172 PSYCHOLOGY. 



prove conclusively tliat, in addition to the fully conscious 

 way in which an idea may exist in the mind, there is also 

 an uncoi>scious way ; that it is unquestionjibly the same 

 identical idea which exists in these two ways ; and that 

 therefore any arguments against the mind -stuff theory, 

 based on the notion that esse in our mental life is sentiy^i, 

 and that an idea must consciously be felt as what it is, fall 

 to the ground. 



Objection. These reasonings are one tissue of confusion. 

 Two states of mind which refer to the same external reality, 

 or two states of mind the later one of which refers to the 

 earlier, are described as the same state of mind, or ' idea,' 

 published as it were in two editions ; and then whatever 

 qualities of the second edition are found openly lacking in 

 the first are explained as having really been there, only in 

 an ' unconscious' way. It would be difficult to believe that 

 intelligont men could be guilty of so patent a fallacy, were 

 not the history of ps^'chology there to give the j^roof. The 

 psychological stock-in-trade of some authors is the belief 

 that two thoughts about one thing are virtually the same 

 thought, and that this same thought may in subsequent 

 reflections become more and more conscious of what it really 

 tvas all along from the first. But once make the distinc- 

 tion br;tween simply having an idea at the moment of its pres- 

 ence and subsequently -knowing all sorts of things about it ; 

 make moreover that between a state of mind itself, taken 

 as a subjective fact, on the one hand, and the objective 

 thing it knows, on the other, and one has no difficulty in 

 escaping from the labyrinth. 



Take the latter distinction first : Immediately all the 

 arguments based on sensations and the new features in 

 them which attention brings to light fall to the ground. 

 The sensations of the B and the V when we attend to these 

 sounds and analyze oat the laryngeal contribution which 

 makes them differ from P and F respectively, are different 

 sensations from those of the B and the V taken in a simple 

 way. They stand, it is true, for the same letters, and thus 

 mean the same older realities ; but they are different mental 

 affections, and certainly depend on widely different processes 

 f)f cerebral activitv. It is unbelievable that two mental 



