CHAPTER V 



FUNCTIONAL INERTIA AS RELATED TO CONSCIOUS- 

 NESS : PSYCHIC INERTIA 



AT a very early period in my thinking about 

 functional inertia as a property of protoplasm, I 

 came to the conclusion that this inertia must be 

 demonstrable among the phenomena of conscious- 

 ness or mind. Not only must it operate within the 

 sphere of the senses, but no psychic state whatever 

 can really be destitute of its presence. In my first 

 paper I said there must be an inertia of mind 

 corresponding to that of matter at rest, as well as a 

 mental momentum corresponding to the momentum 

 of matter. Subsequent reading showed me that 

 this idea had not escaped former thinkers : I found 

 that Hobbes of Malmesbury had written, " Like 

 water troubled, an organ of sense will remain in 

 motion after the removal of the exciting agent ; 

 in that case the corresponding phantasm is called 

 imagination or memory." That the term " inertia " 

 is not used, need hardly surprise us when we 

 recollect that Hobbes died (1679) when Newton 

 was only thirty-seven. But everything is really in 

 this passage ; the inertia of moving particles of 

 matter, the physical analogy with the psychic process. 



