we notice the varied phenomena of that region, evidencing an increased sensitiveness, although there are practically no signs of special organs of sense.  Then we pass on to the higher plant life, in which begin to manifest certain “sensitive-cells,” or groups of such cells, which are rudimentary sense organs.  Then the forms of animal life, and considered with rising degrees of sensations and growing sense apparatus, or sense organs, gradually unfolding into something like nervous systems.

Among the lower animal forms there are varying degrees of mentation with accompanying nerve centers and sense-organs, but little or no signs of consciousness, gradually ascending until we have dawning consciousness in the reptile kingdom, etc., and fuller consciousness and a degree of intelligent thought in the still higher forms, gradually increasing until we reach the plane of the highest mammals, such as the horse, dog, elephant, ape, etc., which animals have complex nervous systems, brains and well developed consciousness.  We need not further consider the forms of mentation in the forms of life below the Conscious stage, for that would carry us far from our subject.

Among the higher forms of animal life, after a “dawn period” or semi-consciousness, we come to forms of life among the lower animals possessing a well developed degree of mental action and Consciousness, the latter being called by psychologists “Simple Consciousness,” but which term we consider too indefinite, and which we will term “Physical Consciousness,” which will give a fair idea of the thing itself.  We use the word “Physical” in the double sense of “External,” and “Relating to the material structure of a living being,” both of which definitions are found in the dictionaries.  And that is just what Physical Consciousness really is—­an “awareness” in the mind, or a “consciousness” of the “external” world as evidenced by the senses; and of the “body” of the animal or person.  The animal or person thinking on the plane of Physical Consciousness (all the higher animals do, and many men seem unable to rise much higher) identifies itself with the physical body, and is conscious only of thoughts of that body and the outside world.  It “knows,” but not being conscious of mental operations, or of the existence of its mind, it does not “know that it knows.”  This form of consciousness, while infinitely above the mentation of the nonconscious plane of “sansation,” is like a different world of thought from the consciousness of the highly developed intellectual man of our age and race.