FOOTNOTES:

“Abstraction and generalization only become intellectual when they are utilized by the intellect. A bull is irritated by a red colour, and not by the object of which redness is a property; but it would be absurd to say that the bull voluntarily abstracts the phenomenon of redness from these objects. The process is essentially one of abstraction, and yet at the same time it is essentially automatic.” And with reference to the ideation of brutes in general, he continues:—“Certain qualities of an object engage his attention to the exclusion of other qualities, which are disregarded; and thus he abstracts automatically. The image of an object having been imprinted on his memory, the feelings which it excited are also imprinted on his memory, and on the reproduction of the image these feelings and the actions resulting therefrom are reproduced, likewise automatically: thus he acts from experience, automatically still. The image may be the image of the same object, or the image of another object of the same species, but the effect is the same, and thus he generalizes, automatically also.” Lastly, speaking of inference, he says:—“This method is common to man and brute, and, like the faculties of abstraction, &c., it only becomes intellectual when we choose to make it so.” (E. J. Morshead, in an essay on Comparative Psychology, Journ. Vic. Inst., vol. v., pp. 303, 304, 1870.) In the work of M. Binet already alluded to, the distinction in question is also recognized. For he says that the “fusion” of sensations which takes place in an act of perception is performed automatically (i.e. is receptual); while the “fusion” of perceptions which are concerned in an act of reason is performed intentionally (i.e. is conceptual).

Since publishing the chapter just alluded to, I have received an additional and curious illustration of the imaginative faculty in animals, which I think deserves to be published for its own sake. Of course we may see in a general way that dogs and cats resemble children in their play of “pretending” that inanimate objects are alive, and this betokens a comparatively high level of the imaginative faculty. The case which I am about to quote, however, appears to show that this kind of imaginative play may extend in animals, as in children, to the still higher level of not only pretending that inanimate objects are alive, but of “peopling space with fancy’s airy forms.” I shall quote the facts in the words of my correspondent, who is Miss Bramston, the authoress.

“Watch is a collie dog belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury; but lives with me a good deal, as Lambeth does not suit him. He is a very remarkable dog in many ways, which I will not inflict on you. He is very intelligent, understands many words, and can perform tricks. What I mention him for, however, is that he is the only dog I ever met with a dramatic faculty. His favourite drama is chasing imaginary pigs. He used now and then to be sent to chase real pigs out of the field, and after a time it became a custom for Miss Benson to open the door for him after dinner in the evening, and say, ‘Pigs!’ when he always ran about, wildly chasing imaginary pigs. If no one opened the door, he went to it himself wagging his tail, asking for his customary drama. He now reaches a further stage, for as soon as we get up after our last meal he begins to bark violently, and if the door is open he rushes out to chase imaginary pigs with no one saying the word ‘pigs’ at all. He usually used to be sent out to chase pigs after prayers in the evening, and when he came to my small house it was amusing to see that he recognized the function of prayers, performed with totally different accompaniments, to be the same as prayers performed in an episcopal chapel, so far as he expected ‘Pigs’ to be the end of both. The word ‘Pigs,’ uttered in any tone, will always set him off playing the same drama.”

Af-ta (in imitation of the sound which the nurse used to make when pretending to drink) = drinking or a drink, drinking-vessel, and hence a glass of any kind.

Vy = a fly.

Vy-’ta = window, i.e. the ‘ta or af-ta (glass) on which a fly walks.

Blow = candle.

Blow-hattie = a lamp, i.e. candle with a hat or shade.

’Nell = a flower, i.e. smell.

These words are clearly all of imitative origin. The following, however, seem to have been purely arbitrary:—

Numby = food of any kind (onomatopoetic).

Nunny = dress of any kind.

Milly = dressing, and any article used in dressing, e.g. a pin.

Lee = the name for her nurse, though no one else called the woman by any other name than nurse.

Diddle-iddle = a hole; hence a thimble; hence a finger.

Wasky = the sea.

Bilu-bilu = the printed character “&,” invented on learning the first letters of her alphabet, and always afterwards used.

Lower recept = an automatic grouping of percepts.

Higher recept = pre-concept; or a degree of receptual ideation which does not occur in any brute.

Lower concept = named recept, provided that the naming be due to reflective thought.

Higher concept = a named compound of concepts.

The analogues of these terms are, in the matter of naming:—

Receptual naming = denotation, which includes pre-conceptual naming.

Conceptual naming = denomination.

And, in the matter of judging, the analogues are:—

Receptual judgment = automatic, “practical,” or unthinking inference.

Pre-conceptual judgment = the higher, though still unthinking, inferences of a child prior to the rise of self-consciousness.

Conceptual judgment = true judgment, whether exhibited in denomination, predication, or any act of inference for which self-conscious thought may be required.

While this work is passing through the press an additional paper has been published by Dr. Hale, entitled, The Development of Language. It supplies further evidence in support of this hypothesis.

“These categories, which proved of so much utility to the early grammarians, have a still higher interest to the students of the science of language and thought. Whereas Aristotle accepted them simply as the given forms of predication in Greek, after that language had become possessed of the whole wealth of its words, we shall have to look upon them as representing the various processes by which those Greek words, and all our own words and thoughts, too, first assumed a settled form. While Aristotle took all his words and sentences as given, and simply analyzed them in order to discover how many kinds of predication they contained, we ask how we ever came into possession of such words as horse, white, many, greater, here, now, I stand, I fear, I cut, I am cut. Anybody who is in possession of such words can easily predicate, but we shall now have to show that every word by itself was from the first a predication, and that it formed a complete sentence by itself. To us, therefore, the real question is, how these primitive sentences, which afterwards dwindled away into mere words, came into existence. The true categories, in fact, are not those which are taught by grammar, but those which produced grammar, and it is these categories which we now proceed to examine” (Science of Thought, p. 439).

“The further a language has been developed from its primordial roots, which have been twisted into forms no longer suggesting any reason for their original selection, and the more the primitive significance of its words has disappeared, the fewer points of contact can it retain with signs. The higher languages are more precise because the consciousness of the derivation of most of their words is lost, so that they have become counters, good for any sense agreed upon and for no other.

“It is, however, possible to ascertain the included gesture even in many English words. The class represented by the word supercilious will occur to all readers, but one or two examples may be given not so obvious and more immediately connected with the gestures of our Indians. Imbecile, generally applied to the weakness of old age, is derived from the Latin in, in the sense of on, and bacillum, a staff, which at once recalls the Cheyenne sign for old man [previously mentioned]. So time appears more nearly connected with [Greek: teinô], to stretch, when information is given of the sign for long time, in the Speech of Kin Chē-ĕss, in this paper, namely, placing the thumbs and forefingers in such a position as if a small thread was held between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, the hands first touching each other, and then moving slowly from each other, as if stretching a piece of gum-elastic” (Mallery, Sign-Language, &c., p. 350). This writer also says, with reference to the uncivilized languages which he has specially studied, “In the languages of North America, which have not become arbitrary, to the degree exhibited by those of civilized man, the connection between the idea and the word is only less obvious than that still unbroken connection between the idea and the sign, and they remain strongly affected by the concepts of outline, form, place, position, and feature on which gesture is founded, while they are similar in their fertile combination of radicals. Indian language consists of a series of words that are but slightly differentiated parts of speech following each other in the order suggested in the mind of the speaker without absolute laws of arrangement, as its sentences are not completely integrated. The sentence necessitates parts of speech, and parts of speech are possible only when a language has reached that stage where sentences are logically constructed. The words of an Indian tongue, being synthetic or undifferentiated parts of speech, are in this respect strictly analogous to the gesture elements which enter into a sign-language. The study of the latter is therefore valuable for comparison with the words of the former. The one language throws much light upon the other, and neither can be studied to the best advantage without a knowledge of the other.”