This is what the spiritualists keep saying; and since we do, as a

matter of fact, have the 'compounded' idea, and do know _a_ and _b_

together, they adopt a farther hypothesis to explain that fact. The

separate ideas exist, they say, but _affect_ a third entity, the soul.

_This_ has the 'compounded' idea, if you please so to call it; and the

compounded idea is an altogether new psychic fact to which the separate

ideas stand in the relation, not of constituents, but of occasions of

production.

This argument of the spiritualists against the associationists has

never been answered by the latter. It holds good against any talk

about self-compounding amongst feelings, against any 'blending,'

or 'complication,' or 'mental chemistry,' or 'psychic synthesis,'

which supposes a resultant consciousness to float off from the

constituents _per se_, in the absence of a supernumerary principle of

consciousness which they may affect. The mind-stuff theory, in short,

is unintelligible. Atoms of feeling cannot compose higher feelings, any

more than atoms of matter can compose physical things! The 'things,'

for a clear-headed atomistic evolutionist, are not. Nothing is but

the everlasting atoms. When grouped in a certain way, _we_ name them

this 'thing' or that; but the thing we name has no existence out of

our mind. So of the states of mind which are supposed to be compound

because they know many different things together. Since indubitably

such states do exist, they must exist as single new facts, effects,

possibly, as the spiritualists say, on the Soul (we will not decide

that point here), but at any rate independent and integral, and not

compounded of psychic atoms.[176]

CAN STATES OF MIND BE UNCONSCIOUS?

The passion for unity and smoothness is in some minds so insatiate

that, in spite of the logical clearness of these reasonings and

conclusions, many will fail to be influenced by them. They establish

a sort of disjointedness in things which in certain quarters will

appear intolerable. They sweep away all chance of 'passing without

break' either from the material to the mental, or from the lower

to the higher mental; and they thrust us back into a pluralism of

consciousnesses--each arising discontinuously in the midst of two

disconnected worlds, material and mental--which is even worse than the

old notion of the separate creation of each particular soul. But the

malcontents will hardly try to refute our reasonings by direct attack.

It is more probable that, turning their back upon them altogether, they

will devote themselves to sapping and mining the region roundabout

until it is a bog of logical liquefaction, into the midst of which all

definite conclusions of any sort may be trusted ere long to sink and

disappear.

Our reasonings have assumed that the 'integration' of a thousand

psychic units must be either just the units over again, simply

rebaptized, or else something real, but then other than and additional

to those units; that if a certain existing fact is that of a thousand

feelings, it cannot at the same time be that of ONE feeling; for the

essence of feeling is to be felt, and as a psychic existent _feels_,

so it must _be_. If the one feeling feels like no one of the thousand,

in what sense can it be said to _be_ the thousand? These assumptions

are what the monists will seek to undermine. The Hegelizers amongst

them will take high ground at once, and say that the glory and

beauty of the psychic life is that in it all contradictions find

their reconciliation; and that it is just because the facts we are

considering _are_ facts of the self that they are both one and many at

the same time. With this intellectual temper I confess that I cannot

contend. As in striking at some unresisting gossamer with a club, one

but overreaches one's self, and the thing one aims at gets no harm. So

I leave this school to its devices.

The other monists are of less deliquescent frame, and try to break

down distinctness among mental states by _making a distinction_. This

sounds paradoxical, but it is only ingenious. The distinction is that

_between the unconscious and the conscious being of the mental state_.

It is the sovereign means for believing what one likes in psychology,

and of turning what might become a science into a tumbling-ground for

whimsies. It has numerous champions, and elaborate reasons to give for

itself. We must therefore accord it due consideration. In discussing

the question:

DO UNCONSCIOUS MENTAL STATES EXIST?

it will be best to give the list of so-called proofs as briefly as

possible, and to follow each by its objection, as in scholastic

books.[177]

_First Proof_. The _minimum visibile_, the _minimum audibile_, are

objects composed of parts. How can the whole affect the sense unless

each part does? And yet each part does so without being separately

sensible. Leibnitz calls the total consciousness an '_aperception_,'

the supposed insensible consciousness by the name of '_petites

perceptions_.'

"To judge of the latter," he says, "I am accustomed to use the example

of the roaring of the sea with which one is assailed when near the

shore. To hear this noise as one does, one must hear the parts which

compose its totality, that is, the noise of each wave,... although

this noise would not be noticed if its wave were alone. One must be

affected a little by the movement of one wave, one must have some

perception of each several noise, however small it be. Otherwise one

would not hear that of 100,000 waves, for of 100,000 zeros one can

never make a quantity."[178]

_Reply_. This is an excellent example of the so-called 'fallacy of

division,' or predicating what is true only of a collection, of each

member of the collection distributively. It no more follows that if a

thousand things together cause sensation, one thing alone must cause

it, than it follows that if one pound weight moves a balance, then one

ounce weight must move it too, in less degree. One ounce weight does

not move it _at all_; its movement _begins_ with the pound. At most we

can say that each ounce affects it in _some_ way which helps the advent

of that movement. And so each infra-sensible stimulus to a nerve no

doubt affects the nerve and helps the birth of sensation when the other

stimuli come. But this affection is a nerve-affection, and there is not

the slightest ground for supposing it to be a 'perception' unconscious

of itself. "A certain _quantity_ of the cause may be a necessary

condition to the production of _any_ of the effect,"[179] when the

latter is a mental state.

_Second Proof._ In all acquired dexterities and habits, secondarily

automatic performances as they are called, we do what _originally_

required a chain of deliberately conscious perceptions and volitions.

As the actions still keep their intelligent character, intelligence

must still preside over their execution. But since our consciousness

seems all the while elsewhere engaged, such intelligence must consist

of unconscious perceptions, inferences, and volitions.

_Reply._ There is more than one alternative explanation in accordance

with larger bodies of fact. One is that the perceptions and volitions

in habitual actions may be performed consciously, only so quickly and

inattentively that no _memory_ of them remains. Another is that the

consciousness of these actions exists, but is _split-off_ from the rest

of the consciousness of the hemispheres. We shall find in Chapter X

numerous proofs of the reality of this split-off condition of portions

of consciousness. Since in man the hemispheres indubitably co-operate

in these secondarily automatic acts, it will not do to say either that

they occur without consciousness or that their consciousness is that

of the lower centres, which we know nothing about. But either lack of

memory or split-off cortical consciousness will certainly account for

all of the facts.[180]

_Third Proof._ Thinking of A, we presently find ourselves thinking of

C. Now B is the natural logical link between A and C, but we have no

consciousness of having thought of B. It must have been in our mind

'_un_consciously,' and in that state affected the sequence of our

ideas.

_Reply._ Here again we have a choice between more plausible

explanations. Either B was consciously there, but the next instant

forgotten, or its _brain-tract_ alone was adequate to do the whole work

of coupling A with C, without the idea B being aroused at all, whether

consciously or 'unconsciously.'

_Fourth Proof._ Problems unsolved when we go to bed are found solved

in the morning when we wake. Somnambulists do rational things. We

awaken punctually at an hour predetermined overnight, etc. Unconscious

thinking, volition, time-registration, etc., must have presided over

these acts.

_Reply._ Consciousness forgotten, as in the hypnotic trance.

_Fifth Proof._ Some patients will often, in an attack of epileptiform

unconsciousness, go through complicated processes, such as eating a

dinner in a restaurant and paying for it, or making a violent homicidal

attack. In trance, artificial or pathological, long and complex

performances, involving the use of the reasoning powers, are executed,

of which the patient is wholly unaware on coming to.

_Reply._ Rapid and complete oblivescence is certainly the explanation

here. The analogue again is hypnotism. Tell the subject of an hypnotic

trance, during his trance, that he _will_ remember, and he may remember

everything perfectly when he awakes, though without your telling him no

memory would have remained. The extremely rapid oblivescence of common

_dreams_ is a familiar fact.

_Sixth Proof._ In a musical concord the vibrations of the several notes

are in relatively simple ratios. The mind must unconsciously count the

vibrations, and be pleased by the simplicity which it finds.

_Reply._ The brain-process produced by the simple ratios may be as

directly agreeable as the conscious process of comparing them would be.

No counting, either conscious or 'unconscious,' is required.

_Seventh Proof._ Every hour we make theoretic judgments and emotional

reactions, and exhibit practical tendencies, for which we can give

no explicit logical justification, but which are good inferences from

certain premises. We know more than we can say. Our conclusions run

ahead of our power to analyze their grounds. A child, ignorant of

the axiom that two things equal to the same are equal to each other,

applies it nevertheless in his concrete judgments unerringly. A boor

will use the _dictum de omni et nullo_ who is unable to understand it

in abstract terms.

"We seldom consciously think how our house is painted, what the shade

of it is, what the pattern of our furniture is, or whether the door

opens to the right or left, or out or in. But how quickly should we

notice a change in any of these things! Think of the door you have

most often opened, and tell, if you can, whether it opens to the

right or left, out or in. Yet when you open the door you never put

the hand on the wrong side to find the latch, nor try to push it when

it opens with a pull.... What is the precise characteristic in your

friend's step that enables you to recognize it when he is coming? Did

you ever consciously think the idea, 'if I run into a solid piece of

matter I shall get hurt, or be hindered in my progress'? and do you

avoid running into obstacles because you ever distinctly conceived, or

consciously acquired and thought, that idea?"[181]

Most of our knowledge is at all times potential. We act in accordance

with the whole drift of what we have learned, but few items rise into

consciousness at the time. Many of them, however, we may recall at

will. All this co-operation of unrealized principles and facts, of

potential knowledge, with our actual thought is quite inexplicable

unless we suppose the perpetual existence of an immense mass of _ideas

in an unconscious state_, all of them exerting a steady pressure

and influence upon our conscious thinking, and many of them in such

continuity with it as ever and anon to become conscious themselves.

_Reply._ No such mass of ideas is supposable. But there are all kinds

of short-cuts in the brain; and processes not aroused strongly enough

to give any 'idea' distinct enough to be a premise, may, nevertheless,

help to determine just that resultant process of whose psychic

accompaniment the said idea _would_ be a premise, if the idea existed

at all. A certain overtone may be a feature of my friend's voice,

and may conspire with the other tones thereof to arouse in my brain

the process which suggests to my consciousness his name. And yet I

may be ignorant of the overtone _per se_, and unable, even when he

speaks, to tell whether it be there or no. It leads me to the idea of

the name; but it produces in me no such cerebral process as that to

which the _idea of the overtone_ would correspond. And similarly of

our learning. Each subject we learn leaves behind it a modification

of the brain, which makes it impossible for the latter to react upon

things just as it did before; and the result of the difference may

be a tendency to act, though with no idea, much as we should _if_ we

were consciously thinking about the subject. The becoming conscious

of the latter at will is equally readily explained as a result of the

brain-modification. This, as Wundt phrases it, is a 'predisposition'

to bring forth the conscious idea of the original subject, a

predisposition which other stimuli and brain-processes may convert into

an actual result. But such a predisposition is no 'unconscious idea;'

it is only a particular collocation of the molecules in certain tracts

of the brain.

_Eighth Proof._ Instincts, as pursuits of ends by appropriate means,

are manifestations of intelligence; but as the ends are not foreseen,

the intelligence must be unconscious.

_Reply._ Chapter XXIV will show that all the phenomena of instinct are

explicable as actions of the nervous system, mechanically discharged by

stimuli to the senses.

_Ninth Proof._ In sense-perception we have results in abundance, which

can only be explained as conclusions drawn by a process of unconscious

inference from data given to sense. A small human image on the retina

is referred, not to a pygmy, but to a distant man of normal size. A

certain gray patch is inferred to be a white object seen in a dim

light. Often the inference leads us astray: e.g., pale gray against

pale green looks red, because we take a wrong premise to argue from.

We think a green film is spread over everything; and knowing that

under such a film a red thing would look gray, we wrongly infer

from the gray appearance that a red thing must be there. Our study

of space-perception in Chapter XVIII will give abundant additional

examples both of the truthful and illusory percepts which have been

explained to result from unconscious logic operations.

_Reply._ That chapter will also in many cases refute this explanation.

Color-and light-contrast are certainly purely sensational affairs, in

which inference plays no part. This has been satisfactorily proved by

Hering,[182] and shall be treated of again in Chapter XVII. Our rapid

judgments of size, shape, distance, and the like, are best explained

as processes of simple cerebral association. Certain sense-impressions

directly stimulate brain-tracts, of whose activity ready-made conscious

percepts are the immediate psychic counterparts. They do this by a

mechanism either connate or acquired by habit. It is to be remarked

that Wundt and Helmholtz, who in their earlier writings did more than

any one to give vogue to the notion that unconscious inference is a

vital factor in sense-perception, have seen fit on later occasions to

modify their views and to admit that results _like_ those of reasoning

may accrue without any actual reasoning process unconsciously taking

place.[183] Maybe the excessive and riotous applications made by

Hartmann of their principle have led them to this change. It would be

natural to feel towards him as the sailor in the story felt towards the

horse who got his foot into the stirrup,--"If you're going to get on, I

must get off."

Hartmann fairly boxes the compass of the universe with the principle of

unconscious thought. For him there is no namable thing that does not

exemplify it. But his logic is so lax and his failure to consider the

most obvious alternatives so complete that it would, on the whole, be

a waste of time to look at his arguments in detail. The same is true

of Schopenhauer, in whom the mythology reaches its climax. The visual

perception, for example, of an object in space results, according

to him, from the intellect performing the following operations, all

unconscious. First, it apprehends the inverted retinal image and

turns it right side up, constructing _flat space_ as a preliminary

operation; then it computes from the angle of convergence of the

eyeballs that the two retinal images must be the projection of but a

single _object_; thirdly, it constructs the third dimension and sees

this object _solid_; fourthly, it assigns its _distance_; and fifthly,

in each and all of these operations it gets the objective character of

what it 'constructs' by unconsciously inferring it as the only possible

_cause_ of some sensation which it unconsciously feels.[184] Comment on

this seems hardly called for. It is, as I said, pure mythology.

None of these facts, then, appealed to so confidently in proof of the

existence of ideas in an unconscious state, prove anything of the sort.

They prove either that conscious ideas were present which the next

instant were forgotten; or they prove that certain results, _similar_

to results of reasoning, may be wrought out by rapid brain-processes to

which no ideation seems attached. But there is one more argument to be

alleged, less obviously insufficient than those which we have reviewed,

and demanding a new sort of reply.

* * * * *

_Tenth Proof._ There is a great class of experiences in our mental life

which may be described as discoveries that a subjective condition which

we have been having is really something different from what we had

supposed. We suddenly find ourselves bored by a thing which we thought

we were enjoying well enough; or in love with a person whom we imagined

we only liked. Or else we deliberately analyze our motives, and find

that at bottom they contain jealousies and cupidities which we little

suspected to be there. Our feelings towards people are perfect wells of

motivation, unconscious of itself, which introspection brings to light.

And our sensations likewise: we constantly discover new elements in

sensations which we have been in the habit of receiving all our days,

elements, too, which have been there from the first, since otherwise

we should have been unable to distinguish the sensations containing

them from others nearly allied. The elements must exist, for we use

them to discriminate by; but they must exist in an unconscious state,

since we so completely fail to single them out.[185] The books of the

analytic school of psychology abound in examples of the kind. Who knows

the countless associations that mingle with his each and every thought?

Who can pick apart all the nameless feelings that stream in at every

moment from his various internal organs, muscles, heart, glands, lungs,

etc., and compose in their totality his sense of bodily life? Who is

aware of the part played by feelings of innervation and suggestions of

possible muscular exertion in all his judgments of distance, shape, and

size? Consider, too, the difference between a sensation which we simply

_have_ and one which we _attend to_. Attention gives results that seem

like fresh creations; and yet the feelings and elements of feeling

which it reveals must have been already there--in an unconscious

state. We all know _practically_ the difference between the so-called

sonant and the so-called surd consonants, between D, B, Z, G, V, and

T, P, S, K, F, respectively. But comparatively few persons know the

difference _theoretically_, until their attention has been called to

what it is, when they perceive it readily enough. The sonants are

nothing but the surds plus a certain element, which is alike in all,

superadded. That element is the laryngeal sound with which they are

uttered, surds having no such accompaniment. When we hear the sonant

letter, both its component elements must really be in our mind; but

we remain unconscious of what they really are, and mistake the letter

for a simple quality of sound until an effort of attention teaches us

its two components. There exist a host of sensations which most men

pass through life and never attend to, and consequently have only in

an unconscious way. The feelings of opening and closing the glottis,

of making tense the tympanic membrane, of accommodating for near

vision, of intercepting the passage from the nostrils to the throat,

are instances of what I mean. Every one gets these feelings many times

an hour; but few readers, probably, are conscious of exactly what

sensations are meant by the names I have just used. All these facts,

and an enormous number more, seem to prove conclusively that, in

addition to the fully conscious way in which an idea may exist in the

mind, there is also an unconscious way; that it is unquestionably the

same identical idea which exists in these two ways; and that therefore

any arguments against the mind-stuff theory, based on the notion

that _esse_ in our mental life is _sentiri_, and that an idea must

consciously be felt as what it is, fall to the ground.

_Objection._ These reasonings are one tissue of confusion. Two states

of mind which refer to the same external reality, or two states of

mind the later one of which refers to the earlier, are described

as the same state of mind, or 'idea,' published as it were in two

editions; and then whatever qualities of the second edition are found

openly lacking in the first are explained as having really been there,

only in an 'unconscious' way. It would be difficult to believe that

intelligent men could be guilty of so patent a fallacy, were not the

history of psychology there to give the proof. The psychological

stock-in-trade of some authors is the belief that two thoughts about

one thing are virtually the same thought, and that this same thought

may in subsequent reflections become more and more _conscious_ of what

it really _was_ all along from the first. But once make the distinction

between simply _having an idea_ at the moment of its presence and

subsequently knowing all sorts of things _about it_; make moreover that

between a state of mind itself, taken as a subjective fact, on the one

hand, and the objective thing it knows, on the other, and one has no

difficulty in escaping from the labyrinth.

Take the latter distinction first: Immediately all the arguments based

on sensations and the new features in them which attention brings to

light fall to the ground. The sensations of the B and the V when we

attend to these sounds and analyze out the laryngeal contribution

which makes them differ from P and F respectively, are _different

sensations_ from those of the B and the V taken in a simple way.

They stand, it is true, for the _same letters_, and thus mean the

_same outer realities_; but they are different mental affections, and

certainly depend on widely different processes of cerebral activity.

It is unbelievable that two mental states so different as the passive

reception of a sound as a whole, and the analysis of that whole into

distinct ingredients by voluntary attention, should be due to processes

at all similar. And the subjective difference does not consist in that

the first-named state _is_ the second in an 'unconscious' form. It is

an absolute psychic difference, even greater than that between the

states to which two different surds will give rise. The same is true

of the other sensations chosen as examples. The man who learns for the

first time how the closure of his glottis feels, experiences in this

discovery an absolutely new psychic modification, the like of which he

never had before. He had another feeling before, a feeling incessantly

renewed, and of which the same glottis was the organic starting point;

but that was not the later feeling in an 'unconscious' state; it was

a feeling _sui generis_ altogether, although it took cognizance of

the same bodily part, the glottis. We shall see, hereafter, that the

same reality can be cognized by an endless number of psychic states,

which may differ _toto cœlo_ among themselves, without ceasing on

that account to refer to the reality in question. Each of them is a

conscious fact: none of them has any mode of being whatever except a

certain way of being felt at the moment of being present. It is simply

unintelligible and fantastical to say, because they point to the same

outer reality, that they must therefore be so many editions of the same

'idea,' now in a conscious and now in an 'unconscious' phase. There is

only one 'phase' in which an idea can be, and that is a fully conscious

condition. If it is not in that condition, then it is not at all.

Something else is, in its place. The something else may be a merely

physical brain-process, or it may be another conscious idea. Either of

these things may perform much the same _function_ as the first idea,

refer to the same object, and roughly stand in the same relations to

the upshot of our thought. But that is no reason why we should throw

away the logical principle of identity in psychology, and say that,

however it may fare in the outer world, the mind at any rate is a place

in which a thing can be all kinds of other things without ceasing to be

itself as well.

Now take the other cases alleged, and the other distinction, that

namely between _having_ a mental state and knowing all _about_ it.

The truth is here even simpler to unravel. When I decide that I have,

without knowing it, been for several weeks in love, I am simply giving

a name to a state which previously _I have not named_, but which was

fully conscious; which had no residual mode of being except the manner

in which it was conscious; and which, though it was a feeling towards

the same person for whom I now have a much more inflamed feeling, and

though it continuously led into the latter, and is similar enough to be

called by the same name, is yet in no sense identical with the latter,

and least of all in an 'unconscious' way. Again, the feelings from our

viscera and other dimly-felt organs, the feelings of innervation (if

such there be), and those of muscular exertion which, in our spatial

judgments, are supposed unconsciously to determine what we shall

perceive, are just exactly what we feel them, perfectly determinate

conscious states, not vague editions of other conscious states. They

may be faint and weak; they may be very vague cognizers of the same

realities which other conscious states cognize and name exactly; they

may be unconscious of much in the reality which the other states are

conscious of. But that does not make them _in themselves_ a whit dim

or vague or unconscious. They _are_ eternally as they feel when they

exist, and can, neither actually nor potentially, be identified with

anything else than their own faint selves. A faint feeling may be

looked back upon and classified and understood in its relations to what

went before or after it in the stream of thought. But it, on the one

hand, and the later state of mind which knows all these things about

it, on the other, are surely not two conditions, one conscious and the

other 'unconscious,' of the same identical psychic fact. It is the

destiny of thought that, on the whole, our early ideas are superseded

by later ones, giving fuller accounts of the same realities. But none

the less do the earlier and the later ideas preserve their own several

substantive identities as so many several successive states of mind.

To believe the contrary would make any definite science of psychology

impossible. The only identity to be found among our successive ideas is

their similarity of cognitive or representative function as dealing

with the same objects. Identity of _being_, there is none; and I

believe that throughout the rest of this volume the reader will reap

the advantages of the simpler way of formulating the facts which is

here begun.[186]

* * * * *

So we seem not only to have ascertained the unintelligibility of the

notion that a mental fact can be two things at once, and that what

seems like one feeling, of blueness for example, or of hatred, may

really and 'unconsciously' be ten thousand elementary feelings which

do not resemble blueness or hatred at all, but we find that we can

express all the observed facts in other ways. The mind-stuff theory,

however, though scotched, is, we may be sure, not killed. If we ascribe

consciousness to unicellular animalcules, then single cells can have

it, and analogy should make us ascribe it to the several cells of the

brain, each individually taken. And what a convenience would it not

be for the psychologist if, by the adding together of various doses

of this separate-cell-consciousness, he could treat thought as a kind

of stuff or material, to be measured out in great or small amount,

increased and subtracted from, and baled about at will! He feels an

imperious craving to be allowed to _construct_ synthetically the

successive mental states which he describes. The mind-stuff theory so

easily admits of the construction being made, that it seems certain

that 'man's unconquerable mind' will devote much future pertinacity and

ingenuity to setting it on its legs again and getting it into some sort

of plausible working-order. I will therefore conclude the chapter with

some consideration of the remaining difficulties which beset the matter

as it at present stands.

DIFFICULTY OF STATING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MIND AND BRAIN.

It will be remembered that in our criticism of the theory of the

integration of successive conscious units into a feeling of musical

pitch, we decided that whatever integration there was was that of the

air-pulses into a simpler and simpler sort of physical effect, as the

propagations of material change got higher and higher in the nervous

system. At last, we said (p. 23), there results some simple and massive

process in the auditory centres of the hemispherical cortex, to which,

_as a whole_, the feeling of musical pitch directly corresponds.

Already, in discussing the localization of functions in the brain,

I had said (pp. 158-9) that consciousness accompanies the stream of

innervation through that organ and varies in quality with the character

of the currents, being mainly of things seen if the occipital lobes

are much involved, of things heard if the action is focalized in the

temporal lobes, etc., etc.; and I had added that a vague formula like

this was as much as one could safely venture on in the actual state of

physiology. The facts of mental deafness and blindness, of auditory

and optical aphasia, show us that the whole brain must act together

if certain thoughts are to occur. The consciousness, which is itself

an integral thing not made of parts, 'corresponds' to the entire

activity of the brain, whatever that may be, at the moment. This is a

way of expressing the relation of mind and brain from which I shall

not depart during the remainder of the book, because it expresses the

bare phenomenal fact with no hypothesis, and is exposed to no such

logical objections as we have found to cling to the theory of ideas in

combination.

Nevertheless, this formula which is so unobjectionable if taken

vaguely, positivistically, or scientifically, as a mere empirical law

of concomitance between our thoughts and our brain, tumbles to pieces

entirely if we assume to represent anything more intimate or ultimate

by it. The ultimate of ultimate problems, of course, in the study

of the relations of thought and brain, is to understand why and how

such disparate things are connected at all. But before that problem

is solved (if it ever is solved) there is a less ultimate problem

which must first be settled. Before the connection of thought and

brain can be explained, it must at least be _stated_ in an elementary

form; and there are great difficulties about so stating it. To state

it in elementary form one must reduce it to its lowest terms and

know which mental fact and which cerebral fact are, so to speak, in

immediate juxtaposition. We must find the minimal mental fact whose

being reposes directly on a brain-fact; and we must similarly find

the minimal brain-event which will have a mental counterpart at all.

Between the mental and the physical minima thus found there will be an

immediate relation, the expression of which, if we had it, would be the

elementary psycho-physic law.

Our own formula escapes the unintelligibility of psychic atoms by

_taking the entire thought_ (even of a complex object) _as the minimum

with which it deals on the mental side_. But in taking the entire

brain-process as its minimal fact on the material side it confronts

other difficulties almost as bad.

In the first place, it ignores analogies on which certain critics

will insist, those, namely, between the composition of the total

brain-process and that of the _object_ of the thought. The total

brain-process is composed of parts, of simultaneous processes in the

seeing, the hearing, the feeling, and other centres. The object thought

of is also composed of parts, some of which are seen, others heard,

others perceived by touch and muscular manipulation. "How then,"

these critics will say, "should the thought not itself be composed of

parts, each the counterpart of a part of the object and of a part of

the brain-process?" So natural is this way of looking at the matter

that it has given rise to what is on the whole the most flourishing of

all psychological systems--that of the Lockian school of associated

ideas--of which school the mind-stuff theory is nothing but the last

and subtlest offshoot.

The second difficulty is deeper still. _The 'entire brain-process' is

not a physical fact at all._ It is the appearance to an onlooking mind

of a multitude of physical facts. 'Entire brain' is nothing but our

name for the way in which a million of molecules arranged in certain

positions may affect our sense. On the principles of the corpuscular or

mechanical philosophy, the only realities are the separate molecules,

or at most the cells. Their aggregation into a 'brain' is a fiction of

popular speech. Such a fiction cannot serve as the objectively real

counterpart to any psychic state whatever. Only a genuinely physical

fact can so serve. But the molecular fact is the only genuine physical

fact--whereupon we seem, if we are to have an elementary psycho-physic

law at all, thrust right back upon something like the mind-stuff

theory, for the molecular fact, being an element of the 'brain,'

would seem naturally to correspond, not to the total thoughts, but to

elements in the thought.

What shall we do? Many would find relief at this point in celebrating

the mystery of the Unknowable and the 'awe' which we should feel at

having such a principle to take final charge of our perplexities.

Others would rejoice that the finite and separatist view of things

with which we started had at last developed its contradictions, and

was about to lead us dialectically upwards to some 'higher synthesis'

in which inconsistencies cease from troubling and logic is at rest.

It may be a constitutional infirmity, but I can take no comfort in

such devices for making a luxury of intellectual defeat. They are but

spiritual chloroform. Better live on the ragged edge, better gnaw the

file forever!

THE MATERIAL-MONAD THEORY.

The most rational thing to do is to suspect that there may be a third

possibility, an alternative supposition which we have not considered.

Now there _is_ an alternative supposition--a supposition moreover

which has been frequently made in the history of philosophy, and which

is freer from logical objections than either of the views we have

ourselves discussed. It may be called the _theory of polyzoism or

multiple monadism_; and it conceives the matter thus:

Every brain-cell has its own individual consciousness, which no other

cell knows anything about, all individual consciousnesses being

'ejective' to each other. There is, however, among the cells one

central or pontifical one to which _our_ consciousness is attached. But

the events of all the other cells physically influence this arch-cell;

and through producing their joint effects on it, these other cells may

be said to 'combine.' The arch-cell is, in fact, one of those 'external

media' without which we saw that no fusion or integration of a number

of things can occur. The physical modifications of the arch-cell thus

form a sequence of results in the production whereof every other cell

has a share, so that, as one might say, every other cell is represented

therein. And similarly, the conscious correlates to these physical

modifications form a sequence of thoughts or feelings, each one of

which is, as to its substantive being, an integral and uncompounded

psychic thing, but each one of which may (in the exercise of its

_cognitive_ function) be _aware of THINGS_ many and complicated in

proportion to the number of other cells that have helped to modify the

central cell.

By a conception of this sort, one incurs neither of the internal

contradictions which we found to beset the other two theories. One has

no unintelligible self-combining of psychic units to account for on the

one hand; and on the other hand, one need not treat as the physical

counterpart of the stream of consciousness under observation, a 'total

brain-activity' which is non-existent as a genuinely physical fact.

But, to offset these advantages, one has physiological difficulties

and improbabilities. There is no cell or group of cells in the brain

of such anatomical or functional pre-eminence as to appear to be the

keystone or centre of gravity of the whole system. And even if there

were such a cell, the theory of multiple monadism would, in strictness

of thought, have no right to stop at it and treat it as a unit. The

cell is no more a unit, materially considered, than the total brain

is a unit. It is a compound of molecules, just as the brain is a

compound of cells and fibres. And the molecules, according to the

prevalent physical theories, are in turn compounds of atoms. The

theory in question, therefore, if radically carried out, must set up

for its elementary and irreducible psycho-physic couple, not the cell

and its consciousness, but the primordial and eternal atom and its

consciousness. We are back at Leibnitzian monadism, and therewith leave

physiology behind us and dive into regions inaccessible to experience

and verification; and our doctrine, although not self-contradictory,

becomes so remote and unreal as to be almost as bad as if it were.

Speculative minds alone will take an interest in it; and metaphysics,

not psychology, will be responsible for its career. That the career may

be a successful one must be admitted as a possibility--a theory which

Leibnitz, Herbart, and Lotze have taken under their protection must

have some sort of a destiny.

THE SOUL-THEORY.

But is this my last word? By no means. Many readers have certainly been

saying to themselves for the last few pages: "Why on earth doesn't

the poor man say _the Soul_ and have done with it?" Other readers, of

anti-spiritualistic training and prepossessions, advanced thinkers,

or popular evolutionists, will perhaps be a little surprised to

find this much-despised word now sprung upon them at the end of so

physiological a train of thought. But the plain fact is that all the

arguments for a 'pontifical cell' or an 'arch-monad' are also arguments

for that well-known spiritual agent in which scholastic psychology

and common-sense have always believed. And my only reason for beating

the bushes so, and not bringing it in earlier as a possible solution

of our difficulties, has been that by this procedure I might perhaps

force some of these materialistic minds to feel the more strongly the

logical respectability of the spiritualistic position. The fact is that

one cannot afford to despise any of these great traditional objects of

belief. Whether we realize it or not, there is always a great drift

of reasons, positive and negative, towing us in their direction. If

there be such entities as Souls in the universe, they may possibly be

affected by the manifold occurrences that go on in the nervous centres.

To the state of the entire brain at a given moment they may respond

by inward modifications of their own. These changes of state may be

pulses of consciousness, cognitive of objects few or many, simple or

complex. The soul would be thus a medium upon which (to use our earlier

phraseology) the manifold brain-processes _combine their effects_.

Not needing to consider it as the 'inner aspect' of any arch-molecule

or brain-cell, we escape that physiological improbability; and as its

pulses of consciousness are unitary and integral affairs from the

outset, we escape the absurdity of supposing feelings which exist

separately and then 'fuse together' by themselves. The separateness is

in the brain-world, on this theory, and the unity in the soul-world;

and the only trouble that remains to haunt us is the metaphysical one

of understanding how one sort of world or existent thing can affect or

influence another at all. This trouble, however, since it also exists

inside of both worlds, and involves neither physical improbability nor

logical contradiction, is relatively small.

I confess, therefore, that to posit a soul influenced in some

mysterious way by the brain-states and responding to them by conscious

affections of its own, seems to me the line of least logical

resistance, so far as we yet have attained.

If it does not strictly _explain_ anything, it is at any rate less

positively objectionable than either mind-stuff or a material-monad

creed. _The bare_ PHENOMENON, _however, the_ IMMEDIATELY KNOWN _thing

which on the mental side is in apposition with the entire brain-process

is the state of consciousness and not the soul itself._ Many of the

stanchest believers in the soul admit that we know it only as an

inference from experiencing its _states_. In Chapter X, accordingly,

we must return to its consideration again, and _ask ourselves whether,

after all, the ascertainment of a blank unmediated correspondence,

term for term, of the succession of states of consciousness with the

succession of total brain-processes, be not the simplest psycho-physic

formula, and the last word of a psychology which contents itself with

verifiable laws, and seeks only to be clear, and to avoid unsafe

hypotheses._ Such a mere admission of the empirical parallelism will

there appear the wisest course. By keeping to it, our psychology

will remain positivistic and non-metaphysical; and although this is

certainly only a provisional halting-place, and things must some day

be more thoroughly thought out, we shall abide there in this book, and

just as we have rejected mind-dust, we shall take no account of the

soul. The spiritualistic reader may nevertheless believe in the soul

if he will; whilst the positivistic one who wishes to give a tinge of

mystery to the expression of his positivism can continue to say that

nature in her unfathomable designs has mixed us of clay and flame,

of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and

determine each other's being, but how or why, no mortal may ever know.

FOOTNOTES:

[160] Psychol. § 62.

[161] _Ibid._ § 272.

[162] Fragments of Science, 5th ed., p. 420.

[163] Belfast Address, 'Nature,' August 20, 1874, p. 318. I cannot

help remarking that the disparity between motions and feelings on

which these authors lay so much stress, is somewhat less absolute

than at first sight it seems. There are categories common to the two

worlds. Not only temporal succession (as Helmholtz admits, Physiol.

Optik, p. 445), but such attributes as intensity, volume, simplicity

or complication, smooth or impeded change, rest or agitation, are

habitually predicated of both physical facts and mental facts. Where

such analogies obtain, the things do have something in common.

[164] Psychology, § 131

[165] 'Nature,' as above, 317-8.

[166] 'Nascent' is Mr. Spencer's great word. In showing how at a

certain point consciousness must appear upon the evolving scene this

author fairly outdoes himself in vagueness.

"In its higher forms, Instinct is probably accompanied by a rudimentary

consciousness. There cannot be co-ordination of many stimuli without

some ganglion through which they are all brought into relation. In

the process of bringing them into relation, this ganglion must be

subject to the influence of each--must undergo many changes. And

the quick succession of changes in a ganglion, implying as it does

perpetual experiences of differences and likenesses, constitutes the

_raw material_ of consciousness. The _implication_ is that as fast as

Instinct is developed, some kind of consciousness becomes nascent."

(Psychology, § 195.)

The words 'raw material' and 'implication' which I have italicized

are the words which do the _evolving_. They are supposed to have

all the rigor which the 'synthetic philosophy' requires. In the

following passage, when 'impressions' pass through a common 'centre

of communication' in succession (much as people might pass into a

theatre through a turnstile) consciousness, non-existent until then, is

supposed to result:

"Separate impressions are received by the senses--by different parts

of the body. If they go no further than the places at which they

are received, they are useless. Or if only some of them are brought

into relation with one another, they are useless. That an effectual

adjustment may be made, they must be all brought into relation with one

another. But this implies some centre of communication common to them

all, through which they severally pass; and as they cannot pass through

it simultaneously, they must pass through it in succession. So that as

the external phenomena responded to become greater in number and more

complicated in kind, the variety and rapidity of the changes to which

this common centre of communication is subject must increase--there

must result an unbroken series of these changes-_there must arise a

consciousness_.

"Hence the progress of the correspondence between the organism and its

environment necessitates a gradual reduction of the sensorial changes

to a succession; and by so doing _evolves a distinct consciousness_--a

consciousness that becomes higher as the succession becomes more rapid

and the correspondence more complete." (_Ibid._ § 179.)

It is true that in the Fortnightly Review (vol. xiv, p. 716) Mr.

Spencer denies that he means by this passage to tell us anything about

the origin of consciousness at all. It resembles, however, too many

other places in his Psychology (e.g. §§ 43, 110, 244) not to be taken

as a serious attempt to explain how consciousness must at a certain

point be 'evolved.' That, when a critic calls his attention to the

inanity of his words, Mr. Spencer should say he never meant anything

particular by them, is simply an example of the scandalous vagueness

with which this sort of 'chromo-philosophy' is carried on.

[167] His own words are: "Mistakes are made in the sense that he

admits having been touched, when in reality it was radiant heat that

affected his skin. In our own before-mentioned experiments there

was never any deception on the entire palmar side of the hand or

on the face. On the back of the hand in one case in a series of 60

stimulations 4 mistakes occurred, in another case 2 mistakes in 45

stimulations. On the extensor side of the upper arm 3 deceptions out of

48 stimulations were noticed, and in the case of another individual,

1 out of 31. In one case over the spine 3 deceptions in a series of

11 excitations were observed; in another, 4 out of 19. On the lumbar

spine 6 deceptions came among 29 stimulations, and again 4 out of

7. There is certainly not yet enough material on which to rest a

calculation of probabilities, but any one can easily convince himself

that on the back there is no question of even a moderately accurate

discrimination between warmth and a light pressure so far as but small

portions of skin come into play. It has been as yet impossible to make

corresponding experiments with regard to sensibility to cold." (Lehrb.

d. Anat. u. Physiol. d. Sinnesorgane (1862), p. 29.)

[168] Principles of Psychology, § 60.

[169] Oddly enough, Mr. Spencer seems quite unaware of the

_general_ function of the theory of elementary units of mind-stuff

in the evolutionary philosophy. We have seen it to be absolutely

indispensable, if that philosophy is to work, to postulate

consciousness in the nebula,---the simplest way being, of course, to

suppose every atom animated. Mr. Spencer, however, will have it (e.g.

First Principles, § 71) that consciousness is only the occasional

result of the 'transformation' of a certain amount of 'physical force'

to which it is 'equivalent.' Presumably a brain must already be there

before any such 'transformation' can take place; and so the argument

quoted in the text stands as a mere local detail, without general

bearings.

[170] The compounding of colors may be dealt with in an identical

way. Helmholtz has shown that if green light and red light fall

simultaneously on the retina, we see the color yellow. The mind-stuff

theory would interpret this as a ease where the feeling green and the

feeling red 'combine' into the _tertium quid_ of feeling, yellow. What

really occurs is no doubt that a third kind of nerve-process is set

up when the combined lights impinge on the retina,--not simply the

process of red plus the process of green, but something quite different

from both or either. Of course, then, there _are_ no feelings, either

of red or of green, present to the mind at all; but the feeling of

yellow which _is_ there, answers as directly to the nerve-process which

momentarily then exists, as the feelings of green and red would answer

to their respective nerve-processes did the latter happen to be taking

place.

[171] Cf. Mill's Logic, book vi, chap. iv, § 3.

[172] I find in my students an almost invincible tendency to think that

we can immediately perceive that feelings do combine. "What!" they say,

"is not the taste of lemonade composed of that of lemon _plus_ that of

sugar?" This is taking the combining of objects for that of feelings.

The physical lemonade contains both the lemon and the sugar, but its

taste does not contain their tastes, for if there are any two things

which are certainly _not_ present in the taste of lemonade, those are

the lemon-sour on the one hand and the sugar-sweet on the other. These

tastes are absent utterly. The entirely new taste which is present

_resembles_, it is true, both those tastes; but in Chapter XIII we

shall see that resemblance can not always be held to involve partial

identity.

[173] E. Montgomery, in 'Mind,' v, 18-19. See also pp. 24-5.

[174] J. Royce, 'Mind,' vi, p. 376. Lotze has set forth the truth

of this law more clearly and copiously than any other writer.

Unfortunately he is too lengthy to quote. See his Microcosmus, bk. ii,

ch. i, § 5; Metaphysik, §§ 242, 260; Outlines of Metaphysics, part ii,

chap. i, §§ 3, 4, 5. Compare also Reid's Intellectual Powers, essay v,

chap. iii, _ad fin._; Bowne's Metaphysics, pp. 361-76; St. J. Mivart:

Nature and Thought, pp. 98-101; E. Gurney: 'Monism,' in 'Mind,' vi,

153; and the article by Prof. Royce, just quoted, on 'Mind-stuff and

Reality.'

_In defence of the mind-stuff view,_ see W. K. Clifford: 'Mind,' iii,

57 (reprinted in his 'Lectures and Essays,' ii, 71); G. T. Fechner,

Psychophysik, Bd. ii, cap. xlv; H. Taine: on Intelligence, bk. iii; E.

Haeckel: 'Zellseelen u. Seelenzellen' in Gesammelte pop. Vorträge, Bd.

i, p. 143; W. S. Duncan: Conscious Matter, _passim_; H. Zöllner: Natur

d. Cometen, pp. 320 ff.; Alfred Barratt: 'Physical Ethic' and 'Physical

Metempiric,' _passim_; J. Soury: 'Hylozoismus,' in 'Kosmos,' V. Jahrg.,

Heft x, p. 241; A. Main: 'Mind,' i, 292, 431, 566; ii, 129, 402; _Id._

Revue Philos., ii, 86, 88, 419; iii, 51, 502; iv, 402; F. W. Frankland:

'Mind,' vi, 116; Whittaker: 'Mind,' vi, 498 (historical); Morton

Prince: The Nature of Mind and Human Automatism (1885); A. Riehl: Der

philosophische Kriticismus, Bd. ii, Theil 2, 2ter Abschnitt, 2tes Cap.

(1887). The clearest of all these Statements is, as far as it goes,

that of Prince.

[175] "Someone might say that although it is true that neither a blind

man nor a deaf man by himself can compare sounds with colors, yet since

one hears and the other sees they might do so both together.... But

whether they are apart or close together makes no difference; not even

if they permanently keep house together; no, not if they were Siamese

twins, or more than Siamese twins, and were inseparably grown together,

would it make the assumption any more possible. Only when sound and

color are represented in the same reality is it thinkable that they

should be compared." (Brentano: Psychologie, p. 209.)

[176] The reader must observe that we are reasoning altogether about

the _Logic_ of the mind-stuff theory, about whether it can _exist in

the constitution_ of higher mental states by viewing them as _identical

with lower ones_ summed together. We say the two sorts of fact are

not identical: a higher state _is_ not a lot of lower states; it is

itself. When, however, a lot of lower states have come together, or

when certain brain-conditions occur together which, _if they occurred

separately, would produce_ a lot of lower states, we have not for a

moment pretended that a higher state may not emerge. In fact it does

emerge under those conditions; and our Chapter IX will be mainly

devoted to the proof of this fact. But such emergence is that of a new

psychic entity, and is _toto cœlo_ different from such an 'integration'

of the lower states as the mind-stuff theory affirms.

It may seem strange to suppose that anyone should mistake criticism

of a certain theory about a fact for doubt of the fact itself. And

yet the confusion is made in high quarters enough to justify our

remarks. Mr. J. Ward, in his article Psychology in the Encyclopædia

Britannica, speaking of the hypothesis that "a series of feelings can

be aware of itself as a series," says (p. 39): "Paradox is too mild

a word for it, even contradiction will hardly suffice." Whereupon,

Professor Bain takes him thus to task: "As to 'a series of states being

aware of itself,' I confess I see no insurmountable difficulty. It

may be a fact, or not a fact; it may be a very clumsy expression for

what it is applied to; but it is neither paradox nor contradiction.

A series merely contradicts an individual, or it may be two or more

individuals as coexisting; but that is too general to exclude the

possibility of self-knowledge. It certainly does not bring the property

of self-knowledge into the foreground, which, however, is not the same

as denying it. An algebraic series might know itself, without any

contradiction: the only thing against it is the want of evidence of the

fact." ('Mind,' xi, 459). Prof. Bain thinks, then, that all the bother

is about the difficulty of seeing how a series of feelings can have the

knowledge of itself _added to it!!!_ As if anybody ever was troubled

about that. That, notoriously enough, is a fact: our consciousness

is a series of feelings to which every now and then is _added_ a

retrospective consciousness that they have come and gone. What Mr. Ward

and I are troubled about is merely the silliness of the mind-stuffists

and associationists continuing to say that the 'series of states' _is_

the 'awareness of itself;' that if the states be posited severally,

their collective consciousness is _eo ipso_ given; and that we need no

farther explanation, or 'evidence of the fact.'

[177] The writers about 'unconscious cerebration' seem sometimes to

mean that and sometimes unconscious thought. The arguments which follow

are culled from various quarters. The reader will find them most

systematically urged by E. von Hartmann: Philosophy of the Unconscious,

vol. i; and by E. Colsenet: La Vie Inconsciente de l'Esprit (1880).

Consult also T. Laycock: Mind and Brain, vol. i, chap. v (1860); W.

B. Carpenter: Mental Physiology, chap. xiii; F. P. Cobbe: Darwinism

in Morals and other Essays, essay xi, Unconscious Cerebration (1872);

F. Bowen: Modern Philosophy, pp. 428-480; R. H. Hutton: Contemporary

Review, vol. xxiv, p. 201; J. S. Mill: Exam. of Hamilton, chap. xv; G.

H. Lewes: Problems of Life and Mind, 3d series, Prob. ii, chap. x, and

also Prob. iii, chap. ii; D. G. Thompson: A System of Psychology, chap.

xxxiii; J. M. Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, chap. iv.

[178] Nouveaux Essais, Avant-propos.

[179] J. S. Mill, Exam. of Hamilton, chap. xv.

[180] Cf. Dugald Stewart, Elements, chap. ii.

[181] J. E. Maude: 'The Unconscious in Education,' in 'Education,' vol.

i, p. 401 (1882).

[182] Zur Lehre vor Lichtsinne (1878).

[183] Cf. Wundt: Ueber den Einfluss der Philosophie, etc.--Antrittsrede

(1876), pp. 10-11;--Helmholtz: Die Thatsachen in der Wahrnehmung

(1879), p. 27.

[184] Cf. Satz vom Grunde, pp. 59-65. Compare also F. Zöllner's Natur

der Kometen, pp. 342 ff. and 425.

[185] Cf. the statements from Helmholtz to be found later in Chapter

XIII.

[186] The text was written before Professor Lipps's Grundtatsachen des

Seelenlebens (1883) came into my hands. In Chapter III of that book

the notion of unconscious thought is subjected to the clearest and

most searching criticism which it has yet received. Some passages are

so similar to what I have myself written that I must quote them in a

note. After proving that dimness and clearness, incompleteness and

completeness do not pertain to a state of mind _as such_--since every

state of mind must be _exactly_ what it is, and nothing else--but only

pertain to the way in which states of mind stand for objects, which

they more or less dimly, more or less clearly, _represent_; Lipps takes

the case of those sensations which attention is said to make more

clear. "I perceive an object," he says, "now in clear daylight, and

again at night. Call the content of the day-perception _a_, and that

of the evening-perception _a^1_. There will probably be a considerable

difference between _a_ and _a^1_. The colors of _a_ will be varied

and intense, and will be sharply bounded by each other; those of

_a^1_ will be less luminous, and less strongly contrasted, and will

approach a common gray or brown, and merge more into each other. Both

percepts, however, as such, are completely determinate and distinct

from all others. The colors of _a^1_ appear before my eye neither more

nor less decidedly dark and blurred than the colors of _a_ appear

bright and sharply bounded. But now I know, or believe I know, that

one and the same real Object A corresponds to both _a_ and _a^1_. I

am convinced, moreover, that _a_ represents A better than does _a^1_.

Instead, however, of giving to my conviction this, its only correct,

expression, and keeping the content of my consciousness and the real

object, the representation and what it means, distinct from each other,

I substitute the real object for the content of the consciousness, and

talk of the experience as if it consisted in one and the same object

(namely, the surreptitiously introduced real one), constituting twice

over the content of my consciousness, once in a clear and distinct,

the other time in an obscure and vague fashion. I talk now of a

distincter and of a less distinct _consciousness_ of A, whereas I

am only justified in talking of two consciousnesses, _a_ and _a^1_,

equally distinct _in se_, but to which the supposed external object A

corresponds with different degrees of distinctness." (P. 38-9.)

CHAPTER VII.

THE METHODS AND SNARES OF PSYCHOLOGY

We have now finished the physiological preliminaries of our subject

and must in the remaining chapters study the mental states themselves

whose cerebral conditions and concomitants we have been considering

hitherto. Beyond the brain, however, there is an outer world to which

the brain-states themselves 'correspond.' And it will be well, ere we

advance farther, to say a word about the relation of the mind to this

larger sphere of physical fact.

PSYCHOLOGY IS A NATURAL SCIENCE.

That is, the mind which the psychologist studies is the mind of

distinct individuals inhabiting definite portions of a real space and

of a real time. With any other sort of mind, absolute Intelligence,

Mind unattached to a particular body, or Mind not subject to the course

of time, the psychologist as such has nothing to do. 'Mind,' in his

mouth, is only a class name for _minds_. Fortunate will it be if his

more modest inquiry result in any generalizations which the philosopher

devoted to absolute Intelligence as such can use.

To the psychologist, then, the minds he studies are _objects_, in a

world of other objects. Even when he introspectively analyzes his own

mind, and tells what he finds there, he talks about it in an objective

way. He says, for instance, that under certain circumstances the color

gray appears to him green, and calls the appearance an illusion.

This implies that he compares two objects, a real color seen under

certain conditions, and a mental perception which he believes to

represent it, and that he declares the relation between them to be of

a certain kind. In making this critical judgment, the psychologist

stands as much outside of the perception which he criticises as he

does of the color. Both are his objects. And if this is true of him

when he reflects on his own conscious states, how much truer is it

when he treats of those of others! In German philosophy since Kant

the word _Erkenntnisstheorie_, criticism of the faculty of knowledge,

plays a great part. Now the psychologist necessarily becomes such an

_Erkenntnisstheoretiker_. But the knowledge he theorizes about is not

the bare function of knowledge which Kant criticises--he does not

inquire into the possibility of knowledge _überhaupt_. He assumes it to

be possible, he does not doubt its presence in himself at the moment

he speaks. The knowledge he criticises is the knowledge of particular

men about the particular things that surround them. This he may, upon

occasion, in the light of his _own_ unquestioned knowledge, pronounce

true or false, and trace the reasons by which it has become one or the

other.

It is highly important that this natural-science point of view should

be understood at the outset. Otherwise more may be demanded of the

psychologist than he ought to be expected to perform.

A diagram will exhibit more emphatically what the assumptions of

Psychology must be:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

| The | The Thought | The Thought's | The Psychologist's |

| Psychologist | Studied | Object | Reality |

------------------------------------------------------------------------

These four squares contain the irreducible data of psychology. No. 1,

the psychologist, believes Nos. 2, 3, and 4, which together form _his

_ total object, to be realities, and reports them and their mutual

relations as truly as he can without troubling himself with the puzzle

of how he can report them at all. About such _ultimate _ puzzles he in

the main need trouble himself no more than the geometer, the chemist,

or the botanist do, who make precisely the same assumptions as he.[187]

Of certain fallacies to which the psychologist is exposed by reason of

his peculiar point of view--that of being a reporter of subjective as

well as of objective facts, we must presently speak. But not until we

have considered the methods he uses for ascertaining what the facts in

question are.

THE METHODS OF INVESTIGATION.

_Introspective Observation is what we have to rely on first and

foremost and always._ The word introspection need hardly be defined--it

means, of course, the looking into our own minds and reporting what

we there discover. _Every one agrees that we there discover states of

consciousness._ So far as I know, the existence of such states has

never been doubted by any critic, however sceptical in other respects

he may have been. That we have _cogitations_ of some sort is the

_inconcussum_ in a world most of whose other facts have at some time

tottered in the breath of philosophic doubt. All people unhesitatingly

believe that they feel themselves thinking, and that they distinguish

the mental state as an inward activity or passion, from all the objects

with which it may cognitively deal. _I regard this belief as the most

fundamental of all the postulates of Psychology,_ and shall discard all

curious inquiries about its certainty as too metaphysical for the scope

of this book.

* * * * *

_A Question of Nomenclature._ We ought to have some general term

by which to designate all states of consciousness merely as such,

and apart from their particular quality or cognitive function.

Unfortunately most of the terms in use have grave objections. 'Mental

state,' 'state of consciousness,' 'conscious modification,' are

cumbrous and have no kindred verbs. The same is true of 'subjective

condition.' 'Feeling' has the verb 'to feel,' both active and neuter,

and such derivatives as 'feelingly,' 'felt,' 'feltness,' etc., which

make it extremely convenient. But on the other hand it has specific

meanings as well as its generic one, sometimes standing for pleasure

and pain, and being sometimes a synonym of '_sensation_' as opposed

to _thought_; whereas we wish a term to cover sensation and thought

indifferently. Moreover, 'feeling' has acquired in the hearts of

platonizing thinkers a very opprobrious set of implications; and since

one of the great obstacles to mutual understanding in philosophy is the

use of words eulogistically and disparagingly, impartial terms ought

always, if possible, to be preferred. The word _psychosis_ has been

proposed by Mr. Huxley. It has the advantage of being correlative to

_neurosis_ (the name applied by the same author to the corresponding

nerve-process), and is moreover technical and devoid of partial

implications. But it has no verb or other grammatical form allied to

it. The expressions 'affection of the soul,' 'modification of the

ego,' are clumsy, like 'state of consciousness,' and they implicitly

assert theories which it is not well to embody in terminology before

they have been openly discussed and approved. 'Idea' is a good vague

neutral word, and was by Locke employed in the broadest generic way;

but notwithstanding his authority it has not domesticated itself in the

language so as to cover bodily sensations, and it moreover has no verb.

'Thought' would be by far the best word to use if it could be made to

cover sensations. It has no opprobrious connotation such as 'feeling'

has, and it immediately suggests the omnipresence of cognition (or

reference to an object other than the mental state itself), which

we shall soon see to be of the mental life's essence. But can the

expression 'thought of a toothache' ever suggest to the reader the

actual present pain itself? It is hardly possible; and we thus seem

about to be forced back on some _pair_ of terms like Hume's 'impression

and idea,' or Hamilton's 'presentation and representation,' or the

ordinary 'feeling and thought,' if we wish to cover the whole ground.

In this quandary we can make no definitive choice, but must, according

to the convenience of the context, use sometimes one, sometimes another

of the synonyms that have been mentioned. _My own partiality is for

either FEELING or THOUGHT._ I shall probably often use both words in a

wider sense than usual, and alternately startle two classes of readers

by their unusual sound; but if the connection makes it clear that

mental states at large, irrespective of their kind, are meant, this

will do no harm, and may even do some good.[188]

* * * * *

_The inaccuracy of introspective observation_ has been made a subject

of debate. It is important to gain some fixed ideas on this point

before we proceed.

The commonest spiritualistic opinion is that the Soul or _Subject_

of the mental life is a metaphysical entity, inaccessible to direct

knowledge, and that the various mental states and operations of which

we reflectively become aware are objects of an inner sense which

does not lay hold of the real agent in itself, any more than sight

or hearing gives us direct knowledge of matter in itself. From, this

point of view introspection is, of course, incompetent to lay hold of

anything more than the Soul's _phenomena_. But even then the question

remains, How well can it know the phenomena themselves?

Some authors take high ground here and claim for it a sort of

infallibility. Thus Ueberweg:

"When a mental image, as such, is the object of my apprehension,

there is no meaning in seeking to distinguish its existence in my

consciousness (in me) from its existence out of my consciousness (in

itself); for the object apprehended is, in this case, one which does

not even exist, as the objects of external perception do, in itself

outside of my consciousness. It exists only within me."[189]

And Brentano:

"The phenomena inwardly apprehended are true in themselves. As they

appear--of this the evidence with which they are apprehended is a

warrant--so they are in reality. Who, then, can deny that in this a

great superiority of Psychology over the physical sciences comes to

light?"

And again:

"No one can doubt whether the psychic condition he apprehends in

himself _be_, and be _so_, as he apprehends it. Whoever should doubt

this would have reached that _finished_ doubt which destroys itself

in destroying every fixed point from which to make an attack upon

knowledge."[190]

Others have gone to the opposite extreme, and maintained that we

can have no introspective cognition of our own minds at all. A

deliverance of Auguste Comte to this effect has been so often quoted

as to be almost classical; and some reference to it seems therefore

indispensable here.

Philosophers, says Comte,[191] have

"in these latter days imagined themselves able to distinguish, by a

very singular subtlety, two sorts of observation of equal importance,

one external, the other internal, the latter being solely destined for

the study of intellectual phenomena.... I limit myself to pointing out

the principal consideration which proves clearly that this pretended

direct contemplation of the mind by itself is a pure illusion.... It

is in fact evident that, by an invincible necessity, the human mind

can observe directly all phenomena except its own proper states. For

by whom shall the observation of these be made? It is conceivable

that a man might observe himself with respect to the _passions_

that animate him, for the anatomical organs of passion are distinct

from those whose function is observation. Though we have all made

such observations on ourselves, they can never have much scientific

value, and the best mode of knowing the passions will always be that

of observing them from without; for every strong state of passion

... is necessarily incompatible with the state of observation. But,

as for observing in the same way _intellectual_ phenomena at the

time of their actual presence, that is a manifest impossibility. The

thinker cannot divide himself into two, of whom one reasons whilst

the other observes him reason. The organ observed and the organ

observing being, in this case, identical, how could observation take

place? This pretended psychological method is then radically null

and void. On the one hand, they advise you to isolate yourself, as

far as possible, from every external sensation, especially every

intellectual work,--for if you were to busy yourself even with the

simplest calculation, what would become of _internal_ observation?--on

the other hand, after having with the utmost care attained this state

of intellectual slumber, you must begin to contemplate the operations

going on in your mind, when nothing there takes place! Our descendants

will doubtless see such pretensions some day ridiculed upon the stage.

The results of so strange a procedure harmonize entirely with its

principle. For all the two thousand years during which metaphysicians

have thus cultivated psychology, they are not agreed about one

intelligible and established proposition. '_Internal observation_'

gives almost as many divergent results as there are individuals who

think they practise it."

Comte hardly could have known anything of the English, and nothing

of the German, empirical psychology. The 'results' which he had in

mind when writing were probably scholastic ones, such as principles

of internal activity, the faculties, the ego, the _liberum arbitrium

indifferentiæ_, etc. John Mill, in replying to him,[192] says:

"It might have occurred to M. Comte that a fact may be studied through

the medium of memory, not at the very moment of our perceiving it,

but the moment after: and this is really the mode in which our

best knowledge of our intellectual acts is generally acquired. We

reflect on what we have been doing when the act is past, but when

its impression in the memory is still fresh. Unless in one of these

ways, we could not have acquired the knowledge which nobody denies us

to have, of what passes in our minds. M. Comte would scarcely have

affirmed that we are not aware of our own intellectual operations. We

know of our observings and our reasonings, either at the very time,

or by memory the moment after; in either case, by direct knowledge,

and not (like things done by us in a state of somnambulism) merely

by their results. This simple fact destroys the whole of M. Comte's

argument. Whatever we are directly aware of, we can directly observe."

Where now does the truth lie? Our quotation from Mill is obviously the

one which expresses the most of _practical_ truth about the matter.

Even the writers who insist upon the absolute veracity of our immediate

inner apprehension of a conscious state have to contrast with this the

fallibility of our _memory_ or _observation_ of it, a moment later. No

one has emphasized more sharply than Brentano himself the difference

between the immediate _feltness_ of a feeling, and its perception by

a subsequent reflective act. But which mode of consciousness of it is

that which the psychologist must depend on? If to _have_ feelings or

thoughts in their immediacy were enough, babies in the cradle would

be psychologists, and infallible ones. But the psychologist must not

only _have_ his mental states in their absolute veritableness, he must

report them and write about them, name them, classify and compare

them and trace their relations to other things. Whilst alive they are

their own property; it is only _post-mortem_ that they become his

prey.[193] And as in the naming, classing, and knowing of things

in general we are notoriously fallible, why not also here? Comte is

quite right in laying stress on the fact that a feeling, to be named,

judged, or perceived, must be already past. No subjective state,

whilst present, is its own object; its object is always something

else. There are, it is true, cases in which we appear to be naming

our present feeling, and so to be experiencing and observing the same

inner fact at a single stroke, as when we say 'I feel tired,' 'I am

angry,' etc. But these are illusory, and a little attention unmasks

the illusion. The present conscious state, when I say 'I feel tired,'

is not the direct state of tire; when I say 'I feel angry,' it is not

the direct state of anger. It is the state of _saying-I-feel-tired_,

of _saying-I-feel-angry_,--entirely different matters, so different

that the fatigue and anger apparently included in them are considerable

modifications of the fatigue and anger directly felt the previous

instant. The act of naming them has momentarily detracted from their

force.[194]

The only sound grounds on which the infallible veracity of the

introspective judgment might be maintained are empirical. If we had

reason to think it has never yet deceived us, we might continue to

trust it. This is the ground actually maintained by Herr Mohr.

"The illusions of our senses," says this author, "have undermined

our belief in the reality of the outer world; but in the sphere of

inner observation our confidence is intact, for we have never found

ourselves to be in error about the reality of an act of thought or

feeling. We have never been misled into thinking we were _not_ in

doubt or in anger when these conditions were really states of our

consciousness."[195]

But sound as the reasoning here would be, were the premises correct,

I fear the latter cannot pass. However it may be with such strong

feelings as doubt or anger, about weaker feelings, and about the

_relations to each other_ of all feelings, we find ourselves in

continual error and uncertainty so soon as we are called on to name and

class, and not merely to feel. Who can be sure of the exact _order_

of his feelings when they are excessively rapid? Who can be sure, in

his sensible perception of a chair, how much comes from the eye and

how much is supplied out of the previous knowledge of the mind? Who

can compare with precision the _quantities_ of disparate feelings

even where the feelings are very much alike? For instance, where an

object is felt now against the back and now against the cheek, which

feeling is most extensive? Who can be sure that two given feelings are

or are not exactly the same? Who can tell which is briefer or longer

than the other when both occupy but an instant of time? Who knows, of

many actions, for what motive they were done, or if for any motive

at all? Who can enumerate all the distinct ingredients of such a

complicated feeling as _anger_? and who can tell off-hand whether or no

a perception of _distance_ be a compound or a simple state of mind? The

whole mind-stuff controversy would stop if we could decide conclusively

by introspection that what seem to us elementary feelings are really

elementary and not compound.

Mr. Sully, in his work on Illusions, has a chapter on those of

Introspection from which we might now quote. But, since the rest of

this volume will be little more than a collection of illustrations of

the difficulty of discovering by direct introspection exactly what our

feelings and their relations are, we need not anticipate our own future

details, I but just state our general conclusion that _introspection is

difficult and fallible; and that the difficulty is simply that of all

observation of whatever kind_. Something is before us; we do our best

to tell what it is, but in spite of our good will we may go astray, and

give a description more applicable to some other sort of thing. The

only safeguard is in the final _consensus_ of our farther knowledge

about the thing in question, later views correcting earlier ones, until

at last the harmony of a consistent system is reached. Such a system,

gradually worked out, is the best guarantee the psychologist can give

for the soundness of any particular psychologic observation which he

may report. Such a system we ourselves must strive, as far as may be,

to attain.

The English writers on psychology, and the school of Herbart in

Germany, have in the main contented themselves with such results as

the immediate introspection of single individuals gave, and shown what

a body of doctrine they may make. The works of Locke, Hume, Reid,

Hartley, Stewart, Brown, the Mills, will always be classics in this

line; and in Professor Bain's Treatises we have probably the last word

of what this method taken mainly by itself can do--the last monument of

the youth of our science, still untechnical and generally intelligible,

like the Chemistry of Lavoisier, or Anatomy before the microscope was

used.

* * * * *

_The Experimental Method_. But psychology is passing into a less simple

phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology

has arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods, asking of

course every moment for introspective data, but eliminating their

uncertainty by operating on a large scale and taking statistical means.

This method taxes patience to the utmost, and could hardly have arisen

in a country whose natives could be _bored_. Such Germans as Weber,

Fechner, Vierordt, and Wundt obviously cannot; and their success has

brought into the field an array of younger experimental psychologists,

bent on studying the _elements_ of the mental life, dissecting them

out from the gross results in which they are embedded, and as far as

possible reducing them to quantitative scales. The simple and open

method of attack having done what it can, the method of patience,

starving out, and harassing to death is tried; the Mind must submit

to a regular _siege_, in which minute advantages gained night and day

by the forces that hem her in must sum themselves up at last into

her overthrow. There is little of the grand style about these new

prism, pendulum, and chronograph-philosophers. They mean business, not

chivalry. What generous divination, and that superiority in virtue

which was thought by Cicero to give a man the best insight into nature,

have failed to do, their spying and scraping, their deadly tenacity and

almost diabolic cunning, will doubtless some day bring about.

No general description of the methods of experimental psychology

would be instructive to one unfamiliar with the instances of their

application, so we will waste no words upon the attempt. _The principal

fields of experimentation_ so far have been: 1) the connection of

conscious states with their physical conditions, including the whole

of brain-physiology, and the recent minutely cultivated physiology

of the sense-organs, together with what is technically known as

'psycho-physics,' or the laws of correlation between sensations and

the outward stimuli by which they are aroused; 2) the analysis of

space-perception into its sensational elements; 3) the measurement

of the _duration_ of the simplest mental processes; 4) that of the

_accuracy of reproduction_ in the memory of sensible experiences and

of intervals of space and time; 5) that of the manner in which simple

mental states _influence each other_, call each other up, or inhibit

each other's reproduction; 6) that of the _number of facts_ which

consciousness can simultaneously discern; finally, 7) that of the

elementary laws of oblivescence and retention. It must be said that in

some of these fields the results have as yet borne little theoretic

fruit commensurate with the great labor expended in their acquisition.

But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them they are sure

to combine. New ground will from year to year be broken, and theoretic

results will grow. Meanwhile the experimental method has quite changed

the face of the science so far as the latter is a record of mere work

done.

* * * * *

The _comparative method_, finally, supplements the introspective and

experimental methods. This method presupposes a normal psychology of

introspection to be established in its main features. But where the

origin of these features, or their dependence upon one another, is

in question, it is of the utmost importance to trace the phenomenon

considered through all its possible variations of type and combination.

So it has come to pass that instincts of animals are ransacked to throw

light on our own; and that the reasoning faculties of bees and ants,

the minds of savages, infants, madmen, idiots, the deaf and blind,

criminals, and eccentrics, are all invoked in support of this or that

special theory about some part of our own mental life. The history of

sciences, moral and political institutions, and languages, as types of

mental product, are pressed into the same service. Messrs. Darwin and

Galton have set the example of circulars of questions sent out by the

hundred to those supposed able to reply. The custom has spread, and it

will be well for us in the next generation if such circulars be not

ranked among the common pests of life. Meanwhile information grows, and

results emerge. There are great sources of error in the comparative

method. The interpretation of the 'psychoses' of animals, savages, and

infants is necessarily wild work, in which the personal equation of

the investigator has things very much its own way. A savage will be

reported to have no moral or religious feeling if his actions shock the

observer unduly. A child will be assumed without self-consciousness

because he talks of himself in the third person, etc., etc. No rules

can be laid down in advance. Comparative observations, to be definite,

must usually be made to test some pre-existing hypothesis; and the only

thing then is to use as much sagacity as you possess, and to be as

candid as you can.

THE SOURCES OF ERROR IN PSYCHOLOGY.

_The first of them arises from the Misleading Influence of Speech._

Language was originally made by men who were not psychologists, and

most men to-day employ almost exclusively the vocabulary of outward

things. The cardinal passions of our life, anger, love, fear, hate,

hope, and the most comprehensive divisions of our intellectual

activity, to remember, expect, think, know, dream, with the broadest

genera of æsthetic feeling, joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain, are the only

facts of a subjective order which this vocabulary deigns to note by

special words. The elementary qualities of sensation, bright, loud,

red, blue, hot, cold, are, it is true, susceptible of being used

in both an objective and a subjective sense. They stand for outer

qualities and for the feelings which these arouse. But the objective

sense is the original sense; and still to-day we have to describe a

large number of sensations by the name of the object from which they

have most frequently been got. An orange color, an odor of violets,

a cheesy taste, a thunderous sound, a fiery smart, etc., will recall

what I mean. This absence of a special vocabulary for subjective facts

hinders the study of all but the very coarsest of them. Empiricist

writers are very fond of emphasizing one great set of delusions which

language inflicts on the mind. Whenever we have made a word, they

say, to denote a certain group of phenomena, we are prone to suppose

a substantive entity existing beyond the phenomena, of which the word

shall be the name. But the _lack_ of a word quite as often leads to the

directly opposite error. We are then prone to suppose that no entity

can be there; and so we come to overlook phenomena whose existence

would be patent to us all, had we only grown up to hear it familiarly

recognized in speech.[196] It is hard to focus our attention on the

nameless, and so there results a certain vacuousness in the descriptive

parts of most psychologies.

But a worse defect than vacuousness comes from the dependence of

psychology on common speech. Naming our thought by its own objects,

we almost all of us assume that as the objects are, so the thought

must be. The thought of several distinct things can only consist of

several distinct bits of thought, or 'ideas;' that of an abstract or

universal object can only be an abstract or universal idea. As each

object may come and go, be forgotten and then thought of again, it

is held that the thought of it has a precisely similar independence,

self-identity, and mobility. The thought of the object's recurrent

identity is regarded as the identity of its recurrent thought; and

the perceptions of multiplicity, of coexistence, of succession, are

severally conceived to be brought about only through a multiplicity, a

coexistence, a succession, of perceptions. The continuous flow of the

mental stream is sacrificed, and in its place an atomism, a brickbat

plan of construction, is preached, for the existence of which no

good introspective grounds can be brought forward, and out of which

presently grow all sorts of paradoxes and contradictions, the heritage

of woe of students of the mind.

These words are meant to impeach the entire English psychology derived

from Locke and Hume, and the entire German psychology derived from

Herbart, so far as they both treat 'ideas' as separate subjective

entities that come and go. Examples will soon make the matter clearer.

Meanwhile our psychologic insight is vitiated by still other snares.

'_The Psychologist's Fallacy._' The _great_ snare of the psychologist

is the _confusion of his own standpoint with that of the mental fact_

about which he is making his report. I shall hereafter call this the

'psychologist's fallacy' _par excellence_. For some of the mischief,

here too, language is to blame. The psychologist, as we remarked above

(p. 183), stands outside of the mental state he speaks of. Both itself

and its object are objects for him. Now when it is a _cognitive_ state

(percept, thought, concept, etc.), he ordinarily has no other way of

naming it than as the thought, percept, etc., _of that object_. He

himself, meanwhile, knowing the self-same object in _his_ way, gets

easily led to suppose that the thought, which is _of_ it, knows it in

the same way in which he knows it, although this is often very far from

being the case.[197] The most fictitious puzzles have been introduced

into our science by this means. The so-called question of presentative

or representative perception, of whether an object is present to the

thought that thinks it by a counterfeit image of itself, or directly

and without any intervening image at all; the question of nominalism

and conceptualism, of the shape in which things are present when only

a general notion of them is before the mind; are comparatively easy

questions when once the psychologist's fallacy is eliminated from their

treatment,--as we shall ere long see (in Chapter XII).

_Another variety of the psychologist's fallacy is the assumption

that the mental state studied must be conscious of itself as the

psychologist is conscious of it._ The mental state is aware of itself

only from within; it grasps what we call its own content, and nothing

more. The psychologist, on the contrary, is aware of it from without,

and knows its relations with all sorts of other things. What the

thought sees is only its own object; what the psychologist sees is

the thought's object, plus the thought itself, plus possibly all the

rest of the world. We must be very careful therefore, in discussing a

state of mind from the psychologist's point of view, to avoid foisting

into its own ken matters that are only there for ours. We must avoid

substituting what we know the consciousness _is_, for what it is a

consciousness _of_, and counting its outward, and so to speak physical,

relations with other facts of the world, in among the objects of which

we set it down as aware. Crude as such a confusion of standpoints seems

to be when abstractly stated, it is nevertheless a snare into which

no psychologist has kept himself at all times from falling, and which

forms almost the entire stock-in-trade of certain schools. We cannot be

too watchful against its subtly corrupting influence.

_Summary_. To sum up the chapter, Psychology assumes that thoughts

successively occur, and that they know objects in a world which the

psychologist also knows. _These thoughts are the subjective data

of which he treats, and their relations to their objects, to the

brain, and to the rest of the world constitute the subject-matter of

psychologic science._ Its methods are introspection, experimentation,

and comparison. But introspection is no sure guide to truths _about_

our mental states; and in particular the poverty of the psychological

vocabulary leads us to drop out certain states from our consideration,

and to treat others as if they knew themselves and their objects as the

psychologist knows both, which is a disastrous fallacy in the science.

FOOTNOTES:

[187] On the relation between Psychology and General Philosophy, see G.

C. Robertson, 'Mind,' vol. viii, p. 1, and J. Ward, _ibid._ p. 153; J.

Dewey _ibid._ vol. ix, p. 1.

[188] Compare some remarks in Mill's Logic, bk. i, chap. iii, §§ 2, 3.

[189] Logic, § 40.

[190] Psychologie, bk. ii, chap. iii, §§ 1, 2.

[191] Cours de Philosophie Positive, i, 34-8.

[192] Auguste Comte and Positivism, 3d edition (1882), p. 64.

[193] Wundt says: "The first rule for utilizing inward observation

consists in taking, as far as possible, experiences that are

accidental, unexpected, and not intentionally brought about.... _First_

it is best as far as possible to rely on _Memory_ and not on immediate

Apprehension.... _Second_, internal observation is better fitted to

grasp clearly conscious states, especially voluntary mental acts: such

inner processes as are obscurely conscious and involuntary will almost

entirely elude it, because the effort to observe interferes with them,

and because they seldom abide in memory." (Logik, ii, 432.)

[194] In cases like this, where the state outlasts the act of naming

it, exists before it, and recurs when it is past, we probably run

little practical risk of error when we talk as if the state knew

itself. The state of feeling and the state of naming the feeling

are continuous, and the infallibility of such prompt introspective

judgments is probably great. But even here the certainty of our

knowledge ought not to be argued on the _a priori_ ground that

_percipi_ and _esse_ are in psychology the same. The states are really

two; the naming state and the named state are apart; '_percipi_ is

_esse_' is not the principle that applies.

[195] J. Mohr: Grundlage der Empirischen Psychologie (Leipzig, 1882),

p. 47.

[196] In English we have not even the generic distinction between

the-thing-thought-of and the-thought-thinking-it, which in German is

expressed by the opposition between _Gedachtes_ and _Gedanke_, in Latin

by that between _cogitatum_ and _cogitatio_.

[197] Compare B. P. Bowne's Metaphysics (1882), p. 408.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE RELATIONS OF MINDS TO OTHER THINGS.

Since, for psychology, a mind is an object in a world of other objects,

its relation to those other objects must next be surveyed. First of

all, to its

TIME-RELATIONS.

Minds, as we know them, are temporary existences. Whether my mind

had a being prior to the birth of my body, whether it shall have

one after the latter's decease, are questions to be decided by my

general philosophy or theology rather than by what we call 'scientific

facts'--I leave out the facts of so-called spiritualism, as being still

in dispute. Psychology, as a natural science, confines itself to the

present life, in which every mind appears yoked to a body through which

its manifestations appear. In the present world, then, minds precede,

succeed, and coexist with each other in the common receptacle of time,

and of their _collective_ relations to the latter nothing more can

be said. The life of the _individual_ consciousness in time seems,

however, to be an interrupted one, so that the question:

_Are we ever wholly unconscious?_

becomes one which must be discussed. Sleep, fainting, coma, epilepsy,

and other 'unconscious' conditions are apt to break in upon and occupy

large durations of what we nevertheless consider the mental history of

a single man. And, the fact of interruption being admitted, is it not

possible that it may exist where we do not suspect it, and even perhaps

in an incessant and fine-grained form?

This might happen, and yet the subject himself never know it. We often

take ether and have operations performed without a suspicion that our

consciousness has suffered a breach. The two ends join each other

smoothly over the gap; and only the sight of our wound assures us

that we must have been living through a time which for our immediate

consciousness was non-existent. Even in sleep this sometimes happens:

We think we have had no nap, and it takes the clock to assure us that

we are wrong.[198] We thus may live through a real outward time, a time

known by the psychologist who studies us, and yet not _feel_ the time,

or infer it from any inward sign. The question is, how often does this

happen? Is consciousness really discontinuous, incessantly interrupted

and recommencing (from the psychologist's point of view)? and does it

only seem continuous to itself by an illusion analogous to that of the

zoetrope? Or is it at most times as continuous outwardly as it inwardly

seems?

It must be confessed that we can give no rigorous answer to this

question. Cartesians, who hold that the _essence_ of the soul is to

think, can of course solve it _a priori_, and explain the appearance of

thoughtless intervals either by lapses in our ordinary memory, or by

the sinking of consciousness to a minimal state, in which perhaps all

that it feels is a bare existence which leaves no particulars behind to

be recalled. If, however, one have no doctrine about the soul or its

essence, one is free to take the appearances for what they seem to be,

and to admit that the mind, as well as the body, may go to sleep.

Locke was the first prominent champion of this latter view, and the

pages in which he attacks the Cartesian belief are as spirited as any

in his Essay. "Every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine who teach that

their soul is always thinking." He will not believe that men so easily

forget. M. Jouffroy and Sir W. Hamilton, attacking the question in the

same empirical way, are led to an opposite conclusion. Their reasons,

briefly stated, are these:

In somnambulism, natural or induced, there is often a great display of

intellectual activity, followed by complete oblivion of all that has

passed.[199]

On being suddenly awakened from a sleep, however profound, we always

catch ourselves in the middle of a dream. Common dreams are often

remembered for a few minutes after waking, and then irretrievably lost.

Frequently, when awake and absent-minded, we are visited by thoughts

and images which the next instant we cannot recall.

Our insensibility to habitual noises, etc., whilst awake, proves that

we can neglect to attend to that which we nevertheless feel. Similarly

in sleep, we grow inured, and sleep soundly in presence of sensations

of sound, cold, contact, etc., which at first prevented our complete

repose. We have learned to neglect them whilst asleep as we should

whilst awake. The mere _sense-impressions_ are the same when the sleep

is deep as when it is light; the difference must lie in a _judgment_

on the part of the apparently slumbering mind that they are not worth

noticing.

This discrimination is equally shown by nurses of the sick and mothers

of infants, who will sleep through much noise of an irrelevant sort,

but waken at the slightest stirring of the patient or the babe. This

last fact shows the _sense-organ_ to be pervious for sounds.

Many people have a remarkable faculty of registering when asleep the

flight of time. They will habitually wake up at the same minute day

after day, or will wake punctually at an unusual hour determined upon

overnight. How can this knowledge of the hour (more accurate often than

anything the waking consciousness shows) be possible without mental

activity during the interval?

Such are what we may call the classical reasons for admitting that the

mind is active even when the person afterwards ignores the fact.[200]

Of late years, or rather, one may say, of late months, they have been

reinforced by a lot of curious observations made on hysterical and

hypnotic subjects, which prove the existence of a highly developed

consciousness in places where it has hitherto not been suspected at

all. These observations throw such a novel light upon human nature that

I must give them in some detail. That at least four different and in

a certain sense rival observers should agree in the same conclusion

justifies us in accepting the conclusion as true.

_'Unconsciousness' in Hysterics._

One of the most constant symptoms in persons suffering from hysteric

disease in its extreme forms consists in alterations of the natural

sensibility of various parts and organs of the body. Usually the

alteration is in the direction of defect, or anæsthesia. One or both

eyes are blind, or color-blind, or there is hemianopsia (blindness

to one half the field of view), or the field is contracted. Hearing,

taste, smell may similarly disappear, in part or in totality. Still

more striking are the cutaneous anæsthesias. The old witch-finders

looking for the 'devil's seals' learned well the existence of those

insensible patches on the skin of their victims, to which the minute

physical examinations of recent medicine have but recently attracted

attention again. They may be scattered anywhere, but are very apt to

affect one side of the body. Not infrequently they affect an entire

lateral half, from head to foot; and the insensible skin of, say, the

left side will then be found separated from the naturally sensitive

skin of the right by a perfectly sharp line of demarcation down the

middle of the front and back. Sometimes, most remarkable of all, the

entire skin, hands, feet, face, everything, and the mucous membranes,

muscles and joints so far as they can be explored, become _completely_

insensible without the other vital functions becoming gravely disturbed.

These hysterical anæsthesias can be made to disappear more or less

completely by various odd processes. It has been recently found that

magnets, plates of metal, or the electrodes of a battery, placed

against the skin, have this peculiar power. And when one side is

relieved in this way, the anæsthesia is often found to have transferred

itself to the opposite side, which until then was well. Whether

these strange effects of magnets and metals be due to their direct

physiological action, or to a prior effect on the patient's mind

('expectant attention' or 'suggestion') is still a mooted question.

A still better awakener of sensibility is the hypnotic trance, into

which many of these patients can be very easily placed, and in which

their lost sensibility not infrequently becomes entirely restored.

Such returns of sensibility succeed the times of insensibility and

alternate with them. But Messrs. Pierre Janet[201] and A. Binet[202]

have shown that during the times of anæsthesia, and coexisting with it,

_sensibility to the anæsthetic parts is also there, in the form of a

secondary consciousness_ entirely cut off from the primary or normal

one, but susceptible of being _tapped_ and made to testify to its

existence in various odd ways.

Chief amongst these is what M. Janet calls 'the method of

_distraction_.' These hysterics are apt to possess a very narrow field

of attention, and to be unable to think of more than one thing at a

time. When talking with any person they forget everything else. "When

Lucie talked directly with any one," says M. Janet, "she ceased to

be able to hear any other person. You may stand behind her, call her

by name, shout abuse into her ears, without making her turn round;

or place yourself before her, show her objects, touch her, etc.,

without attracting her notice. When finally she becomes aware of you,

she thinks you have just come into the room again, and greets you

accordingly. This singular forgetfulness makes her liable to tell

all her secrets aloud, unrestrained by the presence of unsuitable

auditors."

Now M. Janet found in several subjects like this that if he came up

behind them whilst they were plunged in conversation with a third

party, and addressed them in a whisper, telling them to raise their

hand or perform other simple acts, they would obey the order given,

although their _talking_ intelligence was quite unconscious of

receiving it. Leading them from one thing to another, he made them

reply by signs to his whispered questions, and finally made them

answer in writing, if a pencil were placed in their hand. The primary

consciousness meanwhile went on with the conversation, entirely

unaware of these performances on the hand's part. The consciousness

which presided over these latter appeared in its turn to be quite as

little disturbed by the upper consciousness's concerns. This _proof

by 'automatic' writing_, of a secondary consciousness's existence, is

the most cogent and striking one; but a crowd of other facts prove the

same thing. If I run through them rapidly, the reader will probably be

convinced.

_The apparently anæsthetic hand_ of these subjects, for one thing,

_will often adapt itself discriminatingly_ to whatever object may be

put into it. With a pencil it will make writing movements; into a pair

of scissors it will put its fingers and will open and shut them, etc.,

etc. The primary consciousness, so to call it, is meanwhile unable to

say whether or no _anything_ is in the hand, if the latter be hidden

from sight. "I put a pair of eyeglasses into Léonie's anæsthetic

hand, this hand opens it and raises it towards the nose, but half way

thither it enters the field of vision of Léonie, who sees it and stops

stupefied: 'Why,' says she, 'I have an eye-glass in my left hand!'" M.

Binet found a very curious sort of connection between the apparently

anæsthetic skin and the mind in some Salpétrière-subjects. Things

placed in the hand were not felt, but _thought_ of (apparently in

visual terms) and in no wise referred by the subject to their starting

point in the hand's sensation. A key, a knife, placed in the hand

occasioned _ideas_ of a key or a knife, but the hand felt nothing.

Similarly the subject _thought of_ the number 3, 6, etc., if the hand

or finger was bent three or six times by the operator, or if he stroked

it three, six, etc., times.

In certain individuals there was found a still odder phenomenon, which

reminds one of that curious idiosyncrasy of 'colored hearing' of which

a few cases have been lately described with great care by foreign

writers. These individuals, namely, _saw_ the impression received by

the hand, but could not feel it; and the thing seen appeared by no

means associated with the hand, but more like an independent vision,

which usually interested and surprised the patient. Her hand being

hidden by a screen, she was ordered to look at another screen and to

tell of any visual image which might project itself thereon. Numbers

would then come, corresponding to the number of times the insensible

member was raised, touched, etc. Colored lines and figures would come,

corresponding to similar ones traced on the palm; the hand itself or

its fingers would come when manipulated and finally objects placed in

it would come; but on the hand itself nothing would ever be felt. Of

course simulation would not be hard here; but M. Binet disbelieves this

(usually very shallow) explanation to be a probable one in cases in

question.[203]

The usual way in which doctors measure the delicacy of our touch is by

the compass-points. Two points are normally felt as one whenever they

are too close together for discrimination; but what is 'too close' on

one part of the skin may seem very far apart on another. In the middle

of the back or on the thigh, less than 3 inches may be too close;

on the finger-tip a tenth of an inch is far enough apart. Now, as

tested in this way, with the appeal made to the primary consciousness,

which talks through the mouth and seems to hold the field alone, a

certain person's skin may be entirely anæsthetic and not feel the

compass-points at all; and yet this same skin will prove to have a

perfectly normal sensibility if the appeal be made to that other

secondary or sub-consciousness, which expresses itself automatically by

writing or by movements of the hand. M. Binet, M. Pierre Janet, and M.

Jules Janet have all found this. The subject, whenever touched, would

signify 'one point' or 'two points,' as accurately as if she were a

normal person. She would signify it only by these movements; and of the

movements themselves her primary self would be as unconscious as of the

facts they signified, for what the submerged consciousness makes the

hand do automatically is unknown to the consciousness which uses the

mouth.

Messrs. Bernheim and Pitres have also proved, by observations too

complicated to be given in this spot, that the hysterical blindness

is no real blindness at all. The eye of an hysteric which is totally

blind when the other or seeing eye is shut, will do its share of vision

perfectly well when _both_ eyes are open together. But even where both

eyes are semi-blind from hysterical disease, the method of automatic

writing proves that their perceptions exist, only cut off from

communication with the upper consciousness. M. Binet has found the hand

of his patients unconsciously writing down words which their eyes were

vainly endeavoring to 'see,' i.e., to bring to the upper consciousness.

Their submerged consciousness was of course seeing them, or the hand

could not have written as it did. Colors are similarly perceived by

the sub-conscious self, which the hysterically color-blind eyes cannot

bring to the normal consciousness. Pricks, burns, and pinches on the

anæsthetic skin, all unnoticed by the upper self, are recollected to

have been suffered, and complained of, as soon as the under self gets

a chance to express itself by the passage of the subject into hypnotic

trance.

It must be admitted, therefore, that _in certain persons_, at least,

_the total possible consciousness may be split into parts which coexist

but mutually ignore each other,_ and share the objects of knowledge

between them. More remarkable still, they are _complementary_. Give an

object to one of the consciousnesses, and by that fact you remove it

from the other or others. Barring a certain common fund of information,

like the command of language, etc., what the upper self knows the

under self is ignorant of, and _vice versâ_. M. Janet has proved this

beautifully in his subject Lucie. The following experiment will serve

as the type of the rest: In her trance he covered her lap with cards,

each bearing a number. He then told her that on waking she should

_not see_ any card whose number was a multiple of three. This is the

ordinary so-called 'post-hypnotic suggestion,' now well known, and

for which Lucie was a well-adapted subject. Accordingly, when she was

awakened and asked about the papers on her lap, she counted and said

she saw those only whose number was not a multiple of 3. To the 12,

18, 9, etc., she was blind. But the _hand_, when the sub-conscious

self was interrogated by the usual method of engrossing the upper

self in another conversation, wrote that the only cards in Lucie's

lap were those numbered 12, 18, 9, etc., and on being asked to pick

up all the cards which were there, picked up these and let the others

lie. Similarly when the sight of certain things was suggested to the

sub-conscious Lucie, the normal Lucie suddenly became partially or

totally blind. "What is the matter? I can't see!" the normal personage

suddenly cried out in the midst of her conversation, when M. Janet

whispered to the secondary personage to make use of her eyes. The

anæsthesias, paralyses, contractions and other irregularities from

which hysterics suffer seem then to be due to the fact that their

secondary personage has enriched itself by robbing the primary one

of a function which the latter ought to have retained. The curative

indication is evident: get at the secondary personage, by hypnotization

or in whatever other way, and make her _give up_ the eye, the skin, the

arm, or whatever the affected part may be. The normal self thereupon

regains possession, sees, feels, or is able to move again. In this way

M. Jules Janet easily cured the well-known subject of the Salpétrière,

Wit...., of all sorts of afflictions which, until he discovered the

secret of her deeper trance, it had been difficult to subdue. "Cessez

cette mauvaise plaisanterie," he said to the secondary self--and the

latter obeyed. The way in which the various personages share the stock

of possible sensations between them seems to be amusingly illustrated

in this young woman. When awake, her skin is insensible everywhere

except on a zone about the arm where she habitually wears a gold

bracelet. This zone has feeling; but in the deepest trance, when all

the rest of her body feels, this particular zone becomes absolutely

anæsthetic.

Sometimes the mutual ignorance of the selves leads to incidents

which are strange enough. The acts and movements performed by the

sub-conscious self are withdrawn from the conscious one, and the

subject will do all sorts of incongruous things of which he remains

quite unaware. "I order Lucie [by the method of _distraction_] to make

a _pied de nez_, and her hands go forthwith to the end of her nose.

Asked what she is doing, she replies that she is doing nothing, and

continues for a long time talking, with no apparent suspicion that her

fingers are moving in front of her nose. I make her walk about the

room; she continues to speak and believes herself sitting down."

M. Janet observed similar acts in a man in alcoholic delirium. Whilst

the doctor was questioning him, M. J. made him by whispered suggestion

walk, sit, kneel, and even lie down on his face on the floor, he

all the while believing himself to be standing beside his bed. Such

_bizarreries_ sound incredible, until one has seen their like. Long

ago, without understanding it, I myself saw a small example of the way

in which a person's knowledge may be shared by the two selves. A young

woman who had been writing automatically was sitting with a pencil

in her hand, trying to recall at my request the name of a gentleman

whom she had once seen. She could only recollect the first syllable.

Her hand meanwhile, without her knowledge, wrote down the last two

syllables. In a perfectly healthy young man who can write with the

planchette, I lately found the hand to be entirely anæsthetic during

the writing act; I could prick it severely without the Subject knowing

the fact. The _writing on the planchette_, however, accused me in

strong terms of hurting the hand. Pricks on the _other_ (non-writing)

hand, meanwhile, which awakened strong protest from the young man's

vocal organs, were denied to exist by the self which made the

planchette go.[204]

_We get exactly similar results in the so-called post-hypnotic

suggestion._ It is a familiar fact that certain subjects, when told

during a trance to perform an act or to experience an hallucination

after waking, will when the time comes, obey the command. How is the

command registered? How is its performance so accurately timed? These

problems were long a mystery, for the primary personality remembers

nothing of the trance or the suggestion, and will often trump up an

improvised pretext for yielding to the unaccountable impulse which

possesses the man so suddenly and which he cannot resist. Edmund

Gurney was the first to discover, by means of automatic writing, that

the secondary self is awake, keeping its attention constantly fixed

on the command and watching for the signal of its execution. Certain

trance-subjects who were also automatic writers, when roused from

trance and put to the planchette,--not knowing then what they wrote,

and having their upper attention fully engrossed by reading aloud,

talking, or solving problems in mental arithmetic,--would inscribe the

orders which they had received, together with notes relative to the

time elapsed and the time yet to run before the execution.[205] It is

therefore to no 'automatism' in the mechanical sense that such acts

are due: a self presides over them, a split-off, limited and buried,

but yet a fully conscious, self. More than this, the buried self often

comes to the surface and drives out the other self whilst the acts are

performing. In other words, the subject lapses into trance again when

the moment arrives for execution, and has no subsequent recollection

of the act which he has done. Gurney and Beaunis established this

fact, which has since been verified on a large scale; and Gurney also

showed that the patient became _suggestible_ again during the brief

time of the performance. M. Janet's observations, in their turn, well

illustrate the phenomenon.