PSYCHICAL ANTECEDENTS OF SCIENCE 157

mistakes have arisen from the fact that many persons will

attempt to understand and explain the psychical powers

of animals without having previously obtained a compre-

hension of their own. As Mr. C. Lloyd Morgan has

amusingly remarked,* "The psychologist is apt sometimes

to smile when, after the recital of some anecdote of animal

intelligence, the writer exclaims, ' If this is not reason I do

not know what reason is.' As, however, in such cases the

writer has himself suggested the alternative, there is perhaps

no discourtesy on the part of the psychologist in accepting

it." Indeed, men often interpret the actions of animals in

a way which they regard as being simple and natural.

" Simple and natural " such explanations would be if they

were applied to human beings, but exceedingly forced and

unnatural they may be when applied in estimating the

acts of creatures the natures of which are exceedingly

different. They are also apt to be caught in a snare,

which it is as necessary as it is difficult to avoid. This is

the necessity we are all under of expressing ourselves in

terms which have been gained as the result of prolonged

processes of abstraction, since, as we before observed,! all

our words are the results of such processes. To make use

of such symbols, then, to denote psychical states which are

not the result of abstraction, is to run the greatest risk

either of misrepresentation or of being misapprehended.

Occam's celebrated saying, " Entia non sunt multiplicanda

prater necessitatem" applies to psychology as well as to

other sciences, and it forbids us to credit mere animals

with the higher human mental powers when their actions

can be quite well explained more simply by those lower

psychical activities which we have just passed in review as

* In his excellent work entitled Introduction to Comparative Psychology,

p. 261.

t See ante, p. 7.

mistakes have arisen from the fact that many persons will

attempt to understand and explain the psychical powers

of animals without having previously obtained a compre-

hension of their own. As Mr. C. Lloyd Morgan has

amusingly remarked,* "The psychologist is apt sometimes

to smile when, after the recital of some anecdote of animal

intelligence, the writer exclaims, ' If this is not reason I do

not know what reason is.' As, however, in such cases the

writer has himself suggested the alternative, there is perhaps

no discourtesy on the part of the psychologist in accepting

it." Indeed, men often interpret the actions of animals in

a way which they regard as being simple and natural.

" Simple and natural " such explanations would be if they

were applied to human beings, but exceedingly forced and

unnatural they may be when applied in estimating the

acts of creatures the natures of which are exceedingly

different. They are also apt to be caught in a snare,

which it is as necessary as it is difficult to avoid. This is

the necessity we are all under of expressing ourselves in

terms which have been gained as the result of prolonged

processes of abstraction, since, as we before observed,! all

our words are the results of such processes. To make use

of such symbols, then, to denote psychical states which are

not the result of abstraction, is to run the greatest risk

either of misrepresentation or of being misapprehended.

Occam's celebrated saying, " Entia non sunt multiplicanda

prater necessitatem" applies to psychology as well as to

other sciences, and it forbids us to credit mere animals

with the higher human mental powers when their actions

can be quite well explained more simply by those lower

psychical activities which we have just passed in review as

* In his excellent work entitled Introduction to Comparative Psychology,

p. 261.

t See ante, p. 7.