Smith, EducabiUty of Parmncecium. 501 



their assumptions must be considered and agreed upon by animal 

 psychology before we can have an exact classification in that 

 science. Lloyd Morgan^ says that consciousness is present wher- 

 everwe find profit by experience. He feels justified in assuming 

 that pleasurable consciousness is associated with those modes of 

 behavior which through repetition become more vigorous, and dis- 

 agreeable consciousness with those* that are checked. 



In man most education takes place in the highest level of the 

 brain, the functions of which are synchronous with consciousness. 

 Hence, in man, profit by experience usually implies consciousness. 

 In many lower animals no such level exists and education is a modi- 

 fication of the lower centers or even of the somatic tissue. If our 

 inference of animal consciousness is based on analogy, is it analogy 

 with the gross behavior of man or with the nervous mechanism of 

 man 1 If profit by experience is our criterion it would seem that 

 the analogy was to man's gross behavior. But all profit by expe- 

 rience in man is not necessarily accompanied by consciousness. 

 Many adjustments are brought about unconsciously and many 

 more are arrived at without involving our choice, and this is what 

 Morgan really has in mind. We certainly do not think that the 

 profitable adaptation of our muscle tissue to new conditions ren- 

 ders the muscle "a conscious mechanism." But much adapta- 

 tion in animals may be of this kind, and in animals possessing no 

 differentiated nervous system any adaptation, or profit by wear and 

 tear, must be a modification of body tissue. 



How then shall w^e justify ourselves in saying that all profit by 

 experience is evidence of consciousness in an organism .? This 

 special case of inference by analogy is usually described in such 

 words as these: "I infer consciousness in others because I ob- 

 serve their behavior to be similar to that behavior in myself which 

 is accompanied by consciousness." But is the similarity of gross 

 behavior our only ground of inference .? 



If a race of beings should appear whose gross behavior was 

 similar to our own but whose central nervous system was entirely 

 different would the analogy of gross behavior alone justify the 

 inference of their consciounsess .^ Though it might do so for the 

 unreflective man, it would not for the ontologist. Why is the 

 doll more than a puppet to the child .? Because of the analogy of 



1 Animal Behavior p. 45 ff. 



