Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/503

490 H. MAUDSLEY : tion of the antecedent or underlying conditions of that illuminated instant. Furthermore, it is not necessary that the instances observed and noted be complex and extra- ordinary ; as good instruction may be obtained from simple and common instances, fitly selected, as from the most complicated and rare, provided that they be observed accu- rately and carefully weighed. The good use of uncommon facts is to awaken a curiosity and attention which common facts fail to awaken. I. Consciousness implies discrimination : that is the manifest condition of its origin. Now, discrimination means not a separate impression alone on the brain, but the feeling that it is separate or different from something else ; wherefore, consciousness is not a simple but a duplex event. Were the impression entirely separate, without relation to the foregoing or accompanying impression, there would not be conscious- ness ; without some bond of connexion between the two states they would be as distinct and unrelated as impressions made upon different minds. He who could not discriminate two colours, or two feelings, or two thoughts, but, by sup- position, lived exclusively in one feeling, or in one thought, would not be conscious of sensation, feeling or thought. The bond of a bodily unity between the different impressions there necessarily is always, but conscious unity is something more : there is the physical connexion of an underlying bodily unity ; there is also a certain active state of that con- nexion and unity, which is the condition of consciousness. The common way of speaking of consciousness seems calculated to mislead, if not to produce misconception of its true nature and functions ; for it is spoken of as if it had existence apart from each particular fact or act of conscious- ness as if, indeed, it were a sort of illuminated mental atmosphere into which states of mind arose and so became known. Such terms as the ' threshold ' and the ' horizon ' of consciousness tend perhaps to keep up misconception. There is no such domain of supereminent being ; a general or abstract consciousness is not an existence at all, it is no more than a general name or notion. What is a fact is the particular conscious state at the particular instant. There are so many consciousnesses as there are sensations, emo- tions, thoughts : a redness-consciousness, a greenness-con- sciousness, a sourness-consciousness ; a tree-consciousness, a sea-consciousness, a star-consciousness ; an anger-con- sciousness, an envy-consciousness, a joy-consciousness ; and