360 REPORT— 1879. 



on animal psychology have been ' biassed by a secret desire to establish the identity 

 of animal and human nature,' and certainly no one can deny that those who do 

 assert that identity are necessarily exposed to the temptation referred to. Of course 

 persons who desire to disprove this identity are exposed to the opposite temptation ; 

 but it cannot be maintained that there is evidence of Buffon having been influenced 

 by any such desire. 



The obvious differences between the highest powers of man and animals have 

 led the common sense of mankind to consider them to be of radically distinct kinds, 

 and the question which naturalists now profess to investigate is whether this is so 

 or not. 



But we may doubt, whether many who enter upon this inquiry do not enter 

 upon it with their minds already made up that no such radical difference can by any 

 possibility exist. To admit it, they think, would be tantamount to admitting some 

 non-natural origin of man, to accepting as a fact something not harmonising with 

 our views as to nature generally, leading to we know not what results. To 

 admit it, would be to deny the principle of continuity. There cannot, therefore, 

 be any essential difference between man and brute, and their mental powers must 

 be the same in kind. This, I think, is no unfair representation of the state of 

 mind in which this question is very likely to be entered upon at the present time. 

 Surely, however, if we profess to investigate a question, we ought in honesty to 

 believe that there is a question to investigate, or else leave the matter to others ; 

 and if evidence should seem to show that ' intellect' cannot be analysed into sense, 

 but is an ultimate, it ought to be accepted, at the least provisionally, as such, even 

 at the cost of having to regard its origin as at present inexplicable. Can we explain 

 the origin of ' motion ' ? But what rational man thinks of denying it on that 

 account ? Let us not reject anything, then, which may be evident, on account of 

 certain supposed speculative consequences. 



But that no such consequences as those referred to need follow from the ad- 

 mission of the radical distinctness of human reason, seems evident from the views 

 of Aristotle. He certainly was free from theological prejudices or predispositions, 

 and yet to his clear intellect the difference between the merely sentient and the 

 rational natures was an evident difference, and the facts which are open to our 

 observation are the same as those which presented themselves to his. 



To enter on this inquiry with any fair prospect of success, it is not only 

 necessary to guard against such temptations as these, but it is also necessary to be 

 provided with a certain amount of knowledge of a special kind ; namely, with a 

 clear knowledge of what our own intellectual powers are. I conceive that, great 

 as is the danger of exaggeration and false inference as to the faculties of animals, 

 the danger of misapprehending and underrating our own powers is far greater. 



Buffon held very decided views as to the distinctness of the mind of man 

 from the so-called minds of animals. But an ingenious and gifted writer, 1 who 

 has recently done good service in supporting Buffon's claims to greater considera- 

 tion than he commonly receives, has, nevertheless, done him what I believe to be 

 strange injustice in attributing to his great work an ironical character, and this in 

 spite of Buffon's own protest 2 against irony in such a work as his. I cannot venture 

 to take up your time with controversy on this subject ; but, apart from Buffon's 

 protest against ' Equivoque,' it is incredible to me that he should have carried on a 

 sustained irony through so voluminous a work — thus making its whole teaching 

 absolutely mendacious. One remark of Buffon's, which has been strangely misin- 

 terpreted by this writer, I shall have occasion to notice directly ; but I think it may 

 suffice to clear Buffon's character from the aspersion of his admiring assailant, to 

 point out that in the table of contents in the final volume of his ' History of 

 Mammals ' 3 (which table gives the pith and gist of his several treatises), he 

 distinctly affirms the distinctions maintained in the body of his work. 



The following were Buffon's views. In his ' Discourse on the Nature of 

 Animals,' 4 he says, ' Far from denying feelings to animals, I concede to them 



1 Mr. Samuel Butler. See his Evolution, Old and Nov. Hardwicke & Bogue, 1879. 

 2 ZOp. eit. tome i. p. 25, s Op. oit. tome xv. 



4 Op. oit. vol. iv. p. 41. 



