CONTENTS 

 CHAPTER I 



PAGE 



THE CONCEPTUAL WORLD I 



Argument. — The conscious organism is one that acts. Its 

 consciousness of an external world is not simply the result of 

 the stimuli made by that world on its organs of sense, for it becomes 

 fully aware only of those stimuli which result in deliberated bodily 

 activity. This awareness of an outer world on which it acts is the 

 perception of the organism. Its consciousness is an intensive 

 multiplicity. This multiplicity is arbitrarily dissociated, for con- 

 venience' sake, by the mental organisation, which confers extension 

 and magnitude and succession on those aspects of consciousness 

 which it arbitrarily dissociates from each other. Our notion of 

 space is an intuitive one and depends on our modes of bodily 

 exertion. Our notions of motion and continuity are also intuitive 

 ones, and they cannot be represented intellectually, but we can 

 approximate to them by the methods of the infinitesimal calculus. 

 Mathematical time is only a series of standard events which 'punc- 

 tuate our duration. Duration is the accumulated existence and 

 experience of the organism. We cannot prove intellectually that 

 there is a world external to our consciousness, but that this world 

 exists is a conviction intuitively held. 



CHAPTER II 



THE ORGANISM AS A MECHANISM ..... 



Argument. — If the organism is a physico-chemical mechanism its 

 activities must conform to the two principles of energetics : the law 

 of conservation of energy and matter, and the law of entropy- 

 increase. They conform strictly to the law of conservation. 

 The law of the degradation of energy is true of our experience 

 of inorganic nature, but we can show that it cannot be universally 

 true. Inorganic processes are irreversible ones, and they proceed 



49 



