THE CELL-SOUL AND CELLULAR PSYCHOLOGY.
No attack in Virchow's Munich address surprised me so much, and none
so plainly betrayed the subversion of his most important scientific
views, as that which he directed against my observations on psychology
and cellular physiology. A mystic dualism in his fundamental views is
here revealed, which stands in the sharpest contrast to the mechanical
monism formerly upheld by the famous pathologist of Wuerzburg.
In my Munich discourse (p. 12), I had alluded to the "grand and
fruitful application which Virchow had made, in his system of cellular
pathology, of the cell-theory to the general province of theoretic
medicine;" and as a logical amplification of that idea, I asserted
emphatically that we must ascribe an independent soul-life to every
individual organic cell. "This conception is validly proved by the
study of infusoria, amoebae, and other one-celled organisms; for, in
these individual, isolated, living cells we find the same
manifestations of soul-life--feelings, and ideas (mental images),
will and motion, as is in the higher animals compounded of many cells"
(p. 13). Virchow now rises up in the strongest protest against this
theory of a cellular sensibility, which I regard as the inevitable
consequence of his early views of cellular physiology; it is to him
"mere trifling with words." He combats with equal decisiveness "the
scientific necessity of extending the province of psychical processes
beyond the circle of those bodies in and by which we actually see them
exhibited." He further says, "If I explain attraction and repulsion as
psychical phenomena, I simply throw the psyche out of the window; the
psyche ceases to be a psyche." Finally he says, "I assert without any
hesitation that for us the sum total of psychical phenomena is
connected with certain animals only, and not with the collective mass
of all organic beings; nay, not even with all animals in general. We
have no ground as yet for speaking of the lowest animals as possessing
psychical properties; we find such properties only in the higher
grades, and with perfect certainty only in the very highest."
When I first read this and other astounding statements in Virchow's
paper, I involuntarily asked myself, "Can this be the same Virchow
from whom, twenty-five years ago, I learnt in Wuerzburg that the
soul-functions of man and animals depend on mechanical processes in
the soul-organs; that these organs are, like all other organs,
composed of cells, and that the functional activity of an organ is
nothing more than the sum of the activity of all the cells which
compose it? Is this the same Virchow whose most vital doctrine it was
that all the physical and psychical processes of the human organism
were to be referred to the mechanics of cell life; who supported the
view of the unity of all the phenomena of life with the same emphasis
with which we are now obliged to defend it against his attacks?"
In fact, and beyond a doubt, we have here a new proof of Virchow's
complete change in all fundamental scientific principles. For the
cellular psychology which I advance is only a necessary consequence of
the cellular physiology promulgated by Virchow. His present opposition
to the former is either a renunciation of the latter or an untenable
and inconsequent position. To explain this astonishing metapsychosis,
we shall do well first to glance at the soul in general, and then give
particular consideration to the cell-soul.
What is the Soul or Psyche? The innumerable different answers which
have been given to this crowning question of psychology, may
collectively, when freed from all extraneous matter, be brought
under two groups which we may shortly designate as the dualistic and
the monistic soul-hypothesis. According to the monistic (or
realistic) soul-hypothesis, the "soul" is nothing more than the sum
or aggregate of a multitude of special cell-activities, among which
sensation and volition--sensual perception and voluntary
movement--are the most important, the most common, and the most
widely diffused; associated with these in the higher animals and in
man, we find the more developed activities of the ganglionic cells
which are included under the conceptions of Thought, Consciousness,
Intellect, and Reason. Like all the other functional-activities of
the organic cells, these soul-functions depend ultimately on
material phenomena of motion, and more particularly on the motions
of the plasson-molecules or plastidules, the ultimate atoms of the
protoplasma, and perhaps of the nucleus also; therefore we should be
able actually to grasp and explain them, as well as every other
cognisable natural process, if we were in a position to refer them
to the mechanics of atoms. This monistic soul-hypothesis, then, is
at bottom mechanistic. If psychical mechanics--psychophysics--were
not so infinitely complex and involved, if we were in a position to
take a complete view of the historical evolution of the psychic
functions, we could reduce the whole of them (including
consciousness) to a mathematical "soul-formula."
According to the opposite, or dualistic (or spiritualistic)
soul-hypothesis, the soul is, on the contrary, a peculiar substance,
which most people somewhat grossly conceive of as a gaseous body,
while others picture it with more subtlety, as an immaterial essence.
This "soul-substance" subsists independently of the animal-body, and
stands in only a temporary connection with certain organs of that
body--the soul-, or mental-organs. It has been imagined that this
soul-matter, which resembles that imponderable ether which is the
medium of light, is diffused between the ponderable molecules of the
soul-organs and especially of the nerve-cells, and that this
connection of the imponderable "soul" with the ponderable body
subsists only so long as the individual life lasts. At the instant of
the first beginning of the individual organism, at the moment of
generation, this imponderable "soul" passes into the body, and at the
instant of death, at the annihilation of the living individual, it
again quits the body. This mystical or dualistic soul-hypothesis,
which, as is well known, is to this day universally accepted, is
fundamentally vitalistic, inasmuch as it regards the force which is
bound up with the soul-substance, like the "vital force" of a past
time, as a peculiar force quite independent of mechanical forces. This
force does not depend on the material phenomena of motion, and is
quite independent of the mechanics of atoms. The highest law of modern
natural science, the law of the conservation of force, has,
therefore, no application in the region of soul-life, and that
mechanical causality which prevails throughout all the processes of
nature does not exist for the soul. The Psyche, in a word, is a
supernatural phenomenon, and the supernatural department of the
spiritual world stands free and independent of the natural department
of the material world.
If we now compare the psychological views of the youthful and
unprejudiced Virchow of Wuerzburg with those of the older and mystical
Virchow of Berlin, there can be no doubt in the minds of the impartial
that the former, a quarter of a century ago, was as decided and
logical a monist as the latter is at present a confessed and convicted
dualist. The distinguished position which Virchow, twenty-five years
since, won by his natural conception of the nature of man, and the
great fame which he then earned in the fight for the truth, rest
precisely on this, that on every occasion he maintained with his
utmost vigour the unity of all vital phenomena, and asserted their
mechanical character. All organic life, even the soul-life, rests on
mechanical principles, on that causal mechanism of which Kant said
that "it alone contained a practical interpretation of nature," and
that "without it no natural science can exist." On this point Virchow
says well in his discourse on "Efforts at Unity in Scientific
Medicine," 1849:--"Life is only a peculiar sort of mechanics, though
it is indeed the most complex form of mechanics; that in which the
usual mechanical laws fall under the most unusual and manifold
conditions. Thus life, compared with the universal processes of motion
in nature, is a thing peculiar in itself; but it does not constitute a
diametrical, dualistic opposition to those laws; it is only a peculiar
species of motion. The motion itself is a mechanical one, for how
should we become cognisant of it if it were not based on the sensible
properties of bodies? The media of the motion are certain chemical
matters, for we recognise none but chemical matter in bodies. The
individual acts of motion reduce themselves to mechanical, or
physico-chemical, modifications of the constituent elements of the
organic unities, the cells and their equivalents." These and many
similar utterances in Virchow's earlier writings, and especially in
the essay I have mentioned, "On the Mechanical Conception of Life,"
leave no doubt that he formerly supported, with a clear conscience and
his utmost energy, in psychology as in the other collected departments
of physiology, that very mechanical standpoint which we to-day accept
as the essential basis of our monism, and which stands in
irreconcilable antagonism to the dualism of the vitalistic doctrine.
To none of my teachers am I so deeply indebted for my emancipation
from all the prejudices of the dualistic doctrine, and for my
conversion to the monistic, as to Rudolf Virchow; for it was his
superior guidance which most firmly convinced me, and many others, of
the exclusive importance of the mechanical view of nature. He led me
to a clear recognition of the fact that the nature of man, like every
other organism, can only be rightly understood as a united whole, that
this spiritual and corporeal being are inseparable, and that the
phenomena of the soul-life depend, like all other vital phenomena, on
material motion only--on mechanical (or physico-chemical)
modifications of cells. And it was in perfect agreement with my most
honoured master that I subscribed then, and at this day still
subscribe, to the proposition with which he, in September 1849, closed
the preface to the above-mentioned "Efforts at Unity." "It is possible
that I may have erred in details; in the future I shall be ready and
willing to acknowledge my mistakes and to rectify them, but I enjoy
this conviction, that I shall never find myself in the position of
denying the principle of the unity of the human nature with all its
consequences!"
To err is human! Who can say to what diametrical contradiction to his
firmest convictions man may not in the future be driven by his
adaptation to new relations in life? If we compare these stout
monistic declarations of 1849 and 1858 with the equally decided
dualistic utterances in Virchow's Munich address of 1877, we perceive
that he could not give the lie more fiercely to his former fundamental
opinions than he has there done. Not quite twenty years have passed
by, and yet, in the course of that time, in Virchow's views of the
universe, in his conception of human nature, and of the soul-life, a
change has been effected than which we can conceive of no greater. We
learn to our surprise that psychical and corporeal processes are
wholly different phenomena; that no scientific necessity whatever
exists for extending the province of psychical processes beyond the
circle of those bodies in which, and by which, we see them actually
exhibited. "We may ultimately explain the processes of the human mind
as chemical, but at any rate, it is not yet our business to amalgamate
these two subjects!"
From the whole psychological discussion which is involved in Virchow's
Munich address, it is made clear that at the present time he regards
the "soul" in a purely dualistic sense as a substance, an immaterial
essence which only temporarily takes up its abode in the body. Highly
characteristic of this is the remarkable sentence, "If I explain
attraction and repulsion as psychical phenomena, I simply throw the
psyche out of the window; the psyche ceases to be a psyche." If we
substitute for the word "psyche" the word which corresponds to
Virchow's earlier mechanistic view--the word "motion" (or peculiar
mode of motion)--the sentence runs thus: "If I explain attraction and
repulsion as phenomena of motion, I simply throw motion out of the
window."
Almost more remarkable is Virchow's assertion that the lowest animals
have no psychic properties; that, on the contrary, "these are only to
be found in the higher, and, with perfect certainty, only in the
highest animals." It is only to be regretted that Virchow has not here
stated what he understands by the higher and the highest animals;
where that remarkable dividing line is, beyond which the soul suddenly
appears in the hitherto soulless body. Every zoologist who is in some
degree familiar with the results of comparative morphology and
physiology will here clasp his hands in astonishment, for by this
proposition Virchow seems to mean that we must ascribe a soul-life
only to those animals in which special soul-organs, in the form of a
central and peripheral nerve-system, are developed from sense-organs
and muscles. But it is admitted that all these different soul-organs
with their characteristic properties have originated from single cells
through the division of labour (differentiation); and the nerves and
muscles especially have been developed by differentiation from the
neuro-muscular cells. The cells from which all these different
nerve-cells, muscle-cells, mind-cells, and so forth, are derived, are
originally the simple neutral cells of the epithelium of the ectoderm
or exterior germ-layer, and these cells, again, like all the cells of
many-celled animal bodies, originated in the repeated division of one
single original cell, the ovum-cell.
The individual development or ontogenesis of each of these many-celled
animal-forms, brings this histological process of development so
clearly and evidently before our eyes that we can but directly infer
from it the truth of the phylogenesis, or gradual historical evolution
of the soul-organs. The association of cells and the division of
labour among them are the modes by which, in the first instance, the
compound many-celled organism has originated, historically, from the
simple one-celled organism. And an impartial comparative consideration
teaches us in the clearest way that a functional-activity of the
soul-cells exists in the lowest one-celled animals as well as in the
highest and many-celled; in the infusoria as well as in man. Volition
and sensation, the universal and unmistakable signs of soul-life, may
be observed among the former as well as in the latter. Voluntary
motion and conscious sensation (of pressure, light, warmth, &c.) come
under our observation so undoubtedly in the commonest forms of
infusorial animals--for instance the Ciliata, that one of their most
persevering observers, Ehrenberg, asserted undeviatingly to the day of
his death that all Infusoria must possess nerves and muscles, organs
of sense and of soul, as well as the higher animals.
It is well known that the enormous advance which our science has lately
made in the natural history of these lowest organisms culminates in the
statement--clearly made by Siebold thirty years since, but only recently
"ascertained as proved"--that these minute creatures are _one-celled_,
and that in the case of these infusoria one single cell is capable of
all the various vital functions--including soul-functions--which in the
zoophytes (plant-animals), as the hydra and the sponges, are distributed
among the cells of the two germ-layers, and in all the higher animals
among the different tissues, organs, and apparatus of a highly developed
and constructed organism. The psychic functions of sensation and
voluntary motion, which are here distributed to such very various organs
and tissues, are in the infusoria fulfilled by the neutral plasson
material of the cell, by the protoplasma, and possibly also by the
nucleus (compare my treatise "The Morphology of the Infusoria." Jena,
Zeitschriften, 1873, vol. vii. p. 516). And just as we must attribute to
these primary animal forms an independent "soul," just as we must
plainly be convinced that the single independent cell has a "psyche," we
must as decidedly attribute a soul to every other cell; for the most
important active constituent of the cell, the protoplasm, everywhere
exhibits the same psychic properties of sensibility or irritability, and
motive power or will. The only difference is this, that in the organism
of the higher animals and plants the numerous collected cells, to a
great extent, give up their individual independence, and are subject,
like good citizens, to the soul-polity which represents the unity of the
will and sensations in the cell community. We here also must distinguish
clearly between the central soul of the whole many-celled organism or
the personal psyche (the person-soul), and the particular individual
soul or elementary soul of the individual cells constituting that
organism (the cell-soul). Their relations are strikingly illustrated in
the instructive group of Siphonophora, as I have briefly shown in my
article on "The Cell-soul and Soul-cells" (Deutsche Rundschau, July
1878). Beyond a doubt the whole stock or polity of Siphonophora has a
very definite united will and a united sensibility, and yet each of the
individual persons of which this stock (or Cormus) is composed has its
own personal will and its own particular sensations. Each of these
persons indeed was originally a separate Medusa, and the individual
Siphonophora stock originated, by association and division of labour,
out of these united Medusa communities.
When I developed this theory of the cell-soul and designated it in my
Munich address as the "surest foundation of empirical psychology," I
believed I was drawing an inference quite to Virchow's mind, from his
own views of mechanical and cellular-physiology; and for that reason I
took the same occasion specially to celebrate his very great services
to the cell theory. How astonished then was I when in his reply this
very theory was violently attacked and satirised as "mere trifling
with words." It never could have occurred to me that Virchow had long
since become unfaithful to his most important biological principles,
and had deserted his own mechanical "theory of cells;" it never had
occurred to me that Virchow could be in great measure wanting in that
zoological knowledge which is requisite for a practical comprehension
of the cell-soul theory. He has never thoroughly studied either the
one-celled Protozoa, the Infusoria and Lobosa, nor the Coelenterata,
the highly instructive Sponges, Hydroids, Medusae, or Siphonophora; and
thus he is wanting in those genetic principles of comparative zoology
on which our theory rests. It is in no other way conceivable that
Virchow should contemn the most important consequences of the cell
theory as "mere trifling with words."
Next to the one-celled infusoria no phenomenon throws such direct
light on our cellular psychology as the fact that the human ovum, like
the ova of all other animals, is a single, simple cell. In accordance
with our monistic conception of the cell-soul, we must conclude that
the fertilised ovum-cell already virtually possesses those psychical
properties which, by the special combination of the peculiarities
inherited from both parents, characterise the individual soul of the
new person; in the course of the development of the germ, the
cell-soul of the fertilised ovum naturally is developed simultaneously
with its material substratum, and subsequently, after birth, it
appears in full activity.
According to Virchow's dualistic conception of the psyche, we must, on
the contrary, assume that this immaterial essence at some period of
its embryonic development (apparently when the spine separates itself
from the external germ-layer) informs the soulless germ. Of course,
the bare miracle is thus complete, and the natural and unbroken
continuity of development is superfluous.