It is exactly the same with the first appearance of voluntary movement, and again with that of free moral self-determination. The reaction of the sentient subject upon his sensations is something qualitatively different from the purely mechanical and physical action and
reaction of pure matter; although, in order to understand the possibility of a sensation as well as of a voluntary movement, we must admit that the physical qualities of matter must be such as to afford a basis and condition for sentient and reacting beings. That reaction is the reaction of something immaterial upon the material, even if it is entirely caused by the material and bound to the material. Now, with free moral self-determination a new subject comes into existence and activity in the individual, which makes that subject, reacting upon mere sensations and ideas, its object, and, as a new immaterial subjective unity, acts determiningly upon that subject which has just become object. This new subject, considered from the side of its receptivity, we call self-consciousness; from the side of its spontaneity, free moral self-determination. Whether we consider this freedom predetermined or not, does not at all alter the described fact and the qualitative difference between the form of human moral agency and that of purely animal spontaneity. For even those advocating determination must admit that the morally acting subject distinguishes itself from its object, and does not take its motives to action from the material and from the instinctive life which is bound to the sensual and dependent on it.
Now it is true that all these circumstances in organized individuals which serve self-consciousness and free moral self-determination as their condition, presupposition, and basis, all the dispositions of the soul and the manifestations of life found in the animal world, will be worthy of the closest attention even on this account: because they form the basis, the condition, and (if self-consciousness and freedom are once present) an essential
part of the contents and object of self-consciousness and moral self-determination. But where the origin of man is discussed, the central point of the investigation is no longer the enumeration of those activities of the soul of man whose analogies we also find in the animal world, but rather in the answer to the question as to how that entirely new manifestation, self-consciousness and moral self-determination, came into existence or could have originated. This question is the more decidedly the central point of the investigation, since this new form, when once in existence, has for its object not only what already appears in the life of the soul of animals, but also receives a new object, which can only be an object of self-consciousness and of moral self-determination, and not of mere consciousness and instinctive life. These new objects are the ideas leading up to the conception of God and moral ideals.
Now this very question as to the origin of self-consciousness and of free moral self-determination is wholly misjudged as to its importance, and given remarkably little attention by those evolutionists who are well versed in the realm of natural science. The question as to the origin of self-consciousness is either entirely ignored—as if self-consciousness must originate wholly by itself, if only those first steps of an intellectual and social life which the animal world also shows, are once present and properly developed—or the solution is put aside with the most superficial analogies. The question regarding free moral self-determination, on the other hand, is either likewise ignored, and for the same reasons, or it is supposed that it must fail of itself, if
only this self-determination is explained in a deterministic way.
It is true, Darwin devotes several chapters of his work, "Descent of Man," to a comparison of the intellectual powers of man with those of animals, and these chapters are full of the most interesting facts and comparisons; but although his work comprises two volumes, he devotes to the origin of self-consciousness, individuality, abstraction, general ideas, etc., only a single page, and justifies his brief treatment with the assertion that the attempt at discussing these higher faculties is useless, because hardly two authors agree in their definitions of these terms. What he says about self-consciousness is really contained in two sentences, namely: "But how can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagination, as shown by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures or pains in the chase? This would be a form of self-consciousness." On the other hand, as Büchner has remarked in his "Lectures about Darwin's Theory": "How little can the hard-working wife of a degraded Australian savage, who hardly ever uses abstract words, and can not count above four, how little can such a woman exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence!" And in Darwin's resumé of his chapters on the intellectual powers of man and animals, he says, on page 126: "If it could be proved that certain high mental powers, such as the formation of general concepts, self-consciousness, etc., were absolutely peculiar to man, which seems extremely doubtful, it is not improbable that these qualities are merely the incidental results of other highly-advanced intellectual faculties:
and these again mainly the result of the continued use of a perfect language."
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 coördinate with them, but, as an entirely new form of being, introduces a qualitatively new and valuable factor into the subject. That which precedes the
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.