Sketch of an Organismal Theory of Consciousness 301 



The great merit here shown by Hume is his ability to push 

 the analysis of his problem to the very limit of the positive 

 information he had to go on, recognise exactly wherein his 

 information was lacking, and then stop without running off 

 into a purely speculative substitute for his deficient knowl- 

 edge. According to my hypothesis the unknown "medium" 

 which he saw must exist, the* researches of a century and a 

 half since he wrote, in chemistry, physiology, general zoology 

 and botany, and psychology, have enabled us to see is the 

 individual animal organism reaching with the respiratory 

 substance (oxygen?) it takes in. In this one particular and, 

 from the standpoint to which we have been accustomed, very 

 peculiar case, the reaction is at one and the same time part 

 of the essence of both ideas and impressions in the Humean 

 sense, the reaction being the "medium" or the "certain step" 

 by which the inference is drawn, this inferring being possible 

 because of the continuity of the organism as a person, or 

 self, and the persistence of the respiratory substance as the 

 same identical thing from the past through the present into 

 the future. 



We will now notice how Huxley, because of his much more 

 extensive knowledge of the structure and function of animals 

 than Hume possessed, was able to draw still closer than Hume 

 could to the heart of the old Mind-Body puzzle. The gist 

 of Huxley's position on, and contribution to, the problem 

 can conveniently be presented through his remarks on the 

 question of innateness of various aspects of psychic life, 

 these remarks occurring in his essay on Hume. After point- 

 ing out that neither Locke nor Hume seemed to know exact- 

 ly what Descartes, the originator of the modern conception 

 of innate ideas, meant by his phrase "idees naturelles, 1 " Hux- 

 ley quotes Descartes as follows: "I have used this term in 

 the same sense as when we say that generosity is innate in 

 certain families ; or that certain maladies such as gout or 

 gravel, are innate in others ; not that children born in these 



