*28 COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 



is the only one among all created beings to whom the power 

 has been given of feeling that he feels, of knowing that he un- 

 derstands, and of thinking that he has the power of thinking."* 



Such is the only difference. The question is now reduced 

 to a more limited field than it has ever been before, and infi- 

 nitely less vast. The thing which would be wanting in animals 

 is a kind of internal knowledge ; not the knowledge of oneself 

 (they know this since they feel) but the scientific knowledge of 

 oneself, which can bring reflecting and reasoning study to bear 

 on all the interior phenomena which may occur to each. We 

 desire fully that this may be a distinction, but solely a second- 

 ary one, and able at most to make certain races of men differ 

 one from the other. In fact, if we form an absolute and fun- 

 damental character of humanity out of this faculty, this power 

 of investigation into an interior world, we ought to find it in a 

 powerful manner among all men. It will resist every other 

 influence, it will be permanent, since, this being destroyed, 

 man would be no longer a man, and would be lowered by this 

 fact to the rank whence he is said to have come. 



And do we consider that it may possibly be so ? Does this 

 reflected knowledge of oneself exist among inferior races, if 

 it does not exist among animals ? Certainly we shall never 

 maintain that these last enjoy such a faculty, the source of all 

 our legislation, and that which has made us what we are. 

 But we ask if it is well proved whether all human races possess 

 it. If we do not allow innate ideas to the orang, as F. Cuvierf 

 would do, be it so, but let it be remembered that certain phi- 

 losophers have refused them to man himself. We ourselves 

 agree that an animal has no abstract notion of right or duty, 

 or any idea of a divinity, J but it must also be remembered that 

 certain people have not even a word for the purpose of expressing 

 these things, and it is M. de Quatrefages himself who avows it. 



We refer these persons to the following account of animal 



* Proudhon says, in language which is even more concise and affirmative, 

 " In man, the mind knows itself; whilst elsewhere it seems to us that it does 

 not do so" (Systeme des Contradictions economiques, vol. i, 1850, p. 20). 



f Annales du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, vol. xvi, p. 58. 



j Maire, Societe Havraise d' Etudes Diver ses, 1855-1856. 



Unite de I'Espcce Humaine, 1861, p. 24. 



