xiv THE CONCEPT 327 



is readily aroused by the appropriate stimulus, and partly 

 by instinct, partly by training, the young animals scuffle 

 and race and make pretended bites, according to the 

 rules of the game. Finally, a cat or a dog can make us 

 understand well enough within certain limits what it wants. 

 Without saying, " I want to go out," a cat will make it 

 quite clear by stages. She will attract attention by 

 mewing and rubbing against one's legs. Then, looking 

 up, one sees from her face that she wants something. As 

 soon as she sees that her master is attentive, she will stroll 

 in a delicately insinuating manner towards the door, look- 

 ing round to see if she is followed, and, if not, coming 

 back again, and going to and fro from the door to her 

 master. Finally, if she does not get her way at once, she 

 will sit before the door with a gaze half reproachful and 

 half resigned, but wholly suggestive, towards the handle. 

 And as soon as she gets the door opened, she darts out 

 without the u thank you " which a good-natured dog 

 would be sure to express. 



We shall probably not be far wrong if we take this 

 proceeding as typical of animal language. The cat knows 

 in the concrete what she wants, but she has no terms 

 common to her and her master into which she can reduce 

 it, and so make it clear in its completeness at once. What 

 she can do is to impel her master to take the successive 

 steps required, one by one. Her "language " is thus an 

 adaptation or employment of concrete experience and the 

 practical judgment. It is not an analysis of the concrete 

 into its elements whereby it is brought into connection 

 with a world of ideas common to two interlocutors. 1 



1 It is possible that by a combination of sensori-motor suggestions a 

 specially intelligent animal might be made virtually to understand a com- 

 plex situation. Such, for example, would be the case with the dog which, 

 according to Dr. Wesley Mills (pp. cit. p. 33) would fetch at command 

 any one of six different articles. A still stronger case is that of the dog 

 which, on the authority of Mr. Bastian (The Brain as an Organ of Mind, 

 p. 315), would fetch home the particular cow named to it, or keep cattle in 

 an assigned part of a field. These cases seem to illustrate the beginnings 

 of a transition to a higher stage, but they are clearly developments of the 

 process already described. The order to fetch, e.g., excites a set of motor 

 impulses which the name " hat " or " stick " defines by attaching it to a 

 familiar object. 



If higher developments of communication are to be found in the animal 



