( 



CONSCIOUSNESS IN EVOLUTION. 391 



species by species, order by order, and class by class, from others 

 which have preceded them in time. Clearly, then, we enter the 

 question by considering the nature of movements of plants and 

 animals in relation to the stimuli which are suj^posed to call 

 them forth. 



II. THE UNCONSCIOUS. 



A true study of metaphysics necessarily has for its objects 

 plants, animals, idiots, and infants, as well as healthy men ; never- 

 theless, necessity compels us, in discussing the question, to dwell 

 on our own experiences as a sine qua noti. Now experience, in a 

 general sense, includes not only the memory of our conscious acts, 

 but a knowledge of our unconscious ones, and to the latter espe- 

 cial attention must be directed, since they are most readily over- 

 looked. The marvelous character of memory can not be too 

 much considered. Of the millions of impressions which the mind 

 has received and registered, in the course of a lifetime, but one 

 can be clearly present in consciousness at one time. The remain- 

 ing millions are not lost ; they are stored, each in its appropriate 

 place, to be sprung into consciousness when the appropriate 

 suggestion presents. How much more vast, from this point of 

 view, is the unconscious mind than the conscious ! But the 

 phenomenon is not confined to memory. Who that has ever at- 

 tempted the digestion of a subject which includes a mass of de- 

 tails, is not acquainted with the unconscious activity of the mind 

 in classification ? How frequently a question involving many 

 parts, is, on the first reception of the constituent facts, all con- 

 fusion ; but in time displays its symmetry clearly to the con- 

 sciousness, every part in its proper place, and that with little or 

 no further attention having been dgvoted to it. It is indeed proba- 

 ble that the every-day process of inductive reasoning is conducted 

 in unconsciousness on the part of the subject. Induction con- 

 sists in the generalization of some quality as common to a great 

 number of objects of memory ; a greater or smaller number of 

 other qualities being neglected in the process. When this act is 

 performed voluntarily, one or many qualities are successively 

 passed in review before the mind — each one being in its turn im- 

 pressed on the perceptive centers — so long as it is the object of 

 inquiry, the others being excluded from consciousness for the 

 time being. It is simply a process of classification, and when per- 

 formed in consciousness, constitutes "experiment." But when 



