picture Spoliarum it was not known that the artist was a Malay, and
the work was therefore regarded and criticised from a purely artistic
point of view. But as soon as the race of the painter became known,
European prejudice made itself manifest. It was said that the choice
of a tragic subject could unquestionably be traced back to the descent
of the artist from "savages." But when did artists of the white race
ever shrink from such subjects? Luna has had cause enough to complain
of European injustice. The natives are charged with not being
independent in art. "They can only imitate," it is said. But how many
European nations one would have to strike out of the list of the
civilized if that title is to belong only to those which have an art
of their own! It should not be forgotten that the Spaniards have,
during their three hundred years' rule, impressed a Spanish mark on
the native artistic tendencies. The ethnographer who is acquainted
with the woven and carved designs of the heathen tribes which have
remained free from the Spaniards and from Christian civilization will
certainly not be able to deny that the Malays of the Philippine
Islands have a great talent for ornamental art. But if the reproach is
cast against the Filipinos that they have tried to Europeanize
themselves in plastic art as well as in music, they have not done
differently from the Europeans--that is, they denationalize themselves
and come into the great international circle of civilization, a thing
that can hardly be charged as a sin against them. It is very
remarkable, they say, that Europeans condemn in the Filipinos, as a
mark of inferiority that which they regard in themselves as a sign of
progress.
Rizal also has spoken of the injustice of the judgments which
Europeans pass upon Philippine conditions. I have published his views
on this subject in the tenth volume of the _Internationalen Archivs
für Ethnographie_, and will therefore on the present occasion only
give a sketch of them, with a few additional observations to
complement them. Dr. Rizal says that most Europeans judge the natives
from their servants, which would be as false as if anybody should form
his conception of the German people from the complaints which German
housewives are always ready to make concerning their domestics. At one
time while he was visiting me we strolled out of town. He gathered
some wild flowers and asked me their names. I had to confess
respecting many of them that I knew neither their common nor their
botanical names. He laughed and said: "Well, you are a cit; let us ask
a countryman." We met a peasant, but he could not give us any
information about any of the flowers. "Why," Rizal said, "is this the
first time you ever saw the flowers?" The peasant replied that he knew
the flowers very well, but did not know what they were called. When
the countryman had gone, Rizal said to me: "How fortunate you
Europeans are as compared with us poor Tagals! If such an experience
as I have just gone through should happen to a European among us he
would write in his notebook that 'the stupidity of these people shows
itself in the fact that they do not know or have no names for many of
the flowers which they see every day and tread upon with their clumsy
feet. What can not be eaten or put to some immediate use has very
little value or interest to these fellows, and such dull-witted folk
as these want reform and autonomy!' And he would be only a modest
traveler. Another one would write a whole chapter over the incident,
as illustrating the inferiority of all our people."
I might continue at greater length on this theme, but I believe that
the reader will sufficiently apprehend from what I have said that the
European and American whites have not made a good impression on the
colored Filipinos, and that the Philippine creoles feel as one with
their colored brethren; that there is no spirit of caste in the matter
like that which existed in the old colonial times, but they all call
themselves simply Filipinos, and that the rule of the American
Anglo-Saxons, who regard even the creoles as a kind of "niggers,"
would be looked upon by educated Filipinos of all castes as a supreme
loss of civic rights.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly
from the Deutsche Rundschau._
DO ANIMALS REASON?
BY EDWARD THORNDIKE, PH. D.
Probably every reader who owns a dog or cat has already answered the
question which forms our title, and the chance is ten to one that he
has answered, "Yes." In spite of the declarations of the psychologists
from Descartes to Lloyd Morgan, the man who likes his dog and the
woman who pets a cat persist in the belief that their pets carry on
thinking processes similar, at least in kind, to our own. And if one
has nothing more to say for the opposite view than the stock arguments
of the psychologists, he will make few converts. A series of
experiments carried on for two years have, I hope, given me some
things more to say--some things which may interest the believer in
reason in animals, even if they do not convert him.
In trying to find out what sort of thinking animals were capable of I
adopted a novel but very simple method. Dogs and cats were shut up,
when hungry, in inclosures from which they could escape by performing
some simple act, such as pulling a wire loop, stepping on a platform
or lever, clawing down a string stretched across the inclosure,
turning a wooden button, etc. In each case the act set in play some
simple mechanism which opened the door. A piece of fish or meat
outside the inclosure furnished the motive for their attempts to
escape. The inclosures for the cats were wooden boxes, in shape and
appearance like the one pictured in Fig. 1, and were about 20 × 15 ×
12 inches in size. The boxes for the dogs (who were rather small,
weighing on the average about thirty pounds) were about 40 × 22 × 22.
By means of such experiments we put animals in situations seeming
almost sure to call forth any reasoning powers they possess. On the
days when the experiments were taking place they were practically
utterly hungry, and so had the best reasons for making every effort to
escape. As a fact, their conduct when shut up in these boxes showed
the utmost eagerness to get out and get at the much-needed food.
Moreover, the actions required and the thinking involved are such as
the stories told about intelligent animals credit them with, and, on
the other hand, are not far removed from the acts and feelings
required in the ordinary course of animal life. It would be foolish to
deny reason to an animal because he failed to do something (e. g., a
mathematical computation) which in the nature of his life he would
never be likely to think about, or which his bones and muscles were
not fitted to perform, or which, even by those who credit him with
reason, he is never supposed to do. So the experiments were arranged
with a view of giving reasoning every chance to display itself if it
existed.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
What, now, would we expect to observe if a _reasoning_ animal, who is
surely eager to get out, is put, for example, into a box with a door
arranged so as to fall open when a wooden button holding it at the top
(on the inside) is turned from its vertical to a horizontal position?
We should expect that he would first try to claw the whole box apart
or to crawl out between the bars. He would soon realize the futility
of this and stop to consider. He might then think of the button as
being the vital point, or of having seen doors open when buttons were
turned. He might then poke or claw it around. If after he had eaten
the bit of fish outside he was immediately put in the box again he
ought to remember what he had done before, and at once attack the
button, and so ever after. It might very well be that he would not,
when in the box for the first time, be able to reason out the way to
escape. But suppose that, in clawing, biting, trying to crawl through
holes, etc., he happened to turn the button and so escape. He ought,
then, if at once put in again, this time to perform deliberately the
act which he had in the first trial hit upon accidentally. This one
would expect to see if the animal _did_ reason. What do we really see?
To save time we may confine ourselves to a description of the twelve
cats experimented with, adding now that the dogs presented no
difference in behavior which would modify our conclusions. The
behavior of all but No. 11 and No. 13 was practically the same. When
put into the box the cat would show evident signs of discomfort and of
an impulse to escape from confinement. It tries to squeeze through any
opening; it claws and bites at the bars; it thrusts its paws out
through any opening, and claws at everything it reaches; it continues
its efforts when it strikes anything loose and shaky; it may claw at
things in the box. The vigor with which it struggles is extraordinary.
For eight or ten minutes it will claw and bite and squeeze
incessantly. With No. 13, an old cat, and No. 11, an uncommonly
sluggish cat, the behavior was different. They did not struggle
vigorously or continually. (In the experiments it was found that these
two would stay quietly in the box for hours, and I therefore let them
out myself a few times, so that they might associate the fact of being
outside with the fact of eating, and so desire to escape. When this
was done, they tried to get out like the rest.) In all cases the
instinctive struggle is likely to succeed in leading the cat
accidentally to turn the button and so escape, for the cat claws and
bites all over the box. These general clawings, bitings, and
squeezings are of course instinctive, not premeditated. The cats will
do the same if in a box with absolutely no chance for escape, or in a
basket without even an opening--will do them, that is, when they are
the foolishest things to do. The cats do these acts for just the same
reason that they suck when young, propagate when older, or eat meat
when they smell it.
Each of the twelve cats was tried in a number of different boxes, and
in no case did I see anything that even looked like thoughtful
contemplation of the situation or deliberation over possible ways of
winning freedom. Furthermore, in every case any cat who had thus
accidentally hit upon the proper act was, after he had eaten the bit
of fish outside, immediately put back into the box. Did he then think
of how he had got out before, and at once or after a time of thinking
repeat the act? By no means. He bursts out into the same instinctive
activities as before, and may even fail this time to get out at all,
or until a much _longer_ period of miscellaneous scrabbling at last
happens to include the particular clawing or poking which works the
mechanism. If one repeats the process, keeps putting the cat back into
the box after each success, the amount of the useless action gradually
decreases, the right movement is made sooner and sooner, until finally
it is done as soon as the cat is put in.
This sort of a history is not the history of a reasoning animal. It is
the history of an animal who meets a certain situation with a lot of
instinctive acts. Included without design among these acts is one
which brings freedom and food. The pleasurable result of this one
gradually stamps it in in connection with the situation "confinement
in that box," while their failure to result in any pleasure gradually
stamps out all the useless bitings, clawings, and squeezings. Thus,
little by little, the one act becomes more and more likely to be done
in that situation, while the others slowly vanish. This history
represents the wearing smooth of a path in the brain, not the
decisions of a rational consciousness.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
We can express graphically the difference between the conduct of a
reasoning animal and that of these dogs and cats by means of a
time-curve. If, for instance, we let perpendiculars to a horizontal
line represent each one trial in the box, and let their heights
represent in each trial the time it took the animal to escape (each
three millimetres equaling ten seconds), the accompanying figure (Fig.
2) will tell the story of a cat which, when first put in, took sixty
seconds to get out; in the second trial, eighty; in the third, fifty;
in the fourth, sixty; in the fifth, fifty; in the sixth, forty, etc.
This figure represents what did actually happen with one cat in
learning a very easy act. Suppose the cat had, after the third
accidental success, been able to reason. She would then have the next
time and in all succeeding times performed the act as soon as put in,
and the figure would have been such as we see in Fig. 3. The thing is
still clearer if, instead of drawing in the perpendiculars, we draw
only a line joining their tops. Fig. 4 shows, then, the curve for the
real history, and Fig. 5 shows the abrupt descent, due to a rational
comprehension of the situation. I kept an accurate record of the time,
in seconds, taken in every trial by every cat in every box, and in
them all there appears no evidence for the presence of even the little
reasoning that "what let me out of this box three seconds ago will let
me out now." Surely, if an animal could reason he would, after ten or
eleven accidental successes, think what he had been doing, and at the
eleventh or twelfth trial would at once perform the act. But no! The
slope of the curves, as one may see in the specimens shown in Fig. 6,
is always gradual. So, in saying that the behavior of the animals
throughout the experiments gave no sign of the presence of reasoning I
am not giving a personal opinion, but the impartial evidence of an
unprejudiced watch. The curves given in Fig. 6 are for cats learning
to escape from the box already described, whose door was held by a
wooden button on the inside.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
Some one may object that, true as all this may be, the intelligent
acts reported of animals are in many cases such as could not have
happened in this way by accident. These anecdotes of apparent
comprehension and inference are really the only argument which the
believers in reason have presented. Its whole substance vanishes if,
as a matter of fact, animals can do these supposed intelligent acts in
the course of instinctive struggling. They certainly can and do. I
purposely chose, for experiments, two of the most intelligent
performances described by Romanes in his Animal Intelligence--namely,
the act of opening a door by depressing the thumb-piece of an ordinary
thumb-latch and the opening of a window by turning a swivel (see pp.
420-422 and p. 425 of Animal Intelligence, by G. J. Romanes). Here I
may quote from the detailed report of my experiments (Monograph
Supplement to the Psychological Review, No. 8):
"G was a box 29 × 20-1/2 × 22-1/2, with a door 29 × 12 hinged on the
left side of the box (looking from within), and kept closed by an
ordinary thumb-latch placed fifteen inches from the floor. The
remainder of the front of the box was closed in by wooden bars. The
door was a wooden frame covered with screening. It was _not_ arranged
so as to open as soon as the latch was lifted, but required a force of
four hundred grammes, even when applied to the best advantage. The bar
of the thumb-latch, moreover, would fall back into place again unless
the door were pushed out at least a little. Eight cats (Nos. 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, and 13) were, one at a time, left in this thumb-latch box.
All exhibited the customary instinctive clawings and squeezings and
bitings. Out of the eight, _all succeeded, in the course of their
vigorous struggles, in pressing down the thumb-piece_, so that if the
door had been free to swing open they could have escaped. Six
succeeded in pushing both thumb-piece down and door out, so that the
bar did not fall back into its place. Of these, _five succeeded in
also later pushing the door open, so that they escaped and got the
fish outside_. Of these, three, after about fifty trials, associated
the complicated movements required with the sight of the interior of
the box so firmly that they attacked the thumb-latch the moment they
were put in."
In the cases of No. 1 and No. 6 the combination of accidents required
was enough to make their successes somewhat rare. Consequently
weariness and failure offset the occasional pleasure of getting food,
and after succeeding four and ten times respectively they never again
succeeded, though given numerous opportunities. Their cases are almost
a perfect proof of the claim that accident, not inference, makes
animals open doors. For they hit upon the thing several times, but did
not know enough to profit even by these experiences, and so failed to
open the door the fifth and eleventh times.
Accident is equally capable of helping a cat escape from an inclosure
whose door is held by a swivel.
"Out of six cats who were put in the box whose door opened by a
button, _not one failed_, in the course of its impulsive activity, to
push the button around. Sometimes it was clawed one side from below;
sometimes vigorous pressure on the top turned it around; sometimes it
was pushed up by the nose. No cat who was given repeated trials failed
to form a perfect association between the sight of the interior of
that box and the proper movements."
If, then, three cats out of eight can escape from a small box by
accidentally operating a thumb-latch, one cat in a hundred may easily
escape from a room by accident. If one hundred per cent of all cats
are sure to sooner or later turn a button around when in a small box,
one cat in a thousand may well escape from a room by accidentally
turning a swivel around.
So far we have seen that when put in situations calculated to call
forth any thinking powers which they possess, the animal's conduct
still shows no signs of anything beyond the accidental formation of an
association between the sight of the interior of the box and the
impulse to a certain act, and the subsequent complete establishment of
this association because of the power of pleasure to stamp in any
process which leads to it. We have also seen that samples of the acts
which have been supposed by advocates of the reason theory to require
reasoning for their accomplishment turn out to be readily accomplished
by the accidental success of instinctive impulses. The decision that
animals do not possess the higher mental processes is re-enforced by
several other lines of experiment--for example, by some experiments on
imitation.
The details of these experiments I will not take the time to describe.
Suffice it to say that cats and dogs were given a chance to see one of
their fellows free himself from confinement and gain food by
performing some simple act. In each case they were where they could
see him do this from fifty to one hundred and fifty times, and did
actually watch his actions closely from ten to forty times. After
every ten chances to learn from seeing him, they were put into the
same inclosure and observed carefully, in order to see whether they
would, from having so often seen the act done, know enough to do it
themselves, or at least to try to do it. In this they signally failed.
Those who had failed previously to hit upon the thing accidentally
never learned it later from seeing it done. Those who were given a
chance to imitate acts which accident would sooner or later have
taught them learned the acts no more quickly than if they had never
seen the other animal do it the score or more of times. The animals,
that is, could not master the simple inference that if, in a certain
situation, that fellow-cat of mine performs a certain act and gets
fish, I, in the same situation, may get fish by performing that act.
They did not think enough to profit by the observation of their
fellows, no matter how many chances for such observation were given
them.
Equally corroborative of our first position are the results of still
another set of experiments. Here the dogs and cats were put through
the proper movement from twenty-five to one hundred times, being left
in the box after every five or ten trials and watched to see if they
would not be able at least to realize that the act which they had just
been made to do and which had resulted in liberation and food was the
proper act to be done. For instance, a dog would be put in a box the
door of which would fall open when a loop of string hanging outside
the box was clawed down an inch or so. Animals were taken who had,
when left to themselves, failed to be led to this particular act by
their general instinctive activities. After two minutes I would put in
my arm, take the dog's paw, hold it out between the bars, and,
inserting it in the loop, pull the loop down. The dog would of course
then go out and eat the bit of meat. After repeating this ten times
(in some cases five) I would put the dog in and leave him to his own
devices. If, as was always the case, he failed in ten or twenty
minutes to profit by my teaching I would take him out, but would not
feed him. After a half hour or so I would recommence my attempts to
show the dog what needed to be done. This would be kept up for two or
three days, until he had shown his utter inability to get the notion
of doing for himself what he had been made to do a hundred or more
times. The mental process required here need not be so high a one as
inference or reasoning, but surely any animal possessing those would,
after seeing and feeling his paw pull a loop down a hundred times with
such good results, have known enough to do it himself. None of my
animals did know enough. Those who did not in ten or twelve trials hit
upon an act by accident could never be taught that act by being put
through it. And, as in the case of imitation, acts of such a sort as
would be surely learned by virtue of accidental success were not
learned a whit sooner or more easily when I thus showed them to the
animal.
An interesting supplement to these facts is found in the following
answers to some questions which I sent to the trainer of one of the
most remarkable trick-performing horses now exhibited on the stage.
The counting tricks done by this horse had been quoted to me by a
friend as impossible of explanation unless the horse could be educated
by being put through the right number of movements in connection with
the different signals.
_Question 1._--If you wished to teach a horse to tap seven times with
his hoof when you asked him "How many days are there in a week?" would
you teach him by taking his leg and making him go through the motions?
_Answer._--"No!"
_Question 2._--Do you think you _could_ teach him that way, even if
naturally you would take some other way?
_Answer._--"I do not think I could."
_Question 3._--How would you teach him?
_Answer._--"You put figure 2 on the blackboard and _touch him, on the
leg_ twice with a cane, and so on."
The counting tricks of trained horses seem to us marvelous because we
are not acquainted with the simple but important fact that a horse
instinctively raises his hoof when one pricks or taps his leg in a
certain place. Just as once given, the cat's instinct to claw,
squeeze, etc., you can readily get a cat to open doors by working
latches or turning buttons, so, once given this simple reflex of
raising the hoof, you can, by ingenuity and patience, get a horse to
do almost any number of counting tricks.
Probably any one who still feels confident that animals reason will
not be shaken by any further evidence. Still, it will pay any one who
cares to make scientific his notions about animal consciousness to
notice the results of two sets of experiments not yet mentioned. The
first set was concerned with the way animals learn to perform a
compound act. Boxes were arranged so that two or three different
things had to be done before the door would fall open. For instance,
in one case the cat or dog had to step on a platform, reach up between
the bars over the top of the box and claw down a string running across
them, and finally push its paw out beside the door to claw down a bar
which held it.
The animal's instinctive impulses do often lead it to accidentally
perform these several acts one after another, and repeated accidental
successes do in some of these cases cause the acts to be done at last
in fairly quick succession. But we see clearly that the acts are not
thought about or done with anything like a rational comprehension of
the situation, for the time taken to learn the thing is much longer
than all three elements would take if tackled separately; and even
after the animal has reached a minimum time in doing the acts, he does
not do the things in the same order, and often repeats one of the acts
over and over again, though it has already attained its end.