466 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



" JSTicht aller Mensch ist im Thier, aber alles Thier 

 1st im Menschen." The construction of this high 

 wall between man and beast varies considerably. It 

 is not of course without the hard stones of fact, but 

 is usually cemented with superstition. Those who 

 build it seldom look over it, not that they do not 

 exalt themselves, but they suffer from timidity or 

 from lack of the curious spirit. 



If they happen to observe how like to human con- 

 duct the behaviour of animals often is, the resem- 

 blance is hastily explained away as a mere analogy. 

 In comparing human conduct with that of animals, 

 we must, we are told, ever remember that it is a 

 person, a soul, a homo sapiens, a man who acts. 

 Sometimes the distinction is confessedly apparent; 

 at other times we wish we could forget it. 



Sometimes the height of the separating wall is 

 made to depend not so much on " the unique maj- 

 esty of human nature " as on the " marked infer- 

 iority of the brute." The animal is seen as an eft 

 in the moat around the human citadel. It is said to 

 have no soul, no intelligence, no control, even no con- 

 sciousness. 



Such then, sufficiently outlined for our purpose, 

 are the two extreme views, that which reads the man 

 into the beast, and that which rears an unsurmount- 

 able wall between them, that which makes of an 

 individual Lepus cuniculus frisking on the links a 

 Brer-rabbit, or that which regards him as a whimsi- 

 cal automatic machine. 



A Compromise. Between the two extreme inter- 

 pretations indicated above it seems necessary to find 

 a compromise. We are sure of a conscious mental 

 life in ourselves, it is our greatest certainty ; we in- 

 fer it in other people, without this postulate there 



