ON THE JSSTHETIC SENSE IN ANIMALS. 729 



ON THE ESTHETIC SENSE IN ANIMALS. 



TBANSLATED FEOM THE FEENCH OF LOUIS VIAEDOT. 



By A. E. MACDONOUGH. 



THE mind of animals is a very old subject of discussion. Descartes 

 and his school regarded an animal as a mere piece of machinery, 

 like a clock or a turnspit. For man alone they reserved intelligence, 

 meaning by that, memory, feeling, will, and reason. The story of 

 Malebranche is well known : As he was going into his convent at the 

 Oratory with a friend, a little bitch ran up and fawned on him ; he 

 gave her a kick which sent the poor beast yelping off, and when his 

 friend expressed surprise that so gentle, kindly, and Christian a per- 

 son returned kicks for caresses, he exclaimed, " What ! do you really 

 suppose that that animal had any feeling ? " Thus Malebranche not 

 merely believed he had not wounded or grieved her; he even thought 

 he had caused her no physical pain. This was denying clear proof, 

 and pushing faith in his master's doctrine to absurdity. 



On the other hand, Montaigne, Leibnitz, La Fontaine, Bayle, Con- 

 dillac, Madame de Sevigne, agreeing with all antiquity, from Pythag- 

 oras to Galen, assert that animals have all the organs of sensation and 

 of feeling ; that they possess will, desires, memory, ideas, combinations 

 of ideas, and even the power of performing some moral acts, such as 

 entertaining attachment like that a dog feels for his master, or a hen 

 for her chicks ; or, like " that very just equality which they practise 

 in dividing food or other good things among their young," as Mon- 

 taigne says ; and that therefore the intelligence of animals, if not 

 equal to man's, is at least like it, and that the differences between the 

 oyster anchored to its rock and the homo sapiens of Linnaeus are 

 merely differences between more and less, degrees of succession that 

 make up what is called the scale of being. It is the latter opinion 

 that has been declared triumphant by the researches of natural history 

 and those of comparative anatomy alike. On this point science has 

 reached certainty, and every one, reading the story of " the two Rats, 

 the Fox and the Egg," says now with La Fontaine : 



" After that tale, where's the pretense 

 That animals are lacking sense ? " 



But another dispute has just been opened on this question : " Have 

 animals the sense of beauty, the aesthetic sense?" The famous 

 Charles Darwin, and his numerous followers agreeing with him, dis- 

 playing even greater generosity than Montaigne, Leibnitz, and La 

 Fontaine, answer unhesitatingly in the affirmative. In their view, 

 just as animals are endowed with intelligence as well as man, though 

 in a lower degree, so in the same way and in the same proportion they 



