INTERCOMMUNICATION 201 
wall outside, a strange dog, C, ran along below the wall on the 
public road, following a dog-cart. Immediately on seeing C, 
B jumped off the wall, ran upstairs to where A was asleep, 
woke him up by poking him with his nose in a determined 
and suggestive manner, which A at once understood as a sign: 
he jumped over the wall and pursued the dog OC, although C 
was by that time far out of sight round a bend in the road.” 
Romanes did not probably intend to imply that A by poking 
B, conveyed specific information that there was another dog, 
C, which had proceeded in a particular direction. That would 
be descriptive communication. The meaning attaching to A’s 
action was presumably similar to that which characterizes 
other “ meaning ” for intelligent animals—the development of 
the situation on lines marked out by previous experience. 
Still, it is clear that such an act would be the perceptual 
precursor of the deliberate conduct of the rational being by 
whom the sign is definitely realized as a sign, the intentional 
meaning of which is distinctly present to thought. This 
involves a judgment concerning the sign as an object of 
thought ; and this is probably beyond the capacity of the dog. 
For, as Romanes himself says,* “it is because the human 
mind is able, so to speak, to stand outside of itself, and thus 
to constitute its own ideas the subject-matter of its own 
thought, that it is capable of judgment, whether in the act of 
conception or in that of predication. We have no evidence 
to show that any animal is capable of objectifying its own 
ideas ; and, therefore, we have no evidence that any animal is 
capable of judgment.” 
It seems, therefore, that the sounds made by animals, and 
certain other modes of behaviour, may be regarded as primarily 
instinctive acts which have been evolved with the biological 
end of affording suggestive stimuli furthering intercom- 
munication between the members of the social group. Their 
performance, however, affords data to consciousness, which 
intelligence makes use of in the guidance of behaviour in 
accordance with the results of experience. And since the 
* Op. cit. p. 175. : 
