The second point is, that the germs of abstraction and generalization, or rather processes which are the precursors of abstraction and generalization, arise, and cannot fail to arise, in the genesis of experience from the performance of inherited responses, and from the coalescence of their results into a conscious situation. To a quite young chick I gave pieces of yellow orange peel, which were found to be distasteful and rejected. In Dr. Stout’s phraseology, they acquired meaning in experience. Can one doubt that the colour and taste were thus rendered predominant, and that the shape, size, and other qualities of the bits of orange peel remained practically unnoticed? Shortly afterwards the chick was given chopped and crumbled egg; the fragments of “white” were eaten, but the bits of hard-boiled yolk were untouched. They possessed a sufficient general resemblance to the orange peel to carry the same meaning. In many ways particular qualities of objects are emphasized in so far as they incite to behaviour; they form centres of biological interest, just as the abstract quality of ideational thought is the centre of rational interest on a higher plane of mental development. And in many ways objects presenting certain salient features in common, amid differences which remain unnoticed, are unconsciously grouped as the starting-points of similar perceptual situations, just as in the generalization of ideational thought similar relationships are deliberately grouped as the starting-points of like conceptual situations. Both are purposive and have an end, which we as investigators are able to assign; but only for reflection and conceptual thought are they also purposeful--the end being foreseen and realized, not only by the investigators, but by the agent concerned. And the purpose or end itself is in the two cases different. In the one case it is the biological end of practical behaviour; in the other case it is the rational end of explanation--abstraction and generalization being deliberately used as a means to this latter end. The question has again and again been asked: Do animals reason? And different answers are given by those who are substantially in agreement as to the facts and their interpretation, but are not in agreement as to their use of the word “reason.” Perhaps, if the question assume the form--Are animals capable of explaining their own acts and the causes of phenomena?--the position of those who find the evidence of their doing so insufficient may be placed in a clearer light. This is what is generally meant by the statement that animals have probably not reached the level of rational beings.