The aim of our study has been to define our attitude to naturalism, and to
maintain in the teeth of naturalism the validity and freedom of the
religious conception of the world. This seemed to be cramped and menaced
by those “reductions to simpler terms” which we have already discussed.
But one of these reductions, the most important of all, we have not yet
encountered, and it remains to be dealt with now. In comparison with this
one all others are relatively unimportant, and it is easy to understand
how some have regarded the problem of the relations of the naturalistic
and the religious outlook as beginning at this point, and have neglected
everything below it. For we have now to consider the attempt of naturalism
to “reduce” spirit itself to terms of nature, either to derive it from
nature, or, when that is recognised as quite too confused and impossible,
to make it subject to nature and her system of laws, or to similar laws,
and thus to rob it of its freedom and independence, of its essential
character as above nature and free from it, and to bring it down to the
level of an accompanying shadow or a mere reverse side of nature. The
aggressive naturalism which we have discussed has from very early times
exercised itself on this point, and has instinctively and rightly felt
that herein lies the kernel of the whole problem under dispute. It has for
the most part concentrated its interest and its attacks upon the
“immortality of the soul.” But while this was often the starting-point,
the nature of soul, and spirit, and consciousness in general have been
brought under discussion and subjected to attacks which sought to show how
vague and questionable was the reality of spirit as contrasted with the
palpable, solid and indubitable reality of the outer world. Prominence was
given to the fact that the spiritual side of our nature is dependent on
and conditioned by the body and bodily states, the external environment,
experiences and impressions. These were often the sole, and always the
chief subjects of the doctrine of the vulgar naturalism. But the same is
true of the naturalism of the higher order, as we described it in Chapter
II. In order to acquire definite guiding principles of investigation, it
makes the attempt to find the true reality of phenomena in the mechanical,
corporeal, physiological processes, and to take little or no account of
the co-operation, the interpolation, the general efficiency of sensation,
perception, thought, or will, and to treat them as though they were a
shadow and accompaniment of reality, but not as an equivalent, much less a
preponderating constituent of it. Out of these fundamental principles of
investigation, and out of the opposition and doubt with which the
spiritual is regarded, there is compounded the current mongrel naturalism,
which, without precision in its ideas, and without any great clearness or
logical consequence in its views, is thoroughly imbued with the notion
that that only is truly real which we can see, hear, and touch—the solid
objective world of matter and energy, and that “science” begins and ends
with this. As for anything outside of or beyond this, it is at most a
beautiful dream of fancy, with which it is quite safe to occupy oneself as
long as one clearly understands that of course it is not true. “Nature” is
the only indubitable reality, and mind is but a kind of _lusus_ or _luxus
naturæ_, which accompanies it at some few places, like a peculiarly
coloured aura or shadow, but which must, as far as reality is concerned,
yield pre-eminence to “Nature” in every respect.
The religious conception is deeply and essentially antagonistic to all
such attempts to range spirit, spiritual being, and the subjective world
under “nature,” “matter,” “energy,” or whatever we may call what is
opposed to mind and ranked above it in reality and value. The religious
conception is made up essentially of a belief in spirit, its worth and
pre-eminence. It does not even seek to compare the reality and origin of
spirit with anything else whatever. For all its beliefs, the most sublime
and the crudest alike, conceal within them the conviction that
fundamentally spirit alone has truth and reality, and that everything else
is derived from it. It is a somewhat pitiful mode of procedure to direct
all apologetic endeavours towards the one relatively small question of
“immortality,” thus following exactly the lines usually adopted by the
aggressive exponents of naturalism, and thus allowing opponents to dictate
the form of the questions and answers. It is quite certain that all
religion which is in any way complete, includes within itself a belief in
the everlastingness of our spiritual, personal nature, and its
independence of the becoming or passing away of external things. But, on
the one hand, this particular question can only be settled in connection
with the whole problem, and, on the other hand, it is only a fraction of
the much farther-reaching belief in the reality of spirit and its
superiority to nature. The very being of religion depends upon this. That
it may be able to take itself seriously and regard itself as true; that
all deep and pious feelings, of humility and devotion, may be cherished as
genuine and as founded in truth; that it behoves it to find and experience
the noble and divine in the world’s course, in history and in individual
life; that the whole world of feeling with all its deep stirrings and
mysteries is of all things the most real and true, and the most
significant fact of existence—all these are features apart from which it
is impossible to think of religion at all. But they all depend upon the
reality, independence and absolute pre-eminence of spirit. Freedom and
responsibility, duty, moral control and self-development, the valuation of
life and our life-work according to our life’s mission and ideal aims,
even according to everlasting aims, and “sub specie æterni,” the idea of
the good, the true and the beautiful—all things apart from which religion
cannot be thought of—all these depend upon spirit and its truth. And
finally “God is Spirit”: religion cannot represent, or conceive, or
possess its own highest good and supreme idea, except by thinking in terms
of the highest analogies of what it knows in itself as spiritual being and
reality. If spirit is not real and above all other realities; if it is
derivable, subordinate and dependent, it is impossible to think of
anything whatever to which the name of “God” can be given. And this is as
true of the refined speculations of the pantheistic poetic religions, as
of the idea of God in simple piety. The interest of religion as against
the claims of naturalism includes all this. And it would be doing the
cause of religion sorry service to extract from this whole some isolated
question to which the mood of the time or traditional custom has given
prominence. Our task must be to show that religion maintains its validity
and freedom because of the truth and independence of spirit and its
superiority to nature.
It is, of course, impossible to give an exhaustive treatment of this
problem in a short study like this. The answer to this question would
include the whole range of mental science with all its parts and branches.
Mental science, from logic and epistemology up to and including the moral
and æsthetic sciences, proves by its very existence, and by the fact that
it cannot be reduced to terms of natural science, that spirit can neither
be derived from nor analysed into anything else. And it is only when we
have mastered all this that we can say how far and how strongly knowledge
and known realities corroborate religion and its great conclusions as to
spirit and spiritual existence, how they reinforce it and admit its
validity and freedom. Since this is so, all isolated and particular
endeavours in this direction can only be a prelude or introduction, and a
more or less arbitrary selection from the relevant material of facts and
ideas. And nothing more than this is aimed at in the following pages.
Naturalistic Attacks on the Autonomy of the Spiritual.
The attacks that have been made by naturalism upon the independence and
freedom of the spiritual are so familiar to every one—even from school
days—through books of the type of Büchner’s “Kraft und Stoff,” and
Haeckel’s “The Riddle of the Universe,” and other half or wholly
materialistic popular dogmatics, that it is unnecessary to enter into any
detail. Very little that is new has been added in this connection to the
attack made by Plato on himself in the “Phædo” through Simmias and Kebes.
It is only apparently that the modern attacks have become more serious
through the deepened knowledge of natural science. At all times they have
been as serious and as significant as possible, and the religious and
every other idealistic conception of the universe has always suffered from
them. It is plain that here, if anywhere, “faith goes against
appearances,” and that in the last resource we have to postulate free
moral resolution, the will to believe, the desire for the ideal, for
freedom, and for the eternity of the spirit, and the confidence of the
spirit in itself. All this is, or at least ought to be, self-evident and
generally admitted.
Let us once more take a brief survey of the reasons on the other side and
arrange them in order.
That nature is everything and spirit very little seems to follow from a
very simple circumstance. There are whole worlds of purely natural and
corporeal existence without mind, sensation, or consciousness, which,
quite untroubled by their absence, simply exist according to the
everlasting laws of matter and energy. But nowhere do we find spirit or
mind without a material basis. All that is psychical occurs in connection
with a physical being, and with relatively few physical beings. Spirit
seems wholly bound up with and dependent upon the states, development, and
conditions of material being. With the body of living beings there arises
what we call “soul”; with the body it grows, gains content, changes,
matures, ages, and disappears. According as the body is constituted and
composed, as it is influenced by heredity, race, and selection, by
nutrition, mode of life, climate, and other circumstances, there are
developed in a hundred different ways what we call the natural disposition
or character, inclinations, virtues or vices, passions or temperaments.
Even the names given to the different temperaments emphasise this
dependence of what is innermost in us, the deepest tendencies of our
being, on the bodily organisation and the nature of its physiological
constitution. The man whose blood flows easily and freely is called
sanguine, and the melancholic is the victim of his liver. According as our
organs are good or bad, function freely or sluggishly, our mood rises or
sinks, we are bold or cowardly, languid or impetuous, and enthusiasm is
often enough only a peculiar name for a state which, physiologically
expressed, might be called alcoholic poisoning. There is one soul in the
sound body, another in the sickly. Fever, and the impotence of the soul
against it, made Holbach a materialist. If the brain be diseased, that
marvellous order of psychical processes which we call reasoning is broken;
the “soul” is wholly or partly eliminated; it fades away, or becomes
nothing more than a confused disconnected medley of images and desires.
Even artificial interference with, and changes in the bodily organisation
react upon the mind. The removal of the thyroid gland may result in
idiocy. Castration not only prevents the “breaking” of the voice in the
Sistine choristers, it damps the fires of life to dulness, and makes of
the impetuous Abelard a comfortable discursive father-confessor. The mind
is bound up almost piece by piece with its material basis. Through the
“localisation” of psychic processes in the particular parts of the brain,
naturalism has enormously strengthened the impression that existed even
among the ancients, that sensation and imagination are nothing more than,
let us say, what the note is to a tightly stretched string. Cerebrum and
cerebellum are regarded as the seats of different psychic processes. The
secret of the higher processes is believed to be hidden in the grey matter
of the cortex of the cerebrum. We seek and find in the various lobes and
convolutions of the brain the “centres” for the different capacities, the
power of sight, of smell, of moving the arms, of moving the legs, of
associating ideas, of co-ordinated speech, and so on. When brain and
spinal cord are injured or removed piece by piece from a pigeon or a frog,
it seems as if the “soul” were eliminated piece by piece,—the capacity for
spontaneous free co-ordination, for voluntary action, for the various
sense-impressions, and so on from the higher to the lower. It has even
been maintained that the different feelings and perceptions which are
gradually acquired can be apportioned among the individual cells of the
brain in which they are localised, and the thought-processes, the
associations of percepts, the origin of consecutive ideas, the rapid and
easy recalling of memory-images, and the process of voluntary control, of
instincts, can be explained as due to the “gradual laying down of
nerve-paths” between the different centres and areas of localisation in
the brain. All this seems to refute utterly the old belief in the unity
and personality of the soul. It is different in youth and in age, and
indeed varies continually. It is the ever-varied harmony of the notes of
all the strings which are represented by the fibres and ganglion-cells of
the nerve-substance. It apparently can not only be completely confused and
brought to disharmony, but it may be halved and divided. An almost
terrifying impression was produced when Trembley in 1740 made the
experiment of cutting a “hydra” in two, and showed that each of the halves
became a complete animal, so that obviously each of the two halves of the
soul grew into a new hydra-soul. And Trembley’s hydra was only the
precursor of all the cut-up worms, of the frogs, birds, and guinea-pigs
that have been beheaded, or have had their brain removed, or their nerves
cut, and have furnished further examples of this divisibility of “souls.”
If the independence of the spiritual is thus shown to be a vain
assumption, the alleged difference between the animal and the human Psyche
is much more so. Not from the days of Darwinism alone, but from the very
beginning, naturalism has opposed this claim to distinctiveness. But it is
due to Darwinism that the fundamental similarity of the psychical in man
and animals has come to be regarded as almost self-evident. The mental
organisation of man, as well as his corporeal organisation, is traced back
through gradual stages to animal antecedents, and in thus tracing it there
are two favourite methods of procedure, which are, however, apt to be
mutually destructive.
On the one hand, some naturalists regard the animal anthropomorphically,
insist on its likeness to man, discovering and extolling, not without
emotion, all the higher and nobler possessions of the human mind,
intellectual capacities, reason, reflection, synthesis, fancy, the power
of forming ideas and judgments, of drawing conclusions and learning from
experience, besides will in the true sense, ethical, social and political
capacities, æsthetic perceptions, and even fits of religion in elephants,
apes, dogs, down even to ants and bees, and these naturalists reject
old-fashioned explanations in terms of instinct, and find the highest
already contained in the lowest. Those of another school are inclined to
regard man theriomorphically, to insist on his likeness to animals,
explaining reason in terms of perception and sensation, deriving will from
impulse and desire, and ethical and æsthetic valuations from physiological
antecedents and purely animal psychological processes, thus, in short,
seeking to find the lowest in the highest. (We have already met with an
analogous instance of a similarly fallacious double-play on parallel
lines.) So it comes about that both the origin and the development of the
psychical and spiritual seem to be satisfactorily cleared up and
explained, and at the same time a new proof is adduced for its dependence
upon the physical. For what is true of all other parts of the
organisation, of the building up and perfecting of every member and every
system of organs, the bony skeleton, the circulatory system, the
alimentary canal, that they can be referred back to very simple
beginnings, and that their evolution may be traced through all its
stages—is equally true of the nervous system in general and of the brain
in particular. It increases more and more in volume and in intricacy of
structure, it expands the cranial cavity and diversifies its convolutions.
And the more it grows, and the more complex it becomes, the more do the
mental capacities increase in perfection, so that here again it seems once
more apparent that the psychical is an accompaniment and result of the
physical.
Popular naturalism usually stops short here, and contents itself with
half-truths and inconsequences, for it naïvely admits that psychical
processes, sensation, perception, will, have a real influence upon the
physical, and, not perceiving how much the admission involves, it does not
trouble itself over the fact that, for instance in the so-called voluntary
movements of the body, in ordinary behaviour, the psychical, and the will,
in particular, is capable of real effect, and can move hand and foot and
the whole body, and thus has a real reciprocal relation with the physical.
This form of popular naturalism sometimes amuses itself with assuming a
psychical inwardness even in non-living matter, and admitting the
co-operation of psychical motives even in regard to it.
But it is far otherwise with naturalism in the strict sense, which takes
its fundamental principles and its method of investigation seriously. It
is aware that such half-and-half measures interrupt the continuity of the
system at the most decisive point. And therefore with the greatest
determination it repeats along psychological lines the same kind of
treatment that it has previously sought to apply to biological phenomena:
the corporeal must form a sequence of phenomena complete in itself and not
broken into from without. All processes of movement, all that looks as if
it happened “through our will,” through a resolve due to the intervention
of a psychical motive, every flush of shame that reddens the cheek, every
stroke executed by the hand, every sound-wave caused by tongue and lips,
must be the result of conditions of stimulation and tension in the energy
of the body itself.
This is the meaning of all those psycho-physical experiments that have
been carried on with so much ingenuity and persistence (usually associated
with attempts to explain vital phenomena in terms of mechanism). First,
they attempt to interpret the expressions of will, feeling and need, the
spontaneous activities and movements of the lowest forms of
life—protists—as “pure reflexes,” as processes which take place in
obedience to stimuli, and thus are ultimately due to chemical and physical
influences and causes without the intervention of a psychical motive; and,
secondly, when this has been apparently or really achieved, the theory of
irritability and reflex mechanism is pushed from below upwards, until even
the most intricate and complex movements and operations of our own body,
which we have wrongly distinguished as acts or behaviour from mere
processes of stimulation, are finally recognised as reflexes and
liberations due to stimuli. Some stimulus or other, from light or sound or
something else, is, according to this theory, conducted to the nervous
centre, the ganglion, the spinal cord, the cerebellum or the cerebrum.
Here it produces an effect, not of a psychical nature, but some minute
chemical, or physical,—or purely mechanical change, which goes through
many permutations within the nervous centre itself, unites there with the
stored energies, and then, thus altered, returns by the efferent nerve
paths to effect a muscle-contraction in some organ, a stretching of the
hand, or a movement of the whole body. The physical process is accompanied
by a peculiar inward mirroring, which is the psychical penumbra or shadow
of the whole business. Thus what is in reality a purely mechanical and
reflex sequence appears like a psychical experience, like choice and will
and psychical causality. We may be compared to Spinoza’s stone; it was
thrown, and it thought it was flying.
The reasons for interpreting things in this way lie in the principles of
investigation. It is only in this way, we are told, that nature can be
reduced to natural terms, that is, to chemistry, physics, and mechanics.
Only in this way is it possible to gain a true insight into and
understanding of things, and to bring them under mathematical formulæ.
Thus only, too, can “the miraculous” be eliminated. For if we are obliged
to admit that the will has a real influence on the corporeal, for instance
upon our brain, and nerves, and arm-muscles, this would be a violation of
the law of the constancy of the sum of energy. For in this case there
would occur, at a certain point in the nexus of phenomena, a piece of work
done, however small it might be, for which there was no equivalent of
energy in the previous constitution. But this is, since the days of
Helmholtz, an impossible assumption. And thus all those experiments and
theories on what we have called the “second line” of mechanistic
interpretation of the universe show themselves to be relevant to our
present subject.
Interpretations of the psychical such as these have given rise to four
peculiar “isms” of an epistemological nature, _i.e._, related to a theory
of knowledge. Not infrequently they are the historical antecedents which
result in the naturalistic theory of the psychical. These are nominalism
and sensualism, empiricism and a-posteriorism, which, setting themselves
against epistemological rationalism, assail the dignity, the independence,
and the autonomy of the thinking mind. They are so necessarily and closely
associated with naturalism that their fate is intimately bound up with its
fate, and they are corroborated or refuted with it. And it would be
possible to conduct the whole discussion with which we are concerned
purely with reference to these four “isms.” The strife really begins in
their camp.
The soul is a _tabula rasa_, all four maintain, a white paper on which, to
begin with, nothing is inscribed. It brings with it neither innate
knowledge nor commands. What it possesses in the way of percepts,
concepts, opinions, convictions, principles of action, rules of conduct,
are inscribed upon it through experience (empiricism). That is, not
antecedent to, but subsequent to experience (a posteriori). But experience
can only be gained through the senses. Only thus does reality penetrate
into and stamp itself upon us. “What was not first in the senses (sensus)
cannot be in the intelligence.” What the senses convey to us alone builds
up our mental content, from mere sensory perceptions upwards to the most
abstract ideas from the simplest psychical elements up to the most complex
ideas, concepts, and conclusions, to the most varied imaginative
constructions. And in the development of the mental content the “soul”
itself is merely the stage upon which all that is acquired through the
senses crowds, and jostles, and unites to form images, perceptions, and
precepts. But it is itself purely passive, and it becomes what happens to
it. Therefore it is not really spirit at all, for spirit implies
spontaneity, activity, and autonomy.
Philosophy and the mental sciences have always had to carry on the strife
with these four opponents. And it is in the teacup of logic and
epistemology that the storm in regard to theories of the universe has
arisen. It is there, and not in the domain of neurology, or zoology, that
the real battlefield lies, upon which the controversy must be fought out
to the end. What follows is only a sort of skirmish about the outposts.
What naturalism holds in regard to the psychical and spiritual may be,
perhaps, most simply expressed by means of an illustration. Over a wide
field there glide mighty shadows in constant interplay. They expand and
contract, become denser or lighter, disappear for a little, and then
reveal themselves again. While they are thus forming and changing, one
state follows quite connectedly on another. At first one is tempted to
believe that they are self-acting and self-regulating, that they move
freely and pass from one state to another according to causes within
themselves. But then one sees that they are thrown upon the earth from the
clouds above, now in this way and now in that, that all their states and
forms and changes are nothing in themselves, and neither effect anything
in themselves nor react upon the occurrences and realities up above, which
they only accompany, and by which they are determined without any
co-operation on their own part, even in determining their own form. So it
is with nature and spirit. Nature is the true effective reality; spirit is
its shadow, which effects nothing either within or outside of itself, but
simply happens.
The Fundamental Answer.
How can the religious conception of the world justify itself and maintain
its freedom in face of such views of spirit and spiritual being? It is
questionable whether it is worth while attempting to do so. Is not the
essence of the validity and freedom of spirit made most certain simply
through the fact that it is able to inquire into it? If we leave popular
naturalism out of the question, is not the attempt made by scientific
naturalism the best witness against itself? For scientific study, and the
establishment of fundamental conceptions and guiding principles are only
possible if mind and thought are free and active and creative. The direct
experience that spirit has of itself, of its individuality and freedom, of
its incomparability with all that is beneath it, is far too constant and
genuine to admit of its being put into a difficulty by a doctrine which it
has itself established. And this doctrine has far too much the character
of a “fixed theory” to carry permanent inward conviction with it. Here
again, the mistake made is in starting with scepticism and with the fewest
and simplest assumptions. It is by no means the case that in order to
discover the truth we must start always from a position of scepticism,
instead of from calm confidence in ourselves and in our conviction that we
possess in direct experience the best guarantee of truth. For we
experience nothing more certainly than the content and riches of our own
mind, its power of acting and creating, and all its great capacities. And
it is part of the duty laid upon us by the religious conception of the
universe, as well as by all other idealistic conceptions, to follow this
path of self-assurance alone, that is, through self-development and
self-deepening, through self-realisation and self-discipline, to use to
the full in our lives all that we have in heart and mind as possibilities,
tendencies, content, and capacities, and so practically to experience the
reality and power of the spiritual that the mood of suspicion and distrust
of it must disappear. The validity of this method is corroborated by all
the critical insight into the nature of our knowledge that we have gained
in the course of our study, and it might be deepened in regard to this
particular case. For here, if anywhere, we must recognise the limitations
of our knowledge; the impossibility of attaining to a full understanding
of the true nature and depths of things applies to the inquiring mind and
its hidden nature. From Descartes to Leibnitz, Kant, and Fries, down to
the historian of materialism itself, F. A. Lange, it has been an axiom of
the idealistic philosophy, expressed now in dogmatic, now in critical
form, that the mathematical-mechanical outlook and causal interpretation
of things, not excluding a naturalistic psychology, is thoroughly
justifiable as a method of arranging scientifically the phenomena
accessible to us and of penetrating more deeply towards an understanding
of these. It is, indeed, justifiable, so long as it does not profess to
reveal the true nature of things, but remains conscious of the free
spirit, whose own work and undertaking the whole is.
Yet here again it is by no means necessary to surrender to naturalism a
field which it has tried to take possession of, but is certainly unable to
hold. We need not try to force naturalism to read out of empirical
psychology the high conclusions as to human nature and spirit which
pertain to the religious outlook, or to find in the “simplicity” of the
“soul monad” a kind of physical proof of its indestructibility, or
anything of that kind. We maintain that to comprehend the true inwardness
of the vitality, freedom, dignity, and power of the spirit is not the
business of psychology at all, but may perhaps be dealt with in ethics, if
it be not admitted that with these concepts one has already entered the
realm of religious experience, and that they are the very centre of
religious theory. But undoubtedly we must reject in great measure the
claims which naturalism makes upon our domain, and maintain that the most
important starting-points for the higher view are to be found in the
priority of everything spiritual over everything material, in the
underivability of the spiritual and the impossibility of describing it in
corporeal-mathematical terms and concepts.
Individual Development.
What lives in us, as far as we can perceive and trace it in its empirical
expression, is not a finished and spiritual being that leaps, mature and
complete, from some pre-existence or other into its embodied form, but is
obviously something that only develops and becomes actual very gradually.
Its becoming is conditioned by “stimuli,” influences, impressions from
without, and perfects itself in the closest dependence upon the becoming
of the body, is inhibited or advanced with it, and may be entirely
arrested by it, forced into abnormal developments which never attain to
the level of an “ego” or “personality,” but remain incomprehensible
anomalies and monstrosities. In general, the psychical struggles slowly
and laboriously free from purely vegetative and physiological processes,
and gains control over itself and over the body. Its self-development and
concentration to full unity and completeness of personality is only
achieved through the deepest self-culture, through complete
“simplification” as the ancients said, through great acts and experiences
of inward centralisation such as that which finds religious expression in
the metaphor of “regeneration.” What “building up” and self-development of
the psychical means remains obscure. If we think of it as a summation, an
adding on of new parts and constituents, and thus try to form a concrete
image of the process, we spoil it altogether. If we speak of the
transition from the potential to the actual, from the tendency to the
realisation, we may not indeed spoil it, but we have done little to make
the process more intelligible. So much only we can say: certain as it is
that the Psyche, especially as conscious inner life, only gradually
develops and becomes actual, and that in the closest dependence upon the
development, maturing, and establishment of the nervous basis and the
bodily organisation in general, yet the naturalistic view, _a fortiori_
the materialistic, is never at any point correct. There are three things
to be borne in mind. First, the origin, the “whence” of the psychical is
wholly hidden from us, and, notwithstanding the theory of evolution and
descent, it remains an insoluble riddle. And secondly, however closely it
is associated with and tied down to the processes of bodily development,
it is never at any stage of its development really a function of it in
actual and exact correspondence and dependence. And finally, the further
it advances in its self-realisation, the further the relation of
dependence recedes into the background, and the more do the independence
and autonomy of the psychical processes become prominent.
We have still to consider and amplify this in several respects, and then
we may go on to still more important matters.
Underivability.
The first of the three points we have called attention to has, so to
speak, become famous through the lectures of du Bois-Reymond, which
attracted much attention, on “The Limits of Natural Knowledge,” and “The
Seven Riddles of the Universe.” That these thoughtful lectures made so
great an impression did not mean that a great new discovery had been made,
but was rather a sign of the general lack of reflection on the part of the
public, for they only expressed what had always been self-evident, and
what had only been forgotten through thoughtlessness, or concealed by
polemical rhetoric. Consciousness, thought, even the commonest sensation
of pleasure and pain, or the simplest sense-perception, cannot be compared
with “matter and energy,” with the movements of masses. They represent a
foreign and altogether inexplicable guest in this world of matter,
molecules, and elements. Even if we could follow the play of the nervous
processes with which sensation, consciousness, pain, or pleasure are bound
up, into their most intricate and delicate details, if we could make the
brain transparent, and enlarge its cells to the size of houses, so that,
with searching glance, we could count and observe all the processes, and
even follow the dance of the molecules within it, we should never see
“pain,” “pleasure,” or “thought,” or anything more than bodies and their
movements. A thought, such as, for instance, the perception that two and
two make four, is not long or broad, above or beneath; it cannot be
measured or weighed in inches or pounds like matter, tested with the
manometer, thermometer, or electrometer for its potential or intensity and
tension, measured by ampères or volts or horse-powers like energies and
electric currents; it is something wholly different, which can be known
only through inner experience, but which is much better known than
anything else whatever, and which it is absolutely impossible to compare
with anything but itself. Even if we admit that it can only become actual
and develop as an accompaniment of processes within bodies, and only
within those bodies we call “living,” and that wherever bodies exist
psychical phenomena occur; even if we were able, as we never shall be
able, to produce living beings artificially in a retort, and even if
psychical phenomena occurred in these also, we should still have made no
progress towards explaining what the psychical really is. It would still
only be the blazing up in these bodies of a flame which, in some
inexplicable way, had fallen upon them, and associated itself with them.
We do not doubt that this association, where it takes place, does so in
obedience to the strictest law and the most inexorable necessity;
therefore, that wherever and however the corporeal conditions are
produced, sensation and consciousness will awaken. For we believe in a
world governed by law. But the mystery is in no way lessened by this, and
the modern theory of evolution throws no light into this utterly
impenetrable darkness. In the first place, the whole idea of “explaining”
in terms of “evolution” is a futile one. The process of becoming is
pictured as a simple process of cumulation, a gradual increase of
intensities, while the business is really one of change in quality and the
introduction of what is new. In the second place, the occurrence even of
the first and most primitive sensation contains the whole riddle
concentrated on a single point. In the third place, the riddle meets us
anew and undiminished in every developing individual. For to say that the
physical inwardness, once it has arisen, is “transmitted,” is not an
explanation but merely an admission that the riddle exists. And the idea
that the psychical is just a penumbra or shadow of reality, which comes of
itself and so to speak gratis, is quite inadmissible from the point of
view of strict natural science. There are no longer _luxus_ and _lusus
naturæ_. Reality cannot throw a “shadow.” According to the principles of
the conservation of matter and energy, we must be able to show whence it
gets the so-called shadow, and with what it compensates for it.
Pre-eminence of Consciousness.
But we have already spent too much time over this naïve mode of looking at
things, which, though it professes to place things in their true light, in
reality distorts them and turns them upside down. As if this world of the
external and material, all these bodies and forces, were our first and
most direct data, and were not really all derived from, and only
discoverable by, consciousness. We have here to do with the ancient view
of all philosophy and all reflection in general, although in modern days
it has taken its place as a great new discovery even among naturalists
themselves, by whom it is extolled and recognised as “the conquest of
materialism.” Such exaggerated emphasis tends to conceal the fact that
this truth has been regarded as self-evident from very early times.
What is a body, extension, movement, colour, smell and taste? What do I
possess of them, or know of them, except through the images, sensations
and feelings which they call up in my receptive mind? No single thing
wanders into me as itself, or reveals itself to me directly; only through
the way in which they affect me, the peculiar changes which they work in
me, do things reveal to me their existence and their special character. I
have no knowledge of an apple-tree or of an apple, except through the
sense perceptions they call up in me. But these sense perceptions, what
are they but different peculiar states of my consciousness, peculiar
determinations of my mind? I see that the tree stands there, but what is
it to see? What is the perception of a colour, of light, of shade, and
their changes? Surely only a peculiar change of my mind itself, a
particular state of stimulus and awareness brought about in myself. And in
the same way I can feel that the apple lies there. But what is the
perception of resistance, of hardness, of impenetrability? Nothing more
than a feeling, a change in my psychical state, which is unique and cannot
be described in terms of anything but itself. Even as regards “attraction
and repulsion,” external existence only reveals itself to us through
changes in the mind and consciousness, which we then attribute to a cause
outside ourselves.
It is well enough known that this simple but incontrovertible fact has
often led to the denial of the existence of anything outside of ourselves
and our consciousness. But even if we leave this difficult subject alone,
it is quite certain that, if the question as to the pre-eminence of
consciousness and its relation to external things is to be asked at all,
it should be formulated as follows, and not conversely: “How can I,
starting from the directly given reality and certainty of consciousness
and its states, arrive at the certainty and reality of external things,
substances, forces, physics and chemistry?”
Creative Power of Consciousness.
To this insight into the underivability and pre-eminence of consciousness
over the world of external reality there must be added at this stage a
recognition of its peculiar creative character. We have here to recognise
that consciousness itself creates its world,—that is, the world that
becomes our own through actual experience, possession, and enjoyment. We
are led to this position even by the conception now current in natural
science of the world as it is, not as it is mirrored in consciousness, and
the theory of the “subjectivity of sensory qualities.” The qualities which
we perceive in things through the senses are “subjective”; philosophy has
long taught that, and now natural science teaches it too. That is to say,
these qualities are not actually present in the things themselves; they
are rather the particular responses which our consciousness makes to
stimuli. Take, for instance, tone or colour. What we call tone or sound is
not known to acoustics. That takes cognisance only of vibrations and the
conditions of vibration in elastic bodies, which, by means of the ear and
the nerves of hearing, become a stimulus of consciousness. Consciousness
“responds” to this stimulus by receiving a sense-impression of hearing.
But in this, obviously, there is nothing of the nature of oscillations and
vibrations, but something quite different. What outside of us is nothing
more than a complex process of movement according to mathematical
conditions, blossoms within us to a world of sound, tone, and music. The
world itself is soundless, toneless. And the same is true of light and
colour; “light” and “blue” are nothing in themselves—are not properties of
things themselves. They are only the infinitely rapid movements of an
infinitely delicate substance, the ether. But when these meet our
consciousness, they spin themselves within us into this world of light and
colour, of brilliance and beauty. Thus without us there is a world of a
purely mathematical nature, without quality, charm, or value. But the
world we know, the world of sound, light, and colour, of all properties
whatsoever, of the ugly or the beautiful, of pain and pleasure, is in the
most real sense the product of consciousness itself, a creation which,
incited by something outside of itself and of a totally different nature,
which we can hardly call “world,” evolves out of itself and causes to
blossom. No part of this creation is given from without; not the blue of
the heavens, for outside of us there is no colour, only vibrations of the
ether; not the gold of the sun nor the red glory of the evening sky.
External nature is nothing more than the stimulus, the pressure upon the
mind, which liberates from its depths the peculiar reactions and responses
to this stimulus, and calls them forth from its own treasure-stores.
Certainly in this creating the consciousness is entirely dependent on the
impressions stamped on it from outside, and to that extent upon
“experience.” But it is by no means a _tabula rasa_, and a merely passive
mirror of the outer world, for it translates the stimulus thus received
into quite a different language, and builds up from it a new reality,
which is quite unlike the mathematical and qualityless reality without.
And this activity on the part of consciousness begins on the very lowest
stages. The simplest perception of light or colour, the first feeling of
pleasure or discomfort, is a reaction of the psychical, which brings about
something entirely new and unique. “The spirit is never passive.”
That the psychical is not derivable from the physical, that it does not
arise out of it, is not secondary to it, but pre-eminent over it, is not
passive but creative; so much we have already gained to set over against
naturalism. But its claims are even more affected by the fact of real
psychical causality. We need not here concern ourselves with the difficult
question, whether the mind can of itself act upon the body, and through it
upon the external world. But in the logical consistence of naturalism
there was implied not only a negative answer to this last question, but
also a denial of the causality of the psychical, even within itself and
its own domain. This is well illustrated in the figure of the cloud
shadows. In consciousness state follows upon state, a upon b, b upon c.
According to naturalism, b is not really the result of a, nor c of b, for
in that case there would be independence of phenomena, and distinctness of
laws in the psychical. But as all the states, a, b, and c, of the cloud
shadows, depend upon states _a_, _b_, and _c_, of the clouds themselves,
but do not themselves form a concatenation of causes, so all the states of
the mind depend upon those of the body, in which alone there is a true
chain of causes because they alone have true reality.
This is a complete distortion of the facts of the case. It would never be
possible to persuade oneself or any one else that the arm, for instance,
did not bend simply because we willed that it should. And it is still less
possible to doubt that there are sequences of causes within the psychical,
that in the world of thought and feeling, of desire and will, one thing
calls up another, awakes it, impels it onwards, and influences it. Indeed,
the mode of influence is peculiarly rich, subtle, and certain. Mental
images and experiences arouse joy or sorrow, admiration or repulsion. One
image calls up another, forces it to appear according to quite peculiar
laws, or may crowd it out. Feelings call up desires, desires lead to
determination. Good news actually causes joy, this is actually
strengthened to willing, and the new situation gives rise to actual
resolves. All this is so obvious and so unquestionable that no naturalism
can possibly prevail against it. It has also long been made the subject of
special investigation and carefully regulated experiment, and it is one of
the chief subjects of modern psychological science. And especially as
regards the different forms of “association of ideas,” the particular laws
of this psychical causality have been established.
It cannot be denied, however, that this psychology of association has
itself in a deeper sense certain dangers from the point of view of the
freedom of the mind, and it is apt to lead, not indeed to naturalistic
conceptions, but to views according to which the “soul” is reduced to the
level of a passive frame and stage, so to speak, for the exhibition of
mental mechanics and statics. “Ideas” or thoughts, or states of feelings,
are sometimes represented almost as actual little realities, which come
and go in accordance with their own laws of attraction and repulsion,
unite and separate again, by virtue of a kind of mental gravitation, move
and crowd one another, so that one must almost say “it thinks,” as one
says “it rains,” and not “the mind thinks” or “I think.” But more of this
later. This psychological orderliness is in sharp antagonism to pure
naturalism. It describes the laws of a sequence of causes, which have
nothing to do with the physical, chemical, or mechanical, and clearly
establishes the uniqueness, independence, and underivability of the
psychical as contrasted with the physical.
The individuality and incommensurability of this psychical causality shows
itself in another series of factors which make even the _form_ of the
psychical process quite distinctive, and produce phenomena which have no
parallel in the material sequences of the world, indeed, conflict with all
its fundamental laws. The great psychologists of to-day, Wundt in
particular, and James, have frequently emphasised these factors. We can
only briefly call attention to a few points, as, for instance, Wundt’s
theory of the creative resultants through which the psychical processes
show themselves to be quite outside of the scope of the laws of
equivalence which hold good in the physical. If, in the realm of the
corporeal, two components of energy, a and b, come together, they unite in
a common resultant c, which includes in part a new movement, in part
transformation into heat, but always in such a way that c remains equal to
a and b. But it is otherwise in the psychical. Here there occurs what may
be called an increase (and a qualitative change) of the psychical energy.
If we take the notes, c, e, and g, and call the sensation- and
perception-value of the individual notes x, y, z, when they come together,
the resulting sensation-value is by no means simply x + y + z, for a
“harmony” results of which the effect is not only greater than the mere
sum of x + y + z, but is _qualitatively_ different. This is true of all
domains of psychical experience. The parallels from mechanical operation
cannot be applied in any case. These only supply inadequate analogies and
symbols which never really represent the actual state of the case.
Let us take, for instance, a motive, _m_, that impels us towards a
particular action, and another, _n_, that hinders us. If these meet in us,
the result is not simply a weakening of the power of the one, and a
remaining motive of the strength of _m_ minus _n_. The meeting of the two
creates an entirely new and peculiar mental situation, which gives rise to
conflict and choice, and the resultant victorious motive is never under
any circumstances _m-n_, but may be a double or three-fold _m_ or _n_.
Thus, in the different aspects of psychical activity, there are factors
which make it impossible to compare these with other activities, remove
them outside of the scope of the law of the equivalence of cause and
effect, and prove that there is self-increase and growth on the part of
psychical energies. And all such phenomena lead us away from the
standpoint of any mere theory of association.
Activity of Consciousness.
Naturalism takes refuge in the doctrine of association, when it does not
attain anything with its first claims, and applies this theory in such a
way that it seems possible from this standpoint to interpret mental
processes as having an approximate resemblance to mechanically and
mathematically calculable phenomena. As in physics the molecules and
atoms, so here the smallest mental elements, the simplest units of feeling
are sought for, and from their relations of attraction and repulsion,
their groupings and movements, it is supposed that the whole mental world
may be constructed up to its highest contents, will, ideals, and
development of character. But even the analogy, the model which is
followed, and the fact that a model is followed at all, show that this
method is uncritical and not unprejudiced. What reason is there for
regarding occurrences in the realm of physics as a _norm_ for the
psychical? Why should one not rather start from the peculiar and very
striking differences between the two, from the primary and fundamental
fact, not indeed capable of explanation, but all the more worthy of
attention on that account, that there is an absolute difference between
physical occurrences and mental behaviour, between physical and mental
causality? These most primitive and simplest mental elements which are
supposed to float and have their being within the mind as in a kind of
spiritual ether are not atoms at all, but deeds, actions, performances.
The laws of the association of ideas are not the laws of a mental
chemistry, but laws of mental behaviour; very fixed and reliable laws, but
still having to do with modes of behaviour. Their separating and uniting,
their relations to one another, their grouping into unities, their
“syntheses,” are not automatic permutations and combinations, but express
the _activity_ of a thinking intelligence. Not even the simplest actual
synthesis comes about of itself, as psychologists have shown by a neat
illustration.
[Illustration: Square _a_2, next to smaller square _b_2. Above them are
horizontal lines _a_ and _b_, the same lengths as the widths of the
squares below them. Caption: _a_ and _b_ only associated. Squares of _a_
and _b_ in juxtaposition.]
[Illustration: Square _c_2. Above it is horizontal line _c_, the same
length as the width of the square below it. Caption: _a_ and _b_ really
synthetised to _c_. Square of _a_ + _b_ as a true unity = _c_2.]
Given that, through some association, the image of the line _a_ calls up
that of the line _b_, and both are associatively ranged together, we have
still not made the real synthesis _a_ + _b_ = _c_. For to think of _a_ and
_b_ side by side is not the same thing as thinking of _c_, as we shall
readily see if we square them. The squares of _a_ and _b_ thought of
beside one another, that is, _a_2 and _b_2, are something quite different
from the square of the really synthetised _a_ and _b_, which is (_a_ +
_b_)2 = _a_2 + 2_ab_ + _b_2, or _c_ 2. This requires quite a new view, a
spontaneous synthesis, which is an action and not a mere experience.
The Ego.
It was customary in earlier psychology, as it still is in all apologetic
psychology, to regard the soul as a unified, immaterial, indivisible and
therefore indestructible _substance_, as a monad, which, as a unity
without parts, superior to its own capacities and the changes of its
states, is at all times one and the same subject. Many attempts have been
made since the time of Plotinus to accumulate proofs of this substantial
unity. We may leave this question untouched here, and need not even
inquire whether these definitions are not themselves things of the
external world employed as images and analogies and pushed too far. But
there are three factors which may be established in regard to the
psychical in spite of all naturalistic opposition; and those who have
attempted to find proofs for the traditional idea we have noted, have
usually really had these three in mind, and quite rightly so: they are,
self-consciousness, the unity of consciousness, and the consciousness of
the ego.
Self-Consciousness.
1. Our consciousness is not merely a knowledge of many individual things,
the possession of concrete and abstract, particular or general conceptions
and ideas, the cherishing of sensations, feelings and the like. We not
only know, but we know that we know, and we can ponder in thought over the
very fact that we are able thus to reflect in thought. Thought can turn
its attention upon itself, can establish that it takes place, and how it
runs its course, can reflect upon the forms in which it expresses itself,
its powers, its laws, possibilities, and limits, and can ponder over the
general nature of thought and the contingent individual nature of the
particular thinking subject. (The very possibility and preliminary
condition of moral freedom is implied in this.) How naturalism is to do
justice to this fact it is not easy to see. Even if it were possible that
the mental content was gained through mere experience, that comparisons,
syntheses, and abstractions were formed simply according to the laws of
association, and that these were sublimed and refined to general ideas,
and could grow into axioms of logic and of geometry, or crystallise into
necessary and axiomatic principles—none of which can happen—yet it would
always be a knowledge of something. But how this something could be given
to itself remains undiscoverable. The soul is a _tabula rasa_ and a mere
mirror, says this theory. But it would still require to show how the
silver layer behind the mirror began to see itself in the mirror.
The Unity of Consciousness.
2. The same holds true of the unity of consciousness, of which we are
directly convinced. It is quite inexplicable if consciousness is a
function of the extended and divisible physical substratum which is built
up of nerve-cells and nerve-fibres. And yet this unity is the fundamental
condition of our whole inner life.
Even the facts of association demonstrate it. Two images could not come
together, the one could not call up the other, if they were not possessed
in the same consciousness, and could unite in it. It is the preliminary
condition of every higher mode of thought, of every relating of things, of
every comparison and abstraction. No judgment can be formed, no conclusion
drawn without this. How could a predicate become associated with its
subject, or a principal clause with its subordinate clause, if they were
in separate consciousnesses, and how could the conclusion be drawn from
them?
Consciousness of the Ego.
3. This unified self-consciousness is consciousness of the ego. It is only
by means of an artificial abstraction that we can leave out of account in
the consideration of processes of thought the peculiar factor of personal
relationship that absolutely attaches to every thought within us. There
are no thoughts in general that play their part of themselves alone. “It”
never “thinks” in me. On the contrary, all sensation, thought, and will
has in every human being a peculiar central relationship to which we refer
when we say “my idea,” “my sensation.” What the “I” is cannot be defined.
It is that through which the relation of all experiences and actions is
referred to a point, and through which the treasuring of them for good or
ill, the appreciation, the valuation of them is accomplished. And it plays
its part even in the case of cold and indifferent items of knowledge. For
instance, that twice two are four is not simply a perception, it is _my_
perception. Of the ego itself nothing more can be said than that it is the
thought of me as the subject of all experience, willing, and action, and
if we try to take hold of it nothing more than this formula remains. Yet
the fact that the ego is the subject of all this, gives conduct, will, and
experience that peculiar character which distinguishes them from mere
action and reaction. For it is directly certain that all the psychical
contents are not only co-existences in one consciousness but that they are
possessed by it.
Thus in summing up we have to say, that it is through the ego that all
psychical activities and experiences are centred and related, that the ego
is itself the point of relation, that it is the reason of the unity of
consciousness and of the possibility of self-consciousness, and that in
all this it is the most certain reality, without which the simplest
psychical life would be impossible. At the same time, it is difficult to
state what the “ego” is in itself, apart from the effects in which it
reveals itself.