MENTAL POWERS. 75 



sclously placed before the mind.-° The same would apply to 

 the elephant and the bear making currents in the air or water. 

 The savage would certainly neither know nor care by what law 

 the desired movements were effected; yet his act would be 

 guided by a rude process of reasoning, as surely as would a 

 philosopher in his longest chain of deductions. There would no 

 doubt be this difference between him and one of the higher 

 animals-, that he would take notice of much slighter circum- 

 stances and conditions, and would observe any connection be- 

 tween them after much less experience, and this would be of 

 paramount importance. I kept a daily record of the actions of 

 one of my infants, and when he was about eleven months old, 

 and before he could speak a single word, I was continually 

 struck with the greater quickness, with which all sorts of objects 

 and sounds were associated together in his mind, compared With 

 that of the most intelligent dogs I ever knew. But the higher 

 animals differ in exactly the same way in this power of associa- 

 tion from those low in the scale, such as the pike, as well as in 

 that of drawing inferences and of observation. 



The promptings of reason, after very short experience, are well 

 shown by the following actions of American monkeys, which 

 stand low in their order. Rengger, a most careful observer, 

 states that when he first gave eggs to his monkeys in Paraguay, 

 they smashed them, and thus lost much of their contents; after- 

 wards they gently hit one end against some hard body, and 

 picked off the bits of shell with their fingers. After cutting 

 themselves only once with any sharp tool they would not touch 

 it again, or would handle it with the greatest caution. Lumps 

 of sugar were often given them wrapped up in paper; and 

 Rengger sometimes put a live wasp in the paper, so that in 

 hastily unfolding it they got stung; after this had once hap- 

 pened, they always first held the packet to their ears to detect 

 any movement within.'" 



The following cases relate to dogs. Mr. Colquhoun^' winged 

 two wild-ducks, which fell on the further side of a stream; his 

 retriever tried to bring over both at once, but could not succeed; 



2B Prof. Huxley has analyzed with aflmirable clearness the mental 

 steps by which a man, as well as a dog, arrives at a conclusion in a 

 case analogous to that given in my text. See his article, 'Mr. Darwin's 

 Critics,' in the 'Contemporary Review,' Nov. 1S71, p. 462, and In his 

 'Critiques and Essays,' 1873, p. 279. s- 



=» Mr. Belt, in his most interesting work, 'The Naturalist in NioaTa- 

 gua,' 1874 (p. 119), likewise describes various actions of a tamed Cebus, 

 which, I think, clearly show that this animal possessed some reasoning 

 power. 



^ 'The Moor and the Loch,' p. 45. Col. Hutchinson on 'Dog Break- 

 ing,' 1850, p. 46. 



