The Reason of Animals

Animals Have Reason Just as Humans Have Reason

The most obvious truth is that beasts have thought and reason just like humans.

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.

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

The external actions of animals resemble ours.

• This means their internal actions likewise resemble ours

Since the internal actions of humans and animals resemble each other, then 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.

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.

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.

Their actions come from a reasoning that is similar to human reasoning.

There must be some impression immediately present to their memory or senses as basis 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 accepted if it is the only one able to answer to all these.

The Reason of Animals is Limited to Habit and Cannot Extend to Cause and Effect

Beasts never perceive any real connection among objects.

Therefore, they infer one from another by experience.

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 merely a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls.
• carries us along a certain train of ideas
• 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.