CHAPTER IX.

MENTAL PROCESSES IN ANIMALS: THEIR POWERS OF PERCEPTION AND INTELLIGENCE.

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]

"Day 1. Van brought 'Food' 4 times, 'Tea' 2 times. " 2. " " 6 " " 3. " " 8 " " 2 " " 4. " " 7 " " 3 " " 5. " " 6 " " 4 " " 6. " " 6 " " 3 " 'Nought' once. " 7. " " 8 " " 2 " " 8. " " 5 " " 3 " " 9. " " 4 " " 2 " " 10. " " 10 " " 4 " 'Door' once. " 11. " " 10 " " 3 " " 12. " " 6 " " 3 " -- -- 80 31

"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--

"'Four and twenty blackbirds, When they die, Go to that world above, Baked in a pie.'"

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--

(1) _x_ × dog-mind } { Percepts to be interpreted in terms (2) _x_ × cat-mind } = { of (4), being analogous thereto but (3) _x_ × infant-mind } { not identical therewith.

(4) _x_ × adult human mind = the percepts of psychologists, named or namable.

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.

NOTES

[GD] "Chapters on Animals," p. 9.

[GE] Or perhaps we may say, in the language of analogy, that when the germinal psychoplasm of some dim form of organic memory is fertilized by the union therewith of the more active male element of discrimination, a process of segmentation of the psychoplasm sets in by which, in process of differentiation, the tissues and organs of the mind are eventually developed.

[GF] _Nature_, vol. xxxviii. p. 257.

[GG] For examples, see Romanes's "Animal Intelligence," p. 455.

[GH] I use the word "arbitrary" in the sense that they form no part of the normal construct such as would be formed by the animal.

[GI] "The Senses of Animals," p. 277.

[GJ] As I understand the observations here tabulated, the twelve cards lay always within Van's reach and sight. An ordinary untrained dog would have taken no notice of them. But Van, when he wanted food or tea, went and fetched the appropriate card, and got what he wanted in exchange. In twelve days he only made two mistakes, bringing "Nought" once and "Door" once.

[GK] "Mental Evolution in Man," p. 27.

[GL] "Intelligence of Animals," p. 121.

[GM] Mr. Romanes also says ("Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 235), "This abstract idea of ownership is well developed in many if not in most dogs." By an abstract idea of ownership I understand a conception of ownership which, to modify Mr. Romanes's phrase, is quite apart from any objects or persons of which such ownership happens to be characteristic. Even if we believe that a dog can regard this or that man as his owner, or this or that object as his master's property, still even this seems to me a very different thing from his possessing an abstract idea of ownership.

[GN] Doubt has recently been thrown on this fact. Mr. Bateson has shown that some fishes do not hear well, and has suggested that the carp may be attracted by seeing people come to the edge of the pond.

[GO] Journal of Marine Biological Association, New Series, vol. i. No. 2, p. 214. I should not myself have used the word "explanation."

[GP] Ibid. vol. i. No. 3, p. 240.

[GQ] I have to thank this gentleman for a most interesting account of the intelligence of his favourite bird.

[GR] Professor Max Müller suggests to me that perhaps the ants were frightened.

[GS] "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 82.

[GT] Ibid. p. 48.

[GU] These fall under the "practical intelligence" of Mr. Mivart. All their intelligent activities, in his view, are performed by the exercise of merely sensitive faculties, through their "consentience." I agree to so large an extent with Mr. Mivart in his estimate of animal intelligence, and in his psychological treatment, that I the more regret our wide divergence when we come to the philosophy of the subject. I am with him in believing that conception and perception, in the sense he uses the words, are beyond the reach of the brute. But I see no reason to suppose that these higher faculties differ _in kind_ from the lower faculties possessed by animals. They differ generically, but not in kind. I believe that, through the aid of language, the higher faculties have been developed and evolved from the lower faculties. Here, therefore, I have to part company from Mr. Mivart.

[GV] Romanes, "Animal Intelligence," p. 401.

[GW] "Animal Intelligence," p. 465.

[GX] "Animal Intelligence," p. 430; and _Nature_, vol. xix. p. 409.

[GY] "Animal Intelligence," p. 497.

[GZ] Mr. Romanes regards it as, in the case of the capuchin, a _recept_. But when he speaks of a generic idea of causation, and generic ideas of principles, and of qualities as recepts, I find it exceedingly difficult to follow him. They seem to me to be concepts supposed to be formed in the absence of language.

[HA] Page 54.

[HB] Vol. xx. p. 96.

[HC] _Nature_, vol. xxi. p. 34.

[HD] Romanes, "Animal Intelligence," p. 17: Definition of _reason_.

[HE] "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 318.

[HF] "Lessons from Nature," pp. 226, 227.