Page:The Function of Reason.pdf/75

 interconnected vaguely and yet insistently with other items in dim apprehension, and this dimness shading off imperceptibly into undiscriminated feeling.

Further, the clarity cannot be segregated from the vagueness. The togetherness of the things that are clear refuses to yield its secret to clear analytic intuition. The whole forms a system, but when we set out to describe the system direct intuition plays us false. Our conscious awareness is fluctuating, flitting, and not under control. It lacks penetration. The penetration of intuition follows upon the expectation of thought. This is the secret of attention.

But besides this character of an immediate moment of experience, these moments differ among themselves in the life of any one of us. We are alert, or we are drowsy, or we are excited, or we are contemplative, or we are asleep, or we are dreaming, or we are intently expecting, or we are devoid of any concentrated expectation. Our variety of phases is infinite.

Again when we consider other humans, and animals, an analogous variation suggests itself between their average states, and between the highest stages respectively possible for different individuals. As we descend the scale, it seems that we find in the lower types a dim unconscious drowse, of undiscriminated feeling. For the lower types, experience loses its illustration of forms, and its illumination by consciousness, and its discrimination of purpose. It seems finally to end in a massive uncon-