Chapter III.
The first question with which we are to be engaged is this: When does consciousness come into operation? And we ask, first of all, is man born conscious, or is he conscious during several (be their number greater or less) of the earlier months, we may say years, of his existence? We answer, No: for if he were, then he would remember, or at least some individuals of the species would remember, the day of their birth and the first year or years of their infancy. People in general recollect that of which they were conscious. But perhaps it may be objected that a man, or that many men, may forget, and often do forget, events of which they were conscious. True; but it is absolutely impossible, and at variance with universal experience, that every body should forget that of which every body was conscious. If the whole human race were conscious at the day of their birth, and during their earliest childhood, it is altogether inconceivable but that some of them at least should remember those days and their events. But no one possesses any such remembrance; and therefore the inference is irresistible that man is not born conscious, and does not become conscious until some considerable period after his birth. Let this conclusion then be noted, for we may require to make some use of it hereafter.
If, then, man is not conscious at his birth, or until some time after it has elapsed, at what period of his life does consciousness manifest itself? To ascertain this period we must seek for some vital sign of the existence of consciousness. It is possible that, before the true and real consciousness of the human being displays itself, there are within him certain obscure prefigurations or anticipations of the dawning phenomenon; and therefore it may not be practicable to fix in the precisest and strictest manner its absolute point of commencement. Still, compared with the actual rise and development of consciousness, these dim and uncertain preludes of it are even more faint and indistinct than are the first feeble rays which the sun sends up before him, compared with the glory which fills heaven and earth when the great luminary himself bursts above the sea. This parallel is certainly not perfect, because the sun, though below the horizon, nevertheless exists; but an unapparent consciousness is zero, or no consciousness at all. Consciousness, no doubt, keeps ever gaining in distinctness, but there is certainly a period when it is an absolute blank, and then there is an epoch at which it exists and comes forth distinctly into the light—an epoch so remarkable that it may be assumed and fixed as the definite period when the true existence and vital manifestation of consciousness commences. Our business now is to point out and illustrate this epoch.
It is a well-known fact that children, for some time after they acquire the use of language, speak of themselves in the third person, calling themselves John, Tom, or whatever else their names may be. Some speak thus for a longer, others for a shorter period; but all of them invariably speak for a certain time after this fashion. What does this prove, and how is it to be accounted for?
In the first place, it proves that they have not yet acquired the notion of their own personality. Whatever their intellectual or rational state may in other respects be, they have not combined with it the conception of self. In other words, it proves that as yet they are unconscious. They as yet exist merely for others, not for themselves.
In the second place, how is the origin of the language, such as it is, which the child makes use of, to be explained? It is to be accounted for upon exactly the same principle, whatever this may be, as that which enables the parrot to be taught to speak. This principle may be called imitation, which may be viewed as a modification of the great law of association, which again is to be considered as an illustration of the still greater law of cause and effect; and under any or all of these views it is not to be conceived that intelligence is by any means absent from the process. The child and the parrot hear those around them applying various names to different objects, and, being imitative animals, acting under the law of causality, they
