162 PSYCHOLOGY. 



poiut here), but at any rate iudependent and integral, and 

 not compounded of psychic atoms.* 



CAN STATES OP MIND BB UNCONSCIOUS? 



The passion for unity and smoothness is in some minds 

 so insatiate that, in spite of the logical clearness of these 

 reasonings and conclusions, many will fail to be influenced 

 by them. They establish a sort of disjointedness in things 

 which in certain quarters will appear intolerable. They 



*The reader must observe that we are reasoning altogether about the 

 logic of the miud-slulf theory, about whether it can explain the constitution 

 of higher mental states by viewing them as identical with lower ories 

 summed together. We say the two sorts of fact are not identical : a higher 

 state is not a lot of lower states ; it is itself. When, however, a lot of 

 lower states have come together, or when certain brain-conditions occur 

 together which, if they occurred separately, would produce a lot of lower 

 states, we have not for a moment pretended that a higher state may not 

 emerge. In fact it does emerge under those conditions ; and our Chapter 

 IX will be mainly devoted to the proof of this fact. But such emergence 

 is that of a new psychic entity, and is toto coslo different from such an 

 'integration' of the lower states as the mind-stuff theory afliims. 



It may seem strange to suppose that anyone should mistake criticism of 

 a certain theory about a fact for doubt of the fact itself. And yet the 

 confusion is made in high quarters enough to justify our remarks. Mr. J. 

 Ward, in his article Psychology in the Encyclopedia Britannica, speak- 

 ing of the hypothesis that "a series of feelings can be aware of itself as 

 a series," says (p. 39): " Paradox is too mild a word for it, even contradiction 

 will hardly suffice." Whereupon, Professor Bain takes him thus to task: 

 " As to ' a series of states being aware of itself, I confess I see no insur- 

 moimtable difficulty. It may be a fact, or not a fact ; it may be a very 

 clumsy expression for what it is applied to ; but it is neither paradox nor 

 contradiction. A series merely contradicts an individual, or it may be 

 two or more individuals as coexisting ; but that is too general to exclude 

 the possibility of self-knowledge. It certainly does not bring the property 

 of self-knowledge into the foreground, which, however, is not the same 

 as denying it. An algebraic series might know itself, without any con- 

 tradiction : the only thing against it is the want of evidence of the fact.' 

 (' Mind,' XT. 459). Prof. Bain thinks, then, that all the bother is about the 

 difficulty of seeing how a series of feelings can have the knowledge of 

 itself added to it ! ! ! As if anybody ever was troubled about that. That, 

 notoriously enough, is a fact : our consciousness is a series of feelings to 

 which every now and then is added a retrospective consciousness that they 

 have come and gone. What ]\Ir. Ward and I are troubled about is merely 

 the silliness of the mind-stulfists and associationists continuing to say that 

 the ' series of states ' is the ' awareness of itself ;' that if the states be posited 

 severally, their collective consciousness is eo ipso given ; and that we need 

 no further explanation, or ' evidence of the fact.' 



