Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/502

 No. 48.] [OCTOBER, 1887. MIND A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. I. THE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF CON- SCIOUSNESS. By HENRY MAUDSLEY, M.D. IT is certain that by no exercise of consciousness of which we are capable can we explain what it is in itself: con- sciousness must be a fundamental fact in all its functions inexplicable, ultimate. The aim of sober inquiry is, there- fore, to search and, if possible, find out the conditions of consciousness the conditions, that is to say, under which it arises, varies, sinks and lapses. And, inasmuch as those who base psychology entirely upon its revelations cannot but acknowledge that it is not essential to mental being at every moment or at any moment coextensive with the whole of it, but that mental powers exist habitually and even act occasionally in the absence of consciousness, they also may view with approval every effort to discover and set forth the physiological conditions of its occurrence. At the outset it is evident that those conditions, if they ever are discovered, will be discovered only by observation of suitable instances and by legitimate inductions from them. No intuition of self-consciousness can possibly help in the matter ; the self-revelation of any instant of its being is a revelation of the instant only, does not contain a revela- 32