Last week I quoted from a 19th century article by Chauncey Wright, mentor of the Harvard-based Metaphysical Club, concerning the beginnings of self-consciousness in humans. He compared it with flight in birds. I'll try to elucidate. "The derivation of this power [self-consciousness], supposing it to have been observed by a finite angelic (not animal) intelligence, could not have been foreseen to be involved in the mental causes, on the conjunction of which it might, nevertheless, have been seen to depend. The angelic observation would have been a purely empirical one." The bracketing is mine, the parenthesis is Wright's. Our observing angel presumably is aware of mental activity in a range of animals -- stimulus is followed (often after some gap in time as if for deliberation) by response. Monkey sees some food out of reach. Monkey looks around, sees a long stick, uses it to extend his reach for the food. But then a particular "naked ape" appears who ha...