MENTAL LIFE OF APES AND MONKEYS 277 



" If we allow reason to the human species in general, and yet 

 restrict it to that species, it must be by identifying the term 

 reason arbitrarily with a certain grade in the development 

 of analysis. It would be true to say that abstract or ex- 

 plicitly general reasoning emerges hi the level of intelligence 

 under consideration, but we have seen that abstractness 

 is only one side of generality, and that the generality of 

 human as opposed to animal reasoning is once more primarily 

 a matter of explicitness. At bottom the function of mind 

 in this as in the lower stages is to organize life by the correla- 

 tion of experiences. As in every stage of mental growth 

 what is new is that the work of the mind becomes on the 

 one hand more explicit or articulate, on the other, more 

 comprehensive in scope." 



Wasmann's position is typical of the attitude which 

 formerly characterized to a greater extent than happily is 

 the case now the relation of theology to science. It is the aim 

 of science to explain phenomena in terms of natural laws. 

 Theology, on the other hand, has always been interested in 

 finding things which cannot be so explained, and in thus 

 compelling us to take refuge in some sort of supernatural 

 intervention. Gaps, barriers, discontinuities, mysterious 

 and inexplicable phenomena have always afforded her, 

 therefore, a peculiar satisfaction; but one by one they have 

 been obliterated or resolved, and there can be little doubt, I 

 believe, that the question of the continuous evolution of the 

 human mind will go the way of the others. 



While there is little to indicate that the apes are able to 

 reason in an abstract way, it is obviously absurd to attempt 

 to account for such behavior as we have described on the 

 basis of blind sensori-motor association. It is not going too 

 far, I think, to say that there is good evidence in the apes and 

 monkeys for the existence of ideas and for a certain power 



