p. 1 | Do Brutes Reason? by M. E. Cornell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 30, 1862

Do Brutes Reason?

By M. E. Cornell

We copy the following from the West Union (Iowa) Republican Era.

MR. EDITOR: I wish to offer a few of the many reasons I have for saying that beasts do, to a limited extent, possess the faculty of reason. In your article with the above caption, you say:—

"To affirm that brutes reason is to affirm without evidence. Animals furnish no evidence of reason, and only those whose theories have perverted their judgment, would affirm they possess it."

Probably none will deny that some brutes possess more reason than some men. All we know of the amount of reason in either man or beast, is by what we see them manifest. In many cases where the organism is defective, man falls below the brute. You see a man who is minus the intellectual organs, sloping immediately back from his eyebrows, and you do not hesitate to pronounce him an idiot. A monkey or a dog knows more than he. This, proves, so far as reason is concerned, man's superiority over the beast consists in his superior organization. Man in general is matter more refined and better organized for the manifestation of mental and moral quality than the brute creation. His body and brains are better proportioned, and his temperaments are more happily compounded for the development of mental property. In man we behold a balance in the coronal and basilar regions of the brain; and the whole is so distributed as to give force to intellectuality.

In regard to reason in brutes, a few words from reliable authors may not be uninteresting.

"The power of fancy is great even in brute animals, in which it is the chief faculty. Most of them have a good memory, and with all some kind of foresight." Dr. Grew.

"Birds learning of tunes, and the endeavors to hit the notes right, put it past doubt with me, that they have perception, and retain ideas in their memories, and use them for patterns." "It seems as evident to me that they (beasts) do reason, as that they have sense." Locke's Essays, b. ii.

"Sensation is an attribute of mind, and the possession of mind certainly extends as far as its phenomena. Whatever beings have conscious feeling, have, unless the preceding arguments amount to nothing, souls, or immaterial minds." Dr. Ritchard on the vital principle.

To affirm a difference between reason in man and the same manifestation in beasts, calling the latter "instinct," is to affirm without evidence. It is all imaginary, and came as the result of a theory which perverts the judgment.

In the Ladies' Repository for March, 1857, is an article on "Mind in Animals," in which the writer says:—

"The contrast between man and beast is not a contrast between reason and instinct, (common and almost universal as is this supposition,) for it can be readily shown that these two mental qualities, though very different, are by no means inseparable; that in point of fact the dog is endowed with reason as well as instinct, and that man performs many actions which are purely instinctive, as well as those which are prompted by reason." Among the many facts to sustain this position, we have room only for the following.

"The battering-train going from the siege of Seringapatum, had to cross the sandy bed of a river, . . . very heavy for draught, and abounding in quicksands. It happened that an artillery man, who was seated on the tambril of one of the guns, by some accident fell off in such a situation that in a second or two the hind wheel must have gone over him. The Elephant which was stationed behind the gun, perceiving the predicament, in which the man was, instantly, without any warning from its keeper, lifted up the wheel with its trunk and kept it suspended until the carriage had passed clear over him." In remarking upon this and similar cases, the writer says that it, "indicates a reasoning power, combining cause with effect, using the light of past experience, or perceiving the suitability of some recourse to present emergency, and that, in some cases, with a sudden promptitude which in man would have been admired as presence of mind. Why should we hesitate to call it so here?"

To your enquiry, "Does our materialist friend make no difference between killing chickens and children for food?" I answer Yes! most assuredly I do. Reason touches us better than to subsist on our own kind. And it is a fact that many beasts have so much reason that they will not kill their own kind for food, even when at the point of starvation.

In regard to the charge of being a "materialist" I wish to say, that I have some pretty good company, even this side of the Apostles. John Wesley says:—

'For what is immaterial fire? The same as immaterial water or earth! Both the one and the other is absolute nonsense, a contradiction in terms. Either, therefore we must affirm it to be material, or deny its existence.' Sermons, Vol. ii p. 150.

"We choose all substance, what remains, The mystical immaterialist gains; All that each claims each shall possess, Nor grudge each other's happiness. An immaterial God they choose, An immaterial heaven and hell; For such a God we have no use, In such a heaven we cannot dwell. We claim the earth, the air, and sky, And all the starry worlds on high; Gold, silver, ore, and precious stones, And bodies made of flesh and bones. Such is our hope, our heaven, our all When once redeemed from Adam's fall, All things are ours, and we shall be The Lord's to all eternity."