INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 



upon little cakes, which being offered to the bears in the usual 

 way, the animals stood up on their hind legs, and opened their 

 mouths to catch them. The moment they received them, however, 

 they spat them out, and retired to a remote corner of their den, 

 as though they were frightened. After a short interval, however, 

 they returned to the cakes, and pushed them with their paws 

 into the water-trough left to supply them with drink, and there 

 they carefully washed them by agitating them to and fro in the 

 water. After this they smelled them, and again washed them, 

 and continued this process until the poison was washed off, when 

 they ate the cakes with impunity. All the poisoned cakes given 

 to them were thus treated, while all the cakes not poisoned were 

 devoured immediately. 



The animals which had shown these singular marks of intel- 

 ligence were spared the fate to which they had previously been 

 condemned. 



115. One of the most remarkable circumstances attending the 

 faculty of intelligence, observed not only in the ourang-outang, 

 but in all species of apes, is that its greatest development is 

 manifested when the animal is young, and that instead of im- 

 proving, it decreases rapidly with age. The ourang-outang when 

 young excites surprise by his sagacity, cunning, and address. 

 Having attained the adult state, he is a gross, brutal, and intract- 

 able animal.* In this, as well as in all other species of apes, the 

 decrease of intelligence is commensurate with the increase of 

 growth and strength. The intelligence of the animal, therefore, 

 such as it is, is not like that of man, perfectable. 



116. It is established, therefore, by the observations and re- 

 searches of naturalists, that intelligence is a faculty common to 

 man and to inferior animals. According to some, man is distin- 

 guished from other animals only by the degree in which he is 

 endowed with this faculty ; and the difference of degree is so 

 immense, that, before accurate observations had proved the con- 

 trary, the faculty of intelligence was deemed the exclusive gift of 

 the human race. Others contend that the intelligence of man 

 differs from that of animals not in degree only, but in kind ; that, 

 in short, what is called intelligence in animals, is a faculty essen- 

 tially different from what is called intelligence in man, and ought 

 to have been called by a different name. 



The intelligence of animals is limited and stationary. It is 

 unimproveable and incommunicable. The intelligence of man, on 

 the contrary, is susceptible of improvement without limit, and 



* Flourens, "De 1'Instinct et de 1' Intelligence des Animaux," p. 35. 

 168 



