THE 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
NOVEMBER, 1882. 
I. RECENT STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE 
PSYCHOLOGY* 
c u. 
PTljT is well known that common convention refers the 
a&ions of animals other than man to “ instinCt.” What 
this same “ instinCt” is, how it operates, how it is to 
be distinguished from reason, are indeed questions which 
few persons even attempt to answer, and concerning which 
scarcely two of these few are agreed. For all this we find 
the notion obstinately upheld by literary men, lawyers, poets, 
metaphysicians, and the like — the more obstinately in gene- 
ral the less they have been accustomed to a close and 
heedful study of animal life. Actual working naturalists, 
on the other hand, such as have made a point to observe 
“ our poor relations ” in the woods, the fields, or, in default 
and supplementation, in the vivarium or the aviary, almost 
invariably come to a very different conclusion. They find 
this phantom “instinCt” — in the common acceptation of 
the term — receding as they approach it, and are driven to 
admit that animals possess and are guided by faculties like 
our own in kind, though for the most part of much lower 
degree. Strange to say, however, the conclusion thus forced 
upon the naturalist exposes him, if expressed in speaking or 
in writing, to some little unpopularity. The irrationality of 
brutes is commonly assumed to be in some mysterious man- * 
ner a tenet of the Christian faith, and he who shows that 
they are capable of tracing analogies, of arguing from effeCt 
* Animal Intelligence. By G. J. Romanes, F.R.S. London : Kegan Paul, 
Trench, and Co. 
VOL. IV. (THIRD SERIES). 2 T 
