Part 6

These two Malay jurists carefully examined the criminal records of Europe. Why? Because, whenever an extraordinary or especially heinous crime was committed in the Philippine Islands, the Spaniards were accustomed to use it to confirm their conclusions as to the innate inferiority of the Malay race. "That could occur only among a people of inferior intelligence," was their standing phrase. Del Pilar and Ponce gathered the accounts of trials from the European journals, and were able to reply to the Spaniards quietly: "No, that is not so. All these crimes occur among you Europeans, and relatively more frequently than with us. Your conclusion is therefore false, or else you too have a defective intelligence such as you ascribe to us." Del Pilar, from his studies of the colonial enterprises of all peoples, came to the conclusion that "the Europeans founded most of their colonies at a time when the holding in vassalage of men of their own race by whites and the slavery of negroes and Indians were not regarded as offenses. If, now, we look at colonies in which, as in the Philippine Islands, agricultural populations are living with a civilization of their own, the development of the native races will depend on their religion. In a colony where Islam or a dogmatized heathen religion prevails no assimilation between Europeans and natives can take place. It is otherwise in countries like the Philippines, where the natives accepted Christianity at a time when religion had more importance among Europeans than now; a common basis was formed for the co-operation of both parts, the whites and the colored. But the circumstance that rulers and ruled had the same religion and the same official language may have led directly to another evil--that the colors became marks of condition, the whites being the Spartans, the mestizos the perioikoi, and the colored men the helots or servile people. So long as no pressure toward higher ambitions occurred from among those of the perioikoi and the helot grades, and so long as the whites were able to keep their prestige freely recognized by their dependents, the view of the whites, that the colored were both socially and intellectually a lower caste, seemed to be justified. The case has been different in the present century, especially in the second half of it. People of our (Philippine) race attended the high schools, appropriated to themselves the civilization and the knowledge of the whites, and still the brand of inferiority stuck to them. And this happened, too, when the quality of the whites had deteriorated. They were no longer exclusively _señors_, but there came bankrupted Spaniards or those of the lowest classes into the country, among them persons who could not read and write, who should be rated as beneath our school-trained people. And yet these illiterates claimed, by virtue of their color, to be respected as lords of the land, an absurdity which left the idea of 'European prestige' without justification, for how could beggars, spongers, bummers, rowdies, and illiterates impress anybody? The decent Spaniards committed the mistake of avowing their solidarity with the sorry fellows of their caste, instead of rejecting them and holding aloof from them and sending them back to Spain. So the Spaniards have brought it to pass, through a mistaken policy, that the Filipinos on their side, too, throw the good elements of the Spanish population into the same pot with the foul. Another reason why a Spanish prestige can not be thought of among us is that, with the exception of the tobacco companies, all the great enterprises in our country are carried on by foreigners and Filipinos. We owe all that is called progress not to the Spaniards, but to our own force or to foreigners."

When the painter Juan Luna attracted so much attention with his 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.

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.

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.

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.