Sketch of an Organismal Thcorij of Conscwmncss 3015 



these innate potentialities Into actual experiences."-^ Now 

 these "unknown causes" are, according to my view, essential- 

 ly the same as the "medium" which Hume recognized must 

 exist for making the "stej)" i)ossll)le from tlie "sujjerficial 

 qualities" to the "secret j)owers" of natural objects and from 

 the "secret powers" of one object to those of another. They 

 are, to repeat, the reaction of the orrranism in its latently 

 psychical aspect, with "the breath of life," that is, with the 

 oxygen, or whatever be the gaseous constituent of the air 

 which is active in respiration. And I believe we can see to 

 a considerable extent why Huxley considered these causes as 

 wholly unknown. It was because physiology and bio-chemis- 

 try in his day w^ere not yet able to view the organism from 

 the standpoint of physical chemistry. Because of this ina- 

 bility Huxley nor any other physiologist of his period had 

 an adequate structural ground-work for thinking organis- 

 mall}^ about living things. They were consequently obliged, 

 really, to think of all psychic phenomena, and consciousness 

 with the rest, as being restricted to the nervous system. 

 That such was Huxley's view at any rate, we know from 

 his own words : "No one who is cognisant of the facts of the 

 case nowadays doubts," he writes, "that the roots of psychol- 

 ogy lie in the physiology of the nervous system." The im- 

 portant revision of this statement which our hypothesis calls 

 for is that while the roots of psychology are indeed in the 

 nervous system they are by no means in that system alone. 

 They pass through it to a much deeper level, so to speak, and 

 in passing draw great nutriment from it. 



In a brief but important ])a])er starting off with the proj)- 

 osition that a philosopher can not legitimately question the 

 existence of the external world — that all he can rightly do is 

 to inquire what that world Is and how we can know it at all, 

 G. F. Stout comes to the kernel of the |)r()])len) in considera- 

 bly the same way that Hume and Huxley came to it. "I'or 

 primitive consciousness and for our own unreflective con- 



