Reason and Instinct. 5575 



the child's imagination* which makes the scenery, the actors, the inci- 

 dents, the conversation of the tale, all real : and it is the same imagina- 

 tion which leads the child, in its play, one moment to personate a 

 beast or a bird, and the next its father, or some one else well known 

 to it: and so it is with the dog in its mimic fights or pursuits with its 

 playmates, whether those playmates be canine like itself, or human, or 

 even belong to some other family or tribe of living creatures. The 

 same of the kitten and her fancy-figured mouse, a weakness into which 

 the demure matron tabby, her mother, sometimes descends for a 

 moment; of the young fox, the lamb, the chicken, and so on without 

 end. Indeed, illustrations of animal imagination are sufficiently 

 numerous and striking ; but what is there in any one of them to lead 

 us to infer that it is a manifestation of an immaterial essence different 

 in kind from that which is the property of man ? I must confess 

 that I cannot see anything which even appears to point to such a 

 conclusion. 



It is certainly much more reasonable to subscribe to the sentiments 

 set forth in the following passages : — " I apprehend that no one who 

 considers the subject can doubt that the mental principle in animals 

 is of the same essence as that of human beings ; so that, even in the 

 humbler classes, we may trace the rudiments of those faculties, to 

 which, in their state of more complete development, we are indebted 

 for the grandest results of human genius." (Psych. Res. p. 167). And 

 again, " I am inclined to believe that the minds of the inferior animals 

 are essentially of the same nature with that of the human race, and 

 that of those various and everchanging conditions of it, which we term 

 the mental faculties, there are none of which we may not discover 

 traces more or less distinct in other creatures." (Id. p. 170). 



A brief glance at our position and that of our argument may not 

 now be altogether out of place. In the former part of it, we were led, 

 by a variety of facts and considerations, not simply to see that a vast 

 number of animals are " no contemptible reasoners," but to admit that 

 they are so in virtue of their possession of the power of comparing, 

 compounding, generalizing or abstracting, and also of communicating 

 their ideas ; all, of course, within certain limits or boundaries ; those 

 limits or boundaries being possibly somewhat indefinite or indistinct, 

 owing to our imperfect and utterly insufficient knowledge. Later on 

 we have come to a conclusion that would, of necessity, have compelled 

 us to look for just such results as the facts and considerations founded 



* Macaulay's Essays, ait, ' Milton.' 



