CONSCIOUSNESS 211 



serve such values from being lost in automatism, and to 

 infuse new values stemming from his own interpretation. 



Thus, Dr. Saperton cogently emphasizes the 'ratio' be- 

 tween conscious attention and mechanical performance: 



"I believe," he says, "that there is a constantly vary- 

 ing or shifting ratio between the 'automatic' and the 

 aware/ This ratio differs with different individuals and 

 at different times within the same individual. But a 

 musically fine performance in the highest re-creative 

 meaning is directed, in the artistically critical sense, by 

 the controls or factors within the area of 'directed aware- 

 ness.' I do not beHeve that a performance of high artistic 

 quahty can be produced at the level of pure automatism. 



"Which means, of course, that since two matters can- 

 not occupy the center of attention simultaneously, the 

 attention of the artist must oscillate with remarkable 

 rapidity from one matter to another throughout his per- 

 formance." 



At the other extreme of mental agility are those occa- 

 sional individuals who perform the most complicated 

 mental acts with no special training and no conscious 

 dehberation whatever— a recent example to reach public 

 attention being Shakuntala Divi, the Brahman girl who 

 quickly extracted the 20th root of a 42-digit number, or 

 multipUed figures yielding 39 digits, without hesitation 

 and with no knowledge of how she did it. 



Consciousness is not and never has been a prerequisite 

 for function in the nervous system; it only supplements 

 the activities of the nerve net, the nerve cord, the visceral 

 nervous system, the brain stem and cerebrospinal re- 

 flexes, all of which can and do function, even in man, at 

 the unconscious level. Consciousness is a very special, 

 and very specialized, function of the nervous system. Its 

 unique value lies in its delay time, its sluggishness, its 

 time-binding quality: it carries a residue of neural ac- 

 tivity from one instant to die next, giving the semblance 



