The Scoff is Ji Natural 1st. 287 



transcend the world, and bear the likeness of and enjoy fellow- 

 ship with the world's Creator ? There would be an inconceiv- 

 able incongruity between the endowment and the purpose 

 which it had to serve, if the animal, with the task only of a 

 beast of burden, were yet provided with the soul and the 

 potentialities of a man. 



This negative or destructive method of dealing with the 

 problem seems to be both valid and successful. But the 

 positive or constructive method, i.e., accounting for animal 

 phenomena by positive causes, which fall short of self-conscious- 

 ness and will, is a task incumbent on him who holds the animal 

 soul to be not the same in kind as man's ; and he need not 

 fear that task as compared with the task of proving that it is of 

 the same kind by showing it to be possessed of these powers. 

 The general result of an investigation conducted for the 

 solution of the problem in this form is, as we have seen, that 

 all the psychical phenomena of animals are capable of being 

 explained by such an intelligent principle as is merely 

 automatic in its mode of operation. There is a centre of 

 intelligent force in animals ; but it is not an intelligence self- 

 conscious, self-determined, and self-regulated. 



On this subject I wish here to give the following view. Let 

 lis distinguish these three classes of phenomena,— first, those 

 that may be designated under the term Irritability ; second, those 

 that go to constitute Sensibility or Sensitive Intelligence ; and 

 third, the phenomena of Volition. The classification is minute 

 and comprehensive enough to allow the nature and relations of 

 animal psychosis to appear. 



i Under Irritability I include what is called reflex action ; 

 and I do not see why such action may not fall under that 

 designation. There is nothing psychical, it is supposed, in the 

 reflex action of the spinal cord. No feeling, idea, or image, 

 nor any form of consciousness whatever intervenes. The 

 ingoing motion excited by external stimulus passes from the 

 afferent to the efferent system of nerves through the immediate 

 central connection of the two systems, and the whole movement 

 is thus confined to the external circle of innervation and is wholly 

 mechanical. I do not see why the most even of the phenomena 

 that Carpenter has called sensori-motor or consensual should not 

 be to a large extent equally ranked under this head. The only 

 difference is that the external stimulus in that action falls on 

 the special senses, while in the so-called reflex action it affects 



