Animal Intelligence: The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.Romanes, George John
Science
Animal Intelligence: The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.
Romanes, George John
Animal behavior; Animal intelligence
CHAPTER XVI.
THE DOG 437
CHAPTER XVII.
MONKEYS, APES, AND BABOONS 471
INDEX 499
INTRODUCTION.
BEFORE we begin to consider the phenomena of mind throughout the animal
kingdom it is desirable that we should understand, as far as possible,
what it is that we exactly mean by mind. Now, by mind we may mean two
very different things, according as we contemplate it in our own
individual selves, or in other organisms. For if we contemplate our own
mind, we have an immediate cognizance of a certain flow of thoughts or
feelings, which are the most ultimate things, and indeed the only
things, of which we are cognisant. But if we contemplate mind in other
persons or organisms, we have no such immediate cognizance of thoughts
or feelings. In such cases we can only _infer_ the existence and the
nature of thoughts and feelings from the activities of the organisms
which appear to exhibit them. Thus it is that we may have a subjective
analysis of mind and an objective analysis of mind--the difference
between the two consisting in this, that in our subjective analysis we
are restricted to the limits of a single isolated mind which we call our
own, and within the territory of which we have immediate cognizance of
all the processes that are going on, or at any rate of all the processes
that fall within the scope of our introspection. But in our objective
analysis of other or foreign minds we have no such immediate cognizance;
all our knowledge of their operations is derived, as it were, through
the medium of ambassadors--these ambassadors being the activities of the
organism. Hence it is evident that in our study of animal intelligence
we are wholly restricted to the objective method. Starting from what I
know subjectively of the operations of my own individual mind, and the
activities which in my own organism they prompt, I proceed by analogy to
infer from the observable activities of other organisms what are the
mental operations that underlie them.
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