ANIMAL “ ASSTHETICS” AND “ETHICS” 277 
as animate, objects, and that its due restriction comes far later 
in development, of which the so-called personification of life- 
less things by savages may be a relic. In any case, the give- 
and-take of play in young animals, and the after-earnest of 
courtship and fighting, would seem to afford ample opportunity 
for the external and internal distribution of feeling which 
sows the seed in perceptual life of that which blossoms into 
self and alter in the reflective life of ideational thought. 
Although, therefore, an animal cannot conceive its com- 
panion as another self of similar nature, and with like passions 
to his own, yet a considerable share of the feeling-element of 
the conscious situation is projected on to that companion as 
the chief centre of interest. And if it be said that this is 
his feeling and not his neighbour’s, the objection will be seen 
to lose its force, so soon as it is realized that even man has 
no experience of any feelings save his own. The only way we 
can reach fellow-feeling is through sympathy ; and sympathy 
has its roots in the projective process we have endeavoured to 
describe. We endow our neighbours with natures as sensitive 
to pain and pleasure as our own. This is a pre-requisite to 
the social relationships termed ethical. But when we hear 
people say, and find even Mr. Romanes putting on deliberate 
record,* that “the feelings which prompt a cat to torture a 
captured mouse can only be assigned to the category to which, 
by common consent, they are ascribed—delight in torturing 
for torture’s sake,” I venture to think that common consent, 
if such it be, is wrong. As I said a dozen years ago,{ before 
Professor Groos had so carefully elaborated his theory of play, 
“the cat or kitten plays with the mouse not from innate cruelty, 
but for the sake of getting some little practice in the most 
important business of cat life. Only man, who has the 
capacity for nobler things, can be cruel for cruelty’s sake ;” 
and this is the direction in which Dr. Groos’s opinion { tends 
to set. Mr. Romanes might have learnt a lesson in caution 
* “ Animal Intelligence,” p. 413. 
+ Atalanta, Jan., 1889. Reprinted in “ Animal Sketches,” p. 17. 
+ “The Play of Animals,” p. 122. 
