INSTINCT AND REASON. 141 



to reason or intelligence ; and until we can do so, or other- 

 wise satisfactorily name and classify them, it is at least an 

 advantage or convenience to retain the term ' instinct ' as a 

 provisional designation for all the phenomena in question that 

 are not at present classifiable under or assignable to reason. 

 But when the study of comparative psychology attracts the 

 attention it so well deserves, and in proportion as it is pro- 

 perly studied, more and more of the mental operations of 

 the lower animals will be relegated to intelligence, more and 

 more will it come to be recognised that what is instinct or 

 intelligence in man is equally so in other animals in short, 

 that their psychical organisation is alike. 



Physiologists and mental philosophers tell us that rea- 

 soning in man consists of comparison, abstraction, generali- 

 sation, recollection, reflection, and imagination (Carpenter) ; 

 that is reason when fully developed and in its higher 

 forms. For it need not be affirmed by the enthusiastic 

 philanthropist that all men, lower as well as higher, and 

 in all their stages of growth in infancy and old age as in 

 maturity, and in disease as well as health can abstract, 

 generalise, reflect, compare, imagine, or even recollect. In 

 so far, however, as it can truthfully be said that man, as a 

 species, possesses such mental faculties, it must equally be 

 admitted that all of them occur also in certain other ani- 

 mals not necessarily in the same degree, or manifested in 

 the same way, though the difference, as has been shown in 

 other chapters, is not always or often in favour of man. 

 The constant exercise of reason, indeed, is absolutely neces- 

 sary to many of the commonest or most familiar actions of 

 animals. In other words, they are necessarily, in varying 

 degree, rational creatures if man's actions under similar 

 circumstances are to be considered rational. As contrasted 

 with popular conceptions of instinct, reason in other ani- 

 mals, as in man, is fallible, progressive, slow in action ; 

 while, so far from being simple, it involves operations of 

 considerable complexity. Obviously certain of the lower 

 animals can and do engage in regular or irregular courses 

 or trains of reasoning or thought, and the process of reason- 

 ing in them is essentially what it is in man. 



