He is a pauper as against
a millionaire. To ask him to do so would be like giving a street-
boy sixpence and telling him to go and buy himself a founder's share
in the New River Company. He would not even know what was meant,
and even if he did it would take several millions of sixpences to
buy one. It is astonishing what a clever workman will do with very
modest tools, or again how far a thrifty housewife will make a very
small sum of money go, or again in like manner how many ideas an
intelligent brute can receive and convey with its very limited
vocabulary; but no one will pretend that a dog's intelligence can
ever reach the level of a man's. What we do maintain is that,
within its own limited range, it is of the same essential character
as our own, and that though a dog's ideas in respect of human
affairs are both vague and narrow, yet in respect of canine affairs
they are precise enough and extensive enough to deserve no other
name than thought or reason. We hold moreover that they communicate
their ideas in essentially the same manner as we do--that is to say,
by the instrumentality of a code of symbols attached to certain
states of mind and material objects, in the first instance
arbitrarily, but so persistently, that the presentation of the
symbol immediately carries with it the idea which it is intended to
convey.
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