Chapter III—Consciousness as a Function of Chemical Complexity 
laws of nature in which is manifest the working of 
the Divine Mind.—Berkeley (1685-1753). 
T. Matter is simply an appearance to sense, without 
anything real in it—The Hindu theory of Maya, 
the Eleatie Philosophers’ theory of non-being, etc. 
U. Matter is “the permanent possibility of sensations.” 
—. 5. Mill (1806-1873), 
V. "Matter is that whereby Will, which constitutes the 
inner reality of things, becomes perceptible or mani- 
fest. In this sense Matter is thus merely the mani- 
festation of Will, or the bond between the World as 
Will and the World as Idea. Matter is throughout 
Causality.” —Schopenhauer (1788-1860). 
W. Matter is constituted by forces which are outgoings 
or manifestations of the Divine Will. 
X. Matter is not objectified Will but objectified 
Thought. 
Y. Matter is Nature’s self-externality in its most uni- 
versal form with a tendency to self-internality or 
individuation shown in the force of gravitation, and 
nature is the Idea in the form of otherness, or self- 
alienation.—Hegel (1770-1831), 
RELATION OF THE WHOLE TO ITS PARTS. 
119. Difficult as is the problem of consciousness, 
science has at any rate to some extent defined the nature 
of the problem. By emphasising the extreme loneliness 
and isolation of man in the universe it has done away 
with a number of vague speculations regarding ex+ 
traneous spiritual and supernatural consciousnesses 
and possibilities of such being concerned in the genesis 
of human consciousness, speculations which otherwise 
might have continued to obscure the subject; it has 
shown that the only hope of solution, if solution is 
possible, lies in laboratory methods in physies, chemistry 
end psychology. 
120. Consciousness appears to be a unifying prin- 
ciple, a relation of the whole to its parts, and, as such, 
some light may in the future be thrown on it by study 
of the way in which qualities of chemical compounds 
are related to those of their constituents. Nothing could 
be more surprising than the difference which exists 
between tlie qualities of such a substance as water and 
the hydrogen and oxygen of which it is composed, or a 
host of other compounds which could be mentioned, 
unless the fact that the various qualities of elementary 
substances themselves depend on the mere numbers and 
geometrical arrangements of two or three kinds of 
primordial particles be considered even more surprising. 
Both in regard to atomic. and molecular organisation 
we have the clearest evidence that the whole is a very 
different thing from the sum of its parts: and herein 
may lie one way of approach to the problem, of life 
and consciousness. Merely mechanical aggregation in- 
troduces no such difference of qualities; a nebula, a 
sun or a planet (the latter apart from living organisms 
which may be present) is no more than the sum of its 
constituent materials, although, of course, these materials 
may themselves be of a certain low order of chemical 
27 
complexity and their quàlities may thus be a few steps 
removed from those of simple atoms or particles. This 
discrepancy between the whole and the sum of its parts 
rcaches its climax in our own personalities, 
121. Looking outside oür own personalities we are 
convinced of the presence of similar qualities in other 
human beings, and I think we cannot deny very similar 
qualities to mammals, birds, many reptiles, insects, 
molluscs and other animals. [η the highest of these 
we can almost recognise ourselves, except for rational 
specch. — Allowing for anatomical differences, when we 
watch a cat or a dog, or a bird, or even a bee, a hermit- 
crab, or an octopus, the difference between any of them 
and ourselves is only one of degree and proportion, As 
we pass down in the scale of life recognition becomes 
more difficult: but there is no hard and fast line, so 
that we can say “this side is consciousness, the other is 
none." Still lower in the scale, how are we to recognise 
consciousness? Even if it is there, and I believe it is, 
the conditions and organisation of the lowest animals 
and plants are too far from our own to make. it imme- 
diately recognisable by us. We know for a certain fact 
that the fertilised human ovum grows into the full 
human personality; at no stage in this growth is there a 
division line between consciousness and its absence. The 
male and female germ cells in plants, such as ferns and 
cycads, clearly indicate common origin with animals; 
uowhere can a sharp line of division between conscious 
and unconscious be drawn. But we cannot recognise 
consciousness in the lowest forms; that does not mean 
iL is absent, but only that the organisation is not there 
to present it in the form we know in ourselves. If this 
line of argument is valid, and I think it is, we have to 
look for germs of consciousness, in the lowest forms of ` 
life and in “lifeless” matter, from a very different stand- 
point from that of human psychology. Starting from 
the top we have to work from human psychology down- 
wards; starting from the bottom we have to work from 
the changes of qualities with atomic and molecular 
organisation upwards. Can these two lines of work be 
made to meet? 
THE FREQUENCY RATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
122. What is the highest rate of change by which 
states of consciousness succeed one another? Some 
information on this can be obtained by the process of 
counting. We can count aloud four or five figures per 
second, so long as small, easily spoken numbers go; 
here evidently the speed of nerve conduction (about 28 
metres per second) between brain and speech organs, 
and time-lag in the nerve endings has to be taken into 
account, If we count mentally we can increase to six 
to eight figures-to the second, counting, so to speak, in 
mental “ticks” instead of mental “figures.” The extreme 
limit of mental successions appears to be about ten to the 
second. 
123. Flicker on rotating black and white discs dis- 
appears at ten to the second with weak, and fifty to the 
