i6 THE HORSE OF MR. VON OSTEN 



gap. The animal may have sensations and memory- ' 

 images of sensations which may become associated in 

 manifold combinations. Both sensations and memory 

 images are believed to be accompanied by conditions of 

 pleasure and of pain (so-called sensuous feelings), and 

 these in turn, become the mainsprings of desire. The 

 possession of memory gives the power of learning 

 through experience. But with this, the inventory of the 

 content of animal consciousness is exhausted. The 

 ability to form concepts * and with their aid to make 

 judgments and draw conclusions is denied the lower 

 forms. All the higher intellectual, aesthetic and moral 

 feelings, as well as volition guided by motives, are also 

 denied. Among the ancients this view was held by Aris- 

 totle and the Stoics ; and following them it was taught 

 by the Christian Church. It pervaded all mediaeval 

 philosophy, which grew out of the teachings of Aristotle 

 and the Church. It is this philosophy, in the form of 

 Neo-Thomism, which still obtains in the Catholic world. 

 During the 17th century, even though temporarily, an- 

 other conception of the consciousness of lower forms 

 came to prevail and was introduced by Descartes, the 

 " Father " of modern philosophy. Far more radical than 

 the earlier conception, it denied to animals not only the 



* Ideas are copies of fonner sensations, feelings and other psychic 

 experiences and retain also the accidental signs which belonged to those 

 earlier experiences. They are images in the concrete, such as the 



memory of a certain horse in a certain definite situation say a 



well-fed, long-tailed one standing at a manger. A concept, on the other 

 hand, is a mental construct which has its rise in ideas, or memory- 

 images, in that their essential characteristics are abstracted. For this 

 reason the concept has not a definite image<ontent. (Thus the thought 

 of " horse " in general, is a concept. Not so the thought of a certain 

 individual horse, that is an idea, with a definite image-content.) 



