INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS. 165 



not in kind. But what we have to guard against is 

 not to ascribe [he obviously means the reverse, that 

 we are to guard against ascribing] to animals reason- 

 ing powers of a higher type than is consistent with 

 the development of their brain, especially when the 

 actions which seem, to postulate such powers can be 

 readily accounted for by simply bearing in mind the 

 extraordinary acuteness of one or more of their senses. 

 We are altogether too prone to judge the intellectual 

 life of animals by the human standard to imagine 

 that the eye is everywhere, as with us, the leading 

 source of knowledge. The neglect of the important 

 role which the sense of smell plays in animal life has 

 been particularly fruitful of errors in philosophical 

 speculation. It has, among other things, helped to 

 give a longer basis of life to the old theory of instinct, 

 regarded as a mysterious power of nature." In 

 passing, we may remark that at the very beginning 

 of our own life the sense of smell is stronger and 

 more useful than the sense of sight ; as though during 

 those first few days, before the eyes acquire power to 

 recognise objects or to do much more than to distinguish 

 light from darkness, we belonged, for the time being, 

 to that inferior class of animals with whom the pre- 

 dominant sense is that of smell. In that part, also, 

 of their lives, human beings seem so far to resemble 

 the lower animals that their actions appear to be 

 governed by instinct solely. In reality, probably, a 

 sense of smell much keener then than during the 

 subsequent years, which alone we can remember, 



