Sometimes, however, as in hypnotism and sleep-walking, people refuse to admit “consciousness” even where many of the usual marks of it are present. For this there are certain reasons. One of them is subsequent lack of memory; another is lack of intelligence in what is being done. If you offer a hypnotised patient a drink of ink, telling him it is port wine, and he drinks it up with every sign of enjoyment, you say that he is not “conscious”, because he does not react normally to the nasty taste. It would seem better, however, to say that he is conscious of the hypnotist and what he commands, though not of other things of which he would be conscious in a normal condition. And lack of subsequent memory is a very difficult criterion, since we normally forget many things that have happened to us, and the sleep-walker’s forgetting is only unusually complete. This is obviously a matter of degree. Take next morning’s memories in the case of a man who was drunk overnight. They become more and more vague as he reviews the later hours of the evening, but there is no sharp line where they cease abruptly. Thus, if memory is a test, consciousness must be a matter of degree. I think that here, again, common sense regards a certain amount of memory as necessary evidence to prove that there were “mental” processes at the time of the acts in question, acts in sleep being regarded as not involving “mind”, and other acts in certain abnormal conditions being supposed to resemble those of sleep in this respect. It follows that, if we are to find out what is commonly meant by “consciousness”, we must ask ourselves what is meant by a “mental” occurrence. Not every mental occurrence, however, is in question. The only kinds concerned are those which seem to have relation to an “object”. A feeling of pleasant drowsiness would commonly count as “mental”, but does not involve “consciousness” of an “object”. It is this supposed peculiar relation to an “object” that we have to examine. We may take, as the best example, an ordinary act of perception. I see, let us say, a table, and I am convinced that the table is outside me, whereas my seeing of it is a “mental” occurrence, which is inside me. In such a case I am “conscious” of the table--so at least common sense would say. And since I cannot see without seeing something, this relation to an “object” is of the very essence of seeing. The same essential relation to an “object”, it would be said, is characteristic of every kind of consciousness.