238 The Outline of Science 



key's cage, Professor Holmes "poked it about with the stick so 

 as to give her a suggestion of how the stick might be employed 

 to move the food within reach, but although the act was repeated 

 many times Lizzie never showed the least inclination to use the 

 stick to her advantage." Perhaps the idea of a "tool" is beyond 

 the Bonnet Monkey, yet here again we must be cautious, for 

 Professor L. T. Hobhouse had a monkey of the same macaque 

 genus which learned in the course of time to use a crooked stick 

 with great effect. 



The Case of Peter 



Perhaps the cleverest monkey as yet studied was a perform- 

 ing chimpanzee called Peter, which has been generally described 

 by Dr. Lightner Witmer. Peter could skate and cycle, thread 

 needles and untie knots, smoke a cigarette and string beads, 

 screw in nails and unlock locks. But what Peter was thinking 

 about all the time it was hard to guess, and there is very little 

 evidence to suggest that his rapid power of putting two and two 

 together ever rose above a sort of concrete mental experimenting, 

 which Dr. Romanes used to call perceptual inference. Without 

 supposing that there are hard-and-fast boundary lines, we cannot 

 avoid the general conclusion that, while monkeys are often intel- 

 ligent, they seldom, if ever, show even hints of reason, i.e. of 

 working or playing with general ideas. That remains Man's 

 prerogative. 



The Bustle of the Mind 



In mammals like otters, foxes, stoats, hares, and elephants, 

 what a complex of tides and currents there must be in the brain- 

 mind! We may think of a stream with currents at different 

 levels. Lowest there are the basal appetites of hunger and sex, 

 often with eddies rising to the surface. Then there are the pri- 

 mary emotions, such as fear of hereditary enemies and maternal 

 affection for offspring. Above these are instinctive aptitudes, 

 inborn powers of doing clever things without having to learn 



