In this way I may be again led by gradual stages to more and more
complex experiences. I may overlook and yet include within my content of
consciousness most various parts of my surroundings; and yet the
neglected is not less in consciousness itself than the attended. Much
that figures in literature as subconscious means indeed nothing else but
the unattended. But it belongs to the elements of psychological analysis
to recognize that the full content of consciousness is always larger
than the narrow field of attention. This narrow field on the other hand
has certainly no sharp demarcation line. There is a steady shading off
from the most vivid to the least vivid. We cannot grasp those least
vivid contents of consciousness, we cannot fixate them as such, because
as soon as we try to hold them, they move from the periphery of the
content into its center and become themselves vivid and clear. But as we
are surely aware of different degrees of clearness and vividness in our
central mass of contents, we have no difficulty in acknowledging the
existence of still lower degrees of vividness in those elements which
are blending and fusing into a general background of conscious
experiences. Nothing stands out there, nothing can be discriminated in
its detail. That background is not even made up of whole ideas and whole
memories and whole emotions and feelings and judgments and volitions,
but of loose fragments; half ideas and quarter ideas, atoms of feelings
and incipient impulses and bits of memory images are always mixed in
that half-dark background. And yet it is by principle not less in
consciousness, and consciousness itself is not different for these
contents. It is not half-clear consciousness, not a lower degree of
awareness, only the objects of awareness are crumbled and fading.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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