ABSTRACT
Animals have understanding, without having reason, hence perceptual but not any abstract cognizance: they apprehend with accuracy, grasp immediate causal connections, higher animals do so even along several links of the chain, yet they do not actually think. The faculty of memory proper, required for this, is therefore an ordered, coherent, thinking recollection; such a memory however is only possible by means of general concepts, whose aid is needed even for that which is entirely individual. Accordingly, the consciousness of animals is a mere succession of matters present, none of which however exists as something future before it occurs that is the distinctive characteristic of human consciousness. No animal, namely, is capable of intention proper; to conceive of and stick to an intention is the prerogative of human beings, and a highly consequential one. Animals therefore have infinitely less to suffer than we have, since they know no other pain than that which the present immediately brings about.
