The next question is--Have the higher animals the power of analyzing their constructs and forming isolates or abstract ideas of qualities apart from the constructs of which these qualities are elements? Can we say, with Mr. Romanes,[GK] "All the higher animals have general ideas of 'good-for-eating' and 'not-good-for-eating,' _quite apart from any particular objects of which either of these qualities happens to be characteristic_"? Or with Leroy,[GL] that a fox "will see snares when there are none; his imagination, distorted by fear, will produce deceptive shapes, to which he will attach _an abstract notion of danger_"? Now, this is a most difficult question to answer. But it seems to me that, if we take the term "abstract idea" in the sense in which I have used the word "isolate," we must answer it firmly, but not dogmatically (this is the last subject in the world on which to dogmatize), in the negative. Fully admitting, nay, contending, that this is a matter in which it is exceedingly difficult to obtain anything like satisfactory evidence, I fail to see that we have any grounds for the assertion that the higher animals have abstract ideas of "good-for-eating" or "not-good-for-eating," quite apart from any particular objects of which either of these qualities happens to be characteristic.[GM] The particular example is well chosen, since the idea of food is a dominant one in the mind of the brute. There can be no question that the quality of eatability is built in by the dog into a great number of his constructs. But I question whether this quality can be isolated by the dog, and can exist in his mind divorced from the eatables which suggest it. If it can, then the dog is capable of forming a concept as I have defined the term. I can quite understand that a hungry dog, prowling around for food, has, suggested by his hunger, vague representations in memory of things good to eat, in which the element of eatability is predominant and comparatively distinct, while the rest is vague and indistinct. And that this is a concept in Mr. Sully's use of the term, I admit. But it appears to me that there is a very great difference between a perceptual construct with eatability predominant and the rest vague, and a conceptual isolate or abstract idea of eatability quite apart from any object or objects of which this quality is characteristic. And to mark the difference, I venture to call the prominent quality a _predominant_ as opposed to the _isolate_ when the quality is floated off from the object. _No doubt it is out of this perceptual prominence of one characteristic and vagueness of its accompaniments that conceptual isolation of this one characteristic has grown, as I believe, through the naming of predominants._ But I should draw the line between the one and the other somewhere distinctly above the level of intelligence that is attained by any dumb animal. I am not prepared either to affirm or deny that this line should be drawn exactly