ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 93 
2. Are the consciousness and intelligence of animals the 
physical product of chemical and organic changes taking 
place in the growth of the egg, embryo, or larva, and 
therefore spontaneous in the sense that muscle, bone, 
and blood develop by the spontaneous multiplication of 
cells ? 
“Tf,” says Mr Lloyd Morgan in his fascinating treatise 
on Habit and Instinct—“‘ if on the one hand it cannot be said 
without extravagance that an egg is endowed with con- 
sciousness, and if, on the other hand, it cannot be said with- 
out extravagance that the day-old chick is an unconscious 
automaton, there must be some intervening moment at which 
this consciousness has its origin. When is this, and how 
does it arise? If we attempt to answer this question with 
anything like thoroughness, we shall open up the further 
question—From what does consciousness take its origin? 
And this would lead to a difficult and, for most of us, not 
‘very interesting discussion.’’ Be it interesting to many or 
few, herein lies enfolded the secret hitherto most jealously 
-guarded from human scrutiny—an enigma to which no 
student of nature can be indifferent. None but a physiologist 
—which, of course, I have not the slightest pretence to be— 
need presume to offer any help to its solution; but any intel- 
lect of moderate training may derive advantage from recog- 
nising and examining the nicety of the problem. Modern 
lawyers have pronounced that, from the moment of concep- 
tion, the human embryo has the nature and rights of a 
distinct being—of a citizen—and accordingly the law deals 
with one who procures abortion as a criminal. Plato and 
Aristotle sanctioned the current opinion of their day that 
** it was but a part of the mother, and that she had the same 
right to destroy it as to cauterise a tumour upon her body.’’® 
Between these two extreme opinions perhaps lies the truth, 
namely, that at a certain stage of development the foetus in 
one of the higher animals acquires individual, probably 
sentient, though still unconscious, automatism. This is 
5 Lecky’s Huropean Morals, i., 94 (ed. 1869). 
