orientate perfectly well in our three-dimensional world? How to explain that
a bird flies up and down, straight ahead and sideways, in all three directions;
that a horse jumps fences and ditches; that a dog and a cat seem to understand
the properties of depth and height together with length and breadth?
In order to explain this we must return once
more to the fundamental
principles of animal psychology. It has been pointed out earlier that many
properties of objects which we remember as the
general
properties of species
and varieties, have to be remembered by animals as the
individual
properties
of objects. In sorting out this enormous store of individual properties
preserved in memory animals are helped by the emotional quality connected
for them with each representation and each memory of a sensation.
An animal knows, say, two roads as two entirely separate phenomena
having nothing in common; one phenomenon, i.e. one
road consists of a
series of definite representations coloured by definite emotional qualities; the
other phenomenon, i.e. the other road, consists of a series of other definite
representations, coloured by other qualities. We say that both the one and the
other are roads, one leading to one place, the other to another.
For the animal
the two roads have
nothing in common.
But it remembers all the sequence of
emotional qualities connected with the first road and the second road and so
remembers both roads with their turnings, ditches, fences and so on.
Thus the memory of the definite properties of objects which they have seen
helps animals to orientate in the world of phenomena. But, as a rule, when
faced with new phenomena, animals are much more helpless than man.
Animals see two dimensions. They constantly sense the
third dimension
but do not see it. They sense it as something
transient,
as we sense
time.
The surfaces which animals see possess for them many strange properties;
these are, first of all
numerous and varied movements.
It has been said already that all illusory movements must be perfectly real
for them.
These movements
seem
real to us also, but we
know
them to be
illusory, as for instance the turning round of a house as we drive past, the
springing up of a tree from round the corner, the movement of the moon
among the clouds and so on.
In addition, many other movements will exist
for animals which we do not
suspect. Actually a great many objects, completely motionless for us - indeed
all objects -
must appear to animals as
moving.
AND IT
IS PRECISELY IN THESE MOVEMENTS THAT THE
THIRD DIMENSION OF
SOLIDS WILL BE MANIFESTED FOR THEM, i.e. THE THIRD DIMENSION OF
SOLIDS WILL APPEAR TO THEM AS MOTION.
Let us try to imagine how an animal perceives objects of the external world.
Let us suppose that a
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