Alfred Binet

“ The consciousness remains insensible to those nervous properties of the current which are so often repeated that they are annulled; it perceives, on the contrary, its variable and accidental properties which express the nature of the excitant. By this partial sensibility, the consciousness lays bare that which, in the nerve current, represents the object—that is to say, a cognition; and this operation is equivalent to a transformation of the current into a perception, image, or idea. There is not, strictly speaking, a transformation, but an analysis ”

“ It is only the effect which reaches us, our nerve cells, and our consciousness. What must be explained is how a cognition (if such a word may be employed here) of the effect can excite the consciousness of the cause. It is clear that the effect does not resemble the cause, as quality: the orange I am looking at has no resemblance with the brain wave which at this moment is traversing my optic nerve; but this effect contains everything which was in the cause, or, more exactly, all that part of the cause of which we have perception. ”

“ Since it is only by the intermediary of our nervous system that we perceive the object, all the properties capable of being perceived are communicated to our nervous system and inscribed in the nerve wave. The effect produced therefore is the measure of our perception of the cause. This is absolutely certain. All bodies possess an infinity of properties which escape our cognitions; because, as excitants of our organism, these properties are wanting in the intensity or the quality necessary to make it vibrate; they have not been tuned in unison with our nervous chords. ”

“ This new theory appears to me to represent a better form of the series of attempts which have been inspired by the common necessity of making the phenomena of consciousness accord with the determinism of physical facts.
I hold fast to this physical determinism, and accept a strictly mechanical conception of the functions of the nervous system. In my idea, the currents which pass through the cerebral mass follow each other without interruption, from the sensorial periphery to the motor periphery; it is they, and they alone, which excite the movements of the body by acting on the muscles. ”

“ My hypothesis would fairly well explain why the motor current remains unconscious; it explains the affair by taking into consideration the nature of this current and not its direction. This current is a motor one because it is born in the central cells, because it is a discharge from these cells, and is of entirely nervous origin. Since it does not correspond with the perception of an object—the ever varying object—it is always the same by nature. It does not carry with it in its monotonous course the débris of an object, as does the sensory current. Thus it can flow without consciousness. ”

“ The law of consciousness which I have used to explain the transformation of a nerve current into perception and images is only an empirical law produced by the generalisation of particular observations. ”

“ It will suffice to suppose that it is the consciousness itself that is the dialyser. It acts by virtue of its own laws—that is to say, by changes in intensity. Supposing that sensibility increases for the variable elements of the undulation, and becomes insensible for the constant elements. The effect will be the same as a material dissociation by chemical analysis: there will be an elimination of certain elements and the retention of others. Now, all we know of the consciousness authorises us to entrust this rôle to it, for it is within the range of its habits. ”

“ We may therefore reject as inexact the pretended law of eccentricity of the physiologists, who suppose that sensation is first perceived as it were centrally, and then, by an added act, is localised at the peripheric extremity of the nerve. This argument would only be correct if we admitted that the brain is perceived by the consciousness of the brain. I have already said that the consciousness is not an anatomist, and that therefore this problem does not present itself. ”

“ Consciousness appears only when the molecular disturbance reaches the nerve centres; everything takes place in the same way as if this disturbance released the consciousness. Consciousness also accompanies or follows certain material states of the nerve centres, such as the waves which traverse the sensory nerves, which exercise reflex action in the cells, and which propagate themselves in the motor nerves. It is to the production, the distribution, and the integrity of this nervous influx that the consciousness is closely linked. ”

“ In the second place, it is explanatory, at least in a certain measure, since the formula we employ allows us to understand, better than by the principle of a simple juxtaposition, why certain nerve currents flow in the light of consciousness, while others are plunged into the darkness of unconsciousness. This law of consciousness, which Bain called the law of relativity, becomes, when embodied with my theory of the relations of the physical to the moral, an explanation of the distribution of consciousness through the actions of the brain. ”

“ The consciousness is conditioned, kept up, and nourished by the working of the cerebral substance, but knows nothing of what passes in the interior of that substance. This consciousness might itself be compared to a parasitical organism which plunges its tap roots into the nerve centres, and of which the organs of perception, borne on long stalks, emerge from the cranium and perceive everything outside that cranium. ”

“ When we are working at a distance from the facts, this sense of proof gets thinner, and there is lost that feeling of responsibility and fear of seeing one’s assertions contradicted by a decisive countervailing observation, which is felt by every observer. ”

“ The theory of the specific energy of the nerves causes it to be overlooked. As we see that the quality of the sensation depends on the nerve that is excited, one is inclined to minimise the importance of the excitant. It is relegated to the position of a proximate cause with regard to the vibration of the nerve, as the striking of a key on the piano is the proximate cause of the vibration of a string, which always gives the same degree of sound whether struck by the forefinger or third finger, or by a pencil or any other body. ”

“ This same kind of hypothesis supplies us with the reasons why a given sensory current may be, according to circumstances, either conscious or unconscious. The consciousness resulting from the analysis of the molecular wave is, as it were, a supplementary work which may be subsequently added to the realised wave. The propagation of the wave is the essential fact—there is always time to become conscious of it afterwards. It is thus that we happen, in moments of abstraction, to remain insensible to certain even very powerful excitements. ”

“ In the long run, I can see no sort of theoretical reason for subordinating the consciousness to the direction of the nerve current, and for supposing that the consciousness is aroused when this current is centripetal, and that it cannot follow the centrifugal current. ”

“ It is certain that the consciousness accompanies the effort towards the untried, and perishes as soon as it is realised. Whence comes this singular dilemma propounded to it by nature: to create something new or perish? It really seems that my hypothesis explains this. ”

“ A living being has to know the world external to himself in order to adapt and preadapt himself to it, for it is in this outer world that he finds food, shelter, beings of his own species, and the means of work, and it is on this world of objects that he acts in every possible way by the contractions of his muscles. ”

“ The opinion which has prevailed is in the negative. We have recognised—a good deal on the faith of experiment, and a little also for theoretical reasons—that no sensation is awakened by the centrifugal current. As to the sensation of effort, it has been agreed to place it elsewhere. We put it among the centripetal sensations which are produced as the movement outlines itself, and which proceed from the contracted muscles, the stretched ligaments, and the frictional movements of the articulations. ”

“ There is no daily need to know them, and we can understand that the consciousness has not found very pressing utilitarian motives for development in that direction. One must be an histologist or a surgeon to find an appreciable interest in studying the structure of the nerve cell or the topography of the cerebral centres. ”

“ Let us place ourselves now at the moment when the analysis I am supposing to be possible has just been effected. Our consciousness then assists at the unrolling of representations which correspond to the outer world. These representations are not, or do not appear to be, lodged in the brain; and it is not necessary to suppose a special operation which, taking them in the brain, should project them to the periphery of our nerves. This transport would be useless, since for the consciousness the brain does not exist: the brain, with its fibres and cells, is not felt ”

“ Moreover, the essential is, I repeat, less to find a solution than to take account of the point which requires one; and metaphysics seem to me especially useful when it shows us where the gap in our knowledge exists and what are the conditions required to fill this gap. ”

“ Similarly, I suppose that if the nervous vibration resembles so little the excitant which gives it birth, it is because the factor nervous system adds its effect to the factor external object. Each of these factors represents a different property: the external object represents a cognition and the nervous system an excitement. ”

“ A few convinced materialists and parallelists, to whom I have read the above criticisms on their systems, have found no answer to them; my criticisms have appeared to them just, but nevertheless they have continued to abide by their own systems, probably because they were bound to have one. We do not destroy an erroneous idea when we do not replace it by another. ”

“ This is a deplorable method, and to it is perhaps due the kind of disdain that observers and experimentalists feel for metaphysics—a disdain often without justification, for all is not false, and everything is not hypothetical, in metaphysics. ”

“ They present their systems as a well-connected whole, and they set forth its different parts, even the boldest of them, in the same dogmatic tone, and without warning that we ought to attach very unequal degrees of confidence to these various parts. ”