Page:Mind and the Brain (1907).djvu/257

 the analysis I am supposing to be possible has just been effected. Our consciousness then assists at the unrolling of representations which correspond to the outer world. These representations are not, or do not appear to be, lodged in the brain; and it is not necessary to suppose a special operation which, taking them in the brain, should project them to the periphery of our nerves. This transport would be useless, since for the consciousness the brain does not exist: the brain, with its fibres and cells, is not felt; it therefore supplies no datum to enable us to judge whether the representation is external or internal with regard to it. In other words, the representation is only localised in relation to itself; there is no determinate position other than that of one representation in relation to another. We may therefore reject as inexact the pretended law of eccentricity of the physiologists, who suppose that sensation is first perceived as it were centrally, and then, by an added act, is localised at the peripheric extremity of the nerve. This argument would only be correct if we admitted that the brain is perceived by the consciousness of the brain. I have already said that the consciousness is not an anatomist, and that therefore this problem does not present itself.

Such as it is, this hypothesis appears to me to present the advantage of explaining the reason