Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 147 



Whilst Bethe regards ants as "reflex mechanisms" 

 without sensitive feeling and cognition, he tries to raise 

 the psychic endowment of higher animals nearer to that 

 of man. Thus he affirms (p. 69) that : 'The dog and 

 the monkey must first learn everything in the same way 

 as man does"; whilst he had just stated that the natural 

 disposition of the ant contains everything that she does 

 in her lifetime." We shall dwell upon both statements 

 more closely in the following chapter in which we treat 

 on the different methods of acquiring knowledge. Still 

 we wish to point out the consequences that would fol- 

 low from the consistent application of Bethe's reflex- 

 theory not only as he would prefer to non-vertebrate, 

 but also to vertebrate animals. 



If we lay down the principle with Bethe and Loeb 

 that "what is not learned, must pass for reflex ac- 

 tivity," we must conclude that all hereditary instincts, 

 and all those sensitive feelings, perceptions and imagin- 

 ations, which govern the exercise of these instincts in 

 higher animals, are necessarily mere reflex phenomena. 

 But as the so-called intelligence of animals is nothing 

 more than the combination of different sense percep- 

 tions and acts of the imagination, subject to the heredi- 

 tary laws of association, and mediated by individual 

 experience, we must consistently maintain that it is also 

 a mere reflex, though perhaps more complicated ac- 

 tivity. What would then be left of the psychic life 

 of animals but a "complicated reflex mechanism" that 

 is capable of analysis? The whole animal kingdom 

 would be reduced once more to the famous animal 

 mechanisms of the Cartesian school. 



Therefore it cannot be denied that there is a uniform 



