is a rather bold attempt, for it meets with many serious difficulties in execution; but the idea seems fairly correct, and is acceptable if we may limit it. It is certain that the consciousness accompanies the effort towards the untried, and perishes as soon as it is realised. Whence comes this singular dilemma propounded to it by nature: to create something new or perish? It really seems that my hypothesis explains this. Every new act is produced by nerve currents, which contain many of those variable elements which the consciousness perceives; but, in proportion as the action of the brain repeats itself and becomes more precise and more exact, this variable element becomes attenuated, falls to its lowest pitch, and may even disappear in the fixation of habit and instinct.
My hypothesis much resembles the system of parallelism. It perfects it, as it seems to me, as much as the latter has perfected materialism. We indeed admit a kind of parallelism between the consciousness and the object of cognition; but these two series are not independent, not simply placed in juxtaposition as is possible in ordinary parallelism; they are united and fused together so as to complete each other. This new theory appears to me to represent a better form of the series of attempts which have been inspired by the common necessity of making the phenomena of
