PROGRESS OF PSYCHOLOGY. 465 



parasite's drifting life of ease. Here locust eats 

 locust, and rat rat ; there in the combat of stags lover 

 fights with lover till death conquers both ; and again 

 we see a mother animal losing her life in seeking 

 to save her children. At one pole we see simple 

 brainless creatures pursuing their daily life in what 

 we can hardly call more than dull sentience; again 

 we marvel at an instinctive skill whose expression 

 is unconscious art; finally we are face to face with 

 a.n intelligent behaviour which seems at once a carica- 

 ture and prototype of our own. 



When we talk to naturalists or read a num- 

 ber of works on natural history, we soon recog- 

 nise that there are two extreme positions. One of 

 these has been briefly described in the phrase " The 

 man in tJie beast." It is that which interprets an 

 animal's action forthwith as if it were human, which 

 credits the beast with the man's qualities of feeling 

 and reasoning without seeking to prove their pres- 

 ence, which, in short, reads the man into the beast. 

 Now this is generous, and the interpretation of ani- 

 mal life which results is pleasing, and free from 

 the usual self-conceit of human intelligence. Most 

 children pass through it, some naturalists die peace- 

 fully in the faith of it. But if comparative psy- 

 chology has taught us anything, it is that this posi- 

 tion is fallacious. He is still at the feet of Uncle 

 Remus, who credits animals with his own qualities 

 without proving his pleasant poetry. 



The other extreme is that of those who erect be- 

 tween themselves and the beast a high wall. At no 

 price will they let the man into the beast, nor admit 

 the man in the beast. They are far from agreeing 

 with Scheitlin, the author of a Yersuch einer voll- 

 stdndigen Thierseelenkunde (1840), who said, 

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