320 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



panzee Consul, at Belle Vue, which made a key for itself 

 by biting a piece of wood till it would fit into the square 

 keyhole. The animal had been taught to use the key. It 

 found that some pieces of wood would act instead, and 

 then, when a piece was of the wrong shape, it bit off the 

 excrescence which hindered it. There is here a clear 

 appreciation based on experience of the relations of one 

 object to another, and what we have called a Cl spon- 

 taneous application " of this experience prompting an act 

 which is in no way imitation, but is cleverly adjusted to 

 overcoming a practical difficulty. All this falls readily 

 within the lines already laid down. But supposing that 

 we could find a monkey that had never seen a key used, 

 and supposing that the circumstances forced us to infer 

 that he had been told all about keys, and how to use 

 them, by a companion ; then we should have to revise our 

 view altogether, and admit that monkeys, like men, can 

 forms ideas which are communicable in the absence of the 

 sense impressions to which they relate. 



2. If we consider how such communication is effected 

 by human language, we shall be able to measure the 

 difference. If the key were, used, not by a man to confine 

 an ape, but by a white man to confine a savage, any 

 savage who had seen it work would be able to make the 

 matter sufficiently clear to his friends by the use of words 

 drawn from the common objects of their experience. If 

 keys were unknown in the tribe, the narrator would fall 

 back on simpler and more general ideas, which he would 

 combine so as to convey a description accurate enough for 

 the purpose, and the white man would soon have to fall 

 back on some more recondite device for the "benevolent" 

 control of his u contract labour/' 



Now much controversy may be raised on the question 

 whether animals can have " ideas." We have attributed 

 to the higher animals " practical ideas " in the sense of a 

 function which does for them that which practical ideas do 

 for human behaviour. The nature of the inner conscious- 

 ness that we impute to them cannot of course be matter of 

 direct observation, and our conception of it rests on an 

 analogy which is admittedly not perfect in all respects. 



