WAYS OF NATURE 



Animals take the first step in knowledge — they 

 perceive things and discriminate between them ; but 

 they do not take the second step — combine them, 

 analyze them, and form concepts and judgments. 



So that, whether animals know much or little, I 

 think we are safe in saying that what they know in 

 the human way, that is, from a process of reasoning, 

 is very slight. 



The animals all have in varying degrees perceptive 

 inteUigence. They know what they see, hear, smell, 

 feel, so far as it concerns them to know it. They 

 know their kind, their mates, their enemies, their 

 food, heat from cold, hard from soft, and a thousand 

 other things that it is important that they should 

 know, and they know these things just as we know 

 them, through their perceptive powers. 



We may ascribe intelligence to the animals in the 

 same sense in which we ascribe it to a child, as the 

 perception of the differences or of the likenesses and 

 the relations of things — that is, perceptive intelli- 

 gence, but not reasoning intelligence. When the 

 child begins to " notice things," to know its mother, 

 to fear strangers, to be attracted by certain objects, 

 we say it begins to show intelligence. Development 

 in this direction goes on for a long time before it can 

 form any proper judgment about things or take the 

 step of reason. 



If we were to subtract from the sum of the intelli- 

 gence of an animal that which it owes to nature or 

 126 



