10 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE 
too much, and of assuming that in the mental life of 
the great mass of mankind there enter more of 
those higher intellectual processes (conceivable and 
possible at times) than there really are even among 
civilised men, not to mention the savage at all? We 
hardly realise, I fear, in how narrow a groove many 
minds move for the greater part of the waking period 
of every day; and this will hold, whether we take the 
case of those whose lives are one monotonous grind, or 
those who limit their thinking by devotion to some 
one simple but absorbing. pursuit. 
Let me illustrate by the case of a student who is 
passionately devoted to cycling. I know of one such 
case. His father is a professor, and in speaking of his 
son’s absorption in this subject to the neglect of his 
studies, he expressed himself somewhat thus: “I would 
not mind if my son spent a couple of hours a day on 
the bicycle, and would forget it for the rest of the time ; 
but wherever he is, he seems to think of almost nothing 
else, hence he cannot study successfully.” Probably 
you can call up pretty well the condition of the mind 
of this youth. He sees bicycles, he feels bicycles, he 
beholds race-tracks and crowds, he hears applause, he 
receives prizes in imagination, etc., etc., and this over 
and over again with little variation. You might con- 
struct a diagram giving a representation of the probable 
thought relations in his case, seeing he lives in a 
realm of “sense-experience,” one in which the percep- 
tion of relations only occasionally enters, if we are by 
this to mean such perception as is impossible to the 
dog. 
Indeed, how much is there in such mental states 
that is impossible to the dog? If for cycling we sub- 
stitute hunting, the case will be clearer. Do you think 
that the pictures of the hunting-field on which the man 
feasts, differ much from those the dog calls up ? 
