Freedom and purpose; an interpretation of the psychology of Spinoza

Front matter

REEDOM AND PURPOSE

An Interpretation of the Psychology of SPINOZA

By JAMES H. DUNHAM

Preface

The following essay is an attempt to interpret Spinoza's ideas of human consciousness in terms of modern psychology. It is extremely hazardous to project the feelings and methods of one age into the mental habits of earlier thinkers. The difficulty is of a peculiar kind when we examine the shell of scholastic formulae from which the author never wholly released himself. Nevertheless, the consensus of opinion has given him a place second to none among the progenitors of the scientific study of mind. Indeed, he is held by some, and with good reason, to be the unwitting founder of the historic school known as Parallelism. Be this as it may, it is certain that no man before the rise of empirical methods understood as well as he the meaning and scope of psychic conation. The structural phenomena of the organism were hidden from his view, but their functional values, which we now subsume under the rubric of teleology, were grasped with an accuracy that astonishes the inquirer.

We submit the results of our study not as a complete account of the Spinozistic philosophy — for the inquiry is limited to a particular field — but as a practical solution of a problem which has persistently vexed the reader of the Ethics. Freedom, in whatsoever manner described, reveals a network of unexplained difficulties. The mesh grows thicker and more tangled if we treat Spinoza's problem in the cavalier fashion usually accorded it. Either freedom vanishes altogether, or its terms become tantalisingly vague. The form of argument which we have adopted allows room for the scientific verification of material. Its virtue, if any, lies here.

We cannot undertake to list the array of authorities consulted, — on the one side the direct expositors of the text, on the other the standard works on the meaning of consciousness. It is not invidious, however, to single out two books, which have measurably affected the framing of our conclusions, viz., Joa-

PREFACE

chim's A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza and Hobhouse's Development and Purpose.

One word of personal acknowledgment should be added. For the initial suggestion of subject and repeated counsels in its unfolding, the writer is indebted to Professor Edgar A. Singer, Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania.

The references in the body of the essay are from the Ethics, except as otherwise noted, and are cited by book and proposition. When the page is named the reference is to the authoritative Latin text of VanVloten and Land. It will appear that the English translation by Elwees in the Bohn Library has been freely used, as being in most cases substantially correct.

Philadelphia, January I, 191 6.

Chapter I The Problem Of Servitude

The philosophy of Spinoza is first of all a transcript of his own experience. He found himself confronted with a serious problem, and he set about solving it to the best of his ability. He was conscious of two facts, the inflexibility of the natural order, together with his own inevitable place therein, and a well defined sense of freedom. Could these two facts be reconciled? The method proposed has been variously appraised by succeeding thinkers. Some have scorned it; others have altered its terms, so as to bring it into agreement with their own views; a third group have enthusiastically accepted it as a new Gospel. But whatever be the critical attitude of his readers, for him it was sufficient, and for him it became a genuine confession of faith. Let us understand at the outset his idea of human servitude.

I

The world in which we live, viewed as extended substance, can only be conceived as one and indivisible. For if it could be divided as sense-perception avers, then each segment would or would not possess all the properties of substance. If it did, infinity, e.g., could be predicated of each, and we should have an infinite number of infinite segments; if it did not, then the whole of substance having been divided into finite parts must surely lose its original character. Both alternatives, 'however, are absurd. 1 To prove the same thing from another angle, let us suppose that a particular segment is destroyed, the other parts remaining unchanged in position. Immediately a vacuum is created; but as this is abhorrent to nature, all its parts being obliged to seek a^ junction, we conclude that quantitative divisions are inconceivable. From this point of view nature is a continuum; and all objects, such as water, which the individuating eye distinguishes as separate, are only modal variations, undulations on the unbroken sea, by means of which fundamental unity is expressed. 2

But it is extremely difficult for the mind to grasp the idea of unqualified substance, inured as it is to the presence and activity of individuals. Let us approach the case from the opposite direction. We deal at once with simple bodies, exhibiting the most primary properties, viz., rest and motion. These may be compounded with one another, the aggregate maintaining a due relation in its parts, even though the modes of motion be changed. If now we advance another step and combine compound individuals, the product will include a great variety of possible modifications, let us say organic reactions, or orbital movements, without working any change in the new nature. By continuing this process to infinity, we at length reach the conception of the whole of nature, tot a fades mundi, an individual whose parts undergo an infinite and infinitely complex variety of changes, without endangering the unity of the whole. 3 Nature as thus conceived is not a dreary waste of substance, with nothing upon which the mind can seize; it is stocked with bodies of different degrees of "animation", that is, with different meanings as related to the whole. 4 The upshot of this view is that the world cannot be conceived without its parts, 5 the smallest organ and the most fleeting idea having their appointed place in the universal system, because they form the modes by which the attributes of God (or nature) are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. 6

Given, then, a world whose continuity is not interrupted, but defined by its modal parts, we inquire next how the parts are related to one another. That relationship is causal. Everything that exists, exists either through itself or something else. 7 If it exist through something else, it will be the effect of a cause. 8 Thus, a body at rest cannot supply its own impulse to motion ; it

•I, 15, Scholium (— Sch.). "I, 25, Corollary (=C.).

3 II, Lem. 7, Sch. 7 1, Ax. i.

must be moved by another body. Nor can a body in motion come to rest without the interposition of a second body. 9 In measuring the exact amount of work done we must take account of the texture of bodies in contact, hard, soft, or fluid. If the impinging body fails to move a body at rest, the effect of the motion is measured by the recoil of the first object, the path of the subsequent motion being determined by the angle of incidence. 10 Again, the constitution of compound bodies is a more intricate application of the same principle. For the constituent parts are determined to their relative positions by the "compulsion" of other bodies and their reciprocal motions preserve a fixed ratio among themselves. 11

If now we examine the world as a whole, we find the undeviating dependence of one individual upon another. Every thing is determined to exist or to act by another thing determined in the same way, in a regress that goes to infinity. 12 Take an example. A stone is dislodged from its place 1 on the roof, and falls to the ground, killing a passing pedestrian. The cause of the event was a tempestuous wind that came in from the sea. The wind was raised by the agitation of the sea on the preceding day. The agitation of the waves was produced by a definite cause, a mechanical series thus beginning which cannot be closed until its every member has been ascertained. But inasmuch as the number of links in the chain is infinite, we can never reach the ultimate cause of a particular act, and must simply say that all things which are, are in God (or nature) and so depend on Him; that without Him they can neither be nor be conceived. We do not thereby give up the pursuit of a mechanical ideal as an explanation of the world, and take refuge in the "sanctuary of ignorance", the will or purpose of God. Final causes cannot explain how a particular thing is determined in space and time. For in the first place the dogma reverses the actual order of events, taking the cause from its position of priority and making it the effect. It removes, also, the element of perfection from the world as immediately constituted and argues that perfection

9 II, Lem. iii. " II, Lem. iii. Definition.

can only be attained when purpose is realized. "If the immediate creations of God were made with a view to His attaining a certain end, then the last things for which the first were made must be the most excellent of all". 13

Mechanism on the other hand insists that everything is determined to existence, and to a particular state of existence by God, that is, by the laws of nature. It affirms that a definite effect always follows a definite cause, the essence in each being the same, 14 that the only way to estimate the power of a cause is to compare the essential natures of the affecting and affected bodies. 15 Thus, if man be the effect, we must look for the cause not in the lifeless stone, but in the germinating seed. If the nature of the tree be the cause, we must look for the effect not in articulate sounds, such as men utter, but in umbrageous foliage or luscious fruit. 16 Moreover, the principle of causality concerns not only the nature of the bodies, but their numerical status. To account for a group of similar individuals the determination of the essence, e.g., man, is not enough; we must also determine why there is a prescribed number of them. Let us posit twenty men, existing simultaneously and without mutual relationship. They possess the same properties and can be understood by the same formulas. But the definition of finite things does not involve existence; 17 the nature of man does not require that there should be twenty units of the class at the same time. Hence, we are forced to seek a causal nexus for each one in turn, in order to understand why he exists. 1S In other words, mechanism lays its grip upon every element in nature, forces it into an infinite regress of causes, and sets upon it the inerasable mark of necessity. 19 There is nothing contingent in the wide spaces of the universe ; nothing, that is to say, which is dependent on the operation of causes whose entrance into the sphere of influence we cannot positively determine. 20

Still another fact confronts us; the rule of causality can not be broken. When a body has been endowed with certain prop-

I, App.

19 1, 29.

I, Def. 4.

V, Ax. ii.

1S I, 8, Sch.

erties, and conditioned to act in a certain way, it can never disavow its condition; it can never act in a different fashion. 21 The most conspicuous interruption to the natural order is alleged to have occurred in the miracles of religion. They have woven themselves so intimately into the faith of the masses and are so manifestly the instruments of priestcraft for cementing its authority, that any one who attempts to examine them as natural phenomena, links in the causal chain, is branded as an impious heretic. Nevertheless we are warranted in inquiring into their character, proceeding on the assumption that the order of nature is immutable, as the being of God. 22 It will then appear that a miracle has no meaning, except in relation to the opinion of men. For it reflects not an activity in the mechanical world, but the limits of human knowledge. It is an event whose cause cannot be explained by those principles which natural reason has deduced from observed phenomena. In many of the recorded miracles an uncritical age declined to institute a search into causes, a search which would doubtless have removed once and for all the unusual character of the event. The necessity of mechanism remains unimpaired. 23

From a different point of view the application of this rule is denied. Men allege there is a break in the observed order. Sensations pressing thick and fast upon consciousness give us the impression of a confused, unarticulated mass. They do not conform to the sequence and order with which we have hedged natural phenomena. Disharmonies in sights and sounds, fetid, decomposing matter, bitterness or insipidity in taste, disease, inequalities in social condition, — these are to us evidences of an unbalanced scheme of nature ; we are wont to charge it up against the inadequacy of the governing rule, forgetting that our "order" is simply a synthesis of the sensuous manifold, a concept of the understanding. In nature there is no "order", there is nothing but irresistible law. 24 Everything is determined to act in a particular way, and in that way it must act. More than that, it is the only way in which it could act; that is to say, the world in

22 1, App. M I, App.

which we live, and all its constituent parts, could have assumed no other form, developed no other causal series, than that which science reveals. The argument adduced by Spinoza to prove this point is strictly scholastic; you could not make a new nature without making a new substance, which would mean the constructing of two infinities, an absurd proposition. But there is an empirical basis for his contention ; for, granting the physicist's principle, the conservation of energy, we are assured that however much you may alter the relations of individuals you cannot reduce the actual amount of force at work within the world. Hence, all speculation as to what might have happened is on the face of it inept. The fact remains inevitable and emphatic, — the rule of causality is universal.

II

To the rule as thus formulated the body of man does not present an exception. It follows in every detail the laws of physics and chemistry. Man comes into existence through the medium of a necessary cause, that is, by the action of another body, and is determined to his particular form and function by forces over which he has no control. 25 His corporeal constituents are precisely the same as those which enter into the making of a purely mechanical body, e.g., a planet. Like it his organization is not simple, but a congeries of minute and infinitely diversified bodies. Like it, too, his component parts reveal the usual variety of texture, hard, soft, fluid. He is affected by the same impact of foreign bodies, while all the organs and functions within the compound sustain an undeviating relation to one another. 26 The vegetative system requires the introduction of bodies from without for its constant "regeneration" — a fact which apparently unique to organic structure may yet be paralleled by magnetic influences in unorganized bodies. Again, the human body receives impressions through the sense-organs, in such a way that the impressions endure after the stimulus is removed, by virtue of the fact that the fluid parts of our body impinge on the softer

25 1, 17, Sch. 2S Cf. II, Lem. vi.

parts of the same and register there an effect, undisturbed until a new reaction is set up. This transaction is subject to the common calculus of chemistry.

Man has also a reciprocating- power; he can "do work" on his neighbor; he can "arrange" external bodies in various ways, especially by bodily motion, or change of place. 27 It is therefore true to say that man is conformed to nature in an almost infinite number of ways, 28 that he is inexorably a part of nature, and cannot undergo any changes save such as are determined by the laws of physical activity, his own body as well as outside forces being examined ; 29 and that his every act mirrors the general constitution of the world and not exclusively the properties which make him a man. 30 In this way he fulfills the universal axiom that there is in nature no individual thing which is not surpassed in intrinsic strength by another individual, and which consequently is liable to destruction by it. 31 The axiom is empirically verifiable, and in no case more clearly than in the life of man. Man thus becomes a member of the causal series, which grows ever more powerful in its regress. The slightest experience proves to him that his own power is infinitely exceeded by the power of external causes.

But the account of man which we have so far given has made no reference to intellect as the special endowment of our subject. This is the element which is thought to distinguish him from other objects in nature, even conscious animals. It must be his certificate of freedom, if he have any. We therefore ask, how mental processes arise and what relation they bear to body. The primary fact is, that the order and nexus of ideas is the same as the order and nexus of things. 32 For every individual in the world there is an idea in the mind of God, since he is both thought and extension; that is, everything has a "mind". 33 But man alone of all'modes is able to express his ideas in language; hence his experience must be studied in order to ascertain the relation between mind and body. Now the first element in con-

27 II, Posts, i-vi.

28 IV, App. vi.

81 IV, Ax.

sciousness, the fact which first makes us aware that there is such a thing as mind, is the idea of an existing object, viz., the body. 34 The relation between them is indestructible. The moment a reaction, even of the most rudimentary kind, takes place in body, the mind registers its image as an idea. Mental action corresponds point by point with physical changes; the concomitance is exact. 35 Hence, the finer the articulation of the organs of body, and the acuter the senses to receive and coordinate their perceptions, that is to say, the greater the reactive power of body, the more fitted will mind be to work the sensuous manifold into a conceptual system. In other words, percept and concept are inevitably joined; there is no distinction between them. 36 The mind is not a plastic surface, a tabula rasa, on which images are successively engraved. It is another aspect of body, just as body is another aspect of mind. What happens to one happens simultaneously to the other, whether the "happening" be viewed from the standpoint of ideas or their objective equivalent. 37

Now we know what happens to body, and from these data we can judge what happens to mind. When the body is affected by external forces, the impact of the affection is registered in consciousness. The mind, however, does not perceive the nature of the impinging body, except as it is mediated through the constitution of its own body. 3s Thus, Peter's idea of Paul will be different from Paul's idea of himself, inasmuch as the one passes through the sense-organs of the observer, while the other is the product of a man's experience with his own organic system. The modification of body determines the image in the mind. 39 When, then, two or more sensations occur simultaneously in the mind, the return of one of them will induce a modification, kindred to that sustained when both were present. This is possible because the body retains the impression of an external agent even after its withdrawal, and until such impression has been effaced by a new sensation. On this basis memory cannot be an originative act of the mind ; it is the sequence of images, caused by corresponding reactions in the body. For example, the soldier sees the prints of the horses' hoofs in the sand and at once conjures up the image of a horse, a horseman, and the tumult of battle; while a farmer observing the same tracks would think of the plow, the furrow, and the hard-working animal. In this way, too, objects which have no natural affinities are joined together; as when a Roman hearing the word pomum, would at once think of the fruit bearing that name, the two images having nothing in common except the fact that both had at the same moment produced modifications in the percipient's senses. 40 One conclusion alone can be deduced from these considerations, viz., that the mind is framed to think in a particular way, by a definite cause, which in turn is subject to a like determination, until a causal series develops in the operation of mind, parallel to, and as rigorous as, that which governs the affections of body. 41

But to many students of human nature such a conclusion is obnoxious. They cannot understand how the laws of physics or chemistry can be the sole and originating "causes of pictures, buildings, and all things of that kind, which are produced only by human act." They affirm that the body of man, unguided by the mind, is incapable of unfolding the genius, enshrined in a classic temple. We answer that no one has as yet explored the resources stored within the body's confines. The fineness of texture, the complexity of organization, far transcending the products of art, are such that they may of themselves account for many esthetic achievements, which we have hitherto ascribed to deliberate intent. Nor has anyone gained so complete a knowledge of the structure of organs, or of the bundle of nerves which now we call the motor-sensory system, as to explain' adequately their functional offices. There are many performances in subconscious life, e.g., somnambulism, which throw us into surprise when we waken, and which when we are awake we should not venture to repeat. Animal psychology discloses certain instincts, leading to action, which in sagacity quite excel the voluntary efforts of man. Again, it is averred that the body remains inert and passive, so long as the mind is in no condition to think.

io JAMES H. DUNHAM

But we answer, the state of body has much to do with the capacity for mental exertion. If the body be sunken in sleep, the mind is torpid; if the body suffer from fatigue or disease, or if the nerve-centres be subject to some particular stimulation, the mind cannot adjust itself to think on a given theme. 42 These illustrations are adduced to prove, not that body is superior to mind, but that mind and body are one and the same individual, conceived now under the aspect of thought, again under the aspect of extension. 43 There is no interaction ; the mind cannot change the functioning of bodily organs, nor can the body give to mind the power of thinking; they act with a united impulse. 44

The relation of mind and body as thus sketched is diametrically opposed to that adopted by Descartes. He held the rules of physics to be inviolable until man is reached. The instincts of sentient creatures are mere automatisms, combinations of physical and chemical elements. Man however is of a different fibre. He possesses thought and extension, soul and body. Descartes agreed with many less critical thinkers in "conceiving man to be situated in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom." The bearer of intelligence does not passively follow the natural order; he interrupts and often shatters it. To trace the emotions of body to their primary causes was one of the secure triumphs of this philosopher. But he did it only to assure to man an absolute dominion over them. Hence his question was, how the transit from soul to body, from thought to motion could be effected. Preestablished harmony, as afterwards worked out by Leibnitz, would be a poet's dream, not a scientific hypothesis. The single substance of Spinoza obliterated the agelong division, accepted by religion and philosophy as final. A solitary alternative remained to the exponent of Rationalism : man must break into the mechanism of nature, he must master his physical environment. How shall he do it ? By translating volition into mechanical action. The pineal gland in the "midst of the brain" furnished the point of contact. All the diverse, agitations of animal spirits impinge upon it, and from it receive in turn the impulses which drive them back to the state of equilibrium. Probably in

FREEDOM AND PURPOSE n

infancy this connecting gland dealt with a single thought, let us say the most rudimentary reaction; but in time it became associated with the great complex of thought and motion, and at length stood out as the fulcrum by which a man could lift himself above the murk and bondage of circumstance on to the level of independence. 45

To Spinoza such a transgression of mechanical law was unthinkable. Man is not a privileged being in a world of determined bodies. He may acquire a lordship over nature, if he will; but he can win it not by overriding her precepts, but by obeying everyone to the uttermost. The device proposed by Descartes was a childish invention, unworthy of a. mind which had deliberately shivered the idols of Scholastic occultism. For if the uniting gland be equally agitated by impinging passion and volitional decision, the one neutralizing the other, it can yield no assurance that decision will not be checked and perhaps destroyed through the excess of passion. Nor does this theory answer the objection that there is no common denominator between idea and motion, and hence no basis for comparing their relative powers. For how shall I find out the strength of the mental assertion required to lift the arm in the act of felling an opponent, when my instrument of measure is practically unknown to me ? When however we understand that the emotions of body follow from the necessary order of nature, that they can be traced back to determinate causes, that they involve no defect in nature, such as is described by the terms pain and vice, but rather register a little known aspect of her perfection, then we shall not decline to exhibit them in geometrical fashion, as we do lines, planes and solids, believing that by such a survey we shall be driven to oppose and conquer the restraints which have been forced upon us. 46

Ill

Having accepted the thesis that man shares the causal relations of mechanism, we proceed to inquire how they find expression in his emotional life. His body, as we saw, comes into

46 V, Pref. 46 III, Pref.

being wholly without his connivance. Inasmuch as mutually destructive elements cannot operate within the same body, we must attribute to man as to other individuals the endeavor to preserve his own existence. This endeavor can be nothing else than the essence or constitutive nature with which he makes his entrance into the world. 47 Hence the Conatus is a determined quantum, an appetite governed solely by the laws of chemical reaction. It is a something which we cannot change. We cannot, for example, do injury to ourselves with a view to ultimate benefit. To hate an object, and sustain thereby a distinct loss of emotional vigor, expecting to attain later a degree of mental "''perfection" hitherto unknown, is a type of sacrifice utterly repugnant to natural law. 4S Moreover, the same impulse, even when associated with consciousness and called desire, receives not a shred more of self-initiating power than it formerly had. Desire is not an outreaching for a benison which we would make our own. We do not desire a thing because it is good ; a thing is good because we desire it ; that is, because the organic function responds most readily to the stimulus. Now the realisation of a good, or more strictly, the functioning of desire, brings with it an increase of the body's powers and a corresponding increase of the mind's capacity. The movement is purely reflexive; it springs from the properties of our nature. We could not be men if we did not pursue a conduct like this. Thus, the emotions of love and hate are not careful discriminations on the part of an agent, as many moralists contend. They are mental registrations of physical facts. The forces of body are enlarged or diminished, and the mind cultivates or shrinks from a conception of the same. 49 Hatred and envy do not in the first instance imply deliberate intent. They are impulses which record an automatic revolt against any interference with a man's comfort, or his right to live. Parents have often fed the fires of such emotion by inciting their children to virtue, precisely for the sake of eclipsing the prestige of a neighbor's family or neutralizing their efforts. But all the training born of ambition would have been fruitless and dead except for the tendency already implanted in the youthful nature. 50 Whatever be the emotion that struggles for utterance, we may be sure that it forges one new fetter upon hands already heavily loaded with the tokens of human enslavement.

We have nothing to do with the rise of emotion; we have as little to do with its development. This consideration accounts for the wide variation of types in a given society, a measurable difference here, an extraordinary contrast there. Whence comes such diversity? The answer is: Elemental passions depend altogether on the way a body receives its modifications through the medium of external forces. 51 That our emotional nature is stirred to activity in this way only, is the common testimony of observers. 52 Thus, the child is constrained to laugh or cry when similar phenomena are found in the behavior of its attendants, 53 an imitative reaction which in later life develops into a determinate attempt to emulate the word, look or dress of one whom we love. 54 Again, the tremor of lip and the pallor of brow are traceable directly to a nervous shock administered by some foreign body of higher potency than ours. These are emotional experiences which every man involuntarily repeats; pieces of "fossilized intelligence" (Lamarck), not drafts on the mind, as the reservoir of thought. 55 Another group of emotions distinguish one agent from another. These admit of a diversity of intellectual judgments; and yet these, too, are based upon the empirical fact that every man tends to react to given conditions in certain well defined ways. Thus, courage and fear are first of all physical phenomena; a man does not make himself brave or timid; he is that, by the tendency of his nature. r More than that; no man can form an opinion on a particular act involving hardihood, without revealing at the same time his own emotional synthesis. "I shall call a man intrepid when he makes light of an evil which I am disposed to fear; and if in addition I consider the fact that his desire of injuring his enemy and benefiting his friend is not restrained through fear of danger, I shall call him audacious." The value of my judgment depends on my personal idea of courage, and that can be appraised only in terms of the physical power which I myself feel in face of evils. 56