_HUXLEYISM._
'_A force d'esprit tout lui paroit matiere._'
In one of his interesting 'Lay Sermons,' the most interesting perhaps of
the whole interesting series, Professor Huxley, taking for his theme the
'Physical Basis of Life,' combats 'the widely-spread conception of life
as a something which works through matter, but is independent of it;'
affirming, on the contrary, 'that matter and life are inseparably
connected, and that there is one kind of matter which is common to all
living beings.' The preacher may be safely allowed to have
satisfactorily made out the second portion of this affirmation. With his
own singular felicity of illustration, he shows how all vegetable and
animal tissues, without exception, from that of the brightly coloured
lichen looking so like a mere mineral incrustation on the rock that
bears it, to that of the painter who admires or the botanist who
dissects it, are, however diverse in aspect, essentially one in
composition and structure. He explains how the microscopic fungi
clustering by millions within the body of a single fly, the giant pine
of California towering to the height of a cathedral spire, the Indian
fig-tree covering acres with its profound shadow, the animalcules of
ocean's lowest deep, minute enough to dance in myriads on the point of a
needle, and the Finner whale, hugest of beasts, that disports its ninety
feet of bone and blubber on ocean's billowy heights, the flower that a
girl wears in her hair, and the blood that courses through her veins,
are, each and all, smaller or larger multiples or aggregates of one and
the same structural unit, which, again, is invariably resolvable into
the same identical elements. That unit, he tells us, is an atom or
corpuscle composed of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon, which, and
which alone, seem to be required by nature for laying withal the
foundations of vitality, inasmuch as no substance from which any one of
these ingredients is totally absent, ever exhibits any sign of life,
while, on the other hand, not only are these four ingredients sufficient
of themselves to form a substance capable of living, but they actually
do with very little (when any) foreign admixture, form all substances
whatsoever that are ever found vivified. All such substances, he informs
us, are but varieties of _protoplasm_, differing indeed from each other
in texture, colour, and general appearance, even as a diamond differs
from granite, yet all being equally protoplasm, just as a diamond and a
block of granite are equally stones, or as heart of oak and the outer
case of a nettle's sting are equally wood. The human ovum, he gives us
to understand, is in its earliest stage but a single particle of
protoplasm; the human foetus but an aggregation of such particles,
variously modified; the human body perfectly matured, but a larger
aggregation of such particles still further modified.
He proceeds to point out, as following from these premises, that a
solution of smelling salts, together with an infinitesimal quantity of
certain other salts, contains all the elements that enter into the
composition of protoplasm, and consequently of whatever substance the
very highest animal requires for sustenance. He does not, however,
leave us to suppose that any abundance of the fluid in question would
avail aught to save a hungry creature of any sort from starving, but
continues his exposition to the following effect. Not only is there no
animal, there is not even any vegetable organism, to which the elements
of food can serve as food, as long as they remain elementary. It is
indispensable that hydrogen and oxygen should combine to form water,
nitrogen and hydrogen to form ammonia, carbon and oxygen to form
carbonic acid; and even then, even at a table groaning under whole
hogsheads of these primitive compounds, there is no single animal that
would not find itself at a Barmecide feast. There are many plants
likewise, which in the midst of such uncongenial plenty would be equally
without a drop to drink; but there are also multitudes of others which,
without the aid of any more elaborated nutriment, would be able to grow
into a million, nay million million fold of their original bulk.
Provided there be in the seed or germ of any of these latter one single
particle of living protoplasm to begin with, that single particle may
convert into animated protoplasm an indefinite quantity of inanimate
ammonia, carbonic acid, and water. The protoplasm thus created in the
first instance, and created, let us suppose, in the form of a lichen or
a fungus, is converted by decay into vegetable mould, in which grass may
take root and grow, and which, in that case, will be converted into
herbaceous protoplasm; which, being eaten by sheep or oxen, becomes
ovine or bovine protoplasm, commonly called mutton or beef; which,
again, being eaten by man, becomes human protoplasm, and, if eaten by a
philosopher, becomes part of a mass of protoplasm capable of
investigating and of expounding in lectures or lay sermons, the changes
which itself and its several components have undergone.
So far we advance with willing steps like dutiful disciples along the
path of knowledge indicated by our distinguished biological teacher, who
here, however, pulls us up short by suddenly intimating that he sees no
break in the series of transubstantiations whereby precisely such
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon as he is lecturing upon, have
become metamorphosed into him, the lecturer, and us, the lectured
audience, and cannot 'understand why the language which is applicable to
any one term of the series should not be used in regard to any of the
others.' Oxygen and hydrogen, he reminds us, are gases, whose particles,
at and also much below 32 deg. Fahrenheit, tend to rush away from each other
with great force; and this tendency we call a property of each gas. Let
oxygen and hydrogen be mixed in certain proportions, and an electric
spark passed through them, and they will disappear, and a quantity of
water equal in weight to the sum of their weights will appear in their
place. But amongst the properties of the water will be some, the direct
opposites of those of its components; watery particles, for example, at
any temperature not higher than 32 deg. Fahrenheit, tending not to rush
asunder, but to cohere into definite geometrical shapes or to build up
frosty imitations of vegetable foliage. And let the water be brought
into conjunction with ammonia and carbonic acid, and the three will,
under certain conditions, give rise to protoplasm, which again, if
subjected to a certain succession of processes, will rise by successive
stages from protoplasm that gives no other signs of life than those of
feeding and reproducing its kind, to protoplasm endowed with the power
of spontaneous motion, and finally to protoplasm that thinks and
reasons, speculates and philosophises. Now why should any of the various
phenomena of life exhibited by these varieties of protoplasm be supposed
to be of a different class from the appearances of activity exhibited by
any of the varieties of lifeless matter? What reason is there why, for
instance, thought should not be termed a property of thinking
protoplasm, just as congelation is a property of water, and
centrifugience of gas? Professor Huxley protests that he is aware of no
reason. We call, he says, the several strange phenomena which are
peculiar to water, 'the properties of water, and do not hesitate to
believe that in some way or other they result from the properties of the
component elements of water. We do not assume that something called
_aquosity_ entered into and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen as
soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to their
places in the facets of the crystal or among the leaflets of the hoar
frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and faith that, by the
advance of molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way
as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as
we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its
parts or the manner in which they are put together.' Why, then, when
carbonic acid, water, and ammonia disappear, and an equivalent weight of
the matter of life makes its appearance in their place, should we assume
the existence in the living matter of a something which has no
representative or correlative in the unliving matter that gave rise to
it? Why imagine that into the newly formed hydro-nitrogenised oxide of
carbon a something called vitality entered and took possession? 'What
better philosophical status has vitality than aquosity?' 'If scientific
language is to possess a definite and constant signification, we are,'
he considers, 'logically bound to apply to protoplasm or the physical
basis of life the same conceptions as those which are held to be
legitimate elsewhere.' Wherefore, he concludes, that 'if the phenomena
exhibited by water are its properties, so are those presented by
protoplasm _its_ properties,' and that if it be correct to describe 'the
properties of water as resulting from the nature and disposition of its
component molecules,' there can be no 'intelligible ground for refusing
to say that the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and
disposition of its molecules.'
Here, however, our lay preacher candidly warns us that by the vast
majority of his clerical brethren this doctrine would be denounced as
rankest heresy, and that whoever accepts it is placing his foot on the
first rung of a ladder which, in most people's estimation, is the
'reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of heaven.' He frankly
owns that the terms of his propositions are distinctly materialistic:
nay, that whoever commits himself to them will be temporarily landed in
'gross materialism.' Not the less, however, does he, mingling
consolation with admonition, recommend us to plunge boldly into the
materialistic slough, promising to point out a way of escape from it,
and insisting, indeed, that through it lies the only path to genuine
spiritualistic truth.
In pronouncing this to be exceedingly evil counsel, as with the most
unfeigned respect for its author I feel bound at once to do, it might
not be necessary for me to undertake a detailed topographical survey of
the path alluded to. It might, perhaps, suffice to specify the
conclusions to which the path is represented as leading, in order to
show that those conclusions cannot possibly be reached by any such
route. By Professor Huxley himself they are thus described:--We know
nothing of matter 'except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical
cause of states of our own consciousness,' nor of spirit, except that
'it also is a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause of states of
consciousness. In other words matter and spirit are but names for the
imaginary _substrata_ of groups of natural phenomena.'
But if matter be not a thing, but a name, and a name too not for a real,
but only an imaginary thing, one perfect certainty is that matter cannot
possibly be composed either wholly or in part of molecules, and, by
necessary consequence, that life cannot possibly be 'the product of any
disposition of material molecules,' nor the phenomena of life be
'expressions of molecular changes in the matter of life.' Of the
particular Huxleian doctrine which we are considering, the two moieties
are absolutely irreconcileable; so that on the assumption that either
moiety were true, the truth of that moiety would be decisive against the
other. If matter have no real, and only a nominal existence, life, which
is undeniably a reality, cannot be a property of matter. If life, being
an undisputed reality, be a property of matter, matter must needs be a
reality also, and not merely a name. Any one, however, who, like myself,
is thoroughly convinced that both halves of the doctrine are equally and
utterly erroneous, is precluded from employing one for the refutation of
the other, and in order to prove, as I shall now attempt to do, that
life is in no sense either a product or a property of matter, must
resort for the purpose to independent reasoning.
I commence by defining one of the principal terms occurring in the
debate. When in scientific discourse we speak of anything as a property
of an object, we mean thereby not simply that it is a thing belonging to
the object, but also that it is a thing without which the object could
not subsist. We mean that it is one of the constituents inherent in and
inseparable from the object, whose union gives to the object its
distinctive character. When we call fluidity at one temperature,
solidity at another, and vaporisation at a third, properties of water,
we mean that matter which did not liquefy, congeal, and evaporate at
different temperatures would not be water. The habits of exhibiting
these phenomena, in conjunction with certain other habits, make up the
aquosity or wateriness of water. They are parts of water's nature, and,
in the absence of any one of them, water would not be its own self, and
could not exist. But in no such sense, nor in any sense whatever, is the
life or vitality whereby what we are accustomed to call animated are
distinguished from inanimate objects, essential to the existence of the
species of matter termed matter of life or protoplasm. Take from water
its aquosity, and water ceases to be water; but you may take away
vitality from protoplasm, and yet leave protoplasm as much protoplasm as
before. Vitality, therefore, evidently bears to protoplasm a quite
different relation from that which aquosity bears to water. Protoplasm
can do perfectly well without the one, but water cannot for a moment
dispense with the other. Protoplasm, whether living or lifeless, is
equally itself; but unaqueous water is unmitigated gibberish. But if
protoplasm, although deprived of its vitality, still remains protoplasm,
vitality plainly is not indispensable to protoplasm, is not therefore a
_property_ of protoplasm.
And that it is not a _product_ of protoplasm, or a result of any
particular arrangement of protoplasmic particles or molecules, is not
less easily or unanswerably demonstrable. For if it were, as long as the
particular molecular arrangement remained unaltered, life would
necessarily be in attendance; an amputated joint would, until
decomposition set in, be as much alive as the trunk from which it had
been lopped, even as water poured from a jug into a glass is quite as
much liquid as the water remaining in the jug. There would be no such
thing as dead meat, which was not putrid as well as dead, any more than
water can freeze without changing from a fluid to a solid; and there
would moreover be production antecedent in origin to its own producer.
The force of the last at least of these objections is not to be
resisted. Water, ammonia, and carbonic acid cannot, it is admitted,
combine to form protoplasm, unless a principle of life preside over the
operation. Unless under those auspices the combination never takes
place. At present, whenever assuming its presidential functions, the
principle of life seems to be invariably embodied in a portion of
pre-existing protoplasm; but there certainly was a time when the fact
was otherwise. Time was, as geology places beyond all doubt, when our
globe and its appurtenances consisted wholly of inorganic matter, and
possessed not one single animal or vegetable inhabitant. In order, then,
that any protoplasm or the substance of any organism should have been
brought into existence in the first instance, life plainly must have
been already existent. It must at one time have been possible for life,
without being previously embodied, to mould and vivify inert matter;
and it must needs have been by unembodied life that inorganic matter was
first organised and animated. There is no possible alternative to this
conclusion, except that of supposing that death may have given birth to
life--that absolutely lifeless and inert matter may have spontaneously
exerted itself with all the marvellous energy requisite for its
conversion into living matter, exerting for the purpose powers which,
under the conditions of the case, it could not have acquired without
exercising before it acquired them. Whoever declines to swallow such
absurdity has no choice but to admit that unembodied life must have been
the original manufacturer of protoplasm: but to admit this, and yet to
suppose that when now-a-days embodied life is observed to give birth to
new embodied life, the credit of the operation belongs not to the life
itself but to its protoplasmic embodiment, is much the same as to
suppose that when a tailor, dressed in clothes of his own making, makes
a second suit of clothes, this latter is the product not of the tailor
himself but of the clothes he is wearing.
Thus, irrespectively of whatever grounds there may be for believing that
life still _does_, it is incontestable that life once _did_, exist apart
from protoplasm; and that protoplasm both may and continually does exist
apart from what is commonly understood by life, must be obvious to every
one who is aware that protoplasm is the substance of which all plants
and all animals are composed, and has observed also that plants and
animals are in the habit of dying. That matter and life are inseparably
connected cannot, therefore, it would seem, be asserted except in total
disregard of the teachings both of reason and observation, and 'the
popular conception of life as a something which works through matter but
is independent of it,' would seem to be as true as it is popular. If
the only choice allowed to us be between 'the old notion of an Archaeus
governing and directing blind matter,' and the new conception of life as
the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, the absolute
certainty that the latter conception is wrong, may be fairly urged as
equivalent to certainty, equally absolute, that the former notion is
right.
How far soever it may be true that, as Professor Huxley says, 'the
progress of physical science means, and has in all ages meant, the
extension of the province of matter and causation,' it is certainly not
true that, as he proceeds to predict, the same province will ever be
extended sufficiently to banish from the region of human thought not
'spontaneity' simply, but likewise 'spirit.' In one direction at least,
limits are clearly discernible which scientific investigation need not
hope to overleap. How much soever we may eventually discover of the
changes whereby inorganic matter becomes gradually adapted for the
reception of life, physical science can never teach us what or whence is
the life that eventually takes possession of the finished receptacle.
Possibly we at length may, as Professor Huxley doubts not that we
by-and-by shall, see how it is that the properties peculiar to water
have resulted from the properties peculiar to the gases whose junction
constitutes water; and similarly how the characteristic properties of
protoplasm have sprung from properties in the water, ammonia, and
carbonic acid that have united to form protoplasm; but knowing all this,
we shall not be a hair's breadth nearer to the more recondite knowledge
up to which it is expected to lead. To extract the genesis of life from
any data that completest acquaintance with the stages and processes of
protoplasmic growth can furnish, is a truly hopeless problem. Given
the plan of a house, with samples of its brick and mortar, to find the
name and nationality of the householder, would be child's play in
comparison. Life, as we have seen, is not the offspring of protoplasm,
but something which has been superinduced upon, and may be separated
from, the protoplasm that serves as its material basis. It is,
therefore, distinct from the matter which it animates, and, being thus
immaterial, cannot possibly become better known by any analysis of
matter.
Of this emphatically vital question Professor Huxley, as has been
already intimated, takes a diametrically opposite view. He does not
merely, in sufficiently explicit terms, deny that there is any intrinsic
difference between matter and spirit, and affirm the two to be, in spite
of appearances, essentially identical. If this were all, I at any rate
should not be entitled to object, for I shall myself presently have
occasion to use very similar language, although attaching to it a widely
different meaning from that with which it is used by Professor Huxley.
But the latter goes on to avow his belief that the human body, like
every other living body, is a machine, all the operations of which will
sooner or later be explained on physical principles, insomuch that we
shall eventually arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness,
even as we have already arrived at a mechanical equivalent of heat. He
considers that with the same propriety with which the amount of heat
which a pound weight produces by falling through the distance of a foot,
may be called its equivalent in one sense, may the amount of feeling
which the pound produces by falling through a foot of distance on a
gouty big toe, be called its equivalent in another sense, to wit, that
of consciousness. Yet he protests against these tenets being deemed
materialistic, which, he declares, they certainly neither are nor can
be, for that while he himself certainly holds them, he as certainly is
not himself a materialist. Professor Huxley is among the last to be
suspected of talking anything, as Monsieur Jourdain did prose, without
knowing it. He knows perfectly well that he has here been talking
materialism, but he insists that his materialism is only another form of
idealism. He seeks to evade the seemingly inevitable deduction from his
premises by representing both matter and spirit as mere names, and
names, too, not for real things, but for fanciful hypotheses which may
be spoken of indifferently in materialistic or in spiritualistic terms,
thought in the one case being treated as a form of matter, and matter in
the other as a form of thought. The identity of matter and spirit is, in
short, represented by him as consisting in this: that the existence of
both is merely nominal, or at best merely ideal.
Ordinary folk may perhaps be somewhat slow to derive from this
compromising theory all the comfort which its author deems it capable of
affording. Most of us may, probably, be inclined to think that we might
as well have been left to fret in the frying-pan of materialism as be
cast headlong into idealistic fire, to no better end than that of being
there fused body and soul together, and sublimated into inapprehensible
nothingness. Our immediate concern, however, is not with the
pleasantness of the theory, but with its truth; in proceeding to test
which we shall probably find that there is as little warrant for
idealising matter after this fashion as we have already seen that there
is for materialising mind.
The originator of the theory about to be examined, or rather, perhaps,
of a somewhat different theory out of which this has been developed--not
to say perverted--may, without much inaccuracy, be pronounced to be
Descartes. He it was who, perceiving that we are surrounded on all sides
by illusions of all sorts, that not only is there no authority or
testimony implicitly to be depended on, but that our senses likewise
often play the traitor, and that we can never be perfectly sure whether
we are really seeing, hearing, or feeling, or merely thinking or
dreaming that we see, hear, or feel, and looking anxiously around for
one single point at least on which complete confidence might be placed,
discovered such a point in thought. Whatever else we may doubt about, we
cannot, he justly argued, doubt that there are thoughts. If it were
possible to doubt this, our very doubt would be thought, constituting
and presenting as evidence the very existence doubted of. Our thoughts,
then, are unquestionably real existences. They may be delusive, but they
cannot possibly be fictitious.
We may perhaps hereafter have occasion to note how Descartes, having
thus secured one firm foothold and solid resting-place, outwent the
farthest stretch of Archimedean ambition by using it, not as a fulcrum
from whence to move the world, but as a site for logical foundations
whereon he might, if he had persevered, have raised the superstructure
of an universe at once mental and material.[32] Intermediately, however,
we have to observe how two pre-eminent disciples of the Cartesian
school have perverted the fundamental proposition of their great master
by treating its converse as its synonyme. Descartes having demonstrated
that all thought is existence, Bishop Berkeley and Professor Huxley
infer that all existence is thought. So says the Professor in so many
words, and to precisely the same effect is the more diffuse language of
the Bishop, where, speaking of 'all the choir of heaven and furniture of
earth, of all the bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world,'
he declares that their _esse_ is _percipi_, that their 'being' consists
in their being 'perceived or known,' and that unless they were actually
perceived by, or existed in, some created or uncreate mind, they could
not possibly exist at all.
The reasoning in support of these assertions is in substance as
follows:--We know nothing of any material object except by the
sensations which it produces in our minds. What we are accustomed to
call the _qualities_ of an object are nothing else but the mental
sensations of various kinds which the object produces within us. Some of
these qualities, such as extension, figure, solidity, motion, and
number, are classed as primary; others, as, for instance, smell, taste,
colour, sound, as secondary. Now that these latter have no existence
apart from mind can readily be shown thus. If I prick my finger with a
needle, the pain I suffer in consequence is surely in myself, not in the
needle, nor anywhere else but in myself. If an orange be placed on my
open hand, my sensation of touching it is in myself, not in the orange.
If the orange could feel, what it would feel would be a hand, while what
I am feeling is an orange. Nor are my sensations of pain and touch
merely confined to myself; they are also confined to a particular part
of myself, viz., to the brain, the seat of my consciousness, which it
is, and not the finger or hand, that really feels when the one is hurt,
or when anything comes in harmless contact with the other. To prove
this, let the fine nervous threads, which, running up the whole length
of the arm, connect the skin of the finger with the spinal marrow and
brain, be cut through close to the spinal cord, and no pain will be
felt, whatever injury be done: while if the ends which remain in
connection with the cord be pricked, the sensation of pricking in the
finger will arise just as distinctly as before. Or let a walking-stick
be held firmly by the handle, and its other end be touched, and the
tactile sensation will be experienced as if at the end of the stick,
where, however, it plainly cannot be. It is the mind alone which feels,
but which, by a peculiar faculty of localisation or extradition, seems
to remove a feeling exclusively its own, not only to the outside of
itself, but to the outside also of the walls of its fleshly tenement.
And as it is with pain or touch, so it is with every sensation with
which any of the so-called secondary qualities of matter are identical.
If I look at, or smell, or taste a blood orange, the sensation of
colour, or scent, or flavour I receive is entirely and exclusively my
own, the orange remaining quite unconscious of its own redness, or
fragrance, or sweetness, and not, indeed, possessing in itself any real
qualities of the kind. For to take redness as an example; how does the
sensation of it or of any other colour arise? The waves of a certain
very attenuated medium, the particles of which are vibrating with vast
rapidity but with very different velocities, strike upon an object and
are thrown off in all directions. Of the particles which vibrate with
any particular velocity, some are gathered by the optical apparatus of
the eye, and deflected so as to impinge on the retina and on the fibres
of the optic nerve therewith connected, producing in these fibres a
change which is followed by other changes in the brain, which, again, by
virtue of some inscrutable union between the brain and the mind, create
a feeling or consciousness of colour. What the particular colour shall
be, depends either on the rate of motion in the vibrating medium or on
the character of the retina; and if, while the former remained the same,
the other were to be altered, or if two persons, with differently formed
retinas, and one of the two colour-blind, were to be looking, what had
first seemed red might now seem green, or what seemed red to one
spectator might seem green to the other. But as the same object cannot
itself be both red and green at the same time, it follows that what are
called its redness and greenness are not in it, but in the spectator.
Similarly, the sounds which an object appears to give forth neither are
nor ever were in it: they originate in the mind of the hearer, and have
not, and never have had any existence elsewhere. 'If the whole body were
an eye, where,' asks St. Paul, 'were the hearing? If the whole were
hearing, where were the smelling?' and Professor Huxley more than meets
the drift of the Apostle's questions by pronouncing it 'impossible to
imagine but that if the universe contained only blind and deaf beings,
darkness and silence would reign everywhere.'
And as with the secondary qualities of matter, so, on the same showing,
must it be with the primary. If colour, taste, scent, and the like,
exist nowhere but in the mind, so neither do extension, solidity, and
the like. If the former could not exist unless there were intelligent
minds to perceive them, then neither could the latter. For, by
extension and its cognates, we understand simply relations which we
conceive to exist between certain qualities of objects identical with
certain of our own visual and tactile sensations, or between these and
our consciousness of muscular effort; but inasmuch as all sensations and
all consciousness are purely mental, and exist nowhere but in the mind,
it follows necessarily that ideas of relation between different
sensations, or between sensations and consciousness, must also be purely
mental, and non-existent save in the mind. All the qualities of matter,
therefore, primary as well as secondary, are alike conceptions of the
mind, and consequently could not exist without a mind for them to be
conceived by and to exist in. But if the qualities did not exist, then
matter, which cannot be conceived otherwise than as an assemblage of
qualities, could not exist either. Wherefore in respect of matter
itself, as well as of the qualities of matter, _esse_ is _percipi_,
essence is perception, to be is to be perceived. Wherefore, finally, if
there were no mind to perceive matter, matter could not exist. Q. E.
D.[33]
Although in the foregoing summary of an argument to which not Berkeley
and Huxley alone, but others of the deepest and acutest thinkers that
this country has produced, have contributed, I have strenuously laboured
to state all its points as convincingly as the obligations of brevity
would permit, I am not myself by any means convinced by it. On the
contrary, although to say so may seem to imply a considerable overstock
of modest assurance, still I do say that whatever portion of it is
sound is irrelevant, and that whatever portion is relevant is not
sound. So much of it as relates to the nature of the qualities of
matter, is, however interesting or otherwise important, very little, if
at all, to the purpose. No doubt if I prick my finger with a needle,
or--to take in preference an illustration employed by Locke--if my
fingers ache in consequence of my handling snow, it would be supremely
ridiculous to talk of the pain I feel being in the snow; yet not a whit
more ridiculous than to call the snow itself white or cold, if, by so
speaking, I mean that anything in the slightest degree resembling my
sensation of either snowy whiteness or snowy coldness resides in the
snow itself. And as of coldness and whiteness, so of all the other
so-styled secondary qualities. If I smell a rose, or listen to a piano,
the rose or the piano is quite insensible to the scent or sounds by
which my sense is ravished. And of primary qualities, also, precisely
the same thing may with equal confidence be alleged. A stone which I
perceive to be large, round, hard, and either rotating or motionless,
has no more perception of its own extension, figure, solidity, motion,
or rest than a snowball has of its colour or temperature. But all this,
though perfectly true, has nothing to do with the question, which is not
_what_ qualities of matter are, but _where_ they are, and whether they
can exist anywhere but in mind; and this question, I submit, is
distinctly begged by those who assume, as is done throughout the
reasoning under examination, that our _sensations_ with regard to
material objects, and the _qualities_ of those objects, are synonymous
and convertible terms. Incontestably, sensations are affections of the
mind which neither have nor can have any existence outside the mind. If,
then, the qualities of objects are identical with the sensations which
arise in the mind concerning those objects, why, of course, the
qualities likewise can exist nowhere but in the mind. On narrowly
scrutinising, however, the supposed identity, we shall find that it
involves somewhat reckless confusion of diametrical opposites. When I
look at or smell a rose, or eat a beefsteak, or listen to a piano, the
sensations which thereupon arise within me, whether immediately or
subsequently, either are the results of my seeing, smelling, eating, or
hearing, or they are not. To say that they are not is equivalent to
saying that an object need not be within reach of the perceptive
faculties in order to be perceived; that I may see or smell a rose,
though there be no rose to be seen or smelt; may dine sumptuously off
empty dishes, and be raised to the seventh heaven of delight by the
audible strains of a music which is not being executed. _Fortunati
nimium_--only too lucky would mankind be, did this turn out to be a
correct theory, affording as it would a solution of every social
problem, and serving as a panacea for every social evil. Psychology
would then be the only science worth attention, for of whatever things
proficiency in that branch of study had qualified any one to form mental
images, of those same things would he simultaneously become possessor in
full property. Whoever had succeeded in training himself to imagine
vigorously might at once have, do, or be whatever it pleased him to
imagine, becoming _ipso facto_, as the Stoics used to say an acquirer of
virtue does, 'rich, beautiful, a king.' Woe betide any one, however,
who, as long as the cosmical constitution remains what it is, shall
attempt to put the theory into practice, and desisting from all those
animal functions, involving intercourse with a real or imaginary
external world, which are vulgarly supposed essential to animal
existence, shall obstinately restrict himself to the sensations which he
believes the mind to be, without any such intercourse, capable of
creating for the body's sustenance and delectation. The physical
extinction inevitably consequent on such devotion to principle would
speedily render all the devotees physically incapable of testifying in
behalf of their peculiar opinion, and, clearing them away, would leave
no witnesses surviving but such as were signifying by deeds if not in
words their hearty adherence to the popular belief. Practically, then,
there may be assumed to be entire unanimity of assent to the truism that
for our senses to be affected by the presence of external objects, the
objects must needs be present to affect them. On all hands it is in
effect admitted that in some mode or other external objects exist, but
if so, and if the sensations resulting from operations performed by the
bodily organs with external objects would not have resulted unless the
objects had been present to operate or to be operated upon, clearly
there must be resident in, or inseparably bound up with, the objects a
power or powers of producing sensation in conscious mind. But the power
of producing sensation, and sensation itself, are not one and the same
thing, but two separate and distinct things, intrinsically distinct and
locally separate. The feeling, agreeable or painful, according to its
intensity, which heat occasions, is not the same thing as the heat by
which it is occasioned. The twofold taste, sweet to a healthy, bitter to
a distempered palate, of one and the same aliment, cannot be identical
with the single property of the aliment whereby the taste is produced.
In the sense of seeming red to a spectator with normally constructed
eyes, and green to one who is colour-blind, a ruby or a Siberian crab is
at once both red and green, but the two colours which it causes to be
perceived cannot be identical with the peculiar structure, or whatever
else it be, whereby the ruby or Siberian crab communicates to
circumambient ether the one self-same motion that terminates in
different impressions on differently constructed eyes. In these and in
all cases of the kind the feeling is in the mind, the source of the
feeling in matter. The one is a perception, the other a quality, and to
mistake the quality, not merely for a perception, but for the very
perception to which the quality gives rise; and to infer thence that the
quality must likewise be in the mind, is an instance as glaring as can
well be imagined of that most heinous of logical offences, the
confounding of cause with effect.
By what steps Berkeley was led, and has since led so many after him,
into so grave an error, he has himself acquainted us. Thus it is that he
argues: By sensible things can be meant only such as can be perceived
immediately by sense: and sensible _qualities_ are of course sensible
_things_. But the only perceptions of sense are sensations, and all
perceptions are purely mental. Wherefore, sensible qualities being, as
such, perceptible immediately by the senses, must be sensations, and
being sensations must be perceptions, and being perceptions they are of
course purely mental, and existent nowhere save in the mind. Carefully,
however, as Berkeley fancied he was picking his way, he really had
tripped, and that fatally, at the second step. He calls the qualities of
objects _sensible_ things; but sensible they are not according to his
definition, for they are not capable of being immediately perceived by
the senses. It is not sense which perceives, but reason which infers
them. The senses, as Berkeley elsewhere repeatedly and earnestly
insists, receive nothing from objects but sensations, and these they
communicate to the mind without accompanying them by the slightest hint
as to whence they originally came. The senses suggest nothing as to any
qualities resident in or appertaining to an object corresponding with
the sensations derived from the object. The existence of such qualities
is an inference of reason which, taking for granted that sensations, in
common with all other occurrences, must have causes, and observing that
certain of them commonly occur in the presence of certain objects, and
never occur in the absence of those objects, infers that the causes of
the sensations must exist in the objects. To the causes thus inferred
the name of qualities is given, to distinguish them from the sensations
whereof they are causes; and the Berkeleian transgression consists in
overlooking the distinction between things so diametrically opposite.
By the commission of such a sin the most powerful intellect becomes
inevitably committed to further enormities. Except by neglecting to
distinguish between sight and hearing, the effects, and light and sound,
their respective causes, it would surely have been impossible for
Professor Huxley to come to the strange conclusion that if all living
beings were blind and deaf, 'darkness and silence would everywhere
reign.' Had he not himself previously explained that light and sound are
peculiar motions communicated to the vibrating particles of an
universally diffused ether, which motions, on reaching the eye or ear,
produce impressions, which, after various modifications, result
eventually in seeing or hearing? How these motions are communicated to
the ether matters not. Only it is indispensable to note that they are
not communicated by the percipient owner of the eye or ear, so that the
fact of there being no percipient present cannot possibly furnish any
reason why the motions should not go on all the same. But as long as
they did go on there would necessarily be light and sound; for the
motions are themselves light and sound. If, on returning to his study in
which, an hour before, he had left a candle burning and a clock ticking,
Professor Huxley should perceive from the appearance of candle and clock
that they had gone on burning and ticking during his absence, would he
doubt that they had likewise gone on producing the motions constituting
and termed light and sound, notwithstanding that no eyes or ears had
been present to see or hear? But if he did not doubt this, how could he
any more doubt that, although all sentient creatures suddenly became
eyeless and earless, the sun might go on shining, and the wind roaring,
and the sea bellowing as before?
Akin to the inadvertence which, as I presume to think, has led Professor
Huxley thus to misconceive _secondary_ qualities, is an inattention to
the differences between our ideas, or mental pictures, and the originals
whereof those pictures are copies, which seems to me seriously to
vitiate his reasoning with regard to _primary_ qualities. With admirable
perspicuity he shows[34] how it is that our notions of primary qualities
are formed; how the mind, by _localising_ on distinct points of the
sensory surface of the body its various, tactile sensations, obtains the
idea of extension, or space in two dimensions, of figure, number, and
motion: how the power, combined with consciousness of the power, of
moving the hand in all directions over any substance it is in contact
with, adds the idea of geometrical solidity, or of space in three
dimensions: how the ideas thus formed with the aid of the sense of touch
are confirmed by, and blended with, others derived from visual
sensations and muscular movements of the eye: and, finally, how the idea
of mechanical solidity, or impenetrability, arises from experience of
resistance to our muscular exertions. All these details, however,
interesting as they are, are nevertheless quite out of place. What we
are at present concerned with is the nature of the things themselves,
not the nature of our knowledge of them. No question that this latter is
purely mental. If figure, motion, and solidity were really, as Professor
Huxley says, each of them nothing but a perception of the relation of
two or more sensations to one another, no question but that, since the
mind is the sole seat of perception, they could exist nowhere else. But
if all these suppositions be incorrect, if, as we have seen, there be in
matter and apart from mind, potentialities of producing sensations, it
follows that, in matter, and outside of mind, there must be relations
between different potentialities, and there must, moreover, be limits
to, and there may be changes in, those relations. Wherefore, since there
is in matter a potentiality of imparting to the mind those sensations
whence it derives its ideas of place and distance, and since figure is
but a 'limitation of distance,' and motion but a 'change of place,' it
necessarily follows that there is in matter a potentiality of conveying
to the mind those sensations whence it derives its ideas of figure and
motion. And a similar remark applies equally to solidity, and to every
other so-called quality of matter. All of them are substantive
potentialities of producing in the mind those sensations whence our
ideas of themselves (the qualities) are derived. No doubt all these
qualities would be _inconceivable_ in the absence of a mind by which
they might be _conceived_, but it is not necessary that, in order to
_be_, they should be _conceived_. In discussions of any abstruseness we
cannot be too precise in our use of words, and we shall inevitably be
going astray here if we allow ourselves for a moment to forget that a
quality and the conception of that quality are not one single thing, but
two things. Can it be seriously supposed that if all the conscious
creatures, of every description, by which the universe is peopled, were
to fall temporarily into complete stupor, the material universe would,
at the commencement of the trance, be deprived of its extension,
solidity, figure, and all its other constituent properties, recovering
them again as soon as its inhabitants woke up again? Can it be doubted
that, on the contrary, all potentialities resident in its material
composition would pursue the even tenor of their way just as if nothing
had happened; performing, during the temporary absence of external
percipient minds, precisely those operations which, as soon as
consciousness returned to those minds, would be followed by the
perceptions of sight, hearing, and touch? But if so, then plainly it is
exceedingly derogatory to matter to charge it with such absolute
dependence on external support that its very being consists in being
perceived from without. That matter cannot exist without mind I
cheerfully admit, or rather most earnestly affirm, proposing presently
to explain in what sense I make the affirmation. Meanwhile let it
suffice to have ascertained that the mental service with which matter
cannot dispense, whatever else it be, is at any rate not, as the whole
Berkeleian school so positively insist, that of mental testimony to its
existence.
Let us pause here for a moment to report progress. We have seen, on the
one hand, that unless mind and matter have been eternally coexistent,
mind must have preceded matter, and that it is idle, therefore, to
expect, by any researches into matter, to discover how mind (or life)
originated. We have seen that from a materialism which represents mind
as in any sense a property or product of matter there is no possible
outlet to an idealism which represents matter as owing its being to
mind. To see this is simply to see that the builder of a house cannot
possibly have been born in the house he has himself built. On the other
hand, we have seen that the idealism which represents being or existence
as consisting of perception is utterly incompatible with materialism of
any sort or kind, unless, indeed, with a materialistic nihilism wherein
would be no room for a solitary molecule, still less for any molecular
structure, and least of all for that motion of molecular structures into
which consistent materialists are logically bound to attempt to resolve
all natural phenomena. We have, in short, seen that materialism and
idealism, in the senses in which those terms are commonly used, are
utterly incapable of amalgamation, or indeed of even being harmoniously
approximated, without being first deprived of all the characteristic
traits which at present entitle them to their distinguishing
appellations.
To which of the two belongs the larger share of blame for this
implacable hostility is easily determined. Materialism, in dealing with
mental phenomena, begins by setting chronology at defiance; but between
idealism and the phenomena of matter there is no such aboriginal
incongruity. From principles common to every form of idealism a theory
is deducible which, while frankly acknowledging the reality of matter,
may, with perfect consistency, maintain that reality to be
mental--although mental in the sense of being, not a perception by, but
a metamorphosis of, mind. Of such a theory the outlines seem to me to
have been sketched, and the foundations partly laid, by Descartes, and
it cannot be otherwise than interesting to inquire in what manner and
how far so consummate an artificer advanced in the work, and where and
wherefore he suddenly stopped short in it.
When Descartes, after convincing himself of the hollow pretentiousness
of most human knowledge, proceeded to dig away the accumulated drift and
sand of ages in quest of any clay or rock there might be below, the
first indubitable verity he came to was thought, about whose reality
there could, as already explained, be no possibility of doubt, inasmuch
as any doubt concerning it, being itself thought, would be but an
additional proof of it. On the bit of firm ground thus thoroughly
tested, he proceeded to place a formula not less carefully verified, his
famous 'Cogito, ergo sum'--'I think, therefore I am.' By many of his
followers, however, this second verification of his is deemed to be by
no means so satisfactory as it was by himself, Professor Huxley more
especially taking vehement, though, as I make bold to add, somewhat
gratuitous, exception to every single word of the most celebrated of
Cartesian formulae. No doubt the premiss of the formula assumes the
conclusion, but it likewise includes as well as assumes it. No doubt,
since 'I think' is but another way of saying 'I am thinking,' to say
that 'I think' is to assume that 'I am;' nay, the same thing is equally
assumed by the mere introduction of the pronoun 'I.' But Descartes was
fully warranted in taking for granted the truth of his conclusion. For
by previously showing incontestably that thought and consciousness are
real existences, he had completely proved the premiss wherein his
conclusion is included. What though, as Professor Huxley suggests,
'thought' may possibly 'be self-existent,' 'or a given thought the
result of its antecedent thought, or of some external power'? Be thought
what else it may, it must needs be, also, either an affection or an
operation; if not performed, it must be felt; there must needs be,
therefore, something by which it is either performed or felt, and that
something cannot possibly be other than a thinking and conscious thing.
As surely as thought is, so surely must there be a thinker. This is, in
substance, affirmed even by many who deny it in terms, and Hume, in
particular, when saying, as he somewhere does, that 'all we are
conscious of is a series of perceptions,' denies and affirms it at one
and the same time. For how can there be perception without a percipient?
or how consciousness without a conscious entity? or how can that entity
be conscious of feeling without being simultaneously conscious that it
is itself which feels, without knowing, consequently, that it has a
self, or without being warranted, if it possess the gift of speech, in
declaring, in words even more emphatic than those of Descartes, 'I
_myself_ am'? And how, if these questions do not admit of reply, can
Professor Huxley be warranted in declaring self and non-self to be mere
'hypotheses by which we account for the facts of consciousness,' and
adding that of their existence we 'neither have, nor by any possibility
can have' the same 'unquestionable and immediate certainty as we have of
the states of consciousness which we consider to be their effects'?
Surely the existence of self is one of the most direct and immediate
subjects of consciousness; yet it does not depend for evidence on
consciousness alone, but is as unanswerably demonstrable as that two
straight lines cannot enclose space or that parallel lines cannot meet,
or as any other mathematical negation. No ratiocinative deduction can be
more incontestable than that, since _I_ have thoughts, there must be an
_I_ to have them.
Whoever thus assures himself of the existence of self obtains
simultaneously equal assurance of the existence of non-self; for feeling
that his conscious self is not boundless, but is confined within limits,
he cannot doubt that beyond those limits there must be space, and,
receiving continual sensations from without, he perceives that there
are, in external space, potentialities of imparting sensations. Thus, I
repeat, Descartes in laying down the first principles of his philosophy
created an intellectual basis for the external universe. Unfortunately,
however, instead of proceeding to place its proper superstructure on the
foundation thus laid, he wilfully stepped aside from what he had just
pronounced the only firm ground in existence, and undertook to raise a
rival edifice on part of the formless void beyond. Deeply struck by the
grand discoveries of his illustrious contemporaries, Galileo and Harvey,
and thence discovering for himself that the phenomena of remotest worlds
and also the involuntary phenomena of our own bodily frames take place
in accordance with forces of uniform operation, he leaped suddenly to
the conclusion that those forces are purely mechanical. The circulation
of the blood, he says, 'is as much the necessary result of the structure
of the parts one can see in the heart, and of the heat which one may
feel there, and of the nature of the blood which may be experimentally
ascertained, as is the motion of a clock the result of the force,
situation, and figure of its wheels and of its weight.' Nor, in his
view, does the heart, by virtue of its structure and composition, merely
cause the blood to circulate. 'It also generates animal spirits,' which,
'ascending like a very subtle fluid, or very pure and vivid flame, into
the brain as into a reservoir, pass thence into the nerves, where,
according as they more or less enter, or tend to enter, they have the
power of altering the figures of the muscles into which the nerves are
inserted, and of so causing all the organs and limbs to move.' He puts
the case thus: Even as the ordinary movements of a water-clock or of a
mill are kept up by the ordinary flow of the water, and even as 'in the
grottoes and fountains of royal gardens, the force wherewith the water
issues from its reservoirs suffices to move various machines, and even
to make them play instruments or pronounce words according to the
different disposition of the pipes which lead the water'--even so do
pulsation, respiration, digestion, nutrition, and growth, and 'other
such actions as are natural and usual in the body,' result naturally
from the usual course of the animal spirits. Moreover, even as intruders
upon the waterworks aforesaid unconsciously by their mere presence cause
special movements to take place, even as, for example, 'if they approach
a bathing Diana, they tread on certain planks so arranged as to make her
hide among the reeds, and, if they attempt to follow her, see
approaching a Neptune who threatens with his trident, or rouse some
other monster who vomits water into their faces'--even so do external
objects, by their mere presence, act upon the organs of sense; even so
do 'the reception of light, sounds, odours, flavours, heat, and such
like qualities in the organs of the external senses, the impression of
the ideas of these in the intellect, the imagination, and the memory,
the internal movements of the appetites and passions, and the external
movements which follow so aptly on the presentation of objects to the
senses, or on the resuscitation of impressions by the memory,' yea, even
so do all these 'functions proceed naturally from the arrangement of the
bodily organs, neither more nor less than do the movements of a clock or
other automaton from that of its weights and its wheels, without the aid
of any other vegetative or sensitive soul or any other principle of
motion or of life than the blood and the spirits agitated by the fire
which burns continually within the heart, and which differs in no wise
from the fire existing in inanimate bodies.'[35]
Quite fairly it may be urged that the writer of passages like these
would, if writing in modern language, and with the aid of modern
conceptions, have expressed himself much as Professor Huxley does when,
declaring that the circulation of the blood and the regular movements of
the respiratory, alimentary, and other internal organs are simply
'affairs of mechanism, resulting from the structure and arrangement' of
the bodily organs concerned, from 'the contractility of those organs,
and from the regulation of that contractility by an automatically acting
nervous apparatus;' that muscular contractility and the automatic
activity or irritability of the nerves are 'purely the results of
molecular mechanism;' and that 'the modes of motion which constitute the
physical bases of light, sound, and heat are transmuted by the sensory
organs into affections of nervous matter,' which affections become 'a
kind of physical ideas constituting a physical memory,' and may be
combined in a manner answering to association and imagination, or may
give rise to muscular contractions in those reflex actions which are the
mechanical representatives of volition.' Quite fairly may a doctrine,
capable of being thus translated, be described as leading 'straight to
materialism.' Quite justly may its author be claimed by Huxley as joint
professor of a materialistic creed. True, Descartes lodges within his
human mechanism a _chose pensante_ or rational soul, whose principal
seat is in the brain, and who is treated as corresponding to a hydraulic
engineer stationed in the centre of waterworks for the purpose of
increasing, slackening, or otherwise altering their movements. But this
rational soul is a very needless appendage to either the Cartesian or
the Huxleian system, wherein, if its post be not a literal sinecure,
there is, at any rate, little or nothing for it to do which might not
quite as well be done without it. The hydraulic engineer, sitting in his
central office, has to wind up the whole machinery from time to time,
and to turn now this tap, now that, when he wishes to set this or that
particular machine in motion. But, as no one need be told, our _chose
pensante_ has nothing to do with the winding up of our digestive,
circulatory, or respiratory apparatus; and so far from internally
arranging those other internal organs from the mere arrangement of whose
parts, according to Descartes, the reception, conversion, and retention
of sensations, and the movements, whether internal or external,
thereupon consequent, naturally proceed, or from regulating the
molecular mechanism, whence, according to Professor Huxley, results the
automatic nervous activity which, in his opinion, governs the movements
of the limbs not less absolutely than those of the intestines, it, nine
times out of ten, neither knows nor suspects that any such organs or
mechanism exist. If the functions above attributed to the human frame
could be shown really to belong to it, pure, not to say crass,
materialism, would require no further proof. Those particular functions
undoubtedly take place without the cognisance of that particular
sensitive soul which we call ourself, so that if no other sensitive soul
take cognisance of them, they must needs be, not simply automatic
performances, but performances of an automaton of such marvellous powers
as to be quite equal to the performance likewise of whatever human
operations are vulgarly classed as mental. Assume, however illogically,
that motion is a function of matter, and from that premiss, whether true
or false, the conclusion that thought likewise is a function of matter
may be quite logically deduced. 'That thought is as much a function of
matter as motion is' must needs be conceded to Professor Huxley, who,
therefore, if he could show that motion is really such a function, would
be fully justified in adding, that 'the distinction between spirit and
matter vanishes,' that 'we lose spirit in matter.'
Undeniably, then, of the Cartesian philosophy one moiety is, as
Professor Huxley says, materialistic; but from the self-contradictions
inseparable from every species of materialism the Cartesian variety is,
of course, no more exempt than any other, and it has besides one
self-contradiction peculiar to itself. A clock's pendulum vibrates, and
its hands move, not simply by reason of the situation and figure of its
weight and wheels, but also because some intelligent person, by winding
up the clock, has communicated an impulsive force to the weight and
wheels. Waterworks perform all sorts of antics, not solely because the
pipes are skilfully constructed and arranged with a view to such end,
but because also an intelligent engineer has turned running water into
the pipes. But the only intelligent agent to whom Descartes allows
access to his corporeal machinery is one who not only has no notion how
to apply a moving force except to some few portions of the machinery,
but with regard to the other portions has most likely no suspicion that
they even exist. But how in the absence of some other intelligence, of
some other 'vegetative or sensitive soul or principle of motion or of
life,' is it possible for the inert and inanimate heart to generate
animal spirits?--how is it possible for death thus to give birth to
life?--or, if the generative faculty be supposed to be the necessary
result of a particular molecular structure, how is it that when the
animal spirits become from any cause extinct, they are not immediately
regenerated by the same molecular structure? or rather, how is it
possible for animal spirits to become extinct as long as the molecular
structure of which they are necessary concomitants remains unaltered? In
these questions the old insuperable difficulties reappear in new forms,
but on these we need not dwell. Apart from anti-materialistic arguments
of general applicability, there is a mode of refutation specially
adapted to the Cartesian form of materialism, which, besides flatly
contradicting itself, contradicts not less flatly a twin system of
unimpeachable veracity. Truth cannot be opposed to truth:--a doctrine
cannot be true, even though propounded by Descartes and Huxley, if it
conflict irreconcileably with doctrines which Descartes and Huxley have
unanswerably demonstrated. Now one-half of Cartesian philosophy shows
conclusively that amidst the countless infinity of human notions, the
one single and solitary certainty of independent and self-evident
authority is the existence of thought, and nothing else whatever,
therefore, can be entitled to be regarded as absolutely certain which
cannot be shown to rest mediately or immediately upon this. One thing
which can, by strictest logical process, be shown so to rest, is the
existence of a thinking self; and another is the existence of a non-self
or external universe; but of this external universe we know scarcely
anything beyond the bare fact that it exists. We know that outside the
thinking self there are potentialities capable of somehow or other
communicating sensations to the thinking self; but of the nature of
these potentialities our senses teach us absolutely nothing, and the few
particulars that reason is able to discover, are, with one single though
very momentous exception, to which we are rapidly approaching, purely
negative. We do know to a certain extent what qualities of objects are
not. We know that they are not and cannot be in the least like the
sensations which we call by the same names. We know that what we call
the whiteness and coldness of snow or the hardness and weight of marble,
can no more resemble the feelings we receive from looking at or handling
snow or marble than the mental exaltation produced within us on hearing
one of Bach's fugues is like the organ on which, or the organist by
whom, it is played. We know that of the pictures which our senses form
for us not one can possibly be a correct likeness. We know that what we
fancy we see in matter we do not see; that what we seem to feel we do
not feel; that the apparent structure and composition of matter cannot
therefore possibly be real. To this conviction we are irresistibly drawn
by a chain of idealistic reasoning of which Descartes forged the first
link, and every link of which will stand the severest strain. But if
this be the teaching of an idealism occupying as its base the only
morsel of solid ground to be found in the mental universe, what scrap of
footing is there left for an antagonistic materialism purporting to rest
on what we can see and feel of a structure and composition which, as we
have just satisfied ourselves, we cannot see or feel at all?
As plainly then as one half of Descartes' philosophy is materialistic,
so plainly, that half, instead of a necessary outgrowth and exact
correlative of the other or idealistic moiety is, on the contrary, the
latter's diametrical and implacable opponent. As plainly, therefore, as
the one is true, must the other be false, and Cartesian idealism, in so
far as its character has been exhibited above, has, I submit, been
demonstrated to be true. The greater the pity that it was not brought to
maturity by its author. In enumerating its first principles, Descartes,
as I must once again observe, was forming a logical basis whereon a
comprehensive and consistent conception of an external universe might
forthwith have been securely deposited, had he not unluckily, instead of
himself proceeding to build on his own foundations, with congruous
materials, left them free for others to build upon with gold, silver,
precious stones, wood, hay, or stubble, as chance might determine. May
I, without presumption, hazard a conjecture as to the sort of fabric
that might have arisen, if he had steadily prosecuted his original
design?
At the stage which we are supposing him to have reached, very little
remained to complete the work. Around man, around every individual man,
or other conscious intelligence, as its centre, is ranged infinitely
extended space, filled with, or, as it were, composed of various kinds
of matter, every kind and every separate portion of which is endowed
with special qualities capable of communicating corresponding sensations
to the central intelligence. So far all that can be predicated of any
material object or portion of matter is that it is a collection of
qualities; but from hence we may advance boldly to the further negative
discovery that it is nothing else; that there is not and cannot be, in
addition to those qualities, any substance in or to which the qualities
inhere, or are in any way attached.
The absence from matter of any such substance is evidenced by the
absurdity involved in the idea of its presence. Suppose the substance to
exist: the qualities inherent in it must needs be as completely distinct
from itself as pins are from a pincushion; the extension and solidity of
an extended, solid substance can no more be identical with the substance
than the nominative is identical with the genitive case. The substance,
therefore, although deprived of all its qualities will still retain its
essence unimpaired, will still be equally a substance, just as a
pincushion continues equally a pincushion after its last pin has been
abstracted. Conceive, then, all the qualities of matter to be
abstracted, and consider what remains--a substance without qualities of
any sort. But a substance neither solid, nor fluid, nor yet gaseous;
neither coloured nor colourless; neither singular nor plural; without
form and void, without even extension--what is it? not something, but
nothing; a nonentity or non-existence. The qualities of matter in being
removed from the substance have therefore left nothing behind, and,
consequently, although carrying with them nothing but themselves, have
yet carried with them all the constituents of matter, which is thus
seen to be composed exclusively of qualities without a single particle
of foreign admixture. And since, moreover, the qualities of matter are
clearly not themselves substances, that is to say do not themselves
_stand under_ or uphold anything, it follows that their compound,
matter, must likewise be purely unsubstantial.
The edifice begun by Descartes has now been raised high and strong
enough to have its layer of negations crowned with an affirmation of
pre-eminent importance. The qualities of matter, being known only by
their effects, are evidently causes: and, being causes, must necessarily
be either themselves forces, or, at the least, manifestations of force;
and inasmuch as force involves exertion, it cannot be inert; and
inasmuch as deadness must be incapable of exertion, all force must be
alive; and life without substance cannot be conceived otherwise than as
some species of spirit or mind. Such therefore must be matter. Matter
can be nothing else than pure spirit of some kind.
And may we not with good reason congratulate ourselves on this result of
our investigations? Instead of the vision we were threatened with, of
mind losing itself in matter, our eyes are gladdened with that of the
converse operation, of the transmutation of matter into mind. And on no
account is this metamorphosis to be mistaken for annihilation of matter,
whose stolid grossness has vanished, not in order to give place to empty
nominalism or to a thin mist of mere mental perceptions existing only in
virtue of being perceived, but in order to reappear gloriously
etherealised into living energy. By the change that has taken place,
corruption has put on incorruption; the natural body has become a
quickening spirit; death is swallowed up in victory. Matter reappears
converted, not into a perception of percipient mind, but into percipient
mind itself; yet although thus presumably percipient of its own
existence, it not the less has an existence perfectly independent of
perception, either by itself or by any other intelligence.
Under what head the mind, or combination of living forces, thus
constituting all matter, ought to be classed, is a question, which the
imperfection of human faculties may as well be content to leave
unanswered, though to its being supposed to emanate directly from the
mind of Omnipresent Deity, one insuperable objection may be mentioned,
which should be kept steadily in view. There are few of us who will not
shrink with horror from a notion, according to which man, whenever doing
as he pleases with any material object, applying it, as likely as not,
to some base or criminal purpose, is disposing at his pleasure of a
portion of the Divine essence: few who will not greatly prefer to
believe that the vital principle which manifests itself in the form of a
dunghill or of a poisoned dagger, may be, for the time, as completely
individualised and separate from all other life or mind, as every human
being perceives his own conscious mind or self to be. At all events, we
have now reached a point beyond which it would be rash to rush hastily
on. For a while we may be well content to rest where we are. That matter
is nothing else but a peculiar manifestation, or avatar, of some species
of mind, whatever that species be, is a proposition as demonstrably true
as its converse is demonstrably false. Unless it be possible for death
to give birth to life, it is impossible for living mind to be the
offspring of inanimate matter; but so surely as mind is mind, and that
living force alone can act either on mind or aught else, so surely must
all matter that imparts sensation to mind, be itself a species of living
force and consequently a species of mind.
An unexpected conclusion this, and widely different, I confess, from
that to which I was myself looking forward at the outset of the
discussion; yet, at the same time, one of which there is the best
possible proof in the impossibility of conceiving its contrary. It is
besides a conclusion to which not only ought Descartes in consistency to
have come, but at which both Locke and Berkeley, though advancing from
opposite points of the compass, did very nearly arrive; nay, which the
latter did almost touch, and must apparently have grasped, had not his
hands been already full of other things. It is, moreover, one from which
I do not apprehend that Professor Huxley himself will seriously dissent.
Indeed, I almost hope that he may object chiefly to its having been
moved by me as an amendment on his original motion, and that he may be
disposed to claim it for himself as a portion of genuine Huxleyism. If
so, I shall readily recognise the claim so far as to admit that things
very similar to many of those said by me above had already been said by
Professor Huxley; though, in justice to myself, I must add that their
complete opposites had likewise been said by him. But the office which I
here proposed to myself was mainly that of an eclectic, who, going over
a field which another husbandman has tilled, separates the wheat from
the tares, and binds up the former into shapely and easily portable
sheaves; and no more satisfactory assurance can be given of my having
been usefully employed in such subordinate capacity than that Professor
Huxley, who, amongst all his numerous admirers, has not one sincerer
than myself, should welcome me as a coadjutor, instead of repelling me
as an antagonist.
FOOTNOTES:
[32] Archimede, pour tirer le globe terrestre de sa place et le
transporter en un autre lieu, ne demandait rien qu'un point qui fut
ferme et immobile: ainsi j'aurai droit de concevoir de hautes esperances
si je suis assez heureux pour trouver seulement une chose qui soit
certaine et indubitable.--Descartes, _Meditation Deuxieme_.
[33] Lay Sermons, xiv. 'On Descartes' Discourse;' also an article by
Professor Huxley, on 'Berkeley and the Metaphysics of Sensation,' in
'Macmillan's Magazine' for June, 1871.
[34] Article on 'Berkeley and the Metaphysics of Sensation,' in
'Macmillan's Magazine' for 1871, pp. 152 et seq.
[35] The quotations, of which those in the text are abridgments, will be
found in 'Lay Sermons,' xiv. pp. 364-7.