320 
We have been told a number of very interesting anecdotes, showing that 
certain results are arrived at by animals, which took very much like the 
results of reason. To what are those results attributable ? Do they come 
from a reason like our own ? Hardly. Yet those results seem very remark- 
able when we compare them with our own modes of action. We speak 
of an instinctive action in man as one in which there is no conscious exercise 
of the will. A great majority of such instinctive actions are performed with 
a view to self-preservation. When we see in ourselves an action performed 
which we cannot attribute to any rational process of deliberation, we say it is 
performed instinctively. We apply the same term to the actions of animals 
which are not apparently results of deliberation, but it is an evasive term. 
There is a similar use of a term in the word “ chance.” When we do not 
know the cause of a phenomenon, we say that chance produced it. . In the 
same way we use the word “ instinct ” evasively, to show that there is some- 
thing to produce a course of action, but that we do not know what it is. For 
that reason there is no definition of instinct. A question was raised about the 
intellectual powers which animals possess or may possess. It seems clear 
that they have memory. We are also told that they have jealousy; but 
these emotions, in the present discussion, we have nothing to do with. Now 
Aristotle, in sketching out the mental process, says we first begin with me- 
mory ; a number of memories produce an experience, and from experience 
settling itself down in the mind arises generalization, which leads to art 
and science. We may apply this to the question of the scientific and 
artistic power of brutes. A brute has memory, and can collect iuto an 
experience a number of memories ; but his powers stop there. He cannot 
generalize, and there you have the difference between human rationality 
and the apparent rationality of brutes. The latter possess no power of 
concentration or induction. (Hear, hear.) 
The Meeting then terminated. 
