238 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



Attention not natural but acquired. 



Nor had the animals and this is a further negative 

 result of some importance any natural impulse to attend 

 to what they were shown. There is no instinct to learn 

 by perception. So far as my own experience goes, indeed, 

 the absence of this instinct is as strongly marked among 

 apes as among lower mammals. I found the Rhesus 

 monkey less attentive than my dog, and certainly not more 

 attentive than the cat. 1 To learn new methods of action 

 by watching an external process is certainly not a part of 

 an average animal's normal life. On the other hand, 

 attention can be cultivated. Jack showed a very marked 

 improvement in this respect, so that I was able to lead him 

 on step by step to more difficult things ; and both he and 

 my cat showed what may be called a general appreciation 

 of what was to be done. They became excited when I 



It did the catch and bolt together, with only one failure, though with 

 much delay. Later it was given a box with two levers to be raised 

 running at right angles with each other. It took five minutes over this 

 at the first trial, and two minutes at the second. When I saw it a fort- 

 night later it bungled the first trial rather, but did the second in thirty-five 

 seconds. It then tried a box with one catch to raise, another at right 

 angles to depress, and a bolt to draw. It failed in the first two trials 

 because it knocked one catch up so as to interfere with the other. This 

 being prevented with a nail it succeeded, though with a good deal of 

 bungling, but in the second trial it seemed clear about the two catches. 

 The Rhesus monkey, Jimmy, learnt several double movements. Thus, I 

 taught him first to push back one bolt, then to pull at a wedge which 

 prevented the bolt from going back, then to remove a spike which pre- 

 vented him from pulling at the wedge, and, in addition, to pull out a 

 loose bolt by which the box was also guarded. Jimmy, when interested, 

 would go through the whole performance, every part of which, except the 

 pushing of the bolt, he learnt for himself, with great rapidity. But I am 

 bound to add that he would also pull at the spike when I so arranged it 

 as to have no function. Playful pulling at things is the basis of Jimmy's 

 learning. 



Further experiments are wanted on this head, particularly with regard 

 to the rapidity with which the order is learnt before any safe inference 

 can be drawn from them. 



1 Hence he utterly failed, though repeatedly shown, to learn to open a 

 cupboard door by turning a button. For another conspicuous failure see 

 p. 284. I also tried in vain to teach him to use a hammer to break 

 walnuts. Miss Romanes succeeded in this with her Cebus, but it was 

 already accustomed to use a metal plate for this purpose, and merely 

 learnt to substitute the hammer. I do not wish to generalise from a 

 slender experience, but I am bound to say that the monkeys I observed 

 scarcely showed a trace of "mechanical" imitation in their behaviour, 

 and generally learnt much less by being shown than from their own 

 experimentation. 



