ANIMAL “ASSTHETICS” AND “ETHICS” 275 
for the protection of the herd, animal societies of various kinds, 
animal division of labour, etc.,—whatever be the origin of it,— 
we have what seems to be such an epoch in animal life. These 
creatures show a real recognition of one individual by another, 
and a real community of life and reaction, which is quite 
different from the individualism of purely sensational and 
unsocial consciousness. And yet it is just as different from 
the reflective organization of human society, in which the 
self-consciousness and personal volition of the individual play 
the most important ré/e. I see no way of accounting for the 
gregarious instinct anywhere, except on the assumption of such 
a projective epoch of animal consciousness.” 
Now, in endeavouring to realize how the situation feels to 
an animal in this projective stage, the first difficulty we 
encounter is that of divesting ourselves of those products of 
reflection which characterize our own mental situation ; and 
to avoid what Dr. Stout, in the passage above quoted,* terms 
the psychologist’s besetting snare. The second difficulty is 
to grasp that, in experience, subject and object are inseparable, 
however clearly we may learn to perceive that they are dis- 
tinguishable aspects of that experience. If the subject is 
eventually regarded as that which experiences, and the object 
as that which is experienced, it is surely obvious that each is 
necessary to the other. But, before these different aspects are 
clearly distinguished, there is, in the perceptual stage of 
mental development, what we may term a distribution of the 
items of experience among the centres of interest. 
In illustration of the kind of distribution which we may 
suppose to come naturally to an animal, in what Professor 
Baldwin terms the projective epoch, let us take three animal 
situations: first, a chick pecks at a soldier-beetle, and finds it 
nauseous ; secondly, a hen-bird hears the joyous song of her 
mate; thirdly, a puppy in play bites its companion, and 
receives a painful nip in return. Each of these constitutes 
an experience-situation ; assuming that the results of the expe- 
rience are distributed, how may we suppose them to he allocated ? 
* Supra, p. 270. 
