Chapter XI (1)

Origin of the human mind--Mr. Spencer's theory of the composition of mind--His system of morality.

According to their appointment, our two disputants have met to discuss the origin of mind.

SOPHEREUS. Will you begin this conference by stating the evolution theory of the origin of the human mind?

KOSMICOS. Most willingly. I have thus far spoken of the hypothesis of evolution as affording an explanation of the origin of distinct animals, regarded simply as living organisms, differentiated from each other by the slow process of development from a common stock, by the operation of certain physical causes. I am now to account to you for the origin of the human mind, upon the same hypothesis, namely, that man is a development from some previous and lower organism. I acknowledge that what we call mind, or intellect, has to be accounted for; and that we who hold the evolution theory of the origin of man as an animal must be able to suggest how his intellect became developed by the operation of the same natural causes which produced his physical organization. It is not material, in this inquiry, whether we agree with Darwin in assuming some one distinct living organism of a very low type, as the original stock from which all the other animal organisms have been derived, or whether we go with Spencer back to the primal molecules of organizable matter, and suppose that from a single cell have been developed all the organisms possessing life, in a regular order of succession. Upon either supposition, the doctrine of evolution explains the origin of the human mind. For, upon either supposition, there was a point in the long series of new forms, each descending from a pre-existing form, at which the manifestations of what we call mind may be said to have begun. This link in the connected chain of organisms occurred where nervous organization began to act with some spontaneous movement, with some power of voluntary exertion, as distinguished from the involuntary exertions of a substance that acted only in a certain and fixed way, although that substance was endowed with life. The substance of nervous organization is alike in all animals. In some it acts in a limited manner, and without volitional control; in others, it acts in more varied modes, and it manifests some power of volitional control and volitional rest, as well as of involuntary movement. But in all animals the substance of which nervous organization is composed--the substance which acts in producing movement, whether voluntary or involuntary--is the same kind of physical structure. In the higher animals, the great nerve-center is the organ called the brain. To this organ proceed the impressions produced upon one set of nerves by external objects, or by light or heat. From the same organ proceed, by another set of nerves, those movements which the animal is endowed with the power of making from within. Contemplating, then, the whole animal kingdom as one great connected family, but divided into different species, all of which have a nervous organization, we find that each species is endowed with the power of generating other individuals of the same species and of the same nervous organization. In the long course of development of the several species, or forms of animal life, there comes about a nervous organization which acts freely within certain limits, but in a fixed and invariable mode, so that the movements are uniformly the same, and not in any proper sense volitional. To such an animal we should not attribute any mind, for mind implies some power of comparison and variation, some ability to act in more than a prescribed way. This animal, which I have just supposed to possess a very limited power of nervous action, transmits that power to its descendants; and in some of the successive generations the power remains always at the same fixed point. But the laws of natural and sexual selection are perpetually operating among those descendants. In progress of time there comes to be developed another organism, which has a wider range of nervous action; and, as this ceaseless process of modification and improvement goes on, there is developed still another nervous organization which acts with still more varied movements. As the different species of animals become evolved out of those that have gone before, the expansion of nervous organization goes on; and as each new and higher and more complex stage is gained, individuals of the species have the power to transmit it to their descendants by ordinary generation. At length, as in some of the mammalia, a nervous organization is attained, whose action exhibits manifestations of what we call mind. There appears to be a power of something like reasoning and volition, because the nervous actions are so various and so much adapted to outward circumstances. Thus, before we reach the human animal, we find nervous organizations widely separated from those of the remote progenitor species, because they can do so much more, and can do it with an apparent power of voluntary variation. At last, this process of modifications accumulating upon modifications culminates in an animal in whose nervous organization we find the freest, the most complex, and the most various power of receiving into his brain the impressions derived from the external world, and of transmitting from his brain to the different organs of his body those movements which the external circumstances of his life, or his internal efforts, cause him to strive for and to effect. This animal was the primeval man.[113]

Looking back, then, to the primal source of all nervous organization, in the remote animal in which the nervous structure and action were at the crudest state of development, and remembering that there was a power of transmitting it to offspring, and that natural and sexual selection were unceasingly operating to expand and perfect it, we may trace the successive stages of its modification and growth, from the lowest to the highest, until we reach in the primeval man the highest development that it had yet attained. But throughout all its stages, from the lowest to the highest, the system of nervous organization and action is the same in kind. We do not call its manifestations or action mind, or speak of them as indicating mind, until we find it developed into a condition of some voluntary activity and power of variation, as it is in many of the animals inferior to man. But in all the animals, man included, mind is the action of the nervous organization when it evinces a superior power of variation; and we speak of the brain of such animals as the seat of mind because that organ is the source to and from which nervous action proceeds.

Let me now illustrate this view by the acquisition of articulate speech and the formation of language. In many of the lower animals with which we are acquainted there is a power of uttering vocal sounds, and of understanding them when uttered by their fellows. It must have been a power possessed by those animals which were the progenitors of man in the long line of descent of one species from another. But in them it was a very limited power. It increased as the nervous organization and the vocal organs became in the successive species capable of a more varied action. The sounds of the external world impressed themselves upon the brains of the primeval men more forcibly than they did upon the brains of the other animals, and excited the nervous organization to reproduce or imitate them. Those emotions and desires which originated in the brain itself--the impressions of pain or the sensations of pleasure experienced in the nervous system--sought expression through the vocal organs. Certain sounds repeated alike by the same individual, or by numerous individuals, for a long time, became associated in their brains with certain feelings or sensations. What are called words were thus formed; which, at first, could have been nothing but the utterance of certain sounds by the vocal organs, expressing the sensations felt by the nervous organization, or the imitations of external noises. At length these vocal sounds are gathered in the memory, multiplied and systematized, and a rude language is formed. But, all the while, the first crude human language was nothing but the result of nervous action excited to greater activity than in the other animals, accompanied by nicer and more capable vocal organs and a greater power of using them. This acquisition, obtained by the primeval men, was transmitted to their descendants as an improved physical organization, and in those descendants it finally reached the marvelous development of the most perfect languages of antiquity.

Let us now retrace our steps back to the time when nervous organization, in the successive generations of the whole animal series regarded as one great family of kindred animals successively developed out of a common stock, began to act in such a way as to evince the presence of what we call mind. Once attained, this improved nervous organization would be transmitted by the parents to new individuals; and so on through countless generations, just as the offspring would inherit the same physical structure as the parents in other respects.

Mental phenomena are the products of nervous organization. We have no means of knowing that mind is an organism or an entity. If it is an existence capable of surviving the death of the body, which evolution neither affirms nor denies, you must go to revelation for the grounds of belief in its immortality. There is no conflict between the evolution theory of the nature of mind and the doctrine of immortality as taught by revealed religion.

SOPHEREUS. I am not disposed to constitute myself a champion of revealed religion. I have lately read in the writings of some well-meaning persons, whose positions and convictions made them anxious about the truths of revelation, expressions of the opinion that there is no necessary conflict between the hypothesis of a revelation and the teachings of evolution. I have been rather surprised by such concessions. But through all our discussions, and throughout all my reflections and inquiries, I have excluded revealed religion from the number of proofs of our immortality. But it seems to me that, as to the possibility of a survival of the mind after the death of the body, you have stated yourself out of court, not because you have propounded something that is inconsistent with revelation, although it certainly is, but because you have made mind to consist in nothing but the action of nervous organization, and when that has perished what can remain? You may say that science does not undertake to determine that mind is or is not a special existence capable of surviving the body. But, observe that you attribute to nervous action the production of phenomena to which you give the name of mind, when the nervous action evinces some power of volitional variation and control. Now, when and where did this begin, in the long series of animal organisms which you assume have been successively evolved out of one another? Remember that, according to the system of evolution, there are supposed to have been countless forms of animal organisms, graduating by slow improvements into higher and higher organisms. Where and when and what was the first animal that possessed a nervous organization which would manifest the power of variation in so marked a degree as to render it proper to speak of the animal as possessing or evincing mind? Are not the works of naturalists of the evolution school filled with comparisons of the minds of different animals, and do they not contend that in many of them there are manifestations of mental power, of the exercise of reason and comparison, and a volitional action according to varying circumstances? Did, then, these manifestations of something like mental power begin in the anthropomorphous ape from whom we are supposed to be descended, or who is supposed to be of kin to us? Or did it begin in any one and which of the innumerable intermediate forms between that ape-like creature and the primeval man? And when once this improved and improving nervous organization had been developed and put into a condition to be transmitted to descendants, until in the primeval man it had attained its highest development, what was it but a more sensitive, more various, and complex condition of the substance of which all nervous tissues are composed? And when these tissues are decomposed and resolved into their original material elements, where and what is the mind, whether of man or beast? It is nowhere and nothing, unless you suppose that the improved and improving action of the nervous organization at last developed an existence which is not in itself material or physical, and which may be imperishable and indestructible, while the material and physical organs by and through which it acts for a time perish daily in our sight. If this is a possible, it is a very improbable hypothesis, because the nature of the human mind points to a very different origin.

I surely do not need to tell you that like produces like. If the mind of man is now a spiritual essence, it is a wild conjecture to suppose that it was generated out of the action of a material substance, in whatever animal, or supposed species of animal, its genesis is imagined to have begun. We must therefore determine, from all the evidence within our reach, whether the mind is a spiritual existence. If it is, it is not difficult to reach a rational conclusion that its Creator contrived a means of connecting it for a season with the bodily organs, and made the generative production of each new individual body at the same time give birth to a new individual mind, whenever a new child is born into the world. We can not discover the nature of the connection, or the process by which generative production of a new body becomes also generative production of a new mind. These are mysteries that are hidden from us. But the fact of the connection--the simultaneous production of the new body and the new mind--is a fact that the birth of every child demonstrates. Whether the union takes place at any time before birth, or whether it is only at birth that the mind, the spiritual essence, comes into existence, and so may become capable of an endless life, we can not know. But that this occurs at some time in the history of every human being, we are justified in saying that we know.

I shall now contrast your hypothesis of the origin of the human mind with another and a very different one; and, in stating it, I shall borrow nothing from the Mosaic account of the creation of Adam and Eve. I shall not assert, on the authority of Moses, that God breathed into Adam a living soul, for that would be to resort to a kind of evidence which, for the present, I mean to avoid, and which would bring into consideration the nature of the means by which the Hebrew historian was informed of the fact which he relates, and which he could have known in no other way. It would also give rise to a question of what was meant by "a living soul." But I shall assume that there is a spiritual and a material world; that a spiritual existence is one thing and a material existence is another. I shall assume that there is a spiritual world, because all our commonest experience, our introspection and consciousness, our observation of what the human mind can do, its operations and its productions, its capacity to originate thought and to send it down the course of ages, its power to recognize and obey a moral law as a divine command, the monuments of every kind which attest that it is something which is not matter or material substance, prove to us that the human mind is essentially a spiritual existence; and that while it acts and must act by and through bodily organs, so long as it acts in this world, it is a being quite distinct from all the physical substance and physical organism with which it is connected for a time. Physiology alone can teach us this much at least, that mind is not matter; and experience, consciousness, and observation teach us that while the action of the mind may be suspended for a time when the nervous organization can not normally act, from disease or injury, the mind itself is not destroyed, but its action may be restored with the restoration of the brain to its normal condition.

I am going to assume another thing--the existence of the Creator, the Supreme Governor of the universe, having under his control the whole realms of the spiritual and the material world; alike capable of giving existence to spiritual entities and to material organisms, and capable of uniting them by any connection and for any purpose that might seem to him good. I shall assume this, because some of you evolutionists concede, if I understand rightly, the existence and capacities of the Supreme Being, since you assume, and rightly, that the whole question relates to his methods; and you believe that he chose the method of evolution instead of the method of special creation for all the types of animal life excepting the aboriginal and created lowest form, out of which all the others have been evolved. With these two assumptions, then, the nature of a spiritual existence, and the existence and capacities of the Creator, I now state to you the opposite hypothesis of the origin and nature of the human mind.

A pair of human beings, male and female, is created by the hand and will of the Almighty; and to each is given a physical organism, and a spiritual, intellectual self, or mind, which is endowed with consciousness and capable of thought. Why is this a rational supposition, aside from any evidence of the fact derived from its assertion by an inspired or a divinely instructed witness? It is so, because, when this aboriginal pair of human creatures fulfill the law of their being, by the procreation of other creatures of the same kind, the offspring must be supposed to possess whatever the parents possessed of peculiar and characteristic organization. This law of transmission is stamped upon all the forms of organic life; and we may well apply it to the first pair of human beings. Its operation must have begun in them and their offspring. Every law that proceeded from the will of the Supreme Being began to operate at some time; and this law, like all others, must have been put in operation by the Creator at some definite period. He created in the first pair a bodily organization, and he created in each of them the spiritual entity that we now call mind, and established its connection with their bodily organs. He established in them also the power of procreating offspring; and this included the production of a new individual of the same species, in whom would be united, by the same mysterious bond, the same kind of physical organization and the same kind of spiritual or intellectual existence, which is not matter, and could not have been generated out of matter alone. The beginning of this connection of body and mind in the first parents was an occasional and special exercise of the divine power. It was not a miraculous exercise of power, because a miracle, in the proper sense, implies some action aside from a previously established course of things. It was simply a first exercise of the power in the case of the creation of the first human pair; that is, it was the establishment in them, specially, of the union of the body and soul. Its repetition in the offspring, for all time, and through successive generations, was left to the operation of the laws of procreation and heredity. The nature and operation of those laws are wrapped in mystery; but about the fact of their existence, and of the compound procreation of a new body and a new mind at every new birth, there can be no doubt whatever.

It seems to me that this hypothesis has in its favor a vast preponderance of probability, because--

1. The generation of mind or spirit out of matter is inconceivable.

2. The creation of mind by the Almighty is just as conceivable as his creation of a material organism; and the latter is conceded by all naturalists who admit that there was a first animal organism; and even some of the evolutionists hold that the first animal organism was directly fashioned by the Creator, although all the succeeding organisms were formed, as they contend, by natural and sexual selection.

3. The nature of mind--of the human mind--is the same in all individuals of the race. They may differ in mental power, but they all possess an intellectual principle that is the same in kind. To the production of mind, or its formation, the process of evolution was not necessary. Not only was it unnecessary, but in the nature of things it was not adapted to do what it is supposed to have done in the production of physical organisms. To suppose that the Creator, instead of the direct exercise of his power of creation, left it to the material laws of natural and sexual selection to produce a mind, is to suppose him to have resorted to a method that was both unnecessary and indirect, and was furthermore incapable of effecting that kind of product. In reasoning about the methods of the Creator, it is certainly irrational to suppose him to have resorted to one that was so ill adapted to the accomplishment of his object. In the accomplishment of some physical objects, we may well suppose that they have been brought about by physical agencies that have operated very slowly and indirectly; and we can see that this has often been the case in regard to many material products. But for the production of mind, for the accomplishment of a spiritual existence, there can be imagined no secondary agencies, no gradual growth out of antecedent existences or substances, no evolution out of some other and that other a material organism. The first mind, the first human soul, must have come direct from the hand and will of God. The succeeding minds may well have been left to owe their existence to the laws of procreation, by a process which we can not understand, but of which we have proof in the birth of every child that has been born of woman.

KOSMICOS. We now have the two hypotheses of the origin and nature of the human mind fairly before us; and here I must point out to you wherein you do injustice to my side of the question. In the first place, your assumption of one pair of progenitors of the human race from whom have diverged all the varieties of the race, does not encounter the evolution process of man's descent as an animal. It is either an arbitrary assumption, or it is derived from the Mosaic account of the creation, which, in a scientific point of view, and aside from the supposed authority of that story, is just as arbitrary an assumption as if the book of Genesis had never existed. Take, therefore, Darwin's hypothesis of the zoölogical series: First, a fish-like animal, of course inhabiting the water; next, the amphibians, capable of living in the water and on the land; next, the ancient marsupials; next, the quadrumana and all the higher mammals, among whom are to be classed the _Simiadæ_ or monkeys; and out of these came the hairy, tailed quadruped, arboreal in its habits, from which man is descended. This long line of descent is filled with diversified forms, intermediate between the several principal forms which are known to us, and which were successively the progenitors of man. Now, hear Darwin on the subject of one pair of progenitors:

"But since he [man] attained to the rank of manhood he has diverged into distinct races, or, as they may be more fitly called, sub-species. Some of these, such as the negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species. Nevertheless, all the races agree in so many unimportant details of structure and in so many mental peculiarities, that these can be accounted for only by inheritance from a common progenitor; and a progenitor thus characterized would probably deserve to rank as man. It must not be supposed that the divergence of each race from the other races, and of all from a common stock, can be traced back to any one pair of progenitors. On the contrary, at every stage in the process of modification all the individuals which were in any way better fitted for their conditions of life, though in different degrees, would have survived in greater numbers than the less well fitted. The process would have been like that followed by man, when he does not intentionally select particular individuals, but breeds from all the superior individuals and neglects the inferior. He thus slowly but surely modifies his stock, and unconsciously forms a new strain. So with respect to modifications acquired independently of selection, and due to variations arising from the nature of the organism and the action of the surrounding conditions, or from changed habits of life, no single pair will have been modified much more than the other pairs inhabiting the same country, for all will have been continually blended through free intercrossing."[114]

The meaning of this is that if you go back to the period when an animal, by the slow process of modification which was continually operating among the preceding organisms, had been raised to the present state of man, and then follow out the divergencies into the distinct races of men, those divergencies would not have occurred in consequence of any one pair having been modified much more than the other pairs inhabiting the same country, but all the individuals would have undergone a continually blending process through unrestrained intercrossing; and those individuals of both sexes, who became in a superior degree fitted for their conditions of life, would have survived in greater numbers than the less well fitted, and would have transmitted to their posterity those peculiarities which tended at last to produce different races of the human family. So that the notion of a single pair of the negro variety, or of a single pair of the Caucasian variety, formed and completed as an independent stock, is not necessary to account for these varieties.

To apply this, now, to the slow production of man's intellectual faculties, we must, if we would do justice to Darwin's hypothesis of the method in which he was developed as an animal, bear in mind that his mental powers, like his animal structure, have been the necessary acquirement of new powers and capacities by gradation, through the perpetual process of modification, and retention and transmission of the new acquisitions. Darwin, indeed, does not professedly undertake the genealogy of the human mind; but he appears to hold the opinion that in future psychology will be based on the gradual acquisition of each mental power and capacity, as distinguished from their complete production in any one pair, or in any one being; and he refers to Herbert Spencer as having already securely laid the foundation for this new psychology.[115]

I take, therefore, the great English naturalist as the person who has most satisfactorily explained the origin of man as an animal, and the great English philosopher as the person who has propounded the most satisfactory theory of the origin of the human mind. The two hypotheses run parallel to and support each other. Man, as respects his mere animal structure, is an organism developed by a slow process of modification out of preceding organisms. His mental faculties have one by one grown out of the operation of the same physical agencies that have formed his animal structure, and they have not been bestowed at once upon any one pair, or upon any one individual of the race. After they have all been acquired, as we now know and recognize them, they have descended to the successive generations of the race.

SOPHEREUS. I have studied Mr. Spencer's "System of Psychology," but I do not know whether we understand it alike. You say that he has propounded the most satisfactory theory of the origin of mind. Assuming that mind was evolved as an aggregate of powers and capacities, slowly acquired, _pari passu_ with the evolution of the animal organism, be good enough to tell me whether Mr. Spencer does or does not conclude that mind is anything more than an aggregate of powers and capacities of the nervous organization. I am quite aware of the mode in which he meets the charge of materialism; but waiving for the present the question of materialism, I should be glad to know, according to your understanding of his philosophy, what he considers mind to be.

KOSMICOS. To answer your question requires an analysis of Spencer's "Principles of Psychology." You have here on your table the third edition of that work, which received his latest corrections and additions.[116] If you look at the preface of this edition, you will see that, as between Realism and Idealism, he enunciates a view which recognizes an element of truth in each, but rejects the rest. By this "Transfigured Realism" he aims to conciliate what is true in Realism with what is true in Idealism; and it is by this conciliation that he answers the partisans of both systems, who will not sacrifice any part of their respective doctrines. It is important for you to remember this in judging of his psychological system. He begins by a description of the structure and functions of the nervous system, and the nature of nervous actions. Without repeating in all its minute details the structure which he describes, it is enough to say that in all animals, from the lowest to the highest, this peculiar part of the organism which we call the nervous system is composed of two tissues which differ considerably from those composing the rest of the organism. In color they are distinguished from one another as gray and white, and in their minute structures as vesicular and fibrous. In the gray tissue, the vesicles or corpuscles contain a soft protein substance, with granules imbedded in it, consisting of fatty matter. The more developed of these nerve-corpuscles give off branching processes, and the terminations of nerve-fibers are distributed among them. The white tissue is composed of minute tubes containing a medullary substance or pulp, viscid like oil. Imbedded in this pulp, which fills the tubes, there lies a delicate fiber or axis-cylinder, which is uniform and continuous instead of having its continuity broken by fat-granules. This central thread is the essential nerve; and the sheath of medullary matter, and its surrounding membranous sheath, are only its accessories. While, therefore, the matter of nerve-fiber has much in common with the matter of nerve-vesicle, in the latter the protein substance contains more water, is mingled with fat-granules, and forms part of an unstable mass; whereas in the former, the nerve-tube, the protein substance, is denser, is distinct from the fatty compounds that surround it, and so presents an arrangement that is relatively stable.

Conceive, then, of this interlaced physical structure extending throughout the whole organism as a kind of circular mechanism, having its periphery at the surface of the body and limbs, ramifying among and into the internal organs, with various nerve-centers distributed through the interior mechanism, and the one great nerve-center in the brain. Conceive of this structure, further, as fed continually by the blood-vessels, which repair its waste of tissue and keep it in proper tone and activity. Then imagine it as first put in operation in some animal in whom it has become developed as we now know it in ourselves, and let that animal stand as the primeval man, who has become, by inherited transmission of gradual accumulations, possessed of this consummate development of nervous organization. You can then observe the method of its action, and can perceive how mind became developed, and what it is.

What I have now given you is only a general description of the structure of the nervous mechanism, and in order to understand its functions, we may take it up, in an individual, at a point of time when it had not experienced a single movement or change from a state of rest, but when it was completely fitted to act. Observe, then, that its action will consist in the origination and accomplishment of motion; or, in other words, in molecular change of the substance composing the nerves, which, for illustration only, may be likened to the conductor through which the molecular disturbance passes which is popularly, but not scientifically, called the electric fluid. At the surface of the body and limbs, the external termini of the nerves are exposed to disturbance by contact with an external object. Along the highly sensitive and minute conductor, the nerve which has by contact with an external object at its outer extremity received a slight shock, there passes through the fluid or semi-fluid substance of the nerve a wave of disturbance, or a succession of such waves. This disturbance reaches the brain, the great nerve-center, where it becomes a feeling. In this way is generated the feeling of contact with an external object, and this is what is commonly called the sense of touch, which is simply a feeling produced in the great nerve-center of the brain. Now, to reverse the process, let us suppose that this feeling, caused by touching an external object, provokes or excites a desire to remove that object, or to get rid of the continuance of the feeling, and to be without the irritation or pain which it is causing. From the central seat of nervous action, the brain, along another nerve, there proceeds a wave, or a series of waves, in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of which the conductor of that nerve is composed, and motion is communicated to some muscle or set of muscles, which need to be put in motion in order to break the contact with the external object. In like manner, all internal organs of the body, the viscera, are supplied with a system of nerves connected with the great nerve-center. If a disturbance arises in one of the viscera, some action that is abnormal, a sensation that is called pain is produced. So, too, in regard to the normal action of the viscera, kept up by involuntary movements--those movements originate in and are transmitted from the nerve-center, by waves in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of which the special nerves are composed, whose office it is to cause the necessary movements in the muscular substance, or the tissue, of the particular organ.

In this way began, in the supposed individual, those simpler states of feeling which pain or irritation produced in the nervous system, and those other involuntary movements which were essential to the normal and unconscious action of the viscera. These varying conditions of the highly sensitive nervous system, which constitute and are rightly denominated feelings, were constantly repeated; and, so far as they are capable of becoming a part of consciousness, that consciousness is a repetition of the same nervous actions many times over. Pass, then, from the feelings called sensations to the feelings called emotions, and it will be found that while both are states of nervous action, the former are peripherally initiated and the latter are centrally initiated. The meaning of this is that a sensation is an effect produced at the nerve-center by the transmission, from the outer terminus of a particular nerve, of the waves in the fluid or semi-fluid substance of the nerve. The strong forms of feeling called sensations are peripherally initiated, and the feelings called emotions are centrally initiated. Now, any feeling of any kind is directly known by each person in no other place than his own consciousness; and the question is, Of what is consciousness composed? In order to afford an answer to this question, Mr. Spencer proceeds to examine the substance of mind, and then passes to a consideration of the composition of mind. These are not the same thing; for, if there be no such thing, properly speaking, as the substance of mind, its composition, or its nature, must be looked for in another way. The expression "substance of mind," if used in any way but that in which we use the _x_ of an algebraic equation, has no meaning. If we undertake to interpret mind in the terms of matter, as crude materialism does, we are at once brought to this result, that we know, and can know, nothing of the ultimate substance of either. We know matter only as forms of certain units; but the ultimate unit, of which the ultimate homogeneous units are probably composed, must remain absolutely unknown. In like manner, if mind consists of homogeneous units of feeling, the ultimate unit, as a substance, must remain unknown. When, therefore, we think of the substance of mind, the simplest form under which we can think of it is nothing but a symbol of something that can never be rendered into thought, just as the concept we form to ourselves of matter is but the symbol of some form of power absolutely and forever unknown to us, as the representation of all objective activities in terms of motion is only a symbolic representation, and not a knowledge of them. Symbols of unknown forms of existence, whether in the case of matter, motion, or mind, are mere representations which do not determine anything about the ultimate substance of either. "Our only course is constantly to recognize our symbols as symbols only, and to rest content with that duality of them which our constitution necessitates. The unknowable as manifested to us within the limits of consciousness in the shape of feeling, being no less inscrutable than the unknowable as manifested beyond the limits of consciousness in other shapes, we approach no nearer to understanding the last by rendering it into the first."[117]

Discarding, then, the expression "substance of mind," excepting as a mere symbol, Mr. Spencer passes to the "composition of mind"; and here we reach his explanation of mind as an evolution traceable through ascending stages of composition, conformably to the laws of evolution in general, so that the composition of mind, as something evolved out of simple elements, does not need or involve a symbolical representation in the terms of matter.

The method of composition, by which the whole fabric of mind is constituted, from the formation of its simplest feelings up to the formation of the complex aggregates of feelings which are its highest developments, can now be sketched. A sensation is formed by the consolidation of successive units of feeling; but the feelings called sensations can not of themselves constitute mind, even when many of different kinds are present together. When, however, each sensation, as it occurs, is linked in association with the faint forms of previous sensations of the same kind, mind is constituted; for, by the consolidation of successive sensations, there is formed a knowledge of the particular sensation as a distinct subject of what we call thought, or the smallest separable portion of thought as distinguished from mere confused sentiency. Thus, as the primitive units of feeling are compounded into sensations, by the same method simple sensations, and the relations among them, are compounded into states of definite consciousness. The next highest stage of mental composition is a repetition of the same process. Take a special object, which produces in us a vivid cluster of related sensations. When these are united with the faint forms of like clusters that have been before produced by such objects, we know the object. Knowledge of it is the assimilation of the combined group of real feelings which it excites, with one or more preceding ideal groups which were once excited by objects of the same kind; and, when the series of ideal groups is large, the knowledge is clear. In the same way, by the connections between each special cluster of related sensations produced by one object, and the special clusters generated by other objects, a wider knowledge is obtained. By assimilating the more or less complex relations exhibited in the actions of things in space and time, with other such complex relations, knowledge of the powers and habits of things is constituted. If we can not so assimilate them, or parts of them, we have no knowledge of their actions. So it is, without definite limit, through those tracts of higher consciousness which are formed of clusters of clusters of feelings held together by extremely involved relations. This law of the composition of mind is, therefore, the assimilation of real feelings and groups of real feelings with the ideal feelings or ideal groups of feelings which objects of the same kind once produced. You can follow out, without my assistance, the correspondence which Mr. Spencer exhibits between the views of mental composition and the general truths respecting nervous structure and nervous functions with which he began the treatment of mind, which consists largely, and in one sense entirely, of feelings. The inferior tracts of consciousness are constituted by feelings; and the feelings are the materials out of which are constituted the superior tracts of consciousness, and thus intellect is evolved by structural combination. "Everywhere feeling is the substance of which, when it is present, intellect is the form. And where intellect is not present, or but little present, mind consists of feelings that are unformed or but little formed."[118] Does not this statement, which in substance is Mr. Spencer's explanation of the formation of mind, explain to you why he denominates it "transfigured realism"?

SOPHEREUS. I have attentively and carefully read Mr. Spencer's book from which you have made this partial analysis of his view of the nature of mind, but whether it is realism "transfigured," or whatever is, I think it must be admitted that its basis is a truly realistic one; for it comes back at last to just what I suggested to you at the beginning of this discussion, that mind, according to his view, is constituted by the action of the nervous system, or, in other words, that mind consists of the phenomena of movements which take place in a physical structure. If this is all that can be predicated of mind, it is not something that can have an independent and continuous existence after the dissolution of the physical structure called the nervous system. That structure is one that is analogous in its action to the other part of the organism by which digestion, or the assimilation of food, is carried on. We might as well suppose that by the action of the digestive system there has been constituted a something which will remain as a digestive function after the organs of digestion have perished, as to suppose that the action of the nervous system has constituted a something which will remain mind, a conscious and independent existence, after the nervous system has been resolved into its original material elements. Indeed, I do not understand Mr. Spencer's philosophy as including, providing for, or leading to, any possible continued existence of the mind after the death of the body. He seems to exclude it altogether. There is a passage at the end of one of his chapters which appears to be a summary of his whole philosophic scheme, and which is one of the dreariest conclusions I have ever met with. "Once more," he says, "we are brought round to the conclusion repeatedly reached by other routes, that behind all manifestations, inner and outer, there is a Power manifested. Here, as before, it has become clear that while the nature of this Power can not be known, while we lack the faculty of forming even the dimmest conception of it, yet its universal presence is the absolute fact without which there can be no relative facts. Every feeling and thought being but transitory, an entire life made up of such feelings and thoughts being also but transitory, nay, the objects amid which life is passed, though less transitory, being severally in course of losing their individualities quickly or slowly; we learn that the one thing permanent is the Unknowable Reality hidden under all these changing shapes."[119]

I will not say that the mournful character of this hopelessness of human destiny is proof of its unsoundness. I have accustomed myself to accept results, whatever may be the gloom in which they involve us, provided they are deductions of sound reasoning; and our wishes or hopes can not change the constitution of the universe or become important evidence for or against any view of what that constitution is. But let me ask, what does this philosopher mean by the transitory character of an entire life made up of transitory feelings and thoughts, occupied throughout their continuance with transitory objects, or objects which are quickly or slowly losing their individualities? What possible room does he leave for the development and discipline of an immortal being, supposing that man is an immortal being, by an entire life passed in feelings, thoughts, and action about objects which, relatively to the individual, may, quickly or slowly, pass away from him? Or, what room does he allow for the effect on such a being of an entire life spent in the pursuit of objects or the enjoyment of pleasures which develop only his baser nature and unfit him for anything else? In any scheme of philosophy which omits to regard this life as a preparatory school for some other life, it seems to me that something is left out which ought to be included, and which ought to be included for the very reason that the evidence which tends to show that mind is not constituted as Mr. Spencer supposes, but that it is an existence of a special character, not generated by the action of a physical structure, but deriving its existence from the direct action of the creating Power, is so strong that, if we leave this conclusion out of the hypothesis, we shall have left out the strongest probabilities of the case. It is no answer to the necessity for including this conclusion to say that there is a power which we can not know, or an Unknowable Reality hidden under all changing manifestations, among which are those of mind. A study of those manifestations leads rightly to some conclusions respecting the Power which underlies all manifestations. It is necessary, therefore, to subject Mr. Spencer's philosophy of mind to the further inquiry, How does he account for the moral sense? How does he explain that part of consciousness which recognizes moral obligations--the recognition of moral law and duty? We may easily dispense with the phrase "substance of the mind," if we wish to avoid a term of matter; but if mind is constituted by the perception of feelings excited in the nervous system, what is it that perceives? Is there a something that is reached by the feelings which constitute sensations in the great nerve-center, which takes cognizance of them, which combines them into portions of consciousness, or is consciousness nothing but a succession of sensations, and if so, what is "thought"? And what is that portion of thought which takes cognizance of moral duty, and which shows man to be capable of recognizing and obeying or breaking a moral law? I have somewhere read a suggestion that the polity which is said to have been given to the Hebrew people on the Mount of Sinai, and which is described as ten statutes written on two tablets of stone, consisted of five laws on one tablet and five on the other; one set of them expressing the relations of the Hebrews to the Deity, and the other being the fundamental laws of the social life which the Hebrews were commanded to lead. This division is not accurate, because the commandments which express the relations of the Hebrews to the Deity are four in number, and the commandments which were to constitute their social law are six. But that there is a line of demarkation between the two kinds of laws is obvious, and how they were written on the tablets, or whether they were written at all, is immaterial. Looking, then, first at the social law, whether there was more or less of the same ethical character in the codes of other ancient peoples, or whether the social law which is said to have been delivered to Moses and by him communicated to his nation stands as an embodiment of morality unequaled by anything that had preceded it, it is certain that it found the Hebrew people capable of the idea of law as a divine command. It is true that the corner-stone of the whole superstructure is to be found in the fact that the several commands which constituted this social code--"Honor thy father and thy mother," "Thou shalt do no murder," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor," "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house," etc.--were addressed to a people to whose representatives the Almighty is supposed to have revealed himself amid "thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a trumpet exceeding loud, and all the people that were in the camp [below] trembled." It is also true that the first of these awful annunciations was said to have been, "I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before [or beside] me."[120] So that the source whence all the following commands proceeded was the one and only God, who is described as having thus revealed himself in fire and cloud and earthquake, and thus to have secured instant and implicit faith in what he spoke. But what he is asserted to have said was addressed to human minds. This is in one aspect the most important fact in the whole Hebrew history. It makes no difference whether Moses performed a piece of jugglery, or whether he actually went within the fire and the cloud, and actually spoke with God and received his commands. The indisputable truth remains that the individual minds of the Hebrew people, whom Moses had led out of Egypt, received and obeyed, as divine commands, an original and unique moral code, because they were so constituted that they could embrace and act upon the idea of law emanating from another than an earthly or a human source. What, then, was this constitution of the human mind, that could thus receive and act upon a divine command; and what is it now? It matters not, in the view in which I ask this question, whether there was any deceit practiced or not, or whether there is any practiced now in respect to the authority giving the command. What is to be accounted for is the capacity of the human mind to embrace and accept the idea of a moral law, be it that of Moses, or of Christ, or of Mohammed.