Chap. II. 
MENTAL POWERS. 
45 
a particular monkey would turn out a good actor, he 
answered that it all depended on their power of atten- 
tion. If when he was talking and explaining anything 
to a monkey, its attention was easily distracted, as by 
a fly on the wall or other trifling object, the case was 
hopeless. If he tried by punishment to make an in- 
attentive monkey act, it turned sulky. On the other 
hand, a monkey which carefully attended to him could 
always be trained. 
It is almost superfluous to state that animals have 
excellent Memories for persons and places. A baboon 
at the Cape of Good Hope, as I have been informed by 
Sir Andrew Smith, recognised him with joy after an 
absence of nine months. I had a dog who was savage 
and averse to all strangers, and I purposely tried his 
memory after an absence of five years and two days. I 
went near the stable where he lived, and shouted to 
him in my old manner; he showed no joy, but in- 
stantly followed me out walking and obeyed me, 
exactly as if I had parted with him only half-an-hour 
before. A train of old associations, dormant during five 
years, had thus been instantaneously awakened in his 
mind. Even ants, as P. Huber 12 has clearly shewn, 
recognised their fellow-ants belonging to the same com- 
munity after a separation of four months. Animals 
can certainly by some means judge of the intervals of 
time between recurrent events. 
The Imagination is one of the highest prerogatives 
of man. By this faculty he unites, independently of 
the will, former images and ideas, and thus creates bril- 
liant and novel results. A poet, as J ean Paul Kichter 
remarks , 13 “ who must reflect whether he shall make a 
12 ‘Les Mceurs des Fourmis,’ 1810, p. 150. 
13 Quoted in Dr. Maudsley’s 1 Physiology and Pathology of Mind/ 
1868, pp. 19, 220. 
