_The "Genius of the Species."_—The problem of consciousness (or more
correctly: of becoming conscious of oneself) meets us only when we begin
to perceive in what measure we could dispense with it: and it is at the
beginning of this perception that we are now placed by physiology and
zoology (which have thus required two centuries to overtake the hint
thrown out in advance by Leibnitz). For we could in fact think, feel,
will, and recollect, we could likewise "act" in every sense of the term,
and nevertheless nothing of it all would require to "come into
consciousness" (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be
possible without its seeing itself as it were in a mirror: as in fact
even at present the far greater part of our life still goes on without
this mirroring,—and even our thinking, feeling, volitional life as well,
however painful this statement may sound to an older philosopher. _What_
then is _the purpose_ of consciousness generally, when it is in the main
_superfluous_?—Now it seems to me, if you will hear my answer and its
perhaps extravagant supposition, that the subtlety and strength of
consciousness are always in proportion to the _capacity for
communication_ of a man (or an animal), the capacity for communication
in its turn being in proportion to the _necessity for communication_:
the latter not to be understood as if precisely the individual himself
who is master in the art of communicating and making known his
necessities would at the same time have to be most dependent upon others
for his necessities. It seems to me, however, to be so in relation to
whole races and successions of generations: where necessity and need
have long compelled men to communicate with their fellows and understand
one another rapidly and subtly, a surplus of the power and art of
communication is at last acquired, as if it were a fortune which had
gradually accumulated, and now waited for an heir to squander it
prodigally (the so-called artists are these heirs, in like manner the
orators, preachers, and authors: all of them men who come at the end of
a long succession, "late-born" always, in the best sense of the word,
and as has been said, _squanderers_ by their very nature). Granted that
this observation is correct, I may proceed further to the conjecture
that _consciousness generally has only been developed under the pressure
of the necessity for communication_,—that from the first it has been
necessary and useful only between man and man (especially between those
commanding and those obeying), and has only developed in proportion to
its utility. Consciousness is properly only a connecting network between
man and man,—it is only as such that it has had to develop; the recluse
and wild-beast species of men would not have needed it. The very fact
that our actions, thoughts, feelings and motions come within the range
of our consciousness—at least a part of them—is the result of a