Author's Note 21
Modern philosophy, which only admits what it can understand, is careful not to admit this obscure power called instinct which seems to guide the animals to some end without any acquired experience. Instinct, according to some of our wise philosophers, is only a secret habit of reflection, acquired by reflection; and from the way in which they explain this development one ought to suppose that children reflect more than grown-up people: a paradox strange enough to be worth examining. Without entering upon this discussion I must ask what name I shall give to the eagerness with which my dog makes war on the moles he does not eat, or to the patience with which he sometimes watches them for hours and the skill with which he seizes them, throws them to a distance from their earth as soon as they emerge, and then kills them and leaves them. Yet no one has trained him to this sport, nor even told him there were such things as moles. Again, I ask, and this is a more important question, why, when I threatened this same dog for the first time, why did he throw himself on the ground with his paws folded, in such a suppliant attitude calculated to touch me, a position which he would have maintained if without being touched by it, I had continued to beat him in that position? What! Had my dog, little more than a puppy? acquired moral ideas? Did he know the meaning of mercy and generosity? By what acquired knowledge did he seek to appease my wrath by yielding to my discretion? Every dog in the world does almost the same thing m similar circumstances and I am asserting nothing but what any one can verify for himself. Will the philosophers, who so scornfully reject instinct, kindly explain this fact by the mere p lay of sensations and experience which they assume we have acquired? Let them give an account of it which will satisfy any sensible man; in that case I have nothing further to urge, and I will say no more of instinct.