CONSCIOUSNESS 21/ 



survival value. The mechanism of sleep has been 

 evolved, like all else, and is most highly developed where 

 consciousness is most highly developed— in the mam- 

 mals; but there is no reason to beheve that consciousness 

 is without its occasional blackout in submammalian 

 forms. 



Nor does it follow that in its lower levels of develop- 

 ment consciousness assumes the elaborately integrated, 

 egocentric human pattern known as 'self.' In man the 

 'self,* the seemingly enduring spectator-director who 

 commands the performance, is an impermanently sus- 

 tained pattern of neural activity. Far from an entity en- 

 during from day to day, it is a flickering image formed 

 where the rays of sense are brought to focus in the con- 

 scious pattern; it forms and dissolves in successive in- 

 stants, and never re-forms the same. Pathologically it 

 can suffer such distortion or dissociation of its parts as 

 to lead to the tragic fractionation of personahty. 



Man's body, as Sherrington pointed out, has genetic 

 continuity through his chromosomes with his predeces- 

 sors throughout the geologic ages, but there is no such 

 genetic continuity in consciousness. There is no require- 

 ment for either seH-awareness or awareness of environ- 

 ment in the individual organism until it develops to the 

 point where it possesses both physical freedom and the 

 neuromuscular system necessary for it to take advantage 

 of that freedom; and there is no evidence of conscious- 

 ness in the ovum and sperm, or in the immature embryos 

 of the fishes. Amphibia, reptiles or birds, where it would 

 be of no avail; nor is there any evidence of its presence 

 in the entire nonmotorized plant kingdom. It is plausible 

 to beheve that self -awareness begins to stir in the mam- 

 mahan fetus at about the time when the developing or- 

 ganism begins to kick and squirm, simply because this 

 is the time of beginning motor activity when, even in 

 utero, something is to be gained by going from here to 

 there. 



