198 The American Naturalist. [Mareh, 
in consciousness, but they certainly do not have ‘that vivid 
and definite character which distinguish peripheral sensations. 
Moreover they must detract from the general vitality, and 
lower the tone of the higher orders of experience. 
There can be no doubt that the stock of vitality, and the 
natural endowments of body and mind immensely transcend 
all the other differences hitherto considered. Not only do 
ER E cro 3. ei gE eat ee 
they give rise to differences in the intensity, but also in the — : 
duration of life. The vigorous, alert, and impressionable nature 
has a livelier consciousness of all that it experiences, responds 
more keenly to all its enjoyments, and resists more stubbornly 
the wracking and dissolution of conflict and disease. Hence 
such an individual lives longer and lives more. There are 
still other differences of a psychological character which give 
rise to still more important variations in the quantity of the 
conscious life. Owing to the absence of any standards in the 
higher fields of psychometric research, it is hard to discrimin- 
ate between quantitative and qualitative differences. Yet 
viewed from a rational standpoint it cannot be doubted that 
different kinds of consciousness are quantitatively different, 
though there is no perceptible disparity in their relative 
intensities. That the untutored savage feels as intense grati- 
fication in the pursuit of his game, as the astronomer in the 
pursuit of undiscovered asteroids, cannot reasonably be doubted. 
But how totally different the quality of the feeling, and the 
psychological grounds upon which it is based! Where the 
thoughts and emotions are different in kind, this disparity 18 
even greater. There are certain thoughts and emotions access 
ible to the few which are totally beyond and above the range 
of the average mind. Such thoughts as those of Laplace and 
Kant, and such emotions as those of Schiller, are of this order. 
While it may not be easy to defend the position, yet We feel 
forced to believe that there are quantitative differences between 
such thoughts and emotions, and the stolid apathy, and or , 
materialistic conceptions of the mediocre mind. 
Up to this point we have considered the conditions W 
modify the quantity of the conscious life in a generat 
But the quantity of the life of every human being is subj 
hich 
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