88 Chapter V. 



said to be essentially the same, and to represent only 

 different degrees or stages of one and the same power 

 of abstraction. Consequently, this power should not be 

 totaHy denied to the animal. 



What are general sense images? When a harrier 

 scents a hare, it is guided in chasing it by a "general 

 sense image," as we say, or by a "general phantasm" of 

 that animal; for it does not track the same hare which 

 it pursued sometime ago, but another animal of the same 

 species, whose individual qualities are as yet unknown 

 to it. What is the characteristic of this "general sense 

 image," this "general" phantasm of a hare in the dog's 

 brain? As we do not share a canine nature with the 

 animal in question, we must necessarily try to solve this 

 problem from the analogy which exists between the 

 general sense images of animals and those of our own 

 sensile imagination; nor must we omit to pay due re- 

 gard to the differences which prevail between the outer 

 senses of man and those of the dog. When a sports- 

 man sallies forth to shoot hares, and pictures to himself 

 the object of his quest, this sense representation will 

 always contain the image of an absolutely specified hare 

 with its individual and special properties. It is "gen- 

 eral" only in so far as the modifications which dis- 

 tinguish this imaginative hare from all other individuals 

 of its species, are only obscurely represented, and be- 

 long, as it were, to the background of the image, 

 whereas the properties which are common to all hares, 

 the size of the body, the long ears, the color are, so to 

 say, in the foreground of the representation. Or, per- 

 haps our sportsman pictures to himself an unusually big 

 and beautiful hare which he would be delighted to bag. 



