Relations between the Physical and the Moral. 231 



normal or morbid, which may not occur under an unconscious 

 form. In a word, we find in ourselves or in others, and we con- 

 clude that there exists in animals, a great number of acts, often 

 complex, which, as a rule, are willed, deliberated upon, conceived, 

 felt in short, accompanied by consciousness ; that is, by a more or 

 less clear knowledge (i) of the means, and (2) of the end. In 

 some cases the consciousness of the end to be attained, and of the 

 means to be employed disappears : yet we know that the end has 

 been attained, though we know it only through the effect produced. 

 Such acts are unconscious. 



Two hypotheses only are possible to interpret these facts. 



1. It may be said that consciousness is the habitual, though not 

 indispensable, accompaniment of mental life ; that the intellect 

 is by nature unconscious : that its essence consists in the co-ordina- 

 tion of means, and its progress in a more and more complex, a 

 more and more perfect, co-ordination ; but that consciousness is 

 only a secondary phenomenon, though of the highest importance ; 

 somewhat as the brain, which is the noblest of all the organs, is 

 nevertheless only a complementary organ, superadded to the rest, 

 though it is the noblest of all. This thesis has even been applied 

 to physiology, when it has been said that the unconscious pheno- 

 mena presuppose only nerve-currents terminating in the secondary 

 centres (rachidian bulb, annular protuberance, tubercula quadri- 

 gemina, etc.), while the conscious phenomena presuppose a second 

 series of currents terminating in the ganglionic substance of the 

 brain. In this way consciousness would be a fact of a higher 

 order, but not indispensable to psychological life, which could 

 subsist without it under all its forms. Consciousness would be 

 like the intermittent flashes from the furnace of an engine, which 

 allow us to see glimpses of a marvellous mechanism, but which do 

 not constitute the mechanism. 



2. On the other hand, consciousness may be regarded as being 

 pre-eminently the psychological fact The operation which con- 

 stitutes consciousness (Bewusstwerdeii), never being identical with 

 itself through two consecutive moments, possesses every possible 

 degree of clearness and of intensity ; consciousness increases and 

 diminishes, but in its progressive decrease it never reaches zero : 

 what we call the unconscious is only a minimum of consciousness 



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