The fourth dimension

116 THE FOURTH DIMENSION

we have presupposed may be regarded as originated by a process of selection.

Darwin set himself to explain the origin of the fauna and flora of the world. He denied specific tendencies. He assumed an indefinite variability —that is, chancebut a chance confined within narrow limits as regards the magnitude of any consecutive variations. He showed that organisms possessing features of permanence, if they occurred would be preserved. So his account of any structure or organised being was that it possessed features of permanence.

Kant, undertaking not the explanation of any particular phenomena but of that which we call nature as a whole, had an origin of species of his own, an account of the flora and fauna of consciousness. He denied any specific tendency of the elements of consciousness, but taking our own consciousness, pointed out that in which it resembled any consciousness which could survive, which could give an account of itself.

He assumes a chance or random world, and as great and small were not to him any given notions of which he could make use, he did not limit the chance, the randomness, in any way. But any consciousness which is permanent must possess certain features—those attributes namely which give it permanence. Any consciousness like our own is simply a consciousness which possesses those attributes. The main thing is that which he calls the unity of apperception, which we have seen above is simply the statement that a particular set of phases of consciousness on the basis of complete randomness will be self-conjugate, and so permanent.

As with Darwin so with Kant, the reason for existence of any feature comes to this—show that it tends to the permanence of that which possesses it.

We can thus regard Kant as the creator of the first of