4 7 he Scottish Naturalist. 



The special study of latent mental operation is what is to be 

 desiderated also in the valuable and world-wide researches of 

 Dr. Lauder Lindsay on animal psychical phenomena. These 

 researches, I consider, are in danger of being more fruitless 

 than they ought to be from the want of adequate theorising — 

 let the theory be sought from mental latency in man, or from 

 any other quarter. Theory in reference to the animal soul is 

 indispensable, and is what is now to be specially attempted. 

 Facts about the animal soul are not and never shall be the 

 science thereof 



Dr. Lindsay has in this matter of studying the animal soul, 

 commended to my attention a series of books. Some of them 

 are valuable books. I am not aware that one, who might be 

 working at a theory of animal intelligence, should suffer 

 materially from not having read the first and last in the list 

 viz., " Man and beast, here and hereafter," by the Rev. J. G. 

 Wood; and Maurice Girard's work on Insects — the section on 

 instinct and intelligence ; and as to the others I am not aware 

 that I had manifested ignorance of them. I thought I had 

 utilised their matter and their spirit as far as it was possible or 

 wise to do so, in the line of inquiry I was pursuing. One of them, 

 "The Reasoning Power in Animals," by the Rev. J. T. Watson, 

 M.A., is a copious, interesting, and valuable collections of facts 

 bearing on animal instinct and intelligence. Such facts are of 

 course indispensable, and the more of them, well observed and 

 truthfully told, the better. But are we to go on till doomsday 

 collecting facts, and not to presume that those already at hand 

 require explanation, and may, through that explanation, advance, 

 farther than has been hitherto reached, the solution of the 

 general problem that lends them their chiefest value and 

 interest. In truth, I despair of ever getting facts that shall 

 suggest the solution, or prove it, if those already gathered, 

 were their significance for the end only exhausted, do not. 

 The facts already observed, and on record, are indicative of 

 wonderful intelHgcnce, and of an equally wonderful degTce of 

 other psychical powers and passions. No fact of intelligence or 

 uf affection in animals, that could be observed in time to 

 come, liowever striking or mysterious, would surprise me, after, 

 what of wonder we already know in that quarter, except the 

 fact that should be of such a nature as clearly and unmistakably 

 to imply, in the animal-agent, self-conscious, self-regulated action. 

 For my part, if a fact of that kind were observed, I should be 



