COMPAEATIVE PSYCHOLOGY: ITS OBJECTS 

 AND PROBLEMS* 



THE term comparative psychology, in its modern sense, 

 gives us the widest desirable scope as including all 

 that pertains to the mind or soul of the animal kingdom. 

 It may have been at one time considered as highly im- 

 pertinent to ask whether the lower animals possess 

 mind, and to substitute the term soul would have been 

 dangerously suggestive of heterodoxy of a type rapidly 

 to be extinguished. However, few persons of any 

 degree of culture will now be found prepared to deny 

 that the inferior animals have minds. The questions 

 now to be settled are : What kind of minds ? In how 

 far do they resemble, and in how far differ from, our 

 own ? Few, it is true, have considered that they suffi- 

 ciently resemble the human mind to make it worth 

 while to investigate the subject at all. Probably the 

 great mass of persons have been led to believe that 

 man does and always has occupied a distinctive and 

 wholly isolated position in the universe of life a centre 

 around whom and for whom all other forms exist. 

 This view seems to me totally unwarranted by the state 

 of our scientific knowledge at the present day. Further, 

 it is a view not only without scientific foundation, but 

 calculated to lead to pernicious practical results. 



By experiments on the lower animals, and by this 

 means almost wholly, has the science of physiology 

 been built up. We argue from the case in animals to 

 the case in man, and consider the inferences thus 

 derived valuable, even final possibly too much so ; 



* A Presidential Address delivered before the Society for the 

 Study of Comparative Psychology in 1887. 



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