Examination of Some Objections. 61 



the training of animals, will be able to endorse this 

 assertion. This fact which is so important for a critical 

 estimate of the psychic life of higher animals, was 

 perhaps illustrated in the most interesting manner by 

 the lessons given by Lubbock 1 to his clever poodle 

 Van. Even some lower animals can be tamed to a 

 certain degree, although it is far more difficult for our 

 intelligence to gain a directing influence upon their 

 sense representations, because they differ from us so 

 widely in size, in their sense organs and in their nervous 

 system. Nevertheless, a hornet was tamed by P. W. 

 Mueller, and I succeeded in taming an ant of the wild 

 and warlike species Formica rufibarbis. Further in- 

 formation on this experiment is to be had in my "Ver- 

 gleichende Studien ueber das Seelenleben der Ameisen 

 und der hoeheren Thiere." 2 



While, therefore, the taming of animals is due to 

 the intelligence of man, who impresses the respective 

 combinations of representations upon and into the sen- 

 sitive knowledge of the animal, the cultural development 

 even of the lowest races, always commences with the 

 individual understanding of the people, that undergoes 

 the process of mental development. The instruction 

 which it receives from higher cultivated men, only 

 serves, as it were, as a stimulating force. Prof. Forel 

 happened to overlook this essential difference between 

 the docility of animals and the cultural development of 

 man. Otherwise he could never have asserted that the 



1 ) Lubbock, "On the Senses, Instincts and Intelligence of An- 

 imals" (London, 1889), Chapt. 14. 



2 ) See also "Die psychischen Faehigkeiten der Ameisen" (Zoologica, 

 Heft 26, Stuttgart, 1899), p. 82 ff. 



