Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/508

 496 EDMUND GURNEY : great show of reason. But now let us take a case where, though the answer is equally simple, the question itself does not suggest one answer rather than another. For instance, let some one, standing behind the ' subject/ give a very light clap of the hands at intervals, and let the ' subject ' immedi- ately before each clap and also at other times between the claps, be asked the question ' Do you hear this ? ' He will be found to answer ' yes ' when a clap follows, ' no ' when no clap follows. Now here even to suppose the answer ' yes ' to be automatically given involves some strain of the reflex- theory ; for granting that the physical attention might be fixed by the question i.e., that the nervous events correspond- ing to expectation of a faint sound might be thus produced these events would in themselves have no tendency to pro- duce the word ' yes ' in response to the clap. In the normal state, that answer would involve a sense that a doubtful point had to be decided by the person himself, and the result truly communicated a mental operation of some complexity and great delicacy; and if the same result be produced without any psychic concurrence, the physical events must at any rate differ considerably from anything involved in the trance-medium's self-propagating stream of irresponsible verbiage. But when the answer given is ' no,' the indication of a true psychical event viz., the conscious- ness of not hearing corresponding to it seems almost irre- sistible ; for here the answer, besides involving just the same delicate operations as the former one, would have to be reflexly jogged out not by the stimulation of sound, but by the ?iow-stimulation of silence. Similar and far more complicated instances could be easily multiplied ad infinitum. But Despine's principal argument, and Heidenhain's only one, depends on the ' subject's ' subsequent defect of memory as to what has passed during his trance. It does not seem to have occurred to either of them that the requirement, as a test for present consciousness, that its content shall be after- wards remembered, requires itself any justification. Yet if the reality of that test be granted, the question whether a man was conscious when he read an article in the Times will depend on whether or not he receives a blow on the head when he has finished it. In his development of the argument, however, Despine shows considerable controversial ingenuity ; and it must be admitted that those who have maintained the pre- sence of consciousness in hypnotism and somnambulism have not always been happy in their way of accounting for the subsequent forgetfulness. This has been attributed by Dugald Stewart to the ' subject's ' defect of attention to the