Licence: In copyright
Credit: An introduction to comparative psychology. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.
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![consciousness of the implied generalisation, nor even an analysis revealing the point of identity as against the in- dividual differences between the two cases.”* As before stated, he concludes that the higher animals have as much capacity for dealing with the practical exigencies of their surroundings as can be attained by an intelligence limited in its scope to the concrete and the practical.”f “Caution, cunning, and sagacity of the kind of which animal stories are so full do not as a rule imply anything more or less than the concrete experience that we have described.” I find some difficulty in following his treatment of relations. He says that the particular relations are explicit, the uni- versal that connects them operates unconsciously, and, again, that the related term which in the previous stage merely influences action, is now, in the higher phases of animal behaviour, brought explicitly into consciousness.]: But he also says that “ if we attribute ideas to an animal, it must be understood that they are not ideas arrived at by any process of analysis.” In my own treatment of the perception of relations the beginnings of analysis are in- volved. The relation, implicit in the body of concrete experience, is through comparison rendered explicit as a focal object in consciousness. I do not think, therefore, that Mr Hobhouse’s interpretation differs in essentials from that which I suggested. The distinction between concrete experience and conceptual thought holds good for him as it does for me. But he has brought out the nature of the advance in intelligent behaviour and the distinction between its lower and its higher phases in a way which I did not attempt. I am not wholly satisfied with his treatment; but I cannot deal with it more fully here. The characteristic feature of the conclusions above quoted is that they are based on the results won by careful experi- ments and on observations directed ad hoc. The body of * Page 363. f Page 281. Pp. 363 and 362.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21523964_0324.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
