THE STREAM OF THOUGHT. 273 



fcnows them. This stage of reflective condition is, more or 

 less explicitly, our habitual adult state of mind. 



It cannot, however, be regarded as primitive. The con- 

 sciousness of objects must come first. ' We seem to lapse 

 into this primordial condition when consciousness is re- 

 duced to a minimum by the inhalation of anaesthetics or 

 during a faint. Many persons testify that at a certain stage 

 of the anaesthetic process objects are still cognized whilst 

 the thought of self is lost. Professor Herzen says : * 



" During the syncope there is absolute psychic annihilation, the ab- 

 sence of all consciousness ; then at the beginning of coming to, one has 

 at a certain moment a vague, limitless, infinite feeling— a sense of exist- 

 ence in general without the least trace of distinction between the me and 

 the not-me." 



Dr. Shoemaker of Philadelpliia describes during the 

 deepest conscious stage of ether-intoxication a vision of 



" two endless parallel lines in swift longitudinal motion . . . on a uni- 

 form misty background . . . together with a constant sound or whirr, 

 not loud but distinct . . . which seemed to be connected with the paral- 

 lel lines. . . . These phenomena occupied the whole field. There were 

 present no dreams or visions in any way connected with human affairs, 

 no ideas or impressions akin to anything in past experience, no emo- 

 tions, of course no idea of personality. There was no conception as to 

 what being it was that was regarding the two lines, or that there existed 

 any such thing as such a being; the lines and weaves were all." f 



Similarly a friend of Mr. Herbert Spencer, quoted by 

 him in 'Mind' (vol ill. p. 556), S23eaks of " an undisturbed 

 empty quiet everywhere except that a stupid presence lay 

 like a heavy intrusion somewhere — a blotch on the calm." 

 This sense of objectivity and lapse of subjectivity, even 

 when the object is almost indefinable, is, it seems to me, a 

 somewhat familiar phase in chloroformization, though in 

 my own case it is too deep a phase for any articulate after- 

 memory to remain. I only know that as it vanishes I 

 seem to wake to a sense of my own existence as something 

 additional to what had previously been there.;}: 



* Revue Philosophique, vol. xxi. p, 671. 



f Quoted from the Therapeutic Gazette, by the N. Y . Semi-weekly 

 Evening Post for Nov. 2, 1886. 



:J:In half-stunned states self-consciousness may lapse. A friend writes 

 me : " We were driving back from in a wagonette. The door flew 



