INTELLIGENCE AND "END"
It is interesting to notice the opinions of different scientists and
philosophers as to the extent to which reason is diffused in the
universe, where the point lies at which the boundary line is to be drawn
between reason and an automatism of instinct or organic action, or
whether any such point can be found at all, whether reason, at least as
consciousness and will, is not inherent in all life, or at least in all
animal life, or whether it is not, indeed, to be regarded as the cause
of motion even outside life, in the inorganic as well as the organic.
There is no need to remind ourselves of the philosophic conception of
the World as Will, the Philosophy of the Unconscious, or the Theory of
Monads. The theories that specialists in physical science have arrived
at, through the results of wide-reaching investigations in their own
peculiar branch, are as various as those of philosophers. Darwin
carefully avoids drawing any distinct limit-line between reason and
instinct, but remarks that "A little dose of judgment or reason, as
Pierre Huber expresses it, often comes into play, even with animals low
in the scale of nature."[112] Haeckel says: "Unbiassed comparison and
unprejudiced test and observation place it beyond doubt that so-called
'instinct' is nothing else than a sum of soul-activities which,
originally acquired by adaptation, have been fixed by habit and carried
down from generation to generation by inheritance. Originally performed
with consciousness and reflection, many instinctive actions of the
animals have become, in the course of time, unconscious, exactly as is
the case with the habitual activities of human reason. These, too, may,
with like justice, be looked upon as the workings of innate instinct,
as, indeed, the impulse to self-preservation, maternal love, and the
social instinct often are regarded. Again, instinct is neither
distinctively an attribute of the brain of the animal, nor is the
reason an especial endowment of human beings. On the contrary, an
impartial doctrine of soul recognizes a long, long, descending scale of
gradual evolution in the life of the soul, which leads from higher to
lower human beings, from more perfect to more imperfect animals, step by
step, down to those forms whose simple nerve-ganglion furnishes the
starting-point of all the cell-less brain-forms of this scale."[113] The
lecture in which this passage occurs not only argues further that the
soul is composed of soul-activities as the brain is composed of cells,
but finds in all living cells, "all protoplasm, the first element of all
soul life, sensation in the simple forms of pain and pleasure, movement
in the simple forms of attraction and repulsion. Only the degrees of
development and combination of soul are different in different beings."
Du Prel, impressed with the evolution of order from disorder in the
heavens as on the earth, ascribes this to universal sensation as a
fundamental quality of all matter, which makes it continually tend
towards a state of equilibrium in which collision is reduced to a
minimum.[114] Some biologists ascribe sensation, or consciousness, to
animal life alone; some ascribe consciousness to such animals only as
possess a nervous system; some philosophers make a distinction between
sensation, consciousness, and self-consciousness, as shown in the scale
of animal life; some, again, approaching the problem from another side,
lay emphasis on the difference between automatic and organic action,
instinct, "blind impulse," and will. Carneri, as we have seen,[115]
holds that even the action of an animal so high in the scale as the
butterfly may be pure automatism, its fluttering when impaled merely the
motion of a continued attempt at flight.
These differences in opinion seem to depend, in great measure, upon the
end of the scale of being chosen as the starting-point in the
development of theory. If we begin with man and assume intelligence to
be the cause of design,--of the purposeful, the self-preserving,--in his
action, we shall be likely to infer intelligence as the cause of
self-preserving function in all animals, and we shall find great
difficulty in drawing any distinct line between intelligence and
automatism. If we are not students of inorganic nature, the evolution to
be found also in it, up to the attainment of preservative forms of
motion, may escape our observation, preoccupation with man and the self-
or rather human-interested bias of observation blinding us to it; but if
we carry our considerations, in an unprejudiced spirit, on beyond the
province of life, we may, like Du Prel and others, arrive at a theory of
intelligence as a universal property of matter. On the other hand, if we
begin with inorganic matter and assume automatism to be the cause of its
motion, we are likely, ascending the scale of organic existence, to
interpret much of its function as due to material action and reaction,
and may again, from this side, find so great difficulty in drawing the
line where intelligence begins, that we may fall, as Carneri has done,
into the opposite extreme to that last noticed, and interpret nearly all
animal action as unintelligent or even insentient.
Let us look at the dilemma a little more closely. Might it not seem,
from one point of view, as if the harmonious movements of the stars, by
which they avoid their own destruction, must be referred to desire and
will to avoid it? If all systems of material parts, without exception or
distinction, tend, as Fechner, Du Prel, and Petzoldt assert, towards
harmony of the parts such that the motion of these parts will become
self-preservative, does it not seem logically necessary to assume that
this self-preservation, arising in inorganic matter in the same manner
as in organic matter, must be due to the same causes as those
to which we ascribe action towards an end, action that involves
self-preservation, in the broadest sense of the word, in man? May not
the heavenly bodies, learning from experience in some way, as man does,
gradually come to choose, though still in accordance with natural laws
(as man also invariably chooses) that orbit which preserves them from
collision? True, they must finally suffer destruction, but so, also,
must the human individual, and the race of human beings. The difference
of evolution and dissolution in the two cases is only one of time. Among
different species of nervously organized beings, the duration of life
also differs. Or, if we deny the existence of intelligence in inorganic
nature, can we, at least, descending the scale of organic being, find
any point of which we can say, "Here intelligence ends and automatism
begins"? Shall we deny the existence of intelligence in plants, and if
so, how shall we find that dividing line between the plant and animal
kingdoms which the advancement of science in many directions is
rendering, not more distinct, but less and less so? G. Th. Schneider
says, in his book on "The Human Will": "The movements of touch and
locomotion in the search for food are the first movements in which the
specific animal-life may be recognized. In no plant is the groping
caused by hunger to be observed."[116] But is this true? The
insectivorous plants, for instance, open their leaves when their prey is
digested, waiting for fresh prey; and they close them again when prey
has again entered, thus practically grasping their victim and holding
him fast. Although the nature of the plant prevents its moving from the
spot where it grows, are these movements less a search for and capture
of food than those of the animal? To say that the closing of the leaves
depends upon the beginning of some chemical process in the plant
furnishes us with no mark of distinction between the two, for it is
equally true that chemical processes underlie animal motion; and to
object that the reopening of the leaves is the result of the completion
of assimilation gives us, also, no distinctive mark, since the animal's
search for food is likewise the result of hunger and so connected with a
particular state of the digestive organs. The action of insectivorous
plants draws our attention because the process of assimilation involved
so resembles animal digestion; but, as a point of fact, the opening of
petals to receive the air and sun is as much a search for food as the
opening of leaves to receive insect prey.
Schneider adds to the passage above quoted, "A further difference
between psychical and physiological movements is this, that the latter
always remain the same, however the excitation changes, while the former
have, now the character of attraction, now that of repulsion." It may be
questioned whether this difference either can be demonstrated to be a
distinctive mark. We have only to go into a dark cellar where the
potatoes have begun to sprout, in order to see how plants that
ordinarily grow upward will take every curve and angle in order to reach
towards the light of some distant window. And if we turn one of the
tubers about, we may watch the pallid sprout again turn to grow towards
the far-away sunlight. Thomas A. Knight relates experiments in which
plants of the Virginia creeper (_Ampelopsis quinquefolia_) were removed
from one side of the house to the other, being, in each case, screened
from perpendicular rays of the sun, and records that, in all cases, the
tendrils turned in a few hours in a direction pointing to the centre of
the house. One plant after being thus experimented with, was "removed to
the centre of the house and fully exposed to the perpendicular light of
the sun; and a piece of dark-colored paper was placed upon one side of
it, just within reach of its tendrils; and to this substance they soon
appeared to be strongly attracted. The paper was then placed upon the
opposite side, under similar circumstances, and a piece of plate glass
was substituted; but to this substance the tendrils did not indicate any
disposition to approach. The position of the glass was then changed, and
care was taken to adjust its surface to the varying position of the sun,
so that the light reflected might continue to strike the tendrils; which
then receded from the glass, and appeared to be strongly repulsed by
it."[117] Darwin writes of the insectivorous _Drosera rotundifolia_: "If
young and active leaves are selected, inorganic particles not larger
than the head of a small pin, placed on the central glands, sometimes
cause the outer tentacles to bend inwards. But this follows much more
surely and quickly, if the object contains nitrogenous matter which can
be dissolved by the secretion. On one occasion, I observed the following
unusual circumstance. Small bits of raw meat (which acts more
energetically than any other substance), of paper, dried moss, and of
the quill of a pen, were placed on several leaves, and they were all
embraced equally well in about two hours. On other occasions the
above-named substances, or more commonly particles of glass, coal-cinder
(taken from the fire), stone, gold-leaf, dried grass, cork, blotting
paper, cotton-wool, and hair rolled into little balls, were used, and
these substances, though they were sometimes well embraced, often caused
no movement whatever in the outer tentacles, or an extremely slight and
slow movement. Yet these same leaves were proved to be in an active
condition, as they were excited to movement by substances yielding
nitrogenous matter, such as bits of raw or roast meat, the yolk or white
of boiled eggs, fragments of insects of all orders, spiders, etc. I will
give only two instances.
"Minute flies were placed on the discs of several leaves, and on others
balls of paper, bits of moss and quill of about the same size as the
flies, and the latter were well embraced in a few hours; whereas after
twenty-five hours only a very few tentacles were inflected over the
other objects. The bits of paper, moss, and quill were then removed from
these leaves, and bits of raw meat placed on them; and now all the
tentacles were soon energetically inflected.
"Again, particles of coal-cinder (weighing rather more than the flies
used in the last experiment) were placed on the centres of three leaves:
after an interval of nineteen hours, one of the particles was tolerably
well embraced; a second by a very few tentacles; and a third by none. I
then removed the particles from the two latter leaves, and put on them
recently killed flies. These were fairly well embraced in seven and
one-half hours, and thoroughly after twenty and one-half hours; the
tentacles remaining inflected for many subsequent days. On the other
hand, the one leaf which had in the course of nineteen hours embraced
the bit of cinder moderately well, and to which no fly was given, after
an additional thirty-three hours (_i.e._ in fifty-two hours from the
time when the cinder was put on) was completely reexpanded and ready to
act again."[118]
From these and many other experiments Darwin concludes that inorganic
and some organic substances not attacked by the secretion of the leaf
act much less quickly and efficiently than organic substances yielding
soluble matter, which is absorbed.
He also writes of the curvature of radicles which come in contact with
obstacles at right angles:--
"The first and most obvious explanation of the curvature is that it
results merely from the mechanical resistance to the growth in its
original direction. Nevertheless, this explanation did not seem to us
satisfactory. The radicles did not present the appearance of having been
subjected to a sufficient pressure to account for their curvature. Sachs
has shown that the growing part is more rigid than the part immediately
above, which has ceased to grow, so that the latter might have been
expected to yield and become curved as soon as the apex encountered an
unyielding object; whereas it was the stiff, growing part which became
curved. Moreover, an object which yields with the greatest ease will
deflect a radicle: thus, as we have seen, when the apex of the radicle
of the bean encountered the polished surface of extremely thin tin-foil
on soft sand, no impression was left on it, yet the radicle became
deflected at right angles. A second explanation occurred to us, namely,
that even the gentlest pressure might check the growth of the apex, and
in this case growth could continue only on one side, and thus the
radicle would assume a rectangular form; but this view leaves wholly
unexplained the curvature of the upper part, extending for a length of
8-10 mm.
"We were therefore led to suspect that the apex was sensitive to
contact, and that the effect was transmitted from it to the upper part
of the radicle, which was excited to bend away from the touching object.
As a little loop of fine thread, hung on a tendril or on the petiole of
a leaf-climbing plant, causes it to bend, we thought that any hard
object affixed to the tip of a radicle, freely suspended and growing in
damp air, might cause it to bend if it were sensitive, and yet would not
offer any mechanical resistance to its growth.... Sachs discovered that
the radicle a little above the apex is sensitive and bends like a
tendril _towards_ the touching object. But when one side of the apex is
pressed by any object, the growing part bends _away_ from the
object."[119]
Acting on this idea, Darwin found, in many experiments, that the
radicles of plants freely suspended in bottles, when brought into
contact with the most yielding substances, bits of paper, etc., were
deflected, in a very few hours, from their original course, and often at
right angles to this. He says, further:--
"As the apex of a radicle in penetrating the ground must be pressed on
all sides, we wished to learn whether it could distinguish between
harder, or more resisting, and softer substances. A square of sanded
paper almost as stiff as card, and a square of extremely thin paper (too
thin for writing on) of exactly the same size (about one-twentieth of an
inch), were fixed with shellac on opposite sides of the apices of twelve
suspended radicles.... In eight out of the twelve cases, there could be
no doubt that the radicle was deflected from the side to which the
card-like paper was attached and towards the opposite side bearing the
very thin paper.
"This occurred, in some instances, in nine hours, but in others not
until twenty-four hours had elapsed. Moreover, some of the four failures
can hardly be considered as really failures: thus, in one of them in
which the radicle remained quite straight, the square of thin paper was
found, when both were removed from the apex, to have been so thickly
coated with shellac that it was almost as stiff as the card; in the
second case, the radicle was bent upward into a semicircle, but the
deflection was not directly from the side bearing the card, and this was
explained by the two squares having become cemented laterally together,
forming a sort of stiff gable from which the radicle was deflected; in
the third case, the square of card had been fixed by mistake in front,
and though there was deflection, this might have been due to Sachs's
curvature; in the fourth case alone, no reason could be assigned why the
radicle had not been at all deflected."
Darwin found, moreover, by experiment, that, when the tip of a radicle
is burnt or cut, "it transmits an influence to the upper adjoining part,
causing it to bend away from the affected side." This deflection
resembles, in a very striking manner, the avoidance of sources of injury
and pain on the part of animals.
And at the end of his book on the Movements of Plants, which contains
very many other experiments bearing on the question of sensitivity in
plants, the author writes, "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the
tip of the radicle thus endowed, and having the power of directing the
movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the brain of one of the
lower animals."
It is true that the plant does not react with the rapidity which
characterizes the animal; Darwin found that radicles are not sensitive
to temporary contact, but only to long, though to slight pressure. It is
also true that the physical basis of the movement is more simple, and so
more easily traceable in the plant than in the animal organism; yet why
lay such especial stress upon this side of plant-life, since it is
acknowledged that the physical basis is by no means peculiar to it, but
that, on the contrary, all life-processes, in the animal as well as in
the plant, have their physical side, although greater complexity of
organization may make this more difficult to follow in the one case than
in the other?
But we may begin at the other end of the scale and examine the facts
presented from the opposite point of view. The physicist demonstrates
that force is indestructible; that is, that the sum of the motion and
resistance to motion residing in indestructible matter is also
imperishable, that all present motion must be regarded as the resultant
of previous conditions of motion and resistance, as far back as we may
go, until we reach some assumed primal state (which is only assumed and
cannot be proved to have existed) in which the matter composing the
universe is supposed to have been at complete rest; and that every
resultant bears relations to its component factors of force that are
constant, every component finding its full value in the resultant. What
evidence has the present state of our solar system and the other systems
of heavenly bodies revealed to us by the telescope to offer us in proof
of their consciousness or sentience? How are the whirl and concentration
of nebular mists, the crash and collision of elemental bodies, from
which, by simple action and reaction, after ages of disharmony, only a
comparative harmony is arrived at as inevitable result, evidence of aim,
intention, will, consciousness, in the matter subject to this evolution?
Do we find anything here except blind law? The movements of plants,
often directly favorable to self-preservation, may be explained by the
arrangement of the cells and their chemical action. Or, if sentience
must be assumed to be the cause of movement attaining ends of
self-preservation in plants, how are we to account for organic and
instinctive action in animals? How is it, for instance, that the
new-born infant sucks, and the chicken but a few hours old, even though
it has been hatched in an incubator apart from its kind, picks at the
food strewn before it, aiming, too, with considerable precision?[120]
How does it happen that the process of breathing and digestion, the
beating of the heart and the circulation of the blood, all so necessary
to life, go on with regularity, though not directed by reason? Has the
newly hatched chicken any experience to teach it what food is, and how
it is to be seized; or does the caterpillar, which spins itself a
cocoon, do this with the understanding that it is about to enter a new
phase of existence? Or, if such important and, at first view, seemingly
intelligent action can be explained as unreasoning instinct, why cannot
many other actions of the lower animals be thus explained? Why may not
nearly all, if not all of them, be thus explained, and consciousness be
regarded as the exclusive property of man?
But how much of the action we term automatic, instinctive, or organic,
reflex or "merely functional," can be positively asserted to have no
admixture of consciousness? If we examine our own action closely we
shall often find that we were, in fact, conscious of much that seems,
at first glance, purely automatic. It may appear to us, for instance,
that reflection on the notes of a musical composition which we have
known for a long time "by heart" hinders rather than helps us, even
causing us sometimes to fail completely in our performance. But if we
examine our condition at the time of such a failure, do we not usually
find that, when we began to think about what we were playing, we were
suddenly seized with a fear of failing and that the fear confused us? Or
do we not find, at least, that withdrawal of our attention from the
music by conversation that requires any concentration of thought is as
likely to confuse us as too great attention to it? A friend of mine one
day related to me the following experience: Having a felon upon his
finger, he submitted to a surgical operation, for which the operator
preferred to administer an anaesthetic. When he awoke to consciousness
again, he was pleased to find the painful operation completely finished
and the hand newly dressed. Asked whether he had experienced any pain,
he answered, "Not a twinge," whereat the surgeon remarked that he had
screamed and groaned during the operation. To this he replied that his
action must have been merely reflex. An hour or so later, however, as he
was at work, a sudden recollection of the whole operation came to him.
Persons undergoing dental operations under the influence of laughing-gas
often scream and make convulsive movements as if in pain, though they
declare, afterwards, in like manner, that they have felt nothing; but
may not this be due, as in the case just cited, to a mere lapse of
memory? Why, indeed, should the patient scream if not in pain? Again,
there is a poison--curarine, the Indian arrow poison--which has power to
deprive its victim of all motion, while leaving him, as has been
ascertained in cases in which it has been used as a medicine, a
consciousness that is more or less dimmed. May not the seeming dimness,
however, be due to the incomplete function of memory when turned to
events that transpired under its influence? And may not the action of
so-called anaesthetics of all sorts involve simply a paralysis of action
similar to that caused by the Indian arrow poison, together with a more
complete lapse of memory than that ensuing upon the latter? To answer
that anaesthetics affect the brain, and that therefore consciousness is
not possible, is begging the question, for it is by just such
experiments and experience of the apparent mental effects of
anaesthetics in connection with peculiar brain conditions that theories
of non-sensibility under these conditions have been arrived at. States
of somnambulism generally used to be classed as outside the sphere of
memory and were therefore sometimes called unconscious; but recent
experiments in hypnotism have shown that similar states to these may be
remembered or not remembered according to the individual case, and that
persons who, when awakened, ordinarily recall nothing of that which has
passed in the hypnotic state may be made to recall all the events of
that state if commanded to do so before awakening. Pflueger has attempted
to demonstrate, by many experiments, that consciousness is not confined
to the brain but is also connected with the spinal cord;[121] why,
however, draw a line at the spinal cord? Is not nerve substance the same
with that from which the spinal cord and the brain develop, are not all
nerve cells primarily mere modifications of cells of the outer skin?
Of unconsciousness in ourselves we can have no more an immediate and
direct knowledge than of unconsciousness outside ourselves, since, in
order to be immediately known, it would have to be present in
consciousness; and a conscious unconsciousness is a self-contradiction.
We can only witness to a failure of memory at certain points (which
failure has already been shown to be untrustworthy as evidence) or to
movements of our body to which we can supply no corresponding conscious
states as premeditation. But our inability to testify to such is merely
negative. A great deal has been made, in one way and another, of the
fact that there are links in premeditated action which do not come into
consciousness, there being no knowledge, for instance, of the processes
in nerve and muscle between the movement of the arm in writing and the
premeditation of such movement. As a fact, however, none of the
physiological processes which accompany the psychical are present to our
consciousness except as given through the senses or through
nerve-transmission similar to that of sense-perception. The conscious
elements of any present state of thought do not include the changes in
brain-matter concomitant with them. But the question may be raised, as
Haeckel raises it,--though perhaps somewhat differently,--in his essay
on Soul-cells and Cell-souls, as to whether the brain-cells themselves
are not endowed with consciousness; and any answer in the negative is,
evidently, an assumption, of which we can give no proof. Indeed, the
question may be asked, and has been asked, whether the remarkable white
blood corpuscles which traverse our body, and are so similar to certain
lower forms of life, are not to be regarded as distinct beings, or
whether, in fact, all the cells whose combined life and movement make up
our own are not endowed with distinct being and consciousness. Again an
answer in the negative is evidently a mere assumption. And why stop, in
this case, exactly with the cells of animal life; why not apply our
question to those of plant life also? Why not, indeed, suppose all forms
to be endowed with consciousness, all harmonious motion to be
accompanied by pleasure, all dissolution and conflict by pain? From
analogy we may conclude something, but from mere non-analogy nothing.
Our experience may entitle us to the assertion that all beings
possessing a nervous system are endowed with consciousness, but we
cannot conclude, therefore, that all beings not possessing a nervous
system are not endowed with consciousness. We have associated
consciousness with acts peculiar to man, and hence inferred its presence
in similar movements of animals similarly constructed. But if we could
examine the physiological accompaniments of our own thought and feeling
and their issue in action, if we could look on at all the details, the
chemical and mechanical changes of the physiological processes, what
hint should we find in these more than in any other physical processes,
from which to infer consciousness? They are not the less rigidly in
accordance with natural law than any other. But our observation of all
other processes than those of our own organism is a mere extraneous one,
like this we have imagined of the processes of our own body; if there
were consciousness in other forms we could not enter into it; and how
can we prove extraneously its non-existence? Our own "stability" of
function and the stability of all life-motion has been developed in a
perfectly similar manner to that by which the stability of the heavenly
bodies has been developed, the physical side of the process being just
as fully a matter of action and reaction, and our action towards ends
the slowly progressive result of this course of action and reaction,
just as is the case with the harmonious movements of the systems of the
heavens. It would, moreover, be perfectly easy to formulate a purely
physical and mechanical explanation of our action, as Carneri does of
the action of ants and other species,--to explain the plucking of a
rose, for instance, as mere reaction upon the sense of smell and sight,
or as the mere mechanical action of cell-matter.
But, again, on the other hand: If it is true that the nervous system is
developed from cells of the outer covering of the body, it is,
nevertheless, not true that those primary cells are the nervous system,
any more than it is true that the lowest forms of life, from which man
has developed, are human beings. Rudimentary eyes exist in some animals
in the form of mere pigment spots, but we do not suppose these pigment
spots to endow the animal with sight as we understand it. Sight is not a
function of all forms of life, neither is hearing, and these powers have
developed out of forms of animal life in which they did not exist; why
then is it necessary to suppose consciousness to be a property of all
forms of life because we know it to appear in some higher developments
of life? Why may it not arise, as do sight and hearing, by gradual
evolution, as a function of special organisms? Have we any direct
knowledge of consciousness except in connection with certain normal
conditions of our own brain? And, this being said, have we any means
left by which we can prove the existence of consciousness, except in
connection with a brain similar to our own?
What grounds have we for assuming the existence of consciousness where
the analogy of our own organization does not furnish us with an
argument? If we argue from the analogy of our own experience to the
existence of consciousness in animals whose organization is similar to
our own, and then, following down the scale of life, find no pause or
gap at which to draw an exact line, we must not the less forget that
with the diminishing analogy the force of our inference diminishes in
like degree. Or where is the logical necessity of inferring that
consciousness must exist in the inorganic either because the organic
originally developed from the inorganic, or because it suffers
continually a renewal by nourishment, which is, in effect, as much a
development from the inorganic as the supposed primal one? The pigment
spot from which the eye arises is not the eye, simple protoplasm is not
the organized human being; whence does the physical organization arise?
Are we to suppose it, too, as preexistent, "in a weaker form," or in
any form, in the inorganic? Whence have we any grounds for assuming that
that which we know only in connection with a certain peculiar
organization exists elsewhere? Are we to suppose the color blue to be
present in certain chemical elements because their chemical compound is
blue? Or how is it that even isomeric compounds may exhibit different
qualities? Shall we regard the color as not essentially connected with
the chemical constitution of the supposed compound? As a matter of fact,
color is one of the chemist's means of recognition. Or shall we
"explain" the color by the length of light-waves or the construction of
the eye, correcting, thus, one part of our experience by another, and
assuming one as fundamental and essential, the other as non-essential?
We "explain" sound as wave-movement in some outer medium and in the ear,
correcting, thus, the hearing by sight or touch; does this mean that
that part of our experience given us through the eye or hand alone is
truth, and to be relied on and recognized as such, while the experience
given us through the other senses is non-essential and not to be
accepted or relied on? But if the eye gives us the truth, then why do
we, in the case of color, correct it again by another phase of our
experience? How are we to decide which is essential, the wave-movement
that is (or may be made) perceptible to our eye, or the sound heard by
our ear, the color directly seen or the length of the light-wave
concluded from experiment? As a matter of fact, we emphasize one or the
other according to the end we have in view in our experiment. Is it the
length of the wave which causes the color, or the color which causes the
particular wave-length? If we analyze brain-action as chemical action,
do we prove thereby that the consciousness concomitant with this
peculiar chemical action under these peculiar conditions must exist
elsewhere under other conditions? Are the characteristics of one
chemical compound the same as those of another because both compounds
are matter and motion? If we prove that the brain contains cells similar
to cells in other parts of the nervous system, that the whole nervous
system arises, in the first instance, from epithelium cells, that the
whole animal is descended from some primal protoplasmic cell, and that
the cells of plants are similar, in many ways, to those of animals, do
we thereby prove that consciousness exists except as cooerdinate with the
peculiar cells and arrangements of cells in the brain? We have no
precedent from which to argue, since consciousness is to us a unique
feature of the universe; we know it immediately only as existent in
ourselves, and in order to obtain any precedent must be guilty of
assuming it in order to prove it.
The dilemma seems, thus, as we analyse and inquire into it more closely,
to increase rather than decrease in significance. How is any solution to
be arrived at?
If we return to the beginning of our considerations on this point, we
shall find that, in coming at the question from either side, we have
made an assumption. Our first premises were as follows: Assuming that
consciousness is the cause of movement by which man attempts to arrive
at his ends, what reason have we for supposing consciousness to exist
outside man? and, on the other hand: Assuming mechanical action and
reaction to be the cause of movement in inorganic nature, what reason
have we for assuming this to be the cause of action in organic
existence? Let us examine these assumptions more closely.
We may return to the theory of the gradual development of stable out of
unstable conditions as stated in different ways by Zoellner, Fechner, and
Du Prel. As has been shown, the principle applies to organic as well as
to inorganic nature, and is only a broader principle including that of
the Survival of the Fittest. There is a physical side to all psychical
functions, and everywhere our investigation shows us the physical
following unchanging laws. The development of the Stable from the
Unstable explains to us the evolution of function in the direction of
the preservation of the organic forms of which it is the function, as
well as the evolution of harmonious movement in the heavenly bodies. The
explanation of the natural and necessary elimination of the inharmonious
covers the whole ground, and seems to assign a cause for every form of
preservative action, for the harmonious conduct which preserves the
state or the family as a collection of individuals, as well as for the
harmony of function that preserves the individual. As long as reason can
change no smallest detail in the workings of the laws of nature, as long
as it can never render any motion other than the exact resultant of the
forces represented in it, what room remains for reason as a cause? Ought
we not rather, though from a much broader and therefore more convincing,
in fact from the broadest and hence most convincing view of the matter,
to regard consciousness, as do many physiologists on narrower grounds,
as the mere accompaniment of material processes?
But this brings us again to a consideration of the concept of cause.
What do we mean by cause? Above, we spoke of the "cause of motion"; do
we designate by this term those factors of preceding motion which,
continued, produce it as composite resultant? If so, why not substitute
for the term "cause of motion," "component factors of motion"? But is
this, in fact, all we meant by cause? Was there not, in our mind, as we
made use of the term, a vague half-conception of some additional force
beyond those so exactly summed up in the resultant, which, in some
indefinable manner, guided the process? As has been sufficiently
demonstrated, no such additional force can be shown to exist, or be
logically assumed in theory, except in some transcendental sense; nature
gives us only perfect equivalence of forces. A cause of motion except as
the mere sum of its preceding components is, therefore, a natural
impossibility. Hence the reason or consciousness cannot be assumed to be
such a cause. But if consciousness cannot be regarded as such a cause
additional to the component factors of motion, neither can anything
outside consciousness be regarded as such a cause. Natural laws are
often treated as if they constituted a cause; but they are not entities
which control nature: they are merely forms by which we express nature's
constancy, uniformity. Neither is constancy or uniformity a controlling
entity: it is simply a generalization, if a universal one, whether we
regard it as _a priori_ or as _a posteriori_. It appears, then, that we
have no greater reason for regarding the constancy of nature or natural
law as cause than we have for asserting reason to be such.
In this connection the question may be in order, as to why the student
of the natural sciences, who is in the habit of proclaiming, so loudly,
the necessity or at least the constancy of everything in nature, should
yet elect to assign to consciousness the character of the non-essential,
that is the accidental. Action and reaction are, according to him,
essential inherent properties of brain matter as such, but consciousness
is merely a dependent. But who shall decide what part or form of force,
what factors of the universe are accidental and what essential? If our
assertion of constancy in natural phenomena means anything at all, it
means that nothing is accidental, but that all factors of phenomena are
essential. Is the bell the less silver to my eye because it appeals to
my ear with sound, or the ball the less round to touch because my field
of vision is flat? Even if we suppose forms of matter, and organic
forms, to exist without consciousness, can we therefore assert
consciousness to be any the less essential, any the less inherent in the
nature of things, any the less existent and actual, where it appears? If
so, what physiological function can we call inherent and essential,
since these all also arise with evolution? Heat may exist without light,
but is light therefore less essential than heat, where it arises? The
very constancy which psychical phenomena exhibit would show their
essential character as factors of the universe. Perhaps it is the
attempt of the spiritualist to assign to consciousness something more
than such a character which has led his adversary into the opposite
error of asserting it to be something less; but the two extremes of
doctrine are quite equally far from that scientific method which holds
to given phenomena. Materialism is as much metaphysics as Spiritualism
is; and the materialist who condemns metaphysics condemns himself.
Consciousness belongs to the Actual; and the Materialism which assigns
it a place subordinate to that of other actual phenomena is as much
dogmatism as is any theory which subordinates the other phases of the
Actual to it. The fact that consciousness bears constant relation to
certain physiological phenomena is no ground for pronouncing it the
effect and the physiological phenomena the cause, it the dependent and
the physiological phenomena the independent factors; the relations of
all forms of force to each other are constant. Heat is constant in its
accompaniment of light; and yet who shall say the one is dependent, the
other independent, the one cause, the other merely effect?
We have only to regard the theories of specialists in order to discover
how easily habitual occupation with one particular side, form, factor,
or phase of phenomena inclines one to regard that side as the only
essential one, and all others as non-essential, dependent upon it, mere
effect of which it is the cause. The physicist tends to interpret
everything by mechanical action and reaction; the chemist lays more
particular stress on the chemical properties of organic as of inorganic
matter; the physiologist emphasizes cellular structure and combination,
and makes much of brain cells, the spinal cord, the _nervus
sympathicus_, and the special sense-organs; the biologist often regards
the attraction and repulsion involved in the so-called sensibility of
all forms of living matter as the cause of all life phenomena; the
anatomist calls attention to the arrangement of organs with respect to
each other, the mechanical adjustment of parts for function, the size
and shape of bones as caused by weight and the angle of its incidence,
etc., etc.; while the psychologist on the other hand refers everything
to mental causality. For complete science, however, we need the aid of
every special science,--of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physiology,
Anatomy, Psychology, and all the other branches which can contribute to
any side of our knowledge of nature. The desire within us for unity is
strong, the impulse to simplify by referring everything to a single
principle almost irresistible; and in so far as we do this through a
conviction of the oneness of the universe as consisting of
interdependent parts we are in a certain sense justified; but until we
can grasp this unity in its totality, our one-sided reductions must
remain false in so far as they make claim to include the whole of truth.
It may be most useful to choose out that side or phase of phenomena for
any particular investigation which is most accessible to such
investigation; where the links of the psychical fail, it may be
necessary to scientific completeness or clearness to complete the chain
with the aid of the physical, but it should be borne in mind that this
is a device of reason for convenience' sake. It may be possible to
imagine two worlds, one in which the physical evolution alone takes
place and all phenomena peculiar to organic function arise through the
action and reaction of organic matter;[122] but the question is not what
we can imagine but what is: we can imagine many things which do not
exist and are impossible to nature. The human reason has also found it
possible to conceive of spirit unconnected with body.
The materialist calls triumphant attention to the constancy of material
phenomena, and proves, by careful comparison with cooerdinate psychical
phenomena, the uniformities in the latter. Disease of every kind, but
particularly those forms of disease which attack especially the nervous
system--brain and spinal cord and the nerve endings--furnish the strong
points of his argument, which is thus based on facts no lover of truth
desires to gainsay; but when the materialist has shown us all these
facts, has he not proved, with regard to the psychical, exactly that
constancy which entitles it to consideration as a part of the actual
universe subject to natural law?
The materialist objects that if the physical side of nature is the
essential one, the psychical cannot be essential. On what grounds is
this claim based? Is the color of an object not essential to it because
its shape is essential, or do the actual existence and change of color
according to natural law interfere with the actual existence and change
of shape according also to natural law? Does only one of our senses give
us truth?
Logic is very ready with its definitions of "things" and their
"properties" and "accidents," as Physics is very ready with its analyses
of light and color and sound, and Physiology with its analyses of the
sense organs and their relations to color and sound. But shall we accept
only the physiological analysis of cell form and action, and reject the
sense-synthesis of sight or hearing as less important, less actual? Or
are we to believe that the sense-function alone is essential and not
also some actuality in its object, as of this or that color? Are we to
believe that any property or accident of a thing may change, and the
thing remain yet actually the same thing? What are our essences as
separated from their properties and accidents? As a matter of fact, we
know nothing except we know it as some particular thing, every change in
which leaves it something different from what it was before. Changes of
particular form or color are changes to some other particular form or
color, unless they are such changes as withdraw the object from the
reach of the special sense of sight before appealed to, as for instance
in the case of evaporation. That one form of force may accompany or pass
into another makes neither one of the concomitants and neither the
preceding nor the succeeding form less real. As a fact, however, much
superstition still remains with us as unconscious result of just such
withdrawals from the perception of one sense and analogous new appeals
to some hitherto unaffected sense, although we are accustomed to flatter
ourselves that science has long overcome this superstition. There is no
change that is not a particular change, that is not according to
constant laws of nature, and, as such, essential to nature. There is no
phase of nature that exact science can consistently regard as
non-essential. So that, even if reason does not exist in combination
with all matter, we have no ground for regarding it as non-essential
where it does exist, and no more reason for defining it as effect than
we have for defining it as cause. Result it may be, as physiological
function is result,--that is, an end-form of processes of change which
we call evolution.
But we have found our disproof and also our proof of the existence of
reason outside the human species fail us wherever the direct evidence of
extreme analogy is wanting, as soon as we cease to regard reason as a
cause of physiological change. Perhaps it will be well for us to define
more closely the province of reason, before we proceed further in our
considerations. An exhaustive analysis is not necessary to our purpose
and it would be useless to attempt it at this point of our argument. The
relation of reason to action is what chiefly concerns us here, and in
this connection Mr. Leslie Stephen's definition of it as that faculty
which enables us to act with regard to the distant and future might seem
to designate its important function.[123] Simple reaction on the present
action of force belongs to all matter. However, when we consider
further, a certain doubt may rise as to the exact correctness of this
definition or description, for does not that which we call instinct
often perform the same office for the animal as that which we have
designated as the office of reason? Let us look into this question a
little more closely. We may take, for instance, the case of those
insects and other animals which, though never caring for or indeed
seeing their offspring after the hatching of the latter, make provision
at the laying of the eggs for their nourishment during the helplessness
of the first period of their life; are we to suppose that these animals
have any means of knowing that they are providing for their offspring?
Can they have learned the fact from their own parent whom they never
saw, or from others of their own species who are in the same predicament
as themselves? As Schneider points out,[124] the human infant must have
sucked before it could have had any ideas, as individual, of the act of
sucking. The newly hatched chickens of Eimer's experiments above
referred to could scarcely have had any conception of the act of eating
before they picked at their food. How happens it that the young of many
of the lower animals which give no care to eggs or offspring yet know
how to care for themselves after the peculiar manner of their kind? Once
it is admitted that any acts which attain results that constitute
desirable ends for the acting subject need not be regarded as caused by
knowledge of the ends, there is no reason to suppose that the principle
may not hold of many acts in which a distinct knowledge of the end seems
to play a part. But what do we mean by end?
Let us take, for instance, the act of eating. The biologist and the
physiologist tell us that the end which eating serves is the
preservation of life; and the biologist may further add--not the life of
the individual, alone, but that of the species. The very consistent
physiologist may principally have in view, in eating, the preservation
of his own health, and may even take into consideration, in a degree,
his possible future offspring, guarding his own health with a view to
theirs. With a minority of other men these more general and distant
results may to some extent be kept in view as ends. But it is evident
that, with the majority of people, they are, where ends at all,
subordinate ones, the immediate satisfaction of hunger, the pleasure of
eating, or the relief of physical depression, appearing oftener as chief
end. And what is to be said of the new-born infant, which sucks when the
breast is placed between its lips? what is the end which it has in view
in taking nourishment? Shall we suppose it, as individual, to have any
definite conception of the contrast between states of hunger and states
of satisfaction, and to possess the knowledge that the act of sucking is
the proper means to the attainment of satisfaction as an end? As the
infant becomes the boy seating himself at table with a distinct
conception of pleasure to be attained by the gratification of a vigorous
appetite, so the boy may become the physiologist eating with a view
chiefly to his own health and to the further end of health in his
offspring. How does it happen that, thus, the same act, the significance
of which remains the same, may be performed and by the same individual
yet with quite different ends, or perhaps in some cases (that of the
infant) no end at all, in view?
When we perceive the sphex providing its eggs, as is its wont, with
living and yet motionless and helpless insects, we can scarcely refrain
from believing that it is inspired by parental affection thus to provide
for its future young; and yet we might, with quite equal reason,
suppose that the act of copulation, in the case of the sphex, must have
in view the propagation of offspring and the preservation of the
species, since this is its result also; we refrain from so supposing,
simply because a common experience furnishes us with the knowledge that
the act of copulation, most necessary to the propagation of offspring
and the preservation of the species, may yet be performed with no direct
view to either of these ends, the birth of offspring being even
regarded, in many cases, as something to be avoided if possible. With
respect to all manner of acts, we continually fall into error by
imputing what would be our own end, in case we performed the act, to
another individual of our own species performing it; and the danger of
error is doubtless increased when we attempt to judge the ends of an
entirely different species by ends in a degree common to our own
species. There is no reason why we should not suppose that some less
ultimate end than that of the preservation of offspring may be present
to the consciousness of the sphex placing food about its eggs, just as
some nearer end than preservation of the species, health of offspring,
or even individual health may be present to the human individual in the
acts of copulation or of food-taking. And there remains still the
further question as to whether the care of the sphex for its eggs may
not be, and continue forever, on the plane of the first act of
food-taking in the human infant; and then the question again arises as
to what the nature of that plane of action may be.
These questions must remain, I believe, in great part unanswered,
considerations such as those noticed above making the inference even of
like ends from like acts very untrustworthy, the inference of similar
ends from similar acts still more so, and the inference of the existence
of no end or consciousness at all a logical impossibility. However, a
certain general clew is given us in the constant cooerdination of our own
nervous system with psychical processes, from which we may infer
psychical processes in some manner and degree similar to our own in
species whose nervous system greatly resembles our own; the similarity
need not be that of ends, however. The decreasing similarity of nervous
organization as we descend the animal scale may be supposed to be
cooerdinate with some decrease of psychical similarity. _Wherein_ this
increasing dissimilarity consists, however, we have yet to inquire.
If we return to the act of food-taking in the individual, we perceive
that, avoiding any exact assumption as to the definite nature of the act
in its first appearance in the infant, we may make the general assertion
that, as in the case of the supposed physiologist who finally comes to
eat with a direct view to the preservation of health in his offspring as
well as his own preservation and health, the act itself, while remaining
unchanged in nature, connects itself, in the process of development,
with various ends. As the individual becomes conscious of farther and
farther reaching and more and more complicated results of the act, he
postulates these as ends, not forgetting, however, important ends
earlier postulated. He may eat, as a boy, for the pleasure of eating,
later with his health and the capacity for useful work in view, and
finally to the end also, or perhaps primarily, of securing healthy
offspring; but he eats, in all these cases; and it is even supposable
that he may eat the same kinds of food, healthful food being, from the
beginning, agreeable to him. The widening of knowledge by experience, in
the case of the human individual, furnishes him with more distant and
more complex ends, which were earlier impossible to him, since he knew
nothing of them.
Something similar appears to be the truth in the case of the mental
progress of the human species as a whole. The growth of knowledge is, in
fact, a growth of consciousness of the constant connection of particular
processes with particular results, and of human acts as affecting these;
with which increase of knowledge a further cooerdinate development in the
sense of a postulation of further and further and more and more complex
ends keeps pace. We are continually making "discoveries,"--performing or
observing operations some or all of the observed results of which are
unforeseen by us, though these very results may be later sought as ends.
We are often able to predict the results even of entirely new
experiments; but we foresee, and can therefore assume as end, no results
the elements of which in their connection with their conditions have not
first come, in some way, within our knowledge. Nothing is a discovery
which does not involve some new element or new combination of elements.
The growth of knowledge, in individual and species, and the increase in
distance and complexity of ends never attain completeness, not all
results become known; new discoveries are constantly being made which
show us that we have hitherto been blind to results continually before
our eyes, action in accordance with which would have been most
advantageous to us.
With all these facts before us, how are we to decide as to the end in
view in any non-human act? How can we be sure whether the bird which
covers its eggs is acting with a view to the production of offspring or
merely, as some authors have assumed, to the more immediate end of
cooling its own breast.[125] How do we know whether any feeling which we
might term mother-love is active in the sphex's care for her eggs,
whether they are, as some authors have suggested, a part of her own ego
and therefore cared for, or whether the act of caring for them has not
finally come to have some immediate pleasure connected with it, such as
accompanies the satisfaction of hunger or the sexual instinct, the
pleasure itself being sought as an end? How do we know even whether the
impaled butterfly is endeavoring to escape pain or merely attempting to
continue its flight?
There appear to be some general lines that we may draw. Thus, for
instance, all facts seem to justify the assumption that the possession
of a nervous system involves sensibility and susceptibility to pain and
pleasure; and thus it is hardly consistent to suppose that the struggle
of the impaled butterfly can be without pain. It might be at times more
agreeable to our selfishness to suppose animals insusceptible of pain,
but I think we can scarcely lay that flattering unction to our soul, and
must face the assumption of their sensibility and feeling. The question
as to whether the butterfly has any distinct idea of escape as an end to
be striven for is a different one and not so easily solved. Yet as
regards conscious ends, too, we may be able to arrive at some general
conclusions with respect to the acts of animals, even of those low in
the scale. Some such conclusions have already been reached in our
considerations. But it is to be noted that all these are purely
negative--exclusions not inclusions. We may be able to say, for
instance, after careful experiment and observation, that this or that
act takes place where there is no possibility of previous knowledge, on
the part of the animal performing it, of this or that result (which we
may, however, regard as an end that should especially be desired by the
animal), and that this particular result cannot, therefore, be an end
present to the animal mind, as such, in performing the act. Lubbock
believes that the passive state of the caterpillar in its cocoon during
its transformation to a butterfly is a necessary condition of its
preservation, since the mouth while undergoing change to an organ
adapted to sucking, and the digestive organs during their preparation
for the assimilation of honey, must be useless, and therefore the animal
in an active state must perish of starvation. It is scarcely to be
supposed, however, that the insect is aware of these ends of
self-preservation involved in the state of passivity in the cocoon and
knowingly seeks them as ends. Since the metamorphosis takes place but
once in the individual life, the insect has no means of learning
anything about it beforehand from his individual experience (though,
even if this were not true, there would still remain the first instance
of cocoon-spinning to be explained); and it is both difficult to suppose
that the caterpillar has always had opportunity to be instructed in some
way by butterflies of his kind, as well as unnecessary to suppose this,
since we see, in other cases, that acts useful to the individual may
take place without previous instruction or experience. In the case of
the sphex, too, as in that of many other lower species that provide for
offspring they will never see, it is not to be supposed that the welfare
of the offspring but rather some result nearer than this is the end in
view, if any end be present to consciousness.
With regard to primary acts of instinct such as those of the newly
hatched chicken, and the new-born infant, it would seem as if an
argument like the following might hold; it is, in fact, often made use
of in a somewhat different form. We have seen that not only the progress
of the individual but also that of the human species as a whole has
involved an ever increasing knowledge of the connection of processes
with their results and the cooerdinate assumption of these increasingly
distant and complex results as ends. The ends which animals with a less
extensive knowledge of natural processes may postulate, must be nearer
and less complex than our own, the ends of those whose experience
affords them least extensive knowledge being nearest and simplest, until
we arrive thus at those lowest forms of animal life which cannot be
supposed to have any knowledge that may be termed such, whose action and
reaction, in its psychical aspect, can be figured only as vague
sensation.
But first as to this vague sensation. Among our own acts, in which
"blind instinct" seems to play a rather larger part than reason, there
are those in which the gratification of the instinct involved is
attended with a peculiar pleasure, while the denial of gratification to
a sufficient degree is correspondingly painful; these are the acts
connected with the gratification of the primary appetites of hunger,
thirst, and sex. The strength of the appetites, the degree of emotion
involved in them, seems to be directly cooerdinate with their character
as connected with primary functions. This being the case, why may we not
suppose the functions of the simplest forms of life, which we believe to
have been passed on from generation to generation almost unchanged, for
the whole period of time occupied in the evolution of the human race, to
be connected with feelings equally as strong as any of our own, or even
stronger since function has been exercised on these few lines only?
Feeling changes direction with the growth of man's knowledge, with the
development of reason; it may be connected with new and more complex
processes; but it would be difficult to prove that strength of feeling
has increased except as connected with increased exercise of
_particular_ function--that is, it would be difficult to prove that the
whole sum of feeling has increased. And if we may assume that it has not
increased, then we must suppose as great a degree of feeling to be
possible in the lowest animals as in man; and no reason appears why we
should not suppose it to exist also in as great a degree in the plants
and in the inorganic matter from which both these forms of the organic
have sprung.[126]
And we have to notice a second fact: If the ends present to human reason
are nearer ones according as the knowledge of the individual performing
them is narrower, these nearer ends and the means of their attainment
may yet be very clearly and thoroughly known, the narrower knowledge
including the minute, often the minutest particulars, as far as it goes;
and why may we not suppose the so-called "instinctive" movements of
animals very low in the scale of being, which exhibit a most perfect
adaptation as far as it reaches, to be connected with a like perfect, if
very narrow, action of reason? Or why should we draw a line here between
the movements of animals and all other movements?
We are thus brought face to face with a dilemma to which there appears
to be no solution. If the solution is impossible, however, why attempt
it? In this case, anything we may term solution can be only dogmatic
assertion or else mere speculation. If the question is unanswerable, it
is unanswerable, and there is no use in further endeavor in this
direction. But, in reviewing our arguments, we shall find, I think, that
that which led us astray at every turn and induced us to hope for an
answer, now on this side, now on that, was the tendency to look for some
independent cause, some essence, effecting change rather than being
effected, or of which phenomena were only the properties. It was this
which made us believe that we had found the means to an answer in reason
as the cause of action towards ends, as also, again, that we had found
it in the development of the higher organism from the lower, and of the
organic from the inorganic. We know no such independent cause, no such
essence. We know only variables, preceding conditions and succeeding
conditions, all of which preceding and succeeding conditions we must
regard as equally essential since they are equally actual; and we know
in all variation a certain constancy of relations, which we, by
abstraction, term law.
The argument which starts with the dependence of "ends" upon reason,
and so infers a necessary intervention of reason where motion is such as
to attain results regarded by the onlooker as ends to be desired, is
often applied in a still wider form in Theology. Of course if we start
with a definition of ends as results actually desired and premeditated,
then we may infer reason from the assumed existence of "ends" in any
case; but such a form of argument is evidently a gross case of _petitio
principii_; we assume that which is to be proved,--namely, the desire
and premeditation of the results attained. This fallacy ordinarily
escapes the eye through the double significance of the word "end" as it
is generally used; in the premises of the argument the use of the word
is justifiable if no implications of reason and will are associated with
it; but, with such a non-committal definition of the word, the
conclusion noticed could never be reached, we should find ourselves at
the end of the argument no nearer it than we were at the beginning.
The gradual development of stability from instability, harmony from
disharmony, a state where collision is at a minimum from one where it
was at a maximum, may be regarded as furnishing the best phase possible
of a teleological argument. Even the dissolution of any system is part,
according to the theory, of the evolution of some higher system of
stability, that is, of one including more elements. This leads us,
however, to the question of the definition of "higher"; the friends of
theological Teleology are very ready to define the development of life
up to man as the development of higher from lower forms, but are they
willing to regard a succeeding stage of still greater stability, a state
of barren and lifeless rest like that of the moon's surface, which our
earth will probably one day attain, as a yet higher stage of
development, the destruction of man and of the earth as part of a higher
evolution? We have to consider, further, that, unless we assume some
final state of absolute stability for the universe, we can suppose only
an asymptotic evolution towards it, in which higher and higher systems
of stability are developed only to be again destroyed. We know nature
only as involving such processes of evolution and dissolution; we know
no enduring stability. If we regard merely the side of evolution in
these processes, we may seem to have a strong argument for design; but
if we give attention to the dissolution succeeding every evolution, the
argument loses its force. And, again, if we assume the continual order
of destruction, reconstruction, and re-destruction finally to give place
to a condition of absolute stability, the question may be recurred to
whether this state could be one of motion, whether it must not rather be
conceived as one of absolute rest, some frozen peace of which the moon's
is but an imperfect type. We may ask, then, whether the friends of the
teleological argument would agree to designate this state, which is
highest from a mathematical point of view since it includes all the
elements of the universe, as highest in any point of view favoring a
theological theory of design. The teleological argument is accustomed to
take into consideration only the evolution side of natural process; the
pessimistic argument lays emphasis, on the other hand, on all forms of
dissolution,--both views corresponding thus, as a matter of fact, to but
half the truth. Even if we do not look beyond the evolution upon the
earth, it is evident that each step in advance is marked by wide-spread
destruction, each survival of the few bought at the expense of the
slaughter of the many. We may overlook the slaughter, but it does not
the less exist; we may egoistically shut our eyes to the pain, when it
is not our pain, but it is not the less a fact.
But further than this: Our previous investigations have shown us
difficulties on every side, when we have attempted to assume reason in
matter as the cause of stability or harmony, preservative action, or the
survival of the fittest. We may argue that mere matter and motion cannot
have produced such results as these; but how do we know this? How have
we such an intimate acquaintance with the nature of matter and motion
that we can assert this? Where were we at the origin of the universe (if
we suppose such) or where were we at the origin of life, that we should
be able to be assured of this? Or how do we know in any case, from an
origin, what might evolve with time? We obviously cannot argue from the
analogy of man's action, since he is a part of the problem itself,
included in the question, and such an analogy is a _petitio principii_.
If we have found it impossible to assume reason as cause in his case,
how can we, by the analogy of his action and by a universal
generalization, assume it as a Universal Cause? We have, in fact,
absolutely no precedent from which to argue, and may answer,--when
Wallace asserts that combinations of chemical compounds might produce
protoplasm, but that no such combinations could produce living or
conscious protoplasm,[127]--How do you know that they could not? We
have, indeed, no evidence to the contrary: we do not know. If we assume
the creation of protoplasm or the creation of the world to have been
analogous to any of the phenomena of our experience, in which we find
only certain constant results of the forces resident in matter, then
certainly we have no precedent for asserting the necessity of divine
creation; and if we assume the creation to have been essentially
different from any of the phenomena of our experience, then certainly we
have no data upon which to base any theory whatever concerning it. But
the assumption that the creation of protoplasm, of the earth, or of the
universe, was essentially different from any of the processes that we
know, is a mere assumption, without basis: we have no data from which to
argue in this direction; any hypothesis of such sort is made purely and
absolutely _a priori_. A first appearance of protoplasm upon the earth
we must infer from the facts furnished us by Geology and Astronomy; but
a creation of either matter or motion is a mere assumption. As we know
matter, it can neither be created nor destroyed. We cannot draw any
inference from man's will, for man creates nothing; his action is itself
a part of nature. Advanced theological doctrine tends more and more to
limit the creation to the first communication of motion to matter or to
assume some transcendental government of the universe, known, according
to the assumption, transcendentally, or inferred from the existence of
moral tendency or from desire for the transcendental in man. With
Transcendentalism we have, as yet, nothing to do; and with moral
principle in its bearings on this matter we cannot deal until later. But
as for the hypothesis of a first communication of motion to "dead"
matter, we may remark, as before, that this is a mere hypothesis with no
facts to support it. We know nothing of motion apart from matter, or of
matter except through motion; the two cannot be separated in fact, and
there is no reason for their separation in hypothesis or theory. Du Prel
says: "Whether causeless motion is scientifically conceivable, depends
on whether we have to regard rest or motion as the natural condition of
matter; for a motion that is not primary must, as newly appearing
change, be preceded by a cause. But though experience might incline us
to regard rest as the original condition of matter, and therefore to
seek a cause for every motion, this is, nevertheless, only the result
of an incomplete induction. For if it is true that we never see a
motionless body pass into a state of motion without a cause, on the
other hand, it is just as certain that a moving body can never pass into
a state of rest without cause; and if this axiom can never be directly
proved in processes on the earth, we can, nevertheless, show reason for
it: motion on the earth cannot be imagined without resistance from
obstacles, since the attraction of the earth and the moments of friction
can never be removed. But the axiom is indeed indirectly proved by the
fact that we see the velocity of a body decrease in proportion to the
resistance of obstacles; the body can only then attain to a condition of
rest when the moving force is consumed to the last remnant. Hence, if we
subtract the whole sum of resistance to the motion, we have again the
former condition, the motion with its original velocity.... Which
condition of matter is the original one, rest or motion, experience
cannot inform us. We have as good reason for regarding rest as arrested
motion, as for regarding motion as disturbed rest. The requirement of an
outer cause for the first impulsion of matter therefore has meaning only
in so far as rest is claimed to be the original, natural condition of
matter; but this claim cannot be substantiated, and the opposite is just
as conceivable, namely, that rest is only arrested motion, and that all
cosmic matter had motion from the beginning."[128]
Wallace practically abandons his own ground, not only in his later works
in ascribing much to natural selection which he was at first inclined to
believe the effect of some supernatural cause, and omitting from his
chapters on the application of the conception of evolution to man
several arguments for supernatural intercession employed in his earlier
work, but even in his first book, by admitting that natural selection
takes advantage of mental superiority just as it does of physical
superiority. We may notice at this point, however, a consistent
inconsistency of his, in that, though he denies the existence of
consciousness in matter, he leaves no logical room for the opposite
theory of a gradual development of consciousness, since he asserts that
all instinctive actions were at first self-conscious. This position is
held by others also.
We may note here an objection of Wallace's that "because man's physical
structure has been developed from an animal form by natural selection,
it does not necessarily follow that his mental nature, even though
developed _pari passu_ with it, has been developed by the same causes
only." The question may be again repeated as to what is meant by cause;
and it will be well to keep distinct, in our thought, transcendental
cause and cosmic conditions. We must admit that we have no proof of the
absence of transcendental causes. Neither the constancy of nature nor
the inseparability and indestructibility of matter and motion can prove
the absence of such causes, which might be entirely consistent with
these things; we have no data from which to argue that they are not so.
But though the law of Excluded Middle must hold good here as elsewhere,
it is also to be noticed that the absence of proof in the natural order
of things, with respect to the non-existence of transcendental causes,
is not equivalent to the presence of proof of the opposite. We cannot
infer, from the fact that no proof can be given of the non-existence of
transcendental causes, that therefore proof can be given of the
existence of such causes; or, from the fact that transcendental causes
may be, that therefore transcendental causes are; they may also not be.
There is, in fact, absence of proof for either view. Of the
transcendental, if it exists, we can know by definition absolutely
nothing. The man who endeavors to prove its existence generally bases
his argument on this very fact in order to disprove the validity of any
argument of his opponent from natural facts; when he, therefore, after
legitimately silencing his opponent, goes on himself to prove the
transcendental, he is guilty of self-contradiction. When Fiske asserts
that there is no problem "in the simplest and most exact departments of
science which does not speedily lead us to a transcendental problem that
we can neither solve nor elude,"[129] we may admit the point, but surely
it does not follow, because we cannot solve it, that therefore we must
solve it, far less that we must solve it in one particular way. If we
cannot solve it, we cannot solve it, and there is an end to the matter,
unless we find new proof. We may not be able, as Fiske says, to elude
the problem, but we certainly are able to elude the answering of it, and
must do so perforce if the first part of the assertion,--namely, that we
cannot answer it,--be correct. When Fiske urges us to accept one view
because "the alternative view contains difficulties at least as great,"
we fail to perceive any grounds in this position for such acceptance. To
Fiske's question as to whether we are to regard the work of the Creator
as like that of the child, who builds houses just for the pleasure of
knocking them down again, we may answer that the existence of a Creator
must first be proved before we, from a scientific basis, may make any
inference as to his purpose; and that we certainly cannot use an
assumption of his existence in order to protest against a theory of
Disteleology,--as Fiske seems to do,--if we use the teleological
argument to prove his existence.
We may furthermore protest against the elevation of any negative term,
as, for instance, Spencer's "Unknowable," to a term signifying a
positive existence. We do not know whether there is any positive
Transcendental that is to us unknowable; this mere negative term is
admissible only on the assumption that it expresses such an absence of
knowledge. The Unknowable assumed as existent entity is the Unknowable
known,--a self-contradiction.
A similar criticism may be applied to Spencer's use in his "First
Principles" of the word "Force," spelled with a capital, and defined as
designating "Absolute Force," an "Absolute, Unconditioned Reality,"
"Unconditioned Cause,"[130] etc. The attribution of reality to a mere
mental abstraction is a survival of old conceptions repudiated by
Spencer in their older form. Of forces we know much, but of abstract
Force nothing,--except as an abstraction from reality; and the dangers
in the use of such a term are made manifest by Spencer's elevation of
this concept to the character assigned it by the other terms quoted.
To sum up. We have found in nature only variables, no constant and
invariable factor, no independent one according to which the others
vary; we have found no cause that was not also an effect; that is, we
have discovered nothing but a chain of phenomena bearing constant
relations to each other, no causes except in this sense. We have no
precedent or data from which to assert that chemical combinations could
not have resulted in protoplasm and in living protoplasm, no data from
which to assert that mere evolution could not have produced
consciousness. As a matter of fact, however, we find the relations of
consciousness and physiological process as constant as those of the
different forms of material force, and while discovering no grounds upon
which to pronounce either consciousness or physiological process the
more essential, find none, either, for pronouncing one more than the
other independent of what we call natural law. The logic of all our
experience leads us to believe that neither protoplasm, nor the earth,
nor any of the parts of the universe, could have originated otherwise
than under natural law, that is, as the result of preceding natural
conditions which must have contained all the factors united in the
result, and would thus explain to us, if we knew them, in as far as any
process is explained by analysis, the results arising from them. We know
matter and motion only as united; we know no state of absolute rest, and
we have no grounds for supposing any initial state of such absolute
rest, or any state in which motion not previously existent in the
universe entered. On the other hand, we have no proof of the absence of
consciousness outside animal life, and no proof of the non-existence of
transcendental causes, though likewise no proof of their existence.
FOOTNOTES:
[112] "Origin of Species," 6th ed., Vol. I. p. 320.
[113] "Lecture on Cell-souls and Soul-cells," 1878.
[114] "Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls," p. 349 _et seq._
[115] See Part I. p. 161.
[116] "Der menschliche Wille," p. 13.
[117] On the Motions of the Tendrils of Plants; among the essays of
Knight published under the title, "A Selection from Physiological and
Horticultural Papers," 1841.
[118] See "Insectivorous Plants," Chaps. I. and II.
[119] "The Movements of Plants," Chap. III.
[120] See experiments made by Eimer: "Entstehung der Arten," etc., p.
263 _et seq._
[121] E. Pflueger: "Die sensorischen Functionen des Rueckenmarks der
Wirbelthiere," 1853.
[122] See Lange: "Geschichte des Materialismus," II. Theil, p. 486.
[123] "The Science of Ethics," p. 60.
[124] "Der thierische Wille," p. 161.
[125] See, for instance, Eimer: "Entstehung der Arten," p. 283.
[126] Carneri's instance, cited in support of his theory of the
possibility of sensation without pleasure or pain, that certain nerves
connected with fine sense-perception, may yet be cut without special
pain to the owner, is a poor one, first, because highly developed
nerves, the media of fine perceptions, are especially inapt examples for
citation in support of any theory of primitive sensation in lower
organisms, and, second, because the problem of pain and pleasure in such
cases is very different from the problem of pain and pleasure in
connection with ordinary excitation of nerve endings or the outer
covering of the organism from which the nervous system has developed.
The fact that, in highly developed organisms, some parts are less
susceptible of pleasure and pain might as easily be construed into an
argument that corresponding parts of lower organisms differ, in the same
manner, in susceptibility. Furthermore, sensation being admitted, as
Carneri admits it, or rather asserts it, of all forms of animal life, it
is difficult to conceive how he can interpret the phenomena of
appetition and repulsion as devoid of feeling. Most authors have argued,
with much more reason, that pleasure and pain are primordial. Carneri's
further argument that he who conceives the lower species as feeling
pleasure and pain introduces an immense amount of pain into the world
(p. 113, "Grundlegung der Ethik") is quite aside from the question as to
the facts of the case. Nor can man create pain by his conception of its
existence, or destroy it, if it exists, by a refusal to acknowledge its
existence.
[127] See Part I. pp. 19, 22.
[128] "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls", p. 350 _et seq._
[129] See Part I. p. 80.
[130] Pp. 170, 192d.