* * * * * If I do not apologize for having occupied so much space over so obvious a point, it is only because I believe that any one who reads these pages will sympathize with my desire to avoid ambiguity, and thus to reduce the question before us to its naked reality. So far, it will be observed, this question has not been touched. I am not disputing that an immense and an extraordinary distinction obtains, and I do not anticipate that either Mr. Mivart or any one else will take exception to this preliminary clearing of the ground, which has been necessitated only on account of my opponents having been careless enough to represent the Proposition as the simplest exhibition of the Logos. But now the time has arrived when we must tackle the distinction in serious earnest. Wherein does this distinction truly consist? It consists, as I believe all my opponents will allow, in the power which the human being displays of _objectifying ideas_, or of setting one state of mind before another state, and contemplating the relation between them. The power to “think is”—or, as I should prefer to state it, the power to think at all—_is the power which is given by introspective reflection in the light of self-consciousness_. It is because the human mind is able, so to speak, to stand outside of itself, and thus to constitute its own ideas the subject-matter of its own thought, that it is capable of judgment in the technical sense above explained, whether in the act of conception or in that of predication. For thus it is that these ideas are enabled “to exist _beside_ the judgment, not _in_ it;” thus it is that they may themselves become objects of thought. We have no evidence to show that any animal is capable of thus objectifying its own ideas; and, therefore, we have no evidence that any animal is capable of judgment. Indeed I will go further, and affirm that we have the best evidence which is derivable from what are necessarily ejective sources, to prove that no animal _can possibly_ attain to these excellencies of subjective life. This evidence will gradually unfold itself as we proceed, so at present it is enough to say, in general terms, that it consists in a most cogent proof of the absence in brutes of the needful _conditions_ to the occurrence of these excellencies as they obtain in themselves. From which it follows that the great distinction between the brute and the man really lies behind the faculties both of conception and predication: it resides in the conditions to the occurrence of either. What these conditions are I will consider later on. Meanwhile, and in order that we may be perfectly clear about the all-important distinction which is before us, I will re-state it in other terms.