ANIMAL MOTIVES. 339 



mental condition of the civilised man and the savage, the 

 scholar and the boor, or to the human mind in its different 

 phases of health and disease. 



There is insuperable difficulty in discovering or realising 

 the animating motives, reasons, causes, or spurs of action 

 even in fellow-man. None of us can project our own minds 

 or personalities into those of our brethren, and regard events 

 from exactly the same view-point. Hence the impossibility 

 of the mathematician or metaphysician sympathising with 

 the ideas and feelings, or understanding the mental condition, 

 of the child or savage, idiot or lunatic, of the criminal and 

 uneducated classes of his own country. 



It need not, therefore, be surprising that even greater 

 difficulty should be encountered in realising the mental 

 condition of other animals, differing much from man in 

 structure, habit, and surroundings. But the difficulty is one 

 that is materially lessened by proper study. The man who 

 investigates the subject of mind upwards instead of down- 

 wards ; who begins with an examination of the simple 

 before he encounters the complex ; who inquires first into 

 the dawn or rudiments of mind ; who analyses its elements 

 in the lowest organisms, gradually extending his observation 

 to the higher, and ending with man ; who keeps ever in 

 mind the allowances to be made for differences in structure 

 and habit between man and other animals; and who, 

 oblivious of man's asserted supremacy, habitually views 

 animal action from what might be called an animal platform, 

 is likely to arrive at honest and satisfactory conclusions. 

 Those who assert that the motives of other animals are 

 different from those of man will have some difficulty in 

 setting forth the grounds on which they base their asser- 

 tion. 



Assuming, then, that the attribution of human motives 

 to the lower animals is both legitimate and necessary, there 

 are in the first place certain motives that are at once simple 

 and transparent obvious and intelligible. This category 

 includes, for instance , 



1. Hunger and thirst ; ' want ' in all its forms or degrees. 



2. Sexual love. 



