Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/563

Rh any consciousness whatever. We can not, however, logically stop at this point. If a single cortical process and its concomitant mental state may be dissociated from others, there appears no a priori reason why many may not he simultaneously dissociated, nor yet why the entire system may not he dissolved and reduced to a chaotic mass of physical processes and concomitant mental states. For such a supposititious condition I would propose the term disordination, the etymological opposite of coordination. We may well believe that if a disordinated state occurred it would not be remembered. Memory depends, from the psychological point of view, upon the law of association, and from the physiological upon the fact that between the cortical processes underlying the present state of consciousness and the traces left in the cortex by those accompanying the state remembered, there is a continuous system of traces, representing actual processes that discharged successively into one another. In a disordinated state there is no such continuous system and consequently no memory. But it is also conceivable that, from a present state succeeding a state of disordination, a single devious thread of traces, so to speak, might lead us back a little way into the maze of confusion which lies behind. As I shall later show, our memory of a dream depends upon such a line of continuous discharge.

In a disordinated state the dissociated elements would not of course be what they would be in a well coordinated state. In the latter the characteristics of each element are largely determined by the relation which it bears to other elements of the system with which it is interwoven. Freed from the restrictions and incitements of the others, each process would tend to work out its own proper results in a very different way from that which it would otherwise have been compelled to follow.

Furthermore, it is conceivable that co-ordination might be defective without being absolutely lacking. I would term this incoördination. It might occur in either of two forms, or in both at once. The coordinated system underlying the upper consciousness might consist of relatively few elements as compared with those of other persons, there being a larger subconscious field. The upper consciousness would then habitually be narrow; the individual would be unable to grasp many considerations at once and would be easily abstracted. Or, the elements actually coordinated might be defectively coordinated. The consciousness would tend to be confused, the individual would see dimly things which would persistently refuse to get clear, and would be in general what we call "muddle-headed." And, as I have suggested, many are both muddle-headed and narrow-minded.

It is evident that the distinction between disordination and