THE MmnSTUFF THEORY. 179 



about to lead us dialectically upwards to some 'liiglier 

 synthesis ' in which inconsistencies cease from troubling 

 and logic is at rest. It may be a constitutional infirmity, 

 but I can take no comfort in such devices for making a 

 luxury of intellectual defeat. They are but spiritual 

 chloroform. Better live on the ragged edge, better gnaw 

 the file forever ! 



THE MATERIAL-MONAD THEORY. 



The most rational thing to do is to suspect that there 

 may be a third possibility, an alternative supposition which 

 we have not considered. Now there is an alternative sup* 

 position — a supposition moreover which has been fre- 

 quently made in the history of philosophy, and which is 

 freer from logical objections than either of the views we 

 have ourselves discussed. It may be called the theory of 

 ■polyzoism or multiple monadism ; and it conceives the matter 

 thus : 



Every brain-cell has its own individual consciousness, 

 which no other cell knows anything about, all individual 

 consciousnesses being ' ejective ' to each other. There is, 

 however, among the cells one central or pontifical one to 

 which our consciousness is attached. But the events of all the 

 other cells physically influence this arch-cell ; and through 

 producing their joint effects on it, these other cells may be 

 said to ' combine.' The arch-cell is, in fact, one of those 

 * external media ' without which we saw that no fusion or 

 integration of a number of things can occur. The physical 

 modifications of the arch-cell thus form a sequence of 

 results in the production whereof every other cell has a 

 share, so that, as one might say, every other cell is repre- 

 sented therein. And similarly, the conscious correlates to 

 these physical modifications form a sequence of thoughts 

 or feelings, each one of which is, as to its substantive 

 being, an integral and un compounded psychic thing, but 

 each one of which may (in the exercise of its cognitive 

 function) be aivare of things many and complicated in 

 proportion to the number of other cells that have helped 

 to modify the central celL 



By a conception of this sort, one incurs neither of the 



