THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



opened two small glass jars of butter that had loose 

 tin tops, I did not credit them with anything like 

 human intelligence, because to use their paws deftly 

 — digging, climbing, manipulating — is natural to 

 mice. I have seen a chipmunk come into a house 

 from his den in the woods and open a pasteboard 

 box with great deftness, and help himself to the nuts 

 inside, which, of course, he smelled. We do not 

 credit a bird with rational intelligence when it builds 

 its nest, no matter how skillfully it may weave or sew, 

 or how artfully it may hide it from its enemies. It 

 is doing precisely as its forebears have done for 

 countless generations. Hence it acts from inherited 

 impulse. 



But the monkey I was told about at the zoologi- 

 cal park in Washington, that had been seen to select 

 a stiff straw from the bottom of its cage, and use it 

 to dislodge an insect from a crack, showed a gleam 

 of free intelligence. It was an act of judgment on 

 the part of the monkey, akin to human judgment. 

 In like manner the chimpanzee Mr. Hornaday tells 

 about, that used the trapeze-bar in the cage as a 

 lever with which to pry off the horizontal bars on the 

 side of the cage, and otherwise to demolish things, 

 showed a kind of intelligence that is above instinct, 

 and quite beyond the capacity, say, of a dog. 



I would not say, as Mr. Hornaday does, that this 

 ape discovered the principle of the lever as truly as 

 Archimedes did. Would it not be better to say that 

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