CHAP. X.] THE SCOPE OF MIND. 147 



may not reveal itself by any phases of Consciousness what- 

 s oever.* To have a feeling of which we are not conscious 

 will seem to most of us a contradiction in terms. J. S. 

 Mill was evidently of this opinion, since he saysif "To 

 feel, and not to know that we feel, is an impossibility." 

 What, it may be asked, is the nature of an unconscious 

 ' sensation' ? Language employed in this way seems to 

 become meaningless, and, in the writer's opinion, cannot 

 be justified. If an impression receives none of our 

 Attention, that is only saying in other words, that we are 

 not conscious of it or do not feel it. In such a case we 

 have no reasonable warrant for calling such an impression 

 a ' sensation.' No excuse for such language appears to be 

 found in the mere fact that there are different degrees 

 or intensities of Consciousness, and that nerve actions 

 without feeling cannot be sharply separated from nerve 

 actions which are accompanied by feeling. It should be 

 clearly recognized that this kind of reasoning tends to 

 give us no definite resting point : from such a basis we 

 might (and in fact ought logically) to go on to postulate 

 the existence of Consciousness in plants, and even in 

 inanimate things since the demarcation between Con- 

 sciousness and the absence of it, is more radical than that 

 which separates nerve tissues from other living tissues, 

 and living from not living matter, j Although, however, 

 as we may freely concede, the phrase ' unconscious sensa- 

 tion' is far from being meaningless or unjustifiable from 

 the point of view of a purely speculative philosophy, its 



* Since the above was written, G. H. Lewes has published his 

 "Physical Basis of Mind," 1877, in which his views are more elabo- 

 rately developed and supported. 



f " Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy," p. 132. 



" Beginnings of Life," vol. i. p. 79 ; vol. ii. p. 77. 



See A. Barratt's " Physical Ethics," 1869, p. 112. 



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