Chapter XVIII: Part 18

Finally with mournful echoing recurrence comes the old question: How much of individuality persists and passes untouched through death's fingers? How far does the graduate life carry with it the results of experience? I would answer: all that you ought to desire, all that is best, all that you will want when you fully understand how little and poor is individuality and that there is something including it and far better. I have a strange inability, personally, to understand the to me absurd hunger after personal identity. It appears to me a childish obtuseness of character. The great and glorious freeness and largeness of life, the decentralised, impersonal quality of it seems to be unappreciated. I do not see how people can fail to understand that personal identity is not only impossible, does not exist now and here, but that the desire of it is the renunciation of progress. We grow and advance only by change, only by breaking up identity and becoming other. Think also of the lack of identity or individuality in nature. There is no personality and individualism there, and yet there is something that includes personality and is much more. There is will, consciousness, intelligence, life,—but not identity or individuality. So the life that is the heart of us invites us to leave our little self and find a larger self. Religion is our _yes_ to that invitation. Materialism and pessimism is the saying _no_ to it. The immortality that is alone possible or desirable is the losing our life, the individual identity-loving life, again to find it as the impersonal but richer, deeper life of nature and God. God denies you an immortality of individualism and identity because he loves you so well that he refuses you your crude childish desire in order to offer you something infinitely better. People do not seem to see how narrow, small, and partial is the dissociate speck of the individual, and that as an individual progresses in all the virtues of character he evermore becomes proportionally less individual and less centralised, always more like the divine prototype of his impersonal father, Life. The love of individualism is the love of imperfection. This may to some seem a hard doctrine. It is not perhaps an easy task for the butterfly to break its way out through the million-fold bonds of its cocoon, but when risen into the large air and sunshine does it regret the birth-struggle? They who think they are being cheated of reality for a metaphysic illusion will find in breaking through the bonds of flesh that they also have brought with them splendid wings for rising in the no less real but rarer air of spiritual trust in life. It is not that we love less the thousand ties of flesh, home and kindred, but that in recognising the paternity and fraternity of all life, we find love commensurate with that life. I do not think there was any cold stony harshness in the face of Jesus when he uttered those most profoundly significant of all words, "Who is my mother, and who are my brethren? Whosoever shall do the will of my Father, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." What a recall to the common life of the spirit! What unity with the common life based upon loving obedience to the will of the Father. What a wonderful rebuke of the love of individualism. He did not love his mother less but humanity more. The more we rise into that impersonal atmosphere the more are we careless of the fate of personal identity. The composite photograph shows the fundamental and enduring quality, the average feature. In a certain sense life and history are taking humanity's composite photograph; but, inordinately-loving individualism, each sitter conceitedly demands that his own picture be left untouched and unblurred by that of the others, and that his poor little portrait shall stand alone and forever—precisely what the divine photographer does not wish and will not permit. Obstinacy persists and God smashes the negative to the ground with the unanswerable argument called death. Because it is more than metaphor that in any ways your body may be likened unto a photographer's negative: created, for example, by the in-flashing of a heavenly ray of light among the highly unstable chemicals of matter; useless, except as an intermediate step to a clearer showing of the character; black and invisible unless shone through by the pure light of life and love; fragile as glass,—and lastly the poor, weak, shadowy, dead counterfeit of a throbbing, marvellous, living reality. The hunger for an immortality of the body, of the senses, the lust of immortality, is, in empty fatuousness, only comparable to the mania of a crazy photographer interested only in his negatives, and who never "develops" one, or to the foolishness that values photographs more than the friends themselves. If we once get our spiritual eye fixed upon the deep reality and unity hidden by the Maia-veilings of individuality and flesh, the cravings of our weak hearts for eternal continuance of our little bundle of littlenesses, would fall away from us as softly as the wayward longings of childhood. We could then see that it is the quality of all life, the progressive purity, power, and increase of life in the abstract, that become all-important. Religion would become the love and veneration of Life the Father of us; morality the cheerful obedience of the individual to that Father; Heaven the re-entrance of the individual life into the great unity. Much of the old religion was irreligious; its God a far-away dead abstraction, not a living, ever-present love; its immortality was at heart a desire for death, its spiritualism at heart a barbaric materialism. To this death of faith and irreligious religion, comes the sympathetic study and love of nature—that is, science—and reveals to us the opulence of life, the infinity of intellect in nature, the inexhaustibleness of her resources and of her diversity, her beauty, and her splendor. The old materialistic degradation of religion forefelt its doom would come from this spiritualistic revivification, and the devotees cried out against science as atheistic. And science found some foolish enemies in her own camp who, misreading their divine book, joined in the cry—"Nothing but mechanics." It was a dismal short-lived croak. We now see that not only are science and her workers religious, but without scientific knowledge there can be no adequate idea or practice of religion. You can't love God unless you love and know what he is doing in this universe. The man who in a walk goes neglectfully and obliviously by a million mysteries and wonders that God has been toiling to eliminate for ages,—such a man cannot lay much claim to God's friendship. If we love our friend, we have some interest in the deepest concern of his life. The foolishest of all fears is the fear that science is somehow going to destroy all good things of faith and life. In truth it reveals all good things. It demonstrates and manifests both God and immortality,—God as the Father of all life, immortality as the surety of the conservation and non-wastage of that life. Much of the fear of science, is as I have said the fear of the old materialistic religion in presence of the larger faith that burns up its beloved errors. They who had been promised and had argued themselves into a groundless belief in the value and immortality of a bundle of sensual appetites, selfish desires, and imperfections saw far in advance that any large study of life and nature would dash their wretched faith to atoms. And science has overridden this unfaithful faith. "He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." This is as true scientifically as it is true morally and religiously.

It requires but a little study of neurology and psychology to give demonstration to this truth. The products of organisation die with disorganisation. Most, if not all, of what people mean by individuality and personal identity is a product of organisation, is an accident of incarnation. Children are similar to each other; they are lovable partly because idiosyncrasy and individualism haven't yet developed. As we grow older we cultivate individuality, until the very old are usually angular, cranky, individual with a vengeance! Death, thank heaven, is the end of that, the certainty of a non-eternalising of the imperfect. Birth is a new trial. Incarnation and reincarnation are the ever-renewed work of Life. Through the laws of heredity, through physiology, sociology, and biology, science is tirelessly illustrating to us how all life holds together, how individualism is valueless, and sacrificed to the common weal. There is no escape, sensual or supersensual from the world's great common life. The old selfish dream of a heaven apart from incarnation, from doing and becoming was a pitiful mistake. You cannot clutch your cake of happiness and like a spoiled child run into the attic of heaven to eat it alone. Life will see to it that you do not slip off. And if you have been born again of the spirit you will have no such desire, but will beg for kindred work upon the old earth-home.

In the meantime the conclusion is clear: to love and aid the work of our master Life we need not wait for death. We may not seek our own salvation; it is no matter whether you and I are saved or not. The reincarnation of life is our work here and now. It took you twenty years to fashion out of a microscopically-small speck of unorganised protoplasm your body and brain. Within us we are to keep that organisation from cramping and binding the life,—keep life as large and free and pliant as possible. Outside of us the incarnation goes on as well, and every person you influence either for good or for ill, thus by the fact, becomes a product of your incarnating work. Every day you have a hundred opportunities to give, without lessening your own supply, some of your own life, to increase the quantity and to elevate the quality of the general stock of the world's life. Help the young, they inherit the world and will use it well or ill according to your teaching and example. Stop cruelty to animals, they are your brothers, filled with the same life as your own; fight the political ruin we are preparing for ourselves by partisanship, bribery, and class-legislation; discourage war and intemperance and lessen the tyranny of the strong and wealthy. Wage a ceaseless war to the death against luxury, the poison that is eating and rotting the hearts of all of us; love trees, meadows, clear brooks, the mountains and silences of Nature. Love, not so much your own or another's individual life, as Life itself. There is otherwise no immortality.

The divine story tells us that after measureless suffering and self-purification, Buddha had gained the right to enter Nirvana. With compassion filling his heart he put his merited reward aside and resolved to remain without to teach and to help until every child of earth should have become his disciple, and until every disciple should have entered Nirvana before him. Such must be the resolve of every true lover of life and of every right seeker after immortality.

GEORGE M. GOULD.

SOME QUESTIONS OF PSYCHO-PHYSICS.[80]

SENSATIONS AND THE ELEMENTS OF REALITY.

[80] This article is the substance of a private communication
from Prof. Ernst Mach to the Editor of _The Monist_—published
in the present form with Prof. Mach's consent. Translated from
Professor Mach's MS. by Thomas J. McCormack.

I have read Dr. Carus's article "Feeling and Motion"[81] with care, and have also perused Clifford's essay on "The Nature of Things in Themselves." Let me attempt to present the points in which our agreements and differences consist.

[81] _The Open Court_, Nos. 153 and 154.

To begin with, I state with pleasure that the monistic tendency of both endeavors is in the direction that appears to me to be the true one and that is most likely to afford elucidation. Consequently, agreement in matters of detail is of subordinate importance and is only a question of time.

Let me cite, first, a few passages from "Feeling and Motion" to which I give my full assent. They are the following:

"The interconvertibility of motion and feeling is an error."

"Feeling is real as much as are matter and motion."

"Its reality accordingly is most immediate and direct, so that it would be ridiculous to doubt it."

"Man's method of understanding the process of nature is that of abstraction."

"Every concept is formed for some purpose, and every concept by serving one purpose necessarily becomes one-sided.... We must bear in mind.... (1) the purpose it has to serve, and (2) that the totality of things from which abstractions can be made is one indivisible whole.... We must not imagine that the one side only is true reality."

Some years ago I should also have agreed _in toto_ with the passages in which Dr. Carus speaks of the animation of all nature, and of the feeling that accompanies _every_ motion. To-day this form of expression would not, it seems to me, correctly characterise the matter. If I were now prematurely to advance a definitive formulation, I should fear lest, so far as myself and perhaps others are concerned, important aspects might remain concealed.

I shall next cite the passages with respect to which I do not agree with Dr. Carus, and then I shall endeavor to state wherein our differences of opinion consist:

"All series _A B C_ ... are _accompanied_ by α β γ." [The _A B C_ ... series of Dr. Carus has a different meaning from mine.]

"We may represent _motion_ or we may represent _mind_ as the basis of the world, or we may conceive them as being on equal terms." [I cannot agree with a co-ordination of "motion" and "mind."]

"They [viz. feeling and motion] are as inseparable as are the two sides of a sheet of paper." [Fechner says, "As inseparable as the concave and convex sides of the same circle." This appears to me an inapposite simile in so far as a _duality_ is predicated where in my view a _unity_ alone exists.]

My view of the problem is as follows: We have colors, sounds, pressures, and so forth (_A B C_ ...), which, as simplest component parts, make up the world. In addition thereto, percepts (resolvable into α β γ ...), feelings, and so forth, more or less composite. How α β γ ... differ from _A B C_ ... I will not define here, for I do not know exactly. It is enough for the time being that they do differ from _A B C_ ..., as the latter do from one another. And let us now leave α β γ ... entirely out of account and put ourselves in a time and state in which there are only _A B C_. Now I say, that if I see a tree with green leaves (_A_), with a hard (_B_), gray (_C_) trunk, that _A B C_ are _elements_ of the world. I say _elements_—and not sensations, also not motions—because it is not my purpose at this place to arrive at either a psychological or a physiological or a physical _theory_, but to proceed _descriptively_. The every-day man, indeed, takes greenness, grayness, hardness, or complexes thereof it may be, for constituent parts of the world—for he does not trouble himself about a psychologico-physiological theory—and does not learn moreover anything more about the world; from his point of view he is right. Similarly, for the descriptive physicist the question is also one merely of the dependencies of _A B C_ ... on one another; for him too _A B C_ ..., or complexes thereof, are and remain constituent parts of the world.

If, however, I close my eye (_K_), withdraw my feeling hand (_L_), _A B C_ ... disappear. If I contemplate _A B C_ ... in _this_ dependence they are my _sensations_. This is but a special point of view within the first.

According to my conception, therefore, _the same A B C_ ... is both element of the _world_ (the "outer" world, namely) and element of _feeling_.

The question how feeling arises out of the physical element has for me no significance, since both are _one and the same_. The parallelism stands to reason, since each is parallel to itself. It is not _two_ sides of the same paper (which latter is invested with a metaphysical rôle in the simile), but simply the _same_ thing.

A perfect physics could strive to accomplish nothing more than to make us familiar beforehand with whatever it were possible for us to come across _sensorily_; that is, we should have knowledge of the interrelation of _A B C_. A perfect psychology would supply the interrelation of α β γ. Leaving out of account the theoretical intermediaries of physics—physiology and psychology—questions like "How does feeling arise from motion" would never come up. However, the artificial inventions of a physical or psychological theory, must not be introduced into a general discussion of this character—for they are necessarily "one-sided."

I may now set forth my differing point of view with regard to the idea of "motion." A motion is either perceptible by the senses, as the displacing of a chair in a room or the vibration of a string, or it is only supplied, added (hypothetical), like the oscillation of the ether, the motion of molecules and atoms, and so forth. In the first instance the motion is _composed_ of _A B C_ ..., it is itself merely a certain relation between _A B C_ ..., and plays therefore in the discussion now in hand no especial part. In the second instance the hypothetical motion, under especially favorable circumstances, can become perceptible by the senses. In which case the first instance recurs. As long as this is not the case, or in circumstances in which this _can never happen_ (the case of the motions of atoms and molecules), we have to do with a _noumenon_, that is, a mere mental auxiliary, an artificial expedient, the purpose of which is solely to indicate, to represent, after the fashion of a model, the connection between _A B C_ ..., to make it more familiar to us. It is a thing of thought, an entity of the mind (α β γ ...). I cannot believe that this is to be co-ordinated with _A B C_ ... in the same way as _A B C_ ... among each other are. Putting together motion and feeling goes as much against me as would say the co-ordination of numbers and colors. Perhaps I stand quite alone in this, for physicists have accustomed us to regard the motions of atoms as "more real" than the green of trees. In the latter I see a (sensory) fact, in the former a _Gedankending_, a thing of thought. The billions of ether-vibrations which the physicist for his special purposes _mentally annexes_ to the green, are not to be co-ordinated with the green, which is given immediately.

When a piece of zinc and a piece of copper, united by a wire, are dipped in sulphuric acid and deflect a magnetic needle in the vicinity of the wire, the unprepossessed _discoverer_ of the fact discerns naught of motion beyond the deflection of the needle and the diffusion in the fluid. Everything reverts to certain combinations of _A B C_. Electricity is a thing of thought, a mental adjunct; its motion another; its magnetic field still another. All these noumena are implements of physical science, contrived for very special purposes. They are discarded, cast aside, when the interconnection of _A B C_ ... has become familiar; for _this last_ is the very gist of the affair. The implement is not of the same _dignity_, or reality, as _A B C_ ..., and must not be placed in the same category, must not be co-ordinated with it where general considerations are involved to which physics with its special objects does not extend.

The green (_A_) of the tree is not only adjoined to the presence of the sun (_B_), but also to the deflection of the needle (_X_), by my optic nerve. Familiarising intermediary connections to-day by motions, to-morrow by some other means, is the business of the special sciences, and can only disturb and obscure a general discussion. What should we say of a cosmology from a pharmaceutical point of view? In principle, this very thing is done, it seems to me, when physical augers and saws are employed in all fields of work, as is universally the case.

So much for the juxtaposition of motion and feeling. Perhaps I alone am right, perhaps I alone am wrong.

* * * * *

According to my conception accordingly "material" processes are not "_accompanied_" by "feelings," but are _the same_ (_A B C_ ...); only the relation in which we consider them makes them at one time physical elements and at another time feelings.

The relation in which "percepts" and "feelings" as distinguished from "sensations" stand to sensations, is not clear to me. I am much inclined to regard these feelings as a species of sensation (co-ordinate with sensations). How the representative percepts of imagination and memory are connected with sensations, what relation they bear to them, I dare venture no opinion. The relation of α β γ ... to _A B C_ ... is the point regarding which I do not feel sufficiently sure. Regarding _A B C_ ... (world of sense in its objective and subjective significance) I believe I am clear.

Dr. Carus in a private letter to me says: "It almost seems as if you transform all _A B C_ ... series into the corresponding α β γ ... series."

This is not the case. I designate by α β γ ... representative percepts (not sensations), and say simply that _A B C_ ..., _the same A B C_ ..., play, according to circumstances, now the rôle of physical elements, now the role of sensations. I call _A B C_ ..., therefore, _elements_, pure and simple.

Mine is not the Berkeleian point of view. The latter has been mistakenly attributed to me time and again, the separation that I make of _A B C_ ... from α β γ ... not having been sharply discriminated and it not having been borne in mind that I call _A B C_ ... alone _sensations_, not however α β γ. Clifford, with his "mind-stuff," approaches very near to Berkeley.

Monism, as yet, I cannot thoroughly _follow out_; because I am lacking in clearness with regard to the relation of α β γ ... to _A B C_ ..., which can only be supplied by further physiologico-psychological investigations; but I believe that the first step towards a competent monism lies in the assertion that the same _A B C_ ... are both physical and psychical elements. As regards the psychical "accompanying" the physical, the question How? continually recurs. Either they are two incompatible things (Dubois) or their relation is bound up in a third thing ("thing-of-itself"). By viewing the matter as _two sides_ of the same thing, not much more is gained, to my mind, than a momentary satisfaction.

All non-monistic points of view are, in my opinion, artificial constructions, which arise by investing with very far-reaching extensions of meaning psychological or physical special-conceptions, which have a limited value, applicable only within the department in question for the elucidation of the facts of that department. The overvaluing of psychological conceptions leads to spiritualistic systems, the overrating of physical conceptions to materialistic systems. Naturally in the latter systems _motion_ plays a great rôle; for through a mistaken conception of the _principle of energy_, people have come to believe that everything in physics can be explained by motion. But explanations by motions have, as a matter of fact, nothing to do with the principle of energy. The majority of physicists, it is true, believe and disseminate this opinion. If, when a physicist speaks of motion and nothing but motion, the question is asked _What_ moves? in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred nothing palpable or demonstrable is brought forward in answer, but hypothetical atoms or hypothetical fluids are adduced which execute motions still more hypothetical. Even in the domain of physics itself, the business of which is to proceed from the sensory and to return to the sensory, I can regard these "motions" at best only as provisorily tolerated intermediaries of _thoughts_, that have no right to be ranked on equal terms with reality, let alone placed above it.

Still less can I allow "motion" the right to create a world-problem where none exists, and thereby to conceal the real point of attack in the investigation of reality.

I may add that some years ago I took exactly Dr. Carus's point of view, which I presented in a lecture on Psycho-physics published in 1863 in the _Oesterreichische Zeitschrift für praktische Heilkunde_.

With regard to Clifford I may make the following remarks. The notion "eject" pleases me very much. I have long had the idea in mind, but have not defined it because its limitation is not clear to me; nor has Clifford given me any light on the subject. Is the representation in us of the material nature of things we _cannot lay hold of_ (the sun, the moon) to be called an eject? Are the abstract concepts of physical hypotheses, which in their very nature can never become sense-affective, ejects? Such things are abstract in widely differing degrees, and are bound up with the sensory in very unequal proportions; the impossibility of becoming sense-affective is partly absolute, partly only relative, that is, it exists for the time being.

I do not at all agree with Clifford's notion "mind-stuff"; in this I wholly concur with Dr. Carus. It is not unbiased philosophising to come down in the end to a _psychological_ notion as _comprehensive of the world_,—a notion on the face of it pre-eminently one-sided.

* * * * *

In connection with the subject under discussion, I might incidentally make mention of Mr. Charles S. Peirce's article "The Architecture of Theories" in the last number of _The Monist_. One Mr. Peirce, a mathematician,[82] has made some very valuable investigations, similar to Grassmann's. This author's view of the evolution of natural laws does not strike me as so singular. If predominance be given in our conception of the world to the spiritualistic or psychical aspect, the laws of nature may be regarded as tremendous phenomena of memory; as I attempted some years ago to set forth in a lecture of mine. The idea of their evolution is then very near at hand. Of course I do not think that for the time being we can gain much light from this view. For the present the "scientific method" in the grooves of which we have moved for three hundred years, continues to be the most fruitful. It is advisable to be very cautious in advancing beyond this. It is for this reason also that I do not think very much of the fruitfulness of the idea that the entire world is animated and feeling. We have as yet too little insight into the psychical, and still less into the connection between brain-organisation and brain-function and psychical process. Of what advantage to us is the assumption of feeling in cells in which every clue is missing by which to proceed from the psychical assumed to the physical connected with it. It seems to me that the physical and psychical investigation of sensations is for the time being the only thing that can be entered upon with any prospect of accomplishing anything. In this we shall first learn the proper formulation of questions that are to form the subject of further investigations.

[82] Mr. Benjamin Peirce, father of Mr. Charles S. Peirce.—ED.

ERNST MACH.

SOME QUESTIONS OF PSYCHO-PHYSICS.

FEELINGS AND THE ELEMENTS OF FEELINGS.

EXPOSITION.

When a man who has done so much valuable work for the progress of science as Professor Ernst Mach finds it necessary to change the position he has taken,—a position which has appeared to many thinkers as a satisfactory solution of the most intricate problem in the philosophical and psycho-physical field,—there must exist in the solution some difficulty which has either been overlooked or at least too little appreciated. If there is a flaw in it, I wish it to be exposed. And convinced that its discovery must be of general interest, I take pleasure in publishing Professor Mach's criticism of the view which I have defended in a former article of mine.

The main source of most differences, it seems to me, springs from misapprehensions. I shall therefore attempt to elucidate the subject with reference to the objections presented by Professor Mach.

#Recapitulation.#

The main idea set forth in my article "Feeling and Motion" may be briefly recapitulated as follows. Our feelings are phenomena which to an observer who could see all the processes taking place in our brain, would appear as motions of a special kind. Motions and feelings are two aspects of one and the same reality. But feeling cannot be explained as transformed motion. Accordingly, the elements of the conscious feeling which now exists and now disappears, must have existed before. The presence of elements of feeling must be an additional feature of the processes of nature not included in the term motion, and not observable in motions, yet inseparably bound up in motions. Or, in other words, feelings and the elements of feeling are the subjective aspect of what objectively appears as and is called motions.

The term "elements of feeling" employed in this sense has been adopted from Clifford. The idea that feelings and motions are two aspects of one and the same reality has been held by several psychologists; among whom are the founders of the science of psycho-physics, especially Fechner.

I. MOTION AND FEELING.

Professor Mach says: "Putting together motion and feeling goes as much against me as would, say, the co-ordination of numbers and colors."

#Justification of juxtaposition.#

The putting together of two concepts depends upon the purpose of our investigation. Motion and feeling, in spite of their disparity, have one quality in common which justifies their juxtaposition. Both in their spheres are terms of the most general circumscription.

#Feeling described.#

By feelings I understand those features of our experience which constitute what may be called the awareness of the present state. Feeling comprehends all the many degrees of awareness in pleasures and pains, sensations and thoughts, emotions and ideals. It constitutes the subjectivity of our existence and furnishes the basis of all psychic life. Feeling is the most general term of its kind.

#Motion described.#

By motion I understand all kinds of changes in the objective world that can either be directly observed or are supposed to be observable. Indeed all changes taking place must, objectively represented, be thought of as motions.

Feeling and motion being each the broadest concept of its kind, the question, In what relation do motions stand to feelings? appears to be quite legitimate.

* * * * *

Concerning the relation that obtains between feeling and motion, Professor Mach objects to the use of the expression "feeling accompanies motion." "Material processes," he says, "are not accompanied by feeling, but both are the same." And in another passage, "The parallelism stands to reason, since everything is parallel to itself."

#The term "accompany" inadequate.#

I grant most willingly that the term "accompany" is inadequate, and I admit that a certain feeling and a certain motion form one inseparable process. There is no duality of feeling and motion, both are different abstractions made from one and the same reality. I do not say that feeling and motion are identical, not that they are one and the same; but I do say that they are one. There is no such thing as pure feeling; real feeling is at the same time motion. Feeling by itself does not exist in reality. Pure feeling is a mere abstraction. And wherever the expression parallelism between feeling and motion has been used, it can mean only a parallelism between the two spheres of abstraction.

Professor Mach continues: "They [motion and feeling] are not two sides of the same paper (which latter is invested with a metaphysical rôle in the simile), but simply the _same_ thing."

#Fechner's simile.#

For the same reason Professor Mach objects to Fechner's comparison. Yet it seems to me that Fechner hit the mark when he compared feeling and motion to the inside and the outside curves of a circle; they are entirely different and yet the same. The inside curve is concave, the outside curve is convex. If we construct rules relating first to the concave inside and then to the convex outside, we shall notice a parallelism in the formulas; yet this parallelism will appear only in the abstractions which have been made of one and the same thing from different standpoints and serving different purposes. The abstract conceptions form two parallel systems, but the real thing can be represented as parallel only in the sense that it is parallel to itself. If we consider the real thing, it represents a parallelism of identity. There is but one line, and this one line is concave if viewed from the inside, it is convex if viewed from the outside.

#The simile of a sheet of paper.#

The simile which I introduced of the two sides of one and the same sheet of paper was devised to convey no other meaning than this construction of Fechner's comparison. The paper is invested with a metaphysical rôle only in the case where the simile is otherwise construed. There is no page which exists of itself as a mere mathematical plane independent of the paper of which it forms a side. Thus there can never be in reality a page without its counterpage. The paper, its size and color, belong to the page and constitute its properties.

Thus the abstraction 'feeling' represents my looking at the one side of reality. I leave, and from the subjective standpoint I have to leave, the other side out of account. Yet the other side of the sheet is inseparable from the one at which I am now looking, just as much as feeling is inseparable from motion. And I am constrained to admit the truth of the reverse also: motion is inseparable from feeling, but with the limitation that motions need not be on their subjective side actual feelings; they may be only elements of feeling which under certain conditions become actual.

#The metaphysical misinterpretation.#

I am aware that my comparison of feeling and motion to the two sides of one sheet of paper may be easily misinterpreted. But is not that a danger to which all comparisons are subject? A comparison is always imperfect, or as the Romans used to say, it limps: "Omne simile claudicat." And is not reality liable to be misinterpreted in the same way? Have not some philosophers thus introduced the metaphysical explanation of the unknowableness of things in themselves? Such philosophers conceive the two sides of a sheet of paper (the abstract mathematical planes of the pages) as phenomenal and the paper as their metaphysical essence. The size of the sheet, the color of the paper, and all its other qualities are in a metaphysical world-conception represented as properties of which the thing is possessed—not as constituting the thing, but as essentially different from it.

It appears to me that Professor Mach in spite of his opposition to Fechner's simile and to the expression that feeling and motion are two aspects of one and the same reality, entertains the same view. At least his words: "Only the relation in which we consider them makes them at one time physical elements, at another time feelings," are to that effect.

II. SENSATIONS AND THOUGHTS.

#Professor Mach's problem.#

The difference between Professor Mach's view and mine may appear greater than it is, because the problem which Professor Mach treats in his article "The Analysis of the Sensations," lies in quite a different field from that of the problem of the relation of feeling to motion. The problem being different, the same and similar terms are not only used for different purposes, but demand also different comparisons. Professor Mach's symbols _A B C_ ... and α β γ ... represent a contrast different from that of feeling and motion. They represent the contrast of sensations and thoughts. Sensations, such as green and hard, are colors, pressures, tastes, etc; thoughts are memory-images, concepts, volitions, etc.

Professor Mach says: "How the representative percepts of imagination and memory are connected with sensations, what relations they bear to them, as to this I dare venture no opinion.... Monism, as yet, I cannot thoroughly follow out; because I am lacking in clearness with regard to the relation of α β γ ... to _A B C_ ...; but I believe that the first step towards a competent monism lies in the assertion that the same _A B C_ ... are both physical and psychical elements."

My symbols _A B C_ ... and α β γ ... represent the contrast of physical and psychical elements, not of sensations and thoughts. Concerning thoughts, Professor Mach says he is much inclined to co-ordinate them with sensations so that his Greek symbols might differ from his Italic symbols not otherwise than the latter, viz. _A B C_ ...; differ among themselves. Taking this ground, I believe, it would be preferable to symbolise them accordingly among the Italic letters, perhaps as _X Y Z_. In the diagrams on page 407 they are called Μμ, Νν, Σς.

#Feeling, sense-impression and sensation defined.#

According to my terminology, feeling, as explained above, is the most general term expressing any kind and degree of subjective awareness. A sense-impression is a single irritation of one of the senses, the irritation being a special kind of motion plus a special and correspondent kind of feeling. A sensation is a sense-impression that has by repetition acquired meaning. A later sense-impression, when felt to be the same in kind as a former sense-impression, constitutes, be it ever so dimly, an awareness of having to deal with the same kind of cause of a sense-impression; thus giving meaning to it. By sensation, accordingly, I understand a sense-impression which has acquired meaning. And feelings that have acquired meaning, I should call mental states. Representative feelings (feelings that have a meaning) are the elements of mind.

#Thought and thinking defined.#

By thinking I understand the interaction that takes place between representative feelings. Such are the comparisons of sensations with memory-pictures, or of memory-pictures among themselves, the experimenting with memory-pictures so as to plan new combinations, etc. The products of thinking are called thoughts; and by thought in the narrower sense is commonly understood abstract thought which on earth is the exclusive privilege of man.

If I am not mistaken Professor Mach understands by sensations (represented by him as _A B C_ ...) what I should call sense-impressions; while thoughts, memories, and volitions (represented by him as α β γ ...) form what I should call mind, or all kinds of mental states, that is, the domain of representations.

The higher spheres of thought, or representative feelings, grow out of and upon the lower spheres. Sense-impressions, as I have attempted to explain in the article "The Origin of Mind" (_The Monist_, No. 1), are the data which are worked out into concepts and ideas; they are the basis upon which the whole structure of mind rests. The reflex motions of simple irritations, being modified in higher spheres by the rich material of experience consisting of memory-images, and by the possibility of forethought created through experience, become volitions.

#Monism and the origin of mind.#

A monistic explanation of the rise of mind from elements that are not mind is possible only on the supposition that the objective processes of motion are not mere motions but that they are at the same time elements of feeling.

Is this not the same position as Professor Mach's, where he says that "the first step towards a competent monism lies in the assertion that the same _A B C_ ... are both physical and psychical elements"? and again: "The same _A B C_ ... are both elements of the _world_ (the 'outer'[83] world namely) and elements of feeling."

[83] Professor Mach here says "outer world." I should prefer
to replace it by the expression "objective world," because
the motions of a man's brain belong to the outer world of
all other men. To make sure of including the actions of
my own body in this outer world, I should prefer the term
"objective world," making feelings alone (to the exclusion of
the subject's own motions) the constituents of the subjective
world.

#Agreement with Professor Mach.#

Considering the two last-quoted sentences of Professor Mach, it appears to me that all differences vanish into verbal misunderstandings. Yet since I am not at all sure about it, I may be pardoned for becoming rather too explicit. The adjoined diagram may assist me in making my ideas clear.

#Explanation of the diagrams.#

Let the large circle of both figures represent a sentient being, a man. The periphery is his skin. The small circle enclosing _K_ and _L_ is a sensory organ; the other small circle enclosing _M_ and _N_ represents the hemispheres of his brain. _A_ and _B_ are processes taking place outside of the skin of this man. _A_ produces an effect in _K_; _B_ in _L_. The line _R_ represents a reflex motion. _M_ and _N_ are concepts and abstract ideas derived from such impressions as _K_ and _L_. The line _S_ represents an act of volition.

All these symbols represent motions in the objective world. We know through physiological investigations that _K_, _L_, _M_, and _N_ are motions; in our individual experience they appear as feelings.

The second figure represents in agreement with my system of symbols the states of awareness, in Greek letters. Certain physiological processes (_K L R_, _M N S_ of Figure I) appear subjectively as states of awareness (i. e. κ λ ρ, μ ν ς of Figure II). Yet _A_ and _B_ remain to the thinking subject mere motions. If they possess also a subjective side, although only in the shape of potential feeling, it does not and it cannot appear.

#Sensations not elementary.#

Professor Mach calls green, hard, etc., which in a certain relation are our sensations, "the elements of the world." These processes characterised as "green," "hard," etc., are in my opinion too special and at the same time too complicated to be considered elementary. I grant that they are elements of mind, because if further analysed, they cease to be mental phenomena. But they are not elements _per se_, not elements of the world. It remains doubtful to me whether Professor Mach understands by his term "sensation" only _K_ κ and _L_ λ or the whole relations _A K_ κ, and _B L_ λ. Taking it that he represents _A B C_ ... as both elements of the world and sensations, it almost appears certain to me that his term "sensation" stands for the whole process _A K_ κ, and that he considers the scientific analysis of this process into _A_ the outside thing, into _K_ the nerve-vibration corresponding in form to the outside thing, and κ the feeling that takes place in experiencing the sense-impression _A K_, as an artificial procedure that serves no other purpose than that of familiarising us with certain groups of elements and their connections. The processes _A K_ κ, _B L_ λ, in that case would be considered by Professor Mach as the actual facts, while the _A_ and _B_, the _K_ and _L_, the κ and λ represent mere abstract representations without real existence, invented by scientists in order to describe the realities _A K_ κ, _B L_ λ, etc., with the greatest exactness as well as economy of thought. In their separate abstractness they are the tools of science only and we must not take them for more than they are worth.

#Thoughts as mental implements.#

If this be so, I understand Professor Mach very well and I agree with him when he looks upon all _M_ and _N_ with their respective μ and ν as being "noumena, _Gedankendinge_, things of thought." They are mental tools. Sense-impressions are realities, but mental representations are implements; they are auxiliaries for dealing with realities; they are "the augers and saws" employed in the different fields of cognition.

#Persistence of the elements of mind.#

Professor Mach says in his article "The Analysis of the Sensations": "When _I_ (the ego) cease to perceive the sensation green, when I die, then the elements no longer occur in their customary, common way of association. That is all. Only an ideal mental economical unity, not a real unity, has ceased to exist." The term sensations, it appears to me, can in this passage be interpreted neither as _K_ κ only, nor as the whole relations _A K_ κ, but as any _A B C_ ... relations; and since Professor Mach has not excluded from them the element of feeling, I should have to represent them by _A_ α, _B_ β, _C_ γ.... Sensations as I understand the term (viz. _A K_ κ, _B L_ λ), are elements of mind; if they are further analysed they cease to be mental states. Says Professor Mach: "If I close my eye (_K_) withdraw my feeling hand (_L_), _A B C_ ... disappear. In this dependence _A B C_ ... are called sensations." Should we not rather say, they cease to be sensations, if this dependence ceases? Accordingly, sensations and sense-impressions are for this and for other reasons not indecomposable, not ultimate atoms. The elements of mind can be further analysed into the elements of the elements of mind. The elements of mind do not persist; but the ultimate elements of the elements of mind, whatever they are, do (or at least may) persist.

When speaking of the elements of the elements of mind we cease to deal with objects of actual experience as much as a physicist or chemist does who speaks about atoms. Nevertheless the analysis is as legitimate in our case as it is in the chemist's. If in the above quoted passage I am allowed to replace Professor Mach's term "sensations" by elements of sense-impressions, I should not hesitate unreservedly to accept his idea. These elements of sensations would be all kinds of natural processes, all kinds of motion. They would be physical actions which are not mere motions but also and at the same time elements of feeling.

#Ideas as contrivances for comprehension.#

It is true that abstract concepts, and especially scientific terms and theories, are mere contrivances to understand the connections among, and the qualities of, real things. Ideas are not the real things, but their representations, and some ideas are not even representations; they are solely of an auxiliary nature and comparable to tools. They are used as working hypotheses wherever the real state of things is in part hidden from us, until we have found the actual connections. As soon as the actual connections are found we can and must lay down our tools.

In a certain sense all words and concepts are tools for dealing with the realities they represent. But some words are tools in a special sense. They have been invented for acquiring a proper representation.

#The dignity of mental tools.#

Professor Mach says: "The implement is not of the same dignity or reality as _A B C_...." It appears to me that these implements (if they are of the right kind) have almost a higher dignity (although not reality) than the material to which they are applied. My respect for tools is very great, for tools are the most important factors, perhaps the decisive factors, in the evolution of man. The usage of tools has matured, nay created the human mind, and words,—scientific and abstract terms and theories not excluded,—are the most important and most sacred tools of all.

Some ideas, it is true, have to be laid aside like tools that are no longer wanted; but there are other ideas which we cannot lay aside, because they have more value than the ideas of a mere working hypothesis. Some ideas are indispensable and will remain indispensable; we shall always have to employ them in order to represent in our mind the connection between certain facts. If we see a train pass into a tunnel and emerge from it at the other end, we will connect in our mind these two sensations by the thought of the train's passage from one end to the other. This idea is not a sensation; it is a noumenon. Shall it therefore be called a _mere_ noumenon, a tool that has to be discarded as soon as we are accustomed to expect a train to emerge from the one end of a tunnel soon after it has disappeared into it at the other end?

#Noumena legitimate, if representing realities.#

There are scientific concepts which, for some reason or other, can never become objects of direct observation; they can never become sensations. Nevertheless we must think them together with certain sensations as indispensable connecting events taking place behind the stage and hidden from our eyes. Our conception of a train hidden from sight in a tunnel, it is true, is a noumenon, but it is a legitimate noumenon, it represents a reality. So also many scientific ideas, although undoubtedly things of thought, are legitimate noumena. If they contain and in so far as they do contain nothing but formulated features of reality or inevitable conclusions from verified and verifiable experiences, these things of thought represent something real, which means that if we were in possession of microscopes of sufficient power, or if we could look behind the veil that hides them from our sight, we should see them, just as we should see the train if the rock through which the tunnel leads were transparent.

III. THE ORIGIN OF FEELING.

Concerning the origin of feeling Professor Mach says: "The question how feeling arises out of the physical element has for me no significance." I agree that we cannot ask how feeling arises out of the physical element. But feeling being a fleeting phenomenon, to propose the problem of the origin of feeling _has_ a significance.

#Physical elements with and without feeling.#

Some physical elements—namely, those of our own body—are indubitably possessed of the subjective phenomena of feeling. And as to certain other physical elements, observable in our fellow creatures, that is in men and animals, no one would think of denying their presence either. But there are physical elements which we regard as bare of all feeling. The wind that blows, and the avalanche that plunges into the valley are not supposed to be feelings. Yet the energy of the wind and the energy of the avalanche may be utilised and ultimately stored up in food. The food may be changed into human energy and then the element of feeling appears as if called forth out of the void. We agree that feeling has not been changed from motion. But if feeling was not motion before, what was it? Feeling cannot be a creation from nothing. Consequently it must in its elements have existed before. Feeling, namely actual feeling, must be regarded as a special mode of action of the elements of feeling. If all that which we can observe in motion, all that which the term motion comprises, constituting the objective changes taking place in nature, contains nothing of feeling or of the elements of feeling, we must yet attach to every motion the presence of this element of feeling.

#Elements of feeling not observable.#

That the potential subjectivity of the physical elements, namely the elements of feeling, cannot be seen; as motions can be seen and objectively observed, is not a reason that militates against this view; for it is the nature of all subjective states to be felt only by the feeling subject. If all feelings are objectively unobservable except by their correspondent motions, the elements of feeling can form no exception to the general rule.

* * * * *

#The animation of all nature.#

Professor Mach says: "Some years ago I should have agreed _in toto_ with the passages in which Dr. Carus speaks of the animation of all nature and of the feeling that accompanies every motion."

#Nature not all feeling.#

Let me here emphasise that I have termed nature "alive" not in the sense that every motion is supposed to be accompanied with sensation, nor with any kind of feeling, but with an element of feeling only. I am aware that the term element of feeling may be easily misunderstood, and it seems advisable to guard against such misconceptions. Actual feeling I suppose originates from the elements of feeling similarly as an electric current originates under certain special conditions. Sulphuric acid dissolves zinc and sets energy free which appears in the copper wire as electricity. It is an instance of the transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy.

#The term "elements of feeling" inappropriate.#