First, there is the rise of the evolution theory, which teaches that
there is no absolute break between man and the higher animals in the
matter of mental endowment, and that what difference there is must
itself be the result of the laws of mental growth; and the second
reason is that the more adequate the science of the human mind has
become the more evident has it also become that man himself is more of
a machine than had been supposed. Man grows by certain laws; his
progress is conditioned by the environment, both physical and social,
in which he lives; his mind is a part of the natural system of things.
So with the animal. The animal fulfils, as far as he can, the same
sort of function; he has his environment, both physical and social; he
works under the same laws of growth which man also obeys; his mind
exhibits substantially the same phenomena which the human mind
exhibits in its early stages in the child. All this means that the
animal has as good right to recognition, as a mind-bearing creature,
so to speak, as the child; and if we exclude him we should also
exclude the child. Further, this also means--what is more important
for the science of psychology--that the development of the mind in its
early stages and in certain of its directions of progress is revealed
most adequately in the animals.
_Animal Instinct._--Turning to the animals, the first thing to strike
us is the remarkable series of so-called animal Instincts. Everybody
knows what animal instincts are like; it is only necessary to go to a
zooelogical garden to see them in operation on a large scale. Take the
house cat and follow her through the life of a single day, observing
her actions. She washes her face and makes her toilet in the morning
by instinct. She has her peculiar instinctive ways of catching the
mouse for breakfast. She whets her appetite by holding back her meal
possibly for an hour, in the meantime playing most cruelly with the
pitiful mouse, letting it run and catching it again, and doing this
over and over. If she has children she attends to their training in
the details of cat etiquette and custom with the utmost care, all by
instinct; and the kittens instinctively respond to her attentions. She
conducts herself during the day with remarkable cleanliness of life,
making arrangements which civilized man follows with admiration. She
shows just the right abhorrence of water for a creature that is not
able to swim. She knows just what enemies to fly from and when to turn
and fight, using with inborn dexterity her formidable claws. She
prefers nocturnal excursions and sociabilities, having eyes which
make it safe to be venturesome in the dark. She has certain vocal
expressions of her emotions, which man in vain attempts to eradicate
with all the agencies of domestication. She has special arts to
attract her mate, and he in turn is able to charm her with songs which
charm nobody else. And so on, almost _ad infinitum_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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