When Clifford speaks of things in themselves he does not mean Kant’s
thing in itself, he means neither the object independent of the thinking
subject nor the thing independent of space and time. He means the thing
as it would be if viewed from the thing itself.
A man appears to other thinking beings as an active body, as an organism
that is in motion; but to himself he appears as a feeling being. The
subjectivity of things as they appear to the things themselves consists
in our own case of states of awareness, and this subjectivity is called
by Clifford the thing in itself.
A certain brain motion is in its subjective aspect a feeling. This
feeling is according to Clifford the thing in itself of the visible,
observable, and measurable motion. The thing in itself of so-called
inanimate beings is not feeling, but elements of feeling. In other words,
the world-substance is everywhere in itself potentiality of feeling and
Clifford therefore calls it “mind-stuff.”
Schopenhauer arrives at his conception of the thing in itself practically
in the same way. There is the world as it appears to us, the objective
world of motion in space and time. What the kernel of this world may be,
we can know from self-observation. The kernel of ourselves, Schopenhauer
says, is Will; and the will is also the kernel of things; the will is the
thing in itself.
We understand by will the passage into action, i. e. an incipient
motion of the organism if accompanied with the psychical element of
consciousness, and this consciousness is a state of awareness of the will
including its direction and aim. Will, as the term is generally used, is
always conscious. Schopenhauer however speaks of the will as being blind,
i. e. without knowledge, without awareness of itself and its aim. This
indicates that he uses the word not in its original but in a figurative
meaning.
The fall of a stone may be characterised as a blind motion without
awareness and without the stone’s having a consciousness as to its
direction or aim; and in a similar (although not in the same) way
Clifford speaks of the elements of feeling as being not rational. We
agree with Schopenhauer that that factor in a stone which makes it fall
when placed in a certain position is as much a natural process as the act
of a man, only of a lower grade and a simpler kind. Schopenhauer calls
that which both have in common “will.” Yet in common language we call the
objective aspect of that which both processes have in common, “motion.”
What then is the subjective aspect of a falling stone? It is not a state
of awareness, it is no feeling, but it is the potentiality of a state of
awareness, it is potential feeling. There _is_ a subjective aspect, but
this subjective aspect is so far as we can judge of no account to the
stone.
That something in the stone which corresponds to man’s consciousness,
viz. the stone’s subjectivity, is not mind, but it is potential mind.
And potential mind is not as Mr. Conybeare expresses it “mind diluted,”
potential mind is no mind at all.
The world-substance as it exists in inorganic matter is not mind. But
the universe taken as a whole, the All, is for that reason not less than
mind. On the contrary, it is infinitely more than mind. The All is not
brute force and inert matter only, the universe is a cosmos, and its
subjectivity necessarily develops, according to the laws of form which
characterise the cosmos throughout, into mind. We disagree with Professor
Clifford most emphatically when he describes the mind-stuff of which
according to his terminology the world consists, as not rational.
The world it is true is not rational in its elements, but the world as
a whole, the entire cosmos with its laws and especially in its formal
order, is the prototype of all rationality. Human reason is rational
only in so far as it conforms with, as it reflects, as it describes the
order of the cosmos. The human mind is a microcosm. We do not call the
macrocosm, in whose image the microcosm has been created, a mind, because
we understand by the term mind not reality itself but reality pictured in
symbols of feeling. We understand by mind the individual conception of
the world as it is mapped out in the brain of a sentient being, and not
the universe itself, not the all-being. We understand by mind a creature
and not the creator, a soul and not God.
The cosmos, the All, God, that which creates the mind, is not dead, not
irrational, and not inferior to mentality. It is the source of all life,
it is the condition of all order, it is the standard of all morality. All
the minds that exist are but parts of it. In it, with it, and through it
we live and shall live forever. For although we shall die, our being can
never be blotted out. Existence knows no annihilation and life knows no
death. What we call death is a dissolution of life in a special part,
but the contents of a life, the thoughts, the ideas, and the ideals are
preserved and transmitted, they are implanted into other minds; the soul
continues to live. And this continuance of the life of the soul is not
a mere dissolution in the All, it is not the immortality of force and
matter; it is the preservation of its special existence, of its most
characteristic and individual features for an immeasurably long period
hence, which will last as long as the conditions of life remain favorable
upon earth. Yet even if a whole solar system were broken to pieces, life
will reappear; mind will be born again to struggle for truth and to
aspire to live in conformity with truth.