PuBNELL. — The Animal and Human Mind compared. 73 



actions of animals can be viewed. We may regard the ani- 

 mal — (1) As being mentally an automaton ; (2) as possess- 

 ing a mental constitution fundamentally different from man's, 

 but, since we are unable to conceive the precise nature of the 

 animal mind, we interpret it in terms of our own conscious- 

 ness ; (3) as possessing a mental constitution similar in some 

 respects to man's, but also containing elements not found in 

 the human mind ; (4) as possessing a mental constitution 

 fundamentally akin to man's, but differing in degree, and of a 

 lower type of development. 



The first view was advocated by Descartes ; but the stores 

 of information upon the subject of animal intelligence which 

 have been garnered during the last quarter of a century render 

 this theory so improbable that I think it is unnecessary to 

 discuss it. The second view is more debatable. The absolute 

 want of articulate language among the lower animals renders 

 it impossible for us to directly communicate with them except 

 by signs and tokens. A dog may learn to obey the spoken 

 order of its master — it may come to associate a certain sound 

 uttered by the latter with some act to be done — but its master 

 cannot acquire any knowledge of what is passing in the dog's 

 mind except by drawing inferences from the dog's actions ; 

 while these inferences are based upon the assumption that, if 

 a human being possessed the same kind of body and w^ere 

 placed in the same circumstances as the dog, that human 

 being would express certain feelings or ideas by the acts done 

 by the dog. A dog sees a friend approach and wags its tail ; 

 its master concludes that the dog is thereby expressing its 

 pleasure. Why ? Because the master unconsciously infers 

 that if he were the dog and wished to express pleasure he 

 would do so in that fashion. All our ideas about the animal 

 mind and the animal's actions are anthropomorphic, for the 

 simple reason that it is beyond our power in the present state 

 of our knowledge to summon up ideas of any other nature. 

 We even clothe our fellow-men with our own individuality. 

 None of us knows any other human being exactly as that 

 human being is. We construct our own mental image of 

 him. The late Professor Clifford described the mental 

 images thus formed as being "ejects" of the minds of the 

 persons forming them. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his 

 " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," has put the matter in a 

 less precise and scientific, but more easily comprehensible, 

 way when he says that in a dialogue between John and 

 Thomas there are three Johns taking part in it — (1) the real 

 John, known only to his Maker ; (2) John's ideal John, never 

 the real one, and often very unlike him ; and (3) Thomas's 

 ideal John, never the real John, nor John's John, but often 

 very unlike either. Hence it is not impossible that the 



