THE MIND OF APES AND OF MAN 265 



" consciousness " is, that memory is always for most 

 lower animals, and during a period of growth in man, 

 untouched by consciousness, and much of it remains so 

 in all of us. As the dawn lights up a distant peak 

 and then another and then a whole range and spreads 

 to valley and plain, giving greater detail and variety 

 as the moments pass so does consciousness slowly 

 invade in the course of development, whether of the 

 individual or the species, the territory of memory. In 

 the most man-like animals and the more ape-like men 

 the process has not gone very far. In the highest apes 

 consciousness is so limited in its access to memory that 

 it is but a glimmer, a mere rudiment, of what it becomes 

 in the modern races of mankind. We must not overlook 

 the fact that it is only when we have to deal with men 

 far advanced from the state of primeval savagery that 

 the memory itself becomes rich and varied. Observation, 

 memory, and record the vast tradition of taboo, know- 

 ledge, custom, law, and religion not inborn in our structure 

 but handed on by spoken or written word are developed 

 and increased by the very fact that the daylight of con- 

 sciousness has reached the memory of them when less 

 copious than they become in later development, and has 

 given them life-saving value. 



There is no reason to doubt that consciousness a 

 beginning of it exists in such animals as dogs and 

 monkeys. And it is equally true that man not only 

 exists for some months after he is born without being 

 " conscious," but for some years is so only in disconnected 

 intervals. As a matter of fact, he is very incompletely 

 " conscious," even when adult. He is quite unconscious 

 of a great many of his elaborate actions. He has, 

 moreover, an " unconscious memory " that is to say, a 

 memory of the existence of which he is not conscious 



