Chapter VIII (part 8)

We live side by side with animals and yet cannot establish such communication. Evidently the distance between us and them is greater, and the difference deeper, than between men divided by the ignorance of language, stone walls, and enormous distances. Another proof of the absence of concepts in the animal is its inability to use a lever, i.e., its incapacity to come independently to an understanding of the principle of the action of the lever. The usual objection that an animal cannot operate a lever because its organs (paws et cetera)are not adapted to such actions does not hold for the reason that almost any animal can be taught to operate a lever. This shows that the difficulty is not in the organs. p. 92 [paragraph continues] The animal simply cannot of itself come to a comprehension of the idea of a lever. The invention of the lever immediately divided primitive man from the animal, and it was inextricably bound up with the appearance of concepts. The psychic side of the understanding of the action of a lever consists in the construction of a correct syllogism. Without constructing the syllogism correctly it is impossible to understand the action of a lever. Having no concepts it is impossible to construct the syllogism. The syllogism in the psychic sphere is literally the same thing as the lever in the physical sphere. His mastery of the lever differentiates man as strongly from the animal as does speech. If some learned Martians were looking at the earth, and should study it objectively from afar by means of a telescope, not hearing speech, nor entering into the subjective world of the inhabitants of the earth, nor coming in contact with them, they would divide the beings living on the earth into two groups: those acquainted with the action of the lever, and those unacquainted with such action. The psychology of animals is in general very misty to us. The infinite number of observations made concerning all animals, from elephants to spiders, and the infinite number of anecdotes about the mind, spirit, and moral qualities of animals change nothing of all that. We represent animals to ourselves either as living automatons or as stupid men. We too much confine ourselves within the circle of our own psychology. We fail to imagine any other, and think involuntarily that the only possible sort of soul is such as we ourselves possess. But it is this illusion which prevents us from understanding life. If we could participate in the psychic life of an animal, understand how it perceives, thinks and acts, we would find much of unusual interest. For example, could we represent to ourselves, and re-create mentally, the logic of an animal, it would greatly help us to understand our own logic and the laws of our own thinking. Before all else we would come to understand the conditionality and relativity of our own logical construction and with it the conditionality of our entire conception of the world. An animal would have a peculiar logic. It indeed would not be logic in the true meaning of the word, because logic presupposes the existence of logos , i.e., of a word or concept. p. 93 Our usual logic, by which we live, without which "the shoemaker will not sew the boot," is deduced from the simple scheme formulated by Aristotle in those writings which were edited by his pupils under the common name of Organon , i.e., the "Instrument" (of thought). This scheme consists in the following: A is A . A is not Not-A . Everything is either A or Not-A . The logic embraced in this scheme—the logic of Aristotle—is quite sufficient for observation . But for experiment it is insufficient, because the experiment proceeds in time , and in the formulæ of Aristotle time is not taken into consideration.