Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/268

268 system, in airy individual man; and when we ask this question we find ourselves bound to acknowledge our dense ignorance. It is easy to speak of the 'integration' of these systems; but difficult to explain in what this 'integration' consists. All that we are able to assert is that the minor systems are contiguous, and so connected that together they act as a unit. But evidently this contiguity and connectedness within the neural systems of individual men are of various grades, as the unification of the activity between the several minor systems is of different grades.

We are led to note furthermore that when, for instance, any of us touches the hand of a fellow man, the nerve terminals of his neural system are contiguous with, and active at the same time with, the corresponding nerve terminals of that fellow man; and that his neural system and his neighbor's neural system at such a moment form in a sense one still more complex neural system, in which there are two great minor systems in either of which may occur the inception of changes in grade of activity, but in which this inception of activity must affect both parts of, that is the whole of, what we may call the duplex system. No action in the nervous system of one (A) of the two men (A and B), under such conditions of contact, can be without some effect upon the activity of the nervous system of the other man (B); nor can this action in the one man (A) fail to be influenced by the existing conditions of activity in the nervous system of that other man (B).

Taking one step further we note that the nervous systems of two or more individuals living in the same physical environment may be connected by common stimulations the most important of which are those of ocular, or of aural, nerve terminals—and by those signs and symbols in language, spoken and written, which are substituted for these stimulations—just as well as by the common stimulations of touch nerve terminals of which we have just spoken; and we are thus led to see that after all it is not at all impossible to surmise that the individuals of social groups who are similarly constituted, and who are affected at the same time by the same stimuli from the environment, may be organically interrelated elements of a social body to which must be coincident a social consciousness.

We find then that our consciousnesses may not improbably be minor psychic systems which are parts of a greater social psychic system; that we are warranted in assuming that there may be social consciousnesses of which our individual consciousnesses are elementary parts. But we can not accept such a position without making certain reservations to avoid misunderstanding.