As is well known, Descartes boldly faced this dilemma, and maintained that all animals were mere machines and entirely devoid of consciousness.  But he did not deny, nor can anyone deny, that in this case they are reasoning machines, capable of performing all those operations which are performed by the nervous system of man when he reasons.  For even supposing that in man, and in man only, psychosis is superadded to neurosis—­the neurosis which is common to both man and animal gives their reasoning processes a fundamental unity.  But Descartes’s position is open to very serious objections, if the evidence that animals feel is insufficient to prove that they really do so.  What is the value of the evidence which leads one to believe that one’s fellow-man feels?  The only evidence in this argument of analogy, is the similarity of his structure and of his actions to one’s own.  And if that is good enough to prove that one’s fellow-man feels, surely it is good enough to prove that an ape feels.  For the differences of structure and function between men and apes are utterly insufficient to warrant the assumption, that while men have those states of consciousness we call sensations, apes have nothing of the kind.  Moreover, we have as good evidence that apes are capable of emotion and volition as we have that men other than ourselves are.  But if apes possess three out of the four kinds of states of consciousness which we discover in ourselves, what possible reason is there for denying them the fourth?  If they are capable of sensation, emotion, and volition, why are they to be denied thought (in the sense of predication)?

No answer has ever been given to these questions.  And as the law of continuity is as much opposed, as is the common sense of mankind, to the notion that all animals are unconscious machines, it may safely be assumed that no sufficient answer ever will be given to them.

There is every reason to believe that consciousness is a function of nervous matter, when, that nervous matter has attained a certain degree of organization, just as we know the other “actions to which the nervous system ministers,” such as reflex action and the like, to be.  As I have ventured to state my view of the matter elsewhere, “our thoughts are the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena.”

Mr. Wallace objects to this statement in the following terms:—­

“Not having been able to find any clue in Professor Huxley’s writings to the steps by which he passes from those vital phenomena, which consist only, in their last analysis, of movements by particles of matter, to those other phenomena which we term thought, sensation, or consciousness; but, knowing that so positive an expression of opinion from him will have great weight with many persons, I shall endeavour to show, with as much brevity as is compatible with clearness, that this theory is not only incapable of proof, but is also, as