elephant? To such objectors I would reply-How can you show that your conception of matter as it exists is adequate? Matter pure and simple, the materia prima of philosophy, nowhere exists actually, nor ever did so exist. Every form of matter known to us, even the simplest, possesses certain active powers, and is combined with a definite "form." New combinations and collocations of matter are continually evoking new forms, presenting to us other powers before unknown to us. What right, then, has any one to deny the existence in matter of latent potentialities which experience and reason combine to show us are now actually there, and, in all probability, have been latent antecedently? That matter should show us actions which embody a quasi intelligence is the less surprising when we reflect that all nature teems with such unconscious intelligence. Reason, order, and activity pervade the material universe-the mineral as well as the animal and vegetable kingdoms. But, apart from man, such reason is in no material being conscious of ergy in man. itself; and the soul of man is, as we have seen, different in kind from the soul of every brute, and may therefore, as we have also seen, rationally claim another origin. The resemblance of the unconscious infant (whose instincts are less developed than those of many new-born beasts) to a mere animal, is but a superficial one, and results only from the imperfection of our powers of observation. That from the first the whole difference is latent, the result proves. It is like the superficial resemblance of an embryonic reptile to an embryonic bird, or even of an embryonic beast to an embryonic fish. The reptile never is a bird, nor the beast a fish, though the immature stages of development are superficially alike.

A new en

If the history of mankind is sketched out by that of the child's development, then we may conclude that man was never a mere animal. Instinct and Reason seem to form two distinct regions-two distinct kinds of activity-whereof the former serves as the material for the latter. In order that mere instinctive faculties may become rational, there is

needed the introduction from without (as Mr. Lewes well says) of a new form or force, which is self-conscious, and so can distinguish itself from what is not itself, and can analyse both. With this new principle once introduced, mere sensation is transformed into conscious sensibility; the imagination, from being passive, becomes active and creative; appetite becomes passion, and attachment friendship. The association of images prepares the association of ideas. Association becomes inference. In a word, from the mere animal, we have man; and what was but direct, indeliberate, and unconscious Instinct, becomes reflex, deliberate, self-conscious Reason, with true memory, intelligence, and will.

Science demands that nothing should be deduced from facts which such facts do not fully warrant; and if Grounds of any phenomena can be explained by one agency the this decision. existence of which we know, it is quite illegitimate to call in an additional and hypothetical one. It is here contended that there is no need whatever to credit brutes with intellect; first, because all the phenomena they do exhibit can be accounted for without it, while they do not exhibit phenomena characteristic of a rational nature. But besides this negative argument, a positive one, to the same effect, may be drawn from facts which constitute an experimental demonstration: for if the germs of rationality existed in brutes, those germs would certainly have developed long ere this, so as to have produced unequivocal evidences of that faculty during the prodigious lapse of past geological time, especially if we were to accept the Darwinian practical infinity of past organic existence.

Stupidity of

But in fact a book requires to be written on "the stupidity of animals." It is required on account of that tendency to exaggerate so-called animal intelligence animals. (inverted anthropomorphism), and on account of that neglect of contrary instances, while apparently intelligent actions, which may be merely accidental coincidences, are eagerly seized upon.

Acts which would be reckoned as signs of extreme obtuse

ness and stupidity are common enough amongst animals usually reckoned as the most intelligent. Mr. Darwin mentions, as one proof of the existence of sympathy in brutes (which no one denies), the familiar fact of a dog flying at his master's enemy. But in a sudden scuffle it is by no means unprecedented for a dog to fly at his own master. After all that author's wonderful tales about the rationality of crabs and snails it is interesting to read the following admission. He tells us,† on the authority of Mr. Harrison Weir, that if a pair of birds “which would naturally remain mated for life be separated for a few weeks during the winter and matched with other birds, the two when brought together again rarely, if ever, recognise each other."

But what dog, though he has seen fuel put upon fires again and again, ever puts on any himself to maintain the heat he so greatly enjoys?

Many readers may have had a pet cat who has now and again got a fish or chicken bone fixed between its back-teeth. The useless motions the animal makes with its paw are sufficiently irrational; but although the accident may have recurred again and again it will make the same struggles against the removal, by its master, of the object which distresses it, while as soon as it is removed the animal will go off, licking its jaws, without a sign of gratitude for the relief afforded. But even that animal reputed the wisest, the elephant, has, quite recently, in our Zoological Gardens, given proof of extreme stupidity in actually pulling off the end of its own trunk (which had got caught in a cord), instead of waiting till aid came or calling for succour and assistance before the injury instead of clamouring after it.

It would be easy to multiply instances of conduct, in animals of all the better-known classes, which if fairly considered are enough to prove the distinction in quality between the form or force which energizes in each animal and that which we know to exist in ourselves.

*Descent of Man,' vol. i. p. 77.

† Op. cit. vol. ii. p. 109.

What, then, is the conclusion at which we must arrive with respect to brute animals-even those the most Conclusion. like us or the most seemingly intelligent? What

is the lesson which nature seems to teach us in their regard?

We may, it is here contended, learn from it and the evidence here adduced two lessons. The first is that in accepting testimony respecting the psychical characters of brutes, we should be especially on our guard against a certain common form of credulity and tendency to exaggerationBiological Anthropomorphism. The second lesson is, that while we have abundant evidence of the sensitive and imaginative powers of brutes, we have both negative and positive evidence that the form, or force, which energizes in the dog, the bee, the elephant, the ant, or the gorilla, is one which is sentient but not rational-that it feels both pleasures and pains, but neither knows nor reflects upon the one or the other. Finally, we may conclude that the instinctive qualities of the brute may be more or less imperfectly understood by means of those lower powers of the human soul hereinbefore enumerated, which may be performed without deliberation and reflex self-consciousness, while all the efforts of the best-informed naturalists who desire to confound the nature of the brute with that of man but serve to bring out more forcibly the profound gulf which separates psychically man and the brute.

CHAPTER VIII.

LIKENESSES IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS.

"The facts of mimicry and of the various kinds of homology as exhibited in comparative anatomy, teratology and pathology, reveal an internal force and dynamic agency, the soul, in each animal, which forms one indissoluble unity with its material frame."

IN considering the form and structure of animals and plants, Two kinds of amongst the different resemblances presented to our considered. view there are two orders of likeness which it is intended here to notice.

likeness to be

The first of these orders of resemblance is one which is merely external; namely, the likenesses borne by different animals to others of more or less different nature, to plants or to inanimate objects, and likenesses borne by plants to others of more or less different nature or to animals. This kind of resemblance is termed MIMICRY.

The second of the two orders of resemblance extends to internal structure, and relates to likenesses of the kind borne by parts of one animal or plant to parts of other animals or plants, and it also relates to likenesses borne by one part of any animal or plant to other parts of the same individual. First as to Mimicry: "Mimicry" is a close and striking, yet superficial resemblance borne by some animal Mimicry. or plant to some perhaps very different object. A familiar example of mimicry is seen in the bee and spider orchis, and in clear-winged moths, which may be mistaken for bees. One of the most perfect examples of mimicry is afforded by an insect (of the grasshopper and cricket order) which is called, on account of the appearance it presents, the