LOGIC OF RECEPTS. 59 



obscurity is imported into this matter, by not considering in 

 what our own idea of causahty consists. It is clear that to 

 attain a general idea of causality as universal, &c., demands 

 higher powers of abstract thought than are possessed by any 

 animals, or even by the great majority of men ; but it is no 

 less clear that all men and most animals have a generic idea 

 of causality, in the sense of expecting uniform experience 

 under uniform conditions. A cat sees a man knock at the 

 knocker of a door, and observes that the door is afterwards 

 opened : remembering this, when she herself wants to get in 

 at that door, she jumps at the knocker, and waits for the 

 door to be opened.* Now, can it be denied that in this act 

 of inference, or imitation, or whatever name we choose to call 

 it, the cat perceives such an association between the knocking 

 and the opening as to feel that the former as antecedent was 

 in some way required to determine the latter as consequent } 

 And what is this but such a perception of causal relation as is 

 shown by a child who blows upon a watch to open the case — 

 thinking this to be the cause of the opening from the uniform 

 deception practised by its parent, — or of the savage who 

 plants nails and gunpowder to make them grow .■' And 

 endless illustrations of such a perception of causality might 

 be drawn from the everyday life of civilized man : indeed, 

 how seldom does any one of us wait to construct a general 

 proposition about causality in the abstract before we act on 

 our practical knowledge of it. And that this practical 

 knowledge in the case of animals enables them to form a 

 generic idea, or recept, of the equivalency between causes and 

 effects — such that a perceived equivalency is recognized by 

 them as an explanation — would appear to be rendered evident 

 by the following fact, which I carefully observed for the 

 express purpose of testing the question, I quote the incident 

 from an already-published lecture, which was given before 

 the British Association at Dublin, in 1878. 



" I had a setter dog which was greatly afraid of thunder. 

 One day a number of apples were being shot upon the 



* 'T)^q. Animal Intelligence, pp. 422-424. 



