272 JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY. 
pisms represent the mechanized background or marginal con- 
text of that focal experience which we call consciousness. 
Here also is the reason why the spinal soul in man is a myth, © 
while a consciousness in the analogue of the spinal cord in the 
phyletic series may be a reality.' This theory also furnishes a 
rational distinction between intelligence and reason, concerning 
which there has been so much controversy among comparative 
psychologists. An znutelligent act is an act which implies adap- 
tation of means to ends; it is the purposive act. A conscious 
act, i. e., a vationl act, is one which reveals the ability to vary 
the means in the achievement of the end. All intelligent acts 
have passed through the conscious phase, but have become 
mechanized or automatised in the form of instinctive reflexes. 
Fach reflex and instinct represents a habit which has been built 
up in the phylogenetic struggle in connection with such an 
amount and kind of consciousness as was necessary to rally the 
animal for a crisis. 
We have not the facts to enable us to sketch in detail the 
stages in the evolution of animal consciousness. An instruc- 
tive outline of the probable steps, however, forms the substance 
of a course of lectures on comparative psychology by Professor 
GrorGE H. Meap of the University of Chicago, which have 
not as yet been published. I will give in my own words the 
drift of that part of his argument which is relevant here as I 
recall it from his lectures to which it was once my privilege 
to listen. 
Our general principle is that no psychical function appears 
except as relative to some definite end and that such an end is 
found in primitive forms in the reactions necessary to the pre- 
servation of the species or of the individual. And we have seen, 
that progressive evolution has been in and through the animal 
rather than the plant. 
Now, Professor MEap shows that the plant continues to 
play an important part in this evolution, in that the animal is 
1 And here is the element of truth in the theory of partial parallelism, that 
while every psychosis has its neurosis, not every neurosis has its psychosis. 
