340 THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 



ourselves. There is the innate feeling, not to say- 

 conviction, that something takes place, which, acting 

 in concert with ourselves, produces the sensations we 

 perceive, and that that something will go on in- 

 dependently of mankind for all ages to come. We 

 will not call that something " a permanent possibility 

 of sensation," as John Stuart Mill did, we should 

 prefer to call it "a permanent source of possible 

 sensation." That permanent source may be a system 

 of ideas or perceptions, as no doubt they must be 

 perceptions in some mind other than our own if they 

 are entities at all. That permanent source of possible 

 sensation is no doubt a perception in some mind, 

 and that mind is the permanent reality. That 

 permanent source is therefore, although unknowable 

 to us, knowable as perception in some mind. 



This was the aspect of the question taken up 

 by Berkeley or, in the form in which we have 

 presented it, more clearly by Lotze. This absolute 

 mind is no doubt self-conscious, and we are en- 

 countered with the serious difl&culty that self- 

 conscious units like ourselves should form part of 

 this self-conscious whole ; that is, that there would 

 be apparently selves within selves. Certain schools 

 of metaphysicians would maintain this to be an 

 impossibility, and Dr. McTaggart, who represents 

 this school in England, would deny self-conscious- 

 ness to the whole, and grant it only to the parts ; 

 for this reason, that there cannot be selves within 

 selves, and that as we know some of the parts to 

 be self-conscious, the whole cannot be. We should 



