Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/202

202 barometer is rising, and therefore we shall have fine weather; his dog says, My master is putting on his hat, and therefore I am going to have a walk. A dog equals a detective in the sharpness with which he infers general objectionableness from ragged clothes. A clever dog draws more refined inferences. If he is not up to enough simple arithmetic to count seven, he can at least say, Everybody is looking so gloomy that it must be Sunday morning. If he is a sheep-dog, he is probably more capable of finding his way over hills than most members of the Alpine Club, and capable of combining his actions with a view to making the sheep—whose reasoning powers are limited—follow the right track. He can found judgments on cautious experiment, as anybody will admit who has seen a dog testing the strength of a plank which he has to cross, or measuring the height of a jump. In fact, a dog is constantly performing rudimentary acts of reason, which can only be distinguished from our own by the fact that he cannot put them into words. He can understand a few simple words; and, though he cannot articulate, he can make sounds indicative of his wants and emotions, which are to words what the embryo is to the perfect organism. He cannot put together a sentence; but to found a distinction of kind between his intellectual performances and those of man upon that circumstance, seems to be as unreasonable as to make a similar distinction between the intellect of the savage who cannot count five, and that of the philosopher who can use mathematical symbols. The power of abstraction has been carried a step, and a very important step, farther in each case; but there is no more cause to suspect the introduction of an entirely new element in one case than the other.

The condemnation of the poor brutes as non-moral (if we may use such a word) seems to be still more monstrous. We need not speak of exceptional stories, such as the legend in a recent French newspaper of the sensitive dog who committed suicide when deserted by his friends; but who can doubt that his dog has something which serves as a very fair substitute for a sense of duty? Could any thing be more like human heroism than the conduct of the poor collie who drove home her master's sheep, leaving her new-born puppies by the side of the road? Or, to avoid particular instances, is there a been drawn seem to us to rest upon no better foundation than a great many other metaphysical distinctions: that is, the assumption that, because you can give two things different names, they must therefore have different natures. It is difficult to understand how anybody who has ever kept a dog, or seen an elephant, can have any doubts as to an animal's power of performing the essential processes of reasoning. We have been saying in thousands of treatises on logic, All men are mortal: Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal. The elephant reasons: All boys are bun-giving animals; that biped is a boy: therefore I will hold out my trunk to him. A philosopher says, The barometer is rising, and therefore we shall have fine weather; his dog says, My master is putting on his hat, and therefore I am going to have a walk. A dog equals a detective in the sharpness with which he infers general objectionableness from ragged clothes. A clever dog draws more refined inferences. If he is not up to enough simple arithmetic to count seven, he can at least say, Everybody is looking so gloomy that it must be Sunday morning. If he is a sheep-dog, he is probably more capable of finding his way over hills than most members of the Alpine Club, and capable of combining his actions with a view to making the sheep whose reasoning powers are limited follow the right track. He can found judgments on cautious experiment, as anybody will admit who has seen a dog testing the strength of a plank which he has to cross, or measuring the height of a jump. In fact, a dog is constantly performing rudimentary acts of reason, which can only be distinguished from our own by the fact that he cannot put them into words. He can understand a few simple words; and, though he cannot articulate, he can make sounds indicative of his wants and emotions, which are to words what the embryo is to the perfect organism. He cannot put together a sentence; but to found a distinction of kind between his intellectual performances and those of man upon that circumstance, seems to be as unreasonable as to make a similar distinction between the intellect of the savage who cannot count five, and that of the philosopher who can use mathematical symbols. The power of abstraction has been carried a step, and a very important step, farther in each case; but there is no more cause to suspect the introduction of an entirely new element in one case than the other.

The condemnation of the poor brutes as non-moral (if we may use such a word) seems to be still more monstrous. We need not speak of exceptional stories, such as the legend in a recent French newspaper of the sensitive dog who committed suicide when deserted by his friends; but who can doubt that his dog has something which serves as a very fair substitute for a sense of duty? Could any thing be more like human heroism than the conduct of the poor collie who drove home her master's sheep, leaving her new-born puppies by the side of the road? Or, to avoid particular instances, is there a