CHAPTER I.

RESULTS OF HUMAN IGNORANCE, ERROR, AND PREJUDICE.

Ir may, and probably will, appear to many--perhaps the majority-of my readers a work of supererogation to insist that he who ventures upon the study of mind in the lower animals should do so free from bias or prejudice, having his own mind in a state of preparedness for the observation of facts and the deduction of logical inferences from facts; or to stipulate that the student should first possess a proper knowledge of the human mind not only as it is developed amidst the highest civilisation, but in its genesis, growth, degeneracy, and decay in the child, the savage, the idiot, and the lunatic. My own experiences, however, in conversation and correspondence, as well as a varied and extensive reading, leave me in no doubt as to the kind and amount of ignorance, error, and prejudice regarding the mental endowments of animals that are everywhere prevalent, not only among the general public-the indoctum vulgus-but among our representative men of the very highest culture-ignorance, error, and prejudice that are illustrated in speeches or writings from the very highest public platforms, from the most influential official positions.

It is desirable to explain what I mean by specifying some of the errors which man has committed, and is constantly committing, in regard to the mental aptitudes of other animals, and by considering the obvious or probable sources of these errors.

1. The artificial differentiation of animal from human intelligence; the ascription of instinct as an exclusive posses

sion to the one and of reason to the other; the confusion between instinct and reason; the attribution to instinct in other animals of what would be assigned to reason in man.

2. The belief that animals are mere 'animated machines' (Descartes), and that animal reason is mechanical' in its nature or action (Buffon).

3. The confounding of mere reflex or automatic action with expressions of pain-for instance, in the decapitated frog.

4. The supposition, on the other hand, that animals are insensible to, or insusceptible of, ordinary physical pain—for instance, the rhinoceros and beetle.

5. Baron Cuvier's misstatements as to the mental endowments of, or rather their absence in, fishes, while altogether his conceptions on the subject of mind in the lower animals were both limited and incorrect.

6. The inference of Principal Caird of Glasgow-the common outcome of the theological intellect-that the dog, for instance, wants the 'spirit' of man, and cannot therefore 'know the things of man'-whatever such an expression may mean. He speaks of the irrational animal that cannot appreciate man's words or acts, that is inapprehensive of man's thought and feeling,' while he admits a certain ‘rude intelligence' of its master's will.

7. Kirby talking of the half-reasoning' beaver and the 'irrational' animal.

8. The misconceptions, even in physiologists, as to the brain-functions in man (Professor Rutherford).

9. The conviction that the brain is the sole organ of mind in man.

10. The association of intelligence, as to its kind or degree, with the mere size either of brain or body.

11. The undeserved bad reputations of certain animals, and the supposed good ones of certain others; that is to say, misconceptions concerning their real character-their virtues on the one hand and their vices on the other-embodied, for instance, in popular emblems, legends, proverbs, fables, or fiction.

12. The inference of the late Sir Benjamin Brodie that

animals live only in the present, which implies that they have no foresight.

13. Sydney Smith's opinion that mind in animals exists only for the preservation of the body, or that all their actions bear either on self-preservation or reproduction.

14. The ascription of all kinds of mental excitement or forms of insanity in animals to rabies-in other words, the non-discrimination of the nature of the different sorts of animal madness.

15. The hue and cry after animals reputedly 'mad,' and their summary destruction when caught.

16. Belief in the incurability and in the dangerousness to man of all forms of animal' madness.'

17. The idea that rabies occurs only in the so-called dogdays of summer, or during hot weather.

18. The notion that muzzling dogs is a guarantee against the propagation of rabies.

19. The opinion that all dog-bites must or may produce hydrophobia in man, proceeding as they presumably do from rabid animals.

20. Forcing animals to duties that are not understood by them, that are unpalatable, or that are unsuited to their powers, bodily or mental.

21. Regarding affection for man as a matter of selfinterest only.

22. Comte talking of the incapacity for instruction in

apes.

23. Superstitions regarding, for instance, the were-wolf, man-tiger, man-hyæna, griffins, dragons, phoenix, salamander, chimæra, fauns, satyrs, naiads, dryads, and hamadryads, witchcraft, and the transmigration of souls.

24. Inaccuracies in observation and description by authors. of all classes, especially poets, novelists, and theologians, but even by mental philosophers and naturalists of the highest eminence.

25. The comparative but fictitious exaltation of man by the degradation or depreciation of other animals; the supposed necessary inferiority of the latter or-what comes to the same thing-the alleged superiority or supremacy of man.

26. The disavowal or non-admission of man's kinship to, or fellowship with, other animals; obliviousness of the fact that they are fellow-creatures or fellow-mortals, with fellowfeelings.

27. The perplexing terminology of mental philosophy.

Such errors as the foregoing are the natural fruit of the following faults and failings of human nature, which have ever constituted, and continue to constitute, formidable obstacles to the proper study of animal reason:—

1. Ignorance, on the one hand, of the natural history and habits of the lower animals, and on the other of the natural history of the human mind; or, in other words, of biology, zoology, physiology and psychology (human and comparative), and logic.

2. Thoughtlessness; want of due consideration or reflec

tion.

3. Intolerance, pride, arrogance, self-complacency or vanity, amour-propre, exclusiveness and selfishness, jealousy.

4. Prejudice, superstition, bigotry or fanaticism, especially those forms which are theological and metaphysical.

5. Incompetence to sift evidence, to observe facts, to reason logically, and the confusion of ideas therefrom resulting.

6. The substitution of speculation for the observation of fact and for logical inference. The confusion of the uncertain or unascertained with the certain or ascertained; of fact with fiction, inference, or opinion.

7. Imperviousness to conviction, and the prevalence and preference of dogmatism, theological or other.

8. Want of sympathy with, and appreciation of, animal character, feeling, and suffering.

9. The dread of the consequences of scientific enquiry and conclusions, in reference especially to current religious creeds or faiths; fears for the stability or reality of man's boasted pre-eminence, for the vaunted dignity of human nature.

10. The tendency to harsh or hasty judgments on the character of subject creatures.

11. The liability to morbid credulity or credulousness. In so far, then, as error, and the sources or causes of error, in or concerning man's conceptions of the nature and

extent of the mental operations of the lower animals are superabundant, it is a self-evident corollary that the student who professes or proposes to devote himself to investigations in comparative psychology should bring to his task at least the following qualifications:

1. He may have to unlearn much that he has already learned-for instance, as regards the supposed necessary connection of mind with brain or nervous system—and unlearning is always a difficult matter. Learn of me,' said Luther, 'how hard it is to unlearn the errors which the whole world confirms by its example, and which by long use have become to us as a second nature.'

2. He must be prepared to change, or at least enlarge, his conceptions of the nature and range of mind.

3. He should re-study carefully certain phenomena of the human mind, more especially the inter-relations of consciousness and unconsciousness, and the whole subject of reflex or automatic cerebro-spinal action.

4. He should further consider in detail the mental phenomena of acephalous animals or infants; the attributes of the spinal cord and of the different classes of nerves when disconnected from or unassociated with brain.

5. His study of the human mind must not be confined to its highest manifestations or as it has been developed by generations of high culture in the most intelligent of civilised peoples, but it must embrace its lowest manifestations-its stages of non-development, non-cultivation, degeneration, retrogression; in all conditions of disease, moreover, as well as in health. Hence his field of enquiry must include man in all the different stages of the social scale, the genesis and progress or development of mind in the infant, civilised and savage, with the morbid psychical phenomena of the idiot and lunatic.

6. He should enquire further whether the bases of mind are not to be found in the vegetable kingdom-in the form, for instance, of purposive action; what are the bases of mind in plants and the lower animals; what is consciousness, and

I have inaugurated enquiry in this direction in a paper mentioned in the Bibliography.