204 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON, 



true. But sensitivity in exercise is not "thought." If 

 animals had consciousness they would make for them- 

 selves conceptual signs of one kind or another, and not 

 merely emotional expressions. 



Our author next says, * " I take it, then, as estab- 

 lished that true or conceptual self-consciousness consists 

 in paying the same kind of attention to inward 

 psychical processes as is habitually paid to outward 

 physical processes." This error we have already fore- 

 stalled f in our preceding distinction of "direct" from 

 " reflex " consciousness. 



He then tells us, % " All observers are agreed that for 

 a considerable time after a child is able to use words as 

 expressions of ideas, there is no vestige of true self- 

 consciousness." 



This is an amazing assertion. Children often 

 exhibit their self-consciousness in an unmistakable 

 manner, long before they can use words. A boy may 

 very likely have " bitten his own arm " — as Professor 

 Preyer is quoted as relating ; but that does not show 

 an absence of self-consciousness. Even a grown man 

 has struck his own head and inflicted other injuries on 

 his body without thereby giving us the least reason to 

 suppose he did not know full well that it was his own 

 body. Mr. Romanes makes, § as we have before noted, 

 the fact of a child's speaking of itself in the first person 

 the sign of the advent of self- consciousness and con- 

 ceptual power. II But when a child speaks of himself 



* p. 200. t See above, pp. 197, 202. 



X p. 200. § p. 201. 



II At p. 230, "self-consciousness" is explicitly stated to be "the 

 very condition to the occurrence of conceptual ideation." 



