CHAPTER VIII
DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS—THE SEPARATION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS FROM ITS OBJECT—THE UNCONSCIOUS
I ask myself whether it is possible, by going further along this road of the separation between the consciousness and its object, to admit that ideas may subsist during the periods when we are not conscious of them. It is the problem of unconsciousness that I am here stating.
One of the most simple processes of reasoning consists in treating ideas in the same manner as we have treated the external objects. We have admitted that the consciousness is a thing superadded to the external objects, like the light which lights up a landscape, but does not constitute it and may be extinguished without destroying it. We continue the same interpretation by saying that ideas prolong their existence while they are not being thought, in the same way and for the same motive that material bodies continue theirs while they are not being perceived. All that it seems permissible to say is that this conception is not unrealisable.
