And first we have the stage of Simple Consciousness. For hundreds of centuries (we cannot doubt) Man possessed a degree of consciousness not radically different from that of the higher Animals, though probably more quick and varied. He saw, he heard, he felt, he noted. He acted or reacted, quickly or slowly, in response to these impressions. But the consciousness of himSELF, as a being separate from his impressions, as separate from his surroundings, had not yet arisen or taken hold on him. He was an instinctive part, of Nature. And in this respect he was very near to the Animals. Self-consciousness in the animals, in a germinal form is there, no doubt, but EMBEDDED, so to speak, in the general world consciousness. It is on this account that the animals have such a marvellously acute perception and instinct, being embedded in Nature. And primitive Man had the same. Also we must, as I have said before, allow that man in that stage must have had the same sort of grace and perfection of form and movement as we admire in the (wild) animals now. It would be quite unreasonable to suppose that he, the crown in the same sense of creation, was from the beginning a lame and ill-made abortion. For a long period the tribes of men, like the tribes of the higher animals, must have been (on the whole, and allowing for occasional privations and sufferings and conflicts) well adapted to their surroundings and harmonious with the earth and with each other. There must have been a period resembling a Golden Age--some condition at any rate which, compared with subsequent miseries, merited the epithet 'golden.'