152 Animal Intelligence 
do not claim to be stories of the conduct of the average 
or type, but of those exceptional individuals who have 
begun to attain higher powers. And, if even a few 
dogs and cats have these higher powers, our contention 
is, in a modified form, upheld.” To all this I agree, 
provided the anecdote school now realize just what 
sort of a position they hold. They are clearly in pretty 
much the same position as spiritualists. Their anecdotes 
are on pretty much the same level as the anecdotes of 
thought-transference, materializations of spirits, super- 
normal knowledge, etc. Not in quite the same position, for 
far greater care has been given by the Psychical Research 
Society to establishing the criteria of authenticity, to insur- 
ing good observation, to explaining by normal psychology 
all that can be so explained, in the case of the latter than 
the anecdote school has done in the case of the former. The 
off-hand explanation of certain anecdotes by invoking rea- 
son, or imitation, or recognition, or feelings of qualities, is 
on a par with the explanation of trance-phenomena and such 
like by invoking the spirits of dead people. I do not deny 
that we may get lawfully a supernormal psychology, or 
that the supernormal acts it finds may turn out to be ex- 
plained by these functions which I have denied to the nor- 
mal animal mind. But I must soberly declare that I think 
there is less likelihood that such functions are the explana- 
tion of animal acts than that the existence of the spirits of 
dead people is the true explanation of the automatisms of 
spiritualistic phenomena. | So much for the anecdote school, 
if it calls itself by its right name and pretends only to give 
an abnormal animal psychology. ‘The sad fact has been that 
it has always pushed forward these exceptions as the essen- 
tial phenomena of animal mind. It has built up a general 
psychology from abnormal data. It is like an anatomy 
written from observations on dime-museum freaks. ' 
gf 
