Evolutionary16 Psychology Demands a Mind-Dust.
In a general theory of evolution the inorganic17 comes first, then the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life, then forms of life that possess mentality18, and finally those like ourselves that possess it in a high degree. As long as we keep to the consideration of purely19 outward facts, even the most complicated facts of biology, our task as evolutionists is comparatively easy. We are dealing20 all the time with matter and its aggregations22 and separations; and although our treatment must perforce be hypothetical, this does not prevent it from being continuous. The point which as evolutionists we are bound to hold fast to is that all the new forms of being that make their appearance are really nothing more than results of the redistribution of the original and unchanging materials. The self-same atoms which, chaotically23 dispersed24, made the nebula25, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar26 positions, form our brains; and the 'evolution' of the brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed. In this story no new natures, no factors not present at the beginning, are introduced at any later stage.
But with the dawn of consciousness an entirely27 new nature seems to slip in, something whereof the potency28 was not given in the mere29 outward atoms of the original chaos30.
The enemies of evolution have been quick to pounce31 upon this undeniable discontinuity in the data of the world, and many of them, from the failure of evolutionary explanations at this point, have inferred their general incapacity all along the line. Every one admits the entire incommensurability of feeling as such with material motion as such. "A motion became a feeling!" - no phrase that our lips can frame is so devoid32 of apprehensible meaning. Accordingly, even the vaguest of evolutionary enthusiasts33, when deliberately34 comparing material with mental facts, have been as forward as any one else to emphasize the 'chasm35' between the inner and the outer worlds.
"Can the oscillations of a molecule," says Mr. Spencer, "be represented side by side with a nervous shock [he means a mental shock], and the two be recognized as one? No effort enables us to assimilate them. That a unit of feeling has nothing in common with a unit of motion becomes more than ever manifest when we bring the two into juxtaposition36." 1
And again:
"Suppose it to have become quite clear that a shock in consciousness and a molecular37 motion are the subjective38 and objective faces of the same thing; we continue utterly39 incapable40 of uniting the two, so as to conceive that reality of which they are the opposite faces." 2
In other words, incapable of perceiving in them any common character. So Tyndall, in that lucky paragraph which has been quoted so often that every one knows it by heart:
"The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously41; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently42 any rudiment43 of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from one to the other." 3
Or in this other passage:
"We can trace the development of a nervous system and correlate with it the parallel phenomena3 of sensation and thought. We see with undoubting certainty that they go hand in hand. But we try to soar in a vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the connection between them . . . There is no fusion44 possible between the two classes of facts - no motor energy in the intellect of man to carry it without logical rupture46 from the one to the other." 4
None the less easily, however, when the evolutionary afflatus47 is upon them, do the very same writers leap over the breach48 whose flagrancy they are the foremost to announce, and talk as if mind grew out of body in a continuous way. Mr. Spencer, looking back on his review of mental evolution, tells us how "in tracing up the increase we found ourselves passing without break from the phenomena of bodily life to the phenomena of mental life." 5 And Mr. Tyndall, in the same Belfast Address from which we just quoted, delivers his other famous passage:
"Abandoning all disguise, the confession49 that I feel bound to make before you is that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that matter which we, in our ignorance and notwithstanding our professed50 reverence51 for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium52 the promise and potency of every form and quality of life." 6
- mental life included, as a matter of course.
So strong a postulate53 is continuity! Now this book will tend to show that mental postulates54 are on the whole to be respected. The demand for continuity has, over large tracts55 of science, proved itself to possess true prophetic power. We ought therefore ourselves sincerely to try every possible mode of conceiving the dawn of consciousness so that it may not appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new nature, non-existent until then.
Merely to call the consciousness 'nascent56' will not serve our turn.7 It is true that the word signifies not yet quite born, and so seems to form a sort of bridge between existence and nonentity57. But that is a verbal quibble. The fact is that discontinuity comes in if a new nature comes in at all. The quantity of the latter is quite immaterial. The girl in 'Midshipman Easy' could not excuse the illegitimacy of her child by saying, 'it was a very small one.' And Consciousness, however small, is an illegitimate birth in any philosophy that starts without it, and yet professes59 to explain all facts by continuous evolution.
If evolution is to work smoothly60, consciousness in some shape must have been present at the very origin of things. Accordingly we find that the more clear-sighted evolutionary philosophers are beginning to posit5 it there. Each atom of the nebula, they suppose, must have had an aboriginal61 atom of consciousness linked with it; and, just as the material atoms have formed bodies and brains by massing themselves together, so the mental atoms, by an analogous62 process of aggregation21, have fused into those larger consciousnesses which we know in ourselves and suppose to exist in our fellow-animals. Some such doctrine63 of atomistic hylozoism as this is an indispensable part of a thorough-going philosophy of evolution. According to it there must be an infinite number of degrees of consciousness, following the degrees of complication and aggregation of the primordial64 mind-dust. To prove the separate existence of these degrees of consciousness by indirect evidence, since direct intuition of them is not to be had, becomes therefore the first duty of psychological evolutionism.
Some Alleged65 Proofs That Mind-Dust Exists.
Some of this duty we find already performed by a number of philosophers who, though not interested at all in evolution, have nevertheless on independent grounds convinced themselves of the existence of a vast amount of sub-conscious mental life. The criticism of this general opinion and its grounds will have to be postponed66 for a while. At present let us merely deal with the arguments assumed to prove aggregation of bits of mind-stuff into distinctly sensible feelings. They are clear and admit of a clear reply.
The German physiologist67 A. Fick, in 1862, was, so far as I know, the first to use them. He made experiments on the discrimination of the feelings of warmth and of touch, when only a very small portion of the skin was excited through a hole in a card, the surrounding parts being protected by the card. He found that under these circumstances mistakes were frequently made by the patient,8 and concluded that this must be because the number of sensations from the elementary nerve-tips affected68 was too small to sum itself distinctly into either of the qualities of feeling in question. He tried to show how a different manner of the summation69 might give rise in one case to the heat and in another to the touch.
" A feeling of temperatures," he says," arises when the intensities70 of the units of feeling are evenly gradated, so that between two elements a and b no other unit can spatially71 intervene whose intensity73 is not also between that of a and b. A feeling of contact perhaps arises when this condition is not fulfilled. Both kinds of feeling, however, are composed of the same units."
But it is obviously far clearer to interpret such a gradation of intensities as a brain-fact than as a mind-fact. If in the brain a tract7 were first excited in one of the ways suggested by Prof. Fick, and then again in the other, it might very well happen, for aught we can say to the contrary, that the psychic74 accompaniment in the one case would be heat, and in the other pain. The pain and the heat would, however, not be composed of psychic units, but would each be the direct result of one total brain-process. So long as this latter interpretation75 remains76 open, Fick cannot be held to have proved psychic summation.
Later, both Spencer and Taine, independently of each other, took up the same line of thought. Mr. Spencer's reasoning is worth quoting in extenso. He writes:
"Although the individual sensations and emotions, real or ideal, of which consciousness is built up, appear to be severally simple, homogeneous, unanalyzable, or of inscrutable natures, yet they are not so. There is at least one kind of feeling which, as ordinarily experienced, seems elementary, that is demonstrably not elementary. And after resolving it into its proximate components79, we can scarcely help suspecting that other apparently-elementary feelings are also compound, and may have proximate components like those which we can in this one instance identify.
"Musical sound is the name we give to this seemingly simple feeling which is clearly resolvable into simpler feelings. Well known experiments prove that when equal blows or taps are made one after another at a rate not exceeding some sixteen per second, the effect of each is perceived as a separate noise; but when the rapidity with which the blows follow one another exceeds this, the noises are no longer identified in separate states of consciousness, and there arises in place of them a continuous state of consciousness, called a tone. In further increasing the rapidity of the blows, the tone undergoes the change of quality distinguished80 as rise in pitch; and it continues to rise in pitch as the blows continue to increase in rapidity, until it reaches an acuteness beyond which it is no longer appreciable81 as a tone. So that out of units of feeling of the same kind, many feelings distinguishable from one another in quality result, according as the units are more or less integrated.
"This is not all. The inquiries82 of Professor Helmholtz have shown that when, along with one series of these rapidly-recurring noises, there is generated another series in which the noises are more rapid though not so loud, the effect is a change in that quality known as its timbre83. As various musical instruments show us, tones which are alike in pitch and strength are distinguishable by their harshness or sweetness, their ringing or their liquid characters; and all their specific peculiarities84 are proved to arise from the combination of one, two, three, or more, supplementary85 series of recurrent noises with the chief series of recurrent noises. So that while the unlikenesses of feeling known as differences of pitch in tones are due to differences of integration87 among the recurrent noises of one series, the unlikenesses of feeling known as differences of timbre, are due to the simultaneous integration with this series of other series having other degrees of integration. And thus an enormous number of qualitatively-contrasted kinds of consciousness that seem severally elementary prove to be composed of one simple kind of consciousness, combined and recombined with itself in multitudinous ways.
"Can we stop short here? If the different sensations known as sounds are built out of a common unit, is it not to be rationally inferred that so likewise are the different sensations known as tastes, and the different sensations known as odors, and the different sensations known as colors? Nay88, shall we not regard it as probable that there is a unit common to all these strongly-contrasted classes of sensations? If the unlikenesses among the sensations of each class may be due to unlikenesses among the modes of aggregation of a unit of consciousness common to them all; so too may the much greater unlikenesses between the sensations of each class and those of other classes. There may be a single primordial element of consciousness, and the countless89 kinds of consciousness may be produced by the compounding of this element with itself and the recompounding of its compounds with one another in higher and higher degrees; so producing increased multiplicity, variety, and complexity90.
"Have we any clue to this primordial element? I think we have. That simple mental impression which proves to be the unit of composition of the sensation of musical tone, is allied91 to certain other simple mental impressions differently originated. The subjective effect produced by a crack or noise that has no appreciable duration is little else than a nervous shock. Though we distinguish such a nervous shock as belonging to what we call sounds, yet it does not differ very much from nervous shocks of other kinds. An electric discharge sent through the body causes a feeling akin14 to that which a sudden loud report causes. A strong unexpected impression made through the eyes, as by a flash of lightning, similarly gives rise to a start or shock; and though the feeling so named seems, like the electric shock, to have the body at large for its seat, and may therefore be regarded as the correlative rather of the efferent than of the afferent disturbance92 yet on remembering the mental change that results from the instantaneous transit93 of an object across the field of vision, I think it may be perceived that the feeling accompanying the efferent disturbance is itself reduced very nearly to the same form. The state of consciousness so generated is, in fact, comparable in quality to the initial state of consciousness caused by a blow (distinguishing it from the pain or other feeling that commences the instant after); which state of consciousness caused by a blow may be taken as the primitive94 and typical form of the nervous shock. The fact that sudden brief disturbances95 thus set up by different stimuli96 through different sets of nerves cause feelings scarcely distinguishable in quality will not appear strange when we recollect97 that distinguishableness of feeling implies appreciable duration; and that when the duration is greatly abridged98, nothing more is known than that some mental change has occurred and ceased. To have a sensation of redness, to know a tone as acute or grave, to be conscious of a taste as sweet, implies in each case a considerable continuity of state. If the state does not last long enough to admit of its being contemplated99, it cannot be classed as of this or that kind; and becomes a momentary100 modification101 very similar to momentary modifications102 otherwise caused.
"It is possible, then - may we not even say probable? - that something of the same order as that which we call nervous shock is the ultimate unit of consciousness, and that all the unlikenesses among our feelings result from unlike modes of integration of this ultimate unit. I say of the same order, because there are discernible differences among nervous shocks that are differently caused; and the primitive nervous shock probably differs somewhat form each of them. And I say of the same order, for the further reason that while we may ascribe to them a general likeness86 in nature, we must suppose a great unlikeness in degree. The nervous shocks recognized as such are violent - must be violent before they can be perceived amid the procession of multitudinous vivid feelings suddenly interrupted by them. But the rapidly-recurring nervous shocks of which the different forms of feeling consist, we must assume to be of comparatively moderate, or even of very slight intensity. Were our various sensations and emotions composed of rapidly-recurring shocks as strong as those ordinarily called shocks, they would be unbearable103; indeed life would cease at once. We must think of them rather as successive faint pulses of subjective change, each having the same quality as the strong pulse of subjective change distinguished as a nervous shock." 9
Refutation of These Proofs.
Convincing as this argument of Mr. Spencer's may appear on a first reading, it is singular how weak it really is.10 We do, it is true, when we study the connection between a musical note and its outward cause, find the note simple and continuous while the cause is multiple and discrete104. Somewhere, then, there is a transformation105, reduction, or fusion.
Fig25The question is, Where - in the nerve-world or in the mind-world? Really we have no experimental proof by which to decide; and if decide we must, analogy and a priori probability can alone guide us. Mr. Spencer assumes that the fusion must come to pass in the mental world, and that the physical processes get through air and ear, auditory nerve and medulla, lower brain and hemispheres, without their number being reduced. Figure 25, on the previous page, will make the point clear.
Let the line a - b represent the threshold of consciousness: then everything drawn107 below that line will symbolize108 a physical process, everything above it will mean a fact of mind. Let the crosses stand for the physical blows, the circles for the events in successively higher orders of nerve-cells, and the horizontal marks for the facts of feeling. Spencer's argument implies that each order of cells transmits just as many impulses as it receives to the cells above it; so that if the blows come at the rate of 20,000 in a second the cortical cells discharge at the same rate, and one unit of feeling corresponds to each one of the 20,000 discharges. Then, and only then, does 'integration' occur, by the 20,000 units of feeling 'compounding with themselves' into the 'continuous state of consciousness' represented by the short line at the top of the figure.
Now such an interpretation as this flies in the face of physical analogy, no less than of logical intelligibility11. Consider physical analogy first.
A pendulum109 may be deflected110 by a single blow, and swing back. Will it swing back the more often the more we multiply the blows? No; for it they rain upon the pendulum too fast, it will not swing at all but remain deflected in a sensibly stationary111 state. In other words, increasing the cause numerically need not equally increase numerically the effect. Blow through a tube: you get a certain musical note; and increasing the blowing increases for a certain time the loudness of the note. Will this be true indefinitely? No; for when a certain force is reached, the note, instead of growing louder, suddenly disappears and is replaced by its higher octave. Turn on the gas slightly and light it: you get a tiny flame. Turn on more gas, and the breadth of the flame increases. Will this relation increase indefinitely? No, again; for at a certain moment up shoots the flame into a ragged112 streamer and begins to hiss113. Send slowly through the nerve of a frog's gastrocnemius muscle a succession of galvanic shocks: you get a succession of twitches114. Increasing the number of shocks does not increase the twitching115; on the contrary, it stops it, and we have the muscle in the apparently stationary state of contraction116 called tetanus. This last fact is the true analogue117 of what must happen between the nerve-cell and the sensory118 fibre. It is certain that cells are more inert119 than fibres, and that rapid vibrations120 in the latter can only arouse relatively121 simple processes or states in the former. The higher cells may have even a slower rate of explosion than the lower, and so the twenty thousand supposed blows of the outer air may be 'integrated' in the cortex into a very small number of cell-discharges in a second.
Fig26This other diagram will serve to contrast this supposition with Spencer's. In Fig106. 26 all 'integration' occurs below the threshold of consciousness. The frequency of cell-events becomes more and more reduced as we approach the cells to which feeling is most directly attached, until at last we come to a condition of things symbolized122 by the larger ellipse, which may be taken to stand for some rather massive and slow process of tension and discharge in the cortical centres, to which, as a whole, the feeling of musical tone symbolized by the line at the top of the diagram simply and totally corresponds. It is as if a long file of men were to start one after the other to reach a distant point. The road at first is good and they keep their original distance apart. Presently it is intersected by bogs124 each worse than the last, so that the front men get so retarded125 that the hinder ones catch up with them before the journey is done, and all arrive together at the goal.11
On this supposition there are no unperceived units of mind-stuff preceding and composing the full consciousness. The latter is itself an immediate126 psychic fact and bears an immediate relation to the neural127 state which is its unconditional128 accompaniment. Did each neural shock give rise to its own psychic shock, and the psychic shocks then combine, it would be impossible to understand why severing129 one part of the central nervous system from another should break up the integrity of the consciousness. The cut has nothing to do with the psychic world. The atoms of mind-stuff ought to float off from the nerve-matter on either side of it, and come together over it and fuse, just as well as if it had not been made. We know, however, that they do not; that severance130 of the paths of conduction between a man's left auditory centre or optical centre and the rest of his cortex will sever77 all communication between the words which he hears or sees written and the rest of his ideas.
Moreover, if feelings can mix into a tertium quid, why do we not take a feeling of greenness and a feeling of redness, and make a feeling of yellowness out of them? Why has optics neglected the open road to truth, and wasted centuries in disputing about theories of color-composition which two minutes of introspection would have settled forever?12 We cannot mix feelings as such, though we may mix the objects we feel, and from their mixture get new feelings. We cannot even (as we shall later see) have two feelings in our mind at once. At most we can compare together objects previously131 presented to us in distinct feelings; but then we find each object stubbornly maintaining its separate identity before consciousness, whatever the verdict of the comparison may be.13
Self-Compounding of Mental Facts is Inadmissible.
But there is a still more fatal objection to the theory of mental units 'compounding with themselves' or 'integrating.' It is logically unintelligible; it leaves out the essential feature of all the 'combinations' we actually know.
All the 'combinations' which we actually know are EFFECTS, wrought132 by the units said to be 'combined,' UPON SOME ENTITY58 OTHER THAN THEMSELVES. Without this feature of a medium or vehicle, the notion of combination has no sense.
"A multitude of contractile units, by joint133 action, and by being all connected, for instance, with a single tendon, will pull at the same, and will bring about a dynamical effect which is undoubtedly134 the resultant of their combined individual energies. . . . On the whole, tendons are to muscular fibres, and bones are to tendons, combining recipients135 of mechanical energies. A medium of composition is indispensable to the summation of energies. To realize the complete dependence137 of mechanical resultants on a combining substratum, one may fancy for a moment all the individually contracting muscular elements severed138 from their attachments139. They might then still be capable of contracting with the same energy as before, yet no co-operative result would be accomplished140. The medium of dynamical combination would be wanting. The multiple energies, singly exerted on no common recipient136, would lose themselves on entirely isolated141 and disconnected efforts."14
In other words, no possible number of entities142 (call them as you like, whether forces, material particles, or mental elements) can sum themselves together. Each remains, in the sum, what it always was; and the sum itself exists only for a bystander who happens to overlook the units and to apprehend143 the sum as such; or else it exists in the shape of some other effect on an entity external to the sum itself. Let it not be objected that H2 and O combine of themselves into 'water,' and thenceforward exhibit new properties. They do not. The 'water' is just the old atoms in the new position, H-O-H; the 'new properties' are just their combined effects, when in this position, upon external media, such as our sense-organs and the various reagents on which water may exert its properties and be known.
"Aggregations are organized wholes only when they behave as such in the presence of other things. A statue is an aggregation of particles of marble; but as such it has no unity144. For the spectator it is one; in itself it is an aggregate145; just as, to the consciousness of an ant crawling over it, it may again appear a mere aggregate. No summing up of parts can make an unity of a mass of discrete constituents146, unless this unity exist for some other subject, not for the mass itself."15
Just so, in the parallelogram of forces, the 'forces' themselves do not combine into the diagonal resultant; a body is needed on which they may impinge, to exhibit their resultant effect. No more do musical sounds combine per se into concords148 or discords150. Concord147 and discord149 are names for their combined effects on that external medium, the ear.
Where the elemental units are supposed to be feelings, the case is in no wise altered. Take a hundred of them, shuffle151 them and pack them as close together as you can (whatever that may mean); still each remains the same feeling it always was, shut in its own skin, windowless, ignorant of what the other feelings are and mean. There would be a hundred-and-first feeling there, if, when a group or series of such feelings were set up, a consciousness belonging to the group as such should emerge. And this 101st feeling would be a totally new fact; the 100 original feelings might, by a curious physical law, be a signal for its creation, when they came together; but they would have no substantial identity with it, nor it with them, and one could never deduce the one from the others, or (in any intelligible9 sense) say that they evolved it.
Take a sentence of a dozen words, and take twelve men and tell to each one word. Then stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let each think of his word as intently as he will; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence.16 We talk of the 'spirit of the age,' and the 'sentiment of the people,' and in various ways we hypostatize 'public opinion.' But we know this to be symbolic152 speech, and never dream that the spirit, opinion, sentiment, etc., constitute a consciousness other than, and additional to, that of the several individuals whom the words 'age,' 'people,' or 'public' denote. The private minds do not agglomerate153 into a higher compound mind. This has always been the invincible154 contention155 of the spiritualists against the associationists in Psychology, - a contention which we shall take up at greater length in Chapter X. The associationists say the mind is constituted by a multiplicity of distinct 'ideas' associated into a unity. There is, they say, an idea of a, and also an idea of b. Therefore, they say, there is an idea of a + b, or of a and b together. Which is like saying that the mathematical square of a plus that of b is equal to the square of a + b, a palpable untruth. Idea of a + idea of b is not identical with idea of (a + b). It is one, they are two; in it, what knows a also knows b; in them, what knows a is expressly posited156 as not knowing b; etc. In short, the two separate ideas can never by any logic45 be made to figure as one and the same thing as the 'associated' idea.
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 everlasting157 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.17
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 consciousness - each arising discontinuity 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 bog123 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 reconciliation158; 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 gossamer159 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 metal 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 whimsies160. 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 briefly161 as possible, and to follow each by its objection, as in scholastic162 books.18
First Proof. The minimum visible, the minimum audible, 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 assailed163 when near the shore. To hear this noise as one does, on 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."19
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 advent164 of that movement. And so each infra-sensible stimulus165 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,"20 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 habitual167 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.21
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 'unconsciously,' and in that state affected the sequence of our ideas.
Reply. Here again we have a choice between more plausible168 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 awaken169 punctually at an hour predetermined overnight, etc. Unconscious thinking, volition166, 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 hypnoticism. Tell the subject of an hypnotic trance, during his trance, that he will remember, and he may remember everything perfectly170 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 simplicity171 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 judgments172 and emotional reactions, and exhibit practical tendencies, for which we can give no explicit logical justification173, but which are good inferences from certain premises174. We know more than we can say. Our conclusions run ahead of our power to analyze176 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 boor177 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 latch178, 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?"22
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 inexplicable179 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 premise175, 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 conspire180 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 cerebral181 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 forth182 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 molecules183 in certain tracts of the brain.
Eighth Proof. Instincts, as pursuits of ends by appropriate means, are manifestations184 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 truthful186 and illu- sory 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 sensational187 affairs, in which inference plays no part. This has been satisfactorily proved by Hering,23 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 stimulate188 brain-tracts, of whose activity ready-made conscious percepts are the immediate psychic counterparts. They do this by a mechanism189 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 vogue190 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 accrue191 without any actual reasoning process unconsciously taking place.24 Maybe the excessive and riotous192 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 mythology193 reaches its climax194. 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 apprehends195 the inverted196 retinal image and turns it right side up, constructing flat space as a preliminary operation; then it computes197 from the angle of convergence of the eyeballs that the two retinal images must be the projection198 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.25 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 insufficient199 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 motives200, and find that at bottom they contain jealousies201 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 discriminate202 by; but they must exist in an unconscious state, since we so completely fail to single them out.26 The books of the analytic203 school of psychology abound204 in examples of the kind. Who knows the countless associations that mingle205 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, glands206, 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 exertion207 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 consonants208, 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 component78 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 membrane209, of accommodating for near vision, of intercepting210 the passage from the nostrils211 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 conclusively212 that, in addition to the fully213 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 labyrinth214.
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 incessantly215 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 coelo 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 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 unravel216. 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 residual217 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 much more inflamed218 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 spatial72 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 whit185 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 superseded219 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 substantive220 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 cognitive221 or representa- tive 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 formulating222 the facts which is here begun.27
So we seem not only to have ascertained223 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 hatred224, 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 scotched225, 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 craving226 to be allowed to construct synthetically227 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 pertinacity228 and ingenuity229 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 beset230 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 decided231 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 lobes232 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 physiology233. The facts of mental deafness and blindness, of auditory and optical aphasia234, 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 vaguely235, 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 minimal236 mental fact whose being reposes237 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 onlooking238 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 'awe239' 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 upwards240 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 gnaw241 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 consciousness being 'ejective' to each other. There is, however, among the cells one central or pontifical242 one to which our consciousness is attached. But the events of all the other cells physically243 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 incurs244 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 physiological245 fact. But, to offset246 these advantages, one has physiological difficulties and improbabilities. There is no cell or group of cells in the brain of such anatomical or functional247 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 radically248 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 inaccessible249 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. Speculative250 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 antispiritualistic 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 materialistic251 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 absurdity252 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 attained253.
If it does not strictly254 explain anything, it is at any rate less positively255 objectionable than either mind-stuff or a material-monad creed256. 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 ascertainment257 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 thoroughly258 thought out, we shall abide259 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 tinge260 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.
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obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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scrutinize
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| n.详细检查，细读 | |
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posit
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| v.假定，认为 | |
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irresistibly
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| adv.无法抵抗地，不能自持地；极为诱惑人地 | |
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tract
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| n.传单，小册子，大片(土地或森林) | |
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unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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unintelligibility
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| 不可懂度，不清晰性 | |
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intelligibility
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| n.可理解性，可理解的事物 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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evolutionary
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| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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inorganic
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| adj.无生物的；无机的 | |
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18
mentality
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| n.心理，思想，脑力 | |
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19
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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21
aggregation
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| n.聚合，组合；凝聚 | |
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aggregations
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| n.聚集( aggregation的名词复数 )；集成；集结；聚集体 | |
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chaotically
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dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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nebula
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| n.星云，喷雾剂 | |
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26
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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27
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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28
potency
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| n. 效力，潜能 | |
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29
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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30
chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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31
pounce
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| n.猛扑；v.猛扑，突然袭击，欣然同意 | |
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32
devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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33
enthusiasts
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| n.热心人，热衷者( enthusiast的名词复数 ) | |
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34
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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35
chasm
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| n.深坑，断层，裂口，大分岐，利害冲突 | |
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36
juxtaposition
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| n.毗邻，并置，并列 | |
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37
molecular
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| adj.分子的；克分子的 | |
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38
subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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39
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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40
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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41
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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42
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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43
rudiment
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| n.初步；初级；基本原理 | |
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44
fusion
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| n.溶化；熔解；熔化状态，熔和；熔接 | |
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45
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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46
rupture
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| n.破裂；(关系的)决裂；v.(使)破裂 | |
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47
afflatus
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| n.灵感，神感 | |
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48
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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49
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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50
professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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51
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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52
opprobrium
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| n.耻辱，责难 | |
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53
postulate
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| n.假定，基本条件；vt.要求，假定 | |
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54
postulates
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| v.假定，假设( postulate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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55
tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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56
nascent
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| adj.初生的，发生中的 | |
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57
nonentity
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| n.无足轻重的人 | |
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58
entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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59
professes
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| 声称( profess的第三人称单数 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉 | |
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60
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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61
aboriginal
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| adj.（指动植物）土生的，原产地的，土著的 | |
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62
analogous
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| adj.相似的；类似的 | |
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63
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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64
primordial
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| adj.原始的；最初的 | |
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65
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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66
postponed
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| vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发） | |
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67
physiologist
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| n.生理学家 | |
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68
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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69
summation
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| n.总和；最后辩论 | |
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70
intensities
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| n.强烈( intensity的名词复数 )；（感情的）强烈程度；强度；烈度 | |
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71
spatially
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| 空间地，存在于空间地 | |
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72
spatial
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| adj.空间的，占据空间的 | |
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73
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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74
psychic
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| n.对超自然力敏感的人；adj.有超自然力的 | |
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75
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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76
remains
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|
| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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77
sever
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| v.切开，割开；断绝，中断 | |
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78
component
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| n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的 | |
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79
components
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| （机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分 | |
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80
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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81
appreciable
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| adj.明显的，可见的，可估量的，可觉察的 | |
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82
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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83
timbre
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| n.音色，音质 | |
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84
peculiarities
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|
| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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85
supplementary
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| adj.补充的，附加的 | |
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86
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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87
integration
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| n.一体化，联合，结合 | |
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88
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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89
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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90
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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91
allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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92
disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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93
transit
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| n.经过，运输；vt.穿越，旋转；vi.越过 | |
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94
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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95
disturbances
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| n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 )；打扰；困扰；障碍 | |
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96
stimuli
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| n.刺激（物） | |
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97
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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98
abridged
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| 削减的，删节的 | |
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99
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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100
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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101
modification
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| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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102
modifications
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| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
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103
unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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104
discrete
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| adj.个别的，分离的，不连续的 | |
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105
transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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106
fig
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| n.无花果(树) | |
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107
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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108
symbolize
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| vt.作为...的象征，用符号代表 | |
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109
pendulum
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| n.摆，钟摆 | |
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110
deflected
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| 偏离的 | |
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111
stationary
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| adj.固定的，静止不动的 | |
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112
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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113
hiss
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| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
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114
twitches
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| n.（使）抽动， （使）颤动， （使）抽搐( twitch的名词复数 ) | |
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115
twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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116
contraction
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| n.缩略词，缩写式，害病 | |
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117
analogue
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| n.类似物；同源语 | |
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118
sensory
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| adj.知觉的，感觉的，知觉器官的 | |
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119
inert
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| adj.无活动能力的，惰性的；迟钝的 | |
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120
vibrations
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| n.摆动( vibration的名词复数 )；震动；感受；（偏离平衡位置的）一次性往复振动 | |
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121
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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122
symbolized
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| v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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123
bog
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| n.沼泽；室...陷入泥淖 | |
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124
bogs
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| n.沼泽，泥塘( bog的名词复数 )；厕所v.（使）陷入泥沼， （使）陷入困境( bog的第三人称单数 )；妨碍，阻碍 | |
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125
retarded
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| a.智力迟钝的，智力发育迟缓的 | |
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126
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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127
neural
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| adj.神经的，神经系统的 | |
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128
unconditional
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| adj.无条件的，无限制的，绝对的 | |
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129
severing
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的现在分词 )；断，裂 | |
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130
severance
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| n.离职金；切断 | |
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131
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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132
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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133
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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134
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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135
recipients
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|
| adj.接受的；受领的；容纳的；愿意接受的n.收件人；接受者；受领者；接受器 | |
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136
recipient
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| a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器 | |
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137
dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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138
severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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139
attachments
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| n.（用电子邮件发送的）附件( attachment的名词复数 )；附着；连接；附属物 | |
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140
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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141
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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142
entities
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| 实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 ) | |
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143
apprehend
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| vt.理解，领悟，逮捕，拘捕，忧虑 | |
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144
unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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145
aggregate
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| adj.总计的，集合的；n.总数；v.合计；集合 | |
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146
constituents
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| n.选民( constituent的名词复数 )；成分；构成部分；要素 | |
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147
concord
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| n.和谐；协调 | |
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148
concords
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| n.和谐，一致，和睦( concord的名词复数 ) | |
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149
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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150
discords
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| 不和（discord的复数形式） | |
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151
shuffle
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| n.拖著脚走，洗纸牌；v.拖曳，慢吞吞地走 | |
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152
symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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153
agglomerate
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| v.凝聚，结块；n.团块；集块岩；（杂乱的）堆积； | |
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154
invincible
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| adj.不可征服的，难以制服的 | |
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155
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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156
posited
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| v.假定，设想，假设( posit的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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157
everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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158
reconciliation
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| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
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159
gossamer
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| n.薄纱，游丝 | |
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160
whimsies
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| n.怪念头( whimsy的名词复数 )；异想天开；怪脾气；与众不同的幽默感 | |
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161
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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162
scholastic
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| adj.学校的，学院的，学术上的 | |
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163
assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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164
advent
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| n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临 | |
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165
stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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166
volition
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| n.意志；决意 | |
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167
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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168
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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169
awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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170
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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171
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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172
judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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173
justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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174
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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175
premise
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| n.前提；v.提论，预述 | |
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176
analyze
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| vt.分析，解析 (=analyse) | |
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177
boor
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| n.举止粗野的人；乡下佬 | |
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178
latch
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| n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁 | |
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179
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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180
conspire
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| v.密谋，（事件等）巧合，共同导致 | |
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181
cerebral
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| adj.脑的，大脑的；有智力的，理智型的 | |
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182
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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183
molecules
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| 分子( molecule的名词复数 ) | |
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184
manifestations
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| n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式） | |
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185
whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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186
truthful
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| adj.真实的，说实话的，诚实的 | |
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187
sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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188
stimulate
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| vt.刺激，使兴奋；激励，使…振奋 | |
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189
mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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190
Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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191
accrue
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| v.(利息等)增大，增多 | |
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192
riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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193
mythology
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| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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194
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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195
apprehends
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的第三人称单数 )； 理解 | |
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196
inverted
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| adj.反向的，倒转的v.使倒置，使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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197
computes
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| v.计算，估算( compute的第三人称单数 ) | |
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198
projection
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| n.发射，计划，突出部分 | |
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199
insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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200
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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201
jealousies
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| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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202
discriminate
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| v.区别，辨别，区分；有区别地对待 | |
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203
analytic
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| adj.分析的，用分析方法的 | |
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204
abound
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| vi.大量存在；(in，with)充满，富于 | |
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205
mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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206
glands
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| n.腺( gland的名词复数 ) | |
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207
exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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208
consonants
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| n.辅音，子音( consonant的名词复数 )；辅音字母 | |
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209
membrane
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| n.薄膜，膜皮，羊皮纸 | |
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210
intercepting
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| 截取（技术），截接 | |
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211
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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212
conclusively
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| adv.令人信服地，确凿地 | |
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213
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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214
labyrinth
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| n.迷宫；难解的事物；迷路 | |
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215
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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216
unravel
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| v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开 | |
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217
residual
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| adj.复播复映追加时间；存留下来的，剩余的 | |
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218
inflamed
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| adj.发炎的，红肿的v.（使）变红，发怒，过热( inflame的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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219
superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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220
substantive
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| adj.表示实在的；本质的、实质性的；独立的；n.实词，实名词；独立存在的实体 | |
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221
cognitive
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| adj.认知的，认识的，有感知的 | |
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222
formulating
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| v.构想出( formulate的现在分词 )；规划；确切地阐述；用公式表示 | |
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223
ascertained
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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224
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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225
scotched
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| v.阻止( scotch的过去式和过去分词 )；制止（车轮）转动；弄伤；镇压 | |
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226
craving
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| n.渴望,热望 | |
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227
synthetically
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| adv. 综合地，合成地 | |
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228
pertinacity
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| n.执拗，顽固 | |
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229
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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230
beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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231
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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232
lobes
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| n.耳垂( lobe的名词复数 )；（器官的）叶；肺叶；脑叶 | |
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233
physiology
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| n.生理学，生理机能 | |
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234
aphasia
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| n.失语症 | |
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235
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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236
minimal
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| adj.尽可能少的，最小的 | |
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237
reposes
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的第三人称单数 ) | |
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238
onlooking
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| n.目击，旁观adj.旁观的 | |
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239
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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240
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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241
gnaw
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| v.不断地啃、咬；使苦恼，折磨 | |
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242
pontifical
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| adj.自以为是的，武断的 | |
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243
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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244
incurs
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| 遭受，招致，引起( incur的第三人称单数 ) | |
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245
physiological
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| adj.生理学的，生理学上的 | |
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246
offset
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| n.分支，补偿；v.抵消，补偿 | |
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247
functional
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| adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的 | |
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248
radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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249
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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250
speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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251
materialistic
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| a.唯物主义的，物质享乐主义的 | |
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252
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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253
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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254
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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255
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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256
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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257
ascertainment
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| n.探查，发现，确认 | |
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258
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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259
abide
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| vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受 | |
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260
tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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