[m]li>] DEVELOPMENT OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 193 



knowledge nor special experience of any kind with animals, and were 

 plainly prejudiced at the outset against the views that the common 

 sense of mankind, as well as the consensus of opinion among naturalists 

 had held to be worthy of consideration. One of this school, perhaps 

 to be considered the leader, claimed that with his method one only 

 needed "' a pair of eyes.'" This experimenter proceeded to place cats 

 in cages 30 inches long, 15 broad and 13 high, and because they did 

 not, under the stimulus of hunger, speedily manipulate certain 

 mechanisms successfully he, on this and similar evidence, employing 

 also dogs and other animals, proceeds to demolish in very summary 

 fashion, the fundamental conclusions of hosts of observers who had 

 se\'cral of them O'ccupicd many years in their tasks. Some of 

 these conclusicns seemed to be absolutely against common sense. Here 

 we had, indeed., a violent reaction against that excess of credulity, which 

 it must be confessed had existed, and it again was the natural reaction 

 againjit that indifference to animals which had characterized preceding 

 ages. 



As the experimental methods of the laborators are now attract- 

 ing so much attention, it will be worth while to examine them a little 

 more fully. I elsewhere criticised, some four years ago, the methods 

 and conclusions of the chief agnostic of this school. Dr. Thorndike, 

 and I see now no reason to change the opinions I then expressed. 

 Indeed, since that time the experience, and I may add the failures of 

 others working along the same lines, bave only strengthened the force 

 of iny convictions. 



Mr. L. T. Hobhouse made a number of experiments on the dog, 

 the cat, the monke}', the elephant and the otter. In the main these 

 tests were carried out under conditions somewhat more natural than 

 those of the experimenters of the school in question, but still they do 

 not differ sufficiently to free them from the force of the objections 

 which may be urged against all such ways of determining the nature 

 of animal intelligence. Xevertheless, Mr. Hobhouse, using similar 

 methods, came to very different conclusions from Dr. Thorndike, so 

 that it would appear that something more than '' a pair of eyes " is 

 necessary for the solutions of the problems of animal psychology. Mr. 

 Hobhouse from all his experiments and a critical examination of those 

 of others, together with the weighing of the evidence afforded by the 

 most extended and accurate series of consecutive observations on 

 mammals available, came to the conclusion that "on their own lines 

 and in tlieir own wa}^, some of the more understood mammals have* 

 powers equivalent to fliose of the ape." He also in criticism of the 

 experimental method says, " so a dog may show not merely highly deve- 

 loped hunting instincts, but real cleverness in the adaptation of past 



