Chapter XII: Part 12

“You are right. The thing in itself is a dangerous idea,—one
that easily leads astray. But so long as we have no better
expression to represent the relation for which it stands we
shall have to use it. You also accept the following three
momenta: (1) Objective existence or reality. (2) Effectiveness
of Reality upon consciousness, i. e. sensation. (3)
Effectiveness of sensation upon consciousness and reproduction
of sensation in consciousness, i. e. representation. Nobody,
however, can maintain that in sensation, and still less
in representation, the whole of reality will appear in
consciousness. First we learn from history what progress has
been made in the cognition of reality and secondly it is
obvious that we are infinitely far from an actual comprehension
of reality. We have strong reasons to suspect that there
are many processes in reality which in no way affect our
sensibility and cannot enter into consciousness, and we know
for sure that we do not comprehend—i. e. reconstruct from
them assumed causes—many things, indeed most things, which we
observe in their effects. Our cognition of nature, if we begin
to construct, always leads us to some _x_. It may be doubted
whether this _x_ is an unknown or an unknowable. In my opinion
it is both—anyhow we cannot eliminate it.

“I am convinced that many things which are unknown to-day and
appear as unknowable will be known and knowable in a thousand
years. But I doubt whether the total mass of the Unknowable has
been noticeably diminished. For the Unknowable is infinite and
the infinite if divided by any finite number can never produce
a finite number. Every solved problem contains new and greater
problems. What shall we call this? I believe that the term
“thing in itself” is after all the best expression. Whoever
wants to turn a mystic on account of it cannot be prevented.
This state of things can be brought out of existence by an act
of violence only.”

It is most certainly true, as Professor Jodl says, that sensations do not depict the whole of reality. But why should they? Cognition is possible only by limiting the attention to a special point. Every sense organ is an organ of abstraction. Every sense depicts the effects of reality in its own way and in this way alone. It may freely be granted that there are many processes in reality which do not affect our sensibility. Yet there is nothing in reality which does not affect something in some way. If it did not, it could not be said to exist. The chemical rays of light do not affect our eye, they are invisible and were for that reason not noticed. But these rays are not without any effects. If we cannot observe them directly, we can invent sensitive plates or other instruments for observing their effects indirectly. Indirect observation makes it possible that the limitation of our senses does not result in a limitation of knowledge.

Says Professor Jodl:

“Our cognition of nature if we begin to construct always leads
us to some _x_.”

This sentence indicates that Professor Jodl’s and our conception of cognition are different. Cognition is not a reconstruction of assumed causes; it is a unification of our representative sensations or ideas. Something is again noticed, it is re-cognised, to be the same thing. Cognition is adaptation of new facts to our present stock of knowledge; it is the proper arrangement of new data in our system of mental representations. Cognition, accordingly, is the reduction of the unknown to terms of the known. How can it ever lead to an _x_? The positive conception of cognition is, as Kirchoff defines, it “an exhaustive and most simple description of facts.” It is a reconstruction of facts or, as Mach says, _Ein Nachbilden der Thatsachen_. Cognition is based upon _Anschauungen_; it will lead to an ultimate _x_, only in case we expect that cognition instead of being a description of facts will have to give us information about how it happens that facts exist, how they originated out of nothing.

Professor Jodl’s thing in itself is not outside of Space and Time (as is Kant’s thing in itself) but it is the overwhelming infinitude of problems to be solved with which we cannot hope to get through even though our life lasted billions of light-years. Let me repeat here what I said in the second edition of “Fundamental Problems,”

“A philosophy which starts from the positive data of
experience, and arranges them in the system of a monistic
conception of the world, will meet with many great problems
and in solving them will again and again be confronted with
new problems. It will always grapple with something that is
not yet known. The unknown seems to expand before us like an
infinite ocean upon which the ship of knowledge advances. But
the unknown constantly changes into the known. We shall find no
real unknowable wherever we proceed. The idea of the unknowable
is like the horizon—an optic illusion. The more we advance,
the farther it recedes. The unknowable is no reality; the
unknowable can nowhere prevent knowledge nor can the horizon
debar a ship in her voyage, from further progress.” (p. 271.)

Man’s knowledge has value as positive information concerning the facts he has to deal with, and the infinitude of the not known, the infinitude of other problems and things which he will never face, is of no consequence whatever. Positivism commences and has to commence with the positive facts of the given experience and not with the infinitude of possibilities which lie beyond our horizon. Compare knowledge to property and suppose a man is to buy a farm. Shall we discourage him with the idea that the whole amount of soil on the surface of the earth and of other planets is infinite, and this infinitude of all existences if divided by his finite little possession can never result in a finite number. Even if it were doubled, if it were multiplied a thousand times, it remains as good as nothing in comparison with the rest of the world which he cannot acquire. However, his possession is something to him, whatever the relation of infinite possibilities may be in proportion to it.

The concept of infinitude serves a good purpose in its place, but we cannot use it for analogies in other fields or bring it in relation to concrete realities. We produce confusion and drop into mysticism as soon as we handle the idea of infinitude as if it were a positive thing. The infinite is a function which is mathematically expressed by 1/0 = ∞, and whenever we bring anything in relation to the infinite, we at once dwarf the greatest number no less than the smallest number into zero.

Clearness of thought is the indispensable method of sound philosophy for constructing a positive world-conception, which in great outlines is a description of the facts of reality. By suffering mysticism as a legitimate conception either in science or in philosophy, we enhance the interests of those who prefer the chiaroscuro of vague notions to clear thought.

V. CLIFFORD’S AND SCHOPENHAUER’S CONCEPTIONS OF THE THING IN ITSELF.

When Clifford speaks of things in themselves he does not mean Kant’s thing in itself, he means neither the object independent of the thinking subject nor the thing independent of space and time. He means the thing as it would be if viewed from the thing itself.

A man appears to other thinking beings as an active body, as an organism that is in motion; but to himself he appears as a feeling being. The subjectivity of things as they appear to the things themselves consists in our own case of states of awareness, and this subjectivity is called by Clifford the thing in itself.

A certain brain motion is in its subjective aspect a feeling. This feeling is according to Clifford the thing in itself of the visible, observable, and measurable motion. The thing in itself of so-called inanimate beings is not feeling, but elements of feeling. In other words, the world-substance is everywhere in itself potentiality of feeling and Clifford therefore calls it “mind-stuff.”

Schopenhauer arrives at his conception of the thing in itself practically in the same way. There is the world as it appears to us, the objective world of motion in space and time. What the kernel of this world may be, we can know from self-observation. The kernel of ourselves, Schopenhauer says, is Will; and the will is also the kernel of things; the will is the thing in itself.

We understand by will the passage into action, i. e. an incipient motion of the organism if accompanied with the psychical element of consciousness, and this consciousness is a state of awareness of the will including its direction and aim. Will, as the term is generally used, is always conscious. Schopenhauer however speaks of the will as being blind, i. e. without knowledge, without awareness of itself and its aim. This indicates that he uses the word not in its original but in a figurative meaning.

The fall of a stone may be characterised as a blind motion without awareness and without the stone’s having a consciousness as to its direction or aim; and in a similar (although not in the same) way Clifford speaks of the elements of feeling as being not rational. We agree with Schopenhauer that that factor in a stone which makes it fall when placed in a certain position is as much a natural process as the act of a man, only of a lower grade and a simpler kind. Schopenhauer calls that which both have in common “will.” Yet in common language we call the objective aspect of that which both processes have in common, “motion.” What then is the subjective aspect of a falling stone? It is not a state of awareness, it is no feeling, but it is the potentiality of a state of awareness, it is potential feeling. There _is_ a subjective aspect, but this subjective aspect is so far as we can judge of no account to the stone.

That something in the stone which corresponds to man’s consciousness, viz. the stone’s subjectivity, is not mind, but it is potential mind. And potential mind is not as Mr. Conybeare expresses it “mind diluted,” potential mind is no mind at all.

The world-substance as it exists in inorganic matter is not mind. But the universe taken as a whole, the All, is for that reason not less than mind. On the contrary, it is infinitely more than mind. The All is not brute force and inert matter only, the universe is a cosmos, and its subjectivity necessarily develops, according to the laws of form which characterise the cosmos throughout, into mind. We disagree with Professor Clifford most emphatically when he describes the mind-stuff of which according to his terminology the world consists, as not rational.

The world it is true is not rational in its elements, but the world as a whole, the entire cosmos with its laws and especially in its formal order, is the prototype of all rationality. Human reason is rational only in so far as it conforms with, as it reflects, as it describes the order of the cosmos. The human mind is a microcosm. We do not call the macrocosm, in whose image the microcosm has been created, a mind, because we understand by the term mind not reality itself but reality pictured in symbols of feeling. We understand by mind the individual conception of the world as it is mapped out in the brain of a sentient being, and not the universe itself, not the all-being. We understand by mind a creature and not the creator, a soul and not God.

The cosmos, the All, God, that which creates the mind, is not dead, not irrational, and not inferior to mentality. It is the source of all life, it is the condition of all order, it is the standard of all morality. All the minds that exist are but parts of it. In it, with it, and through it we live and shall live forever. For although we shall die, our being can never be blotted out. Existence knows no annihilation and life knows no death. What we call death is a dissolution of life in a special part, but the contents of a life, the thoughts, the ideas, and the ideals are preserved and transmitted, they are implanted into other minds; the soul continues to live. And this continuance of the life of the soul is not a mere dissolution in the All, it is not the immortality of force and matter; it is the preservation of its special existence, of its most characteristic and individual features for an immeasurably long period hence, which will last as long as the conditions of life remain favorable upon earth. Yet even if a whole solar system were broken to pieces, life will reappear; mind will be born again to struggle for truth and to aspire to live in conformity with truth.

VI. THINGS AND RELATIONS.

The proposition that things in themselves are unknowable finds a strong argument in the statement that we can know relations only, that all knowledge is relative. It is undoubtedly true that all knowledge is relative and knowledge is a knowledge of relations. But what is a relation? When I once proposed this question, I was answered:

“A relation is the connection between two things; it is that
something in which the one stands to the other, in short, it is
the betwixtness of things.”

This is exactly what a relation is not. From such a definition of relation agnosticism will necessarily follow. It is a misstatement of the case, and when we come to follow out the idea, we shall be led into inextricable contradictions, and unless we revise the whole argument, we shall have to confess that we are at our wit’s end.

The question, what is a relation? was one of the issues between the two great mediæval schools of philosophy, the Nominalists and the Realists.[45] The Nominalists answered: “A relation is a mere product of the mind,” while the Realists declared that “a relation without which the thing cannot be, is in the thing.”

Both schools relied upon Aristotle’s authority. Aristotle had declared that matter is mere possibility of existence (it is δυνάμει ὄν) and form is that which makes it real, the formal is the real, form is existence or being (οὐσία). The metal of a statue, Aristotle says, is its matter, the idea of the statue is its form, both together make the real statue. The metal having had another form before, did not exist with the inherent purpose of being this metal of the statue. The metal is the mere potentiality of becoming a statue.[46] Hence, says Aristotle, not the matter but the form constitutes the reality of the statue, the form is that which is real, or that which makes actual, ἐνεργείᾳ ὄν, it is the being in completeness or actuality, ἐνετλεχείᾳ ὄν, i. e. that which makes a thing exist in its purpose (ἐν τέλει ἔχειν). If the formal alone is and makes real, relations must be real. This is in favor of the Realists.

Yet Aristotle’s philosophy is not in every respect clearly worked out. In fact there are two Aristotles, the one being a Platonist, the other a naturalist, the one believing in universals, the other investigating concrete things and taking individuals as real beings. But both Aristotles and with them both parties of the schoolmen had no clear conception of the nature of ideas, what they are, and what they purport, and how we can discriminate between their subjective and objective elements. Ideas have a meaning. Is their meaning purely mental or has it an objective value? We say that it has.

The same Aristotle who considered the formal as that which makes real, denied the objective existence of relations. He said that such qualities as greater, or smaller, double or half, indeed all relations (the πρός τι of things) did not belong to the things, but were added to them by the thinking subject. Ergo relations are mere products of the mind, they have no objective value. This was in favor of the Nominalists.

Now it is true that some relations are purely mental in so far as the comparison upon which they rest is purely imaginary. An answer to the question, Who was the greater, Alexander or Cæsar? depends upon the standard of measurement which we create for the special purpose. Some such relations have no objective value, they are not facts but a play of imagination dependent on the recognition of the standard of measurement. But how is it, if we express the relation between the gravity of a stone and the whole mass of the earth as it manifests itself in the stone’s fall? Is that also a mere product of the mind? Certainly Newton’s laws describing gravitation in exact and mathematical formulas are a product of the mind, but this product of the mind has an objective value, it has a meaning, it describes facts, and these facts are certain relations between certain things.

* * * * *

The fault of the modern misconception of relativity lies in the assumption that the two or more things are considered as things in themselves. We are apt to consider the gravity of two masses, of a stone and of the earth, as a relation between two independent things. Here is the stone and there is the earth and the relation is considered as some third item, being the connection in which the one stands to the other.

In reality there are not two things and, in addition to them a betweenness of the two things. The world is not a sum of things, not even a system of things, but a whole indivisible entirety and what we call things are abstractions which serve special purposes in the household of cognition. All things consist as it were of innumerable relations to all other things. When we abstract one special process which takes place in the province of what we are wont to call _two_ things, we have to deal with a relation.

There are no relations of themselves and there are no things of themselves. Relations describe certain features of reality obtaining between what we call two or more things, and in this description all other features of which the real things consist are purposely omitted.

There is no quality of things but it is at the same time a quality of relation. Every quality of a thing characterises it under a certain condition; it appears as an effect upon something and thus it is actual as a relation. Cognition analyses things into bundles of relations and all these relations together make up the things.

The modern idea that we can know relations only and that there are things in themselves which are unknowable is an old error inherited from mediæval scholasticism, and its roots can be traced back to the philosophy of Aristotle. The difficulty disappears as soon as we consider the whole world (ourselves included) as an interacting whole, and that the conceptions “things” and “relations” have been invented for describing certain of its parts and certain of its interactions or interconnections.

If we push the idea of things in themselves to the ultimate extreme we arrive at the atomistic conception of the universe. _Atoms are the things in themselves reduced to the point system._ If we consider the world as a heap of innumerable atoms, we are at a loss how to explain the interaction among these atoms. The atomist universalises the substance-abstraction and will be disappointed afterwards not to be able to deduce from his universalisation other qualities which are found in reality, such as the relations of things, their interconnections, their spontaneity of motion, the life of organised beings, and the mind of thinking creatures.

Ideas are symbols and symbols have a meaning. The whole realm of mental representations may be viewed in their symbolism or in their significance. Considering their symbolism, ideas of things as well as of relations, are products of the mind, considering their meaning, ideas represent realities; in other words: their contents or that which they signify is real.

It appears that neither Nominalism nor Realism is right; yet if we stretch them only a little, if we are allowed to interpret them in the light of a monistic world-conception, both are right. They cease to be contradictory and become complementary. Universals are real, say the Realists, i. e. the forms and relations of things are actualities. Universals are names, say the Nominalists, i. e. the relations and forms in which we describe the world are mental symbols.

The Realists had the misfortune to defeat the Nominalists entirely, and thus had a chance to insist upon being right in every respect. All opposition having ceased, the errors of Realism grew in extraordinary exuberance. Nominalism in the mean time raised its head in opposition to the recognised authority of the church as well as the schools, slowly yet powerfully and irresistibly. The errors and the tyranny of Realism gave strength to the Nominalistic movement which reached its height in Kant’s philosophy. The Realists had gone to the extreme of declaring that universals were things, real substances, independent of single and concrete objects, and the Nominalists on the other hand, represented by Kant, went so far as to declare that all relations, time and space included were _mere_ products of the mind.

If the relations are mere products of the mind, all knowledge being a knowledge of relations, knowledge becomes impossible. That last consequence was drawn by Kant and is emphatically insisted upon by agnosticism.

There is but one world-conception that can dispense with these conclusions: it is that View which conceives of the All as a whole; and of knowledge as a description of its parts, qualities, and relations, ever mindful on the one hand that the parts are parts, that qualities and relations are certain features only, not entire realities, or isolated entities, and that the symbols thereof frequently overlap each other; on the other hand that there is nothing absolute,[47] and that there are no things in themselves.

The relativity of knowledge, whether we conceive of it as the relativity of the object to the subject in general or as an appreciation of the fact that all knowledge gives and can give information of relations only, does not lead to the conclusion that knowledge is impossible. Relativity is a fundamental feature of knowledge, and we shall understand that it must be so if we consider that reality itself is a great system of relations.

* * * * *

The interconnection of all things with all things appears to be so complete, that if we intended to explain or understand one single fact fully and exhaustively in all its relations, past, present, and future, we should be obliged to give a complete description of the universe. Says Tennyson:

“Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies;—
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.”

We might address in the same way anything else, an atom of hydrogen, a grain of sand as well as the sun, the action of a tiny speck of irritable protoplasm as well as the soul of man.

VII. IS THE EGO A THING IN ITSELF?

Prof. Lloyd Morgan in his excellent work “Animal Life and Intelligence” uses repeatedly the word “mind” as if it were a thing in itself. Professor Morgan is a monist and he does not intend the word to mean a thing in itself; yet such is the influence of language that we, all of us, unless we are constantly on our guard, will inadvertently slip into dualistic expressions. Professor Morgan says, with reference to certain sensations of animals (p. 309):

‘From these stippled sensations the mind in all cases
elaborates a continuum.’

The unity which arises out of stippled sensations and which through their interaction becomes a continuum is called mind. To speak of mind as working out the continuum is mythological language, it is the transformation of the abstract idea “mind” into a real and independent thing whose existence is conceived to be independent of the reality from which it has been abstracted.

Again, Professor Morgan says: “Our constructs are literally our handiwork.” Our constructs, i. e. our mental signs constructed to represent realities, constitute our soul; they are we ourselves.

Professor Morgan, as I understand him, does not believe in a mind behind the psychical facts of mental activity, he does not assume the pre-existence of mind to the continuum elaborated. His view of mind appears to be the same as ours. The more noteworthy, then, is his usage of the term “mind.” It is a remarkable instance of how language naturally inveigles us into a belief in things in themselves. Words seem to denote concrete existences and as soon as we use words in this way we are entangled in dualism.

Prof. F. Max Müller as well as the late Prof. Thomas Hill Green, the founder of the Oxford transcendentalist school, start from this assumption, that man’s mental activity is performed by a something which is quite distinct from it. This something is the thing in itself of the human soul. Prof. F. Max Müller says:

“If mind is the name of the work, what is the name of the
worker?... It is what we may call the ego as personating the
self; it is what other philosophers call the monon. Let us
call therefore the worker who does the work of the mind in its
various aspects, the Monon or the Ego.”

This conception which asks for the worker of the work is based upon a materialistic view of the human organism. An organism is not a dead machine which must be set a-going by somebody who attends to it. Organisms are active and not passive, they are living and not dead. Every part of an organism is a worker and so is the whole. And if we speak of its “life” we must bear in mind that “life” is an abstract which denotes a certain inseparable quality of the organism. The work and the worker are two abstracts of one and the same thing. The reality from which these terms have been abstracted is “something working.” This something working does not consist of a worker and his work, but the worker is in every part of his work. The worker of our mental activity is the work itself. Both are identical.

The objection is made: “Whence does the activity come which appears in the realm of organised life.” The answer is: Activity is a universal quality of all existence. There is no such a thing as absolutely inert matter. Every chemical element combines with other elements spontaneously, according to its inherent nature and not through the influence of a worker manipulating its atoms. Spontaneity is a universal feature of reality. Nature is throughout self-working activity. And this its most remarkable character is preserved in its highest efflorescence in the soul of man.

The present number of _The Monist_ contains a lucid presentation of the transcendentalist position by Mr. F. C. Conybeare, an Oxford scholar and a personal disciple of Professor Green, with special reference to the views of Prof. William Kingdon Clifford. Mr. Conybeare, like Prof. F. Max Müller, assumes a Self independent of the reality from which the idea of self has been abstracted, and he attempts to prove the existence of this self as follows:

“In truth there can be no relation of before and after between
the two terms except for a self which takes note of the one
disappearing and of the other appearing; and whenever we speak
of things following one another we tacitly presuppose a self
before whom the procession passes.”

The transcendentalist adopts, in the realm of psychology, the error of atomism. If we accept the view that the world consists of isolated atoms, we are at a loss how to bring the atoms into relations; the unity of every group of atoms, every thing and every system of things will become a mystery. And if we look upon feelings as unrelated things in themselves, their connection becomes a deep problem. Mr. Conybeare solves this problem of the connection that obtains among the feelings supposed to be atomical, by postulating a relation-producing entity, called the self. He says:

“No link is left, save a connecting self.”

And this assumed entity of a connecting self or ego is taken to be “the heart and centre of reality.” Reality, that which we have to deal with in real life and what is commonly called reality, appears as a second class of reality in comparison with this assumed thing in itself of our existence. The thing in itself is thus regarded as something realer than real; it is conceived to be a reality of a higher degree.

Mr. Conybeare is very explicit in the explanation of his transcendental “self.” He says:

“Feelings constitute a conscious self when they become the
feelings of a conscious self and not before, for except as
gathered up in the unity of a self which has [sic!] memory and
remains the same throughout its differences, feelings can be
neither new, nor repeated, nor joined by links.”

What does “self” mean? What can it mean? What is the “unity of the self”? These are questions which have not been answered to our satisfaction by the transcendentalists. Whenever they speak of the self, they lose themselves in mysticism. Their “self” is an assumed entity which they have carefully divested of everything real and actual. Their self is transcendental and not a being of the world; it is a myth.

Let us describe the simplest possible instance of psychical activity.

An irritation takes place in some sentient substance. This irritation produces an extra-commotion. We must say “extra-commotion” because all sentient substance is in a state of constant activity. This extra-commotion causes the sentient substance to assume a certain form, and while it lasts, a certain and special feeling takes place in some part of the sentient substance. This certain and special feeling ceases, as soon as the extra-commotion, caused through the irritation, abates. There can be no doubt that certain effects of this extra-commotion remain. Its trace is left in the sentient substance and this trace is preserved in the constant whirl of the sentient being’s normal activity. Now, we suppose that an irritation of the same kind takes place in the same sentient substance. This second irritation finds the substance no longer in the same condition. It finds the sentient substance prepared to receive it. The feeling which now appears is no longer a simple feeling. The second irritation causes a commotion as much as the first, and this commotion acts as a stimulant upon the trace left by the first irritation. This trace being again in a state of extra-commotion is revived and the same kind of feeling appears. Thus the second irritation is accompanied by a state of awareness in which two feelings are blended, the revival of the former feeling and the feeling of the present irritation.

The preservation of traces left in sentient substance is the condition of memory. We understand by memory the psychical aspect thereof, and the act of reviving, so that their correspondent feelings will reappear, is called recollection.

“Memory” has been the greatest stumbling-block to our psychologists as well as to our philosophers. Even modern works written from a positive standpoint treat memory frequently as a mysterious faculty of the mind. Mr. Conybeare speaks of the self as _having_ memory, while in fact, memory is one of the features, indeed the most important feature, of mind-activity.

Says Mr. Conybeare:

“Such a feeling [of the togetherness of two feelings] would
involve memory and memory involves self-hood.”

Memory does not involve any transcendental self-hood. True self-hood, viz. that which can reasonably be understood by self-hood, is not prior to, not the cause of memory; self-hood, i. e. the personality of a man, the organised unity of the psychical aspect of a human organism, is consequent upon, it is the effect of, memory. Self-hood is the product of memory.[48]

The self is also called the ego. What is the ego?

The ego is a Latin term used in philosophical language to denote the pronoun “I,” and the pronoun “I” is quite a definite nerve-structure situated in quite a definite place of the centre of language. As all words, so also the term “I” is a symbol. Its general meaning is unequivocal; it stands for the name of the speaker. It stands for Mr. Brown, if Mr. Brown speaks of himself, for Mr. Smith, if Mr. Smith speaks of himself, etc.

What does Mr. Brown mean when he says, “_I_ speak, _I_ act, _I_ will, _I_ feel pain, _I_ feel pleasure, _I_ intend,” etc.?

When Mr. Brown speaks, a certain number of word-structures in the centre of language are in a state of commotion, innervating the muscles of speech. Correspondent to this physiological process, a state of consciousness obtains, which is an awareness of the situation. When he adds: “I say this,” it is again a special nerve-structure that is irritated into action and he might just as well say: “Mr. Brown says this.” The idea of Mr. Brown, viz. of his own personality, is just as much an idea as his idea of Mr. Smith. The main difference consists in the fact that the idea of one’s own personality is very much more important than the ideas representing other personalities.

The nervous structure representing the feeling of the idea “I” must be the centre of innumerable nervous tracts connecting it with all those activities which when performed are thought of as done by ourselves. The “I do this” is almost constantly ready to fill the present state of consciousness and to accompany any action performed through the innervation of other brain structures.

Sentient substance is not always actually feeling. It is feeling only when in a state of extra-commotion. Systems of sentient substance are called organisms; all its structures are interconnected and most so those structures in which sentiency as well as motory impulses are differentiated—viz. the nervous structures. The extra-commotions which agitate the different nervous structures, the memories of former sense-perceptions, of sounds, of words, of ideas depend upon the conditions of the moment. Now this and now another structure will represent the summit of commotion and the feeling of the strongest commotion at a given time will under normal conditions appear as the contents of consciousness. It is as it were the focus in which the attention of the whole organism is centralised. That which appears in the focus is clear and distinct, while the other weaker feelings rapidly disappear into the undistinguishable general feeling of the organism as a whole, commonly called cœnæsthesis or _Gemeingefühl_.

The centre of attention is constantly changing; yet whenever a thinking creature stops to ask himself, who is doing this? Who is willing this? Who is thinking this? the answer is given: “I am doing this; I am willing this; I am thinking this.” The structure of the little pronoun “I” seems to be the most ticklish of all; it is always ready to force itself into the foreground.

The answer, “I am doing this,” proposes the _totum pro parte_. The whole personality is supposed to do what a part of it is performing. The hands are executing this work; these hands of course are innervated from certain regions of the brain. Some parts of the personality are in a relative rest and have nothing to do with the work presently on hand. A commotion in a certain number of brain-structures represents the physiological aspect of a deliberation, perhaps the planning of some action. Psychologically considered certain ideas appear successively and sometimes simultaneously in the focus of consciousness. The ideas disagree and other ideas replace them until a combination is formed in which the ideas do agree. This state of agreement brings a temporary peace into the tumult of conflicting ideas; the plan is ready; it may pass into action at once, or, perhaps, the ego-structure will appear in consciousness and will quietly think: “I will do it.”

When certain motory nerve-structures are innervated, they cause under normal conditions their respective muscles to contract, they produce motion. Under normal conditions the nervous process accompanying the idea “I will raise my arm” serves as an irritation upon the cortical centre of arm-raising, yet it is not the “I” that in some mystical way raises the arm. The idea “I” has as little and as much to do with this discharge of energy as any other idea. The idea “I” is not the power behind the veil that produces the will.

What is will? As soon as some plan of action is joined with the idea that it should be executed, supposing it be not counteracted by any stronger idea that it should not be done, this combination represents a will. A will accordingly is the psychological aspect of an incipient action, and it is usually, or if it is not it can always be accompanied with the thought “I will it.” But this accompanying thought however is not the energy displayed in the act of willing.

The “I will it,” or “I do it,” or “I perceive it” being always ready to appear together with the strongest idea in the field of consciousness, the term “ego” has acquired a specialised meaning. It means that part of a man’s personality which at the time is the contents of the “I will,” or “I think,” i. e. it is his present state of consciousness. Every organism is a coherent system and thus all the feelings of an organism naturally blend into a unity. The strongest feeling however appears in the normal state of waking in a distinct clearness thus representing a centre of consciousness.

However, whether we use the term “ego” in the sense of the idea “I” meaning the whole personality of the speaker, or in the sense of the present centre of consciousness, it designates in either case a definite reality, the origin and action of which are natural facts and as plain as any other psychological phenomena.

Neither the ego-idea nor the centre of consciousness are transcendental. The former is as little mystical as are the ideas dog, horse, man, etc.; the latter no less miraculous than any other feeling or display of sentiency.

VIII. THE EGO-CENTRIC VIEW ABANDONED.

The contrast between the old and the new psychology appears strongest in their conceptions of the ego. The former believes that the ego is “the thing in itself” of man’s soul and takes it to be the centre of all psychical phenomena, while the latter looks upon the ego-idea as one idea among many other co-ordinated ideas and considers the centre of consciousness as the strongest feeling at a given time, which as such naturally predominates over and eclipses the other feelings of the organism.

The new psychology brings about a change of standpoint similar to that effected by the Copernican system in astronomy. In astronomy the geo-centric, and in psychology the ego-centric standpoint had to be abandoned. And all things seem to be upset to those who are still accustomed to the old conception. To them the physical and moral world-conceptions appear to become impossible. If the new view were correct, so they imagine, the entire universe would break to pieces. All our modes of speech are formed in accord with the old view. We speak of sunset and sunrise, and so in our daily conversation the little pronoun “I” plays a part which makes it seem as if the ego-idea were the centre of all soul-life and as if this “I” were the active agent in all acts of willing and doing.

The advantage of the Copernican system lies in this, that we can think of the motions of the sun and the planets in a systematic and unitary conception without being either involved in contradictions or obliged to invent mysterious qualities in the stars for explaining the velocities, directions, or other phenomena of the celestial bodies. The most important advantage however is the practical applicability of the new theory.

The old theory of the soul necessarily leads to mysticism. Fictitious facts of a transcendent character must be invented in addition to the facts observed, in order to explain the latter. The new theory after abandoning the ego-centric standpoint of the thing in itself of a soul shows the facts of psychic life in an harmonious and unitary conception. All facts agree among themselves and we are not in need of supplementing them with mysterious inventions. It must be emphasised, at the same time, that the new conception throws a new light upon ethics; it shows the error and perversity of all egotism, for it would be a mistake to act as if the ego were really the centre of soul-life.

Here the new psychology comes in contact with religion. What is the practical aim of all the great religions of the world but a surrender of the ego, a renunciation of the self as the centre of our being, and the acceptance of the moral law as the regulative power of our actions? The new psychology gives a justification and a scientific explanation of Christian ethics while the latter from the standpoint of the old psychology necessarily appears as mystical and supernatural.

IX. PERSONALITY AND EVOLUTION.

The ego, i. e. the centre of consciousness, is constantly shifting, while the personality of a man is relatively constant, certain important ideas being stable and thus lending character to the whole system of thoughts and intentions.

The term personality indicating the self-hood of a man is used in several ways. First, we understand by a man’s personality his bodily appearance; secondly the whole system of his mentality, viz. his knowledge, his temperament, his character; thirdly the history of his life, past, present, and future; fourthly his position in life, his possessions, his connections, his influence, or at last we mean by it all these four items together. In all these applications the man and his personality are conceived as a unity. And they are a unity. Wherever the term unity is applicable, it is most certainly applicable here. All the many facts of the history of his life are one continuous process; all the parts of his body are parts of a system, and the world of his ideas also will under normal conditions bear a certain harmonious character. Wherever in any soul the concord among the ideas has been disturbed, a state of unrest will ensue until the peace of soul is restored in one or another way. But with the same necessity as every water surface tends to present a smooth level, so the ideas in one and the same soul tend to come to a state of agreement. As every water surface has its ripples so even that mind which has attained an undisturbed peace of soul is constantly confronted with some problems—be they ever so trifling—producing some slight disturbances in his life.

The unity of a self, it is apparent, is the inevitable consequence of given conditions. It is not something which exists outside the personality and its constituent parts, it is in the personality and it develops together with it. Mr. Conybeare supposes that “the unity of a self remains the same throughout.” This is an error, and this error vitiates Mr. Conybeare’s whole conception of growth and evolution. He says:

“Properly speaking a thing can only be said to grow or develop
when it remains the same with itself all through the process
and unfolds therein capacities which were anyhow latent in it
to start with.”

The truth contained in this proposition may be expressed thus: When a thing develops, some part of it remains the same during the change, so that a continuity is preserved. Yet every change of a part of an organism—such is the intimate interconnection of all its parts—produces an alteration, be it ever so small, of the whole unity. And in the course of evolution the character of the whole thing may be changed. Think of the growth of a caterpillar into a butterfly, or of an egg-cell into a man. However, the changes in the character of an adult man will become slighter and slighter the stronger certain features of his existence preserve their sameness, although the most stable personality will, nevertheless, be subject to, at least, unimportant changes as long as life lasts.

Mr. Conybeare, like his master Professor Green and all the transcendentalists, is still under the influence of a belief in the thing in itself. The unity of an organism which is the product of the co-operation of its parts, is not some independent thing whose business it is to gather up their single activities and bring them into relation with one another. The unity of a self is the combination of all those relations which make of its parts a systematised whole, and this unity is changing together with its constituents; as a matter of fact, we have to state that it does _not_ remain constant or the same with itself. Mark that I do not deny the unity of the soul, nor do I underrate the enormous importance of this unity. But I do deny that this unity exists independent of its parts. It is as much immanent in its parts as is a melody in its notes. There is as little a transcendental self-hood as a melody in itself independent of its sounds.

The assumption of a transcendental unity which throughout the process of evolution remains the same with itself naturally leads to a wrong conception of what Mr. Conybeare calls “latent capacities.” The terms potential existence and latent qualities are fertile and useful ideas but we must beware not to employ them incorrectly. Any heap of iron ore can be called a potential sword. This is a mode of speaking which expresses the possibility that the ore can be changed somehow into a sword. But the sword does not exist at all, not even as a latent quality of the ore. The ore has no latent qualities of that kind. Those qualities of the ore which represent the potential sword are very patent to everybody who knows the art of using them properly and changing them into an actual sword.

We may say that the hen’s egg contains a potential chick; but this is a mere mode of speech devised to say that the egg can be changed into a chick under certain conditions. There is no chick at all contained in the egg and nothing that is like a chick.

Evolution is not, as the name suggests, a process of unfolding; evolution is, as Christian Friedrich Wolff calls it, an “epigenesis,” i. e. the process of the additional growth of new formations. The chick is something different in kind from the egg. The unity of the egg-cell organism in the yolk is radically different from the unity of the full-fledged chick. The former shows traces of irritability but not of consciousness, while the latter exhibits unmistakable symptoms of psychical activity. The formation of the chicken-soul is a new formation as much as the growth of feathers. The feathers of the chick are an additional growth; there are no latent feathers in the egg. We might express ourselves to the effect that the egg contains the potential existence of feathers, but with the same logic we might say the egg contains a potential chicken broth.

It is however true that something remains constant in the process of growth. There is a preservation of form in the constant change of material particles and this is the physiological basis of memory, so that a man of eighty may say “I remember when I was a child,” although not one particle of the substance of which the child consisted is left in him. The continuity produced through this preservation of form makes growth and evolution possible.

The preservation of memory-structures constitutes the possibility of reviving the feelings of the past, it constitutes a preservation of soul. The material parts of the body are thrown out but the form being preserved, the soul remains. And this preservation of the soul is the basis of its additional growth through new and enlarged experience. The soul of the child is not lost in the man, it is preserved. It has lost certain features and at the same time it has gained new features, it has developed, and the unity of the soul has more or less changed with the development.

What is true of the individual is also true of mankind. Mankind as a whole is different in the savage and in civilised society. Nevertheless the latter has developed from the former. Certain traits have been dropped, other radically new features have appeared. That which was valuable in the soul of primitive man is not lost. The better part of his soul still lives in the highest developed man of to-day; the continuity is preserved. And to-day all our moral instruction aims at this, so to live that our souls also will be preserved in the future evolution of humanity. The gist of ethics is to make the soul immortal.[49]

X. PROFESSOR MACH’S POSITION.

The problem, “Are there things in themselves?” is closely connected with the subject of my discussion with Professor Mach. Professor Mach as well as myself are aspiring to arrive at a consistent and harmonious or unitary world-conception. Both of us recognise that things in themselves have no room in a monistic philosophy, both of us recognise that concepts are means only of orientation, they are the mental tools of living beings developed as an assistance in dealing with the surrounding world. They are symbols in which the processes of nature are copied and imitated and which can serve for planning or modeling and thus predetermining the course of nature. So far we agree, but then there appears a difference which it is difficult for me to understand or formulate in precise terms.

Professor Mach objects to the dualism of motion and feeling, which he declares he conceives as a unity not as a duality. But so do I. It appears to me that we must differ somehow in the method of constructing the unity. I see indeed a contrast of physical and of psychical. This contrast, however, in my conception does not belong to the object but to the subject. It is a contrast of our conception of things, but it is not a contrast existing objectively in the real things themselves. The world is not composed of the psychical and the physical, but certain features of the world are called physical, and others psychical. Both terms are abstracts.

Professor Mach said in his first article and repeats it again in the present article that his former standpoint resembles very closely my present standpoint. When reading Professor Mach’s lectures of 1863, I took pains to look for the similarity, and finding many things in which I could agree I dropped the differences taking the agreements as the essential points. In reading, however, Professor Mach’s résumé of his former position as stated in this present article, I find that he attaches prominence to several points which I cannot endorse. I do not accept the theory that atoms feel, that they are endowed with consciousness. I have never spoken of atoms when dealing with psychological problems. The term “atom” is a chemical term invented as a help for thinking the equivalence of the weight of the elements which always combine in definite proportions. The term “atom” has in my opinion no sense if applied to other phenomena. The term “atom” has not been abstracted from psychical phenomena nor has it been invented for describing them. There is accordingly no probability that it can find there any appropriate application. We might as well expect that mathematical terms such as lines, points, circles, etc., are applicable in psychology. The idea of conscious circles or points can not in my mind be more absurd than that of conscious atoms. The rule must be observed that we can use abstractions made for a special purpose for that purpose only; they will not serve any other purpose as well. It is true that they are often employed as analogies, but in such cases, we must bear in mind that we are dealing with mere analogies.

In addition to the impropriety of using the term atoms in psychology, it appears to me erroneous to attribute feeling or anything like feeling to physical processes of any description. Natural processes are so constituted, that under certain conditions, such as take place in animal organisms, they will develop feelings. Clifford speaks in this sense of the elements of feeling. Lloyd Morgan calls it metakinesis, and I find that feelings being simply states of awareness represent the subjectivity of natural processes. We have reasons to suppose that in the processes of unorganised nature this subjectivity is neither feeling nor anything like feeling: but the subjectivity of the natural processes is as it were the stuff out of which our own feelings are formed.