specks, as it were, of a vast ocean of _thought_, to which they bear a
like inconspicuous proportion to that borne by the few brain motions of
which they are the _antitheta_, to the totality of motions throughout
Nature. Under this view the laws of the _universe_ are the laws of
_thought_. This is a very different thing, be it noted, from saying that
they are the laws of human thought. The laws of human thought bear to
them the same small proportion which the laws of the action of the wheels
of a watch upon one another bear to the entire science of dynamics. The
science of dynamics could never be evolved from a study of these laws.
But perhaps it may not be hopeless for man to attain some sound knowledge
of the laws of cosmic _thought_, inasmuch as we have some few instances
of the way _thought_ acts upon _thought_ open to our investigation in
our own minds, and since this is supplemented by our knowledge of the
physical laws of nature, which are a shadow, a probably complete shadow,
of all the laws of causation which operate throughout the _universe_,
throughout the all-embracing _Mind_ of the great _Autos_.
Such is Dr. Johnstone Stoney’s conception of the relation of Natural
Science to Ontology. I have presented it partly in his own words, partly
in mine. It has been my conscientious endeavor to put it in as strong and
favorable a light as possible, and not in any way to weaken the strength
of its logical consistency. The main thesis may now be briefly summarised
in the following propositions:
The phenomenal object is a syntheton or product of mental
synthesis.
Its efficient cause is a _real existence_ or _antitheton_.
Nature is the totality of phenomenal syntheta.
The _universe_ is the totality of autic _antitheta_.
There is no causation in Nature; but the Uniformities of Nature
are the shadows of the causal Laws of the Universe.
_Thought_ has no place in Nature: it is part of the autic
_universe_.
The syntheton of which _thought_ is the _antitheton_ is the
motion of brain molecules.
It is a probable hypothesis that the _antitheta_ of which the
motions of Diacrinomenal Nature are the syntheta, are _thought_.
This is the monistic hypothesis, that there is but one kind
of existing thing, viz. _thought_; in contradistinction to
the dualistic hypothesis that there are two kinds of existing
things, _thought_ and _motion_.
I now pass from the attitude of expositor to the attitude of critic. And
first I will attack a quite outstanding position, namely Dr. Stoney’s
assumption that Clifford’s hypothesis which he supports and extends is
_the_ monistic hypothesis, and by implication that it is the _only_
monistic hypothesis. In opposition to this I venture to affirm that there
are several forms or phases of monism. I have not space to discuss the
matter; and must content myself with a bare enumeration of some of the
logically possible forms of Dualism and of Monism.
1) DUALISM.
_A._ _Synthetic Dualism_: according to which there are two
entities, the mind and the body; and these
_a_) either work side by side, without interaction, in
pre-established harmony (_philosophic dualism_),
_b_) or interact the one on the other (_empirical
dualism_).
_B._ _Analytic Dualism_: according to which there are two
elements as the result of analysis; _motion_ (with or
without a material basis) and _consciousness_; the two
elements being related in such a way that consciousness is
inseparably associated with certain complex modes of motion.
2) MONISM.
_A._ _Synthetic monism_: according to which there is but
one entity. And this entity may be:
_a_) The body, of which consciousness is a product
(_materialistic or physical monism_);
_b_) The mind, of which the body in common with the
world of phenomena is a fiction (_idealistic monism_);
_c_) The conscious organism, exhibiting certain
transformations of energy which are felt as psychical
states (_scientific monism_).
_B._ _Analytic monism_: according to which analysis
discloses but one element; and this may be
_a_) _motion_, of which (or of one phase of which)
consciousness is merely the psychical aspect (_analytic
materialism_);
_b_) _consciousness_, of which motion is merely the
phenomenal aspect (_analytic psychism_);
_c_) _x_ (_the unknowable_) of which motion is the
physical aspect and consciousness the psychical aspect
(_monistic agnosticism_).
Such are some of the forms or phases of monism as compared with those of
dualism. It will be seen that Dr. Johnstone Stoney’s speculations fall
under the head of what I have termed analytic psychism, according to
which the sole ultimate reality disclosed by analysis is consciousness
or thought. So far I have only reminded my readers that this, though
one form of monism, is not the only form. To which Dr. Stoney may very
possibly reply that it matters not to him whether there are five or
fifty-and-five monistic heresies besides the true creed of which he is
the prophet. He is only concerned with the establishment of the true
monistic faith. And as herein I should very heartily agree with him, I
will pass on without delay to criticise an assumption that lies close to
the heart and centre of his hypothesis.
On the first page of Dr. Stoney’s essay we read: “Let us, for
convenience, call these real existences _auta_—the very things
themselves. An _auto_ is a thing that really exists, and in no wise
depends on the way we, human minds, may happen to regard it.” And on
the second page we read: “My own thoughts are, at all events, things
that exist: they at least are _auta_ so long as they last. They are,
accordingly, while they last, a part of the _universe of existing
things_.” No proof is offered of this latter assumption that my thought,
human thought, is part of the universe of _auta_. I venture to call this
assumption in question. I demand proof of its validity. Nay, I am ready
to go further and roundly assert that my thoughts are not _auta_, and
furnish no evidence whatever as to the nature of such _auta_. I am quite
aware that I may seem to be giving the lie to a direct deliverance of
consciousness; and that it will be said that it is obviously impossible
to deny the existence of thought without at the same time exercising
that, the existence of which is denied—a dictum which contains a very
pretty play upon two different uses of the word “existence.”
I go back to the orange, without which as a philosopher I am lost. I hold
it in my hand, look steadfastly at it, and drink in with my nostrils
its fragrant aroma. What says consciousness? That the phenomenal object
I call an orange exists. It says nothing about independent existence,
nothing about _auta_. The direct deliverance of consciousness is that
an object-in-consciousness exists. If a “plain man” says that the
orange has a real existence, as such, independent of consciousness, he
is going beyond the direct deliverance. And if a philosopher says that
consciousness has a real existence, as such, independent of the object,
he too is going beyond the direct deliverance. And if, as would seem
to be the case, Dr. Stoney relies on the deliverance of consciousness
for the justification of his statement that “perceptions, while they
last, are _auta_, real existences,” I submit that he is relying on a
misinterpretation of the deliverance of consciousness.
The existence of the object-in-consciousness is the datum from which
plain man and philosopher alike must start. On this foundation we must
base all our reasonings and speculations. Physical science directs its
attention to the “object” side of the given relation. And it reaches
its “diacrinomenal” result that the orange may for physical purposes
be represented as a group of swift and rapid molecular motions. But
can physics at any stage of its analysis shake itself free from the
“consciousness” side of the relation? Assuredly not. All that it can do
is to represent the object-in-consciousness we call an orange in terms
of other objects-in-consciousness we term molecular motions. Psychology
directs its attention to the “consciousness” side of the given relation.
It analyses the object-in-consciousness into percepts, sensations, and
so forth. But can psychology at any stage of its analysis shake itself
free from the “object” side of the relation? Assuredly not. All that it
can do is to represent the consciousness-of-the-object we call an orange,
in terms of the objects-in-consciousness we term sensations, relations
between sensations, and so forth.
The relation of the consciousness-of-an-object to the
object-in-consciousness may be made clear by the analogy, which is
something more than an analogy of vision and the visual field. For
clear and distinct vision, a well-illuminated object of vision, and a
healthy organ of vision are necessary as coöperating factors. So, too,
for distinct consciousness a definite object-in-consciousness and a
well-defined consciousness-of-the-object are necessary as coöperating
factors. More than this. Unless there be some object of vision, however
vague, and some organ of vision, however dim, no vision at all is
possible. The coöperation of the two factors is essential. So, too,
unless there be some object-in-consciousness, however vague, and some
consciousness-of-the-object, however dim, no consciousness at all, in
anything like the human sense of the word “consciousness,” is possible.
Here, again, the coöperation of the two factors is essential. _And
neither factor is ever given in experience without the other._
Writing as I am, for readers of _The Monist_, I need hardly turn aside to
explain what I mean by an object-in-consciousness. And yet perhaps a few
words on the subject may not be out of place, and may prevent possible
misunderstanding. An object-in-consciousness is not necessarily a
tangible, visible object, like an orange. The yellowness, the sweetness,
the weight, the bare existence of the orange, may each in turn be an
object in consciousness. For the physicist the tangible orange may be
represented in terms of swift, infinitesimal motions; and these, not less
than the phenomenal orange, are objects in consciousness. A conception of
consciousness itself, an imperfect conception, but the best we can frame,
may be an object of consciousness, just as a reflected image of the eye
may be to the eye an object of vision.
It is generally believed by modern psychologists that all
objects-in-consciousness are derivable by processes of abstraction,
generalisation, and so forth, from the primitive datum of a perceptual
object. And it must be remembered that it is only in abstraction
that we distinguish between the object-in-consciousness and the
consciousness-of-the-object. The two terms of this, for us, inevitable
relation are given in inseparable coördination. But in abstract thought
we can distinguish the inseparable terms; distinguish in thought, that
is to say, what is inseparable in actual experience. To continue the
analogy of vision, we can make the one term focal, while the other term
remains marginal in the field of view. And we can neglect, for the
purposes of our thought and reason, the marginal term. But we cannot
get rid of it. We may deal, as in physics, with motion, neglecting the
consciousness in and through which it is appreciated; but we cannot
get rid of this consciousness. Or we can deal, as in psychology,
with the consciousness, neglecting the object-in-consciousness; but
we cannot get rid of this object. The object-out-of-consciousness and
the consciousness-without-an-object, are alike unknown—or, if the
reader prefers it, unknowable, which he may write with as many capital
letters as seemeth to him good. The common-sense realist believes in
the existence of objects-out-of-consciousness. The analytical psychist
believes in the existence of consciousness-without-an-object. Both are,
if the views here advocated be sound, attributing independent existence
to that which, so far as human knowledge is concerned, has only dependent
or relative existence.
It is unfortunate that the terms “real” and “reality” should
ever have been applied to the independent existence of so-called
things-in-themselves. I think such terms as Dr. Stoney’s “autic” and
“autic existence” would be far preferable. For the word “real” has a
meaning and force which is quite definite. The orange that I hold in my
hand and see with my eyes is as real as real can be. And if a philosopher
steps in and says, “My dear sir, _that_ is not real! The real reality
is, according to some, mind-stuff or consciousness; according to others,
motion of—well I don’t quite know what, so let us simply call it motion;
and according to others this real reality is unknowable”—I say if a
philosopher steps in and talks like this, one is reminded of Lamb’s
remark on Coleridge. Coleridge had been maundering on, as was his wont,
on “subject” and “object” and all the rest of his second-hand German
metaphysics, when Lamb broke in, with his forcible stammer, in a stage
whisper: “N-n-n-never mind C-c-c-coleridge; it’s only his f-f-f-fun.”
I repeat that the orange I hold in my hand and see with my eyes
is as real as real can be; and that we have here the standard and
criterion of reality not only for plain men but for philosophers.
In the perceptual object we have reality given in its clearest,
fullest, and most forcible form. Every step in the analysis of the
perceptual object-in-consciousness; every step in the analysis of the
consciousness-of-the-object takes us so far further from reality at its
best. The orange as an object-in-consciousness is far more real to me
than either the swift infinitesimal motions of the physicist, or the
“syntheton” of related and integrated sensations of the psychologist.
And when we reach the autic existence which is supposed to underlie both
motion and consciousness, we seem to get just as far as it is possible
for the human mind to get from the real orange with which we started.
And yet it is to this autic existence that metaphysicians apply the term
“real” in a different sense. For so far I have used the word “real” for
that which is given in experience. But metaphysically the word “real”
is used to indicate independence of experience. I repeat that for this
independent existence some such word as Dr. Stoney’s “autic” would be far
better and less misleading. It would emphasise the distinction between
_real_, that is to say given in direct experience, and _autic_, that is
to say independent of experience.
Accepting at any rate for our present purpose this distinction, we
have as coördinate realities the object-in-consciousness and the
consciousness-of-the-object. And these two are only different aspects of
the one great reality, the reality of experience. Of these two aspects
neither is more real than the other. The object-in-consciousness is every
bit as real as the consciousness-of-the-object; the orange as real as our
perception thereof. Both are intensely and vitally real; but—here I am in
opposition to Dr. Stoney—_neither is autic_. I can find no warranty for
such autic existence in direct experience or the so-called deliverance of
consciousness. Nor am I aware of any process of reasoning by which it can
be demonstrated.
But, it may be said, is it not in accordance with scientific method to
make an assumption and then see how far such assumption is justified by
the results it enables us to reach? Assuredly such procedure is allowable
and often fruitful. It is not on such grounds, however, that Dr. Stoney,
if I rightly understand him, bases his doctrine of the psychical nature
of _auta_. Let us, nevertheless, pay a moment’s attention to this
assumption and the correlative assumption of analytic materialism.
Consciousness and matter-in-motion (or bare motion perhaps) are the
ultimate elements reached by the psychologist on the one hand and the
physicist on the other. Neither, if he knows his business, pretends by
this analysis to have reached autic existence. But it is open to each
to make an assumption. The materialist says: I assume that motion is
the true autic existence, of which, under appropriate conditions, human
consciousness is merely a psychical aspect. The psychist says: I assume
that consciousness is the true autic existence, of which motion is
merely the phenomenal aspect. I confess that if I were forced to choose
one of these two, (which fortunately I am not,) I should elect to throw
in my lot with the materialists. For if justification by results is
to be the criterion, I hold that the results the materialists have to
show far outweigh any results which the analytic psychists can produce.
But the fact of the matter is that in neither case do the results flow
from the autic assumption. All the results are equally valid for the
student who holds fast to the relativity of object-in-consciousness
to consciousness-of-the-object. Since therefore the assumption is
valueless so far as practical results are concerned, and since it is
somewhat repugnant to sound reason to assume that either term of a given
relationship is the same out of relationship as it is in relation to its
fellow, I contend, as against both materialist and psychist, that it
fails to make good its claim to acceptance.
What shall we say then of _auta_ or _things in themselves_? Simply that
we do not know anything about them—that they are outside the pale of
human knowledge. If we even say they exist we are using the word “exist”
in an autic and unreal sense. It is phenomenal Nature which constitutes
the real Universe; of its autic _shadow_, supposing that there be such a
_shadow_, we know nothing. Need we then stay to criticise this unknown
_shadow_?
Even if we take Dr. Johnstone Stoney’s hypothesis as it stands we
find a marked distinction between the sense-compelling _auta_ and the
egoistic _auta_, or between the sense-compelling aspect of _auta_
and the egoistic or perceptive aspect. How is this distinction to be
explained and accounted for? I can see no answer to this question save
that the distinction is a matter of experience. Why not, then, trust
experience fully? Why go beyond it at all? Why not say that both the
sense-compelling aspect and the perceptive aspect are part of the
relation which is given in experience? If Dr. Stoney could only see his
way to this concession and could be led to adopt scientific monism, which
is based on relativity, he would still secure all that is valuable in
his hypothesis, and at the same time get rid of the difficulties which as
it stands encumber it. But it would no longer be a doctrine of _auta_.
For scientific monism is not a doctrine of _auta_ but a doctrine of
phenomena—phenomena regarded not only in their physical but also in their
psychological aspect. Unifying these two diverse aspects, it contends
that the conscious organism is one and indivisible; that it is a product
of evolution; that in its physical or material aspect this evolution has
given rise to the body and brain; that in its psychical or immaterial
aspect it has given rise to the mind and human consciousness; that these
two aspects, though distinguishable in analytic thought, are inseparable
in phenomenal existence; that just as the complex modes of energy of
the human brain have been evolved from the simpler modes of energy that
are found throughout organic and inorganic nature, so too the complex
modes of consciousness of the human mind have been evolved from the
simpler modes of infra-consciousness[19] that are associated with merely
organic and inorganic modes of energy. The last clause is admittedly
hypothetical. But it is submitted that the hypothesis is one that is
founded on strictly scientific and in no sense metaphysical or autic
analysis.
C. LLOYD MORGAN.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] See _Mental Evolution_ in _The Monist_, Vol. II, No. 2 (Jan. 1892),
p. 161.
EVOLUTIONARY LOVE.
AT FIRST BLUSH. COUNTER-GOSPELS.
Philosophy, when just escaping from its golden pupa-skin, mythology,
proclaimed the great evolutionary agency of the universe to be Love. Or,
since this pirate-lingo, English, is poor in such-like words, let us say
Eros, the exuberance-love. Afterwards, Empedocles set up passionate-love
and hate as the two coördinate powers of the universe. In some passages,
kindness is the word. But certainly, in any sense in which it has an
opposite, to be senior partner of that opposite, is the highest position
that love can attain. Nevertheless, the ontological gospeller, in whose
days those views were familiar topics, made the One Supreme Being, by
whom all things have been made out of nothing, to be cherishing-love.
What, then, can he say to hate? Never mind, at this time, what the scribe
of the apocalypse, if he were John, stung at length by persecution into
a rage unable to distinguish suggestions of evil from visions of heaven,
and so become the Slanderer of God to men, may have dreamed. The question
is rather what the sane John thought, or ought to have thought, in order
to carry out his idea consistently. His statement that God is love
seems aimed at that saying of Ecclesiastes that we cannot tell whether
God bears us love or hatred. “Nay,” says John, “we can tell, and very
simply! We know and have trusted the love which God hath in us. God is
love.” There is no logic in this, unless it means, that God loves all
men. In the preceding paragraph, he had said, “God is light and in him
is no darkness at all.” We are to understand, then, that as darkness
is merely the defect of light, so hatred and evil are mere imperfect
stages of ἀγάπη and ἀγαθόν, love and loveliness. This concords with
that utterance reported in John’s Gospel: “God sent not the Son into the
world to judge the world; but that the world should through him be saved.
He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been
judged already.... And this is the judgment, that the light is come into
the world, and that men loved darkness rather than the light.” That is
to say, God visits no punishment on them; they punish themselves, by
their natural affinity for the defective. Thus, the love that God is, is
not a love of which hatred is the contrary; otherwise Satan would be a
coördinate power; but it is a love which embraces hatred as an imperfect
stage of it, an Anteros—yea, even needs hatred and hatefulness as its
object. For self-love is no love; so if God’s self is love, that which he
loves must be defect of love; just as a luminary can light up only that
which otherwise would be dark. Henry James, the Swedenborgian, says: “It
is no doubt very tolerable finite or creaturely love to love one’s own in
another, to love another for his conformity to one’s self: but nothing
can be in more flagrant contrast with the creative Love, all whose
tenderness _ex vi termini_ must be reserved only for what intrinsically
is most bitterly hostile and negative to itself.” This is from “Substance
and Shadow: an Essay on the Physics of Creation.” It is a pity he had
not filled his pages with things like this, as he was able easily to do,
instead of scolding at his reader and at people generally, until the
physics of creation was well-nigh forgot. I must deduct, however, from
what I just wrote: obviously no genius could make his every sentence as
sublime as one which discloses for the problem of evil its everlasting
solution.
The movement of love is circular, at one and the same impulse projecting
creations into independency and drawing them into harmony. This seems
complicated when stated so; but it is fully summed up in the simple
formula we call the Golden Rule. This does not, of course, say, Do
everything possible to gratify the egoistic impulses of others, but
it says, Sacrifice your own perfection to the perfectionment of your
neighbor. Nor must it for a moment be confounded with the Benthamite, or
Helvetian, or Beccarian motto, Act for the greatest good of the greatest
number. Love is not directed to abstractions but to persons; not to
persons we do not know, nor to numbers of people, but to our own dear
ones, our family and neighbors. “Our neighbor,” we remember, is one whom
we live near, not locally perhaps, but in life and feeling.