LIMITS OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY 731 



environment, but the discrimination must be of relatively concrete 

 parts of total situations, and the analysis into abstract elements 

 is doubtless beyond them. 



There is a twofold proof of the incapacity of animals for abstract 

 analysis. In the first place, the apparent results of an analytic 

 consciousness in animals' behavior often lack the permanence 

 of the conduct characteristic of the truly analytic consciousness. 

 Thorndike's animals, for example, after six or seven times per- 

 forming some mechanical operation, would "forever after fail to 

 do it." * This persistent failure would have been impossible had 

 the animals, in their initial success, analyzed the situation and 

 discovered the precise adjustment of means to end; for such ana- 

 lysis and the resulting consciousness of relation are not readily 

 forgotten. On the other hand, the failure to repeat the success- 

 ful movement is comparatively natural, if learning is due to the 

 chance connection of total situation with total movement. 



The insignificant character of an animal's mental analysis is 

 further shown by the typically gradual advance in its learning- 

 process. The complete analysis of situations such as is involved, 

 for example, in solving problems and in guessing riddles is nor- 

 mally achieved suddenly: 2 it comes, not as gradual dawn, but as 

 a sudden flash of light. The generally regular progress in an animal's 

 acquirement of activities and the lack of permanence of these ac- 

 quired movements tend, therefore, to discredit the significance of 

 analysis in the psychic life of animals. But the consciousness of rela- 

 tions certainly requires a high degree of the capacity to analyze: the 

 elements of similarity, difference, connection, and totality are with 

 difficulty held by attention. The fact that animals to such slight 

 degree analyze their experience is a strong indication, therefore, 

 that they do not reason analytically. The presence of a faint con- 

 sciousness of relation, nearly swamped by concrete experiences, is, 

 however, not to be disproved by objective tests. Certain acts of 

 animals and of young children, reported by trustworthy observers, 

 are indeed most naturally thus interpreted. Such are the cases 

 of Hachet-Souplet's coati, who reached the eggs on a high shelf 

 by drawing up a distant chair with a scarf twisted around its legs ; 3 

 and that of the child of fourteen months, who was observed "to 

 feel his own ears and then his mother's, one day, when looking at 

 pictures of rabbits." 4 In the main, however, it is fairly certain 



1 Psychol. Review, vol. v, p. 552, and Animal Intelligence, p. 44. Cf. also The 

 Mental Life of Monkeys (p. 15), for the account of a monkey who had learned to 

 pull a loop of wire from a nail, and who " failed thereafter to pull off a similar 

 loop made of string." 



2 Cf. Lindley, A Study of Puzzles, Amer. Jour, of Psychol. 18^7, vol. vm, pp. 

 473 seq. and 481. 



3 Hachet-Souplet, Examen psychologique des animaux, pp. 70 seq. 



4 F. Tracy, The Psychology of Childhood, p. 44, 1893. 



