now, 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. I
cannot think of it even as antecedent to all the various winds and the
dissolving clouds they bear, to the currents of all the rivers, and the
grinding actions of all the glaciers; still less can I think of it as
antecedent to the infinity of processes simultaneously going on in all the
plants that cover the globe, from scattered polar lichens to crowded
tropical palms, and in all the millions of quadrupeds that roam among them,
and the millions of millions of insects that buzz about them. Even a single
small set of these multitudinous terrestrial changes I cannot conceive as
antecedent a single series of states of consciousness--cannot, for
instance, think of it as causing the hundred thousand breakers that are at
this instant curling over on the shores of England. How, then, is it
possible for me to conceive an 'originating Mind,' which I must represent
to myself as a _single_ series of states of consciousness, working the
infinitely multiplied sets of changes _simultaneously_ going on in worlds
too num