xii ARTICULATE IDEAS 287 



The next day, he failed to use the box as a stool. The 

 day after, I placed the box in its old position while his 

 back was turned. The result was as follows : 



No notice till I go out of room. He struggles as I watch 

 behind door. Chain is too short, and box is only in his way. 

 He removes it. I lengthen chain, and move table slightly and 

 raise onion, placing it on a piece of bamboo rested on some 

 object on the table. He goes at it, fails to reach, pulls oak chair 

 towards him, gets on it, reaches out, drags at corner of oak table 

 so that onion, which is on bamboo, swings round over chair ; 

 then just manages to knock it over on to floor, jumps down 

 and gets it. After two miscalculations of mine, in which he 

 gets it without chair, he again pulls chair into line, and 

 gets food, reaching over it with great stretch, and knocking onion 

 down. 



His success in this experiment indicates a power of 

 fairly precise adjustment of one thing to another ; and it 

 is one in which neither accident nor imitation can be sup- 

 posed to have played much part. I do not think that he 

 ever saw me adjust the stool to the table, 1 nor could chance 

 play much part in aiding him to place a thing which, if to 

 be used at all, had to be brought into one particular posi- 

 tion and no other. I only once saw him make a complete 

 mistake upon this point ; 2 when he dragged a large basket 

 into the line between his fastening and the food, but much 

 too near to the fastening. One must admit that in this 

 case the animal judged, from memory or otherwise, that a 

 certain arrangement would help him, and set about to 

 make that arrangement. What is principally remarkable 

 is that the arrangement involved a certain adjustment 

 of one thing in relation to another. If we explain 

 it by reference to an idea, we must conceive the idea 

 as having much less of that "crassness," of which we 

 have spoken. 3 



1 Nor, if he did, did he begin by a similar movement, but by throwing 

 open the lid. 



2 />., as to the direction in which the stool had to be moved. It 

 sometimes happened that the heavy box would roll too far or not far 

 enough. 



3 Cuvier's Orang would place a chair for himself to stand on, according 

 to Romanes. (Animal Intelligence, p. 481.) Mr. Shepherd's monkeys, 

 on the other hand, failed completely in this test (pp. tit., p. 53.) 



