336 THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 
we have found that such processes as attention and imitation 
pass through instinctive and intelligent stages which are the 
precursors of the ideational stage, where they reach a higher 
expression as deliberately conscious acts. In the young bird 
that instinctively pecks at some small, perhaps moving, thing, 
which forms the starting point of a piece of responsive behaviour, 
we have attention in the germ. When experience has caused the 
thing to acquire meaning, attention passes into a succeeding in- 
telligent phase ; but only when we desire to explain this meaning, 
and attention thus has a deliberate purpose, do we find it entering 
upon its higher ideational career. So, too, as we have seen, 
imitation is at first a specialized form of instinctive behaviour, 
where the response is seen to resemble that which stimulates 
it. Later it becomes intelligent when the repetition of the 
imitative behaviour is due to the satisfaction it introduces 
into the conscious situation. Then, at last, it reaches the 
ideational stage, where reflection gives rise to an ideal, which 
is to be realized in conduct. The imitation by the child of 
its older companions is at first probably intelligent; but 
when the child begins to consider why it imitates these and 
not those among its companions, he is passing to the ideal 
stage, and imitation becomes the sincerest form of hero- 
worship. The boy who merely imitates his elder brothers 
playing at soldiers because he gets satisfaction from so doing, 
becomes the subaltern who has his ideal soldier, and will face 
death firmly rather than fall below his conception of how such 
a soldier should behave. 
We need not again attempt to indicate how among animals 
we have the perceptual precursors of the esthetic and ethical 
concepts. But we may remind the reader that we endeavoured 
to show that intercommunication had its foundation in instinc- 
tive sounds; and that it passed into the intelligent stage in 
the perceptual life, when these sounds acquired meaning, 
and hence became guides to behaviour. This is especially 
instructive from our present standpoint, since it is probable 
that the passage of communication from the indicating to the 
descriptive stage afforded the conditions under which rational 
