CONTINUITY IN EVOLUTION 335 
the aim of explaining what are its characteristics as an 
object. 
There can be little doubt that the higher animals become 
intimately and practically acquainted with their environment. 
The dog who accompanies his master in many a ramble, the 
horse who carries him again and again over all the surrounding 
country, has a good perceptual knowledge of a somewhat 
extended environment. And this, again, is the precursor of the 
far more extended conceptual knowledge which leads up at 
last to a rational conception of the universe of objects in their 
varied relationships. But only through the concentration of 
thought rendered possible by much true abstraction. and 
generalization,—only through disentangling the relationships 
and regrouping them for the purpose of framing an ideal 
scheme,—only, in short, by explanation and for the sake of 
explanation is this difficult process brought to a more or less 
successful issue. ; 
Again, there can be little doubt that the higher animals, in 
the course of experience begotten of behaviour, reach a per- 
ceptual sensing of the bodily self, through experience derived 
from the non-projecting senses, in pain and sickness, and 
often, we may hope, in the sense of well-being, and the joy of 
existence. They do not probably set this self in antithesis to 
the not-self. That comes with reflection, and is the result of 
ideal construction based on the analysis of experience, with a 
view to reaching some explanation of the genesis of experience. 
But in their perceptual awareness of the embodied self, they 
have that kind of consciousness which affords the necessary 
data, for the later conception of the self—when experience is 
polarized into its subjective and objective aspects and thus is 
explained, so far as science can explain it ; suggesting, indeed, 
long ere science has attained this end, metaphysical explana- 
tions by reference to underlying causes—too often accepted as 
an easy substitute for the difficult tracing out of the antecedent 
conditions which science endeavours painfully and by slow 
steps to formulate. 
It is unnecessary to do more than remind the reader that 
