Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/182

170 also impregnable. Animals feel and reason, but have not the power of deciding for themselves. From the point of view of feeling or common sense, the latter system is much more acceptable than the other. It may even be said that it satisfies the mind and the heart, and imposes no hindrance to scientific research. This has also been proved by Schwann's own example. But it is not less certainly irreconcilable with transformist theories of the descent of man; by it man should have a place apart in Nature.

The stories that have been recently published and held up to attention, as illustrations of the intelligence of animals, have really no bearing unless they indicate that animal intelligence is comparable to ours, in the sense that a passage may take place from one to the other by insensible degrees. Otherwise there would be no need of the demonstration; and Schwann as well as Darwin, Malebranche as well as Descartes, might subscribe to it; for we might say that, in a certain sense, a mechanism is intelligent.

Now, there are some facts that bear against the assimilation of the two kinds of intelligence. An infant, which in the beginning seems less intelligent than a young puppy, very early manifests its superiority; and one of the first things it learns is that which can not with any amount of attention be taught to a dog. It is the capacity of our race for improvement in contrast with the immobility that seems to attach to animal races. Need we, to illustrate this, speak of machines and tools, writing, and the fine arts? It is true that there are monkeys that can defend themselves with sticks and pebbles; fish that can throw up drops of water to stun the insects they want to swallow; and birds that can embellish their nests and form parterres of flowers which they will keep fresh. But these curious stories are not enough to close the discussion. Moreover, however similar these acts may appear in a material sense, they must not always be regarded as mentally alike. When my dog, at my order, brings my slippers or letters, he does not act with the same mind as a servant.

Indeed, the assimilation is sometimes justifiable. I had occasion in some articles that appeared in the "Revue Philosophique," on Mr. G. H. Lewes's last book (March and April, 1881), to relate a number of stories in which insects, mollusks, and hydras, as well as dogs, behaved, under particular circumstances, as a man would. Let me repeat one of them: "I was in the habit of giving bones to my poodle Mouston during dinner, and he would go into the yard to gnaw them. When the bone was too large for him, I would get up and go out with him, and split it before his eyes with a hatchet. One day, Mouston, after having gone out with his bone as usual, came back bringing it in his mouth, fixed himself in front of me and wagged his tail. I ordered him back, but he persisted in staying where he was. Finally, I thought of what he wanted and arose, while the animal indulged himself in leaps of satisfaction. The trouble was, that the bone was