6 INTRODUCTION. 



conceptions of these faculties, since there is no other rule 

 wherewith to measure them, and the word " instinct " as 

 will presently be further shown is only a paraphrase of 

 our ignorance, and depends in countless cases on demon- 

 strably false representations.* The French philosopher, 

 Condillac, the able tutor of the Infant of Parma, who, by 

 his victorious struggle against the innate ideas of Locke, 

 gave the death-stroke to the vanishing relics of the Car- 

 tesian philosophy, had used the argument against Descartes 

 that animals were far removed from machines, since they 

 felt like ourselves, avoided danger, gained expertness, and 

 supplied their own wants as did human beings. " Man is 

 wont to say," remarks Condillac, " that animals obey in- 

 stinct and man reason, without knowing what is to be 

 conveyed bv these two words. The actions of animals can 

 only be explained on three principles ; either as the result 

 of mere mechanism, or of blind impulse which neither 

 reasons nor judges, or as the outcome of something which 

 reasons, judges and understands. Since I have proved that 

 both the first explanations are utterly unsatisfactory, the 

 last alone remains." Linnaeus, Buffon who made the 

 admirable remark that we were compelled to marvel the 

 more at the intelligence of animals, the more we observed 

 and the less we theorised Voltaire, G. F. Meier (in his 

 famous " Search after a new system of Animal Intelligence," 

 1750), C. Bonnet, and many others spoke more or less 

 against the Cartesian philosophy. The last especially, an 

 excellent naturalist and a distinguished thinker (1770), 

 refers to the contrivances of insects, especially of wasps and 

 bees, and to the artistic talent of the beavers, which last 

 are brought in immediately after the bees. (!) 



Even the Jesuit father, Bonjeant, who found so much 

 intelligence in animals that he thought it could only be due 

 to the help of the devil or devils, turned against Descartes 

 with the words: "All the Cartesians in the world will 

 never persuade me that a dog is a mere machine. Imagine 

 a man who should love his clock as a man loves his dog, 

 and who should pet it because he believed it loved him and 

 was of opinion that it struck the hours consciously and out 



* Compare on this point the admirable treatment of the mind of 

 animals, by L. H. Morgan, in " The American Beaver and his Works," 

 p. 148, etc. 



