5i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tiling like a general idea of water, a pure (generic) image being 

 all that seems necessary. On the other hand, one is disposed, on 

 the evidence of the facts adduced by our author, to put the begin- 

 nings of the true generalizing process pretty low down. It cer- 

 tainly seems to be involved in the mental life of the ants, as 

 elicited by Sir John Lubbock's experiments, and described by Dr. 

 Romanes (p. 94 and following). And since these particular 

 actions plainly imply the use of signs, and apparently signs capa- 

 ble of indicating such abstract ideas as those of quantity, there 

 seems no reason why we should hesitate to call ants thinkers in 

 the sense of being able to form general notions. The same applies 

 to the mechanical inventions of the spider, described by Mr. Larkin 

 (p. 62). Similarly, it is difficult to deny the rudiment of " concept- 

 ual thought " to a fox who can reason on the matter of traps in 

 the way described by Leroy (p. 56), or to a dog that was cured of 

 his dread of imagined thunder by being shown the true cause of 

 the disturbing noise, viz., the shooting bags of apples on to a floor 

 (pp. 59, 60). No doubt there is a danger in straightway endowing 

 animals with mental qualities identical with our own, when their 

 actions resemble ours. There may, of course, be two psychological 

 explanations of the same action. We can not, however, escape ouiv 

 limitations, and, if we are to deal with animal ways at all, we are 

 bound to interpret them in terms of our own mental processes. 



The hesitation of the evolutionist to attribute rudimentary 

 thought to animals, in which Dr. Romanes evidently shares, is no 

 doubt due to the firmly established assumption that we generalize 

 by help of language. To the nominalist more especially it savors 

 of rank heresy to hint that animals apparently destitute of signs 

 may be capable of generalizing their perceptions and reaching a 

 dim consciousness of the distinction between the universal and the 

 particular. 



But is the nominalist's assumption that language is the indis- 

 pensable instrument of thought above challenge ? A considerable 

 part of Dr. Romanes's volume deals with the relations of thought 

 to language. He gives us a fairly good summary of the results of 

 research into the origin of language. It can not be said that these 

 throw much light on the question. Perhaps it is unreasonable to 

 expect that they should. Our author contends with some skill as 

 against Prof. Max Miiller that the earliest traces of human lan- 

 guage suggest a highly pictorial and non-conceptual mode of idea- 

 tion. And in his ingenious hypothetical account of the genealogy 

 of man as the articulate reasoner our author inclines to the idea 

 that, so far from language making the thinker, the endowment of 

 language has to be ingrafted on a high quality of intelligence, 

 and even then to undergo considerable development before it 

 becomes a mechanism for conceptual thought. 



