123 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Consciousness 

 Conservation 



case logical continuity disappears. Between 

 molecular mechanics and consciousness is in- 

 terposed a fissure over which the ladder of 

 physical reasoning is incompetent to carry 

 us. TYNDALL Fragments of Science, vol. ii, 

 ch. 15, p. 388. (A., 1900.) 



607. CONSCIOUSNESS PERSISTS IN 

 SLEEP Waking Ideas Control "A Dream 

 Cometh through the Multitude of Business " 

 (Eccl. v, 3). Our dream-operations have 

 been found to have a much closer connection 

 with our waking experiences than could be 

 supposed on a superficial view. The ma- 

 terials of our dreams are seen, when closely 

 examined, to be drawn from our waking ex- 

 perience. Our waking consciousness acts in 

 numberless ways on our dreams, and these 

 again in unsuspected ways influence our 

 waking mental life. Not only so, it is found 

 that the quaint chaotic play of images in 

 dreams illustrates mental processes and 

 laws which are distinctly observable in 

 waking thought. Thus, for example, the ap- 

 parent objective reality of these visions has 

 been accounted for, without the need of re- 

 sorting to any supernatural agency, in the 

 light of a vast assemblage of facts gathered 

 from the byways, so to speak, of waking 

 mental life. SULLY Illusions, ch. 7, p. 130. 

 (A., 1897.) 



608. CONSCIOUSNESS, POWER OF 



Influences the Bodily Life. The particu- 

 lars of the distribution of consciousness, so 

 far as we know them, point to its being effi- 

 cacious. It is very generally admitted, tho 

 the point would be hard to prove, that con- 

 sciousness grows the more complex and in- 

 tense the higher we rise in the animal king- 

 dom. That of a man must exceed that of an 

 oyster. From this point of view it seems an 

 organ, superadded to the other organs which 

 maintain the animal in the struggle for ex- 

 istence; and the presumption, of course, is 

 that it helps him in some way in the strug- 

 gle, just as they do. But it cannot help him 

 without being in some way efficacious and 

 influencing the course of his bodily history. 

 If now it could be shown in what way con- 

 sciousness might help him, and if, moreover, 

 the defects of his other organs . . . are 

 such as to make them need just the kind of 

 help that consciousness would bring pro- 

 vided it were efficacious; why, then the 

 plausible inference would be that it came 

 just because of its efficacy in other words, 

 its efficacy would be inductively proved. 

 JAMES Psychology, vol. i, ch. 5, p. 138. (H. 

 H. & Co., 1899.) 



609. CONSCIOUSNESS REPUDIATES 



MATERIALISM The Soul Not a Combina- 

 tion of Atoms. To be sure, we cannot, no, 

 we cannot be satisfied with that practical 

 outcome of psychology, with those conclu- 

 sions about the final character of personality 

 and freedom [as mere psychophysical proc- 

 esses " for nobody, for no end, and with no 



value *'], about history and logic and ethics, 

 about man and the universe. Every fiber in 

 us revolts, every value in our real life re- 

 jects such a construction. We do not feel 

 ourselves such conglomerates of psychophys- 

 ical elements, and the men whom we admire 

 and condemn, love and hate, are for us not 

 identical with those combinations of psy- 

 chical atoms which pull and push one another 

 after psychological laws. We do not mean, 

 with our responsibility and with our free- 

 dom in the moral world, that our con- 

 sciousness is the passive spectator of psy- 

 chological processes which go on causally de- 

 termined by laws, satisfied that some of the 

 causes are inside our skull, and not outside. 

 The child is to us in real life no vegetable 

 which can be raised like tomatoes, and the 

 criminal is no weed which does not feel that 

 it destroys the garden. MUNSTERBERG Psy- 

 chology and Life, p. 15. (H. M. & Co., 

 1899.') 



610. CONSCIOUSNESS SUSPENDED 



Effect of a Lightning-stroke. On June 

 30, 1788, a soldier in the neighborhood of 

 Mannheim, being overtaken by rain, placed 

 himself under a tree, beneath which a wom- 

 an had previously taken shelter. He looked 

 upwards to see whether the branches were 

 thick enough to afford the required protec- 

 tion, and, in doing so, was struck by light- 

 ning, and fell senseless to the earth. The 

 woman at his side experienced the shock in 

 her foot, but was not struck down. Some 

 hours afterwards the man revived, but re- 

 membered nothing about what had occurred, 

 save the fact of his looking up at the 

 branches. This was his last act of con- 

 sciousness, and he passed from the conscious 

 to the unconscious condition without pain. 

 TYNDALL Fragments of Science, vol. i, ch. 

 21, p. 442. (A., 1900.) 



611. CONSERVATION OF ENERGY 



Heat, Light, Magnetism, Electricity, and 

 Motion Convertible. The phrase " conser- 

 vation of energy " does not cover the whole 

 subject that it is intended to cover. It in- 

 volves the correlation of energy, or, as it 

 has been called in earlier times, the corre- 

 lation of forces, as well as the transmuta- 

 tion of energy, by which is meant a change 

 from one form to another. For instance, 

 heat as an energy may be converted into an- 

 other form called electricity, and this in 

 turn may be reconverted into heat. This 

 process is called transmutation. The energy, 

 as such, representing a definite amount of 

 work, remains the same in both cases. Heat, 

 light, magnetism, electricity, are all differ- 

 ent modes or forms of energy working 

 through motion; the fact that they are in- 

 terchangeable is their " correlation " ; the 

 fact that the amount of energy remains the 

 same through all changes is its " conserva- 

 tion." Energy is a constant quantity. 

 ELISHA GRAY Nature's Miracles, vol. ii, ch. 

 1, p. 2. (F. H. &IL, 1900.) 



