MENTAL STATES AND PROCESSES. 8r 



the door of its cage.* Having thus itself acquired a 

 habit of picking up straws and passing them through 

 a hole, there could be little difficulty in getting it to 

 pass the straw through other holes, and not much in 

 getting it to pick up more straws than one. That it 

 should associate certain motions with the sound of 

 certain words, is no more than dogs, pigs, and various 

 other animals lower in the scale will accomplish. 



There remains, then, as the single distinguishing 

 peculiarity of this case, the association in the ape's 

 imagination and consentience, of the words, one, two, 

 three, four, or five, with the picking up, holding, and 

 handing over a corresponding number of straws. This 

 fact of association is, so far as we know, exceptional, 

 and it is therefore very interesting. But it does not 

 prove that the animal has any idea of these five numbers 

 — not, of course, as numbers f — but as so many separate 

 things. The matter would be the same if the animal 

 could discriminate up to ten or more. We know abun- 

 dantly already that various animals may be made to 

 associate very complex bodily movements with sounds, 



* Possibly as a result of having seen a key put in and out of 

 the keyhole. 



t The idea of " number " implies comparison, with a simul- 

 taneous recognition of both distinctness and similarity ; although, 

 of course, it is not necessary that the fact of our having such 

 apprehensions should be adverted to. No two things could be 

 known to be two without an apprehension that while they are 

 numerically distinct they can in some way be thought of as be- 

 longing to one class of entities. We could not say " pink " and 

 " a high rate of interest " were two, unless it were two "thoughts." 

 By so speaking of them we should unite them under one con- 

 ception which is common to them both as two " ideas." As to 

 this, see further, " On Truth," p. 241. 



G 



