If so much is clear to the reader, he will be willing to admit that the mind in which this mode of association most prevails will, from its better opportunity of extricating characters, be the one most prone to reasoned thinking; whilst, on the other hand, a mind in which we do not detect reasoned thinking will probably be one in which association by contiguity holds almost exclusive sway.
Geniuses are, by common consent, considered to differ from ordinary minds by an unusual development of association by similarity. One of Professor Bain's best strokes of work is the exhibition of this truth.[334] It applies to geniuses in the line of reasoning as well as in other lines. And as the genius is to the vulgarian, so the vulgar human mind is to the intelligence of a brute. Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass from one concrete object to its habitual concrete successor far more uniformly than is the case with us. In other words, their associations of ideas are almost exclusively by contiguity. It will clear up still farther our understanding of the reasoning process, if we devote a few pages to
THE INTELLECTUAL CONTRAST BETWEEN BRUTE AND MAN.
I will first try to show, by taking the best stories I can find of animal sagacity, that the mental process involved may as a rule be perfectly accounted for by mere contiguous association, based on experience. Mr. Darwin, in his 'Descent of Man,' instances the Arctic dogs, described by Dr. Hayes, who scatter, when drawing a sledge, as soon as the ice begins to crack. This might be called by some an exercise of reason. The test would be, Would the most intelligent Eskimo dogs that ever lived act so when placed upon ice for the first time together? A band of men from the tropics might do so easily. Recognizing cracking to be a sign of breaking, and seizing immediately the partial character that the point of rupture is the point of greatest strain, and that the massing of weight at a given point concentrates there the strain, a Hindoo might quickly infer that scattering would stop the cracking, and, by crying out to his comrades to disperse, save the party from immersion. But in the dog's case we need only suppose that they have individually experienced wet skins after cracking, that they have often noticed cracking to begin when they were huddled together, and that they have observed it to cease when they scattered. Naturally, therefore, the sound would redintegrate all these former experiences, including that of scattering, which latter they would promptly renew. It would be a case of immediate suggestion or of that 'Logic of Recepts' as Mr. Romanes calls it, of which we spoke above on [p. 327].
A friend of the writer gave as a proof of the almost human intelligence of his dog that he took him one day down to his boat on the shore, but found the boat full of dirt and water. He remembered that the sponge was up at the house, a third of a mile distant; but, disliking to go back himself, he made various gestures of wiping out the boat and so forth, saying to his terrier, "Sponge, sponge; go fetch the sponge." But he had little expectation of a result, since the dog had never received the slightest training with the boat or the sponge. Nevertheless, off he trotted to the house, and, to his owner's great surprise and admiration, brought the sponge in his jaws. Sagacious as this was, it required nothing but ordinary contiguous association of ideas. The terrier was only exceptional in the minuteness of his spontaneous observation. Most terriers would have taken no interest in the boat-cleaning operation, nor noticed what the sponge was for. This terrier, in having picked those details out of the crude mass of his boat-experience distinctly enough to be reminded of them, was truly enough ahead of his peers on the line which leads to human reason. But his act was not yet an act of reasoning proper. It might fairly have been called so if, unable to find the sponge at the house, he had brought back a dipper or a mop instead. Such a substitution would have shown that, embedded in the very different appearances of these articles, he had been able to discriminate the identical partial attribute of capacity to take up water, and had reflected, "For the present purpose they are identical." This, which the dog did not do, any man but the very stupidest could not fail to do.
If the reader will take the trouble to analyze the best dog and elephant stories he knows, he will find that, in most cases, this simple contiguous calling up of one whole by another is quite sufficient to explain the phenomena. Sometimes, it is true, we have to suppose the recognition of a property or character as such, but it is then always a character which the peculiar practical interests of the animal may have singled out. A dog, noticing his master's hat on its peg, may possibly infer that he has not gone out. Intelligent dogs recognize by the tone of the master's voice whether the latter is angry or not. A dog will perceive whether you have kicked him by accident or by design, and behave accordingly. The character inferred by him, the particular mental state in you, however it be represented in his mind—it is represented probably by a 'recept' ([p. 327]) or set of practical tendencies, rather than by a definite concept or idea—is still a partial character extracted from the totality of your phenomenal being, and is his reason for crouching and skulking, or playing with you. Dogs, moreover, seem to have the feeling of the value of their master's personal property, or at least a particular interest in objects which their master uses. A dog left with his master's coat will defend it, though never taught to do so. I know of a dog accustomed to swim after sticks in the water, but who always refused to dive for stones. Nevertheless, when a fish-basket, which he had never been trained to carry, but merely knew as his master's, fell over, he immediately dived after it and brought it up. Dogs thus discern, at any rate so far as to be able to act, this partial character of being valuable, which lies hidden in certain things.[335] Stories are told of dogs carrying coppers to pastry-cooks to get buns, and it is said that a certain dog, if he gave two coppers, would never leave without two buns. This was probably mere contiguous association, but it is possible that the animal noticed the character of duality, and identified it as the same in the coin and the cake. If so, it is the maximum of canine abstract thinking. Another story told to the writer is this: a dog was sent to a lumber-camp to fetch a wedge, with which he was known to be acquainted. After half an hour, not returning, he was sought and found biting and tugging at the handle of an axe which was driven deeply into a stump. The wedge could not be found. The teller of the story thought that the dog must have had a clear perception of the common character of serving to split which was involved in both the instruments, and, from their identity in this respect, inferred their identity for the purposes required.
It cannot be denied that this interpretation is a possible one, but it seems to me far to transcend the limits of ordinary canine abstraction. The property in question was not one which had direct personal interest for the dog, such as that of belonging to his master is in the case of the coat or the basket. If the dog in the sponge story had returned to the boat with a dipper it would have been no more remarkable. It seems more probable, therefore, that this wood-cutter's dog had also been accustomed to carry the axe, and now, excited by the vain hunt for the wedge, had discharged his carrying powers upon the former instrument in a sort of confusion—just as a man may pick up a sieve to carry water in, in the excitement of putting out a fire.[336]
Thus, then, the characters extracted by animals are very few, and always related to their immediate interests or emotions. That dissociation by varying concomitants, which in man is based so largely on association by similarity, hardly seems to take place at all in the mind of brutes. One total thought suggests to them another total thought, and they find themselves acting with propriety, they know not why. The great, the fundamental, defect of their minds seems to be the inability of their groups of ideas to break across in unaccustomed places. They are enslaved to routine, to cut-and-dried thinking; and if the most prosaic of human beings could be transported into his dog's mind, he would be appalled at the utter absence of fancy which reigns there.[337] Thoughts will not be found to call up their similars, but only their habitual successors. Sunsets will not suggest heroes' deaths, but supper-time. This is why man is the only metaphysical animal. To wonder why the universe should be as it is presupposes the notion of its being different, and a brute, which never reduces the actual to fluidity by breaking up its literal sequences in his imagination, can never form such a notion. He takes the world simply for granted, and never wonders at it at all.
Professor Strümpell quotes a dog-story which is probably a type of many others. The feat performed looks like abstract reasoning; but an acquaintance with all the circumstances shows it to have been a random trick learned by habit. The story is as follows: