ess is an inactive
spectator for the procession of the contents. Thus consciousness itself
cannot change anything in the content nor can it connect the contents.
No other function is left to consciousness but merely that of awareness.
Every change and every fusion and every process must be explained
through the relations of the various contents to one another.
Consciousness has, therefore, not the power to prefer the one idea or to
reject the other, to reenforce the one sensation and to inhibit the
other. From a psychological point of view, we have seen before that
even attention does not mean an activity of consciousness but a change
in the content of consciousness. Certain sensations become more
impressive, more clear, and more vivid, and others fade away, become
indistinct and disappear, but all that goes on in the content of
consciousness and the spectator, consciousness itself, simply becomes
aware of those changes. Consciousness has also in itself no special
span, ideas appear or disappear not because consciousness expands or
narrows itself but because the causal conditions awaken or suppress the
various contents.

Consciousness has in itself no limit; all organization belongs to the
content. Whatever psychical states are attributed to one organism belong
thus to its consciousness but all the connections are entirely
connections of the content. We, therefore, have not even the right to
say that consciousness, as such, has unity. Unity too belongs to the
organization of the content. One part of the content hangs together with
the other parts but consciousness is only the constant condition for
their existence. Where there is no unity, there it cannot have any
meaning to speak of the double or triple existence. There may be a
disconnection in the various parts of the content and a dissociation by
which the normal ties between the various contents may be broken but
consciousness itself cannot fall asunder. Thus consciousness cannot have
any different degrees. The same consciousness experiences the distinct
clear content and the vague fading confused content. Thus also
consciousness can never be aware of itself and the word
self-consciousness is easily misleading. In psychology, it can never
mean that the consciousness which is a subject of all experience is at
the same time object of any experience. Its whole meaning lies in its
being the passive spectator. That of which consciousness becomes aware
in self-conscious