xii ARTICULATE IDEAS 293 



movement of my hand, so, in this, the clank of the chain 

 seemed suddenly to set the whole thing before him. For 

 the rest, one may regard his getting round the chair as a 

 kind of analogy from his experience with the table, and 

 one not so easy to draw in fact as it may seem from its 

 description upon paper. For round the table the lie of 

 the chain when once attended to was obvious ; round the 

 chair it was hidden in the darkness of the corner. 



10. Attempted theft. 



My reasons for suspecting Jimmy of trying to deceive 

 me are not only a certain furtiveness of manner that came 

 over him at times ; but the use of methods the object of 

 which was unmistakable. It often happened that when 

 I was giving him bits of potato, I would leave the bulk 

 of the potato carelessly somewhere within his reach. On 

 such an occasion the first symptom I noticed of anything 

 wrong was a loss of interest in the experiment. I would 

 then see him wandering off to perch on some table or 

 chair, or investigate some harmless object. Looking for 

 a reason, I would see that he was almost within striking 

 distance of my potato, and then, a stern, " No, Jimmy, 

 no ! " would send him scuttling back to the fire, and to 

 the investigation of his person. On one occasion in par- 

 ticular, as I was going out of the room, having left the 

 potato on a table, as I thought, out of his reach, I saw 

 him walking quietly, not to the table, but towards a box 

 near by. As I looked back, I saw him sliding from the 

 box to the table, and I stopped him just on the spring. 1 



People ask whether animals use deception. I do not 

 for a moment suppose that Jimmy has any clear con- 

 ception of a lie. I do not suppose that he troubles 

 himself about my mental state. But I do think that he 

 could form a pretty shrewd estimate of the way in which 

 I was likely to act under given circumstances. He was 

 perfectly certain that if I saw him making a dive for the 

 whole potato, I should stop him ; and I do attribute to 

 him, further, the idea 1 do not know how else to express 

 it that if he avoided going straight at the prize, he 



1 Of a baboon described in Brehm's Thierleben (I. p. 177) it is said 

 that she " stahl meisterhaft." 



