V THE MENTAL PHENOMENA OF ANIMALS 127 



height which he can leap, and will never attempt what exceeds 

 his force and ability. An old greyhound will trust the more 

 fatiguing part of the chase to the younger, and will place him- 

 self so as to meet the hare in her doubles ; nor are the conjectures 

 which he forms on this occasion founded on anything but his 

 observation and experience. 



" This is still more evident from the effects of discipline and 

 education on animals, who, by the proper application of rewards 

 and punishments, may be taught any course of action, the most 

 contrary to their natural instincts and propensities. Is it not 

 experience which renders a dog ^apprehensive of pain when you 

 menace him, or lift up the whip to beat him ? Is it not even 

 experience which makes him answer to his name, and infer from 

 such an arbitrary sound that you mean him rather than any of 

 his fellows, and intend to call him, when you pronounce it in a 

 certain manner and with a certain tone and accent ? 



"In all these cases we may observe that the animal infers 

 some fact beyond what immediately strikes his senses ; and that 

 this inference is altogether founded on past experience, while the 

 creature expects from the present object the same consequences 

 which it has always found in its observation to result from 

 similar objects. 



''Secondly, it is impossible that this inference of the animal 

 can be founded on any process of argument or reasoning by 

 which he concludes that like events must follow like objects, 

 and that the course of nature will always be regular in its 

 operations. For if there be in reality any arguments of this 

 nature they surely lie too abstruse for the observation of such 

 imperfect understandings ; since it may well employ the utmost 

 care and attention of a philosophic genius to discover and observe 

 them. Animals therefore are not guided in these inferences by 

 reasoning ; neither are children ; neither are the generality of 

 mankind in their ordinary actions and conclusions ; neither are 

 philosophers themselves, who, in all the active parts of life, are 

 in the main the same as the vulgar, and are governed by the 

 same maxims. Nature must have provided some other principle, 

 of more ready and more general use and application ; nor can an 

 operation of such immense consequence in life as that of in- 



