18 Animal Intelligence 
neglect of the connections becomes preposterous. The 
adventitious scraps of consciousness called ‘willing’ which 
may intervene between a situation productive of a given 
act and the act itself are hopelessly uninstructive in com- 
parison with the bonds of instinct and habit which cause the 
situation to produce the act. In conduct, at least, that 
kind of psychology which Santayana calls ‘the perception 
of character’ seems an inevitable part of a well-balanced 
science of human nature. I quote from his fine descrip-) 
tion of the contrast between the external observation of a 
mind’s connections and the introspective recapitulation of 
its conscious content, though it is perhaps too pronounced 
and too severe. 
“Perception of Character. — There is, however, a wholly 
different and far more positive method of reading the mind, 
or what in a metaphorical sense is called by that name. 
This method is to read character. Any object with which 
we are familiar teaches us to divine its habits; slight 
indications, which we should be at a loss to enumerate. 
separately, betray what changes are going on and what! 
promptings are simmering in the organism. . . . The gift! 
of reading character . . . is directed not upon consciousness 
but upon past or eventual action. Habits and passions, 
however, have metaphorical psychic names, names indicat- 
ing dispositions rather than particular acts (a disposition 
being mythically represented as a sort of wakeful and haunt- 
ing genius waiting to whisper suggestions in a man’s ear). 
We may accordingly delude ourselves into imagining that 
a pose or a manner which really indicates habit indicates 
feeling instead. 
“Conduct Divined, Consciousness Ignored. ... As the 
weather prophet reads the heavens, so the man of expe- 
rience reads other men. Nothing concerns him less than 
