14 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
consciousness. Human experience is far more luminous. We often make the mistake of reading into the actions of the beasts the measure of consciousness we ourselves pos sess. It is, perhaps, a fortunate error and leads to the cul tivation of a larger sympathy with animals and to a more humane treatment of them. But it is also fortunate for the beasts that they do not have the measure of conscious ness that man has, else the life they must of necessity live would be intolerable. Their consciousness in its sensa tional, ideational and emotional factors must be exceedingly dim, and as the lower end of the scale of life is approached, it is a question whether consciousness in any clearly denned sense of the term can be attributed to them. As we go down the ranks of living things consciousness must ap proximate the zero point.
But, though the human species is marked off sharply from the brute world by the degree of consciousness, we must not assume that all men have the same measure of this inward light. The more highly developed the man is, the wider the range of his experience, the larger the fund of his ideas, the more luminous will his consciousness be. Especially is this true of the man who lives in a varied and changeful environ ment. We have seen that consciousness is developed as a function of adaptation to changes in the environment for which the instincts are not adequate. But even an environ ment so complex and variable that the instincts will not suf fice may, however, be comparatively simple, stable and uni form, so that the formation of a number of habits may furnish a supplement which will be approximately adequate. In such a relatively simple and uniform environment life becomes " rutty." It moves along in the same channels from day to day, month to month, perhaps from year to year, with comparatively few unusual events to disturb its even tenor. Habitual modes of doing things become deeply ingrained. The consciousness of persons so situated be comes lax. They go through the daily routine in a mental state half dream-like, which is only now and then inter-
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