THE LIVING WORLD 227 



the creature can so employ as to have a practical sense- 

 perception (through its different and combined senses) 

 of different objects which it also practically distinguishes 

 from itself. 



Feelings experienced, successively, tend to become 

 associated together. Thus it is when some definite 

 past feeling is revived, an imagination of feelings, and 

 groups of feelings, previously associated with that past 

 definite feeling, will again present themselves to the cat's 

 imagination, and create expectant feelings as well as 

 render sense-perceptions more distinct and significant. 



It is impossible to doubt that a cat can at the same 

 time see, feel, smell, and taste a mouse it has caught, as 

 also that it can hear its cry while seeing it and clawing 

 it, before killing it. There must, therefore, be some 

 common centre where these influences are simultaneously 

 received. There is no reason to suppose the cat can 

 know that it exists and that it is not the mouse, but it 

 evidently possesses a feeling, however vague, of this 

 distinction. This feeling of self-identity and distinct- 

 ness from other things, is to be distinguished as a feeling 

 of consentience. That the cat possesses a power of retain- 

 ing and reproducing groups of feelings which have before 

 been excited in it by external objects, can hardly be 

 doubted, since dogs give sometimes such plain signs that 

 they dream, and dreams are the reproduction, by imagina- 

 tion, of sense-perceptions previously experienced. The 

 cat has also the power of associating effects of past 

 sensations with present ones in such a ^vay that the 

 occurrence of one will excite the other. We cannot 

 doubt that the sound of a gnawing mouse, or a percep- 

 tion of its odour, will excite in the cat's imagination 

 an image of a mouse, and this may lead it to 

 intensify the exercise of its senses and so simulate what 



