152 Animal Intelligence 



do not claim to be stories of the conduct of the average 

 or type, but of those exceptional individuals who have 

 begun to attain higher powers. And, if even a few 

 dogs and cats have these higher powers, our contention 

 is, in a modified form, upheld." To all this I agree, 

 provided the anecdote school now realize just what 

 sort of a position they hold. They are clearly in pretty 

 much the same position as spiritualists. Their anecdotes 

 are on pretty much the same level as the anecdotes of 

 thought-transference, materializations of spirits, super- 

 normal knowledge, etc. Not in quite the same position, for 

 far greater care has been given by the Psychical Research 

 Society to establishing the criteria of authenticity, to insur- 

 ing good observation, to explaining by normal psychology 

 all that can be so explained, in the case of the latter than 

 the anecdote school has done in the case of the former. The 

 off-hand explanation of certain anecdotes by invoking rea- 

 son, or imitation, or recognition, or feelings of qualities, is 

 on a par with the explanation of trance-phenomena and such 

 like by invoking the spirits of dead people. I do not deny 

 that we may get lawfully a supernormal psychology, or 

 that the supernormal acts it finds may turn out to be ex- 

 plained by these functions which I have denied to the nor- 

 mal animal mind. But I must soberly declare that I think 

 there is less likelihood that such functions are the explana- 

 tion of animal acts than that the existence of the spirits of 

 dead people is the true explanation of the automatisms of 

 spiritualistic phenomena. So much for the anecdote school, 

 if it calls itself by its right name and pretends only to give 

 an abnormal animal psychology. The sad fact has been that 

 it has always pushed forward these exceptions as the essen- 

 tial phenomena of animal mind. It has built up a general 

 psychology from abnormal data. It is like an anatomy 

 written from observations on dime-museum freaks. 



