THE KNICKERBOCKER.

MIND OR INSTINCT.

AN INQUIRY CONCERNING THE MANIFESTATION OF MIND BY THE LOWER ORDERS OF ANIMALS.

OF THE REASON OR JUDGMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE CALLED INSTINCT.

A surgeon of Leeds, (Eng.,) says Buffon, found a little spaniel who had been lamed. He carried the poor animal home, bandaged up his leg, and, after two or three days, turned him out. The dog returned to the surgeon's house every morning, till the leg was perfectly well. At the end of several months, the spaniel again presented himself, in company with another dog, who had also been lamed; and he intimated, as well as piteous and intelligent looks could intimate, that he desired the same kind assistance to be rendered to his friend as had been bestowed upon himself. A similar circumstance is stated to have occurred to Morant, a celebrated French surgeon.

A fox, adds the same writer, having entered a hen-house through a small aperture, which was the only opening, succeeded without disturbing the family in destroying all the fowls, and in satiating his appetite with part of them; but his voracity so enlarged his dimensions as to prevent his egress. In the morning the farmer discovered the havoc of the night, and the perpetrator himself sprawled out on the floor of the coop, apparently dead from surfeit. He entered, and taking the creature by the heels, carried him out and cast him beside the house. This was no sooner done than the fox sprang up and bounded away with the speed of a racer. This was communicated by the person.

A spaniel, Obsend informs us, having discovered a mouse in a shock of corn, jumped with his fore feet against it to frighten him out; and then running quickly to the back side, succeeded in taking the mouse as he attempted to escape.

Buffon says: 'A number of beavers are employed together at the foot of the tree in gnawing it down; and when this part of the labor is accomplished, it becomes the business of others to sever the branches, while a third party are engaged along the borders of the river in cutting other trees, which though smaller than the first tree, are yet as thick as the leg, if not the thigh, of a common-sized man. These they carry with them by land to the brink of the river, and then by water to the place allotted for their building; where sharpening them at one end, and forming them into stakes, they fix them in the ground, at a small distance from each other, and fill up the vacant spaces with pliant branches. While some are thus employed in fixing the stakes, others go in quest of clay, which they prepare for their purpose with their tails and their feet. At the top of their dyke, or mole, they form two or three openings. These they occasionally enlarge or contract, as the river rises or falls. Note.—Should the current be very gentle, the dam is carried nearly straight across; but when the stream is swiftly flowing, it is uniformly made with a considerable curve, having the convex part opposed to the current.

'In formicâ non modo sensus sed etiam mens, ratio, memoria.'—Cic.

'Si quis comparet onera corporibus earum (formicarum) fateatur nullis portione. Vires esse majores. Gerunt ea morsu; majora aversæ postremio pedibus moliuntur, humeris obnoxæ. Est iis Reip ratio memoria cura. Semima arrosa condunt vie rursus in fruges exeant e terra. Majora ad introitum (cavernæ) dividunt Madefacta imbre proferunt atque siccant.'—Pliny: lib. XI., cap. 30.

Many birds and other animals, Buffon informs us, station a watch, while they are feeding in the fields. Whenever marmots venture abroad, one is placed as a sentinel, sitting on an elevated rock, while the others amuse themselves in the fields below, or are engaged in cutting grass and making it into hay for their future convenience; and no sooner does their trusty sentinel perceive a man, an eagle, a dog, or any other enemy approaching, than he gives notice to the rest by a kind of whistle, and is himself the last that takes refuge in the cell. It is asserted that when their hay is made, one of them lies upon its back, permits the hay to be heaped between its paws, keeping them upright to make greater room, and in this manner remaining still upon its back, is dragged by the tail, hay and all, to their common retreat.

These instances could be multiplied indefinitely; but more than sufficient have been cited. They prove in the first place, without need of argument, that animals have a language by which they apprehend each other. Concert of action and division of labor would be impossible without it. They also exhibit the exercise of memory and abstraction; and it now remains to ascertain whether their conduct was the result of reason.

If a person should take a friend whose arm had been fractured to a skilful surgeon who had before cured him of a similar wound, we should infer the following course of reasoning: First, a comparison of facts, to discover whether the injury in question was like the one he had received; the ability of this surgeon over others in such cases; and the presumption that the same skill and remedies will again produce the same effects. These are the most obvious points. The dog, in the cited case, had once been healed of a broken limb by a surgeon; and having found a mate in a like situation, took him also to the same surgeon. It is evident that his conduct was as wise as the man's. The facts and actions in the two cases are parallel; and having seen that animals obtain a perception of objects by the same agencies that man does, it only remains to ascertain whether the intermediate reasoning process between perception and action were essentially the same. Now, we cannot prove directly that the mind of another passes through any process whatever; because the proof of any process of our own mind is consciousness, which cannot go beyond us; but we can infer the train of reasoning in a given case with great correctness, taking self-knowledge as a basis; and the similarity of conduct in another, in view of premises, with what our own would have been. This is the chief criterion by which much of our daily conduct is regulated, and is the most substantial proof that can be reached. Hence, we can