DO ANIMALS REASON? 105 



living plant. Forestry schools that have for their class room the 

 wooded mountains and the botanical gardens with their living her- 

 baria are welcome steps toward the same end of phytoecology. 



In view of the above facts, and many more that might be men- 

 tioned did space permit, the writer has felt that the present in- 

 complete and faulty presentation of the subject of the newer bot- 

 any should be placed before the great reading public through the 

 medium of a journal that has as its watchword Progress in Edu- 

 cation. 



DO ANIMALS EEASON? 



By the Rev. EGERTON R. YOUNG. 



THIS interesting subject has been ably handled from the nega- 

 tive side by Edward Thorndike, Ph. D., in the August num- 

 ber of the Popular Science Monthly. Dr. Thorndike, with all his 

 skill in treating this very interesting subject, seems to have for- 

 gotten one very important point. His expectation has not only 

 been higher than any fair claim of an animal's reasoning power, 

 but he has overlooked the fact that there are different ways of rea- 

 soning. Men of different races and those of little intelligence can 

 be placed in new environments and be asked to perform things 

 which, while utterly impossible to them, are simple and crude to 

 those of higher intelligence and who have all their days been ac- 

 customed to high mental exercise. If such difference exists be- 

 tween the highest and most intelligent of the human race and the 

 degraded and uncultured, vastly greater is the gulf that separates 

 the lowest stratum of humanity from the most intelligent of the 

 brute creation. The fair way to test the intelligence of the so- 

 called lower orders of men is to go to their native lands and study 

 them in their own environments and in possession of the equip- 

 ments of life to which they have been accustomed. The same is 

 true of the brute creation. Only the highest results can be ex- 

 pected from congenial environments. To pass final judgment upon 

 the animal kingdom, having for data only the results of the doc- 

 tor's experiments, seems to us manifestly unfair. He takes a few 

 cats and dogs and submits them to environments which are alto- 

 gether foreign to them, and then expects feats of mind from them 

 which would be far greater than the mastering of the reason why 

 two and two make four is to the stupidest child of man. As the 

 doctor has been permitted to tell the results of his experiments, 

 may I claim a similar privilege? While I did not use dogs merely 

 to test their intelligence^my business demanding of myself and 



TOL LVI - 9 



