130 COSMIC rniLOSOPHY. [PT. II. 



other sensations. The Ji7-st is, that sensations which are 

 apparently simple and elementary, and which cannot be 

 analyzed by mere observation of consciousness, are neverthe- 

 less compounded of many successive and simultaneoxis sensa- 

 tions, which are themselves compounded of still lower 

 psychical affections. The second is, that two sensations, 

 which differ only in the mode in which tlieir elements are 

 compounded, may appear in consciousness as generically 

 different and irreducible to each other. The third is, that 

 two or more psychical affections which, taken separately, are 

 as non-existent to consciousness, may, nevertheless, when 

 taken together, coalesce into a sensation which is present to 

 consciousiiess. And when these three conclusions are pre- 

 sented in a single statement, they become equivalent to the 

 conclusion above obtained from examining the beginnings of 

 conscious int lligence in an infant; namely, that states of 

 consciousness may be produced by the differential grouping 

 or compounding of psychical states which are beneath 

 consciousness. 



This result is in entire harmony with what might be in- 

 ferred d priori from the known characteristics of nerve- 

 action. Whether in the grey substance of ganglia, or in the 

 white substance of nerve-fibres, the physical action which 

 accompanies psychical changes is an undulatory displace- 

 ment of molecules resulting in myriads of little waves 

 or pulses of movement. From this fact we might have 

 suspected that, as a cognizable state of consciousness is 

 attended by the transmission of a number of little waves 

 from one nerve-cell to another, so the ultimate psychical 

 elements of each conscious state must correspond to the 

 pass; ge of these little waves taken one by one. And this 

 inference, which by ItseK 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 



