CHAPTER XII 



ARTICULATE IDEAS 



i. WE have seen evidence in animal behaviour for the 

 operation of what we called practical ideas, but they were 

 ideas of a very crude and unanalysed character. Evidence 

 of more articulate ideas is much more restricted, and so 

 far as decisive experimental tests are concerned, confined, 

 I believe, to monkeys. By a more articulate idea, is meant 

 one in which comparatively distinct elements are held 

 in a comparatively distinct relation. Thus, that a bolt 

 must be pushed back is a crude idea ; that it must be 

 pushed back so as to clear a staple, a relatively articulate 

 one, implying a distinction between the parts of the object 

 perceived (the bolt and its staples), and an appreciation of 

 the relation between them. As ideas become more articu- 

 late, the results of experience are more freely combined or 

 modified to suit practical needs. Something like originality 

 begins to show itself, and we have instances of what we 

 have called "spontaneous application." Of this also, it is 

 difficult to find experimental evidence for animals lower 

 than the monkeys. Whether this is because the intelligence 

 of all other mammals is lower, or because monkey intelli- 

 gence lends itself more readily to the kind of experiment 

 which human intelligence most readily devises, is not so 

 clear. There is, in fact, a good deal of evidence of the 

 anecdotal kind suggesting the existence of intelligence of 

 this grade below the Primates. Before considering the 

 value of such evidence, I may illustrate the kind of 



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