232 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN, 



to support my side of the argument These two considera- 

 tions, therefore, I will next adduce. 



The first consideration is, that although the advance to 

 self-consciousness from lower grades of mental development 

 is no doubt a very great and important matter, it is not so 

 great and important in comparison with what this develop- 

 ment is afterwards destined to become, as to make us feel 

 that it constitutes any distinction sui generis — or even, 

 perhaps, the principal distinction — between the man and the 

 brute. For while, on the one hand, we have now fully seen 

 that, given the protoplasm of judgment- and of predication as 

 these occur in the young child (or as they may be supposed 

 to have occurred in our semi-human ancestors), and self- 

 consciousness must needs arise ; on the other hand, there is 

 evidence to show that when self-consciousness does arise, 

 and even when it is fairly well developed, the powers of the 

 human mind are still in an almost infantile condition. Thus, 

 for instance, I have observed in my own children that, while 

 before their third birthday they employed appropriately and 

 always correctly the terms "I," "my," "self," "myself," at 

 that age their powers of reasoning were so poorly developed 

 as scarcely to be in advance of those which are exhibited by 

 an intelligent animal. To give only one instance of this. 

 My little girl when four and a half years old — or nearly two 

 years after she had correctly used the terms indicative of true 

 self-consciousness — wished to know what room was beneath 

 the drawing-room of a house in which she had lived from the 

 time of her birth. When she asked me to inform her, I told 

 her to try to think out the problem for herself She first 

 suggested the bath-room, which was not only above the 

 drawing-room, but also at the opposite side of the house ; 

 next she suggested the dining-room, which, although below 

 the drawing-room, was also at the other side of the house ; 

 and so on, the child clearly having no power to think out so 

 simple a problem as the one which she had spontaneously 

 desired to solve. From which (as from many other instances 



