electricity—at least such a form of electricity as we are
familiar with. Still, here it is necessary to be guarded,
because so many different forms of electricity are known to
science that it would be rash to say positively that we shall
not class vital energy as a form of electrical energy. We
cannot argue anything from difference in speed. Nerve-force
may travel as fast as electricity, once it gets started.
The apparent slowness may be in the brain. It may take an
appreciable time for the brain to set the force going.
I made an experiment with a frog’s leg that indicates something
of the kind. I took a leg that was susceptible to galvanic
current. The vibration produced a note that was as high as a
piccoto. While the leg was alive it responded to the electrical
current; when it was dead it would not respond. After the
frog’s leg had been lying in the laboratory three days I
couldn’t make it squeal. The experiment was conclusive as
to this point: The vital force in the nerves of the leg was
capable of acting with speed enough to induce the vibration of
the diaphragm necessary to produce sound.
Certainly this rate of speed is greater than physiologists
appear to allow, and it seems reasonable that there is a close
affinity between vital energy and electricity. I do not say
they are identical; on the contrary I say they are very like.
If one could learn to make vital energy directly without fuel,
that is without beefsteak in the stomach, and in such manner
that the human system could appropriate it, the elixir of life
would no longer be a dream of alchemy. But we have not yet
learned to make electricity directly, without the aid of fuel
and steam.
I believe this is possible; indeed, I have been experimenting
in this direction for some time past. But until we can learn
to make electricity, like nature, out of disturbed air, I am
afraid the more delicate task of manufacturing vital energy so
that it can be bottled and sold at the family grocery store
will have to be deferred.
Electricity, by the way, is properly merely a form of energy,
and not a fluid. As for the ether which speculative science
supposes to exist, I don’t know anything about it. Nobody
has discovered anything of the kind. In order to make their
theories hold together they have, it seems to me, created the
ether. But the ether imagined by them is unthinkable to me. I
don’t say I disagree with them, because I don’t pretend to have
any theories of that kind, and am not competent to dispute with
speculative scientists. All I can say is, my mind is unable to
accept the theory. The ether, they say, is as rigid as steel
and as soft as butter. I can’t catch on to that idea.
I believe that there are only two things in the universe—matter
and energy. Matter I can understand to be intelligent, for
man himself I regard as so much matter. Energy I know can
take various forms, and manifest itself in various ways. I
can understand also that it works not only upon, but through,
matter. What this matter is, what this energy is, I do not know.
However, it is possible that it is simply matter and energy,
and that any desire to know too much about the whole question
should be diagnosed as a disease; such a disease as German
doctors are said to have discovered among the students of their
universities—the disease of asking questions.
THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE.
Mr. Thomas A. Edison’s article is full of suggestions which invite
further discussion. We must here limit ourselves solely to those which
touch the problem of Panpsychism and Panbiotism.
Any one who has read Mr. Edison’s article will be struck with the strange
coincidence that obtains between his and Professor Haeckel’s views. The
famous naturalist considers what he calls panpsychism as the corner-stone
of his monism: he says that atoms possess souls; and in a similar way
the famous inventor believes in the intelligence of atoms, he declares
that atoms are endowed with minds. There is certainly a deep truth in
this conception of nature; and yet we cannot accept it in the way it is
presented by either Professor Haeckel or Mr. Edison.
With reference to Professor Haeckel’s views we have explained why atoms,
the actions of which are not endowed with meaning, have no soul, and also
why they cannot feel pleasure and pain. It remains for us to explain why
atoms are not in possession of intelligence.
What is intelligence?
That reaction upon a stimulus which takes place in the way it does
because of the presence of meaning, is called mental, or intelligent
action; and the ability to adjust action to mental representations is
intelligence.
Intelligence is a psychical quality, and the psychical process which is
preparing to act with intelligence is called deliberation. Deliberation
is the successive revival of several soul-structures, either of memories
of former experiences, or of rules derived therefrom, or of advice
formerly received, including also new combinations of these mental
structures, and keeping in view the probable results of the intended
action. In a word, deliberation is thought, and thought is an interaction
among meaning-freighted feelings.
Among these ideas, which in so far as they can influence action (i. e.
purposive motions) are called “motives,” the strongest one will determine
the result. Now, any atom of non-organised matter, say an atom of
hydrogen, acts (as we said above) with spontaneity. It is in this sense
as much alive as is any ever so complex vegetable or animal substance. It
is self-acting, and its action reveals the innermost nature of its being
just as much as the action of the man shows the character of the man.
There is, however, a great difference between the action of animal
beings whose action is regulated by the meanings of their feelings,
which in their totality we call the soul, and the actions of inorganic
matter, of crystals, minerals, gases, chemical elements, and gravitating
masses, all of which we comprise under the name “inanimate nature.”
The stone’s fall does not depend upon any representative feeling; it
depends solely upon that quality of the stone which we popularly call
its weight. Nor has the falling stone any choice whether to fall or
not to fall. Under certain circumstances it falls. There is no act of
deliberation preceding the fall. Nor has it any choice concerning the
direction of its fall. The surrounding conditions, viz., its position
with regard to the centre of the earth together with its mass, determine
the process. The stone’s action can satisfactorily be explained without
attributing to it psychical qualities. The stone possesses no soul;
it is void of mentality; and although we believe that everything,
organised or unorganised, is endowed with subjectivity (by which we
understand the conditions of psychical life, or the potentiality of
feeling and consciousness), this subjectivity can only be analogous
to the blind impulse of the stone’s mass. If some other, psychical or
mental, subjectivity were present, we should say that it apparently does
not enter as a factor in the determination of the event. Accordingly
such an assumption is gratuitous. There is subjectivity, but there
is no intelligence. There is potentiality of feeling, but there is
no consciousness. There is present the elementary condition of that
something which is going to develop into mind, but there is no mind;
there is no meaning-freighted awareness of the surrounding conditions.
Says Mr. Edison:
“The intelligence of man is, I take it, the sum of the
intelligences of the atoms of which he is composed.”
The sum total of the intelligences of the atoms in a human body (if,
in this connection, for the sake of argument, we grant that atoms are
intelligent) would not as yet make up the intelligence of man. Suppose we
are contemplating a mosaic picture or inscription. Are such compositions
really only the sum of the little stones? Are they not rather a certain
peculiar form in which these colored stones are arranged? It is not
the sum of the stones that makes the picture, but the form of their
composition. The picture is not contained in any single one of them, nor
is it the whole number of all the single stones: it originates through
their peculiar combination and consists of the form in which they are
combined.
Mr. Edison’s explanation of the soul, applied to this example of a mosaic
picture, would be as follows: Every little stone is in itself a little
mosaic picture. The whole picture of the mosaic is the sum of the little
pictures of the stones of which it is composed.
The intelligence of the soul, however, is not even as yet the form in
which feeling structures combine; it originates with the representative
faculty of the feeling structures. The soul is the organised totality of
a set of images and abstract mental symbols representing the qualities,
the influences, and the interactions of the different objects of the
surrounding world, the thinking subject included.
Says Mr. Edison:
“Every atom has an intelligent power of selection, and is
always striving to get into harmonious relation with other
atoms.”
The latter is true; the former is an error. Every atom “is always
striving to get into harmonious relation with other atoms”; this is its
nature; and its nature being stable, consisting of certain inalienable
and intrinsic qualities, the atom acts with consistency. Certain
atoms, say atoms of hydrogen, are of such a nature as to combine with
certain other atoms, say atoms of oxygen, into molecules that form a
certain substance of peculiar properties, which, if each atom of oxygen
combines with two atoms of hydrogen, would be _H₂O_, or water. This
substance again, having certain definite qualities, will in a temperature
below freezing point crystallise at a definite angle. The angle of
crystallisation being the same for all molecules _H₂O_, the result will
necessarily be one of most marvellous regularity. And not being able to
observe the atoms in their secret activity, not knowing all the details
of nature’s marvellous laboratory, we are astonished to find such a
wonderfully harmonious relation. And yet, considering the nature of
things, we are urged to confess that it is the result of an inevitable
necessity, which takes place according to strict mathematical laws.
Although every atom strives, according to its nature, to get into
harmonious relation with other atoms, we do not see any “intelligent
power of selection” in the province of inorganic nature. Every atom of
inorganic substances acts according to its nature in one and the same
way throughout. There is no choice, no selection, allowed. Choice and
selection are faculties that are reserved for the higher domains of
psychical life, which originates in the domain of animal existence when
meaning, conditioned by the presence of sentiency, rises into being and
creates the soul.
Supposing that through some combination of atoms their subjectivity be
combined in such a form as to produce sentiency or feeling, we can very
easily understand how this feeling will in time become representative of
the conditions by which it is affected. The soul does not consist of the
atoms of its organism, nor of the sum of the qualities of the atoms. The
soul consists of something more subtle than matter: the soul consists of
the meaning that is attached to the different forms of the feelings which
obtain in living organisms.
THE PROBLEM OF THEISM.
The problem as to whether or not there is an element of feeling present
in the unorganised realm of nature, is connected also with the problem
of theism. The monistic view of the world, which considers nature as
alive throughout, can neither accept the old supernaturalism, nor the
materialistic theory of atheism. Theism, as it is usually conceived,
believes in a personal creator and ruler of the world. Materialism denies
the existence of any God; it regards matter and its actions as the only
reality.
Monism does not regard mental phenomena as an incidental by-play of
blindly operating forces. It regards mind as a necessary product of
reality. Mind and the peculiar qualities of mind are characteristic of
the world-tree, of which it is the highest efflorescence we know. From
the fruit we can know the root, from the product we can judge of the
factors, in the creature we see the creator.
That great something which has produced us, the All-power in which we
live and move and have our being, and obedience to the laws of which are
the conditions of life, of welfare, and of an advance to higher life, is
called with a popular religious name “God.”
Let us comprise under the name “theism” all those views which recognise
any conception of God, and reserve the term anthropotheism for that view
which regards God as a person, a mind, a conscious being, or a world-ego.
Atheism in that case will be a negation of the existence of God in any
form, a negation of the All-power of which we are parts and to which we
have to conform; and accordingly atheism will be also a negation of any
authority of moral conduct.
We call attention to the fact that many who call themselves atheists,
simply because they do not believe in anthropotheism, are according to
this definition not to be classed among the atheists.
What has monism to say, on the problem of the existence of God?
Prof. George J. Romanes, in an article which appeared some time ago in
the _Contemporary Review_ under the title “The World as an Eject,”
declares that monism has left the problem of theism in the same state it
was in before. He says:
“The views of the late Professor Clifford concerning the
influence of monism on theism, are unsound. I am in full
agreement with him in believing that monism is destined to
become the generally accepted theory of things, seeing that it
is the only theory of things which can receive the sanction
of science on the one hand, and of feeling on the other. But
I disagree with him in holding that this theory is fraught
with implications of an anti-theistic kind. In my opinion,
_this theory leaves the question of theism very much where
it was before_.[44] That is to say, while not furnishing any
independent proof of theism, it likewise fails to furnish any
independent disproof.
“As a matter of methodical reasoning it appears to me that
monism alone can only lead to agnosticism. That is to say,
it leaves a clear field of choice as between theism and
atheism.”[45]
Clifford says in the passage referred to by Professor Romanes:
“Reason, intelligence, and volition are properties of a complex
which is made up of elements themselves not rational, not
intelligent, not conscious.”
Rational, intelligent, conscious beings, so far as their material
existence is concerned, are made up of elements not rational, not
intelligent, not conscious. But mind, reason, intelligence are not at
all made up of material elements; they are neither latent nor germinal
and least of all fully developed properties of the single atoms. Reason
can in our conception never be explained as a complex result of the
interaction of absolutely irrational elements. The material elements of
the world, it is true, are not intelligent, not conscious; but the world
as a whole (although _not_ conscious and _not_ endowed with purposive
volition) is at least _not ir_rational and not void of determination. On
the contrary the world as a whole is the prototype of all rationality,
and human reason is a mere image of the world-order. What is the reason
of a rational being but an incarnation of this world-order?
Reason is not a thing of matter; exactly so the world-order is not a
thing of matter. But it exists none the less; it is a reality. On the
other hand, the world-order need neither be a personal being nor the
work of a personal being. The order that prevails in the real world and
in the laws of nature appears also in the ideal world, in the laws of
formal thought, in mathematics, and its kindred sciences; and the same
rationality that obtains in the ideal domain permeates the realms of
reality, the universe of objective existence.
The idea that God created the world-order and dictated its laws is a
fanciful and poetical allegory; it is as such a pagan notion which
belongs in the same category with Hesiod’s Cosmology, but it is
scientifically and philosophically unthinkable. For God is eternal and
God’s being is eternal. God has not created his own attributes and the
world-order is simply an attribute of God; it is part and parcel of his
nature. Or can you think of God without that attribute of irrefragable
order that appears to science as necessity, to religion as holiness, to
ethics as justice, to art as the law of beauty, to the mystic as the key
to all the wonders of existence which though solving all the problems
remains most wonderful itself?
The world as a whole, the cosmos, God, or whatever we call the One and
All, is the prototype of all reason, but he is not a mind; he is not a
system of sentient symbols; he is not a soul. Minds are a special kind of
God’s creatures; but God is not a creature: he is the condition of the
existence of creatures, he is the creator.
The objection is made from materialistic quarters: “What is the world
as a whole but the sum of all atoms!” This is an error. The world is
not merely the sum of all its atoms; the universe does not consist of
innumerable little particles which in their combination form the All. On
the contrary: the world as a whole, existence in its oneness, or speaking
religiously God, is alone the only true reality; all other things and
beings are parts of him. Atoms are abstract concepts; the existence of
an atom and of its actions presupposes the existence of the great whole
of which it is a part, and without which it would have no reality. There
are no atoms in themselves. Atoms regarded as things in themselves are a
scientific superstition.
Professor Romanes advances the proposition, that cosmical events, being
as highly complex as nervous phenomena, might be possessed of a similar
subjectivity. The nervous phenomena which constitute the physiological
action of mind in the province of objectivity are, it is true, very
complex, but complexity does not constitute that characteristic feature
on the presence of which depends the origin of mind.
Professor Romanes says:
“Both mind and matter in motion admit of degrees: first as to
quantity, next as to velocity, and lastly as to _complexity_.
But the degrees of matter in motion are found, in point
of observable fact, not to correspond with those of mind,
save in the last particular of complexity, where there is
unquestionably an evident correspondence.
“Now, if we fix our attention merely on this subject-matter
of complexity, and refuse to be led astray by obviously false
analogies of a more special kind, I think that there can be
no question that the macrocosm does furnish amply sufficient
opportunity, as it were, for the presence of subjectivity, even
if it be assumed that subjectivity can only be yielded by an
order of complexity analogous to that of a nervous system. For,
considering the natural and dynamical system of the universe as
a whole, it is obvious that the complexity presented is greater
than any of its parts. Not only is it true that all these parts
are included in the whole, and that even the visible sidereal
system alone presents movements of enormous intricacy, but we
find, for instance, that even within the limits of this small
planet there is presented to actual observation a peculiar
form of circumscribed complex, fully comparable to that of the
individual brain, and yet external to each individual brain.
For the so-called ‘social organism,’ although composed of
innumerable individual personalities, is, with regard to each
of its constituent units, a part of the objective world—just as
the human brain would be, were each of its constituent cells
of a construction sufficiently complex to yield a separate
personality.”
The so-called social organism which is composed of innumerable
personalities undoubtedly yields a peculiar spiritual existence, which
cannot be explained solely as the sum of the parts and actions of its
constituent individuals. The relations in which the members of society
stand to each other are of an analogous importance to the relations of
the cells and organs in an organism. It is the form that constitutes this
or that kind of an organism, not the sum of atoms, nor the intricacy or
complexity of their combinations. Different forms of perhaps the same
material amount, and of the same intricacy of combination, yield quite
distinct types of individuality, and every state, every nation, every
society possesses, as it were a personality of its own.
Mind is not constituted by complexity. Mind is a system of sentient
symbols. Wherever we find organisms acting in such a way that their
actions depend upon the _meanings_ of certain stimuli, we have to
attribute to them that characteristic feature which we call mind, or
soul. The action of a falling stone is explainable without attributing
to it any mentality. There is no representative value, no meaning in
that quality of the stone which, under certain conditions, makes the
stone fall. However, if a man acts, the motive of his action does not
consist in the gravity of certain material particles of his brain. It
consists in the meaning that resides in certain feelings. Without taking
into consideration the meaning that dominates the man’s motives, we
cannot explain his action, and it is the meaning of feelings that the
soul consists of. Only where and when we can discern the presence of
meaning as the raison d’être of actions, are we justified in calling
phenomena mental. When the action that takes place in response to a
stimulus depends solely upon the significance of a symbol, the inference
is legitimate, nay, it is inevitable and conclusive, that we have to
deal with a mind. The motion of a comet, which depends perhaps not only
upon the gravity of its mass, but also upon the chemical actions and
explosions of its constituent elements during its approach to the sun,
may be ever so intricate; but this does not in the least justify the
assumption of the presence of mind in the comet.
The assumption of mind in inorganic nature is not only fantastical, it is
also needless. Facts are better explained without this speculation.
The world as a whole is not bare of subjectivity. In this we agree
with both Clifford and Romanes. But we do not identify subjectivity
and mind, the latter being a special and indeed a very complex form
of subjectivity. We suppose that subjectivity pervades also all the
processes of unorganised nature, and no less the cosmic events; but be
they ever so much more complex than nervous phenomena, there is present
only a non-mental subjectivity.
Yet although the phenomena of so-called inanimate nature, be they motions
of celestial bodies or physical and chemical processes, are non-mental,
there is in every one of them present that grand feature which is as
it were the breath of God. This feature appears in all the phenomena of
nature, but in none of them more gloriously than in the soul of man. Even
the cosmical events of marvellous sublimity appear as a mere prelude to
the appearance of soul-life, for in soul-life is focused all the divinity
of nature. Reason is the reflex of the world-order and thus a rational
being is made in the likeness of God.
[Illustration]
Professor Romanes presents the problem of the subjectivity of existence
by the adjoined diagram, which he explains as follows:
“Following Clifford, I will call these inferred subjectivities
by the name of ‘ejects,’ and assign to them the symbol _Y_.
Thus in the following discussion _X_ = the objective world,
_Y_, the ejective world, and _Z_, the subjective world. Now,
the theory of monism supposes that _X_, _Y_ and _Z_ are all
alike in kind, but presents no definite teaching as to how far
they may differ in degree. We may, however, at once allow that
between the psychological value of _Z_ and that of _X_, there
is a wide difference of degree, and also that while the value
of _Z_ is a fixed quantity, that of _Y_ varies greatly in the
different parts of the area _Y_.”