384 THE CAT. [CHAP. 



ourselves ? "We know that in our own actions sensations enter as 

 causes as well as accompaniments of our activity, and not only this, 

 for we know further that our thoughts may also enter into the same 

 circle of our life changes. We know that it is our knoiokdge that a 

 certain event is imminent (e.g., that a storm is fast approaching) 

 which makes us act in a certain way (e.g., to stop in a walk 

 and hegin to return towards home) in anticipation of it. To deny 

 this is to deny the evident teaching of our consciousness it is to 

 deny what is most evident in favour of what is much less so some 

 speculative hypothesis. Let us suppose that some one tells us when 

 away from home that our house is on fire, who does not know that 

 the actions he thereupon performs are due to his mental apprehen- 

 sion of the news told him ? If we do not know such a thing as this 

 we know nothing, and discussion is useless. As the late Mr. Lewes 

 has said,* " That we are conscious, and that our actions are de- 

 termined by sensations, emotions, and ideas, are facts which may or 

 may not he explained by reference to material conditions, hut which 

 no material explanation can render more certain." The advocate of 

 "Natural Selection " may also be asked, "How did knowledge ever 

 come to be, if it is in no way useful to its possessor, if it is utterly 

 without action, and is but a superfluous accompaniment of physical 

 changes which would go on as well without it ? " 



15. But let us learn a little more from our own experience of 

 our own nature. "We know that a whole multitude of actions, 

 which are at first performed with attention and full consciousness, 

 come at last to be performed unconsciously ; we know that effective 

 impressions may be made on pur organs of sense without our know- 

 ledge our attention at the time of the occurrence being diverted. 

 We know also that countless organic activities take place in us under 

 the influence and control of the nervous system, which either never 

 rise into consciousness at all, or only do so under abnormal con- 

 ditions. Yet we cannot but think that those activities are of the 

 same generic nature, whether we feel, perceive, or attend to them or 

 not. The principle of individuation in ourselves, then, evidently 

 acts with intelligence in some actions, with sentience in many 

 actions, but constantly in an unperceived and unfelt manner. Yet 

 we have seen that it undeniably intervenes in the chain of physical 

 causation. 



The principle of individuation in the cat is a principle which 

 subsumes into a higher unity, which unifies and directs the active 

 properties of all the cells and tissues, and the functions of all the 

 organs and system of organs which make up the animal's corporeal 

 frame. Its activities are : (1) mainly unfelt and occupied with the 

 simplest vital processes of the organism. Amongst these there is 

 much organic discrimination, and that automatic memory of the 

 organism which, is, as it were, the basis of that felt memory which 

 intervenes in the animal's mental activity; (2) They are those 



* See Physical Basis of Mind, p. 383. 



