470 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



may, he can never solve it. It can only be solved (and 

 how simple then the solution!) by a being outside both 

 spheres, who can see what the enclosed being, " cabin'd, 

 cribb'd, confined," could never see, namely, that the 

 characters were wrought in the translucent glass of the 

 spheres. By which parable, imperfect as it is, I would 

 teach that we can never learn how kinetic manifestations 

 have a metakinetic aspect without getting outside ourselves 

 to view kinesis and metakinesis from an independent 

 standpoint. Or, in the words of Sir W. E. Hamilton,* 

 ''How consciousness in general is possible; and how, in 

 particular, the consciousness of self and the consciousness 

 of something different from self are possible . . . these 

 questions are equally unphilosophical, as they suppose the 

 possibility of a faculty exterior to consciousness and con- 

 versant about its operations." 



The only course open to us, then, in this difficult but 

 important problem is to make certain assumptions, and 

 see how far a consistent hypothesis may be based upon 

 them. I make, therefore, the following assumptions : 

 First, that there is a noumenal system of "things in them- 

 selves " of which all phenomena, whether kinetic or meta- 

 kinetic, are manifestations. Secondly, that whenever in 

 the curve of noumenal sequences kinetic manifestations 

 (convexities) appear, there appear also concomitant meta- 

 kinetic manifestations (concavities). Thirdly, that when 

 kinetic manifestations assume the integrated and co- 

 ordinated complexity of the nerve-processes in certain 

 ganglia of the human brain, the metakinetic manifestations 

 assume the integrated and co-ordinated complexity of human 

 consciousness. Fourthly, that what is called "mental 

 evolution" is the metakinetic aspect of what is called 

 brain or interneural evolution. 



It would require far more space than I can here com- 

 mand to deal adequately with these assumptions, and meet 

 the objections which have been and are likely to be raised 

 against them. I must content myself with drawing atten- 

 * Quoted in Professor Veitch's " Hamilton," p. 77. 



