1 8 Animal Intelligence 



neglect of the connections becomes preposterous. The 

 adventitious scraps of consciousness called 'willing' which 

 may intervene between a situation productive of a given 

 act and the act itself are hopelessly uninstructive in com- 

 parison with the bonds of instinct and habit which cause the 

 situation to produce the act. In conduct, at least, that 

 kind of psychology which Santayana calls ' the perception 

 of character' seems an inevitable part of a well-balanced 

 science of human nature. I quote from his fine descrip- 

 tion of the contrast between the external observation of a 

 mind's connections and the introspective recapitulation of 

 its conscious content, though it is perhaps too pronounced 

 and too severe. 



"Perception of Character. There is, however, a wholly 

 different and far more positive method of reading the mind, 

 or what in a metaphorical sense is called by that name. 

 This method is to read character. Any object with which 

 we are familiar teaches us to divine its habits; slight 

 indications, which we should be at a loss to enumerate 

 separately, betray what changes are going on and what 

 promptings are simmering in the organism. . . . The gift 

 of reading character ... is directed not upon consciousness 

 but upon past or eventual action. Habits and passions, 

 however, have metaphorical psychic names, names indicat- 

 ing dispositions rather than particular acts (a disposition 

 being mythically represented as a sort of wakeful and haunt- 

 ing genius waiting to whisper suggestions in a man's ear). 

 We may accordingly delude ourselves into imagining that 

 a pose or a manner which really indicates habit indicates 

 feeling instead. 



" Conduct Divined, Consciousness Ignored. ... As the 

 weather prophet reads the heavens, so the man of expe- 

 rience reads other men. Nothing concerns him less than 



