180 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



tation; it is not further reported to the psychical headquarters 

 of the frog and thus we say, the frog has ceased to feel it. 

 Every irritation which thrills through our nervous organism 

 takes place in response to a stimulus of some kind and must be 

 supposed to be a feeling. If the irritation be not transmitted 

 from the lower systems of projection to a higher and the high- 

 est range of nervous activity, the feeling remains isolated and 

 unconnected with other feelings and cannot attain conscious- 

 ness. No isolated feeling be it ever so intense can be felt. In 

 order to be felt it must stand in relation to other feelings ; in 

 order to be distinct several, or at least two, feelings must be co- 

 ordinated, for distinction is only by contrast. The thirst of 

 the brainless frog may be ever so parching, and we do not 

 doubt that the dearth that takes place in his stomach is real. 

 The various ganglions of the sympathetic nervous system feel 

 the thirst, but their feelings remain isolated : they remain un- 

 connected with the old memories, especially those of quenching 

 the thirst by drinking water, for they have been removed, and 

 thus the thirst is there, but it is not perceived ; there is a feel- 

 ing, but it is not felt. The co-ordination of various feelings is 

 missing and so there is no adaptation to circumstance, and all 

 psychical as well as all mental activity has ceased. A feeling 

 can become conscious only by being brought into connection 

 with that chain of states of awareness which constitutes what 

 we sometimes call our personality, or ego, or self. Conscious- 

 ness, accordingly, is a peculiarly distinct feeling, having its seat 

 at the centre of our nervous activity. Consciousness is not merely 

 feeling, not any state of self-awareness, but a centralized common 

 feeling, a product of co-ordinated feelings, allowing not only a 

 comparison between various different feelings but also connect- 

 ing them and rendering them clear by contradistinction. 



There are some psychologists who identify feeling and 

 consciousness. Professor Ziehen, for instance, speaks of the 

 absurdity of speaking of unconscious feelings. He appears to 

 accept consciousness as a fact which admits of no further inves- 

 tigation or analysis, and while admitting that many psycholog- 

 ical states are concomitant with physiological conditions, he 



