260 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



resistance to the sway of love, which man often fondly imagines 

 he can withstand or escape. 



Of course, he who ventures at the outset to dispute man's be- 

 longing to the animal world at all, sees in an animal nothing more 

 than a machine which is moved and guided, stimulated to action, 

 incited to sue for the favour of the opposite sex, impelled to songs 

 of rejoicing, provoked to combat with rivals, by forces outside of 

 itself; and, naturally enough, he denies to such a machine all free- 

 dom and discretion, all conflict between opposing motives, all emo- 

 tional and intellectual life. Without raising himself by thus claiming 

 a monopoly of intelligent action, or at least of intellectual freedom, 

 he degrades the lower animals to false creations of his own hollow 

 vanity, suggesting that they lead a seeming rather than a real life, 

 and that they are without any of the joys of existence.^^ 



An exactly contrary position would be undoubtedly more just, 

 as it certainly is more accurate. Indeed, it is scarcely too much to 

 say that he who refuses to credit the lower animals with intelligence 

 raises anxiety on the score of his own, and that he who denies 

 them all emotional life has himself no experience of what emotional 

 life is. Whoever observes without prejudice is sooner or later forced 

 to admit that the mental activity of all animal beings, diverse as its 

 expression may be, is based upon the same laws, and that every 

 animal, within its own allotted life-circle and under the same cir- 

 cumstances, thinks, feels, and acts like any other, and is not; in 

 contrast to man, impelled to quite definite actions by so-called 

 higher laws. The causes of the actions of animals may perhaps be 

 termed laws, but, if so, we must not forget that man is subject to 

 the same. His intellect may enable him to make some of these 

 laws of nature subservient to his purposes, to modify others, some- 

 times even to evade them, but never to break or annul them. 



Let me attempt to prove the correctness of these opinions by 

 giving examples to show how essentially the expressions of life in 

 man and in the lower animals may resemble each other, how both 

 are alike ail-powerfully influenced by the most important of the 

 laws of nature, that which has for its aim, or its consequence, the 

 continuance of the species. Man and bird: how wide the gulf which 



