INTRODUCTION. 



CHAPTER I. 

 HISTORICAL REVIEW. 



THE question of mind in animals and of their intellectual 

 capacities as compared with those of men is as old as 

 man's thought ; it can scarcely be accepted as a brilliant 

 testimony to human philosophy and its progress, that the 

 different points of view from which this question has been 

 judged stand out against each other to-day with almost the 

 same distinctness as was the case some thousand years ago, 

 although lately the influence of the Darwinian theory, and 

 the more accurate knowledge of the remarkable facts of 

 heredity, have thrown a heavy weight into the scale of the 

 opinion hitherto rejected by the majority. This opinion 

 has been urged or denied less from scientific than from 

 egoistical motives ; it was feared lest man and his place in 

 nature should be lowered and degraded if animals were 

 allowed the possession of intellectual powers like or allied 

 to those of man. Just as if " our superiority over the 

 animals " (as Lord Brougham says in his '' Discourse on 

 Instinct") "was not great enough to banish and make ridicu- 

 lous every feeling of jealousy in this respect, even if we 

 regard the difference between ourselves and them as a ques- 

 tion of degree and not of kind." 



There was indeed in their exceedingly slight knowledge 

 of animals and of their habits an excuse for the philosophers 

 of antiquity, which cannot be admitted for the philosophers 

 of to-day. Nevertheless, Anaxagoras, with philosophic in- 

 sight, calls man the wisest of animals ; Socrates calls him 

 a beautiful, and Plato a civilised animal. Their disciple, 



