whole being tingles with sentient life. I sense, or am aware of, my own life and consciousness, in an unusually subtle manner. Experience is vivid and continuous. Such I take it to be the condition of the conscious but not yet self-conscious animal."

I can therefore cordially endorse Dr. Thorndike's conclusions as expressed in the following passages :

66

"One who has watched the life of a cat or dog for a month or more under test conditions, gets, or fancies he gets, a fairly definite idea of what the intellectual [intelligent] life of a cat or dog feels like. It is most like what we feel when consciousness contains little thought about anything, when we feel the sense-impressions in their first intention, so to speak, when we feel our own body, and the impulses we give to it. Sometimes one gets this animal consciousness while in swimming, for example. One feels the water, the sky, the birds above, but with no thoughts about them or memories of how they looked at other times, or æsthetic judgments about their beauty; one feels no ideas about what movements he will make, but feels himself make them, feels his body throughout. Self-consciousness dies away. Social consciousness dies away. The meanings, and values, and connections of things die away. One feels sense-impressions, has impulses, feels the movements he makes; that is all."

And after an illustration from such a game as tennis, Dr. Thorndike adds: "Finally the elements of the associations are not isolated. No tennis-player's stream of thought is filled with free-floating representations of any of the tens of thousands of sense-impressions or movements he has seen and made on the tennis-court. Yet there is consciousness enough at the time, keen consciousness of the sense-impressions, impulses, feelings of one's bodily acts. So with the animals. There is consciousness enough, but of this kind."

It may be said that between the method of intelligence and that of fully developed rational procedure there is a wide gap which must have been bridged in the course of mental evolution. Unquestionably. And in contending that the methods

of the animal are predominantly intelligent, I am far from wishing to assert dogmatically that in no animals are there even the beginnings of a rational scheme. Indications thereof do not indeed at present appear to have been clearly disclosed by experiment. But the experimental development of the subject is still in its infancy. We shall probably have to await the further results which must be the outcome of patient and well-directed child-study. The human child does pass in the course of his individual development from intelligent to rational procedure. Here there is a bridge which is crossed by every child. When we know more about the stadia of this development we shall be in a position to apply the results obtained in child-study in the analogous field of animal-study. Till then we must possess our souls in patience, and base our provisional conclusions on the results of systematic investigation, rather than on those of casual observation and anecdote.

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOUR

It is difficult to say where, in the hierarchy of animal progress, the beginnings of intelligence can first be traced. In the articulated animals, such as the insects, spiders, and crustacca, there is abundant evidence of intelligence of a relatively high grade. Many molluscs unquestionably profit by experience. The way in which limpets return to the scars on the rock which form their homes seems to show that they have acquired a practically adequate experience of their near surroundings. Romanes cites some of the earlier observations which were extended by Professor Ainsworth Davis.† I looked into the matter myself some years ago, at Mewps Bay near Lulworth in Dorsetshire. The method adopted ‡ was to remove the limpets from the rock, and affix them at various distances from their scars. This can be done without difficulty or injury to the mollusc if one catches them as they are moving. • “Animal Intelligence," pp. 28, 29. † Nature, vol. xxxi., p. 200. Ibid., vol. li., p. 127.

But one must make sure that they are just leaving or returning to their proper homes, and are not taken in the midst of a more extended peregrination, as in that case their special scars cannot be noted. Failure to be careful in this matter vitiated my earlier observations, which are therefore excluded in the following table :

From the nature of the rock surfaces the removal of a limpet to a distance of two feet almost invariably involved placing them on the further side of an angle. And though some returned over such an angle, the majority did not.

In most cases the individuals which failed to return to their respective scars took up new positions; and in several instances, when they were subsequently removed to a distance of a few inches from this new position, they returned to it. Their return to the scar was watched in many cases, and the course was fairly, but not quite direct. One limpet covered a distance of ten inches, over a somewhat curved course, in a little under twenty minutes. In another case the limpet on its return journey had to pass between two others, which necessitated the lifting of the shell to some height so as to clear one of them. On reaching the scar they twist and turn about so as to fit down in the normal position which is constant. When they come up the wrong way round they rotate pretty rapidly through the 180 degrees to get into position. One was observed to make a short excursion from and return to its scar under stillish water. But as a rule they seem to remain fixed when they are submerged, moving for the most part when the tide has just receded.

The greatest distance I have watched a limpet reach from its home was twenty-two inches. But I have found them at a distance of three feet from their scars-that is to say, from those to which they fitted perfectly. This was on a large flat surface.

When they move, the tentacles are projected out beyond the shell, and keep on touching and slightly adhering to the rock. On reaching the scar they carefully feel round it with the tentacles. By excision of these feelers Professor Davis was led to conclude that it is not through their instrumentality that the limpet finds its way back to its particular scar. But I am inclined to question these results. At any rate, further observations and experiments are needed to settle the point.

Snails will also return to special dark hollows or crannies in the wall after their foraging excursions. Such behaviour in molluscs affords evidence of something more than instinct. In popular speech, we should say that there is memory of the locality. And in any case it is difficult to interpret the facts without the assumption that the animals are conscious, and that re-presentative states are evoked through the mediation of presentative sense-impressions. And such re-presentative states are the foundation-stones of experience, which forms the basis on which intelligent behaviour is grounded.

The most highly developed molluscs are the cephalopods. They have long sensitive mobile arms with which they feel for and capture their prey. "Now Schneider observed," writes Dr. Stout, "a very young octopus seize a hermit-crab. The hermit-crab covers the shell in which it takes up its abode with stinging zoophytes. Stung by these, the octopus immediately recoiled and let its prey escape. Subsequently it was observed to avoid hermit-crabs. Older animals of the same species managed cleverly to pull the crab out of its house without being stung." Such cases afford evidence of profiting by experience through the exercise of intelligence.

Darwin's careful observations on the manner in which earthworms drag leaves into their burrows seem to show that

"Manual of Psychology," p. 257.

these annelids act intelligently, and deal with leaves of different shapes in different ways. The leaves of Pine trees, consisting of two needles arising from a common base, were almost invariably drawn down by seizing this basal point of junction; while the leaves of the Lime were, in 79 per cent. of the cases examined, drawn down by the apex; in only 4 per cent. by the base; and in the remaining 17 per cent. by seizing some intermediate portion. On the other hand, the leaves of the Rhododendron, in which the basal part of the blade is often narrower than the apical part, were in 66 per cent. of the observations drawn down by the narrower base. Triangles of paper were in the majority of cases seized by the apex. Commenting upon his observations, carried out with great care under experimental conditions, Darwin says, "As worms are not guided by special instincts in each particular case, though possessing a general instinct to plug up their burrows, and as chance is excluded, the next most probable conclusion seems to be that they try in different ways to draw in objects, and at last succeed in some one way;" that is to say, they profit by experience based on the method of trial and failure. But Darwin adds that the evidence he obtained shows "that worms do not habitually try to draw objects into their burrows in many different ways." And he seems to attribute to them an almost rational power of dealing with the circumstances in the light of general conceptions. "If worms," he says, "are able to judge, either before drawing or after having drawn an object close to the mouths of their burrows, how best to drag it in, they must acquire some notion of its general shape. This they probably acquire by touching it in many places with the anterior extremity of their bodies, which acts as a tactual organ. It may be well to remember how perfect the sense of touch becomes in a man when born blind and deaf, as are worms. If worms have the power of acquiring some notion, however rude, of the shape of an object and of their burrows, as seems to be the case, they deserve to be called intelligent; for they ... Vegetable Mould and Earthworms," p. 95.