REPLIES TO CRITICISMS. 403 



characterized by the simultaneity with which all kinds of them go on 

 throughout the organism, the changes constituting psychical life, aris- 

 ing as the nervous system develops, become more and more distin- 

 guished by their seriality : that with the advance of nervous integration 

 "there must result an unbroken series of these changes — there must 

 arise a consciousness." Now, I admit that here is an apparent incon- 

 sistency. I ought to have said that " there must result an unbroken 

 series of these changes," which, taking place in the nervous system 

 of a highly-organized creature, gives coherence to its conduct, and 

 along with which we assume a consciousness, because consciousness 

 goes along with coherent conduct in ourselves. If Mr. Sidgwick will 

 substitute this statement for the statement as it stands, he will see 

 that the arguments and conclusions remain intact. A survey of the 

 chapter as a whole proves that its aim is not in the least to explain 

 how nervous changes, considered as waves of molecular motion, be- 

 come the feelings constituting consciousness ; but that, contemplating 

 the facts objectively in living creatures at large, it points out the car- 

 dinal distinction between vital actions in general, and those jDarticular 

 vital actions which, in a creature displaying them, lead us to speak of 

 it as intelligent. It is shown that the rise of such actions becomes 

 marked in proportion as the changes taking place in the part called 

 the nervous system are made more and more distinctly serial, by union 

 in a supreme centre of coordination. The introduction of the word 

 consciousness arises in the effort to show what fundamental character 

 there is in the physiological changes which is parallel to a fundamental 

 character in the psychological changes. 



Another instance of the way in which Mr. Sidgwick evolves an in- 

 congruity, which he considers fundamental, out of what I should have 

 thought he would see is a defective expression, I will give in his own 

 words. Speaking of a certain view of mine, he says : 



"He tells us that 'logic .... contemplates in its propositions certain con- 

 nections predicated, which are necessarily involved with certain other connec- 

 tions given: regarding all these connections as existing in the non-ego — not, it 

 may be, under the form in which we know them, but in some form.' But in 

 § 473, where Mr. Spencer illustrates by a diagram his * Transfigured Kealism,' 

 the view seems to be this : although we cannot say that the real non-ego re- 

 sembles our notion of it in 'its elements, relations, or laws,' we can say that 

 ' a change in the objective reality causes in the subjective state a change exactly 

 answering to it — so answering as to constitute a cognition of it? Here the 

 ' something beyond consciousness ' is no longer said to be unknown, as its effect 

 in consciousness ' constitutes a cognition of it.' " 



This apparent inconsistency, marked by the italics, would not have 

 existed, if, instead of " a cognition of it," I had said, as I ought to 

 have done, " what we call a cognition of it " — that is, a relative cog- 

 nition as distinguished from an absolute cognition. In ordinary lan- 

 guage we speak of as cognitions those connections in thought which 



