49X 



THE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF BIOLOGY 



would properly belong in Class i. Imita- 

 tion, purposive cooperation, intercom- 

 munication of ideas and plans of action by 

 means of signs, or sounds that serve the 

 language function would fall in Class z. 

 The fallacy of anthropomorphic analogy 

 reached its worst in the fanciful interpre- 

 tations of Class 3, the underlying assump- 

 tion seeming to be that if the animal acts 

 like man it also feels like man. 



The following criticisms may be urged 

 against the anecdote as a source of scien- 

 tific information regarding the mental life 

 and behavior of animals: (i) that the 

 observer is likely to be untrained and 

 unable to give an accurate account of the 

 happening, even if his intentions are of 

 the best; (2.) that interpretative elements 

 are likely to be confused in the report with 

 factual, making it impossible for the 

 scientist later to separate the two; (3) 

 that the happening even when adequately 

 reported is usually an incident cut off from 

 the essential genetic antecedents (both 

 individual and phyletic) which would 

 explain it and give it proper significance; 

 (4) that the happening, in the nature of 

 the case, represents highly selected and 

 atypical behavior that can have little or no 

 statistical validity; (5) that even if the 

 tendency of mankind to humanize the 

 animal — whether in a scientific or a 

 literary mood — is restrained, errors of 

 memory and of transmission (if verbal) 

 are likely to enter; and (6) there is the 

 difficulty of selecting reliable, authentic 

 material from the various available 

 sources. It is evident that the method, 

 even when guardedly employed, which 

 usually is not the case, hardly deserves to 

 be considered scientific in the strict sense. 



The anecdotal collections were widely 

 read and the popular imagination was 

 deeply stirred. In fact, the wide appeal 

 to anecdote by the protagonists of the 

 doctrine of mental evolution was not 



altogether without value as a reaction 

 against the older instinct-reason anti- 

 thesis. Just as philosopher and theo- 

 logian had previously twisted the facts in 

 order to create an insuperable gulf between 

 the mind of man and animal, so now by 

 the opposite bias that gulf was not only 

 bridged, but the difference between the 

 mind of man and animal unduly mini- 

 mized — owing in large part to the contro- 

 versial temper of the times. The general 

 acceptance of the view of Darwin that the 

 entire mental life of man must be included 

 in the general scheme of mental evolution 

 made the appeal to anecdote no longer 

 necessary or excusable. 



Anecdotalism and anthropomorphism 

 at the level of Pliny and Plutarch shared 

 honors with specious reasoning and far- 

 flung analogy. The natural philosophers 

 were obsessed with pedantic attempts to 

 achieve a monistic Weltanschauung regard- 

 less of fact or logic — a natural reaction, 

 engendered by the general evolutionary 

 movement, against the current dualism. 

 The cell-soul theory of Haeckel (50) and 

 the psychade theory of Schultze (5 1) are 

 examples of the type of speculation which 

 sought to find in each living cell a psychic 

 substrate or attribute, usually held to be 

 below the conscious level but analogous 

 to mind in higher organisms. Serious 

 consideration was given to such fanciful 

 discussions of plant life as appears in 

 Fechner's Nanna (1848) and contemporary 

 writings of the same sort. 



The notion that ontogeny repeats phy- 

 logeny in mental development was applied 

 very literally, especially with respect to 

 man himself. The classic example is the 

 psychogenetic scale worked out by 

 Romanes and elaborated in his Mental 

 Evolution in Animals, and in the com- 

 panion volume on the mental evolution of 

 man. He compares in great detail the 

 mental status of the embryonic and early 



