CHAP. XI.] 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GAT. 



373 



(12) A power of, on certain occasions, deliberately electing to act 

 (or to abstain from acting) either with, or in opposition to, 

 the resultant of involuntary attractions and repulsions — ivilL 



Now all the actions performed by the cat — all of which may be 

 grouped under one or other of the eighteen groups of the former * list 

 of faculties — are such as may be understood to take place without 

 deliberation or self-consciousness. For such action it is necessary, 

 indeed, that the animal should sensibly cognize external things, but 

 it is not necessary that it should intellectually perceive their being ; 

 that it should feel itself existing, but not recognize that existence ; 

 that it should feel relations between objects, but not that it should 

 apprehend them as relations ; that it should remember, but not 

 intentionally seek to recollect ; that it should feel and express 

 emotions, but not itself advert to them ; that it should seek the 

 pleasurable, but not that it should make the pleasurable its deliberate 

 aim. 



In fact, all the mental phenomena displayed by the cat, are 

 capable of explanation by the former list of psychical powers, with- 

 out the aid of any one of those enumerated in the above catalogue 

 of truly rational faculties,! nor could any of the former by any mere 



* In the second section of this chapter, 

 p. 370. 



t As a friend of mine, Professor Clarke, 

 has put it: — "In ourselves sensations 

 presently set the intellect to work ; but 

 to suppose that they do so in the dog is 

 to beg the question that the dog has an 

 intellect. A cat to bestir itself to obtain 

 its scraps after dinner, need not enter- 

 tain any belief that the clattering of 

 plates when they are washed is usually 

 accompanied by the presence of food for 

 it, and that to secure its share it must 

 make certain movements ; for quite 

 independently of such belief, and by 

 virtue of mere association, the simple 

 objective conjunction of the previous 

 sounds, movements, and consequent 

 sensations of taste, would suffice to set 

 up the same movements on the jsresent 

 occasion." Let certain sensations and 

 movements become associated, and then 

 the former need not be noted : they only 

 need to exist for the association to pro- 

 duce its effects, and stimulate appre- 

 hension, deliberation, inference, and 

 volition. "When the circumstances of 

 any present case diff'er from those of any 

 past experience, but imperfectly resemble 

 those of many past experiences, parts of 

 these, and consequent actions, are irregu- 

 larly suggested by the laws of resem- 

 blance, until some action is hit on which 

 relieves pain or gives pleasure. For 

 instance .... let a dog be lost by his 

 mistress in a field in which he has never 



been before. The presence of the group 

 of sensations which we know to in- 

 dicate his mistress is associated with 

 pleasure, and its absence with pain. By 

 past experience an association has been 

 formed between this feeling of pain and 

 such movements of the head as tend to 

 recover some part of that group, its 

 recovery being again associated with 

 movements which, dc facto, diminish the 

 distance between the dog and his mis- 

 tress. The dog, therefore, pricks up his 

 ears, raises his head and looks round. 

 His mistress is nowhere to be seen ; but 

 at the corner of the field there is visible 

 a gate at the end of a lane which re- 

 sembles a lane in which she has been 

 used to walk. A phantasm (or image) of 

 that other lane, and of his mistress walk- 

 ing there, presents itself to the imagina- 

 tion of the dog ; he runs to the present 

 lane, but on getting into it she is not 

 there. From the lane, however, he can 

 see a tree at the other side of which she 

 was wont to sit ; the same process is 

 repeated, but she is not to be found. 

 Having arrived at the tree, he thence 

 finds his way home." By the action of 

 such feelings, imaginations, and associa- 

 tions — which we know to be vcrce causce 

 —I believe all the apparently intelligent 

 actions of animals may be explained 

 without the need of calling in the help 

 of a power, the existence of which is in- 

 consistent with the mass, as a whole, of 

 the phenomena they exhibit. 



