An Introduction to Comparative Psychology

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1896. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV DO ANIMALS PERCEIVE RELATIONS. WHEN I take a walk across the downs with Tony, a fox-terrier pup, I carry with me a stick; for it is his delight to race after it and bound back with it in his mouth. The other day I took with me a heavy-knobbed stick, a Kaffir knob-kerrie. At first he seized this by the middle; but to carry it thus was an awkward, lop-sided, unbalanced operation, and by the close of the afternoon he had profited by an hour or two of experience, and seized the stick near the knob end. Now such a proceeding can be completely explained in terms of sense-experience. The process was throughout one of trial and error; gradually he found the most comfortable way of carrying that stick, and adopted it. Incidentally he was solving in a practical way a problem in mechanics; he was finding the centre of gravity of the stick. Incidentally, too, he gave me an opportunity of perceiving that the centre of gravity had certain spacerelations. It lay within about seven inches of the knob-end of the stick. But is there any reason to suppose that Tony perceived this relationship in even a rudimentary and indefinite way? I could see none. 'Through sense-experience he became aware in a practical way of how best to deal with the stick. There is no necessity for the adequate explanation of all that I observed to suppose that the pup perceived the relations as such; the relations at most may be regarded as implicit in practical performance by certain activities, not as explicit in focal perception. If therefore the canon we have already laid down is to be adopted, Q namely, that in no case is an animal activity to be interpreted as the outcome of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be fairly interpreted as the outcome of one which stands lower in t...