Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Handbook of psychology : senses and intellect / by James Mark Baldwin. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![observation. Tliey are known, on the contrary, in an immediate way tlirougli tlie consciousness of the individ- ual. And while we are able to observe and analyze the physical processes of others, our immediate knowledge of mind is limited to ourselves. Yet we cannot say that all psychological data are presented at once and immediately known in conscious- ness ; for the field of consciousness is presented in adult life as a mature and developed contimiity. Many of our states of consciousness are products, not simple elements, though consciousness does not afford us this informa- tion; and even when by analysis the component elements are revealed, they may, in certain circumstances, be be- yond the range of conscious presentation. In the absence of attention we are unconscious of states which become distinctly conscious when attended to.' IV. Hie most essential cliaracteristic of mental states is their subjective nature; what we may call their inner aspect, in the phraseology of late science. By this is meant that relation to a self or subject that makes them what they are in distinction from outer phenomena, which, as far as we know, have an existence apart from such a reference. This distinction is admitted even by those who reduce the two classes of phenomena ulti- mately to a single principle, and it is emphasized in the name their theory prominently bears. This fact of a self affected becomes in developed mental states a mat- ter of reflection and differentiation from the not-self; a distinction arising, as will appear, within the inner aspect, and impossible without such an essentially sub- jective initiation. V. T]ie method of mental activity is quite distinct from that of the physical forces. As we proceed we shall find ' See discussion of the unconsoious, Cbap. IV, § 2, and Volkmann, Lehrhuch der Pmjrjioloyie, % ?>. ' '' Double Aspect Theory, Lewes, Huxley, Wundt.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21906749_0029.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
