44 THE HUMANIZING OF THE BRUTE. 



they build their nests. Who ever saw a swallow con- 

 structing its nest of flies or mosquitoes and feeding its 

 young with mud? What else, than some kind of 

 sensuous cognition guides the hawk when it swoops 

 down from on high and grasps its prey with unfailing 

 certainty? What else always impels the hen to gather 

 its chicks under its protecting wing on the first ap- 

 proach of such a dangerous visitor? Indeed, Descartes, 

 misled by the regularity of instinctive actions, spoke 

 of animals as of automatic beings and thought that he 

 could explain animal activity by his ' 'spiritus vitales, ' ' 

 certain liquids of a merely mechanical nature. But in 

 doing so he disregarded the fact that animals have real 

 organs that produce effects similar to those which are 

 brought forth by the sensitive cognition of man and he 

 forgot how variable within the limits of a certain reg- 

 ularity instinctive actions may be. Therefore, the fact 

 that some kind of sensitive cognition determines the 

 animal, when acting instinctively, is beyond all doubt. 

 Nevertheless, there are some modern scientists of 

 no small reputation who follow the example of Des- 

 cartes and maintain that instinctive actions are in no 

 wise influenced by sensitive cognition, but are of a 

 merely mechanical nature. One of these scientists is 

 Prof. Jacques L,oeb *) of the University of California, 

 well known on account of his experiments regarding 

 artificial parthenogenesis. 2 ) L,oeb boldly asserts: 



1 ) Studies in General Physiology, Chicago, 1905, vol. I. 

 pp. 1114. 



2 ) We may note here that these experiments have nothing 

 to do with the great question of primo-genesis. For, all ex- 

 periments of I/oeb suppose life, and there is none among them 



