Children have some inkling of substance before they have any of accidents, as is shown by this, that the first names they use are nouns substantive, not adjectives. On dumb animals Cardinal Newman writes in his Grammar of Assent (p. 111, cd. 1895) "It is one peculiarity of animal natures to be susceptible of phenomena through the channels of sense: it is another to have in those sensible phenomena a perception of the individuals to which this or that group of them belongs. This perception of individual things, amid the mass of shapes and colours which meets their sight, is given to brutes in large measure, and that, apparently, from the moment of their birth. It is by no mere physical instinct, such as that which leads him to his mother for milk, that the new-dropped lamb recognises each of his fellow-lambkins as a whole, consisting of many parts bound up in one, and, before he is an hour old, makes experience of his and their rival individualities. And much more distinctly do the horse and dog recognise even the personality of their master."

Of God and His Creatures: 1.34