342 Animal Life and Intelligence, 



consciousness. Now picture this rope gradually slipping 

 round as it floats, so that now one part, now another, sees 

 the light. This is analogous to the musing state, when 

 we allow our thoughts to wander unchecked by any effort 

 of attention. Attention is the faculty by which we steady 

 the rope, so that one particular strand is kept continuously 

 uppermost. The inattentive mind is one in which the rope 

 keeps slipping round and refuses to be steadied in this 

 manner ; and in unquiet sleep, when the faculty of attention 

 is dormant, the strands come quite irregularly and hap- 

 hazard to the surface, and we have the phantasmagoria of 

 dreams. 



In the dog or the ape the rope is presumably in- 

 comparably simpler. But that it is of the nature of a rope 

 we may, perhaps, not improbably surmise. Interest and 

 the attention it commands steady the rope. Animals 

 differ widely in their power of attention, as every one 

 knows who has endeavoured to educate his pets. Darwin 

 tells us that those who buy monkeys from the Zoological 

 Gardens, to teach them to perform, will give a higher price 

 if they are allowed a short time in which to select those in 

 which the power of attention is most developed. And 

 when animals dream, their consciousness-rope is slipping 

 round unsteadily. That they do apparently dream is, 

 so far, evidence of their possessing linked chains of 

 memories. 



In speaking of the faculty of attention in animals, it 

 may be well to note that attention is of two kinds — per- 

 ceptual or direct, and conceptual or indirect. In perceptual 

 attention its motive is directly suggested by the object 

 which stimulates this concentration of the faculties ; a 

 menacing dog, for example, stimulates my perceptual 

 attention. In conceptual attention the motive is ulterior 

 and indirect. The concentrated attention which a man 

 devotes to the acquisition of Sanscrit does not arise directly 

 out of the symbols over which he pores ; it is of intellectual 

 origin. 



In the normal life of animals the attention is of the 



