CHAPTER XIII. 



CONSCIOUSNESS IN LOWER ANIMALS. 



SOME of the common but elementary Conscious States of 

 Men having been principally considered in the last chap- 

 ter, we have now to turn our attention more particularly 

 to such states in lower organisms and in members of the 

 so-called ' brute creation.' 



At some stage in the complication of the nervous actions 

 of lower organisms, as well as of brutes generally, there is 

 good ground for inferring that the in-going molecular 

 movements, which traverse nerve fibres and thence diffuse 

 themselves among related groups of nerve cells, give rise 

 (in a way which is inexplicable) to what we know and have 

 just been considering as Feeling or Sensation. The mere 

 molecular movements and changes in the nerve tissues- 

 representing ' impressions ' in their purely physical aspects 

 - are supposed to acquire, engender, or, at all events, 

 become associated with certain subjective phases, answer- 

 ing to what we call ' States of Consciousness.' Though 

 nothing can be known as to the precise manner in which 

 these supposed Conscious States arise, it seems to many 

 to be a ' legitimate inference ' that a bond of kinship must 

 exist between them and the molecular movements of the 

 fibres and cells with which, as commonly admitted, they 

 are in some manner intimately related. 



But the very existence in lower animals of any conscious 



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