MATERIALISM.
This is the theory which presents great fascination to the student of
physical science. By laborious investigation physiology has established
the fact beyond the reach of rational dispute, that there is a constant
relation of concomitancy between cerebral action and thought. Within
experience mind is found in constant and definite association with that
highly complex and peculiar disposition of matter called a living brain.
The size and elaboration of this peculiar structure throughout the
animal kingdom stand in conspicuous proportion to the degree of
intelligence displayed; while the impairment of this structure, whether
by congenital defect, mutilation, anaemia, decay, or appropriate poison,
entails corresponding impairment of mental processes. Thus much being
established, no reasonable man can hesitate in believing the relation
between neurosis and psychosis to be a constant and concomitant
relation, so that the step between this, and regarding it as a causal
relation, seems indeed a small one. For, in all matters of physical
inquiry, whenever we have proved a constant relation of concomitancy in
a sequence _A B_, we call _A_ the cause of _B_; and, therefore, it has
been frequently said that the evidence of causation between neurosis and
psychosis is recognized causation. Lastly, to fortify this hypothesis,
materialists point to the doctrine of the conservation of energy, which
is supplied by the science of physics as a sort of buttress in this
matter to the teachings of physiology. For, as this doctrine compels us
to believe that the chain of physical causation involved in cerebral
processes can nowhere be broken or deflected _ab extra_, we are
compelled to believe that the mental processes, which are correlatively
associated with these cerebral processes, can nowhere escape from 'the
charmed circle of the forces,' so that whether we look to the detailed
teachings of physiology, or to the more general teachings of physics, we
alike perceive that natural science appears to leave no locus for mind
other than as a something which is in some way a result of motion.
The position of Materialism being thus at first sight so naturally
strong, and having been in recent years so fortified by the labours of
physiology, it is not surprising that in the present generation
Materialism should be in the ascendant. It is the simple truth, as a
learned and temperate author, speaking from the side of theology, has
recently said, that
'Materialism is a danger to which individuals and societies will
always be more or less exposed. The present generation, however,
and especially the generation which is growing up, will obviously
be very especially exposed to it; as much so, perhaps, as any
generation in the history of the world. Within the last thirty
years the great wave of spiritualistic or idealistic thought ...
has been receding and decreasing; and another, which is in the main
driven by materialistic forces, has been gradually rising behind,
vast and threatening. It is but its crest that we at present see;
it is but a certain vague shaking produced by it that we at present
feel; but we shall probably soon enough fail not both to see and
feel it fully and distinctly[4].'
Such being the present importance of Materialism, I shall devote the
present chapter to a consideration of this theory. Each of the points in
the argument for Materialism which I have mentioned above admits, of
course, of elaboration; but I think that their enumeration contains all
that is essential to the theory in question. It now devolves upon us to
inquire whether this theory is adequate to meet the facts.
And here I may as well at once give it as my own opinion that, of
however much service the theory of Materialism may be, up to a certain
point, it can never be accepted by any competent mind as a final
explanation of the facts with which it has to deal. Unquestionable as
its use may be as a fundamental hypothesis in physiology and medicine,
it is wholly inadequate as a hypothesis in philosophy. That is to say,
so long as there is a constant relation of concomitancy found by
experience to obtain between neural processes and mental processes, so
long no harm can accrue to physical science by assuming, for its own
purposes, that this relation is a causal one. But as soon as the
question concerning the validity of this assumption is raised into the
region of philosophy, it receives the answer that the assumption cannot
be allowed to pass. For where the question becomes one not as to the
_fact_ of the association but as to its _nature_, philosophy, which must
have regard to the facts of mind no less than to those of matter, must
pronounce that the hypothesis is untenable; for the hypothesis of this
association being one of causality acting from neurosis to psychosis,
cannot be accepted without doing violence, not merely to our faculty of
reason, but to our very idea of causation itself.
A very small amount of thinking is enough to show that what I call my
knowledge of the external world, is merely a knowledge of my own mental
modifications. A step further and I find that my idea of causation as a
principle in the external world is derived from my knowledge of this
principle in the internal world. For I find that my idea of force and
energy in the external world is a mere projection of the idea which I
have of effort within the region of my own consciousness; and therefore
my only idea of causation is that which is originally derived from the
experience which I have of this principle as obtaining among my own
mental modifications.
If once we see plainly that the idea of causation is derived from
within, and that what we call the evidence of physical causation is
really the evidence of mental modifications following one another in a
definite sequence, we shall then clearly see, not merely that we have no
evidence, but that we _can have_ no evidence of causation as proceeding
from object to subject. However cogent the evidence may appear at first
sight to be, it is found to vanish like a cloud as soon as it is exposed
to the light of adequate contemplation. In the very act of thinking the
evidence, we are virtually denying its possibility as evidence; for as
evidence it appeals only to the mind, and since the mind can only know
its own sequences, the evidence must be presenting to the mind an
account of its own modifications; from the mere fact, therefore, of its
being accepted as thinkable, the evidence is proved to be illusory.
To uneducated men it appears an indisputable fact of 'common sense' that
the colour of a flower exists as perceived in the flower, apart from any
relation to the percipient mind. A physiologist has gone further into
the thicket of things, and finds that the way is not so simple as this.
He regards the quality of colour as necessarily related to the faculty
of visual perception; does not suppose that the colour exists _as such_
in the flower, but thinks of the something there as a certain order of
vibrations which, when brought into relation with consciousness through
the medium of certain nerves, gives rise to the perception experienced;
and in order to account for the translation into visual feeling of an
event so unlike that feeling as is the process taking place in the
flower, physiologists have recourse to an elaborate theory, such as that
of Helmholtz or Hering. In other words, physiologists here fully
recognize that colour, or any other thing perceived, only exists _as
perceived_ in virtue of a subjective element blending with an objective;
the thing _as perceived_ is recognized as having no existence apart from
its relation to a percipient mind. Now, although physiologists are at
one with the philosophers thus far, it is to be feared that very
frequently they are in the same position as the above-mentioned
'uneducated men,' when it becomes needful to press still further into
the thicket. For after having distinguished the necessity of recognizing
a mind-element in any possible theory of perception, they forthwith
proceed to disregard this element when passing from the ground of
perception to that of thought. Although the ideas of matter, motion,
causation, and so on, are themselves as much the offspring of a thinking
mind, with its environment, as the perception of colour is a conceiving
of the percipient mind, with _its_ environment, these ideas are
inconsistently supposed to stand for equivalent realities of the
external world--to truly represent things that are virtually independent
of any necessary relation to mind. Or, as the case has recently been
well put by Principal Caird:
'You cannot get mind as an ultimate product of matter, for in the
very attempt to do so you have already begun with mind. The
easiest step of any such inquiry involves categories of thought,
and it is in terms of thought that the very problem you are
investigating can be so much as stated. You cannot start in your
investigations with a bare, self-identical, objective fact,
stripped of every ideal element or contribution from thought. The
least and lowest part of outward observation is not an independent
entity--fact _minus_ mind, and out of which mind may, somewhere or
other, be seen to emerge; but it is fact or object as it appears to
an observing mind, in the medium of thought, having mind or thought
as an inseparable factor of it. Whether there be such a thing as an
absolute world outside of thought, whether there be such things as
matter and material atoms existing in themselves before any mind
begins to perceive or think about them, is not the question before
us. If it were possible to conceive of such atoms, at any rate you,
before you begin to make anything of them, must think them; and you
can never, by thinking about atoms, prove that there is no such
thing as thought other than as an ultimate product of atoms. Before
you could reach thought or mind as a last result you must needs
eliminate from it the data of the problem with which you start, and
that you can never do, any more than you can stand on your own
shoulders or outstrip your own shadow.... In one word, to
constitute the reality of the outward world--to make possible the
minimum of knowledge, nay, the very existence for us of molecules
and atoms--you must needs presuppose that thought or thinking self,
which some would persuade us is to be educed or evolved from
them.... To make thought a function of matter is thus, simply, to
make thought a function of itself[5].'
From this reasoning there can be no escape; and it is more rational for
a man to believe that colour exists as such in a flower than, after
having plainly seen that such cannot be the case, forthwith to
disregard the teaching of this analogy, and to imagine that any apparent
evidence of mind as a result of matter or motion can possibly be
entertained as real evidence.
Remembering, then, that from the nature of this particular case it is as
impossible for mind to prove its own causation as it is for water to
rise above its source, it may still be well, for the sake of further
argument, to sink this general consideration, and to regard such
spurious evidence of causation as is presented by Materialism, without
prejudice arising from its being _prima facie_ inadmissible.
Materialists, as already observed, are fond of saying that the evidence
of causation from neurosis to psychosis is as good as such evidence can
be proved to be in any other case. Now, quite apart from the general
considerations just adduced to show that from the peculiar nature of
this case there can here be no such evidence at all--quite apart from
this, and treating the problem on the lower ground of the supposed
analogy, it may be clearly shown that the statement is untrue. For a
little thought will show that in point of fact the only resemblance
between this supposed case of causation and all other cases of
recognized causation, consists in the invariability of the correlation
between cerebral processes and mental processes; in all other points the
analogy fails. For in all cases of recognized causation there is a
perceived _connexion_ between the cause and the effect; the antecedents
are physical, and the consequents are physical. But in the case before
us there is no perceived, or even conceivable, connexion between the
cause and the effect; for the causes are supposed to be physical and the
effects mental. And the antithesis thus posited is alone sufficient to
separate _toto coelo_ the case of causation supposed from that of all
cases of causation recognized. From the singularly clear and
well-balanced statement of this subject given by Professor Allman in his
Presidential Address before the British Association, I may here fitly
quote the following:--
'If we could see any analogy between thought and any one of the
admitted phenomena of matter, we should be justified in the first
of these conclusions (i. e. that of Materialism) as the simplest,
and as affording a hypothesis most in accordance with the
comprehensiveness of natural laws; but between thought and the
physical phenomena of matter there is not only no analogy, but no
conceivable analogy; and the obvious and continuous path which we
have hitherto followed up in our reasonings from the phenomena of
lifeless matter through those of living matter here comes suddenly
to an end. The chasm between unconscious life and thought is deep
and impassable, and no transitional phenomena can be found by
which, as by a bridge, we may span it over[6].'
And, not unduly to multiply quotations, I shall only adduce one more
from another of the few eminent men of science who have seen their way
clearly in this matter, and have expressed what they have seen in
language as clear as their vision. Professor Tyndall writes:--
'The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding
facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite
thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur
simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor
apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to
pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one phenomenon to the
other. They appear together but we do not know why. Were our minds
and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable
us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable
of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their
electrical discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately
acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we
should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem. How are
these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness?
The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain
intellectually impassable[7].'
Next, in all cases of recognized causation there is a perceived
_equivalency_ between cause and effect, such equivalency belonging to
the very essence of that in which we conceive causation to consist. But
as between matter and motion on the one side, and feeling and thought on
the other, there can be no such equivalency conceivable. That no such
equivalency is conceivable may be rendered apparent on grounds of
Materialism itself. For Materialism is bound to accept the fundamental
doctrine of modern physics--that, viz. as to the conservation of
energy--and therefore it becomes evident that unless we assimilate
thought with energy, there is no possibility of a causal relation, or a
relation of equivalency, as obtaining between the one and the other.
For however little we may know about brain-dynamics, materialists, at
least, must take it for granted that in every process of cerebration the
matter and force concerned are indestructible quantities, and therefore
that all their possible equations are fully satisfied, could we but
follow them out. Howsoever complex we may suppose the flux and reflux of
forces to be within the structure of a living brain, it is no more
possible for any one of the forces concerned to escape from brain to
mind, than it would be for such an escape to occur in a steam-engine or
a watch; the doctrine of the conservation of energy forms an insuperable
bar to the supposition that any equation in the region of physics can be
left unsatisfied, in order to pass over and satisfy some other equation
in the region of psychics.
Of course in saying this I am aware that some of the more clear-sighted
of the materialists have plainly perceived this difficulty in all its
magnitude, and so have felt that unless it can be met, any theory of
Materialism must necessarily contain a radical contradiction of
principles. Some few materialists have therefore sought to meet the
difficulty in the only way it can be met, viz. by boldly asserting the
possibility of thought and energy being transmutable. On this view
thought becomes a mode of motion, and takes its rank among the forces as
identical in nature with heat, light, electricity, and the rest. But
this view is also inherently impossible. For suppose, as a matter of
argument, that physiologists should discover a mechanical equivalent of
thought, so that we might estimate the value of a calculation in thermal
units, or the 'labour of love' in foot-pounds: still we should not be
out of our difficulties; we should only have to cut a twist of flax to
find a lock of iron. For by thus assimilating thought with energy, we
should in no wise have explained the fundamental antithesis between
subject and object. The fact would remain, if possible, more
unaccountable than ever, that mind should present absolutely no point of
real analogy with motion. Involved with the essential idea of motion is
the idea of extension; suppress the latter and the former must
necessarily vanish, for motion only means transition in space of
something itself extended. But thought, as far as we can possibly know
it, is known and distinguished by the very peculiarity of not having
extension. Therefore, even if we were to find a mechanical equivalent of
thought, thought would still not be proved a mode of motion. On the
contrary, what would be proved would be that, in becoming transformed
into thought, energy had ceased to be energy; in passing out of its
relation to space it would cease to exist as energy, and if it again
passed into that relation it would only be by starting _de novo_ on a
new course of history. Therefore the proof that thought has a mechanical
equivalent would simply amount to the proof, not that thought _is_
energy, but that thought _destroys_ energy. And if Materialism were to
prove this, Materialism would commit suicide. For if once it were
proved that the relation of energy to thought is such that thought is
able to absorb or temporarily to annihilate energy, the whole argument
of Materialism would be inverted, and whatever evidence there is of
causation as between mind and matter would become available in all its
force on the side of Spiritualism. This seems plain, for if it even were
conceivable--which most distinctly it is not--that a motor could ever
become a motive, and so pass from the sphere of dynamics into the sphere
of consciousness, the fact would go to prove, not that the motor was the
cause of the motive, but rather that the motive was the cause of
destroying the motor; so that at that point the otherwise unbroken chain
of physical sequences was interrupted by the motive striking in upon it,
and in virtue of the mysterious power supposed to have been proved by
physiology, cancelling the motor, so allowing the nerve-centre to act as
determined by the motive.
Of course I wish it to be understood that I believe we are here dealing
with what I may call, in perhaps suitably contradictory terms,
inconceivable conceptions. But let it be remembered that I am not
responsible for this ambiguity; I am only showing what must be the
necessary outcome of analysis if we begin by endeavouring phenomenally
to unite the most antithetical of elements--mind and motion.
Materialism, at least, will not be the gainer should it ever be proved
that in the complex operations of the brain a unique exception occurs
to the otherwise universal law of the conservation of energy in space.
We may, therefore, quit the suggestion that the difficulty experienced
by Materialism of showing an equivalency between neurosis and psychosis
can ever be met by assuming that some day mental processes may admit of
being expressed in terms of physical. But before leaving this difficulty
with regard to equivalency, I may mention one other point that seems to
me of importance in connexion with it. I have already said that if we
suppose causation to proceed from brain to mind, we must suppose this
essential requirement of equivalency between the cerebral causes and the
mental effects to be satisfied somewhere.
But where are we to say that it is satisfied? Even if we suppose that
thought has a mechanical equivalent, and that causation proceeds in the
direction from energy to thought, still, when we have regard to the
supposed effects, we find that even yet they bear no kind of equivalency
to their supposed causes. The brain of a Shakespeare probably did not,
as a system, exhibit so much energy as does the brain of an elephant;
and the cerebral operations of a Darwin may not have had a very
perceptibly larger mechanical equivalent than those of a banker's clerk.
Yet in the world of thought the difference between our estimate of the
results, or 'work done,' in these cases is such as to drive all ideas of
equivalency to the winds. Doubtless, a materialist will answer that it
is not fair to take our estimate of 'work done' in the world of mind as
the real equivalent of the energy supposed to have passed over from the
world of motion, seeing that our estimate is based, not on the
quantitative amount of thought produced, but rather on its qualitative
character with reference to the social requirements of the race. But to
this it is enough to answer that we have no means of gauging the
quantity of thought produced other than by having regard to _its_
effects in the world of mind, and this we cannot do except by having
regard to its qualitative character. Many a man, for instance, must have
consumed more than a thousand times the brain-substance and brain-energy
that Shelley expended over his 'Ode to a Skylark,' and yet as a result
have produced an utterly worthless poem. Now, in what way are we to
estimate the 'work done' in two such cases, except by looking to the
relative effects produced in the only region where they are produced,
viz. in the region of mind? Yet, when we do so estimate them, what
becomes of the evidence of equivalency between the physical causes and
the psychical effects?
Now if thus, whether or not we try to form an estimate, it is impossible
to show any semblance of equivalency between the supposed causes and the
alleged effects, how can any one be found to say that the evidence of
causation is here as valid as it is in any other case? The truth rather
is that the alleged effects stand out of every relation to the supposed
causes, with the exception only of being associated in time.
There still remains one other enormous difficulty in the way of the
theory of Materialism; it necessarily embodies the theory of _conscious
automatism_, and is therefore called upon to explain why consciousness
and thought have ever appeared upon the scene of things at all. That
this is the necessary position of Materialism is easily proved as
follows. We have already seen that Materialism would commit suicide by
supposing that energy could be transmuted into thought, for this would
amount to nothing short of supposing the destruction of energy as such;
and to suppose energy thus destructible would be to open wide the door
of spiritualism. Materialism, therefore, is logically bound to argue in
this way: We cannot conceive of a conscious idea, or mental change, as
in any way affecting the course of a cerebral reflex, or material
change; while, on the other hand, our knowledge of the conservation of
energy teaches us as an axiom that the cerebral changes must determine
each other in their sequence as in a continuous series. Nowhere can we
suppose the physical process to be interrupted or diverted by the
psychical process; and therefore we must conclude that thought and
volition really play no part whatever in determining action. Thoughts
and feelings are but indices which show in the mirror of the mind
certain changes that are proceeding in the matter of the brain, and are
as inefficient in influencing those changes as the shadow of a cloud is
powerless to direct the movements of that of which it is the shadow.
But when Materialism reaches, in a clear and articulate manner, this
inference as a conclusion necessary from its premises, it becomes
opposed at once to common sense and to the requirements of methodical
reason. It becomes opposed to common sense because we all feel it is
practically impossible to believe that the world would now have been
exactly what it is even if consciousness, thought, and volition had
never appeared upon the scene--that railway trains would have been
running filled with mindless passengers, or that telephones would have
been invented by brains that could not think to speak to ears that could
not hear. And the conclusion is opposed to the requirements of
methodical reason, because reason to be methodical is bound to have an
answer to the question that immediately arises from the conclusion. This
question simply is, Why have consciousness, thought, and volition ever
been called into existence; and why are they related, as they are
related, to cerebral action? Materialism, by here undertaking to prove
that these things stand uselessly isolated from all other things, is
bound to show some reason why they ever came to be, and to be what they
are. For observe, it is not merely that these things exist in a supposed
unnecessary relation to all other things; the fact to be explained is
that they exist in a most intimately woven and invariable connexion with
certain highly complex forms of organic structure and certain highly
peculiar distributions of physical force. Yet these unique and
extraordinary things are supposed by automatism to be always results and
never causes; in the theatre of things they are supposed to be always
spectators and never actors; in the laboratory of life they are supposed
to be always by-products; and therefore in the order of nature they are
supposed to have no _raison d'etre_. Such a state of matters would be
accountable enough if the stream of mental changes were but partly,
occasionally, and imperfectly associated with the stream of material
changes; but as the association is so minute, invariable, and precise,
the hypothesis of the association being merely accidental, or _not
requiring explanation_, becomes, at the bar of methodical reasoning,
self-convicted of absurdity.
The state of the case, then, simply is that two distinct facts stand to
be explained by the theory of conscious automatism--first, why psychosis
should ever have been developed as a mysterious appendage to neurosis;
and, secondly, why the association between these things should be so
intimate and precise. Assuredly, on the principles of evolution, which
materialists at least cannot afford to disregard, it would be a wholly
anomalous fact that so wide and general a class of phenomena as those of
mind should have become developed in constantly ascending degrees
throughout the animal kingdom, if they are entirely without use to
animals. If psychosis is, as supposed, a function of neurosis, the
doctrine of natural selection alone would forbid us to imagine that this
function differs from all other functions in being itself functionless.
If it would be detrimental to the theory of natural selection that any
one isolated structure--such as the tail of a rattlesnake--should be
adapted to perform a function useless to the animal possessing it, how
utterly destructive of that theory would be the fact that all the
phenomena of mind have been elaborated as functions of nerve-tissue
without any one of them ever having been of any use either to the
individual or to the species. And the difficulty that thus arises is
magnified without limit when we remember that the phenomena of mind are
invariable in their association with cerebral structure, grade for
grade, and process for process.
It is of no argumentative use to point to the fact that many adaptive
movements in animals are performed by nerve-centres apart from any
association with consciousness or volition, because all the facts on
this head go to prove that consciousness and volition come in most
suggestively just where adaptive movements begin to grow varied and
complex, and then continue to develop with a proportional reference to
the growing variety and complexity of these movements. The facts,
therefore, irresistibly lead to the conclusion (if we argue here as we
should in the case of any other function) that consciousness and
volition are functions of nerve-tissue super-added to its previous
functions, in order to meet new and more complex demands on its powers
of adaptation.
Neither is it of any argumentative use to point to the fact that
adaptive actions which originally are performed with conscious volition
may by practice come to be performed without conscious volition. For it
is certain that no adaptive action of quite a novel kind is ever
performed from the first without consciousness of its performance, and
therefore, although it is true that by repetition its performance may
become mechanical or unconscious, this does not prove that consciousness
was without use in producing the adaptive action. It only proves that
after a nervous mechanism has been elaborated by the help of
consciousness, consciousness may be withdrawn and leave the finished
mechanism to work alone; the structure having been completed, the
scaffolding necessary to its completion may be removed.
But passing over this difficulty which the theory of conscious
automatism seems bound to encounter in its collision with the theory of
natural selection, the most insuperable of all its difficulties arises
from the bare fact, which it cannot explain, that conscious intelligence
exists, and exists in the most intimate relation with one peculiar kind
of material structure. For automatists must concede that the evidence
of causation in the region of mind is at least as cogent as it is in the
region of matter, seeing that the whole science of psychology is only
rendered possible as a science by the fundamental fact of observation
that mental antecedents determine mental consequents. Therefore, if we
call a physical sequence _A, B, C_, and a mental sequence _a, b, c_
automatists have to explain, not merely why there should be such a thing
as a mental sequence at all, but also why the sequence _a, b, c_ should
always proceed, link for link, with the sequence _A, B, C_. It clearly
is no answer to say that the sequence _A, B, C_ implies the successive
activity of certain definite nerve-centres _A', B', C'_ which have for
their subjective effects the sequence _a, b, c_ so that whenever the
sequence _A, B, C_ occurs the sequence _a, b, c_ must likewise occur.
This is no answer, because it merely restates the hypothesis of
automatism, and begs the whole question to be discussed. What methodical
reason demands as an answer is simply why the sequence _A, B, C_ even
though we freely grant it due to the successive activity of certain
definite nerve-centres, should be attended by the sequence _a, b, c_.
Reason perceives clearly enough that the sequence _a, b, c_ belongs to a
wholly different category from the sequence _A, B, C_ the one being
immediately known as a process taking place in a something which is
without extension or physical properties of any kind, and the other
taking place in a something which when, translated by the previous
something, we recognize as having extension and the other antithetical
properties which we class together as physical. There would of course be
no difficulty if the sequence _A, B, C_ continued through any amount of
complexity in the same conceivable category of being; so that there
would be nothing actually inconceivable in cerebral sequence--changes
running through _D, E, F_, &c., to an extent sufficient to cause
unconscious automatism of any degree of complexity. But that which does
require explanation from automatists is why automatism should have
become associated with consciousness, and this so intimately that every
change in the sequence _A, B, C_, &c., is accompanied by a particular
and corresponding change in the sequence _a, b, c_, &c. Thus, to take a
definite illustration, if on seeing the sun I think of a paper on solar
physics, and from this pass to thinking of Mr. Norman Lockyer, and from
this to speculating on the probability of certain supposed elements
being really compounds, there is here a definite causal connexion in the
sequence of my _thoughts_. But it is the last extravagance of absurdity
to tell me that the accompanying causal sequences going on in my brain
happen to have exactly corresponded to the sequences which were taking
place in the mind, the two trains of sequences being each definite and
coherent in themselves, and yet each proceeding link for link in lines
parallel with the other. Without some theory of pre-established
harmony--which, of course, it is no part of automatism to entertain--it
would, on the doctrine of chances alone, be impossible to suppose that
the causal sequences in the brain always happen to be just those which,
by running link for link with another set of causal sequences taking
place in the mind, enable both the series to be definite and coherent in
themselves. Therefore, before reason can allow the theory of automatism
to pass, it must be told how this wonderful fact of parallelism is to be
explained. There must be _some_ connexion between the intrinsically
coherent series _A, B, C_ and the no less intrinsically coherent
sequence _a, b, c_, which may be taken as an explanation why they
coincide each to each. What is this connexion? We do not know; but we
have now seen that, whatever it is, it cannot be an ordinary causal
connexion--first, because the doctrine of the conservation of energy
makes it incumbent on us to believe that the procession of physical
cause and effect is complete within the region of brain--a closed
circle, as it were, from which no energy can, without argumentative
suicide, be supposed to escape into the region of mind; and next,
because, even were this difficulty disregarded, it is unaccountable that
the causative influence (whatever it is supposed to be), which passes
over from the region of physics into that of psychics, should be such as
to render the psychical series coherent in itself, when on the physical
side the series must be determined by purely physical conditions,
having no reference whatsoever to psychical requirements.
Thus it is argumentatively impossible for Materialism to elude the
necessity of explaining the kind of connexion which it supposes to
subsist between neurosis and psychosis; and forasmuch as the above
considerations clearly show this connexion cannot be accepted as one of
ordinary causality without some answer being given to the questions
which reason has to ask, Materialism must be ruled out of court if she
fails to respond to the demand. But it is no less clearly impossible
that she can respond to the demand, and therefore at the bar of
Philosophy Materialism must be pronounced, for this as well as for the
reasons previously cited, conspicuously inadequate to account for the
facts.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: Professor Flint, _Antitheistic Theories_, p. 99.]
[Footnote 5: _Philosophy of Religion_, pp. 95, 99, and 101.]
[Footnote 6: British Association Report, 1879, p. 28.]
[Footnote 7: British Association Report, 1868. Trans. of Sections, p.
5.]