Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/265

 Rh perspective. But in all his comparisons of present and past sensations, definite notions of number rarely have any part.

The inequalities in the development of the power of counting and of arithmetical notions among the different human races should make us cautious about accepting the accounts of those who believe that some animals can be taught to count. It is extremely improbable, at least, that animals, however intelligent, without language, should acquire precise ideas which human beings succeed in apprehending only by the aid of language and education.

The animal can distinguish relative sizes, but the measure of quantities escapes him. Like the child and savage of inferior development, he can only distinguish between few and many, between unity, duality, and plurality, the various degrees of which must inevitably be more or less confused in his perceptions. He knows facts, but he distinguishes them chiefly by their order of coexistence in space, rather than of succession in time; and they are photographed in his brain in views of the whole, of which, not being able to separate them from the others, he can not distinguish the similar parts enough to count them. His recollection of places is a succession of kaleidoscopic pictures, in which, among the moving forms and successive sounds, he marks only what moves him, what gives him pleasure or pain, what flatters his instincts or answers to his wants, what arouses fear or desire in him. If he should go so far as to count, it would be only those objects which interest him with a view to his security.

The wolf and the fox, for instance, can distinguish whether a flock is guarded by one or two dogs, but can not tell any better than we can how many sheep there are in the flock; but if they see one or two separated from the rest, they will attack them. In the same way we can distinguish the forms of two, three, or four poplars on the bank of a stream, while we can not tell the number of trees in an avenue, but are always inclined to exaggerate it.

It is by this observation of lines, directions, and signs in the whole, rather than of numbers, that the animal acquires the faculty of recognizing roads it has passed over, and places where it has met its prey or escaped its enemies. It can orient itself to the horizon and measure distances, as the savage does; and, like him, it has the sense of the direction it ought to take to reach the object it is in search of; but it is reasonably certain that no calculation of any number of units enters into this intelligence. When a dog in hunting crosses a wood or a fallow ground, he is able, by a quick apperception, to describe all the curves and all the angles that permit him to avoid or turn the obstacles. He can adjust his leap to the width of the ditch which he has to jump,