There enter into all conscious determinations three factors, namely: (_a_) the scope, or totality, of adaptations which an organism can make in the sensible world, (_b_) the power of consciousness to make adaptations and (_c_) environment. These three are interdependent. The totality of adaptations depends primarily, of course, upon the quality of conscious powers or faculties, and also, in a lesser degree, upon opportunities afforded by environment. Faculties of consciousness are derived directly from the influences exerted upon the organism by his environment and the results of the struggle to overcome them. Environment is of two kinds, artificial and natural. The artificial environment is such as has been modified by our conscious action upon external phenomena. The residue is natural. And thus the scope of adaptability becomes an unvarying witness to the quality of consciousness manifesting through a given organism.
The universe is so constructed that the essential character of its various states and qualities is a fixed quantity for a given scope of consciousness and varies only as the sphere of consciousness varies. States of existence or scopes of adaptation which are registering upon a higher plane or in a more subtle sphere of existence than that in which we may at any time be functioning can only appear evidential to us when the mechanism of our consciousness becomes congruently adjusted therewith. So that the focus of consciousness must always be a variable quantity adaptable, under proper conditions, to any plane in the kosmos. Consciousness, then, becomes the sphere of limits both of knowledge and adaptability. But lest we seem to admit implicitly part of the contentions which mathematical publicists have made in postulating the unodim and duodim consciousness, it is necessary carefully to differentiate between the results arrived at as a result of the two procedures. In the first place, analysts _assume_ the existence of a unodim and duodim plane of consciousness and proceed to construct thereon an analogy designed to show the feasibility of another assumption, the fourth dimension. While, in laying the foundation of consciousness upon a tridimensional plane we do not start with an _assumption_, but with a fact. Therein lies the difference. Enormous advantages inhere in a procedure based upon facts, but in a series of planes built upon assumptions no such advantages are discovered. For however much the series of hypothetical planes may be extended or elaborated there must inhere necessarily throughout the series an assumptional value which vitiates the conclusions no less than the premises. The sanity and integrity of intellectual operations depend almost entirely upon the differentiation which we make between the necessities arising out of assumptions and those which spring up empirically from established facts. No procedure is necessary to establish the value of such a differentiation, nevertheless it may be suggested that it is allowable, under the rules of logic, to make any assumption whatsoever so long as care is taken to see that the conclusions embody in themselves the characteristics of the original premise. For instance, it is permissible to assume that space is curved. Under such an assumption, it is only necessary that the constructions which follow shall be self-consistent. But the case is different when we come to deal with spatiality and vitality. These are quantities which cannot, in the last analysis, be made to conform to the rules of the game of logic.