piece of floating bread within his reach. These actions of the elephant
and bear can hardly be attributed to instinct or inherited habit, as
they would be of little use to an animal in a state of nature. Now, what
is the difference between such actions, when performed by an
uncultivated man, and by one of the higher animals?

The savage and the dog have often found water at a low level, and the
coincidence under such circumstances has become associated in their
minds. A cultivated man would perhaps make some general proposition on
the subject; but from all that we know of savages it is extremely
doubtful whether they would do so, and a dog would certainly not. But a
savage, as well as a dog, would search in the same way, though
frequently disappointed, and in both it seems to be equally an act of
reason, whether or not any general proposition on the subject is
consciously placed before the mind. The same would apply to the elephant
and the bear making currents in the air or water. The savage would
certainly neither know nor care by what law the desired movements were
effected; yet his act would be guided by a rude process of reasoning, as
surely as would a philosopher in his longest chain of deductions. There
would no doubt be this difference between him and one of the higher
animals, that he would take notice of much slighter circumstances and
conditions, and would observe any connection between them after much
less experience, and this would be of paramount importance. I kept a
daily record of the actions of one of my infants, and when he was about
eleven months old, and before he could speak a single word, I was
continually struck with the greater quickness with which all sorts of
objects and sounds were associated together in his mind, compared with
that of the most intelligent dogs I ever knew. But the higher animals
differ in exactly the same way in this power of association from those
low in the scale, such as the pike, as well as in that of drawing