Page:Principles of Psychology (1890) v1.djvu/233

213 THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS 213 with something much more complex ; namely, an active counting out and positive exclusion of certain objects. It is as when one ' cuts ' an acquaintance, ' ignores ' a claim, or ' refuses to be influenced ' by a consideration. But the perceptive acti^dty which works to this result is discon- nected from the consciousness which is personal, so to speak, to the subject, and makes of the object concerning which the suggestion is made, its own private possession and prey.* The mother who is asleep to every sound but the stir- rings of her babe, evidently has the babe-portion of her au- ditory sensibility systematically awake. Eelatively to that, the rest of her mind is in a state of systematized anaesthesia. That department, split off and disconnected from the sleep- ing part, can none the less wake the latter up in case of need. So that on the whole the quarrel between Des- cartes and Locke as to whether the mind ever sleeps is less near to solution than ever. On a priori speculative grounds Locke's view that thought and feeling may at times wholly disappear seems the more plausible. As glands cease to secrete and muscles to contract, so the brain should some- times cease to carry currents, and with this minimum of its activity might well coexist a minimum of consciousness. On the other hand, we see how deceptive are appearances, and are forced to admit that a part of consciousness may sever its connections with other parts and yet continue to be. On the whole it is best to abstain from a conclusion. The science of the near future will doubtless answer this ques- tion more wisely than we can now. simpler to understand the process, if adding new strokes made the first one visible. There would then be two different objects apperceived as totals, — paper with one stroke, paper with many strokes ; and, blind to the for- mer, he would see all that was in the latter, because he would have apper- ceived it as a different total in the first instance. A process of this sort occurs sometimes (not always) when the new strokes, instead of being mere repetitions of the original one, are lines which combine with it into a total object, say a human face. The sub- ject of the trance then may regain his sight of the line to which he had previously been blind, by seeing it as part of the face.
 * How to conceive of this state of mind is not easy. It would be much