Chapter II: Part 2

But if new relationships and new properties appear in the course of evolutionary progress, where is the opportunity for that unification of scientific knowledge which, according to Spencer, is the goal of philosophy? To be frank, I am by no means sure that this question can be answered in a manner that is other than tentative. Perhaps we have not yet reached the stage at which more than provisional unification is possible. Such provisional unification as is suggested by a survey of the facts is that of seemingly uniform correlation in a hierarchy of logical implication. There are certain modes of relatedness which belong to the cognitive type. It would seem that whenever these obtain they may be correlated with other modes of relatedness which are of the vital or physiological type; and that these, in turn, may be correlated with those that are physico-chemical. Thus C implies B, and B implies A. The order cannot be reversed. Physico-chemical relations, _as a class_, do not imply those that are physiological.[57] The implication is not symmetrical. Spencer was within sight of this when he spoke[58] of the abstract-concrete sciences as 'instrumental' with respect to the concrete sciences, though the latter are not 'instrumental' in the same sense with respect to the former. But unfortunately he regarded the 'chasm' between the two groups as 'absolute'. And for him the proper home of properties--of all properties it would appear--is the abstract-concrete group--mechanics, physics, and chemistry. This seemingly leaves no place for a specific type of properties connected with vital relatedness as such. In fact Spencer's method of treatment reduces all modes of relatedness to the A type, the laws of which are, for him, the primary 'causes' of all kinds of differentiation and integration. Hence the laws of biology and psychology can ultimately be expressed and explained, he thinks, in mechanical or mechanistic terms. But in the doctrine of implication they are just the laws of B and C respectively, though laws of A may underlie them in a logical sense. And as we ascend the evolutionary plane from A to AB and thence to ABC--from the physico-chemical to the vital and thence to the cognitive--we find new modes of relatedness, new forms of more complex integration and synthesis, new properties successively appearing in serial order. This seems to me simply to express, in outline, the net result of interpretation based on empirical observation--though much, very much, requires to be filled in by future research. And the new properties are not merely additive of preceding properties; they are constitutive, and characterize the higher evolutionary products as such. Why they are thus constitutive, science is unable to say. Spencer, of course, calls in the Unknowable to supply the required nexus.[59] Otherwise, in each case, he confesses that 'we can learn nothing more than that here is one of the uniformities in the order of phenomena'.[60] None the less we may be able some day to establish an ordinal correlation[61] of cognitive processes with physiological processes, and an ordinal correlation of these physiological processes with those of the physico-chemical type. That I conceive to be the ideal of strictly scientific interpretation if it is to be raised progressively to a level approaching that of the exact sciences. It certainly is not yet attained. But I see no reason why we should not regard it as attainable. It will involve the very difficult determination of many correlation coefficients and constants--and for some of these our data are, it must be confessed, both scanty and unreliable.

We must here note a much-discussed departure on Spencer's part from his earlier position. On the first page of the _Biology_ in the earlier editions, and in the last, we are told:

'The properties of substances, though destroyed to sense by
combination are not destroyed in reality. It follows from the
persistence of force that the properties of a compound are
resultants of the properties of its components, resultants in
which the properties of the components are severally in full
action, though mutually obscured.'

There is no hint here of Mill's heteropathic laws nor of Lewes's emergents. But in the last edition a special chapter is inserted on the Dynamic Element in Life. We here find a tardy recognition of the presence of specific vital characters.

'The processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible
as the results of any physical actions known to us.... In brief,
then, we are obliged to confess that Life in its essence cannot be
conceived in physico-chemical terms.'[62]

I speak of this as a tardy recognition; but it is one that does honour to the man; it is a frank admission that his previous treatment was in some measure inadequate, which a smaller man would not have had the honesty or the strength of character to make. Of course it is traced down to the Unknowable. 'Life as a principle of activity is unknown and unknowable; while phenomena are accessible to thought the implied noumenon is inaccessible.'[63] Still, certain specific characteristics of living organisms are explicitly recognized as among the accessible phenomena; and these cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. But did Spencer fully realize how big a hole this knocks in the bottom of the purely mechanical interpretation of nature he had for so long championed?

There remains for consideration the place of the cognitive relation in Spencer's philosophy of science. We need not here discuss his transfigured realism. Apart from the customary references to the Unknowable, of which what is knowable is said to be symbolic, it comes to little more than laying special emphasis on the truism that what is known in the so-called objective world involves the process of knowing; from which it follows that, apart from knowing it the objective world cannot be known. From this Spencer draws the conclusion that terms in cognitive relatedness have their very nature determined in and through that relatedness, and cannot _in themselves_ be what they are, and as they are, in the field of cognitive symbolism. This may or may not be true. I am one of those who question the validity of the arguments in favour of this conclusion. Since, however, the philosophy of science deals only with the knowable--of which the so-called appearances with which we have direct acquaintance are the primary data--we need not here trouble ourselves with the controversy between realists and symbolists. Even on Spencer's view the world as symbolized is the real world _for science_.

Now one way of expressing the fact that the cognitive relation is always present where knowledge is concerned is to proclaim 'the truth that our states of consciousness are the only things we can know'.[64] But it is a terribly ambiguous way of expressing the fact. What is here meant by a state of consciousness? So far as cognition is concerned it is, or at any rate it involves, a relationship between something known and the organism, as knowing--for Spencer assuredly the organism, though a so-called inner aspect therein. Of course it is a very complex relationship. It comprises relations in what is known, and relations in the organism as knowing. Hence Spencer defines life, psychical as well as physical, as 'the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations'.[65]

'That which distinguishes Psychology is that each of its
propositions takes account both of the connected internal
phenomena and of the connected external phenomena to which they
refer. It is not only the one, nor only the other, that
characterises cognition. It is the connexion between these two
connexions.'[66]

So far well. Cognition is a very complex network of relatedness involving many terms. What are these terms? For Spencer the internal terms are ultimately nervous (=psychic) shocks in highly integrated aggregates; and the external terms are, proximately at least, things in the environment. But both alike are spoken of as states of consciousness. There is surely an opening for ambiguity here. Sometimes, too, the words subjective affections are used in place of states of consciousness. 'Thus we are brought to the conclusion that what we are conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective affections.'[67] Well, these states of consciousness, these subjective affections, fall into two great classes--the vivid and the faint. The former, which we know as sensations, accompany direct and therefore strong excitations of the nerve-centres; the latter, which we know as remembered sensations, or ideas of sensations, accompany indirect and therefore weak excitations of the same nerve-centres.[68] And then we are told that the aggregate of the faint is what we call the mind, the subject, the _ego_; the aggregate of the vivid is what we call the external world, the object, the _non-ego_.[69] It would seem, then, that the aggregate of vivid _subjective_ affections is the _objective_ world so far as knowable. To say the least of it, this terminology is somewhat perplexing.

No doubt our knowledge of the external world involves a subtle and intricate inter-relation of what is experienced vividly and what is experienced faintly--of what is actually presented and what is ideally re-presented. The distinction between them is a valid one. But when Spencer equates this distinction with that between the external world and the mind, as he does in the passages to which I have referred, the validity of his procedure is seriously open to question.

It must be confessed that an adequate analysis of cognitive relatedness on scientific lines is not to be found in Spencer's works. I am not sure that it is yet to be found in the works of any other philosopher, though there are many signs that the difficult problems it involves are receiving serious attention. This much seems certain, for those who accept the spirit, though not perhaps the letter, of Spencer's teaching: that there it is as a constitutive mode of relatedness in the realm of nature, and that, if it forms part of the evolutionary scheme, if it is present in the conclusion, so far reached, though it was absent in the physico-chemical premises, if it is to be included in a philosophy of science it must be dealt with by that philosophy on lines strictly analogous to those on which any other relational problem is treated. Firmly as we may believe in the reality of Source, we must not call to our aid some psychic entity, some entelechy, some _elan vital_, to help us out of our difficulties; for one and all of these lie wholly outside the universe of discourse of science; and not one of them affords the smallest help in solving a single scientific problem in a manner that is itself scientific.

We have seen that Spencer believed that the task of psychology is to investigate the correlation of external and internal relations, and, in that sense, itself to correlate them within a scientific interpretation. Now the outcome of the former correlation is some form of behaviour or conduct on the part of the organism. No doubt such behaviour affords data to be dealt with in subsequent cognition. But it implies the prior cognition which leads up to it; and it is this prior cognition, abstracted from the behaviour to which it leads, that we have to consider. It is so terribly complex that it is difficult to deal with it comprehensibly in a brief space. Let me, however, try to do so, at least in tentative outline. There occurs, let us say, an external event in the physical world, such as the motion of a billiard-ball across the table; and when during its progress this stimulates the retina, there is an internal physico-chemical process which runs its course in retina, optic nerves, and the central nervous system. We may regard these two processes, external and internal, as _so far_, of like physical order. With adequate knowledge the two could, in some measure, be serially correlated as such. But the physico-chemical processes in the organism are not only of this physical type. They are vital or physiological as well. And this makes a real difference. Of course this statement is open to question. But I, for one, believe that there are specific relations present in physiological processes, _qua_ vital, other than those of the physico-chemical type--relations which are effective and which require a distinctive name. So far I am a vitalist. At some stage of evolution these new modes of effective relatedness came into being, whereas in the fire-mist and for long afterwards they were not in being. None the less when they did actually come into being, under conditions of which we are at present ignorant--though not so ignorant as we were--they were dependent upon, and, for our interpretation, they logically imply, the physico-chemical relations which are also present. In any given case they further imply, through heredity-relatedness, the evolutionary history of the organism in which they obtain. This so-called historical element in biology no doubt involves a characteristic vital relationship. But, I take it, the physico-chemical constitution of any inorganic compound, and of any molecule therein, has also its history--has relationship to past occurrences within its type, which have helped to make it what it is. Still, in the organism the relation to past happenings has a quite distinctive form which we deal with in terms of heredity. See, then, how we stand so far. The internal physiological process implies a long chain of heredity-relationships through which the organism is prepared for its occurrence. It also implies a physico-chemical basis, an underlying[70] physico-chemical process. And this implies as a condition of its occurrence, the external event, the passage of the billiard-ball across the table. In a broad sense we may say that the inner process knows the external event which is a condition of its occurrence. But we have not yet reached cognition of the psychological type.

Before passing on to indicate, in tentative outline, the nature of this higher mode of relatedness, I pause to note two points. The first is that knowing in that extended sense which I have borrowed,[71] is essentially selective in its nature. The physiological process, in the case I have taken, knows only that external event which is directly before the eyes and which is serially correlated with changes in the retinal images through the stimulation of specialized receptors. Of other external events it has no such knowledge. Compare this with the gravitative knowledge--if a yet wider extension of the meaning of the word be permitted--which the earth has of the sun and all the other members of the solar system--nay more, in degrees perhaps infinitesimal, of all other material bodies in the universe. The motion of the earth in its orbit implies the whole of this vast field of gravitative relatedness. The existing orbital motion at any moment implies, too, the preceding motion which it has, in a sense, inherited from the past. Abolish the rest of the universe at this moment and the earth's motion would cease to be orbital. In virtue of its 'inheritance from the past', it would continue at uniform velocity in one direction. The continuous change of direction and velocity we observe, is a response which implies gravitative knowledge. In a sense, then, the whole solar system is known by the earth as it swings in its orbit.

The second point may be introduced by a question. Granted that we may say, in a very liberal sense, that the earth in its motion has this gravitative knowledge--is such knowledge accompanied by awareness? We do not know. But the point I have in mind is this, that the question itself is vague. Awareness of what? There must be awareness of something; and a definite question should be directed towards the nature of that something. For example: is the earth aware of its own motion? Or is it aware of the solar system? Or is it aware of the relation of the one to the other? If it be said that the second of these is meant when we ask whether the knowledge is accompanied by awareness, well and good. The answer will serve to define the question. Take now a case of biological knowledge. Are the plants in the cottager's window, when they grow towards the light, aware of a process in their own tissues? Or are they aware of the sunshine? Or are they in some measure aware of the connexion between the one and the other? To all these questions we must answer, I suppose, that we do not know. But it may have been worth while to ask them in a definite way.

We pass, then, to cognition in the usual acceptation of the term--to what we speak of as knowledge in the proper and narrower sense. My contention is that this is a mode of relatedness which science must endeavour to treat on precisely the same lines as it deals with any other natural kind of relatedness. At some stage of evolution it came into being, whereas in the fire-mist, and for long afterwards, it was not in being. None the less when it did come into being, it was dependent on, and for our interpretation it logically implies, underlying physiological processes, as they in turn imply physico-chemical processes, in each case serially correlated. It is pre-eminently selective. And just as any physiological process, however externally conditioned, is grounded in[72] the constitution of the organism, as such, so too is any cognitive process grounded in the constitution of the organism as one in which this higher type of relatedness has supervened. Again, just as the physiological constitution implies a prolonged racial preparation, describable in terms of that mode of relatedness we name heredity, so, too, does any cognitive process imply, not only this racial preparation of the biological kind, but also an individual preparation of the psychological kind--implies relatedness to what we call, rather loosely, prior experience--which itself implies a concurrent physiological preparation.

Now there can be no doubt that awareness is a characteristic feature of the knowledge of cognition, whether it be present or absent in knowledge in the more extended sense. We must just accept this as what appears to be a fact. In science we do not pretend to say why facts are what they are and as they are. We take them as they are given, and endeavour to trace their connexions and their implications. Accepting, then, awareness as given, we must ask: Awareness of what? It is sometimes said that cognition is aware of itself. I am not sure that I understand what this means. If we are speaking of the cognitive relation, which is an awareness relation, the question seems to be whether a relation of awareness is related to itself. But of course if a field of cognitive relatedness be regarded as a complex whole, any part may be related to the rest, and the rest to any part. That kind of self-awareness--if we must so call it!--is eminently characteristic of cognition in the higher forms of its development. On these terms cognition is aware of itself--though the mode of statement savours of ambiguity.

Let us next ask whether there is awareness of the underlying cortical process. If we are speaking of direct awareness, apparently not. The correlation between the two is only discoverable through a very elaborate and complex[73] application of further cognition in interpretative knowledge. We only know the correlated cortical process by description, as Mr. Bertrand Russell would say,[74] and never by direct acquaintance.

Parenthetic reference must here, I suppose, be made to psycho-physical parallelism. But it shall be very brief. The sooner this cumbrous term with its misleading suggestions is altogether eliminated from the vocabulary of science the better. The locus of the so-called parallelism is, we are told, the cortex of the brain. But the cortical process is only an incident--no doubt a very important one, but still an incident--in a much wider physiological process, the occurrence of which, in what we may speak of as primary cognition, implies events in the external world. It is of these events that there is direct physical, physiological, and cognitive knowledge. Of course there are also inter-cortical relations which underlie the relations of those ideal cognita (Spencer's faint class) that supplement the primary cognita which imply direct stimulation of sensory receptors (Spencer's vivid class). It is questionable whether any form of cognition, properly so called, is possible in their absence. Now I see no objection to labelling the fact (if it be a fact) that the cognitive process implies a physiological process in which, as in a larger whole, the cortex plays its appropriate part, by the use of some such convenient correlation-word as psycho-physical; but only so long as this does not involve a doctrine of parallelism; so long as it merely means that cognition implies, let us say, certain underlying cortical changes. Of course it implies a great deal more than cortical process only; but this may perhaps be taken for granted. My chief objection to the word 'parallelism' is that it suggests two separate orders of being, and not two types of relationship within one order of being for scientific study.[75] We do not speak of parallelism between physiological and physico-chemical processes. We just say that scientific interpretation proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a kind that physiological process implies a physico-chemical basis. So too, I urge, we should be content to say that scientific interpretation proceeds on the working hypothesis that there is a correlation of such a kind that cognitive process implies a physiological basis.

It may be said that Spencer accepted the so-called identity hypothesis which does not lie open to the objection that it suggests two orders of being. He believed[76] 'that mind and nervous action are the subjective and objective faces of the same thing', though 'we remain utterly incapable of seeing or even imagining how the two are related'. Well, we may call them in one passage the same thing, we may speak, in another passage, of the antithesis between them as never to be transcended, and we may try to save the situation by reference to duality of aspect. But this kind of treatment does not help as much towards a scientific interpretation. It is true that, in yet another passage, speaking of the correlation of the physical and the psychical, Spencer says:[77] 'We can learn nothing more than that here is one of the uniformities in the order of phenomena.' Then why not leave it at that? And if there be a constant and uniform correlation which is 'in a certain indirect way quantitive', it would seem that we _do_ see, as far as science ever professes to see, 'how the two are related.' We see, or conceive, how they are related in much the same way as we do in the case of the connexion between the physiological and the physico-chemical, and in numberless other cases. Both parallelism and identity will have to go by the board in a philosophy of science. They must be replaced by the far more modest hypothesis, which seems to express all that they really mean for science, that cognition always implies certain physiological processes in the organism.

If we do speak of mind and nervous action as two faces of the same thing, it seems pretty certain that the one face is not directly aware of the other. When we speak of awareness in cognition we must therefore, it appears, exclude any direct awareness of concurrent physiological processes. Of what, then, is there awareness? Primarily perhaps of some occurrence in the external world. But the difficulty here is that, in the simplest case of human cognition there is awareness of so many things and in such varying degrees. There may be primary awareness of events in the external world (Spencer's vivid series), awareness of the relations involved in these occurrences as such, of the relations of these to ideal re-presentations of like kind (Spencer's faint series), of the relations of any or all of these to behaviour as actually taking place or as ideally re-presented; and all in different degrees within a relational meshwork of bewildering complexity, which we have not, as yet, adequately unravelled. The essential point to bear in mind is that the cognitive relation always involves relatedness of _many terms_, and that its discussion involves the analysis of what, in the higher phases of its existence, is probably the most complex natural occurrence in this complex world.

I cannot here follow up further the difficult problem of cognition[78]--save to add one or two supplementary remarks. First: it is, I suppose, fairly obvious that any given field of cognitive relatedness comprises _all_ that is then and there selectively cognized. Just as, in the very extended sense of the word 'knowledge', the earth knows, in gravitative fashion, the whole solar system, as does also any one of the planets, so, in the restricted sense, is knowledge co-extensive with all that is, selectively, in cognitive relationship with the organism or that part of the organism which is the locus of awareness. I speak here of the locus of awareness in just the same sense as I might speak of the earth as a locus of gravitative knowledge of the solar system. The locus of awareness is just a specialized portion of the whole relational web. In other words, the relatedness is of the part-whole kind, where whole means rest of the whole other than the specific part. In any such integrated system the part implies the whole--which, by the way, is quite a different matter from saying that the part includes the whole, or, as I understand the words, is equivalent to the whole. But, whereas gravitative knowledge is reciprocal--the sun knowing the earth in the same fashion as the earth knows the sun--cognitive knowledge is not reciprocal. My cognitive awareness of a spinning-top does not imply that the spinning-top is in like manner aware of me. The part knows the whole in a way that the whole does not know the part. The relationship of the part to the rest of the whole is not reciprocal or symmetrical. This we must just accept as a given feature of cognitive relatedness.[79]

Another very important point is that cognitive relatedness is effective. By this I mean that just as, when the earth is in gravitative relation to the sun and the other planets (the constitution of nature being what it is), changes take place because the parts of the system as a whole are in this field of effective relatedness; so too, when the organism is in cognitive relation to its environment, changes in this system also take place just because a part of the whole system is in cognitive relatedness to the rest of the system. That means that the cognitive relation really counts--that it is not merely an epiphenomenal accompaniment of changes which would be precisely the same if it were absent. The 'sum of energy' presumably remains constant. There is no necessary interference with physical principles. But we know of so many cases in which the direction of change may be changed without any alteration of the 'amount of energy', as the phrase goes, that I see no reason, based on physical science,[80] for denying this kind of effectiveness, within a field of cognitive relatedness, if the facts seem indubitably to point to its existence. To assert that the presence or absence of cognitive relatedness makes absolutely no difference appears to me, I confess, little short of preposterous; to urge that it may be brought under the rubric of physico-chemical relatedness surely involves the ignoring of differentiating features, which science should not ignore. But, on the other hand, to invoke an immaterial psychic entity[81]--unless this merely names the relatedness itself[82] as gravitation names the gravitative relatedness--appears to me quite unwarranted in the scientific universe of discourse.[83]

I must, however, draw to a conclusion. I cannot but think that Spencer failed to bring cognition and the conscious awareness it involves into really close touch with the rest of his philosophy of science. No such double-aspect theory as he accepted affords a satisfactory avenue of scientific approach. But where Spencer failed, who has come within measurable sight of success? We are only just beginning to see our way to stating the problem in such a form as to bring it within the purview of science. What we must insist on, as followers, at a distance, of Herbert Spencer, is the treatment of this type of relatedness on lines similar to our treatment of other types of relatedness within one order of nature.

Surveying his work as a whole, we may confidently assert that Spencer brought to a conclusion a great task, and was himself great in its execution. The present generation can, perhaps, hardly realize how potent his influence was on the thought of the latter half of the last century. Many of his conclusions ran counter to those which were, in his day, widely accepted. If only they seemed to him to be true, however, he held to them with a tenacity which his opponents branded as obstinacy. But as he himself said:

'It is not for nothing that a man has in him sympathies with some
principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities,
and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of
his time. While he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of
the future; and his thoughts are as children born to him, which he
may not carelessly let die. Not as adventitious therefore will the
wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he
sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of
it, he is thus playing his right part in the world.'[84]

NOTES

[1] _Fragments of Science_, vol. ii, p. 132.

[2] _Essays_, vol. i (American reprint), p. 3.

[3] _Op. cit._, p. 32.

[4] _Op. cit._, p. 58.

[5] Cf. W. K. Clifford, _Lectures and Essays_, vol. i, p. 95.

[6] _More Letters_, vol. ii, p. 235.

[7] _Memories and Studies_, p. 139.

[8] _Ibid._, p. 140.

[9] _Autobiography_, vol. i, p. 212.

[10] James, _op. cit._, p. 124.

[11] _Autobiography_, vol. i, p. 211.

[12] _First Principles_, Sixth (Popular) Edition, p. 446 (hereafter F. P.).

[13] _Principles of Psychology_, Third Edition, vol. i, p. 508 (hereafter Ps.).

[14] Ps., vol. i, p. 627.

[15] _Ibid._, p. 158.

[16] F. P., p. 155.

[17] Ps., vol. ii, p. 484.

[18] There is '_intrinsic_ force by which a body manifests itself as occupying space, and that _extrinsic_ force distinguished as energy'. F. P., p. 150.

[19] 'Divest the conceived unit of matter of the objective correlate to our subjective sense of effort and the entire fabric of physical conceptions disappears.' F. P., p. 151 note. Cf. Ps., vol. ii, pp. 237, 239.

[20] F. P., p. 171.

[21] e.g. 'Social changes take directions that are due to the joint actions of citizens determined as are those of all other changes wrought by the composition of forces.' 'The flow of capital into business yielding the largest returns, the buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, the introduction of more economical modes of manufacture, the development of better agencies for distribution, exhibit movements taking place in directions where they are met by the smallest totals of opposing forces.' F. P., pp. 193-6.

[22] _Creative Evolution_, English translation, p. 53.

[23] _Op. cit._, pp. 385, 6.

[24] According to Dr. Carr's interpretation of M. Bergson, 'The whole world, as it is presented to us and thought of by us, is an illusion. Our science is not unreal, but it is a transformed reality. The illusions may be useful, may, indeed, be necessary and indispensable, but nevertheless it is illusion.' _Problem of Truth_, p. 66.

[25] _Creative Evolution_, p. 389.

[26] 'But, when I posit the facts with the shape they have for me to-day, I suppose my faculties of perception and intellection such as they are in me to-day; for it is they that portion the real into lots, they that cut the facts out of the whole of reality.' C. E., p. 389.

[27] _Creative Evolution_, p. 389.

[28] _Op. cit._, p. 387.

[29] _Introduction to Metaphysics_, English translation, p. 8 and _passim_.

[30] e.g. 'Organisation can only be studied scientifically if the organised body has first been likened to a machine.' C. E., p. 98. Science is, I think, generally used by M. Bergson for _intellectual_ knowledge in contradistinction to intuitional knowledge.

[31] F. P., p. 184.

[32] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 14.

[33] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 366.

[34] F. P., p. 156.

[35] 'There remained to assign a reason for that increasingly-distinct demarkation of parts, &c.... This reason we discovered to be the segregation, &c.... This cause of the definiteness of local integrations, &c.' F. P., p. 440.

[36] F. P., p. 43.

[37] _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 47.

[38] F. P., p. 176.

[39] F. P., p. 154.

[40] _Proceedings Aristotelian Society_, 1912-13, p. 1.

[41] _Popular Scientific Lectures_, English translation, p. 254.

[42] _Lectures and Essays_, vol. i, p. 111.

[43] 'But when we ask what this energy is, there is no answer save that it is the noumenal cause implied by the phenomenal effect.' F. P., p. 154. It is towards this and like statements that my criticism is directed. There can be no objection to the treatment, by physicists, of energy as an entity in the sense given below in note 82. Those phenomena to which 1/2 _mv_^{2} has reference are fundamental realities for physical science.

[44] In a statement of the law of gravitation we may substitute the words 'in a degree' for 'with a force'; we may speak of 'the measure of attraction' instead of 'the force of attraction'.

[45] _System of Logic_, Bk. III, ch. v, Sec. 3, Eighth Edition, vol. i, p. 383.

[46] _Ibid._, Sec. 3 and Sec. 5, pp. 379 and 389.

[47] Ps., vol. ii, p. 93; cf. p. 97. One has now, however, to add the realm of subsistence.

[48] As a more technical example the following may be given:--The difference in properties of isomers is caused by difference of internal molecular structure notwithstanding identity of chemical composition.

[49] If we take spark as cause and explosion as effect there is obviously no proportionality between the cause and its effect. Thus M. Bergson speaks of the spark as 'a cause that acts by releasing'; and he adds that 'neither quality nor quantity of effect varies with quality or quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable'. _Creative Evolution_, p. 77. Compare what Spencer introduced into the Sixth edition of F. P. (pp. 172-3), concerning 'trigger action which does not produce the power but liberates it'. According to the treatment in the text there can be no 'proportionality' unless both ground and conditions are taken into account.

[50] Spencer says (F. P., pp. 169-70) that 'the transformation of the unorganised contents of an egg into the organised chick is a question of heat' ['altogether a question of heat', in the Third Edition], and tells us that 'the germination of plants presents like relations of cause and effect as every season shows'. But he also says that 'the proclivities of the molecules determine the typical structure assumed'. Obviously here the 'heat supplied' falls under (3) of the text, and 'the proclivities of the molecules' is his notion of what should fall under (2).

[51] See Index to F. P., _sub verbo_ 'integration'.

[52] e. g. 'Diminish the velocities of the planets and their orbits will lessen--the solar system will contract, or become more integrated.' _Essays_, vol. iii, p. 28. Mere condensation is often spoken of as integration. But then the term is used with bewildering laxity. Cf. James, _Memories and Studies_, p. 134.

[53] I retain in this connexion the current term physico-chemical. It seems that the basal type of relatedness here is electrical. It may be said that when we come down to the atom the _things in_ relation are electrical, are electrons, are positive and negative charges. So be it. But is it not the _electrical relatedness_ that is constitutive of the atom as such?

[54] 'A large number of physical properties', says Nernst, 'have been shown to be clearly additive; that is, the value of the property in question can be calculated as though the compound were such a mixture of its elements that they experience no change in their properties.' But other properties are not additive. 'The kind of influence of the atom in a compound is primarily dependent on the mode of its union, that is, upon the constitution and configuration of the compound. Such non-additive properties may be called constitutive.' Quoted by E. G. Spaulding in _The New Realism_, p. 238.

[55] _System of Logic_, vol. i, Bk. III, ch. vi.

[56] _Problems of Life and Mind_, Series II, p. 212.

[57] Of course if a particular physico-chemical change (_a_) is correlated with a particular physiological or vital change (_b_), then (_b_) implies (_a_) as (_a_) implies (_b_). The statement in the text refers to the implications of classes of change. There may be physico-chemical relatedness without any correlated vital relatedness; but there does not appear to be any vital relatedness which is not correlated with physico-chemical relatedness.

[58] _Essays_, vol. iii, pp. 31, 55.

[59] Ps., vol. ii, p. 484.

[60] F. P., p. 178.

[61] An ordinal correlation is one that couples every term of a series (_a_) with a specific term of another series (_b_) and _vice versa_ in the same order in each. Cf. Spaulding in _The New Realism_, p. 175. I shall sometimes speak of such correlation as serial.

[62] _Principles of Biology_, Edition of 1898, pp. 117, 120.

[63] _Op. cit._, p. 122.

[64] Ps., vol. i, p. 208.

[65] F. P., p. 61. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 134.

[66] Ps., vol. i, p. 132. James well says 'Spencer broke new ground here in insisting that, since mind and its environment have evolved together, they must be studied together. He gave to the study of mind in isolation a definite quietus, and that certainly is a great thing to have achieved'. _Memories and Studies_, p. 140.

[67] Ps., vol. i, p. 206.

[68] Ps., vol. i, p. 124.

[69] F. P., p. 120. Ps., vol. ii, p. 472. Cf. Ps., vol. i, p. 98.

[70] The word underlying is used in the sense of occupying a lower position in the logical hierarchy above indicated. If any one likes to speak of the physico-chemical and the vital as two aspects of one process, he is free to do so. And if he likes to say that the vital is caused by the physico-chemical, let him do so; but he must define the exact sense in which he uses the ambiguous word cause. The word inner in the text means within the organism.

[71] See S. Alexander, 'On Relations: and in particular the Cognitive Relation.' _Mind._, vol. xxi, N. S., No. 83, p. 318.

[72] I have avoided the use of the word determine. It would be well to distinguish between that which is _determined_ from without, that is, conditioned, and that which is _determinate_, that is, grounded in the constitution. I am here, I think, in line with Bosanquet. (See _Principle of Individuality and Value_, e. g. pp. 341, 352.) I have also avoided all reference to teleology. Without committing myself to the acceptance of all that Mr. Bosanquet says in the fourth lecture of the series to which reference has just been made, his treatment, there, appears to be on right lines. There is no opposition in teleology, so treated, to what is determinate. Indeed, such teleology is the expression of the logical structure of the world, or, as Spencer would say, the universality of law. For just as higher types of relatedness imply a substratum of physico-chemical processes, so do all events imply the underlying logic of events. Cf. W. T. Marvin, _A First Book of Metaphysics_, ch. xiii, 'On the logical strata of reality.'

[73] Cf. Ps., vol. i, pp. 99 and 140.

[74] _Problems of Philosophy_, ch. v; cf. _Proc. Aristotelian Soc._, 1910-11, p. 108.

[75] It should be distinctly understood that I here speak of one order of being in reference to the phenomena dealt with by science, including the cognitive phenomena discussed in the text. Whether we should speak of the Source of phenomena as constituting a separate order of being is a question I cannot discuss in a note. Does the logic of events imply a Logos? That is the question in brief. But, since the implication in question is not of the scientific kind, I may leave it on one side in considering a philosophy of science.

[76] Ps., vol. i, p. 140.

[77] F. P., p. 178.

[78] I have confined my attention to the cognitive type of relatedness. Other higher modes supervene when the course of evolution is traced further upwards. Indeed, cognition is only part of the underlying basis implied by the richer forms of distinctively human relational life. Spencer has much to say of them in his _Sociology_ and his _Ethics_, though he fails to realize that the phenomena he is dealing with involve essentially new constitutive features in man and in society. Can music or any form of art be discussed in terms of cognition only? I merely add this note to show that I am not unaware of the patent fact that when we have reached the cognitive type of relatedness, we are nowhere near the top of the evolutional tree.

[79] The part which is the centre of awareness, may be spoken of as experienc_ing_, in contradistinction to what is experienc_ed_. It is clear that such experiencing is always correlative to what is experienced actually or ideally (Spencer's vividly or faintly). The centre of awareness is either the cortex, or some specific part of the cortex, or (more generally) the organism as owning the cortex, in each case in accordance with the universe of discourse.

[80] Few physicists would, I think, be prepared to deny that, within a field of effective relatedness, there may be, and very often is, guidance without work done or any change in the 'amount of energy'. What physicists are concerned to insist on is their cardinal principle that every physical change involves physical terms in physical relatedness. This can be fully and freely accepted in accordance with the doctrine of implication sketched in the text. It is when Life or Consciousness is invoked to play the part of a non-physical term, or thing, which acts and reacts as if it were a physical term or thing, that physicists enter an emphatic protest. Cognitive relatedness among physical things may well be effective in guidance. To claim its presence must not, however, be regarded as in any sense equivalent to a denial of underlying physico-chemical relatedness.

[81] Until those who seek to furnish evidence of the existence of discarnate spirits can make some plausible suggestions as to the nature of a comprehensible scheme of correlation which shall serve to link the discarnate with the incarnate, one is forced to enter their results in a suspense account. It is of little use to proclaim the existence of 'facts scorned by orthodox science'. The so-called facts must be incorporated within a consistent scheme, before they can claim a place in the fabric of scientific truth.

[82] As the word entity is now often used, for example by Mr. G. E. Moore, cognitive relatedness may be termed an entity. 'When I speak of an entity I shall mean to imply absolutely nothing more with regard to that which I so call, than that it _is_ or _was_--that it is or was contained in the Universe; and of anything whatever which _is_ or _was_, I shall take the liberty to say that it is an entity.' G. E. Moore, _Proc. Aristotelian Soc._, 1909-10, p. 36.

[83] I have no space to discuss the physiological differentiation which is implied by the effectiveness of the cognitive relation. It involves, I believe, the differentiation of a superior cortical system from an inferior system of nervous arcs. I have dealt with it in some detail elsewhere. See _Instinct and Experience_.

[84] F. P., pp. 91-2.

OXFORD: HORACE HART M.A.
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

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