How Animals Talk 



mob caught it and bent to it, as a field of grass 

 bends to the storm. 



Therefore (and I hope you keep the thread of 

 logic through a long digression), when I go as a 

 man among caribou or wolves or plover or crows, 

 and see the whole herd or pack or flock acting 

 as one, as if swayed by a single will, I see no 

 reason why I should evoke an incorporeal swarm 

 impulse, or "call a spirit from the vasty deep" of 

 the unknown to explain their similarity of action, 

 since there are natural causes which may account 

 for the matter perfectly familiar causes, too, 

 which still influence men and women as they in- 

 fluence the remote wood folk. 



No, this is not a new animal psychology; it is 

 rather an attempt to banish the delusion that 

 there is any such thing as a distinct animal 

 psychology. Science has many forms, and still 

 plenty of delusions, but there is a basic principle 

 to which she holds steadily namely, that Nature 

 is of one piece because her laws are constant. 

 It follows that, if you know anything of a surety 

 about your own mind, you may confidently apply 

 the knowledge to any other mind in the universe, 

 whether in the heavens above or the earth beneath 

 or the waters under the earth. The only ques- 

 tion is, How far may the term "mind" be prop- 

 erly applied to the brute ? 



[i34] 



