140 CONSCIOUSNESS 



of its powers of choice. It sets before the will the 

 impulses of instinct, the promptings of habit, 

 and the inferences of reason, so that the will has 

 before it, so to speak, a catalogue of the various 

 courses that are open for adoption. The cata- 

 logue is often exceedingly incomplete. The 

 suggestions of instinct and habit are faithfully 

 presented ; but the inferences of reason may be 

 a travesty of those at which a cultivated intelli- 

 gence would arrive. Thus the case for burning 

 a witch will give full weight to the instinct of 

 fear, and the habit of persecution, but will be 

 ludicrously inadequate in the inferences which 

 are marshalled to justify the act. 



Consciousness has assuredly been the most 

 potent of the influences which have raised man 

 above the brutes. But it has led him into errors 

 and unhappiness with which the brutes are not 

 troubled. They are not distracted by the super- 

 stitions of magic and fetishism ; they do not 

 mutilate themselves, torture their fellows, or 

 endeavour to exterminate their own kind under 

 the impression that they are earning merit. 

 These, it may be said, are errors of reason, not of 

 consciousness. But reason is misled by mis- 

 apprehending happenings, or drawing wrong 

 inferences from happenings, with which it would 

 not concern itself were they not set before it by 

 consciousness. The reasoning powers of a monkey 

 are not exercised over the cause of a toothache, 

 or a plentiful crop of nuts, because it is not con- 

 scious that these events are causally connected 

 with anything that precedes them. And, beyond 

 doubt, consciousness has increased very materially 

 the tale of human unhappiness. It overshadows 

 us with the foreknowledge of death also, it 



