Although, therefore, an animal cannot conceive its companion as another self of similar nature, and with like passions to his own, yet a considerable share of the feeling-element of the conscious situation is projected on to that companion as the chief centre of interest. And if it be said that this is his feeling and not his neighbour’s, the objection will be seen to lose its force, so soon as it is realized that even man has no experience of any feelings save his own. The only way we can reach fellow-feeling is through sympathy; and sympathy has its roots in the projective process we have endeavoured to describe. We endow our neighbours with natures as sensitive to pain and pleasure as our own. This is a pre-requisite to the social relationships termed ethical. But when we hear people say, and find even Mr. Romanes putting on deliberate record,[163] that “the feelings which prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse can only be assigned to the category to which, by common consent, they are ascribed--delight in torturing for torture’s sake,” I venture to think that common consent, if such it be, is wrong. As I said a dozen years ago,[164] before Professor Groos had so carefully elaborated his theory of play, “the cat or kitten plays with the mouse not from innate cruelty, but for the sake of getting some little practice in the most important business of cat life. Only man, who has the capacity for nobler things, can be cruel for cruelty’s sake;” and this is the direction in which Dr. Groos’s opinion[165] tends to set. Mr. Romanes might have learnt a lesson in caution from his sister, who at first attributed a sense of shame to the capuchin she so carefully studied, but subsequently was led to adopt a simpler interpretation. “He bit me in several places to-day,” she says, in her admirable diary,[166] “but he seemed ashamed of himself afterwards, hiding his face in his arms, and sitting quiet for a time.” She adds, however, in a footnote: “On subsequent observation, I find this quietness was not due to shame at having bit me; for whether he succeeds in biting any person or not, he always sits quiet and dull-looking after a fit of passion, being, I think, fatigued.”