Two things I have been especially anxious to bring out prominently in the foregoing chapter: first, that the world we see around us is a joint product of two factors—the outward existence, on the one hand, and our active mind on the other; and secondly, that our mental processes and products fall under two categories—on the one hand, perception, giving rise to percepts, perceptual inferences, and intelligence, and on the other, conception (involving the analysis of phenomena), giving rise to concepts, conceptual inferences, and reason.

Now, I am anxious that the former—to take that first—should be laid hold of and really grasped as an indubitable fact. It is implied in the word "phenomena," that is to say, appearances. We can only know the world as it appears to us; and the world is for us what it appears. There is nothing here in conflict with common sense; the practical reality of phenomena is altered no whit. Suppose philosophy tries to get behind phenomena, so as to get a peep at the world beyond. Suppose Carlyle tells us that "All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there [as such] at all; matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some idea and body it forth." Has he altered the reality of the phenomena themselves? Not in the smallest degree. Suppose the materialist gives us his analysis of phenomena. Are not the phenomena he analyzes still the same, still equally real? No matter how far he analyzes phenomena, behind phenomena he cannot get. The materialist resolves all phenomena into matter in motion or into energy, and says that these are the only real existences. But they are no more real (they are a good deal less real to most of us) than the phenomena with which he started. How can the results of analysis be more real than that which is analyzed? Moreover, the matter and energy are still phenomena, and involve, as such, the percipient mind. Do what you will, you cannot get rid of the mental factor in phenomena.

It is possible that my use of the word "construct," my saying that the object is a thing which each of us constructs at the suggestion of certain sense-stimuli, may lead some to suppose that the process is in some sense an arbitrary one. This, however, would be a misconception. The process under normal conditions is just as inevitable as is, under normal conditions, the fall of a stone to the ground. The law of construction for human-folk is as much a law of nature as the law of gravitation. Both laws are condensed statements of the facts of the case. There is nothing arbitrary, lawless, or unnatural in the one or the other; the phrase merely emphasizes the essential presence of the mental factor.

If this principle be once thoroughly grasped, it will be seen how shallow and misleading is the view that the world is just reflected in consciousness unchanged as in a mirror, or faithfully photographed as on a sensitive plate. This is to reduce the human mind, which is surely no whit less complex than the human body, to the condition of a mere passive recipient instead of a vital and active agent in the construction of man's world.

The next point we have to consider is why we believe, as you and I practically do believe, that the world of phenomena exists as such, not merely for you and for me, but for man. Is it not because we believe in the practical unity of mankind? Is it not because we believe that, greatly as the conceptual and intellectual superstructure may differ in different individuals, the perceptual basis and foundation are practically identical? The senses and sense-organs give, in all normal individuals, sense-data, which differ only within comparatively narrow limits; and though the intellectual and moral world of the Bushman and the North Australian may differ profoundly from those of Shakespeare and Pascal, the perceptual world is, we have every reason to suppose, within these narrow limits, the same. This we may fairly believe; but even so there must be, nay, we know that there are, very great differences in the interpretation of the perceptual world. The individual cannot divest himself of the intellectual and conceptual part of his nature. We, for whom phenomena are more or less conditioned by science, find it difficult to think ourselves into the position of the savage, whose perceptual world is conditioned by crude superstition. The elements of his perceptual world are the same as ours, but the light of knowledge in which we view them is, for him, very dim. When we try to realize his world we find it exceedingly difficult.

And when we come to the lower animals—even those nearest us in the scale of life—the difficulties are enormously increased. The sense-data are probably much the same, but they are combined in different proportions. Olfactory sensation must, one would suppose, be built into the constructs of the dog and the deer to an extent which we cannot at all realize. And then, as Mr. P. G. Hamerton has well said, we have to take into account the immensity of the ignorance of animals. That ignorance, in combination with perfect perceptual clearness (ignorance and mental clearness are quite compatible) and with inconceivably strong instincts, produces a creature whose mental states we can never accurately understand.

I am tempted here to give the instance Mr. Hamerton quotes[GD] in illustration of the ignorance of animals.

"The following account of the behaviour of a cow," he says, "gives a glimpse of the real nature of the animal. These long-tailed cows, say Messrs. Huc and Gabet, are so restive and difficult to milk, that to keep them at all quiet the herdsman has to give them a calf to lick meanwhile. But for this device, not a single drop of milk can be obtained from them. One day a Llama herdsman, who lived in the same house as ourselves, came with a long dismal face to announce that his cow had calved during the night, and that, unfortunately, the calf was dying. It died in the course of the day. The Llama forthwith skinned the poor beast and stuffed it with hay. This proceeding surprised us at first, for the Llama had by no means the air of a man likely to give himself the luxury of a cabinet of natural history. When the operation was completed, we found that the hay-calf had neither feet nor head; whereupon it occurred to us that, after all, it was perhaps a pillow that the Llama contemplated. We were in error, but the error was not dissipated till the next morning, when our herdsman went to milk his cow. Seeing him issue forth, the pail in one hand and the hay-calf under the other arm, the fancy occurred to us to follow him. His first proceeding was to put the hay-calf down before the cow. He then turned to milk the cow herself. The mamma at first opened enormous eyes at her beloved infant; by degrees she stooped her head towards it, then smelt at it, sneezed three or four times, and at last proceeded to lick it with the most delightful tenderness. This spectacle grated against our sensibilities; it seemed to us that he who first invented this parody upon one of the most touching incidents in nature must have been a man without a heart. A somewhat burlesque circumstance occurred one day to modify the indignation with which this treachery inspired us. By dint of caressing and licking her little calf, the tender parent one fine morning unripped it. The hay issued from within, and the cow, manifesting not the slightest surprise nor agitation, proceeded tranquilly to devour the unexpected provender."

Are we surprised at the want of surprise on the part of the cow? Why should we be? What knows she of anatomy or of physiology? If she could think at all about the matter, she would, no doubt, have expected her calf to be composed of condensed milk. But failing that, why not hay? She had presumably some little experience of putting hay inside. Why not find hay inside; and, finding hay, why not enjoy the good provender thus provided? But clearly we must not expect the brutes to possess knowledge to which they cannot attain about matters which in no wise concern their daily life.

"In our estimates of the characters of animals," continues Mr. Hamerton, in his comments on this anecdote, "we always commit one of two mistakes—either we conclude that the beasts have great knowledge because they are so clever, or else we fancy that they must be stupid because they are so ignorant." "The main difficulty in conceiving the mental states of animals," says the same observer, "is that the moment we think of them as human, we are lost." Yes, but the pity of it is that we cannot think of them in any other terms than those of human consciousness. The only world of constructs that we know is the world constructed by man.

"To Newton and to Newton's dog, Diamond," said Carlyle, "what a different pair of universes! while the painting in the optical retina of both was most likely the same." Different, indeed; if we can be permitted, without extravagance, to speak of the universe as existing at all for Diamond, or allowed, except in hyperbole, to set side by side a conception of ultimate generality, like the universe, the summation of all conceptions, and "the painting in the optical retina." Carlyle's meaning is, however, clear enough. Given two different minds and the same facts, how different are the products! In the construct formed on sight of the simplest object, we give far more than we receive; and what we give is a special resultant of inheritance and individual acquisition. No two of us give quite the same in amount or in quality. It is not too much to say that for no two human beings is the world we live in quite the same. And if this be so of human-folk, how different must be the world of man from the world of the dog—the world of Newton from the world of Diamond!

And we must remember that it is not merely that the same world is differently mirrored in different minds, but that they are two different worlds. If there is any truth in what I have urged in the last chapter, we construct the world that we see. The sensations are, as we have seen, mental facts, in no sense resembling their causes, but representing them in mental symbolism. Percepts are the elaborated products of this mental symbolism. The question, then, is not—How does the world mirror itself in the mind of the dog? but rather—How far does the symbolic world of the dog resemble the symbolic world of man? How far is his symbolism the same as ours? Only by fully grasping the fact that the external world of objects does not exist independently of us (though something exists which we thus symbolize), shall we realize the greatness of the difficulty which stands in the path of the student of animal psychology. So long as we are content to accept John Bunyan's crude analogy of the gateways of sense, the difficulty is comparatively small. There is the outside world self-existent and independent; a knowledge of it comes into the mind through the five gateways of sense—a picture of it through the eye-gate, and so on. The dog has also five similar gateways. The world for him is, therefore, much the same as for us. But this is not a true analogy. The world we see around us is a joint product of an external existence, the independent nature of which we can never know, and the human mind. It is something we construct in mental symbolism. How far does the dog construct a similar world? The answer to this question must, as it seems to me, be largely speculative.

And what help have we towards answering it? That afforded by the theory of organic evolution. If we accept that theory, and accept also the view that mental or psychical products are the inseparable concomitants of certain organic or physiological processes, then we have a basis from which to start. That basis I adopt.

Unfortunately, we have at present but little particular knowledge of the correlation of psychical and physiological processes. We cannot, by the dissection of a brain, draw much in the way of valid and detailed inference as to the nature of the psychical processes which accompany its physiological action. Fortunately, however, on the other hand, there are certain physical manifestations which do aid us, and that not a little, in drawing inferences from the physical to the mental. For organisms exhibit certain activities, and from these activities we can infer to some extent the character of the mental processes by which they are prompted. We are wont, in observing the actions of our fellow-men, to draw conclusions (often, alas! erroneous) as to the mental processes which accompany them. We are ourselves active, and we are immediately conscious of the modes of consciousness which accompany our actions. Thus the activities of organisms give us some clue to their mental processes, and it is through observation of their physical activities that we gain nearly all that is of particular value concerning the mental activities of animals. These activities we shall have to consider more fully in a future chapter. In the present chapter we shall consider them only so far as they give us information concerning the perceptual world (or worlds) of animals, and the nature of the inferences which we may suppose animals to draw from the phenomena which fall within their observation.

I think that, from the fundamental identity of life-stuff, or protoplasm, in all forms of animal life, and from the observed similarity of nerves and nerve-cells when nervous tissue has been developed, and again from the essential resemblance of life-processes in all animal organisms, we are justified in believing that mental or conscious processes, when they emerge, are essentially similar in kind. Exactly when they do emerge in the ascending branches of the great tree of animal life it is exceedingly difficult, if not quite impossible, to determine. And it is, I fancy, quite impossible for us so to divest ourselves of the complexity of human consciousness as to imagine what the simplicity of the emergent consciousness in very lowly organisms is like. But I think that we may fairly believe that some dim form of discrimination is the germ from which the spreading tree of mind shall develop.[GE]

I assume, then, that, granting the theory of evolution, the early stages of the process of construction—discrimination, localization, and outward projection—are the same in kind throughout the whole range of animal life, wherever we are justified in surmising that psychical processes occur, and the power of registration and revival in memory has been established. As will be gathered, however, from what I have already said, I hold that the nature of the constructs produced is and must be for us human-folk, since we are human-folk, to a large extent a matter of speculation. Remembering this, then, endeavouring never to lose sight of it for a moment, let us consider what we may fairly surmise concerning the constructs and the process of construction in animals.

There can be no question that the animals nearest us in the scale of life—the higher mammalia—form constructs analogous to, if not closely resembling, ours. I do not think the resemblance can be in any sense close, seeing to how large an extent our constructs are literally our handi-work. For though in many animals the tongue and lips are delicate organs of touch—not to mention the trunk of the elephant—and though in the monkeys and many rodents the hands are used for grasping, still we have no reason to suppose that in any other mammal the geometrical sense of touch plays so determining a part in the formation of constructs as in man. On the other hand, in the dog and the deer, for example, not only must the marvellously acute sense of smell have a far higher suggestive value, but smells and odours must, one would suppose, be built into the constructs in a far larger proportion. But although their constructs may not closely resemble ours, the constructs of animals may, I believe, be fairly regarded as closely analogous to our own. And as with us, so with them, a comparatively simple and meagre suggestion may give rise, through association in experience, to the construction of a complex object. And again, as with us, so with them, the suggested construct may be very vague and indefinite.

A dog, for example, is lying asleep upon the mat, and hears an unfamiliar step in the porch without. There can be no question that this suggests the construct man. But from the very nature of the case, this must be vague and indefinite. So, too, when a chamois, bounding across the snow-fields, stops suddenly when he scents the distant footprints of the mountaineer, the construct that he forms cannot be in any way particularized—no more particularized than is to me the sheep that I hear bleating in the meadow behind yonder wall.

And no one is likely to question the fact that animals habitually proceed from this first stage—the formation of constructs by immediate association—to the second stage of construction—the defining of constructs by examination. In many of the deer tribe, notably the prong-horn of America, this tendency is so strongly developed that they may be lured to their destruction by setting up a strange and unfamiliar object which, as we put it, may excite their curiosity. A strange noise or appearance will make a dog uneasy until he has by examination satisfied himself of the nature of that which produces it. Of this an instance fell under my observation a few days ago. My cat was asleep on a chair, and my little son was blowing a toy horn. The cat, without moving, mewed uneasily. I told my boy to continue blowing. The cat grew more uneasy, and at last got up, stretched herself, and turned towards the source of discomfort. She stood looking at my boy for a minute as he blew. Then curling herself up, she went to sleep again, and no amount of blowing disturbed her further. Similarly, Mr. Romanes's dog was cowed at the sound of apples being shot on to the floor of a loft above the stable; but when he was taken to the place, and saw what gave rise to the sound, he ceased to be disquieted by it. Every one must have seen animals defining their constructs by examination. A monkey will spend hours in the examination of an old bottle or a bit of looking-glass. At the Zoological Gardens connected with the National Museum at Washington, a monkey was observed with a female opossum on his knee. He had discovered the slit-like opening of the marsupial pouch, and took out first one and then another of the young, looked them over carefully, and replaced them without injury.[GF]

There may possibly be some difference of opinion as to whether animals are able to infuse into their constructs of other animals the element of feeling. One would, perhaps, fain believe that the beasts of prey were wholly unaware of the pain they inflict on other organisms. But I question whether any close observer of animals could hold this view. Even if it were supposed that when two dogs fight they are blind to the pain they are inflicting on each other, their mock-fighting seems to imply a consciousness of the pain they might inflict, but avoid inflicting. And many of us have presumably had experiences analogous to the following: A favourite terrier of mine was once brought home to me so severely gashed in the abdominal region that I felt it necessary to sew up the wound. In his pain the poor dog turned round and seized my hand, but he checked himself before the teeth had closed upon me tightly, and piteously licked my hand. For myself, I cannot doubt that animals project into each other the shadows of the feelings of which they are themselves conscious.

The fact that dogs may be deceived by pictures[GG] shows that they may be led through the sense of sight to form false constructs, that is to say, constructs which examination shows to be false. Through my friend and colleague, Mr. A. P. Chattock, I am able to give a case in point. I quote from a letter received by Mr. Chattock: "Your father asks me to tell you about our old spaniel Dash and the picture. I remember it well, though it must be somewhere, about half a century ago. We had just unpacked and placed on the old square pianoforte, which then stood at the end of the dining-room, the well-known print of Landseer's 'A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society.' When Dash came into the room and caught sight of it, he rushed forward, and jumped on the chair which stood near, and then on the pianoforte in a moment, and then turned away with an expression, as it seemed to us, of supreme disgust."

I think we may say, then, that the higher animals are able to proceed a long way in the formation and definition of highly complex constructs analogous to, but probably differing somewhat from, those which we form ourselves. These constructs, moreover, through association with reconstructs or representations, link themselves in trains, so that a sensation or group of sensations may suggest a series of reconstructs or a series of remembered phenomena. We here approach the question of inferences, of which more anon. But in this connection passing reference may be made to the phenomena of dreaming. Dogs and some other animals undoubtedly seem to dream.

The nature of dreaming may, perhaps, be best illustrated by a rough analogy. Professor Clifford likened the human consciousness to a rope made up of a great number of occasionally interlacing strands. Let us picture such a rope floating in water. Much of it is submerged; only the upper part is visible at the surface. This upper part is like the series of mental phenomena of which we are distinctly conscious. Below this lie other series in the half-submerged state of subconsciousness. Deeper still lie unconscious physiological processes capable of emerging into the shadow of subconsciousness or the light of distinct consciousness. Now picture this rope gradually slipping round as it floats, so that now one part, now another, sees the light. This is analogous to the musing state, when we allow our thoughts to wander unchecked by any effort of attention. Attention is the faculty by which we steady the rope, so that one particular strand is kept continuously uppermost. The inattentive mind is one in which the rope keeps slipping round and refuses to be steadied in this manner; and in unquiet sleep, when the faculty of attention is dormant, the strands come quite irregularly and haphazard to the surface, and we have the phantasmagoria of dreams.

In the dog or the ape the rope is presumably incomparably simpler. But that it is of the nature of a rope we may, perhaps, not improbably surmise. Interest and the attention it commands steady the rope. Animals differ widely in their power of attention, as every one knows who has endeavoured to educate his pets. Darwin tells us that those who buy monkeys from the Zoological Gardens, to teach them to perform, will give a higher price if they are allowed a short time in which to select those in which the power of attention is most developed. And when animals dream, their consciousness-rope is slipping round unsteadily. That they do apparently dream is, so far, evidence of their possessing linked chains of memories.

In speaking of the faculty of attention in animals, it may be well to note that attention is of two kinds—perceptual or direct, and conceptual or indirect. In perceptual attention its motive is directly suggested by the object which stimulates this concentration of the faculties; a menacing dog, for example, stimulates my perceptual attention. In conceptual attention the motive is ulterior and indirect. The concentrated attention which a man devotes to the acquisition of Sanscrit does not arise directly out of the symbols over which he pores; it is of intellectual origin.

In the normal life of animals the attention is of the perceptual order; it is a direct stimulation of the faculties through a perceptual presentation of sense or representation in memory which gives rise to an appetence or aversion. The importance of such a faculty is obvious. As M. Ribot well says, it is no less than a condition of life. The carnivorous animal that had not its attention roused on sight of prey would stand but a poor chance of survival; the prey that had not its attention roused by the approach of its natural enemy would stand but a poor chance of escape. The emperor moth that had not its attention roused by the scent of the virgin female would stand but a poor chance of propagating its species.

We are not, however, at present in a position further to discuss this matter. For there is a factor in the process which we shall have to consider more fully hereafter—the emotional factor. The hungry lion is in a very different position, so far as attention is concerned, from the satiated animal. The force and volume of the attention depends not merely, or even mainly, upon the intensity of the stimulus, but on the emotional state of the recipient organism.

Endeavour to divert the attention of any animal which is intent upon some action connected with the main business of its life—nutrition, self-defence, or the propagation of the species—the force of attention will at once be obvious.

In the training of animals (and young children) artificial associations, pleasurable or painful, have to be established in connection with certain actions. Abnormal appetences and aversions have to be introduced into the mental constitution. In this process much depends on the plasticity of the constitution. In the absence of such plasticity it is impossible to establish new associations.

We have seen that words are arbitrary[GH] symbols, which we associate with objects, or qualities, or actions. Can animals, we may ask, form such arbitrary associations? There can be little question that they can. Many of the higher animals understand perfectly some of our words. The word "cat" or "rats" will suggest a construct to the dog on which he may take very vigorous action. How far they are able to communicate with each other is a somewhat doubtful matter. But the signs by which such communication is effected are probably far less arbitrary. And, in any case, the communication would seem to refer only to the here and the now. A dog may be able to suggest to his companion the fact that he has descried a worriable cat; but can a dog tell his neighbour of the delightful worry he enjoyed the day before yesterday?

I imagine that what a dog can suggest to his neighbour is what we symbolize by the simple expression "Come." But I am fully aware that other observers will interpret the facts in a different way. Here is an anecdote that is communicated to me by Mr. Robert Hall Warren, of Bristol. "My grandfather," he says, "a merchant of this city, or, as Thomas Poole, of Stowey, would have preferred calling him, 'a tradesman,' had two dogs, one a small one and another larger, who, being fierce, rejoiced in the appropriate name of Boxer. On one of his business journeys into Cornwall he took the smaller dog with him, and for some reason left it at an inn in Devonshire, promising to call for him on his return from Cornwall. When he did so, the landlord apologized for the absence of the dog, and said that, some time after my grandfather left, the little dog fought with the landlord's dog, and came off much the worse for the fight. He then disappeared, and some time afterwards returned with another and larger dog, who set upon his enemy, and, I think, killed him. Then the two dogs walked off, and were no more seen. From the description given, my grandfather had no doubt that the larger dog was Boxer, and, on returning home, found that the little dog had come back, and that both dogs had gone away, and, after a time, had returned home, where he found them." Now, some will say that the little dog told Boxer all about it; but I am inclined to believe that the facts may be explained by the communication "Come."

Dogs can also communicate their wishes to us. The action of begging in dogs is a mode of communication with us. Mr. Romanes tells of a dog that was found opposite a rabbit-hutch begging for rabbits. When I was at the Diocesan College near Capetown, a retriever, Scamp, used to come in and sit with the lecturers at supper. He despised bread, but used to get an occasional bone, which he was not, however, allowed to eat in the hall. He took it to the door, and stood there till it was opened for him. On one occasion he heard without the excited barking of the other dogs. He trotted round the hall, picked up a piece of bread which one of the boys had dropped, and stood with it in his mouth at the door. When it was opened, he dropped the bread, and raced off into the darkness to join in the fun. In a similar way, but with less marked intelligence, I have seen a dog begging before a door which he wished opened. My cat has been taught to touch the handle of the door with his paw when he wishes to leave the room. Mr. Arthur Lee, of Bristol, tells me that a favourite cat has a habit of knocking for admittance by raising the door-mat and letting it fall. This is an action similar to those communicated by several observers to Nature, where cats have learnt either to knock for admittance or to ring the bell—an action which, as my friend, Mr. J. Clifton Ward, informed me, was also performed by a dog of his. I think, therefore, that it is unquestionable that the higher animals are able to associate arbitrary signs with certain objects and actions, and to build these signs into the constructs that they form. Sir John Lubbock has tried some experiments with his intelligent black poodle Van, with the object of ascertaining how far the dog could be taught to communicate his wishes by means of printed cards. "I took," he says,[GI] "two pieces of cardboard, about ten inches by three, and on one of them printed in large letters the word 'FOOD,' leaving the other blank. I then placed the two cards over two saucers, and in the one under the 'Food' card put a little bread-and-milk, which Van, after having his attention called to the card, was allowed to eat. This was repeated over and over again till he had had enough. In about ten days he began to distinguish between the two cards. I then put them on the floor, and made him bring them to me, which he did readily enough. When he brought the plain card, I simply threw it back; while, when he brought the 'Food' card, I gave him a piece of bread, and in about a month he had pretty well learned to realize the difference. I then had some other cards printed with the words 'Out,' 'Tea,' 'Bone,' 'Water,' and a certain number also with words to which I did not intend him to attach any significance, such as 'Nought,' 'Plain,' 'Ball,' etc. Van soon learned that bringing a card was a request, and soon learned to distinguish between the plain and printed cards; it took him longer to realize the difference between words, but he gradually got to recognize several, such as 'Food,' 'Out,' 'Bone,' 'Tea,' etc. If he was asked whether he would like to go out for a walk, he would joyfully fish up the 'Out' card, choosing it from several others, and bring it to me or run with it in evident triumph to the door.

"A definite numerical statement always seems to me clearer and more satisfactory than a mere general assertion. I will, therefore, give the actual particulars of certain days. Twelve cards were put on the floor, one marked 'Food' and one 'Tea.' The others had more or less similar words. I may again add that every time a card was brought, another similarly marked was put in its place. Van was not pressed to bring cards, but simply left to do as he pleased.[GJ]

"Thus, out of 113 times, he brought 'Food' 80 times, 'Tea' 31 times, and [one out of] the other 10 cards only twice. Moreover, the last time he was wrong he brought a card—namely, 'Door'—in which three letters out of four were the same as in 'Food.'"

These experiments and observations are of great interest. But, of course, no stress whatever must be laid on the fact that words chanced to be printed on the cards instead of any other arrangements of lines. I draw attention to this because I have heard Sir John Lubbock's interesting experiments quoted, in conversation, as evidence that the dog understands the meaning of words, not only spoken, but written! What they show is that Van is able, under human guidance, to associate certain arbitrary symbols with certain objects of appetence; and, desiring the object, will bring its symbol. It would have been better, I think, because less misleading to the general public, had Sir John Lubbock selected other arbitrary symbols than the printed words we employ. Then no one could have run away with the foolish notion that the dog understands the meaning of these words. No doubt if they had been written in Greek or Hebrew, some people would have been interested, but not surprised, to learn that a dog can be taught to understand with perfect ease these languages!

The next question is—Have the higher animals the power of analyzing their constructs and forming isolates or abstract ideas of qualities apart from the constructs of which these qualities are elements? Can we say, with Mr. Romanes,[GK] "All the higher animals have general ideas of 'good-for-eating' and 'not-good-for-eating,' quite apart from any particular objects of which either of these qualities happens to be characteristic"? Or with Leroy,[GL] that a fox "will see snares when there are none; his imagination, distorted by fear, will produce deceptive shapes, to which he will attach an abstract notion of danger"?

Now, this is a most difficult question to answer. But it seems to me that, if we take the term "abstract idea" in the sense in which I have used the word "isolate," we must answer it firmly, but not dogmatically (this is the last subject in the world on which to dogmatize), in the negative. Fully admitting, nay, contending, that this is a matter in which it is exceedingly difficult to obtain anything like satisfactory evidence, I fail to see that we have any grounds for the assertion that the higher animals have abstract ideas of "good-for-eating" or "not-good-for-eating," quite apart from any particular objects of which either of these qualities happens to be characteristic.[GM]

The particular example is well chosen, since the idea of food is a dominant one in the mind of the brute. There can be no question that the quality of eatability is built in by the dog into a great number of his constructs. But I question whether this quality can be isolated by the dog, and can exist in his mind divorced from the eatables which suggest it. If it can, then the dog is capable of forming a concept as I have defined the term. I can quite understand that a hungry dog, prowling around for food, has, suggested by his hunger, vague representations in memory of things good to eat, in which the element of eatability is predominant and comparatively distinct, while the rest is vague and indistinct. And that this is a concept in Mr. Sully's use of the term, I admit. But it appears to me that there is a very great difference between a perceptual construct with eatability predominant and the rest vague, and a conceptual isolate or abstract idea of eatability quite apart from any object or objects of which this quality is characteristic. And to mark the difference, I venture to call the prominent quality a predominant as opposed to the isolate when the quality is floated off from the object. No doubt it is out of this perceptual prominence of one characteristic and vagueness of its accompaniments that conceptual isolation of this one characteristic has grown, as I believe, through the naming of predominants. But I should draw the line between the one and the other somewhere distinctly above the level of intelligence that is attained by any dumb animal. I am not prepared either to affirm or deny that this line should be drawn exactly between brute intelligence and human intelligence and reason, though I strongly incline to the view that it should. I am not sure that every savage and yokel is capable of isolation, that he raises the predominant to the level of the isolate, or abstract idea. I am not sure that these simple folk submit the phenomena of nature around them, and of their own mental states to analysis. But they have in language the instrument which can enable them to do so, even if individually some of them have not the faculty for using language for this purpose. That is, however, a different question. But I do not at present see satisfactory evidence of the fact that animals form isolates, and I think that the probability is that they are unable to do so. I am, therefore, prepared to say, with John Locke, that this abstraction "is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to."

I am anxious, however, not to exaggerate my divergence, more apparent, I believe, than real, from so able a student of animal psychology as Mr. Romanes. Let me, therefore, repeat that it is the power of analysis—the power of isolating qualities of objects, the power of forming "abstract ideas quite apart from the particular objects of which the particular qualities happen to be characteristic," as I understand these words—that I am unable to attribute to the brute. Animals can and do, I think, form predominants; they have not the power of isolation.

Furthermore, it seems to me that this capacity of analysis, isolation, and abstraction constitutes in the possessor a new mental departure, which we may describe as constituting, not merely a specific, but a generic difference from lower mental activities. I am not prepared, however, to say that there is a difference in kind between the mind of man and the mind of the dog. This would imply a difference in origin or a difference in the essential nature of its being. There is a great and marked difference in kind between the material processes which we call physiological and the mental processes we call psychical. They belong to wholly different orders of being. I see no reason for believing that mental processes in man differ thus in kind from mental processes in animals. But I do think that we have, in the introduction of the analytic faculty, so definite and marked a new departure that we should emphasize it by saying that the faculty of perception, in its various specific grades, differs generically from the faculty of conception. And believing, as I do, that conception is beyond the power of my favourite and clever dog, I am forced to believe that his mind differs generically from my own.

Passing now to the other vertebrates, the probabilities are that their perceptual processes are essentially similar to those of the higher animals; but, in so far as these creatures differ more and more widely from ourselves, we may, perhaps, fairly infer that their constructs are more and more different from ours. Still, the thrush that listens attentively on the lawn and hops around a particular spot must have a vague construct of the worm he hopes to have a more particular acquaintance with ere long. The cobra that I watched on the basal slopes of Table Mountain, and that raised his head and expanded his hood when I pitched a pebble on to the granite slope over which he was gliding, must have had a vague percept suggested thereby. The trout that leaps at your fly so soon as it touches the water must have a vague percept of an eatable insect which suggests his action. The carp[GN] that come to the sound of a bell must have, suggested by that sound, vague percepts of edible crumbs. And no one who has watched as a lad the fish swimming curiously round his bait can doubt that they are by examination defining their percepts, and drawing unsatisfactory inferences of a perceptual nature.

And here let us notice that the whole set of phenomena which have been described in previous chapters under the heads of recognition-marks, of warning coloration, and of mimicry, involve close and accurate powers of perception. Recognition-marks are developed for the special purpose of enabling the organisms concerned rapidly and accurately to form particular perceptual constructs. Of what use would warning coloration be if it did not serve to suggest to the percipient the disagreeable qualities with which it is associated? The very essence of the principle of mimicry is that misleading associations are suggested. Here a false construct, untrue to fact, that is to say, one that verification would prove to be false, is formed; just as a well-executed imitation orange, in china or in soap, may lead a child to form a false construct, one that is proved to be incorrect so soon as the suggestions of sight are submitted to verification by touch, smell, and taste.

No one who has carefully watched the habits of birds can have failed to notice how they submit a doubtful object to examination. Probably the avoidance of insects protected by warning colours is not perfectly instinctive. I have seen young birds, after some apparent hesitation, peck once or twice doubtfully at such insects. A young baboon with whom I experimented at the Cape seemed to have an undefined aversion to certain caterpillars, which he could not be induced to taste, though he smelt at them. Scorpions he darted at, twisted off the sting, and ate with greedy relish.

If nudibranchs and other marine invertebrates be protectively coloured, there must be corresponding perceptual powers in the fishes that are thus led to avoid them; for there seems to be definite avoidance, and not merely indifference. This, however, might be made the subject of further experiment, not only with fishes, but with other animals. I tried some chickens with currant-moth caterpillars, to each of which I tied with thread a large looper. Some of them would have nothing to do with the unwonted combination. But one persistently pecked at the looper, and tried to detach it from its fellow-prisoner. Though, on the whole, there was some tendency for aversion to the currant-moth caterpillar to overmaster the appetence for the looper, I was not altogether satisfied with the result of the experiment. But I think that if the protectively coloured larva had been regarded with mere indifference (i.e. neither aversion nor appetence), the appetence for the loopers should have made the chickens seize them at once.

To return to fishes. It is probably difficult or impossible for us to imagine what their constructs are like; but that they, too, proceed to define them by examination seems to be a legitimate inference from some of their actions. Mr. Bateson says, "The rockling searches [for food] by setting its filamentous pelvic fins at right angles to the body, and then swimming about, feeling with them. If the fins touch a piece of fish or other soft body, the rockling turns its head round and snaps it up with great quickness. It will even turn round and examine uneatable substances, as glass, etc., which come in contact with its fins, and which presumably seem to it to require explanation."[GO] And, speaking of the sole, the same observer says,[GP] "In searching for food the sole creeps about on the bottom by means of the fringe of fin-rays with which its body is edged, and, thus slowly moving, it raises its head upwards and sideways, and gently pats the ground at intervals, feeling the objects in its path with the peculiar viliform papillæ which cover the lower (left) side of its head and face. In this way it will examine the whole surface of the floor of the tank, stopping and going back to investigate pieces of stick, string, or other objects which it feels below its cheek."

If we admit the fact that carp come to be fed at the sound of a bell, we have evidence that some fishes can associate an arbitrary sound with the advent of things good to eat. But it is, perhaps, better at present to regard the fact as one requiring verification.

That some birds can associate arbitrary signs with their percepts will be admitted by all who have watched their habits. And from its peculiar and almost unique power of articulation, the parrot shows us that not only may the words suggest a construct, but that the sight of the construct may suggest the word that it has heard associated with the object by man. Mr. Romanes gives evidence which satisfies him that a parrot which had associated the word "bow-wow" with a particular dog, uttered this sound when another dog entered the room. The word was here suggested at sight, not of the same object, but of an object which the bird recognized as similar. A somewhat similar case is furnished by one of my own correspondents (Miss Mabel Westlake). "We left London," she says, "in December, 1888, and brought our grey parrot with us; but left behind with a friend our favourite cat, a dark tortoiseshell with a white breast, the forehead clearly marked with a division down the middle to the tip of the nose. This led to our calling her 'Demi.' For a week or two after our arrival in Bristol, a black-and-white cat belonging to the people formerly living here frequented the house. The parrot seemed delighted to see this cat, which was larger than our old cat, and called it Dem, as she had been accustomed to do in London. From that time until the commencement of January (1890), which was over a year, the parrot had not seen a cat that we are aware of, nor had we heard her call it for a long time. About six weeks ago, as I was coming along Kingsdown Parade, a large black kitten followed me home. We took it in and fed it. The next day it came into the room where the parrot was, and she immediately said 'Puss! puss! puss! Hullo, dear!' and during the day called it by the same name, 'Dem! Dem! Dem!' that she had called our cat in London."

We may here notice that, in most of the tricks which animals are taught to perform, the action is suggested by a form of words (or the tone and manner in which they are uttered). Mr. John G. Naish, J.P., of Ilfracombe,[GQ] has taught his cockatoo the following trick (I quote Mr. Naish's own words): "I give him a shilling, which he puts into the slit of a money-box. This is 'enlisting.' After that, I say to him, 'Will you die for the queen, like a loyal soldier?' Then he lies on his back, with his paws together, for as long as I hold up my finger. 'Now live for your master!' He takes hold of my finger and resumes his erect posture. Last year I took him into the street near my house, and collected on our 'Hospital Saturday.' He worked for more than an hour before he became impatient. And then he would do no more, but flung the coins over his head or at the giver in the funniest way. He went to sleep for a long time after that performance; and when he awoke and I took him, he covered my face with kisses, as if he was glad to find his bad dream was over." The weariness and failure to perform the trick when tired, and the long sleep which succeeded, are interesting points. What I wish especially to notice is, however, that the actions are suggested by certain forms of words; but that there is no evidence that the form of words is in any sense understood. When the onlooker sees a bird lie on its back when asked if it will die for the queen, and get up again when told to live for its master, he is apt to think that, since he understands the form of words, the bird must understand them too. But I am convinced that Mr. Naish's intelligent cockatoo could have been taught with equal ease to lie down at the command "Abracadabra," and to stand up again at "Hocus pocus." Tricks taught to animals involve the performing animal and the human onlooker. The form of words introduced is for the sake of the latter, not for the sake of the former.

So much has been written concerning the intelligence of the parrot, and so much has been said concerning its imitative power of speech, that I must say somewhat on this head. I have received from Miss Mildred Sturge, of Clifton, an interesting account of an African West Coast parrot which was possessed by Miss Tregelles, of Falmouth. This parrot used the phrases it had learnt appropriately in time and place. "At dinner, when he saw the vegetable-dishes, he generally said, 'Polly wants potato;' at tea he would say, 'Polly wants cake,' or 'Polly's sop,' or 'Polly's toast.' Our grandmother's house was not far from the station, and almost before people could hear it, Polly would announce, 'Grandmamma, the train is coming,' and presently the train would quietly go by. Besides repeating much poetry, Polly made new editions by putting lines together from different authors; but the remarkable thing was that he always got the right rhyme. One of his favourite mixtures was, 'Sing a song of sixpence' and 'I love little pussy.' One day my mother overheard—