

ANIMAL SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 57 



not appear that they suppose these things to be en- 

 dowed with life. It is, however, necessary in the 

 first place to distinguish two modes and stages in 

 this animation of things, one of which we may term 

 static, and the other dynamic. In the first instance, 

 the sentient subject remains tranquil at the very 

 moment when he vivifies the phenomenon or the 

 thing perceived ; while the act is accomplished with 

 so much animating force, and with an implicit and 

 fugitive consciousness, it exerto no immediate and 

 sudden influence on the perceiving animal, and con- 

 sequently he gives no external signs of the per- 

 sonifying character of his perception. In the second 

 instance, which we have termed dynamic, that is, 

 when the phenomenon or object has a direct and 

 sudden effect on the animal himself, he expresses by 

 his movements, gestures, cries, and other signs, how 

 instantaneously he considers and feels the object in 

 question to be alive, for he behaves in exactly the 

 same way towards real animals. 



Animals are accustomed to show such indiffer- 

 ence towards numerous objects that it might be 

 supposed that they have an accurate conception of 

 what is inanimate ; but this arises from habit, from 

 long experience, and partly also from the hereditary 

 disposition of the organism towards this habit. But 

 if the object should act in any unusual way, then the 

 animating process which, as we have just said, was 

 rendered static by its habitual exercise, again becomes 



