4. In their method of learning or associative processes; in—

The fact of (1) is well known to comparative anatomists. Its importance in mental development is perhaps not realized, but appears constantly to a systematic student.

(2) is what accounts for much of the specious appearance of human ways of thinking in the monkeys and becomes in its human extension the handy tool for much of our intellectual life. It is in great measure the prerequisite of 4 c.

(3) accounts for the rest of such specious appearances, is at the basis of much of 4 b, presages the similar though extended instincts of the human being, which I believe are the leading efficient causes of human mental capacity, and is thus the great mental bond which would justify the inclusion of monkeys and man in a common group if we were to classify animals on the basis of mental characteristics.

Even the casual observer, if he has any psychological insight, will be struck by the general, aimless, intrinsically valuable (to the animal’s feelings) physical activities of a monkey compared with the specialized, definitely aroused, utilitarian activities of a dog or cat. Watch the latter and he does but few things, does them in response to obvious sense presentations, does them with practical consequences of food, sex-indulgence, preparation for adult battles, etc. If nothing that appeals to his special organization comes up, he does nothing. Watch a monkey and you cannot enumerate the things he does, cannot discover the stimuli to which he reacts, cannot conceive the raison d’être of his pursuits. Everything appeals to him. He likes to be active for the sake of activity.

The observer who has proper opportunities and takes proper pains will find this intrinsic interest to hold of mental activity as well. No. 1 happened to hit a projecting wire so as to make it vibrate. He repeated this act hundreds of times in the few days following. He did not, could not, eat, make love to, or get preliminary practice for the serious battles of life out of, that sound. But it did give him mental food, mental exercise. Monkeys seem to enjoy strange places; they revel, if I may be permitted an anthropomorphism, in novel objects. They like to have feelings as they do to make movements. The fact of mental life is to them its own reward.

It is beyond question rash for any one to venture hypotheses concerning the brain parallel of mental conditions, most of all for the ignoramus in the comparative histology of the nervous system, but one cannot help thinking that the behavior of the monkeys points to a cerebrum that is no longer a conservative machine for making a few well-defined sorts of connections between sense-impressions and acts, that is not only fitted to do more delicate work in parts, but is also alive, tender all over, functioning throughout, set off in action by anything and everything. And if one adds coördinations allowing a freedom and a differentiation of action of the muscles used in speech comparable to that already present in connection with the monkey’s hand, he may well ask, “What more of a nervous mechanism do you need to parallel the behavior of the year-old child?” However, this is not the place to speculate upon the importance to human development of our instinctive aimless activity, physical and mental, or to describe further its similarity and evident phylogenetic relationship to the instinctive behavior of the monkeys. Elsewhere I shall undertake that task.

4. In their method of learning, the monkeys do not advance far beyond the generalized mammalian type, but in their proficiency in that method they do. They seem at least to form associations very much faster, and they form very many more. They also seem superior in the delicacy and in the complexity of the associations formed and the connections seem to be more permanent.