Page:The Monist Volume 2.djvu/100

88. If the Self is conceived as a monon, i.e. something "alone" like an atomic unit, it can have no evolution. Evolution is change of form through the production of new configurations. A monon or an isolated unit considered by itself cannot evolve. It is as it ever has been and will be—a monon.

If this is Prof, Max Müller's meaning, we must ask, How does he know that the self is a monon and that objects are mona? Do they not, if so conceived, become highly mysterious entities? New mona are constantly born into this world. Whence do they come? Is every birth of a child the new creation of another monon by the creator, who so distributes the babes in the world that like babes are given to like parents thus producing the wrong impression of heredity as well as of a continuity of evolution? The idea of explaining all the activities of the mind by the postulate of a conscious monon is very simple indeed, but the problems which would arise from this postulate are extremely complex, and it seems to us that after all the proposition of evolution is by far the simplest solution of all the difficulties.

Mind as we conceive it is the product of evolution. Mind has been evolved in a world which (judging from its product) must be conceived as being freighted not only with energy but also with the