CHAP.X SOME EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS 187 



placed out of reach, yet so that it could be obtained by 

 pulling a string, or pushing a door. The animal was 

 first allowed time to discover the method of obtaining it 

 for itself. If after a little while it showed no sign of 

 hitting on the right method, it was shown, and allowed to 

 get the food. 1 Fresh food was then placed as before, and a 

 new trial began. It was of course necessary that the 

 experiments should be tried before the animal's ordinary 

 meal, but there seems to be an immense difference in the 

 effort which different animals will make to satisfy their 

 hunger, and this difference has to be kept carefully in 

 mind in weighing results. 



2. The original object being to discover whether 

 what an animal sees done will have any effect, the first 

 thing was to secure that it should see. This can only be 

 done by gaining its attention, and I do not think that 

 any one who has experienced the difficulty of getting an 

 animal to attend to what is going on before his nose, will 

 be surprised at any number of failures to learn by 

 perception of results. In every case the animal is taken up, 

 on the one hand with its desire for the food, on the 

 other with its own instinctive or habitual method of 

 dealing with the obstacle before it. One's dog will 

 momentarily attend out of politeness to his master, but a 

 cat is moved by no such considerations, nor is an elephant, 

 nor a monkey. A mere mechanical performance of the 

 act before the animal, which it may or may not see, 

 has no effect whatever. I therefore always endeavoured 

 to call attention to what I was doing. 



It must be added here that as with a human being, so 

 with an animal, attentive perception is something different 

 from mere perception. I will not attempt to determine in 

 what psychologically the difference consists, but there is in 

 some animals a certain obvious difference of expression 

 which strikes the observer. The pricked ears, fixed gaze, 

 and strained, tense, alert attitude of the attentive dog are 



1 It might be thought that to withhold the food is the better plan. 

 Sometimes I did this, but never for many trials together. It discourages 

 the animal, and makes him think (I speak popularly) that he is being 

 fooled. The opposite danger very marked with some dogs is that he 

 may simply wait, or beg his master to do the thing for him again. 



