From The Westminster Review.
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE.*

"ANIMAL intelligence," says Mr. Romanes, in his admirable lecture on the subject, delivered before the British Association in Dublin, 1878, "is a subject which has always been of considerable interest to philosophical minds, but the interest attaching to it has of late years been greatly increased by the significance which it has acquired in relation to the theory of descent."

[he writes], but only seemed to have, is a doctrine or notion as old as the days of the cynics and stoics, and is ridiculed by Plutarch in his discourse on the sagacity of animals. Aristotle too, author of the most ancient work on animals which has come down to us, ex

presses himself of much the same persuasion; mal than man regulates his actions in any he is unwilling to concede that any other anidegree by reasonable considerations. Seneca, a stoic, in conformity with the doctrines of his sect, declared that the homogeneity of the actions of men and beasts is merely apparent, We cannot be surprised that the doc- their natures being altogether different. trines of Darwin, so clearly and forcibly What we call the feelings of beasts, whether enunciated as to have convinced the vast good or evil, are, he thinks, feelings only in majority of scientists of the fact that life, appearance. Descartes may be said to have common alike to man and the lower ani- adopted this opinion, for he intimated in his "Discourse on Method" that all the lower mals, may be traced backwards to its source in the very lowest protoplasmic much as a clock or a watch; that all their animals are mere unreasoning machines as forms, should have likewise revived the actions may by explained by the laws of mechancient controversies of schoolmen and anism. Montaigne, on the contrary, is inphilosophers, with regard to the proper clined to extol beasts to the disparagement of psychological position of the whole of man. Buffon grants them everything pos animated nature, as viewed from the sessed by man except thought and reflection. standpoint of civilized and philosophic The opinion af Leibnitz was not very differman, who now finds himself placed indu-ent from that of Buffon. Réaumur is inclined bitably at the head of the whole. Do the lower animals, in sharing with man vitality and all its accompaniments of pain, disease, and death, share with him also that indefinable unknown quality or essence denominated mind? Do the actions of the lower animals proceed from internal consciousness and reflection akin to that of man although differing in degree, or are they simply automatic movements, directed by instinct, or necessity, or by the superior will of man the master? These are the problems which have occupied the minds of philosophers in all ages. The Rev. J. Selby Watson, in his very interesting book on the "Reasoning Power in Animals," gives an epitome of the opinions of various writers upon the subject from Aristotle downwards.

That beasts had no real thought or feeling

to admit that there is intelligence in the lower animals. Condillac asserts that the beaver

builds his rampart and the bird its nest from forethought and judgment. Helvetius, Humboldt, Darwin, and Smellie asserted that the actions of brutes are the result of reasoning similar to that of man. Salmasius was of the same opinion. Frederick Cuvier, brother of the baron and keeper of the Jardin des Plantes, not only declared that they had intelligence of the same kind as that of man, but endeavored to distinguish the different degrees of it in different species of animals. Lord Brougham ("Dialogues on Instinct " iv.) says, “I know not why so much unwillingness should be shown by some excellent philosophers to allow intelligent faculties and a share of reason to

the lower animals.” *

Looking only to the summary here given, it might be assumed that the balance of opinion among philosophers and naturalists inclined to the rejection of the hypothesis that the lower animals are Disease. By W. Lander Lindsay, M.D., F.R.S. E., endowed with mental faculties similar to those of man, but against this must be

1. Mind in the Lower Animals in Health and

F.L.S.

2. Presidential Address to the Biological Section

of the British Association. By Professor ST. GEORGE placed the universal testimony of men in all ages, who, although neither philoso

MIVART, F.R.S., F.L.S., F.G.S. Sheffield. 1879.

3. Animal Intelligence. A Lecture delivered before the British Association by GEORGE J. ROMANES, M.A., F.L.S. Dublin. 1878.

* Reasoning Power in Animals, by Rev. J. Selby Watson, p. 2, et seq.

phers nor naturalists, have yet been atten- | haps equally undeserved good character tive observers of such of the lower ani- attached to others. In Egypt, every town mals as may have fallen in their way, and had its special divinity regarded with have, moreover, as hunters, been com- aversion elsewhere; and the same feelpelled to study the habits of their prey ings may probably be traced through Asia with greater attention and more minute- Minor, Greece, and Rome, and through ness, and with far more abundant oppor- Europe, even to our own shores, existing tunities, than the philosopher, seated in in the present day in the national emblems his study, aided only by books, or perhaps adopted or assigned, and which occupy so the dry skeleton of the animal whose prominent a position in the various comic mental powers he undertakes to measure, papers. We remember the time when, supplemented by an occasional visit to a during the French occupation of Rome, menagerie, where the same animal is seen to crow like a cock was an Italian chalat its worst, in a wholly artificial and de- lenge, leading frequently to bloodshed. graded condition. With regard to do. We cannot doubt that it was some mesticated animals, which alone usually observed resemblance between man and fall within the scope of ordinary non-sci- beast which led to the adoption of the entific observers, we shall have much to totem, although the selection was in most say later; meanwhile, let us just glance cases the result of accident or of a dream, at the position occupied by the lower ani- for we believe that among many savages mals in the mythologies, traditions and each man has, in addition to the tribal fables of the ancients and of modern totem, his own individual symbol, which savages, as indicative of the esteem, inde- is either the first animal he meets after pendent of philosophy, in which they have the probationary fasting which accompabeen and are held by the vast majority of nies his admission to manhood, or some mankind. animal revealed to him in a dream during the same period. In like manner, observation, based upon near acquaintance with the habits of the lower animals, joined to that poetic and imaginative temperament which characterizes the infancy and youth of humanity, whether as races or individuals, was doubtless the foundation of all those fables and legends which form the folklore of so many nations, and have degenerated into our own nursery tales, in which, as a rule, animals are endowed not only with human reason, but with human speech, and almost invariably outwit their human adversaries.*

It is among the cultured Egyptians that we find veneration for the various good qualities of animals degenerating into absolute worship, and into that strange weird conception of the transmigration of souls, a belief which could only have originated among those who saw no insuperable barrier between man and other animals. The same feeling has led uncivilized man in all ages to look upon certain animals with reverence as representing in some manner their deceased ancestors. More especially is this the case with regard to serpents and birds, which seem to be almost universally looked upon as the abodes of departed human spirits; but in addition to these, almost every tribe has adopted some especial animal as a symbol or totem, an object of reverence, representing in a peculiar manner the head of the tribe, and which therefore may not be killed or eaten by that tribe, although free The superstitions derived from this infantine stage of human society have hardly yet died out among civto every other; and there can be little ilized mankind. The belief in were-wolves can hardly doubt that it is to this capricious selec- yet be said to be extinct, and in the last century many tion of tribal totems that we must at-cused of having metamorphosed herself into a black an unlucky wretch doomed as a witch was gravely actribute the undeservedly bad character cat. Among African tribes to the present day, men are assigned to certain animals, and the per- said to turn themselves at will into leopards and jackals.

In all these cases imagination has magnified an observed peculiarity or natural characteristic, but there is no scientific deduction, no reasoning as to the possibility or probability of animals having assumed the rôle assigned to them. The savage notes the cunning of the fox or the

jackal in escaping the snare of the hunter, | science, seeing something extraordinary, 工 and does not stop to consider whether if not almost supernatural, in the most that cunning is the result of instinct or of ordinary actions of the lower animals, intelligence, but assumes him to be en- and giving to these acts a significance far dowed with reason equal to or superior to greater than if they had been performed his own, seeing that under similar circum- by man, he avows that "the general stances he would gladly have acted with scope of the present work is to show how the same foresight; he consequently sees superior certain animals are to whole no difficulty in believing that the spirit of races or classes of mankind, both morally some chief famed for sagacity has assumed and mentally, and how essentially alike the form of the fox, and acted in and moral and mental influences and operathrough him. The same holds good with tions are in man and other animals." * regard to other animals and their characteristics, whether of speed, strength, ferocity, or gentleness.

ourselves among those who regard the mind of animals as differing from that of man in degree rather than in kind, looking upon it as capable of development by education, and varying in individuals even as in the human race, but we do not believe this view is likely to be advanced by such sentences as the following, taken almost at random from the book before us :

Now, it is the latter part of this proposition which is at present a matter of dispute between naturalists and philosoBut this minute insight into the habits phers, and we imagine there are few, if and special characteristics of the lower any, cautious and candid investigators animals, and their consequent undue ex- who would be willing to concede an inaltation, does not satisfy the needs of nate superiority to the mental powers of modern scientific inquiry. If the fox is the lower animals, although it may be cunning, the scientist desires to have the conceded that many of them show excause of that cunning demonstrated, he traordinary sagacity and powers of adapmust know whether it is a natural or ac- tation which can hardly be relegated to quired characteristic; whether all foxes that very vague but convenient term inplaced in the same position would act instinct, which is supposed to be so much precisely the same manner, or whether more powerful in the lower animals than they would show individuality and inde- in man. We do not hesitate in ranging pendent reasoning powers. Now, many naturalists of the present day, and notably Darwin, Huxley, Lubbock, and many foreign naturalists, have done much to throw light upon the numerous difficult problems with which the subject of animal intelligence is surrounded, but we can hardly imagine that the book which we have placed at the head of this article ("Mind in the Lower Animals," by Dr. W. Lander The most promising of all animals on whom Lindsay) will greatly advance the cause to try the effects of moral education are the of science; for, although the author has anthropoid apes, such as the orang and the shown unwearied zeal and industry in col- chimpanzee. We know how human-like has lecting from all sources anecdotes illus- been their behavior when they have been civtrative' of the mental capacity of the lowerilized by man, made his servants or compananimals, and in arranging them under certain heads more or less appropriate, he is so plainly the advocate rather than the judge, and takes up the cause of his clients so injudiciously, as to invest the whole subject with an air of unreality likely to cast ridicule and contempt, rather than respect and admiration upon his advocacy. He seems in truth to have entered upon his task with a foregone conclusion: starting from the platform of the savage rather than that of the man of

ions on board ship or in his household. We know how in them politeness or refinement of manners may be developed, and all the usages of good society; how they can behave at table and take their meals; how they can act as domestic or other service. But we do not yet substitutes for the negro in various kinds of know how good they can be made, to what extent or in what directions their moral nature can be developed. I believe that, could only they be induced to bestow them, the patient

Mind in the Lower Animals, vol. i., p. 187.

Again, in the chapter entitled "Religious Feeling in Other Animals," Dr. Lindsay says:

"Some

We quote this passage because Dr. Church attendance by dogs is, and has long Lindsay has himself laid special stress been, a common phenomenon in the pastoral districts of Scotland. Scotch shepherds, both upon it, by reiterating it in another chapter in Highland and Lowland, are a devout, church-(on "Laughter and Weeping ").† attending race; and, so far at least as con- old rats finding a young one dead by cerns regularity of attendance upon the ordi- drowning, wiped the tears from their eyes nances of worship and demure and decorous with their fore-paws" - thus proving himbehavior thereat, their dogs, or "collies," are self incapable of distinguishing between equally devout. These Scotch collies fre- the probable and the improbable, or absoquently have particular seats or pews—or at lutely absurd; for, although rats might least their equivalent lairs or crouching-places possibly attempt to rescue a drowning in church; and there, when no attempt is comrade in the manner described, the made by them-as it sometimes is - -at psalm- particular incident of wiping the tears singing, the animals rest quietly and sedately until the completion of the service. It away may be, and probably is, the case, that they frequently coil themselves comfortably and compose themselves to sleep as soon as the service has begun; but that a similar process is quite as common and much more conspicuous and inexcusable in men, I have no room for doubting, inasmuch as I have over and over again myself seen in country-aye, and in citychurches in Scotland, people, mostly males, be it in fairness explained, deliberately composing themselves for a good sound sleep before the service begins.t

Such writing as this is surely inconsistent and ludicrous in a professedly scientific treatise, and although Dr. Lindsay acknowledges the desirability or necessity of verifying as far as possible the truth of the incidents quoted, he yet appears to have allowed himself to be too easily convinced, or to have been led by his love of the marvellous to accept as literally true those minute details which have only been added as embellishments by facetious narrators. Take, for example, the tale of the rats satirized by the Saturday Review. Dr. Lindsay quotes, from "The Animal World," an incident given in an American paper which, says that veracious journal, "may well put Christians to the blush."

A young rat had fallen into a pail of pig

food. Six older ones held a consultation so earnest in its character as to lead them to

ignore the presence of human onlookers. They decided on an ingenious scheme of rescue, and successfully carried it out. Entwin

Mind in the Lower Animals, vol. i., p. 230. † Ibid.

with the fore-paws, which Dr. Lindsay has so gravely reproduced, stamps the whole episode as unreal and unworthy of credit. Nevertheless, Dr. Lindsay has collected together from the writings of naturalists of world-wide repute a mass of evidence not easily to be gainsaid in favor of the high mental powers of the bounds of that mental capacity we must lower animals, but for the origin and turn to the investigations of others.

The subject of animal intelligence has specially occupied the attention of the British Association during the two last meetings, for although the biological section has always devoted itself more or less to the investigation of questions leading to comparisons between man and the lower animal kingdom, it has been chiefly concerned with bodily structure, rather than mental development. But at the Dublin meeting Mr. Romanes was selected to give an evening lecture upon this subject, and last year at Sheffield, Professor St. George Mivart made it the subject of his opening address as president of the biological section. Particular interest attaches to the utterances of two men so well known to science, not only because of the thorough character of their investigations, but because they represent the two modern schools of thought, the one confessing himself a thorough evolutionist, a disciple of Darwin, believing "that mind is everywhere one," the other professing himself a follower of Buffon, dis

Mind in the Lower Animals, vol. i., p. 94. ↑ Ibid., p. 324.

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trusting or disbelieving the doctrines of | least indispensable antecedents to the exercise evolution, and consequently seeing a fun- of our intellectual activity. I have no wish to damental distinction between the mind of ignore the marvellous powers of animals or man and that of the lower animals. "The the resemblance of their actions to those of obvious difference," says Professor MiNo one can reasonably deny that many of them have feelings, emotions, and sensevart, "between the highest powers of perceptions similar to our own; that they man and animals has led the common exercise voluntary motion and perform actions sense of mankind to consider them to be grouped in complex ways for definite ends; of radically different kinds, and the ques- that they to a certain extent learn by experition which naturalists now profess to ence, and can combine perceptions and remiinvestigate, is whether this is so or niscences so as to draw practical inferences, directly apprehending objects standing in dif ferent relations one to another, so that, in a sense, they may be said to apprehend relations. But we may doubt whether many who enter They will show hesitation, ending apparently, upon this inquiry do not enter upon it with after a conflict of desires, with what looks like their minds already made up, that no such rad- choice or volition, and such animals as the dog ical difference can by any possibility exist. will not only exhibit the most marvellous fidelSurely, however, if we profess to investi-ity and affection, but will also manifest evigate a question, we ought in honesty to believe dent signs of shame, which may seem the that there is a question to investigate, and if outcome and indication of incipient moral evidence should seem to show that intellect perceptions.* cannot be analyzed into sense but is an ultimate, it ought to be accepted, at the least provisionally, as such, even at the cost of having to regard its origin as at present inexplicable.*

...

It is, however, evident that Professor Mivart does not enter upon this task free from bias; he has made up his mind that the mental differences between man and the lower animals are radical, and he undertakes to prove his theory by a complicated method of reasoning which we certainly cannot look upon as convincing. Starting with the hypothesis that man possesses two sorts of faculties, the higher and the lower, he goes on to say:

Now, we fail to see why the same feelings expressing themselves by similar outward signs should be assumed to be real, the outcome of the higher intellectual life in man, and only simulated in the lower animals. Take, for instance, shame, which Professor Mivart allows is sometimes exhibited by dogs, why should in the human species, be supposed to be the moral perception, which causes shame wanting in the dog when exhibiting the quality, which therefore can hardly be outward tokens of that confessedly mental accounted for by instinctive perceptions apart from mind? Again, Professor Mivart says:

That we have automatic memory, such as animals have, is obvious; but the presence of intellectual memory (or memory proper) may be made evident by the act of searching our minds (so to speak) for something which we know we have fully remembered before, and thus intellectually remember to have known, though we cannot now bring it before our im agination.

And he quotes from Mr. Clarke, as follows:

It is, of course, impossible for us thoroughly to comprehend the minds of dogs or birds, because we cannot enter into the actual experience of such animals, but by understand ing the distinction between our own higher and lower faculties we may, I think, more or less approximate to such a comprehension. It may, I believe, be affirmed that no animal but man has as yet been shown to exhibit true concerted action, or to express by external signs distinct intellectual conceptions-processes of which all men are normally capable. But just as some plants simulate the sense, perception, voluntary motions, and instincts When the circumstances of any present case of animals, without there being a real identity differ from those of any past experience, but between the activities thus superficially simi-imperfectly resemble those of many past exlar, so there may well be in animals, actions simulating the intellectual apprehensions, ratiocinations and volitions of man, without there being any necessary identity between the activities so superficially alike. More than this, it is certain, a priori, that there must be such resemblance, since our organization is similar to that of animals, and since sensations are at

• Presidential Address, by Professor St. George Mivart.

periences, parts of these and consequent actions, are irregularly suggested by the laws of resemblance, until some action is hit on which relieves pain or gives pleasure. For instance, let a dog be lost by his mistress in a field in which he has never been before. The presence of the group of sensations which we know to indicate his mistress is associated

* Presidential Address, by Professor St. George Mivart.