MENTAL FACULTIES 



ments as I took off one garment after another. At first this 

 curiosity was an agreeable one : something like the pleasure of 

 having a certain degree of comprehension of what was going on 

 was expressed in the repeated nodding of his head, in the droll 

 oblique turning of one side of it to the object of his attention 

 with an upward look, which is a well-known attitude in young 

 dogs. But when I proceeded further in my operations, and 

 was about to take off my shirt, I saw signs of agitation and fear 

 appear in the dog ; once or twice he suddenly drooped his 

 ears, hitherto erect, and turned his head as if to run away, then 

 took courage to remain longer. These signs of anxiety gave 

 place to the greatest terror when I had thrown off my shirt ; 

 the dog looked at me for a moment in horror, but when I went 

 into the water and more and more of me was covered, so that 

 perhaps I seemed to him to grow smaller, or to vanish, the 

 prodigy was too much for him, he suddenly laid his ears back, 

 drew his tail between his legs, and ran as fast as he could run 

 inland from the place. When shortly after I appeared again 

 in my clothes near the house, the dog looked at me from afar 

 with the greatest distrust, and afterwards took care to keep out 

 of my way. The whole occurrence gave me the impression 

 that the dog was terrified at the appearance, to him previously 

 unknown, of an almost unclothed and afterwards naked man, 

 and that he did not give way to panic from the first, before I 

 went into the water, because he had not yet drawn the 

 conclusion that he had to do with a spectre. 



This case proves how cautiously the idea of instinctive fear 

 must be used, at least in the sense of fear of definite objects. 

 The dog was afraid of something which he had never yet seen, 

 because it appeared to him incomprehensible, mysterious, 

 ghostly. Such a condition in an animal still further deserves 

 notice, because the possibility of forming supersensuous con- 

 ceptions is intimately connected with it, and because it may 

 accordingly be suspected that animals are endowed with this 



