Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, October 1899: Vol. LV, May to October, 1899Various
Philosophy
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, October 1899: Vol. LV, May to October, 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The chief cause of the inability of students to reach concordant
results in this matter of animal intelligence appears to lie in a
certain uncritical assumption often made. That all consciousnesses
have a certain field of presentations, that to this field they attain,
that because of it they feel and will, are fundamental facts; but the
belief that attention or feeling or will differs per se in different
consciousnesses, other than as the field to which they are at the
moment related, differs--this is an utterly unwarranted assumption.
According to the action of its environment, each conscious being must
know the world just so far as is needed to conform its existence
thereto, or else it must perish; but whether such knowledge, which is
acquired by experience only, be quite small, as with animals, or
somewhat larger, as with man, there is no reason to suppose that the
attention, feeling, or will of the animal differs in itself from the
same psychological state in man.
MR. ANDREW VAN BIBBER, of Cincinnati, Ohio, says: Animals, and
especially wild ones, have no bank account or reserve, and have to
face new conditions daily, and yet they make a living where man would
starve.
When I was out in Colorado and Utah, years ago, I used to know of
animals removing the bait nicely from dangerous traps without
springing the trap. I knew of a dog who went over a mile to call his
owner to the aid of a boy who had broken his leg, and who would not be
refused till understood. This is brutish "instinct," is it?--something
that Dr. Thorndike can't define. Will "instinct" teach a tired,
half-starved horse to eat oats if you set them before him? Dr.
Thorndike would say "Yes," but Dr. Thorndike would be wrong unless
that horse knew from personal past experience what oats were. What
animals learn (like the human animal) they learn chiefly by
experience. They accumulate facts in their minds and use them.
I served in the cavalry of the Armies of the Tennessee and the
Cumberland, and I know that instinct will not cause a hungry horse to
touch oats unless he knows from his own experience what oats are. We
used to capture horses in Mississippi which had never seen oats. It is
all corn down there. We would bring them into camp tired out and
hungry, and would pour out our oats for them. Not one of them would
touch the oats. You could leave the hungry horses hitched for
twenty-four hours before oats, and not one grain would they touch.
They would stand there and starve. We had to throw up their heads and
fill their mouths full of oats. If we stopped there, they would spit
them out. We had to grab their jaws and work them sideways until they
had a good taste. Then they understood, and ate oats right along.
Plenty of such horses in Mississippi to-day....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account