Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/249

No. 2.] which is an impossibility. The difficulties of the teleological conception render its acceptance impossible. We must start from something concrete and real, as from something fundamentally given, and proceed to the parts, elements, and conditions. Metaphysical thinking requires that we regard the metaphysical being as something primordially given, and absolute as to time.

M. confines his speculations within the field of mental evolution in animals. If so highly intelligent an animal as the dog sprang from the amœba, the latter cannot be an insentient automaton. If it is, where did consciousness creep in? To say that it is potentially present in the germ is an ambiguity. Nor is consciousness either a product of brain-tissue or a mode of energy, but something sui generis. The phrase that consciousness is called into existence by physical processes is also unintelligible. M. adopts the hypothesis of scientific monism, according to which consciousness and brain-energy are respectively the subjective and objective aspects of the same occurrences. From the simpler modes of energy in the simpler organic substance of the ovum the more complex modes of energy have been evolved. Similarly, the complex and orderly states of consciousness have emerged from something simpler than consciousness, but of the same order of existence, which answers subjectively to the simpler organic energy of the fertilized ovum. As the complex molecular vibrations of the brain are to the simpler molecular vibrations of the ovum, so are the complex states of consciousness associated with the former, to the simple states of infra-consciousness associated with the latter. All organic modes of energy are associated with conscious or infra-conscious states. Thus molecular vibrations in the brain are sometimes attended by consciousness, sometimes not, there being unconscious cerebration. If there are such infra-conscious states in the cerebral hemispheres, why should there not be associated with every molecular thrill of the living body yet lower states of infra-consciousness? We go a step further and say that all modes of energy, whether organic or inorganic, have their conscious or infra-conscious aspect. This doctrine is necessarily implied in the phrase "mental evolution" for all thinkers who have grasped the distinction between consciousness and energy.

Our theories are abstractions, which, while they place in relief that which is important for certain fixed cases, neglect almost necessarily, or