Is it
not possible then that there may be even yet new channels dug out for
consciousness, though we can detect no signs of them at present?
"Again. Consciousness, in anything like the present acceptation of the
term, having been once a new thing--a thing, as far as we can see,
subsequent even to an individual centre of action and to a reproductive
system (which we see existing in plants without apparent
consciousness)--why may not there arise some new phase of mind which
shall be as different from all present known phases, as the mind of
animals is from that of vegetables?
"It would be absurd to attempt to define such a mental state (or whatever
it may be called), inasmuch as it must be something so foreign to man
that his experience can give him no help towards conceiving its nature;
but surely when we reflect upon the manifold phases of life and
consciousness which have been evolved already, it would be rash to say
that no others can be developed, and that animal life is the end of all
things. There was a time when fire was the end of all things: another
when rocks and water were so."
The writer, after enlarging on the above for several pages, proceeded to
inquire whether traces of the approach of such a new phase of life could
be perceived at present; whether we could see any tenements preparing
which might in a remote futurity be adapted for it; whether, in fact, the
primordial cell of such a kind of life could be now detected upon earth.
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