252 Wheeler, The Study of Ariitnal Behavior. \ a'^ 



efforts of the comparative psychologist, involving as they neces- 

 sarily must, the endless drudgery of observation and experiment 

 to establish the simplest facts. The kind of training required in 

 such work is not necessarily given by any term of years spent in 

 camping in the American forests, nor in the arrogant conviction of 

 surpassing one's fellow men in keenness of insight into the animal 

 mind. No such conviction necessarily carries with it a grain of 

 authority. There is no short-cut to a knowledge of animal 

 behavior in the sense of a trajectory which o'er-leaps a humble 

 and diligent apprenticeship in the methods of correct observation 

 and reflection. In no science is it more true than in comparative 

 psychology that " every man shall not go to Corinth." 



There are a few simple considerations which the objective 

 student of animal behavior must constantly bear in mind. A 

 moment's reflection shows that all we can really perceive of animal 

 behavior is certain movements of the creatures in time and space. 

 As soon as we attempt to assign causes to these movements we at 

 once pass into the province of pure inference. This, of course, 

 holds good also of human actions, but in this case we are at least 

 dealing with organisms essentially like ourselves in structure and 

 development. All animals, however, differ more or less widely 

 from man. They have neither the power of concealing nor of 

 revealing their mental processes by means of speech, and, 

 although their actions are, in a sense, frank and undisguised, and 

 often resemble human actions which we have learned to associate 

 with certain feelings, volitions and thoughts, we can never do more 

 than infer a similar association in animals, since we are forever 

 debarred from knowing what is actually taking place in the animal 

 mind. It follows, therefore, that we can have no such thing as an 

 animal psychology or science of animal behavior, unless we accept 

 these inferences from analogy as a valid scientific method. Thus 

 the science resolves itself into a critical treatment and testing of 

 these inferences. And it is just here that the tendencies of the 

 true and the false students of animal behavior diverge. The 

 latter, consciously or unconsciously, construe the predicament of 

 our inability to know what is going on in the animal mind, into a 

 license for all kinds of fancies and a safeguard for unremitting 

 malobservation. 



