move through the higher and more tenuous medium of introspective thought." We object to the above expression, "standing as signs of outward objects." We admit the existence in animals of groups and groups of groups of imaginations, and that they have a material relation to the objects which produced them and may result in exciting various results; but we deny that any animal ever recognizes any objects in the same sense as children do, therefore we would keep clear of the suspicious word, "sign"-particularly suspicious as used by Mr. Romanes, who has never defined the meaning he gives to that term.

He next proceeds to observe that "the foundations of self-consciousness are largely laid in the fact that an organism is one connected whole. . . . Hence a brute, like a young child, has learnt to distinguish its own members, and likewise its whole body from all other objects." Here we must explain: It has, of course, feelings of activity and passivity, self and not-self, but need not on that account have a scintilla of consciousness. Similarly it may, by a loose analogy, be said to "know how to avoid sources of pain" and to "seck those of pleasure." But Mr. Romanes himself says, "Such knowledge and such experience all belong to the receptual order," and this order, as we have several times pointed out, is no case of true knowledge. He continues, "But this does not hinder that they play a most important part in laying the foundations of a consciousness of individuality." Of course not! All sensation "plays a most important part in laying the

p. 197. † See "On Truth,” p. 190. ‡ p. 197.

foundations" for intellectual action, just as all mere vegetative vitality "plays a most important part in laying the foundations" for the exercise of sensitivity, and just as the power of chemical action, or even of physical energy, "plays a most important part in laying the foundations" for vegetative vital activity. But this relation does not reduce vital action to mere physics, or sensitivity to mere vitality. These faculties remain distinct, and we have no reason to suppose a real transition or a fundamental identity to exist between them in any case. Neither, then, because sensitivity serves as a foundation upon which embodied intellect may act, does that fact give us any ground for concluding that sensitivity is intellect.

in

Mr. Romanes asserts, as still more important, the fact that brutes can apprehend (have "recepts. "reference to") "the mental states of other animals." This we deny. We admit they are acted upon by, and respond to, the sensations they receive through the actions of animals, due to psychical states of such animals; but that is a very different matter. Our author cites Wundt as giving his opinion that "the most important of all conditions to the genesis of self-consciousness is given by the muscular sense in acts of voluntary movement." Mr. Romanes himself, while agreeing with Wundt "that this is a highly important condition," thinks that the others he has mentioned are "quite as much, or even more so." All these are, no doubt, as we have said, important or indispensable antecedent conditions to the evocation of consciousness,

p. 197.

as fire is an important, indispensable antecedent condition to enable the genius of a distinguished chef to furnish forth an artistic dinner. "That is to say," he continues, "the logic of recepts, even in brutes, is sufficient to enable the mind to establish true analogies between its own states (although these are not yet the objects of separate attention, or of what may be termed subjective knowledge), and the corresponding states of other minds." This sentence, in spite of the words in the parenthesis, is a most misleading one. We might with as much justice and propriety represent a match coated with a certain phosphoric compound, as capable of establishing "a true analogy between its own" dynamic state and the dynamic state of a lighted candle! He goes on, "I take it to be a matter of general observation that animals habitually and accurately interpret the mental states of other animals, while they also well know that other animals are able similarly to interpret theirs—as is best proved by their practising the arts of cunning, concealment, hypocrisy, etc." We take it for granted that the "general observation" of a multitude of persons interested in animals, but not experts in the study of their own mental processes, does often lead them to form such mistaken inferences. But they are inferences which the facts do not suffice to prove, and which, if true, would overthrow the infinitely wider basis of experiment and observation which has convinced serious thinkers since Aristotle, that animals are not rational. That they act in many respects so as to lead the careless or prejudiced observer to think they really

have such perceptions and intuitions as those here attributed to them, is, of course, most obvious; but their actions, nevertheless, do not afford us any proof that they ever experience "perception " or form an "intuition" of any sort or kind whatever. Mr. Romanes quotes M. Quatrefages's relation, of an experience such as we are all more or less familiar with-namely, a dog playing with his master, and only biting him most tenderly. As to this M. Quatrefages says, "In reality it played a part in a comedy, and we cannot act without being conscious of it." To this assertion we reply, "We, indeed, cannot, but a mastiff may, and nothing in the tale appears to us in the least to indicate a faculty higher than that consentience we assign, in different degrees, to a mastiff and an earth-worm." Mr. Romanes follows up this citation with another extraordinary, gratuitous assertion. He says, "It is of importance further to observe that at this stage of mental evolution the individual-whether an animal or an infant-so far realizes its own individuality as to be informed by the logic of recepts that it is one of a kind. I do not mean that at this stage the individual realizes its own or any other individuality as such; but merely that it recognizes the fact of its being one among a number of similiar though distinct forms of life." This we strenuously deny. There is no shadow of reason for asserting that any animal "recognizes" any "fact," though, of course, it is manifest that their various feelings lead them to act in ways to a certain superficial extent similar to the ways in which creatures like ourselves would act. Many very lowly animals go in troops, and, of

course, their movements are guided by feelings which differ according as such movements relate to themselves, to organisms of the same kind or to organisms of other kinds. "In this way," he tells us, "there arises a sort of outward self consciousness,' which differs from true or inward self-consciousness only in the absence of any attention being directed upon the inward mental states as such." But true self-consciousness by no means needs for its existence that it should be "directed upon the inward mental states at all," and, à fortiori, it does not need that it should be "directed upon the inward mental states as such." He goes on,f “This outward self-consciousness is known to us all, even in adult life—it being but comparatively seldom that we pause in our daily activities to contemplate the mental processes of which these activities are the expression.' In order to avoid confusion, it may be well here to enumerate the states of consciousness that really exist. We have :

(1) Reflex consciousness concerning our mental processes as such, as, e.g., that in thinking, "That man is probably a thief," we are making an "act of judgment."

(2) Reflex consciousness as to what we think, but not as to the nature of our mental process itself, as when we say, "I do think that man is a thief."

(3) Direct consciousness, as when we think a man. a thief, without adverting to the fact that we think so at all, and still less advert to the fact that in so thinking we are making a judgment.

But besides these states of consciousness, we may