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 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 29/5/2021, SPi

Vagueness and the Evolution

of Consciousness
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 29/5/2021, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 29/5/2021, SPi

Vagueness and the

Evolution of
Consciousness
Through the Looking Glass

MICHAEL TYE

1
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2021, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Michael Tye 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021937352
ISBN 978–0–19–886723–4
Printed and bound in the UK by
TJ Books Limited
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 29/5/2021, SPi

Contents

Introduction 1
1. A Paradox of Consciousness 4
1.1 The Paradox Explained: Part A 6
1.2 The Paradox Explained: Part B 13
2. Russellian Monism to the Rescue? 19
2.1 Versions of Russellian Monism 24
2.2 Objections to Reductive Russellian Monism 25
2.3 Objections to Primitivist Russellian Monism 28
2.4 A Final Concern 31
3. Transparency and Representationalism 32
3.1 The Transparency Thesis 32
3.2 Qualia Realism 34
3.3 Two Arguments from Transparency Against
Qualia Realism 35
3.4 How Does Transparency Support Representationalism for
Visual Experience? 39
3.5 Blur 41
3.6 Extending Transparency: Bodily Sensations 43
3.7 Emotions and Moods 48
3.8 Conscious Thoughts 55
3.9 More on Property Representationalism 58
3.10 Objections and Clarifications 62
3.11 An Argument for Property Representationalism 69
3.12 Moore and the Missing Ingredient 71
4. Representationalism and Panpsychism 73
4.1 The Problem of Undirected Consciousness 75
4.2 The Problem of Combination 80
4.3 Poise and the Global Workspace 85
4.4 More on the Problem of Combination 88
4.5 The Problem of Tiny Psychological Subjects 91
4.6 The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness 93
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 29/5/2021, SPi

vi 

5. The Location of Consciousness 100

5.1 A Hypothesis by Crick and Koch 100
5.2 Decorticate Children 103
5.3 The Prefrontal Cortex and Working Memory 105
5.4 Where in the Animal Realm Is Consciousness Located? 107

Bibliography 117
Index of Names 127
Index 129
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2021, SPi

Introduction

As you may recall, when Alice stepped through the mirror, she encountered
a very peculiar world in which many of the people she met were chess pieces
or characters from nursery rhymes. Everything was inside out, upside down.
So it is with consciousness.
Reflection upon the appearance of consciousness in living beings suggests
that there are just two alternative views. Either consciousness appeared
suddenly so that its appearance is like that of a light switch being turned
on or it arose through intermediate stages, not yet definitely involving
consciousness but also not definitely not involving it. On the former view,
consciousness is an on/off matter, but once it arose, it became richer and
richer through time rather as a beam of light may become brighter and
broader in its sweep. On the latter view, consciousness is not an on/off
matter. There are shades of gray. There is no one moment at which
consciousness appeared. It arose gradually just as life did, becoming richer
through time as animal brains became more complex.
The latter view seems more plausible at first glance; for if consciousness
suddenly appeared out of the blue, as it were, then what was responsible for
its sudden emergence? Presumably the occurrence of some suitable neural
state. But neurological states themselves admit of borderline cases, so the
relevant neural state cannot itself have arisen suddenly. Instead it must have
appeared gradually through various intermediate neurological stages. So, if
consciousness originally appeared suddenly without any borderline cases, it
cannot be identified with any such neurological state; nor for similar reasons
can it be identified with any complex functional or informational state
supported by the neurological architecture. It seems, then, that if conscious-
ness appeared suddenly, it must be something special and new, totally
different from the physical properties of the underlying neural and func-
tional architecture. But if this is the case, what could consciousness be? It
appears that we are driven to think of consciousness as something nonphy-
sical in nature that suddenly emerged in certain animal brains without any
further explanation. This is very hard to accept.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2021, SPi

2 

On the other hand, if consciousness arose gradually then we should be

able to describe borderline cases of consciousness just as we can for life.
Unfortunately, as I shall argue, that we cannot do. Putative borderline cases
of consciousness are all cases in which there is indeterminacy in what is
experienced, and not in experience or consciousness itself. So, a kind of
paradox arises. Consciousness cannot be sharp or precise, but equally it
cannot be vague.
The paradox is laid out fully in the first chapter. One possible response to
this paradox is to say that it is based on a mistaken assumption about the
origins of conscious states. Conscious states did not arise with neurological
complexity. Instead, they are fundamental features of microphysical reality
(panpsychism) or at least they are grounded in such fundamental features.
Chapter 2 lays out the standard version of this view: Russellian Monism.
I argue that the view, in either of its two standard elaborations, faces
overpowering objections.
In the next two chapters, I discuss the relationship between conscious
states and consciousness itself. I argue that the basic tenet of the represen-
tationalist view of conscious states can be preserved within a framework that
takes consciousness itself, or rather a central element of consciousness I call
“consciousness*”, to be sharp but conscious states vague. Consciousness*,
I claim, is indeed a fundamental feature of micro-reality, and thus it did not
evolve, but conscious states are not. Conscious states evolved gradually, as
did life, through a range of borderline cases. The view with which I end up
presents novel solutions to three important problems (the problem of
undirected consciousness, the problem of combination, and the problem
of tiny, psychological subjects). It also takes up the question of how con-
sciousness can be causally efficacious with respect to animal behavior.
That I am prepared to embrace a position that has something in common
with the panpsychist world view will come as a surprise to many, given my
past writings on consciousness, but as John Perry quipped: “If you think
about consciousness long enough, you either become a panpsychist or you
go into administration,” and I haven’t gone into administration. I cannot say
that the transition has been an easy one. But, to repeat, I am still a
representationalist about consciousness. I am also still a physicalist. And it
is consciousness*, not consciousness, I maintain, that is to be found in the
micro-realm. So, the change is not quite as radical or dramatic as it may
first seem.
Chapter 5 turns to the question of where in the brain macro-
consciousness is located and which animal brains so evolved as to support
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2021, SPi

 3

conscious states. It is suggested here that even though conscious states

appeared gradually, on the account I am offering, it may well be true that
in human brains and those of many other species, there is a trigger for
conscious states that typically (though not always) turns such states on or off
and so functions in the same general way as a light switch.
The world is a strange place, if you look into it deeply enough, not as far
removed from the world Alice encountered through the looking glass as lay
people suppose. We know that already from theories in physics which tell us
that microphysical entities are both waves and particles, that there can be
action at a huge distance (one so great that there cannot a causal connection,
as in quantum entanglement), and that time is dependent on a frame of
reference. Perhaps it is only fitting that consciousness should turn out to be
strange too.
I am grateful to audiences at talks in the USA, the UK, and China for
comments and discussion. I would like to thank specifically Derek Ball, Zack
Blaesi, Paul Boghossian, Jane Chen, David Chalmers, Alex Grzankowski,
Keith Hossack, Cheyenne Howell, Jon Litland, David Papineau, Simon
Prosser, Connor Quinn, Mark Sainsbury, Henry Shevlin, and Jonathan
Simon. I am also indebted to two referees for Oxford University Press,
who gave me much food for thought in their detailed reports.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2021, SPi

1
A Paradox of Consciousness

Some philosophers and scientists have likened the appearance of conscious-

ness in living beings to that of a light switch being turned on.
Consciousness, on this view, suddenly appeared and then it became richer
and richer through time rather as a beam of light may become brighter
and broader in its sweep (see, for example, Searle 1992). On such a picture,
either consciousness is present or it isn’t. There are no shades of gray.
But once consciousness has emerged, there are different degrees of
consciousness.
Others have said that the light switch model for consciousness is funda-
mentally misconceived. Consciousness is not an on/off matter. Rather con-
sciousness arose gradually just as life did (see, for example, Lycan 1996;
Dennett 2004). Advocates of this view deny that consciousness is an all-or-
nothing phenomenon, even in our own case.
One way to put the disagreement here is in terms of vagueness. Typically
vagueness is understood in terms of borderline cases. Here are some repre-
sentative quotations:

However borderline cases should be characterized, it is a datum that vague

concepts give rise to them. (Wright 2003, p. 93)
It is better to define a predicate as vague if and only if it is capable of
yielding borderline cases, where the notion of borderline cases is intro-
duced by examples. (Williamson 1994, p. 171)
What does it mean to say that ‘bald’ is vague? Presumably it means that the
predicate admits borderline cases. (Field 1994, p. 410)

Notice that in the above quotations, predicates and concepts are classified as
vague. This is part and parcel of the common view that vagueness is
ultimately a linguistic or conceptual phenomenon. But we can also sensibly
ask whether, for example, the property of being bald or the property of
being red admit of borderline cases and are thereby vague. And the answer
to these questions seems clearly ‘yes’. The boundary between red and orange
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2021, SPi

    5

is fuzzy. Objects having a color in that region are neither definitely red nor
definitely not red, and so are borderline red. Likewise, some people with
small patches of hair on their head do not have sufficiently few hairs to
count as definitely bald but then neither are they definitely not bald. They
are in the gray area.
We can now put the disagreement about consciousness in terms of the
following question. Is consciousness like being bald and being red in being
vague, that is, in allowing borderline cases or is consciousness like being an
even number in being sharp, that is, in not being capable of having border-
line cases? Searle holds that consciousness is sharp, as do McGinn (1982),
and Simon (2017).¹ Dennett and Lycan hold that consciousness is vague as
does Papineau (2002) and as did I previously (Tye 1996).
There is one further point of clarification needed. Consciousness, for
present purposes, is experience. Experiences are mental states such that
there is inherently something it is like subjectively to undergo them.
Examples are feeling pain, feeling an itch, visualizing an elephant, experien-
cing anger, and feeling fearful. In each of these cases, it is incoherent to
suppose that the state exists without there being some phenomenology,
some subjective or felt character. Thus to say that a state is conscious in
the present context just is to say that it is an experience; and to consider
whether consciousness is vague is to consider whether there can be border-
line cases of experience.
In understanding the term ‘consciousness’ in this way, I do not mean to
suggest that the term has not had other uses both in science and philoso-
phy. Sometimes, for example, it is held that a mental state is conscious just
in case it is one of which its subject is introspectively aware. This is
sometimes called ‘higher-order consciousness’. My claim is simply that
among the various mental states we undergo, many of which are intro-
spectively accessible (but arguably not all), are experiences and feelings, and
these states, unlike beliefs, for example, are inherently such that they feel a
certain way. Different experiences differ in how they feel, in their subjective
character, and that is what makes them different experiences. In being this
way, experiences are conscious mental states by their very nature. This
point is sometimes put by saying that experiences are phenomenally
conscious.²

¹ Antony (2006) has a complex view which allows that consciousness may turn out to be
vague even though our current concept of it is sharp. More on this below, pp. 19–20.
² In various places in this book, I adopt this usage myself.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2021, SPi

6    

The paradox I wish to discuss is a paradox about phenomenal conscious-

ness. It can now be stated as follows:

1) Consciousness is either sharp or vague.

2) If consciousness is sharp, then it isn’t a (broadly) physical phenomenon.
3) Consciousness is a (broadly) physical phenomenon.
4) Consciousness is vague (from 1, 2, 3).
5) If consciousness is vague, then there are possible borderline cases of
consciousness.
6) There are no possible borderline cases of consciousness.
7) Consciousness is not vague (from 4, 5, 6).
8) Consciousness is both vague and not vague (from 4, 7).

A contradiction!

1.1 The Paradox Explained: Part A

Premise (1) of the paradox is an instance of the logical law of the excluded
middle. Either consciousness is sharp or it is not sharp, that is, it is vague.
Premise (2) is sometimes taken to be an obvious, nonlogical truth. Colin
McGinn, for example, says:

Whatever the explanation [of the all-or-nothing character of conscious-

ness] is—whether indeed the all-or-nothing character of consciousness can
be explained—this seems to be a feature that any account of consciousness
must respect. And there are theories of the mind, such as materialism and
behaviorism, that will find this feature problematic, since the concepts in
terms of which they choose to explain mental phenomena do not exhibit
this all-or nothing character. (1982, p. 14)

This seems to me too fast; for why should we accept that all the concepts
available to the physicalist for giving an account of mental phenomena are
vague? (2) is surely better based on a consideration of the various alter-
natives open to the physicalist about the nature of consciousness.
Consider first the type identity theory and the hypothesis put forward by
Crick and Koch that consciousness is one and the same as neuronal oscil-
lation of 40MHz. It is evident that Crick and Koch did not intend this
hypothesis to rule out every neuronal oscillation that is not exactly 40MHz.
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  :   7

What about a neuronal oscillation of 40.1 MHz? Or 40.01MHz? Or

40.000001 MHz? Their proposal is that consciousness is one and the same
as neuronal oscillation of approximately 40MHz or neuronal oscillation
sufficiently close to 40MHz. But these formulations of the hypothesis bring
out its inherent vagueness, and not just from the use of the terms ‘approx-
imately’ and ‘sufficiently’; for the term ‘neuron’ is vague too.
Neurons are complex physical entities with diverse components. Each
neuron has a cell body, dendrites, and an axon. Electrical impulses come in
along the dendrites and go out along the axon. Imagine removing atoms one
by one from a given neuron. Eventually, as one does so, there will be no
neuron left. But along the way, there will surely be a range of borderline
cases—entities that are neither definitely neurons nor definitely not neurons.
So, the property of being a neuronal oscillation is vague. It admits of
borderline cases. In general, neurophysiological properties are highly com-
plex. The idea that the relevant neural properties for consciousness are sharp
is extremely implausible.
What about representational or functional role or behavioral properties?
The proposal that there cannot be borderline cases here is again very
implausible. Borderline cases of representational properties are easy to
specify. Take the property of representing meat. Historically, the word
‘meat’ meant being edible: through time, it came to mean being flesh. It is
very hard to accept that the transition was sudden. More plausibly, there was
a gradual drift and thus a period of time at which the word neither definitely
meant one nor definitely meant the other. This was not because being edible
and being flesh are vague (though they are). Rather it is because the property
of representing itself admits of borderline cases. For a nonconventional
example, consider a neuron in the visual cortex, the firing of which repre-
sents the presence of an edge. Natural representation is usually taken to be a
matter of tracking under normal conditions. Since the concept of normality
is vague if it is cashed out statistically (what typically happens) and also
vague if it is understood teleologically (what is supposed to happen if the
relevant system is operating properly), natural representation is vague too.
Turning to functional role properties, there are physical inputs and out-
puts and these will admit of borderline cases whether they are at the level of
activity on sensory and motor neurons or at the level of environmental
inputs and behavioral outputs. Furthermore, functional role properties are
properties that involve normal conditions, so the points just made with
respect to natural representation carry over. Similar points apply to any
direct appeal to behavioral properties.
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8    

So far, then, it seems that if consciousness is taken to be a broadly physical

phenomenon, it is vague, as premise (2) asserts. But perhaps there are
further plausible physical candidates for identification with consciousness
that aren’t vague, candidates not to be found in neurophysiology or func-
tional roles or behavior or representation. Might such candidates be found
within microphysics? Once again, this is implausible. We are conscious;
rocks and plants are not. But if we are physical beings, then we and rocks
and plants are built of the same basic stuff. So, why are we conscious and
rocks and plants not?
The obvious answer is that we have brains. Consciousness requires a
brain. So, the relevant physical properties, if any there be, for identification
with consciousness should be of a sort found in neurophysiology or in
functioning or representation at a level of complexity that requires a brain.
And such complex properties I have argued are not sharp.
Perhaps it will now be suggested that we should look to the chemistry of
brain processes for the relevant physical properties. Take the feeling of
anxiety, for example. That is associated with a decrease in serotonin and
dopamine levels in the brain. Again, however, inevitably vagueness will arise.
How large a decrease in serotonin and dopamine? To put a numerical value
on the decrease is to invite the response that a very tiny amount more or less
would surely not make a difference. To say that the decrease must be
sufficiently large is to introduce vagueness right away. It is also worth noting
that the appeal to decreased serotonin and dopamine in the brain brings
vagueness with its use of the qualifier “in the brain”; for the brain lacks sharp
boundaries and so there are borderline cases of changes in the brain. It does
not help to drop the qualifier “in the brain,” I might add, since serotonin is
produced widely throughout the body, but it is only the serotonin that is
produced in the brain that matters directly to feelings. There is no reason to
think that these points are not applicable to consciousness generally.
Suppose it is now proposed that integrated information holds the answer.
What it is for a physical system to be conscious is for it to have a large amount
of integrated information (Phi) in it (Tononi et al. 2016). This view, which can
be taken to be offering a high-level physical account of consciousness, has
some extremely counter-intuitive consequences. For example, as noted by
Scott Aaronson (2014), it predicts that if a simple 2-D grid has ten times the
amount of integrated information as my brain, the grid is ten times more
conscious! What exactly is meant by one system being more conscious than
another has also not been made fully clear by advocates of the theory, but for
present purposes, it suffices to note that what it is for an amount of integrated
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2021, SPi

  :   9

information to be large is patently vague and thus the view is of no help to

those who want to hold that consciousness is sharp and broadly physical.
A response to this difficulty is to say that some degree of consciousness
goes along with any amount greater than zero of integrated information. So,
consciousness is sharp, after all. This requires us to agree that thermostats
are conscious as are speedometers, since they contain some integrated
information, and that seems a line to be avoided, if at all possible! But
even if you disagree here, as noted above, there remains the question as to
what it is for one system to have a greater amount of consciousness than
another. And since advocates of integrated information theory accept that
certain 2-D grids are more conscious than human brains, it cannot have to
do with the number of experiences or the intensity of the experiences; for
surely no one wants to hold that the relevant grids have more experiences or
more intense experiences than our brains (Pautz 2019). What is meant by
saying that they are more conscious then?
An alternative strategy is to accept, for the reasons given, that conscious-
ness is not to be reduced to properties found in the physical sciences or to
functional properties having inputs and outputs built up from such physical
properties or informational properties but to insist that consciousness is
broadly physical nonetheless, since it is metaphysically grounded in lower-
level physical properties. This needs a little explanation. Following Fine
(2012), to say that a property P is metaphysically grounded in a property
Q is to say (a) that it is metaphysically necessary that whenever Q is
instantiated, P is too, and (b) that the nature of P explains why P is
metaphysically necessitated by Q. As an illustration, consider the disjunctive
property of being red or square. That is metaphysically grounded in the
property of being red. It is so since it is metaphysically necessary that
whenever the property of being red is instantiated the property of being
red or square is instantiated and the nature of the latter property explains
why this relationship of necessitation obtains.
The point to be made now is that if consciousness is held to be grounded
in lower-level physical properties then there are two possibilities. The first is
that the relevant lower-level properties are vague in which case yet again
consciousness will be vague; for how could a sharp property have a nature
that explains its being metaphysically necessitated by a vague property?
Sharp properties are sharp by their nature. They are necessarily sharp. So,
the nature of a sharp property P has no room for vagueness within it and
thus that nature cannot explain the presence of P in every possible world in
which the preferred vague property is present.
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Perhaps it will be replied that this is too fast. However puzzling it may
initially seem, we can actually give examples of sharp properties that are
metaphysically grounded in vague ones. Consider the property being col-
ored. That is metaphysically grounded in the property of being red. But
being red is vague whilst being colored is sharp.
It is not clear that the property of being colored really is sharp. But let us
put that to one side. This case of metaphysical grounding is unproblematic
because the property of being colored is just the second-order property of
having a color and it is a priori that red is a color. So, it is a priori and
necessary that anything that is red is colored. But nothing like this obtains in
the consciousness case; for suppose that consciousness is metaphysically
grounded in vague physical property P. Then, on the model of being colored
and being red, there will have to be some second-order physical property of
having Q such that consciousness is one and the same as having Q, where
having Q is sharp, and P has the property Q and further it is a priori that
P has Q. But there is no suitable sharp candidate for the (broadly) physical
property of having Q. Furthermore, it is a crucial feature of the physicalist
metaphysical grounding proposal for consciousness that consciousness not
be reducible to some broadly physical property. And this is being denied
with the claim that consciousness is one and the same as the second-order
physical property of having Q.
The conclusion to which we are driven is that consciousness cannot be a
sharp property that is metaphysically grounded on vague lower-level phys-
ical or functional properties. This brings us to the second possibility with
respect to the metaphysical grounding of consciousness, namely that the
relevant lower-level properties are complex configurations of sharp micro-
physical properties³, in which case there will be a really huge number of
grounding laws linking consciousness to the microphysical realm. But even
if it is supposed that complex configurations of sharp microphysical proper-
ties metaphysically necessitate consciousness, no account has been offered
(or even seems possible) of how the nature of consciousness explains why it
is so necessitated. Consider one such case. Call the relevant configuration
‘C’. Now consider a minimally different configuration, C* that doesn’t
metaphysically necessitate consciousness. Microphysically, C and C* are
almost the same. Yet C necessitates consciousness and C* doesn’t. If

³ On the issue of sharpness in the microphysical realm, see note 4 below.

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consciousness itself does not have a physical/functional nature, it is a total

mystery as to why C does the job but C* doesn’t.
Of course, it could now be held that the grounding is brute. But leaving aside
the issue of whether the relation is appropriately called “grounding”, the
suggestion that consciousness is brutely grounded in the physical is very
unsatisfying. Indeed, it puts the physicalist about consciousness in the uncom-
fortable position of replacing the dualist’s brute psycho-physical laws of nature
(about which more later) with a host of special, inexplicable, metaphysically
necessary pseudo-laws. That surely is to be avoided, if possible.
There is one final way in which premise (2) might be put under pressure.
Perhaps consciousness is a physical property that is not to be found in the
physical sciences nor is metaphysically grounded in any such property. If this
is the case, the possibility opens up that consciousness is a sharp, physical
property after all. On the face of it, the suggestion that consciousness might
be physical and yet not lie within the physical sciences nor be grounded
(only) upon properties referred to therein is incoherent. But there is a view—
Russellian Monism—under which it makes good sense. Since Russellian
Monism is a complex view which deserves extended discussion, I put it
aside for now. I shall return to it in Chapter 2. For the present, I simply
note that there is good reason to deny that Russellian Monism, in either of its
two standard forms, ultimately can be used to overturn premise (2).
I turn next to premise (3). Consider the origin of the universe and the
emergence of more and more complex properties. Take water, for example.
Water emerged once hydrogen and oxygen atoms combined in a certain
way. Further, there is an explanation as to why they combined in the way
they do to form water. Oxygen needs two more electrons to become stable. If
oxygen atoms were to go to two hydrogen atoms and take away two
electrons from them (one from each), the result would be an O₂ oxide ion
and two H+ ions. These ions are not fully stable. So, instead oxygen atoms
share electrons with hydrogen atoms by forming two O-H bonds. The result
is H₂O, which is fully stable.
What about properties like being a mountain or being a river? Again,
these properties seem reducible to fundamental physical and topic neutral
properties arranged in the right ways. So, there is no special or inexplicable
emergence in these cases.⁴ The case of consciousness is radically different if

⁴ It might be supposed that there is a puzzle even here, if it is accepted that these macro-
properties are themselves vague. But the puzzle arises only on the assumption that reality at the
level of microphysics is sharp. This assumption is highly contentious, however. The simplest
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consciousness is a sharp, nonphysical property that emerged out of certain

brain structures. Here there is no reducibility and relatedly no explanation as
to why it emerged as it did. So, uniformity in nature is lost. Phenomena
gradually get more and more complex and then suddenly out of the blue
something radically different just occurs. Why? There is no explanation. It is
just a brute fact that once certain vague physical structures are in place,
something sharp and nonphysical emerges. But that is very difficult to accept
or even comprehend. The worry here is related to the one J.J.C. Smart was
expressing in the following passage which gives his reaction to the dualist
view that there are fundamental phenomenal-physical laws:

I cannot believe that ultimate laws of nature could relate simple constitu-
ents to configurations consisting of perhaps billions of neurons (and
goodness knows how many billion billions of ultimate particles) all put
together for all the world as though their main purpose in life was to be a
negative feedback mechanism of a complicated sort. Such ultimate laws
would be like nothing so far known in science. They have a queer “smell” to
them. I am just unable to believe in the nomological danglers themselves,
or in the laws whereby they would dangle. (1959, p. 143)

The term “nomological dangler” that Smart uses in this passage is due to
Feigl (in an essay not itself published until later, as a short book, in 1967).
My concern about consciousness is similar to that of Smart’s. The idea that
consciousness just suddenly emerges without any explanation from certain
neural configurations, themselves wholly without consciousness, is puzzling
indeed. One wants to ask: why did this nonphysical phenomenon just
suddenly appear out of the blue, given these physical states? Why wouldn’t
other prior physical states have done just as well? But if the laws connecting
consciousness to certain physical states are fundamental, then these seem-
ingly sensible questions are illegitimate. And that makes the view that
consciousness is a nonphysical phenomenon “frankly unbelievable”.
There is also a further dimension to the worry. It is not just that con-
sciousness is nonphysical and tied by a brute law to the physical realm that is
difficult to accept. It is also that consciousness is sharp whereas the relevant

interpretation of quantum mechanics has it that micro-reality is vague or fuzzy, that properties
of micro-entities lacking theoretical values in quantum mechanics are vague properties.
Examples would include energy, spin, polarization, and spatio-temporal location. For more
here, see Chibeni 2006.
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underlying physical states are vague. Why should vague states generate a
sharp one?⁵ If anything cries out for an explanation, this does. But none is
forthcoming—or even possible—if consciousness is nonphysical and so
linked only by a brute law to the physical domain.
So, premise (3) seems very plausible. And once premise (3) is accepted
along with (2), the first intermediate conclusion of the paradox is estab-
lished: consciousness is not sharp.

1.2 The Paradox Explained: Part B

However, if consciousness is not sharp, it is vague and, in being vague, it

permits borderline cases. Are there any? Here is a possible case. Suppose
I have only just woken up, and I am still groggy, I am not yet fully conscious.
Isn’t this a borderline case of consciousness?
It is certainly a fact that I am more conscious of the world around me
when I am fully awake than when I first groggily open my eyes. What
I experience is initially indefinite and impoverished. As I become fully
awake, what I experience gets richer and richer. But this doesn’t show that
experience or consciousness itself has borderline cases. Here is how
Papineau puts the point:

If the line between conscious and non-conscious states is not sharp,

shouldn’t we expect to find borderline cases in our own experience? Yet
when we look into ourselves we seem to find a clear line. Pains, tickles,
visual experiences and so on are conscious, while the processes which allow
us to attach names to faces, or to resolve random dot stereograms are not.
True, there are ‘half-conscious’ experiences, such as the first moments of
waking . . . . But, on reflection, even these special experiences seem to
qualify unequivocally as conscious, in the sense that they are like some-
thing, rather than nothing. (1993, p. 125)

Try to think of other clearcut, objectively borderline cases of consciousness,

that is, cases such that it is objectively indeterminate whether consciousness
is present. Obviously, with some simpler creatures, we may not know
whether they are conscious. But that is not germane to the issue. You can

⁵ For more here, see pp. 9–10 earlier.

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certainly think of a case of consciousness which is indeterminate as to

whether it is a case of pain, say. Think of sensations at the dentist as your
teeth are being drilled. Some of these sensations seem impossible to classify
as to their species. There is a feeling of pressure perhaps. Is it pain? Not
clearly so, but not clearly not. Here it is indeterminate as to what you are
feeling, but not indeterminate as to whether you are feeling.
Alternatively, imagine that you are in a hospital bed feeling pain and that
you can adjust a dial that controls the delivery of morphine to your body. As
you do so, your pain becomes less intense, gradually transforming itself into
a feeling of pleasure. In the middle of this process, there may well be
experiences that are not easy to classify. Again, there is indeterminacy at
such times as to what you are feeling, but there is no indeterminacy as to
whether feeling continues to be present.
Consider the case of auditory sensations. Suppose you are participating in
an experiment, listening to random high-pitched sounds through head-
phones. You are asked to press a button for each sound you hear. In some
cases, you are unsure whether you are hearing any sound at all. Isn’t this a
borderline case of consciousness?
We can agree that there is epistemic indeterminacy here: you do not know
whether you are hearing any sound. Still, this isn’t enough for there to be a
borderline case of consciousness. After all, you are listening attentively for a
sound; are you hearing a sound or not? Well, even if you aren’t hearing a
sound, you are still hearing something, namely silence. That is, you are
hearing the absence of a sound; it is not that you are failing to hear at all!
There is something it is like for you subjectively to hear silence. So, either
way, you are hearing and thus experiencing something. So, this doesn’t show
that there can be borderline cases of experience.
Suppose someone held that being tall is precise, admitting of no border-
line cases. We can quickly show this person that she is wrong by presenting
her with examples of people who aren’t definitely tall but who also aren’t
definitely not tall. We can do the same with experiencing red or feeling pain
or hearing a loud noise or feeling happy. But can we do it with being an
experience (or being conscious)?
I don’t think we can. We can certainly agree that as the intensity of an
experience diminishes, it becomes less and less definite and rich in its
character, but either an experience is still there or it isn’t. Picturing what it
is like from the subject’s point of view, we picture the experience gradually
changing in its phenomenology until it is so ‘washed out’ and minimal that it
has hardly any distinguishing features subjectively. But the subject is still
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having an experience. The gradual transition is in the number and intensity

of the subjective features of the experience, not in the state’s being an
experience (being phenomenally conscious).
The model that tempts us here is that of a light bulb with a dimmer
switch. As one falls asleep, the light becomes dimmer and dimmer and then
suddenly all light is gone. By contrast, as one comes out of anaesthesia, a
very faint light suddenly dawns and then it becomes bright. But of course if
this is the case, then consciousness is sharp.
Life is not like this. The reason is straightforward: the concept living is a
functional/behavioral, cluster concept. Living things use energy, they grow,
they reproduce, they respond to their environment, they adapt, and they
self-regulate. What it is for an entity to be living is for it to have enough of
these functional and behavioral features. Borderline cases arise with respect
to whether a given entity genuinely does have enough of the relevant
features (perhaps it does by my standards but not by yours) and also with
respect to the possession of individual features, as, for example, with bacteria
and certain kinds of organic molecules. The result is that the transition in
the case of life from clearly inanimate to clearly animate beings is gradual
and continuous.
In the case of consciousness, there is no functional or behavioral defini-
tion. This is why it is perfectly coherent to imagine a creature that is not
conscious (a zombie) even though it is functionally and behaviorally just like
a creature that is.⁶ As noted earlier, the concept of a conscious state is just the
concept of an experience, that is, a state such that there is something it is like
to undergo it. So, there is nothing in the concept of consciousness that
supports the view that there are intermediate stages, as is true for life.
Perhaps it will now be replied that the fact that we cannot give any clear
examples of borderline cases of consciousness and the further fact that the
concept consciousness is not like the concept life does not demonstrate that
the concept consciousness is sharp. Imagine, for example, that we lived in a
world with only red objects and only blue objects. In such a world, we might
not be able to conceive of a borderline case of red and so we might take it for
granted that red is a sharp property (and the concept red a sharp concept)
and likewise for blue. But we would be wrong. It is metaphysically possible
for there to be borderline case of red even if we are not able to conceive of a
borderline red thing.

⁶ This over-simplifies minimally. For more here, see Chapter 2, pp. 7–8.
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This seems to me correct as far as it goes. But the issue is what it is

reasonable to believe on the basis of evidence rather than what is provable.
Conceivability is defeasible evidence for metaphysical possibility and incon-
ceivability is defeasible evidence for metaphysical impossibility. In the latter
case, the question is whether what we know by a priori rational reflection
upon the relevant concept, given that we possess the concept and a good
understanding of it,⁷ is good grounds for ruling out the truth of the prop-
osition that it is metaphysically possible that there is an object satisfying the
concept. In the case of the concept tall, we can easily conceive of a borderline
case whether or not we have encountered any borderline tall men. That is
evidence for the view that the concept is vague. In the case of the concept red
and green all over we cannot conceive of an object that satisfies it. Since we
possess the constituent concepts here and we have a good grasp of them, that
is evidence that it is metaphysically impossible that there is such an object.
The concept consciousness is such that we cannot conceive of a borderline
case and that is prima facie evidence that it is sharp. And what goes for the
concept consciousness goes for the property of being conscious too.
One reaction to these observations is to say that it is indeed true that our
current concept of consciousness is sharp but that doesn’t mean that it will
remain sharp in the future. This is a possibility suggested by Michael Antony
in his 2006.⁸ He says:

One can, however, distinguish between our current concept conscious state
and some future version of the concept, claiming that while our current
concept is indeed sharp, a future development of it will be vague. This
occurred with the concept life. At earlier stages in its history the concept
was sharp: borderline living creatures were inconceivable. However, the
concept developed with the advent of modern biology, and it now appears
to be vague (viruses, for example, are often plausibly suggested as borderline
cases). Similarly, it might be thought that our current, relatively primitive
concept conscious state must undergo developmental change before it can
correctly represent its subject matter, one such change being from sharpness

⁷ Rats cannot conceive of the truth of various true theoretical, scientific propositions but this
is no reason to suppose that these propositions are not really (possibly) true. This is because rats
lack the relevant concepts. Similarly, if I possess a given concept but I misunderstand it (as in the
case of Burge’s individual who possesses the concept fortnight but thinks that a fortnight is ten
days), the fact that I cannot conceive of P’s being the case via my a priori reflection on the
concept is not grounds for holding that it is metaphysically impossible that P is true.
⁸ I should add that Antony does not end up endorsing this suggestion.
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to vagueness. In this way, one can admit that our current concept is sharp
in accordance with our intuitions, but maintain that the concept is also in
a sense vague since a future, more correct version of it will be vague.
(2006, p. 517)

It is not fully clear that the concept life really has changed from sharp to
vague, as Antony supposes in this passage. Vitalists held that life is a vital,
immaterial force animating living things. But this was a view about life itself,
not about the concept life. There is no inconsistency in holding both that
what it is for any organism to be alive is for it to have enough of a certain
cluster of functional and behavioral features and that in actual fact what is
responsible for any organism’s having such a cluster of features is its having
a vital, immaterial force within it. The force might be held to be what realizes
that complex of features.
Still, it must be admitted that vitalists seem to have taken their view to
offer an account of the nature of life rather than just a realization of it. From
the modern perspective, their concept of life is like the concept phlogiston in
being an empty natural kind concept. The cluster of features we now take to
define life is merely contingently associated with life, on the vitalist view.
This is pretty obviously not a plausible model for understanding how our
concept consciousness might develop into a vague concept from its current
sharp form. For one thing, the idea that it could turn out that consciousness,
that is, experience or feeling, never existed, seems prima facie absurd (unlike
the idea that there never was any vital force). To consciously think such an
idea is to have a conscious experience of thinking and thereby already to
refute it! For another thing, any future vague functionalist or behavioral
definition would not be a definition of the phenomenon we currently call
‘consciousness’; for our current concept has no functionalist or behavioral
definition. Since trivially it is a priori necessary that our current concept of
consciousness is without any such definition, our current concept cannot
develop into a future vague functionalist or behavioral concept. At best, it
could be replaced by such a concept (as was the case with the vitalist’s
concept of life on the second understanding of it above and our current
concept of life). But were such a replacement to occur, it would be a concept
for something other than consciousness and therefore the possibility of such
a replacement offers no support to the view that consciousness itself might
turn out to be vague.
There is a further point worth making here about the above suggestion,
namely that it frames the issue in the wrong way. The question of central
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interest is the question as to whether consciousness itself admits of possible

borderline cases. This is not directly a question about concepts at all. So,
whether our current concept of consciousness might change through time is
really not to the point. What we want to know is whether consciousness is
the sort of thing that can have borderline cases. And the conclusion to which
we are driven by the reflections of this section is that it is not. Consciousness
is not vague. So, consciousness, it seems, is both vague and not vague. What
to do? Houston, we have a problem!
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2
Russellian Monism to the Rescue?

Russellian Monism (RM) gets its name from a view Bertrand Russell held in
1927 and that he himself called ‘neutral monism’. Russell wrote in The
Analysis of Matter (p. 264):

. . . we know nothing of the intrinsic quality of the physical world, . . . we

know the laws of the physical world, in so far as these are mathematical,
pretty well, but we know nothing else about it.

The key preliminary idea is that physical science itself tells us only about
the relational/structural properties of matter, including spatiotemporal
properties and causal/behavioral dispositions (second-order properties).
Physical science leaves open the nature of the categorical bases for these
properties—the nature, that is, of the intrinsic properties that occupy the
causal/dispositional roles associated with the basic theoretical terms of
microphysics.
Here is an illustration. Suppose electrons are basic. Electrons are particles
having mass and negative charge. But what are mass and charge? The
Russellian monist takes it that these properties are to be cashed out in
terms of how electrons behave and interact with other elements of reality.
Things having mass attract other things with mass and resist acceleration.
What it is for an electron to have mass is for it to have an intrinsic property
that enables it to behave as just specified (to play the mass role). Electrons
have negative charge. Negative charged things attract positively charged
things and repel other negatively charged things. What it is for an electron
to have negative charge is for it to have an intrinsic property that enables it
to behave in these ways (to play the negative charge role). Of course, these
specifications are very rough and ready. The full story about these roles is
told by physics via fundamental physical laws. Generalizing, the properties
that physics attributes to elementary particles are structural (that is, pertain-
ing to their arrangement and combinations), causal (nomic), and spatio-
temporal. Physics thus has nothing to say about the intrinsic or categorical
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properties of electrons and likewise for other fundamental particles; or so

the Russellian monist holds.
The intrinsic natures of the micro-parts of reality are made up of (pre-
sumably a small number of) intrinsic properties called “quiddities”. This
brings us to a second part of the Russellian Monist view. The fact that we are
conscious beings, undergoing a variety of macro-conscious states, is to be
understood in terms of there being, among the quiddities, some that we may
call “phenomenal quiddities”.¹ Consciousness, for the Russellian monist, is
quiddity-involving. This makes consciousness very different from the rest of
(or at any rate a very high percentage of) properties found in the manifest
world. Those properties generally are quiddity-neutral. Being a river, being a
tree, being a mountain, being made of wood are structural properties in the
sense that what matters to their instantiation is how micro-particles are
combined into larger structures. Whether the relevant micro-particles (or
other fundamental physical particulars) have the same or different quidd-
ities matters not at all. So long as the basic parts of a tree are duplicated
structurally at the level of microphysics, chemistry, and the other physical
sciences, another tree will result that is a copy of the first one. Whether the
same quiddities are present in both cases makes no difference. After all,
quiddities are completely undetectable by human beings whatever instru-
ments they use.
Consciousness is different. Whether I feel a pain or an itch depends upon
which quiddities are instantiated in me at a micro-level. Only some quidd-
ities ground consciousness and the quiddities relevant to pain are different
from those relevant to feeling an itch. So, macro-conscious states are not
states that can be realized by different quiddities. There is one cluster of
quiddities for pain, another for feeling an itch, and so on. The former
quiddities cannot realize the itch feeling and the latter quiddities cannot
realize pain (see the simple model in the box below).
Russellian monists now have two options: either they hold that the
quiddities crucial to consciousness (the ones I earlier called “phenomenal
quiddities”) are themselves genuinely experiential properties or they hold
more neutrally that there are specific quiddities that ground all macro-
phenomenal facts. Russellian monists sometimes call the latter quiddities
“proto-phenomenal properties”.

¹ Amy Kind (forthcoming) notes that if it is allowed that there are multiple kinds of quiddity,
then the view isn’t really a monistic view at all. Better to call it “Russellian pluralism”. I agree
with Kind that the usage of the term ‘monism’ isn’t happy.
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Scenario 1

P1 has quiddities, Q and S

P2 has quiddities, Q and W
P1 bears arrangement relation R to P2
P1 and P2 are fundamental micro-particulars

Scenario 2
P1 has quiddities, Q and W
P2 has quiddities, Q and S
P1 bears arrangement relation R to P2
P1 and P2 are fundamental micro-particulars

According to the Russellian monist, scenario 2 contains a different

physical complex from scenario 1, but there is no structural difference
between the two. So long as the difference is only at the level of quiddities,
two scenarios cannot differ with respect to the presence of a tree (or a
rock or a river). If one contains a tree (or a rock or a river), so does the
other. But if two scenarios that are structurally identical differ at the level
of quiddities, one can contain a pain and the other an itch (or no feeling
at all). Difference in the relevant quiddities is what makes a crucial
difference with respect to the tokening of macro-phenomenal properties.

The former of these two views is sometimes also called “panpsychism”,

though panpsychists often hold more strongly that everything in the uni-
verse, no matter how large or how small, is conscious, and that is no part of
the Russellian monist position (as I am understanding it). But why should
we believe that among the quiddities are some that are phenomenal in
character? Why hold that there are very primitive forms of consciousness
found even at the level of microphysical reality?
One possible answer is this: humans undergo complex conscious states,
ranging from emotions and moods to sensory experiences and bodily feel-
ings. We all agree that animals less sophisticated than us undergo conscious
states, even though those states are not as wide ranging as ours. Think about
pigs or dogs or chickens. And there is good reason to think that conscious-
ness extends even into the realm of insects (Tye 2016). One possibility is that
as organisms get simpler and simpler, there is a sharp cut-off point, and
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experience, whatever its stripe, ceases. But another possibility is that it

continues in simpler and simpler forms, that the light of consciousness
fades but never fully goes out, being found even in inorganic matter, indeed
being found at the level of the most basic entities in matter (for example,
quarks and electrons).
The trouble with this answer is that it allows consciousness to be present
in structures, large and small, whether or not a brain is present. It is now
hard to see how the Russellian monist can avoid the extreme panpsychist
view that absolutely everything is conscious, including rocks and trees and
thermometers.
A better answer, it seems to me, is for the Russellian monist to say that the
usual physicalist accounts of consciousness all fail (as is shown by a myriad
of familiar arguments) and they do so because consciousness itself is irre-
ducible or at least has irreducible components. Our consciousness, and that
of other animals as different as honeybees and pigs, arise from the right
combinations of these irreducible components (the phenomenal quiddities)
and those combinations are not found in all complex systems, including
rocks and trees and thermometers.
As noted above, Russellian monists who hold that the quiddities pos-
sessed by the most basic microphysical entities are only proto-phenomenal
take a less extreme stance, holding only that some of the quiddities, com-
bined in the right ways, generate consciousness. They thus can easily allow
that many entities, small and large, including quarks, electrons, and rocks,
all lack consciousness.
Russellian Monism (RM), in its standard presentation, has a third aspect to
it: the view is a form of a priori physicalism. Thus, Russellian monists accept
that a super-intelligent being could deduce a priori all the macro-conscious
facts, given knowledge of all the phenomenally relevant quiddities and how
they are combined (their pattern of instantiation) in creatures’ brains.
We might argue about whether RM is really a physicalist view. One thing
at least is clear: RM differs from the usual forms of physicalism in its reliance
on quiddities and its assertion that specific quiddities are crucial to macro-
conscious states. Still, the quiddities postulated in RM are found in things
that are unconscious as well as in things that are conscious—in trees and
rocks, for example. They occur across all of nature at the most fundamental
level. Further, their possessors obey fundamental physical laws. So, why not
count RM as a physicalist view?
Of course, if the Russellian monist holds that some quiddities are genu-
inely phenomenal properties, then some physical things will have subjective
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properties as well as objective ones. And this might lead some to deny that
RM is really a form of physicalism. Still, this seems to me a verbal dispute
about how to use the term ‘physicalism’ and for present purposes I am
happy to allow that admitting phenomenal micro-quiddities does not pre-
clude classifying the view as physical.
Russellian monists can say that they agree with dualists about the con-
ceivability of zombies. Zombies are conceivable, they can claim, since it is
conceivable that there are beings the same as us except for the phenomenally
relevant quiddities. These beings are structurally, functionally, and behav-
iorally just like us but they lack any conscious states.
Alternatively, Russellian monists can say that zombies are not fully
conceivable since beings that are full physical duplicates of us will have
to be physical duplicates not just at the level of structural or dynamic
properties but also intrinsically. This is the line Chalmers takes in his
2002, p. 266:

Some . . . monists may hold that a complete physical description must be

expanded to include an intrinsic description, and may consequently deny
that zombies are conceivable. (We think we are conceiving of a physically
identical system only because we overlook intrinsic properties.)

On this view, what are really conceivable are structural zombies. Torin Alter
and Dirk Pereboom (2019) concur. They comment:

Regarding the conceivability argument, Russellian physicalists can argue as

follows. On reflection, a zombie world is not ideally conceivable. If such a
world initially appears conceivable, this is because we mistake a zombie
world for a structural zombie world: a consciousness-free world that
(minimally) duplicates all of the actual world’s structural features. If
there is an ideally conceivable world in the vicinity, then that world is a
structural zombie world. There is no good reason to accept the ideal
conceivability of a full-fledged zombie world, which would lack conscious-
ness despite duplicating not only the actual world’s structural features but
its quiddistic features as well.

Whichever line on zombies is preferred, Russellian monists can agree with

dualists that there is a strong link between conceivability and metaphysical
possibility that is not defeated here. So, RM can be held to combine virtues of
both physicalism and dualism. It allows for the metaphysical possibility of
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24      ?

structural zombies while still embracing a physicalist worldview. It also

avoids the brute phenomenal-physical laws posited by the dualist. These
considerations make up what Chalmers calls “the Hegelian synthesis argu-
ment for Russellian Monism”.

2.1 Versions of Russellian Monism

There are two versions of RM, as it is usually presented. The reductive

version is held by, for example, Grover Maxwell (1978), Dan Stoljar (2001
and 2006), David Chalmers (1995 and 1997 (less strongly in his 2012)), and
Barbara Montero (2010). This version of RM is an identity thesis. As a way
of introducing the view, let us say that a phenomenal state type is a type of
state with a felt character to it. Examples would be the feeling of intense
pain, the visual experience of red, the feeling of anger, the feeling of an
itch. These states are all conscious states: each one has a distinctive ‘feel’ to it.
For each state, there is something it is like to be in it. The most general
phenomenal state type is simply that of being an experience. Consciousness
itself, as it is of interest in this book and as explained earlier in the elaboration
of the paradox in Chapter 1, just is experience.
Reductive RM is not the thesis that macro-phenomenal types are each
identical with types of the following sort: having micro-parts with so-and-so
phenomenal quiddities, Q₁, Q₂, . . Qn. This does not explain why humans are
conscious and pieces of wood are not; for the micro-parts of humans are the
same as the micro-parts of pieces of wood, if physicalism is true. So, the
micro-quiddities of our micro-parts are also to be found in the micro-parts
of pieces of wood.
The crucial difference is that we have brains and pieces of wood do not.
So, the relevant identities must be of the following form:

Macro-phenomenal state type T (for example, the feeling of pain) is identical

with having micro-parts with phenomenal quiddities, Q₁, Q₂, . . Qn, arranged
to form a certain brain state type N (or functional type of a sort supported by
brains).

Primitivist RM takes the following form:

Macro-phenomenal state type T (for example, the feeling of pain) is meta-

physically grounded in having micro-parts with proto-phenomenal
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quiddities, Q₁, Q₂, . . Qn, arranged to form a certain brain state type N (or
functional type of a sort supported by brains).

Metaphysical grounding does not require identity. The fact that P or Q is

true is metaphysically grounded in the fact that P is true or the fact that Q is
true, but there is here no identity. As noted in Chapter 1, metaphysical
grounding requires metaphysical necessitation and explanation. The fact
that P is true or the fact that Q is true metaphysically necessitates the fact
that P or Q is true. Further, the nature of the disjunctive fact that P or
Q explains why it is metaphysically necessitated by the fact that P or the fact
that Q.
The question we must now ask is whether RM, in either of the above
forms, really can help with our paradox of consciousness. To answer this
question, let us look first at the reductive version of RM.

2.2 Objections to Reductive Russellian Monism

A consequence of reductive RM is that the physical types with which macro-

phenomenal states are to be identified are vague, since neurophysiological
types are vague, and likewise for the relevant functional types. So, conscious-
ness itself (being the most general macro-phenomenal type: experience) now
turns out to be vague and RM is of no assistance with the paradox.
Here is a second problem. RM, as noted earlier, is motivated in part by
considerations of conceivability. Recall Chalmer’s Hegelian Synthesis
Argument for the view. Structural zombies are conceivable, and therefore
metaphysically possible; but this is compatible with physicalism because a
structural zombie duplicate of me is not a duplicate of me at the level of
quiddities. In my structural zombie duplicate, my phenomenal quiddities
are replaced by non-phenomenal ones that play the same structural roles.
So, if reductive RM is correct, structural zombies are indeed metaphysically
possible just as we pre-theoretically suppose, given their conceivability.
The problem this creates has to do with other conceivable scenarios. It
seems conceivable that a stone momentarily feels pain. It also seems con-
ceivable that something that has no parts does, something mereologically
simple. Let us suppose that souls are mereologically simple, as Descartes
held. Then, on the face of it, it is conceivable that souls feel pain. So, given the
accepted link between conceivability and metaphysical possibility, it is met-
aphysically possible that souls feel pain. But pain, according to reductive RM,
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26      ?

is one and the same as having so-and-so phenomenally relevant quiddities

arranged to form brain state B (or functional state F of a sort supported by
brains). So, it is metaphysically necessary that pain is found only where brain
state B (or functional state F) is found. With a soul, however, there is no brain
state B. Indeed there are no parts at all and so it is also hard to see how
functional state F could be supported.² So, the very considerations that
motivate reductive RM end up presenting a problem for the view.
There is a further difficulty for reductive RM, related to the difficulty
broached above for the case of the putative quiddity of consciousness.
Macro-phenomenal states vary dramatically—the feeling of elation, the
experience of an itch, the feeling of anger, the experience of bright red.
The idea that it could be deduced which macro-conscious states are present
at various times in various creatures, using as premises only information
about quiddities (themselves not involving such states) plus facts about how
those quiddities are arranged in the creatures’ brains seems a wild leap of
faith. Why should we believe it? After all, the quiddities generally are very
different from macro-phenomenal states; for it would be absurd to hold that
quarks feel pains and itches and experience colors. So how could the
presence of so-and-so macro-phenomenal states be deduced a priori from
the presence of such-and-such quiddities together with brain state informa-
tion? There is surely a strong temptation to ask: why should these quiddities
give rise to that macro-phenomenal state rather than this one? The explan-
atory gap this question rests on is reminiscent of the one that has been held
to arise for standard physicalist views.
The worry is captured well in the following passage from Chalmers (1995):

On the face of it, our conscious experience does not seem to be any sort of
sum of microphenomenal properties corresponding to the fundamental
physical features in our brain, for example. Our experience seems much
more holistic than that, and much more homogeneous than any simple
sum would be . . . If the roots of phenomenology are exhausted by micro-
phenomenology, then it is hard to see how smooth, structured macroscopic
phenomenology could be derived: we might expect some sort of ‘jagged,’
unstructured phenomenal collection instead. (p. 306)

² Adam Pautz raises essentially this objection in his forthcoming. One might question
whether it really is true to say that the relevant functional state could not be supported by a
soul, given a suitably narrow and counterfactual characterization of that state (as the state (very
crudely) that would be caused in the soul by bodily damage were the soul normally embodied
and that would cause avoidance behavior in such a situation, etc).
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This worry dates back to Wilfrid Sellars and his discussion in the 1960s of the
visual experience of a pink ice-cube. How, wondered Sellars (1963), does
phenomenal pinkness arise? What accounts for its homogeneity in our expe-
rience? It certainly doesn’t seem to be composed of anything more simple.
There is, then, a combination problem for the Russellian monist about
macro-phenomenal states.³ If these states are simple, then there is real
emergence and reductive Russellian Monism is false. On the other hand, if
macro-phenomenal states are generated from combinations of micro-
phenomenal states, then why is it that they seem (in some cases at any
rate) so simple, so utterly lacking in components?
You might reply that there would be no explanatory gap for a super-
intelligent being even if there is for us, as we raise the question. But the
phenomenal quiddities are agreed to be very different from macro-
phenomenal states such as the feeling of pain, so why should we suppose
that the explanatory gap disappears even for such a being? If the explanatory
gap stays open, then it is conceivable that the quiddities are present in
whatever configurations are deemed relevant and the macro-phenomenal
states are arranged differently. And if this is the case, then there is no a priori
deducibility and RM is no longer a version of a priori physicalism.
There is a further dimension to the combination problem for reductive
Russellian Monism. If various experience types are tokened at the micro-
level, then it seems that there should be psychological subjects of experiences
at that level, micro-subjects.⁴ What is the relationship of these micro-
subjects to ordinary people who are the subjects of macro-phenomenology?
Some philosophers say that the tiny subjects combine or merge or fuse to
form the macro-subjects (Seager forthcoming).⁵ But how is this achieved? It
is very difficult to see how a satisfactory answer can be given to this question
on the basis of a priori reflection.
Perhaps it will now be suggested that the aprioricity of reductive RM needs
to be repudiated. This is the line taken by Pat Lewtas (2013, 2017). Lewtas
suggests that there is a ‘mental chemistry’ that “takes micro-experiences as
raw material and refashions them into a single unified micro-experience”. He
claims that this process necessarily decreases the number of subjects and

³ For criticisms of panpsychism in connection with the combination problem, see Goff 2006,
2009; also Coleman 2014.
⁴ I return to this issue in detail in Chapter 4.
⁵ This is denied by Luke Roelofs. Roelofs is a universalist. On his view, everything, no matter how
complex or simple, is conscious, including rocks and Ned Block’s China-Body system. Moreover,
simple subjects do not fuse or merge to form single macroscopic subjects. This highly counter-
intuitive view, which is no part of RM in its standard form, is defended by Roelofs in his 2019.
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28      ?

compares it to what goes on when two streams of consciousness of a split brain

subject merge into one stream at the end of a typical split brain psychological
experiment.
The model of split brain subjects appealed to here is highly controversial.
I have argued elsewhere that claiming that there are two different split brain
subjects undergoing disconnected experiences during the experiment (2003)
is misguided. But even leaving this to one side, the idea that there is a mental
chemistry, the full principles of which are not discoverable by a priori
reflection not only undermines some of the motivation for RM but also
leaves the view with having to say that macroscopic phenomenal properties
are hidden combinations of microscopic phenomenal properties. Not only
are the combinations hidden here but so too are the microscopic phenom-
enal properties. Somehow these all mix so as to present us with the phe-
nomenology with which we are familiar, the phenomenal pinkness as we
view Sellars’ ice-cube, the phenomenal sweetness as we suck on a cube of
sugar, and so on. This leaves the view with very little advantage over the
regular type B identity theory. Let me explain.
Type B identity theory is an a posteriori view. It holds that pain, for
example, is one and the same as so-and-so brain state but that this identity
cannot be discovered by a priori reflection. The mental chemistry version of
reductive RM holds that pain is one and the same as such-and-such quidd-
ities arranged in such-and-such ways (via the principles of ‘mental chemis-
try’) to form so-and-so brain state even though again no amount of a priori
reflection will show this to be true. Likewise for all other macro-conscious
states. What advantage is reductive RM now supposed to have over type
B identity theory? Reductive RM now effectively accepts that pain is one and
the same as a certain brain state. All it adds is that the brain state itself is built
out of certain hidden combinations of hidden quiddities. The latter is suppos-
edly an a posteriori claim but it is unsupported by any scientific investigation.
In this respect, the view is actually worse off than type B identity theory!
The conclusion to which we are driven, it seems to me, is that reductive
RM is a highly problematic view that does not provide any clear rescue at all
with respect to the paradox. Does primitivist RM fare any better?

2.3 Objections to Primitivist Russellian Monism

As noted earlier, primitivist RM rejects the identity claim of reductive

RM and holds instead a grounding thesis for macro-phenomenal types.
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This view might seem to allow a physicalist response to the paradox as

follows. The macro-phenomenal type consciousness is itself sharp and met-
aphysically grounded in a type of the form: having micro-parts with proto-
phenomenal quiddities, Q₁, Q₂, . . Qn, arranged to form a certain brain state
type N (or functional type F).
The trouble is that it is radically unclear how the above complex, vague,
and partly neurological (or functional) type could metaphysically ground
the sharp type consciousness. After all, metaphysical grounding is supposed
to have an explanatory dimension. But on the face of it there is again a huge
explanatory gap here. There is nothing, it seems, in the nature of the sharp
type consciousness that explains why it is metaphysically necessitated by the
micro-quiddities combining to form brain state N (or functional type F for
that matter).
Relatedly, on one standard view of metaphysical grounding (that of Fine),
metaphysical grounding derives from essence. It is of the essence of the
conjunctive fact that P and Q that it be grounded in the fact that P and the
fact that Q. But anyone who holds that consciousness is sharp and distinct
from any underlying physical properties will likely also endorse the thesis of
revelation with respect to consciousness, according to which consciousness
has no hidden essence. This is because once consciousness is held to be
distinct from the quiddities, there doesn’t seem to be anything left which
could constitute the hidden essence of consciousness. Furthermore, if con-
sciousness has a hidden essence then how can the presence of consciousness
be deduced a priori from information about micro-quiddities (not them-
selves involving consciousness) and the physical combinations of their
micro-parts in brains? It seems that primitivist RM eats its own tail, as it
were. We are told that a great virtue of RM is that it takes intuitions about
conceivability seriously, but then it transpires that, on the primitivist version
of the view, conceivability has to go by the wayside.
The upshot is that it is not at all clear how this view has any advantage
over regular type B physicalism; nor does there seem any reason to prefer the
view to dualism even though its advocates often write as if it avoids the
complexities of dualism. In place of the basic, brute, contingent,
phenomenal-physical laws of the dualist connecting conscious states with
the physical, there are now basic, brute, metaphysically necessary laws
connecting the same. These grounding laws are special and quite unlike
any other laws. This is so because they are metaphysically necessary instead
of being nomically necessary, as other laws are, and they go across levels,
bridging physical facts about arrangements of proto-phenomenal quiddities
and phenomenal facts. The disunity introduced here is hard to motivate as is
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the additional complexity unless it can be shown that every other alternative
that avoids such an extreme disunity is simply untenable. That, as I shall
argue in the next two chapters, is not the case.
One strategy the Russellian monist might now adopt is to propose that the
metaphysical grounding of consciousness on quiddities is to be understood
on the model of the grounding of determinable qualities on determinate
ones. Consider, for example, the color red. Something’s being red is meta-
physically grounded on its being a determinate shade of red, red₂₇, say, since
it is metaphysically necessary that things that are red₂₇ are red and it is in the
very nature of the determinate/determinable relationship that something’s
having a determinable quality is metaphysically necessitated by its having a
determinate of that determinable. On this picture of metaphysical ground-
ing, it is not the essence of the grounded property that is crucial to the
grounding (as on the account of grounding adopted thus far, following Fine)
but rather the essence of the determinable/determinate relationship. In the
case of consciousness, then, the thought is that consciousness is a determi-
nable quality having as its determinates properties of the type: having micro-
parts with quiddities, Q₁, Q₂, . . Qn, arranged to form a certain brain state
type N (or functional type F).
On the face of it, this proposal gets things backwards; for consciousness
must be taken to be sharp, it seems, if the paradox is to be avoided, but the
determinate physical properties (either neural or functional) that metaphys-
ically ground consciousness are all vague. In the case of red and red₂₇, it is
the other way around. The color red is vague; red₂₇ is sharp. So, how can the
case of the grounding of determinable qualities by determinate ones be used
to shed light on the grounding of consciousness on quiddities?⁶
A possible reply is to say that in other cases of determinates and deter-
minables, the determinable is sharp but at least some determinates are
vague. Here I have in mind the earlier example of being colored (sharp,
arguably) and being red (vague). Unfortunately, this example is not appli-
cable for the reasons given in Chapter 1.⁷
I conclude that primitivist RM is no more helpful than reductive RM in
dealing with the paradox. Indeed, all things considered, it does even worse!

⁶ This point, independent of Russellian Monism, also creates trouble for those (for example,
Stephen Yablo (1992)) who hold that the relationship of the phenomenal to the physical is to be
modelled on that of the relationship of determinable qualities to determinate ones.
⁷ See here Chapter 1, pp. 10–11.
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   31

2.4 A Final Concern

One more general issue for RM is worth briefly mentioning in conclusion.

As noted earlier, part of the motivation of RM, in its standard form, is to
preserve the link between conceivability and metaphysical possibility and
thus to allow that zombies are metaphysically possible. Consider, then, the
behavior in me that is caused by my being in some given phenomenal state
P. My structural zombie duplicate will behave as I do even though at the
micro-level, the quiddities in him are not phenomenally relevant and thus
P is missing. Given this, what causal difference does the presence of phe-
nomenally relevant quiddities in me make to my behavior? Even if those
phenomenally relevant quiddities are absent, so long as there is duplication
at the level of processes posited by the physical sciences, as is the case for my
structural zombie duplicate, the very same behavior results.
It is well known that neurophysiology casts a shadow over standard forms
of dualism. The additional nonphysical properties posited by the dualist
seem to make no difference to behavior since the same behavior would have
resulted as actually results from some given phenomenal state even if that
state had been missing, so long as the neurophysiological processes remain
constant (as the dualist allows is metaphysically possible). On the face of it,
the same kind of worry arises for RM notwithstanding the fact that it is not a
dualist view.
I shall return to this issue in Chapter 4. Whatever one’s reaction here,⁸ the
overall conclusion I draw from the discussion of the present chapter is that
RM, as it is usually elaborated, is beset by objections to which there are no
clear answers and thus is a dead end as far as the paradox goes. What, then,
is the solution to the paradox? In the next chapter, by way of preparation for
my answer to this question, I turn to the representationalist view of con-
sciousness and a remark made by G.E. Moore about consciousness and
transparency.

⁸ My own reaction to this particular worry is that it can be answered by the Russellian
monist, given the distinctions and framework proposed in the final section of Chapter 4.
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3
Transparency and Representationalism

In this chapter, I want to take another look at the phenomenon of trans-

parency and the thesis of representationalism. As will become clear, there
are several different versions of representationalism. It is important for my
overall position that I clarify which version I still embrace.¹

3.1 The Transparency Thesis

I begin with four quotations, two from G.E. Moore, one from Gilbert
Harman, and one from an earlier essay of mine:

. . . that which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact seems to escape us;
it seems, if I may use a metaphor, to be transparent—we look through it
and see nothing but the blue . . . (Moore 1903, p. 446)
When we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue:
the other element is as if it were diaphanous. (Moore 1903, p. 450)
When Eloise sees a tree before her, the colors she experiences are all
experienced as features of the tree and its surroundings. None of them
are experienced as intrinsic features of her experience. Nor does she
experience any features of anything as intrinsic features of her experiences.
And that is true of you too . . . Look at a tree and try to turn your attention
to intrinsic features of your visual experience. I predict that you will find
that the only features there to turn your attention to will be features of the
tree . . . (Harman 1990, p. 667)
Standing on the beach in Santa Barbara a couple of summers ago on a
bright sunny day, I found myself transfixed by the intense blue of the
Pacific Ocean. Was I not here delighting in the phenomenal aspects of my

¹ Parts of this chapter draw on several earlier essays of mine, most notably Tye 2008, Tye
2014, and Tye 2017.
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visual experience? And if I was, doesn’t this show that there are visual
qualia? I am not convinced. It seems to me that what I found so pleasing in
the above instance, what I was focusing on, as it were, were a certain shade
and intensity of the colour blue . . . . When one tries to focus on [the
sensation of blue] in introspection one cannot help but see right through
it so that what one actually ends up attending to is the real colour blue.
(Tye 1992, p. 160)

Generalizing from the above passages and extrapolating away from

Harman’s restriction to intrinsic features, the key transparency claims are
as follows: in a case of normal visual perception, if we introspect:

1) We are not aware of features of our visual experience.

2) We are not aware of the visual experience itself.
3) We cannot attend to features of the visual experience.
4) The only features of which we are aware and to which we can attend
are external features (colors and shapes of surfaces, for example).

(1), (2), and (4) are to be understood as claims about de re awareness.

There is nowhere in these claims or in the quoted passages any mention of
direct awareness. As far as awareness goes, the thesis is that when we try to
introspect a visual experience occurring in normal perception, we are not
aware of the experience or its features (intrinsic or not) period. This, I take it,
is the basic thesis of transparency, as it applies to visual experience. The basic
thesis is naturally extended to cases of illusory perception and hallucination.
In the case of illusion, claims (1), (2), and (3) are unchanged. (4) becomes

(4’) The only features of which we are aware and to which we can attend
are features experienced as (or presented as) belonging to the external
particulars.

In the case of hallucinations, (4), in my view, should be replaced by

(4’’) The only features of which we are aware and to which we can attend
are locally un-instantiated features of a sort that, if they belong to anything,
belong to external particulars.

I ignore here cases of veridical hallucinations. I also concede that (4’’) is

contentious; for it requires the admission that we can be aware of (and
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
would catch the ear of either side could do so only by fierce
denunciation of the other; he that would have it thought that he
loved us had only to show that he hated you. Men of moderation
found no hearers. The voices of the calm and clear-headed sank into
silence; and Wigfall and Toombs, and Sumner and Phillips walked up
and down in the land.
Yes, no doubt we had thousands of statesmen who knew better. But
who knew them? And so Seward kept piping of peace in ninety days,
and Yancey—Polyphemus of politicians—was willing to drink all the
blood that would be shed. A Yankee wouldn’t fight, said the one.
The slave-drivers, perhaps, would, said the other; but they were,
after all, a mere handful; and the poor white trash would be as
flocks of sheep.
A Yankee wouldn’t fight! And why not, pray? Two bulls will, meeting
in a path; two dogs, over a bone. The fishes of the sea fight; the
birds of the air; nay, do not even the little midgets, warmed by the
slanting rays of the summer’s sun, rend one another with
infinitesimal tooth and microscopic nail? All nature is but one vast
battle-field; and if the nations of men seem at times to be at peace,
what is that peace but taking breath for another grapple? And
congresses and kings are but bottle-holders, and time will be called
in due season. The Yankees wouldn’t fight! And suppose they
wouldn’t, why should they, pray, being sensible men?
Where was the Almighty Dollar?
Had any one of the Southern leaders read one page of history, not
to know that money means men? means cannon, rifles, sabres?
means ships, and commissariat, and clothing? means rallying from
reverses, and victory in the end? The Yankee would not fight, they
told us. His omnipotent ally they forgot to mention or to meet. Had
our Congress consisted of bankers, merchants, railway
superintendents, they would have seen to the gathering of the
sinews of war. We had only the statesmen of the period,—God save
the mark!
It was in finance that we blundered fatally. ’Twas not the eagle of
the orator that overcame us, but the effigy thereof, in silver and in
gold.
When we fired on Fort Sumter there was a burst of patriotism
throughout the North, and her young men flocked to her standards.
They fought, and fought well. The difference between them and us
was, that when they got tired of poor fare and hard knocks they
could find others to take their places. Being sensible, practical men,
they used their opportunities. When a man was drafted (as the war
went on) he or his friends found the means of hiring a substitute
(persons who have visited the North since the war tell me that you
rarely find a man of means who served in the army); and at last
cities and counties and States began to meet each successive call for
fresh troops by votes of money; their magnificent bounty system
grew up, and from that time the composition of the Northern armies
rapidly changed. Trained soldiers from every part of the world
flocked to the El Dorado of the West; and as the war went on each
successive battle brought less and less grief to the hearts and homes
of the North, while with us—with us!
From every corner of Europe they poured.
From Italy, from Sweden, from Russia, and from Spain.
From the Danube and the Loire; from the marshy borders of the
Elbe and the sunny slopes of the Guadalquivir.
From the Alps and the Balkan. From the home of the reindeer and
the land of the olive. From Majorca and Minorca, and from the Isles
of Greece.
From Berlin and Vienna; from Dublin and from Paris; from the vine-
clad hills of the Adriatic and the frozen shores of the Baltic Sea.
From Skager Rack and Skater Gat, and from Como and Killarney.
From sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain, from the banks and
braes o’ bonny Doon, and from Bingen-on-the-Rhine.
Catholic and Calvinist; Teuton, Slav, and Celt,—who was not there to
swell that host, and the babel of tongues around their camp-fires?
For to every hut in Europe, where the pinch of want was known, had
gone the rumor of fabulous bounty and high pay now, generous
pension hereafter.
At Bull Run the North met the South; at Appomattox Lee laid down
his sword in the presence of the world in arms.
 CHAPTER LXXI.

And Gordon? What did he see, standing on Massanutten’s crest?

They lay there, beyond Cedar Creek, the Eighth Corps, the
Nineteenth Corps and the Sixth; and, further away, the heavy
masses of their cavalry; spread out before him, forty or fifty
thousand strong.
Like a map. “I can distinguish the very chevrons of that sergeant,”
said he.
And now he bends his eyes on Fisher’s Hill.
Those men lying there were beaten at Winchester, one month ago.
Against brigade Early can bring regiment, against division, brigade;
can oppose division to corps. And yet he is going to hurl this little
handful against that mighty host.
A mere handful; but hearts of English oak! The ancestors of these
men fought and won at Crecy and Agincourt; and they are going to
fight and lose at Cedar Creek. The result was different,—but the
odds and the spirit were the same.
Have I forgotten the brigade of Louisiana creoles? No; but when I
would speak of them, a certain indignant sorrow chokes my
utterance. They came to us many and they went away few; and the
Valley has been made historic by their blood, mingled with ours.
And now is heard the voice of one, speaking as with authority,—the
voice of a Louisianian, proclaiming to the world that these
Louisianians died in an unjust cause. Unjust! It is a word not to be
used lightly. Your share of the obloquy, living comrades, you can
bear; but theirs? For they are not here to speak for themselves.
And to say it to their widows and their orphans!
That word could not help the slave. He is free, thank heaven. Nor
was the war in which these men died waged to free him. He was
freed to wage the war, rather, as everybody knew when the
proclamation of emancipation was promulgated. In point of fact, the
struggle was between conflicting interpretations of the Constitution;
and the Northern people, by a great and successful war, established
their view of its obligations; the freedom of the slave being a
corollary of victory.
Unjust! had it not been as well to leave that word to others? ’Tis an
ill bird that fouls its own nest.
The war wrought wide ruin; but it has been a boon to the South in
this, at least: that it has jostled our minds out of their accustomed
grooves. Bold thinking has come to be the fashion. And so we should
not find fault with the author of Doctor Sevier, if, dazzled by the
voluptuous beauty of quadroon and octoroon, he should find a
solution of our race troubles in intermarriage. Let him think his little
thought. Let him say his little say. It will do no harm. On one
question he will find, I think, a “solid” North and a “solid” South.
Both are content to choose their wives from among the daughters of
that great Aryan race which boasts so many illustrious women; and
which boasts still more the millions of gentle mothers and brave
wives, whose names the trump of fame has never sounded. And
with such, I think, both the blue and the gray are likely to rest
content. Content, too, that their children, like themselves, should be
of that pure Indo-Germanic stock whence has sprung a Socrates and
a Homer; a Cæsar and a Galileo; a Descartes and a Pascal; a Goethe
and a Beethoven; a Newton and a Shakespeare. The countrymen of
Cervantes and of Cortez, failing to keep their blood pure, have
peopled a continent with Greasers and with Gauchos. And shall the
children of Washington become a nation of Pullman car porters—and
octoroon heroines—be their eyes never so lustrous?
But such matters are legitimate subjects of discussion. So let him
have his say. But there are things which it is more seemly to leave
unsaid.
When a step-mother is installed in the house, you may think her
vastly superior, if you will, with her velvets and her laces and her
diamonds, to her that bore you; and you may, perhaps, win fame as
an original thinker by saying so to the world; but there is a certain
instinct of manhood that would seal the lips of most men. And I, for
my part, know many, very many Northern men; and not one of them
seems to wish to have me grovel in the dust and cry peccavi. Would
it not have been a disgrace to them to have spent, with all their
resources and odds, four years in subduing a race of snivellers? No;
let us say to the end: you were right in fighting for your country, we
equally right in battling for ours. The North will, the North does
respect us all the more for it.
As I read these words, Charley rose, and, opening a book-case, took
out a volume. Finding, apparently, the passage he sought, he closed
the book upon his forefinger.
“When a man takes upon himself,” he began, “to rise up before
Israel to confess and make atonement for the sins of the people, be
should be quite sure that he has the right to exercise the functions
of high-priest.
“If either his father or his mother, for example, sprang from the
region roundabout Tyre and Sidon, that should bid him pause. It is
not enough that one wields the pen of a ready writer. One must be
an Hebrew of the Hebrews. Else the confession goes for naught.
“What Jack has just read,” added he, “brought to my mind a passage
which I have not thought of for ages. You must know, Alice, that
after the death of Cyrus at the battle of Cunaxa, the Ten Thousand
made a truce with Tissaphernes, lieutenant of Artaxerxes, who
agreed to conduct them back to Greece. After journeying together
for some time, he invited the Greek generals to a conference at his
headquarters. Clearchus and almost all of the leading officers
accepted the invitation, and at a given signal were seized and
murdered.
“The Ten Thousand were in as bad plight as ever an army was.
Without leaders, confronted by a countless host, they had either to
surrender or cut their way through a thousand miles of hostile
territory.
“Xenophon, though not an officer, called an assembly, and soon
aroused a stern enthusiasm. Speech after speech was made, and no
one uttered other than brave words, except a certain Apollonides;
and he cried out that the others spoke nonsense,—that the safe and
profitable thing to do was to grovel before the Great King. Xenophon
replied in a sarcastic vein, ending as follows:
“‘It seems to me, oh men, that we should not admit this man into
any fellowship with us, but that we should cashier him of his
captaincy and put baggage upon his back, and use him as a beast of
burden. For he is a disgrace to his native land and to all Greece,
since, being a Greek, he is such as he is.’
“‘And thereupon, Agasias, the Stymphalian, taking up the discourse,
said, ‘But this man is not a Greek; for I see that, like a Lydian, he
has both his ears bored.’
“And such was the fact. Him, therefore, they cast out.”
 CHAPTER LXXII.

It is not my purpose to describe the battle of Cedar Creek. Even of

the rôle played by Gordon’s division, of which the present writer
formed, according to Alice, a large part, I shall give no detailed
account; for my object is not so much to instruct military men as to
entertain my fair reader.
Three simultaneous attacks were to be made. Rosser, advancing
along the “Back-road,” far away to our left, was to swoop down, with
his cavalry, upon that of the enemy. Kershaw and Wharton were to
attack his centre; Gordon, with Ramseur and Pegram, to turn and
assault his left.
At eight o’clock, therefore, in the evening of October 18, 1864, our
men, rising from around their camp-fires and buckling on their
accoutrements, took up their line of march. The enemy was miles
away, yet they spoke in undertones; for their instinct told them that
they were to surprise him. Their very tread as they moved along was
in a muffled rhythm, as it seemed to me, and their canteens gave
forth a dim jingle, as of sheep-bells, by night, from a nodding flock
on a distant hill.
Leaving the pike and turning to the right, we (Gordon’s command) at
one time marched down a country road, at another straggled,
single-file, along bridle-paths, at times fought our way through briers
and amid jagged rocks as we toiled along under the shadow of
Massanutten.
At last, when the night was wellnigh spent, we stacked arms in a
field. The shining Shenandoah murmured just in front of us. We
talked almost in whispers.
Suddenly the notes of a bugle, faint, far away, broke the stillness of
the night. The enemy’s cavalry at Front Royal were sounding the
reveille. We held our breath,—had they divined our intentions?
The bugle-call to our right had scarcely died away, when, from far
away to our left, the rattle of carbines was heard, low and soft, as
though one dreamt of battle! ’Twas Rosser. Unfortunately, he had
found a portion of the enemy in the saddle and ready to march,
though not expecting an attack.
Just then the clanking of sabres and the trampling of hoofs was
heard close beside us; and turning, we saw a squadron of our
cavalry moving upon the ford. A thick mist had begun to rise, and as
they rode through it they seemed colossal phantoms rather than
earthly horsemen. A few moments, and the crack of carbine-shots
was heard. The enemy’s videttes retired, and our horsemen dashed
across the stream. We followed, and formed in a field beyond the
river.
The mist thickened with the approach of day. You could scarcely see
a man thirty feet away. Captain Smith had deployed his skirmishers.
As he stood near me, waiting for the word forward, a terrific rattle of
musketry burst upon our ears, coming from our left. It was Kershaw,
we knew. And then the cannon began to roar. Kershaw had left, his
artillery behind him. Had they been ready to receive him, and were
the cannon and rifles of an entire corps mowing down his gallant
little division? It was an appalling moment!
The word was given, and Captain Smith and his skirmishers dashed
into the wood at a double-quick. We followed, and soon the air was
filled with the roar of wide-spread battle. The cannon that we had
heard, as we soon learned, were captured guns that Kershaw had
turned upon the enemy. His division had rushed up a steep hill and
put a corps to flight. Between us, we had soon driven, in headlong
rout from their camps, the Eighth and the Nineteenth Corps. The
Sixth remained, but we could not see it, so dense was the mist. Our
assault slackened, ceased.
What would have been the result had we pushed on it is needless,
now, to inquire. Desultory firing continued till about four o’clock in
the afternoon, when Sheridan, who was at Winchester when the
battle began, having galloped up, rallied thousands of the fugitives,
and adding them to the Sixth Corps and his heavy force of cavalry,
attacked and routed us in turn.
There were those who said that Early, if he did not choose to
continue the attack (the most brilliant movement of the war, I think),
should have withdrawn his troops, and not held them there, in an
open plain, with greatly superior forces in his immediate front. He
himself, smarting under defeat, attributed the disaster to the fact
that his men, scattering through the captured camps, were engaged
in plundering instead of being at their posts; and his words have
been quoted by our friends the enemy. But I think that a moment’s
reflection will dispel this idea. Our hungry men, pursuing the enemy,
and coming upon their sutlers’ wagons, did undoubtedly snatch up
such edibles as came in their way; but this occurred at day-break,
and we were not attacked till four o’clock in the afternoon. I
remember that I myself, espying a fat leg of mutton (of which some
farmer had been robbed), laid hands on it with a view to a royal
supper when the battle should be over; and, by brandishing it over
my head, like a battle-axe, caused much laughter in the ranks. What
became of it I cannot recall. I know I did not eat it; but I know, too,
that my seizing it had no influence on the fortunes of the day.
The truth is, our defeat requires no explanation or apology from our
brave old general. When Sheridan attacked us, he brought against
our thin, single line of jaded men, overwhelming masses of fresh
troops, assaulting our front, and, at the same time, turning both our
flanks. I remember that Gordon’s men, who held the left of our line,
did not give way till bodies of the enemy had marched entirely
around our flank, and began to pour deadly and unanswered volleys
into our backs.
One more word and I am done with the battle as such.
Captain Smith, in his letter to Major Frobisher, found it impossible to
understand why our army was not entirely destroyed at Winchester.
I, on the contrary, can explain how it was that we were not
annihilated at Cedar Creek.
When the enemy, in their pursuit, reached Strasburg, and saw,
below them, slowly retreating along the road to Fisher’s Hill, a dark
mass of troops, they called a halt. That halt saved our army. I can
hardly repress a smile now, when I remember that that serried
phalanx which looked so formidable, and gave the enemy pause,
consisted of fifteen hundred Federal prisoners, guarded by a few
hundred of our men. But the eccentric strategy of that halt, instead
of being comic, was, in truth, fearfully tragic; for it protracted the
defence of Richmond, and delayed the close of the war till the
following spring, and cost the lives of thousands of brave men on
both sides.
So much for the battle of Cedar Creek. Such slight sketch of it as I
have given has cost me more pain than it can give the reader
pleasure. Not willingly did I introduce it into my story.
That story grows sombre. It opened bright and joyous as the sunny
nook of Earth in which my earlier scenes were laid. But between my
hero and the land he helped to defend there is a parallelism of
fortunes. The shadow of the same fate hangs over both.
SYMPHONY OF LIFE.

MOVEMENT IV.
 CHAPTER LXXIII.

During the night of this 18th of October, while we were making our
toilsome advance upon the enemy, a Virginia soldier, wounded in the
battle of Winchester, lay in a small room of a house in the edge of
Middletown; around which village the battle of Cedar Creek was
chiefly fought. Upon some bedding, spread upon the floor, lay a
young woman, his cousin; who, having heard that he had been hard
hit, had made her way to the enemy’s pickets, and, after some
parleying, gained permission to pass within their lines and nurse her
wounded relative. This young woman had, since the beginning of
the war, passed her life, as one might say, in our hospitals. But her
present position, within the enemy’s lines, was a trying one. It so
happened that between the Federal officer who occupied a room in
the same house and herself a strong antipathy soon grew up. The
little nurse was too busy attending to the wants of her wounded
cousin to leave his side often; but being under the same roof with
the Federal officer, they met, in a casual manner, not infrequently.
These meetings he contrived to make very disagreeable, by
continually attempting to force political discussions upon her. But
she, on her side, managed to render them far more exasperating to
him.
He that would get the better of a woman had best finish her with a
club at once and be done with it; he is sure to get the worst of it in
a tongue-battle. It may be a washerwoman opening on you with
Gatling-gun invective, and sweeping you from the face of the earth;
or a dainty society belle, with a dropping sharp-shooter fire of soft-
voiced sarcasm,—in either case you shall wish that you had held
your peace.
And so this big Federal colonel never had an encounter with the little
rebel nurse but he gnashed his teeth and raged for hours
afterwards. She always contrived, in the subtlest way, and without
saying so, to make him feel that she did not look upon him as a
gentleman. One day, for example, he had been carefully explaining
to her in how many ways the Northern people were superior to the
Southern.
“But I don’t believe,” added he, with evident acrimony, “that you F. F.
V.’s think there is one gentleman in the whole North. This arrogance
on your part is really one main cause of the war.”
“I can readily believe you,—for I understand the feeling. But really
you do us an injustice. I know, personally, a number of Northern
gentlemen. In New York, for instance” (the colonel was from that
city), “I am acquainted with the ——— family and the ———s and
the ———s, do you know them?”
The colonel hesitated.
“No?” said she, in soft surprise. “Ah, you should lose no time in
making their acquaintance on your return to the city. They are very
nice. But I hear my patient calling. Good-day!”
The colonel knew, and he saw plainly that she knew, that he could
no more enter one of those houses than he could fly. He could not
answer her. All that was left him was to hate her, and this he did
with his whole heart; and all aristocrats, living and dead.
When the crash of battle burst forth, on the morning of the
nineteenth, the colonel hurried forth to form his regiment. He met
his men rushing pell-mell to the rear, and he ran back to his
headquarters to gather a few things that lay scattered about his
room. Although the bullets were flying thick, frequently striking the
house itself, he found the little nurse standing on the porch,
exultation in every feature. The whizzing of the rifle-balls seemed
sweet to her ears. Confederate bullets would not hurt her.
“Get out of my way,” said he, in a gruff voice. “This is no place for
women.”
“Nor for men, either, you seem to think!”
He gave her a black look.
“Why this unseemly haste, colonel?” said she, following him into the
hall. “What! through the back door? The Confederates are there!”
And she stabbed the air in the direction of the coming bullets with a
gesture that would have made the fortune of a tragedy queen.
“Take that, d——n you!” And he brought his open hand down upon
her cheek with such force that, reeling through the open door of her
room, she fell headlong upon the floor.
“Coward!” roared a voice from the threshold of the hall.
Rising to her knees and turning, she saw the colonel spring forward
with a fierce glare in his eyes and a cocked pistol in his extended
hand. She shut her eyes and stopped her ears.
Had he killed the Confederate? No, for she heard no fall; but the
clear ring, instead, of a sabre drawn quickly from its scabbard. The
colonel stepped across the threshold of the room in which she was,
cocking his pistol for another shot. He raised the weapon,—but she
heard a spring in the hall, and saw a flash of steel; and the colonel
fell at full length upon the floor, with a sword-blade buried up to the
hilt in his breast. With such terrific force had the thrust been
delivered that he was knocked entirely off his feet, and the whole
house shook.
“Δούπησεν δὲ πεσών, ἀράβησε δὲ τεύχε᾽ ἐπ᾽αὐτῷ,”[1] muttered the
victor, as the young woman, springing to her feet, threw her arms
around his neck and kissed him.
“My brave defender!” cried she, in a fervor of patriotic exaltation,
lifting her eyes to his; and then she sprang back with a shiver, and
stood breathless before him, her head bowed upon her breast, her
face ashy pale.
A scene within a scene.
Without, the roar of cannon, the incessant rattle of musketry, the
bursting of shells, the panic-stricken rush of riderless horses, the
tramp of hurrying men, the Rebel Yell sweeping by like a tornado,
shouts of victory, moans of the dying.
Within, four people for a moment oblivious of all this mad hurly-burly
that billowed around them.
The convalescent soldier, rising upon his elbow, looked with silent
amazement upon the crouching figure of his fair cousin; while the
dying Union soldier forgot, for a moment, his gaping wound as he
gazed upon the man who had inflicted it. Tall, broad-shouldered,
gaunt of flank, supple, straight as an Indian, he held in his right
hand the gory sword, from which the prostrate officer saw his own
life-blood trickling, drop by drop, upon the floor. In his left he held
his cap uplifted.
Attila and Monsieur Deux-pas in one!
With cap uplifted; but head thrown back and eyes averted. His right
shoulder and breast were soaked with blood, which was streaming
down his brown beard upon his coat, from a bullet-hole in his
bronzed cheek. But it was his eyes which riveted the attention of his
fallen enemy. He had been appalled by their fierce glare, when,
angered by the pistol-shot, he had sprung upon him in the hall. But
that look had been soft compared with the cold, steady, pitiless
gleam they poured forth now. That man, thought he, would not give
a cup of water to a dying enemy.
Captain Smith made two steps towards the door, and turning,
bowed.
Feeling that he was going (for she had not dared to raise her eyes),
Mary Rolfe quivered for a moment from head to foot; then springing
forward, with passionate entreaty in every gesture and a cry of
anguish upon her lips:
“And you will leave me without a word? Listen! How frightfully the
battle is raging! And you are so cruel, cruel, as to go forth, and die,
perhaps, without ever— I know you will be killed, I know it, I know
it! And you won’t say you forgive me! Won’t you say just that one
little word? You loved me once,—and dearly, for you pressed me
against your heart and told me so; and can that heart, once so
tender, be so hard now? Oh, say you forgive me; for the sake of that
dear, dead love, say you forgive your little Mary!”
And round about them the battle roared and surged and thundered.
Her cousin has told me that such was the pathos and passion of her
tones, her looks, her gestures, as she uttered these words (which
hardly seemed unconventional in their fearful setting), that the eyes
of the dying soldier grew moist. But Captain Smith, standing like a
granite cliff:
“There is nothing to forgive. You did your duty as you saw it. So did
I when I ran that officer through.—Ah, pardon me: I had forgotten
you. Can I do anything for you?” added he in a tender voice, as he
kneeled beside him.
“Unbutton my coat, please; I am choking.”
The captain shuddered as he saw the broad gash in the breast of his
enemy. “I am sorry I hit you so hard.”
“It is all right,” replied he, wearily. “I tried to kill you, and you killed
me, that’s all. But thank you for your kind words.”
The captain’s eyes filled with tears. “I hope it is not as bad as you
think. I’ll send you a surgeon immediately. Meanwhile, keep up your
spirits.” And taking the wounded man’s hand in his, he pressed it
softly. Then, rising, “Good-by,” said he, with a cheering smile, and
moved towards the door.
It was then that Mary, catching, for the first time, a view of the right
side of his face, saw the blood trickling down his cheek.
“You are wounded already,” she cried in terror.
“Yes; wounded beyond healing,” said the captain of the Myrmidons;
and with a cold bow, he passed out of the door and into the tempest
of the battle.
“Oh—oh—oh!” gasped Mary, wringing her interlocked hands high
above her head; and she sank slowly down upon the floor.
The measures fashioned by the hands of men can hold but so much;
but anguish without limit may be pent up within a human heart that
is bursting, yet will not burst.
The officer turned his eyes, and, even in his own great extremity,
pitied her.
And, after all, which of the two was most to be pitied?
He was about to speak a few kind words, when he saw upon her
pallid cheek the dark bruises made by his own heavy hand; and he
held his peace. His lips were parched, his throat tortured with that
cruel thirst that loss of blood entails. His wounded neighbor could
not, she would not hand him a cup of water. At any rate, it were
worthier to die there, where he lay, rather than ask a favor of the
woman he had so insulted. Three times he tried to rise, and as often
fell heavily back. She raised her head and saw the longing, wistful
look in his eyes, fixed upon a bucket which stood in a corner of the
room.
It is wonderful how sorrow softens the heart!
She rose in an instant and brought him the cup. He could not lift his
head. Bending over him, she placed her arm beneath his neck and
raised him. As he drank, the tears poured down his cheeks. Gently
withdrawing her arm, she tripped softly across the room and brought
her own pillow and placed it beneath his head; and sitting down
upon the floor, by his side, stroked his brown forehead with her soft
white hand. He raised his streaming eyes to hers, and again and
again essayed to speak; but his quivering lips refused to obey.
“I know what you would say; so never mind. Don’t worry now. You
may beg my pardon when you get well.”
He shook his head sadly. “I am dying now,—I feel it.”
His voice sank into a whisper. She bent over him to catch his words.
“Promise me to write to my mother and tell her how I died, and that
you sat beside me. Leave out one thing. It would break her heart to
hear that of me. You will? God bless you. Her address is in my
pocket. Write to her. You promise? Oh, how good of you to hold the
very hand that—”
“Hush! Don’t talk of that now.”
“You won’t have to hold it long. I feel it coming, coming. Press my
hand hard, harder! You have forgiven me! Tell her, that as I lay—
dying—far away from home—an angel—of light—”

[1] He fell with a crash, and his arms rattled upon him.
(The Homeric formula when a warrior falls.)
 CHAPTER LXXIV.

If only night would come!

They were pouring down upon us and around us in overwhelming
masses. They had turned our left, and were raking Gordon’s flank
and rear. It was a question of a few minutes only.
In our front was a narrow field. Beyond that, a wood. Through this
the enemy were driving our skirmishers back upon the main line.
One by one these brave men emerged from the wood and trotted
briskly across the field, targets, every one of them, for a dozen rifles.
There come two more! They are the last. But they do not trot, as the
rest did and as skirmishers should.
Upon those two, convergent rifles from all along the line of the wood
poured a rain of lead. Still they refused to hurry. And one was tall
and bearded, and the other slender, and with a face as smooth as a
girl’s. The boy, as fast as he loaded his rifle, wheeled and fired; the
man carried a pistol in his hand. Weeds fell about them, mowed
down by the bullets; spurts of dust leaped from under their very
feet.
The few men left in our line stood, under cover of a thin curtain of
trees, fascinated by the sight of these two, leisurely stalking along,
under that murderous fire.[1]
“Run, run!” we shouted.
“Run!” cried Captain Smith, giving the shoulder of his companion a
push.
“And leave my commander!” replied Edmund.
“Stoop, then!”
“Show me how, captain!”
“Obey me!” thundered he.
The boy lowered his head, as he rammed a bullet home; then
turned, and, cocking his rifle, scanned the opposite wood narrowly.
Presently he raised his rifle; but before he could fire we heard that
terrible sound which old soldiers know so well.
“Oh!” cried the boy, falling upon his face.
“My God! my God!” ejaculated the captain of the Myrmidons, with a
woman’s tenderness in his voice and the despair of Laocoön in his
corrugated brow.
Hearing that cry, the boy turned quickly and smiled in his captain’s
face. “It is only a flesh-wound, through the thigh,” said he; “I can
walk, I think.”
He was attempting to rise, when his captain, placing his strong arms
beneath him, lifted him high in the air. He ran, then; and his face
was full of terror, as the thick-flying bullets whistled past him and his
burden. The two were within a few paces of where I stood, when
again that terrific sound was heard; and they both fell heavily at my
very feet.
A bullet, coming from our flank and rear, had struck Captain Smith in
the right breast.
It was a wound in front, at any rate.
There was but one ambulance-wagon in sight, and that was
retreating. A skirmisher ran to overtake it. Others placed the captain
and Edmund on stretchers and hurried after it.
“Jack, old boy; good-by. I am done for; but I particularly desire to
get within our lines; so hold them in check as long as you can. Say
farewell to Charley.”
A few of his own men held their ground till they saw their captain
and Edmund disappear, in the wagon, over the hill, when they fell
back, loading and firing as they went. When the wagon reached the
bridge beyond Strasburg, it was found broken down; but the men
with the stretchers managed to get our two wounded friends across
the stream, and to find another wagon; so, the pursuit slackening at
this juncture, they were not captured.
Late in the night, I found them by the road-side. Edmund was
asleep. The captain lay awake, watched by one of his brave
skirmishers. He gave messages to my grandfather, to Charley and
Alice, to the Poythresses. “And now, good-night,” said he. “You need
rest. Throw yourself down by that fire and go to sleep. Don’t bother
about me. I shall set out for Harrisonburg at daybreak.”
“The ride will kill you.”
He smiled faintly. “I must get well within our lines. Remember—
Harrisonburg—good-night!” And he closed his eyes and wearily
turned his lace away. “Shelton!”
The skirmisher bent tenderly over his captain.
“Lie down by the fire and sleep. You cannot help me. God alone can
do that, and he will release me from my sufferings before many
days. Shelton, give me your hand. Tell your little boy, when he grows
up, that I said you were as brave as a lion in battle; and tell your
wife that you could be as gentle as a woman to a suffering comrade.
And now lie down and rest. Good-night!”
“Presently, captain.”
“What are you crying about, man? Such things will happen. Good-
night!”
[1] Meis ipsius vidi oculis.
 CHAPTER LXXV.

Let us return to that little parlor on Leigh Street, from the windows
of which, four years ago, we caught our first glimpse of the man
who has played so large a part in our story. It is full of people, now,
—half a dozen elderly men, all the rest women. Of the men, one is a
minister, with a face so singularly gentle that his smile is a sort of
subdued sunbeam.
The countenances of the women all wear looks of happy expectancy.
Mr. and Mrs. Poythress are there, and Lucy. Mr. and Mrs. Rolfe, but
not Mary. And others whom the reader, to her cost, does not know.
Our plump friend, Mrs. Carter, is bustling about, who but she, her
jolly face wreathed in smiles.
At every sound in the hall, every female neck is craned towards the
door. Somebody or something is expected.
“Mrs. Carter,” said Mrs. Poythress, “what name has Alice selected for
the little man?”
“Oh, yes! what is to be his name?” echoed every lady in the room.
Thereupon, Mrs. Carter, being constitutionally incapable of laughing,
began to shake.
At this eccentric behavior on the part of the young grandmother,
curiosity rose to fever heat; but the more they plied her with
questions, the more she could not answer. Seeing her incapable of
speech, her grave and silent husband came to the rescue, and
explained that what amused Mrs. Carter was that she did not know
what their grandchild was to be called. It appeared that Alice, as a
reward for his getting well of his wound, had allowed Charley the
privilege of naming their son. He had accepted the responsibility,—
but no mortal, not even his wife, had been able to make him say
what the name was to be.
This statement sent the curiosity of the audience up to the boiling
point. Did you ever!
Mrs. Rolfe interrogated Mr. Rolfe with her impressive eyes.
“Such a fancy would never have occurred to me, I’m sure,” said that
man of peace.
“Al-i-ce!” called Mrs. Carter, from the foot of the stairs.
“We are coming, mother,” answered a cheery voice from the ball
above; and Alice, giving two or three final little jerks at the ends of
certain ribbons and bits of lace that adorned her boy (he was asleep
on his nurse’s shoulder), stood aside to let that dignitary pass down-
stairs, at the head of the procession.
“And now,” said Alice, going up to her husband, “what is his name to
be?”
“One that he will never have cause to be ashamed of,” replied
Charley.
Alice drew back in surprise. Up to this point she had looked upon the
thing as a joke, and enjoyed it, too, as so characteristic of her
husband. This time, however, he had not smiled, as usual. On the
contrary, he betrayed, both in voice and look, a certain suppressed
excitement. She imagined, even, that he was a trifle pale; and her
heart began to flutter a little, she knew not why.
The column halted when it reached the closed parlor door. Here
Charley took the sleeping boy in his arms.
When the audience within heard the knob rattle, the excitement was
intense. It was dissipated, in an instant, by the sight of Charley
bearing the child.
In this wide world there lives not a woman who can look upon a
bearded man, with his first infant in his arms, without smiling.
The admiring ohs and ahs made the young mother’s heart beat high
with joy. And who shall call her weak, because she forgot that they
are to be heard at every christening? In the name of pity, let us sip
whatever illusive nectar chance flowers along our stony path may
afford!
Every one noticed how awkward Charley was in handing the baby to
the minister; while the good man, on the contrary, received an
ovation of approving smiles for his skill in holding him.
The little fellow, himself, appeared to feel the difference. He nestled,
at any rate, against the comfortable shoulder, and threw his head
back; and his little twinkling nose, pointing heavenward, seemed to
say that he knew what it all meant.
“Name this child!”
“Ah-ah-ah-ah!”
Every neck was craned, every ear eager to catch the first mysterious
syllable!
Alice glanced anxiously at her husband.
Why that determined look? What was he going to do?
A lightning-flash darted through her brain! Charley’s mother’s father
was named Peter! He had been a man of mark in his day; and,
besides, Charley worshipped his mother’s memory. Peter! Horrors!
And then he stammers so over his P’s! That half-defiant look, too!
Charley leaned forward.
She could not hear what he said; but she saw, from the obstinate
recusancy of his lips, that there was a P in the name. She felt a
choking in her throat.
’Twas her first,—and Peter! And he knew how painfully absurd she
thought the name! Poor little innocent babe! Peter! Her eyes filled
with tears.
No one had heard the name; not even the minister. He bent an
inquiring look upon Charley.
Charley repeated the words.
This time the good man heard, though no one else did. Bringing his
left arm around in front of his breast, he dipped his right hand into
the water, and raised it above the head of the sleeping boy.
Alice’s heart stood still!
“Theodoric Poythress, I baptize thee—”
A gasp of surprise, followed by a stifled moan, startled minister and
people; and all eyes were turned towards the Poythress group.
Mrs. Poythress lay with her head upon her husband’s breast, silent
tears streaming from her closed eyes. Lucy, half-risen from her seat,
leaned over her mother, holding her hand, deep compassion in her
gentle eyes! Her father sat bolt upright, looking stern, in his effort to
appear calm. Her mother pressed Lucy gently back into her chair,
and the minister went on.
Hurried leave-takings followed the ceremony. The baby was awake
and gurgling, but nobody noticed him; not even his mother. Mrs.
Poythress did not stir.
The front door was heard to close.
“Lucy, are they all gone?”
“Yes, mother.”
She opened her eyes, and seeing Charley standing, silent, by the
side of his wife, rose and staggered towards him, with outstretched
arms. He ran to meet her; and she folded him to her breast with a
long, convulsive embrace; then dropped into a chair, without a word,
and covered her face with one hand, while she held one of his with
the other.
First, Lucy thanked Charley, and then Mr. Poythress, coming up, and
taking Charley’s hand in both his: “My boy, you are as true as steel,
—I thank you.” And he strode stiffly out into the hall.
And instantly, as Alice’s quick eye noticed, the cloud which had
lingered on her husband’s brow vanished. He drew a long, deep
breath, and turning with a bright smile, chucked young Theodoric
under the chin. “How do you like your name, young fellow?”
The corners of the young fellow’s mouth made for his ears, then
snapped together beneath his nose.
“Your views vary with kaleidoscopic rap-p-p-pidity,” remarked the
philosopher.
The son of the philosopher crowed.
“He says he rather likes his name,” said Charley; “but,” added he,
drawing his handkerchief from his pocket, “those drops of water, at
the corners of his eyes, look too much like—”
“Hush!” cried Alice, quickly; and she laid her hand on her husband’s
mouth.
“Absit omen!” said he.
 CHAPTER LXXVI.

On the morning following this christening, the papers contained a

telegraphic account of our defeat at Cedar Creek. And, late in the
afternoon of the same day, Lucy Poythress walked into the Carters’
back parlor. Her eyes were red and swollen.
“Have you any news?” asked Alice, anxiously.
“Here is a letter from Edmund.”
“Then he is safe, thank God!”
“Not exactly. The poor child was shot through the thigh. Mr. Whacker
is unhurt.”
“And Captain Smith?”
Lucy’s lips quivered.
“Not killed?” cried Alice, clasping her hands.
“No, but dangerously wounded,—very. Here is Edmund’s letter to
mother.”
Alice read it aloud. He gave an account of the battle, making light of
his own wound (“The rascals popped me in the second joint”), but
represented his captain’s as very serious. The captain had advised
him to remain in Harrisonburg, but had himself gone to Taylor’s
Springs, four miles distant. As for himself, he was in luck.
“Who do you think is my nurse? Why, Miss Mary Rolfe! The battle
caught her in Middletown, nursing a Confederate soldier; and when,
in the afternoon, the enemy showed signs of an intention to attack,
the captain sent me, with an ambulance-wagon, to Miss Mary. I was
to tell her that in my opinion (that is what he told me to say) it
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