166 INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOUR 
contended * that “all the higher animals have general ideas of 
‘eood-for-eating ’ and ‘ not-good-for-eating ’ quite apart from 
any particular objects of which either of these qualities happens 
to be characteristic,” and he quoted with approval Leroy’s 
statement, that a fox “ will see snares when there are none ; 
his imagination, distorted by fear, will produce deceptive 
shapes, to which he will attach an abstract notion of danger.” 
According to such views animals form concepts ; and concepts 
belong to the sphere of rational thought. It is not my inten- 
tion to enter at length into the refinements of psychological 
distinction. Many psychologists, however, seek to distinguish 
between, on the one hand, the predominance by natural 
emphasis, of certain qualities, such as that of being suitable for 
food, and, on the other hand, the intentional isolation of these 
qualities for the purposes of thought and rational explanation. 
Abstraction they regard as a deliberate process applied with 
rational intent to the material afforded by experience and 
reflection. Generalization, too, they regard as deliberate, and 
carried out with like intent. The result is not merely a 
composite or generic product, but something more subtle and 
less dependent on sense. “All trees hitherto seen by me,” 
said Noire, “leave in my imagination a mixed image, a kind 
of ideal presentation of a tree. Quite different is my concept, 
which is never an image.” The concept “tree ” is a deliberate 
synthesis of abstract qualities intentionally isolated, and 
recombined in accordance with the general relationships which 
subsist between them. 
If we accept this distinction, if we regard abstraction and 
generalization as intentional mental processes carried out with 
the rational intent of discovering the relationships of pheno- 
mena with the object of explaining them and recombining 
their essential features in an ideal scheme of thought, we shall 
probably admit, with John Locke, that these are excellencies 
which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to. But 
we shall none the less see that the predominance of certain 
* « Mental Evolution in Man,” p. 27. 
+ “Intelligence of Animals,” p. 121 
