General Sense Images and the Power of A b sir action. 85 



conclusions and the so-called material conclusions of 

 animal cognition, as great, as is the difference between 

 day and night. The former are the result of intelli- 

 gence, of which they are a more perfect activity than 

 is required for the formation of full and complete 

 syllogisms, the practice of which they presuppose; the 

 latter are not the result of intelligence, but rest upori 

 the laws of instinctive association of representations 

 which essentially belongs to the sphere of sensitive 

 cognition. 



Nor are these material conclusions restricted to those 

 sensitive combinations of representations in the psychic 

 life of animals, in which one or more elements are taken 

 from individual experience, but comprise those also 

 which are immediately due to innate, instinctive disposi- 

 tions. Let us again recur to the example of the dog. 

 When he smells a bone for the first time, and the odor 

 excites his appetite, he acts instinctively in attacking it 

 at once. For he had so far no experimental knowledge 

 of the delicious marrow contained in that bone. This is 

 quite in accordance with the doctrine of modern animal 

 psychologists. Still, a "material conclusion" is evidently 

 contained in that process of sense perception, and can 

 be clearly resolved into the following syllogism : What- 

 ever emits an odor that excites my appetite, must taste 

 well; now, this object emits such an odor: therefore it 

 must taste well : ergo I shall at once crunch it. If then, 

 the power of forming "material conclusions" is reason 

 enought to ascribe intelligence to animals, as many mod- 

 erns and among others Tito Vignoli, 1 really do, then 



l ) "Ueber das Fundamentalgesetz der Intelligenz im Thierreich" 

 (German edition, Leipzig, 1879), Chapt. 6. 



