Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/323

THE DOUBLK EFFECT OF MENTAL STIMULI. 309 Thus there is ground at least to suspect that one funda- mental contrast in mental type arises out of difference in the distribution of psycho-physical energy between manifesta- tions of physical and of psychical life. The contrast may be partial, affecting some manifestations rather than others in the persons compared, but probably it occurs more readity as a general characteristic, and it is thus that it concerns us here. An explosion of energy takes place in the organism. In the one type the greater part passes on to do something at once. In the other the greater part passes into consciousness, and if an act emerges it is a conscious, a considered, act. Between these two extremes there may be all grades in the ratio of distribution. Thus one person may be in any degree more conscious of his disturbances than another, whatever the disturbance, and if our analysis be correct, he will be less physically agitated in a corresponding degree. A question now arises which must be faced, even if we can only parley indecisively with it. Is the intenser conscious- ness after all only due to a higher degree of centralisation in the organism ? Is it that to a greater extent disturbances, wherever occurring, pass through the centre (which may be a metaphorical way of saying that they reverberate through the whole) so that the effect is a more completely organic effect and therefore more conscious, ending in considerate action if in action at all ? Obviously, if there occurs this widely-reaching organic disturbance, the activity that follows will be a more adequate translation of the stimulus into the agent's language of act. Also there would be more consciousness, the points being many instead of few. But such an increase of consciousness has the form of multi- plicity. We know it in experience as different from intensity. Comprehensiveness of sensibility in a momentary experience is one thing ; depth of sensibility quite another. The great man's gift of insight is both. The two are not opposed as shallow novel writers sometimes seem to assume, the one turning probably on unity of organisation, the other on this quality now under consideration for which we claim an inde- pendent existence. Certainly it would seem from experience that this widening of effect may occur without a deepening of consciousness to correspond. All highly-organised instinct bespeaks centralisation : instinct may be so highly organised that the act is adequate to the best reason of the man, and yet takes place unconsciously. Even in our intellectual work much that we do, as part of some highly-wrought intelligible whole, is done with a minimum of consciousness, i.e., without an idea of it before it is done. We add mechanically ; we