The consciousness of the ego leads us naturally to the consciousness of
freedom. Freedom of the mind is no simple idea; it embraces various
contents which bear the relation of stages to one another, and each higher
stage presupposes the one below it. Freedom is, first of all, the word
which expresses that we are really agents, not mere points of transit for
phenomena foreign to ourselves, but starting-points of phenomena peculiar
to us, actual causes, beings who are able to initiate activity, to control
things and set them in motion. Here the whole question of freedom becomes
simply the question of the reality and causality of the will. Is the will
something really factual, or is it only the strange illusion to which
Spinoza, for instance, referred in his illustration of the flying stone?
It would be purely an illusion of that kind if materialism were the true
interpretation of things, and the psychical were nothing more than an
accompaniment of other “true” realities, and even if the doctrine of
psychical atoms we have already mentioned were correct.
This idea of freedom speedily rises to a higher plane. Freedom is always
freedom from something, in this case from a compulsion coming from
outside, and from things and circumstances foreign to us. In maintaining
freedom of the mind it is asserted that it can preserve its own nature and
laws in face of external compulsion or laws, and in face of the merely
psychological compulsion of the “lower courses of thought,” even from the
“half-natural” laws of the association of ideas. Thus “freedom” is
pre-eminently freedom of thought. And in speaking thus we are presupposing
that the mind has a nature of its own, distinguished even from the purely
psychological nature, and has a code of laws of its own, lying beyond the
scope of all natural laws, which psychical motives and physical conditions
may prevent it following, but which they can never suspend or pull down to
their own level.
“Der Mensch ist frei, und wär’ er in Ketten geboren.”
Here at last we arrive at what is so often exclusively, but erroneously,
included under the name of freedom, or “freedom of the will,” that is
practical freedom, the freedom to recognise moral laws and ideals, and to
form moral judgments against all psychological compulsion, and to will to
allow ourselves to be determined by these. From this question of moral
freedom we might finally pass to that with which it is usual over-hastily
to begin: the problem of so-called freedom of choice, of the “equilibrium”
of the will, a problem in which are centred all the purely theoretical
interests of the doctrine of the will in general, and ethical interests in
particular. The whole domain is so enormous that we cannot even attempt to
sketch it here. The general bearing of the whole can be made clearest at
the second stage, but we cannot entirely pass over the first.
In this inquiry into the problem of the will it is not necessary to
discuss whether we are able by it to bring about external effects,
movements, and changes in our bodies. We may postpone this question once
more. The most important part of the problem lies in the domain of the
psychical. To move an arm or a leg is a relatively unimportant function of
the will as compared with the deliberate adoption of a rule of conduct,
with inward self-discipline, self-culture, and the development of
character.
That we “will,” and what it is to will, cannot really be demonstrated at
all, or defended against attacks. It simply _is_ so. It is a fundamental
psychical fact which can only be proved by being experienced. If there
were anywhere a will-less being, I could not prove to him that there is
such a thing as will, because I could never make clear to him what will
is. And the theories opposed to freedom of the will cannot be refuted in
any way except by simply saying that they are false. They do not describe
what really takes place in us. We do not find within ourselves either the
cloud-shadows or the play of psychical, minima already referred to, with
their crowding up of images, bringing some into prominence and displacing
them again while we remain passive—we find ourselves _willing_. These
theories should at least be able to explain whence came this marvellous
hallucination, this appearance of will in us, which must have its cause,
and they should also be able to say whence came the idea of the will.
Spinoza’s example of the stone, which seemed to itself to fly when it was
simply thrown, does not meet the facts of the case. If the thrown stone
had self-consciousness, it would certainly not say, “I am flying,” but
would merely wonder, “What has happened to me suddenly?”
We cannot demonstrate what will is, we can only make it clear to ourselves
by performing an act of will and observing ourselves in the doing of it.
Let us compare, for instance, a psychical state which we call “attention”
with another which we call “distraction.” In this last there is a stage
where the will rests. There is actually an uninhibited activity of “the
lower course of thought,” a disconnected “dreaming,” a confused automatic
movement of thoughts and feelings according to purely associative laws.
Then suddenly we pull ourselves together, rouse ourselves out of this
state of distraction. Something new comes into the course of our thoughts.
It is the will. Now there is control and definite guidance of our thoughts
and rejection of subsidiary association—ideas that thrust themselves upon
us. Particular thoughts can be selected, particular feelings or mental
contents kept in focus as long as we desire. In thus selecting and guiding
ideas, in keeping them in mind or letting them go, we see the will in
action.
This brings us to freedom of thought. This lies in the fact, not merely
that we can think, but that we can and desire to think rightly, and that
we are able to measure our thoughts by the standard of “true” or “false.”
Naturalism is proud of the fact that it desires nothing more than to
search after truth. To this it is ready to sacrifice all expressions of
feeling or sentiment, and all prejudices. The truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth is its ideal, even if all pet ideas have to give way
before it. It usually saddles itself with the idea of the good and the
beautiful along with this “idea of truth,” but is resolved, since it must
soon see for itself that it is able to secure only a very doubtful basis
for these, to sacrifice them to truth if need be. This is worthy of
honour,(107) but it implies a curious self-deception. For if naturalism be
in the right, thought is not free, and if thought be not free there can be
no such thing as truth, for there can be no establishing of what truth is.
Let us attempt to make this plain in the following manner: According to
the naturalistic-psychological theory, the play of our thoughts, our
impressions of things and properties, their combination in judgments or in
“perceptions,” are dependent on physiological processes of the brain, and
therefore upon natural laws, or, according to some, on peculiar
attractions and repulsions among the impressions themselves, regulated by
the laws of association. If that and that only were the case, I should be
able to say that such a conception was present in my mind, or that this or
that thought had arisen in me, and I might perhaps be able to trace the
connection which made it necessary that it should arise at that particular
time. But every thought would be equally right. Or rather there could be
no question of right or wrong in the matter at all. I could not forbid any
thought to be there, could not compel it to make way for another, perhaps
exactly its opposite. Yet I do this continually. I never merely observe
what thoughts are in my own mind or in another’s. For I have a constant
ideal, a plumb-line according to which I measure, or can measure, every
train of thought. And I can compel others to apply this same plumb-line to
their thoughts. This plumb-line is logic. It is the unique law of the mind
itself which concerns itself about no law of nature or of association
whatsoever. And however mighty a flood of conceptions and associations may
at times pour through me in consequence of various confused physiological
states of excitement affecting the brain, or in consequence of the
fantastic dance of the associations of ideas, the ego is always able in
free thought to intervene in its own psychical experiences, and to test
which combinations of ideas have been logically thought out and are
therefore right, and which are wrong. It often enough refrains from
exercising this control, leaving the lower courses of thought free play.
Hence the mistakes in our thinking, the errors in judgment, the thousand
inconsistencies and self-deceptions. But the mind can do otherwise, can
defend itself from interruptions and extraneous influences by making use
of its freedom and of its power to follow its own laws and no others. It
is thus possible for us to have not only psychical experiences but
knowledge; only in this way can truth be reached, and error rejected. Thus
science can follow a sure course. Thus alone, for instance, could the
great edifice of geometry and arithmetic have been built up in its
indestructible certainty. The progress from axiom to theorem and to all
that follows is due to free thought, obeying the laws of inference and
demonstration, and entirely unconcerned about the laws of association or
the natural laws of the nervous agitations, the electric currents, and
other plays of energy which may go on in the brain at the same time. What
have the laws of the syllogism to do with the temporary states of tension
in the brain, which, if they had free course, would probably follow lines
very different from those of Euclid, and if they chanced once in a way to
follow the right lines from among the millions of possibilities, would
certainly soon turn to different ones, and could never examine them to see
whether they were right or not. Thus it is not any highly aspiring
emotional desire or any premature prejudice, but the solid old science of
logic that first and most determinedly shuts the door in face of the
claims of naturalism. If we combine this with what has already been said
on page 154, we shall see how dangerous it would be for naturalism to be
proved right in the dispute; for then it would be wholly wrong.
For, as it is only through the free, thinking mind that true and false can
be distinguished and brought into relation with things, so only through it
can we have an ideal of truth to be recognised and striven after, and that
spontaneous, pertinacious, searching, following, and discovering which
constitutes science as a whole and in detail. And in so far as naturalism
itself claims to be nothing more than an attempt towards this goal, it is
itself only possible on the basis of something which it denies.
Freedom of thought is also the most obvious example of that freedom of the
spirit in morally “willing,” which it is the business of ethical science
to teach and defend. As in the one case thought shows itself superior to
the physiologically or psychologically conditioned sequence of its
concepts, so the free spirit, in the uniqueness of its moral laws, reveals
itself as lord over all the motives, the lower feelings of pleasure and
pain that have their play within us. As in the one case it is free to
measure according to the criteria of true or false, and thus is able to
intervene in the sequence of its own conceptions, correcting and
confirming, so in the other it is able to estimate by the criteria of good
or bad. As in the one case it carries within it its own fundamental laws
as logic, so in the other the moral ideals and fundamental judgments which
arise out of its own being. And in both cases it is free from nature and
natural law, and capable of subordinating nature to its own rules, in so
far as it “wills,” and of becoming subordinate to nature—in erroneous
thinking and non-moral acting—in so far as it does not will.
Feeling, Individuality, Genius, and Mysticism.
The four things here mentioned are very closely associated with one
another, especially the second and third, as is easily perceived, but the
second is rooted in the first. And in the second and third there is
already to be discovered a factor which goes beyond the sphere of the
purely rational, and is no longer accessible to our comprehension, but
carries us over into the sphere of the fourth. This is really true even of
the phenomena of moral consciousness and moral “freedom.” In this quality,
and in the ethical ideal of “personality,” there is implied something that
is inaccessible to a purely rational consideration, and is directly
related to mystery and divination. (What is “personality”? We all feel it.
We respect it from the depths of our soul wherever we meet it. We bow down
before it unconditionally. But what it is no philosophy has ever yet been
able definitely to state. In seeking to comprehend it intuition and
feeling must always play the largest part.)
Feeling.
It is in the four attributes here emphasised that the true nature of mind
in its underivability and superiority to all nature first becomes clear.
All that we have so far considered under the name of mind is only
preliminary and leads up to this. All reality of external things is of
little account compared with that of the mind. It does not occur to any
one in practice to regard anything in the whole world as more real and
genuine than his own love and hate, fear and hope, his pain, from the
simplest discomfort due to a wound to the pangs of conscience and the
gnawings of remorse—his pleasure, from the merest comfort to the highest
raptures of delight. This world of feeling is for us the meaning of all
existence. The more we plunge ourselves into it, the deeper are the
intricacies and mysteries it reveals. At every point underivable and
unintelligible in terms of physiological processes, it reveals itself from
stage to stage as more deeply and wholly unique in its relations,
interactions, and processes, and grows farther and farther beyond the
laboured and insufficient schemes and formulas under which science desires
to range all psychical phenomena.
Individuality.
It is especially in “feeling” that what we call individuality has its
roots. The individual really means the “indivisible,” and in the strict
sense of the word need mean nothing more than the ego, and the unity of
consciousness of which we have already spoken. But through a change in the
meaning of the word we have come to mean much more than that by it. This
individuality forces itself most distinctly upon our attention in regard
to prominent and distinguished persons. It is the particular determination
of their psychical nature that marks them out so distinctly, and it often
rather escapes analysis and characterisation than is attained by it.
“Individuum est ineffabile.” It can only be grasped intuitively and by
experience. And people of a non-reflective mood are usually more
successful in understanding it than those who reflect and analyse. It
requires “fine feeling,” which knows exactly how it stands towards the
person in question, which yet can seldom give any definite account of his
characteristics. Individuality usually meets us most obviously in
exceptional men, and we are apt to contrast these with ordinary men. But
on closer examination we see that this difference is only one of degree.
“Individuality” in a less marked manner belongs to them all, and where it
exists it is a distinctly original thing, which cannot be derived from its
antecedents. No psyche is simply derivable from other psyches. What a
child receives from its parents by “heredity” are factors which, taken
together, amount to more than the mere sum of them. The synthesis of these
is at once the creation of something new and peculiar, and what has been
handed down is merely the building material. This can be felt in an
intensified and striking degree in regard to “pronounced individuality,”
but careful study will disclose the fact that there are no men quite
alike. This kind of “creative synthesis,” that is, the underivability of
the individual, was the element of truth in the mythologies of
“creationism” held by the Church fathers, or in the theory of the
“pre-existence of the soul” maintained by Plato and others.
And from this point of view we must safeguard what has already been said
in regard to the culture and gradual development of our psychical inner
nature. It is true that the “soul” does not spring up ready-made in the
developing body, lying dormant in it, and only requiring to waken up
gradually. It really becomes. But the becoming is a self-realisation. It
is not true that it is put together and built up bit by bit by experience,
so that a different being might develop if the experiences were different.
It is undoubtedly dependent upon experience, impressions, and
circumstances, and without these its development would be impossible. But
these impressions act as a stimulus, developing only what is previously
inherent. They do not themselves create anything. A characteristic
predetermination restricts the development to comparatively narrow limits.
And this is identical with the individuality itself. A man may turn out
very different according to circumstances, education, influences. But he
would nevertheless recognise “himself” under any circumstances. He will
never become anything of which he had not the possibility within him from
the very beginning, any more than the rose will become a violet if it is
nurtured with a different kind of manure.
Genius.
We cannot venture to say much about genius and the mystery of it. In it
and its creative power something of the spirit, the nature of the spirit,
seems to look up at us, as we might think of it in itself and apart from
the limits of existence in time and space. It is usually most obvious and
most accessible to us in the domain of art. But it has its place too in
the realm of science. And it is most of all genius, and therefore most
inaccessible to us ordinary mortals, in the domain of religion.
Mysticism.
Even “pronounced individuality” “has an element of mysticism” in it—of the
non-rational, which we feel the more distinctly the more decidedly we
reject all attempts to make it rational again through crude or subtle
mythologies. This is much more true of genius, artistic insight, and
inspiration. But these are much too delicate to be exposed to the
buffeting of controversy, much more so the dark and mysterious boundary
region in the life of the human spirit which we know under the name of
mysticism in the true sense, without inverted commas. It is not a subject
that is adapted for systematic treatment. Where it has been subjected to
it, everything becomes crude and repulsive, a mere caricature of pure
mysticism like the recrudescent occultism of to-day. Therefore it is
enough simply to call the attention of the sympathetic reader to it and
then to pass it by. In face of the witness borne to it by all that is
finest and deepest in history, especially in the history of religion,
naturalism is powerless.
Mind and Spirit. The Human and the Animal Soul.
What is the relation between the human and the animal mind? This has
always been a vital question in the conflict between naturalism and the
religious outlook. And as in the whole problem of the psychical so here
the interest on both sides has been mainly concentrated on the question of
“mortality” or “immortality.” Man is immortal because he has a soul.
Animals “have no souls.” “Animals also have souls, differing only in
degree but not in substantial nature from the soul of man: as they are
mortal, man must be so too.” “Animals have minds: the merely psychical
passes away with the body. But man has spirit in addition. It is
imperishable.” These and many other assertions were made on one side or
the other. And both sides made precisely the same mistake: they made the
belief in the immortality of our true nature dependent upon a proof that
the soul has a physical “substantial nature,” which is to be regarded as
an indestructible substance, a kind of spiritual atom. And on the other
hand they overlooked the gist of the whole matter, the true
starting-point, which cannot be overlooked if the religious outlook is not
to be brought into discredit. It is undoubtedly a fundamental postulate,
and one which the religious outlook cannot give up, that the human spirit
is more than all creatures, and is in quite a different order from stars,
plants, and animals. But absolutely the first necessity from the point of
view of the religious outlook is to establish the incomparable value of
the human spirit; the question of its “substantial nature” is in itself a
matter of entire indifference. The religious outlook observes that man can
will good and can pray, and no other creature can do this. And it sees
that this makes the difference between two worlds. Whether the bodily and
mental physics in both these worlds is the same or different, is to it a
matter rather of curiosity than of importance.
What occurs or does not occur within the animal mind is, as a matter of
fact, wholly hidden from us. We have no way of determining this except by
analogy with ourselves, and therefore our idea of it is necessarily
anthropomorphic. And apologists are undoubtedly right when they maintain
that this is far too much the case. To reach a more unprejudiced attitude
towards the customary anthropomorphisation of animals, it is profitable to
study Wundt’s lectures on “The Human and the Animal Mind” (see especially
Lecture XX.). Perhaps it is true that, notwithstanding all the
much-praised cleverness, intelligence and teachableness of elephants,
dogs, and chimpanzees, they are incapable of forming “general ideas,”
“rules,” and “laws,” of forming judgments in the strict sense, and
constructive syllogisms, that they have only associations of ideas, and
expectations of similar experience, but no thinking in conceptual terms,
and cannot perceive anything general or necessary, that they recognise _à
posteriori_ but not _à priori_, as Leibnitz supposed, and that they form
only perceptual inferences, not judgments from experience. But it is not
easy to see that this contributes anything of importance to our problem.
It does not even help us in regard to the interesting question of a
physical guarantee for the indestructibility of the soul. For even if the
psychical acts of animals were fewer and less important than they are
admitted to be, they have certainly sensations, images, feelings,
pleasure, pain, and desire. All these are of a psychical nature,
immaterial, and underivable from the material. And it is difficult to see,
for instance, why the forming of judgments should be regarded as more
durable and indestructible than sensation and desire. The difference lies
higher than this,—not in the fact that man has a few “capacities” more
than the animal, but in the difference in principle, that the psychical in
man can be developed to spirit, and that this is impossible anywhere else.
The very example that naturalism loves to cite in its own favour makes its
error clear. It asks whether the difference, let us say, between a Fuegian
and one of the higher mammals such as an ape, is not much less than that
between a Fuegian and a European. This sounds obvious, if we measure
simply by habits, morals, and possibly also the content of feeling and
imagination in a “savage” as we find him. And yet it is obviously false. I
can _train_ a young ape or an elephant, can teach it to open wine-bottles
and perform tricks. But I can _educate_ the child of the savage, can
develop in him a mental life equal in fineness, depth, and energy,
frequently more than equal, to that of the average European, as the
mission to the Eskimos and to the Fuegians proves, and as Darwin frankly
admitted. Psychical capacity is nothing more than raw material. It is in
the possibility of raising this to the level of spirit, of using the raw
material to its purpose, that the absolute difference, the impassable gulf
between man and animals lies.
Even in animals there is a primitive thinking, rising above the level of
blind instinct. But it can neither be schooled, nor is it capable of
developing even the crudest beginnings of science. Even the animal has a
sensory satisfaction in colour, form and tone (not nearly so much,
however, as the theory of sexual selection requires us to suppose). But
art, even the most rudimentary self-expression of the spirit upon this
basis, is wholly sealed to it. Even the animal possesses strong altruistic
instincts, impulses towards companionship, pairing, and caring for its
young, and some have seen in this the beginnings of morality. But morality
is a matter of the spirit, which begins with the idea of duty and rises to
the recognition of an ideal of life. Nowhere else do we see so directly
and emphatically the incomparability of the natural-psychical and the
spiritual as in the idea of duty and an ideal of life, although the
contrast is equally great at all points of the spiritual life.
Finally and highest of all, we have the capacity of the human spirit to
rise to religion and the greatest heights of feeling. In science and art,
in morality and religion, the spirit possesses itself. And as such it is a
unique and strange guest in this world, absolutely incomparable with
anything beneath or around it. It may, perhaps, be true that the psychical
difference between the ape and man is smaller than that between the ape
and unicellular organisms (though we really can know nothing about that).
But nowhere in the animal world does the psychical overstep the limits of
purely natural existence, of striving after and being prompted by the
directly and purely natural ends of a vegetative and animal instinctive
life, physical pleasure, self-preservation, and the maintenance of the
species.
And there is more than this. However different the psychical equipment may
be at different animal stages, it has one thing in common in them all, it
is absolutely limited to what is given it by nature. An animal species may
last for a million years. But it has no history. It is and remains the
same history-less natural product. In this respect the animal is not a
step in advance of the stone or the crystal. The only thing it can achieve
is to express more or less perfectly the character of the species. This is
the utmost height of its capacity. But for man this is only the
starting-point, and the really human begins just there. What is implicit
in him as _homo sapiens_, a member of a zoological order, is nothing more
than the natural basis upon which, in human and individual history, he may
build up an entirely unique and new creation, an upper story: the world
and life of the spirit.
It is also erroneous to regard the gradual development of the psychical
capacities at the different levels of animal evolution as the development
of and preparation for the human spirit. It is not the spirit, but the raw
material of it, that is thus being prepared and developed. It is as if, in
the history of colour manufacture, an “evolution” of colour were taking
place. The quality of the colour gradually becomes better and better. Each
generation learns to make it purer and more brilliant. But the painting
which is painted with the most brilliant colour cannot be regarded as a
link in the evolutionary sequence, and is certainly not the crown and
culmination of the pigment; the latter is only the gradual perfecting of a
necessary preliminary condition.
It is only of secondary interest to point out the immense leaps in the
evolution of colour and colour-technique, and especially the vast
difference between the last stage and the one before it, or, to drop the
metaphor, the enormous psychological differences between the animal and
the human mind.
There is no doubt that an apologetic which interests itself in such
matters would find abundant opportunity for work, and could find a
powerful argument against a too hasty naturalism in the differences
between animal and human psychical capacities, which have been recognised
much more sanely and clearly through recent investigation than they
usually were in earlier times. But the question has no special interest
for us here.
Personality.
In as far as man is endowed with a capacity for spiritual life and
spiritual possession, he is likewise destined for personality. This
includes and designates everything that expresses the peculiar dignity of
human nature. Personality is a word which gives us an inward thrill. It
expresses what is most individual in us, what is set before us, our
highest task and the inmost tendency of our being. What is personality?
Certainly something which is only a rudiment in us at birth, and is not
then realised, and at the same time an ideal which we feel more or less
indistinctly, but without being able to outline it clearly. To exhaust the
idea as far as possible is the task of ethical science. But one thing at
any rate we can affirm about it with certainty: it is absolutely bounded
off from the whole world and all existence as a self-contained and
independent world in itself. The more we become persons, the more clearly,
definitely, and indissolubly we raise ourselves with our spiritual life
and spiritual possessions out of all the currents of natural phenomena,
the more do we cease to be mere modes of a general existence and happening
that flows about us, and in which we would otherwise float with vaguely
defined outlines. A microcosm forms itself in contradistinction to the
macrocosm, and a unity, a monad, arises, in regard to which there is now
warrant for inquiring into its duration and immortality as compared with
the stream of general becoming and passing away. For what does it matter
to religion whether, in addition to physical indivisible atoms, there are
spiritual ones which, by reason of their simplicity, are indestructible?
But that the unities which we call personalities are superior to all the
manifoldness and diversity of the world, that they are not fleeting
fortuitous formations among the many which evolution is always giving rise
to and breaking down again, but that they are the aim and meaning of all
existence, and that as such they are above the common lot of all that has
only a transient meaning and a temporal worth—to inquire into all this and
to affirm it is religion itself.
Parallelism.
The independence and underivability of the psychical, the incomparability
of its uniformities with those of mechanical or physico-chemical laws, has
proved itself so clear and incontrovertible, notwithstanding all the
distortions of naturalism, that it is now regarded as a self-evident fact,
not only among philosophers and epistemologists, and technical
psychologists, but for the last decade even among all thinking men, and
“materialism” is now an obsolete position. It was too crude and too
contrary to all experience to define the relation between physical and
mental, as if the latter were a mere secretion of the former, although a
very subtle one, or a mere epi-phenomenon of it, in such a way that all
reality and effectiveness was on the side of the physical.
In place of this, another theory has become widespread, which claims to
define the relation of the two series of phenomena better and more
adequately: the theory of psychophysical parallelism. It is not new. There
are occasional indications of it even in Aristotle’s psychology. It was
suggested by Descartes in his automaton theory, by the occasionalists in
their parable of the two watches running in exact agreement; it was
developed by Spinoza and Leibnitz, and refined by the idealistic
philosophers, by Schopenhauer, Fechner, and the modern psychologists. The
form in which it is most prevalent now is that given to it by Spinoza, and
he is usually referred to in connection with it. Its general tenor is as
follows: The physical cannot be referred back to the psychical, nor the
psychical to the physical. Both orders of phenomena run side by side as
parallels that never separate. Both represent a concatenation of causes
complete in itself, that is never broken, or interrupted, or completed.
And in both there is real causality. Thought really causes thoughts and
feelings. Movement really causes movements. But the one series is always
strictly correlated with the other, and corresponds with it. And thus all
existence is double, and man is an obvious illustration of this. To every
thought, feeling, or exercise of will there corresponds some excitement,
movement or change in the body. I will: my arm moves. Subtle nervous
processes run their course in my brain, and I think. That I will has its
sufficient reasons, its causes lie entirely in the preceding state of my
mind, in motives of feeling, in ideas which again have their efficient
causes in a previous psychical condition, and so on. And that my arm moves
has its efficient cause in the stored-up energies of the muscle-substance,
in the stimulus and impulse conveyed by the motor nerve from the brain.
And these conditions have their purely physiological causes and reasons
again in preceding purely physiological states and processes. (It goes
without saying that a mechanical theory of life is the necessary
presupposition of this parallelistic theory.) But both sets of processes
correspond exactly one to another, and the first is only the inner aspect
of the second, and the second the outer aspect of the first. Thus it is
quite true that my arm moves when I will. But in reality it is quite as
true to say that when my arm moves I will. But we must not substitute
“because” for “when.” This theory must maintain, and does maintain, that
even the most abstract and subtle ideas, the deepest processes of
consciousness, have some corresponding bodily processes, either in the
brain or in the nervous substance generally, and, on the other hand, that
no physical process is without this psychical inwardness. The result is
that this inwardness and soul are attributed also to the purely material
world, the world of “dead” matter. In this way it is believed that
everything gets its due; the thorough mechanical explicability of bodily
phenomena, and the law of the conservation of energy and of matter, and,
on the other hand, very decisively also, the independence and uniqueness
of law which can no longer be denied to the psychical. And from this
latter standpoint sharp protests are raised against all materialistic
distortions. The only thing denied is the old idea of the “influxus
physicus,” the idea, that is, that mind can operate beyond itself and take
effect on the physical world, and conversely the physical world upon it.
This again is regarded as a breach of the law of the conservation of
energy. For if the bodily affects consciousness, then at a given moment a
certain amount of energy must be transformed into something that is not
energy. And if consciousness affects the bodily, a process of movement
must suddenly occur, for which no previous equivalent of energy can be
shown.
This standpoint is most impressively set forth in Paulsen’s widely read
“Introduction to Philosophy.” The same ideas form the central feature in
the work of Fechner, which is having such a marked renaissance to-day.
It seems as though all higher estimates of spirit, even the religious
estimate, could quite well rest upon this basis. For full scope is here
given to the idea that mind and the mental sciences have their own
particular field. God, as the absolute all-consciousness and
self-consciousness, comprehending within Himself all individual
consciousness, is thought of as the eternal correlate of this universe in
space. And the theory has room also for a belief in immortality. Of all
imaginative attempts to make the idea of immortality clear and possible,
undoubtedly that of Fechner is the grandest and most effective. And it,
too, is based entirely upon the idea of parallelism. (Yet as a matter of
fact it could be shown that neither mortality nor immortality really fit
into the scheme of this conception.)
Though its main features are very similar as set forth by its various
champions, this theory differs according to the way in which this
astonishing and mysterious co-ordination, this parallelism itself, is
explained. How is it that “thought” and “extension” can correspond to one
another?
The answer may be either naïvely dogmatic, that this is one of the great
riddles of the universe, and that we must simply take it for granted.
Others declare with Spinoza that the two series of phenomena are only the
two sides of one and the same fundamental being and happening, which may
be designated as _natura sive deus_, and that what is inwardly unified
expresses itself outwardly in these two forms of being. But because both
sides, thought and extension, are only expressions of one and the same
fundamental substance, they correspond exactly to one another. The best
illustration of this is Fechner’s simile of the curved line. It is concave
on one side, convex on the other, and thus entirely different on the two
sides. But at every point the concavity corresponds exactly to the
convexity. And this is possible because the two are the inner and the
outer aspects of the same line.
Others, again, go back to the fundamental ideas of critical idealism, and
declare the whole extended world accessible to the senses and the
mechanical-physical nexus of cause and phenomena, to be simply the form of
appearance in which the fundamentally spiritual existence presents itself
to our senses. Body, movement, physiological processes, are all nothing
more than the will, to speak with Fichte and Schopenhauer, or the idea, or
the spirit itself, which appears thus to sensory beings. Other theories,
some of them new, are also put forward.
No Parallelism.
For a long time it seemed as if the theory of parallelism was to gain
general acceptance. One might write a whole history of the gradually
increasing criticisms of, and reactions from the academic theories which
had become almost canonical. But we may here confine ourselves to the most
general of the objections to the parallelistic theory. They apply to the
general idea of parallelism itself, and affect the different standpoints
of the parallelists in different degrees. The theory in no way corresponds
to what we find in ourselves from direct experience. It is only with the
greatest difficulty that we can convince ourselves that our arm moves only
when and not because we will. The consciousness of being, through the
will, the actual cause of our own bodily movements is so energetic and
direct and certain, that it maintains its sway in spite of all objections,
and confuses the argument even of the parallelists themselves. Usually
after they have laid the foundations of a purely parallelistic theory,
they abandon it again as quickly as possible, and revert to the
expressions and images of ordinary thought. Indeed we have no clearer and
more certain example of causality in general than in our own capacity for
controlling changes in our own bodies. Further, a very fatal addition and
burdensome accessory of the parallelistic theory is involved in the two
corollaries it has above and beneath it. On the one hand there is the
necessity for attributing soul to everything. These mythologies of
atom-souls, molecule-souls, this hatred and love which are the inner
aspects even of the simple facts of attraction and repulsion among the
elements, fit better into the nature-philosophy of Empedocles and
Anaxagoras than into ours. The main support, indeed the sole support, of
this position is that this world of the infinitely little cannot be
brought under control as far as its “soul” is concerned. Thus we can
impute “a soul” to it without danger. On the other hand, there is a
difficulty which made itself felt even in regard to Spinoza’s system. All
bodily processes must have psychical processes corresponding to them, said
Spinoza. Conversely, all ideas in their turn must have bodily processes.
To the system including all bodily processes corresponds the sum-total of
psychical processes. This sum-total we call the soul. And in its entirety
it is the _idea corporis_. If “soul” were really nothing more than this,
the theory of parallelism might be right. But it is more than this. It
rises above itself, and becomes also the _idea ideæ_; it is
self-consciousness and the consciousness of the ego; it makes its own
thought and the laws of it, its feelings and their intensity—its
experiences in short—a subject of thought. How does this fit in with
parallelism? Wundt himself, the most notable modern champion of
parallelism, admits and defines these limits of the parallelistic theory
on both sides.
Furthermore, the theory of parallelism, notwithstanding its opposition to
materialism, must presuppose that localisation of psychical processes of
which we have already spoken, and to which all naturalism appeals with so
much emphasis. Because of the fact that particular psychical functions
seem to be limited to a particular and definable area of the brain-cortex,
or to a spot which could be isolated on a particular convolution, it
seemed as if naturalism could prove that “soul” was obviously a function
of this particular organ or part of an organ. According to the theory of
parallelism this does not follow. It would assert: “What in one aspect
appears to be a psychical process, appears in another aspect to be a
definite physiological process of the brain.” Yet it is clear that in
order to gain support for the doctrine of mutual correspondence,
parallelism has also the same interest in such localisation. For this is
the only method by which it can empirically control its theory. But this
whole idea of localisation does not hold good to anything like the extent
to which the members of the naturalistic school are wont to assert that it
does. In regard to this point, too, there has been considerable
disillusioning in recent years. Perhaps all that can be said is, that
localisation of psychical processes is a fact analogous to the fact that
sight is associated with the optic nerves and hearing with the auditory
nerves. Progressive investigation leads more and more clearly to the
recognition of a fact which makes localisation comparatively unimportant,
namely, the vicarious functioning of different parts of the brain. In many
cases where this or that “centre” is injured, and rendered incapable of
function, or even extirpated, the corresponding part of the mind is by no
means destroyed along with it. At first the mind may suffer from “the
effect of shock” as the phrase runs, but gradually it may recover and the
same function may be transferred to another part of the brain, and there
be fulfilled sometimes less perfectly, sometimes quite as perfectly as
before. We had to deal with this fact of vicarious function in discussing
the general theory of life. It is one of the greatest difficulties in the
way of the mechanistic and materialistic theories. But it must give some
trouble to the parallelists too.
We need not speak of the wonderful duplication of all existence which
parallelism must establish, though it is difficult to evade the question
how a _natura sive deus_ could have come, so superfluously, to say the
same thing twice over. Superfluously, for since both are alike
self-contained and independent of one another, one can have no need of the
other.
One objection, however, may be urged against both parallelism and
materialism, which makes them both impossible, and that is, automatism.
Both parallelism and materialism maintain that the sequence of physical
processes is complete in itself and can be explained in terms of itself.
_All_ physical processes! Not only the movements of the stars, the changes
in inanimate matter, the origin and evolution of the forms of life, but
also what we call actions, for instance the movements of our arms and our
legs, and the complicated processes affecting the breathing organs and
tongue, which we call “speech.” Every plant, every animal, every human
being must be as it is and where it is, must move and act, must perform
its functions, which we explain as due to love or hate, to fear or hope,
even if there were no such thing as sensation, will, idea, neither love
nor hate, fear nor hope. More than this, all that we call history,
building towns and destroying them, carrying on war and concluding peace,
uniting into states and holding national assemblies, going to school and
exercising mouth and tongue, argument, making books and forming letters,
writing Iliads, Bibles, and treatises on the soul or on free will, holding
psychological congresses and talking about parallelism;—all this must have
been done even if there had been no consciousness, no psychical activity
in any brain! This is the necessary consequence to which the theories of
parallelism and materialism lead. If it does not follow, then there was
from the outset no meaning in establishing them. But the monstrosity of
their corollary is fatal to them. It is idle to set up theories in which
it is impossible to believe.
There is another consideration that affects parallelism alone. Since the
theory credits each of the two series with a closed and sufficient causal
sequence, each of which excludes the other, it does away with causality
altogether. That the one line runs parallel with the other excludes the
idea that a unique system of laws prevails, determining the character and
course of each line. One of the two lines must certainly be dependent, and
one must lead. Otherwise there can be no distinctness of laws in either.
Let us recall our illustration of the cloud shadows once more; the
changing forms of the shadows correspond point for point with those of the
clouds only because they are entirely dependent upon them. We may
illustrate it in this way: a parallel may be drawn to an ellipse, it also
forms a closed curved line. But it is by no means again an ellipse, but is
an entirely dependent figure without any formula or law of its own.
Parallelism must make one of its lines the leading one, which is guided
and directed by an actual causal connection within itself. The other line
may then run parallel with this, but its course must certainly be
determined by the other. And as the line of corporeal processes, with its
inviolable nexus of sequences, is not easily broken, parallelism, after
many hard words against materialism, frequently returns to that again or
becomes inconsistent. But if one says that the two aspects of phenomena
are only the forms of one fundamental phenomenon, that means taking away
actual causality from both alike, and leaving only a temporal sequence.
For then the actually real is the hidden something that throws the
cloud-shadows to right and left. But in the sequence of shadows there is
no causal connection, only a series of states succeeding one another in
time, and this points to a causal connection elsewhere.
It is easy enough to find examples to prove that the mental in us
influences the bodily. But the most convincing, deepest and most
trustworthy of these are not the voluntary actions which are expressed in
bodily movements, nor even the passions and emotions, the joy which makes
our blood circulate more quickly, and the shame which brings a flush to
our foreheads, the suggestions which work through the mind towards the
reviving, vitalising or healing of the body, but the cold and simple
course of logical thought itself. Through logical thinking we have the
power to correct the course of our conceptions, to inhibit, modify, or
logically direct the natural course, as it would have been had it been
brought about by our preceding physiological and psychical states, if they
were dominant and uncontrolled. But if so, then we must also have the
power, especially if it be widely true that physiological states
correspond to psychical states, to influence, inhibit, modify the
nerve-processes in our brain, or to liberate entirely new ones, namely,
those that correspond to the corrected conceptions.
The law of the conservation of energy is here applied in as distorted a
sense as we detected before in regard to the general theory of life. And
what we said there holds good here also. That something which is in itself
not energetic should determine processes and directions of energy is
undoubtedly an absolute riddle. But to recognise this is less difficult
than to accept the impossibilities which mechanism and automatism offer us
here, even more pronouncedly than in regard to the theory of life. Perhaps
one of the familiar antinomies of Kant shows us the way, not, indeed, to
find the solution of the riddle, but to recognise, so to speak, its
geometrical position and associations. We have already seen that inquiry
into the causal conditions of processes lands us in contradictions of
thought, which show us that we can never really penetrate into the actual
state of the matter.
Perhaps we have here to do only with the obverse side of the problem dealt
with there. There the chain of conditions could not be finished because it
led on to infinity, where, however, it was required that it should be
complete. Here again the chain is incomplete. In the previous case a
solution is found through the naïve proceeding of simply breaking the
empirical connection of conditions and postulating beginnings in time. In
this case, the admission of an _influxus physicus_ transforms
consciousness almost unnoticed into a mechanically operative causality.
The proper attitude in both cases is a critical one. We must admit that we
cannot penetrate into the true state of the case, because the world is
deeper than our knowledge, we must reject parallelism as being, like the
_influxus physicus_, an unsatisfactory cutting of the critical knot, and
we must frankly recognise the incontrovertible fact, never indeed
seriously called in question, of the controlling power of the mind, even
over the material.
The Supremacy of Mind.
From the standpoint we have now reached we can look back once more on
those troublesome naturalistic insinuations as to the dependence of the
mind upon the body, which we have already considered. It is evident to us
all that our mental development and the fate of our inner life are closely
bound up with the states and changes of the body. And it did not need the
attacks and insinuations of naturalism to point this out. But the reasons
brought forward by naturalism are not convincing, and all the weighty
facts it adduces could be balanced by facts equally weighty on the other
side. We have already shown that the apparently dangerous doctrine of
localisation is far from being seriously prejudicial. But if the
dependence of the mind upon the body be great, that of the body upon the
mind is greater still. Even Kant wrote tersely and drily about “the power
of our mind through mere will to be master over our morbid feelings.” And
every one who has a will knows how much strict self-discipline and firm
willing can achieve even with a frail and wretched body, and handicapped
by exhaustion and weakness. Joy heals, care wastes away, and both may
kill. The influence which “blood” and “bile” or any other predisposition
may have upon temperament and character can be obviated or modified
through education, or transformed and guided into new channels through
strong psychical impressions and experiences, most of all by great
experiences in the domain of morals and religion. No one doubts the
reality of those great internal revolutions of which religion is well
aware, which arise purely from the mind, and are able to rid us of all
natural bonds and burdens. This mysterious region of the influence of the
mind in modifying bodily states or producing new ones is in these days
being more and more opened up. That grief can turn the hair grey and
disgust bring out eruptions on the skin has long been known. But new and
often marvellous facts are being continually added to our knowledge
through curious experiments with suggestion, hypnosis, and
auto-suggestion. And we are no longer far from believing that through
exaltations, forced states of mind associated with auto-suggestion, many
phenomena, such as “stigmata,” for instance, which have hitherto been over
hastily relegated to the domain of pious legend, may possibly have a
“scientific” background.
“The Unconscious”.
But one has a repugnance to descending into this strange region. And
religion, with its clear and lofty mood, can never have either taste for
or relationship with considerations which so easily take an “occult” turn.
Nor is its mysticism concerned with physiologies. But it is instructive
and noteworthy that the old idealistic faith, “It is the mind that builds
up the body for itself,” is becoming stronger again in all kinds of
philosophies and physiologies of “the unconscious,” as a reaction from the
onesidedness of the mechanistic theories, and that it draws its chief
support from the dependence of nervous and other bodily processes upon the
psychical, which is being continually brought into greater and greater
prominence. The moderate and luminous views of the younger Fichte, who
probably also first introduced the now current term “the unconscious,”
must be at least briefly mentioned. According to him, the impulse towards
the development of form which is inherent in everything living, and which
builds up the organism from the germ to the complete whole, by forcing the
chemical and physical processes into particular paths, is identical with
the psychical itself. In instincts, the unconscious purposive actions of
the lower animals in particular, he sees only a special mode of this at
first unconscious psychical nature, which, building up organ after organ,
makes use in doing so of all the physical laws and energies, and is at
first wholly immersed in purely physiological processes. It is only after
the body has been developed, and presents a relatively independent system
capable of performing the necessary functions of daily life, that it rises
beyond itself and gradually unfolds to conscious psychical life in
increasing self-realisation. Edward von Hartmann has attempted to apply
this principle of the unconscious as a principle of all cosmic existence.
And wherever, among the younger generation of biologists, one has broken
away from the fascinations of the mechanistic theory, he has usually
turned to “psychical” co-operating factors.
Is there Ageing of the Mind?
Naturalism is also only apparently right in asserting that the mind ages
with the body. To learn the answer which all idealism gives to this
comfortless theory, it is well to read Schleiermacher’s “Monologues,” and
especially the chapter “Youth and Age.” The arguments put forward by
naturalism, the blunting of the senses, the failing of the memory, are
well known. But here again there are luminous facts on the other side
which are much more true. It is no wonder that a mind ages if it has never
taken life seriously, never consolidated itself to individual and definite
being through education and self-culture, through a deepening of morality,
and has gained for itself no content of lasting worth. How could he do
otherwise than become poor, dull and lifeless, as the excitability of his
organ diminishes and its susceptibility to external impressions
disappears? But did Goethe become old? Did not Schleiermacher, frail and
ailing as he was by nature, prove the truth of what he wrote in his youth,
that there is no ageing of the mind?
The whole problem, in its highest aspects, is a question of will and
faith. If I know mind and the nature of mind, and believe in it, I believe
with Schleiermacher in eternal youth. If I do not believe in it, then I
have given away the best of all means for warding off old age. For the
mind can only hold itself erect while trusting in itself. And this is the
best argument in the whole business.
But even against the concrete special facts and the observable processes
of diminution of psychical powers, and of the disappearance of the whole
mental content, we could range other concrete and observable facts, which
present the whole problem in quite a different light from that in which
naturalism attempts to show it. They indicate that the matter is rather
one of the rusting of the instrument to which the mind is bound than an
actual decay of the mind itself, and that it is a withdrawing of the mind
within itself, comparable rather to sleep than to decay. The remarkable
power of calling up forgotten memories in hypnosis, the suddenly
re-awakening memory a few minutes before death, in which sometimes the
whole past life is unrolled with surprising clearness and detail, the
flaming up anew of a rusty mind in moments of great excitement, the great
clearing up of the mind before its departure, and many other facts of the
same nature, are rather to be regarded as signs that in reality the mind
never loses anything of what it has once experienced or possessed. It has
only become buried under the surface. It has been withdrawn from the
stage, but is stored up in safe treasure-chambers. And the whole stage may
suddenly become filled with it again.
The simile of an instrument and the master who plays upon it, which is
often used of the relation between body and mind, is in many respects a
very imperfect one; for the master does not develop with and in his
instrument. But in regard to the most oppressive arguments of naturalism,
the influence of disease, of old age, of mental disturbances due to brain
changes, the comparison serves our turn well enough, for undoubtedly the
master is dependent upon his instrument; upon an organ which is going more
and more out of tune, rusting, losing its pipes, his harmonies will become
poorer, more imperfect. And if we think of the association between the two
as further obstructed, the master becoming deaf, the stops confused, the
relation between the notes and pipes altered, then what may still live
within him in perfect and unclouded purity, and in undiminished richness,
may present itself outwardly as confused and unintelligible, may even find
only disconnected expression, and finally cease altogether; so that no
conclusion would be possible except that the master himself had become
different or poorer. The melancholy field of mental diseases perhaps
yields proofs against naturalism to an even greater degree than for it. It
is by no means the case that all mental diseases are invariably diseases
of the brain, for even more frequently they are real sicknesses of the
mind, which yield not to physical but to psychical remedies. And the fact
that the mind can be ill, is a sad but emphatic proof that it goes its own
way.
Immortality.
It is in a faith in a Beyond, and in the immortality of our true being,
that what lies finely distributed through all religion sums itself up and
comes to full blossoming: the certainty that world and existence are
insufficient, and the strong desire to break through into the true being,
of which at the best we have here only a foretaste and intuition. The
doctrine of immortality stands by itself as a matter of great solemnity
and deep rapture. If it is to be talked about, both speaker and hearers
ought to be in an exalted mood. It is the conviction which, of all
religious convictions, can be least striven for consciously; it must well
forth from devotional personal experience of the spirit and its dignity,
and thus can maintain itself without, and indeed against much reasoning.
To educate and cultivate it in us requires a discipline of meditation, of
concentration, and of spiritual self-culture from within outwards. If we
understood better what it meant to “live in the spirit,” to develop the
receptivity, fineness, and depth of our inner life, to listen to and
cultivate what belongs to the spirit, to inform it with the worth and
content of religion and morality, and to integrate it in the unity and
completeness of a true personality, we should attain to the certainty that
personal spirit is the fundamental value and meaning of all the confused
play of evolution, and is to be estimated on quite a different scale from
all other being which is driven hither and thither in the stream of
Becoming and Passing away, having no meaning or value because of which it
must endure. And it would be well also if we understood better how to
listen with keener senses to our intuitions, to the direct
self-consciousness of the spirit in regard to itself, which sleeps in
every mind, but which few remark and fewer still interpret. Here, where
the gaze of self-examination reaches its horizon, and can only guess at
what lies beyond, but can no longer interpret it, lie the true motives and
reasons for our conviction of immortality. An apologetic cannot do more
than clear away obstacles, nor need it do much more than has hitherto been
done. It reminds us, as we have already seen, that the world which we know
and study, and which includes ourselves, does not show its true nature to
us; hidden depths lie behind appearances. And it gathers together and sums
up all the great reasons for the independence and underivability of the
spiritual as contrasted with the corporeal. The spiritual has revealed
itself to us as a reality in itself, which cannot be explained in terms of
the corporeal, and which has dominion over it. Its beginning and its end
are wholly unfathomable. There is no practical meaning in discussing its
“origin” or its “passing away,” as we do with regard to the corporeal.
Under certain corporeal conditions it is there, it simply appears. But it
does not arise out of them. And as it is not nothing, but an actual and
effective reality, it can neither have come out of nothing nor disappear
into nothing again. It appears out of the absolutely transcendental,
associates itself with corporeal processes, determines these and is
determined by them, and in its own time passes back from this world of
appearance to the transcendental again. It is like a great unknown sea,
that pours its waters into the configuration of the shore and withdraws
them again. But neither the flowing in nor the ebbing again is of nothing
or in nothing. Whether and how it retains the content, form, and structure
that it assumes in other spheres of animate and conscious nature, when it
retires into the transcendental again; or whether it dissolves and breaks
up into the universal we do not know; nor do we attribute everlastingness
to those individual forms of consciousness which we call animal souls. But
of the self-conscious, personal spirit religion knows that it is
everlasting. It knows this from its own sources. In its insight into the
underivability and autonomy of the spiritual it finds warrant and freedom
to maintain this knowledge as something apart from or even in contrast to
the general outlook on the world.