themselves
the same.[8] By pursuing an easy mode of observation, divested of
prejudice, we may revert to that primeval state of human nature, and may
also comprehend with truth and certainty the condition of animals. For
the animal nature has not ceased to exist in man, and it may be
discerned by those who care to look for it; and careful study, with the
constant aid of observation and experiment, will reveal to us the hidden
life of sensation and intelligence in the lower animals.

There is a continual self-consciousness in all animals; it is
inseparable from all their internal and external acts, from every fact,
passion, and emotion; and this is clear and obvious. This fundamental
and persistent self-consciousness--persistent in dreams, and even in the
calmest sleep, which is always accompanied by a vague sensation--is the
consciousness of a living subject, active, impressionable, exercising
his will, capable of emotions and passions. It is not the consciousness
of an inert thing, passive, dead, or extrinsic; for animal life consists
in sensation of greater or less intensity, but always of sensation.
Consequently, such a consciousness signifies for the animal a constant
apprehension of an active faculty exercised intrinsically in himself,
and it makes his life into a mobile drama, of which he is implicitly
conscious, of acts and emotions, of impulses, desires, and suspicions.

This inward form of emotional life and psychical and organic action,
into which the whole value of personal existence is resolved, may be
said to invest and modify all the animal's active relations to the
external world, which it vivifies and modifies according to its own
image. The subsequent act of doubling the faculties which takes place in
man does not occur in the animal; a process which modifies through the
intellect the spontaneous and primitive act. Consequently, the active
and inward sense which is peculiar to the animal is renewed in him by
the external things and phenomena of nature which stimulate and excite
him.

Two kinds of things present themselves to his perception: other animals,
of whatever species, and the inanimate objects of the world. As far as
the other animals are concerned, which are obvious to his perception, it
is perfectly evident that upon these he will project his whole internal
life of consciousness and emotions, and will feel their identity with
himself by his implicit and intuitive judgment. And in fact, the