not in the margin. The obscureness of
objects when seen with the margin of the retina has no more to do with
the margin of consciousness than the obscureness caused by an attack of
dizziness or by a morning fog.

It will be said, perhaps, that consciousness may be unclear even though
there be no sense of unclearness, that there is such a thing as
intrinsic clearness, quite apart from obstacles and problems. In other
words, the same sensation is capable of realizing various degrees of
clearness. It is not at all obvious, however, why the different
experiences that are concerned in such a comparison should be called the
same sensation. As long as we abstract from objective reference, each
sensation is just what it is and there is no opportunity to make
comparisons on the basis of clearness. A sensation as such--if we are
bound to speak of sensations--can by no possibility be an obscure
sensation, for the trait that we call obscureness or vagueness
constitutes the intrinsic being of that sensation. If we permit
ourselves to speak of clearness at all, we should rather say that it
possesses a maximum of clearness, since it has managed to express or
present its whole nature with not one trait or feature lacking. What
more could be demanded, in the way of clearness, of any conscious fact
than that it should body forth every detail that it possesses?

If sensations or states of consciousness possess degrees of clearness,
it seems to follow that we may scrutinize them for the purpose of
discovering characteristics that were present though scarcely
perceived, in much the same way that the polishing of old furniture
brings out the grain in the wood. But such a parallel, I submit, is
plain nonsense. The supposition that consciousness is something that in
due time and with good fortune may attain consciousness is too absurd
for discussion, even though it is a supposition that plays a
considerable role in present-day psychology.

The purpose of the discussion, up to this point, has not been to deny
the validity of the distinction between focus and margin, but to insist
upon the necessity of reconsidering the meaning of this distinction, if
we are to attain to a workable definition of consciousness and a
fruitful or even intelligible conception of the problem of psychology. I
have endeavored to show, in the first place, that the doctrine of focus
and margin involves the _raison d'etre_ of psychology. Apart from this
doctrine we ha