210 THE SCIENCE OF BIOLOGY 



PROBLEMS OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOR 



The behavior of animals has been recognized as a subject 

 for scientific investigation only within recent times. So 

 long as the idea of souls or similar activating agents persisted, 

 there was scant opportunity for an analysis of behavior in 

 terms of science. The earliest scientific attack dates from 

 the work of Descartes in the seventeenth century, who seems 

 to have originated the doctrine "that the bodies of animals 

 and men act wholly like machines and move in accordance 

 with mechanical laws." The scientific study of behavior 

 was thus begun under the stimulus of the hypothesis that 

 animals are automata, a theory which is a phase of the more 

 general hypothesis known as the mechanistic conception of 

 life. 22 



Those who originally maintained the Cartesian doctrine 

 soon outstripped themselves and their teaching fell into dis- 

 repute. No real progress was made during the eighteenth 

 century, but in the early part of the nineteenth century we 

 find a tendency to interpret the behavior of animals as like 

 that of humans. Interest centered about exaggerated and 

 uncritical accounts of the intelligence of the higher animals. 

 The study of animal behavior consisted largely in the col- 

 lection of anecdotes, the scientific value of which was passed 

 unchallenged, outside of scientific circles, until a very recent 

 date. 23 Such work had its value because it fostered interest 

 in animals and in their humane treatment by man. It was 

 possibly a reflection of the romantic period in literature and 

 catered to imagination rather than to reason. 



With the establishment of the evolutionary doctrine soon 



22 Huxley, T. H., "On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata," Collected 

 Essays Vol. entitled: "Method and Results." 



23 The collection of stories, entitled "The Animal Story Book," and edited by 

 Andrew Lang, although published at a much later date (1896), is representa- 

 tive of the period in question. Its literary quality is pleasing and its influence 

 in arousing sympathetic interest is of the best, but as scientific natural history 

 it is, of course, unreliable. 



