regard-they can at least be trained into so desirable a condition of affairs.

5. It is even a greater indignity to offer to the noblest of all the lower animals to describe a contemptible person as 'a dog,' 'a dirty dog,' 'an ugly dog,' or 'a sly dog;' to refer to a human dandy as 'a puppy,' or to a mean, shabby human scoundrel as a hound;' though it may be legitimate enough to characterise a chattel as 'dog cheap.'

6. The word cannibalism is derived from canis (a dog), or at least is said by the dictionaries to be so. But the practice of destroying each other or their young, for the purpose of eating their victims or not, is quite as common in man as in any of the lower animals; and there is no good ground why the dog's generic name should be selected in the nomenclature of so horrible a procedure or practice.

7. A dog in the manger' spirit is said to be possessed by a man who neither will nor can use a thing himself, nor allow the use or enjoyment of it to those who have both the will and the ability to employ it to good purpose; but in point of fact a dog in his manger frequently gives his protection to, and shares even his food with, companions of very different genera and species.

8. Give a dog a bad name, and you may as well hang him,' is literally applicable to unfortunate animals suspected of rabies. Whatever may be the case with men, to whom the phrase is applied figuratively, the dog to which this particular kind of bad name is given is usually wholly undeserving of it, and if properly treated would prove itself in nine cases out of ten to be a harmless, respectable animal.

9. We apply the words 'an old cat,' or 'spiteful as a cat,' to backbiting scandal and all manner of spitefulness; and no doubt the cat is occasionally spiteful, or may be supposed to be so; but it is not distinctively so, and it is far less so than many men, and especially women, while the poor cat has many admirable qualities for the possession of which it gets no credit.

10. We say of a consequential, pompous, empty-headed coxcomb that he is proud or vain as a peacock;' but the

pride or vanity is much more certain in the case of the man than in that of the beautiful bird.

11. We call a man 'a bear' in allusion to his roughness or gruffness-his tone, temper, or manner-forgetting that the bear is both an affectionate and intelligent mother.

12. One schoolboy calls another who is, or is supposed to be, cowardly 'a hen;' but the hen-in its condition of maternity at least, in protection of its brood-is capable of the exhibition of wonderful bravery.

13. Alluding to the alleged hopeless stupidity of another, a boy stigmatises his companion as an ass' or 'a goose.' But here again the poor animals are grossly maligned; for both of them, under favourable circumstances, sometimes exhibit great intelligence.

14. The ass, too, is regarded as the emblem of obstinacy and laziness; but in its natural or wild state, or under proper treatment by man, it is neither an obstinate nor a lazy animal. Its vices, when it possesses them, it owes usually to man; so that in this as in so many other similar cases the misjudged animals have had developed in them, by man's inhumanity, vices that are really more properly human.

15. A timid child is described as 'a sheep;' and no doubt the domesticated sheep is an eminently timid animal; but, on the other hand, the males of certain races, breeds, or species of wild sheep are both courageous and intelligent.

It were easy to multiply such instances of man's injustice and ignorance; but it is unnecessary to illustrate this subject further here, seeing especially that it is again treated of in the chapter on animal reputation.

Some of man's phrases that appear on the surface uncomplimentary to other animals, because they are obviously intended to be so by those who employ them, are really in a sense complimentary. For instance, when one man is spoken of as 'dogging the steps' of another, an unintended tribute is really paid to the fidelity in companionship, to the disinterestedness in servitude, of the dog. The dogging of footsteps by fellow-man is applied to close following for a sinister object, whereas in the dog's faithful following of his

master no sinister object can possibly, as a rule, be suspected.

Man commits equal error in the epithets applied to his brother man which are, or are supposed to be, complimentary to animal virtues. For instance

1. When we say 'brave as a lion' we commit a grave error; for the lion, so far from being a brave, is naturally a cowardly animal.

2. The majesty of the eagle is also very much-so far. as the term relates at least to mental qualities-a fiction of the poet and the public.

Equal error, then, is committed by man in regarding animals as emblems or embodiments of human virtues dr vices, a subject that is further discussed in another chapter (on animal reputation).

Other illustrations of an incorrect and objectionable phraseology are to be found in such terms as—

1. Dumb, or mute, as applied to the lower animals, implying inability, by a supposed want of all language, to make their wants or feelings known to man or to each other. This is one of those numerous mistakes attributable to man's ignorance, the fact being that animal language is quite as eloquent and efficient in the eyes of those who have studied, and consequently understand, it as can be the mere spoken or written language of vain man.

2. Lower, as applied to other animals than man. No doubt, on the whole or as a group, other animals are zoologically, and psychically, as well as structurally, lower than man. But it is not true that all animals are necessarily lower psychically than all men; for the converse is true, that many individual animals-dogs, horses, elephants, parrots-are both morally and intellectually higher than thousands of men even in the very centres of Western and modern civilisation.

3. Raving, as applied to the delirium or mania of animals incapable of speech. There are, however, exceptional cases, in which the use of such a term is not only not so absurd as may at first sight appear, but is quite legitimatefor instance, in the case of parrots able to speak, sometimes in more than one human language.

4. Hydrophobia is an instance both of the unnecessary multiplication of technical terms and of their ambiguity. It is most unnecessarily and mischievously applied to man in contradistinction to rabies in other animals, while the term 'hydrophobia' itself is highly objectionable, as based upon a mere symptom that frequently or generally does not exist, and that is at least non-diagnostic.

5. Madness in animals may mean any one of several very different affections, including especially insanity and rabies. Rabies itself is sometimes spoken of as 'distemper madness' (Philpots), making 'confusion worse confounded.' A very common and a very serious mistake of a city populace is to confound mere excitement in the hunted, terrified dog or ox with rabies or madness. The animal that is simply overdriven, houseless, starving, nervous, and timid, becomes excited under the influence of man's foolish hue and cry, and naturally takes to flight, endeavouring, and sensibly, to escape from its tormentors. The 'fury,' 'furiosity,' 'infuriation,' 'ferocity,' or so forth that is occasionally developed, with its accompanying or resultant danger to human life, is simply and entirely due, in the majority of cases, to man's own stupidity and inhumanity.

6. The popular terminology of insanity in the lower animals includes such vague terms as 'frenzy' and 'franticness.'

The current terminology of mental philosophy abounds in sources of perplexity to the student. He has perpetually to encounter the misuse of certain terms; the inexactness and multiplicity of the applications of others, even by professed naturalists; the variety and contrariety of definitions; the impossibility of defining some; the employment of others sometimes in a vague, popular, comprehensive sense on the one hand, and in a strictly scientific sense on the other. The following are instructive illustrations of some of these difficulties or sources of difficulty:—

1. As has already been shown, and as will appear in the sequel, the all-important term and quality consciousness may be used, as it is throughout this work, in its ordinary, popular, vague, and comprehensive sense as applicable in different degrees to man, the lower animals, and possibly

even to plants; or its definition may be so restricted by metaphysicians as to be applicable only to man.

2. Sense and sensation, sensibility and sensitiveness, are constantly confounded. Thus the late Dr. Baird, of the British Museum, used the term 'sensibility,' instead of 'sensitiveness' or 'susceptibility,' in speaking of the effects of weather changes on animals.

3. Irritability is frequently used by physiologists, in a strictly scientific sense, as synonymous with mere sensitiveness to the influence of a stimulus--that is, with mere irritoor excito-contractility as it exists even in plants-while the general public understand by it irascibility (of temper), and the physician frequently a certain morbid state of brain and nervous system.

The faulty or unsatisfactory character of current definitions of metaphysical terms is freely admitted by metaphysicians themselves. The extreme difficulties of the definition or application of the terms used in modern mental philosophy have been pointed out by authors differing so much in their various points of view as Darwin, Lewes, Laycock, and Bain. Lewes, for instance, refers to the deplorable and inevitable ambiguity of communication resulting from an absence of strictly defined technical terms' as constituting one of the 'many difficulties which lie in the way of psychological investigation.' On the other hand, Guizot has remarked that 'the common meaning of a word is much more correct than the scientific meaning, which has been given by a few persons under the influence of a particular fact that has taken possession of the imagination.' Hence the propriety, as it appears to me, of avoiding, when possible, in such a work as the present all strictly metaphysical terms, or at least of avoiding, where they must be introduced, all pedantic definitions thereof, and of employing such popular designations as mind, reason, intellect, instinct, consciousness, and so forth in their ordinary, albeit vague and comprehensive, acceptations.