We have seen that a strong case is made out for the view that the consciousness of a complex organism is the ‘collective consciousness’ of all its cells, or of the cells of its nervous system; and it must be admitted that, if this view could be definitely established, it would go far to justify the doctrine of the collective consciousness of societies. Yet the view is by no means established; there are great difficulties in the way of its acceptance. There is the difficulty which meets a doctrine of ‘collective consciousness’ in all its forms from that of Haeckel to that of Hegel,—the difficulty that the consciousness of the units is used twice over, once as the individual consciousness, once as an element entering into the collective consciousness; and no one has been able to suggest how this difficulty can be surmounted. It has been argued also, most forcibly perhaps by Lotze[26], that what we know of the structure and functions of the brain compels us to adopt a very different interpretation of the facts. It is said that, since we cannot find any evidence of a unitary brain-process that might be regarded as the immediate physical correlate of the unitary stream of consciousness of the individual, but find rather that the physical correlate of the individual’s consciousness at any moment is a number of discrete processes taking place simultaneously in anatomical elements widely scattered in different parts of the brain, we are compelled to assume that each of these acts upon some unitary substance, some immaterial entity (which may be called the soul) producing a partial affection of its state. According to this view, then, the consciousness of any moment is the unitary resultant of all these influences simultaneously exerted on the soul, the unitary reaction of the soul upon these many influences[27]. But, even if we could accept the view that the consciousness of the complex organism is the ‘collective consciousness’ of its cells, the analogy between an organism and a society, which constitutes the argument for the ‘collective consciousness’ of a society, would remain defective in one very important respect. If we accept that view, we must believe that the essential condition of the fusion of the consciousnesses of the cells is their spatial continuity, no matter how utterly unintelligible this condition may seem; for the apparent disruption of consciousness on the solution of material continuity between the cells is the principal ground on which this view is founded. Now, no such continuity of substance exists between the members of any human group or society, and its absence constitutes a fatal flaw in the analogical argument.