The Relations Of Minds To Other Things.Since, for psychology, a mind is an object in a world of other objects, its relation to those other objects must next be surveyed.First of all, to its TIME-RELATIONS.Minds, as we know them, are temporary existences.Whether my mind had a being prior to the birth of my body, whether it shall have one after the latter's decease, are questions to be decided by my general philosophy or theology rather than by what we call 'scientific facts' - I leave out the facts of so-called spiritualism, as being still in dispute.Psychology, as a natural science, confines itself to the present life, in which every mind appears yoked to a body through which its manifestations appear.In the present world, then, minds precede, succeed, and coexist with each other in the common receptacle of time, and of their collective relations to the latter nothing more can be said.The life of the individual consciousness in time seems, however, to be an interrupted one, so that the question: Are we ever wholly unconscious? becomes one which must be discussed.Sleep, fainting, coma, epilepsy, and other 'unconscious' conditions are apt to break in upon and occupy large durations of what we nevertheless consider the mental history of a single man.And, the fact of interruption being admitted, is it not possible that it may exist where we do not suspect it, and even perhaps in an incessant and fine-grained form?
This might happen, and yet the subject himself never know it.We often take ether and have operations performed without a suspicion that our consciousness has suf- fered a breach.The two ends join each other smoothly over the gap; and only the sight of our wound assures us that we must have been living through a time which for our immediate consciousness was non-existent.
Even in sleep this sometimes happens: We think we have had no nap, and it takes the clock to assure us that we are wrong. We thus may live through a real outward time, a time known by the psychologist who studies us, and yet not feel the time, or infer it from any inward sign.
The question is, how often does this happen? Is consciousness really discontinuous, incessantly interrupted and recommencing (from the psychologist's point of view)? and does it only seem continuous to itself by an illusion analogous to that of the zoetrope? Or is it at most times as continuous outwardly as it inwardly seems?
It must be confessed that we can give no rigorous answer to this question.
Cartesians, who hold that the essence of the soul is to think, can of course solve it a priori , and explain the appearance of thoughtless intervals either by lapses in our ordinary memory, or by the sinking of consciousness to a minimal state, in which perhaps all that it feels is a bare existence which leaves no particulars behind to be recalled.If, however, one have no doctrine about the soul or its essence, one is free to take the appearances for what they seem to be, and to admit that the mind, as well as the body, may go to sleep.
Locke was the first prominent champion of this latter view, and the pages in which he attacks the Cartesian belief are as spirited as any in his Essay."Every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine who teach that their soul is always thinking." He will not believe that men so easily forget.
M.Jouffroy and Sir W.Hamilton, attacking the question in the same empirical way, are led to an opposite conclusion.Their reasons, briefly stated, are these:
In somnambulism, natural or induced, there is often a great display of intellectual activity, followed by complete oblivion of all that has passed.
On being suddenly awakened from a sleep, however profound, we always catch ourselves in the middle of a dream.Common dreams are often remembered for a few minutes after waking, and then irretrievably lost.
Frequently, when awake and absent-minded, we are visited by thoughts and images which the next instant we cannot recall.
Our insensibility to habitual noises, etc., whilst awake, proves that we can neglect to attend to that which we nevertheless feel.Similarly in sleep, we grow inured, and sleep soundly in presence of sensations of sound, cold, contact, etc., which at first prevented our complete repose.
We have learned to neglect them whilst asleep as we should whilst awake.
The mere sense-impressions are the same when the sleep is deep as when it is light; the difference must lie in a judgment on the part of the apparently slumbering mind that they are not worth noticing.
This discrimination is equally shown by nurses of the sick and mothers of infants, who will sleep through much noise of an irrelevant sort, but waken at the slightest stirring of the patient or the babe.This last fact shows the sense-organ to be pervious for sounds.
Many people have a remarkable faculty of registering when asleep the flight of time.They will habitually wake up at the same minute day after day, or will wake punctually at an unusual hour determined upon overnight.
How can this knowledge of the hour (more accurate often than anything the waking consciousness shows) be possible without mental activity during the interval?
