COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



satlon which is present to consciousness. And 

 when these three conclusions are presented in a 

 single statement, they become equivalent to the 

 conclusion above obtained from examining the 

 beginnings of conscious intelligence in an infant ; 

 namely, that states of consciousness may be pro- 

 duced by the differential grouping or compound- 

 ing of psychical states which are beneath con- 

 sciousness. 



This result is in entire harmony with what 

 might be inferred a priori from the known char- 

 acteristics of nerve action. Whether in the gray 

 substance of ganglia, or in the white substance 

 of nerve fibres, the physical action which ac- 

 companies psychical changes is an undulatory 

 displacement of molecules resulting in myriads 

 of little waves or pulses of movement. From 

 this fact we might have suspected that, as a cog- 

 nizable state of consciousness is attended by the 

 transmission of a number of little waves from 

 one nerve cell to another, so the ultimate psy- 

 chical elements of each conscious state must 

 correspond to the passage of these little waves 

 taken one by one. And this inference, which 

 by itself would be only a plausible guess, is 

 raised to the rank of a scientific hypothesis by 

 its harmony with the results of the analysis above 

 sketched. 



Thus we are led to infer, as the ultimate unit 

 of which Mind is composed, a simple psychical 

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