the warty prominences be touched, the two arms will immediately close together like a spring, thus affording a most perfect example of reflex action. It has been objected by the late Mr. G. H. Lewes and others that we cannot be sure but that the spinal cord itself “feels.” But there is often an ambiguity in the use of the term “to feel.” By it we ordinarily mean a “modification of consciousness;” but experiences such as those just adverted to, and others in ourselves to which I shall next advert, show clearly that surrounding agents may act upon our sense organs without the intervention of anything like consciousness, and yet produce effects otherwise similar to those which occur when they do arouse consciousness. Without, then, entering into any discussion as to whether “sentiency” may or may not be attributed to the spinal cord, it seems evident that some definite term is required to denote such affections or modifications of living beings as those just referred to. Inasmuch as they are affections of creatures possessing a nervous system, which is the essential organ of sensation, and as they resemble sensation in their causes and effects though feeling itself may be absent, they may be provisionally distinguished as “unfelt sensations.” Such are some of the actions with which instinct is contrasted, because, unlike instinct, they are not carried on by the aid of felt sensations, the highest of such insentient action being reflex action. There are also a number of actions which constantly recur in ourselves, which more or less nearly approximate to reflex action. Thus the respiratory movements, the various muscular motions by the aid of which we breathe, are ordinarily performed by us without advertence, though we can, if we will, perform them with self-conscious deliberation. It is well also to note that when our mind is entirely directed upon some external object, or when we are almost in a state of somnolent unconsciousness, we have but a vague feeling of our existence—a feeling resulting from the unobserved synthesis of our sensations of all orders and degrees. This unintellectual sense of “self” may be conveniently distinguished from intellectual consciousness as “consentience.” We may also, as everybody knows, suddenly recollect sights or sounds which were quite unnoticed at the time we experienced them; yet our very recollection of them proves that they must, nevertheless, have affected our sensorium. Such unnoticed modifications of our sense organs may also be provisionally included in the category of those actions of the lower animals, before provisionally denominated “unfelt sensations.” It is not, however, with such inferior activities as reflex and other insentient actions that instinct is commonly contrasted, but with “reason.” Now “reasonable,” “consciously intelligent”conduct is understood by all men to mean conduct in which there is a more or less wise adaptation of means to