140 Chapter III. 



the last twenty years, I could record here still many 

 an interesting occurrence, which, like the above exam- 

 ple, impresses a superficial observer as an intelligent 

 action. Yet, closer examination invariably proves 

 that such facts are accounted for much more easily 

 and naturally by the instinctive combinations of sense- 

 representations ; therefore, no "ant-intelligence/' and 

 in fact no '^animal-intelligence^' at all is required. 



Indeed, the higher mammals ranking next to man 

 in brain development are far from supplying more con- 

 vincing proofs of ''intelligence" than ants. In them 

 also the whole process of cognition is confined to the 

 mere connecting of sense representations and sense ex- 

 periences according to the inborn laws of instinctive 

 association of representations, which ordinarily regu- 

 late their lives. The psychic endowments of dogs 

 and monkeys go no farther. Unless a dog has been 

 specially trained, it never occurs to him to open a 

 door, the knob of which he is unable to reach, by 

 fetching for instance a foot-stool to gain a higher 

 level ; he may have seen children, his play- fellows, 

 doing the same thing a hundred times; the relation 

 between means and end, though so natural and obvious 

 in this case, will forever remain hidden to the canine 

 soul. Hence the dog is not a whit more intelligent 

 than the ants, that failed to notice, that a little heap 

 of earth would have sufficed to secure them an easy 

 passage to the honey suspended in a saucer above their 

 nest. 



Neither do apes possess the power to invent by 

 their own reflection new means of accomplishing their 

 end. Even these highest mammals are confined ex- 



