

CHAP. XL] THE PSYCHOLOGY OP THE CAT. 385 



various feelings and emotions which make up its mental powers. 

 Common sense is right, then, when it says " the cat sees, the cat hears, 

 the cat feels, the cat runs, plays, hunts/* &c. ; for it is the whole living 

 organism which does all these things, and not merely its hrain, 

 muscles, or any portion of that inseparable unity of which it consists. 

 Moreover, it is the invisible, immaterial entity which ever escapes 

 our senses but which is visible to our reason, which is more truly and 

 emphatically THE CAT ITSELF, than is the matter of which it is com- 

 posed. The energy, direction, and control belong to it, and without 

 it the cat is not. The dead body of the cat we may anatomise at 

 will, but the animal itself being dead has no existence, any more 

 than a " corpse " is a " dead man/' 



The dead body of a man is a perfectly correct expression, but to 

 speak of a dead man, a dead cat, or a dead bird, though, of course, 

 fully permissible in popular speech, is really and philosophically to use 

 an expression as self- contradictory as it would be to say a " dead 

 living creature." 



16. The difficulty which some readers may possibly feel in 

 conceiving the real existence of a distinct and substantial but (in 

 itself ) immaterial entity subsisting indivisibly as an innate principle 

 in every living organism, is due rather to the prejudice induced by 

 a popular tendency than to any reason which can be logically urged 

 against it. " Sensationalism " is the vice of the day which tends to 

 degrade our art and literature as well as our science. We see it 

 welcomed on the stage by crowds of sympathetic auditors, and this 

 craving of our lower impulses is copiously fed by the less scrupulous 

 of our novelists. 



Although it is the special dignity and prerogative of man, amongst 

 animals, to apprehend the abstract and ideal, his tendency too often 

 is to repose in what is at once concrete and material. In the 

 field of speculation, we recognize this materialistic tendency in 

 those who refuse to recognize intellectual truths which cannot be 

 verified by sense, and who forget that reason, not sense, is our 

 ultimate criterion, and that it is the office of reason to criticise, and 

 accept or reject the apparent testimony of the senses. 



Reaction from this irrational tendency has given rise, and gives 

 rise, to a directly opposite conception. Thinkers who see clearly 

 how often the essential nature of each object is misunderstood 

 because it is sought for only in matter, loudly proclaim that the 

 essence of everything is an " idea," and thus, in seeking to escape 

 from materialism, fall into the error of idealism. 



Scientific truth, it is here contended, lies between these two 

 opposite errors. It recognizes, with the first school, that the essences 

 of living organism are not ideas but substantial realities. It also 

 recognizes, with the second school, that such realities are not mere 

 agglomerations of matter, but are the expression of an immaterial 

 principle. It recognizes, in a word, that the dominant constituent 

 of every living organic being is neither material nor ideal, but an 

 IMMATERIAL REALITY which the reason can apprehend and recog- 

 nize as necessarily present, but which the imagination can never 



o c 



