LECTURE XXIII

§ I. Problems of Animal Psychology ; Deficiencies of the
Science. § II. Methodological Rules. § III. Acts of Cogni¬
tion AND Recognition among Animals. § IV. Association
AMONG the Lower Animals.

§1

IN the preceding lectures we have considered the associative and
intellectual processes of consciousness, first in their general
and normal features and then under the various aspects which
they present in mental disturbance, dreaming, and certain con¬
ditions related to that of sleep and dreaming. There now
remains one last question, the answer to which is important if
we are to understand the nature of these processes and their
relation to the other functions of the mind, the question of
animal intelligence, or, to express it more exactly, of the nature
and significance of those animal actions the conditions of whose
origin lead us to refer them to mental processes similar to our
own associations, and possibly even to our own processes of
judgment and  inference.

The study of animal psychology may be approached from
two different points of view. We may set out from the notion
of a kind of comparative physiology of mind, a universal
history of the development of mental life in the organic world.
Then the observation of animals is the more important matter ;
man is only considered as. one, though, of course, the highest, of
the developmental stages to be examined. Or we may make
human psychology the principal object of investigation. Then
the expressions of mental life in animals will be taken into
account only so far as they throw light upon the evolution
of consciousness in man. You will remember that we decided
at the outset of these lectures to deal with animal psychology in
this second sense, and for the more limited purpose.