The Reason of Animals

Animals Have Reason Just as Humans Have Reason

Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth, is the ridicule of taking much pains to defend it.

The most obvious truth is that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as humans.

The arguments in this case are so obvious, that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant.

We are conscious that we are guided by reason and design in adapting means to ends.

We do not ignorantly nor casually perform actions for:

• self-preservation,
• obtaining pleasure, and
• avoiding pain.

When we see other creatures perform like actions and direct them to the ends, all our principles of reason and probability carry us with an invincible force to believe the existence of a like cause.

We can illustrate this easily.

The resemblance between the actions of animals and men is so entire.

The very first action of the first animal we examine, will afford us an incontestable argument for the present doctrine.

This doctrine:

• is as useful as it is obvious, and
• furnishes us with a kind of touchstone, by which we may try every system in this species of philosophy.

It is from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to our external actions, that we judge their internal actions likewise to resemble our internal actions.

The same principle of reasoning will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, their causes must also be resembling.

Therefore, when any hypothesis is advanced to explain a mental operation common to men and beasts, we must apply the same hypothesis to both.

Every true hypothesis will obey this trial.

No false hypothesis will ever be able to survive this trial.

Philosophers have used systems to account for the mind’s actions.

Their common defect is that they suppose such a subtlety and refinement of thought that exceeds the capacity of animals and even of children and common humans.

Animals, children, and common people have the same emotions and affections as the most accomplishd geniuses.

Such a subtlety is a proof of any system’s falsehood, just as simplicity is its proof of truth.

Let us test our system on the nature of the understanding.

Let us see whether it will equally account for the reasonings of animals and humans.

We distinguish between:

• the actions of animals which:
  • are of a vulgar nature, and
  • are on a level with their common capacities, and
  • the more extraordinary instances of sagacity which they sometimes discover for:
• their own preservation, and
• the propagation of their species.

1. The first example is a dog that:

• avoids fire and precipices,
• shuns strangers, and
• caresses his master.

2. A second example is a bird that:

• carefully chooses the place and materials of her nest, and
• sits on her eggs for a due time and in suitable season, with all the precaution that a chemist has.

I assert that those actions come from a reasoning that is not different, nor founded on different principles, from human reasoning.

There must be some impression immediately present to their memory or senses to be the foundation of their judgment. From the tone of his master’s angry voice, a dog: infers his masters anger, and foresees his own punishment.

From the smell in the air, a dog judges that his game is not far from him. The inference the dog draws from the present impression is built on: experience, and his observation of the conjunction of objects in past instances. As you vary this experience, he varies his reasoning. Make a beating follow on one sign or motion for some time, and afterwards on another. He will successively draw different conclusions, according to his most recent experience.

Let any philosopher:

• make a trial,
• try to explain belief, and
• give an account of the principles which create belief, independent of the influence of habit on the imagination

Let his hypothesis be equally applicable to beasts and humans.

I promise to embrace his opinion after he has done this. But at the same time, I demand that my system be received as entirely satisfactory, if it is the only one able to answer to all these.

It is obvious that my system is the only one. The Reason of Animals is Limited to Habit and Cannot Extend to Cause and Effect Beasts never perceive any real connection among objects.

Therefore, it is by experience that they infer one from another. They can never by any arguments form a general conclusion, that those objects, of which they have had no experience, resemble those of which they have.

It is through habit alone that experience operates on them. All this was obvious with respect to humans.

But with respect to animals, there cannot be the least suspicion of mistake. This is due to an invincible proof of my system.

The force of habit in reconciling us to any phenomenon is best shown in the fact that:

• humans are not astonished at the operations of their own reason, while they admire the instinct of animals, and
• humans find a difficulty in explaining their own reason, merely because it cannot be reduced to the very same principles as instinct.

Reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls.

It carries us along a certain train of ideas It endows them with qualities according to their situations and relations.

This instinct arises from past observation and experience.

But can any one give the ultimate reason why past experience and observation produces such an effect, any more than why nature alone should produce it?

Nature may certainly produce whatever can arise from habit. Habit is just one of the principles of nature. Habit derives all its force from nature.