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The question has often been asked, Do animals think? I believe that some of them think a great deal. Many of them are like children in their sports. We notice this to be true very often with dogs and cats; but it is true with other animals as well.
Some birds are very lively in their sports; and the same is true with some insects. The ants, hardworking as they are, have their times for play. They run races; they wrestle; and sometimes they have mock fights together. Very busy must be their thoughts while engaged in these sports.
There are many animals, however, that never play; their thoughts seem to be of the more sober kind. We never see frogs engaged in sport. They all the time appear to be very grave. The same is true of the owl, who always looks as if he were considering some important question.
Animals think much while building their houses. The bird searches for what it can use in building its nest, and in doing this it thinks. The beavers think as they build their dams and their houses. They think in getting their materials, and also in arranging them, and in plastering them together with mud. Some spiders build houses which could scarcely have been made except by some thinking creature.
As animals think, they learn. Some learn more than others. The parrot learns to talk, though in some other respects it is quite stupid. The mocking bird learns to imitate a great many different sounds. The horse is not long in learning many things connected with the word which he has to do. The shepherd dog does not know as much about most things as some other dogs, and yet he understands very well how to take care of sheep.
Though animals think and learn, they do not make any real improvement in their ways of doing things, as men do. Each kind of bird has its own way of building a nest, and it is always the same way. And so of other animals. They have no new fashions, and learn none from each other. But men, as you know, are always finding new ways of building houses, and improved methods of doing almost all kinds of labor.
Many of the things that animals know how to do they seem to know either without learning, or in some way which we cannot understand. They are said to do such things by instinct; but no one can tell what instinct is. It is by this instinct that birds build their nests and beavers their dams and huts. If these things were all planned and thought out just as men plan new houses, there would be some changes in the fashions of them, and some improvements.
I have spoken of the building instinct of beavers. An English gentleman caught a young one and put him at first in a cage. After a while he let him out in a room where there was a great variety of things. As soon as he was let out he began to exercise his building instinct. He gathered together whatever he could find, brushes, baskets, boots, clothes, sticks, bits of coal, etc., and arranged them as if to build a dam. Now, if he had had his wits about him, he would have known that there was no use in building a dam where there was no water.
It is plain that, while animals learn about things by their senses as we do, they do not think nearly as much about what they learn, and this is the reason why they do not improve more rapidly. Even the wisest of them, as the elephant and the dog, do not think very much about what they see and hear. Nor is this all. There are some things that we understand, but about which animals know nothing. They have no knowledge of anything that happens outside of their own observation. Their minds are so much unlike ours that they do not know the difference between right and wrong.
人们会经常问到这样的问题：动物会思考吗？我想念有些动物很会动脑筋思考的。很多动物玩起来像小孩子们是一样的。我们注意到，这一点就猫狗说确实真是这样的，而对其他一些动物来说也是如此。
有些鸟类在玩起来的时候是很活跃的，有些昆虫类也是如此。蚂蚁，虽然干起活来很勤奋，可是它们也能抽出时间来玩。蚂蚁参加各种赛跑，摔跤，有时还在一起模拟战斗。在蚂蚁从事这些活动的时候，他的思想肯定很活跃。
可是，也有些动物从来也不玩耍，它们的思想性格令人觉得好像是属于比较严肃冷静的那种类型。我们从来没见过蛙类在一起玩耍。蛙类总是令人觉得很严肃的样子。猫头鹰也是这样：总让人看起来好像猫头鹰老是在考虑很重要的问题的样子。
动物在筑巢或垒窝的时候就会考虑得比较多。鸟在筑巢时就要搜索它能用得上的材料，在做这类工作时，鸟儿就在动脑筋。河狸在修水坝或垒窝的时候也会动脑子。河狸在寻找建筑材料，在把撒谎到的材料考虑怎样安放以及用泥土把这些材料粘合到一起时都在动脑子思考。有些种类的蜘蛛所垒的窝，除了有些思想的动物而外，是很少有什么动物能垒成的。
动物不但会思考，而且也会学习。有些动物比其他动物更关于学习。鹦鹉虽然在别的方面很蠢，可是会学说话。美国南方的模仿鸟会模仿很多不同的音响。马不用很长时间就能学会跟让它干的活儿有关的许多东西。虽然牧羊犬不懂得基他种狗所懂的绝大部分事物，可是牧羊犬却精通于怎样看护好羊群。
虽然动物会思考也会学习，可是却不能像人那样，对学会的事物作出任何真正的改革。每种鸟都有自己的筑巢方法，但总是用的同样的方式，互相之间也不学习。可是，你知道，人类就不是这样，人类总是要寻求新的盖房子的方式，人类总是要改进作一些事情的方式方法。
有许多事情，似乎是动物都知道怎么做。它们秘书科不用学就会或者是用我们还没了解到的方法就掌握了。据说它们都是凭着本能去做这类事情，都能像人类设计新房子那样，动物也能有周密的计划和仔细的考虑，那么动物的巢穴在式样上也会有所变化和改进的。
我提到了河狸的建筑上的本能。一位英国先生抓到了只小河狸，起先把它放到一只笼子里了，过了一会儿又把它放出来，放进了一间里面有很多种不同的东西的房间里。刚把这只小河狸放出来，它就开始施展了它筑坝的本能。它把凡是能找到的东西：刷子、筐子、靴子、衣服、棍子、煤块等等都集中到一起，然后来安排这些东西，好像要筑水坝似的。那么，如果它真的有头有脑的话，它就该知道，在这没有水的地方筑水坝是根本没用的。
道理很明显，当动物像我们人一样在凭各种感官学习事物时，动物对所学的事物几乎不多加考虑，这就是之所以动物不能较迅速地提高的原因。即使是像大象和小狗这样最聪明的动物，也不能对它们的所见所闻加以思考。事情还远不止如此。有些事情我们能懂，而这些事情，动物根本一窍不通。动物对于发生在自己的视野之外一切事物一无所知。动物的头脑与我们人类的头脑是很不相同的，所以动物的头脑就分辨不出真伪或对错。
