Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/508

THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 495 cease. Consciousness goes along with the coaction of parts in a process of combination or integration ; in other words, it attends the reflection of the energy of one nerve-tract or nerve-grouping on to another nerve-tract or nerve-grouping in the making of a new one. In the accomplishment of this process we learn to consense the things, to feel them in their connexion or relation, to know them together (con scio), to be conscious ; and after its accomplishment we come to know them so well that our knowledge is latent or unconscious, implicit, unless we reflect and make it explicit that is to say, unless we repeat the process with deliberate attention. What is the addition then when I reflect, when I am the conscious plus the unconscious / ? It is not an addition to the /, it is an addition only of a change in the /: it is the awakening of an unconscious part of it to consciousness, the implication of other activities by reflection ; and it is the reflection which conditions the consciousness is objectively that which subjectively is consciousness. Thus it appears that the psychological term reflection is founded literally on a certain positive physical basis. According to the number of the thought-junctions is the richness of the reflection that is, the number of incidences or coincidences of related activity ; and the richness of the reflection determines the quantity and quality of the consciousness, which may be concentrated and exact, or ever so vague and diffuse. If the foregoing considerations be sound, they justify the conclusion that the condition of consciousness is a certain concurrence of activities, or alternation of activities so rapid as to seem concurrent. The conclusion may be entertained in regard of intellectual consciousness ; but how can it be true of the simplest consciousness of a simple feeling or sensation ? Here it is necessary to bear in mind that sensations and feelings that appear simple are really com- plex, actually compounds of more rudimentary elements ; sensations seemingly most simple being notably capable of resolution into combinations of simpler sensations by those who are endowed with the fitly acute sensibilities and have cultivated them by practice. It is hardly possible to say of any sensation that it does not contain extension. However, we may assume for our purposes the existence of a primary and simple sensation ; we are then driven perforce to the conclusion that the primary element of a sensation is, paradoxical as the statement sounds, insensible insensible, that is to say properly, to me in whom it is ; which is not equivalent to saying that it has not a special susceptibility or guasi-sensibility of its own. At any rate, however simple