ANIMAL BEHAVIOR j, K 



emotions which we ourselves feel, overlooking the simpler ami 

 more logical explanation of the facts observed. The cat 

 trains from jumping upon the table and helping herself out ol 

 the cream pitcher, not because she knows it is wrong so to do, 

 but because she has had her ears boxed for doing that or some 

 similar act before, and the memory of it has not faded away. 

 Our conclusion, then, in so far as our present knowledgi 

 the facts leads us, must be that in most animals instinct plays a 

 very large role in meeting the ordinary problems of life, a much 

 larger role than in man ; that in the majority of animals intelli- 

 gence takes advantage of past experience, ami instincts become 

 modified to meet the requirements of a varying environment; 

 and that such intelligence seems to be sufficient for the per- 

 formance of the activities of animal life without the aid of ra- 

 tional thought, which thus appears to be confined to man ; this 

 power of reasoning we can, how r ever, conceive to have been 

 evolved through natural selection from the higher manifesta- 

 tions of intelligence, through an attempt to explain the phe- 

 nomena of life by abstraction and generalization, and the 

 consequent formation of an ideal. Such, epitomized, is our 

 conception of the problem of animal behavior to-day. It offers 

 one of the most fascinating and promising subjects for investi- 

 gation in the whole range of the biological sciences ; especially 

 in the careful observation of the activities of young animals and 

 more particularly of the higher vertebrates may we hope for 

 some of the most valuable contributions to our knowledge of 

 animal behavior. 



