266 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



which guides him to, and in, the most complicated pro- 

 ceedings, and astonishes him when, by some chance, it is 

 suddenly revealed to consciousness, or is converted into 

 " conscious memory," when he dreams. Every man 

 finds, sooner or later, that he has stored within him a 

 register of things, persons, and events of the existence of 

 which he was totally unaware. The gradual development 

 of " consciousness " in higher ape-like animals and lower 

 men, in the course of ages, is not the unparalleled thing 

 which one is apt, at times, to consider it to be, since we 

 can all remember the dawning of our own consciousness 

 and its gradual development. We can also watch its 

 growth in that most mysterious and wonderful casket of 

 ancestral secrets and unfathomable destiny — a human 

 infant. 



Inscrutable as is the ultimate nature of " conscious- 

 ness," we may put its further consideration aside on the 

 present occasion, since it forms no actual barrier between 

 men-like apes and ape-like men. On the contrary, the 

 higher apes, the lower living races of men and the 

 children of higher races, furnish us with evidence of 

 transition from the lower condition of automatism to the 

 higher one of self-recognition or consciousness in its 

 most developed form. There is, however, a leading 

 difference in the mental organization and mental pro- 

 cesses of various animals, including man, which is of 

 more importance in the matter which we are considering, 

 and is largely related to the physical measurable difference 

 in the size of the brain. The insects of which Fabre 

 says : " They know nothing about anything," inherit a 

 nervous mechanism — a brain and elongated mass of 

 nerve-cells and fibres, like our spinal cord — which works 

 sharply and definitely like a toy-automaton. Touch 

 this part and that movement follows; excite the sense of 



