REASON AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 209 



Romanes says, " Thus the child is enabled to fix these 

 states before his mental vision as things which admit 

 of being denoted by verbal signs." We do not say this : 

 The child thinks nothing of " signs," or his own mental 

 states as such. To do that would be to make acts of 

 reflex consciousness. But he knows well enough he is 

 pleased, and means to make it known ; and this he 

 could not do had he not self-consciousness. 



Mr. Romanes quotes the late Mr. Chauncey Wright 

 as saying, " It does not appear impossible that an 

 intelligent dog" may be aided by purposely directing 

 its attention to the accessories of a spot where a lost 

 bone may have been buried. 



Attention, in the sense of what we have called 

 **sensuous attention "* (or the intensifying of the looking, 

 by some object associated with the lost bone striking 

 the senses), is one thing, but true or intellectual atten- 

 tion is quite another thing. 



With respect to the development of self-conscious- 

 ness, Mr. Romanes affirms it to be " gradual," because 

 " the process is throughout of the nature of a growth." 



In this connection, however, comes a passage f to 

 which we think it desirable to call special attention. It 

 is as follows : — 



" Nevertheless, there is some reason to think that 

 when this growth has attained a certain point, it makes, 

 so to speak, a sudden leap of progress, which may 

 be taken to bear the same relation to the development 

 of the mind as the act of birth does to that of the 

 body. . . . Midway between the slowly evolving phases 

 See " On Truth," pp. 198, 219. f p. 208. 



P 



