



Natural Science ^? 



k* 



.^ 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 



July 1899 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



The Animal Mind. 



In the June number of Natural Science, we had occasion to remark that 

 comparative psychology is the most anarchic department within the 

 naturalist's province. This is due to several causes : in part to the 

 fact that, as we said, this field is often a happy hunting-ground for the 

 crank, in part to a lamentable want of agreement in the use of psycho- 

 logical terms, and in part to the lack of any co-ordinated body of 

 critical and adequately-trained opinion on the subject. The average 

 press critique of a work on the instincts and intelligence of animals 

 reveals the fact that there are comparatively few men to whom an 

 editor can appeal with confidence that they have a sufficient back- 

 ground of knowledge to enable them to realise the true nature of the 

 problems which are discussed. The more popular and superficial the 

 interpretation in a work under review, and the more closely it accords 

 with the current prejudices of those who, without special study, think 

 they understand, not only mental products, but (a far more difficult 

 matter) the subtle processes by which they are reached, the more likely 

 is it to be hailed as the expression of the " plain common sense view 

 of the question." 



Two articles are devoted to comparative psychology in the May 

 number of the Psychological Review : one by Prof. Wesley Mills on 

 " The Nature of Animal Intelligence, and the Methods of investigating 

 it " ; the other by Prof. E. Thorndike on " The Instinctive Eeaction of 

 Young Chicks." The main object of the former writer is to criticise 

 some of the previous work of the latter. The monograph by Prof. 

 Thorndike thus criticised was reviewed in these pages by Prof. Lloyd 

 Morgan, who urged, inter alia, that the method adopted by its author, 

 that of placing starving cats in cramped cages, was unsatisfactory. 

 This, too, is the burden of much of Prof. Wesley Mills' criticism. And 

 so far he is on safe ground — ground which, as an independent observer, 

 he knows well. But when he deals with psychological criticism the 

 plane of his analysis is so different from Prof. Thorndike's, that little 

 of value comes out of his discussion. He will, we think, enlist the 

 sympathies of the uninstructed, rather than those of serious students of 



1 NAT. SC. VOL. XV. NO. 89. I 



