sense that every motion is supposed to be accompanied with sensation,
nor with any kind of feeling, but with an element of feeling only. I
am aware that the term element of feeling may be easily misunderstood,
and it seems advisable to guard against such misconceptions. Actual
feeling I suppose originates from the elements of feeling similarly
as an electric current originates under certain special conditions.
Sulphuric acid dissolves zinc and sets energy free which appears in the
copper wire as electricity. It is an instance of the transformation of
potential energy into kinetic energy.
#The term "elements of feeling" inappropriate.#
To use the expression "elements of feeling" is no more or less
allowable than to speak of the stored up energy from which electricity
is produced, as elements of electricity. The latter expression is
inappropriate, because we are in possession of better terms, because
our range of experience in the subject is wider. But suppose that
among all molar and molecular motions we were only acquainted with
electricity and knew nothing of potential energy, could we not for want
of a better word form the term "elements of electricity"?
#What the elements of feeling are not.#
The elements of feeling should not be supposed to be feelings on a
very small scale. The elements of feeling may be and for aught we know
are as much unlike actual feelings as mechanical motion, or chemical
dissolution is unlike electricity. The essential features of feeling
may be, and I believe they are, produced through the form in which
their elements co-operate. Similarly the different pieces of a clock
and the atoms of which it consists contain nothing of the clock; and
if we should call the heaviness of a weight, the swinging property
of the pendulum, the tension of the spring, etc., etc., elements of
chronometry, it might appear ridiculous, because we know so many other
processes, viz. all different ways of performing work, for which these
qualities can be used. The action of a spring, of a suspended weight,
of a mere pendulum are not by themselves elements of chronometry; they
become a chronometrical arrangement only by their proper combination
with a dial and hands attached, and by being correctly regulated in
adaptation to temperature and many other conditions.
* * * * *
It is not plausible that the earth, when in its gaseous state, was the
habitation of any feeling beings, and it is actually impossible that
it harbored feeling beings as they exist now. Feeling accordingly must
have originated, and the question how feeling originates is a problem
that suggests itself naturally to the psychologist as well as the
philosopher.
#Vital energy a unique form of energy.#
The kinetic energy liberated in our actions, in brain-activity as well
as muscular motions, is produced from the potential energy stored up
in our tissues. This energy, _qua_ energy, is the same energy which we
meet everywhere in nature. All kinds of energy are interconvertible.
Yet we must bear in mind that the vital energy displayed in animal
organisms is a special and indeed a unique form of energy. It is as
different from other forms of energy as is, for instance, electricity
from molar motion.
#Physiology and psychology not applied mechanics.#
In former times physics and chemistry were considered as applied
mechanics, and physiology as applied chemistry. This position,
however, is wrong and had to be abandoned. Mechanical, chemical,
physiological, and psychical processes exhibit radically different
conditions. The student of mechanics, the chemist, the physiologist,
the psychologist, each one of them attempts to solve a different
problem. They accordingly deal with different sets of abstractions. The
processes which constitute the subject-matter of the physiologist's
and psychologist's work are different from those of the mechanical
philosopher and of the chemist. The abstraction of the so-called
purely mechanical excludes such processes as chemical combinations;
it is limited to molar mechanics only. The term molecular mechanics
is an attempt at widening the domain of mechanics. But the terms
of neither molecular nor molar mechanics contain anything of the
properly physiological nature observed in vegetal and animal life. The
latter is a very complicated process which may briefly be described
as assimilation of living forms. The laws of molar and molecular
motions are not annulled, yet they are superseded; they remain, yet
some additional important traits appear. Different conditions and
complications show different features and the characteristics of
organised life are not the molar or molecular mechanics of their
motions but their properly physiological features.
Mechanical laws accordingly cannot explain physiological action, and
still less have they anything in common with ideas, or thoughts, or
feelings. Accordingly, the attempt to apply mechanics to any other than
mechanical considerations is _prima facie_ to be rejected. We must
never forget that all our scientific inquiries deal with certain sides
of reality only.
#The higher view of the whole.#
The abstractions of the mechanical philosopher as well as those of the
physiologist and psychologist are one-sided aspects only of reality.
Yet it is quite legitimate to take a higher standpoint in order to
classify our notions so that the general views comprise the special
views and to determine the relations among the several in their kind
most general views. In this way we can shape our entire knowledge into
an harmonious world-conception representing the whole as a whole. This
I tried to do when, following the precedent of Fechner and Clifford,
I proposed the problem of the origin of actual feelings from the
non-feeling elements-of-feeling, the former depending upon a special
combination or form of action of the latter, and the latter being a
universal feature of reality.
#The additional feature in a stone's fall.#
When we observe some very simple process in nature, e. g. the fall of
a stone, we represent it as a motion. We formulate the operation of
the stone's fall into a law, describing its mode of action as it holds
good in all cases of the same kind. But the motion observable and
representable in our mind is not all that takes place. There must be
some additional feature which in a further development will appear as
man's consciousness.
To regard the fall of a stone as only a very simple instance of
essentially the same process that takes place when a man does an act,
i. e. performs a motion accompanied with consciousness, appears at
first sight strange or even absurd. But we cannot escape the assumption
that in a certain respect it is the same thing. We are inevitably
driven to adopt this monistic conception of things by inexorable
logical arguments; and we are supported in it by the observation of
natural processes.
#Human activity and energy.#
Human action develops by degrees out of other natural processes,
and we have sufficient evidence to believe that humanity with its
civilisation, science, art, and all its ideals—so far as the energy
alone, spent in human activity, is considered—is but a differentiation
of natural forces that has come to pass on the cooled off surface
of the earth under the influence of solar heat. Man is transformed
solar heat. All the forces animating the planetary system are
differentiations from the heat of which our solar system was possessed
when in a nebular state. And what is the heat of which nebular masses
are possessed? It is the motion of celestial bodies, of comets, or of
so called world-dust, changed by collision into molecular motion.
But in human activity there is some additional element, that of purely
subjective awareness, which is neither energy in itself nor can have
been transformed from energy; it must have existed potentially.
Accordingly we assume that also in the more primitive processes of
nature there is some additional element which in its full development
appears as feeling and reaches its highest stage known to us, in the
consciousness of man.
IV. THE ORIGIN OF ORGANISED LIFE.
#Organised life and feeling.#
There is a very original view concerning the origin of life advocated
in this number of _The Monist_ by Dr. George M. Gould in his article
on "Immortality."[84] The problem of the origin of life (namely, of
organised life) is so closely connected with the problem of the origin
of feeling, that the one cannot be solved without solving the other.
Feeling such as we are familiar with is an exclusive property of
organised life and a few incidental remarks on Dr. Gould's proposition
will therefore not be out of place.
[84] It cannot be denied that many ideas set forth by Dr.
Gould in his presentation of the problem of immortality
contain a deep truth. The brilliant and forcible language in
which the author treats his subject is admirable. But the
passages on the externality of life present a conception
which stands in direct opposition to the views that have been
editorially upheld in _The Open Court_ as well as the _Monist_.
#Dr. Gould's dualism.#
In introducing here the views of Dr. Gould in a discussion with
Professor Mach, I am fully aware of the great difference that obtains
between the two. While Professor Mach's thought moves in an outspoken
monistic direction, Dr. Gould presents a bold dualism, attributing to
all life, to the lichen on the withered rock no less than to the human
soul, an extramundane origin. Why should we not then rather adopt
the more consistent theological supernaturalism which attributes to
inorganic nature also an extramundane origin, thus to realise by a
short cut a complete unitary world-conception?
Dr. Gould's proposition is contained in the following:
"Certain confused and confusion-breeding philosophers, in
the interests of a theoretical monism or pantheism pretend
to find, or to believe, that the organic is born out of
the inorganic, that the physical world shows evidence of
design, that life and mentality were implicate and latent in
pre-existent matter. Yet they will accept the evidence against
spontaneous generation derived from the fact that if you kill
all organic life by intense heat and then exclude life from
without you will never find life to arise. But it is plain
that in the condensation of the dust of space into suns and
planets, all organic life was killed in the hottest of all
conceivable heat. But as the planets cool, life appears. It
must have come from without, and must therefore be a universal
self-existent power."
#What can externality of life mean?#
The idea that "life must have come from without" is not quite clear.
Does Dr. Gould mean "from without our planetary system, out of
other planetary systems"? If so, the same objection holds good: In
other planetary systems also when they were in a nebular state "all
organic[85] life was killed in the hottest of all conceivable heat."
Shall we perhaps consider the cold interstellar regions as the place
whence life does come? And if "from without" means "from without the
whole universe," we should be driven back to the old supernaturalistic
dualism which regards nature as dead and life as a foreign element that
has been blown into the nostrils of material forms so as to animate
them.
[85] Dr. Gould does not seem to make a distinction between
"organic" and "organised." We should here prefer the
expression "organised life." Carbon is an "organic substance"
but not an "organised substance." A cell and its protoplasm,
however, are "organised substance."
#A modern thinker on the externality of life.#
Dr. Gould proposes his theory of the external origin of life, with
great confidence, in the name of modern science. Must we add that
modern science is very far from sustaining his view? Professor Clifford
touches the subject of spontaneous generation in his article "Virchow
on the Teaching of Science." He says:
"Why do the experiments all 'go against' spontaneous
generation? What the experiments really prove is that the
coincidence which would form a _Bacterium_—already a definite
structure reproducing its like—does not occur in a test-tube
during the periods yet observed.... The experiments have
nothing whatever to say to the production of enormously
simpler forms, in the vast range of the ocean, during the ages
of the earth's existence.... We know from physical reasons
that the earth was once in a liquid state from excessive heat.
Then there could have been no living matter upon it. Now
there is. Consequently non-living matter has been turned into
living matter _somehow_. We can only get out of spontaneous
generation by the supposition made by Sir W. Thompson, in jest
or earnest, that some piece of living matter came to the earth
from outside, perhaps with a meteorite. I wish to treat all
hypotheses with respect, and to have no preferences which are
not entirely founded on reason; and yet whenever I contemplate
this
simpler protoplasmic shape
Which came down in a fire-escape,
an internal monitor, of which I can give no rational account,
invariably whispers 'Fiddlesticks!'"
#Difficulties of Dr. Gould's position.#
Suppose, however, Dr. Gould's assumption were accepted, suppose that
life had come from without, matter were of itself lifeless, and life,
the "self-existent power," had ensouled some dead organic substances
so as to cause their organisation, would we be any wiser through this
hypothesis? The assumption instead of diminishing the difficulties in
the problem of life, would increase them. New questions arise: What
must this "self-existent power" be conceived to be? Does it exist
without a physical basis (to use Professor Huxley's phrase)? How does
it differ from energy? Is not all power energy of some kind? And are
not all kinds of energy interconvertible? Has this self-existent power
the faculty of changing other energy into itself, into life, or is it
only supposed to utilise it? In the latter case it would be a _Ding an
sich_, not in but behind the functions of organisms; and in both cases
it would form an exception to the law of the conservation of energy,
for "the self-existent power of life" would be an ever-increasing
power. One life-germ only may have come from spheres unknown into the
universe, and by utilising the mechanical energy of the material world
has animated at least our earth, and may animate in a similar way
all the globes in the milky way. That life-germ, however,—if it was
anything like a real life-germ, such as our naturalists know of,—must
have consisted of organic substance. What a strange coincidence, that
outside of the world also organic substances are found! Life-germs
are not simple substance, but highly complex organisms. Accordingly,
the question presents itself, How has this life-germ been formed?
What conditions in another world radically different from ours have
moulded it and combined its parts into this special life-germ so
extraordinarily adaptable to our material universe? Or must we suppose
that the first life-germ was formed out of the cosmic substance of our
universe by a non-material spark of life, (whatever life may mean,)
that had dropped in somehow into the material world from without?
If life is a self-existent power, why does it always appear dependent
upon and vary with the organisation, which it is supposed to have
formed? Why has life never been observed in its self-existence? So far
as we have ever been able to observe life, it is matter organised and
organising more matter. All the difficulties disappear if we say, Life
does not produce organisation, it is organisation.
* * * * *
#Organisms nor aggregates of cells.#
Dr. Gould, in appealing to the latest scientific researches as proving
"the dependence of all organisation upon life," especially mentions
his friend Dr. Edmund Montgomery and also Professor Frommen's article
"Zelle" (Eulenburg's "Realencyclopädie der gesammten Heilkunde," 1890).
Now it is true, as Dr. Gould says, that "the body of animals is not an
aggregate of cells." It is as little a mere aggregate of cells as a
watch is a mere aggregate of metal, or as a hexagon a mere aggregate
of lines. The body of animals is an organism; which means, it is an
interacting whole of a special form built of irritable substance. A
highly complex organism is not and cannot be considered as a compound
of its diverse organs, but as a differentiation. Its unity is preserved
in the differentiation, yet this unity does not exist outside of or
apart from the differentiated parts.
#Disparity of life and matter.#
I fully assent to Professor Huxley's proposition, approvingly quoted
by Dr. Gould, that "materialism is the most baseless of all dogmas."
I also believe in the _omne vivum ex vivo_; but I do not consider it
with Dr. Gould as an axiom, nor can I accept the consequence which Dr.
Gould derives from it, "that life [viz. organised life] is more certain
and enduring than matter, soul than sense." It is true that "matter
and life" are "as far apart as heaven and earth." Farther indeed,
for they are two abstractions of an entirely disparate character. No
passage through spatial distance, be it ever so large, could bring
both concepts together. They are and remain as different, as is for
instance the idea expressed in a sentence from the ink with which it is
written. Ideas contain no ink and ink contains no ideas. Yet this does
not prove that ideas exist by themselves in a ghostlike abstractness
apart not only from ink, but also from feeling brain-substance. Nor
does the disparity of the terms life and matter prove the abstract or
independent existence of life outside of matter.
If life for some such reasons as hold good only in so far as they
refute the old-style materialism, could or should be considered as
being some self-existent power having come into the world "to bite"
at matter, we might also consider the hexagon as a something that
came into the mathematical world from without. The hexagon cannot be
explained as a mere aggregate of lines, accordingly hexagoneity must be
a self-existent power; it must have come from without, utilising lines
for its hexagonic existence.
Organised life must have originated from non-organised elements by
organisation, and thus a new sphere is created which introduces new
conditions. The laws of organised life are not purely mechanical laws,
nor physical laws, nor chemical laws, but they are a peculiar kind of
laws; just as different as chemical laws are from purely mechanical
laws (the latter not including such phenomena as are generally called
chemical affinity).
#Natural laws and monism.#
Natural laws are formulas describing facts as they take place under
certain conditions. Accordingly if special conditions arise we shall
have a special set of laws. Monism assumes that all the laws of nature
agree among themselves; there is no contradiction among them possible.
Yet there may be an infinite variety of applications. The processes
of organised life are not mere mechanical processes. The abstractions
which we comprise under our mechanical terms do not cover certain
features of vital activity and cannot explain them. Physiology is not
merely applied physics; it is a province of natural processes that has
conditions of its own and the physiological conditions are different
from physical conditions. This however does not overthrow monism. We
believe none the less in the unity of all natural laws and trust that
if the constitution of the cosmos were transparent in its minutest
details to our inquiring mind, we should see the same law operating
in all the different provinces; we should see in all instances a
difference of conditions and consequent thereupon a difference of
results that can be formulated in different natural laws, among which
there is none contradictory to any other.
EDITOR.
LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE.
I.
FRENCH PUBLICATIONS.
Why do we sleep? Some have said, through cerebral congestion; others,
through cerebral anæmia. In reality the question remains undecided. M.
S. SERGUEYEFF has attempted to resolve it in his scholarly lectures
published under the title of _Le Sommeil et le Système nerveux,
Physiologie de la Veille et du Sommeil_.[86] He considers it under a
new and very general point of view.
[86] In two thick octavo volumes. Alcan, publisher.
According to him, wake and sleep would be the two alternating phases
of one and the same function, necessarily vegetative, and absolutely
indispensable to life. Sleep would respond to an assimilation; wake to
a dis-assimilation.
To this vegetative function, nevertheless, it is necessary to assign an
aliment, an organ, a mechanism. Now as yet we know of only two material
forms of assimilative activity, the one semi-liquid for digestion,
the other gaseous for respiration. The aliment of sleep would be, as
opposed to this, an ethereal matter, or, if we wish, a dynamic form,
susceptible of being accumulated and of being transformed in various
ways. At first sight, no doubt, it seems difficult to accept a sthenic
aliment, without a ponderable substratum, and it sounds a little
strange to seek in the phenomena of wake and sleep "an assimilative
group the object of which belongs to the ambient dynamism," in other
terms, "a functional activity," which should be influenced by the
condition of the alimentary source—that which would give at the same
time the explication of the fact, that, in a general way, the two
phases of wake and sleep are related to the planetary periodicity of
day and night, summer and winter. Let us, however, follow M. Sergueyeff
in his interesting researches, where the scientific spirit does not
cease, at any rate, to sustain him.
In his theory the cerebro-spinal system is no longer the organ, as
it is in the theories of congestion and anæmia; but it is rather the
so-called sympathetic elements, the ganglio-epidermic system, of which
the imperfectly known functions rightly require to be explained.
Struck with the insufficient reasons given of the phenomenon of
caloricity resulting from the section of a sympathetic nerve, or from
the obstruction of a ganglion, M. Sergueyeff has been led to assume an
action of the great sympathetic, different from the vaso-motor action.
He does not hesitate, in order to explain the caloricity, to admit
into physiology the principle of the mechanical equivalence of heat.
He endeavors to prove, by an ingenious argument, that the heat which
is produced after the section of the sympathetic nerves, finds its
immediate origin in the arrest of a nervous centripetal movement; that
this arrested movement owes its existence to dynamic condensations,
to which certain organs of the ganglionic system are adapted, being
endowed with a condensatory capacity; and finally that in the normal
state the movement represents, not an expenditure of energy, but a
contribution, that is to say, it is a movement of a trophical character.
The sanguineous condition of the brain remains to be considered; but
the difference in this respect between wake and sleep, would be purely
distributive instead of being quantitative. Schiff has remarked that
white rats deprived of their cerebral lobes and corpora striata sleep
and wake; which leads us to think that the phenomena of cerebral
irrigation are consequentials, and not essentials, of wake and sleep.
In short, these two alternating phases serve in turns as chief moving
causes for the vaso-motor excitation which differences, in one or
the other period, the sanguineous condition of this or that medullar
locality.