REASON AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 199 



foundations" for intellectual action, just as all mere 

 vegetative vitality "plays a most important part in 

 laying the foundations" for the exercise of sensitivity, 

 and just as the power of chemical action, or even of 

 physical energy, " plays a most important part in laying 

 the foundations " for vegetative vital activity. But this 

 relation does not reduce vital action to mere physics, 

 or sensitivity to mere vitality. These faculties remain 

 distinct, and we have no reason to suppose a real transi- 

 tion or a fundamental identity to exist between them in 

 any case. Neither, then, because sensitivity serves as a 

 foundation upon which embodied intellect may act, 

 does that fact give us any ground for concluding that 

 sensitivity is intellect. 



Mr. Romanes asserts,* as still more important, the 

 fact that brutes can apprehend (have " recepts " in 

 "reference to") ^^the mental states of other animals^ 

 This we deny. We admit they are acted upon by, and 

 respond to, the sensations they receive through the 

 actions of animals, due to psychical states of such 

 animals ; but that is a very different matter. Our author 

 cites Wundt as giving his opinion that "the most 

 important of all conditions to the genesis of self-con- 

 sciousness is given by the muscular sense in acts of 

 voluntary movement." Mr. Romanes himself, while 

 agreeing with Wundt " that this is a highly important 

 condition," thinks that the others he has mentioned are 

 " quite as much, or even more so." All these are, no 

 doubt, as we have said, important or indispensable 

 antecedent conditions to the evocation of consciousness, 



* p. 197. 



