The third step in the development of mind is the arrival (for one can call it by no other term) of that condition which we call "consciousness"--the power of saying to oneself "I am I," and of looking on as a detached existence not only at other existences but at one's own mental processes, feelings, and movements. With it comes thought, knowledge, reason, and will. We may speak of consciousness as invading or spreading gradually over the territory of mind. All the three steps of the growth of mind which I have distinguished can be seen following one on the other in the growth of a human child from infancy to adolescence. The second step--the development of individual mechanisms due to memory--is not in most animals, and not entirely in man, pervaded by or "within the area of" consciousness. Memory is at first "unconscious memory," and there still remains in man a capacity for forming "memory" which never (or in some matters only exceptionally) becomes illuminated by consciousness. Apparently the inherited mechanisms which we call "instincts" are never within the reach of consciousness, though, of course, the actions determined by them are. It is a difficult matter to decide how far the memory of apes, dogs, and such animals nearest to man is conscious memory. Probably very little. But it is only when memory, as well as the impression of the moment, is pervaded by consciousness that reflection, and reason and action dependent on reason, are possible.[6]
[6] I have alluded to this subject again, necessarily with some repetition in the chapter on "The Mind of Apes and of Man," p. 262.
Hence it is that man in all the procedure of courtship stands apart from animals. Even the Australian has not only an educable brain, but a more or less conscious memory. He seems to be permanently, in this respect, in the condition of an ordinary European child of about five years old. Gradually in the course of the development, both of increased educability and of more and more efficient and serviceable education, man has first abandoned by slow degrees his violent ancestral methods of procuring a mate, and has, as the result of observation, reflection, and conscious reasoning, taken to courtship by persuasion and fascination, similar to that of the birds and other remote creatures, retaining, however, for a long period his habit of fighting with other males to establish his claim to the woman of his choice. And at last, in his later development in civilized lands, he has abandoned the more obvious arts of courtship and has taken to decorating his womankind instead of himself. He has made woman take over the habit of courtship by the fascination of colour and pose whilst he looks on in sombre clothing with thoughtful reserve. He does not any longer even rely on his strength or skill in fighting in order to scatter his rivals, but makes appeal by word to the sympathy of the desired mate and trusts to the fascination which the power, given either by superior intellectual quality or by accumulated wealth, have for her.