FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 263 



In the first place it seems clear that it is improper to speak of the 

 opinions of aggregates of men, as we comprehend them, as a ' social 

 consciousness/ as our extreme sociologists are wont to do. If such a 

 social consciousness exists, our thoughts are elements of it, in very 

 much the same sense that our sensations are elements in our individual 

 consciousnesses. As our individual sensations do not, and as no mere 

 massing of such sensations could, make our consciousnesses what they 

 are; so the mere massing, so to speak, of the thoughts of men can not 

 make a social consciousness. If it exist, it must be something beyond 

 our ken; something that we, as parts of it, can no more expect to 

 grasp than we could expect our sensations to grasp the nature of our 

 consciousness as a whole. 



If there be a social consciousness of sufficiently high grade cor- 

 responding in general form to our individual consciousness, it may 

 know our thoughts, much as we appreciate the existence of our own 

 sensations and their elementary qualities; and it may have means of 

 expression that are effective for other consciousnesses of its own order ; 

 but we as elements of this wider consciousness can surely not be able 

 to grasp even dimly the intimate nature of that higher consciousness 

 which, if it exist, must be determined by the pulse of thought of many 

 interrelated individual consciousnesses. What sociologists are often 

 tempted to speak of as the ' social consciousness ' should therefore prop- 

 erly be spoken of merely as the related consciousnesses of the indi- 

 viduals composing social groups. 



In all that has preceded this we have given our attention solely to 

 the study of animal and vegetable life, and have left entirely uncon- 

 sidered the possibility of the existence of anything of a psychic nature 

 in correspondence with inorganic matter. 



But, if we allow ourselves to consider such a view as that pre- 

 sented above, we are led further to surmise, as many thinkers have 

 already done, that not merely such transfers of energy as occur in proto- 

 plasmic matter may involve correspondent psychic effects, but that all 

 transfers of energy, whether in living or non-living bodies, may in- 

 volve correspondent psychic effects, even though they be of a nature 

 which we can but little comprehend. 



This view which Paulsen* refers back to Plato and Aristotle, and 

 traces in the thought of Spinoza and Leibnitz, Schelling and Schopen- 

 hauer and Lotze, and which was so clearly stated by Fechner, is in 

 line with the ever-diminishing distinction between organic and non- 

 organic bodies with which the scientist is making us so familiar. 

 It is a view which has been considered by the large body of conserva- 

 tive thinkers in the past as exceedingly imaginative, and not one to 



* ' Einleitung in die Philosophic/ p. 97. 



