2 Psychological Distinctions 



to affect to be dissatisfied with any non-misleading expression, 

 which is currently understood to denote it. 



Place a juvenile chimpanzee in presence of one of its 

 natural enemies ; a python, or one of the larger Feles ; and 

 it " instinctively" recoils with dread. But does a human 

 infant evince the like recognition ? Here, then, is a funda- 

 mental distinction at the outset. 



Not only, too, do brute animals (as remarked by White of 

 Selborne) attempt, in their own defence, to use their natural 

 weapons before these are developed, but they intuitively un- 

 derstand the mode of warfare resorted to by their brute 

 opponents. They know, also, where the latter are most 

 vulnerable, and likewise where their concealed weapons lie. 

 Observe the deportment of a rat that is turned into a room 

 with a ferret : see how artfully he guards his neck against 

 the wall, instinctively knowing that there only will his enemy 

 fix.* Notice, on the other hand, the wondrous accuracy with 

 which the Musteladas constantly wound the jugular vein of 

 any bird or quadruped they attack. Witness a thrush that 

 has captured a wasp, first squeezing out the venom from its 

 abdomen, before it will swallow it. Or see a spider trying to 

 shake off a wasp from its web, and, failing to do so, proceed- 

 ing to cut it clean away. Can aught analogous be traced in 

 the actions of inexperienced man ? Whence, then, the ac- 

 quired knowledge on which these animals could reason to act 

 thus ? 



The distinction is, that, whereas the human race is com- 

 pelled to derive the whole of its information through the 

 medium of the senses, the brute is, on the contrary, supplied 

 with an innate knowledge of whatever properties belong to all 

 the natural objects around, which can in anywise affect its own 

 interests or welfare f; a sort of intimation, by the way, that 

 all the inferior races pertain to some general comprehensive 

 system, all the components of which have a mutual recipro- 

 cal bearing, and to which man only does not intuitively con- 

 form nor constitute a part of, except in so far as his bodily 

 frame is of necessity subject to the common laws of matter 

 and of organisation. 



In every other species, each individual cOmes into the 

 world replete with " instincts," which require no education 



* Even more : he will contrive so to place himself, if practicable, that 

 the ferret's eyes shall be dazzled by the light. 



f The indirect effects of human agency on this intuitive knowledge of 

 brutes will beconsidered presently. In no way is the deterioration more 

 evident, than in domesticated animals poisoning themselves by feeding on 

 that which, in a wild state, they would instinctively reject. 



