106 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



K. DIFFERENT DEGREES OF ACTING IN DIFFERENT ANIMALS 1 



Human acting was the starting-point and centre of our 

 analysis of acting ; but our discussion would be incomplete 

 if we said nothing about the different kinds and degrees of 

 acting in the other parts of the animal kingdom. 



Man and the Highest Animals Contrasted 



Darwinism and phylogeny laid stress on man's affinity 

 to animals, and with justice in respect to most details of 

 his organisation ; that was all right so far, though there 

 was always a difficulty with regard to the hemispheres of 

 the brain. In agreement with this particular the experi- 

 ments of the last few years, carried out by English and 

 American authors (Lloyd Morgan, Thorndike, Hobhouse, 

 Kinnaniann), have shown that as far as the degree of acting 

 is the point of comparison, there is a difference between 

 man and even the highest ape which is simply enormous : 

 man after all remains the only " reasoning " organism, in 

 spite of the theory of descent. 



We have said more than once that motions of animals 

 are the only subject we are studying in this chapter, motions 

 and nothing else. But to describe them at all satisfactorily 



disprove it. Giardina claims to have proved by his experiments an " indipend- 

 enzainiziale o virtuale,"but not an " indipendenza effectiva" ; these concepts 

 seem to signify about the same as the terms "prospective potency" and 

 " prospective value," as applied to brain physiology. 



1 A fuller reference to the subject will be found in the following works : 

 Thorndike, Animal Intelligence, 1898. Lloyd Morgan, Introduction to Com- 

 parative Psychology, 1903. Wasmann, InstinJct und Intelligenz im Tierreich, 

 3. Auflage, 1905. Here the full literature may be found. The recent litera- 

 ture on the subject is well discussed in the articles of the "Comparative 

 Psychology number " of the Psychological Bulletin (vol. v. No. 6), and in the 

 article "Animal Behaviour" in The American Naturalist, vol. xlii. p. 207. 



