“These two latter kinds of action are deliberate operations, performed, as they are, by means of representative ideas implying the use of a reflective representative faculty.  Such actions distinguish the intellect or rational faculty.  Now, we assert that possession in perfection of all the first four (presentative) kinds of action by no means implies the possession of the last two (representative) kinds.  All persons, we think, must admit the truth of the following proposition:—­

“Two faculties are distinct, not in degree but in kind, if we may possess the one in perfection without that fact implying that we possess the other also.  Still more will this be the case if the two faculties tend to increase in an inverse ratio.  Yet this is the distinction between the instinctive and the intellectual parts of man’s nature.

“As to animals, we fully admit that they may possess all the first four groups of actions—­that they may have, so to speak, mental images of sensible objects combined in all degrees of complexity, as governed by the laws of association.  We deny to them, on the other hand, the possession of the last two kinds of mental action.  We deny them, that is, the power of reflecting on their own existence, or of inquiring into the nature of objects and their causes.  We deny that they know that they know or know themselves in knowing.  In other words, we deny them reason.  The possession of the presentative faculty, as above explained, in no way implies that of the reflective faculty; nor does any amount of direct operation imply the power of asking the reflective question before mentioned, as to ‘what’ and ‘why.’” (Loc. cit. pp. 67, 68.)

Sundry points are worthy of notice in this remarkable account of the intellectual powers.  In the first place the Reviewer ignores emotion and volition, though they are no inconsiderable “kinds of action to which the nervous system ministers,” and memory has a place in his classification only by implication.  Secondly, we are told that the second “kind of action to which the nervous system ministers” is “that in which stimuli from without result in sensations through the agency of which their due effects are wrought out.—­Sensation.”  Does this really mean that, in the writer’s opinion, “sensation” is the “agent” by which the “due effect” of the stimulus, which gives rise to sensation, is “wrought out”?  Suppose somebody runs a pin into me.  The “due effect” of that particular stimulus will probably be threefold; namely, a sensation of pain, a start, and an interjectional expletive.  Does the Quarterly Reviewer really think that the “sensation” is the “agent” by which the other two phenomena are wrought out?