THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECT 309 
as much reason for calling this antecedent state of consciousness 
the cause of certain movements and behaviour, as of calling a 
mode of motion in the brain the cause of a further state of 
consciousness. It is true that we have not the least idea how 
the desire can cause the act; but Huxley practically admits 
that we have no idea how molecular change can be the cause 
of consciousness. In the one case we are no worse off than 
we are in the other. Neither position is logically defensible ; 
since each assumes that physical events and states of con- 
sciousness can constitute links in the same causal chain. 
The philosophical hypothesis known as monism regards 
the molecular change, not as the antecedent of a conscious 
state, but as its concomitant. That which from a physical 
and physiological point of view is a complex molecular dis- 
turbance is, at the same time, from a psychological point of 
view, a state of consciousness. The two are different aspects 
of one natural occurrence. Why such an occurrence should 
have two so different aspects we have not the faintest idea ; 
but here we are not one whit worse off than we were before. 
The hypothesis does, however, help us to get over our difficulty. 
An essential feature of Huxley’s contention is that the physical 
and physiological chain of causation is complete in itself, 
which may be granted ; and further, that if consciousness does 
arise it is merely an adjunct without influence on the sequence 
of events—what is influential is the molecular disturbance, not 
the consciousness which accompanies it. But according to 
monism the state of consciousness actually is that very same 
something which the physiologist calls, in the language of 
physics, a molecular disturbance. And in saying that conscious- 
ness influences behaviour one who accepts this hypothesis 
is merely avoiding a cumbrous form of circumlocution. He 
puts it in this way instead of saying that the nerve-changes in 
the cerebral hemispheres, or elsewhere, which from a psycho- 
logical point of view are a conscious situation, influence and 
determine the course of behaviour. But from this point of 
view it is absurd to say that the consciousness is merely an 
adjunct—absurd to say that were there no conscious situation 
