Ohap. 111. Mental Powers. JJ 



iictioiis, when performed by an uncultivated man, and by one of 

 the higher animals ? 



The savage and the dog have often found water at a low level, 

 and the coincidence under such circuDjstances has become asso- 

 ciated in their minds. A cultivated man would perhaps make 

 some general proposition on the subject ; but from all that we 

 know of savages it is extremely doubtful whether they would do 

 so, and a dog certainly would not. But a savage, as well as a 

 dog, would search in the same way, though frequently dis- 

 appointed ; and in both it seems to be equally an act of reason, 

 whether or not any general proposition on the subject is 

 consciously 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 

 between 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 be 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 

 shewn by the following actions of American monkeys, which 

 stand low in their order. Eengger, 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 



" Prof. Huxley has analysed with See his article, ' Mr. Darwin's 



idmirable clearness the mental steps Critics,' in the ' Contemporary Re- 



ov which a man, as well as a dog, view,' Nov. 1871, p. 462, and in his 



irrives at a conclusion in a case 'Critiques and Essajs,' 1873, p. 279. 

 inslogons to that given in my text. 



