2 INTRODUCTION. 



Aristotle who far surpassed his predecessors in scientific 

 knowledge approached more nearly to the solution of 

 the question, for he had caught a glimpse of the gradations 

 of organised beings. He sees in the minds of animals traces 

 of the properties of human minds and human reflection, and 

 maintains that the mind of the child scarcely differs in 

 aught from the mind of the animal ("Natural History,"" 

 Book 8). He regards the elephant as the most intelligent 

 of animals. The Roman Pliny, although too credulous, 

 does the same in relating wonderful anecdotes about 

 animals. Also the Roman poet, Virgil (70 B.C.), speaks 

 very lovingly in his poems about the breeding of animals, 

 and in describing the wonderful doings of bees declares 

 that a portion of the divine spirit dwells in these creatures. 

 Plutarch (B.C. 50) in his treatise on reason in animals 

 makes himself merry over the opinion taught in the 

 schools of the cynics and stoics and still defended to-day 

 that animals in reality possess neither emotion nor thought, 

 and that the identity of their actions with those of men is 

 only apparent. " As for those," he says, " who judge so 

 clumsily and are so barefaced as to maintain that animals 

 feel neither joy, nor anger, nor fear, that the swallow has 

 no forethought, and the bee no memory, but that it is a 

 mere appearance when the swallow shows forethought, or 

 the lion anger, or the hind timidity I do not know how 

 they would answer those who should say that they must then 

 also admit that animals do not see, nor hear, nor have 

 voices, but that they only apparently see, hear, and have 

 voices ; that in fact they do not really live at all, but only 

 appear to have life. For the one contention would not be 

 more antagonistic to manifest fact than is the other." 



Plutarch seems also to embrace the opinion, about which 

 there is now so much controversy, that the difference be- 

 tween animals of the same race is not nearly so great as 

 that between man and man. 



The great Roman physician, Claudius Galen, of Per- 

 gamus, whose system of medicine ruled the world for more 

 than a thousand years, gives it plainly to be understood in his 

 writings that he ascribes reflection and power of determi- 

 nation to animals, and that they only differ from men as to 

 degree. He also, like Anaxagoras, calls man the wisest of 

 animals. 



