Now, we must not underrate nor overrate the evidence afforded by parrot-talk. The rhyme-association is interesting; but since we cannot suppose that the poetry is more to the parrot than a linked series of sounds, there does not seem much evidence of intelligence here, though the evidence of memory is important. The correct association of words and phrases with appropriate objects and actions is of great interest. But the fact that they are words and phrases does not give them a higher value than that of imitative actions in the dog or other animal. What parrot-talk does give us evidence of is (1) remarkable powers of memory; (2) an almost unique power of articulation; (3) a great faculty of imitation; (4) and some intelligence in the association of certain linked sounds which we call phrases with certain objects or actions. The teaching of phrases to the parrot is certainly not more remarkable than the teaching of clever tricks to many birds. But the fact that word-sounds are articulated throws a glamour over these special tricks, and leads some people to speak of the parrot's using language, instead of saying that the parrot can imitate some of the sounds made by man, and can associate these sounds with certain objects.

Coming now to the invertebrates, much has been written concerning the psychology and intelligence of ants and bees. What shall we say concerning their constructs? For reasons already given, I think we may suppose that they are analogous to ours; but it can scarcely be that they in any way closely resemble ours. Their sense-organs are constructed on a different plan from ours; they have probably senses of which we are wholly ignorant. Is it conceivable, by any one who has grasped the principle of construction, that with these differently organized senses and these other senses than ours, the world they construct can much resemble the world we construct? Remember how largely our perceptual world is the product of our geometrical senses—of our delicate and accurate sense of touch, and of our binocular vision, with its delicate and accurate muscular adjustments. Remember how largely these muscular adjustments enter into our perceptual world as constructed in vision. And then remember, on the other hand, that the bee is encased in a hard skin (the chitinous exoskeleton), and that its tactile sensations are mainly excited by means of touch-hairs seated thereon. Remember its compound eye with mosaic vision, coarser by far than our retinal vision, and its ocelli of problematical value, and the complete absence of muscular adjustment in either the one or the other. Can we conceive that, with organs so different, anything like a similar perceptual world can be elaborated in the insect mind? I for one cannot. Admitting, therefore, that their perceptions may be fairly surmised to be analogous, that their world is the result of construction, I do not see how we can for one moment suppose that the perceptual world they construct can in any accurate sense be said to resemble ours. For all that, the processes of discrimination, localization, outward projection; the formation of vague constructs, their definition through experience, and the association of reconstructs or representations;—all these processes are presumably similar in kind to those of which we have evidence in ourselves.

In considering such organisms as ants and bees, however, we must be careful to avoid the error of supposing that, because they happen to have no backbones, they are necessarily low in the scale of life and intelligence. The tree of life has many branches, and, according to the theory of evolution, these divergent branches have been growing up side by side. There is no reason whatever why the bee and the ant, in their branch of life, should not have attained as high a development of structure and intelligence as the elephant or the dog in their branch of life. I do not say that they have. As it is difficult to compare their structure, in complexity and efficiency, with that of vertebrates, so is it difficult to compare their intelligence. The mere matter of size may have necessitated the condensation of intelligence into instinct in a far higher degree than was required in the big-brained mammals. Still, their intelligence, though of a different order and on a different plane, may well be as high. And Darwin has said that the so-called brain of the ant may perhaps be regarded as the most wonderful piece of matter in the world.

That ants have some power of communication seems to be proved by the interesting experiments of Sir John Lubbock. He found that they could carry information to the nest of the presence of larvæ, and that the greater the number of larvæ to be fetched, the greater the number of ants brought out to fetch them in a given time. On one occasion Sir John Lubbock put an ant to some larvæ. "She examined them carefully, and went home without taking one. At this time no other ants were out of the nest. In less than a minute she came out again with eight friends, and the little group made straight for the heap of larvæ. When they had gone two-thirds of the way, I imprisoned the marked ant; the others hesitated a few minutes, and then, with curious quickness, returned home." This is only one observation out of many; and it shows (1) that since the marked ant took no larva home, she must have given information which led the others to come out—unless we can suppose that the smell of the larvæ she had examined still hung about her; and (2) that the communication was not detailed, and probably was no more than "Come," for, when the leader of the party was removed, the rest knew not[GR] where to go—very possibly knew not why they had been summoned.

Passing now to creatures of lower organization, it is exceedingly difficult so to divest ourselves of our own special mental garments as to imagine what their simple and rudimentary constructs are like. Perhaps we may fairly surmise that, as visual, olfactory and auditory organs develop, and differentiate from a common basis of more simple sensation, the process of outward projection has its rudimentary inception. The earthworm, which finds its way to favourite food-stuffs buried in the earth in which it lives, would seem to possess the power of outward projection in a dim and possibly not very definite form. Through their marginal bodies—simple auditory or visual organs—the medusæ may have a rudimentary form of this capacity. In any case, they seem to have the power of localization. Mr. Romanes says,[GS] "A medusa being an umbrella-shaped animal, in which the whole of the surface of the handle and the whole of the concave surface of the umbrella is sensitive to all kinds of stimulation, if any point in the last-named surface is gently touched with a camel-hair brush or other soft (or hard) object, the handle or manubrium is (in the case of many species) immediately moved over to that point, in order to examine or brush away the foreign body." And the same author thus describes[GT] the process of discrimination in the sea-anemone: "I have observed that if a sea-anemone is placed in an aquarium tank, and allowed to fasten upon one side of the tank near the surface of the water, and if a jet of sea-water is made to play continuously and forcibly upon the anemone from above, the result, of course, is that the animal becomes surrounded by a turmoil of water and air-bubbles. Yet, after a short time, it becomes so accustomed to this turmoil that it will expand its tentacles in search of food, just as it does when placed in calm water. If now one of the expanded tentacles is gently touched with a solid body, all the others close around that body in just the same way as they would were they expanded in calm water. That is to say, the tentacles are able to discriminate between the stimulus which is supplied by the turmoil of the water, and that which is supplied by their contact with the solid body, and they respond to the latter stimulus notwithstanding that it is of incomparably less intensity than the former."

Here, in discrimination, we reach the lowest stage of mental activity. It is exceedingly difficult, however, to determine how far such simple responses to stimuli are merely organic, and how far there enters a psychological element.

I ought not, perhaps, to pass over in perfect silence the subject of protozoan psychology. M. Binet has published a little book on "The Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms," in the preface of which he says, "We could, if it were necessary, take every single one of the psychical faculties which M. Romanes reserves for animals more or less advanced on the zoological scale, and show that the greater part of these faculties belonged equally to micro-organisms." He says that "there is not a single infusory that cannot be frightened, and that does not manifest its fear by a rapid flight through the liquid of the preparation," and he speaks of infusoria fleeing "in all directions like a flock of frightened sheep." He attributes memory to Folliculina, and instinct "of great precision" to Difflugia. He regards some of these animalculæ as "endowed with memory and volition," and he describes the following stages:—

"1. The perception of the external object.

"2. The choice made between a number of objects.

"3. The perception of their position in space.

"4. Movements calculated either to approach the body and seize it or to flee from it."

But when we have got thus far, we are brought up by the following sentence: "We are not in a position to determine whether these various acts are accompanied by consciousness, or whether they follow as simple physiological processes." Since, therefore, the fear, memory, instinct, perception, and choice, spoken of by M. Binet, may be merely physiological processes (though, of course, they may be accompanied by some dim unimaginable form of consciousness), it seems scarcely necessary to say more about them here.

I have now said all that is necessary, and all that I think justified by the modest scope of this work, concerning the process of construction in animals, and the nature of the constructs we may presume that they form. The process I hold to be similar in kind throughout the animal kingdom wherever we may presume that it occurs at all. But the products of the process seem to me to be presumably widely different. If we steadily bear in mind the fact that the world of man is a joint product of an external existence and the human mind, and then ask whether it is conceivable that the joint products of this external existence and the dog-mind, the bird-mind, the fish-mind, the bee-mind, or the worm-mind are exactly or even closely similar, we must, it seems to me, answer the question with an emphatic negative.

We will now consider the nature of the inferences of animals. It will be remembered that a distinction was drawn between perceptual inferences and inferences involving a conceptual element. As I use the words, perceptual inferences are a matter, at most, of intelligence; but conceptual inferences involve the higher faculty of reason.

It will be necessary here to say somewhat more than I have already said concerning inference. When I see an orange, that object is mentally constructed at the bidding of certain sight-sensations. All that is actually received is the stimulus of the retinal elements; the rest is suggested and supplied by the activity of the mind. It is sometimes said that this complementary part of the perception is inferred. So, too, when I hear a howl in the street which suggests the construct dog, it may be said that I infer the presence of the dog. And again, when the dog is perceived to be in pain, it may be said that this is an inference. Now, although the use of the word "inference" to denote the complementary part of a percept seems a little contrary to ordinary usage, still there are some advantages in so—with due qualification—employing it. But since, as it seems to me, the characteristic of the inference, if so we style it, in the formation of constructs by immediate association is its unconscious nature (i.e. unconscious as a process) we may perhaps best meet the case by speaking of these as unconscious inferences. When the inference is not immediate and unconscious, but involves a more individual conscious act of the mind in the perceptual sphere, we may speak of it as intelligent; and when the inference can only be reached by analysis and the use of concepts, we may call it rational.

Defining, therefore, "inference" as the passing of the mind from something immediately given to something not given but suggested through association and experience, we have thus three stages of inference: (1) unconscious inference on immediate construction (perceptual); (2) intelligent inference, dealing with constructs and reconstructs (perceptual); and (3) rational inference, implying analysis and isolation (conceptual).

Concerning unconscious inferences in animals, I need add nothing to that which I have already said concerning the process of construction. It is concerning the intelligent inferences[GU] of animals that I have now to speak.

I do not propose here to bring forward a number of new observations on the highly intelligent actions which animals are capable of performing. Mr. Romanes has given us a most valuable collection of anecdotes on the subject in his volume on "Animal Intelligence." It is more to my purpose to discuss some of the more remarkable of these, and endeavour to get at the back of them, so as to estimate what are the mental processes involved. In doing so, the principle I adopt is to assume that the inferences are perceptual, unless there seem to be well-observed facts which necessitate the analysis of the phenomena, the formation of isolates, and therefore the employment of reason (as I have above defined it). In doing this, I shall seem to differ very widely from Mr. Romanes and other interpreters of animal habits and intelligence. But I believe that the divergence is less wide than it seems. I believe that it is largely, but I fear not entirely, a question of the terms we employ.

Why, then, rediscuss the question under these new terms? Because I believe that such rediscussion may place the matter in a fresh and, perhaps, clearer light. The question of the relation of animal intelligence to human reason is one upon which there is a good deal of disagreement, and one that has been discussed and rediscussed. I seek to put it in a somewhat new light. I have endeavoured to define carefully and accurately the terms I use, and the sense in which I use them. I have coined for my own purposes unfamiliar terms such as "construct," "isolate," and "predominant," that I might thereby be enabled to avoid the use of terms which, from the different senses in which they are employed by different writers, have become invested with a certain ambiguity. I trust, therefore, that even those with whom I seem most to disagree will allow that my aim has not been mere disputation, but scientific accuracy and precision in a difficult subject where these qualities are of essential importance.

I take first some observations communicated by Mr. H. L. Jenkins to Mr. Romanes, since, though they raise a point which we have already shortly considered, they form a transition from unconscious to perceptual inferences. Speaking of the intelligence of the elephant, Mr. Jenkins says,[GV] "What I particularly wish to observe is that there are good grounds for supposing that elephants possess abstract ideas; for instance, I think it is impossible to doubt that they acquire, through their own experience, notions of hardness and weight." He then details observations which show that elephants at first hand up things of all kinds to their mahouts with considerable force, but that after a time the soft articles are handed up rapidly and forcibly as before, but that hard and heavy things are handed up gently. "I have purposely," he says, "given elephants things to lift which they could never have seen before, and they were all handled in such a manner as to convince me that they recognized such qualities as hardness, sharpness, and weight."

Now, the question I wish here to ask is—Do the observations of Mr. Jenkins, the nature of which I have indicated, afford good or sufficient reasons for supposing that these animals possess abstract ideas? And I reply—That depends upon what is meant by abstract ideas. If it is implied that the abstract ideas are isolates; that is, qualities considered quite apart from the objects of which they are characteristic, I think not. But if Mr. Jenkins means that elephants, in a practical way, "recognize such qualities as hardness, sharpness, and weight" as predominant elements in the constructs they form, I am quite ready to agree with him. I much question, however, whether there is any conscious inference in the matter. The elephant sees a new object, and unconsciously and instinctively builds the element hardness or weight into the construct that he forms. And he shows his great intelligence by dealing in an appropriate manner with the object thus recognized. But I do not think any reasoning is required; that is to say, any process involving an analysis of the phenomena with subsequent synthesis, any introduction of the conceptual element.

Let us consider next an observation which shows a very high degree of perceptual intelligence on the part of the dog. Several observers have described dogs, which had occasion to swim across a stream, entering the water at such a point as to allow for the force of the current. And both Dr. Rae and Mr. Fothergill communicated to Mr. Romanes instances[GW] of the dog's observing whether the tide was ebbing or flowing, and acting accordingly. Now, I believe that the dog performs this action through intelligence, and that man explains it by reason. The dog has presumably had frequent experience of the effect of the stream in carrying him with it. He has been carried beyond the landing-place, and had bother with the mud; but when he has entered the stream higher up, he has nearly, if not quite, reached the landing-stage. His keen perceptions come to his aid, and he adjusts his action nicely to effect his purpose.

On the bank sits a young student watching him. He sees in the dog's action a problem, which he runs over rapidly in his mind. Velocity of stream, two miles an hour. Width, one-eighth of a mile. Dog takes ten minutes to swim one-eighth of a mile. Distance flowed by the stream in ten minutes, one-third of a mile. Clever dog that! He allows just about the right distance. A little short, though! Has rather a struggle at the end.

The dog intelligently performs the feat; the lad reasons it out.

I do not know whether I am making my point sufficiently clear. A wanton boy is constantly throwing stones at birds and all sorts of objects. He does not know much about the force of gravitation or the nature of the curve his stone marks out; but he allows pretty accurately for the fall of the stone during its passage through the air. He acquires a catapult; and, being an intelligent lad, he perceives that he must aim a little above the object he wishes to hit. This is a perceptual inference. Reason may subsequently step in and explain the matter, or very possibly, being human, sparks of reason fly around his intelligent action.

Am I using the word "reason" in an unnatural and forced sense? I think not. My use is in accord with the normal use of the word by educated people. Two men are working in the employ of a mechanical engineer. Listen to their employer as he describes them. "A most intelligent fellow is A; he does everything by rule of thumb; but he's wonderfully quick at perceiving the bearing of a new bit of work; he sees the right thing to do, though he cannot tell you why it should be done. Now, B is a very different man; he is slow, but he reasons everything out. A knows the right thing to do; and B can tell you why it must be done. A has the keenest intelligence, but B the clearest reasoning faculty. If I have occasion to question them about any mechanical contrivance, A says, 'Let me see it work;' but B says, 'Let me think it out.'"

In other words, A, the intelligent man, deals with phenomena as wholes, and his perceptual inferences are rapid and exact; while B, the reasoner, analyzes the phenomena, and draws conceptual inferences about them.

Let us take next Dr. Rae's[GX] most interesting description of the cunning of Arctic foxes. These clever animals, he tells us, soon learn to avoid the ordinary steel and wooden traps. The Hudson Bay trappers, therefore, set gun-traps. The bait is laid on the snow, and connected with the trigger of the gun by a string fifteen or twenty feet long, five or six inches of slack being left to allow for contraction from moisture. The fox, on taking up the bait, discharges the gun and is shot. But, after one or more foxes have been shot, the cunning beasts often adopt one of two devices. Either they gnaw through the string, and then take the bait; or they tunnel in the snow at right angles to the line of fire, and pull the bait downwards, thus discharging the gun, but remaining uninjured. This is regarded by Dr. Rae as a wonderful instance of "abstract reasoning."

Here, again, it is the "abstract reasoning" that I question. Do the clever foxes resemble the intelligent workman A, or the abstract reasoner B? I believe that their actions are the result of perceptual inferences. They adopt their cunning devices after one or more foxes have been shot. Their keen perceptions (let me repeat that the perceptions of wild animals are extraordinarily keen) lead them to see that this food, quiet as it seems, has to be taken with caution.

With regard to the devices adopted, I think we need further information. Do Arctic foxes tunnel in the snow for any other purposes? What is the proportion of those who adopt this device to those who gnaw through the string? Have careful and reliable observers watched the foxes? or are their actions, as described by Dr. Rae, inferences, on the part of the trappers, from the state of matters they found when they came round to examine their traps? Without fuller information on these points, it is undesirable to discuss the case further. Even if we had full details, however, we should be as little able to get at the process of perceptual inference in the case of the fox as we are in the case of the intelligent workman, who sees the right thing to do, but cannot tell you how he reached the conclusion.

No one can watch the actions of a clever dog without seeing how practical he is. He is carrying your stick in his mouth, and comes to a stile. A young puppy will go blundering with the stick against the stile, and, perhaps, go back home, or get through the bars and leave the stick behind. But practical experience has taught the clever dog better. He lays down the stick, takes it by one end, and draws it backwards through the opening at one side of the stile. A friend tells me of a dog which was carrying a basket of eggs. He came to a stile which he was accustomed to leap, poked his head through the stile, deposited the basket, ran back a few yards, took the stile at a bound, picked up the basket, and continued on his course. "Intelligent fellow!" I exclaim. "Yes," says my friend, "he knew the eggs would break if he attempted to leap with the basket!" This is just the little gratuitous, unwarrantable, human touch which is so often filled in, no doubt in perfect good faith, by the narrators of anecdotes. Against such interpolations we must be always on our guard. It is so difficult not to introduce a little dose of reason.

Mr. Romanes obtained from the Zoological Gardens at Regent's Park a very intelligent capuchin monkey, on which his sister made a series of most interesting and valuable observations. This monkey on one occasion got hold of a hearth-brush, and soon found the way to unscrew the handle. After long trial, he succeeded in screwing it in again, and throughout his efforts always turned the handle the right way for screwing. Having once succeeded, he unscrewed it and screwed it in again several times in succession, each time with greater ease. A month afterwards he unscrewed the knob of the fender and the bell-handle beside the mantelpiece. Commenting on these actions, Mr. Romanes speaks[GY] of "the keen satisfaction which this monkey displayed when he had succeeded in making any little discovery, such as that of the mechanical principle of the screw."

I once watched, near the little village of Ceres, in South Africa, a dung-beetle trundling his dung-ball over an uneven surface of sand. The ball chanced to roll into a sand hollow, from which the beetle in vain attempted to push it out. The sides were, however, too steep. Leaving the ball, he butted down the sand at one side of the hollow, so as to produce an inclined plane of much less angle, up which he then without difficulty pushed his unsavoury sphere.

Now, it seems to me that, if we say, with Mr. Romanes, that the brown capuchin discovered the principle of the screw, we must also say that the dung-beetle that I observed in South Africa was acquainted with the principle of the inclined plane. Such an expression, I contend, involves an unsatisfactory misuse of terms. A mechanical principle is a concept,[GZ] and as such, in my opinion, beyond the reach of the brute—monkey or beetle. That of which the monkey is capable is the perceptual recognition of the fact that certain actions performed in certain ways produce certain results. Why they do so he neither knows nor cares to know. What the brown capuchin discovered was not the principle of the screw, but that the action of screwing produced the results he desired—a very different matter. My friend, Mr. S. H. Swayne, tells me that the elephant at the Clifton Zoo, having taking a tennis-racket from a boy who had been plaguing him, broke it by leaning it against a step and deliberately stepping on it in the middle, where it was unsupported. A most intelligent action. And it would have been a capital piece of exercise for the lad's reasoning power, had he been required to analyze the matter, to show why the elephant's action had the desired effect, and set forth the principle involved. I do not think the elephant himself possesses the faculty requisite for such a piece of reasoning. He is content with the practical success of his actions; principles are beyond him.

I will now give two instances of intelligence in vertebrates which exemplify phases of inference somewhat different from those which we have so far considered. Mr. Watson, in his "Reasoning Power of Animals,"[HA] tells of an elephant which was suffering from eye-trouble, and nearly blind. A Dr. Webb operated on one eye, the animal being made to lie down for the purpose. The pain was intense, and the great beast uttered a terrific roar. But the effect was satisfactory, for the sight was partially restored. On the following day the elephant lay down of himself, and submitted quietly to a similar operation on the other eye. No doubt the elephant's action here was, in part, the result of its wonderful docility and training. But there was also probably the inference that, since Dr. Webb had already given him relief, he would do so again. The anticipation of relief outmastered the anticipation of immediate discomfort or pain. I do not think, however, that any one is likely to contend that any rational analysis of the phenomena is necessarily involved in the elephant's behaviour.

The other instance I will quote was communicated by Mr. George Bidie to Nature.[HB] He there gives an account of a favourite cat which, during his absence, was much plagued by two boys. About a week before his return the cat had kittens, which she hid from her tormentors behind the book-shelves in the library. But when he returned she took them one by one from this retreat, and carried them to the corner of his dressing-room where previous litters had been deposited and nursed. Here abnormal circumstances and the reign of anarchy and persecution forced her to adopt a hiding-place where she might bring forth her young; but the return of normal conditions, sovereignty, and order led her to take up her old quarters under the protection of her master. Now, look at the description I have given in explanation of her conduct. See how it bristles with conceptual terms: "abnormal," with its correlative "normal;" "anarchy and persecution," "protection" and "order." All this, I believe, is mine, and not the cat's. For her there was a practical perception, in the one case of plaguing boys, in the other case of protecting master; and her action was the direct outcome of these perceptions through the employment of her intelligence.

Some stress has been laid on the occasional use of tools by animals. Mr. Peal[HC] observed a young elephant select a bamboo stake, and utilize it for detaching a huge elephant-leech which had fixed itself beneath the animal's fore leg near the body. "Leech-scrapers are," he says, "used by every elephant daily." He also saw an elephant select and trim a shoot from the jungle, and use it as a switch for flapping off flies. How far, we may ask, do such actions imply "a conscious knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained"?[HD] That, again, depends upon how much or how little is implied in this phrase.

A boy picks up a stone and throws it at a bird; he comes home and unlocks the garden-gate with a key; he enters his room, and removes the large "Liddell and Scott" which he uses as a convenient object to keep the lid of his play-box shut; he opens the box, and cuts himself a slice of cake with his pocket-knife. Then he goes to his tutor, who is teaching him about means and ends, and their relation to each other. He is told that the throwing of the stone was the means by which the death of the bird, or the end, was to be accomplished; that the use of the knife was the means by which the end in view, the severance of a piece of cake, was to be effected, and so on. He is led to see that the employment of a great many different things, differing in all sorts of ways—stones, keys, lexicons, and knives—may be classified together as means; and that a great many various effects, the death of a bird or the cutting a bit of cake, may be regarded as ends. He is told that when he thinks of the means and the ends together, as means and end, he will be thinking of their relationship. And it is explained to him that means and ends and their relationships are concepts, and involve the exercise of his reasoning powers.

Weary and sick to death of concepts and relationships and reason, at length he escapes to the garden. Picking up a light stick, he sweeps off the heads of some peculiarly aggravating poppies, and determines to think no more of means and ends, continuing to use the stick meanwhile as a most appropriate means to the end of decapitating the poppies. By all which I mean to imply that there is a great difference between selecting and using a tool for an appropriate purpose, and possessing a conscious knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained. I do not think that any conception of means, or end, or relationship is possible to the brute. But I believe that the elephant can perceive that this stick will serve to remove that leech. And if this is what Mr. Romanes means by its possessing a conscious knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained, then I am, so far, at one with him in the interpretation of the facts, though I disagree with his mode of expressing them.

I do not propose to consider particular instances of intelligent inferences as displayed by the invertebrates. Bees in the manipulation of their comb, ants in the economy of their nest, spiders in the construction of their web and the use they make of their silken ropes, show powers of intelligent adaptation which cannot fail to excite our wonder and admiration. But apart from the fact that insect psychology is more largely conjectural than that of the more intelligent mammals, a consideration of these actions would only lead me to reiterate the opinion above frequently expressed. In a word, I regard the bees in their cells, the ants in their nests, the spiders in their webs, as workers of keen perceptions and a high order of practical intelligence. But I do not, as at present advised, believe that they reason upon the phenomena they deal with so cleverly. Intelligent they are; but not rational.

Once more, let me repeat that the sense in which I use the words "rational" and "reason" must be clearly understood and steadily borne in mind. Mr. Romanes uses them in a different sense. "Reason," he says,[HE] "is the faculty which is concerned in the intentional adaptation of means to ends. It therefore implies the conscious knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained, and may be exercised in adaptation to circumstances novel alike to the experience of the individual and to that of the species. In other words, it implies the power of perceiving analogies or ratios, and is in this sense equivalent to the term 'ratiocination,' or the faculty of deducing inferences from a perceived equivalency of relations. This latter is the only sense of the word that is strictly legitimate."

It is not my intention to criticize this use of the term "reason." Whether animals are capable of a conscious knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained, depends, as we have already seen, upon how much is implied by the word "knowledge"—whether the knowledge is perceptual or conceptual. My only care is to indicate what seem to me the advantages of the usage (legitimate or illegitimate) I adopt.

I repeat, then, that the introduction of the process of analysis appears to me to constitute a new departure in psychological evolution; that the process differs generically from the process of perceptual construction on which it is grafted. And I hold that, this being so, we should mark the departure in every way that we can. I mark it by a restriction of the word "intelligence" to the inferences formed in the field of perception; and the use of the word "reason" when conceptual analysis supervenes. Whether I am justified in so doing, whether my usage is legitimate or not, I must leave others to decide. But, adopting this usage, I see no grounds for believing that the conduct of animals, wonderfully intelligent as it is, is, in any instances known to me, rational.

I say that the introduction of the process of analysis appears to me to constitute a new departure. This, however, must not be construed to involve any breach of continuity.

I do not believe that there is or has been any such breach of continuity. Take a somewhat analogous case. I regard the introduction of aerial respiration in animal life as a new departure. Organisms which had hitherto been water-breathers became air-breathers. But I do not imagine that there was any breach of continuity in respiration. The tadpole begins life as a water-breather only; the frog into which he develops is an air-breather; but there is no breach of continuity between the one state and the other. So, too, the little child dwells in the perceptual sphere; the man into whom he develops is capable of conceptual thought; but there is no breach of continuity in the mental life of the child. It is true that, with all our talk on the subject, we cannot say exactly when in this continuous mental life the new departure is made. But this is no proof whatever that there is no new departure. In a sigmoidal curve there is a new departure where the convex passes into the concave. We may find it difficult to mark the exact point of change. But that does not invalidate the fact that the change does actually take place.

If I be asked how, in the course of mental evolution, the new departure was rendered possible, I reply—Through language. The first step was, I imagine, the naming of predominants. If Noiré and Professor Max Müller be correct in their views, language took its origin in the association of an uttered sound with certain human activities. The action thus named was, so to speak, floated off by its sign. By diacritical marks attached to the word, the agent, the action, and the object of the action were distinguished, and thus came to be differentiated the one from the other. Inseparable in fact, they came henceforth to be separable in thought. Here was analysis in the germ. The action or activity was isolated, and henceforth stood forth as an element in abstract thought. All the busy world around was interpreted in terms of activities. The host of heaven and all the powers of earth were named according to their predominant activities. The moon became the measurer, the sun the shining one, the wind the one who bloweth, the fire the purifier, and so forth. Our verbs and nouns, then, being named predominants (agents, actions, or objects), adjectives and adverbs were subsequently introduced to qualify these by naming a quality less predominant, or to indicate the how, the when, and the where.

When once the different activities and different qualities came to be named or symbolized, they were, as I say, floated off from the agents or objects, and through isolation entered the conceptual sphere. The named predominant became an isolate. Body and mind became separable in thought; the self was differentiated from the not-self; the mind was turned inwards upon itself through the isolation of its varying phases; and the consciousness of the brute became the self-consciousness of man.

Language, and the analytical faculty it renders possible, differentiates man from the brute. "If a brute," says Mr. Mivart,[HF] "could think 'is,' brute and man would be brothers. 'Is' as the copula of a judgment implies the mental separation and recombination of two terms that only exist united in nature, and can, therefore, never have impressed the sense except as one thing. And 'is,' considered as a substantive verb, as in the example, 'This man is,' contains in itself the application of the copula of judgment to the most elementary of all abstractions—'thing' or 'something.' Yet if a being has the power of thinking 'thing' or 'something,' it has the power of transcending space and time by dividing or decomposing the phenomenally one. Here is the point where instinct [intelligence] ends and reason begins." I regard this as one of the truest and most pregnant sentences that Mr. Mivart has written.

And when once the Logos had entered into the mind of man, and made him man, it slowly but surely permeated his whole mental being. Hence language is not only involved in our concepts, but also in our percepts, in so far as they are ours. Professor Max Müller goes so far as to question whether an unnamed percept is possible. And adult intellectual man is so permeated by the Logos that I am not prepared to disagree with him when he says that he has no unnamed perceptions. Nevertheless, the actions of the speechless child and our dumb companions show that they (children and animals) are capable of forming mental products of the perceptual order. But here, once more, we must not forget that it is in terms of these adult human percepts that we interpret the percepts of children and animals; that in doing so we cannot divest ourselves of the garment of our conceptual thought, that we cannot banish the Logos, and that, therefore, these percepts other than ours cannot be identical with ours, though they are of the same order, saving their conceptual element. We may put the matter thus—

If the views that I have thus very briefly sketched (for I have no right to offer an opinion on a question of linguistic science) be correct, language has made analysis, isolation, and conceptual thought possible. But there may have been a transitory stage when the word-signs stood for predominants, not yet for isolates. Granting the possibility or probability of this, I am prepared to follow Professor Max Müller in his contention that language and thought, from the close of that stage onward, are practically inseparable, and have advanced hand-in-hand. It is true that I can now think out a chemical or physical problem without the use of words—the stages of the experimental work being visualized, just as a chess-player may think out a game in pictures of the successive moves. But, historically, I believe the power to do this has been acquired through language; and if I am able temporarily to isolate and analyze without language, thought being at times a little ahead of naming, yet the fact remains that language is absolutely necessary to make such advances good, if not for me, at any rate for man.

And here I would make one more suggestion. Professor Max Müller, as the result of analysis of the Aryan language, finds a comparatively small number of roots which he says are in all cases symbolic of concepts. Yes, for us now they symbolize concepts. But in their inception may they not have been symbolic of predominants? Have we not in them the signs for predominants not yet converted for the primitive utterers into isolates? May not these have been the stepping-stones from the perceptual predominants of animal man, to the conceptual isolates of rational man? Or, to modify the analogy, may they not have been the embryonic wings by which the human race were floated off from the things of sense into the free but tenuous air of abstract thought?

Lastly, before taking leave of the subject of this chapter, I am most anxious that it should not be thought that, in contending that intelligence is not reason, I wish in any way to disparage intelligence. Nine-tenths at least of the actions of average men are intelligent and not rational. Do we not all of us know hundreds of practical men who are in the highest degree intelligent, but in whom the rational, analytic faculty is but little developed? Is it any injustice to the brutes to contend that their inferences are of the same order as those of these excellent practical folk? In any case, no such injustice is intended; and if I deny them self-consciousness and reason, I grant to the higher animals perceptions of marvellous acuteness and intelligent inferences of wonderful accuracy and precision—intelligent inferences in some cases, no doubt, more perfect even than those of man, who is often distracted by many thoughts.