ON TEE NATURE OF TEINGS-IN-TEEMSELYES. 



425 



parent want of connection with the objective 

 order, the notion of consciousness has been 

 chiefly associated — those also turn out, when 

 attention is directed to them, to be complex 

 things. In reading over a former page of my 

 manuscript, for instance, I found suddenly, on 

 reflection, that although I had been conscious of 

 what I was reading, I paid no attention to it ; 

 but had been mainly occupied in debating whether 

 faint red lines would not be better than blue 

 ones to write upon, in picturing the scene in the 

 shop when I should ask for such lines to be 

 ruled, and in reflecting on the lamentable help- 

 lessness of nine men out of ten when you ask 

 them to do anything slightly different from what 

 they have been accustomed to do. This debate 

 had been started by the observation that my 

 handwriting varied in size according to the na- 

 ture of the argument, being larger when that 

 was diffuse and explanatory, occupied with a 

 supposed audience ; and smaller when it was 

 close, occupied only with the sequence of prop- 

 ositions. Along with these trains of thought 

 went the sensation of noises made by poultry, 

 dogs, children, and organ-grinders ; and that 

 vague, diffused feeling in the side of the face 

 and head which means a probable toothache in 

 an hour or two. Under these circumstances, it 

 seems to me that consciousness must be de- 

 scribed as a succession of groups of changes, as 

 analogous to a rope made of a great number of 

 occasionally interlacing strands. 



This being so, it will be said that there is a 

 unity in all this complexity, that in all these 

 varied feelings it is I who am conscious, and that 

 this sense of personality, the self-perception of 

 the Ego, is one and indivisible. It seems to me 

 (here agreeing with Hume) that the "unity of 

 apperception " does not exist in the instantaneous 

 consciousness which it unites, but only in subse- 

 quent reflection upon it ; and that it consists in 

 the power of establishing a certain connection 

 between the memories of any two feelings which 

 we had at the same instant. A feeling, at the 

 instant when it exists, exists an undfur sic7i, and 

 not as my feeling ; but when on reflection I re- 

 member it as my feeling, there comes up not 

 merely a faint repetition of the feeling, but inex- 

 tricably connected with it a whole set of connec- 

 tions with the general stream of my conscious- 

 ness. This memory, again, qua memory, is rela- 

 tive to the past feeling which it partially recalls ; 

 but in so far as it is itself a feeling, it is absolute, 

 Ding-an-sich. The feeling of personality, then, 

 is a certain fceliDg of connection between faint 



images of past feelings ; and personality itself is 

 the fact that such connections are set up, the 

 property of the stream of feelings that part of it 

 consists of links binding together faint reproduc- 

 tions of previous parts. It is thus a relative 

 thing, a mode of complication of certain elements, 

 and a property of the complex so produced. This 

 complex is consciousness. When a stream of 

 feelings is so compacted together that at each 

 instant it consists of (1) new feelings, (2) fainter 

 repetitions of previous ones, and (3) links con- 

 necting these repetitions, the stream is called a 

 consciousness. A far more complicated group- 

 ing than is necessarily implied here is established 

 when discrete impressions are run together into 

 the perception of an object. The conception of a 

 particular object, as object, is a group of feelings, 

 symbolic of many different perceptions, and of 

 links between them and other feelings. The 

 distinction between Subject and Object is two- 

 fold : first, the distinction with which we started 

 between the subjective and objective orders which 

 simultaneously exist in my feelings ; and, sec- 

 ondly, the distinction between me and the social 

 object, which involves the distinction between 

 me and you. Either of these distinctions is ex- 

 ceedingly complex and abstract, involving a highly- 

 organized experience. It l's not, I think, possible 

 to separate one from the other ; for it is just the 

 objective order which I do suppose to be com- 

 mon to me and to other minds. 



I need not set clown here the evidence which 

 shows that the complexity of consciousness is 

 paralleled by complexity of action in the brain. 

 It is only necessary to point out what appears 

 to me to be a consequence of the discoveries of 

 Miiller and Helmholtz in regard to sensation : 

 that at least those distinct feelings which can be 

 remembered and examined by reflection are par- 

 alleled by changes in a portion of the brain only. 

 In the case of sight, for example, there is a mes- 

 sage taken from things outside to the retina, and 

 therefrom sent in somewhither by the optic nerve ; 

 now we can tap this telegraph at any point and 

 produce the sensation of sight, without any im- 

 pression on the retina. It seems to follow that 

 what is known directly is what takes place at the 

 inner end of this nerve, or that the consciousness 

 of sight is simultaneous and parallel in complex- 

 ity with the changes in the gray matter at the 

 internal extremity, and not with the changes in 

 the nerve itself, or in the retina. So also a pain 

 in a particular part of the body may be mimicked 

 by neuralgia due to lesion of another part. 



We come, finally, to say then that, as your 



