121 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Conquest 

 Consciouaiu 



what is right and what is wrong in each in- 

 dividual case, but also that he has a voli- 

 tional power which enables him to intensify 

 his sense of " duty " by fixing his attention 

 upon it, and thus gives it a potency in de- 

 termining his conduct which it might not 

 have otherwise possessed. That this power 

 is a part of the ego's " formed character," 

 and that it can only be exerted within cer- 

 tain limits, is fully admitted on the doctrine 

 I advocate; but the responsibility of the 

 ego is shifted backwards to the share he has 

 had in the formation of his character and in 

 the determination of those limits. And 

 here, again, the results of scientific investi- 

 gation are in complete harmony with the 

 precepts of the greatest of all religious 

 teachers. For no one can study these with 

 care without perceiving that Jesus and 

 Paul addressed themselves rather to the 

 formation of the character than to the lay- 

 ing down rules for conduct; that they en- 

 deavored rather to cultivate the dispositions 

 which should lead to right action than to 

 fix rigid lines of duty the enforcement of 

 which under other circumstances might be 

 not only unsuitable, but actually mischie- 

 vous; and that they not only most fully 

 recognized the power of each individual to 

 direct the habitual course of his thoughts, 

 to cherish his nobler affections, and to re- 

 press his sensual inclinations, but made the 

 possession of that power the basis of the en- 

 tire system of Christian morality. CARPEN- 

 TER Mental Physiology, pref., p. 46. (A., 

 1900.) 



598. CONSCIOUSNESS AND ATOMIC 

 MOTION DIFFERENT IN KIND" Thus 

 far our way is clear, but now comes my dif- 

 ficulty. Your atoms are individually with- 

 out sensation, much more are they without 

 intelligence. May I ask you, then, to try 

 your hand upon this problem. Take your 

 dead hydrogen atoms, your dead oxygen 

 atoms, your dead carbon atoms, your dead 

 nitrogen atoms, your dead phosphorus 

 atoms, and all the other atoms, dead as 

 grains of shot, of which the brain is formed. 

 Imagine them separate and sensationless ; 

 observe them running together and forming 

 all imaginable combinations. This, as a 

 purely mechanical process, is seeable by the 

 mind. But can you see, or dream, or in any 

 way imagine, how out of that mechanical 

 act, and from these individually dead atoms, 

 sensation, thought, and emotion are to rise? 

 Are you likely to extract Homer out of the 

 rattling of dice, or the differential calculus 

 out of the clash of billiard-balls ? . . . I 

 can follow a particle of musk until it 

 reaches the olfactory nerve; I can follow 

 the waves of sound until their tremors reach 

 the water of the labyrinth, and set the oto- 

 liths and Corti's fibers in motion; I can 

 also visualize the waves of ether as they 

 cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay, more, I 

 am able to pursue to the central organ the 

 motion thus imparted at the periphery, and 

 to see in idea the very molecules of the brain 



thrown into tremors. My insight is not 

 baffled by these physical processes. What 

 baffles and bewilders me is the notion that 

 from those physical tremors things so ut- 

 terly incongruous with them as sensation,, 

 thought, and emotion can be derived." 1 

 [Supposed quotation from Bishop Butler.] 

 TYNDALL Fragments of Science (the Bel- 

 fast Address), vol. ii, ch. 9, p. 167. (A.,, 

 1900.) 



599. CONSCIOUSNESS AN UNREST- 

 ING STREAM Not an Assemblage of Molded 

 Forms Mind Not to Be Measured Off into 

 Departments. The traditional psychology 

 talks like one who should say a river con- 

 sists of nothing but pailsful, spoonsful, 

 quartpotsful, barrelsful, and other molded 

 forms of water. Even were the pails and 

 the pots all actually standing in the stream,, 

 still between them the free water would 

 continue to flow. It is just this free water 

 of consciousness that psychologists reso- 

 lutely overlook. Every definite image in the 

 mind is steeped and dyed in the free water 

 that flows round it. With it goes the sense 

 of its relations, near and remote, the dying 

 echo of whence it came to us, the dawning 

 sense of whither it is to lead. The signifi- 

 cance, the value, of the image is all in this, 

 halo or penumbra that surrounds and es- 

 corts it or rather that is fused into one 

 with it and has become bone of its bone and 

 flesh of its flesh; leaving it, it is true, ai* 

 image of the same thing it was before, but 

 making it an image of that thing newly 

 taken and freshly understood. JAMES- 

 Psychology, vol. i, ch. 9, p. 255. (H. H. & 

 Co., 1899.) 



600. CONSCIOUSNESS AS A STAGE 



Ideas as Actors, Appearing and Disap- 

 pearing Comparison Misleading Uncon- 

 scious Idea Also Unknown Same Idea 

 Never Returns. Nothing is more natural 

 than to think of consciousness as a kind of 

 stage upon which our ideas are the actors, 

 appearing, withdrawing behind the scenes, 

 and coming on again when their cue is. 

 given. . . . Nevertheless this compari- 

 son of consciousness to a stage is entirely 

 misleading. The stage remains when the 

 actors have left it; it has an existence of 

 its own, which is not dependent upon them. 

 But consciousness does not continue to exist 

 when the processes of which we are conscious 

 have passed away; it changes constantly 

 with their changes, and is not anything 

 which can be distinguished from them. 

 When the actor has left the stage, we know 

 that he is somewhere else. But when an 

 idea has disappeared from consciousness we 

 know nothing at all about it. Strictly 

 speaking, it is not correct to say that it 

 subsequently returns. For the same idea 

 never returns. A subsequent idea may be 

 more or less similar to an earlier one; but 

 it is probably never exactly the same. 

 WITNDT Psychology, lect. 16, p. 235. (Son.. 

 & Co., 1896.) 



