"We think of a mind dwelling in a body, and we soon find ourselves in the midst of psychological mythology. Let it be clearly understood, therefore, that by Mind I mean nothing but that working which is going on within, embracing sensation, perception, conception, and naming, as well as the various modes of combining and separating the results of these processes for the purpose of new discovery.
"But if Mind is to be the name of the work, what is to be the name of the worker? It is not yet the Self, for the Self, in the highest sense, is a spectator only, not a worker; but it is what we may call the Ego, as personating the Self; it is what other philosophers mean by the Monon, of which, as we shall see, there are many. Let us call therefore the worker who does the work of the mind in its various aspects, the Monon or the Ego."
And in another passage (1. c., p. 552) he speaks of the simplicity of the monon :
"If then the process of thought is so simple as we saw, not less simple, at least, than that of speech, it follows, that the complicated apparatus which had been postulated by most philosophers for the performance of thought in its various spheres of manifestation, must make room for much plainer machinery. Instead of intuition, intellect, understanding, mind, reason, genius, judgment, and all the rest, we want really nothing but a self-conscious Monon, capable of changing all that is supplied by the senses into percepts, concepts, and names. These changes may be represented as something very marvellous, and we may imagine any number of powers and faculties for the performance of them."
"Grant a Monon conscious of itself, and conscious therefore of the impacts made upon it or the changes produced in it by other Mona which it resists, and we require little more to explain all that we are accustomed to call Thought."
The continuity of evolution naturally holds good according to Max Müller for the natural man, but not for the Self. How is this? Is the monon perhaps conceived as not-natural or outside of nature. Hardly. For Prof. Max Müller speaks of the object also as being a monon.[1] If the objects are as much mona as the subjects the same laws must hold good for both, and the subject-monon must be supposed to be an object-monon if considered in its relation to other object-mona.
If Prof. Max Müller's protest against the continuity of evolution is not based upon the dualism of natural and extra-natural mona, what can it mean when he says that evolution does not hold good for the Self?
- ↑ L. c., p. 281. "So much about the subject or the monon. What now about the objects or the mona?"
