Sketch of an Organismal Theory of Consciousness 341 



tic "elements" of which pangens and determinants have per- 

 haps had the greatest vogue. The importance of the anti- 

 elementalistic tendency of physical chemistry when it comes 

 to be applied to biological problems is greatly enhanced, it 

 appears to me, by the circumstance that J. Willard Gibbs, 

 who was one of the very first to appreciate in a full scientific 

 sense the importance of massive as contrasted with minute- 

 particle phenomena in inorganic nature, and so was one of 

 the "fathers" of physical-chemistry, made no assumptions 

 about the invisible composition of substances in his treat- 

 ment of "Heterogeneous Equilibrium" and allied topics. 

 "Certainly," writes Gibbs, "one is building on an insecure 

 foundation who rests his work on hypotheses concerning the 

 constitution of matter." 31 If this is true as touching the 

 relatively simple structures and movements in the lifeless 

 world how much more obviously true is it as touching the liv- 

 ing world, and especially such life phenomena as human con- 



sciousness ! 



So we are able to requisition one of the admittedly most 

 important advances of modern times in inorganic science as 

 support for the supposition that the air we breathe, and 

 presumably its oxygen, contributes in some direct and funda- 

 mental way to the production of consciousness even though 

 this substance, if its "ultimate nature" is what inorganic 

 chemistry and physics have hitherto attributed to it, has lit- 

 tle or nothing to suggest that it possesses such a unique 

 latent attribute. The reader should not fail to recall here 

 Hume's recognition of the "secret powers" of substances. 



But is it not possible that physico-chemical and physi- 

 ological knowledge of oxygen and air, the "breath of life," 

 do contain somewhat more to justify the supposition than is 

 usually recognized? In this connection I relate that one of 

 the most mentally adhesive statements I ever heard from a 

 bio-chemist, its adhesiveness depending largely on the fact 

 that the chemist was one of great experience as a laboratory 



