II. INTELLIGENCE AND "END"…

II. INTELLIGENCE AND "END"

It is interesting to notice the opinions of different scientists and philosophers as to the extent to which reason is diffused in the universe, where the point lies at which the boundary line is to be drawn between reason and an automatism of instinct or organic action, or whether any such point can be found at all, whether reason, at least as consciousness and will, is not inherent in all life, or at least in all animal life, or whether it is not, indeed, to be regarded as the cause of motion even outside life, in the inorganic as well as the organic. There is no need to remind ourselves of the philosophic conception of the World as Will, the Philosophy of the Unconscious, or the Theory of Monads. The theories that specialists in physical science have arrived at, through the results of wide-reaching investigations in their own peculiar branch, are as various as those of philosophers. Darwin carefully avoids drawing any distinct limit-line between reason and instinct, but remarks that "A little dose of judgment or reason, as Pierre Huber expresses it, often comes into play, even with animals low in the scale of nature."[112] Haeckel says: "Unbiassed comparison and unprejudiced test and observation place it beyond doubt that so-called 'instinct' is nothing else than a sum of soul-activities which, originally acquired by adaptation, have been fixed by habit and carried down from generation to generation by inheritance. Originally performed with consciousness and reflection, many instinctive actions of the animals have become, in the course of time, unconscious, exactly as is the case with the habitual activities of human reason. These, too, may, with like justice, be looked upon as the workings of innate instinct, as, indeed, the impulse to self-preservation, maternal love, and the social instinct often are regarded. Again, instinct is neither distinctively an attribute of the brain of the animal, nor is the reason an especial endowment of human beings. On the contrary, an impartial doctrine of soul recognizes a long, long, descending scale of gradual evolution in the life of the soul, which leads from higher to lower human beings, from more perfect to more imperfect animals, step by step, down to those forms whose simple nerve-ganglion furnishes the starting-point of all the cell-less brain-forms of this scale."[113] The lecture in which this passage occurs not only argues further that the soul is composed of soul-activities as the brain is composed of cells, but finds in all living cells, "all protoplasm, the first element of all soul life, sensation in the simple forms of pain and pleasure, movement in the simple forms of attraction and repulsion. Only the degrees of development and combination of soul are different in different beings." Du Prel, impressed with the evolution of order from disorder in the heavens as on the earth, ascribes this to universal sensation as a fundamental quality of all matter, which makes it continually tend towards a state of equilibrium in which collision is reduced to a minimum.[114] Some biologists ascribe sensation, or consciousness, to animal life alone; some ascribe consciousness to such animals only as possess a nervous system; some philosophers make a distinction between sensation, consciousness, and self-consciousness, as shown in the scale of animal life; some, again, approaching the problem from another side, lay emphasis on the difference between automatic and organic action, instinct, "blind impulse," and will. Carneri, as we have seen,[115] holds that even the action of an animal so high in the scale as the butterfly may be pure automatism, its fluttering when impaled merely the motion of a continued attempt at flight.

These differences in opinion seem to depend, in great measure, upon the end of the scale of being chosen as the starting-point in the development of theory. If we begin with man and assume intelligence to be the cause of design,--of the purposeful, the self-preserving,--in his action, we shall be likely to infer intelligence as the cause of self-preserving function in all animals, and we shall find great difficulty in drawing any distinct line between intelligence and automatism. If we are not students of inorganic nature, the evolution to be found also in it, up to the attainment of preservative forms of motion, may escape our observation, preoccupation with man and the self- or rather human-interested bias of observation blinding us to it; but if we carry our considerations, in an unprejudiced spirit, on beyond the province of life, we may, like Du Prel and others, arrive at a theory of intelligence as a universal property of matter. On the other hand, if we begin with inorganic matter and assume automatism to be the cause of its motion, we are likely, ascending the scale of organic existence, to interpret much of its function as due to material action and reaction, and may again, from this side, find so great difficulty in drawing the line where intelligence begins, that we may fall, as Carneri has done, into the opposite extreme to that last noticed, and interpret nearly all animal action as unintelligent or even insentient.

Let us look at the dilemma a little more closely. Might it not seem, from one point of view, as if the harmonious movements of the stars, by which they avoid their own destruction, must be referred to desire and will to avoid it? If all systems of material parts, without exception or distinction, tend, as Fechner, Du Prel, and Petzoldt assert, towards harmony of the parts such that the motion of these parts will become self-preservative, does it not seem logically necessary to assume that this self-preservation, arising in inorganic matter in the same manner as in organic matter, must be due to the same causes as those to which we ascribe action towards an end, action that involves self-preservation, in the broadest sense of the word, in man? May not the heavenly bodies, learning from experience in some way, as man does, gradually come to choose, though still in accordance with natural laws (as man also invariably chooses) that orbit which preserves them from collision? True, they must finally suffer destruction, but so, also, must the human individual, and the race of human beings. The difference of evolution and dissolution in the two cases is only one of time. Among different species of nervously organized beings, the duration of life also differs. Or, if we deny the existence of intelligence in inorganic nature, can we, at least, descending the scale of organic being, find any point of which we can say, "Here intelligence ends and automatism begins"? Shall we deny the existence of intelligence in plants, and if so, how shall we find that dividing line between the plant and animal kingdoms which the advancement of science in many directions is rendering, not more distinct, but less and less so? G. Th. Schneider says, in his book on "The Human Will": "The movements of touch and locomotion in the search for food are the first movements in which the specific animal-life may be recognized. In no plant is the groping caused by hunger to be observed."[116] But is this true? The insectivorous plants, for instance, open their leaves when their prey is digested, waiting for fresh prey; and they close them again when prey has again entered, thus practically grasping their victim and holding him fast. Although the nature of the plant prevents its moving from the spot where it grows, are these movements less a search for and capture of food than those of the animal? To say that the closing of the leaves depends upon the beginning of some chemical process in the plant furnishes us with no mark of distinction between the two, for it is equally true that chemical processes underlie animal motion; and to object that the reopening of the leaves is the result of the completion of assimilation gives us, also, no distinctive mark, since the animal's search for food is likewise the result of hunger and so connected with a particular state of the digestive organs. The action of insectivorous plants draws our attention because the process of assimilation involved so resembles animal digestion; but, as a point of fact, the opening of petals to receive the air and sun is as much a search for food as the opening of leaves to receive insect prey.

Schneider adds to the passage above quoted, "A further difference between psychical and physiological movements is this, that the latter always remain the same, however the excitation changes, while the former have, now the character of attraction, now that of repulsion." It may be questioned whether this difference either can be demonstrated to be a distinctive mark. We have only to go into a dark cellar where the potatoes have begun to sprout, in order to see how plants that ordinarily grow upward will take every curve and angle in order to reach towards the light of some distant window. And if we turn one of the tubers about, we may watch the pallid sprout again turn to grow towards the far-away sunlight. Thomas A. Knight relates experiments in which plants of the Virginia creeper (Ampelopsis quinquefolia) were removed from one side of the house to the other, being, in each case, screened from perpendicular rays of the sun, and records that, in all cases, the tendrils turned in a few hours in a direction pointing to the centre of the house. One plant after being thus experimented with, was "removed to the centre of the house and fully exposed to the perpendicular light of the sun; and a piece of dark-colored paper was placed upon one side of it, just within reach of its tendrils; and to this substance they soon appeared to be strongly attracted. The paper was then placed upon the opposite side, under similar circumstances, and a piece of plate glass was substituted; but to this substance the tendrils did not indicate any disposition to approach. The position of the glass was then changed, and care was taken to adjust its surface to the varying position of the sun, so that the light reflected might continue to strike the tendrils; which then receded from the glass, and appeared to be strongly repulsed by it."[117] Darwin writes of the insectivorous Drosera rotundifolia: "If young and active leaves are selected, inorganic particles not larger than the head of a small pin, placed on the central glands, sometimes cause the outer tentacles to bend inwards. But this follows much more surely and quickly, if the object contains nitrogenous matter which can be dissolved by the secretion. On one occasion, I observed the following unusual circumstance. Small bits of raw meat (which acts more energetically than any other substance), of paper, dried moss, and of the quill of a pen, were placed on several leaves, and they were all embraced equally well in about two hours. On other occasions the above-named substances, or more commonly particles of glass, coal-cinder (taken from the fire), stone, gold-leaf, dried grass, cork, blotting paper, cotton-wool, and hair rolled into little balls, were used, and these substances, though they were sometimes well embraced, often caused no movement whatever in the outer tentacles, or an extremely slight and slow movement. Yet these same leaves were proved to be in an active condition, as they were excited to movement by substances yielding nitrogenous matter, such as bits of raw or roast meat, the yolk or white of boiled eggs, fragments of insects of all orders, spiders, etc. I will give only two instances.

"Minute flies were placed on the discs of several leaves, and on others balls of paper, bits of moss and quill of about the same size as the flies, and the latter were well embraced in a few hours; whereas after twenty-five hours only a very few tentacles were inflected over the other objects. The bits of paper, moss, and quill were then removed from these leaves, and bits of raw meat placed on them; and now all the tentacles were soon energetically inflected.

"Again, particles of coal-cinder (weighing rather more than the flies used in the last experiment) were placed on the centres of three leaves: after an interval of nineteen hours, one of the particles was tolerably well embraced; a second by a very few tentacles; and a third by none. I then removed the particles from the two latter leaves, and put on them recently killed flies. These were fairly well embraced in seven and one-half hours, and thoroughly after twenty and one-half hours; the tentacles remaining inflected for many subsequent days. On the other hand, the one leaf which had in the course of nineteen hours embraced the bit of cinder moderately well, and to which no fly was given, after an additional thirty-three hours (i.e. in fifty-two hours from the time when the cinder was put on) was completely reexpanded and ready to act again."[118]

From these and many other experiments Darwin concludes that inorganic and some organic substances not attacked by the secretion of the leaf act much less quickly and efficiently than organic substances yielding soluble matter, which is absorbed.

He also writes of the curvature of radicles which come in contact with obstacles at right angles:--

"The first and most obvious explanation of the curvature is that it results merely from the mechanical resistance to the growth in its original direction. Nevertheless, this explanation did not seem to us satisfactory. The radicles did not present the appearance of having been subjected to a sufficient pressure to account for their curvature. Sachs has shown that the growing part is more rigid than the part immediately above, which has ceased to grow, so that the latter might have been expected to yield and become curved as soon as the apex encountered an unyielding object; whereas it was the stiff, growing part which became curved. Moreover, an object which yields with the greatest ease will deflect a radicle: thus, as we have seen, when the apex of the radicle of the bean encountered the polished surface of extremely thin tin-foil on soft sand, no impression was left on it, yet the radicle became deflected at right angles. A second explanation occurred to us, namely, that even the gentlest pressure might check the growth of the apex, and in this case growth could continue only on one side, and thus the radicle would assume a rectangular form; but this view leaves wholly unexplained the curvature of the upper part, extending for a length of 8-10 mm.

"We were therefore led to suspect that the apex was sensitive to contact, and that the effect was transmitted from it to the upper part of the radicle, which was excited to bend away from the touching object. As a little loop of fine thread, hung on a tendril or on the petiole of a leaf-climbing plant, causes it to bend, we thought that any hard object affixed to the tip of a radicle, freely suspended and growing in damp air, might cause it to bend if it were sensitive, and yet would not offer any mechanical resistance to its growth.... Sachs discovered that the radicle a little above the apex is sensitive and bends like a tendril towards the touching object. But when one side of the apex is pressed by any object, the growing part bends away from the object."[119]

Acting on this idea, Darwin found, in many experiments, that the radicles of plants freely suspended in bottles, when brought into contact with the most yielding substances, bits of paper, etc., were deflected, in a very few hours, from their original course, and often at right angles to this. He says, further:--

"As the apex of a radicle in penetrating the ground must be pressed on all sides, we wished to learn whether it could distinguish between harder, or more resisting, and softer substances. A square of sanded paper almost as stiff as card, and a square of extremely thin paper (too thin for writing on) of exactly the same size (about one-twentieth of an inch), were fixed with shellac on opposite sides of the apices of twelve suspended radicles.... In eight out of the twelve cases, there could be no doubt that the radicle was deflected from the side to which the card-like paper was attached and towards the opposite side bearing the very thin paper.

"This occurred, in some instances, in nine hours, but in others not until twenty-four hours had elapsed. Moreover, some of the four failures can hardly be considered as really failures: thus, in one of them in which the radicle remained quite straight, the square of thin paper was found, when both were removed from the apex, to have been so thickly coated with shellac that it was almost as stiff as the card; in the second case, the radicle was bent upward into a semicircle, but the deflection was not directly from the side bearing the card, and this was explained by the two squares having become cemented laterally together, forming a sort of stiff gable from which the radicle was deflected; in the third case, the square of card had been fixed by mistake in front, and though there was deflection, this might have been due to Sachs's curvature; in the fourth case alone, no reason could be assigned why the radicle had not been at all deflected."

Darwin found, moreover, by experiment, that, when the tip of a radicle is burnt or cut, "it transmits an influence to the upper adjoining part, causing it to bend away from the affected side." This deflection resembles, in a very striking manner, the avoidance of sources of injury and pain on the part of animals.

And at the end of his book on the Movements of Plants, which contains very many other experiments bearing on the question of sensitivity in plants, the author writes, "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed, and having the power of directing the movements of the adjoining parts, acts like the brain of one of the lower animals."

It is true that the plant does not react with the rapidity which characterizes the animal; Darwin found that radicles are not sensitive to temporary contact, but only to long, though to slight pressure. It is also true that the physical basis of the movement is more simple, and so more easily traceable in the plant than in the animal organism; yet why lay such especial stress upon this side of plant-life, since it is acknowledged that the physical basis is by no means peculiar to it, but that, on the contrary, all life-processes, in the animal as well as in the plant, have their physical side, although greater complexity of organization may make this more difficult to follow in the one case than in the other?

But we may begin at the other end of the scale and examine the facts presented from the opposite point of view. The physicist demonstrates that force is indestructible; that is, that the sum of the motion and resistance to motion residing in indestructible matter is also imperishable, that all present motion must be regarded as the resultant of previous conditions of motion and resistance, as far back as we may go, until we reach some assumed primal state (which is only assumed and cannot be proved to have existed) in which the matter composing the universe is supposed to have been at complete rest; and that every resultant bears relations to its component factors of force that are constant, every component finding its full value in the resultant. What evidence has the present state of our solar system and the other systems of heavenly bodies revealed to us by the telescope to offer us in proof of their consciousness or sentience? How are the whirl and concentration of nebular mists, the crash and collision of elemental bodies, from which, by simple action and reaction, after ages of disharmony, only a comparative harmony is arrived at as inevitable result, evidence of aim, intention, will, consciousness, in the matter subject to this evolution? Do we find anything here except blind law? The movements of plants, often directly favorable to self-preservation, may be explained by the arrangement of the cells and their chemical action. Or, if sentience must be assumed to be the cause of movement attaining ends of self-preservation in plants, how are we to account for organic and instinctive action in animals? How is it, for instance, that the new-born infant sucks, and the chicken but a few hours old, even though it has been hatched in an incubator apart from its kind, picks at the food strewn before it, aiming, too, with considerable precision?[120] How does it happen that the process of breathing and digestion, the beating of the heart and the circulation of the blood, all so necessary to life, go on with regularity, though not directed by reason? Has the newly hatched chicken any experience to teach it what food is, and how it is to be seized; or does the caterpillar, which spins itself a cocoon, do this with the understanding that it is about to enter a new phase of existence? Or, if such important and, at first view, seemingly intelligent action can be explained as unreasoning instinct, why cannot many other actions of the lower animals be thus explained? Why may not nearly all, if not all of them, be thus explained, and consciousness be regarded as the exclusive property of man?

But how much of the action we term automatic, instinctive, or organic, reflex or "merely functional," can be positively asserted to have no admixture of consciousness? If we examine our own action closely we shall often find that we were, in fact, conscious of much that seems, at first glance, purely automatic. It may appear to us, for instance, that reflection on the notes of a musical composition which we have known for a long time "by heart" hinders rather than helps us, even causing us sometimes to fail completely in our performance. But if we examine our condition at the time of such a failure, do we not usually find that, when we began to think about what we were playing, we were suddenly seized with a fear of failing and that the fear confused us? Or do we not find, at least, that withdrawal of our attention from the music by conversation that requires any concentration of thought is as likely to confuse us as too great attention to it? A friend of mine one day related to me the following experience: Having a felon upon his finger, he submitted to a surgical operation, for which the operator preferred to administer an anaesthetic. When he awoke to consciousness again, he was pleased to find the painful operation completely finished and the hand newly dressed. Asked whether he had experienced any pain, he answered, "Not a twinge," whereat the surgeon remarked that he had screamed and groaned during the operation. To this he replied that his action must have been merely reflex. An hour or so later, however, as he was at work, a sudden recollection of the whole operation came to him. Persons undergoing dental operations under the influence of laughing-gas often scream and make convulsive movements as if in pain, though they declare, afterwards, in like manner, that they have felt nothing; but may not this be due, as in the case just cited, to a mere lapse of memory? Why, indeed, should the patient scream if not in pain? Again, there is a poison--curarine, the Indian arrow poison--which has power to deprive its victim of all motion, while leaving him, as has been ascertained in cases in which it has been used as a medicine, a consciousness that is more or less dimmed. May not the seeming dimness, however, be due to the incomplete function of memory when turned to events that transpired under its influence? And may not the action of so-called anaesthetics of all sorts involve simply a paralysis of action similar to that caused by the Indian arrow poison, together with a more complete lapse of memory than that ensuing upon the latter? To answer that anaesthetics affect the brain, and that therefore consciousness is not possible, is begging the question, for it is by just such experiments and experience of the apparent mental effects of anaesthetics in connection with peculiar brain conditions that theories of non-sensibility under these conditions have been arrived at. States of somnambulism generally used to be classed as outside the sphere of memory and were therefore sometimes called unconscious; but recent experiments in hypnotism have shown that similar states to these may be remembered or not remembered according to the individual case, and that persons who, when awakened, ordinarily recall nothing of that which has passed in the hypnotic state may be made to recall all the events of that state if commanded to do so before awakening. Pflueger has attempted to demonstrate, by many experiments, that consciousness is not confined to the brain but is also connected with the spinal cord;[121] why, however, draw a line at the spinal cord? Is not nerve substance the same with that from which the spinal cord and the brain develop, are not all nerve cells primarily mere modifications of cells of the outer skin?

Of unconsciousness in ourselves we can have no more an immediate and direct knowledge than of unconsciousness outside ourselves, since, in order to be immediately known, it would have to be present in consciousness; and a conscious unconsciousness is a self-contradiction. We can only witness to a failure of memory at certain points (which failure has already been shown to be untrustworthy as evidence) or to movements of our body to which we can supply no corresponding conscious states as premeditation. But our inability to testify to such is merely negative. A great deal has been made, in one way and another, of the fact that there are links in premeditated action which do not come into consciousness, there being no knowledge, for instance, of the processes in nerve and muscle between the movement of the arm in writing and the premeditation of such movement. As a fact, however, none of the physiological processes which accompany the psychical are present to our consciousness except as given through the senses or through nerve-transmission similar to that of sense-perception. The conscious elements of any present state of thought do not include the changes in brain-matter concomitant with them. But the question may be raised, as Haeckel raises it,--though perhaps somewhat differently,--in his essay on Soul-cells and Cell-souls, as to whether the brain-cells themselves are not endowed with consciousness; and any answer in the negative is, evidently, an assumption, of which we can give no proof. Indeed, the question may be asked, and has been asked, whether the remarkable white blood corpuscles which traverse our body, and are so similar to certain lower forms of life, are not to be regarded as distinct beings, or whether, in fact, all the cells whose combined life and movement make up our own are not endowed with distinct being and consciousness. Again an answer in the negative is evidently a mere assumption. And why stop, in this case, exactly with the cells of animal life; why not apply our question to those of plant life also? Why not, indeed, suppose all forms to be endowed with consciousness, all harmonious motion to be accompanied by pleasure, all dissolution and conflict by pain? From analogy we may conclude something, but from mere non-analogy nothing. Our experience may entitle us to the assertion that all beings possessing a nervous system are endowed with consciousness, but we cannot conclude, therefore, that all beings not possessing a nervous system are not endowed with consciousness. We have associated consciousness with acts peculiar to man, and hence inferred its presence in similar movements of animals similarly constructed. But if we could examine the physiological accompaniments of our own thought and feeling and their issue in action, if we could look on at all the details, the chemical and mechanical changes of the physiological processes, what hint should we find in these more than in any other physical processes, from which to infer consciousness? They are not the less rigidly in accordance with natural law than any other. But our observation of all other processes than those of our own organism is a mere extraneous one, like this we have imagined of the processes of our own body; if there were consciousness in other forms we could not enter into it; and how can we prove extraneously its non-existence? Our own "stability" of function and the stability of all life-motion has been developed in a perfectly similar manner to that by which the stability of the heavenly bodies has been developed, the physical side of the process being just as fully a matter of action and reaction, and our action towards ends the slowly progressive result of this course of action and reaction, just as is the case with the harmonious movements of the systems of the heavens. It would, moreover, be perfectly easy to formulate a purely physical and mechanical explanation of our action, as Carneri does of the action of ants and other species,--to explain the plucking of a rose, for instance, as mere reaction upon the sense of smell and sight, or as the mere mechanical action of cell-matter.

But, again, on the other hand: If it is true that the nervous system is developed from cells of the outer covering of the body, it is, nevertheless, not true that those primary cells are the nervous system, any more than it is true that the lowest forms of life, from which man has developed, are human beings. Rudimentary eyes exist in some animals in the form of mere pigment spots, but we do not suppose these pigment spots to endow the animal with sight as we understand it. Sight is not a function of all forms of life, neither is hearing, and these powers have developed out of forms of animal life in which they did not exist; why then is it necessary to suppose consciousness to be a property of all forms of life because we know it to appear in some higher developments of life? Why may it not arise, as do sight and hearing, by gradual evolution, as a function of special organisms? Have we any direct knowledge of consciousness except in connection with certain normal conditions of our own brain? And, this being said, have we any means left by which we can prove the existence of consciousness, except in connection with a brain similar to our own?

What grounds have we for assuming the existence of consciousness where the analogy of our own organization does not furnish us with an argument? If we argue from the analogy of our own experience to the existence of consciousness in animals whose organization is similar to our own, and then, following down the scale of life, find no pause or gap at which to draw an exact line, we must not the less forget that with the diminishing analogy the force of our inference diminishes in like degree. Or where is the logical necessity of inferring that consciousness must exist in the inorganic either because the organic originally developed from the inorganic, or because it suffers continually a renewal by nourishment, which is, in effect, as much a development from the inorganic as the supposed primal one? The pigment spot from which the eye arises is not the eye, simple protoplasm is not the organized human being; whence does the physical organization arise? Are we to suppose it, too, as preexistent, "in a weaker form," or in any form, in the inorganic? Whence have we any grounds for assuming that that which we know only in connection with a certain peculiar organization exists elsewhere? Are we to suppose the color blue to be present in certain chemical elements because their chemical compound is blue? Or how is it that even isomeric compounds may exhibit different qualities? Shall we regard the color as not essentially connected with the chemical constitution of the supposed compound? As a matter of fact, color is one of the chemist's means of recognition. Or shall we "explain" the color by the length of light-waves or the construction of the eye, correcting, thus, one part of our experience by another, and assuming one as fundamental and essential, the other as non-essential? We "explain" sound as wave-movement in some outer medium and in the ear, correcting, thus, the hearing by sight or touch; does this mean that that part of our experience given us through the eye or hand alone is truth, and to be relied on and recognized as such, while the experience given us through the other senses is non-essential and not to be accepted or relied on? But if the eye gives us the truth, then why do we, in the case of color, correct it again by another phase of our experience? How are we to decide which is essential, the wave-movement that is (or may be made) perceptible to our eye, or the sound heard by our ear, the color directly seen or the length of the light-wave concluded from experiment? As a matter of fact, we emphasize one or the other according to the end we have in view in our experiment. Is it the length of the wave which causes the color, or the color which causes the particular wave-length? If we analyze brain-action as chemical action, do we prove thereby that the consciousness concomitant with this peculiar chemical action under these peculiar conditions must exist elsewhere under other conditions? Are the characteristics of one chemical compound the same as those of another because both compounds are matter and motion? If we prove that the brain contains cells similar to cells in other parts of the nervous system, that the whole nervous system arises, in the first instance, from epithelium cells, that the whole animal is descended from some primal protoplasmic cell, and that the cells of plants are similar, in many ways, to those of animals, do we thereby prove that consciousness exists except as cooerdinate with the peculiar cells and arrangements of cells in the brain? We have no precedent from which to argue, since consciousness is to us a unique feature of the universe; we know it immediately only as existent in ourselves, and in order to obtain any precedent must be guilty of assuming it in order to prove it.

The dilemma seems, thus, as we analyse and inquire into it more closely, to increase rather than decrease in significance. How is any solution to be arrived at?

If we return to the beginning of our considerations on this point, we shall find that, in coming at the question from either side, we have made an assumption. Our first premises were as follows: Assuming that consciousness is the cause of movement by which man attempts to arrive at his ends, what reason have we for supposing consciousness to exist outside man? and, on the other hand: Assuming mechanical action and reaction to be the cause of movement in inorganic nature, what reason have we for assuming this to be the cause of action in organic existence? Let us examine these assumptions more closely.

We may return to the theory of the gradual development of stable out of unstable conditions as stated in different ways by Zoellner, Fechner, and Du Prel. As has been shown, the principle applies to organic as well as to inorganic nature, and is only a broader principle including that of the Survival of the Fittest. There is a physical side to all psychical functions, and everywhere our investigation shows us the physical following unchanging laws. The development of the Stable from the Unstable explains to us the evolution of function in the direction of the preservation of the organic forms of which it is the function, as well as the evolution of harmonious movement in the heavenly bodies. The explanation of the natural and necessary elimination of the inharmonious covers the whole ground, and seems to assign a cause for every form of preservative action, for the harmonious conduct which preserves the state or the family as a collection of individuals, as well as for the harmony of function that preserves the individual. As long as reason can change no smallest detail in the workings of the laws of nature, as long as it can never render any motion other than the exact resultant of the forces represented in it, what room remains for reason as a cause? Ought we not rather, though from a much broader and therefore more convincing, in fact from the broadest and hence most convincing view of the matter, to regard consciousness, as do many physiologists on narrower grounds, as the mere accompaniment of material processes?

But this brings us again to a consideration of the concept of cause. What do we mean by cause? Above, we spoke of the "cause of motion"; do we designate by this term those factors of preceding motion which, continued, produce it as composite resultant? If so, why not substitute for the term "cause of motion," "component factors of motion"? But is this, in fact, all we meant by cause? Was there not, in our mind, as we made use of the term, a vague half-conception of some additional force beyond those so exactly summed up in the resultant, which, in some indefinable manner, guided the process? As has been sufficiently demonstrated, no such additional force can be shown to exist, or be logically assumed in theory, except in some transcendental sense; nature gives us only perfect equivalence of forces. A cause of motion except as the mere sum of its preceding components is, therefore, a natural impossibility. Hence the reason or consciousness cannot be assumed to be such a cause. But if consciousness cannot be regarded as such a cause additional to the component factors of motion, neither can anything outside consciousness be regarded as such a cause. Natural laws are often treated as if they constituted a cause; but they are not entities which control nature: they are merely forms by which we express nature's constancy, uniformity. Neither is constancy or uniformity a controlling entity: it is simply a generalization, if a universal one, whether we regard it as a priori or as a posteriori. It appears, then, that we have no greater reason for regarding the constancy of nature or natural law as cause than we have for asserting reason to be such.

In this connection the question may be in order, as to why the student of the natural sciences, who is in the habit of proclaiming, so loudly, the necessity or at least the constancy of everything in nature, should yet elect to assign to consciousness the character of the non-essential, that is the accidental. Action and reaction are, according to him, essential inherent properties of brain matter as such, but consciousness is merely a dependent. But who shall decide what part or form of force, what factors of the universe are accidental and what essential? If our assertion of constancy in natural phenomena means anything at all, it means that nothing is accidental, but that all factors of phenomena are essential. Is the bell the less silver to my eye because it appeals to my ear with sound, or the ball the less round to touch because my field of vision is flat? Even if we suppose forms of matter, and organic forms, to exist without consciousness, can we therefore assert consciousness to be any the less essential, any the less inherent in the nature of things, any the less existent and actual, where it appears? If so, what physiological function can we call inherent and essential, since these all also arise with evolution? Heat may exist without light, but is light therefore less essential than heat, where it arises? The very constancy which psychical phenomena exhibit would show their essential character as factors of the universe. Perhaps it is the attempt of the spiritualist to assign to consciousness something more than such a character which has led his adversary into the opposite error of asserting it to be something less; but the two extremes of doctrine are quite equally far from that scientific method which holds to given phenomena. Materialism is as much metaphysics as Spiritualism is; and the materialist who condemns metaphysics condemns himself. Consciousness belongs to the Actual; and the Materialism which assigns it a place subordinate to that of other actual phenomena is as much dogmatism as is any theory which subordinates the other phases of the Actual to it. The fact that consciousness bears constant relation to certain physiological phenomena is no ground for pronouncing it the effect and the physiological phenomena the cause, it the dependent and the physiological phenomena the independent factors; the relations of all forms of force to each other are constant. Heat is constant in its accompaniment of light; and yet who shall say the one is dependent, the other independent, the one cause, the other merely effect?

We have only to regard the theories of specialists in order to discover how easily habitual occupation with one particular side, form, factor, or phase of phenomena inclines one to regard that side as the only essential one, and all others as non-essential, dependent upon it, mere effect of which it is the cause. The physicist tends to interpret everything by mechanical action and reaction; the chemist lays more particular stress on the chemical properties of organic as of inorganic matter; the physiologist emphasizes cellular structure and combination, and makes much of brain cells, the spinal cord, the nervus sympathicus, and the special sense-organs; the biologist often regards the attraction and repulsion involved in the so-called sensibility of all forms of living matter as the cause of all life phenomena; the anatomist calls attention to the arrangement of organs with respect to each other, the mechanical adjustment of parts for function, the size and shape of bones as caused by weight and the angle of its incidence, etc., etc.; while the psychologist on the other hand refers everything to mental causality. For complete science, however, we need the aid of every special science,--of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physiology, Anatomy, Psychology, and all the other branches which can contribute to any side of our knowledge of nature. The desire within us for unity is strong, the impulse to simplify by referring everything to a single principle almost irresistible; and in so far as we do this through a conviction of the oneness of the universe as consisting of interdependent parts we are in a certain sense justified; but until we can grasp this unity in its totality, our one-sided reductions must remain false in so far as they make claim to include the whole of truth. It may be most useful to choose out that side or phase of phenomena for any particular investigation which is most accessible to such investigation; where the links of the psychical fail, it may be necessary to scientific completeness or clearness to complete the chain with the aid of the physical, but it should be borne in mind that this is a device of reason for convenience' sake. It may be possible to imagine two worlds, one in which the physical evolution alone takes place and all phenomena peculiar to organic function arise through the action and reaction of organic matter;[122] but the question is not what we can imagine but what is: we can imagine many things which do not exist and are impossible to nature. The human reason has also found it possible to conceive of spirit unconnected with body.

The materialist calls triumphant attention to the constancy of material phenomena, and proves, by careful comparison with cooerdinate psychical phenomena, the uniformities in the latter. Disease of every kind, but particularly those forms of disease which attack especially the nervous system--brain and spinal cord and the nerve endings--furnish the strong points of his argument, which is thus based on facts no lover of truth desires to gainsay; but when the materialist has shown us all these facts, has he not proved, with regard to the psychical, exactly that constancy which entitles it to consideration as a part of the actual universe subject to natural law?

The materialist objects that if the physical side of nature is the essential one, the psychical cannot be essential. On what grounds is this claim based? Is the color of an object not essential to it because its shape is essential, or do the actual existence and change of color according to natural law interfere with the actual existence and change of shape according also to natural law? Does only one of our senses give us truth?

Logic is very ready with its definitions of "things" and their "properties" and "accidents," as Physics is very ready with its analyses of light and color and sound, and Physiology with its analyses of the sense organs and their relations to color and sound. But shall we accept only the physiological analysis of cell form and action, and reject the sense-synthesis of sight or hearing as less important, less actual? Or are we to believe that the sense-function alone is essential and not also some actuality in its object, as of this or that color? Are we to believe that any property or accident of a thing may change, and the thing remain yet actually the same thing? What are our essences as separated from their properties and accidents? As a matter of fact, we know nothing except we know it as some particular thing, every change in which leaves it something different from what it was before. Changes of particular form or color are changes to some other particular form or color, unless they are such changes as withdraw the object from the reach of the special sense of sight before appealed to, as for instance in the case of evaporation. That one form of force may accompany or pass into another makes neither one of the concomitants and neither the preceding nor the succeeding form less real. As a fact, however, much superstition still remains with us as unconscious result of just such withdrawals from the perception of one sense and analogous new appeals to some hitherto unaffected sense, although we are accustomed to flatter ourselves that science has long overcome this superstition. There is no change that is not a particular change, that is not according to constant laws of nature, and, as such, essential to nature. There is no phase of nature that exact science can consistently regard as non-essential. So that, even if reason does not exist in combination with all matter, we have no ground for regarding it as non-essential where it does exist, and no more reason for defining it as effect than we have for defining it as cause. Result it may be, as physiological function is result,--that is, an end-form of processes of change which we call evolution.

But we have found our disproof and also our proof of the existence of reason outside the human species fail us wherever the direct evidence of extreme analogy is wanting, as soon as we cease to regard reason as a cause of physiological change. Perhaps it will be well for us to define more closely the province of reason, before we proceed further in our considerations. An exhaustive analysis is not necessary to our purpose and it would be useless to attempt it at this point of our argument. The relation of reason to action is what chiefly concerns us here, and in this connection Mr. Leslie Stephen's definition of it as that faculty which enables us to act with regard to the distant and future might seem to designate its important function.[123] Simple reaction on the present action of force belongs to all matter. However, when we consider further, a certain doubt may rise as to the exact correctness of this definition or description, for does not that which we call instinct often perform the same office for the animal as that which we have designated as the office of reason? Let us look into this question a little more closely. We may take, for instance, the case of those insects and other animals which, though never caring for or indeed seeing their offspring after the hatching of the latter, make provision at the laying of the eggs for their nourishment during the helplessness of the first period of their life; are we to suppose that these animals have any means of knowing that they are providing for their offspring? Can they have learned the fact from their own parent whom they never saw, or from others of their own species who are in the same predicament as themselves? As Schneider points out,[124] the human infant must have sucked before it could have had any ideas, as individual, of the act of sucking. The newly hatched chickens of Eimer's experiments above referred to could scarcely have had any conception of the act of eating before they picked at their food. How happens it that the young of many of the lower animals which give no care to eggs or offspring yet know how to care for themselves after the peculiar manner of their kind? Once it is admitted that any acts which attain results that constitute desirable ends for the acting subject need not be regarded as caused by knowledge of the ends, there is no reason to suppose that the principle may not hold of many acts in which a distinct knowledge of the end seems to play a part. But what do we mean by end?

Let us take, for instance, the act of eating. The biologist and the physiologist tell us that the end which eating serves is the preservation of life; and the biologist may further add--not the life of the individual, alone, but that of the species. The very consistent physiologist may principally have in view, in eating, the preservation of his own health, and may even take into consideration, in a degree, his possible future offspring, guarding his own health with a view to theirs. With a minority of other men these more general and distant results may to some extent be kept in view as ends. But it is evident that, with the majority of people, they are, where ends at all, subordinate ones, the immediate satisfaction of hunger, the pleasure of eating, or the relief of physical depression, appearing oftener as chief end. And what is to be said of the new-born infant, which sucks when the breast is placed between its lips? what is the end which it has in view in taking nourishment? Shall we suppose it, as individual, to have any definite conception of the contrast between states of hunger and states of satisfaction, and to possess the knowledge that the act of sucking is the proper means to the attainment of satisfaction as an end? As the infant becomes the boy seating himself at table with a distinct conception of pleasure to be attained by the gratification of a vigorous appetite, so the boy may become the physiologist eating with a view chiefly to his own health and to the further end of health in his offspring. How does it happen that, thus, the same act, the significance of which remains the same, may be performed and by the same individual yet with quite different ends, or perhaps in some cases (that of the infant) no end at all, in view?

When we perceive the sphex providing its eggs, as is its wont, with living and yet motionless and helpless insects, we can scarcely refrain from believing that it is inspired by parental affection thus to provide for its future young; and yet we might, with quite equal reason, suppose that the act of copulation, in the case of the sphex, must have in view the propagation of offspring and the preservation of the species, since this is its result also; we refrain from so supposing, simply because a common experience furnishes us with the knowledge that the act of copulation, most necessary to the propagation of offspring and the preservation of the species, may yet be performed with no direct view to either of these ends, the birth of offspring being even regarded, in many cases, as something to be avoided if possible. With respect to all manner of acts, we continually fall into error by imputing what would be our own end, in case we performed the act, to another individual of our own species performing it; and the danger of error is doubtless increased when we attempt to judge the ends of an entirely different species by ends in a degree common to our own species. There is no reason why we should not suppose that some less ultimate end than that of the preservation of offspring may be present to the consciousness of the sphex placing food about its eggs, just as some nearer end than preservation of the species, health of offspring, or even individual health may be present to the human individual in the acts of copulation or of food-taking. And there remains still the further question as to whether the care of the sphex for its eggs may not be, and continue forever, on the plane of the first act of food-taking in the human infant; and then the question again arises as to what the nature of that plane of action may be.

These questions must remain, I believe, in great part unanswered, considerations such as those noticed above making the inference even of like ends from like acts very untrustworthy, the inference of similar ends from similar acts still more so, and the inference of the existence of no end or consciousness at all a logical impossibility. However, a certain general clew is given us in the constant cooerdination of our own nervous system with psychical processes, from which we may infer psychical processes in some manner and degree similar to our own in species whose nervous system greatly resembles our own; the similarity need not be that of ends, however. The decreasing similarity of nervous organization as we descend the animal scale may be supposed to be cooerdinate with some decrease of psychical similarity. Wherein this increasing dissimilarity consists, however, we have yet to inquire.

If we return to the act of food-taking in the individual, we perceive that, avoiding any exact assumption as to the definite nature of the act in its first appearance in the infant, we may make the general assertion that, as in the case of the supposed physiologist who finally comes to eat with a direct view to the preservation of health in his offspring as well as his own preservation and health, the act itself, while remaining unchanged in nature, connects itself, in the process of development, with various ends. As the individual becomes conscious of farther and farther reaching and more and more complicated results of the act, he postulates these as ends, not forgetting, however, important ends earlier postulated. He may eat, as a boy, for the pleasure of eating, later with his health and the capacity for useful work in view, and finally to the end also, or perhaps primarily, of securing healthy offspring; but he eats, in all these cases; and it is even supposable that he may eat the same kinds of food, healthful food being, from the beginning, agreeable to him. The widening of knowledge by experience, in the case of the human individual, furnishes him with more distant and more complex ends, which were earlier impossible to him, since he knew nothing of them.

Something similar appears to be the truth in the case of the mental progress of the human species as a whole. The growth of knowledge is, in fact, a growth of consciousness of the constant connection of particular processes with particular results, and of human acts as affecting these; with which increase of knowledge a further cooerdinate development in the sense of a postulation of further and further and more and more complex ends keeps pace. We are continually making "discoveries,"--performing or observing operations some or all of the observed results of which are unforeseen by us, though these very results may be later sought as ends. We are often able to predict the results even of entirely new experiments; but we foresee, and can therefore assume as end, no results the elements of which in their connection with their conditions have not first come, in some way, within our knowledge. Nothing is a discovery which does not involve some new element or new combination of elements. The growth of knowledge, in individual and species, and the increase in distance and complexity of ends never attain completeness, not all results become known; new discoveries are constantly being made which show us that we have hitherto been blind to results continually before our eyes, action in accordance with which would have been most advantageous to us.

With all these facts before us, how are we to decide as to the end in view in any non-human act? How can we be sure whether the bird which covers its eggs is acting with a view to the production of offspring or merely, as some authors have assumed, to the more immediate end of cooling its own breast.[125] How do we know whether any feeling which we might term mother-love is active in the sphex's care for her eggs, whether they are, as some authors have suggested, a part of her own ego and therefore cared for, or whether the act of caring for them has not finally come to have some immediate pleasure connected with it, such as accompanies the satisfaction of hunger or the sexual instinct, the pleasure itself being sought as an end? How do we know even whether the impaled butterfly is endeavoring to escape pain or merely attempting to continue its flight?

There appear to be some general lines that we may draw. Thus, for instance, all facts seem to justify the assumption that the possession of a nervous system involves sensibility and susceptibility to pain and pleasure; and thus it is hardly consistent to suppose that the struggle of the impaled butterfly can be without pain. It might be at times more agreeable to our selfishness to suppose animals insusceptible of pain, but I think we can scarcely lay that flattering unction to our soul, and must face the assumption of their sensibility and feeling. The question as to whether the butterfly has any distinct idea of escape as an end to be striven for is a different one and not so easily solved. Yet as regards conscious ends, too, we may be able to arrive at some general conclusions with respect to the acts of animals, even of those low in the scale. Some such conclusions have already been reached in our considerations. But it is to be noted that all these are purely negative--exclusions not inclusions. We may be able to say, for instance, after careful experiment and observation, that this or that act takes place where there is no possibility of previous knowledge, on the part of the animal performing it, of this or that result (which we may, however, regard as an end that should especially be desired by the animal), and that this particular result cannot, therefore, be an end present to the animal mind, as such, in performing the act. Lubbock believes that the passive state of the caterpillar in its cocoon during its transformation to a butterfly is a necessary condition of its preservation, since the mouth while undergoing change to an organ adapted to sucking, and the digestive organs during their preparation for the assimilation of honey, must be useless, and therefore the animal in an active state must perish of starvation. It is scarcely to be supposed, however, that the insect is aware of these ends of self-preservation involved in the state of passivity in the cocoon and knowingly seeks them as ends. Since the metamorphosis takes place but once in the individual life, the insect has no means of learning anything about it beforehand from his individual experience (though, even if this were not true, there would still remain the first instance of cocoon-spinning to be explained); and it is both difficult to suppose that the caterpillar has always had opportunity to be instructed in some way by butterflies of his kind, as well as unnecessary to suppose this, since we see, in other cases, that acts useful to the individual may take place without previous instruction or experience. In the case of the sphex, too, as in that of many other lower species that provide for offspring they will never see, it is not to be supposed that the welfare of the offspring but rather some result nearer than this is the end in view, if any end be present to consciousness.

With regard to primary acts of instinct such as those of the newly hatched chicken, and the new-born infant, it would seem as if an argument like the following might hold; it is, in fact, often made use of in a somewhat different form. We have seen that not only the progress of the individual but also that of the human species as a whole has involved an ever increasing knowledge of the connection of processes with their results and the cooerdinate assumption of these increasingly distant and complex results as ends. The ends which animals with a less extensive knowledge of natural processes may postulate, must be nearer and less complex than our own, the ends of those whose experience affords them least extensive knowledge being nearest and simplest, until we arrive thus at those lowest forms of animal life which cannot be supposed to have any knowledge that may be termed such, whose action and reaction, in its psychical aspect, can be figured only as vague sensation.

But first as to this vague sensation. Among our own acts, in which "blind instinct" seems to play a rather larger part than reason, there are those in which the gratification of the instinct involved is attended with a peculiar pleasure, while the denial of gratification to a sufficient degree is correspondingly painful; these are the acts connected with the gratification of the primary appetites of hunger, thirst, and sex. The strength of the appetites, the degree of emotion involved in them, seems to be directly cooerdinate with their character as connected with primary functions. This being the case, why may we not suppose the functions of the simplest forms of life, which we believe to have been passed on from generation to generation almost unchanged, for the whole period of time occupied in the evolution of the human race, to be connected with feelings equally as strong as any of our own, or even stronger since function has been exercised on these few lines only? Feeling changes direction with the growth of man's knowledge, with the development of reason; it may be connected with new and more complex processes; but it would be difficult to prove that strength of feeling has increased except as connected with increased exercise of particular function--that is, it would be difficult to prove that the whole sum of feeling has increased. And if we may assume that it has not increased, then we must suppose as great a degree of feeling to be possible in the lowest animals as in man; and no reason appears why we should not suppose it to exist also in as great a degree in the plants and in the inorganic matter from which both these forms of the organic have sprung.[126]

And we have to notice a second fact: If the ends present to human reason are nearer ones according as the knowledge of the individual performing them is narrower, these nearer ends and the means of their attainment may yet be very clearly and thoroughly known, the narrower knowledge including the minute, often the minutest particulars, as far as it goes; and why may we not suppose the so-called "instinctive" movements of animals very low in the scale of being, which exhibit a most perfect adaptation as far as it reaches, to be connected with a like perfect, if very narrow, action of reason? Or why should we draw a line here between the movements of animals and all other movements?

We are thus brought face to face with a dilemma to which there appears to be no solution. If the solution is impossible, however, why attempt it? In this case, anything we may term solution can be only dogmatic assertion or else mere speculation. If the question is unanswerable, it is unanswerable, and there is no use in further endeavor in this direction. But, in reviewing our arguments, we shall find, I think, that that which led us astray at every turn and induced us to hope for an answer, now on this side, now on that, was the tendency to look for some independent cause, some essence, effecting change rather than being effected, or of which phenomena were only the properties. It was this which made us believe that we had found the means to an answer in reason as the cause of action towards ends, as also, again, that we had found it in the development of the higher organism from the lower, and of the organic from the inorganic. We know no such independent cause, no such essence. We know only variables, preceding conditions and succeeding conditions, all of which preceding and succeeding conditions we must regard as equally essential since they are equally actual; and we know in all variation a certain constancy of relations, which we, by abstraction, term law.

The argument which starts with the dependence of "ends" upon reason, and so infers a necessary intervention of reason where motion is such as to attain results regarded by the onlooker as ends to be desired, is often applied in a still wider form in Theology. Of course if we start with a definition of ends as results actually desired and premeditated, then we may infer reason from the assumed existence of "ends" in any case; but such a form of argument is evidently a gross case of petitio principii; we assume that which is to be proved,--namely, the desire and premeditation of the results attained. This fallacy ordinarily escapes the eye through the double significance of the word "end" as it is generally used; in the premises of the argument the use of the word is justifiable if no implications of reason and will are associated with it; but, with such a non-committal definition of the word, the conclusion noticed could never be reached, we should find ourselves at the end of the argument no nearer it than we were at the beginning.

The gradual development of stability from instability, harmony from disharmony, a state where collision is at a minimum from one where it was at a maximum, may be regarded as furnishing the best phase possible of a teleological argument. Even the dissolution of any system is part, according to the theory, of the evolution of some higher system of stability, that is, of one including more elements. This leads us, however, to the question of the definition of "higher"; the friends of theological Teleology are very ready to define the development of life up to man as the development of higher from lower forms, but are they willing to regard a succeeding stage of still greater stability, a state of barren and lifeless rest like that of the moon's surface, which our earth will probably one day attain, as a yet higher stage of development, the destruction of man and of the earth as part of a higher evolution? We have to consider, further, that, unless we assume some final state of absolute stability for the universe, we can suppose only an asymptotic evolution towards it, in which higher and higher systems of stability are developed only to be again destroyed. We know nature only as involving such processes of evolution and dissolution; we know no enduring stability. If we regard merely the side of evolution in these processes, we may seem to have a strong argument for design; but if we give attention to the dissolution succeeding every evolution, the argument loses its force. And, again, if we assume the continual order of destruction, reconstruction, and re-destruction finally to give place to a condition of absolute stability, the question may be recurred to whether this state could be one of motion, whether it must not rather be conceived as one of absolute rest, some frozen peace of which the moon's is but an imperfect type. We may ask, then, whether the friends of the teleological argument would agree to designate this state, which is highest from a mathematical point of view since it includes all the elements of the universe, as highest in any point of view favoring a theological theory of design. The teleological argument is accustomed to take into consideration only the evolution side of natural process; the pessimistic argument lays emphasis, on the other hand, on all forms of dissolution,--both views corresponding thus, as a matter of fact, to but half the truth. Even if we do not look beyond the evolution upon the earth, it is evident that each step in advance is marked by wide-spread destruction, each survival of the few bought at the expense of the slaughter of the many. We may overlook the slaughter, but it does not the less exist; we may egoistically shut our eyes to the pain, when it is not our pain, but it is not the less a fact.

But further than this: Our previous investigations have shown us difficulties on every side, when we have attempted to assume reason in matter as the cause of stability or harmony, preservative action, or the survival of the fittest. We may argue that mere matter and motion cannot have produced such results as these; but how do we know this? How have we such an intimate acquaintance with the nature of matter and motion that we can assert this? Where were we at the origin of the universe (if we suppose such) or where were we at the origin of life, that we should be able to be assured of this? Or how do we know in any case, from an origin, what might evolve with time? We obviously cannot argue from the analogy of man's action, since he is a part of the problem itself, included in the question, and such an analogy is a petitio principii. If we have found it impossible to assume reason as cause in his case, how can we, by the analogy of his action and by a universal generalization, assume it as a Universal Cause? We have, in fact, absolutely no precedent from which to argue, and may answer,--when Wallace asserts that combinations of chemical compounds might produce protoplasm, but that no such combinations could produce living or conscious protoplasm,[127]--How do you know that they could not? We have, indeed, no evidence to the contrary: we do not know. If we assume the creation of protoplasm or the creation of the world to have been analogous to any of the phenomena of our experience, in which we find only certain constant results of the forces resident in matter, then certainly we have no precedent for asserting the necessity of divine creation; and if we assume the creation to have been essentially different from any of the phenomena of our experience, then certainly we have no data upon which to base any theory whatever concerning it. But the assumption that the creation of protoplasm, of the earth, or of the universe, was essentially different from any of the processes that we know, is a mere assumption, without basis: we have no data from which to argue in this direction; any hypothesis of such sort is made purely and absolutely a priori. A first appearance of protoplasm upon the earth we must infer from the facts furnished us by Geology and Astronomy; but a creation of either matter or motion is a mere assumption. As we know matter, it can neither be created nor destroyed. We cannot draw any inference from man's will, for man creates nothing; his action is itself a part of nature. Advanced theological doctrine tends more and more to limit the creation to the first communication of motion to matter or to assume some transcendental government of the universe, known, according to the assumption, transcendentally, or inferred from the existence of moral tendency or from desire for the transcendental in man. With Transcendentalism we have, as yet, nothing to do; and with moral principle in its bearings on this matter we cannot deal until later. But as for the hypothesis of a first communication of motion to "dead" matter, we may remark, as before, that this is a mere hypothesis with no facts to support it. We know nothing of motion apart from matter, or of matter except through motion; the two cannot be separated in fact, and there is no reason for their separation in hypothesis or theory. Du Prel says: "Whether causeless motion is scientifically conceivable, depends on whether we have to regard rest or motion as the natural condition of matter; for a motion that is not primary must, as newly appearing change, be preceded by a cause. But though experience might incline us to regard rest as the original condition of matter, and therefore to seek a cause for every motion, this is, nevertheless, only the result of an incomplete induction. For if it is true that we never see a motionless body pass into a state of motion without a cause, on the other hand, it is just as certain that a moving body can never pass into a state of rest without cause; and if this axiom can never be directly proved in processes on the earth, we can, nevertheless, show reason for it: motion on the earth cannot be imagined without resistance from obstacles, since the attraction of the earth and the moments of friction can never be removed. But the axiom is indeed indirectly proved by the fact that we see the velocity of a body decrease in proportion to the resistance of obstacles; the body can only then attain to a condition of rest when the moving force is consumed to the last remnant. Hence, if we subtract the whole sum of resistance to the motion, we have again the former condition, the motion with its original velocity.... Which condition of matter is the original one, rest or motion, experience cannot inform us. We have as good reason for regarding rest as arrested motion, as for regarding motion as disturbed rest. The requirement of an outer cause for the first impulsion of matter therefore has meaning only in so far as rest is claimed to be the original, natural condition of matter; but this claim cannot be substantiated, and the opposite is just as conceivable, namely, that rest is only arrested motion, and that all cosmic matter had motion from the beginning."[128]

Wallace practically abandons his own ground, not only in his later works in ascribing much to natural selection which he was at first inclined to believe the effect of some supernatural cause, and omitting from his chapters on the application of the conception of evolution to man several arguments for supernatural intercession employed in his earlier work, but even in his first book, by admitting that natural selection takes advantage of mental superiority just as it does of physical superiority. We may notice at this point, however, a consistent inconsistency of his, in that, though he denies the existence of consciousness in matter, he leaves no logical room for the opposite theory of a gradual development of consciousness, since he asserts that all instinctive actions were at first self-conscious. This position is held by others also.

We may note here an objection of Wallace's that "because man's physical structure has been developed from an animal form by natural selection, it does not necessarily follow that his mental nature, even though developed pari passu with it, has been developed by the same causes only." The question may be again repeated as to what is meant by cause; and it will be well to keep distinct, in our thought, transcendental cause and cosmic conditions. We must admit that we have no proof of the absence of transcendental causes. Neither the constancy of nature nor the inseparability and indestructibility of matter and motion can prove the absence of such causes, which might be entirely consistent with these things; we have no data from which to argue that they are not so.

But though the law of Excluded Middle must hold good here as elsewhere, it is also to be noticed that the absence of proof in the natural order of things, with respect to the non-existence of transcendental causes, is not equivalent to the presence of proof of the opposite. We cannot infer, from the fact that no proof can be given of the non-existence of transcendental causes, that therefore proof can be given of the existence of such causes; or, from the fact that transcendental causes may be, that therefore transcendental causes are; they may also not be. There is, in fact, absence of proof for either view. Of the transcendental, if it exists, we can know by definition absolutely nothing. The man who endeavors to prove its existence generally bases his argument on this very fact in order to disprove the validity of any argument of his opponent from natural facts; when he, therefore, after legitimately silencing his opponent, goes on himself to prove the transcendental, he is guilty of self-contradiction. When Fiske asserts that there is no problem "in the simplest and most exact departments of science which does not speedily lead us to a transcendental problem that we can neither solve nor elude,"[129] we may admit the point, but surely it does not follow, because we cannot solve it, that therefore we must solve it, far less that we must solve it in one particular way. If we cannot solve it, we cannot solve it, and there is an end to the matter, unless we find new proof. We may not be able, as Fiske says, to elude the problem, but we certainly are able to elude the answering of it, and must do so perforce if the first part of the assertion,--namely, that we cannot answer it,--be correct. When Fiske urges us to accept one view because "the alternative view contains difficulties at least as great," we fail to perceive any grounds in this position for such acceptance. To Fiske's question as to whether we are to regard the work of the Creator as like that of the child, who builds houses just for the pleasure of knocking them down again, we may answer that the existence of a Creator must first be proved before we, from a scientific basis, may make any inference as to his purpose; and that we certainly cannot use an assumption of his existence in order to protest against a theory of Disteleology,--as Fiske seems to do,--if we use the teleological argument to prove his existence.

We may furthermore protest against the elevation of any negative term, as, for instance, Spencer's "Unknowable," to a term signifying a positive existence. We do not know whether there is any positive Transcendental that is to us unknowable; this mere negative term is admissible only on the assumption that it expresses such an absence of knowledge. The Unknowable assumed as existent entity is the Unknowable known,--a self-contradiction.

A similar criticism may be applied to Spencer's use in his "First Principles" of the word "Force," spelled with a capital, and defined as designating "Absolute Force," an "Absolute, Unconditioned Reality," "Unconditioned Cause,"[130] etc. The attribution of reality to a mere mental abstraction is a survival of old conceptions repudiated by Spencer in their older form. Of forces we know much, but of abstract Force nothing,--except as an abstraction from reality; and the dangers in the use of such a term are made manifest by Spencer's elevation of this concept to the character assigned it by the other terms quoted.

To sum up. We have found in nature only variables, no constant and invariable factor, no independent one according to which the others vary; we have found no cause that was not also an effect; that is, we have discovered nothing but a chain of phenomena bearing constant relations to each other, no causes except in this sense. We have no precedent or data from which to assert that chemical combinations could not have resulted in protoplasm and in living protoplasm, no data from which to assert that mere evolution could not have produced consciousness. As a matter of fact, however, we find the relations of consciousness and physiological process as constant as those of the different forms of material force, and while discovering no grounds upon which to pronounce either consciousness or physiological process the more essential, find none, either, for pronouncing one more than the other independent of what we call natural law. The logic of all our experience leads us to believe that neither protoplasm, nor the earth, nor any of the parts of the universe, could have originated otherwise than under natural law, that is, as the result of preceding natural conditions which must have contained all the factors united in the result, and would thus explain to us, if we knew them, in as far as any process is explained by analysis, the results arising from them. We know matter and motion only as united; we know no state of absolute rest, and we have no grounds for supposing any initial state of such absolute rest, or any state in which motion not previously existent in the universe entered. On the other hand, we have no proof of the absence of consciousness outside animal life, and no proof of the non-existence of transcendental causes, though likewise no proof of their existence.

FOOTNOTES:

[112] "Origin of Species," 6th ed., Vol. I. p. 320.

[113] "Lecture on Cell-souls and Soul-cells," 1878.

[114] "Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls," p. 349 et seq.

[115] See Part I. p. 161.

[116] "Der menschliche Wille," p. 13.

[117] On the Motions of the Tendrils of Plants; among the essays of Knight published under the title, "A Selection from Physiological and Horticultural Papers," 1841.

[118] See "Insectivorous Plants," Chaps. I. and II.

[119] "The Movements of Plants," Chap. III.

[120] See experiments made by Eimer: "Entstehung der Arten," etc., p. 263 et seq.

[121] E. Pflueger: "Die sensorischen Functionen des Rueckenmarks der Wirbelthiere," 1853.

[122] See Lange: "Geschichte des Materialismus," II. Theil, p. 486.

[123] "The Science of Ethics," p. 60.

[124] "Der thierische Wille," p. 161.

[125] See, for instance, Eimer: "Entstehung der Arten," p. 283.

[126] Carneri's instance, cited in support of his theory of the possibility of sensation without pleasure or pain, that certain nerves connected with fine sense-perception, may yet be cut without special pain to the owner, is a poor one, first, because highly developed nerves, the media of fine perceptions, are especially inapt examples for citation in support of any theory of primitive sensation in lower organisms, and, second, because the problem of pain and pleasure in such cases is very different from the problem of pain and pleasure in connection with ordinary excitation of nerve endings or the outer covering of the organism from which the nervous system has developed. The fact that, in highly developed organisms, some parts are less susceptible of pleasure and pain might as easily be construed into an argument that corresponding parts of lower organisms differ, in the same manner, in susceptibility. Furthermore, sensation being admitted, as Carneri admits it, or rather asserts it, of all forms of animal life, it is difficult to conceive how he can interpret the phenomena of appetition and repulsion as devoid of feeling. Most authors have argued, with much more reason, that pleasure and pain are primordial. Carneri's further argument that he who conceives the lower species as feeling pleasure and pain introduces an immense amount of pain into the world (p. 113, "Grundlegung der Ethik") is quite aside from the question as to the facts of the case. Nor can man create pain by his conception of its existence, or destroy it, if it exists, by a refusal to acknowledge its existence.

[127] See Part I. pp. 19, 22.

[128] "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls", p. 350 et seq.

[129] See Part I. p. 80.

[130] Pp. 170, 192d.

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III. THE WILL

In any discussion of the will, we are met at the outset by the difficulties of definition, on which whole chapters might be, and have been, written. But one great difficulty has already been considered in the discussions of the previous chapter, in the questions as to the existence of consciousness in inorganic nature, in organisms which differ from our own in not possessing a centralized nervous system, and in connection with actions of our own body known to our centralized consciousness only as results. Leaving these questions open, as we have found it necessary to do, and confining ourselves, in speaking of consciousness, to consciousness as we immediately know it, or as we may, with some degree of probability, infer it in animals constituted similarly to ourselves, we find one obstacle to our definition removed. For by will is generally meant a psychical faculty; and to speak of "unconscious will" is either a self-contradiction or a mere figure of speech.

We shall also find, I think, that the most essential characteristic of the will as a psychical faculty is that it is connected with action which has in view some end consciously sought; action to which there corresponds no conscious end, whether a long premeditated end or an end instantaneously comprehended and assumed in the moment of need, we term reflex. The question may arise as to whether there are not acts which we name merely "involuntary," which must be classified, from a pyschological standpoint, as midway between the voluntary and the reflex. But it may be answered that here, as everywhere in connection with the organic, there is difficulty in drawing distinct lines; there are psychical conditions in which some strong emotion, for instance, terror, so takes possession of the mind as almost to exclude plan of action, and the individual appears to act, as we say, "unconsciously"; but I think this very adverb solves, for us, to all practical purposes, the question we have put. When we analyze such psychical conditions, we often find that, besides emotion, there was some degree of preconception of action, though the emotion so absorbed our attention at the time that the other appeared subordinate and was easily forgotten; but the fact that we term action of this sort, where we fail to discover preconception, "unconsciously" performed, would go to confirm the definition with which we began, though we may have difficulty in deciding whether or not a particular action comes under the head of willed action, that is, action to a preconceived end.

Another question which has been frequently asked, in analyses of the will, is whether mere abstinence from action, the negation of action, can be classed as an instance of willing, willing being, by definition, an active, not a passive state. It may be answered that, from the physiological point of view, a point of view not to be wholly disregarded even by the conservative psychologist, the arresting action of the will as the control of lower by higher centres, is its most important function. And to this physiological fact corresponds the psychological fact that no stronger exertion of will-power is known to us than that sometimes necessary to the attainment of mere passivity. A definition that would exclude such passive states from the province of the will must exclude, on the same principle, all other willing not issuing in muscular action, and so all voluntary control of thought. The choice between activity and passivity may be as real and as difficult as between two different forms of activity.

We have here introduced the concept of choice, and it may be well to define this, and its significance in our definition of will, more exactly. Voluntary action is, we say, often preceded by long deliberation and severe struggle, ending finally in the choice of one of the many modes of action deliberated. We can conceive of this struggle as not so long, as shorter and shorter, until it occupies so little time and attention as to be scarcely perceptible. But we can conceive, also, of a premeditation which includes no struggle, in which one motive appears so strong as to exclude consideration of any but the one end, and the deliberation has reference only to the best means of attaining that end. The murderer, inspired by a desire for revenge, may seek his end with the same directness, if not the same instantaneousness, or with the same directness and instantaneousness, as the dog who snaps at a piece of meat; yet we call his action voluntary, whatever we may think of the dog's action, our conception of which may be rendered indistinct by our uncertainty as to the nature of instinct and the part it plays in the action of other species. We call the action of the murderer voluntary because we conceive that he consciously sought the end involved. We are even inclined to call it voluntary in cases where the criminal is moved by momentary passion, since we conceive that he might have exerted self-control.

Our conception of will is, therefore, closely bound up with the conception of conscious end, distant or near. Our association of choice with the act is not always exact; we may conceive of the choice as actually taking place between one of several ends deliberated upon, or as involved in the conscious determination of any end, even though no other was deliberated upon, even though all others were excluded from consciousness by passion; since we conceive that as all definition is, in fact, exclusion, so the determination of one end is in effect the negation of others that might have been sought, if only in the form of the contrary of action, inaction.

We are thus brought, first of all, to a consideration of the meaning of the term "end." As we have seen in the last chapter, an end is that part of the results of an action which consciousness especially holds in view in the performance of an act. The end in view has sometimes been called the cause of the act, but it is evident, as both Gizycki and Stephen have shown, that a future state, that is, something which at the time of willing does not exist, cannot move the will; though the representation of a hoped-for end is concerned in action,--in just what capacity we have yet to determine. It has also been urged that nothing external can act upon the will, but only internal states of consciousness. All depends, here, upon the definition of external and internal. The distinction between the two is a legitimate one where it calls attention to the difference between that which is at present perceived and that which is only remembered, or imagined from the elements given by memory. But what is an object, as present to me, beyond what it is to my consciousness? My knowledge of a thing is made up of various elements contributed through the different senses; and this assertion is exactly the same as the statement that a thing is the sum of its qualities. My idea of the fire, the lamp, or any other object as external, arises from the fact that it appeals to more of my senses than one, that, if withdrawn from one or from all but one, it may still be perceived by the other or others, or that, if withdrawn from all of them for a time by some obstacle, it may be perceived again when this obstacle is removed; but beyond perception or memory of perception, in any case, I have no consciousness of the object. The perception is not, however, something distinct from consciousness, but is consciousness. The error above noticed arises from the conception of consciousness as a sort of place, another space into which we cannot get objects from external space; the conception is a crude one, yet it often enters into psychological speculation. The perceived, that is the external, does, as a matter of fact, affect our will.

There may thus be two definitions of the term "internal" and two of "external," as the words are generally used. Internal may mean either within the body or within consciousness, external may mean external to the body or external to consciousness. The two meanings are, in both cases, commonly confused,--that is, consciousness is looked upon, as has been said, as a sort of internal space within the body to which external things cannot get admission. "External to consciousness" should refer simply to that which the individual or individuals considered do not perceive, of which they are unconscious. That of which we are conscious is in consciousness. But all manner of ingenious jugglery is played with the help of the metaphysical dualism implied in the other definition of the terms. The objection of a possibility of this duality of meaning applies to Barratt's use of the term "external" at the opening of his book on Ethics, and the objection of a possibility of a similar duality applies to many other expressions in the propositions and definitions with which he begins,--to such expressions, for instance, as "relative to our faculties," "state of consciousness," etc.[131] Objection may also be taken to such quantification of the predicate as is found in Cor. 1 of Prop. I.

To return to the question of the will. The thought-image, memory or perception, with its associations, has been termed the excitation or the motive and said to move or determine the will to some end. Thus the perception of the burning house is said to be that which leads me to give an alarm, or the perception of the smoking lamp that which moves me to turn it down. To this form of statement is often objected that mere thought or perception can never move the will, but that feeling is required to do this. A further discussion may arise as to whether it is feeling in the form of pleasure or of pain which moves the will. Many authors regard anticipated pleasure as a constant motive; Rolph, on the contrary, as we have seen, inclines to the view that it is always some present pain by which we are moved to action. And it is argued that, since the direction of the will is determined by pleasure or by pain, that is by motives, the will is not free.

Again, the physiologist calls attention to the fact that the so-called free action of the will has for its basis physiological processes, all of which are in accordance with the strict uniformity of nature, all subject to law, and all, as we must believe, capable of exact prediction from the conditions which produce them, if we but comprehended these conditions. There is no gap in these processes where free will might interpose; the whole thought-process, the deliberation preceding decision, the moral struggle if there is one, the decision itself, and its realization in action, have for their foundation physiological function, which is as much determined by necessity as any of the processes in inorganic nature. The results of past experience, not of the experience of the individual only but of that of the whole species inherited as inborn tendency and capacity and modified by individual circumstances, are stored up in the organism, the point of centralization being the brain; any single excitation sets this whole complicated machinery in motion and the result is the act. The individual, not understanding this complicated process of reaction, not being able to trace the results of experience to their source, to descend the whole scale of being to the beginnings of life and note the gradual development of tendency, and seeing the inadequacy of the excitation in itself to account for the action following, attributes to this a peculiar character, regarding that which is really result as absolute beginning, independent cause.

We may consider the matter from still another point of view. We may inquire whether the freedom predicated of the human will is predicated of that alone, or of will in the whole range of animal life. And if it be predicated of the human will alone, we may ask at just what point of the evolution this is supposed to arise, whether, in the gradual development, any particular point can be found or assumed to exist, of which we can say: Here the animal ceases and man begins. Or if freedom is asserted of the whole range of animal will, not, however, of plant movement or the motions of the inorganic, we may again inquire as to the point of exact division between the animal and the plant. Evolution is, by definition, a gradual process, a growth in which there are no gaps, and of which our finest and most minute calculations by infinitesimals can give us only a faint conception. Where is there any point of such a process at which we can suppose the entrance of a totally new principle that cannot be regarded as another expression of force or merely a new form of animal function, but as directly opposed to developed function and to the force that is subject to natural law?

The Evolutionist may state the problem in still a new form, as follows: The survival of any organism at a given period is determined by the fitness of that organism for the conditions of the environment at that period. The form and function of the animal are thus, at each moment, determined by the environment. And since only functions in harmony with the environment render the organism capable of survival under that environment, the functions of surviving organisms are in a direction favorable to the preservation of the form of which they are the functions. Since, moreover, self-preservation in some form, whether as preservation of the whole organism or as preservation of a part through satisfaction of its function (rendered possible only through harmony between the function and the environment), always constitutes the end sought by the will, the individual appears to himself to will ends, whereas these are all determined for him by the survival of the fittest, whose function he inherits and carries out subject only to the modification of the peculiar elements of his own environment. If we suppose, at any point of development, an action not in accord with that which the laws of nature necessitate decided upon by the will, such an action cannot be carried out. But even a decision is impossible contrary to natural law, since in preceding evolution there has been no point at which nature has not in like manner determined action, and the present decision, being the expression of function attained as the result of evolution, must be as much determined as the action which follows.

Or if we return to our conception of the development of stable from unstable conditions, we may consider all evolution of higher function as increased adaptation, that is, as harmony with an ever wider circle of nature, the reason appearing as corresponding concomitant knowledge of this widening circle, to which the function of the organism is adjusted. The reflection preceding decision on an end consists in the imagination, by aid of the memory of past experience, of some of the constant results of particular function, to which function, however, the organism is irresistibly moved. Thus that which is generally regarded as the greatest independence of nature is, in reality, the greatest subjection to nature considered as a whole, although this wider subjection means an increasing independence of the mere excitation of the moment. The ability to weigh all sides of a question, sometimes termed Freedom, is rather the widest adaptation, which means the widest determination by nature. The lower organisms may be, as Rolph and Alexander assert, as well adapted to their particular environment as the higher; but the higher are adapted to a wider environment, to more of the variations of the conditions on the earth's surface. Man is the most widely adapted of all animals. This is a fact which we express when we say that man's power of adaptation is greatest,--that is, that there are latent tendencies in him, the result of former adaptations, which may correspond sufficiently to new environment, i.e. to environment involving many new elements, to enable him to survive. This wider adaptation expresses itself especially in the higher development of the nervous centres, to which man's higher reason corresponds; it is through the reason especially that his adaptiveness comes to light.

The statistician often has considerable to say against a doctrine of freedom of the will. He calls attention to the necessary character of human action as evidenced by its uniformities under uniform circumstances, in the various important relations of life. These uniformities are not less than those which statistics reveal in disease and death and other events classed as not under the control of the will.

And to all this evidence we may add that of the history of the mental life of the species, derived from the combined labors of the geologist, the ethnologist, the philologist, and the historian. Everything goes to prove an evolution in the mental life of man, as gradual, and as much subject to the influence of the environment, as his physical evolution has been. Carneri says, "The eternal laws of mind point out the way upon which man has to proceed; it is the same way by which man has become man, and by which mankind must go forward even if it does not will thus to proceed."[132]

And again, the authorities on mental disease demonstrate the constant relations, not only of general health of brain to health of mind, and of disease of brain to mental unsoundness, but also of particular physical symptoms to particular mental symptoms. This constancy of relations is revealed with more certainty and distinctness by every step in the progress of medical knowledge. The specialist in mental disease inquires with reason how we can acknowledge the physical processes of the body to be governed by natural law, yet assert the emancipation from law of the psychical processes which vary concomitantly with these in a manner that science shows to be perfectly constant. To the testimony of Psychiatry may be added that of the comparatively new science of Criminology.

And, finally, Evolutional Ethics demonstrates the constancy of character, the persistence of habit, and the uniformity of its change under the influence of environment. If there is no persistence of character and uniformity in its action, we have no reason, as various authors have shown, for trust or distrust, for praise or blame; and, I think we may add, none for love or dislike, reverence or contempt, enthusiasm or coldness, in the contemplation of character or conduct. If the fact that a man acts honorably, kindly, nobly, in one instance is not a warranty that we may with reason expect him to act similarly again under similar circumstances, allowance being made for error in our interpretation of motive (which may have been merely self-interested where we thought it disinterested) and for changes produced in character by the environment between the first act and the opportunity of the second, then character is merely a jumbled chaos of chance, and the name "habit" a contradiction in terms. We may, perhaps, respect the single act, but we have no reason for respecting the individual performing it, since the "individual" cannot be regarded as coextensive with a single act of his life, and least of all when the act gives no clew to a permanent basis issuing in uniform action of which law can be predicated. In this case, the noble deed, or any number of noble deeds, afford us no security that the next act of the person performing them, or all the rest of the acts of his life, may not be wholly ignoble, base, and vile.

In the face of all the considerations thus offered us, we cannot well find reason for accrediting the will with a peculiar position in the universe, as emancipated from the natural law which we discover in all other phenomena. But it behooves us, in this connection, to inquire as to just what is the significance of the term "natural law." It has already been implicitly defined in our previous considerations. Lewes and several other modern philosophical writers have given excellent definitions of the expression. Lewes writes as follows: "Law is only one of two conceptions, (1) a notation of the process observed in phenomena, which process we mentally detach and generalize by extending it to all similar phenomena; (2) an abstract Type, which, though originally constructed from the observed Process, does nevertheless depart from what is really observed, and substitutes an Ideal Process, constructing what would be the course of the process were the conditions different from those actually present. The first conception is so far real that it expresses the observed series of positions. It is the process of phenomena, not an agent apart from them, not an agency determining them, but simply the ideal summation of their positions.... Phenomena, in so far as they are ruled, regulated, determined in this direction rather than in that, and necessarily determined in the direction taken,... are determined by no external agent corresponding to Law, but by their cooeperant factors internal and external; alter one of these factors and the product will be differently determined. It is owing to the very general misconception of the nature of Law, that there arises the misconception of Necessity; the fact that events arrive irresistibly when their conditions are present is confounded with the conception that the events must arrive whether the conditions be present or not, being fatally predetermined. Necessity simply says that whatever is, is, and will vary with varying conditions."[133] Neither Natural Law nor Necessity is an entity extraneous to phenomena which governs or compels them; the two are generalizations merely by which we express a certain uniformity that we find universal.

Let us return to our analysis of the organic as matter and of function as its motion. Go as far as we like in our analysis, and we still have left positive entities of matter and force, or matter, motion, and the equivalent of motion in resistance; moreover, we cannot suppose either matter or force to decrease by our analysis. Here, therefore, we have indestructible entities, and these, not Law and Necessity, are the positive factors. But if the final divisions of matter leave us still positive factors, then the combinations of these must be positive also; not only the theoretical atoms of the chemist, or the organic cells with their motions and functions, but the combinations of these in organisms, must be positive.

It is said that the organism answers to its environment "as the clay to the mould"; that it is formed by the environment and adjusted to it. Here we may inquire whether the adjustment referred to is present adjustment or that of the whole development of the organism. If present action of the environment is all that is had in view, it may be objected that not anything in the environment, and not the whole environment, is more positive than the organism. The one of the two factors cannot be regarded as positive, the other as merely negative, the environment as the active and formative, the organism as the passive and formed, the environment as determining, the organism as determined.

But we may also consider the organism in the process of development. In this case, we seem to find reason for regarding it as purely the product of the environment in which it has arisen. The product it certainly is in one sense; that is, it is the end-form of a series of changes which we may suppose originally inorganic matter, or (if we prefer to begin with the lowest form of life) simplest forms of organic matter, to have undergone. But the present forms of matter everywhere are, in like manner, the products of the past changes of matter; if we trace these changes which have produced present forms, in the case of the inorganic as well as that of the organic, back to any point of time which we may choose as a beginning, we shall find in neither case more matter or a greater amount of force than at the present period; we shall find the same matter in different combinations, the same force in other forms. Present forms are not greater or less than past ones, but their exact equivalents; the beginning was not greater than the end; the producing forms and forces were not greater than are their products. By a backward course of thought comprehending evolution we may bring unity into our conception of the organic, but we find no new factors of force, and need to avoid laying stress upon the process to the depreciation of the importance of the product. We may be led to suspect that our search after new and more important factors was only another form of the search after an independent cause according to which all other phenomena may be said to vary. Our mathematical habit of selecting some one side of natural process as independent, in order to trace, by its variation, the variation of the others, leads us to regard the one side, phase, or portion, of phenomena as actually thus independent; although we forget, in this assumption, that we may select any phase for our mathematical independent, and are not confined to any particular one. The organism is itself a part of the environment regarded as conditioning, when we consider the development of other organisms, or change in inorganic matter, with which it is in contact. Our minds are unable to comprehend the whole of nature as variation only, and we fasten on some one part of the process as independent of the general change or as holding a unique position in it, from which to consider the variation of the rest. And the conception of some one part of phenomena as cause disappointing us, on closer investigation, as far as merely present phenomena are concerned, we remove the conception farther back into a dim past which we fail to analyze in thought with the same completeness with which we analyze the present. We are not, however, in the habit of tracing back any other than just the organic forms to an arbitrary point which we call the beginning, and emphasizing this in distinction from present conditions; in considering the inorganic, we simply notice present conditions and mark the result of action and reaction between this and that other form of matter with which it comes in contact.

The action of the animal at any moment may be said to be determined by the tendency or potential energy inherent in it at the moment, and the influence exerted by a particular excitation; this is a matter of action and reaction; but the force represented by both sides, by that of organism and by that of environment, is equally positive and equally represented again in the result. Particular emphasis has been laid, now on the positive activity of the organism by one school of writers, now on the activity of the environment as moving the organism to action by another school; but both sides contribute to the result. Where action and reaction in inorganic matter are considered, we do not regard either of two incident forces as alone positive; nor do we regard one as overcome by the other in the sense that it is not fully represented in the result.

Again, if we return to the dispute as to the importance of the physiological "basis" of action, the remark may be repeated, that it is mere dogmatism to select some one phase of phenomena as the only essential phase, while all other phases are regarded as non-essential or subordinate. The materialist who derides the idea of a "Ding-an-sich" is himself assuming something very like it, when he endeavors to prove matter to be the cause, essence, or independent, of which consciousness is the mere effect, property, or dependent.

Even if it could be said with truth that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile (and the analogy does not hold), it should be borne in mind that the bile is no mere dependent creation of the liver, but that, before it became bile, it existed in another form, was, in fact, a part of the liver of which it is regarded as the dependent creation. Matter and force have simply changed form; that is all. The later form is not rendered secondary in importance or less positive by the fact of its sequence upon the other form. The conditions equal the result; they are not greater than it. Where is there, on closer analysis, passivity as distinguished from activity? All force is, by definition, active; and all matter represents force. We find simple equivalence, that is, a uniformity of relation between preceding conditions and succeeding conditions. Our "Natural Law" and "Necessity" resolve themselves into this. Yet the conception of law as something extraneous to things, something without them not included in their primary nature but controlling them, is a very common conception. Thus Du Prel, though rejecting other forms of teleological argument, bases a whole course of teleological reasoning upon the mere fact of law.[134] However, we know of natural law merely as an expression of uniformities, a generalization from the relations of things; we have no reason for treating it as extraneous to the nature of things themselves; and nature itself furnishes us with no reason for supposing the relations of things to be of more significance than things themselves; relations are not entities.

If man be part of nature, it is strange that the force within him should be regarded as so shaped and compelled, the force without him, on the other hand, as so compelling and mighty. No part of nature is, as a matter of fact, compelled. All things act and react spontaneously from their own nature, and man in the same manner acts from his. Law cannot be defined as determining action and reaction, nor can Necessity; they are not entities. Force is sometimes called the determining factor, but an abstract Force we do not know; we know force only as motion or the equivalent of motion in resistance, or as the conceived potentiality of motion. The concept of potentiality of motion is, however, again only a device of reason for bringing unity into our conception of things by accounting for the appearance of motion where before it was not. Potentiality is no existence, no reality; actual potentiality is a contradiction in terms. Nature contains only actualities. Force is the abstract term by which we include motion, resistance, and the conceived potentiality of motion, under one head. Motion again is often defined as the cause of movement; but such a conception makes the abstract notion of a thing the cause of the thing itself, unless by motion as the cause we understand the preceding motion, and by movement as the effect we mean the succeeding motion, in which case we have to bear in mind the equivalence of conditions and results. Nor do we know motion as something apart from matter, moving it; we know no abstract motion; we know only things as moving, changing, and resisting motion. There is no outside cause given us in our experience as the mover, from which things are to be distinguished as the passive moved. Things move. And in correspondence with the activity of things is doubtless the sense of freedom in the exertion of the will. Outer compulsion, resistance to the carrying out of a course decided upon or desired, has sometimes been interpreted as the negation of freedom of the will; but it has with reason been objected to this definition that the very strongest sense of inner freedom may exist in connection with such compulsion. It may be supposed that, as long as there is action in the brain, the corresponding sense of freedom will exist; or, lest this statement be interpreted as materialistic, we may say instead: As long as consciousness exists, it must by definition exist as activity, with which the sense of freedom is indissolubly connected.

But we may look at the matter from the more purely psychological side. The opponents of a theory of freedom make much of the determination of the will by motives. In their argument, the will is treated as if it were some separate material thing, the motive another equally separate thing which, when brought into contact with the will, sets it in motion in somewhat the same manner as the powder in the gun drives the ball. But the motive is not something external to consciousness, something foreign, that, introduced, impels the will to action; nor can the will be compared to an organ of the body, the motion of which is given us through our senses as the motion of a part, not of the whole body. The functions of the body are, in this sense, a part of the material world to us. But the will is no material thing, no separate organ of consciousness in this sense. In the will, consciousness expresses itself; and we cannot say that it is only a part of consciousness that thus expresses itself. The motive, as conscious, belongs to that consciousness which finds expression in the will.

A similar form of theory to that just noticed regards the will as determined especially by feeling. But feeling belongs as evidently to consciousness as does will, nor can we say that one part of consciousness feels and another wills, the one part being the active mover, the other the passive moved; the division into parts is a material one applicable to things occupying space, but not to consciousness. The notion here of mover and moved is very similar to that noticed above, of motion as cause, movement as effect.

It is sometimes said that the desirability of an object moves or determines the will. Here arises the question as to whether the desirability of an object lies in the object or is only dependent upon consciousness as a quality of feeling. Thus we come, by closer analysis, to the fundamental problem of the connection of consciousness with the external world. It is often said that desirability is a mere predication of consciousness and does not lie in the object or end itself. That desirability is a predication of consciousness is true in a sense. And yet it is evident that this predication corresponds to actualities existing in the thing or end, on account of which it is pronounced desirable or, under proper conditions, desired. When we analyze the state of consciousness itself, we find it impossible to separate the desirability as predicated by consciousness and the desirability as predicated of the end, the excited feeling and the feeling as excited by the object. From one point of view, excitation and consciousness are the two sides of the conditions, both of which are essential to the result; but, from another point of view, it is equally true that the desire of the end is always a part of consciousness, which expresses itself in the will according to its own inherent nature.

The act of the will, as following excitation, is sometimes treated as its mere result, hence subject to it, subordinate and passive; on this principle, we could also define brain-action as subject to nerve-action and passive in comparison, wherever it follows. The mere conception of the conservation of force would make it impossible to suppose a result of force to be less than preceding force of which it is the result. We do not call the evolution of organic life on the earth subject or subordinate to the motion of the nebular mists, or passive with respect to them. The mere sequence of one event upon another in time does not justify our pronouncing the one subordinate to the other or passive with respect to it, the whole sum of matter and force remaining always the same, and a resultant in any particular instance exactly representing its factors.

From our examination of the above arguments, we perceive that the materialist uses both the concomitance of consciousness with material processes, and, again, the sequence of particular conscious states upon material processes, as proof of the subordination and passivity or dependence of consciousness, as proof that the latter is effect of the material as cause; indeed, we are not at all sure that he does not often confuse the two arguments from sequence and from concomitance. On the other hand, the argument of sequence is often used to prove the greater importance and activity of consciousness in contrast to matter, consciousness being regarded as antecedent to excitation in general or to some particular excitation. But consciousness is not the "prius" of its excitation in time, since its very definition includes activity and this is not possible without excitation; consciousness is always the consciousness of something. To regard consciousness as the "logical prius" of matter or of excitation by matter may be possible, but the standpoint is either a purely fanciful or a purely dogmatic one. With regard to its priority in respect to a particular excitation, the remarks made above hold good, that mere sequence does not prove subordination or passivity as distinguished from activity. The fact of concomitance is also sometimes treated as a part of theories of the causal nature of consciousness, the brain being regarded as the mere organ of mind, the passive instrument upon which it acts. In this case, however, as in the opposite argument that consciousness is dependent upon brain-action, there is probably some indistinct idea of sequence at work. The argument applies equally well, indeed, in either direction, the materialistic or its opposite, and merely this fact would lead us to suspect that it can be conclusive in neither.

Thus, in hunting for some cause and effect in the activity of the will, we bring to light, in the end, only a certain concomitance and sequence. That which we call "explanation" of natural process is, in fact, in all cases, merely a finer analysis of concomitance or sequence, or the analysis of some new phase of it. We have only the finer elements of the process analyzed before us in any case, although we are often inclined to treat these elements as if they were the essence and cause of the process to which they belong. We explain, for instance, the green color of the leaf by the continually renewed presence of a certain chemical combination; yet the green color is not less real and essential than the chemical composition which constantly accompanies it. The musical note is not the less real to our ear because we can make the vibrations of the string and the air perceptible to our eye, or because we can observe to some extent, and infer further, vibrations of parts of the ear that are the physiological accompaniment of the note heard. The light of the fire is not the less real because of the heat that I feel from it, nor is either less actual because I can analyze the process of combustion in the case. The shape of the leaf to my touch does not make its greenness of color the less real to my eye, nor does change of form prevent change of color or prove it less essential in any case. The smell of the rose does not render its color less real and essential, and, vice versa, the color does not render the smell less an essential part of reality. Neither does the activity of the brain render the activity of consciousness less real, or interfere with its freedom, any more than the activity of the consciousness renders that of the brain less actual or interferes with its free action and reaction. My knowledge of a thing given me through one sense is totally different from the knowledge of it given me through other senses; yet I do not find this various knowledge contradictory or irreconcilable. Why, then, do I find such great difficulty in reconciling the simple facts of consciousness and brain-activity? And why should there be such an inclination to give greater prominence to physiological process than to mental process, to regard the only method of reconciling the two that of proclaiming the dependence of consciousness?

The solution of the question is not so difficult to find. In the first place, our knowledge of the concomitance of brain-process and consciousness, or at least of the constant uniformity of this concomitance, is only comparatively recent. Further, this knowledge is not given us immediately, but is the conclusion of a process of reasoning. While such concomitance as we immediately perceive--the concomitance of certain impressions on one sense with certain other impressions upon other senses--appears to us so natural as to need no comment, the newness and mediate nature of our knowledge of this other concomitance incline us to regard it as strange and needing some especial "explanation." While the concomitant impressions upon the senses, wherever they are constant, become united in our conception to a single whole, we fail to unite the elements of this mediately known concomitance to such a whole; doubtless, however, if a perception of all the details of our own brain-activity were the invariable accompaniment of thought, we should thus unite them. We can no more "explain" why the two activities are concomitant, except as we show it to be a fact and analyze it into its elements, than we can show why just Prussian blue should be the characteristic of one chemical compound and the green of plant-life of another, why the connection of the colors should not be the reverse. The importance we accord the physiological accompaniments of mental process is partly accounted for by the significance which attaches to more recent knowledge as constituting scientific progress; in the effort to bring together in our conception the two elements of consciousness and brain-action, to whose association we are not accustomed by immediate perception, we are led to lay especial weight upon the facts of recent discovery, which are connected with so great advance in science and have done away with so many superstitions. And, finally, in the rebound from the old superstitions, the tendency is to exaggerated views in the opposite direction. The attempt to correct spiritualistic ideas of a soul superior to the rest of nature and no part of it has resulted in materialism. And by the physiological basis we now think to "explain" the facts of psychology. "Notable enough," says Carlyle, "wilt thou find the potency of Names; Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work and Demonology, we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye or without it?"

If the connection of physiological and psychological processes requires "explanation," beyond that of analysis, why should we not feel ourselves equally required to explain, in like manner, the connection of light with heat and sound, and form with color? Why is it more comprehensible that the ball can be at the same time round to my touch and red or gray to my eye, and that the rose can both smell sweet and be yellow in tint? Why should we, in this particular instance, make such a strenuous effort to find reasons which can never be given in this case any more than in the others, and which we do not, moreover, demand in the others? Why cannot we accept the simple fact of concomitance in this case also? Our attempts to show the reason of brain-activity by means of mind-activity, or, vice versa, to explain mental activity as caused by, and dependent upon, physiological activity, must end equally in failure, in a one-sided dogmatism. It is the concomitance of the two, to the thought of which we are not yet used, that thwarts us. And yet Zeno, the sceptic, found as great difficulties in sequence, and proved, to his satisfaction and that of his followers, the utter impossibility of many things which we accept as simple facts without troubling ourselves to solve his problems.

We have seen that any explanation of facts beyond analysis, except as we assume some transcendental intuition, is impossible. The search for some further explanation embodies the last remnant of the idea of some special separate agent behind each single event and process, with which early superstition was animated. Driven by the gradual spread of knowledge to more and more obscure details in concomitance, and to ever greater distance of time in sequence, it has reached the final shadows of the one, and the furthest ends of evolution, whither thought seldom travels, in the other. That we expect other explanation than analysis, or read into analysis more than its real worth, is the result of an indistinctness and confusion in our thought, which has not yet lost the habit of infusing into generalizations and abstractions a vitality of their own apart from reality. We continually hope and strive for some explanation that shall give us more than nature, and yet, strange to say, we endeavor to found our theories in and on nature. We acknowledge the scientific truth of the indestructibility of matter and force, the constancy of their sum, and yet we nevertheless continue to construct our many-storied theories of causes and essences, failing to notice that we are bringing all our concepts from a time when the equivalence of results and conditions, of results and their factors, was not yet comprehended.

FOOTNOTES:

[131] See Part I. p. 107 et seq.

[132] "Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus," p. 363. See also, however, the "Grundlegung der Ethik," p. 289.

[133] "Problems of Life and Mind," Ser. I. Vol. I. pp. 308, 309.

[134] "Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Weltalls," pp. 352 et seq.

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Chapter IV

THE MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THOUGHT, FEELING, AND WILL IN EVOLUTION

Hume, in his essay on the Passions, writes: "What is commonly, in a popular sense, called reason, and is so much recommended in moral discourses, is nothing but a general and calm passion which takes a comprehensive and a distant view of its object, and actuates the will, without exciting any sensible emotion. A man, we say, is diligent in his profession from reason; that is, from a calm desire of riches and fortune. A man adheres to justice from reason; that is, from a calm regard to public good, or to a character with himself and others. The same objects which recommend themselves to reason in this sense of the word, are also the objects of passion, when they are brought near to us, and acquire some other advantages, either of external situation, or congruity to our internal temper; and by that means excite a turbulent and sensible emotion. Evil at a great distance is avoided we say from reason; evil near at hand produces aversion, horror, fear, and is the object of passion." We know no state of consciousness from which elements of thought are excluded; consciousness is not a state of rest, but a continual passage from percept to concept, or from concept to percept, or if from percept to percept even then with the intervention of concepts. Judgment, exclusion and inclusion, has part in all consciousness; and thus pleasure and pain must be regarded as always accompanied by thought-elements, though the thought-factors may escape notice because of the prominence of violent emotion, just as, in like manner, feeling may draw less attention when of a less turbulent nature. This is not equivalent to saying that emotion must always be accompanied by a representation of its object. To this last statement might be objected that emotion may not be, at first, connected with its proper object, just as so-called purely physical pain may not be, in the beginning, combined with any perception of the object producing it, may not even be localized, in fact. But to this objection may be answered that our conception of "its" object, in the case of emotion, is similar to our conception of "the" end of any particular act; that which we regard as "the" object of the emotion may be entirely different from the object in the consciousness of the being subject to the emotion. That is to say, emotion speedily connects itself with some object, or even if felt for some time as vague want is yet combined with thought, in that we make mental search for its object or, where it is too faint to induce this action, tend to turn to memories or imaginations sad or joyful, according as the feeling tinges our mood with exhilaration or sadness; but the objects with which it connects itself in thought may be quite other than those which onlookers regard as its proper object. Into many an emotion of childhood and growing adolescence, for instance, the adult reads a meaning and object of which he is aware the individual subject to the emotion has no thought. Physical feeling may not be connected with any distinct perception of the object producing it (as, for instance, when one bruises oneself in the dark), but it is never unconnected with thought-images. The intermediate links between this outwardly stimulated physical feeling and so-called purely mental emotion are represented by localized organic feelings, passing by imperceptible degrees into non-localized feeling experienced as mood. But feeling on any plane is not, as conscious, uncombined with thought.

It follows that, as connected with the human will, emotion is never uncombined with thought. This fact is implied in the definition of will as the conscious determination on some definite course of conduct which, as definite, is an exclusion of other courses, and thus involves judgment. Where action takes place without conscious predetermination, we call it "organic," "automatic," "reflex," or "involuntary," the pain or pleasure connected with the act rising into our individual, centralized consciousness when the action has already taken place or during its progress. In the latter case, part of the act rises into consciousness as result, as already performed, and the will may then interpose to check and prevent the elements not yet performed.

The question as to whether thought is always accompanied by feeling, at least by feeling as pleasure or pain, may appear more difficult than the previous one. That thought is not always connected with violent emotion as pleasure or pain is evident. But, as Hoeffding says, "feeling may be strong and deep without being violent." If we examine carefully any train even of abstract and apparently, at first glance, wholly unemotional reasoning, we can generally trace a distinct vein of varying feeling accompanying the thought,--perhaps extreme interest in the problem involved and pleasure in its solution, hope as we seem to be on the point of finding the key to it, disappointment when the hope proves a delusive one, shame or impatience at our failure, or pride in our readiness, and exultation when we have finished our work. All these feelings may relate to the mere solution of the problem as end, or may pass beyond it to ends more or less distant and complicated, to which the solution of the problem then appears as means. Even if we could suppose all other feeling to be excluded, we cannot conceive of a train of thought untinged with mood,--interest or weariness, exhilaration or depression,--the dim complex of perhaps many elements, but admitting of general classification on the side of either the pleasurable or the painful, the agreeable or the disagreeable.

Is feeling the result of thought, or thought the result of feeling? which of the two is to be accorded the greater importance with regard to the will? and what is the significance of feeling as pleasure and of feeling as pain with respect to the will? These are some of the questions generally considered in one form or another in the discussion of the relations of mental functions. The first question may be interpreted in any one of several different ways. It may be regarded as referring to particular excitations, objects, or ends, or to precedence at the earliest beginning of consciousness in general, or to the initial state of consciousness in the case of the individual organism. Since we are not able to determine as to where consciousness does begin, either absolutely in nature as a whole or relatively in the individual, whether there is, indeed, any such thing as an initial state, and since we can predicate nothing certainly as to the nature of such a state if there be one, the interpretation of the question which has reference to this relative or absolute beginning of consciousness cannot be answered. If we regard the question, however, as having reference to particular excitations, objects, or ends, it is evident that sometimes one, sometimes the other of the two functions appears more prominent in the beginning; pain or pleasurable excitation sometimes makes itself felt before it is connected in consciousness with any distinct object, and again perception may give us thought-images which only consideration renders painful or pleasurable. But there is no real beginning in either case; in consciousness as we know it, thought and feeling are continually intermingled, and only their direction varies with varying excitation, now thought, now feeling, assuming the greater prominence.

This last consideration has important bearings on a question which we have previously discussed and to which we may, at this point, revert for a moment. The fact alone that we know nothing of a beginning of consciousness, but only its variation, is sufficient to make us doubt whether we are in possession of any data from which to pronounce dogmatically on the absence of consciousness in the case of organisms differing from our own, or even in the case of inorganic matter. Why may we not equally well suppose merely a difference in the direction of consciousness corresponding to differing organization and function in the one case and differing composition or constitution and corresponding motion in the other? Our error begins in assuming no ends possible in action except such as we ourselves would set, and so in assuming no end to be present in cases where no end would exist for the human being, or where the end which would be involved for us cannot have come within the experience of the organism performing the act. In the latter case, we speak of "blind instinct" or of "automatism." We forget that an "end" is merely some one of such constant results of function as are brought within the circle of our experience; which end may come to lie farther and farther away, for the same act, as the circle of experience widens and varies in direction, even in beings as similar as individuals of the human species. With the attainment of manhood and womanhood, whole regions of thought and feeling, whole classes of motives, are opened up which are wholly unknown to the child and would be incomprehensible to him; the ends of the scientist, the man of letters, the idealist in morals, the sensualist, and the boor, may differ radically in performing the same or very similar acts. However, there is a certain community of ends in human beings, due to common organization and experience, which enables them to judge to some extent of each other's ends. But these data of organization and experience fail us when we come to judge of beings not human, and hence we are liable to error in their case. A superior being of an entirely different species from our own might be greatly puzzled to discern the motives which could govern some of our acts,--those, for instance, which incite the miser to starve in misery with a fortune hidden in the cellar. A superior being of another species gifted with pessimistic views, if we can suppose such, regarding our action externally as we regard brute-action and plant-function, might imagine our whole action to be directed to the attainment of our own death, since that is what we finally achieve as the result of action, and sometimes with most purposeful rapidity; and he might suppose the suicide, and the miser, and the opium-eater, and the drunkard, and the glutton, to be only the more intelligent members of the species, the others to be led chiefly by blind instinct. It is a fundamental mistake to suppose that there can be no "ends" but those of which we are conscious.

The question as to the existence of any causal relations in the old sense between thought and feeling has already been answered in previous considerations; all we can assert is sequence or simultaneity. Indeed, as psychology has rarely troubled itself with any direct question of this sort, its introduction may appear foolish. Yet feeling is sometimes, by imputation, treated as a mere attribute of thought, while again, as we shall see, it is often considered as an independent, directing, if not perception, at least the subsumption of percepts in thought. And, indeed, it is difficult to perceive why, if feeling and thought be regarded as two quite distinct yet simultaneous activities, the same problem as to precedence might not arise, under the concepts of cause and effect, as in the case of physiological process and consciousness as a whole.

But a question with which Psychology and Ethics have occupied themselves as a most important one is that of the relation of pleasure and pain to the will. A point around which strife particularly rages is the problem as to whether it is the pleasurableness of the end which moves the will to seek it; and on the view taken as to the truth on this point theories of freedom or determination of the will are often based, the advocate of free will arguing that the power of choosing the painful proves his theory, the determinist declaring that the invariable might of the pleasurable over the will shows the subordination of the latter. But I cannot, for my own part, see how the demonstration of the fact that the will may be moved by the imagination of a painful end rather than, or as well as, by that of a pleasurable one is a proof of its freedom; as I also fail to perceive how it is proved that the will is determined because it invariably chooses the pleasurable rather than the painful end. In either case, choice may be said equally to depend on motive, and in either case the will may be said equally to choose. It is true in either case that the strongest motive moves; it is true in either case that the will decides upon the act with a feeling of its own spontaneity and freedom, and guides the movement of the body in the performance of the act. That which is shown in an invariable connection of the will with pleasurable motives is a constancy which we find elsewhere in nature and which forbids us to regard will as something outside and above the rest of nature. As we have seen, however, the theory of a compulsion of nature anywhere by constancy or law, or of the compulsion of one particular part by the rest, is untenable.

In speaking of the pleasurable and painful, we have introduced the conception of ends into our considerations, and may emphasize, in another form, the fact that we cannot consider indefinite feeling alone as the mover of the will to an end. The pleasurableness or painfulness is predicated of some definite object or event, and corresponds to definite actualities perceived in the object or imagined with the help of former experience. Thought and feeling are thus inextricably commingled in the state of consciousness leading to choice, and the nature of the acting individual and that of the external objects concerned are equally essential to the result.

We have hitherto treated thought, feeling, and will, as separate parts of consciousness, defining each, by implication, much as we would define wheel, tongue, and whiffletree, as parts of a wagon. But the three are indissolubly connected in the act of the will, and thought and feeling are not, as we have seen, ever disconnected. Nor can we say that it is one part of consciousness that feels, another that thinks, and still another that wills. Further, a closer analysis may render it doubtful whether that which we call will is only an occasional act of consciousness, or whether it is not rather involved in all operations of consciousness as we have seen thought and feeling to be. The identity of will and that which is often called involuntary attention has already been asserted by some authors, and not the identity of will and outward attention alone, but also of will and attention to the inner process of consciousness. Here, however, the dividing line generally sought between willed and unwilled, involuntary, or, as we say, drifting thought, becomes dim and uncertain. But it is evident that attention is given to that which interests us for one reason or another; and the question logically presents itself as to whether thought ever follows a direction wholly uninteresting to us, or whether it does not the rather always turn from such direction to one which has for us at least some degree of interest, whether, in short, the will does not in this manner, as the innervation of attention, accompany and direct all mental process. The sense of effort involved in choice, in the struggle of interfering impulses, may bring into prominence mental activity at points where such obstacles and interferences occur; but is not the mental force which we, in this case, especially notice the same with that involved in all processes of consciousness? Just as the physiological process in nerve and muscle with which the limbs are moved in action, or eye or ear innervated in the effort of attention, is only the outcome of the processes which are constantly going on in the brain, so the concomitant process of will or attention is but the expression, in another form, of the activity involved in all consciousness.

The division of consciousness into separate entities or parts has often been carried much further than this threefold one; the division has varied with the particular theory and fancy of the student, until some one has suggested that we might, on the principle used, assume a distinct faculty for dancing, for eating, sleeping, dressing, reading, writing, and so on, ad infinitum,--the faculty, in each case, being defined as the special activity that discharges the particular function assigned to it by the name. Only by abstraction and by the investiture of our abstractions with a life of their own do we arrive at a theory of thought, feeling, and will, as separate entities, or parts; in the mental process itself, they are indissolubly united.

We have seen that thought acquires new directions with the evolution of the individual, that pleasure and pain attach themselves to new objects, and that will is directed to new ends. If we can discover in these changes any uniformities of relation everywhere manifest as far as experience extends, the constancy of nature may admit of our conclusion that the relation is fundamental, and we may be able to formulate thus a general law of evolution with respect to the mental processes. Such a law must, of course, be interpreted, not as governing the changes which it regards, but simply as the expression of general facts of their development. Our considerations on this point are in a line with those of Chapter I; indeed, they are only a more special application and more careful derivation and expansion of points there noticed.

If we begin with our own experience, and study the growth of this or that particular habit gradually acquired, we notice that it not only becomes stronger with time, acquiring an intensity less and less easy to check, but also that this increasing strength of tendency is accompanied with a corresponding increase of pleasure in the performance of the act. The drunkard may have derived no especial pleasure from his first glass; he may, indeed, have found the taste little to his liking, and the slight succeeding dizziness disagreeable; but, with habituation, both gradually become agreeable. The first fit of intoxication may be felt as unpleasant, not only in the succeeding shame and physical depression, but in itself; though it is also conceivable that the state of thorough intoxication may have been led up to so slowly, by such imperceptible degrees, that it may be combined, even in the first instance, with a certain degree of pleasure. It is, however, evident that this pleasure increases with further lapse of time. If we study the habits of individuals, we shall find a thousand little peculiarities of habit in which others than their performers would be puzzled to discover anything attractive, and in which, indeed, the latter themselves would find difficulty in pointing out the source of the gratification that they nevertheless experience. Our habits are things we are loth to break with; and we grow more loth as time passes, until finally no consideration, no shame of scorn or pain of punishment in any form, can suffice to counterbalance the craving of desire and the fierce pleasure of satisfaction, or the less turbulent but not less strong impulse that carries us steadily in the course which past custom has worn for us. Customary acts are themselves agreeable to us, though their results may bring with them disagreeable factors.

Again, this same principle is directly traceable in heredity. We say, for instance, of the drunkard whose father and grandfather were drunkards before him, that he has inherited a "taste" for intoxicants, meaning, not that he can feel their attraction before he has tasted them and experienced their influence, but that the habit of drunkenness is one more easily formed in him than in the average individual, constitutional peculiarities corresponding to a pleasure derived from the alcohol. We often notice striking resemblances, not only in general appearance but also in mental characteristics and habits, extending even to attitude and gesture, between children and parents deceased when the children were yet infants. I have known very peculiar physical habits to appear, in one instance in three, in another in four, generations, with the avowal of satisfaction in their practice on the part of the persons subject to them, although neither they could explain, nor onlookers comprehend, the pleasure derived from them. Imitation is not always possible in such cases; in one case of these two just cited, it was, in the third generation at least, impossible; and even where there is imitation, it is by no means proved that an innate tendency does not lend readiness to the formation of the habit. It may here be objected that we are venturing on too uncertain ground in endeavoring to formulate any general law of the growth of habit in relation to heredity, opinions differing so much as to the relative importance to be accorded to environment and innate tendency in the formation of character, and especially as to the possibility of the inheritance, by succeeding generations, of new peculiarities not common to the species as a whole but acquired by individual parents. As far as the former question is concerned, it may be said that the whole development of plant or animal in organization and corresponding functions must be regarded as directly dependent upon present environment, never independent of it; but that, while it must be conceded that the environment is greatly concerned in the development of habit, and that no innate tendency can manifest itself unless the complementary conditions of its appearance are presented by circumstance, it may likewise be claimed that the influence of environment no more excludes heredity than heredity excludes the influence of the individual environment. We tend, generally, to emphasize heredity in the case of the plant and the animal, and environment in the case of the human being. This is because our knowledge of species other than our own is merely an outward one, while the ideas of heredity in our own case are confused by our consciousness of the influence that even minute circumstances may have upon our inner life and character. And yet just those who are inclined to lay most stress upon the power of good influences are generally, strange to say, the very ones who would most protest at the assertion of the superiority of outer conditions over inner ones. It can scarcely be supposed that any law of heredity which applies to the rest of the animal kingdom does not apply to man also. With respect to the second of the two questions noticed above, something has already been said from one point of view, and more will be said later from another. At present it will be sufficient for our purpose to notice some generally admitted facts. Darwin uses a certain caution when he comes to the consideration of the conditions of inheritance, and makes the general statement that the tendency to inheritance of any function is increased by the continuation of the action of the inducing conditions of environment for several generations. But it may be questioned whether an innate tendency may not have favored and assisted the action of the environment in the later of these generations, whether, indeed, the continuity everywhere supposed in evolution does not compel us to assume, between the first appearance of any function, trait, or habit, and its attainment, after several generations, of sufficient strength to render its hereditary character noticeable, intermediate degrees of strength in the intermediate generations. On the same principle on which we accept the theory of evolution as a logical necessity, despite the gaps in the proof, we must also, I believe, consider development of any sort to be continuous increase.

But even the theory of the increased probability of the inheritance of any mark, function, trait, or habit, after several generations of inducing environment, is sufficient for our present purpose. It still remains true, if we regard the development of function or habit in its broad features, that the tendency to inheritance, the organic significance of any function or habit is increased with increased exercise. Merely in the one case we regard the increments of increase as infinitesimal, while, in the other case, we regard them as of much greater than infinitesimal value. Even the theory of Weismann, which regards everything as present in the germ, must formulate some such theory as this of the environment as the condition of the development of germinal possibilities.

Not only are the strongest and most infallibly recurring functions those which have been most strongly and longest exercised, but these strongest functions, those to which, as we say, the tendency is strongest, are connected with the strongest pleasures of gratification and the most extreme pain of denial. The sexual appetite is an example of such a function fundamental to all the higher forms of animal life. Hunger and thirst, if long unsatisfied, are connected with intensest suffering and, if not dulled by general ill-health or too great satiety, involve a keen pleasure of satisfaction. Muscular exercise is a source of keen enjoyment, and physical inaction results in general depression that may become extreme if the inaction be long continued.

In this pain of inaction, a new conception has been introduced into our considerations. The converse of this pain is that involved in the over-exercise of any function. We thus perceive that the pleasure involved in the exercise of function lies between two extremes, beyond either of which is pain, discomfort. Such pain is connected with the vacillations in the relations of food-assimilation to the use of accumulated energy. These two general processes or functions of all organic matter are reciprocal or complementary, and the too much or too little on either side which involves pain may be looked upon as a disturbance of equilibrium. Excess on either side means want on the other.[135]

And this brings us again to the conception of normal function as a stable form of motion. Long-exercised function, fundamental functions of animal or plant life are forms of motion that for a very long period have found their sufficient complementary conditions in the environment, have met with but little interference in this environment. And thus we attain a conception of pleasure as that form of feeling accompanying forms of physiological motion with which there is a minimum of interference. Pleasure appears as the accompaniment of unimpaired and unimpeded function everywhere as far as our knowledge extends. Function and habit are essentially the same; habit is merely function. The functions of the species furnish the foundation of the habits of the individual, which vary according to individual surroundings and the family peculiarities acquired through peculiar circumstances. The degree of pleasure in the exercise of any function or habit bears constant relations to the strength of the acquired function, while this again bears constant relations to degree of exercise, in which the time relation plays a prominent part. Here we have, too, by implication, the explanation of the disagreeable character of the strange and new except as it corresponds to some tendency of the organism, some capability not yet exercised, in which case it appears as nothing strictly new but only as pleasing variety. From a physiological point of view, the new appears as that which demands a readjustment involving the fresh action of natural selection, and the possible destruction of the organism in case the readjustment demanded is too great. From the physical and mechanical view, the new may be regarded as a disturber of equilibrium.

To this analysis the objection may possibly be urged that obstacles often increase pleasure. If, however, a definition of obstacle be demanded, it will soon appear that what is meant by an obstacle that increases pleasure is not anything that interferes with function but rather that which is exactly its occasion and opportunity. To a man in health and vigor who sets off for a walk through the fields, a hedge or fence in the way is no real obstacle, but furnishes rather an agreeable diversion, a new method of trying his strength and getting rid of superfluous muscular secretions; it adds but the spice of some slight variety to his exercise. That which is an interruption of one function, may be the opportunity of another; and if the demands of the first function for satisfaction are not too imperative, the interruption of too great duration, the obstacle may not be felt to be disagreeable. But pain and pleasure are often mixed, since the satisfaction of one function may be the prevention of another. If, in this case, the function which is satisfied is a fundamental one, the function which is prevented a subordinate one, the pleasure exceeds the pain. If, on the other hand, the function prevented is a fundamental one, the function satisfied a merely subordinate one, the pain exceeds the pleasure.

With the ideas of unimpaired and unimpeded function as pleasurable, and of the new as demanding readjustment, we arrive at the consideration of health and disease. The free performance of any particular function is the first condition of the health of the organ of which it is the function, the regular performance of all physical functions according to the mutual adjustment of the organs of the body the condition of the health of the organism as a whole. And thus again we come round to the conception of pleasure as connected with the action that accords with the health of the organism. And this leads us to some remarks concerning the act of food-taking which may answer a possible objection to the statements made above with regard to the pleasure involved in the act. The moralist and idealist are wont to protest against any theory that may seem to give prominence to "the purely animal" side of human life. But first, we have to do, at present, merely with facts on which ethical theory may be founded, not as yet with such theory itself. Furthermore, the selection of the appetites of hunger, thirst, and sex, as illustrating the general theory of the relations of pleasure and pain to function is not made in order to lay special stress upon these appetites but because they afford, as fundamental, especially good examples. And, finally, it may be noticed that the pleasure connected with the stilling of hunger and thirst is not that of taste alone, though doubtless there are many with whom this pleasure is one of the most important of life; on the taking of sufficient and proper nourishment depends the pleasure involved in the general health of the body; the pain of non-satisfaction in this case is not simply that of a single organ but that of the whole organism. Even the deferment of a single meal beyond the usual hour often lowers the "tone" of the whole body, and the variations of too much or too little strongly influence the mood and general happiness of the individual. On the right use of nourishment depend, in great measure, the ability to cope with circumstances and the moral power of cheerfulness.

In connection with the idea of a certain equilibrium between exercise and nourishment, waste and repair, as normal, healthful, and pleasurable, Rolph's principle of the Insatiability of life may be considered. Evidently the facts of evolution demonstrate the power of the organism to advance by slow degrees beyond its original normal. But the progress is an exceedingly slow one, and the power of advance in the individual organism, at any particular point, by no means limitless, but very definitely limited. The limitations of the power of assimilation are evidenced by the evil results of over-eating, of over-satiety of function in any direction. Even at an early period of life, when growth is most marked, the capacity for assimilation is by no means limitless. The idea of insatiability is advanced by Lewes[136] in a somewhat different form. It may possibly be an aid to the comprehension of the process of growth to regard one factor, namely the organism, as the active side of the development tending to indefinite growth in all directions, and the other factor, the environment, as the regulating, resisting factor, limiting such growth; the conception may, perhaps, be legitimately resorted to as we resort to various other devices which bring into prominence some one side of a process to the neglect of others but to the simplification of our concepts and calculations. A similar device is used by Zoellner in his consideration of sun-spots.[137] But these representations should not be mistaken for actuality. The limitless expansion of the organism is as much a fiction as a theory of the limitless coercion of the environment resisted by the organism would be. The latter fiction is involved in one interpretation of the Struggle for Existence. Either view is one-sided; environment and organism both alike represent active forces, of both which combined, growth is, at each moment, the exactly conditioned resultant.

We may notice another assertion of Rolph's, namely, that growth is produced by increase of nourishment rather than that it demands[138] increase of nourishment as the Darwinians state. I do not know how the Darwinians come to be accredited with this statement in the sense which is evidently criticised by Rolph. In so far as the statement may be interpreted as meaning that growth takes place first, and without nourishment, and that the demand for nourishment then ensues on this growth, the criticism is evidently valid. But the word "demands" may be interpreted in quite a different way as designating the need of growth for its conditions, or rather (for this is the ultimate significance of the word in this sense) the logical demand of the reason, which cannot suppose anything to take place in the absence of its conditions. Any other signification of the word is contrary to the whole spirit of Darwinism, and would accord much better with a theory of Insatiability or with other forms of theory that imply a special vital principle of some sort. If, when Rolph makes the assertion that increase of nourishment produces growth, he refers, by "increase of nourishment," to the mere act of mastication, it is true that growth must be regarded as following upon this as its condition; but growth and the assimilation of nourishment are identical. And, in fact, assimilation begins in the action of the saliva in the act of mastication. Analysis of assimilation gives us sequence in one sense, since the parts of the act follow upon one another; but any interpretation which tends to draw a distinct line at any point in the physiological process, or to distinguish between assimilation as active, performed, and growth as passive, suffered, should be avoided.

We may return to the consideration of pleasure and pain as connected with function in general, with a view to a solution, if possible, of the problem of its especial connection with the will. The brain may be defined, from the point of view of the theory of evolution, as the organ of centralization through which the unity of the organism is established, and the adaptation of parts or the development of special function becomes the adaptation or function of the whole. With this physiological adaptation, an increasing breadth of knowledge by experience, the deviation of feeling from old into new channels, and the attainment of new ends of action, are associated. Just as past adaptations must have their physiological representation in brain-organization, so psychical experience is stored up to be remembered on sufficient suggestion, and finds, thus, its expression in conscious will, just as its physiological concomitants must be supposed to find their expression in nervous and muscular action. As we have seen, pleasure follows the line of evolution of function, strongest pleasure appearing in the direction of most strongly developed function, so that, just as any conflict of tendencies to function in the brain must result in conquest by the strongest tendency, the line of action must always correspond with that of the greatest pleasure. And just as the most strongly inherent function is combined with the greatest pleasure, so the representation of the performance of this most strongly inherent function is, in the conflict of tendencies before action, combined with the greatest pleasure of anticipation. This statement coincides with Stephen's remark that it is not the representation of the greatest pleasure, but the pleasantest representation, which furnishes the decisive motive to will. Contingent circumstances may introduce into the actual carrying out of the act determined upon an element of pain not before experienced, in which the wish may arise that the act had not been performed; and the strength of the tendency to action in this direction is thus diminished.

With regard to this analysis, several things are to be noted. (1) It is no more claimed that the strongest pleasure of anticipation is unmitigated pleasure than that the pleasure involved in the attainment of the end is necessarily unmitigated. Wherever there is interference, there is also pain. Where any struggle is involved, where any conflict of tendencies and wishes precedes choice, the struggle itself and the relinquishment of one or more courses in favor of the one chosen involve disagreeable elements, and the fiercer the struggle the greater the pain. Where two extremely strong tendencies thus come into collision, the pain involved may amount to agony. Our statement that the more pleasurable end or rather the one the imagination of which is the more pleasurable is the one sought by will needs therefore to be put into a somewhat different form, since, among all the methods of action open to choice in any case, there may be none the thought of which involves any positive pleasure, though there is in all or most cases some one which promises at least a negative excess of pleasure, that is, least pain. (2) No assumption is made as to the particular kind of representation or the particular kind of end with which the greatest pleasure of anticipation or of realization is combined, whether these are "higher" or "lower," sensual or intellectual, moral or immoral. It is not by any means asserted that the most moral end may not be that which is chosen. (3) It is not asserted that any direct calculation of the pleasure to self involved in any course of action necessarily contributes to choice. (4) The pleasure or pain connected with the imagination of a future event is not to be confused with the actual pleasure or pain of the event itself. The feeling experienced in the event may be wholly different from that of anticipation.

In connection with the second point, reference may be made to an assertion of Sidgwick's in his attack upon Hedonism. He writes as follows, "We have to observe that men may and do judge remote as well as immediate results to be in themselves desirable, without considering them in relation to the feelings of sentient beings."[139] The question for us here is, first, whether the emphasis of the assertion is on the word "considering,"--a question the context does not answer. It is certainly true that decisions are reached, judgments pronounced, without introspection and self-analysis, and without long reflection of any sort. It is true that, even where reflection does take place, there is not necessarily any distinct attachment of the concept "pleasurable" to results considered, whether with relation to self or to others. The dog who snatches at a piece of meat does not probably waste any time in reflecting on the pleasure he will experience in eating it; and yet we do not the less believe that if the act were not pleasurable to him he would not perform it. It may also be true that a man often pronounces results to be desirable without noting or caring for their relations to other sentient beings; but if these results are regarded by him as desirable, then they must be in some way desirable to himself, that is, must have a pleasurable relation to his own feelings. Desire appertains to sentient beings and to sentient beings as such; a thing which is desirable must be desirable to a sentient being; the desirable which is not desirable to a sentient being is the desirable which is not-desirable, a self-contradiction.

In connection with the third of the points above noticed, Rolph's assertion that not pleasure but pain is the motive to action, may be considered. The author does not mean anything else than that action is in the direction from "want," "hunger," "pain," to ends involving pleasure, so that this theory does not, when analyzed, differ fundamentally from theories which assume the motive to will to be furnished by the most pleasurable end or by the most pleasurable representation of an end. The chief point of difference is the conception of the state of consciousness preceding will as invariably one of pain, the want of the end willed as invariably painful. Now it is evident that the satisfaction of a function may be so long deferred as to involve the severest pain; hunger, thirst, may reach a degree of intensity that is frenzy, muscular inaction, in an ordinarily active individual, if long persevered in, may be combined with extreme discomfort and depression. And it is also true that all desire involves want in the sense that an end is sought because its absence is felt as undesirable. But want in this sense means merely desire, and is not necessarily combined with any real pain of deprivation. The state of consciousness preceding action may be, on the contrary, one of exhilaration, of exceeding joy of anticipation; the gratification of a desire may take place so soon after the first appearance of the desire, or the gratification of the desire become so certain so soon after the desire is first felt, that no pain of want is felt at all. Rolph, indeed, finds great difficulty in demonstrating his theory, and finally resorts to the definition of the pain which, as he asserts, furnishes the motive to action as "the pain of the absence of pleasure." He says, moreover, that not all pain is felt as such, since much feeling is below the threshold of consciousness.[140] But "unconscious pain" and "feeling below consciousness" are mere self-contradictions. Specification of that of which, as unconscious, we know nothing is a very easy way of delivering oneself from the necessity of positive proof, but it is a very unscientific one. With respect to Rolph's assertion that pain can not be dispensed with, since it is everywhere the motive to action, it may be remarked that this statement seems to accord ill with Rolph's other theory that never the struggle for existence but always states of plenty and comfort are the conditions of growth, and the lengthy demonstration that periods of want must condition decline, retrogression, and finally the extinction of the species suffering the want. From the standpoint of Darwin, the struggle for existence is not inconsistent with the possession of plenty on the part of favored individuals and species, but Rolph expressly denies the compatibility of the two principles.

In his theory of want as the universal motive to action, Rolph cites suicide as an extreme case of this want. Our analysis has already taken into consideration some of the cases of mental struggle and postponement of the satisfaction of desire involving pain. But where one end greatly desired is unattainable, choice may yet be possible of another end affording partial satisfaction of the function corresponding to the desire, and, in cases where choice is necessary between two or more conflicting ends, the gratification of one may be attended with a sufficient degree of pleasure to cause partial forgetfulness of the disappointment in the necessary relinquishment of the other ends. Where, however, the function denied is one of the most fundamental of the organism, its denial may be combined with intensest pain and a gradual physical degeneration, or even a sudden collapse of the organism, ending in death; or it may induce an act that secures this end through the mediation of self-conscious will. What is true, in this case, of the denial of some one fundamental function, is true also of an accumulation of coincident denials of a number of lesser ones. Our desires are, indeed, in all cases, more or less complex, and involve the fulfilment of various functions; but we can easily imagine such an accumulation of small ills as to lead to desperation. Where no choice of action seems left us by which we may attain some one end deeply desired, or where a coincidence of obstacles makes it appear as if there were no choice of action towards any desirable ends, death may be chosen as a lesser evil than life, the equivalent of a lesser pain in the absence of feeling altogether. It may be noted, however, that where suicide is prevented in the first moment of desperation, the individual planning it may not only never again attempt it, but may afterwards even find much pleasure in life. As there is a high degree of pleasure connected with the performance of deeply rooted function or habit, so the performance of all function is attended with some modicum of pleasure, except in such isolated moments as render suicide possible. Every end desired is one of function, and all function furnishes ends to the will. The pessimist lays emphasis upon the fact of the speedy loss of pleasure in ends attained. But herein lies the higher pleasure of life, that it is not rest but progress. The pleasures we attain may be continually renewed if rightly sought, but they cannot be unintermittently sustained. We cannot rest at ends attained and find unlessened rapture in them. Rest is not an attribute of life; life is essentially motion, that phase of it which we term rest being mere change of function for a time. The intimate relation, between pleasure and an equilibrium of waste and repair renders it impossible to obtain pleasure except as occupation is varied in order to afford opportunity of recuperation to organs and cells before used. Proper variation, however, may enable us to return to old pleasures with ever renewed and even increased enjoyment. But it is conceivable that the pleasures of gratification and the pains of disappointment may be so nearly balanced as to make life possible and yet endow it, at least for a period, with but little joy. It is to be noticed, however, that intense pain cannot endure, unmodified, for any great length of time. As pleasure follows the line of customary action, so pain diminishes with long-continued lack in any direction, unless this direction be that of too fundamental function, in which case the organism succumbs entirely and perishes. Either we grow gradually used to our disappointment and forget it to a great degree in other gratification, or we die under it. Certainly there are losses the pain of which is never entirely forgotten, after which life is never quite the same again; but the first agony of such losses is materially modified with time; and many of the losses which have seemed worst to us at the time they occurred are later looked back upon without regret. We progress to another stage, and the ends we desire to gain are changed. The habitual misanthrope, indeed, generally derives a great deal of satisfaction from his own misery; and this leads us to the apparently anomalous remark that even pain as function may come to be combined with pleasure; we feel a satisfaction in our own capacity of emotion. The sensitivity of the poet to pain as well as his sensitivity to pleasure is a source of often very keen gratification and pride to him. Of the weak and aged who have no especial pleasure in life, it may be said that they have also, in general, no fierce pains, at least seldom such as bring desperation in youth. Having learned from experience, they are not subject to such exaggerated expectations, and hence disappointments, as accompany youth, vigor, and ignorance of the realities of life; and often they derive enjoyment from things which would have no attraction for the young.

The old question as to the relation between health and happiness may be answered by the statement that the two coincide. The statement is not meant, however, in the sense that the happiness which we at present attain is coincident with health in an absolute sense or that, vice versa, perfect happiness is, or can be, coincident with that which we ordinarily term health. The two terms are generally very ill-defined; sometimes the one, sometimes the other, is used in an absolute sense in connection with the discussion of the parallel term in a comparative sense. Perfect happiness must coincide with perfect health; for perfect health must coincide with perfect fulfilment of all function, and this coincides with the gratification of all desire. At present desires conflict, and the gratification of one is bought at the expense of others. This partial gratification corresponds to a partial health; but we too often forget, in the discussion of health and happiness, that health is no more perfect than is happiness. The individual is not yet in harmony with himself. But this means that he also is not in harmony with the environment.

In the development of thought, feeling, and will, we have noticed a certain parallelism, the attainment of new knowledge, the deviation of feeling into new channels, and the direction of will to new ends; indeed, our analysis must bring us to regard this development as something more than a parallelism, since, as we have seen, thought, feeling, and will, cannot be defined as separate organs of mind. And we are here led to notice a theory sometimes advanced, that the feelings of one individual can never be changed by another. You may present a man with arguments, say the advocates of this theory, but this is all; you cannot bring him to act on the arguments unless his feeling is already of the right sort before you present your arguments; if it is not, you cannot in any way alter it. Now a certain general foundation of character, of fundamental feeling, must always be conceded; but this is not what these theorists mean when they say that arguments can never alter feeling. "Of what use would it be to argue with my child and tell her that this or that act of hers is selfish," said a man to me not long ago of his three-year-old daughter; "if she is selfish, arguing with her will not make her less so; showing her that she is selfish will never have any effect upon her selfishness; you may change opinions by argument, but not feelings." The theory reminds us of the old idea of the will as something above other phases of nature and so supreme above their influence; it replaces this theory of the uncaused nature of the will by one of the like absolute independence of feeling. And yet, strange to say, this theory is oftenest advanced by just those who assert the variability of will in accordance with law, under the influence of the environment, and unite with these already incongruous theories the wholly contradictory one that it is feeling which furnishes the motive to will. To appeal to any one except through the medium of thought is certainly impossible; the feelings cannot be influenced except by representation and argument. Feeling cannot be taken by itself and so influenced. But the person endeavoring to convince does not desire to arouse indefinite feeling; he invariably wishes to excite it with regard to some definite end. To change opinion is also to change feeling in some degree. Whether an appeal to another is successful or not depends on the nature of the appeal and upon the consciousness of the individual to whom the appeal is made; but this means that not the nature of consciousness alone decides the result. In any excitation by the environment, the result is conditioned, not by the one factor alone but by both; and no excitation can leave the individual entirely unchanged; the multiplication of infinitesimal single excitations constitutes the whole of evolution. A first appeal or argument may be felt only as disagreeable interference; but an accumulation of appeals at first disagreeable and met only with rebuffs may eventually result in total change of both ends and feelings. The amount of appeal necessary differs with the person appealed to; it may be large or small, excessively large or excessively small, but the general fact remains, that feelings vary as thought widens, and that an accompanying change of ends takes place. Thought and feeling are not two separate and independent things, but are, on the contrary, vitally united.

We may put our old familiar question with regard to cause and effect in a new form in respect to the development of thought, feeling, and will. In considering the process of evolution, will, and, therefore, the conscious exercise of function, is ordinarily treated as the effect of pleasure; but our course of analysis identifies function and its exercise and rather brings function into the foreground, though the assertion of precedence in importance has been avoided. The course was chosen partly because it affords an opportunity of propounding the following questions: Is lapse of time, amount of exercise, or pleasure, the cause of habit? Or is habit the cause of function? Or is pleasure the cause of continued exercise of function? Or is function the cause of pleasure? Or is a minimum of interference the cause of pleasure and of function in a particular direction? Or is not, rather, continued exercise of function the cause of the absence of interference wherever and as far as it exists? We find all these various suggested theories advocated, by direct statement or by implication, in the treatment of the evolution of function by different authors, and indeed we frequently find several of the theories included, by implication, in the work of the same author. The vital connection of unimpeded function and pleasure is apparent, and the necessity of the time element in the development of function may also be asserted; but there is not, according to our theory, any reason for introducing the concept of cause into the relations.

Our analysis of the development of thought, feeling, and will, has an important bearing on the teleological argument. If all habit comes, in time, to be pleasurable, if pleasure merely follows the line of exercise of function, whatever that line may be, and ends are thus mere matters of habit, and habit, exercise, is a matter of the action and reaction of all conditions, then it is evident that the force of the teleological argument is at once destroyed. We cannot pass beyond nature, by this route, to the inference of a transcendental cause. Man's action being a part of nature and the result of all conditions as much as is the motion of the wind or the waves, the results he produces, like theirs, only change and never creation, the only inference we could make from his will to other will must be an inference to will that is a part of nature, a result if also a condition, a link in the chain of nature, its ends cooerdinate with habit but not the cause of it, and no more determining than determined.

FOOTNOTES:

[135] See Avenarius' formulae of "complete vital maintenance": f(R) = -f(S); f(R) + f(S) = o, "Kritik der reinen Erfahrung."

[136] "Problems of Life and Mind," Ser. II. p. 103.

[137] See essay by Petzoldt above considered.

[138] "Biologische Probleme," p. 96; "erfordern."

[139] "Methods of Ethics," 4th ed. p. 97.

[140] "Biologische Probleme," p. 177 et seq.

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