CONSCIOUSNESS. 189 



and tea) stimulate our powers of thought; others 

 (such as wine and beer) intensify feeling ; musk and 

 camphor reanimate the fainting consciousness ; ether 

 and chloroform deaden it, and so forth. How would 

 that be possible if consciousness were an immaterial 

 entity, independent of these anatomical organs ? And 

 what becomes of the consciousness of the " immortal 

 soul " when it no longer has the use of these organs ? 



These and other familiar facts prove that man's 

 consciousness — and that of the nearest mammals — is 

 changeable, and that its activity is always open to 

 modification from inner (alimentation, circulation, 

 etc.) and outer causes (lesion of the brain, stimula- 

 tion, etc.). Very instructive, too, are the facts of 

 double and intermittent consciousness, which remind 

 us of " alternate generations of presentations." The 

 same individual has an entirely different conscious- 

 ness on different days, with a change of circumstances ; 

 he does not know to-day what he did yesterday : 

 yesterday he could say, "I am I " ; to-day he must 

 say, "I am another being." Such intermittence of 

 consciousness may last not only days, but months, 

 and even years ; the change may even become per- 

 manent. 



As everybody knows, the new-born infant has no 

 consciousness. Preyer has shown that it is only 

 developed after the child has begun to speak ; for a 

 long time it speaks of itself in the third person. In 

 the important moment when it first pronounces the 

 word "I," when the feeling of self becomes clear, we 

 have the beginning of self -consciousness, and of the 

 antithesis to the non-ego. The rapid and solid 

 progress in knowledge which the child makes in its 

 first ten years, under the care of parents and teachers, 



