August 21, 1879J 



NATURE 



397 



1 nver faculties,^ we may, I think, more or less approximate to 

 Kucli a comprehension. 



It may, I believe, be affirmed that no animal but man has yet 

 l)een shown to exliibit true concerted action, or to express by 

 cxteraal signs distinct intellectual conceptions — processes of 

 which all men are normally capable. But just as some plants 

 simuUte the sense perception, voluntary motions and instincts of 

 animals, without there being a real identity between the activities 

 thus superficially similar, so there may well be in animals actions 

 simula.ing the intellectual apprehensions, ratiocinations, and voli- 

 tions of man without there being any necessary identity between 

 the actvities so superficially alike. More than this, it is certain, 

 <5 priori, that there must be such resemblance, since our organisa- 

 tion is iimilar to that of animals, and since sensations are at 

 least indispensable antecedents to the exercise of our intellectual 

 activit)'. 



I have no wish to ignore the marvellous powers of animals or 

 the resemblance of their actions to those of man. No one can 

 reasonably deny that many of them have ^feelings, emotions, 

 and sense-perceptions similar to our own; that they exercise 

 voluntary motion and perform actions grouped in complex ways 

 for definite ends ; that they to a certain extent learn by experi- 

 ence, and can combine perceptions and reminiscences so as to 

 draw practical inferences, directly apprehending objects standing 

 in different relations one to another, so that, in a sense, they may 

 be said to apprehend relations. They will show hesitation, end- 

 -ing apparently, after a conflict of desires, with what looks like 

 cho'.ce or volition, and such animals as the dog will not only ex- 

 hibii the most marvellous fidelity and affection, but will also 

 manifest evident signs of shame, which may seem the outcome 

 and iidication of incipient moral perceptions. It is no great 

 wonder, then, that so many persons, little given to patient 'and 

 careful introspection, should fail to perceive any radical distinc- 

 tions bitween a nature thus gifted and the intellectual nature of 

 man. 



But, unless I am greatly mistaken, the question can never be 

 answered by our observations of animals, unless we bear in 

 mind the distinctions between our own higher and lower 

 faculties, 



Now 1 cannot here even attempt to put before yon what I be- 

 lieve to be the true view of our own intellectual processes. Still 

 I may, perhaps, be permitted to make one or two passing 

 observations. 



Everybody knows Ills own vivid feelings (or sensations), and 

 those faint revivals of feelings, simple or complex, distinct or 

 confused, whidi are imaginations and emotions ; but the .same 

 cannot be said is to thought. Careful introspection will, how- 

 ever, I think, convince any one that a "thought" is a thing 

 widely different from an " imagination " — or revival of a cluster 

 of faint feelings. The simplest element of thought seems to me 

 to be a "judgment," with an intuition of reality concerning some 

 "fact," regarded as 1 fact real or ideal. Moreover, this judg- 

 ment is not itself a modified imagination, because the imagina- 

 tions which may give occasion to it persist unmodified in the 

 mind side by side with the judgment they have called up. Let 

 us take, as examples, the judgments "that thing is good to eat," 

 and ' ' notliing can be and not be at the same time and in the 

 same sense." As to the former, we vaguely imagine "things 

 good to eat," but they exist baide the judgment, not in it. They 

 can be recalled, compared, and seen to co-exist. So with the 

 other judgment, the mind is occupied with certain abstract ideas, 

 though the imagination has certain vague "images" answering 

 respectively to " a thing being" and "a thing not being," and 

 to "at the same lime" and "in the same sense;" but the 

 images do not constitute the judgment itself any more than 

 human "swimming" is made up of "limbs and fluid," though 

 without such necessary elements no such swimming could take 

 place. 



This distinction is also shown by the fact that one and the 

 same idea may be suggested to, and maiutaincd in, the mind by 

 the help of the most incongruous images, and very different ideas 

 by the very same image. This we may see to be the case with 

 such ideas as "number," "purpose," "motion," " identity," &c. 



* Certain writers (as, for example. Prof. Ew.ild Hering, of Prague) have 

 used the word '* memory" to denote what should properly be called " organic 

 habit," y.f., thepower and tendency which living beingF; have to perpetuate 

 in the future, effects wrought on them in the i>ast. Uut to call such action, as 

 that by which a tree as it grows, preserves the traces of scarn inflicted on it 

 years before, " memory," is a gross abuse of language — a use of the word as 

 unreasonable as would be the employrawit of the word "sculptor" to denote a 

 quarryman, or *' sculpture" to indicate the fractures made in rocks by the 

 action of water and frost. 



But the distinctness of "thought" from " imagination " may 

 perhaps be made clearer by the drawing out fully what we really 

 do .when we make some simple judgment, as, e.g., that "a 

 negro is black." Here, in the first place, we directly and ex- 

 plicitly affirm that there is a conformity between the external 

 thing, " a negro," and the external quality, "blackness" — the 

 negro possessing that quality. We afiftrm secondarily and im- 

 implicitly a conformity between the two external entities and the 

 two corresponding internal concepts. And thirdly, and lastly, 

 we also implicitly affirm the existence of a conformity between 

 the subjective judgment and the objective existence. 



All that it seems to me evident that sentience can do is to asso- 

 ciate feelings and images of sensible phenomena, variously re- 

 lated, in complex aggregations, but not to apprehend sensations 

 as "facts" at all, still less as internal facts, which are the signs 

 of external facts. It may be conceived as marking successions, 

 likenesses and unlikenesses of phenomena, but not as recog- 

 nising such phenomena as true. Animals, as I have fully ad- 

 mitted, apprehend things in different relations, but no one that I 

 know of has brought any evidence that they apprehend them as 

 related, or their relations as relations. A dog may feel shame, 

 or possibly (though I do not think probably) a migrating bird 

 may feel agony at the imagination of an abandoned brood ; but 

 these feelings have nothing in common w ith an ethical judgment, 

 such as that of an Australian, who, having held out his leg for 

 the punishment of spearing, judges that he is wounded more than 

 his common law warrants. 



Animals, it is notorious, act in ways in which they would not 

 act had they reason ; while, as far as I have observed or read, 

 all they do is explicable by the association of sensations, imagina- 

 tions, and emotions, such as take place in our own lower 

 faculties. We cannot, of course, prove a negative, but we have 

 no right to assume the existence of that for which there is no 

 evidence, without which all the facts can be explained, and 

 which, if it did exist, would make a multitude of ob.-erved facts 

 impossible. Apes (like dogs and cats) warm themselves with 

 pleasure at deserted fires, yet, though they see wood burning and 

 other wood lying by, though they have arms and hai.ds as we 

 have, and the same sentient faculties, they have never, so far as 

 I know, been recorded to have added fuel to maintain their corn- 

 sort. Swallows will continue to build on a house M'hich they 

 see has begun to be pulled down, and no animal can be shown 

 to have made use of antecedent experience to inientiotially im- 

 prove upon the past. 



If, on the other hand, animals were capable of deliberately 

 acting in concert, the effects would soon make themselves known 

 to us so forcibly as to prevent the possibility of mistake. 



Mr. Lewes has not hesitated to affu-m ^ that " between animal 

 and human intelligence there is a gap which can only be bridged 

 over by an addition from without," and he also says:^ "The 

 animal world is a continuum of smells, sights, touches, tastes, 

 pains, and pleasures : it has no objects, no laws, no distinguish- 

 able abstractions, such as self and not self. ... If we see a 

 bud, after we have learned that it is a bud, there is always a 

 glance forward at the flow er and backward at the seed • . • . 

 but what animal sees a bud at all except as a visible sign of 

 some other sensation ? " As a friend of mine. Prof. Clarke,' 

 has put it : " In ourselves sensations presently set the intellect 

 to work ; but to suppose that they do so in the dog is to beg the 

 question that the dog has an intellect. A cat to bestir itself to 

 obtain its scraps after dinner, need not entertain any belief that 

 the clattering of the plates when they are washed is usually 

 accompanied by the presence of food for it, and that to secure 

 its share it must make certain movements ; for quite independently 

 of such belief, and by virtue of mere association, the simple 

 objective conjunction of the previous sounds, movements, and 

 consequent sensations of taste, would suffice to set up the same 

 movements on the present occasion." Let certain sensations and 

 movements become associated, and then the former need not be 

 noted : they only need to exist for the association to produce its 

 effects, and simulate apprehension, deliberation, inference, and 

 volition. " When the circumstances of any present case differ 

 from those of any past experience, but imperfectly resemble 

 those of many past experiences, parts of these, and consequent 

 actions, are irregularly suggested by the laws of resemblance, 

 until some action is hit on which relieves pain o; gives iileasure. 

 For instance ... . let a dog be lost by his mi-tress m a field m 

 which he has never been before. The presence of the group of 



' "Problems of Life and Mind," vol. i. p. 156. 



' i,.£-., p. 140. s " Questions on Psychology, p. 9. 



