[X.]
PROFESSOR GRIMALDI’S WONDERFUL DISCOVERIES.
It is scarcely necessary to recount the wonderful researches of the great Prof. Grimaldi, the great French naturalist. His name has become a household word, and his fame world-wide. When I unearthed his carefully prepared paper it was yellow with age, but his chirography was a marvel of neatness, and distinct as copper plate. I have made a literal translation of it, and will give it in his own words without emendations.
THE CAT
By Alphonse Leon Grimaldi, F.R.S., F.G.S., M.O.S., D.H. du C., M.F.A.S., M.F.A., et al.
I was born with an intense passion for animals. I am a Frenchman, therefore am I a man of strong passions. I have not married. My love is for the animal kingdom, and it has been returned to me one hundred fold all my life. In woman there is deceit, and in man deception rules his nature. If I treat an animal with kindness, I will, invariably, be overwhelmed with gratitude. The animal never bites the hand that feeds it—the human being frequently does. Therefore, I live among animals and center my affections in them. I have made my unalterable choice. I teach the gentler manners and the magnanimity, perhaps the greater intelligence of those of God's creatures who are far above their self-constituted masters, and their inexhaustible love of even the hand that smites, if it be the hand of a beneficiary. You have repeatedly noticed that a large and powerful dog can never be persuaded to attack or oppress a smaller or a feebler one. Tell me how frequently you have known a man of influence, power, riches or strength, to oppress and take advantage of a feebler or poorer one? Is it not a daily, nay, hourly occurrence? Have you ever seen a healthy animal oppress a sickly one? Never! Times without number you have been an eyewitness to the tender care and solicitude of the well for the sick animal, and as frequently you have seen the unfortunate provided with every necessary by his more fortunate comrades.
How often do you find these traits in the human being? For this, and for many other reasons with which I might tire you, I love all animals but man.
Men declare that only the biped, man, is endowed with reason. It is false. It is so declared, in order that man may possess one characteristic that will elevate him above, and distinguish him from what he chooses, falsely, to call the lower animals.
Your Noah Webster, who padded your dictionary in order to make a formidable book, like many another man, says that animals are not possessed of reasoning powers, but have only instinct. He gives the definition of instinct as follows: "INSTINCT. A certain power or disposition of mind by which, independent of all instructions or experience, without deliberation, and without having any end in view, animals are unerringly directed to do spontaneously whatever is necessary for the preservation of the individual or the continuation of the kind."
This is your American authority, and you must accept it, for you have adopted the dictionary. By this definition, and with only one question, I will prove to you that animals have reasoning powers, just as men have. Have not animals an end in view when they gather their food and build their homes for the winter months, when they rear their young, anticipate the coming of the night and of that longer night constituting the darkness of age and death, when preparing for the coming of their Master, and when, with a grand evidence of their superiority over man, they anticipate the changes of the weather?
The intelligent man admits that animals not only have minds, but that they reason also. The sooner the whole world admits this fact the sooner we will arrive at the truth in the premises, and give the feline her due as well as be just to other animals. The study of natural history unfolds to the mind a new universe of beauty, interest and profit. The beautiful book of nature is spread out in inexhaustible profusion to all creatures, and no one can claim a monopoly of this grand study. Other animals read it constantly, and seem to understand it better than man. Man has not been able, with all his knowledge of science, to make a barometer which will give as unerring calculations concerning the weather as will the animals which he considers beneath him in intelligence. I instance more particularly the wild goose, who will indicate the temperature of the season, and I will remark that there is no compass or needle which can indicate the course of a pigeon while it navigates the air equal to its own instinct. In the hydraulics of nature, the beaver stands foremost of all living creatures, and the bee is the greatest builder in the world. Do you not admit that "instinct" will no longer answer as a name for intelligence in what you call the "brute" animals? Is it without deliberation and without having an end in view that, when you take a young pigeon from the cote in which it was hatched, and carrying it in a coop to a distance of four hundred miles from its home, you free it, and it takes its flight in a bee line for the cote in which it was born? What shall that quality of mind be called?