192 IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 



nice distinctions through which we cannot follow him. He 

 believes, in fine, that while animals lower than man have an 

 awareness of relations, the transitions are marginal in con- 

 sciousness; he denies that they are able to make the transitions 

 focal, thereby arriving at a perception of relations. He does 

 not believe that animals can reflect. 



Finally, let us see our author's definition of reason, or rather 

 the criteria of reasoning powers. He says, "Our question 

 then becomes: Are there animal activities the performance of 

 which is inexplicable if the animal in question does not per- 

 ceive the 'why ' and think the therefore. '" He says that there 

 are none. While admitting that anin als do reason in the sense 

 that they profit by experience, adapting their actions to some- 

 what varying circumstances, he does not believe that they rea- 

 son in the more restricted sense of having a real perception of 

 cause and effect or the true relation between a premise and a 

 conclusion. 



To this position I cannot assent and have certain objections 

 to raise in behalf of my friends, the lower animals. 



As an example of Professor Morgan s method of interpret- 

 ing actions which we would unhesitatingly regard as involving 

 reason, I quote the following; 



" A well known writer describes the case of a dog which 

 used to hunt a rabbit nearly every morning down a curved 

 shrubbery, and each time ran it into a drain at the end. The 

 dog then appears to have come to the conclusion that a chord 

 of a circle is shorter than its arc, for he raised the rabbit again, 

 and, instead of following him through the shrubbery as usual, 

 he took the short cut to the drain, and was ready and waiting 

 for the rabbit when he arrived, and caught him. " Now, says 

 Morgan, "Can we or can we not explain the dog's action as 

 the outcome of sense experience, as indicative of intelligence 

 profiting by association? The terrier used to start the rabbit 

 nearly every moaning, and each time saw it escape into the old 

 drain. There was thus ample opportunity for establishing an 

 association between rabbit and drain. That the sight of the 

 rabbit should suggest the drain into which it daily escaped, and 

 that when the idea was suggested, the dog should run there 

 directly, is a sequence not impossible, one would think, to 

 sense experience. ' ' 



It seems to me little short of absurd to suppose that the dog 

 in his eager and frantic chase after the rabbit could be induced 



