290 The Unity of the Organism 



The sector of organic phenomena best capable of yielding 

 such evidence is, I believe, exactly this of psychic life. And 

 within the great range of this life, the higher conscious life 

 of man is most replete with the evidence we seek. Again 

 within the range of man's higher life, each individual's own 

 private life, even his subjective life, his consciousness, is the 

 evidence most certain and convincing. Translating this last 

 statement into familiar language, one sees that it is only 

 another way — the scientific way — of affirming the truth, that 

 the greatest of all certainties of which man is capable is that 

 of his own existence. I am saying, virtually, that when we 

 analyze, after the manner of objective science, this old fa- 

 miliar affirmation about certainty, and carry the analysis 

 as far as we are at present able to, we find that the sense, or 

 better, the feeling of certainty of self-existence and self- 

 identity is in last analysis one of the effects of a transforma- 

 tory interaction between ourselves and some substance (oxy- 

 gen?) in our breath, as stated in the first of our two propo- 

 sitions. 



That proposition seems then to be hardly more than a 

 recognition that psychic phenomena containing at least the 

 germ of consciousness is a kind of chemical product which 

 has not heretofore been clearly recognized as such, the lack 

 of recognition being due to the strangeness of the product as 

 compared with any chemical products with which experimen- 

 tal chemistry has hitherto occupied itself. But looked at in 

 a really broad and deep way, is it any more difficult for me 

 to interpret a state of consciousness in myself to be a result 

 af chemical action between me and the air (oxygen .f*) I 

 breathe, than for me to interpret the dim greenish-white 

 luminosity of a piece of phosphorus to be a result of the 

 chemical action between the phosphorus and the air essential 

 to the glowing? From a purely chemical standpoint I do 

 not believe we have any ground for holding that some prod- 

 ucts of chemical reaction are more comprehensible or less 



