The Dancing Mouse; a Study in Animal Behaviour

Abstract

THE most characteristic feature of the best psychology of the present day is the tendency to look for much of the explanation of mental life in its antecedents and surroundings. The older individualistic position is being rapidly left behind. The continuity of mind is now as clearly recognised as the continuity of life. Lower forms of mental activity, in the race no less than in the individual, are found to throw much light upon the nature of developed human consciousness. Such forms are, however, matters of inference, not of direct observation; it is therefore not surprising that the science of comparative psychology is so far from keeping pace with its elder brother, comparative anatomy. The work thus far done has been of a somewhat sporadic nature, in one prominent case, at least, vitiated by faulty psychological theory. More decided progress may be looked for in the application of the experimental method. The Dancing Mouse; a Study in Animal Behaviour. By Robert M. Yerkes. Pp. xxi + 290. (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1907.) Price 5s. net.