104 
under the influence of fear, and seeing two ways of escape, 
will select the more feasible one. There is no reason for 
assuming the exercise of reflective powers here, unless they 
are more perfect than human reflective powers, which are 
generally paralyzed in moments of extreme danger : in fact the 
very rapidity with which an animal acts should preclude this 
assumption. We know that the impression made by an object 
on the senses is in many cases involuntarily retained by the 
memory, and regulates mechanically our future conduct with 
reference to that object; and we may surely assume the 
existence of a similar principle in the lower animals. The 
chamois who finds himself, when followed by the hunter, sud- 
denly confronted by a chasm the width of which slightly 
exceeds his leaping power, will not attempt to get over it if 
there is any other way open to him. Are we to suppose that 
he reasons with himself as to his power of leaping compared 
with the breadth of the chasm, or that the sight of the chasm 
impresses on him instantaneously the improbability of his 
arriving safely on the other side ? The great functional differ- 
ence between this quality and the intellect is that it never 
rises superior to the instinct as a source of action, but is 
always subordinate to it and employed in carrying out its 
dictates. 
We have next to consider whether anything analogous to 
the human intellect is to be found in the psychology of the 
lower animals, or whether all their actions may not be traced 
to an instinctive source. Mr. Pike, in a paper “ On the 
Sciences of Mind and Language,” read two or three years 
since before the Anthropological Society of London, and pro- 
nounced by the President of that Society to have been “ con- 
ceived in a most liberal spirit,” says, “ There is not, I believe, 
any a priori reason to suppose that there is a difference of 
kind between the brute intellect and the human intellect. 
Whatever difference may exist, must be s^own to exist 
by evidence and not taken for granted; and the evidence 
which bears upon this point will be the basis of comparative 
psychology.” 
But we cannot well bring a priori argument to bear on the 
matter unless we are agreed as to the original object of the 
creation both of man and brute. If we believe that the object 
of the existence of brutes is fulfilled by the fact of their exist- 
ence and by the involuntary discharge of those functions in- 
volved in the maintenance of their existence, while man, on 
the contrary, was created for a higher destiny, there is good 
a priori reason for supposing that he is separated from the 
brute, as regards his psychical qualities, by a broad line of de- 
