An error akin to the foregoing is that of regarding consciousness as a sort of "luminous atmosphere," in which (as it were) phenomena are steeped and by which they are revealed. This mode of conceiving it is very common, and if it meant nothing more than that conscious activity is only one form of mental activity (the luminous or wakeful form), it might be allowed to pass as an eccentric way of expressing an important fact. But if it means, as apparently it does, that consciousness is something over and above distinct conscious states, it must be condemned as fundamentally erroneous, and the instrumentality of revelation that it speaks of must be discarded as a chimera.

Consciousness, then, is awakeness and having thus tried to set forth its true nature, let us next--for the sake of clearer apprehension -bring it into relation with other kindred and allied words, wherewith it is apt to be confounded.

As has been

Consciousness is sometimes used as a synonym for Knowledge; but this can be only by the figure of synecdoche where the whole is put for the part; for Knowledge is only intellectual Consciousness, whereas Feeling and Volition are conscious elements no less than Intellect. Knowledge, again, is intellectual consciousness in the form of mental concentration; when, out of the untold variety of conscious experiences that we have, the mind selects this, that, or the other portion, and allows the rest to pass by unheeded. well said, there is a discriminative and there is a selective consciousness, and, though the former is, properly speaking, intellectual, it is only the latter that rises to cognition. Nor is the matter mended if we confine the term to immediate Knowledge. The part for which the whole now stands is even smaller than it was before, or, if it is larger, it is only by an unwarrantable stretch or abuse of language. Yet, it is this figurative use that seems to have led Hamilton and others into the mistake of supposing that Consciousness is founded on Knowledge-a view that is sufficiently refuted by pointing to Feeling, where, as a rule, the greater the intellectual pre-occupation the less are we awake to the feeling proper, and conversely.

Again, Consciousness is to be distinguished from Self-consciousness; this latter being, strictly speaking, a contradiction in terms. For if, as is allowed, we have no immediate Consciousness of self as apart from its modes and manifestations-if, in other words, we are not awake to it-a mediate consciousness is absurd. Hence the inadequacy of such a definition as Ferrier's :-"By consciousness we mean the notion of self; that notion of self, and that self-reference, which in man generally, though by no means invariably, accompanies his sensations, passions, emotions, play of reason, or states of mind whatsoever ". The only intelligible signification is when Selfconsciousness is made to stand for the subject consciousness, as distinguished from the object consciousness, our wakeful experience of the world within, as distinct from our wakeful experience of the world without.

1 See Locke, Hume, Kant, Reid, Stewart, Hamilton, Mill, Bain, &c. On the other hand, see Descartes, Berkeley, Mansel, Ferrier.

Not less objectionable is it to identify Consciousness with Conviction a very common error in philosophical disputes, more particularly in the Free-Will Controversy and in the metaphysical problem of the External World. Conviction is no unerring authority; it may be right or wrong, groundless or defensible, reasonable or absurd and to try to settle a dispute by an appeal to Consciousness, when all the time it is simply an appeal to deep-rooted conviction (which may be the result of education or of prejudice or of habit, or which may result from one or more of a hundred other causes), is certainly to cut before the point.

A distinction, again, has to be drawn between Consciousness and Attention. Attention is but one form of consciousness-it is consciousness concentrated; which, although most frequently a voluntary act, is not so always. Awakeness is not at all the same

thing as awareness.

Once more, there are various names used by Descartes and the Cartesians as synonymous with consciousness, which, however, are by no means such, and ought therefore to be discriminated. Thus, in the writings of Descartes himself, not only is Thought taken as convertible with Consciousness, but Consciousness is frequently identified with Perception. To Thought we shall return by and by, when we come to treat of Reason; but meanwhile, as to the other, perception is a word with diverse meanings, and surely it does sufficient duty when it is made to stand-now for sense-perception or immediate knowledge through the senses, now for the intellectual or objective element in sense-perception, now for the passivity of mind in contradistinction to volition, which is the mind's activity,-without putting it to this further and more general use. Much the same may be said of Malebranche's "internal sentiment or "inner feeling". Feeling expresses a distinct and definite enough conception; but, as such, it is only a mode of consciousness-one among several; and to employ it in this extended signification is simply to breed confusion and ambiguity.

There are two other words not unfrequently given as the equivalents of Consciousness, which ought nevertheless to be distinguished: I mean Experience and Apperception. Apperception, if we retain it at all, ought to be restricted to self-consciousness (as above explained), and Experience is a term of the widest import. Be it observed, there is a conscious and there is an unconscious Experience, and the Evolution-theory has taught us that Experience is inherited. What, however, in strictness we inherit is not experience, but the results of it. Again, our knowledge of life and of the world is in great measure dependent, not simply on what comes within the range of our own individual Consciousness, but on what we learn on the testimony of others. Experience, accordingly, has to be extended so as to include History. But not even yet are its applications exhausted. It is common in Philosophy to oppose Experience to Intuition. We have here the antithesis of two sources of knowledge, or of what among our mental possessions can be given us by our life as lived in time

and what this time-life is (or seems to be) incapable of originating : in other words, it is the antithesis of the innate and the acquired. In this sense, Experience is regarded as the lower and Intuition as the higher origin: or, to put it otherwise (as is often done), it is the contrast of the more dignified and the less dignified-of the more authoritative and the less authoritative; although upon what reasonable ground the contrast is made, one is rather at a loss to perceive. For, even granting (as we do) the existence of intuitive truths, they cannot at the best be more than true. But the knowledge got from Experience is true also; and to pit the one against the other as the more and the less authoritative, is either to use the word truth equivocally or to deny that truth (some truth) is itself true.

It is scarcely necessary, after what has been already said, to remark that there is no proper contrast between Consciousness and the Senses, such as we find Reid making towards the end of the Inquiry. There is looseness to a degree in such a sentence as the following:-"The way to avoid both these extremes [viz., spiritualising body and materialising spirit] is to admit the existence of what we see and feel as a first principle, as well as the existence of things whereof we are conscious; and to take our notions of the qualities of body from the testimony of our senses, with the Peripatetics; and our notions of our sensations, from the testimony of consciousness with the Cartesians ".

Let us now sum up. What is the conclusion we have reached? As the result of our analysis and comparison, we find that Consciousness is best defined by antithesis and discrimination. When we have

brought it into connexion with its opposites, and when we have marked it off from the things most nearly allied to it, we have done the most that words can do to make it evident and plain. Consciousness is a convenient generic name (or, better still, perhaps, collective name), most nearly translatable by the term Awakeness; but we conceive it wrongly when we speak of it either as a condition of mental states or as a concomitant or as a revealer. Once draw the line between wakefulness and non-wakefulness, and it is this, that, or the other mental state, and nothing different; and to regard it otherwise is confusing and unphilosophical.

From this there follow certain important consequences. In the first place, if Consciousness be awakeness, and if it is for the moment identical with the mental wakeful state of that moment, then we see that it refers, strictly speaking, only to the present. A consciousness of the past is absurd. It is Memory that deals with the past; but even Memory, as a mental state, is a present fact. In like manner, there cannot be a consciousness of the future. We anticipate the future; but even anticipation as a conscious experience is present. Secondly, if Consciousness be awakeness, it is, as to its existence, beyond the reach of question. Dispute arises only when it is taken as a testifier—a testifier of truths intuitive to the exclusion of others; or when it is unlawfully identified with Conviction. Last of all, we .can now see the intelligibility of the Cartesian position-that

Knowledge is founded on Consciousness. We do not call that position false; it is simply inadequate. No doubt, Knowledge is founded on Consciousness; but other things (in this sense) are founded on Consciousness as well. Thus, there is no feeling without awakeness, neither is there purposive act.

WILLIAM L. DAVIDSON.

SENSE OF DIZZINESS IN DEAF-MUTES.

Professor WILLIAM JAMES has the following Note in the Hurrard University Bulletin No. 18 (1881):—

"An immense amount of evidence, collected within the last few years, tends to show that the semicircular canals of the internal ear have nothing to do with the function of hearing, but are organs of a special sense hitherto unrecognised as such: the sense, namely, of translation through space, which in its more extreme degrees becomes the feeling of dizziness or vertigo. It occurred to me that, if this theory were true, some, at least, of the inmates of deaf and dumb institutions ought to prove insusceptible of experiencing this latter sensation, for in some either the whole auditory nerve is probably degenerated, or else its ampullar terminations will have shared the local fate, whatever it be, which has abolished the hearing functions of the cochlea. An inquiry was accordingly set on foot, of which the results already most beautifully confirm the modern theory. A very large number of the deaf-mutes examined are either wholly incapable of being made dizzy by the most violent rotations, or experience but a slight and transient giddiness. Others, as was to be expected, are strongly and normally affected. The difference in the demeanour of the two extreme classes of patients is so striking as to leave no room for mistake, and to banish doubt from the most sceptical spectator's mind. In the Horace Mann School in Boston, where 54 children were whirled in a rotary swing, (by far the purest and most powerful means of inducing vertigo), only 2 were made dizzy. At the Hartford Asylum, out of 155 pupils, 49 are reported not dizzy, and 49 hardly dizzy. At the National College for Deafmutes in Washington, out of 62 persons examined, 19 are not at all dizzy, and 2 hardly dizzy. I have also received 58 answers to a printed circular of questions: 18 of these report complete absence, 12 a slight degree of dizziness. In all, 326 cases, of whom 131 were not dizzy, and 63 but slightly The deficiency in question seems quite independent of the age at which deafness began, semi-mutes and congenitals being found indifferently in all three classes. The number of deaf-mutes who are afflicted with disorders of locomotion seems never to have attracted the attention of physiologists, although it has long been notorious in asylums. The connexion of these disorders with the loss of the semicircular canal sense becomes now a most interesting problem, into which I have begun to inquire. The matter is evidently complicated by the fact that the disease causing deafness may also leave central disorders expressing themselves in anæsthesia of the legs or by ataxia. That this is so appears from the number of semi-mutes who stagger and zigzag in walking, especially in the dark, but who are normal as respects dizziness. Congenital mutes are hardly ever found with dis orders of locomotion. The evidence I already have in hand justifies the formation of a tentative hypothesis, as follows: The normal guiding sensation in locomotion is that from the semicircular canals. This is co-ordinated in the cerebellum (which is known to receive auditory nerve fibres) with

So.

the appropriate muscles, and the nervous machinery becomes structurally organised in the first few years of life. If, then, this guiding sensation be suddenly abolished by disease, the machinery is thrown completely out of gear, and must form closer connexions than before either with sight or touch. But the cerebellar tracts, being already organised in another way, yield but slowly to the new co-ordinations now required, and for many years make the patient's gait uncertain, especially in the dark. Where the defect of the auditory nerve is congenital the cerebellar machinery is organised from the very outset in co-ordination with tactile sensations, and no difficulty occurs. To prove this hypothesis a minute medical examination of many typical cases will be required. If this prove confirmatory, it will then appear probable that many of the so-called paralyses after diphtheria, scarlet-fever, etc., may be nothing but sudden anesthesia of the semicircular canals.

"A complete discussion, with further details, is reserved for future publication."

Illusions.

VII.-CRITICAL NOTICES.

A Psychological Study. By JAMES SULLY. (“International Scientific Series.") London Kegan Paul, 1881. Pp. 372.

This book, as a whole, has two distinctive and valuable features :(1) It takes "illusions" in a wider and more practical sense than usual, extending its view beyond sense-illusions. (2) While fully admitting the validity and importance of the philosophical aspect of the whole question of illusion and error, Mr. Sully has admirably succeeded in keeping clearly before his mind the distinction between science and philosophy, and his treatment is strictly scientific as involving no philosophic assumptions or conclusions.

The keynote of the book is struck in the succinct preface, where Mr. Sully states his aim to be "the description and classification of acknowledged errors, and the explanation of these by a reference to their psychical and physical conditions". But when, in halfapologetic fashion, he goes on to say, "At the same time, I was not able, at the close of my exposition, to avoid pointing out how the psychology leads on to the philosophy of the subject," one is disposed to feel that he need not excuse himself for, so to say, showing his hand at the end. This might rather be named a third characteristic which distinguishes his book and gives it value. It seems a great thing for the general reader and the student of science that they should in such frank and generous fashion have thrown open for them the gateways that lead from science to philosophy, by one who is himself a man of science. The one side of the distinction, that of science, is plainly formulated in the sentence just quoted, as description, classification, and explanation by conditions. The other side, that of philosophy, Mr. Sully will make plain to us in his epilogue.

In Chapter I. he defines his field, taking it to extend beyond false perception, but to stop where fallacy begins. Fallacy is explicit