Page:Russell - An outline of philosophy.pdf/35

Rh When the disturbance has reached the brain, it may or may not cause a characteristic set of events in the brain. If it does not, we shall not be what is called "conscious” of it. For to be "conscious" of seeing yellow, whatever else it may be, must certainly involve some kind of cerebral reaction to the message brought by the optic nerve. It may be assumed that the great majority of messages brought to the brain by the afferent nerves never secure any attention at all—they are like letters to a government office which remain unanswered. The things in the margin of the field of vision, unless they are in some way interesting, are usually unnoticed; if they are noticed, they are brought into the centre of the field of vision unless we make a deliberate effort to prevent this from occurring. ‘These things are visible, in the sense that we could be aware of them if we chose, without any change in our physical environment or in our sense- organs; that is to say, only a cerebral change is required to enable them to cause a reaction. But usually they do not provoke any reaction; life would be altogether too wearing if we had to be always reacting to everything in the field of vision. Where there is no reaction, the second stage completes the process, and the third and fourth stages do not arise. In that case, there has been nothing that could be called "perception" connected with the stimulus in question.

To us, however, the interesting case is that in which the process continues. In this case there is first a process in the brain, of which the nature is as yet conjectural, which travels from the centre appropriate to the sense in question to a motor centre. From there there is a process which travels along an efferent nerve, and finally results in a muscular event causing some bodily movement. In our illustration of the man hing the beginning of a race, a process travels from the part of the brain concerned with sight to the part concerned with speech; this is what we called the third stage. Then a process travels along the efferent nerves and brings about the movements which constitute saying "They're off"; this is what we called the fourth stage.