Mental Processes in Animals, 349 



that a hungry dog, prowling around for food, has, sug- 

 gested by his hunger, vague representations in memory 

 of things good to eat, in which the element of eatability is 

 predominant and comparatively distinct, while the rest is 

 vague and indistinct. And that this is a concept in Mr. 

 Sully's use of the term, I admit. But it appears to me 

 that there is a very great difference between a perceptual 

 construct with eatability predominant and the rest vague, 

 and a conceptual isolate or abstract idea of eatability quite 

 apart from any object or objects of which this quality is 

 characteristic. And to mark the difference, I venture to 

 call the prominent quality a predominant as opposed to 

 the isolate when the quality is floated off from the object. 

 No doubt it is out of this perceptual prominence of one 

 characteristic and vagueness of its accompaniments that con- 

 ceptual isolation of this one characteristic has grown, as I 

 believe, through the naming of predominants. But I should 

 draw the line between the one and the other somewhere 

 distinctly above the level of intelligence that is attained by 

 any dumb animal. I am not prepared either to affirm or 

 deny that this line should be drawn exactly between brute 

 intelligence and human intelligence and reason, though I 

 strongly incline to the view that it should. I am not sure 

 that every savage and yokel is capable of isolation, that he 

 raises the predominant to the level of the isolate, or abstract 

 idea. I am not sure that these simple folk submit the 

 phenomena of nature around them, and of their own 

 mental states to analysis. But they have in language the 

 instrument which can enable them to do so, even if 

 individually some of them have not the faculty for using 

 language for this purpose. That is, however, a different 

 question. But I do not at present see satisfactory evidence 

 of the fact that animals form isolates, and I think that the 

 probability is that they are unable to do so. I am, there- 

 fore, prepared to say, with John Locke, that this abstraction 

 "is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no 

 means attain to." 



I am anxious, however, not to exaggerate my divergence, 



