"Day1.Van brought 'Food'4times, 'Tea'2times.
"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"
——
8031

"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.