THE ANIMAL AND THE PUZZLE-BOX 



horseback shows how little speculation there is in 

 his eye. 



The thorough student of animal life knows that 

 animals do not reason or have any mental concepts, 

 that one can train them to form habits, but cannot 

 develop their intelligence; that is, that they can be 

 trained, but cannot be educated. He knows they 

 have no self -consciousness, from such a field obser- 

 vation as this: song-birds with a defective instru- 

 ment will sing as constantly and joyously, even 

 ecstatically, as the perfect- voiced songsters. A bobo- 

 link with only a half-articulated song will hover 

 above the meadows and pour out his broken and asth- 

 matic notes as joyously and persistently as any of his 

 rivals ; apparently he is as oblivious to the inadequacy 

 of his performance as a machine would be. Last 

 spring one of our roosters got a bad influenza, or in 

 some way injured his vocal cords, so that only 

 half of his crow was audible, and this half was very 

 husky and unnatural; yet he went through with 

 the motions of crowing just as persistently and tri- 

 umphantly as ever he had. He gave his rival crow 

 for crow day after day. It was a grotesque perform- 

 ance and was to me proof of how absolutely void 

 of self -consciousness the lower animals are. 



One is convinced on general principles that an 



animal knows only what it has to know in order to 



survive; that when keenness of scent or of hearing 



or of sight is not needed, it does not have it; that 



193 



