gestions of spatial realities, seems a question sufficiently enigmatical. Most persons, perhaps, would be disposed to say that if such vague intuitions really arise in the infant consciousness they are of singularly little effect. One may observe, indeed, the helplessness of children, even when several months old, as they try to follow with the eye or head some interesting object, or to fix on the direction of some vocal sound. There is much the same kind of difficulty with respect to the alleged instinctiveness of certain elements in conscience and in the higher emotions generally. Mr. Spencer's assumption that in an infant's responsive smile and in its incipient fear before a frowning face we have presented the effects of ancestral experience and intelligence, is no doubt susceptible of a rough kind of logical appreciation. But when the supposed instinctive feeling does not display itself conspicuously as an isolated phenomenon in these early stages of the individual development, but blends with, and gives additional intensity to, later feelings confessedly derived from individual experiences, there appear to be no available means of discovering whether any part, and if so what proportion, of the phenomenon is really an inherited result of ancestral sensibilities.*

The only path that seems open to the evolutionist for reaching a solution of these questions is that of deductive argument. If, he may say, we know that the experiences of mankind and the lower races from which it has been evolved have uniformly presented a connection between certain impressions and feelings, there seems a strong presumption that some permanent deposit, left by these countless experiences, will be transmitted to the infant of to-day in the form of an instinctive mental association. This à priori mode of reasoning appears, indeed, to be that employed by Mr. Spencer in accounting for our intuitions of time and space. The only fault to be found with it is that it seems to prove too much. Thus, for example, would it not lead one to anticipate the existence in the infant mind of an intuitive knowledge of space-relations at least as complete as, if not far more exact than, that which is said to be discoverable in the first movements of chicken? It seems a curious fact that Professor Helmholtz, as I have shown in another essay, makes no use of the Darwinian hypothesis-so popular with German physiologists in general-in accounting for the marvellous capacities of the

* This is indeed very much the practical difficulty pointed out by Locke, in the way of any precise separation of the innate portion of an idea.

human eye. Similarly it might be argued that, if there are ancestral experiences sufficient to account for the infant's instinctive dread of a frown, there are others of equal number and intensity from which one would reason to the existence in the infant mind of other instinctive phenomena, which yet are conspicuous by their absence. Thus, it might be asked why an infant is wholly unaffected by the sudden movement of one's hand towards its eye, or why it appears to be quite ignorant of the meaning of such vocal sounds as that of scolding, although certain distinctions would appear to have had a permanent significance during innumerable generations. Such difficulties are not of course conclusive against the hypothesis of inherited associations; but they appear to show that if these instinctive combinations exist, they are subject to laws not yet adequately defined, and that therefore it is not perfectly safe to reason à priori to the existence in the infant mind of an instinctive predisposition which is not directly manifested in visible actions or impressions.

One may remark, further, that while the second term of this alleged hereditary sequence is often so little susceptible of exact observation, the antecedent itself is very frequently inaccessible. This is especially true of those mental qualities of the lower animals which have been more than once referred to as representatives of the remote causal antecedents of our own passions and habits.

The popular notion respecting the amount of our knowledge of the brute mind, seems to be far from exact. It is very pleasing, no doubt, to imagine that a dog's quiescent features are full of a dumb eloquence; and a great animal-painter owed at least one half of his power to his skill in seizing and exaggerating every suggestion of human character in our faithful companions and obedient servants. Yet on close examination it may be seen that the means at our disposal in reading the hidden page of brute consciousness are very few and limited. The popular fiction that we can peer directly into the soul of our favourite hound, is nothing but a relic of that once uni versal tendency of the human mind to project its own feelings into every object, animate or inanimate.

Of the three great avenues by which men are able to approach the minds of their fellows, namely the expressive look, the resulting action, and the descriptive word, the last appears to be, in spite of human reticence and mendacity, the most important. And it is the absence of this which obviously limits our knowledge of the lower animals. Their emotional utterances are rich and various, and, when we once get the right clue to their interpretation, reveal a vast life of

pleasure and pain, want and satisfaction. So again, a close observer, by studying the actions of animals and their modifications under the influence of new circumstances and added experiences, may learn something valuable respecting the inner processes of their thoughts and feelings. But the total absence of language makes our best inferences but feeble conjectures. We may often misread the particular shade of feeling, or fail to recognise its special cause, and yet be totally unable to rectify the error.

our own.

error.

The risks of misinterpreting the brute mind arise not only from the poverty of its external signs, but also from its wide dissimilarity to There is no doubt a bias among many observers to an exaggeration of the contrasts between the mind of the "rational animal," and that of its less favoured rivals. Yet it is probable that the anthropomorphic bias just referred to is a far greater source of It is clear that we cannot ascertain the precise bearing of articulate speech on thought and feeling until we are capable of directly observing a type of consciousness in which this instrument is wanting; and this is a sufficiently remote possibility. Yet one may roughly infer that the absence of language implies the lack of many of the familiar properties of our own conscious life. Employing the method of concomitant variations, we may see how certain changes in idea and sentiment uniformly accompany the successive developments of human language. And if it be proved that linguistic progress is but an effect of intellectual development, it will still remain true that the state of a language at any particular time is one great limiting condition of individual culture.

Applying these premises to the particular instance of brute intelligence, one may roughly draw certain à priori conclusions respecting its nature. Thus it is obvious enough that unless the lower animals have some substitute for verbal symbols, as yet undiscovered by us, they are incapable of general ideas and of any mental processes involving these. Not only so, but it seems fairly certain that these simpler types of mind are wanting in persistence of ideas, this property being largely due to the habit of introspective attention, which, again, appears to depend in part at least on the verbal accompaniment of the idea. Still more clearly does it seem that they are deficient in the power of co-ordinating ideas in complex groups or series, as the representatives either of single objects, of parts of an object, or of the sequent events of past life. And the absence of these characteristics, not to speak of others, would certainly limit the growth of the so-called faculties of perception, memory, and imagination.

This line of argument might well appear too self-evident to require distinct unfolding, were it not for the fact that a great authority in biological matters has quite recently undertaken to interpret the lower world of consciousness without betraying a sufficiently clear apprehension of the limitations to the inquiry. Mr. Darwin, in his Descent of Man, has thrown a valuable light on many of the aspects of animal intelligence. And with respect to a considerable number of his conclusions and conjectures, there appears to be no antecedent difficulty. Thus one sees no reason why, for example, birds should not possess that exquisite fineness of sensibility which appears to be displayed in the curious Minnesinger-contests of the male suitors (vol. i., p. 351); or why a baboon should not be endowed with that capacity for applying the results of past experiences to new and slightly different cases which is implied in his examining the kitten's paw which had scratched him and forthwith biting it off (vol. i., p. 41). But when Mr. Darwin says (p. 45) that ants "can certainly by some means judge of the intervals of time between recurrent events," because they are able to recognise their companions after a separation of four months, he seems to be reasoning in too anthropomorphic a manner. For is it not immensely more probable that these acts of recognition are due to some undiscovered fineness of sensibility, than that they should be the results of conscious inference involving such ideas as duration and interval? It strikes one as a similar transgression of the limits of strict scientific inference to call an aged dog's reflection on the past a form of self-consciousness (p. 62). For is it not probable that the most rudimentary idea of self follows by a long interval the degree of intelligence involved in linguistic capacity? Nor is the fine emotional susceptibility to tones and colours, which is said to be manifested by birds, rendered any clearer by being named a sense of beauty, since there seems a vast psychological interval between an emotional response to the action of some grateful stimulus, and the highly complex intellectual and emotional development implied in a distinct appreciation of objective beauty.

One example of the risks which attend all attempts to read the animal mind deserves a special examination. I refer to the mode in which, as we have seen, Mr. Darwin would derive man's ethical feelings from the instincts of lower races. How far the more intelligent animals feel anything like remorse, is, one would say, a point of considerable difficulty. Yet Mr. Darwin finds this state of mind necessarily involved in a certain strength of social instinct.

C

An animal, he says, will certainly feel remorse when the degree of its sociability and of its intelligence qualifies it to experience the recurrence of images of past actions, and a feeling of dissatisfaction at the recollection of an unsatisfied instinct. Yet this strikes one as a curious analysis of what we understand by conscientious sensibility. How a mere recollection of an ungratified instinct is transformed into the voice of "an inward monitor" which teaches" that it would have been better to have followed the one impulse rather than the other," Mr. Darwin does not explain. If the superior persistence of an instinct gives a consciousness of obligation, it of course follows, as Mr. Darwin seems inclined to allow, that a pointer feels it ought to point, and migratory birds, that they ought to abandon their young at the appointed time. Now it might, perhaps, be a sufficient criticism of this theory to point to the immense difficulties of trying to enter into the feelings which a dog experiences under the drawings of two opposite impulses. But one may find facts which appear directly to contradict this view of the moral sentiment. First of all, our own subjective reflection tells us that we constantly experience the regret which attends a recollection of unsatisfied desire without feeling anything akin to a sense of wrong. This is true of our daily vexations at the remembrance of neglected opportunities of advantage, and even of the omission to seize a passing pleasure. Secondly, it appears highly probable, after a wide psychological induction, based on the observation of many races of mankind, that the first rudimentary sense of duty presents itself in that peculiar variety of fear which accompanies a recognition of superior will and power in another. Hence it is conceivable that an intelligent dog, which is able to apprehend the sanctions which lurk behind its master's words, may feel something analogous to our sentiment of duty. But it seems a little too conjectural to suppose that animals experience the feeling as soon as the impulses of union and mutual service reach a certain degree of persistence.

Unless the foregoing considerations can be shown to be invalid, it follows that we cannot yet dispense with the fullest and most patient study of the subjective side of the human mind. The doctrine of the descent of species has a singular fascination just now. It appears to expand thought to regions compared with which the older objects of inquiry look puny and cramped. Nor can it be doubted that it opens up splendid possibilities of a deeper understanding of vital processes, among which conscious thought is certainly one. But it may be well for us, under the first dazzling