THE PROBLEMS OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. 41 



infants. Both show at parallel stages of development the appear- 

 ance of the same faculties, often in strikingly similar forms. Just 

 as infants learn to distinguish between men and women, between 

 persons differently dressed, between old and young, kindred and 

 stranger, so an intelligent dog learns to distinguish between vis- 

 itors and beggars, between strangers and friends of the family, 

 between those who will fondle him and those who will not. A 

 single illustration is all we can stop to recount. A child was 

 accustomed to hear prayers read by the head of the household, 

 who while thus engaged often rested his head on his hand. When 

 asked to say prayers, the child assumed this at first inexplicable 

 attitude and mumbled something under its breath. The real 

 process was incomprehensible, the outward form had been 

 mimicked and some insignificant detail seized upon as the essen- 

 tial. Precisely the same is true of the behavior of the monkey 

 described by Dr. Romanes. This pet animal was given the key of 

 a trunk in which nuts were kept, and " every time he put the key 

 into the lock and failed to open the trunk he passed the key round 

 and round the outside of the lock several times. The explanation 

 of this is that my mother's sight being bad, she often misses the 

 lock when putting in the key, and then feels round and round the 

 lock with the key ; the monkey therefore evidently seems to think 

 that this feeling round and round the lock with the key is in 

 some way necessary to the success of unlocking the lock, so that, 

 although he could see perfectly well how to put in the key 

 straight himself, he went through the useless operation first." 

 Not alone can this general parallelism between infant and animal 

 traits be maintained, but to a considerable extent can it be shown 

 that the powers and traits appearing earliest in the child are 

 those already present in the lower groups of animals ; and Dr. 

 Romanes has drawn up a table exhibiting the first appearance of 

 various emotions and intellectual powers in the animal scale and 

 in the life history of human individuals, in which he makes the 

 order very largely the same for both. 



We may now proceed to illustrate the relation between child 

 psychology and anthropological psychology, to trace points of 

 community between the infancy of the race and the infancy of 

 the individual. At the stage at which, owing largely to the de- 

 velopment of language, the analogies between infant and animal 

 traits become weak and scanty, the comparison between the child 

 and the savage increases in extent and importance. Difficult as 

 it is to select typical instances of this varied and suggestive simi- 

 larity, both in emotional and intellectual traits, yet the attempt 

 must be made. In the emotional sphere we would instance insta- 

 bility of character, impulsiveness, an easy and quick transition 

 from one series of emotions to their opposites, violent passion upon 



