2 ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS. 



v v^ 



The Jesuit father E. Wasmann and von Buttel-Reepen are 

 willing, on the other hand, to accept the inductive inference from 



analogy as a valid scientific method. Like Lubbock, the lecturer 

 \ v 



. and others, they advocate a comparative psychology of the inverte- 

 brates and convincingly demonstrate the existence of psychic facul- 

 ties in these animals. Wasmann, however, puts a very low esti- 

 mate on the mental powers of the higher vertebrates and, in my 

 opinion, improperly, denies to them any ability of drawing infer- 

 ences from experience when in the presence of new conditions (this 

 alone he designates as intelligence); he believes that man alone 

 possesses an immortal soul (independent of natural laws?) in addi- 

 tion to the animal mind. 



It is necessary, first of all, to arrive at some common under- 

 standing concerning the obscure notion "psychic" in order that 

 we may avoid logomachy, and carrying on theology in the sense of 

 Goethe's Mephistopheles. Two concepts are confounded in an 

 obscure manner in the word "psychic" : first, the abstract concept 

 of introspection, or subjectivism, i. e. , observation from within, 

 which every person knows only, and can know only, in and by him- 

 self. For this let us reserve the term "consciousness." Second, 

 the "activity" of the mind or that which determines the contents 

 of the field of consciousness. This has been included without fur- 

 ther ado with consciousness in the wider sense, and thence has 

 arisen the confusion of regarding consciousness as an attribute of 

 the mind. In another place I have designated the molecular wave 

 of activity of the neural elements as "neurocyme." 



We cannot speak of the consciousness of human beings other 

 than ourselves without drawing an inference from analogy ; quite 

 as little ought we to speak of a consciousness of forgotten things. 

 The field of our consciousness is constantly changing. Things ap- 

 pear in it and disappear from it. Memory, through association, 

 enables us to recall, more or less directly and with more or less diffi- 

 culty, things which appear to be momentarily absent from con- 

 sciousness. Moreover, both the experience of self-observation and 

 the phenomena of hypnotism teach us experimentally that many 

 things of which we seem to be unconscious, are nevertheless pres- 



