CHAPTER IX. 



ALLEGED PSYCHICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MAN AND OTHER 



ANIMALS. 



IT is, and has for ages been, popularly believed that there exist 

 certain fundamental psychical or other differences between 

 man, on the one hand, and all other or lower animals on 

 the other. There are, it is alleged, certain mental or other 

 attributes which are distinctively or peculiarly human, abso- 

 lutely confined to and characteristic of man, and which con- 

 stitute therefore fixed and demonstrable points of differentia- 

 tion between him and other animals. Some of these sup- 

 posed exclusive prerogatives of man are physical; but the 

 physical are so blended with the mental that in such a 

 review of them as the present it is desirable not to separate 

 them. The differences in question are, however, so numerous 

 that it is equally impossible and unnecessary to analyse or 

 discuss all of them here. And, moreover, some are of such 

 a character that it could serve no good end to do more than 

 refer to them en passant as being mere verbal distinctions 

 mere ingenious refinements of men determined by any means 

 to prevent the occupation by other animals of the same 

 moral or mental platform as man. It is proper, nevertheless, 

 to give specimens of the different kinds of objections that 

 have been raised mainly by the prejudice of man against 

 granting to the lower animals a moral or mental status at 

 all approaching that of the vain lords of the creation. Let 

 us, then, enumerate the leading differences that have been 

 supposed to distinguish man from what he contemptuously 

 calls e the brute ; ' and in doing so let us determine for our- 

 selves how far the objections taken are real or substantial. 



