class="pindent">There is too much assumption in human beings about most things,—animal instinct and human reason not excluded. What I wish to protest against, with emphasis and vigor, is the assumption that we know all there is to know about intelligence—that we know the limits Nature herself has placed upon its development, and that all efforts to foster further development are useless. I affirm that we do not know; that we have never, as yet, even tried to know; and that until men with loving, devoted, sympathetic singleness of heart and purpose seek to develop all there is in the mentality of all the lower animals,—dogs, cats, deer, as well as horses,—shall we begin to have a real foundation for our assumptions upon the subject.

I am still simple enough to believe implicitly in the Spiritual Controller of the Universe we call God. I am still enamoured of the belief that as Browning says in “Saul”

Romanes claims for the horse an intelligence less than that of the larger carnivora, the elephant, or even the ass. Yet he asserts that the emotional life of the horse is remarkable, and that working through the emotions wonderful results of training have been secured. He says it is an affectionate animal, pleased at being petted, jealous of companions receiving favor, greatly enjoying play with others of its kind, and thoroughly entering into the sport of the hunting-field. Horses also exhibit pride in a marked degree, as also do mules, being unmistakably pleased with gay trappings.

Now is it inconceivable that these animals might some day, somehow, find a door open whereby they could enter into the realm of speech. To feel is certainly a large step towards expression, and to my mind, the possession of the one power suggests the close proximity of the other.

I read with great interest the arguments—as different from the mere assumptions—of those who assert that the instinct of animals, and the reason of human beings, are two separate and distinct things; there is a deep gulf between them which can never be passed by the lower order. I do not believe this. Rather do I hold with Romanes that:

Instinct certainly involves some kind of mental operations, and by this feature it is clearly distinguished and differentiated from reflex action. One bold difference between instinct and reason, I contend, is that the actions of instinct are uniform, though performed by different individuals of the same species, while reason—however limited in its operations—leads to the performance of individualistic actions, limited to single personalities. Instinct implies “mental action directed towards the accomplishment of adaptive movement, antecedent to individual experience, without necessary knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained, but similarly performed under the same appropriate circumstances by all the individuals of the same species.”^[2]

In all these particulars instinct differs from reason, in that it, “besides involving a mental constituent, and besides being concerned in adaptive action, is always subsequent to individual experience, never acts but upon a definite and often laboriously acquired knowledge of the relation between means and ends, and is very far from being always similarly performed under the same appropriate circumstances by all the individuals of the same species.”^[3]

Where there is an intentional adaptation of means to ends there is clear indication of reason. This adaptation I claim Captain possesses, as distinctively, though of course on a much lower plane than I myself possess it. For instance: When Captain, of his own volition, after finding his groom asleep after being awakened, went to him again and pulled the covers from his bed, that may have been accident the first time. It led to the groom’s awakening, arising and feeding the horse. Now was it not conscious adaptation of means to that end when, the next morning, on the groom, failing to arise and feed him, Captain deliberately went and pulled the bed clothes from him, and has done it ever since?

Romanes, in his Animal Intelligence, clearly suggests the processes by which we may study or investigate the operations of animal intelligence. Says he:

Upon any hypothesis of the development of human or animal intelligence it is evident that mentality is of a wonderfully varied quality. There is a distinct, though by no means clearly defined, sliding scale of intelligence. It is universal knowledge that a dog shows more intelligence than a frog, and a horse than a turtle; and human intelligences are as widely separated as the Igorrote and a Hottentot and a Gladstone or a Tagore. Where the horse’s place is, in the sliding scale of general intelligence, I do not know; nor can I tell exactly where Captain should be located in the varying scale of the intelligence of horses in general. But this I do know. He has intelligence, and it is much superior to that commonly shown by the majority of horses. And I firmly believe with Captain Sigsbee that training and discipline have their effect in bringing up the intelligence of the higher order of horses to the intelligence of the lower class, or child, level of humans.

I am decidedly opposed to the assumption that the intelligence of horses is a fixed and immovable mental quantity; that no amount of kindly, sympathetic, and understanding training by thoughtful men, will add to, or develop what they already possess. I believe, beyond the power of any logical formula to shake my belief, that any constant contact of the soul of man with whatever there is in horses that corresponds to the soul must produce a resulting awakening, quickening, deepening of that soul—something in both man and animal.