THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 505 



thus a mental act, at least one stage beyond sense- 

 impression. The doctrine that conscious states have 

 preceded organisms in time and evolution I have called 

 archaesthetism. It seems to have been first clearly for- 

 mulated by Erasmus Darwin, who believed that growth 

 has been stimulated by "irritations" (of hunger, thirst, 

 etc.) and by the pleasurable sensations attending those 

 irritations, and by exertions in consequence of painful 

 sensations, similar to those of hunger and suffocation,"^ 

 etc. 



The weakness of the doctrine of archaesthetism con- 

 sists in our ignorance of the characters of the Proto- 

 zoa, with respect to the presence or absence of con- 

 sciousness or sensation. While many of the acts of 

 these low organisms need not be explained by suppos- 

 ing its presence, others seem to be impossible without 

 it. We are, however, led to infer its presence rather 

 on uniformitarian grounds, than by any certaint}'^ of 

 explanation of the phenomena. We can trace sensa- 

 tion so far down in the scale of animal life, that it 

 seems unreasonable to deny its presence when the 

 same phenomena are exhibited by the Protozoa. We 

 are confirmed in our belief in the presence of sensation 

 in these low forms, by the knowledge that reflex acts 

 are the product of conscious acts, whereas we have no 

 evidence that conscious acts are the product of the re- 

 flex. 



Although it is frequently alleged or assumed that 

 designed conscious acts are the product of reflexes, no 

 one has yet shown how this is possible. On the other 

 hand, the development of automatic acts out of con- 

 scious ones is of ordinary occurrence, and is known 

 under the name of education. 



iZoonomia, XXXIX., 3 ; Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, p. 148 



