46 PROLOGUE I 



phenomena of consciousness are manifested, it is 

 impossible to say. No one doubts their presence 

 in his fellow-men ; and, unless any strict Cartesians 

 are left, no one doubts that mammals and birds are 

 to be reckoned creatures that have feelings analo- 

 gous to our smell, taste, sight, hearing, touch, 

 pleasure, and pain. For my own part, I should 

 be disposed to extend this analogical judgment a 

 good deal further. On the other hand, if the 

 lowest forms of plants are to be denied conscious- 

 ness, I do not see on what ground it is to be 

 ascribed to the lowest animals. I find it hard to 

 believe that an infusory animalcule, a foraminifer, 

 or a fresh -water polype is capable of feeling ; and, 

 in spite of Shakspere, I have doubts about the 

 great sensitiveness of the "poor beetle that we 

 tread upon." The question is equally perplexing 

 when we turn to the stages of development of the 

 individual. Granted a fowl feels ; that the chick 

 just hatched feels ; that the chick when it chirps 

 within the egg may possibly feel ; what is to be 

 said of it on the fifth day, when the bird is there, 

 but with all its tissues nascent ? Still more, on 

 the first day, when it is nothing* but a flat cellular 

 disk ? I certainly cannot bring myself to believe 

 that this disk feels. Yet if it does not, there must 

 be some time in the three weeks, between the 

 first day and the day of hatching, when, as a con- 

 comitant, or a consequence, of the attainment by 

 the brain of the chick of a certain stage of 



