268 THE FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS 
how else she was to gain that wide experience of men which 
was absolutely necessary to guide her in exercising a wise and 
becoming choice. Let us hope that when the fateful time 
arrived she acted with due deliberation. Now the coquetry 
of birds affords the opportunity of gaining just such experience 
in the light of which a perceptual choice may be made. 
Let us remember that courtship is, as Darwin said, “a 
prolonged affair,” and that coyness is a means to its prolonga- 
tion. And let us remember that in simple cases, as also in 
more complex matters, the intelligent exercise of choice 
depends upon what Dr. Stout terms the acquisition of meaning. 
“The chicken does not, at first,” he says,* “ distinguish 
between what is edible and what is not. This it has to learn 
by experience. It will at the outset peck at and seize all worms 
and caterpillars indiscriminately. There is a particular cater- 
pillar called the cinnabar caterpillar. When this is first 
presented to the chicken it is pecked at and seized, like other 
similar objects. But as soon as it is fairly seized it is dropped 
in disgust. When next the chicken sees the caterpillar, it 
looks at it suspiciously, and .refrains from pecking. Now, 
what has happened in this case? The sight of the cinnabar 
caterpillar re-excites the total disposition left behind by the 
previous experience of pecking at it, seizing it, and ejecting 
it in disgust. Thus the effect of these experiences [what I 
have termed the conscious situation] is revived. The sight 
of the cinnabar caterpillar has acquired a meaning.” Take 
now the case of a coy hen bird, to whom several males pay 
court. The sight of this one, behaving after his kind, excites 
in small degree the sexual impulse and emotions. Her heart 
beats but little the faster for all his antics, her respiratory 
rhythin is scarcely affected, her feathers, like her feelings, 
remain comparatively unrufled. He has acquired meaning 
from the reaction to his presence ; it is not, however, a very 
attractive meaning. But that other, perhaps from mere 
persistency, perhaps because he is more “ vigorous, defiant, and 
mettlesome” (she, at any rate, certainly knows not why), deeply 
* “Manual of Psychology,” p. 85. 
