AND DEMERIT. 189 



among other animals, just as they do so very certainly and 

 commonly in man. There can be no doubt, however, that 

 frequently, if not generally, the generosity of the lower 

 animals, where it exists, is of a higher, purer kind. 



Tocque monkeys nurse each other or human children 

 (Cassell). This may be the result simply of imitation of the 

 behaviour of human female nurses or ayahs ; but we know 

 full well that in countless other cases, whatever be the case 

 in the Tocque monkey, the nursing of animals by each other 

 involves the very highest moral and mental qualities affec- 

 tion, devotion, self-sacrifice, disinterestedness, vigilance, fore- 

 sight, and so forth. 



Intercession in combat may sometimes, as is alleged, arise 

 from a selfish motive for instance, in the case of a hen, from 

 the risk of injury to hei*} r oung (Houzeau). But, on the other 

 hand, we know that many animals have compassion for 

 suffering ; and there are many cases of mediation in which 

 there is no room or ground for the ascription of selfish 

 motives. 



Conciliation of man by animals, we are told, may spring 

 from a knowledge of the advantage of man's friendship in 

 the bestowal of food and the affording of protection and 

 shelter in other words, from a selfish motive. And there is 

 no denying and no disposition to conceal the fact that selfish- 

 ness rules among other animals just as it does among men 

 certainly not more so. They are not all virtue ; there is a 

 due blending of vice. But conciliation may arise from other 

 causes or motives for instance, and much more probably, 

 from the necessity for loving and of being loved in return. 



Again, it is alleged that their love of knowledge, where it 

 exists or is implied for instance, in their inquisitiveness 

 is for selfish ends. That this may frequently be the case is 

 quite probable. In what proportion of mankind, however, 

 can it be said that the desire for knowledge has any higher 

 motive ? Is it not in man the conviction that ' knowledge is 

 power' that leads most usually to its acquisition by him? 

 Love of knowledge for its own sake is obviously peculiar to 

 the higher races in man, and to the most highly endowed 

 individuals of these races. 



