Page:Calcutta Review (1925) Vol. 16.djvu/253

238 Its life consists essentially in being acted on by them, and in re-acting upon them; so that its self-awareness has two sides—(i) a consciousness of being affected by other things as in our experience of sensations such as colour, sound, taste, smell, touch, etc., and of the emotions such as fear, anger pity, love, hate and the like—and (ii) a consciousness of reacting to resist and produce changes in other things, which will be the consciousness of volition, activity, energy.

Now according to a view rather common in recent times, the second of these two kinds of consciousness has no real existence. Mind is a consciousness only of effects produced by other things, i.e., of sensations and other feelings. Ideas are clusters of sensations and other feelings retained and revived in memory. Volition is merely an awareness of one set of feelings followed uniformly by another set. Energy is merely a peculiar kind of feeling, impressed upon us by changes in other things; the energy is not in us, but in the things. In short, mind is a purely passive product, having no consciousness of acting, but only of being acted on. Self is only the flow of present feelings, together with past ones preserved and revived. Therefore mind cannot be a source of energy.

Wundt, who in earlier times held the Self to be an active power, gave in latterly to the above way of thinking in his analytical psychology, and thinks that the Self should not be considered even to be the whole stream of feelings. It is only a group of feelings which may appear here and there, more intense than the rest, and thereby forming a centre round which others may group themselves—a view which makes the Self to be still more fleeting and insubstantial. Mind, being merely a shadow which accompanies organic processes, can have no energy—it can do nothing. Hence the theory—

That the Self cannot be a Source of Energy.—It is clear, then, that this conception of the Self can give