PROGRESS IN THE LOWER ANIMALS. 179 



no emotional or intellectual life of tlieir own, but that a higher 

 power performs all these operations through them as cunmng 

 pieces of mechanism. The bird sings, according to this theory, 

 without any personal pleasure or participation m its song ;_ it 

 sings at a certain time and can not help it, nor is it able to sing 

 at any other time. The living cuckoo is as automatic as the 

 wooden cuckoo of a Black Forest clock, and under the same 

 mechanical compulsion to sing its song when the appointed hour 

 arrives Altum, in his book on bird-life (Der Vogel und sem 

 Leben Miinster, 1868), infers from the fact that a bird smgs more 

 in the pairing season than at other seasons of the year, that its 

 sono- is a "natural necessity," in which it takes no individual 

 pleasure But this conclusion by no means follows from the 

 premises. The song is a means to an end, and has for its final 

 obiect sexual attraction and selection. One would snrely not be 

 iustified in inferring that a woman who dresses well, chieliy m 

 order to gratify her husband or her lover, finds no individual 

 aesthetic satisfaction in a fine gown ; or that a man goes a-woomg 

 from "natural necessity," and gets no entertainment out of court- 

 Prof. Schutz's doctrine that animals are mere puppets, whose 

 movements are determined by the direct intervention of higher 

 powers, seems to have been derived from what is recorded of the 

 relations of these creatures to holy men in the legends of the 

 saints, rather than from a scientific study of the book of Nature ; 

 his point of view is not that of the zoOpsychologist, but that of 

 the hagiologist. 



The chief difficulty attending the investigation of mental 

 processes in animals is that they can not express themselves in 

 human language and explain to us their thoughts and feelings 

 and the motives underlying their conduct. We are thus liable 

 to misinterpret their actions and deny them many endowments 

 which they really possess, just as the first explorers of new 

 countries fail to discover in savages ideas and conceptions which 

 are afterward found to characterize them in a remarkable 



degree. 



We have happily rid ourselves somewhat of the ethnocentric 

 prepossessions which led the Greeks, and still lead the Chinese, to 

 regard all other peoples as outside barbarians ; but our percep- 

 tions are still obscured by anthropocentric prejudice which pre- 

 vents us from fully appreciating the intelligence of the lower 

 animals and recognizing any psychical analogy between these 

 humble kinsmen and our exalted selves. 



