CONSCIOUSNESS UNDER CHLOROFORM. 697 



the higher consciousness seems not to have been wholly abolished ; 

 since there remained certain emotions and certain most general ideas 

 of relation to objective agents. On the other hand, it is to be doubted 

 whether the partial consciousness which the narrator had during anaes- 

 thesia is not, in the description, eked out in some measure by the 

 ideas of his recovered consciousness carried back to them. Be this as 

 it may, however, it is clear that certain components of consciousness 

 disappeared and others became extremely vague, while a remainder 

 continued tolerably distinct. And there is much significance in the re- 

 lations among them : 1. There ceased earliest the sensations derived 

 from the special senses ; then the impression of force acting on the body 

 from without ; and, simultaneously, there ceased the consciousness of 

 external space-relations. 2. There remained a vague sense of relative 

 position within the body ; which, gradually fading, left at last only a 

 sense of those space-relations implied by consciousness of the heart's 

 pulsations. 3. And this cluster of related sensations produced by the 

 heart's action finally constituted the only remaining distinct portion 

 of the ego. 4. In the returning consciousness we note first a sense 

 of pressure somewhere / there was no consciousness of space-relations 

 within the body. 5. The consciousness of this was not a cognition 

 proper. In an accompanying letter my correspondent says of it : " ' Rec- 

 ognition' seems to imply installation in some previously-formed con- 

 cept (talking in the Kantian way), and this is just what was not the 

 case : " that is, consciousness was reduced to a state in which there 

 was not that classing of states whioh constitutes thought. 6. The 

 pain into which the pressure was transformed was similarly universal 

 instead of local. 7. When the pain became localized, its position in 

 space was vague : it was " up on the right." 8. Concerning the ap- 

 parition of "the girl," which, as my correspondent remarks, seems to 

 have occurred somewhat out of the probable order, he says, in a let- 

 ter : " I did not recognize her ' under any concept ' what I saw seemed 

 to be almost unassisted intuition in the Kantian sense." 9. The local- 

 ization of the pain was at first the least possible the consciousness 

 was of that part versus all other parts unlocalized. 



These experiences furnish remarkable verifications of certain doc- 

 trines set forth in the " Principles of Psychology." This degradation 

 of consciousness by chloroform, abolishing first the higher faculties and 

 descending gradually to the lowest, may be considered as reversing 

 that ascending genesis of consciousness which has taken place in the 

 course of evolution ; and the stages of descent may be taken as showing, 

 in opposite order, the stages of ascent. It is significant, therefore, that 

 impressions from the special senses ceasing early, leave behind, as the 

 last impression derived from without, the sense of outer force con- 

 ceived as opposed by inner resistance ; for this we have seen to be the 

 primordial element of consciousness. Again, the fact that the conscious- 

 ness of external space disappeared simultaneously with the conscious- 



