The Outline of Science, Volume 1

In mammals like otters, foxes, stoats, hares, and elephants, what a complex of tides and currents there must be in the brain-mind! We may think of a stream with currents at different levels. Lowest there are the basal appetites of hunger and sex, often with eddies rising to the surface. Then there are the primary emotions, such as fear of hereditary enemies and maternal affection for offspring. Above these are instinctive aptitudes, inborn powers of doing clever things without having to learn[Pg 239] how. But in mammals these are often expressed along with, or as it were through, the controlled life of intelligent activity, where there is more clear-cut perceptual influence. Photo: W. P. Dando. CHIMPANZEE An African ape, at home in the equatorial forests, a lively and playful creature, eminently educable. Photo: W. S. Berridge. YOUNG CHEETAHS, OR HUNTING LEOPARDS Trained to hunt from time immemorial and quite easily tamed. Cheetahs occur in India, Persia, Turkestan, and Africa. Photo: C. Reid. COMMON OTTER One of the most resourceful of animals and the "most playsomest crittur on God's earth." It neither stores nor hibernates, but survives in virtue of its wits and because of the careful education of the young. The otter is a roving animal, often with more than one resting-place; it has been known to travel fifteen miles in a night. Higher still are the records or memories of individual experience and the registration of individual habits, while on the surface is the instreaming multitude of messages from the outside world, like raindrops and hailstones on the stream, some of them penetrating deeply, being, as we say, full of meaning. The mind of the higher animal is in some respects like a child's mind, in having little in the way of clear-cut ideas, in showing no reason in the strict sense, and in its extraordinary educability, but it differs from the child's mind entirely in the sure effectiveness of a certain repertory of responses. It is efficient to a degree.