RE/iSON AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 211 



and its cry in answer to a scolding one." It is this, he 

 thinks, which leads savages to endow inanimate objects 

 and the forces of nature with psychical attributes, and 

 he finds further evidence of it " in the fact of psycho- 

 logical analysis revealing that our idea of cause is 

 derived from our idea of muscular effort." * 



This tendency, he adds, f leads man " in his early 

 days" to regard the Ego as an ejection, resembling the 

 others of his kind by whom he is surrounded, and he 

 regards Max Miiller's generalization that " I " is trace- 

 able to the expression, " This one," as " additional and 

 more particular evidence of the originally ejective cha- 

 racter of the idea of self" This we must reluctantly 

 declare to be, to our judgment, simply nonsense. 

 That men should be apt to attribute life to what is 

 inanimate is but an instance of the law that we judge 

 by experience, and that motion is commonly a sign of 

 vitality. It is the same law which leads us spontane- 

 ously to judge other persons and things by ourselves. 

 That animals instinctively apprehend in their way the 

 dispositions of others, is surely a very simple form of 

 Instinct. But to regard the "idea of self" as really 

 made up of an assemblage of "ideas of other people," 

 is like saying that a straight line is made up of a 

 number of crooked ones, or that a collection of a 

 number of musical instruments, all silent, could pro- 

 duce sound. 



* Would Mr. Romanes, then, say that from such analogies he 

 has good cause to disbelieve in Cause ? For what we believe to 

 be the true relation of our feelings of effort, etc., to our appre- 

 hension of causation, see " On Truth," pp. 48-52. 



t p. 211. 



