62 Chapter IV. 



docility of higher animals betrayed the "germ" of cul- 

 tural development. 



We willingly admit that higher animals accumulate 

 experience which they subsequently utilize. Indeed, 

 not only the higher, but all animals are more or less 

 able to gather and to profit by sensitive experience, 

 because they all possess a more or less perfect sensile 

 memory. But we have proven, that these applications 

 of sensitive experience cannot be regarded as acts of 

 "intelligence." 



It can also be maintained to some extent that higher 

 animals "teach" their young. They perform certain 

 actions in presence of their offspring, and thus unin- 

 tentionally show them how to do the same ; whilst under 

 the impulse of their instinct of imitation the young do 

 what the parent animal did and thus they "learn." But 

 Forel nowhere proves that in performing such suitable 

 actions the parent animal intended to instruct its off- 

 spring, as human parents do when they instruct their 

 children. Indeed, the interpretation of the stimulus 

 given to the imitative instincts of the young by the 

 example of their parents as an act of instruction which 

 is equivalent to teaching among hitman beings, is un- 

 doubtedly an arbitrary humanization of the animal. 

 But then Forel's assertion that "the gulf between this 

 stage and the lowest germs of cultural development in 

 man is not so very wide" is absolutely untenable. By 

 the way, the pseudo-psychology of Brehm, Buechner, 

 etc., which is so sharply condemned by Prof. Forel, has 

 dealt with this so-called "instruction and teaching" 

 among animals in such an arbitrary manner, and has 

 been influenced in doing so by such hostile tendencies 



