He then proceeds to "show" their importance, observing

"We have now before us unquestionable evidence that in the growing child there is a power, not only of forming, but of expressing a pre-conceptual judgment, long before there is any evidence of the child presenting the faintest rudiment of internal, conceptual, or true self-consciousness."

We have now before us, to our judgment, unquestionable evidence that in the growing child there is consciousness and a power of conception, long before there is any power of speech whatever; as also that clearly conceived judgments are explicitly made known sometimes by the utterance of two sounds, and sometimes by a mere monosyllable, as is frequently the case with adults also-even Fellows of the Royal Society. Therefore, instead of saying with Mr. Romanes* that expressions of children are not examples of “true predication in the sense of being the expression of a true or conceptual judgment," because the child using them has not yet spoken of itself as "I," we say that, being at once true predications-true conceptual judgments— they prove that self-consciousness preceded them, in spite of the very unnecessary habit of using the term "I" not having come into use. He tells us that the child's expression, "Mama pleased to Dodo," would have no meaning as spoken by a child, unless the child knew "what is the state of mind he thus attributes to another." So when the child Dodo further says, "Dodo pleased to mama," he is conscious that he is pleased. Mr. † p. 206.

#

p. 205.

Romanes says, "Thus the child is enabled to fix these states before his mental vision as things which admit of being denoted by verbal signs." We do not say this: The child thinks nothing of "signs," or his own mental states as such. To do that would be to make acts of reflex consciousness. But he knows well enough he is pleased, and means to make it known; and this he could not do had he not self-consciousness.

Mr. Romanes quotes the late Mr. Chauncey Wright as saying, "It does not appear impossible that an intelligent dog" may be aided by purposely directing its attention to the accessories of a spot where a lost bone may have been buried.

Attention, in the sense of what we have called "sensuous attention" (or the intensifying of the looking, by some object associated with the lost bone striking. the senses), is one thing, but true or intellectual attention is quite another thing.

With respect to the development of self-consciousness, Mr. Romanes affirms it to be "gradual," because "the process is throughout of the nature of a growth." In this connection, however, comes a passage† to which we think it desirable to call special attention. It is as follows :—

"Nevertheless, there is some reason to think that when this growth has attained a certain point, it makes, so to speak, a sudden leap of progress, which may be taken to bear the same relation to the development of the mind as the act of birth does to that of the body. . . . Midway between the slowly evolving phases See "On Truth," pp. 198, 219. † p. 208.

in utero, and the slowly evolving phases of after-growth, there is in the case of the human body a great and sudden change at the moment when it first becomes separated from that of its parent. And so, there is some reason to believe, it is in the case of the human mind."

We by no means accept the analogy as here given, but we deem it well to note this admission of a sudden leap in psychical human development. In principle it admits all we demand, and may be regarded as a case resembling that other sudden leap of evolution, before referred to the junction of the spermatozoon and the ovum, etc. † The existence of some real changes of kind in nature can hardly be denied by the consistent. biologist, and we have seen how strongly even Mr. Wallace has quite recently affirmed their existence. But a change of kind must be sudden. An essential nature is, or it is not. It can never partly be and partly not be.

Mr. Romanes employs here, as in his former work, the uncouth and somewhat repulsive term "ejects," to denote the feelings accompanying a creature's spontaneous activities, and readily appreciated by other creatures seeing them. He says § he desires to "lay particular stress upon the point, which I do not think has been sufficiently noticed by previous writers— namely, the ejective origin of subjective knowledge." He regards such appreciation as hereditary, as shown by "the smile of an infant in answer to a caressing tone,

See above, p. 12.

† As to these sudden psychical changes occurring in nature, see "On Truth," pp. 458, 439, 507, 508.

‡ See above, pp. 10, 27.

$ p. 209.

and its cry in answer to a scolding one." It is this, he thinks, which leads savages to endow inanimate objects and the forces of nature with psychical attributes, and he finds further evidence of it "in the fact of psychological analysis revealing that our idea of cause is derived from our idea of muscular effort."

This tendency, he adds, † leads man "in his early. days" to regard the Ego as an ejection, resembling the others of his kind by whom he is surrounded, and he regards Max Müller's generalization that "I" is traceable to the expression, "This one," as "additional and more particular evidence of the originally ejective character of the idea of self." This we must reluctantly declare to be, to our judgment, simply nonsense. That men should be apt to attribute life to what is inanimate is but an instance of the law that we judge by experience, and that motion is commonly a sign of vitality. It is the same law which leads us spontaneously to judge other persons and things by ourselves. That animals instinctively apprehend in their way the dispositions of others, is surely a very simple form of Instinct. But to regard the "idea of self" as really made up of an assemblage of "ideas of other people," is like saying that a straight line is made up of a number of crooked ones, or that a collection of a number of musical instruments, all silent, could produce sound.

* Would Mr. Romanes, then, say that from such analogies he has good cause to disbelieve in Cause? For what we believe to be the true relation of our feelings of effort, etc., to our apprehension of causation, see "On Truth," pp. 48-52.

† p. 211.

Wundt says, "It is only after the child has distinguished by definite characteristics its own being from that of other people, that it makes the further advance of perceiving that these other people are also beings in and for themselves." This Mr. Romanes quotes, adding, very remarkably, "Now, this I do not question, although I do not think there can be much before or after in these two concepts." This sentence is indeed remarkable, since Wundt's position is simply fatal to that of Mr. Romanes. However quickly the idea of other people may come after the idea of self, the fact of such ideas coming after at all is absolutely fatal to the idea that what precedes them can be due to them and composed of them. Whether or not Wundt is justified in saying that a child must first distinguish its own being by definite characteristics, we regard it as absolutely certain that it could not have a conception of other people without also having a conception of itself also.

Nothing in Mr. Romanes's chapter on self-consciousness, even tends to show us how the gulf between mere sensitivity and intellect can be bridged over; or how consciousness can have arisen by any natural process whatever. We have, of course, long known that there are certain conditions antecedently necessary for its manifestation in man-such as mechanical forces, chemical energies, life, and sensitivity-but none or all of these suffice to explain consciousness, the origin of which remains shrouded in mystery as inscrutable to mere physical science as the origin of sensitivity, life, or physical energy itself. We see it there, where it