176 Wisco7ism Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



sons which seem to me to justify me in adopting the opinion to 

 which I have here given expression. 



1. One strong proof of this position is to be gained from such 

 facts as I have been relating in your hearing. An unprejudiced 

 and attentive examination of the mental phenomena of lower 

 animals, shows them to have in some measure most, if not all, the 

 mental capacities or faculties which distinguish men. But let us 

 for a moment go even back of this. The nervous system, the ad- 

 mitted instrument of mind, in its intimate structure, is essentially 

 the same ; even the h-airi of man and the lower animals agree so 

 closely as to render all but futile the elaborate attempt of Prof. 

 Owen to establish a separate class, the archencephale, of which man 

 is held to be the sole member. The agreements in general, and 

 even in details, are surprisingly close, whether in gross form or 

 in minute texture, between the brains of men and the anthropoid 

 apes. Then the lower animals have the same extrinsic means 

 for acquiring a knowledge of the outer world that man has. But 

 why have they the sense apparatuses of vision, hearing, touch, 

 taste, smell, the muscular sense, etc., unless for the same purposes 

 that they subserve in men ? But to come nearer. The lower 

 animals experience sensations both agreeable and the contrary, 

 they enjoy sense-perception, and in many cases far beyond what 

 is true for man. They have frequently as perfect, and often a 

 more elaborate muscular system than man, which is exercised and 

 controlled by means of the same kind of nervous mechanism, and 

 is devoted to similar purposes. They have often well marked 

 and very tenacious memories, so far as we can tell, the same as 

 that which belongs to man. They can reason also, or compare 

 the perceptions they have or have had, and many times in a surpris- 

 ing degree. They have most certainly a will, and hence power 

 to choose from among alternatives, the story of Buridan's ass to 

 the contrary notwithstanding. They display all the principal quali- 

 ties and passions which belong to man, such as parental affection, 

 jealousy, anger, fear, courage, constancy, fidelity, friendship, ill- 

 temper, hope, despair (for animals have been known to commit 

 suicide), pride, self-importance, caution, trickery, maliciousness, etc. 

 examples of all of which it would be easy to give and of many 



