CHAPTER VII.

SELF ELEMENTS IN OUR CONSCIOUSNESS.

It is often taken for granted that our consciousness of ourselves and of our own feelings has a sort of direct and absolute value.

It is supposed to afford a testimony which does not require to be sifted like our consciousness of external events. But in reality it needs far more criticism to be applied to it than any other mode of apprehension.

To a certain degree we can sift our experience of the external world, and divide it into two portions. We can determine the self elements and the realities. But with regard to our own nature and emotions, the discovery which makes a science possible has yet to be made.

There are certain indications, however, springing from our observation of our own bodies, which have a certain degree of interest.

It is found that the processes of thought and feeling are connected with the brain. If the brain is disturbed, thoughts, sights, and sounds come into the consciousness which have no objective cause in the external world. Hence we may conclusively say that the human being, whatever he is, is in contact with the brain, and through the brain with the body, and through the body with the external world.

It is the structures and movements in the brain which the human being perceives. It is by a structure in the brain that he apprehends nature, not immediately. The most beautiful sights and sounds have no effect on a human being unless there is the faculty in the brain of taking them in and handing them on to the consciousness.

Hence, clearly, it is the movements and structure of the minute portions of matter forming the brain which the consciousness perceives. And it is only by models and representations made in the stuff of the brain that the mind knows external changes.

Now, our brains are well furnished with models and representations of the facts and events of the external world.

But a most important fact still requires its due weight to be laid upon it.

These models and representations are made on a very minute scale--the particles of brain matter which form images and representations are beyond the power of the microscope in their minuteness. Hence the consciousness primarily apprehends the movements of matter of a degree of smallness which is beyond the power of observation in any other way.

Hence we have a means of observing the movements of the minute portions of matter. Let us call those portions of the brain matter which are directly instrumental in making representations of the external world--let us call them brain molecules.

Now, these brain molecules are very minute portions of matter indeed; generally they are made to go through movements and form structures in such a way as to represent the movements and structures of the external world of masses around us.

But it does not follow that the structures and movements which they perform of their own nature are identical with the movements of the portions of matter which we see around us in the world of matter.

It may be that these brain molecules have the power of four-dimensional movement, and that they can go through four-dimensional movements and form four-dimensional structures.

If so, there is a practical way of learning the movements of the very small particles of matter--by observing, not what we can see, but what we can think.

For, suppose these small molecules of the brain were to build up structures and go through movements not in accordance with the rule of representing what goes on in the external world, but in accordance with their own activity, then they might go through four-dimensional movements and form four-dimensional structures.

And these movements and structures would be apprehended by the consciousness along with the other movements and structures, and would seem as real as the others--but would have no correspondence in the external world.

They would be thoughts and imaginations, not observations of external facts.

Now, this field of investigation is one which requires to be worked at.

At present it is only those structures and movements of the brain molecules which correspond to the realities of our three-dimensional space which are in general worked at consistently. But in the practical part of this book it will be found that by proper stimulus the brain molecules will arrange themselves in structures representing a four-dimensional existence. It only requires a certain amount of care to build up mental models of higher space existences. In fact, it is probably part of the difficulty of forming three-dimensional brain models, that the brain molecules have to be limited in their own freedom of motion to the requirements of the limited space in which our practical daily life is carried on.

_Note._--For my own part I should say that all those confusions in remembering which come from an image taking the place of the original mental model--as, for instance, the difficulty in remembering which way to turn a screw, and the numerous cases of images in thought transference--may be due to a toppling over in the brain, four-dimensionalwise, of the structures formed--which structures would be absolutely safe from being turned into image structures if the brain molecules moved only three-dimensionalwise.

It is remarkable how in science “explaining” means the reference of the movements and tendencies to movement of the masses about us to the movements and tendencies to movement of the minute portions of matter.

Thus, the behaviour of gaseous bodies--the pressure which they exert, the laws of their cooling and intermixture are explained by tracing the movements of the very minute particles of which they are composed.