5458 Reason and Instinct, 



I have already, in the preceding paragraph, to a slight degree, 

 anticipated some of the conclusions I have come to in conducting 

 this inquiry, and I may perhaps be permitted here, in some measure, 

 further to anticipate a portion of the argument which, some might 

 think, would have been quite as much in its place in a more advanced 

 stage of the discussion. The author of ' Psychological Enquiries' 

 says (p. 174), " We seldom see animals, in their free and natural state 

 or otherwise than as being cowed and oppressed by the superiority of 

 man;" and Mr. Couch (' Illustrations of Instinct,' p. 187) expresses 

 himself thus : " I have purposely avoided drawing any illustrations of 

 intellect from the history of the dog, because, however sagacious many 

 of its actions are, an objection might be raised that its proceedings 

 are influenced by the long-continued habit of receiving instructions 

 from man." Now I cannot quite go with either of these gentlemen in 

 this matter. I cannot think that a man, intellectually inferior to 

 another man, can be properly said to be " cowed and oppressed by 

 the superiority" of the other, even although daily or continually 

 brought into contact with that other, and made to act in concert with 

 or possibly in subjection to him. In fact, the reverse is proverbially 

 true. And therefore I do not see how animals should at all suffer in- 

 tellectually by their habits of association with and subjection to man, 

 always, of course, supposing that they are not cowed or oppressed by 

 something apart from intellectual superiority, such as hard usage, the 

 unyielding fetters of stern discipline, — that, for instance, which elicits 

 the popular air from the piping bulfinch, or produces the "paces" of 

 the " managed horse," and the like. And, so far from thinking the 

 long-continued habit of receiving instructions from man a prejudice 

 to the animal, when made the subject of our special inquiry, or a hin- 

 drance and obstacle to ourselves in prosecuting the inquiry, I hold a 

 contrary view. I should as soon think that, if it were my object to 

 ascertain what is the intellectual or mental calibre of the Bushman or 

 the Digger, the said Bushman or Digger would be prejudiced, as to 

 the result of my inquiry, by a course of instruction in a good school, 

 or that the inquiry itself would be, by that process, rendered more 

 difficult, or less satisfactory and conclusive in the results it led to. 

 For surely if it be made to appear not only that an animal, human or 

 brute, has certain faculties, and that these faculties, under certain 

 processes, are capable of being developed, strengthened, improved, — 

 by this very fact the inquiry into the nature or the degree, or the 

 measure of those faculties, antecedently presumed to exist, must be 

 not so much facilitated as resolved, or at least put in the direct and 



