A manual of psychology.

  • Stout, George Frederick, 1860-1944.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of psychology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    always a danger of restricting the term so as to make it apply to certain modes and degrees and not to others. Historically, the word lias been used by certain writers for the awareness which we have of ourselves and of our own experiences, as states of the self. Indeed, consciousness has been called an inner sense, and has been regarded as a special function by which we perceive the mind and its processes; just as sight and hearing are outer senses for the perception of material facts. In opposition to all such views, we must state definitely that consciousness includes not only awareness of our own states, but these states themselves, whether we have cognisance of them or not. If a man is angry, that is a state of consciousness, even though he does not know that he is angry. If he does know that he is angry, that is another modification of con- sciousness, and not the same. Wherever there is not total unconsciousness in the sense in which we attribute unconsciousness to a table or a log of wood, consciousness in some mode or degree is present. As Professor Baldwin says, it is “ the common and necessary form of all mental states; ... it is the point of division between mind and not-mind.”*' To quote Pro- fessor Ladd: 11 What wo are when we are awake, as contrasted with what we are when we sink into a profound and perfectly dreamless sleep, . . . that it is to be con- scious. What we are less and less, as we sink gradually down into dreamless sleep, or as we swoon slowly away : and what we are more and more, as the noise of the crowd outside tardily arouses us from our after-dinner nap, or as we come out of the midnight darkness of the typhoid-fever crisis—”j that, is consciousness. The becoming conscious ♦ Elements of Psycholayy% p. o7. t Psychology, Descriptive mid Explanatory, p. 30.