THE MIND OF THE FOX 59 



we can know anything about them. But we must 

 not forget the differences. 



To begin with, animals have not language. 

 Thought itself can only go a certain way without 

 words. Animals can probably distinguish colours ; 

 for example, they may recognise the difference 

 between one colouring and another ; but they can 

 have no abstract ideas of colour. Therefore we must 

 cut out all abstract ideas in interpreting the mind 

 of the lower animals. Then we have to recollect 

 three facts which must affect the fox's mind greatly : 

 First, that he lives so near the ground (the world 

 probably appears very different at six inches from 

 what it does at six feet from the earth) ; that his sight 

 is not extraordinarily keen, and his nose is. 



On the other hand, the fox has a power of con- 

 centrating his attention on any point of importance 

 to himself. He is intensely observant, not easily 

 distracted. I think that animals look forward 

 hardly at all, and that their memories, efficient 

 as they are, must be a bundle of facts, not of 

 inferences. A man finding his way over a country 

 has a general impression, but the fox remembers 

 almost every twig and stone. The man goes on 

 making a few rapid and almost unconscious inferences 

 as to the district ; the fox is passed on, as it were 



