320 The Animal Mind 



away from their own mothers when the latter moved toward 

 them. He explained this as adapted to the fact that ordi- 

 narily their first duty, on making their appearance in the 

 world, is to keep up with the receding herd, while an ap- 

 proaching object is more likely to be an enemy (347). 

 Later, this rough adjustment is modified ; they learn by 

 experience not to run away from their mothers, and not 

 to follow indiscriminately any leader. 



If it is true that instinct unmodified by experience is 

 adapted to general rather than to special features of environ- 

 ment, it seems likely that the phenomena of attention as we 

 know them are found chiefly in connection with those re- 

 sponses to vitally important stimulation which are deter- 

 mined, in part, at least, by the individual experience of 

 the reacting animal, for these are the responses requiring 

 most careful discrimination among stimuli, and the delay 

 of reaction until such discrimination has been made.^ 

 Putting the matter in a slightly different way, we may 

 say that purely inherited responses can be adapted only to 

 certain broad, roughly distinguished classes of stimuli, for 

 these alone are common to the experience of all members of 

 the species. Nothing but individual experience can bring 

 to light the importance for welfare of certain particular 

 stimuli, for the significance of these would vary with the 

 experience of each individual animal. Among the lower 

 animals, attention probably reaches its highest pitch where 

 the response most needs to be suspended in order that the 



^ In this connection Franz's experimental demonstration that the frontal 

 lobes, long regarded as the seat of the neural processes underlying atten- 

 tion, are concerned in the functioning of recently learned reactions, is of 

 especial interest. Franz found that cats and monkeys which had been 

 trained to work mechanisms lost the power to do so when the frontal lobes 

 were extirpated, although habits of older date, such as responding to a call, 

 were preserved (237, 238). 



