IX 



THE REASONABLE BUT UNREASONING 

 ANIMALS 



THERE is to me a perennial interest in this 

 question of animal instinct versus intelligence, 

 and I trust my readers will pardon me if I again 

 take the question up. Ever since one of our lead- 

 ing weekly journals (last June) declared its belief 

 that " animals are capable of reasoning from certain 

 premises, and do possess and express, though in a 

 rudimentaiy form, many of the moral and intellec- 

 tual processes and sentiments of man," I have 

 wanted to take another shot at the subject. I do 

 not now recall that any one has before claimed that 

 the lower animals possess many of the moral senti- 

 ments of man, though a goodly number of persons 

 seem to have persuaded themselves that animals 

 do reason. Even so competent a naturalist as Mr. 

 Homaday says that asking if animals reason is 

 to him like asking if fishes swim. But I suspect 

 that Mr. Homaday is a better naturalist than he is 

 a comparative psychologist, because all the eminent 

 comparative psychologists, so far as I know them, 

 177 



