If Darwin is thus not able to show us in the animal world a single real analogy which at all approaches self-consciousness, and, in order to supply this want, must have recourse to the purely hypothetical _possibility_ that it is not certain whether an old hunting-dog does not reflect upon the past joys of the chase; if by the uncertainty of the expression that self-consciousness might be an "_accompanying_" result of other faculties, he nevertheless gives us to understand that he can not find the _sufficient_ cause of the origin of self-consciousness in those other faculties; and, finally, if he closes the last mentioned quotation with a sentence which has for its premise the wholly illogical thought that language might have been able to reach "a high state of development" before the origin of self-consciousness and without its assistance: then, indeed, the result of all this certainly is that he has given no adequate consideration to the specific nature of self-consciousness. It is only under this supposition that it is possible for him to say: "Nevertheless, the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it certainly is, is one of degree and not of quality." The authors may possibly not agree in the definitions of the idea of self-consciousness--we ourselves perhaps are only an additional example in confirmation of this fact--; but whatever the definition may be, the fact itself remains, that self-consciousness does not stand as one of the intellectual faculties beside the others and cooerdinate with them, but, as an entirely new form of being, introduces a qualitatively new and valuable factor into the subject. That which precedes the {120} origin of self-consciousness--the purely conscious and not yet self-conscious life of the soul, as it shows itself with higher animals, especially with mammals--_may_ have been the necessary condition and requirement for the origin of self-consciousness. It certainly _has_ been so; and from this point of view, all these psychological studies of animals and psycho-physical investigations which are a favorite object of modern science, have a high value; but what has been called into existence by _means_ of conditions is not on that account the _product_ of those conditions. This very fact is one of the greatest mistakes of most of the modern evolution theories: that very often--and especially where they wish to draw metaphysical conclusions from their scientific results or hypotheses--they confound condition and basis with cause.