THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 



5i3 



the production of motion and sound. The production 

 of heat, light, chemism, and electricity doubtless re- 

 sult from molecular aptitudes inherent in the constitu- 

 tion of protoplasm. But the first and last production 

 of even these phenomena is dependent on the motions 

 of the animal in obtaining and assimilating nutrition. 

 For without nutrition all energy would speedily cease. 

 Now the motion required for the obtaining of nutrition 

 has its origin in the sensation of hunger. So, even for 

 the first steps necessary to the production of inorganic 

 forces in animals, we are brought back to a primitive 

 consciousness. This hypothesis I have termed Ar- 

 chaesthetism. 



"It maintains that consciousness as well as life 

 preceded organism, and has been the primum mobile in 

 the creation of organic structure. This conclusion 

 also flows from a due consideration of the nature of 

 life. I think it possible to show that the true defini- 

 tion of life is, energy directed by sensibility, or by a mech- 

 anism which has originated under the direction of sensi- 

 bility. If this be true, the two statements that life has 

 preceded organism, and that consciousness has pre- 

 ceded organism are coequal expressions. 



"Granting the existence of living protoplasm on 

 the earth, there is little doubt that we have some 

 of its earliest forms still with us. From these sim- 

 plest of living beings both vegetable and animal king- 

 doms have been derived. But how was the distinc- 

 tion between the two lines of development, now so 

 widely divergent, originally produced ? The process 

 is not difficult to imagine. The original plastid dis- 

 solved the salts of the earth and appropriated the gases 

 of the atmosphere and built for itself more protoplasm. 

 Its energy was sufficient to overcome the chemism 



