Mechanism and personality: an outline of philosophy in the light of the latest scientific research

Front matter

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Preface

SOME time ago a gentleman of excellent attainments requested the author of the following pages to recommend him a book which would give, within moderate compass, the present attitude of Philosophy in the light of the latest scientific research, and that in a way suited to the comprehension of the ordinary reader. The author mentioned several books which he thought would in some sort answer the purpose, but at the same time had to confess that he could think of no one work which exactly met the case. Reflecting afterwards from time to time upon the subject, he was still unable to fix upon any one such book.

It was in this way that the need of something to meet the growing inquiry as to what has become of metaphysic in the glare of the scientific thought of the day impressed itself upon the author, and that he conceived the idea of trying what he could do himself in the way of outlining an answer. These pages are the result of his effort.

The author has tried to keep the general reader in mind, and, as a result, the book is largely elementary; but, while aiming at simplicity and clearness, he has not thought it best to avoid entirely the recognized terminology of the subject. Care has been taken, however, when introducing purely technical terms, to give equivalent expressions in common speech. The author has been at times tempted — almost compelled —

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VI PREFACE.

to enter upon disputed ground, and to venture upon questions of considerable subtlety, but, for all that, the book will be found, in the main, fairly easy reading.

With regard to materials, a free hand has been laid upon whatever was within reach ; and although it has been thought unnecessary to give detailed references, the reader will be able to know, in a general way, to whom credit is due. The author is free to confess his regret, however, that his references have been so meagre.

The reader will find that there has been no effort to keep back or underrate the conclusions of the most advanced scientific thought, but that the burning questions between the Empiricists and Transcendentalists have been treated with perfect candor and openness.

The metaphysic is, in the main, that of Lotze, or perhaps better, the Lotzian phase of Kant. The " Outlines of Metaphysic," lately translated by Professor Ladd (Ginn & Company) , has been found most suitable for quotation, and, with the exception of a few passages from the " Mikrokosmus," the extracts from Lotze may be found in that English version.

The thanks of the author are due to Dr. Henry H. Donaldson, Professor of Neurology in Clark University, for valuable assistance in revising Chapters III. to VII. inclusive, and to John Fearnley, M.A., of the University of the South, for efficient help in revising proofs.

If this book shall be the means of directing speculative

thought more in the lines marked out by Lotze, it will have

served a useful purpose, in the opinion of

THE AUTHOR.

Sewanee, Tenn., January, 1891.

Chapter I

What is truth? Incompleteness of Knowledge. Lack of permanence. Difficulties of arriving at ultimate principles. The senses mendacious. The intellect open to attack. May we not be compelled to see things as they are not? Practical limits of doubt. Logical limits. Personality. The self an ultimate fact. The ' One and the many.'

Chapter V

The specific senses. Number indefinite. Touch fundamental. Pressure. End-organs. Threshold value. Weber's and Fechner's law. ' Local signs.' Pressure spots. Temperature spots. End-organs of taste. Stimuli. Classification. Sense of smell. End-organs of smell. Stimuli. Classification. Muscular sense. End-organs of motion.

CHAPTER VI. The Sense of Hearing 48

The ear. Structure. Corti's organ. Theories. Physical basis of sound. Intensity, pitch, quality. Illustrations. Partials. Tyndall quoted. Difference in people's sensibilities. Powers of discrimination. Range. The human voice.

CHAPTER VII. The Sense of Vision 60

Mechanism of the eye. Structure of the retina. End-organs. Rods and cones. Mechanical basis of vision. Color. ' Consecutive ' images. Tone, intensity, saturation. Yellow spot.

Chapter VIII

Physiological research with respect to psycho-mechanisms. Protoplasm net pure and simple matter. Professor Romanes quoted.

CONTENTS. IX

PAGE

Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer not materialists. Hobbes quoted. The problem of relation between physiology and consciousness. The chasm recognized. Leaders of science quoted.

CHAPTER IX. Personality in its Psychical Aspect 82

Analysis of the psychical factor of personality. The three fundamental modes of the self — sensation, cognition, and conation. A tri-unity, inseparable but logically distinguishable. Sub-consciousness. Unity and plurality.

CHAPTER X. Development of the Psychical Aspect of Personality ... 86

The relation of the mechanical and psychical factors. Mutually necessary. The human organism at birth. The line between elementary consciousness and self-realization shadowy. Automatic action. Basic-personality. Evolution. Continuity and discontinuity. Instincts. 'Jelly-specks.' Ants. ChcEtodon rostratus. The beaver. Domestic animals. Inverse order of intelligence and instinct. A Evolution as well as an evolution. Instincts gradually replaced in ascending order of nature.

CHAPTER XI. The Concept-Forming Process 97

Muscular co-ordination. Education of the organism. Vital organs not under control of will. Analogous psychical conditions. Process of thought-development. Like and unlike. Discovery of meaning. Attention. Retention. Concepts. Concept-masses. Apperception. Thought as thought. Language. Introspection. 1 Pure ' and ' empirical ego.' ' One ' and ' many.' A sense of 'knowing' deeper than understanding. Personality antedates knowledge.

X CONTENTS.

Chapter XII. Page

Differentiations of Self. Memory 109

Consciousness. Differentiation of feeling, of cognition, of will. An end ideally first. Self-development. Perception. Intuition. Ideas in the mind not like objects without. Space. Time. Memory. Mechanical basis. Objection by Lotze. Complexity. Illustration from sound. Phenomena explicable upon theory of mechanical basis. Dr. Rush's case. Dr. Carpenter's Welshman. Coleridge's case. Power to recall the past. Sudden recollections. Law of association.

CHAPTER XIII. The Imagination 126

Definition. Classification. Cognitive and Sentient imagination. Economic and Rational. Artistic and Rhythmic. Music. Relation of memory and imagination.

Chapter XIV

Phenomenon of dreaming. Sleep. Do we always dream in sleep? The brain a thought-machine. Consciousness a mere phenomenon. The brain in sleep. Mosso's observations. Character of dreams. Nightmare. Somnambulism. Case of student at Amsterdam. Case recorded by Dr. Abercrombie. German monk. Muscular feats. Double consciousness. Case of young lady at West Point. Hypnotism. Muscular effects. Dr. Charcot quoted. ' Suggestions.'

Chapter XV

A technical phase of cognition. Faculty of Relations. Thought proper. The lower animals. Pain. The logical element in man. The syllogism. Dictum of Aristotle. Deduction and Induction. Reasoning. Reciprocal processes.

CONTENTS. XI

Chapter XVI. Page

Hypothetical. Intuitive Knowledge. Conditions of all explicit thought. Controversy about 'Innate Ideas.' Empirical Knowledge. Law of Identity. Law of Contradiction. Excluded Middle. Its questionable use in certain cases. Hamilton. Sufficient Reason. Causality. Hume. Locke. Leibnitz. The Laws of Motion. All Science based upon necessary truths.

Chapter XVII

Conditional syllogisms and law of sufficient Reason. No law of the natural world above doubt. Not so in thought. l A priori? 1 original,' etc., truths. Necessity the characteristic. Relation of Induction and Deduction. The basis of Induction. Intuition of space. The Infinite and Absolute. The * Philosophy of the Conditioned.'

CHAPTER XVIII. The Bearing of EmpiricisxM on Personality 185

Intuition of Time. Time the ground of motion. Space of mass. Cause conditions Space and Time. Inertia. Self-activity inconceivable in ' Thing.' Personality the only ground of efficient cause. ' Persistent Force.' Doubt as to the being of ' force ' as an entity. Professor Tait quoted. Spencer's effort to find an ultimate Reality. Energy implies Personality. Spencer's position sounder than that of his followers. Quoted. His ' unknown ' known.

CHAPTER XIX. Feeling 199

Classification. Pain and pleasure. Sensuous feeling. Herbartian scheme. Intensity and quality in feeling. Caenesthesia. Esoteric and exoteric feeling. The one working from within emerges in the understanding; the other built up through the understanding. Practical bearing.

Xll . CONTENTS.

Chapter XX. Page

Feeling {continued') 211

Rational Feeling. Esthetic Feeling. Beauty. Periodic motion. Music. Vision. Illusions. Berkeley's Theory of Vision. Knowledge through vision. Cheselden's case. Other cases. Other problems.

CHAPTER XXI. Feeling {continued') 220

Art. Ideal element. Sculpture. Painting. Music. Architecture. Poetry. Evolution of ethical feeling. The Good. Ethical treatment reserved to later stage.

CHAPTER XXII. The Will 229

Elementary effort. Emerges in conscious volition. Much that is commonly accounted free, mechanical. Liberty restricted to Purposive epoch. Inhibitory functions. Directive functions. The office of the will in developing emotional nature. Development of volitive powers. Moral aspect of the will. Penitence.

CHAPTER XXIII. Unity of Personality 242

Difficulties of question. Unity and manifoldness. Unity a primordial condition. Inferior organisms. Protozoa. Not two worlds, one spiritual and the other physical. Man a manifestation of one person in two modes. The psychical and mechanical inseparable. Gross and sublimated matter. Visible and Invisible Universe. The ' Unseen Universe ' quoted. The mechanical mode has its only title to reality through personality. The Cicada.

Chapter XXIV

What is 'Thing'? Construction of Matter 254

Illusions. What underlies phenomena? Pure Being. 'Thing' that which affects and is affected. The position of Bishop Berke-

CONTENTS. Xlll ley. Quoted. Analytical physics and construction of matter. Boscovich's theory. Molecular mechanics. Clerk Maxwell. Professor Tait. Sir W. Thompson's ' vortical atom.' Difficulties. Le Sage's theory. Ether. The physicists driven into metaphysics Atoms 'manufactured articles.'

Chapter XXV

Position of mathematics in scientific inquiries. Mathematical processes develop contradictions. Surds. Asymptotes. Graphical illustration. Cissoid of Diodes. Other cases. Right lines intersecting with no common point. The concept 'infinity.' Illustration.

Chapter XXVI

The Metaphysical Attitude of Change. Cause 283

The problem of change. Quotation from Plato. The problem of causation. Influence * passing over.' Doctrine of ' Occasionalism.' ' Pre-established Harmony.' ' Divine Assistance.' Lotze quoted. Causation, as such, inexplicable.

CHAPTER XXVII. Relation of Personality to Space and Time, Mass and Motion . 294

The concepts Space and Time. Subjective ground of Mass ?nd Motion. Not self-subsisting realities. Find their reality in Personality. Reality of the Cosmos Personal. Soundness of scientific methods. No truth material. Personality necessary to Truth. Personality not a phenomenon.

Chapter XXVIII

Idealism. Fichte. Lotze quoted. Schelling. Hegelianism. Hegel quoted. Objections to absolute Idealism. Lotze's position commended. The Supreme Good.

XIV CONTENTS.

Chapter XXIX. Page

Self-activity necessary to morality. No liberty in Sensibility or Cognition as such. Choice. Motives. The 'Good.' Obligation. Man held to be omniscient. No obligation in Selfness. Altruism. How the will of the Supreme Good is Known. The ' Categorical Imperative.'

Chapter XXX

The admonitions of the moral monitor. Conscience discovers itself only upon change of moral purpose. Analogy between the functions of conscience and inertia. Analysis. Illustration of steamship. Moral momentum.

CHAFrER XXXI.

Personal good implies Personality in God. The Mosaic account of the origin of evil in man. Disobedience. Obedience. A class of theologians faulted. Conflict and agreement of the Finite and Infinite. Theology and Religion. Human aspirations. Quotation from Mrs. Browning. Conclusion.

Chapter I. Scope And Limits Of Skepticism

What is Truth? Incompleteness of knowledge. Lack of permanence. Difficulties in arriving at ultimate principles. The senses mendacious. The intellect open to attack. May we not be compelled to see things as they are not? Practical limits of doubt. Logical limits. Personality. The S elf an ultimate fact. ' The one and the many.'

THE lack of certitude in human knowledge and human destiny has always been a ground of anxiety and complaint. It is not alone a Roman Procurator, who, in mockery or despair, asks the perplexing question, " What is Truth ? " ; but every man, who thinks at all, must find the inquiry forcing itself upon his attention at times; and, too often, with the dismal refrain, "Who shall show us any good? " And yet it is a great mistake to inveigh against the skeptical element in man's nature. A little reflection must make it apparent that doubt is a necessary condition of knowledge in any form. Paradoxically stated, if we could know at once and perfectly, we should not know at all. It is not by light alone that objects are seen in the external world. If all shade and shadow were removed, there might be left indeed a dead, perfectly even and unvarying illumination ; but all sense of sight would be gone, and the external world blotted out. Doubt is the shadow of certitude, without which the world of Truth would vanish from human consciousness.

It must be confessed that the extent to which skepticism may be carried is bewildering in the extreme ; but there is a limit which must be reached in thought at last — a practical limit unconsciously forced upon the unthinking at all times, and from which the tide turns back in a flood of unmistakable verity. It will be well to take a look into this yawning chasm of doubt and denial, that we may be more sure of our footing on the heights of the true and abiding.

In the first place, every body knows how incomplete at best is all human knowledge. Those who know the most are most impressed with a sense of their inadequacy and ignorance. Every school-boy knows how Socrates could not understand the declaration of the oracle that he was the wisest man in Athens, until it came over him that it must be because he knew his own ignorance ; and how Sir Isaac Newton could fancy himself a little child gathering shells cast up by the sea, while the great ocean of Truth lay spread out in mystery before him. An ' educated ignorance ' is but another expression for the highest stage of human knowledge.

Then again the little that one does know has no fixedness and permanence. Every day brings changes — every varying mood causes modifications and colorings. The most firmly settled opinions are constantly assailed by suggestions of doubt. No statement — even the simplest — can be made that is not open to question. Suppose one should attempt to teach a child something of the law of gravitation. He lets a pebble drop from his hand, and asks the child why it falls, explaining that it is because all bodies are attracted to the centre cf the earth. The explanation is not true. That body and all other bodies are attracted, not by the earth alone, but by the sun and moon and all other bodies. He corrects himself, enunciating the law of gravitation : Every body attracts every other body with a force which varies inversely as the square of the distance, and directly as the mass. False again. This is only true for sensible distances. When one passes within molecular limits, the law undergoes a change, — perhaps a thousand alternations of attraction and repulsion ; and it is hopeless to attempt to follow it. But one cannot be allowed to go even so far in peace. What is a body? No one knows. We may say it is that which is made up of particles, which are composed of molecules, which in turn are composed of atoms. But what is an atom ? We do not know. What is a molecule ? It is an hypothetical combination or system of atoms, — that is, of elements which nobody can know nor conceive of. Are there any atoms? Nobody knows» It is not only doubted, but stoutly denied. What is attraction or repulsion? Nobody knows. What is force? Not only does nobody know; but the advanced mathematicians and physicists are so seriously skeptical as to the existence of any such ' thing ' that they are doing their best to banish the word from the vocabulary of scientific terms. Thus there is not much left of the definition of gravitation ; but even what remains is equally open to doubt.

It must be confessed that the skeptic has got on pretty well already in his work of demolition ; but he has broad fields yet before him for the exercise of his destructive propensity. He attacks the entire external world, and denies its existence. Take any object, as the long-suffering tree of the metaphysicians : how do we know that it exists ? We see it. See what ? The color — light and shade. But are these the tree? No; they are the sensations produced through the eye by modifications of light. Then they are something which the tree effects ; not what it is.

Bat it will be said, We can touch it. Yes, and what do we find? That it is hard, rough, cold and all that : — but these are not the tree. They are states or conditions, — called ' properties ' or ' accidents ' — and so we may go on through every possible test of the senses, and we shall only find other properties, or accidents, no one of which, nor all of them combined, can be the tree. The skeptic still asks, what is ' it ' — what is ' The-thing-in-itself ? '

He asks further, When one sees objects in a dream, are they real ? Have they ' thingness ' which supports the properties or attributes, such as color, shape, size and whatever else they seem to have ? The sleeper thinks so at the time. Why may it not be that we only think they have all these in our waking moments? Or, how do we know which are our waking moments? Why may not the dream-world be the reality, and that which we call the real world be the dream?

But even yet the skeptic is not satisfied. He has cast suspicion upon the external world ; he next attacks the thought-world.

One must get all material of thought through experience, and experience must come through the senses. But the senses are not infallible. By an artful combination of mirrors, the most successful delusions are practised by the modern magician. Every body is misled from time to time by tricks of vision. The ear is even more fallible, and all the senses, even touch, are constantly deceived. Information received through fallible sources, from the nature of the case, must be open to suspicion.

But the mental powers and operations are themselves mutable and uncertain. Memory cannot be trusted implicitly. We find ourselves constantly mistaken in our recollection of things and events; and memory is absolutely necessary to any sort of knowledge. But even if it were never caught limping, how do we know that it is not always persistently and consistently false ? What can we do but simply take what it tells us of the past as true without possibility of verification?

But in point of fact, all our ideas and opinions have in them undeniable sources of change and uncertainty. The mind itself is not the same from youth to age, and no one can tell at what stage it can best be trusted. Its grasp and flexibility undergo daily changes, through variation in health — through fits of passion, moods of despondency, the use of intoxicants and the effects of environment. All of these jangling voices cannot be true, and how can we be sure of any one of them? Then again, one's way of thinking is greatly modified by education, religion, birth, manners and customs, interest, and a thousand external circumstances. Some of these, or all of them must be distorting j and how shall we say that the Hindoo mother, the Howling Dervish, and the modern Thug, are not all equally justified in their conclusions ?

The skeptic is not done yet. He asks — especially in the person of certain pseudo-scientists — why should not the mind, with all thought, be but an effect, like the blaze of a candle, or any other mechanical or chemical reaction? We can trace the motion from any external stimulus along the sensory and motor nerves to and from the nerve centres in the brain, — we can localize these centres and note their action : what more is needed ? If the quiet, restful earth, and all that goes on in it is but the effect of mass and motion, why should we look further for an explanation of thought ? Call it a phenomenon of matter and be content !

Or again, — and one can go no farther — even admitting that there is an infallible criterion of certitude, and that in spite of all that has been said, one could find it, how do we know that it would reveal that which is real — that the power behind nature and all phenomena has not so made us that we are compelled to see things quite otherwise than they are — that what we take for truth, and must take for truth is after all a delusion, unreal and false? The objects of the external world when seen through colored glasses, take the color of the glasses ; why may not the whole thought-world appear what it is not, because it is seen through a medium which is forced upon us, and which gives a fictitious tone and character to truth ; and so presents it to us as what it is not?

Even such a radical position as this is possible, and as an hypothesis it is irrefutable. We should have to be given another set of senses with which to examine this hyper-sensuous world, and compare the results with our present knowledge, before we could know whether we should see things as we do now, if we were angels or inhabitants of Mars or some other possible world. But even then we should only know that our new senses made things look to us as they would to an angel or a Martian ; but the question would again obtrude itself— Does the angel or the Martian see things as they are? and so it would again and again, if we had a thousand sets of senses. No one set could do more than our present senses do, — that is, do just what is their business to do. The very highest created being — though he be only less than the All-Father, can know only as his powers and capacities enable him to know ; and we are in no worse case. He would know more, doubtless, but he could not know with greater certainty. He too could doubt, — doubt as radically as man, — doubt being, as we have seen, an absolutely necessary condition of knowledge to any finite intelligence. If, then, we do not demand to be as Gods, — if we are to remain as created beings, — if there are to be created beings at all, there is no truth, — there can be no truth except as it is made known or revealed to the creature as he is, with and through the limitations which make him a creature. That is a false and absurd philosophy which attempts to carry one out of the scope of the actual and asks how things are or could be, to another order of beings than man. We are men, and in the man-world ; and the very truth is the truth that man knows, or can know.

But it will be remembered that I said in the beginning of this discussion, that there is a practical limit to doubt unconsciously forced upon the unthinking at all times. By the necessity of man's nature, he cannot live in utter doubt and negation. After the sum of all actual doubt is reckoned up, there remains in his practical life a far vaster sum of unquestioned reality, through which, indeed, the very doubt and his own existence are made possible. Question and deny as we may, we have faith in our senses ; and we show it every moment of our lives. There is no man who does not thoroughly believe that the earth is under his feet, and that if he does not take food he will die. There never was a man who did not know that there were other men about him, and that there were rights and duties growing out of the relations between them. There never was a man who, uncertain about a fact, did not know that if his means of investigation were sufficiently enlarged, the doubt would be removed. Granted that the senses do sometimes mislead us, does not this very knowledge emerge from the far deeper knowledge that they commonly do not? and are we not certain that if due precaution were taken, — if the obstructing or misleading elements were removed, the deception would go too ? Is not the universal and necessary consciousness that we must not always trust the senses a certainty ? and does it not carry with it the further and deeper conviction that there is an infallible criterion, if we can only be sufficiently informed ? As Jouffroy, whose line of thought I have in good part followed, says, " The cause of our faculties deceiving us, is not the want of a criterion to distinguish the proper from the improper exercise of them, but carelessness or haste in not using this criterion."

With regard to the question of the accidents, or properties of bodies, and that ■ thing-in-itself ' which supports them, I have only to say here that the difficulty is one which presents itself only to the philosopher, and will come up for consideration further on. People at large are not troubled with any such abstraction, but innocently assume as the philosopher does also, when he is not philosophizing, that what lies spread out before him, as land and sea and sky, are simply what they seem. I also pass for the present that great domain of necessary truths, or presuppositions of our nature, as we shall be able to get at it better further on.

So much for the practical limits of skepticism. Let us now consider briefly the question from a purely logical standpoint. We are told that Descartes, the father of modern speculative thought, shut himself out from the world, and deliberately set himself to the work of carrying doubt to its direst limit. He found that there is one fact which stands out clear and distinct in the midst of one's most determined effort at denial, — and that is, the fact of one's own existence. Doubt as I may, I cannot doubt that I doubt. The ego is necessarily posited or affirmed in the very act of doubting. Consciousness is beforehand in forcing the knowledge of self upon me in the act of construing the notion of denial in any form, and in enunciating my conclusion the "self" is affirmed as a necessary condition: it is / that doubt.

The formula in which Descartes embodied this fundamental verity, ' I think, therefore I am ' {cogito ergo sum) — has been much criticised and discussed. There is no reasonable question that the philosopher intended it not as an argument, but as an incontestable postulate. But it is a matter of no moment to us here what he may have intended ; the truth remains. We need only the two words, ' I doubt.' They cover the whole range of skepticism; and it is logically impossible to entertain or formulate the expression of any sort of doubt whatever without positing incontestably the belief on the part of the doubter, in his own existence.

But this assertion, — <I doubt,' — which lies at the threshold of all questionings, is pregnant with a further truth, equally important, and equally obvious. One could never have the slightest consciousness of self without the consciousness of the not-self. If the ego were in a state of absolute isolation — a unit, without that which is other than itself, even its own parts or limitations, there could be no possible variation in its modes or states, it could have no possible experience — there could be nothing to think about, and so no thought whatever, and no consciousness of existence. Thus the knowledge of the self carries with it necessarily, the knowledge of the non-self with its unending phenomena. And thus that flood of doubt, which we so freely admitted in the beginning, returns upon us in an overwhelming sense of certainty. It does not yet appear what the non-ego is ; but that it is somewhat we cannot deny. We still know that the senses are not always to be relied upon, but we know also, that they are bearing their testimony^ and it remains for the self to weigh it and determine. What we do know, and must know without question, is that we think there is an external world ; and what one thinks and cannot by any possibility not think, one knows. Every sensation is at least a sensation, and in so far real : whether the external stimulus be indeed what w r e take it to be is quite another matter. It is just in this fact that flexibility is left us, and that we are saved from dead mechanism — a dire necessity without the possibility of thought or action. Of these two factors — the self and that which is not self — it will be seen, — and it cannot be logically disputed, — that the positive, living factor is the self. It would be premature to enter upon a discussion of the relation of these two factors at this stage of our investigation. It is enough to emphasize the fact that the world of mass and motion can be known only in thought ; and that thought is the distinguishing characteristic of the self.

But now, what are we to understand by the ego, the me, the self? First, negatively (speaking for myself), I do not mean the body, nor the brain, nor any special organ of the body — I do not mean the memory, nor imagination, understanding, will, or consciousness, nor even what is commonly called mind or soul. I do mean all these — the whole self — all that goes to make up what we know as ' person ' — in one sense compounded of parts, in another and higher sense, absolutely partless — a unit,

IO MECHANISM AND PERSONALITY.

not susceptible of any sort of fraction or division. We see in it a living exemplification of the problem about which philosophy, ancient and modern, has ever busied itself — the co-existence of the ' one and the many.' As 'many ' it is composed of two chief factors — a marvellous mechanism, and an incomprehensible and dominant psychical energy : as ' one ' it is a living and ineffable personality. The nature and existence of the mechanism, and of the psychic factor are known only through the personality which for each and every one of us is the one primordial and necessary fact of the universe.