Lola : $b or, The thought and speech of animalsKindermann, Henny
Science
Lola : $b or, The thought and speech of animals
Kindermann, Henny
Animal intelligence; Dogs -- Folklore
Other observers have repeatedly stated that a capital fact in the story
of "thinking" animals is the necessity, which they regard as proved, of
a _progressive_ "education" directed at getting from the animal results
proportionate to the instruction received.
All these observations and several others of a similar nature would
seem to be arguments in favour of a presumed "intelligence" rather than
of an automatism in the animal. But they should be accepted _cum
grano_. They may indeed contain a good dose of involuntary suggestion,
active or passive. And again, it seems to me, for instance, a very
doubtful procedure to maintain, after a positive result has been
achieved by the animal, that the result should have been on the other
hand negative, if the education has not yet reached the corresponding
stage of development; and vice versa. As for me, when I read what Miss
Kindermann writes about the rapidity of Lola's progress, I cannot help
thinking that, if the authoress had believed that she was able to
obtain at once from the dog the results which she did obtain after a
year's work, she would have obtained them fully and completely.
But this extreme supposition may be exaggerated. I have already
repeatedly referred to the hypothesis that the psychic automatism in
question may be only concomitant. That is, I am convinced from what I
have seen myself and read that a foundation of intelligence, of logical
reasoning and of self consciousness, must go to constitute in the
animal the substratum on which the wonders of the "new zoopsychology"
are built up.
At first I was rather inclined to believe (as so many others) that the
facts discovered at Elberfeld and at Mannheim could and should be
explained simply by the recognition of "intelligence" in the animal.
The chief results obtained up to then (i.e. up to the date of my last
publications on the subject), were the mathematical prodigies performed
by Krall's horses, and the first "philosophic" manifestations of Rolf.
I accordingly thought that I should be able to interpret the new (and,
in its complexity, rather modest) canine "knowledge" by the animal's
memory of words which it had heard. But since then the educators have
taken pleasure in raising the whole level of these wonders. Rolf's
"philosophy" was developed; and in the end they went so far as to make
him compose poetry, as I have already had occasion to mention. Then
came the performances of Lola. And at this point I, too, must say: "Too
much, too much!" At least, as far as concerns the hypothesis of
intelligence in the animal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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