Alfred Binet

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 actualise itself. There is therefore no actual consciousness without an object. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.
↑ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ↑ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”