xv CONCEPTUAL THOUGHT 349 



and being so cleared up, the thought that emerges is the 

 more truly universal in its application. It is this double 

 movement, then, which forms the world of ideas by trac- 

 ing experience to the underlying affinities on which both 

 universal and individual conceptions rest. In these affini- 

 ties we arrive at the basis of the more primitive inferences 

 of the practical intelligence, and in this sense we might be 

 tempted to say that human Reason gets at the ground 

 upon which animal intelligence works without knowing it. 

 But it will be better to avoid using the term Reason to 

 characterise any one stage in distinction from others. The 

 particular organisation of experience which we are now 

 describing rests on the detached idea or the concept as 

 its unit, and, if it is to have a name, may be best qualified 

 as the stage of Conception, the Conceptual Judgment and 

 Conceptual Reasoning. 



What is true of the Reason is true also of Self conscious- 

 ness. A dog or ape looks after " itself." It has a self, 

 i.e., a pervading identity and permanent character, is aware 

 at least of its present needs and seeks to satisfy them. 

 What we miss is evidence that the self is present to it as 

 a persistent identity in such a way, for example, as to shape 

 the choice of immediate ends by considerations of lifelong 

 welfare. The self of which the animal is conscious is a 

 very small fragment as compared with the self of which 

 the man is aware. The light of consciousness reaches but 

 a short way before and after in the animal, and since there 

 is nothing to show that his conception of himself acts other- 

 wise than his conception of his present end, there is no 

 point in attributing to him knowledge of self. A man, 

 on the other hand, who, for example, rejects a desired end 

 on the ground that it is unworthy of him, shows that his 

 consciousness of self is a permanent regulative force distinct 

 from the desires or plans of action which he forms from 

 day to day. 



On the same ground, Will in a special sense may be 

 said to emerge along with Conceptual Reasoning. We 

 have wedded Desire to Concrete Experience and the Prac- 

 tical Judgment on the ground that the Practical Judgment 

 knows its concrete end, and that where the end is known, 



