Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/403

 G. F. STOUT, Analytic Psychology. 387 processes of consciousness are contrasted with the passive re- cesses in so far as, in the passive processes, such as mere percej-- tion, there is no reason within consciousness for the transition from the perception of one object to that of another (p. 148). " Mental activity exists when and so far as process in conscious- ness is the direct outcome of previous process in consciousness." Furthermore (p. 149) "in mental striving there is a tendency towards a state which remains relatively unrealised, so long as the conation continues". Processes of this sort, in so far as they have (p. 152) their " starting point and terminal point in the current of consciousness," are mental activity. To be sure (p. 155), mental activity is never pure. " All mental self-determination is indirect." For the mental process determines changes which occur outside of consciousness, say in the brain, and these changes in their turn react upon the conscious process. But (p. 156) " the impossibility of isolating immanent or direct self-determination constitutes no reason for regarding it as a fiction ". For no change within con- sciousness is entirely determined from without. Furthermore, the conscious activity thus defined is "selective," and "adaptive". That is, what occurs in consequence of mental activity is such as to meet a mental or conscious end. Meanwhile, if mental activity is never pure, and is purely indirect, one can still say (p. 160) " mental activity exists in being felt. It is an immediate experi- ence. The stream of consciousness feels its own current." Or (p. 166) "the process of consciousness is as such a, felt process ". And within what is felt, in the process, is included " the anti- thesis between the process in so far as it contributes to its own self-sustainment and development, and in so far as it is determined by conditions extraneous to itself". In addition "there is an immediate experience," in the conscious process " of its effective- ness or ineffectiveness, its freedom or constraint". And finally (p. 168) "to be mentally active is identical with being mentally alive or awake. According to this view, therefore, there can be no such thing as purely passive consciousness." It will be seen at once that this very frank statement of the thesis that consciousness is active, contains one very curious difficulty. The activity whose existence is asserted, is admitted to be always partly indirect. Consciousness never does directly and wholly determine the sequence of its own states. What con- sciousness does is to determine something outside of consciousness, which something, in turn, determines a process or state within consciousness. Yet what thus occurs indirectly is somehow felt directly. That consciousness is active is immediately known. Yet the activity of consciousness is itself never quite immediate. If the rest of the psycho-physical organism failed, for extra-con- scious reasons, to co-operate with consciousness, the activity would not act ; nothing would be accomplished. Yet conscious- ness feels its own efficacy, and feels this immediately. More- over this difficulty is by no means the only one in the theory