The publisher of this book utilises modern printing technologies as well as photocopying processes for reprinting and preserving rare works of literature that are out-of-print or on the verge of becoming lost. This book is one such reprint.

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II textit{CONS CIO US NESS I.—The Conscious Accompaniments Of Certain Organic Changes It is possible that all organic behaviour is accompanied by consciousness. But there is no direct means of ascertaining whether it is so or not. This is, and must remain, a matter of more or less plausible conjecture. We have, indeed, no direct knowledge of any consciousness save our own. Undue stress should not, however, be laid on this fundamental isolation of the individual mind. We confidently infer that our fellow- men are conscious, because they are in all essential respects like us, and because they behave just as we do when we act under its guiding influence. And on similar grounds we believe not less confidently that many animals are also conscious. But how far we are justified in extending this inference it is difficult to say. Probably our safest criterion is afforded by circumstantial evidence that the animal in question profits by experience. If, as we watch any given creature during its life-history, we see at first a number of congenital or acquired modes of behaviour, we may not be able to say whether they are accompanied by consciousness or not; but if we find that some of these are subsequently carried out more vigorously while others are checked, we seem justified in the inference that pleasurable consciousness was associated with the results of the former, and disagreeable consciousness with those of the latter. When we see that a chick, for example, pecks at first at any small object, it is difficult tosay, on these grounds, 'whether it is a sentient animal or only an unconscious automaton; and if it continued to behave in a similar fashion throughout life, our difficulty would still remain. But when we see that some objects are rejected while others are sele...