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I only came upon this last Saturday. It is amusing to read 
such arguments ; hut I agree with their author that it is 
“ profitable " also. Not in his sense, perhaps, but still it is 
profitable for us to know how the process of “ rationalising " 
is going on among our fellow men, and in other scientific 
societies. But I must now give you Mr. Heath's other illus< 
tration. He proceeds : — 
“ In the next example rationalisation has advanced still further. Let the 
mute mammal be a speaking man, walking along a lonely road, and the 
inexorable boy a highway robber. A sensible or rationalised man, when met 
in such a case, feels neither fear, nor even anger. He recognises the inevit- 
able, hands out at once his purse, and politely hopes the wife and family of 
the depredator are salubrious. Here the power of language enables the 
two parties so fully to understand each other, that the natural inward 
individual emotion passes wholly into an external interchange of ideas 
common to the two.” 
The guinea-pig's emotions, you may remember, became 
rationalised by its being four times washed, and so made 
angry, and to bite and scratch ; while the man is rationalised, 
because at once he meekly submits to be robbed ! * It might 
be profitable— -I am sure it would be amusing, though also 
somewhat sad — could I go on with still larger extracts from 
this anthropological paper. On the Acquirement of Language by 
Mutes. But I must be brief. I am not surprised to find 
Dr. Hunt thus expressing himself this year in his Annual 
Address to the Fellows of the Anthropological Society : “ It 
* When revising the proof-sheets hereof, I was unexpectedly furnished 
with a denial of the accuracy of the small experiment relied upon by Mr. 
Heath. Two of my boys being present, I read aloud the account of the 
result of bathing a guinea-pig, thinking it would amuse them ; when, greatly 
to my surprise, the elder boy interrupted me with the- exclamation, “ That is 
not correct !” I had quite forgotten at the moment that the boys had them- 
selves kept guinea-pigs, and might possibly have made the same experiment. 
This, they told me, they had done frequently ; but with no experience cor- 
responding to that of Mr. Heath’s “ inexorable boy.” Their guinea-pigs, 
when taken to the bath, never fought, bit, squealed, or scratched ; but, on 
the contrary, they took to the water kindly— nay, “sometimes they jumped 
in,” and “seemed to like it.” These guinea-pigs, in fact, were quite un- 
“ like General Lee,” but rather resembled the “rationalised” simpleton who 
is supposed to exchange compliments with the highway robber who attacks 
him, instead of knocking him down. But this result, though contrary to 
that upon which Mr. Heath has founded his reasoning, may answer his argu- 
ment quite as well, and will harmonize his two examples. Perhaps he may 
now be satisfied that even a guinea-pig’s emotions may be “ rationalised ” 
beyond the fighting and biting point ! To jump voluntarily into cold water 
and swim about must surely indicate a step in rationalising beyond the mere 
feeling that to be plunged into a “ nice warm-water bath ” is an “ idea of 
something external to be resisted ” ! 
