Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/319

II.-THE DOUBLE EFFECT OF MENTAL STIMULI ; A CONTRAST OF TYPES. BY MRS. SOPHIA BRYANT. i THE DOUBLE EFFECT OF MENTAL STIMULI. A MENTAL stimulus may be more or less successful, or may fail altogether, in producing its appropriate; mental effect as a manifestation of consciousness ; but we should hardly call it a mental stimulus it' it produced no effect on the organ of consciousness, with manifestations of the in- stinctive or reflex, if not of the conscious, type. A mental stimulus might therefore be denned as an event which may produce a change in consciousness, and which does produce a change in the organ of consciousness. The typical not the universal effect is that the organ stimulated reacts in some way on the rest of the organism, and thereby on the environment, and that some change in consciousness is also produced, in consequence of which there may or may not be further reactions later. Thus the typical effect is primarily double. But stimuli may produce only the one or the other of these effects. For instance in all reflex action there is no change in consciousness, while in that vivid but passive hearing and seeing which is I think possible, though rare, there is nothing except this change. The latter case seems to be well exemplified in the extraordinarily vivid impressions passively made by details in the scenes and sounds presented when the active attention is absorbed in thought or feeling as in times of great anxiety or grief. Between the two extremes there are infinitely numerous intermediate degrees in the ratio between these two con- stituents of mental life, which might for the moment be called conscious and organic, but for which I will presently suggest terms more precise. The purely organic reactions are unconscious in this strict sense that the mind is not at all aware of their genesis, i.e., does not know anything of their happening before they happen. They are no part of our subject matter except 20