Note 226 — Chapter VII · IS FEELING AN AGENT?

M. Luys cites the case of a patient who conversed quite rationally with a visitor “sans en avoir conscience, et ne se souvenait de rien”; and he draws the extraordinary conclusion that the conversation “s’opérait en vertu des forces réflexes.”—Études de Physiologie et de Pathologie Cérébrales, 1874, p. 117. Is it not obvious that the patient must have been conscious at the time, though the consciousness vanished like that in a dream? The persistent consciousness is the continuous linking on of one state with previous states—the apperception of the past.