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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



consciousness is made up of elementary feelings 

 grouped together in various ways (ejective facts), 

 so a part of the action in your brain is made up 

 of more elementary actions in parts of it, grouped 

 together in the same ways (objective facts). The 

 knowledge of this correspondence is a help to the 

 analysis of both sets of facts ; but it teaches us 

 in particular that any feeling, however apparently 

 simple, which can be retained and examined by 

 reflection, is already itself a most complex struct- 

 ure. We may, however, conclude that this cor- 

 respondence extends to the elements, and that 

 each simple feeling corresponds to a special com- 

 paratively simple change of nerve-matter. 



VI. — THE ELEMENTARY FEELING IS A THING-IN- 

 ITSELF. 



The conclusion that elementary feeling co- 

 exists with elementary brain-motion in the same 

 way as consciousness coexists with complex brain- 

 motion, involves more important consequences 

 than might at first sight appear. We have re- 

 garded consciousness as a complex of feelings, 

 and explained the fact that the complex is con- 

 scious, as depending on the mode of complication. 

 But does not the elementary feeling itself imply 

 a consciousness in which alone it can exist, and 

 of which it is a modification ? Can a feeling exist 

 by itself, without forming part of a consciousness ? 

 I shall say no to the first question, and yes t'o the 

 second, and it seems to me that these answers 

 are required by the doctrine of evolution. For 

 if that doctrine be true, we shall have along the 

 line of the human pedigree a series of impercep- 

 tible steps connecting inorganic matter with our- 

 selves. To the later members of that series we 

 must undoubtedly ascribe consciousness, although 

 it must, of course, have been simpler than our own. 

 But where are we to stop ? In the case of organ- 

 isms of a certain complexity, consciousness is in- 

 ferred. As we go back along the line, the com- 

 plexity of the organism and of its nerve-action 

 insensibly diminishes ; and for the first part of 

 our course, we see reason to think that the com- 

 plexity of consciousness insensibly diminishes 

 also. But if we make a jump, say to the tunicate 

 mollusks, we see no reason there to infer the ex- 

 istence of consciousness at all. Yet not only is 

 it impossible to point out a place where any sud- 

 den break takes place, but it is contrary to all the 

 natural training of our minds to suppose a breach 

 of continuity so .great. All this imagined line of 

 organisms is a series of objects in my conscious- 

 ness ; they form an insensible gradation, and yet 



there is a certain unknown point at which I am 

 at liberty to infer facts out of my consciousness 

 corresponding to them ! There is only one way 

 out of the difficulty, and to that we are driven. 

 Consciousness is a complex of ejective facts — of 

 elementary feelings, or rather of those remoter 

 elements which cannot even be felt, but of which 

 the simplest feeling is built up. Such elementary 

 ejective facts go along with the action of every 

 organism, however simple ; but it is only when 

 the material organism has reached a certain com- 

 plexity of nervous structure (not now to be speci- 

 fied) that the complex of ejective facts reaches 

 that mode of complication which is called Con- 

 sciousness. But as the line of ascent is unbroken, 

 and must end at last in inorganic matter, we have 

 no choice but to admit that every motion of mat- 

 ter is simultaneous with some ejective fact or 

 event which might be part of a consciousness. 

 From this follow two important corollaries : 



1. A feeling can exist by itself, without form- 

 ing part of a consciousness. It does not depend 

 for its existence on the consciousness of which 

 it may form a part. Hence a feeling (or an eject- 

 element) is Ding-an-sich, an absolute, whose exist- 

 ence is not relative to anything else. Scntititr 

 is all that can be said. 



2. These eject-elements, which correspond to 

 motions of matter, are connected together in 

 their sequence and coexistence by counterparts 

 of the physical laws of matter. For otherwise 

 the correspondence could not be kept up. 



VII. — MIND-STUFF IS THE REALITY WHICH WE 

 PERCEIVE AS MATTER. 



That element of which, as we have seen, even 

 the simplest feeling is a complex, I shall call 

 Mind-stuff. A moving molecule of inorganic mat- 

 ter does not possess mind, or consciousness ; but 

 it possesses a small piece of mind-stuff. When 

 molecules are so combined together as to form 

 the film on the under-side of a jelly-fish, the ele- 

 ments of mind-stuff which go along with them 

 are so combined as to form the faint beginnings 

 of sentience. When the molecules are so com- 

 bined as to form the brain and nervous system 

 of a vertebrate, the corresponding elements of 

 mind-stuff are so combined as to form some kind 

 of consciousness; that is to say, changes in the 

 complex which take place at the same time get so 

 linked together that the repetition of one implies 

 the repetition of the other. When matter takes 

 the complex form of a living human brain, the 

 corresponding mind-stuff takes the form of a 



