15.
[26] Hovelacque. _Les débuts de l’humanité_.
[27] Sacher-Masoch. _Rev. des Deux Mondes._
[28] Sacher-Masoch. Ibid.
[29] Letourneau. _Evolution de la Morale_, p. 122.
[30] Mantegazza. _Fisiologia etc._ Milan. 1889.
[31] _Histoire morale des femmes._
[32] Romanes. _Animal Intelligence_, Vol. II.
[33] Hovelacque. _Op. cit._
[34] Letourneau. _La Sociologie d’après l’ethnographie._ Paris, 1884.
[35] Renan. _Les Apôtres._
[36] Op. cit.
[37] _La charité privée à Paris_, 1887.
[38] Op. cit.
[39] _The Forum._ 1891.
[40] Spencer. _Principles of Psychology_, II, p. 648.
PANPSYCHISM AND PANBIOTISM.
I. PROFESSOR HAECKEL’S PANPSYCHISM.
Professor Haeckel, in his article “Our Monism,”[41] propounds the theory
of Panpsychism, which he considers as an essential feature of Monism. He
says:
“One highly important principle of my monism seems to me to be
that I regard _all_ matter as _ensouled_, that is to say, as
endowed with feeling (pleasure and pain) and with motion, or,
better, with the power of motion. As elementary (atomistic)
attraction and repulsion these powers are asserted in every
simplest chemical process, and on them is based also every
other phenomenon, consequently also the highest developed
soul-activity of man.
“Simplest example: sulphur and quicksilver rubbed together form
cinnabar, a new body of entirely different properties. This is
possible only on the supposition that the molecules (or atoms)
of the two elements if brought within the proper distance,
mutually _feel_ each other, by attraction move toward each
other; on the decomposition of a simple chemical compound the
contrary takes place: repulsion. (Empedocles’s doctrine of ‘the
love and hatred of atoms.’)”
Not being able to accept Professor Haeckel’s doctrine of Panpsychism, I
propose what might best be called Panbiotism, briefly set forth in the
maxim πᾶν βιωτόν; that is, everything is fraught with life; it contains
life; it has the ability to live.
The word βιωτός is mostly used by Greek authors in the negative, as in
the phrase βίον οὐ βιωτόν, an unlivable life, in the sense of a life
unendurable or not worth living. Thus Sophocles and others. The word
βιωτός is embodied in the term Panbiotism in its etymological sense of
“livable.”
I am willing to concede to Professor Haeckel that all nature is alive.
Indeed, I have most emphatically insisted on the doctrine that there is
a spontaneity pervading all nature. (See “Fundamental Problems,” 2d ed.,
pp. 110 et seqq.)
By spontaneity is to be understood that kind of activity which springs
from the nature of the being or thing which is active. A motion that is
caused by pressure or push is not spontaneous; but a motion, the motive
power of which resides in the moving object, is spontaneous. Thus a cart
rolling down a hill by its own weight performs a spontaneous motion,
but when drawn by horses moves, or rather is moved, by pull without any
spontaneity.[42] Now everything that exists is possessed of certain
qualities; its existence is of some definite, peculiar kind, and this
its peculiar kind is the character of the thing. In the character of
a thing lies the source of its spontaneous actions. The spontaneous
actions of the chemical elements depend upon their qualities, which
always react under certain circumstances in a definite way, and under the
same conditions in the same way. The action of sulphur and quicksilver
lies in the nature of these elements. Their union is not passive, but
active. They _are_ not combined, but they _do_ combine. He who observes
and studies nature cannot be blind to the fact that an inalienable,
intrinsic power is resident in every thing that exists. This is true not
only of organised life, but also of the chemical elements as well as of
gravitating masses. The motion of a falling stone can, no more than the
actions of oxydising substances, be considered as ultimately due to an
extraneous pressure that makes them move by push, or to a _vis a tergo_
acting upon inert matter. These motions must be spontaneous; they are due
to powers inherent in the nature of reality. They are self-motions, and
in this sense we say that all nature is alive.
The term “life” is here used in a broader sense than ordinarily. It means
spontaneity or self-motion, while in its common signification the term
“life” is restricted only to the spontaneous action of organised beings,
i. e. of plants and animals. In order to distinguish life in the broader
sense from the narrower or common acceptance of the term, we call the
latter “organised life.”
It is not impossible, and I consider it even as most probable, that the
difference between Professor Haeckel and myself rests on a different
usage of the term soul. But a vague or inconsistent usage of the term,
unless we are especially careful in so defining it as to prevent
misunderstandings, will inevitably beget errors. Thus the doctrine of
Panpsychism is liable to lead to fantastic ideas, and to cause great
confusion concerning the activity of what is generally called inanimate
nature.
Soul (as I understand the term) is a system of sentient symbols.
The problem of the origin of the soul is solved as soon as we understand
how feelings can acquire meaning.
Suppose we have some sentient substance exposed to the impressions of the
surrounding world. The sense-impressions of the surrounding world leave
traces in the sentient substance; these traces, which are structures of
a certain form corresponding exactly to the various impressions, are
preserved and constitute a predisposition to being very easily revived
by impressions of the same kind. The revival of feeling in traces left
in the sentient structure from former impressions is called memory. If a
new impression of the same kind as the traces of the former impressions
affects a sentient being, the new impression already finds a convenient
path for its reception prepared. Its peculiar vibration fits in the old
trace and thus runs along very easily in the memory-grooves of former
impressions, reviving at the same time the feelings perceived at their
original formation. The feeling thus caused is composed of several
elements, which naturally melt into one: first, there is that kind of
feeling which is produced by the present impression; secondly, there is
the revival of former feelings or memory-sensations; and thirdly, there
is a feeling of congruence resulting from the combination of these two.
This third element is a new and a very important feature. We suppose that
it is extremely insignificant in the beginning, but being a constantly
growing factor, it rapidly increases in importance. The stronger and the
more independent the memory-structures become, the more clearly will
their congruence with fresh sense-impressions be felt as a congruence.
This feeling of congruence is the simplest form of what psychologists
generally call “recognition.”
The recognition of a sense-impression, as being the same as some former
sense-impression, adds to the feeling a new quality; it imparts meaning
to it. This feeling of a special kind will now stand for something. In
this way impressions upon sentient substance will, in the course of
their natural development, simply by the repetition of similar and same
impressions, come to indicate the presence of certain conditions that
cause the impression. This act of indicating something, of symbolising
the presence of a reality, of possessing meaning, is the birth of soul.
Sense-impressions that have acquired meaning are called sensations. A
sensation standing for a special object symbolises that object. Abstract
ideas are symbols of a higher degree, but they remain symbols just the
same. And it is the sentient symbols which constitute the soul.
Those actions which are regulated by the meanings of sentient symbols of
which a soul consists should alone, according to a strict terminology,
be called “psychical.” The falling stone, the chemical elements, when
combining or separating, etc., are alive; there is a spontaneously acting
power even in unorganised nature; but the actions of unorganised nature
are not determined by the meaning of feelings, and, in truth, we have
no reason to believe that their feelings—granting that they really do
possess feelings of some kind—are freighted with even so much as the
slightest inkling of significance. In a word, there is no soul in the
stone; there is no mind in the water-fall; and there is nothing psychical
in either oxygen or hydrogen. But there is soul wherever meaning can be
found as the regulating motive of actions; there is purpose. And wherever
purpose is, there is mind.
II. PLEASURE AND PAIN.
Professor Haeckel goes still farther in the application of his theory
of Panpsychism: he speaks of the atoms not only as feeling each other,
but also as having pleasure and pain. This indicates either that he
is serious in his belief in the psychical nature of all things, or it
proves how dangerous it is to introduce an allegorical expression the
allegorical character of which is from the beginning lost sight of.
What are pleasure and pain?
Pleasure and pain are known to us by experience; they are feelings.
Pleasure is an agreeable, pain a disagreeable feeling.
Pleasure and pain are different from sensation. Sensations are
representative of certain somethings called objects. Pleasures and pains,
however, are not representative, they are purely subjective states.
There may be pleasurable or painful sensations, and there may be pain
indicating the presence of pain-producing objects, but that does not
concern us now. When speaking of pleasure and pain we do not refer to
the representative value of feelings, but consider a merely subjective
aspect, pleasure being the agreeableness, pain the disagreeableness of
feeling.
Accordingly pleasure and pain presuppose the existence of an organised
system of feelings. An isolated feeling, we have learned, is meaningless;
it is still less pleasurable or painful. In order to agree or disagree,
there must be something with which to agree or disagree. Therefore,
although pleasure and pain are not symbols indicative of some objective
presence, they can take place only in sentient organisms, in systems of
feelings, in souls. Where these complex conditions, indicative of the
presence of a soul, are absent, we have no right to speak of the presence
of pleasure and pain.
We cannot interpret the phenomena of unorganised nature as being endowed
with feelings of pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain are psychical
phenomena, and psychical phenomena can take place in souls only.
We might as well speak of the presence of positive and negative
electricity in the cataract, the water-power of which is employed
to produce electricity. Electricity is, in such a case, transformed
water-power; but can we, for that reason, say that the motion of water is
either positive or negative electricity?
All the motions of the objective world must be supposed to have their
subjective correlates; but the simplest forms of objective phenomena
cannot have those subjective correlates which, according to our
experience, appear and have their conditions of appearance only in the
most complex and highest developed forms of existence—in organised nature.
* * * * *
The physiological conditions of pleasure and pain are now just beginning
to be investigated (see Goldscheider’s article in Dubois-Reymond’s
_Archiv_, 1891), and most philosophical theories concerning the nature
of pleasure and pain are mere assumptions. Almost all the views that are
now current attempt an explanation by generalising the idea of pleasure
and pain so as to regard the feelings of pleasure and pain as a universal
feature of nature. This vicious method of generalisation at the cost
of discrimination has produced much confusion in the world; and its
influence is the more pernicious as average minds are easily satisfied
with generalities.
Now, the theory of making pleasure and pain universal features of
existence is a palpably erroneous theory; it is a wrong generalisation.
It is true that sentient beings naturally seek pleasure and avoid pain.
But are we allowed, according to the laws of logic, to transfer the
special feature of the case to the whole class of all processes where a
seeking and an avoiding can be observed? Certainly not. Because sentient
beings are repelled by pain and attracted by pleasure, we cannot say
that every repulsion is due to pain and that every attraction is due to
pleasure.
The theory according to which pleasure and pain alone are the causes of
attraction and repulsion we may fairly consider as a poetical license
justifiable within certain narrow limits, and actually justified in so
far as there is in every natural process some peculiar feature that is
analogous to the feelings of sentient beings. This peculiar feature—viz.
its subjectivity—is, as we have seen, not visible, not observable; yet it
exists: it is that something which in the course of evolution becomes, in
special combinations, first feeling and then consciousness. But for that
reason it is not as yet either consciousness or feeling.
While on the one hand the theories of pleasure and pain that regard
pleasure and pain as universal features of natural phenomena, are
arrived at by a wrong method of generalisation, we find on the other
hand they do not agree with facts. They neither explain nor account for
the appearance or disappearance of real pleasures and pains such as take
place in animal life.
* * * * *
Starting from merely theoretical considerations, Kant defines pleasure as
a feeling of furtherance, pain, as a feeling of hindrance of life; and
so prominent a physiologist and psychologist as Alexander Bain says that
“States of pleasure are connected with an increase, states of pain, with
an abatement of some or of all the vital functions.”
A consideration of the actual causes of our pleasures and pains will
prove the incorrectness of these views, which are also due to wrong
generalisations. An increase of the vital functions and a further growth,
either of the organs or of the whole organism, is very often accompanied
with pain. A growing tooth causes, as a rule, as much pain as a decaying
tooth. And if by some drug the decay is hastened and the nerve is killed,
there is, connected with the suppression and sometimes with the mere
abatement of the vital function, an abatement of the pain also.
Feelings of pleasure and pain presuppose that habits have been formed in
a sentient organism.
Pain is not always a hindrance of life, nor is every hindrance of life
painful. Pain is not an abatement of the functions of life, not a decay,
nor a destruction. But pain is always a disturbance of life and of the
habits that have been formed.
Growth is, under certain circumstances, as much a disturbance as is
decay. And decay, if it is simply an abatement or cessation of function,
is not accompanied with pain.
While pain is always a disturbance of the functions of an organism,
pleasure is simply the gratification of wants; functions and wants being
formed by habits, we may briefly say that pleasure is agreement, pain
disagreement, with habits.
There are natural wants and unnatural wants. There are habits beneficial
to the furtherance of life, and there are habits injurious to the
furtherance of life. The pleasure connected with the gratification of
wants does not depend on its being a furtherance or a hindrance of life,
but solely on the intensity of the want. And the intensity of the want,
again, depends on the degree to which a habit has become inveterate.[43]
* * * * *
The theory of pleasure and pain which regards pleasure as indicative
of the growth, and pain, of the decay of life, leads ultimately to the
ethics of hedonism, which identifies the good with the pleasurable.
However, if our view of pleasure and pain be correct, it is apparent
that the pleasure theory in ethics is wrong in its very foundation. The
pleasurable would cease to be a criterion of goodness; for many things
are pleasurable that are bad, and many things are painful that are good.
Growth, development, progress, evolution have often been, nay must mostly
be bought with great pain, tribulation, anxiety, and also with the
renunciation of pleasures. On the other hand the fulness of pleasure is
always a very dangerous symptom for any state of existence.
The seeking of pleasure and the avoiding of pain are certainly very
questionable guides in determining what right conduct is. In adopting
pleasure and pain as the principles of ethics, we adulterate the nature
of morality; for morality exists and has been called into being simply
to counteract the dangerous allurances of that which promises to produce
pleasure and to avoid pain. Ethics has to teach us how to live, how to
develop, how to grow, how to make our lives useful and serviceable. If
ethics were simply a method of how to obtain the greatest amount of
pleasure, we might better openly confess that there is no moral goodness
but only pleasurableness, and consequently that morality is a chimera and
ethics a farce.
A defender of the pleasure theory in ethics writes in reply to this
criticism of his view: “To seek pleasure and to avoid pain is not wrong.
Why shall we deprive men of their enjoyments?” Certainly, everyone has
a right to enjoy himself; every one has a right to seek pleasure and to
avoid pain. But seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is not as yet ethical.
Under ordinary circumstances it is right enough to follow the natural
impulses of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. But there are cases
where seeking pleasure, be it for ourselves or for others, and avoiding
pain, be it for ourselves or for others, become actual wrongs; not
because present pleasures will lead to future pains, but because certain
pleasures are a hindrance to the higher evolution of the soul.
It is often said that the renunciation of pleasures is richly made up for
by the pleasures which are afforded in a more fully developed life. But
this, in my opinion, is not true. The adult has rather less pleasures
than the child, and the civilised or highly cultured man does not enjoy
himself as much, as easily, and as cheaply as does the savage, the
uncultured, the fool.
III. MR. THOMAS A. EDISON’S PANPSYCHISM.
Some time ago Mr. Thomas A. Edison was interviewed on the question, “What
is life?” Mr. Edison answered the question; and his view is quite in
accord with Professor Haeckel’s idea of panpsychism. The article appeared
first in a daily newspaper. Being remarkable for its coincidence with the
views of a great scientist, and coming from the pen of so interesting
a man as the famous inventor of the phonograph, we deem it best to
republish it in full, with Mr. Edison’s permission, who, at the same
time, acknowledged the copy we sent him as correct.
This is the article:
INTELLIGENT ATOMS.
BY THOMAS A. EDISON.
My mind is not of a speculative order, it is essentially
practical, and when I am making an experiment, I think only of
getting something useful, of making electricity perform work.
I don’t soar; I keep down pretty close to earth. Of course
there are problems in life I can’t help thinking about, but I
don’t try to study them out. It is necessary that they should
be studied, and men fitted for that work are doing it. I am not
fitted for it. I leave the theoretical study of electricity to
the physicists, confining my work to the practical application
of the force. It is my belief, however, that every atom of
matter is intelligent, deriving energy from the primordial
germ. The intelligence of man is, I take it, the sum of the
intelligences of the atoms of which he is composed. Every atom
has an intelligent power of selection and is always striving to
get into harmonious relation with other atoms. The human body
is, I think, maintained in its integrity by the intelligent
persistence of its atoms, or rather by an agreement between
the atoms so to persist. When the harmonious adjustment is
destroyed the man dies, and the atoms seek other relations.
I cannot regard the odor of decay but as the result of the
efforts of the atoms to dissociate themselves; they want to get
away and make new combinations. Man, therefore, may be regarded
in some sort as a microcosm of atoms agreeing to constitute his
life as long as order and discipline can be maintained. But, of
course, there is dissatisfaction, rebellion and anarchy leading
eventually to death, and through death to new forms of life.
For life I regard as indestructible.
All matter lives, and everything that lives possesses
intelligence. Consider growing corn, for example. An atom
of oxygen comes flying along the air. It seeks combination
with other atoms and goes to the corn, not by chance, but by
intention. It is seized by other atoms that need oxygen, and is
packed away in the corn where it can do its work. Now carbon,
hydrogen and oxygen enter into the composition of every organic
substance in one form of arrangement or another. The formula
_CHO_, in fact, is almost universal.
Very well, then, why does a free atom of carbon select any
particular one out of 50,000 or more possible positions unless
it wants to? I cannot see how we can deny intelligence to this
act of volition on the part of the atom. To say that one atom
has an affinity for another is simply to use a big word. The
atom is conscious if man is conscious, is intelligent if man is
intelligent, exercises will-power if man does, is, in its own
little way, all that man is. We are told by geologists that in
the earliest periods no form of life could exist on the earth.
How do they know that? A crystal is devoid of this vital
principle, they say, and yet certain kinds of atoms invariably
arrange themselves in a particular way to form a crystal. They
did that in geological periods antedating the appearance of any
form of life and have been doing it ever since in precisely
the same way. Some crystals form in branches like a fern. Why
is there not life in the growth of a crystal? Was the vital
principle specially created at some particular period of the
earth’s history, or did it exist and control every atom of
matter when the earth was molten? I cannot avoid the conclusion
that all matter is composed of intelligent atoms and that life
and mind are merely synonyms for the aggregation of atomic
intelligence.
Of course there is a source of energy. Nature is a perpetual
motion machine, and perpetual motion implies a sustaining and
impelling force.
When I was in Berlin I met Du Bois-Reymond, and, wagging the
end of my finger, I said to him, “What is that? What moves
that finger?” He said he didn’t know; that investigators have
for twenty-five years been trying to find out. If anybody could
tell him what wagged this finger, the problem of life would be
solved.
There are many forms of energy resulting from the combustion
of coal under a boiler. Some of these forms we know something
about in a practical way, but there may be many others we don’t
know anything about.
Perhaps electricity will itself be superseded in time, who
knows? Now, a beefsteak in the human stomach is equivalent to
coal under a boiler. By oxidisation it excites energy that
does work, but what form of energy is it? It is not steam
pressure. It acts through the nerve-cells, performs work that
can be measured in foot pounds, and can be transformed into
electricity, but the actual nature of this force which produces
this work—which makes effectual the mandate of the will—is
unknown.