Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/415

Rh that they should find in our cajolery a kind of recollection of motherly tenderness. They play together, embrace one another, and press against one another. The man who plays with them is like a companion of a little more respectable species, and that is all. In menageries, monkeys, bears, lions, tigers, and hyenas indulge in caresses to the point that some animals seek them and provoke them. But lizards, with their scaly skin, unaccustomed to embracing, feeling, and licking, hatched in the sun! My Pedro therefore presented a deviation of the feeling of jealousy. We not rarely see parrots that like to be stroked on the neck or the head. I once accustomed a vulture in the zoölogical garden of Ghent to pass his head out between the bars of his cage in order to have it held and caressed. My friend Prof. Gilkinet tamed a wild rabbit till it became as familiar as a dog, and learned to like the hand that stroked it. All these creatures have known the pleasures of the nest and of maternal contact. But again, a lizard? I suppose that when cuddled between my handkerchief and my hand, it felt in that kind of moist and easy cavity a renewal of the pleasure of the days when it was free, and had a secure refuge in the shelter of the leaves against a burning sun. On the other hand, when another lizard comes, it displays envy or anger as if it were threatened with dislodgment. Is it that? It alone can tell what is passing in its darkened psychic sensibility, for man can not penetrate the animal mind. But could he penetrate the human soul if he had not language; can he penetrate the soul of one whose language he is not acquainted with? If we met a savage in the midst of a virgin forest, should we be better able to divine his intentions than we should those of an alligator?

Does it not result from these observations that, aside from the faculty of abstract, artificial, and conventional language, which seems up to this time to be the exclusive appanage of man, there is no clearly marked difference in general feelings between man and his lower brethren? Or rather, as I have ventured to say on another occasion, I ask if there may not appear in each animal species from time to time scamps, individuals inclined to rapine and murder, like my lizard Ben Youssouf, or simple, uneasy creatures like Pedro?

Furthermore, these minute observations, which may seem puerile in the eyes of many, help to establish the psychological transition from man to animals placed much lower in the zoölogical scale than lizards. In this aspect, they may be considered an humble contribution in support of transformism.—Translated for the Popular Science Montlily from the Revue Scientifique.