1885.] The Relations of Mind and Matter. 941 
ceive to-day a landscape which we saw twenty years ago. There 
it has lain unchanged, all its salient points familiar to our sight, 
though we may have since wandered over half the world. So 
the eye of the mind wanders over a world of thoughts and sud- 
denly perceives a mental landscape of which it lost sight twenty 
years before. There it lies, far more unchanged even than the 
physical landscape, for that has suffered innumerable changes, 
while the mental picture has seemingly remained utterly free from 
influences of change, 
Whether consciousness is an energy in itself, or a forceless side 
product of energy is a question that has been considerably de- 
bated. Professor Huxley takes the latter view, and declares that 
consciousness is not an agent in determining action, but is a col- 
lateral result of the action. Professor Cope considers that “ con- 
sciousness is not a necessary condition of energy,” though “ en- 
ergy is a necessary condition of consciousness,”’ and differs from 
Huxley in believing that consciousness exerts a directing influ- 
ence over mental action. In respect to these views it is impor- 
tant to observe that the mental operations which are generally 
attended by consciousness are capable, in some cases, of proceed- 
ing unconsciously. There are on record many striking instances 
of the active operation of the mind during unconsciousness, or 
while consciousness was elsewhere directed, important results of 
reasoning being sometimes produced. There are few thinkers to 
whom minor instances of this kind have not occurred. Such 
cases would seem to prove that consciousness is not a necessary 
element of thought, and therefore not a determining agent in 
thought. On the other hand it must be remembered that such 
mental processes never begin in unconsciousness, In every 
‘ recorded case they have been trains of thought with which con- 
Sciousness was at first actively concerned, and whose movement 
has proceeded during a temporary lapse of consciousness, their 
final results again rising into the realm of conscious thought. 
Instances of this kind, however, are comparatively few, and seem 
only to occur where the preliminary train of thought has been in- 
tense, and the conscious attention close and active. This intense 
activity seems to set in movement energies of the mind, which, 
like a train of wheels set in motion by the hand, run on for some 
time after the acting agent has been withdrawn, and only slowly 
- TOn Catagenesis, AMERICAN NATURALIST, Oct., 1884. 
