At least one of the psychological side problems demands especial
attention, the mental life of the animals. Animal psychology is no
longer made up of hunting stories and queer observations on ants and
wasps, and gossip about pet cats and dogs and canary birds. It has
become an exact science, which is housed in the psychological
laboratories of the universities. And with this change the centre of
interest has shifted, too. The mind of the animals is not studied in
order to satisfy our zoölogical interest, but really to serve an
understanding of the mental functions. It was therefore appropriate to
introduce those methods which had been tested in human psychology. In
our Harvard Psychological Laboratory, in which a whole floor of the
building is devoted exclusively to animal experiments under
specialists, single functions like memory or attention or emotion are
tested in earthworms or turtles or pigeons or monkeys, and the results
are no less accurate than those of subtlest human work. But this
experimental animal psychology has so far served theoretical interests
only. It stands where human psychology stood before the contact with
pedagogy, medicine, law, commerce, and industry suggested particular
formulations of the experiments. Such contact with the needs of
practical life ought to be secured now for animal psychology. The
farmer who has to do with cows and swine and sheep, with dogs and
horses, with chickens and geese, with pigeons and bees, ought to have
an immediate interest to seek this contact. But his concern ought to
go still further. He has to fight the animals that threaten his
harvest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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