ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 141 



and silent world into which language could but sparsely enter, gave 

 equally convincing proof of how busy their brains were with much the 

 same kind of thoughts and purposes and interests as make up the 

 mental lives of their more fortunate playmates. Naturally their do- 

 ings were decidedly hampered, and their thinkings decidedly limited 

 by the slightness of the bond — the single highway of touch — that con- 

 nected them with their fellow beings. Such a child, in almost as 

 languageless a condition as a dog and with far less chance of finding 

 out what was going on in the world and of participating therein, de- 

 velops into a rational creature of just that special kind of rationality 

 that even in its simplest terms the brightest dog seems never to achieve. 

 And now consider what a slow and weary path this bright child, 

 equipped with all its sense and senses, and at the expense of much 

 patient teaching, must tread before it comprehends the message of 

 the letters, and gets to look upon ' twice two is four ' as something 

 more than a rather stupid bit of memory exercise, that, like virtue, if 

 persisted in, brings its own reward. With an inconceivably great start 

 beyond the dog or the horse, with a tremendously greater aptitude for 

 just this sort of mental acrobatics, the human child must await some 

 years of ripening of its powers, and upon that favorable foundation 

 expend some further years of initiation and schooling to exhibit a 

 simple proficiency in getting meaning out of those crooked black marks 

 on white paper, and in putting two and two together so as to com- 

 prehend the manner of its strange transformation into four. Surely, 

 the accomplishment merits our profound admiration. To this under- 

 standing of how much is involved in bringing an apt mind to the 

 point at which reading and calculating becomes a bare possibility, 

 of how great a world is already conquered when the three E's begin 

 to play even the most modest of parts, let us add one point more: 

 When the child begins to show (and not wholly by language) that the 

 letters and numbers have some meaning, it shows the fact so variously 

 that we have constant means of testing how real its knowledge may be. 

 We gain a pretty fair idea in each case, how far the accomplishment is 

 a mere mechanical trick, or a really comprehended operation. Every- 

 where the limitations are conspicuously obvious; and we know how 

 gradually we must add to the complexity of the business, how readily, 

 by only a slight change in the setting of the problem, we sink the strug- 

 gling mind beyond its depth. All this is a very sound lesson in psy- 

 chology to take with us, when we attend a ' show ' in which a horse or a 

 dog is put through some steps which are supposed to prove for the star 

 performer a real comprehension of the message of the letters and the 

 operations of the multiplication-table. 



With so much of preamble, let us look at the actual performance, 

 first as it is presented on the show-bills, and then as it appears from 

 behind the scenes. The program that advertises the learned perform- 



