Difficulties and Methods 7 



of web. Of course many lines passed under his little sliding 

 door, and when he came to close it there was a shght resist- 

 ance. These are the facts. His inference that there was 

 even a remotest intention on the part of his prisoner to 

 hinder the movement of the door is entirely gratuitous. 

 Even the simpler mental states that are supposed to have 

 passed through the mind of the spider were the products 

 of Wundt's own imagination" (572, p. 230). The fact that 

 the anecdote was a recollection of childhood, so that it 

 would probably be impossible to bring any evidence from 

 the character of the web or other circumstance against 

 the suggestion of Mr. and Mrs. Peckham, is a further in- 

 stance of the unscientific use of anecdotal testimony. 



An illustration of the third objection mentioned above, 

 the disadvantage of ignorance of the animal's individual his- 

 tory, is furnished by Lloyd Morgan. In describing his futile 

 efforts to teach a fox terrier the best way to pull a crooked 

 stick through a fence, he says that the dog showed no sign 

 "of perceiving that by pushing the stick and freeing 

 the crook he could pull the stick through. Each time the 

 crook caught he pulled with all his strength, seizing the 

 stick now at the end, now in the middle, and now near 

 the crook. At length he seized the crook itself and with 

 a wrench broke it off. A man who was passing . . . said, 

 'Clever dog that, sir; he knows where the hitch do lie.' 

 The remark was the characteristic outcome of two minutes' 

 chance observation" (507, pp. 142-143). How many 

 anecdotes of animals are based on similar accidents ? 



It will be seen that in both the cases just criticised the 

 error lies in the interpretation of the animal's behavior. 

 Indeed, a root of evil in the method of anecdote consists 

 in the fact that observation in this form is imperfectly 

 divorced from interpretation. The maker of an anecdote 



