748 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 489. 



surely of the utmost importance, if we are 

 to look to a right mental attitude as of 

 more to man than food and raiment. 



Still later we see a rise within a very few 

 years of a class of investigators that I pre- 

 sume would prefer to be called the experi- 

 mental school, but whom I shall designate 

 the laboratory school and the individuals 

 the laborators, for I do not grant that 

 they were the first experimenters. Their 

 researches have practically all been such as 

 can be readily carried out in the laboratory, 

 a fact which explains at once, to a large 

 extent, their excellencies and their defects, 

 especially the latter. This school has, on 

 the whole, been destructive. If it has, on 

 the one hand, brought few bricks to the 

 pile, it has, on the other, boldly attempted 

 to overturn some edifices that were rela- 

 tively of ancient date and regarded by 

 many with considerable respect. The most 

 extreme representatives of this school deny 

 to animals, not only reasoning and every 

 form of intelligence proper, but even imita- 

 tion and memory. The whole psychic life 

 of animals not to be explained by instinct 

 was for them the result of the operation 

 of the law of association of ideas; all else 

 was illusion and delusion; previous work- 

 ers were regarded as prejudiced in favor 

 of animals; they were adjudged to have 

 written as if they held a brief for animals 

 as creatures that mentally were very like 

 man, differing not so much in qualities as 

 in the degree to which they were developed. 



All this is wrong, utterly wrong, accord- 

 ing to this very modern school, and claim- 

 ing that anecdotes were rather misleading 

 than helpful, that observations were of 

 little value at the best, it was maintained 

 that there had really, up till then, been no 

 experiments worthy of the name, and that 

 now, for the first time, was there something 

 to be presented on which reliance might be 

 placed, in spite of the fact that some, at 

 all events, of the experimenters had neither 



biological knowledge nor special experience 

 of any kind with animals, and were plainly 

 prejudiced at the outset against the views 

 that the common sense of mankind, as well 

 as the consensus of opinion among natural- 

 ists, had held to be worthy of considera- 

 tion. One of this school, perhaps to be 

 considered the leader, claimed that with 

 his method one only needed 'a pair of 

 eyes.' This experimenter placed cats in 

 cages twenty inches long, fifteen broad and 

 twelve high, and because they did not, 

 under the stimulus of hunger, speedily 

 manipulate certain mechanisms success- 

 fully he, on this and similar evidence, em- 

 ploying also dogs and other animals, pro- 

 ceeded to demolish in very summary fashion 

 the fundamental conclusions of hosts of 

 observers who had occupied as many years 

 in their tasks as he had spent weeks. Some 

 of these conclusions seemed to be absolutely 

 against common sense. Here we had, in- 

 deed, a violent reaction against that excess 

 of credulity which it must be confessed 

 had existed, and it again Avas the natural 

 reaction against that indifference to ani- 

 mals which had characterized preceding^ 

 ages. 



As the experimental methods of the labo- 

 rators are now attracting so much atten- 

 tion, it will be worth while to examine them 

 a little more fully. I elsewhere criticized, 

 some four years ago, the methods and con- 

 clusions of the chief agnostic of this school, 

 Dr. Thorndike, and I see now no reason 

 to change the opinions I then expressed. 

 Indeed, since that "time the experience, and 

 I may add the failures of others working- 

 along the same lines, have only strength- 

 ened the force of my convictions. 



Mr. L. T. Hobhouse made a number of 

 experiments on the dog, the cat, the 

 monkey, the elephant and the otter. In 

 the main these tests were carried out under 

 conditions somewhat more natural than 

 those of the experimenters of the school 



