178 CURIOUS HOMES AND THEIR TENANTS. 



the reasoning faculty that is proper to man alone. 

 One belongs to an individual, and may be called indi- 

 vidual intelligence. Such is the intelligence often 

 exhibited by some particular dog, or horse, or mon- 

 key, or parrot, that renders them more teachable than 

 their fellows, for this sort of intelligence can be 

 always accurately measured by the capacity the ani- 

 mal possessing it exhibits to learn ; the other belongs 

 to the race, and may be called racial intelligence. 



The capacity for learning in any of the lower ani- 

 mals is, comparatively speaking, small ; it can not be 

 carried beyond a certain fixed point. A parrot can not 

 be taught to actually converse as does a human being, 

 though the words it learns sometimes, among the very 

 many times it uses them, may seem appropriate to the 

 occasion ; nor can a dog or monkey be taught to dis- 

 play the capacity for co-operation possessed by a bee 

 or a beaver. Yet that a dog or monkey is individu- 

 ally more intelligent than a beaver no one can for a 

 moment doubt. The beaver has the racial, the dog, 

 horse, and monkey more or less individual, intelli- 

 gence. 



A human being knows almost absolutely nothing 

 that is not taught him ; a dog or monkey a great part 

 of what it knows, and a beaver almost all that it can 

 ever know, for a beaver individually is a rather stupid 

 creature. The brain, which by its size and weight 

 and the comparative number of its convolutions meas- 

 ures accurately the mental capacity of its owner, is 

 in a beaver small and with few convolutions. The 

 beaver, therefore, considered as an individual, is not 



