280 TRANSACTIONS OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
long been in existence, this elementary consciousness emerged. 
Whence 1 
Now in reply to this enquiry I will first notice a few of the 
answers given by Philosophy or Science. 
The Monadal Philosophy of Leibnitz solves the problem by the 
hypothesis that the original Monads which enter into the constitu- 
tion of all things were by nature perceptive activities, more or less 
distinct, and in due course of evolution, therefore, feeling first, in 
most simple, and, then, in more elaborate, forms would arise. This, 
of course, is logical, and stands or falls with the prior conception 
as to the original units of being. 
The hypothesis of the Animists, who regard all the units of 
matter as endowed with a non-materml property, solves the problem 
by the supposition that at a certain stage in the evolution of the 
original atoms this wow-material property asserted its presence — 
came, as it were, to the surface. Here again the solution is logical. 
It spiritualizes matter in the first instance, and so sees in its later 
development signs of the hitherto hidden property. No disproof 
of this position is possible. All we can do is to admit or deny the 
original assumption ; though, as Clarke Maxwell intimates, all that 
physicists know of the behaviour of molecules goes against its 
truth. 
The speculation of Professors Stewart and Tait, as unfolded in 
their joint work, The Unseen Universe,* seeks to solve the problem 
by taking an exceedingly comprehensive view of the term Life. 
I have already pointed out that, according to them, the potentiality 
of all that now is in the visible universe, whether material or 
otherwise, was in the pre-existing Unseen Universe, from which 
the visible is an evolution. There was in the " Unseen " one 
potentiality which stood in direct relation to all that we cover by 
the word Life ; and as, in their view, Life embraces more than the 
physical processes of growth, nutrition, and reproduction, so in the 
" Unseen " there was that which contained within itself an element 
answering to the psychical character we recognize in living things. 
According to this, then, Consciousness in some germinal form would 
inhere in the lowliest forms of life, and would spring, not from 
the molecular interaction of the organism as the mechanical school 
maintain, but would be an Evolution from some thing, not some 
things, of the same generic character existing previously before 
4 Sections 214-216 ; 224-236. 
