Primordial facts of mind. We are now at the end of our analysis, and the results | (2) the motor or active state, where feeling precedes the act and (3) by voluntary Of the three phases, thus logically distinguishable, the first re To say that feeling and attention are not presentations will seem According to this view, then, presentations, attention, feeling, are not to be regarded as three co-ordinate genera, each a distinguishable "state of mind or consciousness,' i.e., as being all alike included under this one supreme category. There is, as Berkeley long ago urged, no resemblance between activity and an idea; nor is it easy to see anything common to pure feeling and an idea, unless it be that both possess intensity. Classification seems, in fact, to be here out of place. Instead, therefore, of the one summum genus, state of mind or consciousness, with its three co-ordinate subdivisions-cognition, emotion, conation-our analysis seems to lead us to recognize three distinct and irreducible facts-attention, feeling, and objects or presentations-as together, in a certain connexion, constituting one concrete state of mind or psychosis. Of such concrete states of mind we may then say there are two forms, more or less distinct, corresponding to the two ways in which attention may be determined and the two classes of objects attended to in each, viz., (1) the sensory or receptive state, when attention is non-voluntarily determined, i.e., where feeling follows the act of attention; and 1 To cover more complex cases, we might here add the words trains of ideas." or Theory of Presentations. Having now ascertained what seem to be the essential elements in any state of mind, we may next proceed to examine these several elements separately in more detail. It will be best to begin with that which is both the clearest in itself and helps us the most to understand the rest, viz., the objects of attention or consciousness, i.e., presentations. And this exposition will be simplified if we start with a supposition that will enable us to leave aside, at least for the present, the difficult question of heredity. psycho We know that in the course of each individual's life Assumpthere is more or less of progressive differentiation or tion of a development; we know too that the same holds broadly Pogical of a race; and it is believed to hold in like manner of the indievolution of the animal kingdom generally. It is believed vidual. that there has existed a series of sentient individuals beginning with the lowest form of life and advancing continuously up to man. Some traces of the advance already made may be reproduced in the growth of each human being now, but for the most part such traces have been obliterated. What was experience in the past has become instinct in the present. The descendant has no consciousness of his ancestors' failures when performing by "an 2 Compare "Gefühle der Lust und Unlust und der Wille. gar nicht Erkenntnisse sind" (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Hartenstein's ed., p. 76). Lectures on Metaphysics, ii. p. 432. die we But, while we cannot say that we know what attention and feeling untaught ability" what they slowly and painfully found out. But if we are to attempt to follow the genesis of mind from its earliest dawn it is the primary experience rather than the eventual instinct that we have first of all to keep in view. To this end, then, it is proposed to assume that we are dealing with one individual which has continuously advanced from the beginning of psychical life, and not with a series of individuals of which all save the first have inherited certain capacities from its progenitors. The life-history of such an imaginary individual, that is to say, would correspond with all that was new, all that could be called evolution or development, in a certain typical series of individuals each of whom advanced a certain stage in mental differentiation. On the other hand, from this history would be omitted that inherited reproduction of ancestral experience, or tendency to its reproduction, by which alone, under the actual conditions of existence, progress is possible. sent altogether. The worm is aware only of the difference If an assumption of this kind had been explicitly avowed by the psychologists who have discussed the growth of experience in accordance with the evolution hypothesis, not a few of the difficulties in the way of that hypothesis might have been removed. That individual minds make some advance in the complexity and distinctness of their presentations between birth and maturity is an obvious fact; heredity, though a less obvious fact, is also beyond question. Using Locke's analogy of a writing-tablet-or let us say an etching-tablet-by way of illustration, we may be sure that every individual started with some features of the picture completely preformed, however latent, others more or less clearly outlined, and others again barely indicated, while of others there is as yet absolutely no trace. But the process of reproducing the old might differ as widely from that of producing the new as electrotyping does from engraving. However, as psychologists we know nothing directly about it; neither can we distinguish precisely at any link in the chain of life what is old and inherited-original in the sense of Locke and Leibnitz-from what is new or acquired -original in the modern sense. But we are bound as a matter of method to suppose all complexity and differentiation among presentations to have been originated, i.e., experimentally acquired, at some time or other. So long, then, as we are concerned primarily with the progress of this differentiation we may disregard the fact that it has not actually been, as it were, the product of one hand dealing with one tabula rasa but of many hands, each of which, starting with a reproduction of what had been wrought on the preceding tabulæ, put in more or fewer new touches before devising the whole to a successor who would proceed in like manner. The pre tion-con tingum. tiation of But "change of consciousness" is too loose an expression Gradual to take the place of the unwieldy phrase differentiation differenof a presentation-continuum, to which we have been driven. presentaFor not only does the term "consciousness" confuse what tion-conexactness requires us to keep distinct, an activity and its tinuum. object, but also the term "change" fails to express the characteristics which distinguish presentations from other changes. Differentiation implies that the simple becomes complex or the complex more complex; it implies also that this increased complexity is due to the persistence of former changes; we may even say such persistence is essential to the very idea of development or growth. In trying, then, to conceive our psychological individual in the earliest stages of development we must not picture it as experiencing a succession of absolutely new sensations, which, coming out of nothingness, admit of being strung upon the "thread of consciousness" like beads picked up at random, or cemented into a mass like the bits of stick and sand with which the young caddis covers its nakedness. The notion, which Kant has done much to encourage, that psychical life begins with a confused manifold of sensations not only without logical but without psychological unity is one that becomes more inconceivable the more closely we consider it. An absolutely new presentation, having no sort of connexion with former presentations till the subject has synthesized it with them, is a conception for which it would be hard to find a warrant either by direct observation, by inference from biology, or in considerations of an a priori kind. At any given moment we have a certain whole of presentations, a "field of consciousness" psychologically one and continuous; at the next we have not an entirely new field but a partial change within this field. Many who would allow this in the case of representations, i.e., where idea succeeds idea by the workings of association, would demur to it in the case of primary presentations or sensations. "For," they would say, 'may not silence be broken by a clap of thunder, and have not the blind been made to see ?" To What is implied in this process of differentiation or mental growth and what is it that grows or becomes differentiated these are the questions to which we must now attend. Psychologists have usually represented mental advance as consisting fundamentally in the combination and recombination of various elementary units, the so-called sensations and primitive movements, or, in other words, in a species of "mental chemistry." If we are to resort to physical analogies at all-a matter of very doubtful propriety-we shall find in the growth of a seed or an embryo far better illustrations of the unfolding of the contents of consciousness than in the building up of molecules: the process seems much more a segmentation of what is originally continuous than an aggregation of elements at first independent and distinct. Comparing higher minds or stages of mental development with lower-by what means such comparison is possible we need not now consider-parison of several objects; but that absence or confusion of differences we find in the higher conspicuous differences between pre- which hides the many is really very different from the detection of sentations which in the lower are indistinguishable or ab- resemblances which makes the many one. 1 This last statement is apt to mislead by implying an active com urge such objections is to miss the drift of our discussion, | gination is no exception, as is shown by the whirl and Diffusion and restriction. The view here taken is (1) that at its first appearance in psychical life a new sensation or so-called elementary presentation is really a partial modification of some preexisting presentation, which thereby becomes as a whole more complex than it was before; and (2) that this complexity and differentiation of parts never become a plurality of discontinuous presentations, having a distinctness and individuality such as the atoms or elementary particles of the physical world are supposed to have. Beginners in psychology, and some who are not beginners, are apt to be led astray by expositions which begin with the sensations of the special senses, as if these furnished us with the type of an elementary presentation. The fact is we never experience a mere sensation of colour, sound, touch, and the like; and what the young student mistakes for such is really a perception, a sensory presentation combined with various sensory and motor presentations and with representations-and having thus a definiteness and completeness only possible to complex presentations. Moreover, if we could attend to a pure sensation of sound or colour by itself, there is much to justify the suspicion that even this is complex and not simple, and owes to such complexity its clearly marked specific quality. In certain of our vaguest and most diffused organic sensations, in which we can distinguish little besides variations in intensity and massiveness, there is probably a much nearer approach to the character of the really primitive presentations. strong excitement. But this "diffusion" or "radiation," The importance of getting a firm grasp of this conception of a presentation-continuum as fundamental to the whole doctrine of presentations will justify us in ignoring a little longer the details of actual mental development and regarding it first from this more general point of view. In a given sensation, more particularly in our organic sensations, we can distinguish three variations, viz., variations of quality, of intensity, and of what Dr Bain has called massiveness, or, as we will say, extensity. This last characteristic, which everybody knows who knows the difference between the ache of a big bruise and the ache of a little one, between total and partial immersion in a bath, is, as we shall see later on, an essential element in our perception of space. But it is certainly not the whole of it, for in this experience of massive sensation alone it is impossible to find other elements which an analysis of spatial intuition unmistakably yields. Extensity and extension, then, are not to be confounded. Now we find, even at our level of mental evolution, that an increase in the intensity of a sensation is apt to entail an increase in its extensity too; this is still more apparent in the case of movements, and especially in the movements of the young. In like manner we observe a greater extent of movement in emotional expression when the intensity of the emotion increases. Even the higher region of ima ability. In the preceding paragraphs we have had occasion to Retendistinguish between the presentation-continuum or whole tiveness. field of consciousness, as we may for the present call it, and those several modifications within this field which are ordinarily spoken of as presentations, and to which—now that their true character as parts is clear-we too may confine the term. But it will be well in the next place, before inquiring more closely into their characteristics, to consider for a moment that persistence of preceding modifications which the differentiation of the presentation verified, that we do not distinguish or attend separately to presentations of less than a certain assignable intensity. On attaining this intensity presentations are said to pass over the threshold of consciousness, to use Herbart's now classic phrase. What are we to say of them before they have attained it? After they have attained it, any further increase in their intensity is certainly gradual; are we then to suppose that before this their intensity changed instantly from zero to a finite quantity, and not rather that there was also a subliminal stage where too it only changed continuously? The latter alternative constitutes the hypothesis of subconsciousness. According to this hypothesis, a presentation does not cease to be so long as it has any intensity, no matter how little. We can directly observe that an increase in the intensity of many complex presentations brings to light details and differences before imperceptible; since these details are themselves presentations, they have been brought by this increase from the subconscious stage into the field of consciousness. Similarly, presentations not separately distinguishable, because of too close a proximity in time, become distinguishable when the interval between them is such as to allow of a separate concentration of attention upon each. Again, we find that presentations "revived" or re-presented after their disappearance from the field of consciousness appear fainter and less distinct the longer the time that has elapsed between their exits and their re-entrances. Nobody hesitates to regard such obliviscence as a psychological fact; why, then, should we hesitate to suppose that presentations, even when no longer intense enough directly to influence attention, continue to be presented, though with ever lessening intensity? continuum implies. This persistence is best spoken of as | retentiveness; it is sometimes confounded with memory, though this is something much more complex and special. Retentiveness is both a biological and a psychological fact; memory is exclusively the latter. In memory there is necessarily some contrast of past and present, in retentiveness nothing but the persistence of the old. If psychologists have erred in regarding the presentations in consciousness together as a plurality of units, they have erred in like manner concerning the persisting residua of such presentations. As we see a certain colour or a certain object again and again, we do not go on accumulating images or representations of it, which are somewhere crowded together like shades on the banks of the Styx; nor is such colour, or whatever it be, the same at the hundredth time of presentation as at the first, as the hundredth impression of a seal on wax would be. There is no such constancy or uniformity in mind. Obvious as this must appear when we pause to think of it, yet the explanations of perception most in vogue seem wholly to ignore it. Such explanations are far too mechanical and, so to say, atomistic; but we must fall back upon the unity and continuity of our presentation-continuum if we are to get a better. Suppose that in the course of a few minutes we take half a dozen glances at a strange and curious flower. We have not as many complex presentations which we might symbolize as F1, F2, F3. But rather, at first only the general outline is noted, next the disposition of petals, stamens, &c., then the attachment of the anthers, form of the ovary, and so on; that is to say, symbolizing the whole flower as [p' (a b) s' (c d) o' (ƒ g)], we first apprehend say [p'..s'..o'], then [p' (a b) s'..o'.], or [p' (a..)s (c..) of..)], and so forth. It is because the earlier apprehensions persist that the later are an advance upon them and an addition to them. There is nothing in this process properly answering to the reproduction and association of ideas: in the last and complete apprehension as much as in the first vague and inchoate one the flower is there as a primary presentation. There is a limit, of course, to such a procedure, but the instance taken, we may safely say, is not such as to exceed the bounds of a simultaneous field of consciousness. Now the question is: Ought we not to assume that such increase of differentiation through the persistence of preceding differentiations holds of the contents of consciousness as a whole? Here, again, we shall find limitations,-limitations too of great practical importance; for, if presentations did not pale as well as persist, and if the simpler presentations admitted of indefinite differentiation, mental advance unless the field of consciousness, i.e., the number of presentations to which we could attend together, increased without limit-would be impossible. But, allowing all this, it is still probably the more correct and fundamental view to suppose that, in those circumstances in which we now have a sensation of, say, red or sweet, there was in the primitive consciousness nothing but a vague modification, which persisted; and that on a repetition of the circumstances this persisting modification was again further modified. The whole field of consciousness would thus, like a continually growing picture, increase indefinitely in complexity of pattern, the earlier presentations not disappearing, like the waves of yesterday in the calm of to-day, but rather lasting on, like old scars that show beneath new ones. There is yet one more topic of a general kind calling for attention before we turn to the consideration of particular presentations-the hypothesis of unconscious mental modifications, as it has been unfortunately termed, the hypothesis of subconsciousness, as we may style it to avoid this contradiction in terms. It is a fact easily On the whole we seem justified in assuming three grades of consciousness thus widely understood-(1) a centre or focus of consciousness within (2) a wider field, any part of which may at once become the focus. Just as in sight, surrounding the limited area of distinct vision on which the visual axes are directed, there is a wider region of indirect vision to any part of which those axes may be turned either voluntarily or by a reflex set up by the part itself, as happens, e.g., with moving objects quite on the margin of vision. But in describing (3) subconsciousness as the third grade, this simile, due to Wundt, more or less forsakes us. Presentations in subconsciousness have not the power to divert attention, nor can we voluntarily concentrate attention upon them. Before either can happen the subconscious presentations must cross the threshold of consciousness, and so cease to be subconscious; and this, of course, is far from being always possible. Now in the case of sight an object may fail to catch the eye, either because, though within the field of sight, it is too far away to make a distinct impression or because it is outside the field altogether. But we cannot conveniently interpret "threshold of consciousness" in keeping with the latter alternative; mere accretion from without is a conception.as alien to psychology as it is to biology. We must make the best we can of a totum objectivum differentiated within itself, and so are confined to the first alternative. Our threshold must be compared to the surface of a lake and subconsciousness to the depths beneath it, and all the current terminology of presentations rising and sinking implies this or some similar figure. This hypothesis of subconsciousness has been strangely misunderstood, and it would be hard to say at whose hands it has suffered most, those of its exponents or those of its opponents. In the main it is nothing more than the application to the facts of presentation of the law of continuity, its introduction into psychology being due to Leibnitz, who first formulated that law. Half the difficulties in the way of its acceptance are due to the manifold ambiguities of the word consciousness. With Leibnitz consciousness was not coextensive with all psychical life, but only with certain higher phases1 of it. Of late, however, the tendency has been to but the power of reproducing them." But surely the capability of Over and above hindrances to its acceptance which may be set down to the paradoxical and inaccurate use of the word unconsciousness, there are two material difficulties which prevent this hypothesis from finding favour. First, the prevailingly objective implications of language are apt to make us assume that, as a tree remains the same thing whether it is in the foreground of a landscape or is lost in the grey distance, so a presentation must be a something which is in itself the same whether above the threshold of consciousness or below, if it exist, that is, in this lower degree at all. But it must be remembered that we are not now dealing with physical things but with presentations, and that to these the Berkeleyan dictum applies that their esse is percipi, provided, of course, we give to percipi the wide meaning now assigned to consciousness. The qualitative differences of all presentations and the distinctness of structure of such as are complex both diminish with a diminution of intensity. In this sense much is latent or "involved" in presentations lying below the threshold of consciousness that becomes patent_or evolved" as they rise above it. But, on the other hand, the hypothesis of subconsciousness does not commit us to the assumption that all presentations are by their very nature imperishable: while many modifications of consciousness sink only into obliviscence, many, we may well suppose, lapse into complete oblivion and from that there is no recall. Secondly, to any one addicted to the atomistic view of presentations just now referred to it may well seem incredible that all the incidents of a long lifetime and all the items of knowledge of a well-stored mind that may possibly recur-"the infinitely greater part of our spiritual treasures," as Hamilton says-can be in any sense present continuously. The brunt of such an objection is effectually met by the fact that the same presentation may figure in very various connexions, as may the same letter, for example, in many words, the same word in many sentences. We cannot measure the literature of a language by its vocabulary, nor may we equate the extent of our spiritual treasures as successively unfolded with the psychical apparatus, so to say, into which they resolve.2 The attempt has more than once been made to avoid the difficulties besetting subconsciousness by falling back on the conceptions of faculties, capacities, or dispositions. Stored-up knowledge, says J. S. Mill, is not a mental state but a capability of being put into a mental state"; similarly of the cases which Hamilton records, "in which the extinct memory [?] of whole languages was suddenly restored," he says, "it is not the mental impressions that are latent 1 The following brief passage from his Principes de la Nature et de la Grace (§ 4) shows his meaning- "Il est bon de faire distinction entre la Perception, qui est l'état intérieur de la Monade representant les choses externes, et l'Apperception, qui est la Conscience, ou la connoissance réflexive de cet état intérieur, laquelle n'est point donnée à toutes les âmes, ni toujours à la même âme. Et c'est faute de cette distinction que les Cartésiens ont manqué, en comptant pour rien les perceptions dont on ne s'apperçoit pas, comme le peuple compte pour rien les corps insensibles" (Op. Phil., Erdmann's ed., ii. p. 715). 2 Much light may be thrown on this matter and on many others by such inquiries as those undertaken by Mr Francis Galton, and described in his Inquiries into Human Faculty, pp. 182-203. 3 The exposition of subconsciousness given by Wundt is in the us. |