390 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



structure of ideas raised on the bases of sensation and at- 

 tention. 



M. F. Cuvier is of opinion, moreover, in his argument 

 directed against those who maintain that animals reflect, 

 but rest their affirmative on their instinctive actions, — that 

 animals have no consciousness of their own identity or 

 capability of reflection. His words are, " Mais ce qui 

 nous paroit hors de doute, c'est que tous les animaux sans 

 exception sont depourvus du sens intime de la perception 

 du moi et de la faculte de reflechir ; c'est a dire de con- 

 siderer intellectuelment, par un retour sur eux-memes, 

 leur propre modifications ; Us ignorent quHls regoivent 

 V impression des corps exterieurs, qu'ils pensent, quails 

 agissent." It appears to us difficult, we confess, to allow 

 an animal the faculty of thinking, and to deny him all 

 consciousness and reflection ; to believe that a dog does not 

 know that he is not another dog, nor a cat, nor a bull. In 

 fact, consciousness appears to us to be inseparable from the 

 thinking faculty, from intelligence, in the most limited 

 form; the very act of thinking teaches us that we think. 

 " Cogito ergo sum," says Descartes, only he had no ne- 

 cessity to put it in the form of an enthymeme, for it seems 

 a n instinctive truth. This perception of the moi takes place 

 in infants, in the very dawn of reason; infants are much in 

 the same situation as animals, as to the degree of their in- 

 telligence ; perhaps they are inferior in this respect: if, 

 however, they have this perception of the moi, it may be 

 concluded, from a very reasonable analogy, that animals 

 have it too. Even idiots and madmen possess a con- 

 sciousness of self; the latter prove their possession of 

 it by the very act of doubting their identity, by the very 

 act of fancying themselves to be another ; for, after all, 

 it is the moi that is still predominant, and their wildest 

 extravagancies result from an intensity of distempered 

 egotism. 



