198 CONSCIOUSNESS IN 



the Feelings and degrees of Intelligence of the various 

 representatives of the brute creation ? Our own experience, 

 and what we believe to be that of other human beings, has 

 to be taken as our guide and standard throughout. We 

 must watch the movements of animals under particular but 

 varying circumstances, in order to judge of their different 

 emotional states, and of the degree of reason or instinct 

 guiding their actions. But in the case of multitudes and 

 multitudes of the lower organisms, their actions give us no 

 occasion for inferring the existence of anything so complex 

 as Emotion, Eeason, or even Instinct — it becomes a 

 question rather as to whether there does, or does not, 

 exist in them a mere vague ' sentience,' such as might be 

 included under the word Consciousness, in the ordinary 

 acceptation of the term. 



The fact, therefore, that this method of inferential inter- 

 pretation is the only one by Vv^hich we can in any way form 

 an opinion as to the Mental States of the Lower Animals, 

 necessarily leaves us either altogether, or very much in the 

 dark, as regards certain important questions to which 

 reference must now be made. 



(1.) We are wholly unable to determine what degree of 

 complexity the Nervous System must attain, before even 

 the dimmest and most obscure subjective manifestations 

 analogous to what we know in ourselves as Consciousness 

 may result from the actions taking place in the principal 

 nerve centre of an organism. We cannot, to take an 

 example, at all definitely decide whether any of the nerve 

 actions of the Oyster, or of the Earth-worm, are, or are 

 not, attended by subjective states or phases, akin even to 

 our dimmest Sensations. Nor can we say whether any such 

 subjective states accompany the nerve actions of many 

 other organisms presenting Nervous Systems of greater 

 complexity. 



