Related to C.S. Sherrington, The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1906).

Related to A.A. Herzen (trans. T.W. McDowell), 'The Physical Conditions of Consciousness', The British Journal of Psychiatry 30 (129) (1884), pp. 41-53.
Description:

'General physiology shows that nervous tissue, fibres and cells, is [sic] no exception to the universal biological law, according to which in life, the period of activity is the period of disorganization, and that disorganization is followed step by step by reparation, without which life would be death. Mu standing point was thus clear: the nervous elements are disintegrated through action, and are immediately afterwards reintegrated, so that every nervous act has a phase of disintegration and another of reintegration; this latter being accomplished according to the modality of the disintegration which preceded it.' (47)

'we cannot be mistaked: the integration and reintegration of the nervous centres are absolutely unconscious.' (47)

'Once developed, the central elements are stimulated by accidental impressions. Their activity disintegrates and fatigues the central organ; fatigue is the measure of decomposition depending on activity; fatigue of the brain produces sleep; during sleep it rests, that is reintegrates; the resultiing freshness is the measure of the reparation accomplished.' (47)

'observation shows that if, on the one hand, the acts which fatigue the most, which give the largest amount of products of decomposition, which in short, disintegrate the most, are the least automatic and the most conscious; on the other hand, the acts which fatigue the least, which are accompanied by the minimum of functional decomposition, are exactly the least conscious and the most automatic. It therefore appears that disintegration produces consciousness only when it is of a certain intensity.' (48)

'the central acts accompanied most vividly by consciousness are those which require a more extended decomposition and cause a greater calorification; ... consequently, the intensity of consciousness is in direct ratio to the intensity of the functional disintegration.' (49)

''You read a chapter which interests you, or you are present at an important lesson, or you reflect in silence on a problem which preoccupies you: certain regions of your nervous centres suffer profound and extended disintegration, caused by the multiple impressions which affect them, and by the innumerable reflex sensations which they awaken: you are vividly conscious of what is taking place in you. But after some time this occupation fatigues you; you suspend it, in order to have food or take a walk; or for some reason, perhaps unperceived, your psychical activity passes to some other regions of the brain, and allows the reintegration to take place in those parts which have been working; immediately you lose all consciousness of the preceding activity, and are only conscious of the actual activity. In the meantime reintegration takes place, you are rested, you return to your first occupation, and, as soon as the functional vibrations affect there integrated parts, the contents of your consciousness become what they were before - but with this modification: the chaos of impressions then received is now duly arranged into a harmonious whole; reintegration having taken place according to the modality of the disintegration which preceded it; you are in possession of a synthesis, of a new conclusion, of an idea which would not come, but which now comes of its own accord; you have learned something; you have acquired a new faculty; and all without the least consciousness of the reintegration to which you owe this process.' (51-52)

'Every moment of our life, every one of the innumerable nervous elements which are called upon to act, continually oscillates between disintegration and reintegration, between consciousness and unconsciousness... Consciousness... is continuous, due partly to the continuity of the process of functional disintegration, so that the states of consciousness, whilst passing from one group of central elements to another, are always connected by this or that form of association and are, from this point of view, really the continuation of each other; and partly to the reviviscence of past consciousness, consolidfated, or rendered latent, by reintegration and again liberated when a wace of disintegration disturbs their repose.' (53)

Related to W.K. Clifford, 'On Some of the Conditions of Mental Development', in W.K. Clifford, (L. Stephen and F. Pollock, eds.) Lectures and Essays by the Late William Kingdon Clifford, F.R.S. (London and New York, 1886), pp. 49-73.
Description:

'The processes in fact which result in development are made up of differentiation and integration; differentiation means the making things to be different, integration means the binding them together into a whole; these are applied to the parts of the organism, the organism and surrounding nature, the organism and other organisms. Differentiation of parts is illustrated by the figure on the preceding page. (Spencer's Principles of Biology, vol. ii. p. 187.)

Integration of parts means the connected play of them; so that one being affected the rest are affected. Differentiation from the environment takes place in weight, composition, and temperature. A polype is little else than sea-water, which it inhabits; a fish is several degrees of temperature above it, and made of quite different materials; till at last a mammal is 70° or 80° above the surrounding matter, and made of still more different materials. Integration with the environment means close correspondence with it; actions of the environment are followed by corresponding actions of the animal. Differentiation from other organisms means individuality; integration with them sociality.' (64-65)

 

'The first indication of consciousness is a perception of difference. The child's eyes follow the light. Immediately this colourless, homogeneous universe splits, up into twoparts, the light part and the dark part. A line is drawn across it, it is made heterogeneous, and the first thing that exists is a distinction... But by and by a number of these lines of distinction are found to enclose a definite space ; they assume relations to one another; the lines white, round, light, capable of being thrown at people, include the conception of a ball ; this gains coherence, becomes one, a thing, holding itself together not only separated from the rest of consciousness, but connected in itself into a distinct whole, integrated. Here we have the second process. And throughout our lives the same two processes go hand in hand; whatever we perceive is a line of demarcation between two different things ; we can be conscious of nothing but a separation, a change in passing from one thing to another. And these different lines of demarcation are constantly connecting them- selves together, marking out portions of our consciousness as complete wholes, and making them cohere. Just as a sculptor clears away from a block of marble now this piece and now that, making every time a separation between what is to be kept and what is to be chipped off, till at last all these chippings manifest the connection that ran through them, and the finished statue stands out as a complete whole, a positive thing made up of contradictory negations : so is a conception formed in the mind.

And this conception, when it is thus made into a whole, integrated, by an act of the mind, what does it immediately appear to be? Why, something outside of ourselves, a real thing, different from us. This is the third process, the process of differentiation from the environment.' (65-66)

 

'The action of these two laws taken together does in fact amount to the creation of new senses. Men of science, for example, have to deal with extremely abstract and general conceptions. By constant use and familiarity, these, and the relations between them, become just as real and external as the ordinary objects of experience ; and the perception of new relations among them is so rapid, the correspondence of the mind to external circumstances so great, that a real scientific sense is developed, by which things are perceived as immediately and truly as I see you now. Poets and painters and musicians also are so accustomed to put outside of them the idea of beauty, that it becomes a real external existence, a thing which they see with spiritual eyes, and then describe to you, but by no means create, any more than we seem to create these ideas of table and forms and light, which we put together long ago... here, it would seem, are actually two new senses, the scientific and the artistic, which the mind is now in the process of forming for itself There are two remaining marks of development: differentiation from surrounding minds, which is the growth of individuality; and closer correspondence with them, wider sympathies, more perfect understanding of others. These, you will instantly admit, are precisely the twin characteristics of a man of genius. He is clearly distinct from the people that surround him, that is how you recognise him ; but then this very distinction must be such as to bind him still closer to them, extend and intensify his sympathies, make him want their wants, rejoice over their joys, be cast down by their sorrows.' (67-68)