[RAGG-Core] al, 230 principle, 42, 4

[Durazo Brieger]

 Looked at from without, we may regard it as a simple aid to action, a
light that action kindles, a momentary spark flying up from the
friction of real action against possible actions. But we must
also point out that things would go on in just the same way if
consciousness,
instead of being the effect, were the cause. We might suppose that
consciousness, even in the most rudimentary animal, covers by right an
enormous field, but is compressed in fact in a kind of vise: each
advance of the nervous centres, by giving the organism a choice between
a larger number of actions, calls forth the potentialities that are
capable of surrounding the real, thus opening the vise wider and
allowing consciousness to pass more freely. In this second hypothesis,
as in the first, consciousness is still the instrument of action; but
it is even more true to say that action is the instrument of
consciousness;
for the complicating of action with action, and the opposing of action
to action, are for the imprisoned consciousness the only possible means
to set itself free. How, then, shall we choose between the two
hypotheses? If the first is true, consciousness must express exactly,
at each instant, the state of the brain; there is strict parallelism
(so far as intelligible) between
the psychical and the cerebral state. On the second hypothesis,
on the contrary, there is indeed solidarity and interdependence

between the brain and consciousness, but not parallelism: the more
complicated the brain becomes, thus giving the organism greater choice
of possible actio
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