386 



THE CAT. 



[chap. XI. 



picture, for the simple reason that no reality of the kind can, from 

 its very nature, be the object of sensible experience. 



Such an immaterial reality is that indivisible, active principle or 

 individual force, which was called Psyche by Aristotle, and which 

 we may call " soul " or " form," in the sense of an individual living 

 principle, absolutely one with the body it informs. 



§ 17. In order to make clearer what has been pointed out, it 

 may be well to define more distinctly certain terms. 



The psyche or soul, then, is that principle of individuation which 

 makes the animal what it is, though it has no actual existence apart 

 from the matter it vivifies. Yet it is the animal par excellence, the 

 matter of Avhich it is composed being but the subordinate part of 

 that compound but indissoluble unity — the living animal. 



The action of the psyche includes every vital action of the 

 organism of whatsoever kind, each and every such action being a 

 " psi/chosis " of one kind or another. 



The specially animal activity of the organism — anmal psychosis — 

 is the sum of all those activities to which the nervous system minis- 

 ters. Every such activity — every activity of living, neural matter — 

 is a neural psj/chosis, and ends in a feeling, a secretion or a motion. 

 Neural psychosis then may be either felt or unfelt, and amongst the 

 felt actions of the kind, are all sensations, memories, imaginations, 

 emotions and felt impulses tending to result in action, and those 

 practical inferences before referred to. The sum of felt, neural 

 psychoses in the cat, is the so-called " cai-mind " or si/nesthesis, and 

 every felt neural psychosis is a synesthetic or so-called "mental" act.* 

 The remaining, or vegetative activities of the organism — vegetal 

 2')sychosis — is the sum of all those activities which result in nutrition 

 and generation — the maintenance of the individual organism and 

 the reproduction of new individuals. This form of psychosis exists 

 by itself in plants, but in the animal organism is most intimately 

 united with animal psychosis. It is so because, as we have seen in 

 the cat, the nervous system ministers to nutrition and to repro- 

 duction as well as to feeling and to motion. The animal and 

 vegetal psychoses arc thus intimately united because the cat, being a 

 true unity, can have but one principle of individuation — or psyche — 

 which must therefore be the agent of all the vegetative as well as 

 of all the animal psychoses which take place in it. 



§ 18. Such being the principle of individuation as made known 

 to us in the adult animal, what are we to say of it in the earlier 

 stages of the cat's existence ? 



* The terms "mind" and "mental 

 act " are not, of course, pro])orIy applic- 

 able to tile felt neural ])sycliosis of tlic 

 cat or of any unrational animal. They 

 arc here merely employed analogically 

 in deference to popular usage. 



The " mind " pro])erly denotes the ])hc- 

 nomcna of our consciousness — the rational 

 soul energizing both corporeally and con- 

 sciously. Such action cannot take place 



without the aid of neural psychosis to 

 furnish the images or i)hantasmata need- 

 ful for all human mental action ; but 

 though so aided, the action itself is 

 jnirely immaterial. The sum-total of 

 the mental action of a rational animal 

 may be called its nucsis, which will be 

 the analogue of the syiusthcsis or sum- 

 total of the felt neural psychoses of au 

 irrational animal. 



