62 CONSCIOUSNESS 
a rational being, capable of judging how far his own behaviour 
and that of others is conformable to an ideal. 
If, then, we were asked to characterize in the briefest 
possible terms the stages of conscious evolution, we should say 
that in the first stage we have consciousness as accompaniment ; 
in the second, consciousness as guide ; in the third, conscious- 
ness as judge. And if we were pressed to apply distinctive 
terms to these three, we should adopt St. George Mivart’s 
term consentience for the mid-phase, and speak of mere sentience 
in the first stage ; consentience in the second ; and conscious- 
ness, with restricted signification, in the third and highest 
stage. Such a distinction in ternis is, however, a counsel of 
perfection, and we shall not attempt to preserve it in the 
following pages, in which the word “ consciousness” will be 
used in a comprehensive sense. 
