LAMARCK'S THEORY OF DESCENT 325 



only certain animals and man are endowed with this 

 singular faculty, "which consists in being able to 

 experience internal emotions which provoke the wants 

 and different external or internal causes, and which 

 give birth to the power which enables them to per- 

 form different actions." 



" The nervous fluid," he says, " can, then, undergo 

 movements in certain parts of its mass, as well as in 

 every part at once ; moreover, it is these latter move- 

 ments which constitute the general movements 

 {dbranlements) of this fluid, and which we now pro- 

 ceed to consider. 



" The general movements of the nervous fluid are 

 of two kinds ; namely, 



" I. Partial movements (Jbranlementi), which finally 

 become general and end in a reaction. It is the move- 

 ments of this sort which produce feeling. We have 

 treated of them in the third chapter. 



" 2. The movements which are general from the 

 time they begin, and which form no reaction. It is 

 these which constitute internal emotions, and it is of 

 them alone of which we shall treat. 



" But previously, it is necessary to say a word 

 regarding the feeling of existence, because this feeling 

 is the source from which the inner emotions originate. 



" On the Feeling of Existence. 



" The feeling of existence {sentiment d' existence), 

 which I shall call inner feeling,* so as to separate 

 from it the idea of a general condition {g^n&alit^) 

 which it does not possess, since it is not common to 



*The expression "sentiment int/rieur" maybe nearly equivalent 

 to the "organic sense" of modern psychologists, but more probably 

 corresponds to our word consciousness. 



