Now with monkeys, as we shall presently see, a
painful or merely a disagreeable impression, from an action once
performed, is sometimes sufficient to prevent the animal from repeating
it. If we attribute this difference between the monkeys and the pike
solely to the association of ideas being so much stronger and more
persistent in the one than the other, though the pike often received
much the more severe injury, can we maintain in the case of man that a
similar difference implies the possession of a fundamentally different
mind?
Houzeau relates that, while crossing a wide and arid plain in Texas, his
two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty and forty
times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. These hollows
were not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other
difference in the vegetation, and as they were absolutely dry, there
could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if they knew
that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of finding water,
and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behaviour in other animals.
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