Ryerson Memorial: Prepared on the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Ryerson Statute in the Gr... Book

I am not concerned that this writing is a century old. How much more have we learned about our mind’s workings in the last hundred years that we have not during the previous centuries? I was however caught by the author’s lack of acknowledging the famous dictum of Socrates “know thyself” and the ancient’s questioning the limits of such knowledge. The author is optimistic at the very start that “the mind can be known and studied as truly and as scientifically as can the world of matter.” He proposes that “introspection” is “the only means of discovering nature of consciousness.” (p. 1) Introspection is catching ourselves “unaware, so to speak, in the very act of thinking” or in whatever phase of consciousness our mind is engaged. (p. 2)

Betts describes consciousness as a process or a stream that begins in the cradle with the baby’s first groping for light and so at the end with the last groping after light. We can only observe a moment of passing stream of consciousness. Another way of looking at it is as a field with the consciousness in the elevated in the center with whatever is we are thinking about at the present moment. We are led by either interests or will towards these peaks of attention.

The author proposes to us to try observe our thinking, feeling, or willing over the next twenty four hours.

This is my reading of the first chapter.