416 METAPHYSICAL EYOLUTIOK 



Raymond has not found it to be acceptable to his nearest contem- 

 poraries. He says : " The opposition which has been offered to 

 my assertion of tiie incomprehensibility of consciousness on a me- 

 chanical theory, shows how mistaken is the idea of the later phi- 

 losophy, that that incomprehensibility is self-evident. It ap- 

 pears, rather, that all philosophizing upon the mind must begin 

 with the statement of this point." In stating this point some 

 years ago we used the following language :* ^^It will doubtless 

 become possible to exhibit a parallel scale of relations between 

 stimuli on the one hand and the degrees of consciousness on the 

 other. Yet for all this it will be impossible to express self-knowl- 

 edge in terms of force." And again : f *'An unprejudiced scru- 

 tiny of the nature of consciousness, no matter how limited that 

 scrutiny necessarily is, shows that it is qualitatively comparable 

 to nothing else. . . . From this stand-point it is looked upon as 

 a state of matter which is coeternal with it, but not coextensive." 



It is probable then that consciousness is a condition of matter 

 in some peculiar state, and that wherever that condition of mat- 

 ter exists consciousness will be found, and that the absence of that 

 state implies the absence of consciousness. What is that state ? 



It would be a monstrous assumption to suppose that conscious- 

 ness and life are confined to the planet on which we dwell. I 

 presume that no one would be willing to maintain such an hypoth- 

 esis. Yet it is obvious that if there be beings possessed of these 

 attributes in the planets Mercury and Saturn, they can not be 

 composed of protoplasm, nor of any identical substance in the 

 two. In the one planet protoplasm would be utterly disorganized 

 and represented by its component gases ; in the other it would be 

 a solid, suitable for the manufacture of sharp-edged tools. J; But 

 as it is probable that j^rotoplasm is adapted for the phenomena of 

 consciousness by a certain peculiarity of its constitution, it seems 

 evident that other substances having a similar peculiarity may 

 also be able to sustain it. I have elsewhere attempted to discover 

 what this is, in the following language : * 



*^ Nowhere does ^the doctrine of the unspecialized ' receive 

 greater warrant than in the constitution of protoplasm. Modern 

 chemistry refers compound substances to four classes, each of 



* "Consciousness in Evolution." "Penn Monthly," July, 1875. 

 f " The OrijTin of the Will." " Penn Monthly," 1877, p, 439. 

 X Frazer in "American Naturalist," 1879, p. 420. 



* "Consciousness in Evolution," 1S75, p. 573. 



