LEAF AND TENDRIL 



have reached the conclusion that animals do not 

 reason. That eminent German psychologist, Wundt, 

 says that the entire intellectual life of animals can 

 be accounted for on the simple law of association; 

 and Lloyd Morgan, the greatest of living English 

 comparative psychologists, in his discussion of the 

 question, "Do animals reason?" concludes that 

 they do not — they do " not perceive the why and 

 think the therefore." He urges, very justly, I think, 

 that " in no case is an animal's activity to be inter- 

 preted as the outcome of a higher psychic faculty if 

 it can fairly be interpreted as the outcome of fac- 

 ulties which are lower in the psychological scale." 

 That is to say. Why impute reason to an animal 

 if its behavior can be explained on the theory of 

 instinct ? 



Some of our later nature writers seek to cut out 

 instinct entirely, and call it all reason. If we cut 

 out instinct, then we have two kinds of reason to 

 account for and our last state is worse than our 

 first. The young dog that in the house takes a bone 

 and goes through the motions of burying it on the 

 kitchen floor, digging the hole, putting it in, covering 

 it up, and pressing the imaginary soil down with his 

 nose, does not show the same kind of intelligence 

 that even a child of four does when she puts her 

 dolly in its little bed and carefully tucks it up. The 

 one act is rational, the other is irrational ; one is the 

 result of observation, the other is inherited memory. 

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