400 MENTAL FUNCTION 



will no longer shy at hearing the word consciousness or even at the sight 

 of the psychologist in his laboratory, for the truth is marching on that 

 the subject-matter and the methods of science do not, after all, conflict 

 with or even necessarily concern the honored interests of philosophy, 

 In merely describing in a simple way the phenomena of mind, we need 

 never go outside of science, nor indeed outside of physiology considered 

 as the general science of vital processes. 



There is nothing in consciousness more difficult of understanding 

 than many of the functions and structures already described, of the 

 kidney, the brain, or the lung. The impression to the contrary, so 

 common among medical students, arises partly from the novelty of the 

 mental topics but more from the fact that these psychic objects cannot 

 be literally handled but must be felt otherwise and studied as they stand 

 before the mind in the imagination. Bones may be taken out of the box 

 and their tuberosities compared visually with the pictures in the text- 

 book, and brains and muscles may be handled in the dissecting-room, 

 cut open, and preserved. We are accustomed to this mode of studying 

 material things, and it is easy for us. Here, on the other hand, are only 

 sensations, emotions, percepts, ideas, objects not material but objects 

 none the less, well-defined, separate in a way, with qualities, relations, 

 and real. Indeed the aspects of consciousness are the realest of all 

 real things. Who is there whose life has not been influenced more by 

 some ideas or volitions or feelings than by every sort of material object 

 whatsoever ? For every man crushed by a falling rock or an overturning 

 car dozens are crushed by mental objects such as these others. These 

 things, then, are significant and real and can be taken apart somewhat, 

 observed and examined, analyzed, synthesized, classified in many ways 

 in short, scientifically studied. 



Terms different from those of anatomy of course will have to be 

 employed at times and psychological expressions with technical meanings. 

 In no other way can things be scientifically, that is tersely and accurately, 

 denoted or described. The terms, however, are mostly simple compared 

 with many in the text-books of anatomy, histology, and chemistry to 

 which we are accustomed. It is their novelty alone which makes them 

 now and then somewhat forbidding. 



The "Functions" of the Mental Process. In reality the mental process 

 as experienced by individuals has no function; it is the essential part of 

 the personality. Properly speaking, then, it is only the body which has 

 functions: that it may serve as the temporary instrument of the per- 

 sonality. None the less, from a purely biological point of view we may 

 point out one or two uses or functions of this "internal radiance/' as 

 Morat rather strikingly calls consciousness. The most conspicuous of 

 these by far are those which inhere in memory and in the synthetic 

 activities of mind. It is easy to think of an unconscious organic machine 

 which would receive and preserve impressions (such as those which 

 produce light and sound) from the environment, but it is perhaps im- 

 possible to imagine any means, other than that we call consciousness, by 



