Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/143

Rh to determine by all the various kinds of evidence and reasoning that he can bring to bear upon the data, just what kinds of thinking the most favored animal can and can not master. The last particularly must be carefully considered; yet, both for animal capacities and animal limitations, is it of prime importance to note that, like ourselves, animals will only learn to do such things as enter profitably into the scheme of their lives. They will under ordinary natural circumstances acquire an intelligent appreciation of such of the goings on in the world about them as they can put to use; and even though we furnish our pets with decidedly different conditions of life and teach them much that they would have no occasion to learn for themselves, yet the manner of their learning will still remain of the same kind and require the same combination of powers as governs their natural behavior. So, in the end, the question of how animals think is one that psychology may hopefully consider. The answer will never be wholly complete; but there is no reason, so far as it goes, why it should not be sound and convincing—setting forth clearly and precisely what types of intelligent action animals share with us, and how much greater a range of even our simple thinking and doing lies wholly outside of both their interests and their capacities.

Such reflections are brought home to the psychologist whenever he observes how willing people are to be convinced that the multiplicationtable and reading and spelling fall as readily within the powers of the exceptional animal as they do within those of an ordinary small boy. Let us consider a group of performances that within recent years have been triumphantly heralded as proving the vast possibilities of animal education, and have been accepted by the vast majority of people for what they pretend to be. A wise horse, 'Kluge Hans,' has mystified Berlin audiences; and 'Jim Key,' another equine sage, has done the same for the American public, by going through a program that includes adding and subtracting, and multiplying and dividing, reading and spelling, telling time and the days of the week, indicating people's ages, or sorting their letters, revealing their professions and their peculiarities, knowing the value of coins and bills, and even pointing out passages from the Bible or reasoning that a circle has no corners! In analyzing such performances, it is indispensable to remain undistracted by what the exhibitor asserts or pretends that the animal does, but calmly to observe what really takes place and to decide not necessarily how the trick is done, but what kind of thinking is concerned in the steps that the animal really takes. Such an exhibition may, however, offer an equally interesting study of the psychology of the audience as of the performer—a study of what people are ready to believe and why they are so disposed.

It does not require a deep psychological insight to make it clear that the calculating and spelling, time-telling and letter-sorting horse