MENTAL LIFE OF APES AND MONKEYS 275 



is far from implying that animals cannot perform mental 

 operations which are essentially inferential in their nature. 

 Reason, as has been stated before, is not a faculty which 

 stands sharply marked off from other forms of mental 

 activity. Between simple perception on the one hand and 

 abstract ratiocination on the other there is a fundamental 

 kinship and the latter process may be connected with the 

 first by numerous intermediate stages. Monkeys, in all 

 probability, have the power of using ideas derived from their 

 experience as a means of reaching practical results. The 

 monkey which pulls a chair or stool into a certain position, 

 gets on it and secures food, manifests a certain power of 

 inference. He may not explicitly reason: "This fruit is 

 beyond my reach; if I had something to get upon I could 

 secure the fruit; this chair would serve my purpose and 

 moreover is movable; ergo, I will pull it up and get on it." In 

 all probability a man in a similar situation would not reason 

 as explicitly either. He would perceive that the object was 

 out of his reach; seeing a chair the idea would come of pulling 

 it up and getting on it, and the idea would forthwith issue 

 in the proper act. There would be no formal syllogism gone 

 through with. The process would ordinarily take place 

 so quickly that he would scarcely be conscious of the steps. 

 It is true that the man might think about the matter hi a 

 very complex way, and 'employ a lot of abstract and general 

 ideas, but this process would be dispensed with under or- 

 dinary conditions, especially if he were in a hurry. The 

 man's mental operations, even in their simplest form, would 

 nevertheless be in the nature of an inference, and so far as 

 we can judge from appearances, the same statement is true 

 of the mind of the monkey. The latter cannot, hi all proba- 

 bility, think the situation over as the man can in terms of a 

 formal syllogism, but he has the more immediately useful 



