42 WILD TRAITS IN TAME ANIMALS. 



see, when anecdotes of the cleverness of dogs are 

 told, that the narrator is quite unable, in estimat- 

 ing the supposed motives and mental processes, 

 to get out of himself sufficiently to escape the 

 inveterate tendency to anthropomorphism ; and 

 he almost invariably gives the dog credit for 

 iaculties which it is very doubtful if it possesses. 

 When we come to consider how few persons have 

 that power of imaginative sympathy with their 

 own kind which enables us to see to some extent 

 through another's mental spectacles, it is no matter 

 for surprise that a human being should generally 

 fail in trying to think like a dog. 



Thinking, after all, is, like flying, an organic 

 process dependent in every case on actual physi- 

 cal machinery; and dissimilarity of brain structure 

 therefore absolutely precludes us from seeing eye 

 to eye, mentally, with the lower animals. 



Often when we are dealing with the relation 

 between peculiarities of brain structure and special 

 mental attributes, we are obliged to depend to a 

 great degree upon conjecture, because the func- 

 tions of the brain as the organ of mind are so 

 little understood. But here it is possible to point 

 out one of the real reasons why mental furniture 

 in dogs and men differs so essentially. If you 



