290 jEssavs in philosophy 



integral Unit, one single World-mind. For the 

 purposes of my lecture, however, there might be 

 many minds behind the scenes as well as one," ^ 

 This is undoubtedly so : strictly, too, the rebuttal 

 purposes of his lecture would be far better served 

 by this pluralistic hypothesis than by that of a 

 single all-wide mother sea of Mind ; rather, in fact, 

 these purposes cannot be properly served by any 

 hypothesis except the pluralistic. But unfortunately 

 he goes on to say, "All that the transmission- 

 theory absolutely requires is that they [the many 

 minds behind the scenes] should transcend otiv 

 minds, which thus come from something mental 

 that preexists, and is larger than themselves." ^ 



Thus he is confronted — and so are we in follow- 

 ing him — with the awkward consequence that our 

 minds, our individual personalities, only get their 

 being by the fact of transmission through the brain. 

 Existing only on condition that the brain allows 

 us to be, as sifted, restricted, or coloured phantoms 

 of the infinite sea of light beyond, all that ive in 

 strictness are must fail of being, must go out extin- 

 guished, whenever the transmitting medium shall 

 cease to exist. All that is we, all our individual 

 identities, must vanish into nameless nothing when 

 death arrives. That the vast Mind-ocean supposed to 

 be beating over the brain's threshold, or the many 



1 Humatt Immortality, p. 58. ^ Ibid., p. 58, at bottom. 



