304 The Unity of the Organism 



sciousness," he says, "sense experience and the correlative 

 agency which conditions it coalesce in one unanalysed total 

 object. They coalesce in such a way that the sense-presenta- 

 tion appears as possessing the independence of the not-self, 

 and the independent not-self seems to be given with the same 

 immediacy as the sense-presentation." And, "this complex 

 but unanalysed cognition," Stout continues, "is the germ 

 from which our detailed knowledge of matter develops." 38 

 If proved true my hypothesis would be a considerable for- 

 ward step, I believe, in analysing this "unanalysed cogni- 

 tion." For although Stout's assertion "the independent not- 

 self is not matter" seems at first sight to exclude oxygen or 

 any other constituent of our breath from such a place in 

 the external world of his conception as that which it has in 

 that world according to my conception this exclusion is, I 

 think, only seemingly so, for a sentence farther on the author 

 says matter "essentially includes the qualification of the in- 

 dependent not-self by the content of sense-experience." The 

 seeming discrepancy is probably due to the generality of the 

 term matter. I too would say that the "independent not- 

 self" is not matter were I to mean by matter the total sub- 

 stance of the external world. But in the sense that the effec- 

 tive respiratory gas (oxygen supposedly) is matter, my 

 hypothesis would require me to hold that the not-self has an 

 essential material component, which component is really the 

 attribute of the gas in virtue of which it reacts with the 

 organism in the peculiar way it does to produce conscious- 

 ness. It seems to me that what Stout seeks in the "quali- 

 fication of the independent not-self by the content of sense- 

 experience" is the immediately consciousness-producing attri- 

 bute of the respiratory gas. We might state the point this 

 way: Oxygen (or the effective respiratory gas) has a double 

 status in human consciousness. First and most fundamental- 

 ly, it has the status of an immediate and essential participant 

 in producing all consciousness whatever; and second it has 



