OUR SUBORDINATE PERSONALITIES.
WE have seen that we can apprehend neither the beginning nor the end of
our personality, which comes up out of infinity as an island out of the
sea, so gently, that none can say when it is first visible on our mental
horizon, and fades away in the case of those who leave offspring, so
imperceptibly that none can say when it is out of sight. But, like the
island, whether we can see it or no, it is always there. Not only are we
infinite as regards time, but we are so also as regards extension, being
so linked on to the external world that we cannot say where we either
begin or end. If those who so frequently declare that man is a finite
creature would point out his boundaries, it might lead to a better
understanding.
Nevertheless, we are in the habit of considering that our personality, or
soul, no matter where it begins or ends, and no matter what it comprises,
is nevertheless a single thing, uncompounded of other souls. Yet there
is nothing more certain than that this is not at all the case, but that
every individual person is a compound creature, being made up of an
infinite number of distinct centres of sensation and will, each one of
which is personal, and has a soul and individual existence, a
reproductive system, intelligence, and memory of its own, with probably
its hopes and fears, its times of scarcity and repletion, and a strong
conviction that it is itself the centre of the universe.
True, no one is aware of more than one individuality in his own person at
one time. We are, indeed, often greatly influenced by other people, so
much so, that we act on many occasions in accordance with their will
rather than our own, making our actions answer to their sensations, and
register the conclusions of their cerebral action and not our own; for
the time being, we become so completely part of them, that we are ready
to do things most distasteful and dangerous to us, if they think it for
their advantage that we should do so. Thus we sometimes see people
become mere processes of their wives or nearest relations. Yet there is
a something which blinds us, so that we cannot see how completely we are
possessed by the souls which influence us upon these occasions. We still
think we are ourselves, and ourselves only, and are as certain as we can
be of any fact, that we are single sentient beings, uncompounded of other
sentient beings, and that our action is determined by the sole operation
of a single will.
But in reality, over and above this possession of our souls by others of
our own species, the will of the lower animals often enters into our
bodies and possesses them, making us do as they will, and not as we will;
as, for example, when people try to drive pigs, or are run away with by a
restive horse, or are attacked by a savage animal which masters them. It
is absurd to say that a person is a single “ego” when he is in the
clutches of a lion. Even when we are alone, and uninfluenced by other
people except in so far as we remember their wishes, we yet generally
conform to the usages which the current feeling of our peers has taught
us to respect; their will having so mastered our original nature, that,
do what we may, we can never again separate ourselves and dwell in the
isolation of our own single personality. And even though we succeeded in
this, and made a clean sweep of every mental influence which had ever
been brought to bear upon us, and though at the same time we were alone
in some desert where there was neither beast nor bird to attract our
attention or in any way influence our action, yet we could not escape the
parasites which abound within us; whose action, as every medical man well
knows, is often such as to drive men to the commission of grave crimes,
or to throw them into convulsions, make lunatics of them, kill them—when
but for the existence and course of conduct pursued by these parasites
they would have done no wrong to any man.
These parasites—are they part of us or no? Some are plainly not so in
any strict sense of the word, yet their action may, in cases which it is
unnecessary to detail, affect us so powerfully that we are irresistibly
impelled to act in such or such a manner; and yet we are as wholly
unconscious of any impulse outside of our own “ego” as though they were
part of ourselves; others again are essential to our very existence, as
the corpuscles of the blood, which the best authorities concur in
supposing to be composed of an infinite number of living souls, on whose
welfare the healthy condition of our blood, and hence of our whole
bodies, depends. We breathe that they may breathe, not that we may do
so; we only care about oxygen in so far as the infinitely small beings
which course up and down in our veins care about it: the whole
arrangement and mechanism of our lungs may be our doing, but is for their
convenience, and they only serve us because it suits their purpose to do
so, as long as we serve them. Who shall draw the line between the
parasites which are part of us, and the parasites which are not part of
us? Or again, between the influence of those parasites which are within
us, but are yet not _us_, and the external influence of other sentient
beings and our fellow-men? There is no line possible. Everything melts
away into everything else; there are no hard edges; it is only from a
little distance that we see the effect as of individual features and
existences. When we go close up, there is nothing but a blur and
confused mass of apparently meaningless touches, as in a picture by
Turner.
The following passage from Mr. Darwin’s provisional theory of Pangenesis,
will sufficiently show that the above is no strange and paradoxical view
put forward wantonly, but that it follows as a matter of course from the
conclusions arrived at by those who are acknowledged leaders in the
scientific world. Mr. Darwin writes thus:—
“_The functional independence of the elements or units of the
body_.—Physiologists agree that the whole organism consists of a
multitude of elemental parts, which are to a great extent independent of
one another. Each organ, says Claude Bernard, has its proper life, its
autonomy; it can develop and reproduce itself independently of the
adjoining tissues. A great German authority, Virchow, asserts still more
emphatically that each system consists of ‘an enormous mass of minute
centres of action. . . . Every element has its own special action, and
even though it derive its stimulus to activity from other parts, yet
alone effects the actual performance of duties. . . . Every single
epithelial and muscular fibre-cell leads a sort of parasitical existence
in relation to the rest of the body. . . . Every single bone corpuscle
really possesses conditions of nutrition peculiar to itself.’ Each
element, as Sir J. Paget remarks, lives its appointed time, and then
dies, and is replaced after being cast off and absorbed. I presume that
no physiologist doubts that, for instance, each bone corpuscle of the
finger differs from the corresponding corpuscle of the corresponding
joint of the toe,” &c., &c. (“Plants and Animals under Domestication,”
vol. ii. pp. 364, 365, ed. 1875).
In a work on heredity by M. Ribot, I find him saying, “Some recent
authors attribute a memory” (and if so, surely every attribute of
complete individuality) “to every organic element of the body;” among
them Dr. Maudsley, who is quoted by M. Ribot, as saying, “The permanent
effects of a particular virus, such as that of the variola, in the
constitution, shows that the organic element remembers for the remainder
of its life certain modifications it has received. The manner in which a
cicatrix in a child’s finger grows with the growth of the body, proves,
as has been shown by Paget, that the organic element of the part does not
forget the impression it has received. What has been said about the
different nervous centres of the body demonstrates the existence of a
memory in the nerve cells diffused through the heart and intestines; in
those of the spinal cord, in the cells of the motor ganglia, and in the
cells of the cortical substance of the cerebal hemispheres.”
Now, if words have any meaning at all, it must follow from the passages
quoted above, that each cell in the human body is a person with an
intelligent soul, of a low class, perhaps, but still differing from our
own more complex soul in degree, and not in kind; and, like ourselves,
being born, living, and dying. So that each single creature, whether man
or beast, proves to be as a ray of white light, which, though single, is
compounded of the red, blue, and yellow rays. It would appear, then, as
though “we,” “our souls,” or “selves,” or “personalities,” or by whatever
name we may prefer to be called, are but the _consensus_ and full flowing
stream of countless sensations and impulses on the part of our tributary
souls or “selves,” who probably know no more that we exist, and that they
exist as part of us, than a microscopic water-flea knows the results of
spectrum analysis, or than an agricultural labourer knows the working of
the British constitution: and of whom we know no more, until some
misconduct on our part, or some confusion of ideas on theirs, has driven
them into insurrection, than we do of the habits and feelings of some
class widely separated from our own.
These component souls are of many and very different natures, living in
territories which are to them vast continents, and rivers, and seas, but
which are yet only the bodies of our other component souls; coral reefs
and sponge-beds within us; the animal itself being a kind of mean
proportional between its house and its soul, and none being able to say
where house ends and animal begins, more than they can say where animal
ends and soul begins. For our bones within us are but inside walls and
buttresses, that is to say, houses constructed of lime and stone, as it
were, by coral insects; and our houses without us are but outside bones,
a kind of exterior skeleton or shell, so that we perish of cold if
permanently and suddenly deprived of the coverings which warm us and
cherish us, as the wing of a hen cherishes her chickens. If we consider
the shells of many living creatures, we shall find it hard to say whether
they are rather houses, or part of the animal itself, being, as they are,
inseparable from the animal, without the destruction of its personality.
Is it possible, then, to avoid imagining that if we have within us so
many tributary souls, so utterly different from the soul which they unite
to form, that they neither can perceive us, nor we them, though it is in
us that they live and move and have their being, and though we are what
we are, solely as the result of their co-operation—is it possible to
avoid imagining that we may be ourselves atoms, undesignedly combining to
form some vaster being, though we are utterly incapable of perceiving
that any such being exists, or of realising the scheme or scope of our
own combination? And this, too, not a spiritual being, which, without
matter, or what we think matter of some sort, is as complete nonsense to
us as though men bade us love and lean upon an intelligent vacuum, but a
being with what is virtually flesh and blood and bones; with organs,
senses, dimensions, in some way analogous to our own, into some other
part of which being, at the time of our great change we must infallibly
re-enter, starting clean anew, with bygones bygones, and no more ache for
ever from either age or antecedents. Truly, sufficient for the life is
the evil thereof. Any speculations of ours concerning the nature of such
a being, must be as futile and little valuable as those of a blood
corpuscle might be expected to be concerning the nature of man; but if I
were myself a blood corpuscle, I should be amused at making the discovery
that I was not only enjoying life in my own sphere, but was _bonâ fide_
part of an animal which would not die with myself, and in which I might
thus think of myself as continuing to live to all eternity, or to what,
as far as my power of thought would carry me, must seem practically
eternal. But, after all, the amusement would be of a rather dreary
nature.
On the other hand, if I were the being of whom such an introspective
blood corpuscle was a component item, I should conceive he served me
better by attending to my blood and making himself a successful
corpuscle, than by speculating about my nature. He would serve me best
by serving himself best, without being over curious. I should expect
that my blood might suffer if his brain were to become too active. If,
therefore, I could discover the vein in which he was, I should let him
out to begin life anew in some other and, _quâ_ me, more profitable
capacity.
With the units of our bodies it is as with the stars of heaven: there is
neither speech nor language, but their voices are heard among them. Our
will is the _fiat_ of their collective wisdom, as sanctioned in their
parliament, the brain; it is they who make us do whatever we do—it is
they who should be rewarded if they have done well, or hanged if they
have committed murder. When the balance of power is well preserved among
them, when they respect each other’s rights and work harmoniously
together, then we thrive and are well; if we are ill, it is because they
are quarrelling with themselves, or are gone on strike for this or that
addition to their environment, and our doctor must pacify or chastise
them as best he may. They are we and we are they; and when we die it is
but a redistribution of the balance of power among them or a change of
dynasty, the result, it may be, of heroic struggle, with more epics and
love romances than we could read from now to the Millennium, if they were
so written down that we could comprehend them.
It is plain, then, that the more we examine the question of personality
the more it baffles us, the only safeguard against utter confusion and
idleness of thought being to fall back upon the superficial and common
sense view, and refuse to tolerate discussions which seem to hold out
little prospect of commercial value, and which would compel us, if
logically followed, to be at the inconvenience of altering our opinions
upon matters which we have come to consider as settled.
And we observe that this is what is practically done by some of our
ablest philosophers, who seem unwilling, if one may say so without
presumption, to accept the conclusions to which their own experiments and
observations would seem to point.
Dr. Carpenter, for example, quotes the well-known experiments upon
headless frogs. If we cut off a frog’s head and pinch any part of its
skin, the animal at once begins to move away with the same regularity as
though the brain had not been removed. Flourens took guinea-pigs,
deprived them of the cerebral lobes, and then irritated their skin; the
animals immediately walked, leaped, and trotted about, but when the
irritation was discontinued they ceased to move. Headless birds, under
excitation, can still perform with their wings the rhythmic movements of
flying. But here are some facts more curious still, and more difficult
of explanation. If we take a frog or a strong and healthy triton, and
subject it to various experiments; if we touch, pinch, or burn it with
acetic acid, and if then, after decapitating the animal, we subject it to
the same experiments, it will be seen that the reactions are exactly the
same; it will strive to be free of the pain, and to shake off the acetic
acid that is burning it; it will bring its foot up to the part of its
body that is irritated, and this movement of the member will follow the
irritation wherever it may be produced.
The above is mainly taken from M. Ribot’s work on heredity rather than
Dr. Carpenter’s, because M. Ribot tells us that the head of the frog was
actually cut off, a fact which does not appear so plainly in Dr.
Carpenter’s allusion to the same experiments. But Dr. Carpenter tells us
that _after the brain of a frog has been removed_—which would seem to be
much the same thing as though its head were cut off—“if acetic acid be
applied over the upper and under part of the thigh, the foot of the same
side will wipe it away; _but if that foot be cut off_, _after some
ineffectual efforts and a short period of inaction_,” during which it is
hard not to surmise that the headless body is considering what it had
better do under the circumstances, “_the same movement will be made by
the foot of the opposite side_,” which, to ordinary people, would convey
the impression that the headless body was capable of feeling the
impressions it had received, and of reasoning upon them by a
psychological act; and this of course involves the possession of a soul
of some sort.
Here is a frog whose right thigh you burn with acetic acid. Very
naturally it tries to get at the place with its right foot to remove the
acid. You then cut off the frog’s head, and put more acetic acid on the
some place: the headless frog, or rather the body of the late frog, does
just what the frog did before its head was cut off—it tries to get at the
place with its right foot. You now cut off its right foot: the headless
body deliberates, and after a while tries to do with its left foot what
it can no longer do with its right. Plain matter-of-fact people will
draw their own inference. They will not be seduced from the superficial
view of the matter. They will say that the headless body can still, to
some extent, feel, think, and act, and if so, that it must have a living
soul.
Dr. Carpenter writes as follows:—“Now the performance of these, as well
as of many other movements, that show a most remarkable adaptation to a
purpose, might be supposed to indicate that sensations are called up by
the _impressions_, and that the animal can not only _feel_, but can
voluntarily direct its movements so as to get rid of the irritation which
annoys it. But such an inference would be inconsistent with other facts.
In the first place, the motions performed under such circumstances are
never spontaneous, but are always excited by a stimulus of some kind.”
Here we pause to ask ourselves whether any action of any creature under
any circumstances is ever excited without “stimulus of some kind,” and
unless we can answer this question in the affirmative, it is not easy to
see how Dr. Carpenter’s objection is valid.
“Thus,” he continues, “a decapitated frog” (here then we have it that the
frog’s head was actually cut off) “after the first violent convulsive
moments occasioned by the operation have passed away, remains at rest
until it is touched; and then the leg, or its whole body may be thrown
into sudden action, which suddenly subsides again.” (How does this
quiescence when it no longer feels anything show that the “leg or whole
body” had not perceived something which made it feel when it was not
quiescent?)—“Again we find that such movements may be performed not only
when the brain has been removed, the spinal cord remaining entire, but
also when the spinal cord has been itself cut across, so as to be divided
into two or more portions, each of them completely isolated from each
other, and from other parts of the nervous centres. Thus, if the head of
a frog be cut off, and its spinal cord be divided in the middle of the
back, so that its fore legs remain connected with the upper part, and its
hind legs with the lower, each pair of members may be excited to
movements by stimulants applied to itself; but the two pairs will not
exhibit any consentaneous motions, as they will do when the spinal cord
is undivided.”
This may be put perhaps more plainly thus. If you take a frog and cut it
into three pieces—say, the head for one piece, the fore legs and shoulder
for another, and the hind legs for a third—and then irritate any one of
these pieces, you will find it move much as it would have moved under
like irritation if the animal had remained undivided, but you will no
longer find any concert between the movements of the three pieces; that
is to say, if you irritate the head, the other two pieces will remain
quiet, and if you irritate the hind legs, you will excite no action in
the fore legs or head.
Dr. Carpenter continues: “Or if the spinal cord be cut across without the
removal of the brain, the lower limbs may be _excited_ to movement by an
appropriate stimulant, though the animal has clearly no power over them,
whilst the upper part remains under its control as completely as before.”
Why are the head and shoulders “the animal” more than the hind legs under
these circumstances? Neither half can exist long without the other; the
two parts, therefore, being equally important to each other, we have
surely as good a right to claim the title of “the animal” for the hind
legs, and to maintain that they have no power over the head and
shoulders, as any one else has to claim the animalship for these last.
What we say is, that the animal has ceased to exist as a frog on being
cut in half, and that the two halves are no longer, either of them, the
frog, but are simply pieces of still living organism, each of which has a
soul of its own, being capable of sensation, and of intelligent
psychological action as the consequence of sensations, though the one
part has probably a much higher and more intelligent soul than the other,
and neither part has a soul for a moment comparable in power and
durability to that of the original frog.
“Now it is scarcely conceivable,” continues Dr Carpenter, “that in this
last case sensations should be felt and volition exercised through the
instrumentality of that portion of the spinal cord which remains
connected with the nerves of the posterior extremities, but which is cut
off from the brain. For if it were so, there must be two distinct
centres of sensation and will in the same animal, the attributes of the
brain not being affected; and by dividing the spinal cord into two or
more segments we might thus create in the body of one animal two or more
such independent centres in addition to that which holds its proper place
in the head.”
In the face of the facts before us, it does not seen far-fetched to
suppose that there _are_ two, or indeed an infinite number of centres of
sensation and will in an animal, the attributes of whose brain are not
affected but that these centres, while the brain is intact, habitually
act in connection with and in subordination to that central authority; as
in the ordinary state of the fish trade, fish is caught, we will say, at
Yarmouth, sent up to London, and then sent down to Yarmouth again to be
eaten, instead of being eaten at Yarmouth when caught. But from the
phenomena exhibited by three pieces of an animal, it is impossible to
argue that the causes of the phenomena were present in the quondam animal
itself; the memory of an infinite series of generations having so
habituated the local centres of sensation and will, to act in concert
with the central government, that as long as they can get at that
government, they are absolutely incapable of acting independently. When
thrown on their own resources, they are so demoralised by ages of
dependence on the brain, that they die after a few efforts at
self-assertion, from sheer unfamiliarity with the position, and inability
to recognise themselves when disjointed rudely from their habitual
associations.
In conclusion, Dr. Carpenter says, “To say that two or more distinct
centres of sensation and will are present in such a case, would really be
the same as saying that we have the power of constituting two or more
distinct egos in one body, _which is manifestly absurd_.” One sees the
absurdity of maintaining that we can make one frog into two frogs by
cutting a frog into two pieces, but there is no absurdity in believing
that the two pieces have minor centres of sensation and intelligence
within themselves, which, when the animal is entire, act in much concert
with the brain, and with each other, that it is not easy to detect their
originally autonomous character, but which, when deprived of their power
of acting in concert, are thrown back upon earlier habit, now too long
forgotten to be capable of permanent resumption.
Illustrations are apt to mislead, nevertheless they may perhaps be
sometimes tolerated. Suppose, for example, that London to the extent,
say, of a circle with a six-mile radius from Charing Cross, were utterly
annihilated in the space of five minutes during the Session of
Parliament. Suppose, also, that two entirely impassable barriers, say of
five miles in width, half a mile high, and red hot, were thrown across
England; one from Gloucester to Harwich, and another from Liverpool to
Hull, and at the same time the sea were to become a mass of molten lava,
so no water communication should be possible; the political, mercantile,
social, and intellectual life of the country would be convulsed in a
manner which it is hardly possible to realise. Hundreds of thousands
would die through the dislocation of existing arrangements.
Nevertheless, each of the three parts into which England was divided
would show signs of provincial life for which it would find certain
imperfect organisms ready to hand. Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, and
Manchester, accustomed though they are to act in subordination to London,
would probably take up the reins of government in their several sections;
they would make their town councils into local governments, appoint
judges from the ablest of their magistrates, organise relief committees,
and endeavour as well as they could to remove any acetic acid that might
be now poured on Wiltshire, Warwickshire, or Northumberland, but no
concert between the three divisions of the country would be any longer
possible. Should we be justified, under these circumstances, in calling
any of the three parts of England, England? Or, again, when we observed
the provincial action to be as nearly like that of the original undivided
nation as circumstances would allow, should we be justified in saying
that the action, such as it was, was not political? And, lastly, should
we for a moment think that an admission that the provincial action was of
a _bonâ fide_ political character would involve the supposition that
England, undivided, had more than one “ego” as England, no matter how
many subordinate “egos” might go to the making of it, each one of which
proved, on emergency, to be capable of a feeble autonomy?
M. Ribot would seem to take a juster view of the phenomenon when he says
(p. 222 of the English translation)—
“We can hardly say that here the movements are co-ordinated like those of
a machine; the acts of the animal are adapted to a special end; we find
in them the characters of intelligence and will, a knowledge and choice
of means, since they are as variable as the cause which provokes them.
“If these, then, and similar acts, were such that both the impressions
which produced them and the acts themselves were perceived by the animal,
would they not be called psychological? Is there not in them all that
constitutes an intelligent act—adaptation of means to ends; not a general
and vague adaptation, but a determinate adaptation to a determinate end?
In the reflex action we find all that constitutes in some sort the very
groundwork of an intelligent act—that is to say, the same series of
stages, in the same order, with the same relations between them. We have
thus, in the reflex act, all that constitutes the psychological act
except consciousness. The reflex act, which is physiological, differs in
nothing from the psychological act, save only in this—that it is without
consciousness.”
The only remark which suggests itself upon this, is that we have no right
to say that the part of the animal which moves does not also perceive its
own act of motion, as much as it has perceived the impression which has
caused it to move. It is plain “the animal” cannot do so, for the animal
cannot be said to be any longer in existence. Half a frog is not a frog;
nevertheless, if the hind legs are capable, as M. Ribot appears to admit,
of “perceiving the impression” which produces their action, and if in
that action there is (and there would certainly appear to be so) “all
that constitutes an intelligent act, . . . a determinate adaptation to a
determinate end,” one fails to see on what ground they should be supposed
to be incapable of perceiving their own action, in which case the action
of the hind legs becomes distinctly psychological.
Secondly, M. Ribot appears to forget that it is the tendency of all
psychological action to become unconscious on being frequently repeated,
and that no line can be drawn between psychological acts and those reflex
acts which he calls physiological. All we can say is, that there are
acts which we do without knowing that we do them; but the analogy of many
habits which we have been able to watch in their passage from laborious
consciousness to perfect unconsciousness, would suggest that all action
is really psychological, only that the soul’s action becomes invisible to
ourselves after it has been repeated sufficiently often—that there is, in
fact, a law as simple as in the case of optics or gravitation, whereby
conscious perception of any action shall vary inversely as the square,
say, of its being repeated.
It is easy to understand the advantage to the individual of this power of
doing things rightly without thinking about them; for were there no such
power, the attention would be incapable of following the multitude of
matters which would be continually arresting it; those animals which had
developed a power of working automatically, and without a recurrence to
first principles when they had once mastered any particular process,
would, in the common course of events, stand a better chance of
continuing their species, and thus of transmitting their new power to
their descendants.
M. Ribot declines to pursue the subject further, and has only cursorily
alluded to it. He writes, however, that, on the “obscure problem” of the
difference between reflex and psychological actions, some say, “when
there can be no consciousness, because the brain is wanting, there is, in
spite of appearances, only mechanism,” whilst others maintain, that “when
there is selection, reflection, psychical action, there must also be
consciousness in spite of appearances.” A little later (p. 223), he
says, “It is quite possible that if a headless animal could live a
sufficient length of time” (that is to say, if _the hind legs of an
animal_ could live a sufficient length of time without the brain), “there
would be found in it” (_them_) “a consciousness like that of the lower
species, which would consist merely in the faculty of apprehending the
external world.” (Why merely? It is more than apprehending the outside
world to be able to try to do a thing with one’s left foot, when one
finds that one cannot do it with one’s right.) “It would not be correct
to say that the amphioxus, the only one among fishes and vertebrata which
has a spinal cord without a brain, has no consciousness because it has no
brain; and if it be admitted that the little ganglia of the invertebrata
can form a consciousness, the same may hold good for the spinal cord.”
We conclude, therefore, that it is within the common scope and meaning of
the words “personal identity,” not only that one creature can become many
as the moth becomes manifold in her eggs, but that each individual may be
manifold in the sense of being compounded of a vast number of subordinate
individualities which have their separate lives within him, with their
hopes, and fears, and intrigues, being born and dying within us, many
generations, of them during our single lifetime.
“An organic being,” writes Mr. Darwin, “is a microcosm, a little
universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably
minute, and numerous as the stars in heaven.”
As these myriads of smaller organisms are parts and processes of us, so
are we but parts and processes of life at large.