hey are
notoriously able to instruct and correct one another.

Against this Professor Max Muller contends that we can know nothing of
what goes on in the mind of any lower animal, inasmuch as we are not
lower animals ourselves. "We can imagine anything we like about what
passes in the mind of an animal," he writes, "we can know absolutely
nothing." {19} It is something to have it in evidence that he conceives
animals as having a mind at all, but it is not easy to see how they can
be supposed to have a mind, without being able to acquire ideas, and
having acquired, to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them. Surely
the mistake of requiring too much evidence is hardly less great than that
of being contented with too little. We, too, are animals, and can no
more refuse to infer reason from certain visible actions in their case
than we can in our own. If Professor Max Muller's plea were allowed, we
should have to deny our right to infer confidently what passes in the
mind of any one not ourselves, inasmuch as we are not that person. We
never, indeed, can obtain irrefragable certainty about this or any other
matter, but we can be sure enough in many cases to warrant our staking
all that is most precious to us on the soundness of our opinion.
Moreover, if the Professor denies our right to infer that animals reason,
on the ground that we are not animals enough ourselves to be able to form
an opinion, with what right does he infer so confidently himself that
they do not reason? And how, if they present every one of those
appearances which we are accustomed to connect with the communication of
an idea from one mind to another, can we deny that they have a language
of their own, though it is one which in most cases we can neither speak
nor understand? How can we say that a sentinel rook, when it sees a man
with a gun and warns the other rooks by a concerted note which they all
show that they understand by immediately taking flight, should not be
credited both with reason and the germs of language?

After all, a professor, whether of philology, psychology, biology, or any
other ology, is hardly the kind of person to whom we should appeal on
such an elementary question as that of animal intelligence and language.
We might as well ask a botanist to tell us whether grass grows, or a
meteorologist to tell us if it has left off raining. If it is necessary
to appeal to any one, I should prefer the opinion of an intelligent