196 Mr. G. J, Stoney on hoio Tlioiigld p-esents itself in Nature. [Feb. 6, 



or conception of motion, but the factor in the outer world whatever 

 it is, which, co-operating with factors within my mind produces that 

 perception or conception. It is this outside factor which there seems 

 reason to suspect is thought going on beyond my consciousness. When 

 put into the language of this hypothesis, the result of the scientific 

 inquiry would be expressed thus : the geranium consists of eminently 

 complex thoughts going on outside my consciousness, which are in 

 fact a part of the great Animus Mundi. These act on other thoughts, 

 commonly regarded as waves of light, which again alter part of that 

 vast assemblage of thoughts called one of my organs of sense. These, 

 in theii' turn, act on another group of thoughts called the associated 

 nerve, and finally, the thoughts which constitute the nerve bring 

 about a modification within that other vast assemblage of thoughts 

 called my brain ; out of which last assemblage a few small pinnacles 

 rise within my consciousness, i. e. have a special interaction and 

 include special relations to preceding states, and so become parts of 

 one complex thought, my mind. 



That there is one great consciousness extending through the whole 

 Animus Mundi, is I think suggested by the known fact that each part 

 of material nature acts on and is acted on by every other. 



On so abrupt a statement of the drift of an hypothesis which lies 

 outside men's usual highways of thought, it will necessarily seem 

 fanciful ; but just as what is at first sight plausible may prove to be 

 not true, so what on a fii'st view strikes us as fanciful may turn out 

 to be sober fact. 



[G. J. S.] 



APPENDIX. 



This Friday Evening discourse was accompanied by three 

 afternoon lectures at the Eoyal Institution, in which the lecturer 

 endeavoured to explain how some of the determinations referred to 

 in the discourse had been effected. For accurate determinations of 

 wave-lengths of light the reader may refer to Angstrom's ' Spectre 

 Normal du Soleil ' ; for the motions in gases to Maxwell's ' Heat,' 

 pp. 297 and 299, and to a paper* by the lecturer on the internal 

 motions of gases in the ' Philosophical Magazine ' for August, 1868 ; 

 for the motions in chlorochromic anhydride to a paper by the lecturer 

 and Professor J. Emerson Eeynolds in the ' Philosophical Magazine ' 

 for July 1871. Most of the other determinations are in the text- 

 books. 



* Keaders of that paper arc requested to change the square of 16 into the 

 square-root of 16, at the eud of the second paragraph. 



