The evening herald. [volume] (Shenandoah, Pa.) 1891-1966, 1892-09-08
ANIMALS S, THOUGHTS.

It is very doubtful, indeed, whether
people appreciate how great is the gulf
between our human thoughts and feel
ings-thoughts more than feelings-and
those of the lower animals One hears
commonplaces Of the possibility of an
extra sense, and so on, often enough,
but the entire difference of mental basis
that must exist between us and the
cats. dogs and horses which we fancy
we understand, seems hardly ever to
be conceived In one direction all ami
mails are alilSe-all dread death and
physical injury, all eagerly seek and
accept suitable food, all have in their
earlier years that tendency to rehearse
the serious business of after life which
we call play.
These common needs and inclinations
furnish mental substratum, lingua
franca, that roughly all may compre-
heud, but into its crude, almost form
less communications what an infinite
amount of ourselves we are inclined to
read in, without further justification.
The lion in the menagerie sprawls,
with his green-grey eyes staring out it
seems, into the infinite. splendid
fellow" we say; "noble creature! He is
thinking of the blue mountains that
bounded his desert world" About as
much, dear poetess, as you, when you
have that look upon your face, are
thinking of the summation of infinite
series of katabolic metaboly.
Let us first analyze little the ele-
ments in the picture of the universe
painted on our own minds 1t is har-
mony in space and time You think of
thing as a form having a position in
what you call space, and changing as
the minutes, hours and days slip by.
The human world is a world of pict-
ures; our memories are sight images
that we raise from the sleep in our
brains for a little while. We seem to
live at the back of our eyes The human
world is visi BILE universe par excellence.
But since the days of Bishop Berkeley
we have come to perceive more and
more distinctly that the eye sees so
clearly, not by its own virtue, but as
the result of the education afforded it
by our hands At first the world of the
child must be fat confusion of shapes
which it learns to interpret by the
movement of its hands over the forms
it sees The vision is at first without
depth, without relief, without model
ing, or atmosphere. Prof. Preyer's lit
tie boy, many months DID, tried to
snatch the lamp in railway carriage
several feet beyond arms length.
Those born blind who at a later age
have been restored to their sight by
medical skill, and who consequently
have not learned to connect sight and
touch impressions fancied all the things
they saw touched their eyes. Indeed
it is one of the elementary teachings of
psychology that our perception of space
in our vision of the world comes to us
through our fingers.
And the lion has no fingers. Neither
do the cat, the dog, and the horse pos
| possess these necessary media to a nice
discrimination of shapes and position.
The horse, with its digits imprisoned in
a horny hoof, is in particularly bad
case. 1t is impossible to believe that
the painting on the eye of these Great
ures is interpreted by them with any
thing like the delicacy or truth that we
can attribute to what we see. More
over certain yellow spot of distinct
vision" common to US and the apes is
absent from their eyes.
The horse frequently seems to use his
eyes independently of each other, un-
doubtedly the majority of animals do
so; how then can we imagine in their
case, for moment, such a single pict-
ure of world as we in our waking
moments look out upon2 A few simple
experiments with a cat will convince
anyone that she cannot distinguish
hand, with empty fingers, held toward
her from one containing any not too
odoriferous edible. A bull makes no
distinction between the display of
red pocket handkerchief and the she'd
ding of blood.
And while the animal may not, and
in all proba bility does not refer its
world to a spaced picture and think in
visible images as we do, there is no
doubt that in other respects its sensa-
tions may have a definition of mental
value quite unknown TO the equivalent
sense in ourselves. We may carry
faces to the heavens and stalk about
the temporary lords of the world, but
for all that our noses are poor things.
pimple compared with the magnificent
organ of the horse or dog Our sense
of smell is, when contrasted with our
sight and hearing, singularly undis-
eliminating. We can arrange sounds
into series; we know = is between c
and f; we appreciate octaves and har-
monies Similarly we can put the colors
into order decide upon the amount of
blue in a purple and get almost to emo
tion at the sight of white star in the
blue of the summer twilight, or of
the amber sunlight glinting between
the blades of grass
But this serial arrangement this sort
ing and selective choice, is entirely be-
yond our rudimentary sense of smell.
To us the idea of the scent of the violet
being a rich harmony or the suggestion
that the frying of onions is discord or
that patchouli and the new-mown hay
are pleasant things in different times
and lraUe sounds utfar npuEauea Our