Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/378

 366 EDMUND MONTGOMEET : is unable to conceive in the remotest degree how any func- tion of the organism can be capable of originating conscious states. The solution offered by Psychophysical Monism, that functional brain-motion and feeling are two aspects of one and the same fact in nature, this solution, when closely examined, turns out to be an altogether dualistic and un- thinkable assertion. The activity of the subject's brain, and an observer's perception of it, must necessarily be two totally different facts of nature. It has been shown at length in MIND XXVI. -VIII., that the organism as we know it, together with all its functions, are only percepts of an observer ; and that, therefore, the conscious states in the observed subject cannot possibly be functions of this organism, i.e., the observer's percept ; but that the activity which in the observed subject gives rise to conscious states, has also power to compel in an observer, by means of specific stimulation, the percept of the subject's brain definitely functioning. Moreover, the foreign power, which compels in an observer the perception of a brain, may be functionally at rest. We can perceive a living brain not now in functional commotion, and are justified in concluding therefrom that the unknown power which compels our per- ception of a brain, is the entity which at times displays functions functions that to itself are conscious states, but to us observers only specific stimuli, arousing perceptions of our own, that consist in certain molecular motions. In the subject, that which feels is really never at rest. Its mere vitality involves a never-flagging activity ; an activity below the level of special feeling, but accompanied principally in the waking-state by a more or less intensive sense of being. The definite determination or heightening of this general sense of being by specific inward or outward stimulation constitutes function or special feeling. It is, however, always the unitary subject which experiences the special feeling. Why then should not the functional stir of the organised vehicle of naturally accumulated experience suffice to furnish our consciousness with all its contents ? Here we arrive at the one great fact from which Transcendentalism really originates, and which gives it its polemical efficiency over Mental or Material Atomism. All our conscious states which means all phenomena whatever are in time, and with time evanescent. Consequently, the principle or power that unites into simultaneous mental presence the perishing elements, recognising them as integrant parts of an abiding