22. The instincts also belong to the connate mechanism, and in the

course of the normal experience of the animal inevitably come into

play; but, unlike the automatic tendencies of breathing, swallowing,

and coughing, they are capable of modification, or even suppression,

by alterations in the course of individual experience. The connate

mechanism of the cat determines its dread of water, and its enmity

to the dog and mouse; yet a cat will by the modifications of certain

experiences become as ready as an otter to take to the water, and

become so fond of a dog that she will allow him to tend upon her

kittens; and so indifferent to the mouse that she will let it run

over her body. All this implies a new adjustment in the nervous

centres, with new modes of reaction on sensory impressions: the

inherited mechanism has been modified. I need not dwell on the profound

modifications which the human inherited mechanism undergoes in the

course of experience--how social influences and moral and religious

teachings redirect, or even suppress, many primary tendencies; so that

“moral habits” become organized, and replace the original tendencies

of the organism. These, when organized, become the inevitable modes

of reaction, and are sometimes called secondarily automatic. It

is important to recognize this organization of experiences, this

acquisition of a secondary or modified constitution, if we would

explain psychological processes by physiological processes. Thus

the processes of Logic are automatic, they belong to the connate

primary mechanism, and their action is inevitable, invariable. The

elements of a judgment, like the elements of a perception, may vary,

and we therefore say that one judgment is false, and one perception

incomplete; but the judging process is always the same, and the

perceiving process is always the same. We may breathe pure air or

impure air, but the breathing process is in each case the same; and

judgment is as automatic as breathing, not to be altered, not to be

suppressed. Again, the moral terror at wickedness of any recognized

kind is as automatic as the instinctive terror at danger. The one has

its roots in the primary disposition called love of approbation and

its correlative dread of disapprobation: the social instinct. The

other has its root in the primary disposition called “instinct of

self-preservation,” which is really the reflex shrinking from pain: the

physiological instinct.

23. Besides the connate and acquired mechanism, we have now to consider

the temporary and fluctuating adjustments which represent the statical

condition of the organism at each moment. The automatism of the primary

constitution is such that previous experience and conscious effort

are not needed; nor will any experience or any effort alter the mode

of reaction. If a strong light falls on the eye, the iris contracts;

if the eyeball is dry, the eyelid drops; if sound-waves beat upon the

tympanum, the stapedius muscle contracts; if the lining of the throat

be tickled, the muscles involved in coughing or in vomiting contract.

No experience is necessary for these actions, some of which are so

complicated that if we had to learn them, as we learn far simpler

actions, the organism would perish before the power was attained. Yet

all of these presuppose a certain normal state of the mechanism, any

considerable variation in which will modify or suppress them.

24. Secondarily automatic actions are those which have been acquired

through experiences that have modified the organism, and produced a

new adjustment of parts. We learn to shield the eyes against a strong

glare of light by raising the hand; by winking we learn to shield the

eye against an approaching body; we also learn to turn the head in the

direction of a sound, and to thrust away with our hands the object that

is irritating our skin. Experience has been necessary for all these

actions, and has finally organized the tendencies to perform them,

so that the reaction is invariable, inevitable, unless controlled by

the will. If you tickle my throat, I may, or may not, push aside your

hand; but if the inside of my throat be tickled, I must cough. Here

we see the difference between the automatic and secondarily automatic

actions. The second being due to individual experience, are more or

less controllable; and whether they are or are not controlled depends

on the condition of the nerve-centres at the moment. You may tickle my

throat, or irritate my skin, without causing any movement of my hands

to thwart you, either because my nerve-centres are preoccupied by other

stimulations, and I am not conscious of the irritation, or because I do

not choose to thwart you.

25. It should be added that some secondarily automatic actions have

become so firmly organized that we can only with great difficulty

interfere with them. Others never enter into consciousness, and are

therefore often supposed to be purely mechanical. The movement of the

eye towards the brightest light, and the convergence of the axes of

both eyes, are reflexes which, although involuntary and unconscious,

are the products of education. They do not belong to the connate

constitution, although they are so inevitably acquired by experience

that they belong to every normal child. At first the infant stares with

a blank gaze, and its eyes, though moving under the stimulus of light,

move incoherently; the axes never converge except by accident. Very

early, however, the infant’s eyes are observed to follow the movements

of a bright light; and at last they acquire so certain and rapid a

power of adjustment that the eyes shift from spot to spot, always

“fixing” the object by bringing the most sensitive part of the retina

to bear on it. The incoherent movements have become precisely regulated

movements. It is the same with speech. The vocal organs are exercised

in an incoherent babble. By degrees these movements become regulated

so as to respond definitely to definite stimuli, and words are formed,

then sentences, till finally fluent speech becomes in a great degree

automatic. The vocal muscles respond to an auditory stimulus, and the

child repeats the word it has heard, just as the eye-muscles respond

to a retinal stimulus. That we acquire the power of converging the

axes, and accommodating the lens to near objects, is not only proved by

observation of infants, but also by cases of disease. After the reflex

mechanism has been long established, so that it acts with inevitable

precision, a slight paralysis of one of the muscles has the effect of

making all objects appear in a different position; the patient trying

to touch an object, then always moves his hand on one side of it. Von

Graefe relates the case of a stonebreaker who always struck his hand

with the hammer when he tried to strike the stone. Yet this very man

_learned_ to accommodate his movements to the new impressions; so that

if his paralysis had been cured, his modified mechanism would have been

ill adapted to the new conditions, and he would once more have struck

his hand instead of the stone.

26. This digression on the native and acquired dispositions of the

organism, while it has brought into strong light all that can be cited

in favor of regarding animal bodies as mechanisms, and their actions

as the direct consequences of mechanical adjustments, has also made

conspicuous the radical difference between an organism and a machine.

We cannot too emphatically insist on this radical difference. Between

the group of conditions involved in the structure and action of a

machine, and the group of conditions involved in the structure and

action of an organism, there are contrasts as broad as any that can be

named. To overlook these in taking account solely of the conditions

common to both groups is a serious error. On such grounds we might

insist that a tiger is a violet, because both are organisms.

The biologist will admit that an organism is a mechanism, and (in

so far as its bodily structure is concerned) a material mechanism.

All the actions of this structure are therefore mechanical, in the

two senses of the term: first, as being the actions of material

adjustments; secondly, as being movements, and thereby included under

the general laws of motion represented in Mechanics; the abstract

laws of movement for an organic body are not different from the

abstract laws of movement for an inorganic body. So far we have been

considering the abstract relations only. No sooner do we consider the

phenomena as concrete wholes, than we find great diversity in the modes

of production of the movements in organisms and machines. Now it is

precisely the modes of production which have interest for us. We never

understand a phenomenon so as to gain any practical control over it, or

any theoretical illumination from it, unless we have mastered some of

its conditions; our knowledge of these conditions is the measure of our

power.

CHAPTER III.

THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND.

27. The second question proposed was, In what sense can Feeling be

correctly spoken of as an Agent in organic processes? This brings

us face to face with a much-debated topic, the relation of Body and

Mind; and demands a theoretic interpretation of that First Notion

which expresses universal experience, namely, that what I know as

Myself is a Body, in one aspect, and a Soul, in the other. What I

call my Body is a persistent aggregate of objective phenomena; and

my Soul is a persistent aggregate of subjective phenomena: the one

is an individualized group of experiences expressible in terms of

Matter and Motion, and therefore designated _physical_; the other an

individualized group of experiences expressible in terms of Feeling,

and therefore designated _psychical_. But, however contrasted, they

are both simply embodiments of Experience, that is to say, are Modes

of Feeling. All Existence--as known to us--is the Felt. The laws of

our organism compel us, indeed, to postulate an Existent which is

_extra mentem_--a Real not Ourselves--but the same laws debar us from

any knowledge whatever of what this _is_, or is _like_. We know Things

absolutely _in so far_ as they exist in relation to us; and that is the

only knowledge which can have any possible significance for us.

28. It is impossible for me to doubt that I am a Body, though I may

doubt whether what is thus called is anything more than a group of

feelings. It is impossible for me to doubt that I am a Soul; though

I may doubt whether what is thus called is more than a group of

bodily functions. In separating what is unquestionable from what is

questionable, we separate the fundamental facts of consciousness

from the theoretic interpretations of those facts: no theoretic

interpretation can efface or alter the facts. Whatever Philosophy may

discover, it cannot displace the fact that I know I am a Soul, _in

every sense in which that phrase represents Experience_: I know the

Soul in knowing its concretes (feelings), and in knowing it as an

abstraction which condenses those concretes in a symbol. The secondary

question is, Whether this abstraction represents one Existent, and the

abstraction Body another and wholly different Existent, or the two

abstractions represent only two different Aspects? this may be debated,

and must be answered according to theoretic probabilities.

29. What are the probabilities? We are all agreed that Consciousness

is the final arbiter. Its primary deliverance is simply that

of _a_ radical distinction. It is silent on the nature of the

distinction--says nothing as to whether the distinction is one of

agents or of aspects. It says, “I am a Soul.” With equal clearness

it says, “I am a Body.” It does _not_ say, “I am two things.” Nor

does the fact of a radical distinction imply more than a contrast of

aspects, such as that of convex and concave. The curve has at every

point this contrast of convex and concave, and yet is the identical

line throughout. A mental process is at every point contrasted with

the physical process assumed to be its correlate; and this contrast

demands equivalent expression in the terms of each. The identity

underlying the two aspects of the curve is evident to Sense. The

identity underlying the mental and physical process is not evident to

Sense, but may be made eminently _probable_ to Speculation, especially

when we have explained the grounds of the difference, namely, that they

are apprehended through different modes. But although I admit that

the conclusion is only one of probability, it is one which greatly

transcends the probability of any counter-hypothesis. Let us see how

this can be made out.[208]

30. We start from the position that a broad line of demarcation must

be drawn between the mental and the physical aspect of a process,

supposing them to be identical in reality. Nothing can be more _unlike_

a logical proposition than the physical process which is its correlate;

so that Philosophy has hitherto been forced to forego every attempt at

an explanation of how the two can be causally connected: referring the

connection to a mystery, or invoking two different agents, spiritual

and material, moving on parallel lines, like two clocks regulated to

work simultaneously. But having recognized this difference, can we not

also discern fundamental resemblances? First and foremost, we note

that there is common to both the basis in Feeling: they are both modes

of Consciousness. The Mind thinking the logical proposition is not,

indeed, in the same _state_ as the Mind picturing the physical process

which is the correlate of that logical proposition--no more than I,

who see you move on being struck, have the same feelings as you who

are struck. But the Mind which pictures the logical proposition as

a process, and pictures the physical process as a bodily change, is

contemplating one and the same event under its subjective and objective

aspects; just as when I picture to myself the feelings you experience

on being struck I separate the subjective aspect of the blow from its

objective aspect. Secondly, between the logical proposition and the

physical process there is a community of causal dependence, i. e. the

mode of grouping of the constituent elements, whereby this proposition,

and not another, is the result of this grouping, and not another. In

fact, what in subjective terms is called Logic, in objective terms is

Grouping.

31. Let us approach the question on a more accessible side. Sensation

avowedly lies at the basis of mental manifestations. Now, rightly

or wrongly, Sensation is viewed alternately as a purely subjective

fact--a psychological process--and as a purely objective fact--the

physiological reaction of a sense-organ. It is so conspicuously a

physiological process that many writers exclude it from the domain

of Mind, assign it to the material organism, and believe that it is

explicable on purely mechanical principles. This seems to me eminently

disputable; but the point is noticed in proof of the well-marked

objective character which the phenomenon assumes. In this aspect a

sensation is simply the reaction of a bodily organ. The physiologist

describes how a stimulus excites the organ, and declares its reaction

to be the sensation. Thus viewed, and expressed in terms of Matter

and Motion, there is absolutely nothing of that subjective quality

which characterizes sensation. Yet without this quality the objective

process cannot be a sensation. Exclude Feeling, and the excitation of

the auditory organ will no more yield the sensation of Sound by its

reaction, than the strings and sounding-board of a piano when the keys

are struck will yield music to a deaf spectator. Hence the natural

inference has been that inside the organism there is a _listener_: the

Soul is said to listen, transforming excitation into sensation. This

inference only needs a more systematic interpretation and it will

represent the biological theory, which demands something _more_ than

the reaction of the sensory organ--namely, the reaction of the whole

organism _through_ the sensory organ. I mean, that no organ isolated

from the organism is capable of a _physiological_ reaction--only

of a physico-chemical reaction; and sensation depends on (_is_)

the physiological reaction. When a sense-organ is stimulated, this

stimulation is a vital process, and is raised out of the class of

physico-chemical processes by virtue of its being the indissoluble

part of a complex whole. Interfere with any one of the co-operant

conditions--withdraw the circulation, check respiration, disturb

secretion--and the sense-organ sinks from the physiological to the

physical state; it may then be brought into contact with its normal

stimuli, but no stimulation (in the vital sense) will take place, there

will be no vital reaction.

Condensing all vital processes in the symbol Vitality, we may say

Vitality is requisite for every physiological process. A parallelism

may be noted on the subjective side: all the sentient processes may be

condensed in the one symbol Sensibility (Feeling), and we must then

say, No psychological process is possible as an isolated fact, but

demands the co-operation of others--it is a _resultant_ of all the

contemporaneous conditions of Sensibility in the organism. In ordinary

language this is what is meant by saying that no impression can become

a sensation without the intervention of Consciousness--an ambiguous

phrase, because of the ambiguity of the term Consciousness, but the

phrase expresses the fact that in Sensation a process in the organism

is necessary to the reaction of the organ.

32. Having recognized the distinction between the two processes

objective and subjective, physical and mental, we have recognized

the vanity of attempting to assign their limits, and to say where

Motion ends and Feeling begins, or how Feeling again changes into

Motion. The one does _not_ begin where the other ends. According to the

two-clock theory of Dualism, the two _agents_ move on parallel lines.

On the theory of Monism the two _aspects_ are throughout opposed. Both

theories explain the facts; which explanation is the most congruous

with experience? Against the first we may object that the hypothesis of

two Agents utterly unallied in nature wants the cardinal character of

a fertile hypothesis in its unverifiableness: it may be true, we can

never know that it is true. By the very terms of its definition, the

Spirit--if that mean _more_ than an abstract expression of sentient

states--is beyond all sensible experience. This is indeed admitted by

the dualists, for they postulate a Spirit merely because they cannot

otherwise explain the phenomena of Consciousness. Herein they fail to

see that even their postulate brings no explanation, it merely restates

the old problem in other terms.

33. Up to the present time these same objections might have been urged

with equal force against Monism. Indeed, although many philosophers

have rejected the two-clock theory of Leibnitz, they have gained a very

hesitating acceptance for their own hypothesis of identity. To most

minds the difficulty of imagining how a physical process could _also_

be a psychical process, a movement also be a feeling, seemed not less

than that of imagining how two such distinct Agents as Matter and Mind

could co-operate, and react on each other, or move simultaneously on

parallel lines. Although for many years I have accepted the hypothesis

of Monism, I have always recognized its want of an adequate reply to

such objections. Unless I greatly deceive myself, I have now found

a solution of the main difficulty; and found it in psychological

conditions which are perfectly intelligible. But knowing how easily one

may deceive one’s self in such matters, I will only ask the reader to

meditate with open-mindedness the considerations now to be laid before

him, and see if he can feel the same confidence in their validity.

34. One of the early stages in the development of Experience is the

separation of Self from the Not-Self. I look out on “the vast extern

of things,” and see a great variety of objects, included in a visible

hemisphere. All these objects in various positions, having various

forms and colors, I believe to be wholly detached from, and in every

way unallied to, Myself. And what is that Self? It is my Body as a

visible and tangible object, separated from all other visible and

tangible objects by the constant presence of feelings connected with

it and its movements, and not connected with the other objects. This

constant presence of feelings is referred to a Soul, which I then

separate from my Body, as an Inner Self; and from this time onwards I

speak of the Body as _mine_, and learn to regard it in much the same

light as other outer objects. In my naïve judgment the external objects

are supposed to exist _as_ I see and touch them, whether I or any one

else see and touch them or not: they in no sense belong to the series

of feelings which constitute the Me. And since my Body resembles these

objects in visible and tangible qualities, and also in being external

to my feelings, it also takes its place in the objective world. Thus

arises the hypothesis of Dualism which postulates a _Physis_, or

object-world, and an _Æsthesis_, or subject-world: two independent

existents, one contemplated, the other contemplating.

35. Philosophy, as we know, leads to a complete reversal of this

primitive conclusion, and shows that the _contemplated_ is a _synthesis

of contemplations_, the Physis being _also_ the Æsthesis. Psychological

investigation shows that the objects supposed to _have_ forms,

colors, and positions within an external hemisphere, have these

only in virtue of the very feelings from which they are supposed

to be separated. The _visible_ universe exists only _as seen_: the

objects are Reals conditioned by the laws of Sensibility. The space

in which we see them, their geometrical relations, the light and

shadows which reveal them, the forms they affect, the lines of their

changing directions, the qualities which distinguish them,--all these

are but the externally projected signs of feelings. They are signs

which we interpret according to organized laws of experience; each

sign being itself a feeling connected with other feelings. We project

them outside according to the “law of eccentric projection”--which is

only the expression of the fact that one feeling is a sign of some

other, and is thereby _ideally detached_ from it. According to this

law I say, “my Body”; just as I say, “my House”; or, “my Property.”

Misled by this, Dualism holds that in the very fact of detaching my

Body from my Self, calling it _mine_, is the revelation of a distinct

entity within the body. But that this is illusory, appears in the

application of this same law of eccentric projection to sensations

and thoughts, which are called _mine_, as my legs and arms are mine.

If it is undeniable that I say _my_ Body--and thus ideally detach the

Body from the Soul--it is equally undeniable that I say _my_ Soul; and

from what is the Soul detached? In presence of this difficulty, the

metaphysician may argue that neither Body nor Soul can be coextensive

with its manifestations, but demands a noumenal Real for each--a

_substratum_ for the bodily manifestations, and a _substratum_ for the

mental manifestations. This, however, is an evasion, not a solution of

the difficulty. If we postulate an unknown and unknowable noumenon,

we gain no insight: first, because Philosophy deals only with the

known functions of unknown quantities, and therefore leaves the _x_

out of the calculation; secondly, because, granting the existence of

these noumena, we can have no rational grounds for asserting that they

are not of one and the same nature; for we have no grounds for _any_

assertion whatever about them. And if it be urged against this, that

Consciousness testifies to a distinction, I answer that on a closer

scrutiny it will be found to testify to nothing more than a diversity

of manifestation. All therefore that comes within the range of

knowledge is, How does this diversity arise?

36. There are two ways, and there are only two, in which differences

arise. These are, 1°, the _modes of production_ of a product, and,

2°, our _modes of apprehension_ of the product. Things may be very

different, and yet to our apprehension indistinguishable, so that

we regard them as identical; and they may be identical, yet appear

utterly unlike. A mechanical bird may seem so like a living bird, and

their actions so indistinguishable to the spectator, that he will not

suspect a difference, or suspecting it, will not be able to specify

it. Of both objects, so long as his modes of apprehending them are

circumscribed, he can only say what these imply: he sees familiar

forms, colors, and movements, which he interprets according to the

previous experiences of which these are the signs. But by varying the

modes of apprehension, and gaining thus a fuller knowledge, he finds

that the two products have very different modes of production; hence he

concludes the products to be different: the mechanism of the one is not

the organism of the other; the actions of the mechanical bird are not

the actions of the living bird. The fuller knowledge has been gained

by viewing the objects under different relations, and contemplating

them _in_ their modes of production, not as merely visible products. He

sees the mechanism performing by steel springs, wheels, and wires, the

work which the organism performs by bones, muscles, and nerves; and the

farther his analysis of the modes of production is carried, the greater

are the differences which he apprehends.

37. Now consider the other side. One and the same object will

necessarily present very different aspects under different subjective

conditions, since it is _these_ which determine the aspect. The object

cannot be to Sight what it is to Hearing, to Touch what it is to

Smell. The vibrations of a tuning-fork are seen as movements, heard

as sounds. In current language the vibrations are said to cause the

sounds. Misled by this, philosophers puzzle themselves as to how a

material process (vibration) can be transformed into a mental process

(sensation), how such a cause can have so utterly different an effect.

But I have formerly[209] argued at some length that there is no

transformation or causation of the kind supposed. The tuning-fork--or

that Real which in relation to Sense is the particular object thus

named--will, by one of its modes of acting on my Sensibility through

my optical apparatus, determine the response known as _vibrations_;

but it is not this response of the optical organ which is transformed

into, or causes the response of the auditory organ, known as _sound_.

The auditory organ knows nothing of vibrations, the optical nothing of

sounds. The responses are both modes of Feeling determined by organic

conditions, and represent the two different relations in which the

Real is apprehended. The Real _is_ alternately the one and the other.

And if the one mode of Feeling has a physical significance, while the

other has a mental significance, so that we regard the vibrations as

objective facts, belonging to the external world, and the sounds as

subjective facts, exclusively belonging to the internal world, this is

due to certain psychological influences presently to be expounded.

Meanwhile let us fix clearly in our minds that both vibrations and

sounds are modes of Feeling. My consciousness plainly assures me

that it is I who see the one, and hear the other; not that there are

two distinct subjects for the two distinct feelings. Add to which,

manifold uncontradicted experiences assure me that the occasional

cause--the objective factor--of the one feeling, is also the cause of

the other, and not that the two feelings have two different occasional

causes. From both of these undeniable facts we must conclude that the

difference felt is simply a difference of aspect, determined by some

difference in the modes of apprehension.

38. Assuming then that a mental process is only another aspect

of a physical process--and this we shall find the more probable

hypothesis--we have to explain by what influences these diametrically

opposite aspects are determined. From all that has just been said we

must seek these in the modes of apprehension. There can be no doubt

that we express the fact in very different terms; the question is,

What do these terms _signify_? Why do we express one aspect in terms

of Matter and Motion, assigning the process to the objective world;

and the other aspect in terms of Feeling, assigning the process to the

subjective world?

Let the example chosen be a logical process as the mental aspect,

and a neural process as its physical correlate. The particular

proposition may be viewed logically, as a grouping of experiences,

or physiologically, as a grouping of neural tremors. Here we have

the twofold aspect of one and the same reality; and these different

aspects are expressed in different terms. We cannot be too rigorous

in our separation of the terms; for every attentive student must have

noted how frequently discussions are made turbid by the unconscious

_shifting of terms_ in the course of the argumentation. This is not

only the mistake of opponents who are unaware of the shifting which has

occurred in each other’s minds, so that practically the adversaries

do not meet on common ground, but cross and recross each other; it is

also the mistake of the solitary thinker losing himself in the maze

of interlacing conceptions instead of keeping steadily to one path.

Only by such shifting of terms can the notion of the physical process

causing, or being transformed into, the mental process for a moment

gain credit; and this also greatly sustains the hypothesis of Dualism,

with its formidable objections: How can Matter think? How can Mind act

on Matter causing Motion?

39. Those who recognized that the terms Matter and Mind were

abstractions mutually exclusive, saw at once that these questions,

instead of being formidable, were in truth irrational. To ask if

Matter could think, or Mind move Matter, was a confusion of symbols

equivalent to speaking of a yard of Hope, and a ton of Terror. Although

Measure and Weight are symbols of Feeling, and in _this_ respect are

on a par with Hope and Terror, yet because they are objective symbols

they cannot be applied to subjective states, without violation of the

very significance they were invented to express. No one ever asks

whether a sensation of Sound can be a sensation of Color; nor whether

Color can move a machine, although Heat can, yet the one is no less a

sensation than the other. On similar grounds no one should ask whether

Matter can think, or Mind move Matter. The only rational question is

one preserving the integrity of the terms, namely, whether the living,

thinking organism presents itself to apprehension under the twofold

aspect--now under the modes of Feeling classified as objective or

physical; now under the modes classified as subjective or mental.

40. We are told that it is “impossible to imagine Matter thinking,”

which is very true; only by a gross _confusion_ of terms can Thought

be called a property of cerebral tissue, or of Matter at all. We

may, indeed, penetrate beneath the terms which relate to aspects,

and recognize in the underlying reality not two existences, but one.

Our conceptions of this reality, however, are expressed in symbols

representing different classes of feelings, objective and subjective;

and to employ the terms of one class to designate the conceptions of

the other is to frustrate the very purposes of language. Matter and

Mind, Object and Subject, are abstractions from sentient experiences.

We know them as abstractions, and know the concrete experiences from

which they are abstracted. Philosophers, indeed, repeatedly assure us

that we neither know what Matter is nor what Mind is, we only know the

_phenomenal products_ of the action and reaction of these two unknown

noumena. Were this so, all discussion would be idle; we could not say

whether Matter was or was not capable of thinking, whether Mind was or

was not the same as Matter, we could only abstain from saying anything

whatever on the topic. What should we reply to one who asked us to

name the product of two unknown quantities? So long as _x_ and _y_ are

without values their product must be without value. If the value of

_x_ be known, and that of _y_ unknown, then the product still remains

unknown: _x_ + _y_ = _x_ + 0 = _x_. Therefore, unless the Objective

aspect were the _equivalent_ of the Subjective aspect, it could never

be subjectively present. Feeling is but another aspect of the Felt.

41. It is because we do know what Matter is, that we know it is

_not_ Mind: they are symbols of two different modes of Feeling. If

we separate the conception of citizenship from the conception of

fatherhood, although the same man is both citizen and father, how much

more decisively must we separate the conception of Matter, which

represents one group of feelings, from the conception of Mind, which

represents another? One element in the former is common to the whole

group, namely, the reference to a Not-Self, induced by the sensation of

Resistance, which always ideally or sensibly accompanies the material

class. The axiom, I feel, _ergo_ I exist, has its correlative:--I act,

_ergo_ there are other existents on which I act; and these are not

wholly Me, for they resist, oppose, exclude me; yet they are also one

with Me, since they are felt by me. In my Feeling, that which is not Me

is Matter, the objective aspect of the Felt, as Mind is the subjective

aspect.

But since Hunger and Thirst, Joy and Grief, Pain and Terror, are also

_felt_, yet are never classed under the head of Matter, the grounds of

the classification of feelings have to be expressed. Professor Bain

makes the distinction between Matter and Mind to rest solely on the

presence or absence of Extension: this is the decisive mark: Matter

he defines as the Extended. The definition is inadequate. When I see

a dog and its image reflected in a pool, or see a dog and think of

another, in the three cases dog, image, and idea have Extension; but

I recognize the dog as a material fact, the idea as a mental fact;

and although the image of the dog has material conditions by which

I am optically affected, just as the idea has material cerebral

conditions, I recognize a marked difference between them and the dog,

due to the different modes of apprehension. The dog is known as a

persistent reality, which, when Sight is supplemented by Touch, will

yield sensations of Resistance, and thus disclose its materiality. The

image vanishes if I attempt to touch it; I see its outlines waver and

become confused with every disturbance of the surface of the pool;

the idea vanishes when another idea arises; whence I conclude that

neither has material reality, because neither has the Resistance which

characterizes the Not-Self. The image and the idea may be referred to

material conditions, but so may pains, terrors, volitions, yet these

are all without Extension, simply because they are not visual feelings.

42. Matter does not represent all feelings, but only the objective

sensibles; and these are not all characterized by Extension, but only

those which directly or indirectly involve optico-tactical experiences

accompanied by muscular experiences. Matter is primarily the Visible

and Resistant; and secondarily, whatever can be imagined as such;

so that ether, molecules, and atoms, although neither visible nor

tangible, are ranged under the head of Matter. Color is a feeling as

Sound and Scent are feelings, and although material conditions are

equally presupposed in all three, yet Color alone has Extension, and

because it can be imaged it has a more objective character than the

others, which having no lines and surfaces, want the optical conditions

for the formation of images, and are less definitely connected with

tactical and muscular experiences. Nevertheless, since Sound and Scent

are obviously associated with objects seen and touched, they have a

degree of materiality never assigned to such feelings as Hunger and

Thirst, Pleasure, Terror, and Hope.

43. When we refer feelings to material conditions, we follow the

natural tendency to translate the little known in terms of the better

known, and employ the symbols Matter and Motion, because these furnish

the intellect with images, i. e. definite and exact elements to operate

with. In hearing a sound, there is nothing at all like “vibrations,”

nothing like “aerial waves” and “neural processes,” given in that

feeling; but on attempting to _explain_ it, we remove it from the

sphere of Sensation to carry it into the sphere of Intellect, and

we must change our symbols in changing our problem; here our only

resource is to translate the subjective state into an _imaginable_

objective process, which can only be expressed in terms of Matter

and Motion. What we _heard_ as Sound is then _seen_ as Vibration.

When we are optically or mentally contemplating vibrations and neural

processes, we are supplanting one source of feeling by another,

translating an event in another set of symbols. But we can no more hear

the sound in seeing the vibrations, than a blind man can see the fly

in the amber which he feels with his fingers, or than we can feel the

amber he holds, while we are only looking at it. The phrase “material

conditions of Feeling” sometimes designates the objective aspect of the

subjective process, and sometimes the agencies in the external medium

which co-operate with the organism in the production of the feelings.

In each case there is an attempt to explain a feeling by intelligible

symbols.

44. The Animal probably never attempts such explanation; satisfied with

the facts, it is careless of their factors. Man is never satisfied:

is restless in the search after factors; and having found them, seeks

factors of these factors; so that Lichtenberg felicitously calls him

“_das rastlose Ursachenthier_”--“the animal untiring in the search

for causes.” And thus sciences arise: we translate experiences into

geometrical, physical, chemical, physiological, and psychological

terms--different symbols of the different modes of apprehending

phenomena.

45. “I see an elephant.” In other words, I am affected in a certain

way, and interpret my affection by previous similar experiences,

expressing these in verbal symbols. But I want an explanation, and

this the philosopher vouchsafes to me by translating my affection into

his terms. He takes me into another sphere--tells me of an undulating

Ether, the waves of which beat upon my retina--of lines of Light

refracted by media and converged by lenses according to geometric

laws--of the formation thereby of a tiny image of the gigantic elephant

on my retina as on the plate of a camera-obscura--this, and much

more, is what _he_ sees in _my_ visual feeling, and he bids me see it

also. Grateful for the novel instruction, I am compelled to say that

it does not alter my vision of the elephant, does not make the fact

a whit clearer, does not indeed correspond with what I feel. It is

outside knowledge, valuable, as all knowledge is, but supplementary.

It is translation into another language. And when I come to examine

the translation, I find it very imperfect. I ask my instructor: Is

it the tiny image on my retina which I see, and not the big elephant

on the grass? And how do I see this retinal image, which you explain

to be upside down?--how is it carried from my retina to my mind? I

have no consciousness of tiny reversed image, none of my retina,

only of a fact of feeling, which I call “seeing an elephant.” The

camera-obscura has no such feeling--it reflects the image, it does

not see the object. Here my instructor, having reached the limit

of his science,[210] hands me over to the physiologist, who will

translate the fact for me in terms not of Geometry, but of Anatomy

and Physiology. The laws of Dioptrics cease at this point: the image

they help to form on the retina is ruthlessly dispersed, and all its

beautiful geometric construction is lost in a neural excitation, which

is transmitted through semifluid channels of an optic tract to a

semifluid ganglion, whence a thrill is shot through the whole brain,

and is there _transformed_ into a visual sensation. Again I fancy I

have gained novel instruction of a valuable kind; but it does not

affect my original experience that I am enabled to translate it into

different terms; the less so because I cannot help the conviction that

the translation is imperfect, leaving out the essential points. If a

phrase be translated for me into French or German, I gain thereby an

addition to my linguistic knowledge, but the experience thus variously

expressed remains unaffected. When the fact is expressed in geometrical

or physiological terms, the _psychical process_ finds no adequate

expression. Neither in the details, nor in the totals, do I recognize

any of the qualities of my state of feeling in seeing the elephant.

I do not see the geometrical process, I do not see the anatomical

mechanism, I see the elephant, and am conscious only of that feeling.

You may consider my organism geometrically or anatomically, and bring

it thus within the circle of objective knowledge; but my subjective

experience, my spiritual existence, that of which I am most deeply

assured, demands another expression. Nay more, on closely scrutinizing

your objective explanations, it is evident that a psychical process

is _implied_ throughout--such terms as undulations, refractions,

media, lenses, retina, neural excitation, overtly refer, indeed, to

the material objective aspect of the facts, but they are themselves

the modes of Feeling by which the facts are apprehended, and would not

exist _as such_ without the “greeting of the spirit.”

46. What, then, is our conclusion? It is, that to make an adequate

explanation of psychical processes by material conditions we must first

establish an equivalence between the subjective and objective aspects;

and, having taken this step, we must complete it by showing wherein the

difference exists; having established this entity and diversity, we

have solved the problem.

Let us attempt this solution. When I speak to you, the spoken words

are the same to you and to me. You hear what I hear, you apprehend

what I apprehend. But there were muscular movements of articulation

felt by me and not felt by you; to feel these you also must articulate

the words; but so long as you merely hear the words, there is a

difference in our states of feeling. Some of my movements you can see,

others you can imagine; but this is not my feeling of them, it is your

optical equivalent of my muscular feeling. On a similar assumption of

equivalence, a neural process is made to stand for a logical process.

In thinking a proposition, we are logically grouping verbal symbols

representative of sensible experiences; and this is a quite peculiar

state of Consciousness, wholly unlike what would arise in the mental or

visual contemplation of the neural grouping, which is its physiological

equivalent. But this diversity does not discredit the idea of their

identity; and although some of my readers will protest against such an

idea, and will affirm that the logical process is not a process taking

place in the organism at all, but in a spirit which uses the organism

as its instrument, I must be allowed in this exposition to consider

the identity established, my purpose being to explain the diversity

necessarily accompanying it. Therefore, I say, that although a logical

process is identical with a neural process, it must appear differently

when the modes of apprehending it are different. While you are thinking

a logical proposition, grouping your verbal symbols, I, who mentally

_see_ the process, am grouping a totally different set of symbols: to

you the proposition is a subjective state, i. e. a _state_ of feeling,

not an _object_ of feeling: to become an object, it must be apprehended

by objective modes: and this it can become to you as to me, when we see

it as a process, or imagine it as a process. But obviously your state

in seeing or imagining the process must be different from your state

when the process itself is passing, since the modes of apprehension

are so different. There may be every ground for concluding that a

logical process has its correlative physical process, and that the two

processes are merely two aspects of one event; but because we cannot

apprehend the one aspect as we apprehend the other, cannot _see_ the

logical sequence as we _see_ the physical sequence, this difference in

our modes of apprehension compels us to separate the two, assigning

one to the subjective, the other to the objective class. Between the

sensible perception of an object and the reproduced image of the object

there is chiefly a quantitative difference in the physiological and

psychological processes: the image is a faint sensation. Yet this

quantitative difference brings with it the qualitative distinction

which is indicated in our calling the one a sensation, the other a

thought. The consequence has been that while all philosophers have

admitted the sensation to be--at least partly--a process in the bodily

organism, the majority have maintained that the thought is no such

process in the organism, but has its seat in a spirit independent of

the organism.

47. The states of Feeling which are associated with other states

characterized as objective because overtly referring to a Not-Self, we

group under the head of Matter: we assign material conditions as their

antecedents. Whereas states of Feeling which are not thus associated we

group under the head of Mind, and assign internal conditions as their

antecedents. Color and Taste are very different states of Feeling, yet

both are spontaneously referred to external causes, because they are

associated with visual and tactical states; whereas Hunger, Nausea,

Hope, etc., have no such associations, and their material conditions

are only theoretically assigned.

Our intelligible universe is constructed out of the elements of Feeling

according to certain classifications, the broadest of which is that

into external and internal, object and subject. The abstractions Matter

and Mind once formed and fixed in representative symbols, are easily

accredited as two different Reels. But the separation is ideal, and

is really a distinction of Aspects. We know ourselves as Body-Mind;

we do not know ourselves as Body _and_ Mind, if by that be meant two

coexistent independent Existents; and the illusion by which the two

Aspects appear as two Reals may be made intelligible by the analysis

of any ordinary proposition. For example, when we say “this fruit

is sweet,” we express facts of Feeling--actual or anticipated--in

abstract terms. The concrete facts are these: a colored feeling, a

solid feeling, a sweet feeling, etc., have been associated together,

and the colored, solid, sweet group is symbolized in the abstract

term “fruit” But the color, solidity, and sweetness are also abstract

terms, representing feelings associated in other groups, so that we

find “fruit” which has no “sweetness”; and “sweetness” in other things

besides “fruits.” Having thus separated ideally the “sweetness” from

the “fruit”--which in the concrete sweet-fruit is not permissible--we

easily come to imagine a real distinction. This is the case with the

concrete living organism when we cease to consider it in its concrete

reality, and fix our attention on its abstract terms--Body and Mind. We

then think of Body apart from Mind, and believe in them as two Reals,

though neither exists apart.

There is no state of consciousness in which object and subject are

not indissolubly combined. There is no physical process which is

not indissolubly bound up with the psychical modes of apprehending

it. Every idea is either an image or a symbol--it has therefore

objective reference, a material aspect. Every object is a synthesis

of feelings--it has therefore subjective reference, a material

aspect. Thus while all the evidence points to the identity of Object

and Subject, there is ample evidence for the logical necessity of

their ideal separation as Aspects. This I have explained as a case

of the general principle which determines all distinctions--namely,

the diversity in the modes of production of the products,

which--subjectively--is diversity in the modes of apprehending them.

The optico-tactical experiences are markedly different from the other

experiences, as being more directly referred to the Not-Self which

resists; and because these lend themselves to ideal constructions by

means of images and symbols, it is these experiences into which we

translate all the others when we come to explain them and assign their

conditions. For--and this is the central position of our argument--all

interpretation consists in translating one set of feelings in the terms

of another set. We condense sets of feelings in abstract symbols; to

_understand_ these we must reduce them to their concrete significates.

They are signs; we must show what they are signs of.

Now the symbols Object and Subject are the most abstract we can employ.

Because they are universal, they represent what cannot in reality be

divorced. We can, indeed, ideally separate ourselves from the Cosmos;

in the same way we can ideally separate our inner Self or Soul from our

outer Self or Body; and again our Soul from its sentient states, our

Body from its physical changes. But not so in reality. The separation

is a logical artifice, and a logical necessity for Science.

The necessity will be obvious to any one who reflects how the ideal

constructions of Science demand precision and integrity of terms. The

problem of Automatism brings this very clearly into view. The question

is, Can we translate all psychological phenomena in mechanical terms?

If we _can_, we ought; because these terms have the immense advantage

of being _exact_, dealing as they do with quantitative relations. But

my belief is that we cannot--nay, that we cannot even translate them

all into physiological terms. The distinction between quantitative and

qualitative knowledge (p. 354) is a barrier against the mechanical

interpretation. Physiology is a classificatory science, not a science

of measurement. Nor can the laws of Mind be deduced from physiological

processes, unless supplemented by and interpreted by psychical

conditions individual and social.

CHAPTER IV.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND UNCONSCIOUSNESS.[211]

48. Science demands precision of terms; and in this sense Condillac

was justified in defining it, “_une langue bien faite_.” The sciences

of Measurement are exact because of the precision of their terms, and

are powerful because of their exactness. The sciences of Classification

cannot aspire to this precision, and therefore, although capable of

attaining to a fuller knowledge of phenomena than can be reached

by their rivals, this advantage of a wider range is accompanied by

the disadvantage of a less perfect exposition of results. While

physicists and chemists have only to settle the significance of the

facts observed, biologists and social theorists have over and above

this to settle the significance of the terms they employ in expressing

the facts observed. Hence more than half their disputes are at bottom

verbal.

This is markedly the case in the question of Automatism. One man

declares that animals are automata; another that they are conscious

automata; and while it is quite possible to hold these views and not

practically be in disagreement with the views of ordinary men, or

indeed with the views of spiritualist and materialist philosophers,

we can never be sure that the advocates of Automatism do not mean

what they are generally understood to mean. If a man says that by an

automaton he does not here mean a machine, such as a steam-engine or

a watch, but a vital mechanism which has its parts so adjusted that

its actions resemble those of a machine; and if he adds that this

automaton is also conscious of some of its actions, though unconscious

of others, we can only object to his using terms which have misleading

connotations. If he mean by “conscious automata,” that animals are

mechanisms moved on “purely mechanical principles,” their consciousness

having nothing whatever to do with the production of their actions,

then indeed our objection is not only to his use of terms, but to his

interpretation of the facts.

49. The questions of fact are two: Are animal mechanisms rightfully

classed beside machines? and, Is consciousness a coefficient in the

actions of animal mechanism? The first has already been answered; the

second demands a preliminary settlement of the terms “conscious,”

“unconscious,” “voluntary,” and “involuntary.” The aim of Physiology

is to ascertain the particular combinations of the elementary parts

involved in each particular function--in a word, the mechanism of

organic phenomena; and the modern Reflex Theory is an attempt to

explain this mechanism on purely mechanical principles, without the

co-operation of other principles, especially those of Sensation and

Volition. It is greatly aided by the ambiguity of current terms. We are

accustomed to speak of certain actions as being performed unconsciously

or involuntarily. We are also accustomed to say that Consciousness

is necessary to transform an impression into a sensation, and that

Volition is the equivalent of conscious effort. When, therefore,

unconscious and involuntary actions are recorded, they seem to be

actions of an insentient mechanism. The Reflex Theory once admitted, a

rigorous logic could not fail to extend it to all animal actions.

50. I reject the Reflex Theory, on grounds hereafter to be urged,

but at present call attention to the great ambiguity in the terms

“conscious” and “unconscious.” In one sense no definition of

Consciousness can be satisfactory, since it designates an ultimate

fact, which cannot therefore be made more intelligible than it is

already. In another sense no definition is needed, since every one

knows what is meant by saying, “I am conscious of such a change,

or such a movement.” It is here the equivalent of Feeling. To be

conscious of a change, is to feel a change. If we desire to express

it in physiological terms, we must define Consciousness--“a function

of the organism”; and this definition we shall find eminently useful,

because the organism being a vital mechanism, and the integrity of that

mechanism being necessary for the integrity of the function, while

every variation of the mechanism will bring a corresponding variation

of the function, we shall have an objective guide and standard in

our inquiries. Organisms greatly differ in complexity, yet because

they also agree in the cardinal conditions of Vitality, among which

Sensibility is one, we conclude that they all have Feeling; but the

Feeling of the one will differ from that of another, according to the

complexity of the sentient mechanism in each. The perfection of this

mechanism lies in the co-ordination of its parts, and the consensus of

its sentient activities; any disturbance of that consensus must cause

a modification in the total consciousness; and when the disturbance

is profound the modification is marked by such terms as “insanity,”

“loss of consciousness,” “insensibility.” These terms do not imply

that the sentient organs have lost their Sensibility, but only that

the disturbed mechanism has no longer its normal consensus, no longer

its normal state of Consciousness. Each organ is active in its own

way so long as its own mechanism is preserved; but the united action

of the organs having been disturbed, their _resultant_ function has

been altered. Hence in a fit of Epilepsy there is a complete absence

of some normal reactions, with exaggeration of others. In a state of

Coma there is no spontaneity--none of the manifold adaptations of the

organism to fluctuating excitations, external and internal, observable

in the normal state. The organism still manifests Sensibility--but

this is so unlike the manifestations when its mechanism is

undisturbed (and necessarily so since the Sensibility varies with

the mechanism) that it is no longer called by the same name. In the

normal organism Sensibility means Feeling, or Consciousness; but in

the abnormal organism there is said to be a “loss of Consciousness.”

What the physiologist or the physician means by the phrase “loss of

Consciousness” is intelligible, and for his purposes unobjectionable.

He observes many organic processes going on undisturbed--the

unconscious patient breathes, secretes, moves his limbs, etc. These

processes are referred to the parts of the mechanism which are not

disturbed; they are obviously independent of that adjustment of the

mechanism which by its _consensus_ has the special resultant named

Consciousness; he therefore concludes that these, and many other

organic processes, which are neither accompanied nor followed by

_discriminated_ feelings, are the direct consequences of the stimulated

mechanism. He never hesitates to adopt the popular language, and say,

“We sometimes act unconsciously, perceive unconsciously, and even think

unconsciously, all by the simple reflex of the mechanism.”

Now observe the opening for error in this language. The actions are

said to go on unconsciously, and, because unconsciously, as pure

reflexes, which are then assigned to an insentient mechanism, and

likened to the actions of machines. But, as I hope hereafter to make

evident, the reflex mechanism necessarily involves Sensibility; and

therefore reflex actions may be unaccompanied by Consciousness--in

one meaning of that term--without ceasing to be sentient, the feelings

are operative, although not discriminated. On the other hand, there is

another and very general meaning of the term Consciousness, which is

the equivalent of Sentience.

51. In discussing Automatism, or the Reflex Theory, it is absolutely

necessary that we should first settle the meaning we assign to the

term Consciousness. The laxity with which the term is used may be seen

in the enumeration occupying six pages of Professor Bain’s account of

the various meanings. Psychology is often said to be “the science of

the facts of Consciousness”; and the Brain is often assigned as “the

organ of Consciousness.” Yet there are many mental processes, and many

cerebral processes, which are declared to be unconscious. Obviously if

Consciousness is the function of the Brain, there can be no cerebral

activity which is unconscious; just as there can be no activity of the

lungs which is not respiratory. Usage therefore points to a general

and a special sense of the term. The general usage identifies it

with Sensibility, in its subjective aspect as Sentience, including

all psychical states, both those classed under Sensation, and those

under Thought. These states are the “facts of consciousness” with

which Psychology is occupied. In the special usage it is distinguished

from all other psychical states by a peculiar reflected feeling of

Attention, whereby we not only _have_ a sensation, but also _feel_ that

we have it; we not only think, but are conscious that we are thinking;

not only act, but are conscious of what we do. It is this which Kant

indicates when he defines it “the subjective form accompanying all our

conceptions (_Begriffe_)”; and Jessen when he defines it “the internal

knowing of our knowing, an in itself reflected knowing.”[212]

52. We shall often have to recur to this general and this special

meaning, both of which are too firmly rooted for any successful attempt

to displace them. The fact that some organic processes and some

mental processes take place now consciously and now unconsciously,

i. e. now with the feeling of reflected attention, and now with no

such feeling, assuredly demands a corresponding expression; nor, in

spite of inevitable ambiguities, is there ground for regretting that

the expression chosen should be only an extension of the expression

already adopted for all other states of Sentience. A sentient or

conscious state can only be a state of the sentient organism, itself

the unity of many organs, each having its Sensibility. There is

more or less consensus, but there is no introduction of a new agent

within the organism, converting what was physical impression into

mental reaction. From first to last there has been nothing but

neural processes, and combinations of such processes--which, viewed

subjectively, are sentient processes. Thus the gradations of sensitive

reaction are Sentience, Consentience, and Consciousness, which are

represented in the Logic of Feeling and the Logic of Signs. The

familiar term Conscience will then represent the Logic of Conduct.

Thus understood, we may say that a man sometimes acts unconsciously,

or thinks unconsciously, although his action and thought are ruled

by Consentience, as he sometimes acts and thinks unconscientiously,

although he is not without obedience to Conscience on other occasions.

The feeling which determines an action is _operative_, although it

may not be _discriminated_ from simultaneous feelings. When this

is the case, we say the feeling is unconscious; but this no more

means that it is a purely physical process taking place outside the

sphere of Sentience, than the immoral conduct of a man would be said

to be mechanical, and not the conduct of a moral agent. There is

undoubtedly a marked distinction expressed in the terms Consciousness

and Unconsciousness, but it is not that of contrasts such as Mental

and Physical, it is that of grades such as Light and Darkness. Just

as Darkness is a positive optical sensation very different from mere

privation--just as it replaces the sensation of Light, blends with

it, struggles with it, and in all respects differs from the _absence_

of all optical sensibility in the skin; so Unconsciousness struggles

with, blends with, and replaces Consciousness in the organism, and is

a positive state of the sentient organism, not to be confounded with a

mere negation of Sentience; above all, not to be relegated to merely

mechanical processes.

52 _a_. Remember that, strictly speaking, Consciousness is a

psychological not a physiological term, and is only used in Physiology

on the assumption that it is the subjective _equivalent_ of an

objective process. To avoid the equivoque of “unconscious sensation,”

we may substitute the term “unconscious neural process”; and as all

neural processes imply Sensibility, which in the subjective aspect is

Sentience, we say that Sentience has various modes and degrees--such

as Perception, Ideation, Emotion, Volition, which may be conscious,

sub-conscious, or unconscious. When Leibnitz referred to the fact of

“obscure ideas,” and modern writers expressed this fact as “unconscious

cerebration,” the first phrase did not imply a process that was other

than mental, the second phrase did not imply a process that was other

than physiological: both indicated a mode of the process known as

Consciousness under other modes. There are different neural elements

grouped in Ideation and Emotion; there are different neural elements

grouped in Consciousness, Sub-consciousness, and Unconsciousness; but

one tissue with one property is active in all.

53. The nervous organism is affected as a whole by every affection

of its constituent parts. Every excitation, instead of terminating

with itself--as is the case in most physical processes--or with the

motor impulse it excites, is propagated throughout the continuous

tissue, and thus sends a _thrill_ throughout the organism. The wave

of excitation in passing onwards beats against variously grouped

elements--temporary and permanent centres--disturbing their balance

more or less, and liberating the energy of some, increasing the tension

of others, necessarily affecting all. Those groups which have their

energy liberated set up processes that are either _discriminated_

as sensations, or are blended with the general stream, according

to their _relative_ energy in the consensus. Thus the impulse on

reaching the centres for the heart, lungs, legs, and tail excites

the innervation of these organs; but as these are only parts of the

organism, and as all the parts enter the consensus, and Consciousness

is the varying resultant of this ever-varying consensus, the

thrill which any particular stimulus excites will be unconscious,

sub-conscious, or conscious, in proportion to the extent of the

_irradiated_ disturbance, which will depend on the statical conditions

of the centres at the moment. A sound sends a thrill which excites

emotion, causes the heart to beat faster, the muscles to quiver, the

skin-glands to pour forth their secretion; yet this same sound heard

by another man, or the same man under other conditions, physical or

historical, merely sends a faint thrill, just vivid enough to detach

itself as a sensation from the other simultaneous excitations; and

the same sound may excite a thrill which is so faint and fugitive as

to pass unconsciously. Physiological and psychological inductions

assure us that these are only differences of degree. The same kind

of physiological effect accompanies the conscious and unconscious

state. Every sensory impression, no matter whether discriminated or

not, affects the circulation and develops heat. The blood-vessels of

the part impressed expand, vessels elsewhere contract--a change in

the blood pressure has been effected, which of course implies that

the whole organism has been affected. Delicate instruments show that

at the time a sensation is produced the temperature of the brain is

raised. The same is true of ideation. Mosso has invented a method of

registering the effect of thought on the circulation. He finds ideation

accompanied by a contraction of the peripheral vessels proportionate

to the degree of intellectual effort. A young man translating Greek

showed greater contraction than when he was translating Latin. During

sound sleep--when we are said to be unconscious--sudden noises

always cause contraction of the peripheral vessels. Psychological

observation assures us that the conscious and unconscious states

were both consentient, and were both operative in the same degree.

The absorbed thinker threads his way through crowded streets, and is

sub-conscious and unconscious of the various sights, sounds, touches,

and muscular movements which make up so large a portion of his sentient

excitation at the time; yet he deftly avoids obstacles, hears the

sound of a hurried step behind him, recognizes an interesting object

directly it presents itself, and can even recall in Memory many of the

uninteresting objects which he passed in sub-conscious and unconscious

indifference.

54. On all grounds, therefore, we must say that between conscious,

sub-conscious, and unconscious states the difference is only of

degree of complication in the neural processes, which by relative

preponderance in the consensus determine a relative discrimination. We

can only discriminate one thrill at a time; but the neural excitations

simultaneously pressing towards a discharge are many; and the

conditions which determine now this, and now the other excitation to

predominate by its differential pressure, are far beyond any mechanical

estimate. I mention this because the advocates of the Reflex Theory

maintain that the neural processes are the same whether a sensation be

produced or not; and that since the same actions follow the external

stimulation whether sensation be produced or not, this proves the

actions to be purely mechanical. I reply, the neural processes are

_not_ the same throughout in the two cases--otherwise the effects would

be the same. You might as well say, “Since the explosion of the gun

is the same, whether shotted or not, a blank cartridge will kill”;

but if you tell me that your gun killed the bird, I declare that the

cartridge was _not_ a blank one. Whether the explosion of the gun

_also_ produced terror in one bystander, curiosity in a second, and

attracted no notice from a third, will be altogether another matter.

In like manner the sensory impression which determines a movement may

or may not be accompanied or followed by _other_ sentient states; the

fact of such movement is evidence of its sentient antecedent; and an

external stimulus that will produce _this_ neural process, and this

consequent movement, must produce a feeling, although not necessarily a

discriminated sensation. Now since, for discrimination, _other_ neural

processes must co-operate, we cannot say that in the two cases _all_

the neural processes have been the same throughout; nor because of this

difference can we say that the process of the undiscriminated sensation

is a mechanical, not a sentient process. In the next problem this point

will be argued more fully.

55. The need of recognizing Consciousness and Consentience as degrees

of energy and complexity in sentient states is apparent when we

consider animal phenomena. Has a bee consciousness? Has a snail

volition? or are they both insentient mechanisms? All inductions

warrant the assertion that a bee has thrills propagated throughout its

organism by the agency of its nerves; and that some of these thrills

are of the kind called sensations--even discriminated sensations.

Nevertheless we may reasonably doubt whether the bee has sentient

states resembling otherwise than remotely the sensations, emotions,

and thoughts which constitute human Consciousness, either in the

general or the special sense of that term. The bee feels and reacts on

feelings; but its feelings cannot closely resemble our own, because

the conditions in the two cases are different. The bee may even be

said to think (in so far as Thought means logical combination of

feelings), for it appears to form Judgments in the sphere of the Logic

of Feeling--το νοητικὸν; although incapable of the Logic of Signs--το

διανοητικον. We should therefore say the bee has Consentience, but

not Consciousness--unless we accept Consciousness in its _general_

signification as the equivalent of Sentience. The organism of the bee

differs from that of a man, as a mud hut from a marble palace. But

since underlying these differences there are fundamental resemblances,

the functions of the two will be fundamentally alike. Both have the

function of Sentience; as mud hut and palace have both the office of

sheltering.

56. The question of Volition will occupy us in the next chapter.

Restricting ourselves here to that of Consciousness, and recalling

the distinction of the two meanings of the term, we now approach

the question of Unconsciousness. Are we to understand this term as

designating a purely physical state in contrast to the purely mental

state of Consciousness; or only as designating a difference of degree?

This is like asking whether Light and Darkness are both optical

feelings, or one an optical feeling and the other a physical process?

On the Reflex Theory, no sooner does a vital and mental process pass

from the daylight of Consciousness, or twilight of Sub-consciousness,

into the darkness of Unconsciousness, than the whole order of phenomena

is abruptly changed, they cease to be vital, mental, and lapse into

physical, mechanical processes. The grounds of this conclusion are,

first, the unpsychological assumption that the unconscious state is

out of the sphere of Sentience; and secondly, the unphysiological

assumption that the Brain is the only portion of the nervous system

which has the property of Sensibility. Restate the conclusion in

different terms and its fallacy emerges: “organic processes suddenly

cease to be organic, and become purely physical by a slight change

in their _relative_ position in the consensus; the organic process

which was a conscious sensation a moment ago, when its energy was not

balanced by some other process, suddenly falls from its place in the

group of organic phenomena--sentient phenomena--to sink into the group

of inorganic phenomena now that its energy is balanced.” Consider the

parallel case of Motion and Rest in the objective sphere. They are two

functions of the co-operant forces, one dynamic, the other static;

although markedly distinguishable as functions, we know that they are

simply the co-operant forces now unbalanced and now balanced; what

we call Rest is also a product of moving forces, each of which is

operant, and will issue in a definite resultant when its counter-force

is removed. Motion and Rest are correlatives, and both belong to the

sphere of Kinetics. In like manner Consciousness and Unconsciousness

are correlatives, both belonging to the sphere of Sentience.[213] Every

one of the unconscious processes is operant, changes the general state

of the organism, and is capable of at once issuing in a discriminated

sensation when the force which balances it is disturbed. I was

unconscious of the scratch of my pen in writing the last sentence, but

I am distinctly conscious of every scratch in writing this one. Then,

as now, the scratching sound sent a faint thrill through my organism,

but its relative intensity was too faint for discrimination; now that I

have redistributed the co-operant forces, by what is called an act of

Attention, I hear distinctly every sound the pen produces.

57. The inclusion of Sub-consciousness within the sentient sphere is

obvious; the inclusion of Unconsciousness within that sphere may be

made so, when we consider its modes of production, and compare it

with the extra-sensible conception of molecules and atoms. The Matter

which is sensible as masses, may be resolved into molecules, which lie

beyond the discrimination of sense; and these again into atoms, which

are purely ideal conceptions; but because molecules are _proved_, and

atoms are _supposed_, to have material properties, and to conform to

sensible canons of the objective world, we never hesitate to class them

under the head of Matter; nor do we imagine that in passing beyond the

discrimination of Sense they lose their objective significance. They

are still physical, not mental facts. So with Sentience: we may trace

it through infinite gradations from Consciousness to Sub-consciousness,

till it fades away in Unconsciousness; but from first to last the

processes have been those of a sentient organism; and by this are

broadly distinguished from all processes in anorganisms. The movement

of a limb has quite different modes of production from the movement of

a wheel; and among its modes must be included those of Sensibility,

a peculiarly vital property. Oxidation may be slow or rapid,

manifesting itself as combustion, heat, or flame, but it is always

oxidation--always a special chemical phenomenon. And so the neural

process of Sentience, whether conscious, sub-conscious, or unconscious,

is always a state of the sentient organism. If a material process does

not change its character, and become spiritual, on passing beyond the

range of sensible appreciation, why should a psychical process become

material on passing beyond the range of discrimination? If we admit

molecules as physical units, sentient tremors are psychical units.

The extra-sensible molecules have indeed their subjective aspect,

and only enter perception through the “greeting of the spirit.” The

sentient tremors have also their objective aspect, and cannot come

into existence without the neural tremors, which are their physical

conditions.

58. It is only by holding fast to such a conception that we can escape

the many difficulties and contradictions presented by unconscious

phenomena, and explain many physiological and psychological processes.

Descartes--followed by many philosophers--identified Consciousness

with Thought. To this day we constantly hear that to have a sensation,

and to be conscious of it, is one and the same state; which is only

admissible on the understanding that Consciousness means Sentience,

and Sentience the activity of the nervous system viewed subjectively.

Leibnitz pointed out that we have many psychical states which are

unconscious states--to have an idea and be conscious of it, are, he

said, not one but two states. The Consciousness by Descartes erected

into an essential condition of Thought, was by Leibnitz reduced to an

accompaniment which not only may be absent, but in the vast majority

of cases is absent. The teaching of most modern psychologists is

that Consciousness forms but a small item in the total of psychical

processes. Unconscious sensations, ideas, and judgments are made to

play a great part in their explanations. It is very certain that in

every conscious volition--every act that is so characterized--the

larger part of it is quite unconscious. It is equally certain that

in every perception there are unconscious processes of reproduction

and inference--there is much that is _implicit_, some of which cannot

be made explicit--a “middle distance” of sub-consciousness, and a

“background” of unconsciousness. But, throughout, the processes are

those of Sentience.

59. Unconsciousness is by some writers called _latent_ Consciousness.

Experiences which are no longer manifested are said to be stored up in

Memory, remaining in the Soul’s picture-gallery, visible directly the

shutters are opened. We are not conscious of these feelings, yet they

exist as latent feelings, and become salient through association. As a

metaphorical expression of the familiar facts of Memory this may pass;

but it has been converted from a metaphor into an hypothesis, and we

are supposed to _have_ feelings and ideas, when in fact we have nothing

more than a modified _disposition_ of the organism--temporary or

permanent--which when stimulated will respond in this modified manner.

The modification of the organism when permanent becomes hereditary; and

its response is then called an instinctive or automatic action. And as

actions pass by degrees from conscious and voluntary into sub-conscious

and sub-voluntary, and finally into unconscious and involuntary, we

call them volitional, secondarily automatic, and automatic. If any one

likes to say the last are due to latent consciousness, I shall not

object. I only point to the fact that the differences here specified

are simply differences of degree--all the actions are those of the

sentient organism.

60. Picture to yourself this sentient organism incessantly stimulated

from without and from within, and adjusting itself in response to such

stimulations. In the blending of stimulations, modifying and arresting

each other, there is a fluctuating “composition of forces,” with

ever-varying resultants. Besides the stream of direct stimulations,

there is a wider stream of indirect or reproduced stimulations.

Together with the present sensation there is always a more or less

complex group of revived sensations, the one group of neural tremors

being organically stimulated by the other. An isolated excitation is

impossible in a continuous nervous tissue; an isolated feeling is

impossible in the consensus or unity of the sentient organism. The term

Soul is the personification of this complex of present and revived

feelings, and is the substratum of Consciousness (in the general

sense), all the particular feelings being its _states_. To repeat an

illustration used in my first volume, we may compare Consciousness to

a mass of stationary waves. If the surface of a lake be set in motion

each wave diffuses itself over the whole surface, and finally reaches

the shores, whence it is reflected back towards the centre of the lake.

This reflected wave is met by the fresh incoming waves, there is a

blending of the waves, and their product is a pattern on the surface.

This pattern of stationary waves is a fluctuating pattern, because of

the incessant arrival of fresh waves, incoming and reflected. Whenever

a fresh stream enters the lake (i. e. a new sensation is excited from

without), its waves will at first pass over the pattern, neither

disturbing it nor being disturbed by it; but after reaching the shore

the waves will be reflected back towards the centre, and there will

more or less modify the pattern.

CHAPTER V.

VOLUNTARY AND INVOLUNTARY ACTIONS.

61. Much of what has been said in the preceding chapter respecting

the passive side of the organism is equally applicable to the active

side. Our actions are classed as voluntary and involuntary mainly in

reference to their being consciously or unconsciously performed; but

not wholly so, for there are many involuntary actions of which we are

distinctly conscious, and many voluntary actions of which we are at

times sub-conscious and unconscious. I do not propose here to open the

long and arduous discussion as to what constitutes Volition, my present

purpose being simply that of fixing the meaning of terms, so that the

question of Automatism may not be complicated by their ambiguities.

“Voluntary” and “involuntary” are, like “conscious” and “unconscious,”

correlative terms; but commonly, instead of being understood as

indicating differences of degree in phenomena of the same order, they

are supposed to indicate differences of kind--a new agent, the Will,

being understood in the one case to direct the Mechanism which suffices

without direction in the other.

62. This interpretation is unphysiological and unpsychological,

since it overlooks the fact that both voluntary and involuntary

actions belong to the same _order_ of phenomena, i. e. those of the

sentient organism. Both involve the same _efficient_ cause, i. e.

co-operant conditions. We draw a line of demarcation between the two

abstractions--as between all abstractions--but the concrete processes

they symbolize have no such demarcation. Just as the thought which at

one moment passes unconsciously, at another consciously, is in itself

the same thought, and the same neural process; so the action which at

one moment is voluntary, and at another involuntary, is itself the same

action, performed by the same mechanism. The incitation which precedes,

and the feeling which accompanies the action, belong to the accessory

mechanisms, and may be replaced by other incitations and other

feelings; as the fall of an apple is the same event, involving the same

conditions, i. e. efficient cause, whether the _occasional_ cause be a

gust of wind or the gardener’s scissors, and whether the fall be seen

and heard or not. I may utter words intentionally and consciously, and

I may utter the same words automatically, unconsciously; I may wink

voluntarily, and wink involuntarily. There are terms to express these

differences; but they do not express a difference in the efficient

agencies.

63. Many writers seem to think that the involuntary actions belong

to the physical mechanical order, because they are not stimulated by

cerebral incitations, and cannot be regulated or controlled by such

incitations--or as the psychologists would say, because Consciousness

in the form of Will is no agent prompting and regulating such actions.

But I think this untenable. The actions cannot belong to the mechanical

order so long as they are the actions of a vital mechanism, and so long

as we admit the broad distinction between organisms and anorganisms.

Whether they have the special character of Consciousness or not,

they have the general character of sentient actions, being those

of a sentient mechanism. And this becomes the more evident when we

consider the gradations of the phenomena. Many, if not all, of those

actions which are classed under the involuntary were originally of

the voluntary class--either in the individual or his ancestors; but

having become permanently organized dispositions--the pathways of

stimulation and reaction having been definitely established--they have

lost that volitional element (of hesitation and choice) which implies

regulation and control. But even here a slight change in the habitual

conditions will introduce a disturbance in the process which may

awaken Consciousness, and the sense of effort, sometimes even causing

control. An instinctive or an automatic action may be thus changed,

or arrested. Take as an example one of the unequivocally automatic

actions, that of Breathing. It is called automatic because, like the

actions of an automaton, it is performed by a definitely constructed

mechanism, always working in the same way when stimulated and left to

itself. There must of course be a sense of effort in every impulse

which has resistance to overcome, organs to be moved; but the mechanism

of Breathing is so delicately adjusted, that the sense of effort is

reduced to a minimum, and we are unconscious of it, or sub-conscious

of it. Nevertheless, without altering the rate or amplitude of the

inspirations and expirations, we become distinctly conscious of them,

and, moreover, within certain limits we can control them, so that the

Breathing passes from the involuntary to the voluntary class.

64. Pass on to other examples. What action can be more involuntary than

the rhythmic movements of the heart and the contractions of the iris?

Compared with the actions of the tongue or limbs, these seem riveted

by an iron necessity, freed from all consciousness and control. Yet

the movements of the heart are not only stimulated by sensations and

thoughts, they are also capable of being felt; and the movements both

of heart and iris are not wholly removed from our control. That we do

not habitually control (that is, _interfere_ with) the action of the

heart, the contraction of the iris, or the activity of a gland, is

true; it is on this account that such actions are called involuntary;

they obey the immediate stimulus. But it is an error to assert that

these actions _cannot_ be controlled, that they are altogether beyond

the interference of other centres, and cannot by any effort of ours

be modified. It is an error to suppose these actions are essentially

distinguished from the voluntary movement of the hands. We have

acquired a power of definite direction in the movements of the hands,

which renders them obedient to our will; but this acquisition has been

of slow laborious growth. If we were asked to use our toes as we use

our fingers--to grasp, paint, sew, or write with them, we should find

it not less impossible to control the movements of the toes in these

directions, than to contract the iris, or cause a burst of perspiration

to break forth. Certain movements of the toes are possible to us; but

unless the loss of our fingers has made it necessary that we should

use our toes in complicated and slowly acquired movements, we can do

no more with them than the young infant can do with his fingers. Yet

men and women have written, sewed, and painted with their toes. All

that is requisite is that certain links should be established between

sensations and movements; by continual practice these links _are_

established; and what is impossible to the majority of men, becomes

easy to the individual who has acquired this power. This same power

can be acquired over what are called the organic actions; nevertheless

the habitual needs of life do not _tend_ towards such acquisition,

and without some strong current setting in that direction, or some

peculiarity of organization rendering it easy, it is never acquired.

In ordinary circumstances the number of those who can write with their

toes is extremely rare, the urgent necessity which would create such a

power being rare; and rare also are the examples of those who have any

control over the movement of the iris, or the action of a gland; but

both rarities exist.

It would be difficult to choose a more striking example of reflex

action than the contraction of the iris of the eye under the stimulus

of light;[214] and to ordinary men, having no link established which

would guide them, it is utterly impossible to close the iris by any

effort. It would be not less impossible to the hungry child to get

on the chair and reach the food on the table, until that child had

_learned_ how to do so. Yet there are men who have learned how to

contract the iris. The celebrated Fontana had this power; which is

possessed also by a medical man now living at Kilmarnock--Dr. Paxton--a

fact authenticated by no less a person than Dr. Allen Thomson.[215] Dr.

Paxton can contract or expand the iris at will, without changing the

position of his eye, and without an effort of adaptation to distance.

To move the ears is impossible to most men. Yet some do it with ease,

and all could learn to do it. Some men have learned to “ruminate” their

food; others to vomit with ease; and some are said to have the power of

perspiring at will.[216] Now, if once we recognize a link of sensation

and motion, we recognize a possible source of control; and if the

daily needs of life were such that to fulfil some purpose the action

of the heart required control, we should learn to control it. Some

men have, without such needs, learned how to control it. The eminent

physiologist, E. F. Weber of Leipzig, found that he could completely

check the beating of his heart. By suspending his breath and violently

contracting his chest, he could retard the pulsations; and after

three or five beats, unaccompanied by any of the usual sounds, it was

completely still. On one occasion he carried the experiment too far,

and fell into a syncope. Cheyne, in the last century, recorded the case

of a patient of his own who could at will suspend the beating of his

pulse, and always fainted when he did so.

65. It thus appears that even the actions which most distinctly bear

the character recognized as involuntary--uncontrollable--are only so

because the ordinary processes of life furnish no necessity for their

control. We do not learn to control them, though we could do so, to

some extent; nor do we learn to control the motions of our ears,

although we could do so. And while it appears that the involuntary

actions can become voluntary, it is familiar to all that the voluntary

actions tend, by constant repetition, to become involuntary. Thus

involuntary actions, under certain limitations, may be controlled; on

the other hand, the voluntary are incapable of being controlled under

the urgency of direct stimulation. Both are reflexes.

Inasmuch as almost all actions are the products of stimulated

nerve-centres, it is obvious that these actions are reflex--reflected

from those centres. It matters not whether I wink because a sensation

of dryness, or because an idea of danger, causes the eyelid to close:

the act is equally reflex. The nerve-centre which supplies the eyelid

with its nerve has been stimulated; the stimuli may be various, the

act is uniform. At one time the stimulus is a sensation of dryness,

at another an idea of danger, at another the idea of communicating

by means of a wink with some one present; in each case the stimulus

is reflected in a muscular contraction. Sensations excite other

sensations; ideas excite other ideas; and one of these ideas may issue

in an action of control. But the restraining power is limited, and

cannot resist a certain degree of urgency in the original stimulus. I

can, for a time, restrain the act of winking, in spite of the sensation

of dryness; but the reflex which sets going this restraining action

will only last a few seconds; after which, the urgency of the external

stimulus is stronger than that of the reflex feeling--the sensation of

dryness is more imperious than the idea of resistance--and the eyelid

drops.

If a knife be brought near the arm of a man who has little confidence

in the friendly intentions of him that holds it, he shrinks, and the

shrinking is “involuntary,” i. e. in spite of his will. Let him have

confidence, and he does not shrink, even when the knife touches his

skin. The idea of danger is not excited in the second case, or if

excited, is at once banished by another idea. Yet this very man, who

can thus repress the involuntary shrinking when the knife approaches

his arm, cannot repress the involuntary winking when the same friend

approaches a finger to his eye. In vain he prepares himself to resist

that reflex action; in vain he resolves to resist the impulse; no

sooner does the finger approach, than down flashes the eyelid. Many

men, and most women, would be equally unable to resist shrinking on the

approach of a knife: the association of the idea of danger with the

knife would bear down any previous resolution not to shrink. It is from

this cause that timorous women tremble at the approach of firearms. An

association is established in their minds which no idea is powerful

enough to loosen. You may assure them the gun is not loaded; “_that_

makes very little difference,” said a naïve old lady to a friend of

mine. They tremble, as the child trembles when he sees you put on the

mask. These illustrations show that the urgency of any one idea may,

like the urgency of a sensation, bear down the resistance offered by

some other idea; as the previous illustrations showed that an idea

could restrain or control the action which a sensation or idea would

otherwise have produced. According to the doctrines current, the Will

is said to be operative when an idea determines an action; and yet all

would agree that the winking which was involuntary when the idea of

danger determined it, was voluntary when the idea of communicating with

an accomplice in some mystification determined it.

66. There is no real and essential distinction between voluntary and

involuntary actions. They all spring from Sensibility. They are all

determined by feeling. It is convenient, for common purposes, to

designate some actions as voluntary; but this is merely a convenience;

no psychological nor physiological insight is gained by it; an analysis

of the process discloses no element in a voluntary action which is

not to be found in an involuntary action--except in the origin or

degree of stimulation. In ordinary language it is convenient to mark a

distinction between my raising my arm because I will to raise it for

some definite purpose, and my raising it because a bee has stung me; it

is convenient to say, “I _will_ to write this letter,” and “this letter

is written against my will--I have no will in the matter.” But Science

is more exacting when it aims at being exact; and the philosopher,

analyzing these complex actions, will find that in each case certain

muscular groups have been set in action by different sensational or

ideational stimuli. The action itself is that of a neuro-muscular

mechanism, which mechanism works in the same way, whatever be the

source of the original impulse. The stimulation may be incited

directly from the periphery, or indirectly from a remote centre; and

the action may be arrested by a peripheral or central stimulation:

the reflex which ordinarily follows the excitation of a sensory nerve

will be modified, or arrested, if some other nerve be at the same time

stimulated. (See Law of Arrest, _Prob._ II. § 190.)

67. All actions are reflex, all are the operations of a mechanism,

all are sentient, because the mechanism has Sensibility as its vital

property. In thus preserving the integrity of the order of vital

phenomena, and keeping them classified apart from physical and chemical

phenomena, we by no means set aside the useful distinctions expressed

in the terms voluntary and involuntary; any more than we set aside the

distinction of vertebrate and invertebrate when both are classed under

Animal, and separated from Plant, or Planet.

The mechanisms of the special Senses respond in special reactions;

the mechanisms of special actions have also their several responses.

The tail responds to stimulation with lateral movements, the chest

with inspiration and expiration, and so on. These responses are called

automatic, and have this in common with the actions of automata that

they are uniform, and do not need the co-operation of Consciousness,

though they do need the operation of Sensibility, and are thereby

distinguished from the actions of automata. The facial muscles, and

the limbs, also respond to stimulation in uniform ways, but owing to

the varieties of stimulation the actions are more variable, and have

more the character of volitional movements. With this greater freedom

of possible action comes the eminently mental character of _choice_.

In the cerebral rehearsal of an act not yet performed--its mental

prevision--as when we intend to do something, yet for the moment

arrest the act, so that there is only a nascent excitation of the

motor process, there is a peculiar state of Consciousness expressive

of this state of the mechanism: we call the prevision a _motive_--and

it becomes a _motor_ when the intention is realized, the nascent

excitation becomes an unchecked impulse. The abstract of all motives we

call Will. A motive is a volition in the sphere of the Intellect. In

the sphere of Emotion it is a motor. Hence we never speak of the Will

of a mollusc, or the motives of an insect, only of their sensations and

motors. Yet it is obvious that the reflex in operation when a snail

shrinks at the approach of an object is essentially similar to the

reflex in operation when the baby shrinks, and this again is still more

similar to that in operation when the boy shrinks: the boy has the idea

of danger, which neither baby nor snail can have; the idea is a motive,

which can be controlled by another idea; the baby and the snail can

have no such motive, no such control--are they therefore automata?

68. If I see that a donkey has wandered into my garden, the motive

which determines me to take a stick and with it drive the donkey

away is a cerebral rehearsal of the effects which will follow my

act. The sight of the donkey has roused disagreeable feelings,

and these suggest possible means of alleviation; out of these

possibilities--reproductions of former experiences--I choose one.

But if I seize the stick with which some one is threatening me, I do

not pause to choose, I snatch automatically without hesitation. Yet

this unreflecting automatic act is itself as truly volitional as my

seizing the stick to drive away the donkey--it is the motor which has

been organized in me by previous experiences--it is the consequence

of an emotion, not of a deliberation; and it has not been determined

by any clear prevision of consequences. Feeling inspires, and feeling

guides my movements, so that if my snatch has missed the stick, I

snatch again, or duck under. This is the kind of Volition we ascribe

to animals. It is a great part of our own. By insensible degrees, acts

which originally were prompted by motives sink into the automatic

class prompted by motors. When an angry man snatches up a knife, doffs

bystanders aside, and rushes on his enemy to stab him, he does not

distinctly prefigure the final result, he only obeys each motor, and

is conscious of each step; but had he planned the murder he would have

foreseen the end, and this prevision would have been the motive. The

angry man is struck with horror at the sight of the bleeding corpse,

and passionately declares he did not _mean_ to kill. Nor did he will

the consequences of his act, yet he certainly willed each separate

step--he recognized the knife, saw the bystanders, knew they would

interfere with him, willed to push them aside. He may be right in

declaring that the act was involuntary; but assuredly it was not purely

mechanical.

69. Again, we are not conscious of the separate sensations which guide

speech or writing; we cannot properly be said to will the utterance

of each tone, or the formation of each letter. Are these processes

mechanical and not volitional? By no means. We know that they were

laboriously learned by long tentative efforts, each of which was

accompanied by distinct consciousness. We also know that now when the

mechanism is so easy in its adjustment as to suggest automatism, there

needs but a slight alteration in the conditions to make us distinctly

conscious of the processes--the wrong word spoken, or one letter ill

formed, suffices to arrest the easy working of the mechanism. A similar

mechanism operates in thinking, which also lapses from the conscious

and voluntary to the unconscious and involuntary state. The logical

process of Judgment is as purely a reflex from one neural group to

another, as the physiological process of co-ordination. In ordinary

thinking we are as little conscious of the particular steps--our

interest being concentrated on the result--as we are of the particular

stages of an action. The adjustments of the mechanism of Reproduction

and Association are _set_ going by a motive, and _kept_ going by

psychological motors. And here--as in bodily actions--there is often

a conflict between motive and motors--between the foreseen result,

and the available means of reaching it--the motors usually prevailing

because they represent the active side of the mechanism. Thus when an

oculist wishes to examine a patient’s eye, he does not tell him to give

a particular direction to his eye, knowing that the _motive_ to do so

will not suffice; instead of this he simply moves his own hand in the

desired direction, certain that the eye will by reflex irresistibly

follow it. Nay, there are sometimes such anomalies of innervation

that the eye, instead of obeying the motive, moves in a contrary

direction. Meschede mentions a patient whose movements were mostly of

this anomalous kind: when he willed to move the eyes to the right, they

moved to the left; when he willed to move them up, they moved down. It

was thus also with his hands and feet. Yet he was distinctly conscious

that his intention had been frustrated, and that he acted “because he

could not help it.”[217] How insensibly a motive sinks into a motor,

that is to say, a voluntary into an involuntary act, may be recognized

in speech, writing, singing, walking, etc., and in the incessant

movements of the eye in fixing objects. Aubert has well remarked

that we only give definite movements to the eye when we wish to see

an object distinctly. Whenever the indistinct vision suffices--as in

walking through the streets occupied in conversation or thought--we

make no such movements; but no sooner does any object excite our

attention, than the effort to fix that object at once excites the

necessary reflex.[218]

70. By the Will, then, we must understand the abstract generalized

expression of the impulses which determine actions, when those

impulses have an ideal origin; by Volition the still more generalized

expression of all impulses which determine actions. The one class is

that of _motives_ with ideal elements; the other that of _motors_ with

sensational or emotional elements. But both are mental states, both

are neural processes in a sentient organism; neither is mechanical,

except in so far as all actions are expressible in mechanical terms.

For convenience we class actions as reflex, automatic, involuntary,

unconscious, voluntary, and conscious. If we separate the reflex

from the voluntary, we need not therefore dissociate the former from

Sensibility; and the reason why we ought not to separate it is that we

know it to be sense-guided from first to last, although the sensations

may escape discrimination. The feeling of Effort, which was formerly

felt when an action was performed, may have become so minimized

that it is too faint for more than a momentary consciousness, too

evanescent for the memory to retain it; yet the feeling must always

be operant when its mechanism is in action. The ease with which the

mechanism works does not change the adjustment of its elements, nor

alter its character. The facile unobtrusive performance of a vital

function does not change it from a vital to a mechanical act. Mr.

Spencer seems to me to express himself ambiguously when he says:

“Just as any set of psychical changes originally displaying Memory,

Reason, and Feeling cease to be conscious, rational, and emotional

as fast as they by repetition grow closely organized, so do they at

the same time pass beyond the sphere of Volition. Memory, Reason,

Feeling, and Will disappear in proportion as psychical changes become

automatic”[219]--for while it is perfectly true that we only call those

psychical changes “automatic” which have lost the special qualities

called “conscious, rational, and emotional,” it is not less true that

they remain from first to last _psychical_ changes, and are thereby

distinguished from _physical_ changes. To suppose that they pass from

the psychical to the physical by frequent repetition would lead to the

monstrous conclusion that when a naturalist has by laborious study

become so familiarized with the specific marks of an animal or plant

that he can recognize at a glance a particular species, or recognize

from a single character the nature of the rest, the rapidity and

certainty of this judgment proves it to be a mechanical, not a mental

act. The intuition with which a mathematician sees the solution of a

problem would then be a mechanical process, while the slow and bungling

hesitation of the tyro in presence of the same problem would be a

mental process: the perfection of the organism would thus result in its

degradation to the level of a machine!

The operations of the intellect may furnish us with an illustration.

Ideas are symbols of sensations. The idea of a horse is an abstraction

easily traceable to concrete sensations, yet as an abstraction is

so different a state of feeling that we only identify it with its

concretes by a careful study of its stages of evolution, namely,

sensation, image, reproduced images resembling yet differing from the

original sensation, a coalescence of their resemblances, and finally

the substitution of a verbal symbol for these images. With this symbol

the intellect operates, and sometimes operates so exclusively with it

that not the faintest trace of image or sensation is appreciable--the

word horse takes the place of the image in the sequence of sensorial

processes, just as the image takes the place of the sensation. It does

this as a neural equivalent. In the same way we substitute verbal

symbols for a bag of sovereigns when we pay a creditor with a check;

he pays the check away to another; and this monetary equivalent passes

from hand to hand without a single coin making its appearance. Does

the transaction cease to be commercial, monetary, in this substitution

of signs? No; nor does a process cease to be psychical when an image

is substituted for a sensation, and a verbal symbol for an image. This

every one will admit. Must we not go further, and extend the admission

to automatic actions which originally were voluntary, and have now lost

all trace of ideal prevision, and almost all traces of accompanying

consciousness? _The motor mechanism has its symbols also_; in this

sense, that whereas the action which at first needed complex sensorial

processes to set it going and keep it going, is now determined by a

single one of those processes taking the place of their resultant. When

a practised accountant runs his eye up a column of figures, he does

not pause to realize the values of those figures by decomposing the

symbols into their numerical units, he simply groups one symbol with

another according to their intuited relations, and the final result is

reached with a certainty not less, and a rapidity far greater, than if

it had been reached by step-by-step verification. It is thus with the

pianoforte-player. It is thus with all automatic performances, except

those dependent on the connate adjustments of the mechanism.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PROBLEM STATED.

71. If the preceding attempt to disengage the question from the

ambiguities of its terms has been successful, we shall find little

difficulty in rationally interpreting all the facts adduced in favor

of Animal Automatism, without having recourse to a mechanical theory

of biological phenomena. The objections to that theory are that it

employs terms which have very misleading _connotations_ even when they

do not _denote_ phenomena of widely different orders; so that the moral

repugnance commonly felt at the attempt to treat the animal organism as

if it were a machine, is sustained by the intellectual repugnance at

the attempt to explain biological phenomena on principles derived from

phenomena of a simpler order.

Remark, in passing, this piquant contradiction: the Automaton theory

of Descartes, when applied to the animals, generally excited ridicule

or repulsion; whereas the far more inconsistent and mechanical

theory of Reflex Action has been almost universally welcomed as a

great discovery, though it banishes the Sensibility which Descartes

preserved. And further, the philosophers who most loudly protested

against the idea that animals were machines, were the philosophers

who most insisted that these animals were made, not evolved--planned

by their maker, as a watch is planned by its maker, with a distinct

purpose and prevision in the disposition of every part; whereas the

philosophers who most emphatically reject this notion of organisms

being made, are often those who liken organisms to machines.

72. The paradox propounded by Descartes loses much of its strangeness

when we understand his meaning. Its terms are infelicitous because of

their misleading connotations. When he says that all the actions of

animals which seem to be due to Consciousness are in fact produced on

the same principles as those of a machine, he means that animals have

not souls to direct their actions; but since, on being questioned, he

is ready to admit that animals have sensation, perception, emotion, and

memory, his denial of their souls practically comes to much the same as

the ordinary position that animals have not Thought nor Consciousness

of Self.[220] The admission of sensation is, however, quite enough to

mark the essential difference between an organism and a machine.

73. It was really a great step taken by Descartes when he directed

attention to the fact that all animal actions were executed in

strict conformity with mechanical principles, because both before

his time, and since, we may observe a great disregard of the animal

mechanism, and a disposition to interpret the phenomena on metaphysical

principles. But the connotations of the term “machine” were such as to

lead the mind away from the special conditions of the vital mechanism,

and fix it exclusively on the general conditions of machinery. Hence

his opponents misunderstood him, and some of his followers made the

same oversight, and ended by eliminating sensation altogether. In

pursuance of this mechanical point of view, to the exclusion of the

biological, Thought and even Consciousness have been eliminated from

among the organic agencies, and are said to have no more influence in

determining even human actions than the whistle of the steam-engine has

in directing the locomotive. There are thus two _meta_physiological

theories. According to the one, Consciousness directs indeed the

actions of the organism, but is not itself an organic process--it sits

apart, like a musical performer playing on an instrument. According

to the other, it is not a directing agency, but an accessory product

of certain organic processes, which processes may go on quite as well

without any accompaniment and interference of Consciousness.