460 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XIV. 



sensations or any other fact of consciousness, for these 

 are the incommunicable attributes of that Ego to whom they 

 belong. 



I have now to confess that up to the present moment I 

 have remained in ignorance of how I came to be, or, in the 

 Spencerian language, how consciousness must arise, I was 

 dimly aware that somewhere in the vast System of Philosophy 

 this question had been settled, because the Evolutionists are 

 all so calm about it ; but in a hasty search for it I never 

 suspected in how quiet and unostentatious a manner the 

 origin of myself would be accounted for. I am indebted to 

 Mr. Kirkman for pointing it out in his Philosophy without 

 Assumptions. Here it is with Mr. Kirkman's comment. 

 Principles of Psychology, 179, p. 403 : "These separate 

 impressions are received by the senses by different parts of 

 the body. If they go no further than the places at which 

 they are received, they are useless. Or if only some of them 

 are brought into relation with one another, they are useless. 

 That an effectual adjustment may be made, they must all be 

 brought into relation with one another. But this implies 

 some centre of communication common to them all, through 

 which they severally pass ; and, as they cannot pass through 

 it simultaneously, they must pass through it in succession. 

 So that as the external phenomena responded to become 

 greater in number and more complicated in kind, the variety 

 and rapidity of the changes to which this common centre 

 of communication is subject must increase there must 

 result an unbroken series of these changes there must 

 arise a consciousness." 



On this Kirkman remarks : " He knew he could do it, and 

 he did it! " What was the evolution of light to this ? The 

 next Longinus will put that in before yevecrOa) </>w? KOI 

 eyevero <?. 



The opinions about my origin are as various as those 

 about my nature. Canon Liddon tells me that I was 

 created out of nothing in the year 1831, though I cannot 



