EVILS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 141 



should be added, disposes us to seek the con- 

 solations that are offered by religion. It deepens 

 into misery the irritation which proceeds from an 

 unsatisfied impulse : if we are moved to acquire 

 a thing, consciousness brings home to us the 

 bitterness of failure. And it afflicts us with the 

 anguish of repentance that feeling which arises 

 from the failure of the conscious will to hold its 

 own against the temptations of instinct. The 

 freedom of the brutes from these refinements of 

 trouble moved Walt Whitman to envy them : 



They do not sweat and whine about their condition ; 

 They do not lie awake in the dark, and weep for their sins ; 

 They do not make me sick, discussing their duty to God ; 

 Not one is dissatisfied not one is demented with the 



mania for owning things ; 

 Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived 



thousands of years ago ; 

 Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole world. 



I. Errors of apprehension. Before conscious- 

 ness are unrolled two sets of images the sensory 

 impressions, representing actualities, and the 

 recollections, or memorial visions, that are con- 

 jured up by the memory. The latter may be 

 exceedingly distinct, and are generally very 

 distinct during childhood and in persons who are 

 weakly endowed with critical powers. Their 

 verisimilitude is heightened by the faculty of 

 visualization or seeing an image in detail 

 which appears to be strongest when reason is 

 weakest. Children are easily disposed to see 

 ghosts in the dark, and savage life is overshadowed 

 by mysterious haunt ings. But the seeing of 

 visions is not confined to the young or the un- 

 cultured. Many men of intelligence have been 

 troubled by hallucinations of presences or of 

 voices whose unreality can hardly be established 



