94 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



it is often clear that he perceives that it is a dog in the 

 abstract; for when he gets nearer his whole manner sud- 

 denly changes, if the other dog be a friend. A recent 

 writer remarks, that in all such cases it is a pure assump- 

 tion to assert that the mental act is not essentially of the 

 same nature in the animal as in man. If either refers what 

 he perceives with his senses to a mental concept, then so do 

 both.* When I say to my terrier, in an eager voice (and I 

 have made the trial many times), "Hi, hi, where is it?" she 

 at once takes it as a sign that something is to be hunted, 

 and generally first looks quickly all around, and then 

 rushes into the nearest thicket, to scent for any game, but 

 finding nothing, she looks up into any neighboring tree for 

 a squirrel. Now do not these actions clearly show that she 

 had in her mind a general idea or concept that some ani- 

 mal is to be discovered and hunted? 



It may be freely admitted that no animal is self-conscious, 

 if by this term it is implied, that he reflects on such points, 

 as whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is-life 

 and death, and so forth. But how can we feel sure that 

 an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of 

 imagination, as shown by his dreams, never reflects on his 

 past pleasures or pains in the chase ? And this would be a 

 form of self-consciousness. On the other hand, as Biichnert 

 has remarked, how little can the hard-worked wife of a de- 

 graded Australian savage, who uses very few abstract words, 

 and cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness, 

 or reflect on the nature of her own existence. It is gener- 

 ally admitted that the higher animals possess memory, at- 

 tention, association, and even some imagination and reason. 

 If these powers, which differ much in different animals, are 

 capable of improvement, there seems no great improbability 

 in more complex faculties, such as the higher forms of ab- 

 straction, and self-consciousness, etc., having been evolved 

 through the development and combination of the simpler 

 ones. It has been urged against the views here maintained 

 that it is impossible to say at what point in the ascending 

 scale animals become capable of abstraction, etc. ; but who 

 can say at what age this occurs in our young children? 



*Mr. Hookham, in a letter to Prof. Max Miiller, in the "Birm- 

 ingham News," May 1873. 



"Conferences sur la Theorie Darwinienne," French translat., 



P . m 



