182 GENERAL BIOLOGY 



But does this show that the horse can count up to seven and has 

 a sort of mental calendar on which he checks off the days? By no 

 means ! All it may mean is that if a horse works six days in the week, 

 there is a certain feeling of tiredness which has become associated with 

 it, just as a blind man can tell by his "feeling" how many blocks he 

 walked and where it is time to turn without counting the blocks. 



We can then conclude that all animals may be conscious to some 

 extent; that is, they may be aware of their actions, although this has 

 nothing to do with reasoning with thinking. 



The veteran experimental psychologist, the late Professor Wm. 

 Wundt, said, "Animals never think and humans but seldom," and most 

 animal psychologists hold to this dictum, if, by "reason" is meant true 

 thinking, that is, a weighing of two or more sides of a problem and then 

 by a definite mental act decide or conclude what is to be done. In other 

 words, thinking means to use abstract ideas and to form conclusions. 



There are many writers who mean by the term "thinking" only an 

 ability to profit by past experience, so we must always find what an 

 author means by his terms before we attempt to pass judgment on what 

 he says. Others likewise speak of "Intelligence" which should mean 

 only the ability to think, as any associative memory. This is really 

 placing old labels on new bottles and is very confusing to the student 

 who wishes to know both the past and the present of his science. 



The desires of the different men in animal psychology must also be 

 taken into consideration when reading their respective works. There 

 are those who wish to show that there is no real difference between man 

 and the lower animals. These insist that man has nothing distinct from 

 the lower animals except language, but that man's seeming difference in 

 the .mental world is only a little greater development of animal charac- 

 teristics. Language by them is often said to be the cause of man's 

 greater mental ability in that he can by this means write down his find- 

 ings so that others may profit by them. 



Those who hold that- man is something separate and distinct from 

 the animal, call attention to the fact that language but expresses 

 thought, and one must have thought before he can develop a language, 

 rather than language being the cause of thought. These men also insist 

 that there is no proof that any animal has ever "reasoned" out a prob- 

 lem in the way mentioned in an earlier paragraph, and therefore no ani- 

 mal lower than man can be said to have any "Intelligence" in the classic 

 sense. 



These latter men would say that hundreds of thousands of cats, 

 dogs, and even apes (which are considered the more intelligent animals) 

 are very fond of warm places. Such animals have lain before hundreds 

 of thousands of open fires and enjoyed the warmth. They have seen 

 their masters keep the fire aglow by placing fuel upon it, and yet not 

 in a single instance has any animal drawn the very simple conclusion 



