Here we arrive at one of the most wonderful moments in the history of creation,—­the moment of the first faint dawning of consciousness, the foreshadowing of the true life of the soul.  Whence came the soul we no more know than we know whence came the universe.  The primal origin of consciousness is hidden in the depths of the bygone eternity.  That it cannot possibly be the product of any cunning arrangement of material particles is demonstrated beyond peradventure by what we now know of the correlation of physical forces.[4] The Platonic view of the soul, as a spiritual substance, an effluence from Godhood, which under certain conditions becomes incarnated in perishable forms of matter, is doubtless the view most consonant with the present state of our knowledge.  Yet while we know not the primal origin of the soul, we have learned something with regard to the conditions under which it has become incarnated in material forms.  Modern psychology has something to say about the dawning of conscious life in the animal world.  Reflex action is unaccompanied by consciousness.  The nervous actions which regulate the movements of the viscera go on without our knowledge; we learn of their existence only by study, as we learn of facts in outward nature.  If you tickle the foot of a person asleep, and the foot is withdrawn by simple reflex action, the sleeper is unconscious alike of the irritation and of the movement, even as the decapitated frog is unconscious when a drop of nitric acid falls on his back and he lifts up a leg and rubs the place.  In like manner the reflex movements which make up the life of the lowest animals are doubtless quite unconscious, even when in their general character they simulate conscious actions, as they often do.  In the case of such creatures, the famous hypothesis of Descartes, that animals are automata, is doubtless mainly correct.  In the case of instincts also, where the instinctive actions are completely organized before birth, and are repeated without variation during the whole lifetime of the individual, there is probably little if any consciousness.  It is an essential prerequisite of consciousness that there should be a period of delay or tension between the receipt of an impression and the determination of the consequent movement.  Diminish this period of delay and you diminish the vividness of consciousness.  A familiar example will make this clear.  When you are learning to play a new piece of music on the piano, especially if you do not read music rapidly, you are intensely conscious of each group of notes on the page, and of each group of keys that you strike, and of the relations of the one to the other.  But when you have learned the piece by heart, you think nothing of either notes or keys, but play automatically while your attention is concentrated upon the artistic character of the music.  If somebody thoughtlessly interrupts you with a question about Egyptian politics, you go on playing while you answer him politely.  That is,