One of the most important differences between human and animal consciousness comes to light in the appearance of “meaning” which is a differentiating characteristic of _personal_ consciousness. We pass “a great divide” when we pass from bare sensory experience, common to all higher animals, to _consciousness of “meaning,”_ which is a trait common only to persons. We all know what it is to hear words which make a clear impression and which yet arouse no “meaning.” We often gaze at objects and yet, like Macbeth, have “no speculation in our eyes”—we apprehend no significant “meaning” in the thing upon which we are looking. We sometimes catch ourselves in the very act of passing from mere sense or bare image to the higher level of “meaning.” While we gaze or while we listen we suddenly feel the “meaning” flood in and transform the whole content of consciousness. All the higher ranges of experience depend on this unique feature which is something over and above the mere sensory stage. The words, “the quality of mercy is not strain’d” remain just word-sounds until in a flash one sees that mercy is “not something that comes out grudgingly in drops,” and then the mind rises to “a consciousness of meaning.”[12] In this higher experience, “meaning” stands vividly in the focus of consciousness and, in a case, for instance, of grasping a long sentence, or of appreciating a piece of music, consciousness of “meaning” is an integral unitary whole. Now there is no corresponding unitary whole in the brain which could stand as the physical correlate to this consciousness of “meaning.” The simple sensational experiences correspond in some way to parallel brain processes but these elemental experiences are merely cues which evoke higher forms of psychical “meaning,” that have no physical or mechanical correlate in the brain. This is still more strikingly the case in the higher forms of memory. The lower and more mechanical forms of memory may be treated as a habit-sequence, linked up with permanent brain paths. But memory proper depends, as does “meaning,” upon a single act of mental apprehension. As McDougall well says: “the whole process and effect, the apprehension and the retention and the remembering, are absolutely unique and distinct from all other apprehensions and retentions and rememberings.”[13] The higher kind of memory involves “meaning” and, the moment “meaning” floods in, vast and complicated wholes of experience tend to become a permanent possession, while only with multitudinous repetitions can we fix and keep processes that are meaningless and without psychical significance. But here once more this higher unitary consciousness of a remembered whole of experience has no assignable physical correlate in the brain-processes. Certain sensory cues evoke or recall a synthetic whole of consciousness which has no parallel in the material world.