ANIMAL KATIOCINATION 33 



. . . A monkey, as I myself observed, succeeded by 

 methodical investigation, and without any assistance, in 

 discovering for himself the mechanical principle of the 

 screw ; and that monkeys well understand how to use 

 stones as hammers is a matter of common observation since 

 Dampier and Wafer first described this action as practised 

 by these animals in the breaking open of oyster-shells. . . . 

 While a paraffin lamp was being trimmed, some of the oil 

 fell upon the back of a cat, and was afterwards ignited by 

 a cinder falling upon it from the fire. The cat, with her 

 back in a blaze, in an instant made for the door (which 

 happened to be open) and sped up the street about one 

 hundred yards, where she plunged into the village 

 watering-trough, and extinguished the flame. The trough 

 had eight or nine inches of water, and puss was in the 

 habit of seeing the fire put out with water every night. 

 The latter point is important, as it shows the data of 

 observation on which the animal reasoned. . . . The 

 feelings that prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse can 

 only, I think, be assigned to the category to which by 

 common consent they are ascribed delight in torturing 

 for torture's sake. Speaking of man, John S. Mill some- 

 where observes that there is in some human beings a 

 special faculty or instinct of cruelty, which is not merely 

 a passive indifference to the sight of physical suffering, 

 but an active pleasure in witnessing or causing it. Now, 

 so far as I have been able to discover, the only animals in 

 which there is any evidence of a class of feelings in 

 any way similar to these are cats [including those 

 Brobdingnagian cats, tigers, and, I suppose, lions] and 

 monkeys." 



The nearer to man, the less the humanity! To speak 

 more precisely, it appears that man and those brutes (in a 

 double sense) which most resemble him are alone cursed 

 with the quality which in Greek is called tmxatp**axl* t and 

 in German Schadenfreude, but for which there is no equiva- 

 lent in English though such a compound word as " pain- 



3 



