126 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [PT. u. 



sation of pitch, fifty-five times as many psychical states 

 which together make up the sensation of quality, and an 

 immense number of other psychical states which together 

 make up the sensation of intensity. These psychical states 

 are not, in any strict sense of the term, states of conscious 

 ness ; for, if they were to rise individually into conscious 

 ness, the result would be an immense multitude of sensa 

 tions, and not a single homogeneous sensation. There is no 

 alternative, therefore, but to conclude that in this case a 

 seemingly simple state of consciousness is in reality com 

 pounded of an immense multitude of sub-conscious psychical 

 changes. 



Returning, now, to what we have called the elementary 

 sound, by the manifold compounding of which all cognizable 

 tones, qualities, and intensities are built up, we shall the 

 more readily yield to the evidence which shows that even 

 this primitive unit of sound is not elementary. For, as M. 

 Taine observes, each so-called elementary sound, in passing 

 from its minimum to its maximum, passes through an 

 infinite series of degrees of intensity, and, unless there were 

 some psychical modification corresponding to each increment 

 of intensity, there would be no state of consciousness answer 

 ing to the total rise from the minimum to the maximum. 



O 



Again, while, for simplicity s sake, we have assumed that 

 each of the raps or puffs which occur too slowly to be heard 

 as a single tone of lowest pitch is heard by itself as an ele 

 mentary sensation, this is not strictly true. For the so- 

 called simple sensation must be either a sensation of musical 

 tone or a sensation of noise. In the former case its composite 

 character has been already shown. In the latter case, in the 

 sensation of noise, rap, or puff, the truly primitive elements 

 are sub-conscious psychical states answering to successive 

 waves of unequal lengths. Any one of these waves by itself 

 will not produce a genuine state of consciousness ; it is only 

 by compounding the sub-conscious psychical affections which 



