[mills] development OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 203 



Summary. 



The évolution of comparative psychology has followed in the main 

 the evolution of biology and of psychology, and the general trend of 

 human thought. 



When man's mental attitude towards nature in general changed, 

 animals also were regarded in a new light. 



Until comparatively recently the contributions to the subject have 

 been characterised by many-sidedness, but at the same time by loose- 

 ness and often inaccuracy, with a tendency to undue credulity and 

 anthropomoriphism. 



•The " experiments " of the laboratory school of comparative psy- 

 chology have been chiefly valuable in their negative and indirect results. 

 A large proportion of the tests used thus far have been inadequate and 

 often positively misleading; but they have also indicated the directions 

 in which we need not hope to succeed, and suggested more fruitful 

 methods. These experiments have shown that under even unfavourable 

 conditions animals may form new mental associations with surprising 

 rapidity. 



The laboratory methods have proved themselves best adapted to the 

 study of invertebrates and the lower vertebrates. 



The most fruitful work thus far done has been the observation of 

 the development of animals from birth upward by the consecutive or 

 (fairly) continuous method, together with such exiperimentation as has 

 been carried out under freer and more natural conditions generally than 

 those under which the laborators worked. 



It is important that similar observations and experiments be made 

 on other of our domestic animals and especially on wild animals. 



In all cases the investigator should be, if possible, a man with a 

 knowledge of animal life in general, and a special knowledge of the ani- 

 mals to be subjected to critical observation; and if he can combine this 

 with a scientific acquaintance with both biology and psychology, so much 

 the better. The sooner it is realised that the man is as important as 

 the method, the better for the development of comparative psychology. 



Much light is likely to come to comparative ps5''chology from judi- 

 cious child study and it is important that both biologists and psycho- 

 logists turn towards and if possible work in concert in dealing with so 

 large a field as com,parative psychology. 



