A mental act is an unintelligible phrase if I am
not to regard it as an act in which states of consciousness are severally
known as like other states in the series that has gone by, and in which the
relations between them are severally known as like past relations in the
series. If, then, I have to conceive evolution as caused by an 'originating
Mind,' I must conceive this Mind as having attributes akin to those of the
only mind I know, and without which I cannot conceive mind at all.
'"I will not dwell on the many incongruities hence resulting, by asking how
the 'originating Mind' is to be thought of as having states produced by
things objective to it, as discriminating among these states, and classing
them as like and unlike; and as preferring one objective result to another.
I will simply ask, What happens if we ascribe to the 'originating Mind' the
character absolutely essential to the conception of mind, that it consists
of a series of states of consciousness? Put a series of states of
consciousness as cause and the evolving universe as effect, and then
endeavour to see the last as flowing from the first. I find it possible to
imagine in some dim way a series of states of consciousness serving as
antecedent to any one of the movements I see going on; for my own states of
consciousness are often indirectly the antecedents to such movements. But
how if I attempt to think of such a series as antecedent to _all_ actions
throughout the universe--to the motions of the multitudinous stars
throughout space, to the revolutions of all their planets round them, to
the gyrations of all these planets on their axes, to the infinitely
multiplied physical processes going on in each of these suns and planets? I
cannot think of a single series of states of consciousness as causing even
the relatively small groups of actions going on over the earth's surface.
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