SPEECH. 175 



question has not been touched. I am not disputing that an 

 immense and an extraordinary distinction obtains, and I do 

 not anticipate that either Mr. Mivart or any one else will take 

 exception to this preliminary clearing of the ground, which 

 has been necessitated only on account of my opponents 

 having been careless enough to represent the Proposition as 

 the simplest exhibition of the Logos. But now the time has 

 arrived when we must tackle the distinction in serious 

 earnest. 



Wherein does this distinction truly consist ? It consists, 

 as I believe all my opponents will allow, in the power which 

 the human being displays of objectifying ideas, or of setting 

 one state of mind before another state, and contemplating 

 the relation between them. The power to " think is " — or, 

 as I should prefer to state it, the power to think at all — is the 

 power which is given by i7itrospective rejlectiofi in the light of 

 self-consciousness. It is because the human mind is able, so 

 to speak, to stand outside of itself, and thus to constitute its 

 own ideas the subject-matter of its own thought, that it is 

 capable of judgment in the technical sense above explained, 

 vvhether in the act of conception or in that of predication. 

 For thus it is that these ideas are enabled " to exist beside the 

 judgment, not in it ; " thus it is that they may themselves 

 become objects of thought. We have no evidence to show 

 that any animal is capable of thus objectifying its own ideas ; 

 and, therefore, we have no evidence that any animal is 

 capable of judgment. Indeed I will go further, and affirm 

 that we have the best evidence which is derivable from what 

 are necessarily ejective sources, to prove that no animal 

 can possibly attain to these excellencies of subjective life. 

 This evidence will gradually unfold itself as we proceed, so 

 at present it is enough to say, in general terms, that it consists 

 in a most cogent proof of the absence in brutes of the needful 

 conditions to the occurrence of these excellencies as they 

 obtain in themselves. From which it follows that the great 

 distinction between the brute and the man really lies behind 

 the facufties both of conception and predication : it resides in 



