292 The Animal Mind 



adapted to general rather than to special features of environ- 

 ment, it seems likely that the phenomena of attention as we 

 know them are found chiefly in connection with those re- 

 sponses to vitally important stimulation which are determined, 

 in part, at least, by the individual experience of the reacting 

 animal, for these are the responses requiring most careful 

 discrimination among stimuli, and the delay of reaction until 

 such discrimination has been made. 1 Putting the matter 

 in a slightly different way, we may say that purely inherited 

 responses can be adapted only to certain broad, roughly 

 distinguished classes of stimuli, for these alone are common 

 to the experience of all members of the species. Nothing 

 but individual experience can bring to light the importance 

 for welfare of certain particular stimuli, for the significance 

 of these would vary with the experience of each individual 

 animal. Among the lower animals, attention probably 

 reaches its highest pitch where the response most needs to be 

 suspended in order that the stimulus may be fully discrim- 

 inated. The rabbit or wild bird crouching motionless close 

 to the ground, watching each movement of a possible enemy, 

 suggests strongly to our minds a condition of breathless 

 attention. Whether such an interpretation is the true one 

 depends very much, I should say, on the extent to which 

 past individual experience has refined the animal's powers of 

 discrimination. Mere "freezing to the spot" may be an 

 inherited reaction, useful in time of danger, but more anal- 



1 In this connection Franz's recent experimental demonstration that the 

 frontal lobes, long regarded as the seat of the neural processes underlying 

 attention, are concerned in the functioning of recently learned reactions, is 

 of especial interest. Franz found that cats and monkeys which had been 

 trained to work mechanisms lost the power to do so when the frontal lobes 

 were extirpated, although habits of older date, such as responding to a call, 

 were preserved (136, 136 a). 



