SELF- CONS CIO US NESS. 1 99 



liability to punishment or ven^rcancc, &c., the truth is 

 continually being borne in upon the mind of an animal that 

 it is a separate individuality ; and this though it be conceded 

 that the animal is never able, even in the most shadowy 

 manner, to think about itself as such. In this way there 

 arises a sort of "outward self-consciousness," which differs 

 from true or inward self-consciousness only in the absence of 

 any attention being directed upon the inward mental states 

 as such. This outward self-consciousness is known to us all, 

 even in adult life — it being but comparatively seldom that 

 we pause in our daily activities to contemplate the mental 

 processes of which these activities are the expression. 



Now, if these things are so, we encounter the necessity of 

 drawing the same distinction in our analysis of self-conscious- 

 ness, as we have had to draw in our previous analyses of all 

 the other faculties of mind : there is a self-consciousness that 

 is receptual, and a self-consciousness that is conceptual. No 

 doubt it is to the latter kind of self-consciousness alone that 

 the term is strictly applicable, just as it is to conceptual 

 naming or to conceptual predicating alone that the word 

 ''judgment" is strictly applicable. Nevertheless, here, as 

 before, we must not ignore an important territory of mind only 

 because it has hitherto remained uncharted.* Receptual or 

 outward self-consciousness, then, is the practical recognition 

 of self as an active and a feeling agent ; while conceptual or 

 inward self-consciousness is the introspective recognition of 



* Not, however, wholly so. Mr. Chauncey Wright has clearly recognized the 

 existence of what I term receptual self-consciousness, and assigned to it the name 

 above adopted — i.e. "outward self-consciousness." See his Evolution of Self- 

 consciousness, Mr. Darwin, also, appears to have recognized this distinction, in 

 the following passage: — "It may be freely admitted that no animal is self- 

 conscious, if by this term is implied that he reflects on such points as whence he 

 comes or whither he will go, or what is life and death, and so forth. But how 

 can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of 

 imagination, as shown by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures or pains 

 in the chase? And this would be a form of self-consciousness" {Descent of Man^ 

 p. 83). Of course a psychologist may take technical exception to the word 

 "reflects" in this passage; but that this kind of receptual reflection does take 

 l)lace in dogs appears to me to be definitely proved by the facts of home-sickness 

 and pining for absent friends, above alluded to, 

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