e same is not true among men. Of course some are more stupid than
others of the same species, but probably, on the one hand, there are
no idiots among them, and, on the other, none is preeminent in wit.

Animals take the first step in knowledge--they perceive things and
discriminate between them; but they do not take the second
step--combine them, analyze them, and form concepts and judgments.

So that, whether animals know much or little, I think we are safe in
saying that what they know in the human way, that is, from a process
of reasoning, is very slight.

The animals all have in varying degrees perceptive intelligence. They
know what they see, hear, smell, feel, so far as it concerns them to
know it. They know their kind, their mates, their enemies, their food,
heat from cold, hard from soft, and a thousand other things that it is
important that they should know, and they know these things just as we
know them, through their perceptive powers.

We may ascribe intelligence to the animals in the same sense in which
we ascribe it to a child, as the perception of the differences or of
the likenesses and the relations of things--that is, perceptive
intelligence, but not reasoning intelligence. When the child begins to
"notice things," to know its mother, to fear strangers, to be
attracted by certain objects, we say it begins to show intelligence.
Development in this direction goes on for a long time before it can
form any proper judgment about things or take the step of reason.

If we were to subtract from the sum of the intelligence of an animal
that which it owes to nature or inherited knowledge, the amount left,
representing its own power of thought, would be very small. Darwin
tells of a pike in an aquarium separated by plate-glass from fish
which were its proper food, and that the pike, in trying to capture
the fish, would often dash with such violence against the glass as to
be completely stunned. This the pike did for three months before it
learned caution. After the glass was removed, the pike would not
attack those particular fishes, but would devour others that were
introduced. It did not yet understand the situation, but merely
associated the punishment it had received with a particular kind of
fish.

During the mating season the males of some of our birds may often be
seen dashing themselves against a window, and pecking and fluttering
against the pane for hours at a time, day after day. They take thei