470 Animal Life and Intelligence. 



may, he can never solve it. It can only be solved (and 

 how simple then the solution !) by a being outside both 

 spheres, who can see what the enclosed being, " cabin'd, 

 cribb'd, confined," could never see, namely, that the 

 characters were wrought in the translucent glass of the 

 spheres. By which parable, imperfect as it is, I would 

 teach that we can never learn how kinetic manifestations 

 have a metakinetic aspect without getting outside ourselves 

 to view kinesis and metakinesis from an independent 

 standpoint. Or, in the words of Sir W. E. Hamilton,* 

 "How consciousness in general is possible; and how, in 

 particular, the consciousness of self and the consciousness 

 of something different from self are possible . . . these 

 questions are equally unphilosophical, as they suppose the 

 possibility of a faculty exterior to consciousness and con- 

 versant about its operations." 



The only course open to us, then, in this difficult but 

 important problem is to make certain assumptions, and 

 see how far a consistent hypothesis may be based upon 

 them. I make, therefore, the following assumptions : 

 First, that there is a noumenal system of "things in them- 

 selves " of which all phenomena, whether kinetic or meta- 

 kinetic, are manifestations. Secondly, that whenever in 

 the curve of noumenal sequences kinetic manifestations 

 (convexities) appear, there appear also concomitant meta- 

 kinetic manifestations (concavities). Thirdly, that when 

 kinetic manifestations assume the integrated and co- 

 ordinated complexity of the nerve-processes in certain 

 ganglia of the human brain, the metakinetic manifestations 

 assume the integrated and co-ordinated complexity of human 

 consciousness. Fourthly, that what is called "mental 

 evolution " is the metakinetic aspect of what is called 

 brain or interneural evolution. 



It would require far more space than I can here com- 

 mand to deal adequately with these assumptions, and meet 

 the objections which have been and are likely to be raised 

 against them. I must content myself with drawing atten- 



* Quoted in Professor Veitch's " Hamilton," p. 77. 



