ANIMAL AND RATIONAL INTELLIGENCE 231 



life and death, and so forth. But how can we feel 

 sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and 

 some power of imagination, as shown by his dreams, 

 never reflects on his past pleasures or pains in the 

 chase ? And this would be a form of self-conscious 

 ness. l Considering the difference between the direct 

 knowledge of our own procedure in consciousness, 

 and the indirect knowledge of the dog s experience, 

 how can we be sure as to the contents of an old dog s 

 dreams ? What we know of the physiological results 

 of life-long repetition of functions along well-defined 

 lines, warrants a conclusion favourable to re- awakened 

 sensibilities, giving a physical basis for the sensori- 

 motor activity, and for the barking, noticed often 

 in the sleeping dog. Do not such manifestations 

 belong even more to the comparatively young dog 

 than to the old dog I Does not his master s voice 

 readily stir the dog s susceptibilities in the waking 

 state ? Those things are of more consequence to us for 

 the purposes of scientific inference, than the occasional 

 and restricted phases of nerve excitement seen in the 

 sleeping dog. Besides, all the symptoms described, 

 including the barking, are produced by electric 

 excitation of the cortex of the dog s brain. May 

 we not, on this evidence, conclude that all these 

 phenomena belong to the sphere of sensori-motor 

 activity, restricting the interpretation of dreams 

 accordingly ? To me, it seems that such restriction 

 is required by the evidence. If so, the claim to 

 self-consciousness, even in the restricted sense in 

 dicated, must be withdrawn. 



When next we consider how much is involved in 



1 Descent of Man, p. 83. 



