( 193 ) 



CHAPTER IV. 



REASON AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 



In our author's tenth chapter we at last come upon 

 a consideration of that question which, in our opinion, 

 as we before said,* ought to have been the first one 

 treated of. The question to which Mr. Romanes's whole 

 book is devoted, is the question whether the mind of 

 man could have been developed from the psychical 

 facultie^ of brutes,^ or whether it is fundamentally 

 different — different in kind and origin.f In considering 

 this question up to the point at which we have now 

 arrived, he has again and again affirmed I that the 

 intellectual knowledge of self, or " self-consciousness " 

 is the distinctive character of the human mind, and 

 his task is to show that the difference thus admitted to 

 exist is one not of kind but of degree. Almost at his 

 first page § (in describing the scope and purpose of his 

 book), he declares his intention to "examine" that 

 "question of the deepest importance" — "the question 

 whether the mind of man is essentially the same as the 

 mind of the lower animals." An examination like this 

 is, and must, of cowse be, an examination into the 



* See above, p. 36. t P- 3, note t 



t See, e.g., p. 175. § P- 3- 



O 



