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Transcriber's Note:
References are made to footnotes in other footnotes and index.
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International Scientific Series.
Volume LXXXIX.
(The International Scientific Series)
Edited by F. Legge
THE MIND AND THE BRAIN
by
ALFRED BINET
Directeur du Laboratoire de Psychologie
à la Sorbonne
Being the Authorised Translation of
_L'Âme et le Corps_
London
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd
Dryden House, Gerrard Street, W.
1907
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE DEFINITION OF MATTER
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The distinction between mind and matter--Knowable not
homogeneous--Criterion employed, enumeration not concepts
CHAPTER II
OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS ONLY SENSATION
Modern theories of matter--Outer world only known to us by our
sensations--Instances--Mill's approval of proposition, and its
defects--Nervous system only intermediary between self and outer
world--The great X of Matter--Nervous system does not give us true
image--Müller's law of specificity of the nerves--The nervous system
itself a sensation--Relations of sensation with the unknowable the
affair of metaphysics
CHAPTER III
THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER ARE ONLY SYMBOLS
Physicists vainly endeavour to reduce the rôle of
sensation--Mathematical, energetical, and mechanical theories of
universe--Mechanical model formed from sensation--Instance of
tuning-fork--No one sensation any right to hegemony over others
CHAPTER IV
ANSWERS TO SOME OBJECTIONS, AND SUMMARY
Objections of spiritualists--Of German authors who contend that
nervous system does give true image--Of metaphysicians--Common ground
of objection that nervous system not intermediary--Answer to
this--Summary of preceding chapters
BOOK II
THE DEFINITION OF MIND
CHAPTER I
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN COGNITION AND ITS OBJECT
Necessity for inventory of mental phenomena--Objects of cognition and
acts of cognition--Definition of consciousness
CHAPTER II
DEFINITION OF SENSATION
Sensation defined by experimental psychology--A state of
consciousness--Considered self-evident by Mill, Renouvier, and
Hume--Psycho-physical according to Reid and Hamilton--Reasons in
favour of last definition--Other opinions examined and refuted
CHAPTER III
DEFINITION OF THE IMAGE
Perception and ideation cannot be separated--Perception constituted by
addition of image to sensation--Hallucinations--Objections anticipated
and answered
CHAPTER IV
DEFINITION OF THE EMOTIONS
Contrary opinions as to nature of emotions--Emotion a phenomenon _sui
generis_--Intellectualist theory of emotion supported by Lange and
James--Is emotion only a perception? Is effort?--Question left
unanswered
CHAPTER V
DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--THE RELATION SUBJECT-OBJECT
Can thoughts be divided into subject and object?--This division cannot
apply to the consciousness--Subject of cognition itself an
object--James' opinion examined--Opinion that subject is spiritual
substance and consciousness its faculty refuted
CHAPTER VI
DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--CATEGORIES OF THE UNDERSTANDING
Principle of relativity doubted--Tables of categories: Aristotle, Kant,
and Renouvier--Kantian idealism--Phenomenism of Berkeley examined and
rejected--Argument of _a priorists_--The intelligence only an inactive
consciousness--Huxley's epiphenomenal consciousness--Is the
consciousness necessary?--Impossibility of answering this question
CHAPTER VII
DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--THE SEPARABILITY OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS
FROM ITS OBJECT--DISCUSSION OF IDEALISM
Can the consciousness be separated from its object?--Idealists
consider the object a modality of the consciousness and thus
inseparable, from it--Futility of this doctrine--Object can exist
without consciousness
CHAPTER VIII
DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS--THE SEPARATION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS
FROM ITS OBJECT--THE UNCONSCIOUS
Can ideas exist without consciousness?--No consciousness without an
object--Can the consciousness die?--Enfeeblement of consciousness how
accounted for--Doubling of consciousness in hysterics--Relations of
physiological phenomena to consciousness--Consciousness cannot become
unconscious and yet exist
CHAPTER IX
DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY
Difficulty of defining psychology--Definition by substance--Psychology not
the science of the soul--Definition by enumeration: its error--Definition
by method contradicts idea of consciousness--Externospection and
introspection sometimes confused--Definition by content--Facts cannot be
divided into those of consciousness and of unconsciousness--Descartes'
definition of psychology insufficient--"Within and without" simile
unanalogous--Definition by point of view--Inconsistencies of Ebbinghaus'
contention--W. James' teleological theory--Definition by the peculiar
nature of mental laws only one possible: why?
BOOK III
THE UNION OF THE SOUL AND THE BODY
CHAPTER I
THE MIND HAS AN INCOMPLETE LIFE
Problem of union of mind and body stated--Axiom of heterogeneity must
be rejected--Phenomena of consciousness incomplete--Aristotle's
_relatum_ and _correlatum_ applied to the terms mind and matter
CHAPTER II
SPIRITUALISM AND IDEALISM
Spiritualist view that death cuts link between soul and
body--Explanation of link fatal to system--Consciousness cannot
exercise functions without objects of cognition--Idealism a
kaleidoscopic system--Four affirmations of idealism: their
inconsistency--Advantages of historical method
CHAPTER III
MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM
Materialism oldest doctrine of all: many patristic authors lean
towards it--Modern form of, receives impulse from advance of physical
science--Karl Vogt's comparison of secretions of brain with that of
kidneys--All materialist doctrines opposed to principle of
heterogeneity--Modern materialism would make object generate
consciousness--Materialists cannot demonstrate how molecular
vibrations can be transformed into objects--Parallelism avoids issue
by declaring mind to be function of brain--Parallelists declare
physical and psychical life to be two parallel currents--Bain's
support of this--Objections to: most important that it postulates
consciousness as a complete whole
CHAPTER IV
MODERN THEORIES
Berkeley's idealism revived by Bergson, though with different
standpoint--Admirable nature of Bergson's exposition--Fallacy of, part
assigned to sensory nerves--Conscious sensations must be subsequent to
excitement of sensory nerves and dependent on their integrity
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
Author's own theory only a hypothesis--Important conditions for
solution of problem--Manifestations of consciousness conditioned by
brain, but this last unconscious--Consciousness perceives only
external object--Specificity of nerves not absolute--Why repeated
excitements of nerve tend to become unconscious--Formation of habit
and "instinct"--Resemblance to and distinction of this from
parallelism--Advantages of new theory
CHAPTER VI
RECAPITULATION
Description of matter--Definition of mind--Objections to,
answered--Incomplete existence of mind--Other theories--Nervous system
must add its own effect to that of its excitant
BOOK I
THE DEFINITION OF MATTER
THE MIND AND THE BRAIN[1]
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This book is a prolonged effort to establish a distinction between
what is called mind and what is called matter. Nothing is more simple
than to realise this distinction when you do not go deeply into it;
nothing is more difficult when you analyse it a little. At first
sight, it seems impossible to confuse things so far apart as a thought
and a block of stone; but on reflection this great contrast vanishes,
and other differences have to be sought which are less apparent and of
which one has not hitherto dreamed.
First let us say how the question presents itself to us. The fact
which we must take as a starting point, for it is independent of
every kind of theory, is that there exists something which is
"knowable." Not only science, but ordinary life and our everyday
conversation, imply that there are things that we know. It is with
regard to these things that we have to ask ourselves if some belong to
what we call the mind and others to what we call matter.
Let us suppose, by way of hypothesis, the knowable to be entirely and
absolutely homogeneous. In that case we should be obliged to set aside
the question as one already decided. Where everything is homogeneous,
there is no distinction to be drawn. But this hypothesis is, as we all
know, falsified by observation. The whole body of the knowable is
formed from an agglomeration of extremely varied elements, amongst
which it is easy to distinguish a large number of divisions. Things
may be classified according to their colour, their shape, their
weight, the pleasure they give us, their quality of being alive or
dead, and so on; one much given to classification would only be
troubled by the number of possible distinctions.
Since so many divisions are possible, at which shall we stop and say:
this is the one which corresponds exactly to the opposition of mind
and matter? The choice is not easy to make; for we shall see that
certain authors put the distinction between the physical and the
mental in one thing, others in another. Thus there have been a very
large number of distinctions proposed, and their number is much
greater than is generally thought. Since we propose to make ourselves
judges of these distinctions, since, in fact, we shall reject most of
them in order to suggest entirely new ones, it must be supposed that
we shall do so by means of a criterion. Otherwise, we should only be
acting fantastically. We should be saying peremptorily, "In my opinion
this is mental," and there would be no more ground for discussion
than, if the assertion were "I prefer the Romanticists to the
Classicists," or "I consider prose superior to poetry."
The criterion which I have employed, and which I did not analyse until
the unconscious use I had made of it revealed its existence to me, is
based on the two following rules:--
1. _A Rule of Method._--The distinction between mind and matter must
not only apply to the whole of the knowable, but must be the deepest
which can divide the knowable, and must further be one of a permanent
character. _A priori_, there is nothing to prove the existence of such
a distinction; it must be sought for and, when found, closely
examined.
2. _An Indication of the Direction in which the Search must be
Made._--Taking into account the position already taken up by the
majority of philosophers, the manifestation of mind, if it exists,
must be looked for in the domain of facts dealt with by psychology,
and the manifestation of matter in the domain explored by physicists.
I do not conceal from myself that there may be much that is arbitrary
in my own criterion; but this does not seem to me possible to avoid.
We must therefore appeal to psychology, and ask whether it is
cognisant of any phenomenon offering a violent, lasting, and
ineffaceable contrast with all the rest of the knowable.
_The Method of Concepts and the Method of Enumeration._--Many authors
are already engaged in this research, and employ a method which I
consider very bad and very dangerous--the method of concepts. This
consists in looking at real and concrete phenomena in their most
abstract form. For example, in studying the mind, they use this word
"mind" as a general idea which is supposed to contain all the
characteristics of psychical phenomena; but they do not wait to
enumerate these characteristics or to realise them, and they remain
satisfied with the extremely vague idea springing from an unanalysed
concept. Consequently they use the word "mind" with the imprudence of
a banker who should discount a trade bill without ascertaining
whether the payment of that particular piece of paper had been
provided for. This amounts to saying that the discussion of
philosophical problems takes especially a verbal aspect; and the more
complex the phenomena a concept thus handled, contains, the more
dangerous it is. A concept of the colour red has but a very simple
content, and by using it, this content can be very clearly
represented. But how can the immense meaning of the word "mind" be
realised every time that it is used? For example, to define mind and
to separate it from the rest of the knowable which is called matter,
the general mode of reasoning is as follows: all the knowable which is
apparent to our senses is essentially reduced to motion; "mind," that
something which lives, feels, and judges, is reduced to "thought." To
understand the difference between matter and mind, it is necessary to
ask one's self whether there exists any analogy in nature between
motion and thought. Now this analogy does not exist, and what we
comprehend, on the contrary, is their absolute opposition. Thought is
not a movement, and has nothing in common with a movement. A movement
is never anything else but a displacement, a transfer, a change of
place undergone by a particle of matter. What relation of similarity
exists between this geometrical fact and a desire, an emotion, a
sensation of bitterness? Far from being identical, these two facts
are as distinct as any facts can be, and their distinction is so deep
that it should be raised to the height of a principle, the principle
of heterogeneity.
This is almost exactly the reasoning that numbers of philosophers have
repeated for several years without giving proof of much originality.
This is what I term the metaphysics of concept, for it is a
speculation which consists in juggling with abstract ideas. The moment
that a philosopher opposes thought to movement, I ask myself under
what form he can think of a "thought," I suppose he must very
poetically and very vaguely represent to himself something light and
subtle which contrasts with the weight and grossness of material
bodies. And thus our philosopher is punished in the sinning part; his
contempt of the earthly has led him into an abuse of abstract
reasoning, and this abuse has made him the dupe of a very naïve
physical metaphor.
At bottom I have not much faith in the nobility of many of our
abstract ideas. In a former psychological study[2] I have shown that
many of our abstractions are nothing else than embryonic, and, above
all, loosely defined concrete ideas, which can satisfy only an
indolent mind, and are, consequently, full of snares.
The opposition between mind and matter appears to me to assume a very
different meaning if, instead of repeating ready-made formulas and
wasting time on the game of setting concept against concept, we take
the trouble to return to the study of nature, and begin by drawing up
an inventory of the respective phenomena of mind and matter, examining
with each of these phenomena the characteristics in which the
first-named differ from the second. It is this last method, more slow
but more sure than the other, that we shall follow; and we will
commence by the study of matter.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: _L'Ame et la Corps._--Disagreeable as it is to alter an
author's title, the words "Soul and Body" had to be abandoned because
of their different connotation in English. The title "Mind and Body"
was also preoccupied by Bain's work of that name in this series. The
title chosen has M. Binet's approval.--ED.]
[Footnote 2: _Étude experímentale de l'Intelligence._ Paris:
Schleicher.]
CHAPTER II
OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS IS ONLY SENSATIONS
Of late years numerous studies have been published on the conception
of matter, especially by physicists, chemists, and mathematicians.
Among these recent contributions to science I will quote the articles
of Duhem on the Evolution of Mechanics published in 1903 in the _Revue
générale des Sciences_, and other articles by the same author, in
1904, in the _Revue de Philosophie_. Duhem's views have attracted much
attention, and have dealt a serious blow at the whole theory of the
mechanics of matter. Let me also quote that excellent work of Dastre,
_La Vie et la Mort_, wherein the author makes so interesting an
application to biology of the new theories on energetics; the
discussion between Ostwald and Brillouin on matter, in which two rival
conceptions find themselves engaged in a veritable hand-to-hand
struggle (_Revue générale des Sciences_, Nov. and Dec. 1895); the
curious work of Dantec on _les Lois Naturelles_, in which the author
ingeniously points out the different sensorial districts into which
science is divided, although, through a defect in logic, he accepts
mechanics as the final explanation of things. And last, it is
impossible to pass over, in silence, the rare works of Lord Kelvin, so
full, for French readers, of unexpected suggestions, for they show us
the entirely practical and empirical value which the English attach to
mechanical models.
My object is not to go through these great studies in detail. It is
the part of mathematical and physical philosophers to develop their
ideas on the inmost nature of matter, while seeking to establish
theories capable of giving a satisfactory explanation of physical
phenomena. This is the point of view they take up by preference, and
no doubt they are right in so doing. The proper rôle of the natural
sciences is to look at phenomena taken by themselves and apart from
the observer.
My own intention, in setting forth these same theories on matter, is
to give prominence to a totally different point of view. Instead of
considering physical phenomena in themselves, we shall seek to know
what idea one ought to form of their nature when one takes into
account that they are observed phenomena. While the physicist
withdraws from consideration the part of the observer in the
verification of physical phenomena, our rôle is to renounce this
abstraction, to re-establish things in their original complexity, and
to ascertain in what the conception of matter consists when it is
borne in mind that all material phenomena are known only in their
relation to ourselves, to our bodies, our nerves, and our
intelligence.
This at once leads us to follow, in the exposition of the facts, an
order which the physicist abandons. Since we seek to know what is the
physical phenomenon we perceive, we must first enunciate this
proposition, which will govern the whole of our discussion: to wit--
_Of the outer world we know nothing except our sensations._
Before demonstrating this proposition, let us develop it by an example
which will at least give us some idea of its import. Let us take as
example one of those investigations in which, with the least possible
recourse to reasoning, the most perfected processes of observation are
employed, and in which one imagines that one is penetrating almost
into the very heart of nature. We are, let us suppose, dissecting an
animal. After killing it, we lay bare its viscera, examine their
colour, form, dimensions, and connections; then we dissect the organs
in order to ascertain their internal nature, their texture, structure,
and function; then, not content with ocular anatomy, we have recourse
to the perfected processes of histology: we take a fragment of the
tissues weighing a few milligrammes, we fix it, we mount it, we make
it into strips of no more than a thousandth of a millimetre thick, we
colour it and place it under the microscope, we examine it with the
most powerful lenses, we sketch it, and we explain it. All this work
of complicated and refined observation, sometimes lasting months and
years, results in a monograph containing minute descriptions of
organs, of cells, and of intra-cellular structures, the whole
represented and defined in words and pictures. Now, these descriptions
and drawings are the display of the various sensations which the
zoologist has experienced in the course of his labours; to those
sensations are added the very numerous interpretations derived from
the memory, reasoning, and often, also, from the imagination on the
part of the scholar, the last a source at once of errors and of
discoveries. But everything properly experimental in the work of the
zoologist proceeds from the sensations he has felt or might have felt,
and in the particular case treated of, these sensations are almost
solely visual.
This observation might be repeated with regard to all objects of the
outer world which enter into relation with us. Whether the knowledge
of them be of the common-place or of a scientific order matters
little. Sensation is its limit, and all objects are known to us by
the sensations they produce in us, and are known to us solely in this
manner. A landscape is nothing but a cluster of sensations. The
outward form of a body is simply sensation; and the innermost and most
delicate material structure, the last visible elements of a cell, for
example, are all, in so far as we observe them with the microscope,
nothing but sensation.
This being understood, the question is, why we have just
admitted--with the majority of authors--that we cannot really know a
single object as it is in itself, and in its own nature, otherwise
than by the intermediary of the sensations it provokes in us? This
comes back to saying that we here require explanations on the two
following points: why do we admit that we do not really perceive the
objects, but only something intermediate between them and us; and why
do we call this something intermediate a sensation? On this second
point I will offer, for the time being, one simple remark: we use the
term sensation for lack of any other to express the intermediate
character of our perception of objects; and this use does not, on our
part, imply any hypothesis. Especially do we leave completely in
suspense the question whether sensation is a material phenomenon or a
state of being of the mind. These are questions we will deal with
later. For the present it must be understood that the word sensation
is simply a term for the something intermediate between the object and
our faculty of cognition.[3] We have, therefore, simply to state why
we have admitted that the external perception of objects is produced
mediately or by procuration.
There are a few philosophers, and those not of the lowest rank, who have
thought that this intermediate character of all perception was so
evident that there was no need to insist further upon it. John Stuart
Mill, who was certainly and perhaps more than anything a careful
logician, commences an exposition of the idealist thesis to which he was
so much attached, by carelessly saying: "It goes without saying that
objects are known to us through the intermediary of our senses.... The
senses are equivalent to our sensations;"[4] and on those propositions
he rears his whole system, "It goes without saying ..." is a trifle
thoughtless. I certainly think he was wrong in not testing more
carefully the solidity of his starting point.
In the first place, this limit set to our knowledge of the objects
which stimulate our sensations is only accepted without difficulty by
well-informed persons; it much astonishes the uninstructed when first
explained to them. And this astonishment, although it may seem so, is
not a point that can be neglected, for it proves that, in the first
and simple state of our knowledge, we believe we directly perceive
objects as they are. Now, if we, the cultured class, have, for the
most part,[5] abandoned this primitive belief, we have only done so on
certain implicit conditions, of which we must take cognisance. This is
what I shall now demonstrate as clearly as I can.
Take the case of an unlearned person. To prove to him that he knows
sensations alone and not the bodies which excite them, a very striking
argument may be employed which requires no subtle reasoning and which
appeals to his observation. This is to inform him, supposing he is not
aware of the fact, that, every time he has the perception of an
exterior object, there is something interposed between the object and
himself, and that that something is his nervous system.
If we were not acquainted with the existence of our nervous system, we
should unhesitatingly admit that our perception of objects consisted
in some sort of motion towards the places in which they were fixed.
Now, a number of experiments prove to us that objects are known to us
as excitants of our nervous system which only act on this system by
entering into communication, or coming into contact with, its terminal
extremities. They then produce, in the interior of this system, a
peculiar modification which we are not yet able to define. It is this
modification which follows the course of the nerves and is carried to
the central parts of the system. The speed of the propagation of this
nerve modification has been measured by certain precise experiments in
psychometry; the journey is made slowly, at the rate of 20 to 30
metres per second, and it is of interest that this rate of speed lets
us know at what moment and, consequently, by what organic excitement,
the phenomenon of consciousness is produced. This happens when the
cerebral centres are affected; the phenomenon of consciousness is
therefore posterior to the fact of the physical excitement.
I believe it has required a long series of accepted observations for
us to have arrived at this idea, now so natural in appearance, that
the modifications produced within our nervous system are the only
states of which we can have a direct consciousness; and as
experimental demonstration is always limited, there can be no absolute
certainty that things never happen otherwise, that we never go outside
ourselves, and that neither our consciousness nor our nervous influx
can exteriorise itself, shoot beyond our material organs, and travel
afar in pursuit of objects in order to know or to modify them.
* * * * *
Before going further, we must make our terminology more precise. We
have just seen the necessity of drawing a distinction between the
sensations of which we are conscious and the unknown cause which
produces these sensations by acting on our nervous systems. This
exciting cause I have several times termed, in order to be understood,
the external object. But under the name of external object are
currently designated groups of sensations, such as those which make up
for us a chair, a tree, an animal, or any kind of body. I see a dog
pass in the street. I call this dog an external object; but, as this
dog is formed, for me who am looking at it, of my sensations, and as
these sensations are states of my nervous centres, it happens that the
term external object has two meanings. Sometimes it designates our
sensations; at another, the exciting cause of our sensations. To avoid
all confusion we will call this exciting cause, which is unknown to
us, the _X_ of matter.
It is, however, not entirely unknown, for we at least know two facts
with regard to it. We know, first, that this _X_ exists, and in the
second place, that its image must not be sought in the sensations it
excites in us. How can we doubt, we say, that it exists? The same
external observation proves to us at once that there exists an object
distinct from our nerves, and that our nerves separate us from it. I
insist on this point, for the reason that some authors, after having
unreservedly admitted that our knowledge is confined to sensations,
have subsequently been hard put to it to demonstrate the reality of
the excitant distinct from the sensations.[6] Of this we need no
demonstration, and the testimony of our senses suffices. We have seen
the excitant, and it is like a friend who should pass before us in
disguise so well costumed and made up that we can attribute to his
real self nothing of what we see of him, but yet we know that it is
he.
And, in fact, let us remember what it is that we have argued
upon--viz. on an observation. I look at my hand, and I see an object
approaching it which gives me a sensation of feeling. I at first say
that this object is an excitant. It is pointed out to me that I am in
error. This object, which appears to me outside my nervous system, is
composed, I am told, of sensations. Be it so, I have the right to
answer; but if all that I perceive is sensation, my nervous system
itself is a sensation; if it is only that, it is no longer an
intermediary between the excitant and myself, and it is the fact that
we perceive things as they are. For it to be possible to prove that I
perceive, not the object, but that _tertium quid_ which is sensation,
it has to be admitted that the nervous system is a reality external to
sensation and that objects which assume, in relation to it, the rôle
of excitants and of which we perceive the existence, are likewise
realities external to sensation.
This is what is demonstrated by abstract reasoning, and this reasoning
is further supported by a common-sense argument. The outer world
cannot be summarised in a few nervous systems suspended like spiders
in empty space. The existence of a nervous system implies that of a
body in which it is lodged. This body must have complicated organs;
its limbs presuppose the soil on which the animal rests, its lungs the
existence of oxygen vivifying its blood, its digestive tube, aliments
which it digests and assimilates to its substance, and so on. We may
indeed admit that this outer world is not, in itself, exactly as we
perceive it; but we are compelled to recognise that it exists by the
same right as the nervous system, in order to put it in its proper
place.
The second fact of observation is that the sensations we feel do not
give us the true image of the material _X_ which produces them. The
modification made in our substance by this force _X_ does not
necessarily resemble in its nature the nature of that force. This is
an assertion opposed to our natural opinions, and must consequently be
demonstrated. It is generally proved by the experiments which reveal
what is called "the law of the specific energy of the nerves." This is
an important law in physiology discovered by Müller two centuries ago,
and consequences of a philosophical order are attached to it. The
facts on which this law is based are these. It is observed that, if
the sensory nerves are agitated by an excitant which remains constant,
the sensations received by the patient differ according to the nerve
affected. Thus, the terminals of an electric current applied to the
ball of the eye give the sensation of a small luminous spark; to the
auditory apparatus, the current causes a crackling sound; to the hand,
the sensation of a shock; to the tongue, a metallic flavour.
Conversely, excitants wholly different, but affecting the same nerve,
give similar sensations; whether a ray of light is projected into the
eye, or the eyeball be excited by the pressure of a finger; whether an
electric current is directed into the eye, or, by a surgical
operation, the optic nerve is severed by a bistoury, the effect is
always the same, in the sense that the patient always receives a
sensation of light. To sum up, in addition to the natural excitant of
our sensory nerves, there are two which can produce the same sensory
effects, that is to say, the mechanical and the electrical excitants.
Whence it has been concluded that the peculiar nature of the sensation
felt depends much less on the nature of the excitant producing it than
on that of the sensory organ which collects it, the nerve which
propagates it, or the centre which receives it. It would perhaps be
going a little too far to affirm that the external object has no kind
of resemblance to the sensations it gives us. It is safer to say that
we are ignorant of the degree in which the two resemble or differ from
each other.
On thinking it over, it will be found that this contains a very great
mystery, for this power of distinction (_specificité_) of our nerves
is not connected with any detail observable in their structure. It is
very probably the receiving centres which are specific. It is owing to
them and to their mechanism that we ought to feel, from the same
excitant, a sensation of sound or one of colour, that is to say,
impressions which appear, when compared, as the most different in the
world. Now, so far as we can make out, the histological structure of
our auditory centre is the same as that of our visual centre. Both are
a collection of cells diverse in form, multipolar, and maintained by
a conjunctive pellicule (_stroma_). The structure of the fibres and
cells varies slightly in the motor and sensory regions, but no means
have yet been discovered of perceiving a settled difference between
the nerve-cells of the optic centre and those of the auditory centre.
There should be a difference, as our mind demands it; but our eye
fails to note it.
Let us suppose, however, that to-morrow, or several centuries hence,
an improved _technique_ should show us a material difference between
the visual and the auditory neurone. There is no absurdity in this
supposition; it is a possible discovery, since it is of the order of
material facts. Such a discovery, however, would lead us very far, for
what terribly complicates this problem is that we cannot directly know
the structure of our nervous system. Though close to us, though, so to
speak, inside us, it is not known to us otherwise than is the object
we hold in our hands, the ground we tread, or the landscape which
forms our horizon.
For us it is but a sensation, a real sensation when we observe it in
the dissection of an animal, or the autopsy of one of our own kind; an
imaginary and transposed sensation, when we are studying anatomy by
means of an anatomical chart; but still a sensation. It is by the
intermediary of our nervous system that we have to perceive and
imagine what a nervous system is like; consequently we are ignorant as
to the modification impressed on our perceptions and imaginations by
this intermediary, the nature of which we are unable to grasp.
Therefore, when we attempt to understand the inmost nature of the
outer world, we stand before it as before absolute darkness. There
probably exists in nature, outside of ourselves, neither colour,
odour, force, resistance, space, nor anything that we know as
sensation. Light is produced by the excitement of the optic nerve, and
it shines only in our brain; as to the excitement itself, there is
nothing to prove that it is luminous; outside of us is profound
darkness, or even worse, since darkness is the correlation of light.
In the same way, all the sonorous excitements which assail us, the
creakings of machines, the sounds of nature, the words and cries of
our fellows are produced by excitements of our acoustic nerve; it is
in our brain that noise is produced, outside there reigns a dead
silence. The same may be said of all our other senses.
Not one of our senses, absolutely none, is the revealer of external
reality. From this point of view there is no higher and no lower
sense. The sensations of sight, apparently so objective and so
searching, no more take us out of ourselves than do the sensations of
taste which are localised in the tongue.
In short, our nervous system, which enables us to communicate with
objects, prevents us, on the other hand, from knowing their nature. It
is an organ of relation with the outer world; it is also, for us, a
cause of isolation. We never go outside ourselves. We are walled in.
And all we can say of matter and of the outer world is, that it is
revealed to us solely by the sensations it affords us, that it is the
unknown cause of our sensations, the inaccessible excitant of our
organs of the senses, and that the ideas we are able to form as to the
nature and the properties of that excitant, are necessarily derived
from our sensations, and are subjective to the same degree as those
sensations themselves.
But we must make haste to add that this point of view is the one which
is reached when we regard the relations of sensation with its unknown
cause the great _X_ of matter.[7] Positive science and practical life
do not take for an objective this relation of sensation with the
Unknowable; they leave this to metaphysics. They distribute themselves
over the study of sensation and examine the reciprocal relations of
sensations with sensations. Those last, condemned as misleading
appearances when we seek in them the expression of the Unknowable,
lose this illusory character when we consider them in their reciprocal
relations. Then they constitute for us reality, the whole of reality
and the only object of human knowledge. The world is but an assembly
of present, past, and possible sensations; the affair of science is to
analyse and co-ordinate them by separating their accidental from their
constant relations.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: _Connaissance._--The word cognition is used throughout as
the English equivalent of this, except in places where the context
shows that it means acquaintance merely.--ED.]
[Footnote 4: J. S. MILL, _An Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's
Philosophy_, pp. 5 and 6. London. 1865.]
[Footnote 5: A few subtle philosophers have returned to it, as I shall
show later in chapter iv.]
[Footnote 6: Thus, the perplexity in which John Stuart Mill finds
himself is very curious. Having admitted unreservedly that our
knowledge is confined to sensations, he is powerless to set up a
reality outside this, and acknowledges that the principle of causality
cannot legitimately be used to prove that our sensations have a cause
which is not a sensation, because this principle cannot be applied
outside the world of phenomena.]
[Footnote 7: See p. 18, _sup_.--ED.]
CHAPTER III
THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER ARE ONLY SYMBOLS
If we keep firmly in mind the preceding conclusion--a conclusion which
is neither exclusively my own, nor very new--we shall find a certain
satisfaction in watching the discussions of physicists on the essence
of matter, on the nature of force and of energy, and on the relations
of ponderable and imponderable matter. We all know how hot is the
fight raging on this question. At the present time it is increasing in
intensity, in consequence of the disturbance imported into existing
theories by the new discoveries of radio-activity.[8] We psychologists
can look on very calmly at these discussions, with that selfish
pleasure we unavowedly feel when we see people fighting while
ourselves safe from knocks. We have, in fact, the feeling that, come
what may from the discussions on the essence of matter, there can be
no going beyond the truth that matter is an excitant of our nervous
system, and is only known in connection with, the perception we have
of this last.
If we open a work on physics or physiology we shall note with
astonishment how the above considerations are misunderstood. Observers
of nature who seek, and rightly, to give the maximum of exactness to
their observations, show that they are obsessed by one constant
prejudice: they mistrust sensation.
A great part of their efforts consists, by what they say, in reducing
the rôle of sensation to its fitting part in science; and the
invention of mechanical aids to observation is constantly held up as a
means of remedying the imperfection of our senses. In physics the
thermometer replaces the sensation of heat that our skin--our hand,
for example--experiences by the measurable elevation of a column of
mercury, and the scale-pan of a precise balance takes the place of the
vague sensation of trifling weights; in physiology a registering
apparatus replaces the sensation of the pulse which the doctor feels
with the end of his forefinger by a line on paper traced with
indelible ink, of which the duration and the intensity, as well as the
varied combinations of these two elements, can be measured line by
line.
Learned men who pride themselves on their philosophical attainments
vaunt in very eloquent words the superiority of the physical
instrument over mere sensation. Evidently, however, the earnestness of
this eulogy leads them astray. The most perfect registering apparatus
must, in the long-run, after its most scientific operations, address
itself to our senses and produce in us some small sensation. The
reading of the height reached by the column of mercury in a
thermometer when heated is accomplished by a visual sensation, and it
is by the sight that the movements of the balance are controlled; and
that the traces of the sphygmograph are analysed. We may readily admit
to physicists and physiologists all the advantages of these apparatus.
This is not the question. It simply proves that there are sensations
and sensations, and that certain of these are better and more precise
than others. The visual sensation of relation in space seems to be
_par excellence_ the scientific sensation which it is sought to
substitute for all the rest. But, after all, it is but a sensation.
Let us recognise that there is, in all this contempt on the part of
physicists for sensation, only differences in language, and that a
paraphrase would suffice to correct them without leaving any trace. Be
it so. But something graver remains. When one is convinced that our
knowledge of the outer world is limited to sensations, we can no
longer understand how it is possible to give oneself up, as physicists
do, to speculations upon the constitution of matter.
Up to the present there have been three principal ways of explaining
the physical phenomena of the universe. The first, the most abstract,
and the furthest from reality, is above all verbal. It consists in the
use of formulas in which the quality of the phenomena is replaced by
their magnitude, in which this magnitude, ascertained by the most
precise processes of measurement, becomes the object of abstract
reasoning which allows its modifications to be foreseen under given
experimental conditions. This is pure mathematics, a formal science
depending upon logic. Another conception, less restricted than the
above, and of fairly recent date, consists in treating all
manifestations of nature as forms of energy. This term "energy" has a
very vague content. At the most it expresses but two things: first, it
is based on a faint recollection of muscular force, and it reminds one
dimly of the sensation experienced when clenching the fists; and,
secondly, it betrays a kind of very natural respect for the forces of
nature which, in all the images man has made of them, constantly
appear superior to his own. We may say "the energy of nature;" but we
should never say, what would be experimentally correct; "the weakness
of nature." The word "weakness" we reserve for ourselves. Apart from
these undecided suggestions, the term energy is quite the proper term
to designate phenomena, the intimate nature of which we do not seek to
penetrate, but of which we only wish to ascertain the laws and measure
the degrees.
A third conception, more imaginative and bolder than the others, is
the mechanical or kinetic theory. This last absolutely desires that we
should represent to ourselves, that we should imagine, how phenomena
really take place; and in seeking for the property of nature the most
clearly perceived, the easiest to define and analyse, and the most apt
to lend itself to measurement and calculation, it has chosen motion.
Consequently all the properties of matter have been reduced to this
one, and in spite of the apparent contradiction of our senses, it has
been supposed that the most varied phenomena are produced, in the last
resort, by the displacement of material particles. Thus, sound, light,
heat, electricity, and even the nervous influx would be due to
vibratory movements, varying only by their direction and their
periods, and all nature is thus explained as a problem of animated
geometry. This last theory, which has proved very fertile in
explanations of the most delicate phenomena of sound and light, has so
strongly impressed many minds that it has led them to declare that
the explanation of phenomena by the laws of mechanics alone has the
character of a scientific explanation. Even recently, it seemed heresy
to combat these ideas.
Still more recently, however, a revulsion of opinion has taken place.
Against the physicists, the mathematicians in particular have risen
up, and taking their stand on science, have demonstrated that all the
mechanisms invented have crowds of defects. First, in each particular
case, there is such a complication that that which is defined is much
more simple than the definition; then there is such a want of unity
that quite special mechanisms adapted to each phenomenal detail have
to be imagined; and, lastly--most serious argument of all--so much
comprehensiveness and suppleness is employed, that no experimental law
is found which cannot be understood mechanically, and no fact of
observation which shows an error in the mechanical explanation--a sure
proof that this mode of explanation has no meaning.
My way of combating the mechanical theory starts from a totally
different point of view. Psychology has every right to say a few words
here, as upon the value of every kind of scientific theory; for it is
acquainted with the nature of the mental needs of which these theories
are the expression and which these theories seek to satisfy. It has
not yet been sufficiently noticed that psychology does not allow
itself to be confined, like physics or sociology, within the logical
table of human knowledge, for it has, by a unique privilege, a right
of supervision over the other sciences. We shall see that the
psychological discussion of mechanics has a wider range than that of
the mathematicians.
Since our cognition cannot go beyond sensation, shall we first recall
what meaning can be given to an explanation of the inmost nature of
matter? It can only be an artifice, a symbol, or a process convenient
for classification in order to combine the very different qualities of
things in one unifying synthesis--a process having nearly the same
theoretical value as a _memoria technica_, which, by substituting
letters for figures, helps us to retain the latter in our minds. This
does not mean that figures are, in fact, letters, but it is a
conventional substitution which has a practical advantage. What
_memoria technica_ is to the ordinary memory, the theory of mechanics
should be for our needed unification.
Unfortunately, this is not so. The excuse we are trying to make for
the mechanicians is illusory. There is no mistaking their ambition,
Notwithstanding the prudence of some and the equivocations in which
others have rejoiced, they have drawn their definition in the absolute
and not in the relative. To take their conceptions literally, they
have thought the movement of matter to be something existing outside
our eye, our hands, and our sense; in a word, something _noumenal_, as
Kant would have said. The proof that this is their real idea, is that
movement is presented to us as the true outer and explanatory cause of
our sensations, the external excitement to our nerves. The most
elementary works on physics are impregnated with this disconcerting
conception. If we open a description of acoustics, we read that sound
and noise are subjective states which have no reality outside our
auditory apparatus; that they are sensations produced by an external
cause, which is the vibratory movement of sonorous bodies--whence the
conclusion that this vibratory movement is not itself a sensation. Or,
shall we take another proof, still more convincing. This is the
vibratory and silent movement which is invoked by physicists to
explain the peculiarities of subjective sensation; so that the
interferences, the pulsations of sound, and, in fine, the whole
physiology of the ear, is treated as a problem in kinematics, and is
explained by the composition of movements.
What kind of reality do physicists then allow to the displacements of
matter? Where do they place them, since they recognise otherwise that
the essence of matter is unknown to us? Are we to suppose that,
outside the world of _noumena_, outside the world of phenomena and
sensations, there exists a third world, an intermediary between the
two former, the world of atoms and that of mechanics?
A short examination will, moreover, suffice to show of what this
mechanical model is formed which is presented to us as constituting
the essence of matter. This can be nothing else than the sensations,
since we are incapable of perceiving or imagining anything else. It is
the sensations of sight, of touch, and even of the muscular sense.
Motion is a fact seen by the eye, felt by the hand; it enters into us
by the perception we have of the solid masses visible to the naked eye
which exist in our field of observation, of their movements and their
equilibrium and the displacement we ourselves effect with our bodies.
Here is the sensory origin, very humble and very gross, of all the
mechanics of the atoms. Here is the stuff of which our lofty
conception is formed. Our mind can, it is true, by a work of
purification, strip movement of most of its concrete qualities,
separate it even from the perception of the object in motion, and make
of it a something or other ideal and diagrammatic; but there will
still remain a residuum of visual, tactile, and muscular sensations,
and consequently it is still nothing else than a subjective state,
bound to the structure of our organs. We are, for the rest, so
wrapped up in sensations that none of our boldest conceptions can
break through the circle.
But it is not the notion of movement alone which proceeds from
sensation. There is also that of exteriority, of space, of position,
and, by opposition, that of external or psychological events. Without
declaring it to be certain, I will remind you that it is infinitely
probable that these notions are derived from our muscular experience.
Free motion, arrested motion, the effort, the speed, and the direction
of motion, such are the sensorial elements, which, in all probability,
constitute the foundation of our ideas on space and its properties.
And those are so many subjective notions which we have no right to
treat as objects belonging to the outer world.
What is more remarkable, also, is that even the ideas of object, of
body, and of matter, are derived from visual and tactile sensations
which have been illegitimately set up as entities. We have come, in
fact, to consider matter as a being separate from sensations, superior
to our sensations, distinct from the properties which enable us to
know it, and binding together these properties, as it were, in a
sheaf. Here again is a conception at the base of visualisation and
muscularisation; it consists in referring to the visual and other
sensations, raised for the occasion to the dignity of external and
permanent causes, the other sensations which are considered as the
effects of the first named upon our organs of sense.
It demands a great effort to clear our minds of these familiar
conceptions which, it is plain are nothing but naïve realism. Yes! the
mechanical conception of the universe is nothing but naïve realism.
To recapitulate our idea, and, to make it more plain by an
illustration, here is a tuning-fork on the table before me. With a
vigorous stroke of the bow I set it vibrating. The two prongs
separate, oscillate rapidly, and a sound of a certain tone is heard. I
connect this tuning-fork, by means of electric wires, with a Déprez
recording apparatus which records the vibrations on the blackened
surface of a revolving cylinder; and we can thus, by an examination of
the trace made under our eyes, ascertain all the details of the
movement which animates it. We see, parallel to each other, two
different orders of phenomena; the visual phenomena which show us that
the tuning-fork is vibrating, and the auditory phenomena which convey
to us the fact that it is making a sound.
The physicist, asked for an explanation of all this, will answer: "It
is the vibration of the tuning-fork which, transmitted by the air, is
carried to our auditory apparatus, causes a vibration in the
tympanum, the movements of which are communicated to the small bones
of the middle ear, thence (abridging details) to the terminations of
the auditory nerve, and so produces in us the subjective sensation of
sound." Well, in so saying, the physicist commits an error of
interpretation; outside our ears there exists something we do not know
which excites them; this something cannot be the vibratory movement of
the tuning-fork, for this vibratory movement which we can see is
likewise a subjective sensation; it no more exists outside our sight
than sound exists outside our ears. In any case, it is as absurd to
explain a sensation of sound by one of sight, as a sensation of sight
by one of sound.
One would be neither further from nor nearer to the truth if we
answered that physicist as follows: "You give the preponderance to
your eye; I myself give it to my ear. This tuning-fork appears to you
to vibrate. Wrong! This is how the thing occurs. This tuning-fork
produces a sound which, by exciting our retina, gives us a sense of
movement. This visual sensation of vibration is a purely subjective
one, the external cause of the phenomenon is the sound. The outer
world is a concert of sounds which rises in the immensity of space.
Matter is noise and nothingness is silence."
This theory of the above experiment is not absurd; but, as a matter
of fact, it is probable that no one would or could accept it, except
verbally for amusement, as a challenge, or for the pleasure of talking
metaphysics. The reason is that all our evolution, for causes which
would take too long to detail, has established the hegemony of certain
of our senses over the others. We have, above all, become visual and
manual beings. It is the eye and the hand which give us the
perceptions of the outer world of which we almost exclusively make use
in our sciences; and we are now almost incapable of representing to
ourselves the foundation of phenomena otherwise than by means of these
organs. Thus all the preceding experiment from the stroke of the bow
to the final noise presents itself to us in visual terms, and further,
these terms are not confined to a series of detached sensations.
Visual sensation combines with the tactile and muscular sensations,
and forms sensorial constructions which succeed each, other, continue,
and arrange themselves logically: in lieu of sensations, there are
objects and relations of space between these objects, and the actions
which connect them, and the phenomena which pass from one to the
other. All that is only sensation, if you will; but merely as the
agglutinated molecules of cement and of stone are a palace.
Thus the whole series of visual events which compose our experiment
with the tuning-fork can be coherently explained. One understands that
It is the movement of my hand equipped with the bow which is
communicated to the tuning-fork. One understands that this movement
passing into the fork has changed its form and rhythm, that the waves
produced by the fork transmit themselves, by the oscillations of the
air-molecules, to our tympanum, and so on. There is in all this series
of experiments an admirable continuity which fully satisfies our
minds. However much we might be convinced by the theoretical reasons
given above, that we have quite as much right to represent the same
series of events in an auditory form, we should be incapable of
realising that form to ourselves.
What would be the structure of the ear to any one who only knew it
through the sense of hearing? What would become of the tympanum, the
small bones, the cochlea, and the terminations of the acoustic nerve,
if it were only permitted to represent them in the language of sound?
It is very difficult to imagine.
Since, however, we are theorising, let us not be stopped by a few
difficulties of comprehension. Perhaps a little training might enable
us to overcome them. Perhaps musicians, who discern as much reality in
what one hears as in what one sees, would be more apt than other folk
to understand the necessary transposition. Some of them, in their
autobiographies, have made, by the way, very suggestive remarks on the
importance they attribute to sound: and, moreover, the musical world,
with its notes, its intervals, and its orchestration, lives and
develops in a manner totally independent of vibration.
Perhaps we can here quote one or two examples which may give us a
lead. To measure the length of a body instead of applying to it a
yard-wand, one might listen to its sound; for the pitch of the sound
given by two cords allows us to deduce their difference of length, and
even the absolute length of each. The chemical composition of a body
might be noted by its electric resistance and the latter verified by
the telephone; that is to say, by the ear. Or, to take a more subtle
example. We might make calculations with sounds of which we have
studied the harmonic relations as we do nowadays with figures. A sum
in rule of three might even be solved sonorously; for, given three
sounds, the ear can find a fourth which should have the same relation
to the third as the second to the first. Every musical ear performs
this operation easily; now, this fourth sound, what else is it but the
fourth term in a rule of three? And by taking into consideration the
number of its vibrations a numerical solution would be found to the
problem. This novel form of calculating machine might serve to fix
the price of woollen stuffs, to calculate brokerages and percentages,
and the solution would be obtained without the aid of figures, without
calculation, without visualisation, and by the ear alone.
By following up this idea, also, we might go a little further. We
might arrive at the conviction that our present science is human,
petty, and contingent; that it is closely linked with the structure of
our sensory organs; that this structure results from the evolution
which fashioned these organs; that this evolution has been an accident
of history; that in the future it may be different; and that,
consequently, by the side or in the stead of our modern science, the
work of our eyes and hands--and also of our words--there might have
been constituted, there may still be constituted, sciences entirely
and extraordinarily new--auditory, olfactory, and gustatory sciences,
and even others derived from other kinds of sensations which we can
neither foresee nor conceive because they are not, for the moment,
differentiated in us. Outside the matter we know, a very special
matter fashioned of vision and touch, there may exist other matter
with totally different properties.
But let us bring our dream to an end. The interest of our discussion
does not lie in the hypothetical substitution of hearing or any other
sense for sight. It lies in the complete suppression of all
explanation of the noumenal object in terms borrowed from the language
of sensation. And that is our last word. We must, by setting aside the
mechanical theory, free ourselves from a too narrow conception of the
constitution of matter. And this liberation will be to us a great
advantage which we shall soon reap. We shall avoid the error of
believing that mechanics is the only real thing and that all that
cannot be explained by mechanics must be incomprehensible. We shall
then gain more liberty of mind for understanding what the union of the
soul with the body[9] may be.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: I would draw attention to a recent volume by GUSTAVE LE
BON, on _Evolution de la Matière_, a work full of original and bold
ideas.]
[Footnote 9: See [Note 1] on p. 3.--ED.]
CHAPTER IV
ANSWERS TO SOME OBJECTIONS, AND SUMMARY
I have set forth the foregoing ideas by taking the road which to me
seemed the best. On reflection it has occurred to me that my manner of
exposition and demonstration may be criticised much more than my
conclusion. Now, as it is the conclusion alone which here is of
importance, it is expedient not to make it responsible for the
arguments by which I have supported it.
These arguments resolve themselves into the attestation that between
objects and our consciousness there exists an intermediary, our
nervous system. We have even established that the existence of this
intermediary is directly proved by observation, and from this I have
concluded that we do not directly perceive the object itself but a
_tertium quid_, which is our sensations.
Several objections to this might be made. Let us enumerate them.
1. It is not inconceivable that objects may act directly on our
consciousness without taking the intermediary of our nervous system.
Some authors, the spiritualists notably, believe in the possibility
of disembodied souls, and they admit by implication that these souls
remain in communication with the terrestrial world, witness our
actions, and hear our speech. Since they no longer have organs of
sense, we must suppose that these wandering souls, if they exist, can
directly perceive material objects. It is evident that such hypotheses
have, up till now, nothing scientific in them, and that the
demonstrations of them which are given raise a feeling of scepticism
more than anything else. Nevertheless, we have not the right to
exclude, by _a priori_ argument, the possibility of this category of
phenomena.
2. Several German authors have maintained in recent years, that if the
nervous system intervenes in the perception of external objects, it is
a faithful intermediary which should not work any change on those
physical actions which it gathers from outside to transmit to our
consciousness. From this, point of view colour would exist as colour,
outside our eyes, sound would exist as sound, and in a general way
there would not be, in matter, any mysterious property left, since we
should perceive matter as it is. This is a very unexpected
interpretation, by which men of science have come to acknowledge the
correctness of the common belief: they rehabilitate an opinion which
philosophers have till now turned to ridicule, under the name of
naïve realism. All which proves that the naïveté of some may be the
excessive refinement of others.
To establish scientifically this opinion they batter down the theory
of the specific energy of the nerves. I have recalled in a previous
page[10] of what this theory consists. I have shown that if, by
mechanical or electrical means, our different sensory nerves are
excited, notwithstanding the identity of the excitant, a different
sensation is provoked in each case--light when the optic nerve is
stimulated, sound when the acoustic, and so on. It is now answered to
this argument based on fact that the nature of these excitants must be
complex. It is not impossible, it is thought, that the electric force
contains within itself both luminous and sonorous actions; it is not
impossible that a mechanical excitement should change the electric
state of the nerve affected, and that, consequently, these subsidiary
effects explain how one and the same agent may, according to the
nerves employed, produce different effects.
3. After the spiritualists and the experimentalists, let us take the
metaphysicians. Among them one has always met with the most varying
specimens of opinions and with arguments for and against all possible
theories.
Thus it is, for example, with the external perception. Some have
supposed it indirect, others, on the contrary, that it acts directly
on the object. Those who uphold the direct theory are inspired by
Berkeley, who asserts that the sensitive qualities of the body have no
existence but in our own minds, and consist really in representative
ideas. This doctrine is expressly based on this argument--that thought
differs too much in nature from matter for one to be able to suppose
any link between these two substances. In this particular, some
authors often make an assertion without endeavouring to prove it. They
are satisfied with attesting, or even with supposing, that mind can
have no consciousness of anything but its own states. Other
philosophers, as I have said, maintain that "things which have a real
existence are the very things we perceive." It is Thomas Reid who has
upheld, in some passages of his writings at all events, the theory of
instantaneous perception, or intuition. It has also been defended by
Hamilton in a more explicit manner.[11] It has been taken up again in
recent years, by a profound and subtle philosopher, M. Bergson, who,
unable to admit that the nervous system is a _substratum of knowledge_
and serves us as a percipient, takes it to be solely a motor organ,
and urges that the sensory parts of the system--that is to say, the
centripetal, optic, acoustic, &c, nerves--do not call forth, when
excited, any kind of sensation, their sole purpose being to convey
disturbances from periphery to periphery, or, say, from external
objects to the muscles of the body. This hypothesis, surely a little
difficult to comprehend, places, if I mistake not, the mind, as a
power of perception and representation, within the interval comprised
between the external object and the body, so that the mind is in
direct contact with external objects and knows them as they are.
It will be noticed that these three interpretations, the
spiritualistic, the experimental, and the metaphysical, are in formal
opposition with that which I have set forth earlier in these pages.
They deny the supposition that the nervous system serves us as an
intermediary with nature, and that it transforms nature before
bringing it to our consciousness. And it might seem that by
contradicting my fundamental proposition, those three new hypotheses
must lead to a totally different conclusion.
Now, this is not so at all. The conclusion I have enunciated remains
entirely sound, notwithstanding this change in the starting point, and
for the following reason. It is easy to see that we cannot represent
to ourselves the inner structure of matter by using all our sensations
without distinction, because it is impossible to bring all these
sensations within one single and identical synthetic construction: for
this they are too dissimilar. Thus, we should try in vain to unite in
any kind of scheme a movement of molecules and an odour; these
elements are so heterogeneous that there is no way of joining them
together and combining them.
The physicists have more or less consciously perceived this, and, not
being able to overcome by a frontal attack the difficulty created by
the heterogeneity of our sensations, they have turned its flank. The
ingenious artifice they have devised consists in retaining only some
of these sensations, and in rejecting the remainder; the first being
considered as really representing the essence of matter, and the
latter as the effects of the former on our organs of sense; the first
being reputed to be true, we may say, and the second being reputed
false--that is subjective, that is not representing the _X_ of
matter.[12] I have refuted this argument by showing that all our
sensations without exception are subjective and equally false in
regard to the _X_ of matter, and that no one of them, consequently,
has any claim to explain the others.
Now, by a new interpretation; we are taught that all sensations are
equally true, and that all faithfully represent the great _X._ If they
be all equally true, it is absolutely the same as if they were all
false; no one sensation can have any privilege over the others, none
can be truer than the others, none can be capable of explaining the
others, none can usurp to itself the sole right of representing the
essence of matter; and we thus find ourselves, in this case, as in the
preceding, in presence of the insurmountable difficulty of creating a
synthesis with heterogeneous elements.
All that has been said above is summed up in the following points:--
1. Of the external world, we only know our sensations. All the
physical properties of matter resolve themselves for us into
sensations, present, past, or possible. We may not say that it is by
the intermediary, by the means of sensation, that we know these
properties, for that would mean that the properties are distinct from
the sensations. Objects are to us in reality only aggregates of
sensations.
2. The sensations belong to the different organs of the senses--sight,
hearing, touch, the muscular sense, &c. Whatever be the sense
affected, one sensation has the same rights as the others, from the
point of view of the cognition of external objects. It is impossible
to distinguish them into subjective and objective, by giving to this
distinction the meaning that certain sensations represent objects as
they are, while certain others simply represent our manner of feeling.
This is an illegitimate distinction, since all sensations have the
same physiological condition, the excitement of a sensory nerve, and
result from the properties of this nerve when stimulated.
3. Consequently, it is impossible for us to form a conception of
matter in terms of movement, and to explain by the modalities of
movement the properties of bodies; for this theory amounts to giving
to certain sensations, especially those of the muscular sense, the
hegemony over the others. We cannot explain, we have not the right to
explain, one sensation by another, and the mechanical theory of matter
has simply the value of a symbol.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: See p. 22, _sup._--ED.]
[Footnote 11: See J. S. MILL'S _Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's
Philosophy_, chap. x. p. 176, _et. seq._]
[Footnote 12: See p. 18, _sup._--ED.]
BOOK II
THE DEFINITION OF MIND
CHAPTER I
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN COGNITION[13] AND ITS OBJECT
After having thus studied matter and reduced it to sensations, we
shall apply the same method of analysis to mind, and inquire whether
mind possesses any characteristic which allows it to be distinguished
from matter.
Before going any further, let me clear up an ambiguity. All the first
part of this work has been devoted to the study of what is known to us
in and by sensation; and I have taken upon myself, without advancing
any kind of justifying reason, to call that which is known to us, by
this method, by the name of matter, thus losing sight of the fact that
matter only exists by contra-distinction and opposition to mind, and
that if mind did not exist, neither would matter. I have thus appeared
to prejudge the question to be resolved.
The whole of this terminology must now be considered as having simply
a conventional value, and must be set aside for the present. These
are the precise terms in which this question presents itself to my
mind. A part of the knowable consists in sensations. We must,
therefore, without troubling to style this aggregate of sensations
_matter_ rather than _mind_, make an analysis of the phenomena known
by the name of mind, and see whether they differ from the preceding
ones. Let us, therefore, make an inventory of mind. By the process of
enumeration, we find quoted as psychological phenomena, the
sensations, the perceptions, the ideas, the recollections, the
reasonings, the emotions, the desires, the imaginations, and the acts
of attention and of will. These appear to be, at the first glance, the
elements of mind; but, on reflection, one perceives that these
elements belong to two distinct categories, of which it is easy to
recognise the duality, although, in fact and in reality, these two
elements are constantly combined. The first of these elements may
receive the generic name of objects of cognition, or objects known,
and the second that of acts of cognition.
Here are a few examples of concrete facts, which only require a rapid
analysis to make their double nature plain. In a sensation which we
feel are two things: a particular state, or an object which one knows,
and the act of knowing it, of feeling it, of taking cognisance of it;
in other words, every sensation comprises an impression and a
cognition. In a recollection there is, in like manner, a certain image
of the past and the fact consisting in the taking cognisance of this
image. It is, in other terms, the distinction between the intelligence
and the object. Similarly, all reasoning has an object; there must be
matter on which to reason, whether this matter be supplied by the
facts or the ideas. Again, a desire, a volition, an act of reflection,
has need of a point of application. One does not will in the air, one
wills something; one does not reflect in the void, one reflects over a
fact or over some difficulty.
We may then provisionally distinguish in an inventory of the mind a
something which is perceived, understood, desired, or willed, and,
beyond that, the fact of perceiving, of understanding, or desiring, or
of willing.
To illustrate this distinction by an example, I shall say that an
analogous separation can be effected in an act of vision, by showing
that the act of vision, which is a concrete operation, comprises two
distinct elements: the object seen and the eye which sees. But this
is, of course, only a rough comparison, of which we shall soon see the
imperfections when we are further advanced in the study of the
question.
To this activity which exists and manifests itself in the facts of
feeling, perceiving, &c., we can give a name in order to identify and
recognise it: we will call it the consciousness[14] (_la conscience_),
and we will call object everything which is not the act of
consciousness.
After this preliminary distinction, to which we shall often refer, we
will go over the principal manifestations of the mind, and we will
first study the objects of cognition, reserving for another chapter
the study of the acts of cognition--that is to say, of consciousness.
We will thus examine successively sensation, idea, emotion, and will.
It has been often maintained that the peculiar property of mind is to
perceive sensations. It has also been said that thought--that is, the
property of representing to one's self that which does not
exist--distinguishes mind from matter. Lastly, it has not failed to be
affirmed that one thing which the mind brings into the material world
is its power of emotion; and moralists, choosing somewhat arbitrarily
among certain emotions, have said that the mind is the creator of
goodness. We will endeavour to analyse these different affirmations.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 13: See [Note 3], _sup._ on p. 15.--ED.]
[Footnote 14: The word "_conscience_" is one of those which has been
used in the greatest number of different meanings. Let it be, at
least, understood that _I_ use it here in an intellectual and not a
moral sense. I do not attach to the conscience the idea of a moral
approbation or disapprobation, of a duty, of a remorse. The best
example to illustrate conscience has, perhaps, been formed by LADD. It
is the contrast between a person awake and sleeping a dreamless sleep.
The first has consciousness of a number of things; the latter has
consciousness of nothing. Let me now add that we distinguish from
consciousness that multitude of things of which one has consciousness
of. Of these we make the object of consciousness. [_Conscience_ has
throughout been rendered "consciousness."--ED.]]