SELF 223 



"We have no direct acquaintance with consciousness. 

 We are aware only of contents apprehended, never of 

 'the process to which this apprehension is due. We may, 

 of course, be aware of the steps which are taken in 

 order to place ourselves in a proper position, or mental 

 attitude, for experiencing a content, but of the actual 

 consciousness of the content we have no awareness. We 

 have experience of pleasure, pain, desire, striving and 

 the like. These, however, would seem to be, in all cases, 

 experiences of what we are aware, but not to be them- 

 selves describable as awareness." (Norman Kemp 

 Smith.) This word content does not seem to express 

 the fact of consciousness. The latter is a condition and 

 not a thing, or receptacle. It is not a cup which may 

 be filled with a tangible substance. The object is not in 

 the mind, but the act of thinking of the object is. 



"It would be as absurd to refuse consciousness to 

 an animal because it has not brain, as to declare it 

 incapable of nourishing itself because it has no stomach. 

 * * * This amounts to saying that the humblest or- 

 ganism is conscious in proportion to its power to move 

 freely. ' ' (Bergson. ) 



But in another place Bergson says that the animal 

 instinct by being confined to the use of the organic 

 tools grown with its body has but one choice in its 

 action upon matter, while intelligence, (intellect) has 

 several choices, and that the difference between con- 

 sciousness, or mind of the human being, and the animal, 

 which cannot make fire and tools, is one of kind, not 

 degree. He acknowledges the truth of evolution, which 

 must mean that at one time the ancestors of man had 

 instinct only. At what point in his evolution did the 

 new kind of consciousness come to man? When he 

 began to have more than one choice in his method of 



