PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 445 



to, one has at a certain moment a vague, limitless, infinite feeling 

 a sense of existence in general without the least trace of 

 distinction between the me and the not-me. One is conscious, 

 indeed, of existing, but not of one's organic unity, nor of its 

 limitations. This may be a very agreeable sensation if the syncope 

 is not caused by acute pain, or if one has not hurt one's self in 

 falling, and very disagreeable if there is any cause of suffering. 

 This is the only possible distinction ; one feels that one is alive 

 and enjoying, or alive and suffering, but without knowing why 

 ! one suffers or enjoys, nor what is the seat of this feeling. 



" Such is the first phase of returning consciousness here is 

 the second. Amid the indefinite consciousness of the first phase 

 vague and obscure differences emerge little by little. One begins 

 to see and hear, but the sounds and colours seem to arise within 

 the subject with no idea of their external origin, no link between 

 the various sensations perceived or felt. Each sensation is felt 

 separately, and the whole produces an inexpressible confusion. 

 At this moment the sensory centres have recovered sensibility, but 

 are sensible only of the impressions reaching them directly from 

 without : reflex action is not yet re-established, there is still no 

 combination of sensations into perceptions, and therefore no 

 distinction between the me and the not-me ; in a word, the 

 sensations are stupid, if one may so express it, because they are 

 isolated they can only be felt, and are not known. 



" In the next phase, central reflex action is re-established : the 

 various sensations begin to influence one another, to be reciprocally 

 determined, defined, and localised ; the several sensory centres 

 unite in the sensorium commune, and self-consciousness emerges ; 

 but at first it is only an unintelligent feeling, which merely 

 expresses the fact of the organic unity of the subject, and is not a 

 clear notion of the relations with the environment. At this point 

 I felt I was /, and that the auditory and visual sensations came 

 from objects that did not form part of me, although I did not yet 

 understand them. The cortical centres, which are the first to 

 suffer, and the last to recover their functional integrity, had not 

 yet recovered. 



"Then at a given - moment, after the recovery of nutrition, 

 the mind suddenly grasps the situation, and the thought arises, 

 ' Ah, I have fainted again/ From that moment the intellect is 

 completely re-established, and takes the direction from which it 

 had been momentarily diverted by insufficient nutrition." 



In this admirable introspective analysis of the gradual 

 recovery of consciousness after its complete suspension in syncope 

 Herzen traces the different phases by which the mental activities 

 pass from total unconsciousness to full consciousness when, as he so 

 happily expresses it, the mind grasps the complex relations of the 

 situation. 



