THE ANIMAL AND THE PUZZLE-BOX 



The gulf that separates the mind of man from 

 the mind of the animals below him — if we can call 

 mind that bundle of instincts, reflexes, tropisms, and 

 sense-impressions — is so great that I often wonder 

 if I am wrong in feeling that it is as misleading to 

 discuss or describe so-called animal psychology in 

 terms of human psychology as it would be to dis- 

 cuss, the physiological functions of a bee or an ant 

 in terms of our own physiology. The bee breathes 

 and yet it has no lungs; the oxygen of the air reaches 

 its tissues, and yet it has no blood; it smells, and yet 

 it has no olfactories; it sees, and yet its eye has no 

 parts analogous to the retina, the crystalline lens, 

 and the aqueous humor; it has form and structure, 

 and yet it has no bones, and it is only by courtesy 

 that the anterior ganglion to which run the nerves of 

 the eye can be called a " brain"; and yet behold the 

 wonderful intelligence of the bees and the ants! In 

 like manner, we might say that the dog reasons, and 

 yet he has no faculty of reason; he remembers, and 

 yet he has no faculty of memory; he experiences 

 shame and guilt, and yet he has no moral conscience; 

 he is resourceful, and yet he has no free ideas. Just 

 what he does have that stands him instead, I think 

 the laboratory inquirer is as powerless to discover as 

 is the outdoor observer. 



Animals find their way home, they communicate 

 with one another, they are able to act in unison, by 

 some means to which we are strangers. In not reach- 

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