Preface 



maternal body. The Acineta is a protozoon armed in 

 its adult state with venomous tentacles particularly 

 dangerous to the amoeba; but these tentacles are not 

 found on the young Acineta, and the amoeba observed 

 by Carter knew that the young one about to leave 

 the maternal body would be eatable during the early 

 days of its existence.' 



The error is comical: but every one must see that 

 it is entirely insignificant from the philosophic point 

 of view, and disappears automatically before the new 

 knowledge relating to instinct. This error, bearing 

 only on a point of detail, does not in any way attaint the 

 descending induction which allows a relative conscious- 

 ness to all animal life. Even if the extension of the 

 induction to the lower animals were arbitrary, it would 

 have no importance: there is no serious drawback in 

 attributing to them, even arbitrarily, rudimentary con- 

 sciousness and sensibility. 



On the other hand, the errors of the ascending 

 method are flagrant, since they would go so far as to deny 

 that consciousness and sensibility to superior animals! 

 The justice of Auguste Comte's remark is evident : ' As 

 soon as we are dealing with the characteristics of animal 

 life, we ought to take Man as our starting point, and 

 see how his characteristics lower in the scale little by 

 little, rather than start from the sponge and seek how 

 they develop. The animal life of man helps us to 

 understand that of the sponge, but the converse is not 

 true.' 



Passing from biology to psychology, let us consider, 

 for instance, the phenomena attributed to subconscious- 

 ness which will have so large a place in the present work. 

 There, more than anywhere else, the contrast between 

 the two methods will be manifest. 



In a study which appeared in the Annales des Sciences 

 Psychiques I recommended the synthetic method as 

 applicable to the philosophy of the phenomena of 



xvi 



