MIND IS FUNCTION 171 



manifestations of cosmic energy. The evolution of 

 forms is the only creative force, and this is the working 

 over dynamically of an existing limitation of energy, 

 infinite to us, but to us, having no beginning and no 

 end. 



That phase of consciousness, having cognition, is the 

 result of a correspondence between the nervous centers 

 and an environment made up of natural phenomena, 

 including psychical facts of all states of truth or false- 

 hood. In this view, knowledge consists of pure expe- 

 rience, as we all have it, from day to day. To one 

 individual, it may be largely delusion about an absolute. 

 To the scientist everything would appear natural. The 

 forms of matter visible to us are aggregates of certain 

 attributes. The impressions made upon our brains are 

 phenomenal only, but these impressions are real to us. 

 There is never any doubt in the brain of the individual 

 as to the reality of the impression; and to him water, 

 air, earth, fire, are real things, although they may 

 appear to the scientist as differentiated forms of energy. 

 To the ordinary individual, they are existences objective 

 to his perception, and without this existence he knows 

 there would be no impression. He knows also that 

 should the impressions made on his brain by these 

 objective things cease, it would be the result not of the 

 discontinuance of these objective forms, but his own 

 cessation of the conditions of impressibility; or, in other 

 words, a change in his own form which dissociates him 

 from objective relationship. Therefore, the contention 

 of the idealists that there is nothing but impressions, 

 is not the common sense view. These impressions or 

 sensations are received through the nervous system 

 from those objectives into the organism, and ther>e 

 co-ordinated into feelings. Some of these feelings are 



