286 Anima Mundi. 



agrees. " What consciousness is," he says, " we 

 know not ; and how it is that anything so 

 remarkable as a state of consciousness comes 

 about as the result of irritating nervous tissue, 

 is just as unaccountable as the appearance of 

 the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the 

 story." l 



" Afferent nerves lie here, and carry to ; 

 efferent nerves lie there, and carry from ; but in 

 none of them neither in fibre of nerve nor 

 in fibre of brain, will you find any hint of 

 consciousness. How any material impressions 

 should awake thought ; but, still more, how, in 

 independence of all impressions, thought should 

 be all the while there, alive and active, A WORLD 

 BY ITSELF that is the mystery. And that no 

 scalpel, no microscope, will ever explain. 

 Mechanical balances the most delicate, chemical 

 tests the most sensitive, are all powerless there. 

 And why ? Simply because consciousness and 

 they are incommensurable, of another nature, of 

 another world from the first, sundered from 

 each other, as I have said, by the whole 

 diameter of being." 3 



" It is quite true that the tympanum of the 

 ear vibrates under sound, and that the surface of 



1 Huxley's " Physiology," p. 193. 



* Stirling's " Materialism " ut sup., p. 7. 



