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(matter, phenomenal existence, laws of succession and co- 
existence observed, with the aid of thought, through the 
external senses) is made the measure of that which is directly 
known (namely, personal, spiritual existence, thinking being), 
the former containing implicitly the latter, and so being 
virtually, as before indicated, unconscious reason herself! Of 
such nature, either by express admission, or at least in ten- 
dency, were the most of the theories which (under the con- 
current influence of ideas borrowed from English and other 
sources) prevailed in the native country of Descartes in the 
third half-century after his death.* 
Spinoza, the logical continuator of Descartes, remains true 
to the position of the latter respecting the inseparability of 
thought and consciousness. But having pantheistically identi- 
fied the substance of the world with the divine substance, 
making finite extension and thought modes of the divine 
extension and thought, and denying personality (as involving 
limitation) of God, it only remains for him to view the thought 
ot bod as at once conscious and impersonal. But this com- 
bination of attributes is so incongruous, that the ordinary 
mmd, trained in the logic of plain reason and experimental 
tact, refuses (because unable), in spite of the much-vaunted “geo- 
metrical method ” of Spinoza, to admit its possibility, ft is 
therefore but the utmost stretch of euphemism, if, in view of 
this logical absurdity of its conclusion, we term Spinoza’s 
system the very flower of philosophical mysticism,” using 
the langnage of Hartmann, the modern protagonist of un- 
conscious intelligence, who finds in the doctrine of Spinoza 
a mystical presentiment of the philosophy of “the un- 
conscious ” ! 
Locke, opposing Descartes theory of innate ideas, simply 
existimep 6 w® 1 * 1 !?*? c ° nscio " s fought and spiritual or psychical 
existence, and felt obliged to deny the former to animals, he found it 
necessary to deny to them also the possession of any kind of a soul and 
garded them as mituralistically speaking, mere automatic machines ’ The 
fstf "Lb r - no i! t6 « 1 f rG Wil1 reca11 thc energetic protest (“ in the name,” 
from dm f bnli i T k f i°- C0,11, iT se " se ) which the doctrine called forth 
liom the fabulist Lafontame. After adducing, in one of his Fables instances 
o reasoning in animals he adds the following verse, in which it will be 
observed that lie holds self-consciousness to be unessential for “thinking”:— 
“ Qu’on m’aille soutenir, apres un tel recit, 
Que les betes n out point d’esprit. 
Pour moi, si j’eiWdais lc maitre, 
Jc lour en donnerais anssi bien qu’aux enfants. 
Ceux-ci ne pensent-ils pas dos leurs plus jeunes annees / 
vuelqu un pent done penser, ne so pouvant connaitre.” 
