inoffensive, and which, unlike the living prey of carnivora, offer no
resistance.

Observe the way in which an herbivorous or graminivorous animal becomes
excited and angry when the branch or the ear of corn obstinately adheres
to the ground, or offers any other difficulty to his immediate desire of
obtaining food; he acts like one who has to do with a resisting power.
Observe how, when they are quietly stripping the bough, picking out the
grains, or eating the grass, they become suspicious, or fly away if
there should be any unusual movement in the bough, the ears of corn, or
the grass. In one way or another their food is regarded as a subject
endowed with sympathetic and deliberate consciousness. And every one
must have observed that animals at play act towards inanimate objects as
if they were conscious and endowed with will.

Every object of animal perception is therefore felt, or implicitly
assumed, to be a living, conscious, acting subject. This is due to the
external reflection and projection of the intrinsic and sentient
faculty, and therefore--since an animal has not the duplex faculty of
deliberate and reflex attention--he cannot attain to the conception of
simple external reality, of cosmic things and phenomena. Every object,
every phenomenon is for him a deliberating power, a living subject, in
which consciousness and will act as they do in himself. There are
undoubtedly in the vast series of beings which compose the order of
nature, and which he is able to perceive, degrees, differences, and
varieties of energy, power, and efficacy with respect to himself and to
the normal exercise of his life. But he transfuses into all, in
proportion to the effects which result from them, his own nature, and
modifies them in accordance with the intrinsic form of his
consciousness, his emotions, and his instincts.