MENTAL STATES AND PROCESSES. 49 



eating — the motives of the examination clearly being to 

 ascertain which of these two general ideas of kind is 

 appropriate to the particular object examined." 



Now, the inner nature and faculties of an organism 

 can only be judged of by the outcome of its powers, 

 whatever these may be. If these "higher animals" 

 really had ideas of the kind, and consciously performed 

 voluntary acts of examination in order to see "which of 

 two general ideas " might be applicable in any given 

 case, then of a surety we should soon be made un- 

 mistakably aware of it by other, less equivocal, mani- 

 festations of their possession of intellectual faculties like 

 our own. But it is evident that a profound difference 

 between the psychical powers of men and brutes does, 

 in fact, exist, and therefore the interpretation of their 

 actions which Mr. Romanes gives, cannot be the right 

 one. Interpretations of that kind might carry us very 

 far. We might say that plants have abstract ideas of 

 " Suitable-for-nutrition" and ''Not-suitable-for-nutrition," 

 and of the still more abstract ideas, " Big-enough-to-be- 

 worth-a-prolonged-effort " and " Not-big-enough-to-be- 

 worth-a-prolonged-effort." For the plant called Venus's 

 looking-glass {DioncEo) will snap together the blades of 

 its singular leaf to catch an insect, but not to catch 

 a non-digestible object. More than this, if the blades of 

 its leaf have closed on an insect of insignificant size 

 (not worth its catching) they will unclose and let it 

 go again ; while otherwise they will hold it till it is 

 killed and digested. Even the sundew {Droserd) 

 exhibits what might be called a similar process of 

 estimation due to " general ideas," since the actions of 



E 



