Note 58 — Chapter V

From this it will be seen that by using such terms as “inference,” “reason,” “rational,” &c., in alluding to mental processes of the lower animals, I am in no way prejudicing the question as to the distinction between man and brute. In the higher region of recepts both the man and the brute attain in no small degree to a perception of analogies or relations: this is inference or ratiocination in its most direct form, and differs from the process as it takes place in the sphere of conceptual thought only in that it is not itself an object of knowledge. But, considered as a process of inference or ratiocination, I do not see that it should make any difference in our terminology whether or not it happens to be itself an object of knowledge. Therefore I do not follow those numerous writers who restrict such terms to the higher exhibitions of the process, or to the ratiocination which is concerned only with introspective thought. It may be a matter of straw-splitting, but I think it is best to draw our distinctions where the distinctions occur; and I cannot see that it modifies the process of inference, as inference, whether or not the mind, in virtue of a superadded faculty, is able to think about the process as a process—not any more, for instance, than the process of association is altered by its becoming itself an object of knowledge. Therefore, I hope I have made it clear that in maintaining the rationality of brutes I am not arguing for anything more than that they have the power, as Mr. Mivart himself allows, of drawing “practical inferences.” Hitherto, then, my difference with Mr. Mivart—and, so far as I know, with all other modern writers who maintain the irrationality of brutes—is only one of terminology.