118 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



any neighboring tree for a squirrel. Now do not these ac- 

 tions clearly show that she had in her mind a general idea 

 or concept that some animal is to be discovered and hunted ? 



It may be freely admitted that no animal is self-conscious, 

 if by this term it is implied that he reflects on such points as 

 whence he comes or whither he will go, or what is life and 

 death, and so forth. But how can we feel sure that an old 

 dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagina- 

 tion, as. shown by his dreams, never reflects on his past 

 pleasures or pains in the chase ? And this would be a 

 form of self-consciousness. On the other hand, as Biich- 

 ner" has remarked, how little can the hard-worked wife of 

 a degraded Australian savage, who uses very few abstract 

 words, and cannot count above four, exert her self-con- 

 sciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence. 

 It is generally admitted that the higher animals possess 

 memory, attention, association, and even some imagination 

 and reason. If these powers, which differ much in different 

 animals, are capable of improvement, there seems no great 

 improbability in more complex faculties, such as the higher 

 forms of abstraction, and self-consciousness, etc., having 

 been evolved through the development and combination of 

 the simpler ones. It has been urged against the views here 

 maintained, that it is impossible to say at what point in the 

 ascending scale animals become capable of abstraction, etc. ; 

 but who can say at what age this occurs in our young chil- 

 dren ? We see at least that such powers are developed in 

 children by imperceptible degrees. 



That animals retain their mental individuality is unques- 

 tionable. When my voice awakened a train of old associa- 

 tions in the mind of the before-mentioned dog, he must have 

 retained his mental individuality, although every atom of 

 his brain had probably undergone change more than once 

 during the interval of five years. This dog might have 

 brought forward the argument lately advanced to crush all 



<* " Conferences sur la TheorieDarwinienne," French translat., 1869, p. 132. 



