Chapter XI: Part IX: , p. 475, 1890), Dr. Johnstone Stoney, F. R. S., published an (1)

interesting and carefully-reasoned paper “On the Relation between Natural Science and Ontology.” The same author had previously (1885), in a Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution of London, discussed the problem, “How Thought Presents Itself Among the Phenomena of Nature.” Dr. Stoney’s communications have not (I venture to think) received the consideration to which they are entitled alike on the score of their logical consistency, if his premisses and assumptions be granted, and by reason of the author’s scientific eminence as a physicist. I therefore propose, first, to endeavor to set forth his monistic _Doctrine of Auta_; and secondly, to offer some criticisms thereon. Unfortunately Dr. Stoney’s pages bristle with new technical terms, which, though no doubt they have been serviceable to him in the attainment of precision of thought, make his paper hard reading. Some of these I shall introduce; others which seem less essential to the argument I shall omit. It would be scarcely fair on the reader’s teeth or on the author’s store to transfer all these hard nuts from Dublin to Chicago.

No philosophical discussion of a problem involving perception can be regarded as complete without the introduction of an orange. Dr. Stoney, indeed, substitutes a fire; but this, though it shows philosophical independence, cannot for a moment be sanctioned by any good Berkeleyan. An orange then, as such, is a phenomenal object formed, in a way we need not now consider, by the synthesis of perceptions. These perceptions, themselves synthetic, Dr. Stoney calls “tekmeria,” since they are signs within my mind that events are happening in a part of the universe that is distinct from my mind. The phenomenal object is supposed by men untrained in inquiries relating to the mind to have a non-egoistic existence—that is, an existence independent of the percipient mind. But this supposition is found on careful scrutiny to be an error. It is a product of mental synthesis, and is therefore termed by Dr. Stoney a “syntheton.” It is also termed a “protheton” in contradistinction to an “antitheton,” which we shall come to shortly.

Now if the phenomenal orange is a “syntheton”—that is, a product of perceptual synthesis—it clearly cannot be regarded as the _cause_ of the perceptions, through and by means of which it is constructed in mental synthesis. Here popular thought and ordinary language are apt to mislead us. For ordinary language is throughout built upon the popular belief that the objects of the phenomenal world are non-egoistic or independent _existences_, and, moreover, that they are the cause of the perceptions which come into existence when we exercise our senses. This is, however, “to put the car before the horse.” It is to imagine that a structure built up out of the effects of a thing can be the cause of those effects. The phenomenal orange is built up of perceptions instead of being the cause of them. Their cause is therefore to be sought elsewhere than in the phenomenal world of objects. The orange, _qua_ orange, is therefore a “syntheton,” and cannot as such be the cause of the perceptions or “tekmeria,” which go to its synthesis.

Let us now look at these perceptions or “tekmeria” from another point of view. They are states of consciousness: they are _thoughts_, if we use this word in its widest extension to embrace everything of which I or my fellow-men or the lower animals are conscious. But my own thoughts are, so long as they last, things that exist. They may be representative of something outside me, but they _are_ also _real existences_. While they last they constitute a part of the universe of existing things. They are, in Dr. Stoney’s terminology, _auta_ (τά ὄντα αὐτά), the very things themselves. An _auto_ (we shall throughout _italicise_ all that belongs to this autic order of existence) is a _thing which really exists_, and in no wise depends on the way we, human minds, may happen to regard it. Our impressions or beliefs about it may be correct or may be erroneous; but the term _auto_ means the _thing itself_.

Perceptions, then, inasmuch as they are thoughts, are _auta_. They belong, moreover, to that class of real existences which, since they are woven into the tissue of _minds_ (my mind and the minds of my fellow-men and of the lower animals) are termed _egoistic auta_. They do not remain, however, persistent and unchanged; for perceptions come and go and are modified as they pass like waves over the surface of consciousness. What causes this coming and going, and these changes in the _egoistic auta_ we call perceptions? Not, as we have already seen, the world of phenomenal objects! What then, but other _auta_, which, since they produce effects upon men’s minds through their senses, may be termed _sense-compelling auta_? The phenomenal orange is thus a “syntheton” produced through a synthesis of the effects wrought upon my _mind_ by an autic existence, called by Mr. Stoney the _onto-orange_. The phenomenal orange is, as we have seen, a “protheton”; the _onto-orange_ is its _antitheton_ in the universe of real existences.

We are now beginning to open up Dr. Johnstone Stoney’s conception of the relation of the autic _universe_ to phenomenal Nature. Nature is the totality of phenomenal objects; but corresponding with each phenomenal object or “protheton” there is an _onto-object_ or _antitheton_; and the totality of _antitheta_ constitute the _universe_. _Minds_, mine and those of other beings, constitute the egoistic part of the universe; the rest of the universe is constituted by _sense-compelling auta_.

We may liken the _sense-compelling universe_ to a great machine in motion, and the _tekmeria_ or perceptions which it produces within our minds to shadows cast by it. The laws of the movements of the machine are the real laws of the universe—laws of nature are but the laws of the changes which the shadows in consequence undergo. It is these shadow laws alone which natural science can reach: the real laws of the _universe_ of which these are shadows are beyond its grasp. In Nature the reflective eye of science sees not only phenomenal objects, but the relations which they bear to each other. But such relations are themselves phenomenal; they are protheta of which the _onto-relations_ of the real _universe_ are the _antitheta_. Every space-relation, therefore, in Nature—for instance, that my foot is at present three yards from the fender—has a real autic relation in the sense-compelling _universe_, which is its _antitheton_; an _onto-relation_ between the _onto-foot_ and _onto-fender_, meaning by these terms the _auta_ which send men the tekmeria which, when synthesised, furnish these two phenomenal objects. The space-relations of Nature are but the shadows cast by the _autic relations_ within the _minds_ of men, and perhaps some other animals.

But among these shadows there can be no efficient causation. When a change takes place in the sense-compelling _universe_, the mighty machine will cast one shadow before the change and another after. The second shadow will accordingly succeed the first in orderly sequence, but the relation between the shadows is not the relation of cause and effect. Accordingly, in the laws of Nature which have been discovered by scientific investigation, we find abundant instances of unfailingly concomitant events and of uniformities of sequence, but not one single instance of cause and effect. There is nothing competent to cause one body to exclude another from the space it occupies. A statement of the fact is one of the laws of Nature. If a stone be allowed to drop in the vicinity of the earth, its downward speed is accelerated by a perfectly definite law. This law is one of the Uniformities of Nature which scientific inquiry has brought to light. But within the domain of Physics there is no cause of acceleration. The facts as to what occurs in Nature can be observed; the circumstances under which they occur can be investigated; similar cases can be compared; and the laws to which the simultaneous or successive events conform may be brought to light. But here our knowledge ends. Physical science has said its utmost.

Now all this is changed when we turn to the only field of observation accessible to us in which we are dealing directly with _auta_. The _thoughts_ of which _I_ consist, the thoughts which are my _mind_, are _auta_; a very small group of _auta_, no doubt, in the mighty _Universe_, but still an actual sample, though a very special and one-sided sample of what _auta_ really are. Now in the operations that go on in my mind I do find instances, some few instances, of causes producing effects. The familiar case of a geometrical demonstration producing in a man’s mind a belief in the truth of the conclusion is a case in point. Here the understanding of the proof is the efficient cause of the belief in the conclusion which accompanies that understanding. A wish to accomplish something, and a knowledge of how to go about it, both of which are _thoughts_ in the _mind_, are a part of the efficient cause of subsequent events, unless counteracted by other causes. A few other examples can be obtained from the same small field of observation; and this is all that man, in his isolated position, has any right to expect; for the bulk of his thoughts are due, at least in large part, to autic causes which lie outside his mind, and it is there also that those of his thoughts that are known to be causes, usually exhibit their effects. When perceptions arise in my mind, the effect indeed is within my mind, but the cause is beyond it; and when I move my muscles the cause is within my mind, but it is outside the mind that it operates. The instances are indeed few where the causes and the effects are both within my tiny group of _auta_, and it is only in these cases that I can have the process of causes producing effects under my inspection.

But since cases can be cited, however few, they suffice to establish the fact that the relation of cause and effect, in its full sense, does exist in some instances in the autic _universe_; whereas it has nowhere any place within the domain of physical science. The relation of cause and effect among other _auta_ cannot from the nature of the case be proved. But from its occurrence in that small part of the _universe_ which we do know, we may fairly assume its occurrence in all parts of that _universe_. Such an assumption is at any rate justifiable by scientific method.

We must now pass to another point. The scientific analysis of Nature by the physicist has led to an hypothesis which may be regarded as the utmost simplification of which the shadows cast within the human mind by the sense-compelling autic _universe_ are susceptible. This Dr. Stoney calls the Diacrinomenal Hypothesis; according to which Nature is made up of objects each of which consists of almost inconceivably minute and swift motions. The phenomenal orange is a group of molecular motions; and if I bowl it across the table the visible molar motion is a secondary motion of that group of primary molecular motions which constitutes the phenomenal object as such. And not only is the phenomenal object a group of minute and swift motions, but all the steps between that object and our brain, all that takes place in the air or æther, in our organs of sense and nerves, can also be represented in terms of motion. And finally a change consisting of motions takes place in the brain itself, whereupon we become conscious of thought. That change which would be appreciated as motions by a bystander who could search into our brains while we are thinking, we should experience to be _thought_. Thus we find that in certain cases the _autic existence_ that corresponds with motion, namely in the motions of our own brain molecules, is _thought_. And the most probable hypothesis as to the true relation of phenomenal Nature and the autic _universe_ is that what we have found to be true in some cases is always true, and that in every case it is _thought_ (or rather a change in the causal relation in which thought stands to thought) which is the _antitheton_ of motion; so that the totality of all actual existences, the _universe_, is in fact identical with the totality of existing _thought_. Of course all this _thought_, with the exception of that tiny group that is my _mind_, is as much outside my consciousness as are the thoughts of my fellow-men and of the lower animals.

Under this view the _minds_ of men and of other animals are specialised specks, as it were, of a vast ocean of _thought_, to which they bear a like inconspicuous proportion to that borne by the few brain motions of which they are the _antitheta_, to the totality of motions throughout Nature. Under this view the laws of the _universe_ are the laws of _thought_. This is a very different thing, be it noted, from saying that they are the laws of human thought. The laws of human thought bear to them the same small proportion which the laws of the action of the wheels of a watch upon one another bear to the entire science of dynamics. The science of dynamics could never be evolved from a study of these laws. But perhaps it may not be hopeless for man to attain some sound knowledge of the laws of cosmic _thought_, inasmuch as we have some few instances of the way _thought_ acts upon _thought_ open to our investigation in our own minds, and since this is supplemented by our knowledge of the physical laws of nature, which are a shadow, a probably complete shadow, of all the laws of causation which operate throughout the _universe_, throughout the all-embracing _Mind_ of the great _Autos_.

Such is Dr. Johnstone Stoney’s conception of the relation of Natural Science to Ontology. I have presented it partly in his own words, partly in mine. It has been my conscientious endeavor to put it in as strong and favorable a light as possible, and not in any way to weaken the strength of its logical consistency. The main thesis may now be briefly summarised in the following propositions:

The phenomenal object is a syntheton or product of mental
synthesis.

Its efficient cause is a _real existence_ or _antitheton_.

Nature is the totality of phenomenal syntheta.

The _universe_ is the totality of autic _antitheta_.

There is no causation in Nature; but the Uniformities of Nature
are the shadows of the causal Laws of the Universe.

_Thought_ has no place in Nature: it is part of the autic
_universe_.

The syntheton of which _thought_ is the _antitheton_ is the
motion of brain molecules.

It is a probable hypothesis that the _antitheta_ of which the
motions of Diacrinomenal Nature are the syntheta, are _thought_.

This is the monistic hypothesis, that there is but one kind
of existing thing, viz. _thought_; in contradistinction to
the dualistic hypothesis that there are two kinds of existing
things, _thought_ and _motion_.

I now pass from the attitude of expositor to the attitude of critic. And first I will attack a quite outstanding position, namely Dr. Stoney’s assumption that Clifford’s hypothesis which he supports and extends is _the_ monistic hypothesis, and by implication that it is the _only_ monistic hypothesis. In opposition to this I venture to affirm that there are several forms or phases of monism. I have not space to discuss the matter; and must content myself with a bare enumeration of some of the logically possible forms of Dualism and of Monism.

1) DUALISM.

_A._ _Synthetic Dualism_: according to which there are two
entities, the mind and the body; and these

_a_) either work side by side, without interaction, in
pre-established harmony (_philosophic dualism_),

_b_) or interact the one on the other (_empirical
dualism_).

_B._ _Analytic Dualism_: according to which there are two
elements as the result of analysis; _motion_ (with or
without a material basis) and _consciousness_; the two
elements being related in such a way that consciousness is
inseparably associated with certain complex modes of motion.

2) MONISM.

_A._ _Synthetic monism_: according to which there is but
one entity. And this entity may be:

_a_) The body, of which consciousness is a product
(_materialistic or physical monism_);

_b_) The mind, of which the body in common with the
world of phenomena is a fiction (_idealistic monism_);

_c_) The conscious organism, exhibiting certain
transformations of energy which are felt as psychical
states (_scientific monism_).

_B._ _Analytic monism_: according to which analysis
discloses but one element; and this may be

_a_) _motion_, of which (or of one phase of which)
consciousness is merely the psychical aspect (_analytic
materialism_);

_b_) _consciousness_, of which motion is merely the
phenomenal aspect (_analytic psychism_);

_c_) _x_ (_the unknowable_) of which motion is the
physical aspect and consciousness the psychical aspect
(_monistic agnosticism_).

Such are some of the forms or phases of monism as compared with those of dualism. It will be seen that Dr. Johnstone Stoney’s speculations fall under the head of what I have termed analytic psychism, according to which the sole ultimate reality disclosed by analysis is consciousness or thought. So far I have only reminded my readers that this, though one form of monism, is not the only form. To which Dr. Stoney may very possibly reply that it matters not to him whether there are five or fifty-and-five monistic heresies besides the true creed of which he is the prophet. He is only concerned with the establishment of the true monistic faith. And as herein I should very heartily agree with him, I will pass on without delay to criticise an assumption that lies close to the heart and centre of his hypothesis.

On the first page of Dr. Stoney’s essay we read: “Let us, for convenience, call these real existences _auta_—the very things themselves. An _auto_ is a thing that really exists, and in no wise depends on the way we, human minds, may happen to regard it.” And on the second page we read: “My own thoughts are, at all events, things that exist: they at least are _auta_ so long as they last. They are, accordingly, while they last, a part of the _universe of existing things_.” No proof is offered of this latter assumption that my thought, human thought, is part of the universe of _auta_. I venture to call this assumption in question. I demand proof of its validity. Nay, I am ready to go further and roundly assert that my thoughts are not _auta_, and furnish no evidence whatever as to the nature of such _auta_. I am quite aware that I may seem to be giving the lie to a direct deliverance of consciousness; and that it will be said that it is obviously impossible to deny the existence of thought without at the same time exercising that, the existence of which is denied—a dictum which contains a very pretty play upon two different uses of the word “existence.”

I go back to the orange, without which as a philosopher I am lost. I hold it in my hand, look steadfastly at it, and drink in with my nostrils its fragrant aroma. What says consciousness? That the phenomenal object I call an orange exists. It says nothing about independent existence, nothing about _auta_. The direct deliverance of consciousness is that an object-in-consciousness exists. If a “plain man” says that the orange has a real existence, as such, independent of consciousness, he is going beyond the direct deliverance. And if a philosopher says that consciousness has a real existence, as such, independent of the object, he too is going beyond the direct deliverance. And if, as would seem to be the case, Dr. Stoney relies on the deliverance of consciousness for the justification of his statement that “perceptions, while they last, are _auta_, real existences,” I submit that he is relying on a misinterpretation of the deliverance of consciousness.

The existence of the object-in-consciousness is the datum from which plain man and philosopher alike must start. On this foundation we must base all our reasonings and speculations. Physical science directs its attention to the “object” side of the given relation. And it reaches its “diacrinomenal” result that the orange may for physical purposes be represented as a group of swift and rapid molecular motions. But can physics at any stage of its analysis shake itself free from the “consciousness” side of the relation? Assuredly not. All that it can do is to represent the object-in-consciousness we call an orange in terms of other objects-in-consciousness we term molecular motions. Psychology directs its attention to the “consciousness” side of the given relation. It analyses the object-in-consciousness into percepts, sensations, and so forth. But can psychology at any stage of its analysis shake itself free from the “object” side of the relation? Assuredly not. All that it can do is to represent the consciousness-of-the-object we call an orange, in terms of the objects-in-consciousness we term sensations, relations between sensations, and so forth.

The relation of the consciousness-of-an-object to the object-in-consciousness may be made clear by the analogy, which is something more than an analogy of vision and the visual field. For clear and distinct vision, a well-illuminated object of vision, and a healthy organ of vision are necessary as coöperating factors. So, too, for distinct consciousness a definite object-in-consciousness and a well-defined consciousness-of-the-object are necessary as coöperating factors. More than this. Unless there be some object of vision, however vague, and some organ of vision, however dim, no vision at all is possible. The coöperation of the two factors is essential. So, too, unless there be some object-in-consciousness, however vague, and some consciousness-of-the-object, however dim, no consciousness at all, in anything like the human sense of the word “consciousness,” is possible. Here, again, the coöperation of the two factors is essential. _And neither factor is ever given in experience without the other._

Writing as I am, for readers of _The Monist_, I need hardly turn aside to explain what I mean by an object-in-consciousness. And yet perhaps a few words on the subject may not be out of place, and may prevent possible misunderstanding. An object-in-consciousness is not necessarily a tangible, visible object, like an orange. The yellowness, the sweetness, the weight, the bare existence of the orange, may each in turn be an object in consciousness. For the physicist the tangible orange may be represented in terms of swift, infinitesimal motions; and these, not less than the phenomenal orange, are objects in consciousness. A conception of consciousness itself, an imperfect conception, but the best we can frame, may be an object of consciousness, just as a reflected image of the eye may be to the eye an object of vision.

It is generally believed by modern psychologists that all objects-in-consciousness are derivable by processes of abstraction, generalisation, and so forth, from the primitive datum of a perceptual object. And it must be remembered that it is only in abstraction that we distinguish between the object-in-consciousness and the consciousness-of-the-object. The two terms of this, for us, inevitable relation are given in inseparable coördination. But in abstract thought we can distinguish the inseparable terms; distinguish in thought, that is to say, what is inseparable in actual experience. To continue the analogy of vision, we can make the one term focal, while the other term remains marginal in the field of view. And we can neglect, for the purposes of our thought and reason, the marginal term. But we cannot get rid of it. We may deal, as in physics, with motion, neglecting the consciousness in and through which it is appreciated; but we cannot get rid of this consciousness. Or we can deal, as in psychology, with the consciousness, neglecting the object-in-consciousness; but we cannot get rid of this object. The object-out-of-consciousness and the consciousness-without-an-object, are alike unknown—or, if the reader prefers it, unknowable, which he may write with as many capital letters as seemeth to him good. The common-sense realist believes in the existence of objects-out-of-consciousness. The analytical psychist believes in the existence of consciousness-without-an-object. Both are, if the views here advocated be sound, attributing independent existence to that which, so far as human knowledge is concerned, has only dependent or relative existence.

It is unfortunate that the terms “real” and “reality” should ever have been applied to the independent existence of so-called things-in-themselves. I think such terms as Dr. Stoney’s “autic” and “autic existence” would be far preferable. For the word “real” has a meaning and force which is quite definite. The orange that I hold in my hand and see with my eyes is as real as real can be. And if a philosopher steps in and says, “My dear sir, _that_ is not real! The real reality is, according to some, mind-stuff or consciousness; according to others, motion of—well I don’t quite know what, so let us simply call it motion; and according to others this real reality is unknowable”—I say if a philosopher steps in and talks like this, one is reminded of Lamb’s remark on Coleridge. Coleridge had been maundering on, as was his wont, on “subject” and “object” and all the rest of his second-hand German metaphysics, when Lamb broke in, with his forcible stammer, in a stage whisper: “N-n-n-never mind C-c-c-coleridge; it’s only his f-f-f-fun.”

I repeat that the orange I hold in my hand and see with my eyes is as real as real can be; and that we have here the standard and criterion of reality not only for plain men but for philosophers. In the perceptual object we have reality given in its clearest, fullest, and most forcible form. Every step in the analysis of the perceptual object-in-consciousness; every step in the analysis of the consciousness-of-the-object takes us so far further from reality at its best. The orange as an object-in-consciousness is far more real to me than either the swift infinitesimal motions of the physicist, or the “syntheton” of related and integrated sensations of the psychologist. And when we reach the autic existence which is supposed to underlie both motion and consciousness, we seem to get just as far as it is possible for the human mind to get from the real orange with which we started. And yet it is to this autic existence that metaphysicians apply the term “real” in a different sense. For so far I have used the word “real” for that which is given in experience. But metaphysically the word “real” is used to indicate independence of experience. I repeat that for this independent existence some such word as Dr. Stoney’s “autic” would be far better and less misleading. It would emphasise the distinction between _real_, that is to say given in direct experience, and _autic_, that is to say independent of experience.

Accepting at any rate for our present purpose this distinction, we have as coördinate realities the object-in-consciousness and the consciousness-of-the-object. And these two are only different aspects of the one great reality, the reality of experience. Of these two aspects neither is more real than the other. The object-in-consciousness is every bit as real as the consciousness-of-the-object; the orange as real as our perception thereof. Both are intensely and vitally real; but—here I am in opposition to Dr. Stoney—_neither is autic_. I can find no warranty for such autic existence in direct experience or the so-called deliverance of consciousness. Nor am I aware of any process of reasoning by which it can be demonstrated.

But, it may be said, is it not in accordance with scientific method to make an assumption and then see how far such assumption is justified by the results it enables us to reach? Assuredly such procedure is allowable and often fruitful. It is not on such grounds, however, that Dr. Stoney, if I rightly understand him, bases his doctrine of the psychical nature of _auta_. Let us, nevertheless, pay a moment’s attention to this assumption and the correlative assumption of analytic materialism. Consciousness and matter-in-motion (or bare motion perhaps) are the ultimate elements reached by the psychologist on the one hand and the physicist on the other. Neither, if he knows his business, pretends by this analysis to have reached autic existence. But it is open to each to make an assumption. The materialist says: I assume that motion is the true autic existence, of which, under appropriate conditions, human consciousness is merely a psychical aspect. The psychist says: I assume that consciousness is the true autic existence, of which motion is merely the phenomenal aspect. I confess that if I were forced to choose one of these two, (which fortunately I am not,) I should elect to throw in my lot with the materialists. For if justification by results is to be the criterion, I hold that the results the materialists have to show far outweigh any results which the analytic psychists can produce. But the fact of the matter is that in neither case do the results flow from the autic assumption. All the results are equally valid for the student who holds fast to the relativity of object-in-consciousness to consciousness-of-the-object. Since therefore the assumption is valueless so far as practical results are concerned, and since it is somewhat repugnant to sound reason to assume that either term of a given relationship is the same out of relationship as it is in relation to its fellow, I contend, as against both materialist and psychist, that it fails to make good its claim to acceptance.

What shall we say then of _auta_ or _things in themselves_? Simply that we do not know anything about them—that they are outside the pale of human knowledge. If we even say they exist we are using the word “exist” in an autic and unreal sense. It is phenomenal Nature which constitutes the real Universe; of its autic _shadow_, supposing that there be such a _shadow_, we know nothing. Need we then stay to criticise this unknown _shadow_?

Even if we take Dr. Johnstone Stoney’s hypothesis as it stands we find a marked distinction between the sense-compelling _auta_ and the egoistic _auta_, or between the sense-compelling aspect of _auta_ and the egoistic or perceptive aspect. How is this distinction to be explained and accounted for? I can see no answer to this question save that the distinction is a matter of experience. Why not, then, trust experience fully? Why go beyond it at all? Why not say that both the sense-compelling aspect and the perceptive aspect are part of the relation which is given in experience? If Dr. Stoney could only see his way to this concession and could be led to adopt scientific monism, which is based on relativity, he would still secure all that is valuable in his hypothesis, and at the same time get rid of the difficulties which as it stands encumber it. But it would no longer be a doctrine of _auta_.

For scientific monism is not a doctrine of _auta_ but a doctrine of phenomena—phenomena regarded not only in their physical but also in their psychological aspect. Unifying these two diverse aspects, it contends that the conscious organism is one and indivisible; that it is a product of evolution; that in its physical or material aspect this evolution has given rise to the body and brain; that in its psychical or immaterial aspect it has given rise to the mind and human consciousness; that these two aspects, though distinguishable in analytic thought, are inseparable in phenomenal existence; that just as the complex modes of energy of the human brain have been evolved from the simpler modes of energy that are found throughout organic and inorganic nature, so too the complex modes of consciousness of the human mind have been evolved from the simpler modes of infra-consciousness[19] that are associated with merely organic and inorganic modes of energy. The last clause is admittedly hypothetical. But it is submitted that the hypothesis is one that is founded on strictly scientific and in no sense metaphysical or autic analysis.

C. LLOYD MORGAN.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] See _Mental Evolution_ in _The Monist_, Vol. II, No. 2 (Jan. 1892), p. 161.

EVOLUTIONARY LOVE.

AT FIRST BLUSH. COUNTER-GOSPELS.

Philosophy, when just escaping from its golden pupa-skin, mythology, proclaimed the great evolutionary agency of the universe to be Love. Or, since this pirate-lingo, English, is poor in such-like words, let us say Eros, the exuberance-love. Afterwards, Empedocles set up passionate-love and hate as the two coördinate powers of the universe. In some passages, kindness is the word. But certainly, in any sense in which it has an opposite, to be senior partner of that opposite, is the highest position that love can attain. Nevertheless, the ontological gospeller, in whose days those views were familiar topics, made the One Supreme Being, by whom all things have been made out of nothing, to be cherishing-love. What, then, can he say to hate? Never mind, at this time, what the scribe of the apocalypse, if he were John, stung at length by persecution into a rage unable to distinguish suggestions of evil from visions of heaven, and so become the Slanderer of God to men, may have dreamed. The question is rather what the sane John thought, or ought to have thought, in order to carry out his idea consistently. His statement that God is love seems aimed at that saying of Ecclesiastes that we cannot tell whether God bears us love or hatred. “Nay,” says John, “we can tell, and very simply! We know and have trusted the love which God hath in us. God is love.” There is no logic in this, unless it means, that God loves all men. In the preceding paragraph, he had said, “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.” We are to understand, then, that as darkness is merely the defect of light, so hatred and evil are mere imperfect stages of ἀγάπη and ἀγαθόν, love and loveliness. This concords with that utterance reported in John’s Gospel: “God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should through him be saved. He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already.... And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and that men loved darkness rather than the light.” That is to say, God visits no punishment on them; they punish themselves, by their natural affinity for the defective. Thus, the love that God is, is not a love of which hatred is the contrary; otherwise Satan would be a coördinate power; but it is a love which embraces hatred as an imperfect stage of it, an Anteros—yea, even needs hatred and hatefulness as its object. For self-love is no love; so if God’s self is love, that which he loves must be defect of love; just as a luminary can light up only that which otherwise would be dark. Henry James, the Swedenborgian, says: “It is no doubt very tolerable finite or creaturely love to love one’s own in another, to love another for his conformity to one’s self: but nothing can be in more flagrant contrast with the creative Love, all whose tenderness _ex vi termini_ must be reserved only for what intrinsically is most bitterly hostile and negative to itself.” This is from “Substance and Shadow: an Essay on the Physics of Creation.” It is a pity he had not filled his pages with things like this, as he was able easily to do, instead of scolding at his reader and at people generally, until the physics of creation was well-nigh forgot. I must deduct, however, from what I just wrote: obviously no genius could make his every sentence as sublime as one which discloses for the problem of evil its everlasting solution.

The movement of love is circular, at one and the same impulse projecting creations into independency and drawing them into harmony. This seems complicated when stated so; but it is fully summed up in the simple formula we call the Golden Rule. This does not, of course, say, Do everything possible to gratify the egoistic impulses of others, but it says, Sacrifice your own perfection to the perfectionment of your neighbor. Nor must it for a moment be confounded with the Benthamite, or Helvetian, or Beccarian motto, Act for the greatest good of the greatest number. Love is not directed to abstractions but to persons; not to persons we do not know, nor to numbers of people, but to our own dear ones, our family and neighbors. “Our neighbor,” we remember, is one whom we live near, not locally perhaps, but in life and feeling.

Everybody can see that the statement of St. John is the formula of an evolutionary philosophy, which teaches that growth comes only from love, from—I will not say self-_sacrifice_, but from the ardent impulse to fulfil another’s highest impulse. Suppose, for example, that I have an idea that interests me. It is my creation. It is my creature; for as shown in last July’s _Monist_, it is a little person. I love it; and I will sink myself in perfecting it. It is not by dealing out cold justice to the circle of my ideas that I can make them grow, but by cherishing and tending them as I would the flowers in my garden. The philosophy we draw from John’s gospel is that this is the way mind develops; and as for the cosmos, only so far as it yet is mind, and so has life, is it capable of further evolution. Love, recognising germs of loveliness in the hateful, gradually warms it into life, and makes it lovely. That is the sort of evolution which every careful student of my essay “The Law of Mind,” must see that _synechism_ calls for.

The nineteenth century is now fast sinking into the grave, and we all begin to review its doings and to think what character it is destined to bear as compared with other centuries in the minds of future historians. It will be called, I guess, the Economical Century; for political economy has more direct relations with all the branches of its activity than has any other science. Well, political economy has its formula of redemption, too. It is this: Intelligence in the service of greed ensures the justest prices, the fairest contracts, the most enlightened conduct of all the dealings between men, and leads to the _summum bonum_, food in plenty and perfect comfort. Food for whom? Why, for the greedy master of intelligence. I do not mean to say that this is one of the legitimate conclusions of political economy, the scientific character of which I fully acknowledge. But the study of doctrines, themselves true, will often temporarily encourage generalisations extremely false, as the study of physics has encouraged necessitarianism. What I say, then, is that the great attention paid to economical questions, during our century has induced an exaggeration of the beneficial effects of greed and of the unfortunate results of sentiment, until there has resulted a philosophy which comes unwittingly to this, that greed is the great agent in the elevation of the human race and in the evolution of the universe.

I open a handbook of political economy,—the most typical and middling one I have at hand,—and there find some remarks of which I will here make a brief analysis. I omit qualifications, sops thrown to Cerberus, phrases to placate Christian prejudice, trappings which serve to hide from author and reader alike the ugly nakedness of the greed-god. But I have surveyed my position. The author enumerates “three motives to human action:

The love of self;

The love of a limited class having common interests and feelings with one’s self;

The love of mankind at large.”

Remark, at the outset, what obsequious title is bestowed on greed,—“the love of self.” Love! The second motive _is_ love. In place of “a limited class” put “certain persons,” and you have a fair description. Taking “class” in the old-fashioned sense, a weak kind of love is described. In the sequel, there seems to be some haziness as to the delimitation of this motive. By the love of mankind at large, the author does not mean that deep, subconscious passion that is properly so called; but merely public-spirit, perhaps little more than a fidget about pushing ideas. The author proceeds to a comparative estimate of the worth of these motives. Greed, says he, but using, of course, another word, “is not so great an evil as is commonly supposed.... Every man can promote his own interests a great deal more effectively than he can promote any one else’s, or than any one else can promote his.” Besides, as he remarks on another page, the more miserly a man is, the more good he does. The second motive “is the most dangerous one to which society is exposed.” Love is all very pretty: “no higher or purer source of human happiness exists.” (Ahem!) But it is a “source of enduring injury,” and, in short, should be overruled by something wiser. What is this wiser motive? We shall see.

As for public spirit, it is rendered nugatory by the “difficulties in the way of its effective operation.” For example, it might suggest putting checks upon the fecundity of the poor and the vicious; and “no measure of repression would be too severe,” in the case of criminals. The hint is broad. But unfortunately, you cannot induce legislatures to take such measures, owing to the pestiferous “tender sentiments of man towards man.” It thus appears, that public-spirit, or Benthamism, is not strong enough to be the effective tutor of love, (I am skipping to another page,) which must therefore be handed over to “the motives which animate men in the pursuit of wealth,” in which alone we can confide, and which “are in the highest degree beneficent.”[20] Yes, in the “highest degree” without exception are they beneficent to the being upon whom all their blessings are poured out, namely, the Self, whose “sole object,” says the writer in accumulating wealth is his individual “sustenance and enjoyment.” Plainly, the author holds the notion that some other motive might be in a higher degree beneficent even for the man’s self to be a paradox wanting in good sense. He seeks to gloze and modify his doctrine; but he lets the perspicacious reader see what his animating principle is; and when, holding the opinions I have repeated, he at the same time acknowledges that society could not exist upon a basis of intelligent greed alone, he simply pigeonholes himself as one of the eclectics of inharmonious opinions. He wants his mammon flavored with a _soupçon_ of god.

The economists accuse those to whom the enunciation of their atrocious villainies communicates a thrill of horror of being _sentimentalists_. It may be so: I willingly confess to having some tincture of sentimentalism in me, God be thanked! Ever since the French Revolution brought this leaning of thought into ill-repute,—and not altogether undeservedly, I must admit, true, beautiful, and good as that great movement was,—it has been the tradition to picture sentimentalists as persons incapable of logical thought and unwilling to look facts in the eyes. This tradition may be classed with the French tradition that an Englishman says _godam_ at every second sentence, the English tradition that an American talks about “Britishers,” and the American tradition that a Frenchman carries forms of etiquette to an inconvenient extreme, in short with all those traditions which survive simply because the men who use their eyes and ears are few and far between. Doubtless some excuse there was for all those opinions in days gone by; and sentimentalism, when it was the fashionable amusement to spend one’s evenings in a flood of tears over a woeful performance on a candle-litten stage, sometimes made itself a little ridiculous. But what after all is sentimentalism? It is an _ism_, a doctrine, namely, the doctrine that great respect should be paid to the natural judgments of the sensible heart. This is what sentimentalism precisely is; and I entreat the reader to consider whether to contemn is not of all blasphemies the most degrading. Yet the nineteenth century has steadily contemned it, because it brought about the Reign of Terror. That it did so is true. Still, the whole question is one of _how much_. The reign of terror was very bad; but now the Gradgrind banner has been this century long flaunting in the face of heaven, with an insolence to provoke the very skies to scowl and rumble. Soon a flash and quick peal will shake economists quite out of their complacency, too late. The twentieth century, in its latter half, shall surely see the deluge-tempest burst upon the social order,—to clear upon a world as deep in ruin as that greed-philosophy has long plunged it into guilt. No post-thermidorian high jinks then!

So a miser is a beneficent power in a community, is he? With the same reason precisely, only in a much higher degree, you might pronounce the Wall Street sharp to be a good angel, who takes money from heedless persons not likely to guard it properly, who wrecks feeble enterprises better stopped, and who administers wholesome lessons to unwary scientific men, by passing worthless checks upon them,—as you did, the other day, to me, my millionaire Master in glomery, when you thought you saw your way to using my process without paying for it, and of so bequeathing to your children something to boast of their father about,—and who by a thousand wiles puts money at the service of intelligent greed, in his own person. Bernard Mandeville, in his “Fable of the Bees,” maintains that private vices of all descriptions are public benefits, and proves it, too, quite as cogently as the economist proves his point concerning the miser. He even argues, with no slight force, that but for vice civilisation would never have existed. In the same spirit, it has been strongly maintained and is to-day widely believed that all acts of charity and benevolence, private and public, go seriously to degrade the human race.

The “Origin of Species” of Darwin merely extends politico-economical views of progress to the entire realm of animal and vegetable life. The vast majority of our contemporary naturalists hold the opinion that the true cause of those exquisite and marvellous adaptations of nature for which, when I was a boy, men used to extol the divine wisdom is that creatures are so crowded together that those of them that happen to have the slightest advantage force those less pushing into situations unfavorable to multiplication or even kill them before they reach the age of reproduction. Among animals, the mere mechanical individualism is vastly reënforced as a power making for good by the animal’s ruthless greed. As Darwin puts it on his title-page, it is the struggle for existence; and he should have added for his motto: Every individual for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost! Jesus, in his sermon on the Mount, expressed a different opinion.

Here, then, is the issue. The gospel of Christ says that progress comes from every individual merging his individuality in sympathy with his neighbors. On the other side, the conviction of the nineteenth century is that progress takes place by virtue of every individual’s striving for himself with all his might and trampling his neighbor under foot whenever he gets a chance to do so. This may accurately be called the Gospel of Greed.

Much is to be said on both sides. I have not concealed, I could not conceal, my own passionate predilection. Such a confession will probably shock my scientific brethren. Yet the strong feeling is in itself, I think, an argument of some weight in favor of the agapastic theory of evolution,—so far as it may be presumed to bespeak the normal judgment of the Sensible Heart. Certainly, if it were possible to believe in agapasm without believing it warmly, that fact would be an argument against the truth of the doctrine. At any rate, since the warmth of feeling exists, it should on every account be candidly confessed; especially since it creates a liability to one-sidedness on my part against which it behooves my readers and me to be severally on our guard.

SECOND THOUGHTS. IRENICA.

Let us try to define the logical affinities of the different theories of evolution. Natural selection, as conceived by Darwin, is a mode of evolution in which the only positive agent of change in the whole passage from moner to man is fortuitous variation. To secure advance in a definite direction chance has to be seconded by some action that shall hinder the propagation of some varieties or stimulate that of others. In natural selection, strictly so called, it is the crowding out of the weak. In sexual selection, it is the attraction of beauty, mainly.

The “Origin of Species” was published toward the end of the year 1859. The preceding years since 1846 had been one of the most productive seasons,—or if extended so as to cover the great book we are considering, _the_ most productive period of equal length in the entire history of science from its beginnings until now. The idea that chance begets order, which is one of the corner-stones of modern physics (although Dr. Carus considers it “the weakest point in Mr. Peirce’s system,”) was at that time put into its clearest light. Quetelet had opened the discussion by his “Letters on the Application of Probabilities to the Moral and Political Sciences,” a work which deeply impressed the best minds of that day, and to which Sir John Herschel had drawn general attention in Great Britain. In 1857, the first volume of Buckle’s “History of Civilisation” had created a tremendous sensation, owing to the use he made of this same idea. Meantime, the “statistical method” had, under that very name, been applied with brilliant success to molecular physics. Dr. John Herapath, an English chemist, had in 1847 outlined the kinetical theory of gases in his “Mathematical Physics”; and the interest the theory excited had been refreshed in 1856 by notable memoirs by Clausius and Krönig. In the very summer preceding Darwin’s publication, Maxwell had read before the British Association the first and most important of his researches on this subject. The consequence was that the idea that fortuitous events may result in a physical law, and further that this is the way in which those laws which appear to conflict with the principle of the conservation of energy are to be explained, had taken a strong hold upon the minds of all who were abreast of the leaders of thought. By such minds, it was inevitable that the “Origin of Species,” whose teaching was simply the application of the same principle to the explanation of another “non-conservative” action, that of organic development, should be hailed and welcomed. The sublime discovery of the conservation of energy by Helmholtz in 1847, and that of the mechanical theory of heat by Clausius and by Rankine, independently, in 1850, had decidedly overawed all those who might have been inclined to sneer at physical science. Thereafter a belated poet still harping upon “science peddling with the names of things” would fail of his effect. Mechanism was now known to be all, or very nearly so. All this time, utilitarianism,—that improved substitute for the Gospel,—was in its fullest feather; and was a natural ally of an individualistic theory. Dean Mansell’s injudicious advocacy had led to mutiny among the bondsmen of Sir William Hamilton, and the nominalism of Mill had profited accordingly; and although the real science that Darwin was leading men to was sure some day to give a death-blow to the sham-science of Mill, yet there were several elements of the Darwinian theory which were sure to charm the followers of Mill. Another thing: anæsthetics had been in use for thirteen years. Already, people’s acquaintance with suffering had dropped off very much; and as a consequence, that unlovely hardness by which our times are so contrasted with those that immediately preceded them, had already set in, and inclined people to relish a ruthless theory. The reader would quite mistake the drift of what I am saying if he were to understand me as wishing to suggest that any of those things (except perhaps Malthus) influenced Darwin himself. What I mean is that his hypothesis, while without dispute one of the most ingenious and pretty ever devised, and while argued with a wealth of knowledge, a strength of logic, a charm of rhetoric, and above all with a certain magnetic genuineness that was almost irresistible, did not appear, at first, at all near to being proved; and to a sober mind its case looks less hopeful now than it did twenty years ago; but the extraordinarily favorable reception it met with was plainly owing, in large measure, to its ideas being those toward which the age was favorably disposed, especially, because of the encouragement it gave to the greed-philosophy.