The Genesis of Mind

Abstract

It might seem unaccountable that, notwithstanding the common sense of mankind has in all ages recognised the existence of intellect in animals, certain philosophers should always have been found to repudiate the vulgar opinion; were it not that experience proves there is much truth in the description which Condillac gives of the philosophers, as “men who love much better an absurdity that they imagine than a truth which all the world adopts.” Though Plato tells us that in the golden age men derived all their knowledge from communication with beasts, and though the little understood and much misunderstood Egyptians of old paid divine honours to certain animals—not, as is sometimes superficially concluded, on account of their brute wisdom, but really as living symbols of Divine intelligence, which they embodied and instinctively displayed—yet the Cartesian philosophy actually denied sensibility to animals, and designated them living machines. For such unmerited ignominy they have, however, been more than compensated by writers who, like M. Charles Bonnet, maintain the existence of immortal souls in them, and predict for them a future world and a happier destiny. The ancients would appear generally to have entertained a somewhat similar opinion; for, without referring to the doctrine of metempsychosis, we have the authority of Homer, who represents Orion as chasing the souls of stags over the plains of hell. And modem instinct, when not perverted by the prejudices and conceit of learning, never fails to acknowledge the rationality of brutes. According to a Scandinavian aphorism, the bear has the strength of ten men and the sense of twelve; and the Red Indians are so impressed with the intellectual powers of this animal that, whenever they have killed one, they scrupulously strive to appease its manes with various important ceremonies. They deck out its head with various trinkets, and make a long speech in which the courage of the departed is praised, its living relatives profusely complimented, and a hope expressed that the conduct of its slayer has been satisfactory both to itself and them. The intelligence of civilisation may dismiss with a smile of pity or contempt such barbarous displays; but the most advanced intelligence will not forget that there is some substratum of truth beneath every superstition, by virtue of which it lives. As no nation ever yet worshipped a piece of carved wood or chiselled stone otherwise than as a symbol of the Great Incomprehensible, by which both barbarous and civilised men are surrounded; so we may rest satisfied that the Red Indian only labours to propitiate the ghost of the bear because he has at times found, to his cost, that its intelligence has surpassed his own. The extremes of attributing too much and too little intelligence to animals will, however, be alike avoided by that sincere and unbiassed observation which, while discrediting all exaggerated theories, willingly recognises the undoubted existence in them of intelligence in its rudimentary form, and strives to point out the evidences of its gradual development through them.