Reason and Instinct. 5583 



varieties of the dog, quite sufficiently pronounced and remarkable, 

 however, to dictate the familiarly specific nomenclature of the animals 

 in question, are cases in point. The result is that the young of these 

 varieties take to their special duties with great ease, or almost 

 naturally, requiring very little teaching or "breaking," and occasioning 

 their trainer comparatively but little trouble. No doubt other dogs 

 besides the pointer and setter may be taught to " stand." I had a 

 large spaniel whom I succeeded in training to do so, and I knew a 

 remarkably sagacious water-spaniel, much shot to as a retriever, who 

 acquired the habit of herself, and pointed with great steadiness. But 

 this, to me, appears to be an additional confirmation of the theory of 

 hereditary instinct, by explaining the way in which the original 

 pointer, setter, springer, turnspit, &c, were formed. 



Now it is axiomatic enough that the teacher must have something 

 to work on, or his teaching will come to no result. In the school of 

 boys and girls, we know well enough what he has to work on, and he 

 will tell you that he can do the best with the cleverest or the most 

 attentive ; that is, with those whose intellectual faculties are the best 

 adapted for receiving and retaining the impressions it is his object to 

 convey. But the presence of intellectual faculties will be implied in 

 what he tells you of every individual child in the school-room, 

 whether he speaks of the lowest and dullest of his scholars or points 

 out what our Scottish friends call the "dux" of the school. Were he 

 to point out a child incapable of learning, he would add, "but he has 

 no brains, no understanding, no intellectual faculties at all." The 

 very capacity, then, to receive instruction and evince so remarkably 

 the results of training, most manifestly possessed by so many of the 

 .brutes, is, in my view, a most convincing proof that they, too, have 

 intellectual faculties to work on, an understanding to conceive, and 

 mental powers to operate the teaching afforded. No doubt some will 

 be easier taught than others.,— I mean individuals in a species or 

 family, — just as, indeed, we know that some species in the same genus 

 are more intelligent than others, and some tribes much less gifted with 

 sagacity than others. But our opinion that reason belongs to the 

 lower orders of animals, in virtue of a joint possession with mankind of 

 an intellectual essence, is not hereby shaken. Indeed it is rather con- 

 firmed, for we note the same thing as continually occurring in the 

 human family itself, and not at all excluding hereditary peculiarities 

 from the category. It has occurred to me, through a tolerably intimate 

 acquaintance with village schools in many different parts of the king- 

 dom, to become aware that there is a vast difference between the 



