Animal Psychology, the Old and the New 19 



similar and uniform as they now appear to us, but 

 that they arose in the same manner from experience 

 and tradition, as the arts of our own species, though 

 their reasoning is from fewer ideas, and is busied 

 with fewer objects and is exerted with less energy." 

 Similar views were developed by Condillac in his 

 Traite des Animaux published in 1766. 



What had come largely through the writings of 

 Aquinas and his followers to be typical catholic doc- 

 trine concerning the mental life of animals found a 

 very able defender in S. H. Reimarus, a prominent 

 prelate of the church, but at the same time an indus- 

 trious worker in the field of animal behavior. His 

 chief work, Allgemeine Betrachtungen fiber die 

 Triebe der Thiere, remained for a long time the 

 most extensive and thorough treatise on the subject. 

 It passed through four German editions and was 

 translated into French and into Dutch, and soon 

 came to be regarded as a standard authority. The 

 views of LeRoy, Erasmus Darwin and Condillac are 

 subjected to a rigorous criticism which in most re- 

 spects must be regarded as very well founded. The 

 labors of Reaumur, Rosel von Rosenhof, Huber, 

 Bonnet, Buffon, Spallanzani and other naturalists of 

 the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth 

 centuries had added greatly to our knowledge of the 

 instinctive behavior of animals, and Reimarus, from 

 his wide acquaintance with literature and from his 

 own experience, had little difficulty in making out a 

 strong case for instinct. The key-note of the work 



