270 THE FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS 
IV.—ANIMAL “ ANSTHETICS ” AND “ ETHIcs” 
In this section we shall consider some types of behaviour 
which suggest situations that contain the germs of esthetics 
and ethics, with a view to determining, so far as possible, the 
principles on which they should be interpreted. This is a 
peculiarly difficult subject; for we are endeavouring to get 
behind the behaviour, and to infer the mental conditions which 
accompany it, and through which it assumes its distinctive 
character. The difficulty is twofold: first, because, as Dr. 
Stout puts it,* “human language is especially constructed to 
describe the mental states of haman beings, and this means 
that it is especially constructed so as to mislead us when we 
attempt to describe the workings of minds that differ in any 
great degree from the human ;” and secondly, because, to 
quote the same careful thinker,f “the besetting snare of the 
psychologist is the tendency to assume that an act or attitude 
which in himself would be the natural manifestation of a 
certain mental process must, therefore, have the same meaning 
in the case of another. The fallacy lies in taking this or that 
isolated action apart from the totality of conditions under 
which it appears. It is particularly seductive when the animal 
mind is the subject of inquiry.” 
We must, therefore, base our method of procedure on some 
definite principle. The canon of interpretation which I have 
elsewhere suggested { is, that we should not interpret animal 
behaviour as the outcome of higher mental processes, if it can 
be fairly explained as due to the operation of those which stand 
lower in the psychological scale of development. To this it 
may be added—lest the range of the principle be misunderstood 
—that the canon by no means excludes the interpretation of a 
particular act as the outcome of the higher mental processes, 
if we already have independent evidence of their occurrence in 
* “ Manual of Psychology,” p. 23. 
+ Op. cit., p. 22. 
$ “Introduction to Comparative Psychology,” p. 53. 
