The manifold phases of consciousness

Consciousness, in anything like the present acceptation of the term, having been once a new thing – a thing, as far as we can see, subsequent even to an individual centre of action and to a reproductive system (which we see existing in plants without apparent consciousness) – why may not there arise some new phase of mind which shall be as different form all present known phases, as the mind of animals is from that of vegetables?

It would be absurd to attempt to define such a mental state (or whatever it may be called), inasmuch as it must be something so foreign to man that his experience can give him no help towards conceiving its nature; but surely when we reflect upon the manifold phases of life and consciousness which have been evolved already, it would be rash to say that no others can be developed, and that animal life is the end of all things. There was a time when fire was the end of all things: another when rocks and water were so.

Samuel Butler, Erewhon (Penguin Books, 1970) pp. 198-199