Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/185

II. ON THE STUDY OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. By Prof. C. LLOYD MORGAN. 1. The object of this paper is neither, on the one hand, to add anything to the existing enormous and somewhat chaotic mass of anecdotal fact and fiction, nor, on the other hand, to place on record the details of scientific study, but rather to consider this question : By what method are we likely to obtain the most valuable scientific results in this department of knowledge t 2. The subject is sufficiently familiar to enable me to dispense with preliminary illustration. I would refer each individual to his own private repertory, and to the valuable collection published by Mr. G. J. Komanes in his Animal Intelligence. Now with regard to all such anecdotes we may note that, in each case, there are two elements : (a) Certain actions performed under certain external cir- cumstances. These I will call the facts. (b) Certain inferences which are drawn from the facts. The first thing to be done in the scientific study of this question is, therefore, to disentangle the facts from the inferences. Let me give one example, quoted by Mr. Romanes :- " One of the orangs which recently died at the Menagerie of the Musee was accustomed, when the dinner hour had come, to open the door of the room where he took his meals, in company with several persons. As he wa> not sufficiently tall to react! as far as the key of the door, lie hung on to a rope, balanced himself, and after a few oscillations very quickly reached the key. His keeper, who was rather worried by so much exactitude, one day took occasion to make three knots in the rope, which, having thus been made too short, no longer permitted the orang-outan to sei/e the key. The animal, after an ineffectual attempt, rcco<pti*iu<j the n<ttnr<> of the o/> to his desires, climbed up the rope, placed him>elf above the knots, and untied all three, in the presence of M. CJcotlYoy Saint-Hilaire, who related the fact to me." (Leuret, Anat. Comp. du Syst. Nero., i. 540.) Here we have the fact of the orang untying the knots, and the inference that he recognised the nature of the obstacle. Another witness might have inferred that he did it from destructiveness, the desire to pick to pieces what his keeper had done, another that he did it from inquisitiveness, and so on. First, then, let us disentangle the facts from the infer-