30 DOGS 



elude that there is scarcely a mental process which men 

 experience that the lower animals have not in an incipient 

 form, excepting self -consciousness in the strict sense. 



Will you allow me to narrate a story about a fox-terrier 

 that I have at present in rny possession ? Throughout one 

 whole morning he evinced a restless desire to induce the 

 housekeeper to accompany him into the drawing-room. 

 On entering the room at length, he took her directly to the 

 corner where he had deposited a bone, and he stood over 

 it with an air of utter dejection, as if he were conscious 

 that he had done wrong and deserved punishment. There 

 was no necessity for his wishing the housekeeper to enter 

 the room with him, as he could easily have slipped in and 

 out unobserved, unless his fit of conscientiousness made 

 him desirous of " confessing his sin." This incident is 

 on a par with Dr. James Sully 's story of a dog in his book 

 on " The Human Mind," vol. ii., p. 161, note. 



J. G. JAMES. 



June 19, 1909. 



NOTE. It may be useful if I quote Professor Thomson's 

 summing up of the problem of animal psychology, tem- 

 perate but not niggardly. After running through uncon- 

 scious movement (the beating of the heart), reflexes 

 (obligatory movements of part of the body to an external 

 stimulus), tropisms (obligatory movements of the whole 

 body) , instinct (which is constitutional and independent of 

 experience), and intelligence (which is individual and 

 acquired), he concludes : 



" But there is a higher level still that of rational 

 activity; and, so far as we know, we have this field all to 

 ourselves. By rational, as distinguished from intelligent, 

 is meant that we cannot imagine its activities being carried 

 out without general ideas, without conceptual inference as 

 distinguished from perceptual inference, without thinking 

 in the abstract. No one will suppose for a moment that 

 man is always on this high level, in fact, he is on it far too 

 little, much of our industry, for instance, being in detail 

 non-rational and even non-intelligent. Nor dare we deny 



