ix PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 443 



also includes the former, which do not pass the threshold of 

 consciousness, either because they are incapable of crossing it, 

 or because they are carried on beyond the range of attention. 



II. The fundamental importance of the distinction between 

 conscious and unconscious makes it advisable to inquire more 

 minutely into these concepts, and to subject them to a strict 

 analysis. 



The word "conscious" expresses a positive idea of which 

 practically every one grasps the significance, but it is by no 

 means easy to give an adequate definition of it. It is not enough 

 to say with Wundt and Hoffding that a conscious phenomenon 

 consists in the association or synthesis of a multiplicity of 

 sensations or elementary psychical processes; it is necessary to 

 add that this synthesis must constitute an internal experience, 

 which leads us to become aware of an object, or to feel something. 

 The really conscious phenomenon is always a phenomenon of 

 perception, with the inherent attribute of definiteness or lucidity, 

 so that the object of experience is recognised as something distinct 

 from the ego that perceives it. 



From the subjective or psychological point of view, it is 

 therefore impossible to speak of a state of consciousness, or of 

 conscious nervous processes, unless we are able to distinguish 

 between the perceiving ego and the non-ego perceived (Fichte). 



From the objective or physiological point of view (when, that 

 is, we have to judge the existence of conscious states, not in 

 ourselves, but in others), the criterion by which our judgment is 

 guided is founded upon the external signs in which they are 

 expressed. We are sure that an individual has conscious states 

 when he describes the object of his internal experience, and thus 

 shows that he has perceived it clearly. Man is able to express 

 his states of consciousness not only by language but by other 

 external signs, such as mimicry and expressional movements 

 and gestures, and these are the only means we can rely on as 

 evidence of states of consciousness in the higher animals, by the 

 analogy they present with those in which human consciousness is 

 manifested. But as we descend the zoological scale the analogy 

 becomes less reliable, and external manifestations of psychical 

 processes grow increasingly simpler, until finally they lose all 

 value as external signs of true conscious states at least from the 

 point of view of positive psychology. 



As opposed to conscious, what we have generically termed. 

 unconscious is a purely negative idea, to which it is impossible to 

 affix any definite value without an accurate analysis of the 

 different states which it covers. 



In the first place, it is impossible to draw a sharp line of 

 separation between the conscious and the unconscious. If we 

 predicate consciousness in a wide sense, that is, as a synonym of 



