Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/192

 ON THE STUDY OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 181 recollection of guilt (and how complex a conception is that of guilt), but an anticipation of what his master euphe- mistically called ' catching it '. Let me add one more instance. When the lioness at the Bristol Zoological Gardens lately had cubs, one tottered kitten-fashion to the bars of the cage, and I ventured to stroke its nose. The mother rose and earned the little thing back to the further end of the cage. " I wish," I said the other day to Mr. Nettleship, the animal painter, " you could have caught the look of conscious dignity (I speak anthropomorphically) with which she seemed to say, ' How dare you meddle with my child?" "I have seen such a look and attitude," the painter replied, " but I attributed it not to pride but to fear." I say then that, even taking the facts as narrated by the observer, there is, in a great number of cases, more than one probable interpretation. And I now proceed to notice how strong a tendency there is in these cases to see and describe the facts in accordance with the individual interpretation. I do not hint at intentional dishonesty. I speak of scarcely avoidable unconscious bias ; the tendency to see what one expects to see, and to fill in missing links which one is certain were there only we stupidly failed to observe them. I should therefore advocate the most sparing use of the psychical element consistent w T ith an adequate study of habits and activities. Take one example. I pinch a dog's tail and he bites me. Another dog is chained up and asleep. I hammer his tail with a stick. He flies at me, but cannot reach me for the chain. A week afterwards he bites me in the street. An unmistakable case, some will say, of the dog's harbouring feelings of revenge. What I advocate is that such a case should be recorded simply as one of post- ponement of action, of deferred response. Instead of the results of the injury occurring at once, they occur after a certain lapse of time. This implies memory, a mental phe- nomenon ; but it implies no complex mental state with distinctly human associations. In a word I would advocate the study of actions and habits, but place the motives (so difficult to get at even in the case of our neighbours) on one side, as at present beyond the reach of scientific treatment. I am aware that it will be objected that progressive com- plexity of motive is one of the most important evidences of mental evolution in animals. I know it ; and I hold it incumbent on men of science honestly to confess that direct evidence of mental evolution in animals is, in the present state of science, impossible or unattainable. If we can place