The Aesthetic Sense and Religious Sentiment in Animals

This book deals with the aesthetic sense and religious sentiment in animals.
"The mind of animals is a very old subject of discussion. Descartes and his
school regarded an animal as a mere piece of machinery, like a clock or a
turnspit. For man alone they reserved intelligence, meaning by that, memory,
feeling, will, and reason. The story of Malebranche is well known: As he was
going into his convent at the Oratory with a friend, a little bitch ran up and
fawned on him; he gave her a kick which sent the poor beast yelping off, and
when his friend expressed surprise that so gentle, kindly, and Christian a
person returned kicks for caresses, he exclaimed, "What! do you really suppose
that that animal had any feeling?" Thus Malebranche not merely believed he had
not wounded or grieved her; he even thought he had caused her no physical
pain. This was denying clear proof, and pushing faith in his master's doctrine
to absurdity. On the other hand, Montaigne, Leibnitz, La Fontaine, Bayle,
Condillac, Madame de Sévigné, agreeing with all antiquity, from Pythagoras to
Galen, assert that animals have all the organs of sensation and of feeling;
that they possess will, desires, memory, ideas, combinations of ideas, and
even the power of performing some moral acts, such as entertaining attachment
like that a dog feels for his master, or a hen for her chicks; or, like "that
very just equality which they practise in dividing food or other good things
among their young," as Montaigne says; and that therefore the intelligence of
animals, if not equal to man's, is at least like it, and that the differences
between the oyster anchored to its rock and the homo sapiens of Linnæus are
merely differences between more and less, degrees of succession that make up
what is called the scale of being. It is the latter opinion that has been
declared triumphant by the researches of natural history and those of
comparative anatomy alike. On this point science has reached certainty, and
every one, reading the story of "the two Rats, the Fox and the Egg," says now
with La Fontaine: "After that tale, where's the pretenseThat animals are
lacking sense?"