MIND AND STATISTICAL LAWS 315 



of "probability in the light of certain given informa- 

 tion", and the probability alters according to the extent 

 of the information. It is, I think, one of the most un- 

 satisfactory features of the new quantum theory in its 

 present stage that it scarcely seems to recognise this 

 fact, and leaves us to guess at the basis of information 

 to which its probability theorems are supposed to refer. 



Looking at it from another aspect — if the unity of 

 a man's consciousness is not an illusion, there must be 

 some corresponding unity in the relations of the mind- 

 stuff which is behind the pointer readings. Applying 

 our measures of relation structure, as in chapter XI, 

 we shall build matter and fields of force obeying 

 identically the principal field-laws; the atoms will 

 individually be in no way different from those which 

 are without this unity in the background. But it seems 

 plausible that when we consider their collective be- 

 haviour we shall have to take account of the broader 

 unifying trends in the mind-stuff, and not expect the 

 statistical results to agree with those appropriate to 

 structures of haphazard origin. 



I think that even a materialist must reach a conclusion 

 not unlike ours if he fairly faces the problem. He will 

 need in the physical world something to stand for a 

 symbolic unity of the atoms associated with an individual 

 consciousness, which does not exist for atoms not so 

 associated — a unity which naturally upsets physical 

 predictions abased on the hypothesis of random dis- 

 connection. For he has not only to translate into 

 material configurations the multifarious thoughts and 

 images of the mind, but must surely not neglect to find 

 some kind of physical substitute for the Ego. 



