118 Animal Intelligence 
quickness was noted in Cats 1 and 3 when put into B (O at 
back) after learning A (O at front). Moreover, the loops 
were not alike. The loop in A was of smaller wire, covered 
with a bluish thread, while the loop in B was covered with 
a black rubber compound, the diameter of the loop being 
three times that of A’s loop. 
If any advocate of reason in animals has read so far, I 
doubt not that his heart has leaped with joy at these two 
preceding paragraphs. “How,” he will say, “can you ex- 
plain these facts without that prime factor in human reason, 
association by similarity? Surely they show the 
perceiving likenesses and acting from general ideas.” Pree 
is the very last thing that they show. Let us see why they do 
not show this and what they do show. | He who thinks that 
these animals had a general notion of a loop-like thing as the 
thing to be clawed, that they felt the loop in B, different 
as it was in size, color and position, to be still a loop, to 
have the essential quality of the other, must needs pre- 
suppose that the cat has a clear, accurate sensation and 
representation of both. \ Only if the cat discriminates can 
it later associate by noticing similarities. This is what such 
thinkers do presuppose, \A bird, for instance, dives in the 
same manner into a river of yellow water, a pond or an ocean. 
It has a general notion, they say, of water. It knows that 
river water is one thing and pond water another thing, but it 
knows that both are water, ergo, fit to dive into.) ! The cat 
who reacts to a loop of small wire of a blue color knows 
just what that loop is, and when it sees a different loop, 
knows its differences, but knows also its likeness, and reacts 
to the essential. } Thus crediting the cat with our differen- 
tiation and perception of individuality, they credit it with 
our conceptions and perceptions of similarity. Unless the 
animal has the first, there is no reason to suppose the last. \ 
