DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--THE SEPARATION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS
FROM ITS OBJECT--THE UNCONSCIOUS
I ask myself whether it is possible, by going further along this road
of the separation between the consciousness and its object, to admit
that ideas may subsist during the periods when we are not conscious of
them. It is the problem of unconsciousness that I am here stating.
One of the most simple processes of reasoning consists in treating
ideas in the same manner as we have treated the external objects. We
have admitted that the consciousness is a thing superadded to the
external objects, like the light which lights up a landscape, but does
not constitute it and may be extinguished without destroying it. We
continue the same interpretation by saying that ideas prolong their
existence while they are not being thought, in the same way and for
the same motive that material bodies continue theirs while they are
not being perceived. All that it seems permissible to say is that this
conception is not unrealisable.
Let us now place ourselves at the point of view of the consciousness.
We have supposed up to the present the suppression of the
consciousness, and have seen that we can still imagine the object
continuing to exist. Is the converse possible? Let us suppose that the
object is suppressed. Can the consciousness then continue to exist? On
this last point it seems that doubt is not possible, and we must
answer in the negative. A consciousness without an object, an empty
consciousness, in consequence, cannot be conceived; it would be a
zero--a pure nothingness; it could not manifest itself. We might
admit, in strictness, that such a consciousness might exist virtually
as a power which is not exercised, a reserve, a potentiality, or a
possibility of being; but we cannot comprehend that this power can
realise or actualize itself. There is therefore no actual
consciousness without an object.
The problem we have just raised, that of the separability of the
elements which compose an act of consciousness, is continued by
another problem--that of unconsciousness. It is almost the same
problem, for to ask one's self what becomes of a known thing when we
separate from it the consciousness which at first accompanied it, is
to ask one's self in what an unconscious phenomenon consists.
We have, till now, considered the two principal forms of
unconsciousness--that in nature and that in thought. The first named
unconsciousness does not generally bear that name, but is rather
discussed under the name of idealism and realism. Whatever be their
names, these two kinds of unconsciousness are conceivable, and the
more so that they both belong to physical nature.
If we allow ourselves to be guided by the concept of separability, we
shall now find that we have exhausted the whole series of possible
problems, for we have examined all the possible separations between
the consciousness and its objects; but if we use another concept, that
of unconsciousness, we can go further and propound a new problem: can
the consciousness become unconscious? But it is proper first to make a
few distinctions. It is the rôle of metaphysics to make
distinctions.[31]
Unconsciousness presupposes a death of the consciousness; but this
death has its degrees, and before complete extinction we may conceive
it to undergo many attenuations. There is, first, the diminution of
consciousness.
Consciousness is a magnitude capable of increase and decrease, like
sensation itself. According to the individual, consciousness may have
a very large or a very small field, and may embrace at the same time a
variable number of objects. I can pay attention to several things at
the same time, but when I am tired it becomes more difficult to me. I
lose in extension, or, as is still said, the field of consciousness is
restricted. It may also lose not only in extent of surface, but in
depth. We have all of us observed in our own selves moments of obscure
consciousness when we understand dimly, and moments of luminous
consciousness which carry one almost to the very bottom of things. It
is difficult to consider those in the wrong who admit, with Leibnitz,
the existence of small states of consciousness. The lessening of the
consciousness is already our means of understanding the unconscious;
unconsciousness is the limit of this reduction.[32]
This singular fact has also been noticed, that, in the same individual
there may co-exist several kinds of consciousness which do not enter
into communication with each other and which are not acquainted with
each other. There is a principal consciousness which speaks, and, in
addition, accessory kinds of consciousness which do not speak, but
reveal their existence by the use of other modes of expression, of
which the most frequent is writing.
This doubling or fractionation of the consciousness and personality
have often been described in the case of hysterical subjects. They
sometimes occur quite spontaneously, but mostly they require a little
suggestion and cultivation. In any case, that they are produced in one
way or other proves that they are possible, and, for the theory, this
possibility is essential. Facts of this kind do not lead to a theory
of the unconscious, but they enable us to understand how certain
phenomena, unconscious in appearance, are conscious to themselves,
because they belong to states of consciousness which have been
separated from each other.
A third thesis, more difficult of comprehension than the other two,
supposes that the consciousness may be preserved in an unconscious
form. This is difficult to admit, because unconsciousness is the
negation of consciousness. It is like saying that light can be
preserved when darkness is produced, or that an object still exists
when, by the hypothesis, it has been radically destroyed. This idea
conveys no intelligible meaning, and there is no need to dwell on it.
We have not yet exhausted all the concepts whereby we may get to
unconsciousness. Here is another, the last I shall quote, without,
however, claiming that it is the last which exists. We might call it
the physiological concept, for it is the one which the physiologists
employ for choice. It is based upon the observation of the phenomena
which are produced in the nervous system during our acts of
consciousness; these phenomena precede consciousness as a rule, and
condition it. According to a convenient figure which has been long in
use, the relations of the physiological phenomenon to the
consciousness are represented as follows: the physiological phenomenon
consists in an excitement which, at one time, follows a direct and
short route from the door by which it enters the nervous system to the
door by which it makes its exit. In this case, it works like a simple
mechanical phenomenon; but sometimes it makes a longer journey, and
takes a circuitous road by which it passes into the higher nerve
centres, and it is at the moment when it takes this circuitous road
that the phenomenon of consciousness is produced. The use of this
figure does not prejudge any important question.
Going further, many contemporary authors do not content themselves
with the proposition that the consciousness is conditioned by the
nervous phenomenon, but suggest also that it is continually
accompanied by it. Every psychical fact of perception, of emotion, or
of idea should have, it is supposed, a physiological basis. It would
therefore be, taken in its entirety, psycho-physiological. This is
called the parallelist theory.
We cannot discuss this here, as we shall meet with it again in the
third part of this book. It has the advantage of leading to a very
simple definition of unconsciousness. The unconscious is that which is
purely physiological. We represent to ourselves the mechanical part of
the total phenomenon continuing to produce itself, in the absence of
the consciousness, as if this last continued to follow and illuminate
it.
Such are the principal conceptions that may be formed of the
unconscious. They are probably not the only ones, and our list is not
exhaustive.
After having indicated what the unconscious is, we will terminate by
pointing out what it is not and what it cannot be.
We think, or at least we have impliedly supposed in the preceding
definitions, that the unconscious is only something unknown, which may
have been known, or which might become known under certain conditions,
and which only differs from the known by the one characteristic of not
being actually known. If this notion be correct, one has really not
the right to arm this unconsciousness with formidable powers. It has
the power of the reality to which it corresponds, but its character
of unconsciousness adds nothing to this. It is the same with it as
with the science of the future. No scholar will hesitate to admit that
that science will be deeper and more refined than that already formed.
But it is not from the fact that it is unknown that it will deserve
its superiority: it is from the phenomena that it will embrace. To
give to that which is unconscious, as we here understand it, an
overwhelming superiority over the conscious as such, we must admit
that the consciousness is not only a useless luxury, but the
dethronement of the forces that it accompanies.
In the next place, I decline to admit that the consciousness itself
can become unconscious, and yet continue in some way under an
unconscious form. This would be, in my opinion, bringing together two
conceptions which contradict each other, and thus denying after having
affirmed. From the moment that the consciousness dies, there remains
nothing of it, unless it be the conditions of its appearance,
conditions which are distinct from itself. Between two moments of
consciousness separated by time or by a state of unconsciousness,
there does not and cannot exist any link. I feel incapable of
imagining of what this link could be composed, unless it were
material--that is to say, unless it were supplied from the class of
objects. I have already said that the substantialist thesis
endeavours to establish a continuity between one consciousness and
another separated by time, by supposing a something durable, of which
the consciousness would be a property of intermittent manifestation.
They would thus explain the interruptions of consciousness as the
interruptions in the light of a lamp. When the light is extinguished,
the lamp remains in darkness, but is still capable of being lighted.
Let us discard this metaphor, which may lead to illusion. The concept
of consciousness can furnish no link and no mental state which remains
when the consciousness is not made real; if this link exists, it is in
the permanence of the material objects and of the nervous organism
which allows the return of analogous conditions of matter.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 31: In metaphysics we reason, not on facts, but most often
on conceptions. Now just as facts are precise so conceptions are vague
in outline. Facts are like crystallised bodies, ideas like liquids and
gases. We think we have an idea, and it changes form without our
perceiving it. We fancy we recognise one idea, and it is but another,
which differs slightly from the preceding one. By means of
distinctions we ought to struggle against this flowing away and flight
of ideas.]
[Footnote 32: I think I have come across in ARISTOTLE the ingenious
idea that the enfeeblement of the consciousness and its disorder may
be due to the enfeeblement and disorder of the object. It is a theory
which is by no means improbable.]