108 



THE HUMANIZING OF THE BRUTE. 



Though No. 3 saw No. i surely 66 times, it failed 

 in all cases. Prof. Thorndike explains many similar 

 experiments most minutely. All lead to the same 

 conclusion that even the highest animals are absolutely 

 incapable of understanding the finality of actions. But 

 Thorndike's experiments do not refer only to cats, 

 dogs and chicks. In a special monograph 1 ) on the 

 "mental life" of three South American monkeys of 

 the genus Cebus, published in 1901, he shows clearly 

 that "a negative answer to the question 'do the 

 monkeys reason?' seems to be inevitable." Very- 

 many simple acts similar to those enumerated above 

 were not learned by the monkeys in spite of again 

 and again having seen them performed by Thorndike 

 and by their own kind. Similarly, "after having 

 abundant opportunity to realize that one signal meant 



') "The Mental Life of the Monkeys." The Psycholo- 

 gical Review. Monograph Supplement No. 15. 



