328 PSYCHOLOGY. 



purpose, that the idea which it arouses need not rise above the level ot 

 a recept ; and the adaptive movements on my part which that idea im- 

 mediately prompts are performed without any intelligent reflection. 

 Yet, on the other hand, they are neither reflex actions nor instinctive 

 actions ; thty are what may be termed receptual actions, or actions de- 

 pending on recepts. " * 



" How far can this kind of unnamed or non-conceptional 

 ideation extend ?" Dr. Romanes asks ; and answers by a 

 variety of examples taken from the life of brutes, for which 

 I must refer to his book. One or two of them, however, I 

 will quote : 



" Houzeau writes that while crossing a wide and arid plain in Texas, 

 his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty and 

 forty times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. The hol- 

 lows were not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other 

 difference in the vegetation ; and as they were absolutely dry, there 

 could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if they 

 knew that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of finding 

 water, and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behavior in other ani- 

 mals. . . . 



" Mr. Darwin writes : ' When I say to my terrier in an eager voice 

 (and I have made the trial many times), " Hi ! hi ! where is it ? " she at 

 once takes it as a sign that something is to be hunted, and generally 

 first looks quickly all round, and then rushes into the nearest thicket, 

 to scout for any game, but finding nothing she looks up into any neigh- 

 boring tree for a squirrel. Now do not these actions clearly show that 

 she had in her mind a general idea, or concept, that some animal is to 

 be discovered and hunted ? '" f 



They certainly show this. But the idea in question is 

 of an object ahoid which nothing farther may be articulately 

 known. The thought of it prompts to activity, but to no 

 theoretic consequence. Similarly in the following ex- 

 ample : 



"Water-fowl adopt a somewhat different mode of alighting upon 

 land, or even upon ice, from that which they adopt when alighting 

 upon water; and those kinds which dive from a height (such as terns 

 and gannets) never do so upon land or upon ice. These facts prove 

 that the animals have one recept answering to a solid surface, and an- 

 other answering to a fluid. Similarly a man will not dive from a height 

 over hard ground or over ice, nor will he jump into water in the same 

 way as he jumps upon dry land. In other words, like the water-fowi 



* Loc. cit. p. 50. t P- 52. 



