296 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. When one sees, 

 and touches, a thing, the experience is of the thing, 

 or fact, or problem, not of the image on the cortex 

 of the brain. Whoever harbors a delusion as true, 

 is passing through a "pure experience;" as much so, 

 as one who sees only the true. As to the conten- 

 tion of some idealists that the image, or presentation, 

 is the only real thing, this conception ignores con- 

 tinued external existences. The idealist's position is 

 that an object under study in any of the physical 

 sciences is merely mental. We do not know the object, 

 but only the mental conception of it. This seems to 

 imply that we have no proof of existences. The ma- 

 terialist holds that our sense impressions are satisfac- 

 tory proof of external existences, that these impres- 

 sions would not occur unless they were made by exist- 

 ing things. It seems that this theory, viz. : of idealism, 

 does not take into account, that the forms and sub- 

 stance of the environment remain, and make the same 

 impression on successive generations of sensuous or- 

 ganisms, and that history is the product of these re- 

 peated conceptions, identical in facts, impressing the 

 senses of succeeding generations of men. The impres- 

 sions from the same forms are essentially alike to suc- 

 cessive generations. The perpetual apparition of the 

 physical universe persists to all organisms that have 

 lived in the past, and that will live in the future. It 

 is true that the only knowledge a single individual has 

 of it is the impression it makes upon his sense organs, 

 but that it exists as an objective relation to successive 

 generations of men, and as the source of their im- 

 pressions, is not only, a scientific view, but a common 

 sense conception. Of course, the correspondence be- 

 tween the individual, and the objectivity, depends en- 



