内容简介：
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS What, then, is the efficiency and scope and purpose ? or in brief, the function ? of ordinary consciousness ? To approach this question profitably, we must recognize certain broad and readily Terifiable distinctions. The most casual psychologist will have noticed that his consciousness may be directed inwardly towards experiences within himself, or externally towards something occurring in the environment without. By the activity of the one kind I am made aware at the present moment that I still have some of the unpleasant after-effects of a lingering cold in the head, that I have been wearing a new pair of boots all day, that occasionally I still feel a little annoyed because in the after- dinner speech I made last night I omitted some of my best points, that in the interstices of the attention which I am giving to my present task I am groping about to recall the address of one of my correspondents, that I am just dismissing from my attention a rambling reexperiencing of my last night's dream, and that in anticipation of the writing of a note ? for which I must in a moment interrupt my present occupation?I am lookingabout for the most presentable reasons for declining an invitation that promises little pleasure.1 By the other form of awareness I come to realize ? and as before to a more or less absorbing extent ? that the inkstand needs refilling, that the wind is blowing in the trees, that the clock is sounding a premonitory whirr which I recognize as the herald preceding by a few minutes the stroke of the hour, that the lamp has been smoking, and that my paper is lying partly in the shadow of a row of books to my left. Naturally these several forms and directions of awareness do not appear with equal distinctness at the same moment. They ar...