566 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



existing prototypes of the human race. Our knowledge of 

 the psychology of the anthropoid apes is less than our knowledge 

 of the psychology of any other animal. But, notwithstanding 

 the scarcity of the material which I have to present, I think 

 there is enough to show that the mental life of the Simiadie is 

 of a distinctly different type from any that we have hitherto 

 considered, and that, in their psychology as in their anatomy, 

 these animals approach most nearly to Homo sapiens.'' 



The desiderated information has to a slight degree been 

 forthcoming during the past twenty years, but greatly extended 

 observation and experiment are still needed. 



If one starts with Romanes' account (50: 484) of the doings 

 of the Brown Capuchin (Cebus fatuelliis), he is at once arrested 

 not by descriptions given for movements of the eye, the mouth, 

 the skin, the nose, or even of the body generally, though these 

 all cooperate appropriately but to minor degree. The out- 

 standing feature is hand-arm environal action that starts cog- 

 nitic and cogitic stimuli, which result in proenvironal response. 



Thus to abstract so far in the order given he struck nuts with 

 a dish; he covered himself at night with warm shawls; he dashed 

 to the floor and broke a wine-glass in mischief; after throwing 

 down an egg-cup without breaking, he smashed it against an 

 iron bedpost; he broke a stick between a hea\^ object and the 

 wall; he carefully destroyed a dress by pulling out the threads; 

 he used a hammer appropriately to break walnuts; he threw a 

 nut, a hammer, a coffee-pot, and his shawls at a lady who had 

 laughed at his disappointments; he caught fiercely at a domes- 

 tic's hand; he carefully pulled over, balanced, then let crash re- 

 peatedly a marble-top washstand; he secured distant nuts that 

 were outside his tether's area by pulling them in with a stick, 

 or by whipping them in with a shawl; he spun round apples 

 and oranges, then put his long thin finger deep into the fruit, 

 and withdrawing it sucked from the hole; he pushed an arm 

 between a heavy washstand and the wall, then levered out the 

 former and dropped behind it; he pulled the glazed leather 

 cover off a trunk; he hammered at a chain-ring for hours in an 

 effort to break it; he angrily beat servants who supposedly had 



