Appreciation of Ultrcwisible Quantities, i27 



All such events fulfil the necessary condition of continuing 

 temporarily in existence, as each of our thoughts does, for a 

 time which may be immensely long compared with the fa) > da- 

 mental events within or between the molecules, or in the 

 interfused aether. It must, however, he borne in mind that 

 it is upon these fundamental events that the whole super* 

 structure rests ; and that stream effects are in relation to 

 them of the nature of very small outstanding residual events 

 which remain over, when the rest — the great bulk of the 

 events that are actually happening — are such as balance one 

 another*. 



It is evident that it is among protracted events such as 

 those spoken of in the last paragraph that we must search for 

 the physical event in the brain with which human thought is 

 associated. It is also evident that it is with but a very small 

 selection out of the vast number of such events occurring in 

 the brain during life, that the thoughts of which man is 

 conscious can be directly associated. All the rest of the 

 innumerable stream events, and all the underlying funda- 

 mental events within and between the individual molecules, 

 go on besides. 



Now, w T hat happens in the brain is an index to us of what 

 is going on in that portion of the Autic Universe f which is 

 most closely connected with human thought. For what goes 

 on in the phenomenal world (to which the brain belongs) is 

 an index to us of what is going on in the Autic Universe 

 (to which our thoughts belong), in the same sense in which a 

 weather-cock is an index to us of the direction of the wind ; 

 since what occurs in the phenomenal world is dependent upon 

 and determined by what occurs in the Autic Universe (see 

 passim a pi* per by the Author, " On the Relation between 

 Natural Science and Ontology," Scientific Proceedings of the 

 lioyal Dublin Society, vol. vi. p. 475). Hence in the Autic 

 Universe there are events as closely related to the thoughts 

 which exist in my mind at any time, as are the other physical 

 events going on in my brain at that time to those few which 

 are directly associated with my thoughts. The autic events 

 here spoken of probably more or less distantly resemble the 

 events within my own mind of which I am conscious, inas- 

 much as all the physical events in the brain in a certain 



* Wind is such a residual event. It arises whenever there is a small 

 preponderance in one direction of the very much swifter velocities with 

 which the individual molecules of air are at all times darting about in 

 all directions. So also the current in a river is a similar residual event. 



t Auta, actual existences (of which the thoughts that are in my mind 

 are a sample directly known to me). The Autic Universe, the totality 

 of all really existing things, of all auta. 



