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C.

METAPHYSIC OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.

"Come to Physics, and see the Eternal!"-SCHELLING.

I.

CONSCIOUS

THE

DIFFERENTIAE OF

AND UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL ACTIVITY AND THE UNITY OF WILL AND IDEA IN THE UNCONSCIOUS.

1. The Unconscious does not fall ill, but conscious mental activity can sicken if its material organs suffer disturbances, whether from bodily causes, or through violent shocks, arising from violent mental emotions. This point, so far as we are able to enter upon it, has been already touched upon in the chapter on the Vis Mediatrix (vol i. 161-168).

2. The Unconscious does not grow weary, but all conscious mental activity becomes fatigued, because its material organs become temporarily unserviceable, in consequence of a quicker consumption of material than nutrition can repair in the same time. Undoubtedly, fatigue may be avoided by occupying a different sense, or by changing the object of thought or of sense-perception, because then other organs and parts of the brain are brought into requisition, or at least the same organs are constrained to a different kind of activity; but the general fatigue of the central organ of consciousness is not to be prevented, even by the change of objects, and with every new object takes place the sooner, the longer attention has already been absorbed with other objects, until at last complete exhaustion ensues, which is only to be compensated by fresh absorption of oxygen during sleep. The more we approach the sphere of the Unconscious the less is fatigue observable, as, for example, in the department of the feelings, and the less defined they are in

consciousness, for so much the more does their proper essence belong to the Unconscious. Whilst a thought is probably not to be retained in consciousness without interruption for more than two seconds, and thinking grows weary in a few hours, one and the same feeling remains, with fluctuating intensity it is true, but uninterruptedly, often for days and nights, nay, for months, and if it at last becomes blunted, yet, in contrast to thinking, the receptivity for other feelings does not appear to be impaired, and these then do not grow weary earlier than they would otherwise have done. The latter assertion only so far needs limitation, as the frame of mind is to be taken notice of at the same time.-Before falling asleep, when the intellect becomes weary, the feelings which oppress us emerge the more powerfully because they are not impeded by thoughts, so strongly indeed that they often prevent sleep. Even in dream vivid feelings are often much more frequent than clear thoughts, and very many dream-images manifestly owe their origin to present feelings. Further, let any one remember the restless night before an important event; the waking of the mother at the slightest cry of her child, accompanied with total insensibility to other stronger noises; the awaking at a fixed hour, if a decided volition has been exerted to that end, and the like. All this proves the unwearied persistence of the feelings, the interest and the will in the Unconscious, or even with quite weak affection of consciousness, whereas the wearied intellect rests, or at the most idly gazes on the juggle of dreams. Where we have to do with that condition which, of all those that are at all accessible to our observation, lies most deeply in the Unconscious and least emerges into consciousness, the ecstasy of the mystics, there, agreeably to the nature of the case, the fatigue is also reduced to a minimum, for a hundred years are as one hour," and even bodily fatigue, as in the winter sleep of animals, becomes almost obliterated by the incredible slackening of all organic

functions; think of the ever-praying pillar-saints, or the Indian penitents and their distorted postures.

3. All conscious Ideation has the form of Sensibility ; unconscious Thought can only be of a non-sensuous kind.We think either in images, when we directly receive the sense-impressions and their transformations and combinations from memory, or we think in abstractions. These abstractions are, however, also merely abstracted from sense-impressions, and however much is allowed to drop out in abstracting, so long as anything is retained at all, it can only be something that already inhered in the whole from which abstraction was first made, i.e., even the abstract ideas are for us only remnants of sense-impressions, and have consequently the form of sensibility.—That the sense-impressions which we receive from things have no resemblance to these is already sufficiently known by natural science. Further, every sense-perception is eo ipso united with consciousness, i.e., it always excites the latter, whenever it does not light on an already existing sphere of consciousness and is apperceived by this. The Unconscious, accordingly, if it willed to represent things in the form of sensibility, would not only represent them inadequately, but it would always, in this mode of perception, step out of the sphere of unconscious into that of conscious mental activity, as it does in fact do in the individual consciousness of organisms. If we then inquire into the nature of the unconscious spiritual activity of the Unconscious, it follows from what has been said that it can not take on the form of sensibility. But now as consciousness on its part, as we have seen above, can represent nothing at all unless in the form of sensibility, it follows that now and never can consciousness frame a direct conception of the mode and manner in which the unconscious idea is presented; it can only know negatively that the former is represented in no way of which it can form any idea. One can, at the most, form the very probable supposition that things are repre

D

VOL. II.

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