IDEAS, II 



It seems needless to dwell upon a matter where all are 

 agreed, and concerning which a great deal more will require 

 to be said in subsequent chapters. At present I am only 

 endeavouring to ascertain the ground of difference between 

 those psychologists who attribute, and those who deny to 

 animals the faculty of abstraction. And I think I am now 

 in a position to render this point perfectly clear. As we have 

 already seen, and we shall frequently see again, it is allowed 

 on all hands that animals in their ideation are not shut up 

 to the special imaging (or remembering) of particular per- 

 ceptions ; but that they do present the power, as Locke 

 phrases it, of "taking in and retaining together several 

 combinations of simple ideas." * The only question, then, 

 really is whether or not this power is the power of abstraction. 

 In the opinion of some psychologists it is : in the opinion 

 of other psychologists it is not. Now, on what does an answer 

 to this question depend 1 Clearly it depends on whether we 

 hold it essential to an abstract or general idea that it should 

 be incarnate as a word. Under one point of view, to "take 

 in and retain together several combinations of simple ideas," 

 is to form a general concept of so many percepts. But, under 

 another point of view, such a combination of simple ideas 

 is only then entitled to be regarded as a concept, when it has 

 been conceived by the mind as a concept, or when, in virtue 

 of having been bodied forth in a name, it stands before the 

 mind as a distinct and organic offspring of mind — so becoming 

 an object as well as a product of ideation. For then only can 

 the abstract idea be known as abstract, and then only can it 

 be available as a definite creation of thought, capable of being 

 built into any further and more elaborate structure of ideation. 

 Or, to quote M. Taine, who advocates this view with great 

 lucidity, " Of our numerous experiences \i.e. individual percep- 

 tions of a show of araucarias] there remain on the following 



* If required, proof of this fact is to be found in abundance in the chapter on 

 *' Imagination," Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. 142-158. It is there shown that 

 imagination in animals is not dependent only on associations aroused by sensuous 

 impressions from without, but reaches the level of carrying on a train of mental 

 imagery /(fr se. 



