MENTAL POWERS. 81 



a dog sees another dog at a distance. It is often clear that he per- 

 ceives that it is a dog in tlie abstract; for when he gets nearer his 

 whole manner suddenly changes, if the other dog be a friend. 

 A recent writer remarks, that in all such cases it is a pure as- 

 sumption to assert that the mental act is not essentially of the 

 same nature in the animal as in man. If either refers what he 

 perceives with his senses to a mental concept, then so do both." 

 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 around, and then rushes into the nearest thicket, to 

 scent for any game, but finding nothing, she looks up into any 

 neighboring 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? 



It may be freely admitted that no animal is self-conscious, if 

 by this term it is implied, that he reflects on such points, as 

 whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, 

 and so forth. But how can we feel sure that an old dog with an 

 excellent memory and some power of imagination, as shown by 

 his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures or pains in the 

 chase? And this would be a form of self-consciousness. On the 

 other hand, as Biichner* has remarked, how little can the hard- 

 worked wife of a degraded Australian savage, who uses very 

 few abstract words, and cannot count above four, exert her self- 

 consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence. It 

 is generally admitted, that the higher animals possess memory, 

 attention, association, and even some imagination and reason. 

 If these powers, which differ much in different animals, are 

 capable of improvement, there seems no great improbability in 

 more complex faculties, such as the higher forms of abstraction, 

 and self-consciousness, &c., having been evolved through the 

 development and combination of the simpler ones. It has been 

 urged a^gainst the views here maintained, that it is impossible 

 to say at what point in the ascending scale animals become 

 capable of abstraction, &c.; but who can say at what age this 

 occurs in our young children? We see at least that such powers 

 are developed in children by imperceptible degrees. 



That animals retain their mental individuality is unquestion- 

 able. When my voice awakened a train of old associations in 

 the mind of the before-mentioned dog, he must have retained 

 his mental individuality, although every atom of his brain had 



" Mr. Hookham, in a letter to Prof. Max Muller, in the 'Birmingham 

 News,' May, 1873. 



•"! 'Conferences sur la Theorie Darwinienne,' French translat. 1S69, 

 p. 132. 



