THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 243 



discursively analyze this concatenated series of associated 

 stimula'tors and actions; for, let the concrete circumstances be 

 changed never so little, the horse will at once lose its labori- 

 ously acquired ability to open the gate. Such, for example, 

 will be the result, if the position of the gate be transferred to 

 another part of the enclosure. The horse, therefore, is incapa- 

 ble of adapting its acquired ability to new conditions. It can 

 only rehearse the original series in all its initial concreteness and 

 stereotyped specificity; and it must, whenever the circum- 

 stances are changed, begin once more at the beginning, and re- 

 arrive by trial and error at its former solution of the problem. 

 The reason is that the horse merely senses, but does not under- 

 stand, its own solution of the problem. The sense, however, 

 cannot abstract from the here and now. Consequently, the 

 human infant of two summers is enabled by its dawning intel- 

 ligence to adapt old means to new ends, but the ten-year-old 

 horse cannot adjust its abilities to the slightest change in the 

 concrete conditions surrounding the original acquisition of a 

 useful habit. The cognitive powers of an animal are con- 

 fined to the sphere of concrete singularity, it has no power to 

 abstract or generalize. 



The selfsame observation applies to the tricks which animals 

 "learn" through human training. Their sensitive memory is 

 very receptive and retentive. Hence, by means of a judicious 

 alternation of "rewards" and "penalties" {e.g. of sugar and the 

 whip), a man can, as it were, inscribe his own thoughts on 

 the tablets of the brute's memory, in such a way as to force 

 the latter to form habits that appear to rest upon a basis of in- 

 telligence. And so, indeed, they do, but the intelligence is that 

 of the trainer and not that of the animal, which is as destitute 

 of intrinsic intelligence as is a talking phonograph, upon whose 

 records a man can inscribe his thoughts far more efficiently 

 than he can write them in terms of the neurographic imagery 

 of the canine, equine, or simian memory. 



The trained monkey always renders back without change 

 the original lesson imparted by its human trainer. The lesson 



