English Prose: A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice of the Art of Writing
General
English Prose: A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice of the Art of Writing
English language -- Rhetoric; English language -- Style; English prose literature; Readers; Report writing -- Problems, exercises, etc.
Houzeau relates that, while crossing a wide and arid plain in Texas, his
two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty and forty
times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. These hollows
were not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other
difference in the vegetation, and as they were absolutely dry, there
could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if they knew
that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of finding water,
and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behaviour in other animals. I
have seen, as I dare say have others, that when a small object is thrown
on the ground beyond the reach of one of the elephants in the Zoological
Gardens, he blows through his trunk on the ground beyond the object, so
that the current reflected on all sides may drive the object within his
reach. Again, a well-known ethnologist, Mr. Westropp, informs me that he
observed in Vienna a bear deliberately making with his paw a current in
some water, which was close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw a
piece of floating bread within his reach. These actions of the elephant
and bear can hardly be attributed to instinct or inherited habit, as
they would be of little use to an animal in a state of nature. Now, what
is the difference between such actions, when performed by an
uncultivated man, and by one of the higher animals?
The savage and the dog have often found water at a low level, and the
coincidence under such circumstances has become associated in their
minds. A cultivated man would perhaps make some general proposition on
the subject; but from all that we know of savages it is extremely
doubtful whether they would do so, and a dog would certainly not. But a
savage, as well as a dog, would search in the same way, though
frequently disappointed, and in both it seems to be equally an act of
reason, whether or not any general proposition on the subject is
consciously placed before the mind. The same would apply to the elephant
and the bear making currents in the air or water. The savage would
certainly neither know nor care by what law the desired movements were
effected; yet his act would be guided by a rude process of reasoning, as
surely as would a philosopher in his longest chain of deductions. There
would no doubt be this difference between him and one of the higher
animals, that he would take notice of much slighter circumstances and
conditions, and would observe any connection between them after much
less experience, and this would be of paramount importance. I kept a
daily record of the actions of one of my infants, and when he was about
eleven months old, and before he could speak a single word, I was
continually struck with the greater quickness with which all sorts of
objects and sounds were associated together in his mind, compared with
that of the most intelligent dogs I ever knew. But the higher animals
differ in exactly the same way in this power of association from those
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