FORMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 265 



If the suggestions of previous paragraphs are valid, correspondent 

 with this vast organic universe we are compelled to imagine the ex- 

 istence of a universal consciousness in which each psychic element 

 affects every other, and is affected by every other. 



As I have said above, this conception, or conceptions closely allied 

 thereto, have been reached by many thinkers who approach the sub- 

 ject from the most diverse standpoints. Let me quote two passages 

 from lately published works by writers of eminence, in which this is 

 exemplified. 



In his ' "World and the Individual '* Professor Josiah Eoyce tells 



us that 



We have no right whatever to speak of really unconscious nature, but 

 only of uncommunicative nature, or of nature whose mental processes go on 

 at such different time-rates from ours that we can not adjust ourselves to a 

 live appreciation of their inward fluency, although our consciousness does make 

 us aware of their presence. My [Professor Royce's] hypothesis is that, in 

 case of nature in general, as in the case of the particular portions of nature 

 known as our fellowmen, we are dealing with phenomena of a vast conscious 

 process, whose relation to time varies vastly, but whose general characteristics 

 are throughout the same. From this point of view, evolution would be a 

 series of processes suggesting to us various degrees and types of conscious 

 processes. The processes, in case of so-called inorganic matter are very remote, 

 from us; while in the case of the processes which appear to us as the expressive 

 movements of the bodies of our human fellows, they are so near to our own 

 inner processes that we understand what they mean. I suppose then that when 

 you deal with nature you deal with a vast realm of finite consciousness of 

 which your own is at once a part and an example. 



And in Dr. Stout's 'Manual of Psychology 'f we find the follow- 

 ing words : 



If the doctrine of psyche-physical parallelism is true the reason of the 

 connexion between conscious process and correlated nervous process is not to 

 be found in the nervous and consciousness processes themselves. Both must be 

 regarded as belonging to a more comprehensive system of conditions; . . . 

 In particular the individual's consciousness, as we know it, must be regarded 

 as a fragment of a wider whole, by which its origin and its changes are de- 

 termined. As the brain forms only a fragmentary portion of the total system 

 of material phenomena, so we must assume the stream of individual conscious- 

 ness to be in like manner part of an immaterial system. We must further 

 assume that this immaterial system in its totality is related to the material 

 world in its totality as the individual consciousness is related to nervous proc- 

 esses taking place in the cortex of the brain. 



If the notions presented in the previous sections are warranted, then 

 it appears clear that there must be in this universe an enormous variety 

 of consciousnesses corresponding with the enormous variety of types 

 of systematization in this universe. These consciousnesses must vary 

 in breadth and complexity; and as certain minor systems within the 

 whole vast physical system must be more closely systematized than 

 others, so certain of these consciousnesses must be more closely systema- 

 tized — more nearly closed systems — more self-contained — more indi- 

 vidual — than others. Human consciousnesses would in this view be 



* Vol. II., p. 225 ff. 



f Ch. III., Sec. 4, p. 51 ff. 



