158 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON 



be the first to say), quite a simple matter. But it is 

 notorious, and admitted on all hands, that animals be- 

 come impressed so as to identify particulars with par- 

 ticulars — as to form what I have elsewhere * termed 

 "sensuous universals." A sheep does not dread this 

 particular wolf, but any other wolf also. Therefore it 

 must have a corresponding plexus of feelings ; and as 

 the parrot easily can form an association between a 

 plexus of visual feelings and a sound, so it may easily 

 form an association between a similar sound and a 

 plexus* of visual feelings closely resembling the former 

 one. There is no more difficulty in one case than in 

 the other, and no more need of attributing to it any 

 superior cognitive power or intention of extending the 

 meaning of the sound first used. In the first there 

 was no real or intentional meaning, though there was 

 a spontaneous activity excited by certain sense-im- 

 pressions, and the same cause suffices to account for 

 the second case just as well as the first. There is, of 

 course, a certain spontaneity and a certain " meaning " 

 in the sounds, but the meaning is not an intended 

 one. A weather-cock veering east intends to make 

 known the meaning which is, of course, present in its 

 automatic indication " materially," though not " form- 

 ally." As to the parrot discontinuing to employ its 

 vocal gesture for the terrier after it had began to apply 



* See "On Truth," pp. 191, 206. They have only been so 

 termed by a remote analogy with true "universals," for there 

 is nothing which can be truly called universal in such sense- 

 affections . " Sense " is really ignorant, though the practical outcome 

 of its affections may resemble perceptions in the material, external 

 effects which follow. See above, p. 44, note f. 



