If I wrote it in Göttingen, I might make it in paragraphs and more
thoroughly, because the Flachsenfingen folks would not disturb me.
Meanwhile it must still be written here, in order that I may have a
patron and advocate in my own person against the court-gentlemen, who
want to transform my soul into my body.
The Brain and Nerves are the true body of the "I"; the rest of the
environment is only the body of that body, the nourishing and
protecting bark of that tender pith.--And as all the changes of the
world appear to us only as changes of that pith or marrow, accordingly
the pith- and pulp-ball with its streaks is the proper world-globe of
the soul. The inverted nervous tree springs from the swollen brain of
the fœtus as from a kernel, which it also resembles in appearance,
and ascends with--sensitive branches as spinal marrow, even to the
anatomical summit of the horse-tail. This marrowy growth is grafted
upon the venous tree as a consuming parasitic plant. And as every twig
is a tree in miniature, accordingly--for all this is not a
correspondence of wit, but of nature--the nervous ganglia are fourth
cerebral chambers in small. The terminations of the nerves, in their
development, open out on the retina, on the Schneiderian[135]
membrane, in the gustative knot, &c., into leaf and flower. Hence,
e. g., we see not with the continuation of the optic nerve, but with
the delicate unravelling of its stamina; for the great dissolving
picture-gallery on the retina cannot possibly, by a movement of the
nervous spirit, (or whatever one will assume--for after all it comes
back to motion,) be slid back to the brain; in which case, besides, the
two galleries of the two eyes would have to pass through the two prongs
of the visual nerve and coincide at its handle to one picture.
Consequently the image in the eye, ear, &c., if it is to serve any
purpose, must be felt forward on the point of the nerve,--in one word,
it is even more absurd to shut up the soul in the locker[136] of the
fourth ventricle of the brain, i. e. in a pore of this tubercular
plant, than it would be if one who, like me, ascribes an animating soul
to the flower, should imprison the same in the ground-story of the dull
kernel. Rather would I, surely, locate the soul in the finest
honey-vessels of the senses, the eyes, than in the insensible brain, if
I did not, in fact, believe that, like a Hamadryad, it inhabits and
warms and stirs every nervous bough of this animal plant. The
under-tied or severed nerve conveys, it is true, no further sensation,
not however on account of the interruption of the connection with the
soul and residence chamber in the brain, but because the nutritious
spirit of life is cut off from it; for the nerves, like all finer
organizations, need so much a continuous supply of food, that the
arrested beating of heart and artery suspends in one minute all their
powers.
I go further and say outright, beforehand,--by way of contradicting two
errors: these organs do not feel, but are felt; secondly, the organs
are not the condition of all feeling in general, but only of a certain
kind.
The last first: as the organ (i. e. its changes), which is as much a
body as any gross object, whose own changes it brings in contact with
the soul, is nevertheless felt by the spiritual nature immediately and
without a _second_ organ: accordingly all corporeal substances give the
spiritual essence sensations as well as the nerves do, and an
unembodied soul is not possible, for the simple and sole reason, that
in case of the dissolution of the body it would then wear the whole
material universe as a heavier one.
My first assertion was, one should not say the _perceptive_, but the
_perceived_ organization. The nerves do not feel the object, but only
change the place where it is felt, and their changes and those of the
brain are only _objects_ of sensation, not _instruments_ thereof, nor
in fact sensation itself. But wherefore?--
I have more than one Therefore. A body is capable only of motion,
although, to be sure, that motion is only the show of the
aforementioned combination and the result of the powers concealed in
simple parts. The string, the air, the auditory ossicles, the auricular
nerves, vibrate; but the vibration of the latter no more explains the
sensation of a tone than the vibration of the string could, if the soul
were chained to that. Thus, despite all images in the eye and brain,
the _discernment_ of them is still not yet made out or explained; or
will you say, perhaps, that for some such reason as this, because the
senses are _mirrors_ full of images, therefore the spiritual _eye_ is
dispensed with or made good? And does not the change of the nerve
presuppose a second in a second essence, if it is to be perceived? Or
does another motion in this essence represent the first motion?
This brings me to the brain. That greatest and grossest nerve--the
sounding-board of all the others--shows up to the soul the delineations
of those images which are introduced by the rest. Upon the whole, I am
of opinion that the brain serves more the nerves of the muscles, the
veins of the limbs, which meet in the hand of the soul, and all, in
fact, more as nourishing root, than it serves as a case of instruments
to the pictorial soul. As most of our ideas are served up on visual
images, and take from them their ground color, it is probable we think
more with the optic nerve than with the brain. Why is it, as Bonnet has
observed, that deep-thinking wearies the eyes and sharp-seeing the
brain? Why do certain excesses blunt at the same time the memory and
the eyes? The fever-images playing their antics outside of the eyes of
the sick and people of lively fancy, like Cardan, who saw in the dark
whatever he thought vividly and glowingly, are explained in my
hypothesis.
In regard to the brain there are two errors; but Heaven save my friends
only from one of them. For from the other Reimarus can guard them, who
has fully proved that the brain is no Æolian harp with trembling
strings, nor a camera-obscura with sliding pictures, nor a barrel-organ
with pins for every idea, which the spirit turns, in order of itself to
play to and from itself its ideas. If now not even the pre-established
_harmony_ of the brain and the mind, nor the mutual _accompaniment_ of
the two, is conceivable, so is their _identity_ absolutely impossible;
and this is precisely the error from which the abovementioned Heaven
has to keep my friends. The materialist must first set up all that
which Reimarus has overthrown; he must petrify in the brain-pap the
millions of picture-cabinets of seventy years, and yet again make them
movable like _Eidophysica_,[137] and deal out the shuffled card-images
to every second of time; he must see to it that these _animated_
dancing images are forced into rank and file. And then, after all, and
only then, does his difficulty properly begin; for now--even if we
grant him that the images see themselves, the thoughts think
themselves, that every imagination darkly mirrors all others, and even
the conscious "I," as a monad, does the universe--now (we say) he must
first get him a generalissimo who shall command and array this
immeasurable, fluctuating host of ideas, a compositor who shall set up
the idea-book from an unknown manuscript, and, when dreams, fevers,
passions, have shaken all the letter-cases into _pi_, shall rearrange
all the letters alphabetically. This ruling unity and power--without
which the _symmetry of the microcosm_ is as inexplicable as that of the
_macrocosm_, that of _the ideal world_ as that of the _actual_--is
precisely what we call a spirit. To be sure, by this unknown power
neither the origin nor the succession of ideas is _mediated_ or
explained, but, assuming only the known force of matter, motion, all
that is not only incredible, but absolutely impossible; and
Leibnitz can more easily explain motion by dark imaginings, than
the materialist can imaginings by motions. In the former case motion is
only semblance, and exists only in the second contemplating being, but
in the latter the representation would be show and would exist in the
second--_representing_ substance.
I have often quarrelled with men of the world who make good
observations and miserable conclusions, because in case of the least
dependence of the soul upon the body--e. g. in old age, intoxication,
&c.--they made the one a mere repeating-work of the other; nay, I have
even said, no dancing-master was so stupid as to conclude: "Inasmuch as
I dance awkwardly in leaden shoes, more nimbly in wooden ones, and best
of all in silk ones, I see clearly from this, that the shoes have
special springs to communicate rapidity; and as with leaden shoes I can
hardly lift my feet, if I were barefoot I could hardly make out a
single _Pas_." The soul is the dancing-master, the body the shoe.
We cannot conceive any action either of bodies upon bodies or of monads
upon monads; consequently, of the organs upon the conscious being,
still less. This we know, that the cohesion and community of goods
between soul and body is always the same, or at most greater at the
times when others would expect it to be less; for the greatest
depth of thought, the holiest emotion, the highest flight of fancy,
are precisely what need the waxen wing-work of the body most,
as its consequent exhaustion also gives assurance; the more
incorporeal the object of the ideas is, so much the more corporeal
hand-and-draught-services are necessary to the holding of it fast, and
at most the periods of stupid sensuality, of spiritual enervation, of
blear imbecility, are the ones with which we must make coincide the
periods of liberation from the chains of the body. Even the moral power
with which we trample down wanton, upshooting bodily impulses works
with bodily crows and tools; and the soul in this case merely summons
the brain against the stomach.--Add to this, that the limits and
hindrances to such fettering and unfettering are as little to be
assigned as the causes of the same. Still less can the bonds of the
soul, as some think, grow looser and longer in dream. Sleep is the rest
of the nerves, not of the whole body. The involuntary muscles, the
stomach, the heart, keep on working therein, not much less than when
one lies down awake. Only the nerves and the brain, i. e. thinking and
perceiving, are suspended. Hence slumber refreshes men while riding and
driving, who therefore rest nothing but the nerves. Hence weak-nerved
patients, whom all rest wearies, are refreshed by dreamless sleep. By
the way, without the theory of _disorganization_ which assumes negative
and positive nervous electricity, the phenomena of sleep are
inexplicable;--e. g. it is inexplicable in that case, why opium, wine,
manipulation, animality, childhood, plethora, nourishing food,
perfumes, on the one hand, are precisely what promote sleep; while, on
the other hand, torture, exhaustion, old age, temperance, pressure on
the brain, winter, loss of blood, fear, grief, phlegm, fat, spiritual
enervation, also provoke it.----At most in deep sleep, when the
nerve-body rests, could we suppose the soul loosed from earthly chains;
in dream, on the contrary, it should rather be supposed the more
closely fastened, because dreaming, as well as deep thinking, which
also locks the gates of the five senses as well, is surely no sleeping.
Hence dreams wear out the nerves, to the inner overstrainings of which
they add outer impressions. Hence morning lends both the brain and our
dreams equal animation. Hence the sleeping animal--except the
effeminate tame dog--has no unhealthy dreams. Hence even Aristotle
assigns unusual dreams as forerunners of the sick-nurse. Hence--I have
now dreamed enough, and the reader has slept enough.--