ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 107 



gence, and your negations, based on their conduct, may be 

 authoritative so far as concerns the average, typical mammalian 

 mind. But our anecdotes do not claim to be stories of the conduct 

 of the average or type, but of those exceptional individuals who 

 have begun to attain higher powers. And, if even a few dogs and 

 cats have these higher powers, our contention is, in a modified 

 form, upheld." To all this I agree, provided the anecdote 

 school now realize just what sort of a position they hold. They 

 are clearly in pretty much the same position as spiritualists. 

 Their anecdotes are on pretty much the same level as the anec- 

 dotes of thought-transference, materializations of spirits, super- 

 normal knowledge, etc. Not in quite the same position, for far 

 greater care has been given by the Psychical Research Society 

 to establishing the criteria of authenticity, to insuring good 

 observation, to explaining by normal psychology all that can be 

 so explained, in the case of the latter than the anecdote school 

 has done in the case of the former. The off-hand explanation of 

 certain anecdotes by invoking reason, or imitation, or recogni- 

 tion, or feelings of qualities, is on a par with the explanation of 

 trance-phenomena and such like by invoking the spirits of dead 

 people. I do not deny that we may get lawfully a super-normal 

 psj'chology, or that the super-normal acts it finds may turn out to 

 be explained by these functions which I have denied to the nor- 

 mal animal mind. But I must soberly declare that I think there 

 is less likelihood that such functions are the explanation of ani- 

 mal acts than that the existence of the spirits of dead people is the 

 true explanation of the automatisms of spiritualistic phenomena. 

 So much for the anecdote school, if it calls itself by its right name 

 and pretends only to give an abnormal animal psychology. 

 The sad fact has been that it has always pushed forward these 

 exceptions as the essential phenomena of animal mind. It has 

 built up a general psychology from abnormal data. It is like 

 an anatomy written from observations on dime-museum freaks. 



Conclusion. 

 I do not think it is advisable here, at the close of this paper, 

 to give a summary of its results. The paper itself is really only 

 such a summary with the most important evidence, for the ex- 



