By inference we project, as it were, the human
pattern of our own mental chromograph on what is to us the otherwise
blank screen of another mind." The value and clearness of our
inferences will be proportional to the similarity of the animal to
ourselves. Thus we can educate many of our higher mammals by a
system of rewards and punishments, and we seem therefore to have
good reason to believe that fear and joy, anger and desire, certain
powers of perception and inference, are in their minds similar to
our own. But fear in a fish is certainly a much dimmer apprehension
of danger than in us, even if it deserves the name of apprehension.
And the mental state which we call "alarm" in a fly or any lower
animal is very difficult to clearly imagine or at all express in
terms of our own mind.
Some investigators have made the mistake of projecting into the
animal mind all our emotions and complicated trains of thought. Thus
Schwammerdam apparently credits the snail with remorse for the
commission of excesses. Others go to the other extreme and make
animals hardly more than mindless automata. We are warned,
therefore, by our very mode of study, to be cautious, not too
absolutely sure of our results, nor indignant at others who may take
a very different view. And yet by moving cautiously and accepting
only what seems fairly clear and evident we may arrive at very
valuable and tolerably sure results.
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