General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 81 



red, we would rightly say thai he acts only from instinct; 

 he acts like an irrational animal would act which feels 

 pleasure at the sight of red things. But there are no 

 such savages; their existence is a mere fiction. Even 

 the most uncivilized human being takes an essential step 

 further in his mental activity. He recognizes the red 

 :t as a cloth or as glass beads, as a piece of clothing 

 or an ornament, as an object of trade or barter; he 

 knows its real or presumed value, he recognizes its pur- 

 pose. He thus distinguishes between the red color and 

 the object, between the object and its owner; he discerns 

 means and ends; in short, he perceives the relations of 

 the objects of his sense perceptions to one another and 

 to himself, he compares these relations and draws his 

 conclusions to which he adapts his mode of action. The 

 abstract perception of relations, however, essentially pre- 

 supposes a mental power of abstraction. We have evi- 

 dently much more than an instinctive combination of 

 concrete sense representations and feelings. 



For the sake of comparison let us recur to the dog 

 that connects the representations of "the odor of meat," 

 "the gratifying taste," and "the feeling of hunger," and 

 then "acts" accordingly. His sensile memory retains 

 the phantasm of a former piece of meat, and of his 

 previous gratification through this object, of this cer- 

 tain odor and of this certain appearance. This is why 

 the dog, under the impulse of his sensile appetite, looks 

 for another piece of meat when he is hungry, and then 

 devours it with voracity. But, has he, on that account, 

 a general concept of meat, which represents it as an 

 object of nourishment, or a general concept of the means 

 which serve to attain that desirable object. If that 



