CHAPTER VIII. 



THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS. 



Since, for psychology, a mind is an object in a world of 

 other objects, its relation to those other objects must next 

 be surveyed. First of all, to its 



TIME-RELATIONS. 



Minds, as we know them, are temporary existences. 

 Whether my mind had a being prior to the birth of my body, 

 whether it shall have one after the latter's decease, are 

 questions to be decided by my general philosophy or the- 

 ology rather than by what we call ' scientific facts ' — I leave 

 out the facts of so-called spiritualism, as being still in dis- 

 pute. Psychology, as a natural science, confines itself to 

 the present life, in Avliich eveiy mind apj^ears joked to a 

 body through which its manifestations appear. In the 

 present world, then, minds precede, succeed, and coexist 

 with each other in the common recej^tacle of time, and of 

 their collective relations to the latter nothing more can be 

 said. The life of the individual consciousness in time seems, 

 however, to be an interrupted one, so that the question : 



Are lue ever ivJioUy unconscious ? 



becomes one which must be discussed. Sleep, fainting, 

 coma, epilepsy, and other ' unconscious ' conditions are apt 

 to break in upon and occupy large durations of what we 

 nevertheless consider the mental history of a single man. 

 And, the fact of interruption being admitted, is it not 

 possible that it may exist where we do not suspect it, and 

 even perhaps in an incessant and fine-grained form ? 



This might happen, and yet the subject himself never 

 know it. We often take ether and have operations per 

 formed without a suspicion that our consciousness has suf 



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