A HISTORY AND A DEFENSE
OF ANIMISM

A HISTORY AND A DEFENSE
OF ANIMISM

BY

WILLIAM McDOUGALL

FORMERLY FELLOW OF ST JOHn’s COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
reader in MEKTAL PHILOSOPHY XN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

WITH THIRTEEN DIAGRAMS

Beacon Press Boston

First published in 1911 by Methuen & Co., Ltd., London

First published as a Beacon Paperback in 1961 by arrange-
ment with the original publisher

Preface to the Beacon Press Edition copyright © 1961 by
Jerome S. Bruner

Printed in the United States of America

“Philosophy may assure us that the account of body and
mind given by materialism is neither consistent nor intelligible.
Yet body remains the most fundamental and all-pervading fact
with which mind has got to deal, the one from which it can
least easily shake itself free, the one that most complacently
lends Itself to every theory destructive of high endeavour.’’

A. J. Balfour

“ Even the contrast between corporeal and mental existence
may not be final and irreconcilable — but our present life is
passed in a world where it has not yet been resolved, but
yawning underlies all the relations of our thinking and acting.
And, even as it will always be indispensable to life, it is, at
present at least, indispensable to science. Things that appear
to us incompatible, we must first establish separately each on
its own foundation. If we have made ourselves acquainted
with the natural growth and the ramification of each one of
the groups of phenomena which we have thus discriminated, we
may afterwards find it possible to speak of their common root.
To try prematurely to unite them would only mean to obscure
the survey of them, and to lower the value which every
distinction possesses even when it may be done away with ”

R. H. Lotze

“ Quant a I’idde que le corps vivant pourrait ^tre soumis par
quelque calculateur surhumain au meme traitement mathd-
matique que notre syst^me solaire, elle est sortie peu a peu
d’une certaine metaphysique qui a pris une forme plus precise
depuis les d^couvertes physiques de Galilee, mais qui fut toujours
la metaphysique naturelle de I’esprit humain. Sa clart6 appar-
ente, notre impatient d6sir de la trouver vraie, I’empressement
avec laquelle tant d’excellents esprits I’acceptent sans preuve,
toutes les seductions enfin qu’elle exerce sur notre pensee
devraient nous mettre en garde centre elle.”

H. Bergson

PREFACE TO THE BEACON PRESS EDITION

William McDougall was a child of the nineteenth century. But
like William James, whom he deeply admired, he was a rebellious child.
McDougalFs rebellion was more insistently systematic, less genially
humane than James, though both directed their efforts at the same
dragons : the scientific dogmas of the age. Body and Mind is vintage
McDougall, a beautifully learned and systematic example of his approach
to the study of man. It is alive with his opposition to reducing that
study to terms of simple materialism.

Nineteenth century science traded on three great assumptions, the
first of which was, of course, materialism: the conviction that nature,
including the life data of biology, was ultimately explicable in physical
terms. Materialism became a doctrine of mind as well. Consciousness
would one day be reduced to the laws of physics and would eventually
be contained in a periodic table of its own by some future Mendeleev.
Physiology, and particularly sensory physiology, McDougall’s first field,
was dominated in the last quarter of the century by the thoroughgoing
physicalism of such “greats” as Helmholtz, Monakow, and Briicke —
a junta of materialistic purists. They had brought sensory processes into
the realm of physical measure. German experimental psychology was
consolidating the gains. McDougall in the 1890’s, publishing his first
papers on visual sensation, found himself unable to follow. How was
one to give a proper place to the role of attention without a concept of
mind?

A second dogma of McDougalFs youth was extreme Darwinism:
all evolution was based on the adaptation of a species to the demands
of habitat, the process being governed by random variation in genetic
characteristics which are selectively “chosen” for their fitness. Mc-
Dougall, arguing from the scanty data of human evolution, found him-
self espousing the view that mental evolution could not be treated
adequately by the simple formula of adaptation. Like James, he held
that function shapes organs and not vice versa. Insofar as function
derives from the purposive activities of organisms, then purposive
striving must have a part in the shaping of evolution. A physicalistic,
genetically locked theory of evolution could not, he held with Lloyd

vii

viii

Body and Mind

Morgan, account for the evolution of mind. He urged, at the turn
of the century, a new look at Lamarck.

Finally," the turn of the century witnessed a strong reversal of
the tide from nativism to empiricism — a reversal that begins with
John Locke's philosophy of experience. The issue, in brief, was whether
to understand behavior in terms of instincts and innate dispositions (the
nativist option, stemming principally from continental philosophy and
particularly from Leibnizs) , or whether to understand it in terms of the
effects of past experience and the results of adaptation (the empiricist
view, most usually associated with British associationism and American
pragmatism). The nativist view steadily lost ground during the century
and by its close, with the emergence of Pavlov and American radical
behaviorism, it was rejected out of hand by a large section of the Anglo-
American psychological world. Nativism was somehow regarded as a
limb of mentalism and instincts as a manifestation of mind stuff. By the
end of the first decade of the new century, the word teleology, implying
that behavior was somehow directed toward ultimate goals, had become
an epithet. If McDougall had been unable to accept the mechanical
causality of materialism and the fixed genetics of pure Darwinism, it
was plain that the compoundings of conditioned reflexes and associations
would be unpalatable to him as an explanation of man's mind. Like
another self-styled '‘purposive behaviorist" of the generation after his,
Edward Chace Tolman, he felt too strongly that Mind "reeked with
purpose" to be thus reduced to the passive effects of experience.

A believer in Mind, a Lamarckian, and an instinctivist ! What
baggage for a young scientist at the dawn of our centur)?-! It would be
in the epic style to record that McDougall was right. But such is not
the case. The true case is perhaps more interesting. What is true is
that he was more often interestingly wrong, suggestive in his dissent,
and startlingly contemporary in the problems that he posed. The
queries that led him to his view on the interaction of mind and body
are the same ones that produced our contemporary concern with psycho-
somatic medicine. The flavor of his Lamarckianism (stripped of his
rather bizarre ideas about genetics), is interesting not only in the light
of cultural evolution, but also for its empirical suggestiveness. As for
his well conceived theory of instinct, much of what he had to say is
again relevant — thanks to the beautiful studies of animal behavior of the
past t}vo decades. The work of Tinbergen, Lorenz, Beach, and others
suggest that McDougall may be correct in many respects, particularly
in his insistence upon a perceptual or "releaser" aspect in instinctive
behavior.

Preface to the Beacon Press Edition ix

William McDougall was an Englishman, a man of scholarly tastes
and wide ranging interests, a product of that power conscious, sceptical,
and socially-apart class of wealthy northern manufacturers — the textile
masters, ironmongers, chemical manufacturers whose leaders were
Bright, Cobden, and Gladstone. He was born just as the nineteenth
century was entering its last quarter. His family, though very much
a part of the pattern of vigorous industrial enterprise, was of an intel-
lectually venturesome cast of mind. Indeed, the origin of the family
fortune is not without some bearing. His paternal grandfather was the
proprietor and headmaster of an old-fashioned boarding school for boys
in the North. Interested in chemistry, he studied with Dalton, the
author of the atomic theory; and became an intimate friend of Angus
Smith, the pioneer in applied chemistry; and of Sir James Simpson, the
Edinburgh surgeon who first used chloroform as an anesthetic. He
ended by building a chemical factory on the site next to his school and,
with the aid of his five sons, soon turned the enterprise into a world-wide
business. McDougall writes in his The History of Psychology in Auto-
biography (edited by Carl Murchison; Worcester, Clark University
Press, 1930), “I remember my grandfather as a stern and very pious
old gentleman whose hobby was the writing of articles to show that the
Bible miracles were compatible with the teaching of science. I remember
that, even as a young boy, I regarded this as a somewhat futile labor.”
Yet, a half century later, McDougall was to write of his own “incapacity
to be content with one kind of truth in science, another in philosophy
or religion.”

McDougall’s father had what seems a happy restlessness of mind.
Having become chiefly responsible for the very successful chemical busi-
ness, he plowed its considerable profits back into new industrial ventures
— an iron foundry, and then a paper pulp factory — to manufacture
some of his own adventures. “He was successively a member of most
of the leading Christian sects ; and in his later life adhered to none . . .
He was benevolent and affectionate, with a strong taste for poetry and
music; as in his business, so also in religion, art, and domestic affairs,
he was masterful, erratic, unpredictable, and always naive.”

The young William was precocious, and having finished school in
Manchester at fourteen, he was sent with his older brother to study at
the Real-Gymnasium in Weimar where he learned German and de-
veloped a taste for music and the theatre. Upon his return to Manches-
ter, he entered the newly founded University there at the rather tender
age of fifteen, living at home, and pursuing scientific studies principally
in biology and geology. The great controversies between religion and

X

Body and Mind

evolution were raging and the young man, deep in LyelFs Principles of
Geology and the excitement of Darwin and Spencer, “was delighted with
Huxley’s smashing attacks on Gladstone and all the orthodoxies.”
Graduated at nineteen, ill content with his provincial university, he
overrode his father’s suspicions of Tory strongholds and went off to
Cambridge where, at St. John’s College, he read for the Natural Sci-
ence Tripos, striding out across the flat Cambridgeshire country whose
fields and marshes he found ravishing after the grimy cityscapes of
Manchester. He excelled as a student: quick, thorough, competitive,
and arrogant. He ended with highest honors and a university scholarship
to study medicine at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. His interests were
in science ; but he felt that medicine was the route to a career in science
and, besides, he could not be sure that the family fortune would remain
intact under his father’s imaginatively erratic ministry. There would
be no harm in a profession to fall back on. Indeed, save for the period
of the Great War, when he directed a hospital for soldiers with nervous
and mental disease, he never practiced his profession. For upon com-
pleting his internship, he joined the Cambridge Anthropological Expe-
dition to the Torres Straits under Haddon and Rivers, two of his former
teachers, one of them a fellow Johnian. His task was to help Rivers
study the senses of the natives of the islands. The century was just
turning. He stayed on in the Torres Straits Islands for half a year,
then accepted the invitation of Dr. Charles Hose to help put together
a study of the head-hunting people to whom Hose administered in the
province of the Rajah of Sarawak in Borneo.

It was not anthropology but psychology and physiology that Mc-
Dougall wanted. He had read James’ Principles of Psychology in medi-
cal school and worked in the laboratory of the young Sherington. Borneo
and the period with Rivers had not swayed him, though he had been
tempted by the exotic appeal. “Characteristically arrogant, I said That
field is too easy for me!’ ” Returned to England, he put in for a Fel-
lowship at St. John’s, his old college, submitting two essays : one on the
physiology of muscle, the other on the psychophysical problem, a fore-
shadowing of this book. His career was set. He had cast his lot with
psychology. He read Wundt, the emerging leader of the new experi-
mental psychology in Germany and found him dusty. But he determined
to add the German methods to his tool kit, and so in 1900 he spent a
year at Gottingen with Muller. After that came his first post: at Uni-
versity College in London to teach experimental psychology. His work
soon attracted attention — studies of vision, of attention, theoretical
papers on nerve transmission and the neurophysiology of mind. He par-

Preface to the Beacon Press Edition xi

ticipated vigorously in the scientific life of London, and by 1904 he was
elected to the Wilde Readership in Mental Philosophy at Oxford. The
founder of the Readership, an old manufacturer and a disciple of John
Locke, upon hearing that the new incumbent was involved in experi-
mentation, tried to dislodge him: the mind was nothing to be studied
experimentally. McDougall prevailed, work flourished in his laboratory
and students came. William James came to visit in 1908. They argued
pragmatism; James prevailed. McDougalPs interest in psychical re-
search was strengthened, so too his conviction that to understand the
secrets of human nature one needed not only the approach of the physi-
ologist, but the analysis of the evanescent stuff of direct experience.

The decade at Oxford before the war was a fruitful one. The
Social Psychology appeared in 1907, setting forth a theory of sentiments
based on the doctrine of instincts and, though it went unnoticed at first,
it eventually became the single most influential book in the field and is
still regarded as social psychology's ^‘founding book” that set the pattern
for what was later to be the study of attitudes. In 1912 the sacrosanct
F.R.S. was bestowed. That same year he published a little book setting
forth the outline of his general theory, Psychology, the Study of Be-
havior, It sold close to 100,000 copies. I have said nothing of Body
and Mind, also of this period — 1911. But let me return to it later.

The war came, a period of intense clinical work directing a hos-
pital for shell shock cases and filling notebooks with case materials which
he eventually turned into a further extension of his views in the Outline
of Abnormal Psychology. Each war experience added to his conviction
that human functioning involved the patterning of instinctive energies
into systems of sentiments held together by higher order striving. What
the war taught him was the effect of stress in producing dissociation in
this system.

McDougall’s most notable achievement immediately after the war
was a striking and contentious book on The Group Mind. “The title
was unfortunate, for it antagonized many; but the thought I tried to
express in this title was sound ; namely, that a highly organized enduring
group such as a true nation, possesses an organization which, in the main
is mental; an organization that resides not in any one individual but
rather ... is what would now be called a configuration or Gestalt, an
organized system of interacting energies.”

Perhaps McDougall was tired of the struggle to establish psychology
in the antagonistic environment of Oxford. Perhaps he was flattered
to be asked to the University where James had been. Perhaps he was
finding the donnish life of post-war England without sufficient excite-

xii

Body and Mind

merit or recompense. In any case, in 1924, he accepted a professorship
at Harvard. The decision was an interesting one. McDougalFs work
was greatly admired. His books went through new editions yearly. The
principal opposition to his point of view was in America, by then the
colossus in psychology. He was stormily received. He was the target
of the behaviorists who, if they read him, understood little of what he
was trying to say. To them he was a mentalist and teleologist and,
like Sigmund Freud, an embarrassment to the academic psychologist who
wished to seem scientifically aseptic to his colleagues in the natural sci-
ences. But on the other side, Freud had preempted much of the interest
that might have been aroused by McDougalFs dynamic, instinctivist
views. He was virtually without students at Harvard. Yet the half
dozen or so years that he spent there were the years in which he pro-
duced two of the most systematic and important works of his career:
the Outline of Abnormal Psychology and the Outline of Psychology,
The latter book, ignored for years, has begun to find its small army of
devotees who find in it excellent discussions on the relation of motiva-
tion and attention, on the selectivity of perception and attention, and
on the thought processes.

McDougall, fond though he was of Harvard, Cambridge, and
New England, found his position in psychology there confining and
irksome. If he had felt unappreciated at Oxford, he found himself far
more so at Harvard. He was active in psychical research and found
himself involved in investigating — some say gullibly — the famous
medium Margery. Psychologists, still eager for the cachet of scientific
respectability, were scandalized. The legend goes that he received a
letter from the President of the newly constituted Duke University late
in the 20^s asking him to recommend a new professor and head of De-
partment for the new University, his answer to which was, '1 accept.’’

And so, approaching his sixties, McDougall began another chapter
in his career, in Durham, North Carolina, where his principal research
was the continuation of his Lamarckian experiments on the evolution
of discriminative intelligence in successive generations of rats. He
brought J. B. Rhine to Duke to start the parapsychology laboratory and
the experiments on telepathy. And for the first time he had a Depart-
ment of his own choosing, a brilliant group of younger investigators
reflecting a wide range of interests — from child development to Pav-
lovian conditioning. There he died in 1939.

It was as an undergraduate at Duke that I first knew McDougall.

I had been attracted there, as many others had, by the distinguished
faculty that had been ‘"raided” away from other, better established uni-

Preface to the Beacon Press Edition xiii

versities. McDougall was very much of a figure. Strongly and squarely
built and with the sure movement of an athlete, he was an artistocratically
handsome and reserved looking man, fond of walking the college paths
in all weather. As a lecturer, he was matter of fact, without histrionics
but clear and concise. As a polemicist and critic, he was a masterful
debater, as his opponents learned. His lectures were carefully prepared.
His seminars were wide ranging and vigorous: it was in one of them
as a senior that I first became acquainted with the work of Whitehead
and Haldane, the experimental embryologists who were creating so
much excitement on the subject of ^^organizers.^^ Withal, McDougalFs
reserve was not something one could easily get through. He was a
presence; he suffered fools poorly. His partial deafness in later years
was such that one had to raise one’s voice to be heard. It led us to
formulate our points more concisely. Foolishness in a loud voice some-
how seemed the more foolish. My most intimate conversation with him
was on the occasion of leaving Duke to come to Harvard for graduate
work. He had me to tea. *Wou will find, Mr. Bruner, that Harvard
will tempt you with easy answers. The behaviorist creed is well en-
trenched, along with a taste for mechanistic explanations. It is a
seductive invitation to anybody starting off on the wearisome business
of making sense out of psychology. I hope you will not succumb.”

About the book itself. Body and Mind, its purpose was quite clear
in the author’s mind at the time of writing it and we find him in later
years writing postscripts to it in articles and addresses. McDougall felt
that the unity of experience, the oneness of the human ego, defied an-
alysis in terms of the multiplicity of brain processes that constitute organic
functioning. Some unitary principle, he felt it necessary to argue (and
here he allied himself with Leibniz), was the foundation of this unity.
The principle was Mind. Having argued this far, he had explicitly
argued himself out of the materialistic monism of the physical extremists
and, implicitly, out of the two more conventional positions that pre-
vailed at the turn of the century: the epiphenomenalism of Herbert
Spencer that held consciousness and mind to be the mere squeak of the
organic wheel of brain processes, and the parallelism of the German ex-
perimental psychologists which postulated a quite independent and
parallel course for mind and body. Parallelism had to be rejected, for
one could not find a parallel unity in organic functioning to the unity
of consciousness since brain action comprises the compounded activities
of discrete neurons.

The rejection of epiphenomenalism, delegating experience and mind
to the status of a * ‘phosphorescent glow produced by neural discharge,”

xiv Body and Mind

rests on a much deeper base. Fundamentally, McDougall held, as we
have seen, that the most important characteristic of life was purpose
— purpose in all its manifestations: wanting, being driven, aspiring,
hoping, planning, expecting. It was this fundamental belief that made
him begin his account of mental life with a doctrine of instincts or en-
ergies for achieving certain ends. McDougall implicitly believed, as
William James had, that a pure instinct occurs only once, after which
it is modified by experience and is better called a sentiment. The har-
monious blending of sentiments and wants into a unified concert of
striving represented the growth of character (or, as we should call it
today, personality.) In his Social Psychology and in a series of papers
before the Great War, McDougall detailed the manner in which senti-
ments serve a triple function: a conative one that impels behavior
toward goals, a cognitive one that organizes experience selectively in
terms of striving enterprises, and an affective one that gives the signa
ture of emotion to our various strivings. The system of plans for know-
ing and doing that constitute each sentiment are then organized by a
'^metaplan’' or ruling sentiment closely related to a “sentiment of self-
regard,”

With this much of an apparatus of Mind, it was not likely that
McDougall would embrace an epiphenomenalism that relegated Mind
to the category of by-product. But how could he, a man intimately ac-
quainted with and deeply engaged in research on neurophysiology, hold
a view of interactionism, that mind affected body, and vice versa? And
how was he able to hold to his view of the unity of personality and
experience in the light of Freud^s work on the bifurcation of conscious
intention and unconscious impulse, not to mention the dramatic cases
of Morton Prince on “split personality”?

With respect to the first issue, the intervention of Mind in the
intricate affairs of the nervous system, McDougall was hard put. He
published a paper in 1901 in Brain ^ “On the seat of the psycho-physical
processes, in which it was plain that Mind acted not as a capricious
organ of intervention but in a highly systematic way to set and alter the
passage of neural impulses in the synapses of the central nervous sys-
tem. His argument is anatomical (that it is in the synapses between
neurones that any shunting or selectivity of conduction must be de-
termined), physiological (that the evidence of sensory adaptation and
contrast and other sensory phenomena required a selective interaction
in the brain), and psychological (that attention particularly required
a theory of synaptic shunting) . The paper is exquisitely argued and docu-
mented, and while it contains some bad guesses about eventual mech-

XV

Preface to the Beacon Press Edition

anisms of nerve transmission, the general outcome is still interesting.
For what he is saying, to put it in ultramodern dress, is that if Body
is the machine, Mind is the program that determines how the machine
will process its data and one cannot equate the machine and the pro-
gram. The series of three papers on such sensory phenomena as inhi-
bition, facilitation, and contrast in visual sensation published in Mind
in the 1890’s make it quite clear that he is groping toward such a
formulation. Mind, in short, uses the nervous system. To describe the
nervous system, then, does not constitute a description or analysis of
mind any more than the description of the use to which a man puts a
hoe represented a description of the nervous system or the mind of the
man that uses it. Mind, in effect, is the realm of purposes, plans, in-
tentionality. He wished to get Mind as Program into Body as Machine.
The misplaced concreteness of his solution is startling. The problem is
real, and can be stated better today.

No surprise, then, his antagonism to the “dogma of Mechanistic
Psychology” and his impatience with physiologists who felt that an
elucidation of neural processes should suffice for psychology. In the
early 1920’s, John B. Watson, the apostle of Behaviorism, invited
McDougall to lecture to his class in psychology at the New School. The
lecture was subsequently published. It is devastating — perhaps even
more so than McDougalFs merciless but unavailing debate with Watson
in 1924 at the Washington meeting of the American Psychological As-
sociation. At the New School he uses the intellectual biography of
Miinsterberg, his predecessor at Harvard, as his text for attacking a
behaviorism based on the compounding of reflexes. Miinsterberg had
started his career by embracing such a view; had then moved for a
decade into a brilliant career of applying psychology to many practical
fields; and then returned to write a new book in which he set forth a
purposive psychology whose object was to aid in predicting and con-
trolling human behavior. In the later book, Miinsterberg avers a dual
allegiance to both mechanistic and purposive psychology, insisting how-
ever that the older mechanistic view cannot be used to understand
human behavior since it misses the essential nature of its purposeful-
ness. Watson too, having himself had a period in applied psychology,
may now, McDougall hoped, pass to a second phase. To Watson’s
class, his last words were, “If then you must be behaviorists, I beg that
you will be purposive behaviorists.”

Regarding the issue of the unity of consciousness and how it might
be reconciled with the conscious-unconscious dichotomy of Freud and
the multiple personalities reported by Morton Prince and Janet, Me-

XVI

Body and Mind

Dougall made rather a good thing of the challenge. The occasion was
his Presidential Address to the Society for Psychical Research in London
in July 1920. He saw the multiple streams of activity as the internal
organization of personality, a unity deriving from the 'complex monad”
that is the mind. He raised speculatively the possibility that perhaps
the various sub-identities that are part of the organized personality are
the result of a kind of "budding off” process whereby some original
unitary source of energy differentiates into various instinctive forms.
Perhaps the complex unity achieved by man provides the more reason
to view Mind as a separate and unique realm of activity.

McDougall, once convinced of these issues, wrote, as he put it
"this arrogant book” and, as if to underline his arrogance, called it a
"history and defense of animism.” The book is a handsome and im-
passioned piece of scholarship, for McDougall was not only learned but
passionate in his advocacy. Yet, it presents the issues dispassionately for
its time. I went back to the book with a certain trepidation, not having
read it for many years and having been under the spell of the writer’s
personality at the time. Since it had appeared, I and my generation
had been hardened in the scepticism that had been the mark of what
Morton White has called the "age of analysis.” There had been
Gilbert Ryle’s impeccable attack on dualism and the metaphysical quarrels
that take the issue of monism and dualism seriously. Not only Ryle’s
Concept of Mind, with its attack on Mind as a "category error” —
"I see the cricket players, but where is the team spirit” — but the
effects of Wittgenstein and Carnap and Ayer had had the effect of mak-
ing us flippantly cautious about doctrines like "mind,” "instinct,” and
"purpose” for the linguistic booby traps they concealed. Yet in reading
Body and Mind again, a quarter century after my first reading as an
undergraduate, I was pleased at how little ashamed I had to feel for
one of my early intellectual parents. To be sure, there are places where
the argument swirls in a confusion of "category errors.” But on the
whole, the book is a superb example of what, in a very early paper on
attention, McDougall called, "the method of residues.” Having ex-
plained as much as he could of the nature of man by the workings of
the nervous system, McDougall is forced to explain what is left — Mind,
its unity and planfullness and directionality of purpose.

If there is a bias in the book that you, the reader, must beware,
it is that McDougall wields a beautifully honed analytic broadsword
at materialistic and parallelistic theories of the relation of mind and
body — quite rightly. But somehow his onslaughts are less sustained
and brilliant when it comes to taking apart the monadologies and the

Preface to the Beacon Press Edition xvii

Cartesian interaction theories. For all that, the book is as good an
introduction as I know to the psychosomatic dilemma and its history.
Whoever has talked loosely about a ‘^psychosomatic’’ headache or cold,
whoever practices medicine and has puzzled about the subtle physical
reverberations of mental stress does well to read these pages carefully.
Let him then, if the diet here seems overly rich in speculation, go back
to Ryle’s astringent classic and see whether our modern Occam can
make the psychosomatic problem disappear completely.

Jerome S, Bruner

Harvard University
February 1961

PREFACE

I N writing this volume my primary aim has been to provide
for students of psychology and philosophy, within a
moderate compass, a critical survey of modern opinion
and discussion upon the psycho-physical problem, the problem
of the relation between body and mind. But I have tried to
present my material in a manner not too dry and technical for
the general reader who is prepared to grapple with a difficult
subject For I hold that men of science ought to make
intelligible to the general public the course and issue of
scientific discussions upon the wider questions to which their re-
searches are directed, and that this obligation is especially strong
in respect of the subject dealt with in these pages. Among the
great questions debated by philosophers in every age the psycho-
physical problem occupies a special position, in that it is one in
which no thoughtful person can fail to be interested ; for any
answer to this question must have some bearing upon the funda-
mental doctrines of religion and upon our estimate of man’s position
and destiny in the world. And that interest in this question is
widespread among the English-reading public, is shown by the
dense stream of popular books upon it which continues to issue
from the press both of this country and of the United States.

The greater part of this book is, then, occupied with a survey
of modern discussions and modern theories of the psycho-physical
relation ; but without some knowledge of the course of develop-
ment of speculation upon this topic it is impossible to understand
the present state of opinion. I have written, therefore, in the
earlier chapters a very brief history of the thought of preceding
ages. This historical sketch makes no pretence of being a work
of original research ; in putting it together I have relied largely
upon the standard histories of philosophy and science, especially

xix

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BODY AND MIND

the histories of philosophy of Ueberweg, Lewes, and Hoffding,
F. A. Lange*s History of Materialism,” Erwin Rhode’s “ Psyche,”
Sir Michael Foster’s History of Physiology,” the History of
European Thought in the Nineteenth Century ” of Dr T. Merz, and
the “ Vitalismus als Geschichte und Lehre ” of Dr Hans Driesch.

The history of thought upon the psycho-physical problem is
in the main the history of the way in which Animism, the oldest
and, in all previous ages, the most generally accepted answer to it,
has been attacked and put more and more upon the defensive in
succeeding centuries, until towards the end of the nineteenth
century it was generally regarded in academic circles as finally
driven from the field. I have therefore given to the historical
chapters the form of a history of Animism.

The sub-title describes this book as a defence, as well as a
history, of Animism. I hasten to offer some explanation of this
description, lest the mere title of the book should repel a con-
siderable number of possible readers.

The word Animism is frequently used by contemporary
writers to denote what is more properly called primitive Animism,
or primitive Anthropomorphism, namely, the belief that all
natural objects which seem to exert any power or influence are
moved or animated by “ spirits,” or intelligent purposive beings.
It is perhaps hardly necessary to say that the Animism I defend
is not of this primitive type. But this is only one variety of
Animism, one which seems to have been reached by extending the
essential animistic notion far beyond its original and proper sphere
of application. The modern currency and usage of the word derives
chiefly from Prof. Tylor’s “ Primitive Culture,” and I use it with
the general connotation given it in that celebrated treatise.
The essential notion, which forms the common foundation of all
varieties of Animism, is that all, or some, of those manifestations
of life and mind which distinguish the living man from the
corpse and from inorganic bodies are due to the operation within
him of something which is of a nature different from that of the
body, an animating principle generally, but not necessarily or
always, conceived as an immaterial and individual being or soul.

“ Primitive Animism ” seems to have grown up by extension of

PREFACE

XXI

this notion to the explanation of all the more striking phenomena
of nature. And the Animism of civilized men, which has been
and is the foundation of every religious system, except the more
rigid Pantheisms, is historically continuous with the primitive
doctrine. But, while religion, superstition, and the hope of a life
beyond the grave, have kept alive amongst us a variety of
animistic beliefs, ranging in degree of refinement and subtlety
from primitive Animism to that taught by Plato, Leibnitz, Lotze,
William James, or Henri Bergson, modern science and philosophy
have turned their backs upon Animism of every kind with constantly
increasing decision ; and the efforts of modern philosophy have been
largely directed towards the excogitation of a view of man and
of the world which shall hold fast to the primacy and efficiency
of mind or spirit, while rejecting the animistic conception of
human personality. My prolonged puzzling over the psycho-
physical problem has inclined me to believe that these attempts
cannot be successfully carried through, and that we must accept
without reserve Professor TyloPs dictum that Animism “ embodies
the very essence of spiritualistic, as opposed to materialistic,
philosophy,” ^ and that the deepest of all schisms is that which
divides Animism from Materialism.^

The main body of this volume is therefore occupied with the
presentation and examination of the reasonings which have led
the great majority of philosophers and men of science to reject
Animism, and of the modern attempts to render an intelligible
account of the nature of man which, in spite of the rejection of
Animism, shall escape Materialism. This survey leads to the con-
clusion that these reasonings are inconclusive and these attempts
unsuccessful, and that we are therefore compelled to choose between
Animism and Materialism ; and, since the logical necessity of
preferring the animistic horn of this dilemma cannot be in doubt,
my survey constitutes a defence and justification of Animism.

I have chosen to use the word Animism rather than any other,
not only because it clearly marks the historical continuity of the
modern with the ancient conception, but also because no other
term indicates precisely all those theories of human personality
1 Primitive Culture,” vol. i. p. 415. ^ Op. ctt.^ p. 502.

xxii BODY AND MIND

which have in common the notion which, as I believe, provides the
only alternative to Materialism. The word “ Spiritualism ” as
used in philosophy is ambiguous, and it has been spoilt for
scientific purposes by its current usage to denote that popular
belief which is more properly called Spiritism. Nor is all
Animism spiritualistic ; during long ages the dominant form of
it was a materialistic Dualism. The term psycho-physical
dualism ” accurately expresses the essential animistic notion ;
but it is cumbrous, and the word Dualism is apt to be taken to
imply metaphysical Dualism, an implication which I am anxious
to avoid ; for Animism does not necessarily imply metaphysical
Dualism, or indeed any metaphysical or ontological doctrine, and
may logically be held in conjunction with a monistic metaphysic,
or indeed with any metaphysical doctrine, Solipsism alone ex-
cepted. The expression “ psycho-physical interactionism ” will
not serve my purpose, because (as we see in the philosophy of
Leibnitz, and in that modification of the Cartesian system known
as Occasionalism) Animism may be combined with the denial of
psycho-physical interaction. Again, the term “ soul-theory ” does
not cover all varieties of Animism, in illustration of which state-
ment I may remind the reader that the late Prof. James advocated
a distinctly animistic view of numan personality, which he called
the “ transmission theory, but explicitly rejected the conception
of the soul as a unitary and individual being.

The reader may perhaps be helped to grasp the long argu-
ment of the book, if I make here a summary statement of its
course. The first six chapters trace in outline through the
European culture-tradition, from primitive ages to the present
time, the history of Animism and of the attacks upon it from the
sides of metaphysic, epistemology, and the natural sciences, and
they indicate the principal doctrines proposed as alternatives to it.
Chapters VII., VIII., IX., and X. display the grounds on which at
the present day the rejection of Animism is generally founded.

It is shown that, although in former ages the psycho-physical
problem has generally been regarded as one to be solved by
metaphysic, it is now widely recognized that the issue must be
decided by the methods of empirical science ; and it is shown how

PREFACE

xxiii

the modern rejection of Animism finds its principal ground in the
claim of the physical sciences that their mechanical principles of
explanation must hold exclusive sway throughout the universe, a
claim which I venture to characterize as “ the mechanistic dogma.”

Chapters XL and XII. state, examine, and display the
special difficulties of, the more important of the monistic
doctrines proposed as substitutes for Animism. The least un-
satisfactory of these are closely allied, and in accordance with
current usage are classed together under the head of psycho-
physical Parallelism. In Chapter XIII. it is shown that the
choice of Parallelism or Animism is a dilemma from which we
cannot escape, unless indeed we are prepared to adopt all the
absurdities of thoroughgoing Materialism or of Solipsism.

Chapters XIV., XV., and XVI. examine the modern
arguments against Animism, and show that no one of them, nor
all of them together, logically necessitate its rejection.

Chapters XVII. to XXIV. exhibit the inadequacy of the
mechanical principles to the explanation of the facts of general
physiology, of biological evolution, of human and animal
behaviour, and of psychology, and bring forward certain positive
arguments in favour of Animism.

Chapter XXV. states my attitude towards the work of the
Society for Psychical Research, and shows how, as it seems to
me, the results hitherto achieved by that line of investigation
strengthen the case against the “ mechanistic dogma.”

In the last chapter I have tried to draw together the threads
of the argument, and regarding the “ mechanistic dogma ” (the
only serious objection to Animism) as discredited, I have weighed
the claims of the principal varieties of Animism in a discussion
which results in favour of the hypothesis of the soul. Finally, I
have endeavoured to indicate a view of the nature of the soul
which shall be in harmony with all the facts established by
empirical science.

I am aware that to many minds it must appear nothing short
of a scandal that anyone occupying a position in an academy of
learning, other than a Roman Catholic seminary, should in this
twentieth century defend the old-world notion of the soul of man.

xxiv

BODY AND MIND

For it is matter of common knowledge that “ Science ” has given
its verdict against the soul, has declared that the conception of
the soul as a thing, or being, or substance, or mode of existence
or activity, different from, distinguishable from, or in any sense or
degree independent of, the body is a mere survival from primitive
culture, one of the many relics of savage superstition that
obstinately persist among us in defiance of the clear teachings of
modern science. The greater part of the philosophic world also,
mainly owing to the influence of the natural sciences, has arrived
at the same conclusion. In short, it cannot be denied that, as
William James told us at Oxford three years ago, “ souls are out
of fashion.”

But I am aware also that not one in a hundred of those
scientists and philosophers who confidently and even scornfully
reject the notion has made any impartial and thorough attempt
to think out the psycho-physical problem in the light of all the
relevant data now available and of the history of previous thought
on the question. And 1 am young enough to believe that there
is amongst us a considerable number of persons who prefer the
dispassionate pursuit of truth to the interests of any system, and
to hope that some of them may find my book acceptable as an
honest attempt to grapple once more with this central problem.
And I am fortified by the knowledge that a few influential
contemporary philosophers adhere to the animistic conception of
human personality, or at least regard the psycho-physical question
as still open, as also by certain indications that the “ mechanistic
dogma ” no longer holds the scientific world in so close a grip as
during the later part of the nineteenth century.

^‘Animism,” writes Professor Tylor, «is, in fact, the ground-
work of the Philosophy of Religion, from that of savages up to
that of civilized men.”i And, though modern Pantheisms have
generally rejected Animism, the statement remains substantially
correct And it must be admitted that most of those who have
defended Animism in the modern period have been openly or
secretly moved by the desire to support religious doctrines
^ " Primitive Culture, i. p. 426.

PREFACE

XXV

which they have accepted on other than scientific grounds. It
follows that anyone who undertakes to defend the theory is
liable to be suspected of a bias of this kind.

These considerations are my apology for setting down here
a personal confession, which may aid the reader in judging
of the nature and degree of any bias that may have affected
my presentation of the arguments for and against Animism.
I believe that the future of religion is intimately bound up
with the fate of Animism ; and especially I believe that, if
science should continue to maintain the mechanistic dogma,
and consequently to repudiate Animism, the belief in any form
of life after the death of the body will continue rapidly to
decline among all civilized peoples, and will, before many genera-
tions have passed away, become a negligible quantity. Never-
theless, I claim that the discussions of the following pages are
conducted with as much impartiality as is possible for one to whom
the argument seems to point strongly towards one of the rival
hypotheses. For I can lay claim to no religious convictions ; I am
not aware of any strong desire for any continuance of my person-
ality after death ; and 1 could accept with equanimity a thorough-
going Materialism, if that seemed to me the inevitable outcome
of a dispassionate and critical reflection. Nevertheless, I am
in sympathy with the religious attitude towards life ; and I
should welcome the establishment of sure empirical founda-
tions for the belief that human personality is not wholly de-
stroyed by death. For, as was said above, I judge that this belief
can only be kept alive if a proof of it, or at least a presumption
in favour of it, can be furnished by the methods of empirical
science. And it seems to me highly probable that the passing
away of this belief would be calamitous for our civilization.
For every vigorous nation seems to have possessed this belief,
and the loss of it has accompanied the decay of national vigour
in many instances.

Apart from any hope of rewards or fear of punishment after
death, the belief must have, it seems to me, a moralizing influence
upon our thought and conduct that we can ill afford to dispense
with. The admirable Stoic attitude of a Marcus Aurelius or a

xxvi

BODY AND MIND

Huxley may suffice for those who rise to it in the moral environ-
ment created by civilizations based upon a belief in a future life
and upon other positive religious beliefs ; but I gravely doubt
whether whole nations could rise to the level of an austere morality,
or even maintain a decent working standard of conduct, after
losing those beliefs. A proof that our life does not end with
death, even though we knew nothing of the nature of the life
beyond the grave, would justify the belief that we have our share
in a larger scheme of things than the universe described by physical
science ; and this conviction must add dignity, seriousness, and
significance to our lives, and must thus throw a great weight
into the scale against the dangers that threaten every advanced
civilization. While, then, I should prefer for myself a confident
anticipation of total extinction at death to a belief that I must
venture anew upon a life of whose nature and conditions we
have no knowledge, I desire, on impersonal grounds, to see the
world-old belief in a future life established on a scientific founda-
tion. To that extent, and to that extent only, I think, my
inquiry is biassed.

Finally, I wish to state emphatically that my inquiry is not
conceived as a search for metaphysical truth, but that it is rather
conducted by the methods and with the aims of all empirical
science; that is to say, it aims at discovering the hypotheses
which will enable us best to co-ordinate the chaotic data of
immediate experience by means of a conceptual system as con-
sistent as may be, while recognizing that such conceptions must
always be subject to revision with the progress of science.
Of course, if the term metaphysic be taken in the older sense
as implying an inquiry into that which is not physical, the theme of
this work is metaphysical ; but that is a usage which is no longer
accepted ; metaphysic is now distinguished from empirical science
by its aims and methods rather than by its subject-matter. I
claim, then, for the conception of the soul, advocated in the
last chapter of this book, no more than that it is an hypothesis
which is indispensable to science at the present time.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

Primitive Animism or Anthropomorphism — The ghost-soul — Burial customs — Origin
of ghost-soul — Ghost-soul not immaterial — Extension of original idea of soul
— Survivals of ghost-soul — Hebrew Animism — Homeric Animism — The Ionian
physicists — Post-Homei ic Animism — Greek Materialism — Plato — Aristotle
— Stoicism and Scepticism ....

CHAPTER II

ANIMISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Pneuma — Materialistic Animism of early Fathers — Spiritualisation of the soul —
Neoplatonism — The Schoolmen — Averroism — Roman Materialism

CHAPTER III

ANIMISM AT THE TIME OF THE RENASCENCE OF LEARNING

Pomponazzi — Vives — Telesio — Bruno — Physiology founded — Vesalius and Va n
Helmont ... ......

CHAPTER IV

ANIMISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Rise of modern Materialism — Descartes — Occasionalism — Leibnitz— Spinoza —
Hobbes ... . .

CHAPTER V

ANIMISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The attack on ‘ ‘ Substance ” — Locke leads the attack — His dualism — The Deists —
Bishop Berkeley’s idealism — Hume’s scepticism — ^The Wollf^an rationalism
dominant on the Continent — French materialism of the “Enlightenment” —
Kant’s reconciliation of Spiritualism with Materialism — The Vitalists

CHAPTER VI

ANIMISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The romantic speculation — Reaction against it — The modern phase of psycho-
physical discussion introduced by Fechner — Modern defenders of Animism
m Germany, France, Great Britain, and America ....

I'AGES

1-27

28-38

39-45

46-60

61-78

79-86

XXVll

xxviii

BODY AND MIND

CHAPTER VII

MODERN DEVELOPMENTS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE ADVERSE
TO ANIMISM

PAGES

Solipsism unacceptable — The psycho-physical problem to be dealt with by methods of

empincal science — Kinetic mechanism — The law of the conservation of energy 27-93

CHAPTER VIII

THE RISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY AND OF THE
“ PSYCHOLOGY WITHOUT A SOUL ”

Hylozoism of the “ Enlightment Vitalists — Mechanical explanations of vital pro-

cesses confidently assumed — The search for the seat of the soul fails — The
doctrine of the reflex type of all nervous process — Unconscious cerebration —

The association-psychology and the law of habit— The dependence of thought
on integrity of brain-functions — The law of psycho-neural correlation — The
composite nature of the mind ....... 94-118

CHAPTER IX

THE INFLUENCE OF THE DARWINIAN THEORY

Lamarckism — Neo-Darwinism — Organic adaptations mechanically explained — No
need for teleology— Continuity of evolution — Interment of Animism by
Tyndall ..... . . . 119-121

CHAPTER X

CURRENT PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM

Inconceivability of psycho-physical interaction — Variants of the inconceivability
argument — Immediate knowledge of consciousness, but not of the soul —
Rapprochement of science and philosophy on basis of Monism . 122-125

CHAPTER XI

THE AUTOMATON THEORIES

Epiphenomenalism— Its “ energetic ” variant— Psycho-physical Parallelism proper—
Phenomenalistic Parallelism— Psychical Monism as expounded by Paulsen,
Strong, Clifford, and Fechner— Fechner’s “proof” of the sub-conscious—
Fechner’s “ day-view " of nature— Continuity of evolution — Psychical Monism

compatible with scientific Materialism— Its many advantages ,

CONTENTS

xxix

CHAPTER XII

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON-THEORIES AND OF THE SPECIAL
ARGUMENTS IN THEIR FAVOUR

PAGES

Epiphenomenalism combines the difficulties of materialism and of interaction —
Parallelism proper must go on to accept the identity hypothesis in one or
other of its two forms — The ' ‘ two-aspect doctrine ” meaningless — Therefore
Psychical Monism ” the only form of Parallelism deserving of serious con-
sideration — The difficulty of doing without "things” — My self is not my
consciousness, but rather the sum of enduring conditions which we call the
structure of the mind — Difficulties of the compounding of consciousnesses —
Difficulties common to all forms of Parallelism — Universal consciousness —

It necessitates assumption of unconscious consciousness — Parallelism of
mechanical sequences with the logical and teleological . . . 149-178

CHAPTER XIII

IS THERE ANY WAY OF ESCAPE FROM THE DILEMMA — ANIMISM OR
PARALLELISM ?

The acceptance of "idealism” does not absolve us from the psycho-physical
problem — Kant neither resolved nor dissolved the problem — Three attitudes
towards it of Post-Kantians, represented by Parallelism of Paulsen, the
ambiguity of Lange, and the transubjective Idealism of Ward — The last
implies Animism as hypothesis necessary to natural science . . 179-188

CHAPTER XIV

ARGUMENTA AD HOMINEM

Proposed dualism of science and philosophy — A calculable universe— -Animism does
not necessarily imply metaphysical Dualism or Pluralism — Parallelism admits
only pantheistic leligion — Parallelism incompatible with belief in any continu-
ance of personality after death — Fechner, Kant, and Paulsen fail to reconcile
the mechanistic dogma with human immortality — High authorities for and
against Animism ......... 189-205

CHAPTER XV

EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM FROM EPISTEMOLOGY,
“INCONCEIVABILITY,” AND THE LAW OF CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

Necessity of giving all scientific explanation the mechanical form not proved —
Guidance without work — Various possibilities — Argument from conservation
of energy describes a circle — Difficulty of defining the " physical ” — Immediate
awareness not the highest type of knowledge . . . 206-223

CHAPTER XVI

EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM DRAWN FROM
PHYSIOLOGY AND GENERAL BIOLOGY

Inadequate conceptions of intei action alone give plausibility to arguments from
cerebral physiology — Continuity of evolution a postulate — But, if accepted,
not fatal to Animism — Statistics and teleology — Abiogenesis . . . 224-234

XXX

BODY AND MIND

CHAPTER XVII

THE INADEQUACY OF MECHANICAL CONCEPTIONS IN PHYSIOLOGY ^

Last half-century has done nothing to justify physiological materialism— The
impossibility of mechanistic explanation of morphogenesis and heredity —
Experimental embryology, restitution, and regeneration — Orp:anisms and
machines — Organisms and the degradation of energy . . . • 235-245

CHAPTER XVIII

INADEQUACY OF MECHANICAL PRINCIPLES TO EXPLAIN ORGANIC EVOLUTION

Neo-Darwinism based on mechanistic assumption in regard to heredity — Natural
selection implies the struggle for existence — Difficulties of Neo-Darwinism —
Diminished by “ organic selection ’’—But this is a teleological principle— Muta-
tions not fortuitous— Regeneration not explicable on Darwinian principles —
Resuscitation of Vitalism— Appendix on organic selection . . . 246-257

CHAPTER XIX

INADEQUACY OF MECHANICAL CONCEPTIONS TO EXPLAIN
ANIMAL AND HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

The " total reactions” of animalcules are not tropisms — Persistence and “trial and
error ’* among the lowest animals— Purely instinctive actions initiated by per-
ceptions which involve mental synthesis — Instinctive actions co-operating with
intelligence imply more extensive synthesis — Meaning and purpose as factors
in instinctive behaviour — Human instincts — “Meaning” is an essential link
between sense-impression and reaction — ^Values . . . 258-271

CHAPTER XX

THE ARGUMENT TO PSYCHO-PHYSICAL INTERACTION FROM
THE “DISTRIBUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS”

Darwinism implies the usefulness of consciousness — And not merely of infra-con-
sciousness, but of integrated personal consciousness — True consciousness
accompanies not all nervous processes, but only those which result m modifi-
cation .... ... 272-280

CHAPTER XXI

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Two lines of argument — The metaphysical (Lotze) valid, but not capable of con-
vincing — The physiological — The sensortum commune^ variously conceived —

All these conceptions untenable— No physical medium of composition of effects
of sense-stimuli— Some medium demanded by our intellect — Why refuse to
trust it?— Fechner’s doctrine of the threshold and of psycho-physical con-
tinuity— The facts of sensory "fusion ” incompatible with Parallelism, however
stated — Multiple personality ...... 281-300

CONTENTS

XXXI

CHAPTER XXII

THE PSYCHO-PHYSICS OF “MEANING”

The association-psychology ignored “meaning” — But without meaning “ideas”
are meaningless — The doctrine of the “psychic fringe” — Spatial meanings
are not identical with clusters of kinaesthetic sensations— Sensations are
merely cues to meanings — And meanings are relatively independent of sensa-
tions and have no physical parallels ......

CHAPTER XXIII

PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION

The facts of feeling-tqne — Feeling has no immediate correlate among the brain-
processes — Yet feeling determines the trend of thought and action — Feeling
and the establishment of associations — Feeling and evolution — The
peculiarities of conative process have no physical analogues .

CHAPTER XXIV

MEMORY

Parallelism implies that all mental retention can be described in terms of brain-
structure — The fantastic ‘ ‘ memory-cell”— Motor-habit the type of all retention
founded in brain-structure — But true memory cannot be identified with habit
— The law of neural association as generally stated is false — All remembering
involves co-operation of two factors, habit and true memory — Suggestion
towards a theory of memory ... ...

CHAPTER XXV

THE BEARING OF THE RESULTS OF “PSYCHICAL RESEARCH”
ON THE PSYCHO- PHYSICAL PROBLEM

The search for empirical evidence of survival — Telepathy seems to be established —
Hypernormal control of bodily by mental processes — Post-hypnotic apprecia-
tion of time .........

CHAPTER XXVI

CONCLUSION

Animism preferable to Parallelism — Four varieties of Animism — The animistic
“actuelle Seele” — The transmission theory of James and Bergson — The
objections to the soul-theory flimsy, if psycho-physical interaction is accepted
— The contentless soul — The soul a developing system of psychical disposi-
tions — Multiple personalities are of two kinds, both consistent with the soul-
theory— The vegetative functions of the soul — The soul-theory and organic
evolution ..........

PAGES

301-311

312-329

330*346

347-354

3S5-379

Index .

. 381-384

BODY AND MIND

CHAPTER I

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

I T would seem that from a very remote period men of almost
all races have entertained the belief that the living man
differs from the corpse in that his body contains some
more subtle thing or principle which determines its purposive
movements, its growth and self-repair, and to which is due his
capacity for sensation, thought, and feeling. For the belief in
some such animating principle, or soul, is held by almost every
existing race of men, no matter how lowly their grade of culture
nor how limited their mental powers ; and we find evidences of
a similar belief among the earliest human records.

Among the more highly civilized peoples, the soul has generally
been regarded by the more cultured members of each community
as an immaterial being or agency ; but the distinction between
material and immaterial things was only achieved after long ages
of discussion and by many steps of refinement of the conception
of the soul The belief most widely current among the peoples
of lower culture is that each man consists, not only of the body
which is constantly present among his fellows, but also of a
shadowy vapour-like duplicate of his body ; this shadow-like
image, the animating principle of the living organism, is thought
to be capable of leaving the body, of transporting itself rapidly,
if not instantaneously, from place to place, and of manifesting
in those places all or most of the powers that it exerts in the
body during waking life. Sleep is regarded as due to its
temporary withdrawal from the body ; trance, coma, and other
serious illness, as due to longer absence ; and death is thought
to imply its final departure to some distant place.

That this belief is a very real one among many peoples, is
shown by their careful observance of customs in which it finds

1

2

BODY AND MIND

expression. Thus, among some of the peoples who entertain this
belief, it is customary to avoid wakening a sleeper, lest his wander-
ing soul should not return to him ; and, if it becomes absolutely
necessary to waken him, it is done as gradually as possible, in
order that his soul may have time to find its way back to the body.
Or again, the friends of a sick person will procure a medicine-man,
who, falling into trance, will send his soul after the retreating soul,
to arrest it if possible on its journey toward the land of the dead,
and to lead it back to the body of the patient. And after death
the friends or relatives will take all possible measures to aid the
departing soul on its journey, and to promote its welfare m the
land of shades, where it is believed to lead a life very much like
that of its embodied state in this world.^

The burial customs of many peoples afford the best evidence
that the disembodied soul is conceived as like in all essential
respects to the living whole of soul and body. The widespread
custom of killing slaves or wives on the death of a man of some
importance is an expression of the belief that the souls of the
victims will accompany his soul and will continue to serve it as
they served him before death. And the even more widely spread
custom of burying or burning with the body of the dead man his
most valued possessions, especially weapons and ornaments, is due
to the belief that even these things have their shadowy duplicates
or ghost-souls, which can be carried away by the departing soul
and used by it as the real objects were used by the living man.

Professor E. B. Tylor first clearly expounded this primitive
conception of the ghost-soul, showed its wide distribution in space
and time, and illustrated with a wealth of detail its many varia-
tions, in his celebrated chapters on Animism ; ^ and there can be
no reasonable doubt that he has given the true account of its
origin, in attributing it in the main to reflection upon the experi-
ences of dreams and visions, in conjunction with the objectively
observed facts of sleep, trance, and death. In sleep, while the
body lies at rest, the sleeper remains unconscious of the surround-
ings of his body ; he seems to himself to visit other scenes, to
meet and converse with other persons, and to have the use in
these dream-adventures of his dress and weapons. In visions and

^ Among the Kayans of Borneo, for example, it is the custom for an elderly
person learned in such matters to sit beside the corpse, where the soul is sup-
posed to hover for some days after death, and to impart to the latter minute
directions for its journey to the land of the dead.

2 Primitive Culture,” first edition, London, 1871 ; especially chap. xi.

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

3

in dreams he sees, too, the shadowy forms of dead friends. Since,
then, most savages regard their dream-experiences as equally real
with those of waking life, they naturally and inevitably arrive at
the theory that the ghost-self, which in dreams can appear in
distant places, leaving the deserted body in death-like stillness,
is identical with the animating principle.

It is sometimes said that primitive man conceives the ghost-
soul as material ; while Professor Tylor describes it as a spiritual-
istic conception. But to describe the primitive ghost-soul as
either matter or spirit is misleading ; if these terms are to be
applied to it, we must describe it as a material spirit This is,
of course, a contradiction in terms, which we can only resolve by
recognizing that the peoples who believe in the ghost-soul have
not achieved the comparatively modern distinction between
material and immaterial or spiritual existents. It is clear that
the ghost-soul is generally conceived as having many of the pro-
perties of matter, and as having the same needs as the embodied
soul, as subject to the pains of cold and heat, of hunger and thirst,
and as being bound, though less strictly than the body, by con-
ditions of space and matter. This quasi-materiality of the
ghost-soul is well illustrated by the custom, observed among
many peoples, of making a hole in the roof or wall of the death-
chamber for the exit of the departing soul, or by that of sinking
a bamboo tube through the earth above the buried corpse in order
to allow the soul to revisit it

Two things seem chiefly to have determined the form of the
primitive belief as to the substance of the ghost-soul, namely,* the
shadow and the breath. Each man’s shadow is an impalpable
something which has a certain likeness to the man, and which
accompanies him when actively employed, but which disappears
when he lies down in sleep or death. And the breath that comes
and goes from his nostrils seems bound up with his life, and dis-
appears at death. In some regions the new-born babe is held to
the mouth of a dying person, in order to receive his escaping soul
or breath. And language clearly shows the important part
played by the ideas of the shadow and of the breath in such
words as manes and shade, spirit, spiritus^ anima^ animus^ pneumUy
and in similar words of many other languages.

The conception of the ghost-soul cannot be better defined
than in the following words of Professor Tylor, from whose
classical account the foregoing brief description has been con-

BODY AND MIND

4

densed. He writes : “ It is a thin, unsubstantial human image,
in its nature a sort of vapour, film, or shadow ; the cause of life
and thought in the individual it animates ; independently possess-
ing the personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal
owner, past or present ; capable of leaving the body far behind,
to flash swiftly from place to place ; mostly impalpable and
invisible, yet also manifesting physical power, and especially
appearing to men waking or asleep as a phantasm separate from
the body of which it bears the likeness ; continuing to exist and
appear to men after the death of that body ; able to enter into,
possess, and act in the bodies of other men, of animals, and even
of things.” ^

Since the publication of ‘‘Primitive Culture,” the origin of
Animism has been the subject of much discussion and con-
troversy ; but in their main outlines Dr Tylor’s account of the
ghost-soul, and his theory of the genesis of the idea, seem to
remain unshaken. Mr Andrew Lang has urged that waking
hallucinations or apparitions (in , common phrase, the seeing of
ghosts) may have played an important part in developing the
idea. Mr R. R. Marett ^ and others have attempted to describe
a pre-animistic conception, which attributed an ill-defined power
or virtue to all things that evoked awe in the mind of primitive
man ; it is suggested that this notion was the common matrix from
which ideas of the souls of men, animals, and plants, anthropo-
morphic conceptions of natural forces, the ideas of gods and demons,
in fact, all ideas of spiritual existences, have been differentiated.
These are interesting suggestions which, in so far as they are
accepted (and to me a strong case seems to be made out for both
views), are to be regarded as supplementing Dr Tylor s doctrine,
rather than as conflicting with it ^

^ Primitive Culture,” third edition, vol. i p 429...

2 The Threshold of Religion,” London, 1908.

2 More recently Mr A. E. Crawley has published a work (” The Idea of
the Soul ”) in which he claims to have completely refuted Dr Tylor’s theory
of the origin of the ghost -soul, and to have established a rival. To my
mind the weight of the arguments brought forward against Dr Tyior’s view
is a negligible quantity, and the hjqiothesis proposed as an alternative seems
highly improbable. Mr Crawley maintains that the visual images of waking
life are the source from which primitive man derived his ideas of the souls of
men and things. Though this view cannot be seriously entertained as a sub-
stitute for Dr Tylor’s theory, it may, I think, be regarded as supplementing it,
by drawing attention to a factor which may have played some considerable part
in the genesis of the ghost-soul, and which, perhaps, has not been sufficiently
taken into account. The tendency to visualize our dead friends, when we think

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

5

The ascription by primitive men of ghost-souls to animals,
plants, and inert objects, is probably regarded as an extension
of the theory first arrived at by reflection on the problem
of human life. Such extension was rendered almost inevitable
by the fact that persons met in dreams and visions, as well as the
dreamer himself, seem to have about them their dogs, their
weapons, their dress, and other material objects. It seems
probable also that the ghost-soul of man was the first definite
conception of personal intelligent powers, living and working in
detachment from ordinary solid matter and all the narrow
limitations of embodied existence. If so, the developments of
ideas of other powers of a similar, but non-human, nature,
demons, gods, spirits good and evil of all sorts, must have been
in large degree merely extensions and differentiations of this
fundamental notion of the human ghost-soul.^

In various ages and places many variants of this primitive
conception of the ghost-soul have been held ; some savages, for
example, agree with certain philosophers of classical antiquity in
assigning to each man two, three, or even four souls of different
functions. But the diversities of the opinions of uncultured
peoples on this great subject are far less striking than the
uniformities ; and the theory of the ghost-soul is so widely
distributed throughout all regions of the world, and gives so
natural and satisfactory explanations of so many facts that force
themselves upon the attention of men of every grade of culture,
that we may suppose it to have been independently reached by
many peoples. So concordant is it with the way of thinking of
unsophisticated mankind, that it has lived on up to the present
day in the popularly accepted traditions of almost all the peoples
of the world ; and every feature of the primitive conception is
illustrated by practices and beliefs still current among the most
highly civilized peoples of Europe. Even the belief in the
materiality of the soul still finds expression in the custom of
opening the door or window of the death-chamber to give free
egress to the departing soul,^ and in the German superstition ^

of them, is strong in most of ns, and perhaps stronger in the men of primitive
culture than in others. And this tendency may well have facilitated the develop-
ment of the notion of the ghost-soul by reflection upon the facts of sleep, dream,
trance, and death.

^ This is the view forcibly defended by Prof. W. Wundt in his Volher-psycho-
logte (second edition, vol. iv. part i.), Leipzig, 1910.

* Primitive Culture,” vol. i. p. 454. ® Ihid., vol. i. p. 455.

6

BODY AND MIND

that the ghost-soul of a mother who dies in child-birth will return
to suckle the infant and will leave the impress of its weight upon
the bed.

The history of Animism throughout the course of the develop-
ment of European civilization affords one of the most striking
illustrations of the law that, in every civilized community, two
streams of tradition, two strata of belief and custom, persist side
by side, influencing one another, but never fusing : namely, the
stream of popular tradition and the literary tradition of the
cultured few.

Throughout the development of European civilization,
popular beliefs regarding the nature and destiny of the human
soul have remained vague, diversified, and fluctuating. Although,
amid all changes, the primitive conception of the ghost -soul
has persisted in the popular mind, for just the same reasons as
have led to its independent adoption by so many savage peoples ;
it has been modified in various ways, and partially overlaid and
obscured, by the teachings of the leaders of religious, philoso-
phical, and scientific thought. The elements taken up by the
popular tradition from these sources have been for the most part
logically incompatible with the theory of the ghost-soul ; and this
incompatibility has no doubt played a principal part in preventing,
within the stream of popular tradition, the formation of any
definite and generally accepted notion, and in maintaining in every
age among large numbers of the people a sceptical or negative
attitude towards the doctrine of a future life.

The further civilization has progressed, the more chaotic has the
state of popular opinion upon this great question become ; until,
at the present time, there is current among us almost every
variety of opinion and belief that the foregoing generations have
excogitated.

To attempt to trace the devious and many-branched course
of the muddy stream of popular tradition would be a hopeless
task. In the following pages I am concerned only with the
history of Animism in the culture-tradition. I have to attempt
to show how, starting with primitive Animism, the culture-
tradition has successively modified it and refined it ; until at the
present day the venerable doctrine seems to be on the point
of being finally dismissed to the anthropologists’ museum of
curiosities.

The principal influences that differentiated the Animism of

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

7

the culture-tradition from primitive Animism, and set it upon its
long and troubled course, were: (i) the teachings of the Hebrew
prophets ; (2) the speculations of the theologians and philosophers
of ancient Greece; and (3) the efforts of the Christian fathers,
influenced by the culture-tradition of the ancient Greek world
as well as by that of the Hebrews, to set up a consistent and
generally acceptable doctrine of the soul among the dogmas of
the Church. The operation of these influences will be briefly
traced in the present and in the following chapter.

The primitive Hebrew conception of the soul was essentially
the same as the ghost-soul of so many other peoples. As the
Rev. Prof. Charles points out,^ we must distinguish the
earlier from the later view expressed in the Old Testament.
According to the earlier view, “man consists of two elements,
spirit or soul and body ” ; “ the soul is the seat of feeling and
desire, and, in a secondary degree, of the intelligence, and is
identified with the personality ; the soul leaves the body at
death (though, as by so many other peoples, it was thought of as
hovering in its neighbourhood for some time after death) to pass
to the dark underworld of the souls of the dead, Sheol. “ The
relations and customs of earth were reproduced in Sheol. Thus
the prophet was distinguished by his mantle, kings by their
crowns and thrones, the uncircumcised by his foreskin. Each
nation also preserved its individuality, and no doubt its national
garb and customs. . . . Indeed the departed were regarded as
reproducing exactly the same features as marked them at the
moment of death.” And the ghost-souls of ancestors were
believed to have knowledge of their descendants and to benefit
from their ministrations Under the teaching of the prophets
and the development of Monotheism, the spirit began to be dis-
tinguished from the soul ; and, while the soul remained as the
vital principle of the body and as the seat of all the mental
activities, it was not conceived as surviving the death of the body
— “ in death the soul is extinguished and only the spirit survives.
But since the spirit is only the impersonal force of life common
to men and brutes, it returns to the Fount of all life, and thus all
personal existence ceases at death.” “ In the above threefold
division of man’s personality the spirit and soul are distinct alike

1 A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life in Israel, in Judaism,
and in Christianity,” by R. H. Charles, D.D.

8

BODY AND MIND

in essence and origin. The former is the impersonal basis of life
coming from God, and returning on death to God. The latter,
which is the personal factor in man, is simply the supreme
function of the quickened body, and perishes on the withdrawal
of the spirit.'’ Hence, according to this later view, the soul is
annihilated at the death of the body, and Sheol, the abode of the
souls, became a synonym of Abaddon or destruction.” But, says
Prof. Charles, “this doctrine never succeeded in dispossessing
the older and rival doctrine ; their conflicting views of soul and
spirit were current together ” ^ ; that is to say, the primitive con-
ception of the ghost-soul lived on among the Hebrews alongside
the later developed and, doubtless, less popular, because more
difficult, conception.

Just as among the Hebrews the notion of the ghost-soul
continued to be widely entertained, in spite of the teaching by
the prophets of a more difficult conception of human personality ;
so also among the Greeks the ghost-soul retained its place in
popular belief, while the philosophers developed a literary tradition
in which the conception of the soul underwent many changes,
and in which almost every phase of later speculation upon this
topic was either foreshadowed or definitely taught.

The pages of Homer show clearly enough that the Greeks of
the Homeric age believed in the ghost-soul. But their conception
differed markedly in certain respects from the typical ghost-soul
of primitive Animism and of so many savage and barbarous
peoples in all ages. The typical ghost-soul enjoys all the powers,
both bodily and mental, of the living man, and differs from the
man chiefly in being less substantial and less strictly subject to
limitations of time and space ; but the ghost-soul of the Homeric
Greeks, the eidolon {ilhcaXov) or psyche was not conceived

as the bearer of the mental faculties, or at least not as enjoying
the whole of the mental faculties of the living man. It was
rather a shadowy image merely, which leaves the body of the
dying man by way of the mouth or gaping wound ; and this
shadow or shade, descending to Hades, enjoyed but the shadow of
its former life and powers. The strength and will, the intellect
and mental powers in general, were supposed to reside in the
region of the diaphragm and to be dissolved or annihilated at
the death of the body. Disembodied minds were unknown to

^ Op. cttf p. 44.

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

9

the Greeks of this age ; even their gods lived upon the earth, and
were fully incarnate in bodies which differed from those of men
only in that they were subject to neither disease nor death.

The shades, once banished to Hades, were strictly imprisoned
there ; and thus the Homeric world was freed from the terror of
ghosts that has haunted, and still haunts, almost all other peoples.
And the cult of the dead had no recognized place in that world ;
for the dead were incapable of influencing the living for good or ill.

It is clear, then, that the Homeric Greeks had departed widely
from primitive Animism ; that they had modified it in a way
natural to their vigorous, joyous, and but little religious dis-
position, in a period of national expansion and victorious self-
assertion.

There is no reason to doubt that at an earlier period Animism
of the more usual kind had been current among them ; traces
of this, and of the cult of the dead appropriate to it, survive in the
story of Achilles and Patroclus and of the funeral sacrifices of
wine, sheep, oxen, horses, and Trojan youths. These seem to
have been but ceremonial survivals of a cult of souls that had
prevailed in an earlier age, when souls were dreaded for their
active powers of intervention in human life.^

There appears in the Homeric writings a foretaste of that
tendency to the reification of abstractions which was to play so
great a part in the philosophy of later ages. The psyche is
sometimes identified with life ; and the mental powers, regarded
as resident in the region of the diaphragm, are sometimes attri-
buted to the or /SouXjJ, entities which, though belonging to

the body, are not identified with any bodily organs.

The continuance of the ghost-soul in Hades did not constitute
a survival of personality ; for to the Greeks of this age the body
was an essential part of personality. Nevertheless there appears
in Homer, possibly as a late addition, the belief in the immortality
of a favoured few. This immortality was not an immortality of
the soul alone, but rather of the whole person, who was conceived
as transported bodily by the favour of some divinity to ‘‘ the isles
of the blest,” or to “ the Elysian fields,” a distant region of the
earth which might yet be discovered by the daring voyager.
This notion, probably a poetic invention, was given a permanent
place in popular belief by its embodiment in the Homeric poems ;

^ In this brief account of the Homeric and post-Homeric beliefs I follow
Hrwin Rhode’s “ Psyche,” second edition, Leipzig, 1906.

10

BODY AND MIND

it was a natural supplement to the peculiar form that Greek
Animism had assumed.

The Homeric beliefs continued to be generally held up
to the sixth century B.C. ; but a new class of immortals arose,
men who, like the dwellers in the Happy Isles, had not known
death, but who, by the power of some god, were engulfed in
some deep chasm or cave, swallowed by earthquake, or struck
but not killed by the bolt of Zeus ; and these heroes became
in many cases the centres of local cults. It was probably under
the influence of this belief and of these cults that the pre-Homeric
belief in the survival of the personality after death was revived.
Hesiod’s doctrine of the Golden Age seems to have played a
considerable part in restoring this belief For he taught that,
though the men of the Golden Age had died, their souls were
raised by the will of Zeus to a life even fuller and richer than
that they had enjoyed in the body ; and these souls, partaking of
the immortal nature of the gods, and known like them as Daemons,
were regarded by him as wandering invisible among men, seeing
their good and their evil deeds.

There can be little doubt that these influences played a con-
siderable part in bringing into prominence in the religious
life of post- Homeric Greece a new cult of the dead. Not all men
were held to survive the death of the body, but only great leaders,
men who in life had bulked large in the eyes of their fellows.
At this time earth-burial had replaced the funeral pyre of the
Homeric age, and the soul of the dead hero was believed to
hover in the neighbourhood of the tomb where his bones were laid.
Since these surviving souls were held to be capable of affecting
the welfare of men, especially of their own descendants, they
became the objects of local and family cults and of propitiatory
rites. Wine, honey, oil, and burnt sheep were offered to the dead
hero ; and the whole cult implied the belief that the dead man
lived on among his people but little changed by death. This
survival did not imply immortality of the soul ; rather the con-
tinuance of the soul depended upon the maintenance of the cult
by the friends, especially the family, of the dead hero.

The hero attained this life after death by the favour of some
god, generally announced by the Delphic oracle ; but the process
became easier and more frequent, and the heroes multiplied rapidly,
until it was customary to regard as surviving in this way all that
fell in glorious battle.

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

li

A still wider gate to the life after death was opened by the
Eleusinian Mysteries. These were derived from the cult of
Demeter and Persephone of Eleusis, the local divinities of the
underworld. The cult was adopted by Athens, and became ever
more widely open ; until even slaves were admitted to initiation.
Those initiated to participation in this cult were held to be
assured of a future life less shadowy and unreal than the life of
the dim underworld of shades, which still was all that the
uninitiated could look forward to. Thus the hope of a future life
became possible to all men ; but still there was no general
acceptance of a belief in the immortality of the soul.

This first appeared in Greece with the Dionysiac cult, whose
central feature was a mystic union of the worshipper with the god.
In the original form of the cult as practised in Thrace, the wor-
shippers gave themselves up to a wild dance. In the excitement
of the dance they attained an ecstatic exaltation which they
believed to imply their possession by the bull-god ; the soul of the
ecstatic was supposed to depart from his body and to wander in
distant scenes, holding communion with gods and daemons.

From Thrace this cult spread throughout all Greece, fusing
with the cult of Apollo. Under its influence the populace became
familiar with the notion that the soul, with all the mental faculties,
is separable from the body ; and under the same influence there
sprang up the belief that the soul is formed for a higher destiny
than its life in the body, that it is clogged and held down by
its association with the body, and that it must be freed from this
degrading influence by purificatory and ascetic rites.

In the Orphic cult these ideas were further developed, until
the soul was regarded as having its true life among the gods, its
life in the body being a temporary banishment from this true or
higher life. The soul at death goes to judgment in the under-
world. Thence it returns to be reincarnated again and again,
until it is wholly purified ; when it is set free to live for ever with
the gods. In fact, under the influence of the Dionysiac and
Orphic cults, the soul came to be regarded as a god imprisoned in
the body.^ But immortality had always been the most funda-
mental attribute of the gods, and thus the human soul, by
assimilation to the gods, became immortal.

While Animism was developing towards the theory of human
^ Rhode, op. cit., II. S. 133.

12

BODY AND MIND

immortality of the Orphic theologians, the philosophers known as
the Ionian physicists initiated, in the sixth century B.C., that pro-
longed effort to learn by pure unprejudiced reasoning the ultimate
nature of things which we call European philosophy. It was
their principal aim to exhibit the whole world as the manifestation
of some fundamental and primary mode of being. And this aim
led them to reject from the outset both the Animism of popular
opinion and that of the theologians. For them the soul of man
was but one mode of manifestation of the power which moves and
works in all things, without which the world would be dead and
motionless and unchanging. The psyche of these philosophers
had nothing in common with the psyche of the Homeric traditions.
The word was used by them to denote the powers of thinking,
feeling, willing (and the untranslatable which, according to

the Homeric tradition, were bodily functions resident about the
diaphragm. Nor was their psyche an individual immortal being
like that of the Animism of the Orphic priesthood. The question
as to personal immortality seemed meaningless to these philo-
sophers ; nevertheless, since the soul is the working in man of
the power that moves all things, the universal life itself, it is, in
a sense, imperishable and immortal. So conceived, “ the soul
acquired a new dignity; in another sense than that of the mystics
and the theologians, it could be claimed as divine ; in the sense,
namely, that it is a partial manifestation of the one power which
builds and guides the universe. Not a single daemon is it, but
the divine power itself.” ^

The principal Ionian physicists adopted different views of the
nature of that which they sought as the foundation and origin of
all things. Thales (B.c. 636), the first of them, held that the
fundamental element is water ; Anaximenes, that it is the
universal air, “Diogenes adopted the tenet of Anaximenes
respecting Air as the origin of things ; but he gave a wider and
deeper significance to the tenet by pointing out the analogy of
air with the soul (or life). . . . The air is a soul ; therefore it is
living and intelligent. But this Force of Intelligence is a higher
thing than the air through which it manifests itself; it must con-
sequently be prior in point of time ; it must be the
philosophers have sought. The Universe is a living being,
spontaneously evolving itself, deriving its transformations from its
own vitality.” ^ Thus air was for Diogenes but the symbol of mind.

Rhode, op, cit.y II. S. 143. ^ Lewes’ “History of Philosophy,” vol. i. p. ii.

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

13

Heraclitus (503 B.C.), who belongs to this group of thinkers,
elaborated this type of speculation on the basis of the assump-
tion that fire is the principle of life and action which works in
the perpetual fiux of things. ‘‘Whatever in the manifold of
phenomena partakes of the nature of the divine fire is for
Heraclitus soul, and soul is fire. Fire and soul are interchange-
able notions, and so the soul of man also is fire, a part of the
universal vital fire which envelops it, and through the inbreathing
of which the soul maintains itself alive, a part of the universal
reason, by participation in which the soul itself is reasonable. In
man lives the god. Not that, as in the doctrine of the theo-
logians, he descends as a closed individuality into the form of a
single human being ; but, as a unity, he envelops mankind, per-
meating men as with tongues of fire. A part of the all-wisdom
lives in the soul of man ; . . . the soul is such a part of the
universal fire which, absorbed into the flux of existing forms, is
bound up and interwoven with the bodily functions.’’ ^ The fire
which is the soul perpetually converts itself into the water and
earth of which the body is composed, and thus builds up the body ;
while it renews itself by drafts from the universal fire. The
soul, being thus constantly in process of conversion into the lower
elements and constantly renewed, is no enduring self-identical
entity. “ So long as the soul renews itself from the enveloping
world-fire, the individual lives. Separation from the source of all
life, the universal fire, would be death. Now and then, in sleep
and dreams, the individual soul loses its life-giving connexion
with the universal fire and is for a time shut up in its own world,
and this is a partial death. . . . There comes a moment at which
the soul of man can no longer make good what it loses in the
process of metabolism, and then comes death.” Thus the
individual dies, but the universal fire is eternal, “ The question as to
individual immortality, or even the continuance of the individual
soul, has scarcely any meaning for Heraclitus. . . . The indi-
vidual as a separate being has no value and significance ; the
perpetuation of this separate existence (if it were possible) would
seem to him an absurdity. For him only the fire as a whole is
eternal ; not its separate manifestations in individuals, but only
the universal energy which transmutes itself into all things and
reabsorbs all things into itself.” ^

^ Rhode, op. ctt.. II. S. 146,

* Op. cit., II., S. 154.

u

BODY AND MIND

For the Ionian philosophers of nature, the soul was, then, a
part of nature, and psychology a part of natural science. There
was for them no distinction between the physical and the psychical ;
rather, all things, including life and mind, were manifestations of
one universal energy.^

Though philosophy had thus begun its course by the rejection
of Animism, it was not long before the popular doctrine found a
powerful defender among the philosophers. Pythagoras founded
his school and acquired a great influence, hardly a generation after
Thales appeared as the first of the philosophers. The Ionian
philosophy, contemplating the whole of nature, had wellnigh over-
looked man, regarding him as but an insignificant fragment of the
whole. Pythagoras restored man and the problems of human
nature to their position of prime and central importance, giving
the soul of man a central position in his doctrine.

The human soul was conceived as in the Animism then current
in the dominant religious sect, namely, as the double of the visible
body and as a daemon, i.e. a godlike and immortal being fallen
from the divine heights in which is its true home, and shut up in
the body for punishment The soul was distinguished from the
body as something opposed to nature, rather than a part of it.
Even during its sojourn in the body it has no organic relation to
it, but maintains uncontaminated its peculiar nature. It does not
constitute the personality of the man, for any soul may inhabit
any body ; and after death it tarries in Hades, whence it returns
again and again to earth, seeking each time a new body for its
abode. So it wanders during long ages, inhabiting in turn many
human and animal bodies ; its fate at each incarnation being deter-
mined by its actions during its preceding periods of embodied life.
But it is immortal, and in its essence an unchanging individual
being. Its ultimate destiny is to be freed from the bonds of the
natural life of the body, and to return to dwell for ever in the
supernatural realm of pure souls whence it came. The practical
aspect and ultimate aim of the Pythagorean philosophy was to
learn how to hasten this return of the soul to its divine home by
means of ascetic and purificatory rites.

^ The conception of energy current at the present day was of course unknown
to the ancients ; but if, in the teachings of Herachtus, we substitute energy for
fire, we shall realize that he was striving after the modern conception, and that
he foreshadowed the modern doctrine of the conservation of energy and the
view, upheld at the present time by some distinguished physicists, according
to which both mind and matter are but manifestations of the universal energy.

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 15

Thus, at the very dawn of philosophy, we find the leading
thinkers arrayed in the opposed camps of naturalistic Monism
and animistic Pluralism.

Another very influential philosopher, Empedocles (b.c. 444),
gave to the soul a position very similar to that which it occu-
pied in the Pythagorean doctrine. His teaching differed from
the latter in that he attempted the impossible task of combining
a wide-ranging Animism, similar to the Pythagorean, with a
thoroughgoing Hylozoism like that of the Ionian school. The
soul was for him “ of a divine order, too noble for this visible
world, only on release from which it will attain its full and true
life. Banished to the body, it leads there its separate existence ;
not everyday perception and feeling is its part, nor even reasoning,
which is the function of the heart’s blood ; but in the ' higher ’
modes of thought and in ecstatic ‘ exaltation ’ only is it active ; to
it belongs the philosophical insight which, penetrating beyond the
apprehension of the narrow range of sensory experience, knows
the totality of the world’s being according to its true nature.” ^

About the same time that Empedocles thus formulated anew
the animistic philosophy, Anaxagoras and Democritus took up
again the way of thought of the Ionian school, and the latter
especially carried it to a more definite issue than had been
reached by any of his predecessors.

Anaxagoras occupies a middle position between the animists
and the naturalists For him the universal power that moves
and orders all things is Reason (voDg). Wherever in the world life
and movement appear, there this universal power is active. Its
activity within an animated being constitutes the soul of that
being. At death, therefore, the individual soul ceases to exist,
but the supreme power remains. Yet so uncertain still was the
distinction between matter and spirit that, according to Lewes,
the supreme energy “ was only the abstract form of the vital
principle animating animals and plants,” and ‘‘ was simply one
among the numerous agents, material like the rest, and only
differing from them in being pure ” ; and Grote says of it that
it is one substance or form of matter among the rest, but thinner
than all of them, thinner even than fire or air.”

Democritus (B.c. 460) gave the speculations of the Ionian
school a more modern and definitely materialistic form by
reducing all things to material atoms and their movements.

^ Rhode, op, cit., II. S. 185.

BODY AND MIND

l6

The atom was an indivisible unit constantly in motion, and by
impact with others constantly imparting and receiving motion.
The soul, that which animates living beings, consists also of
atoms, w'hich are peculiar only in being finer, smoother, more
rounded, and therefore more mobile, than any others ; these finest
atoms permeate the whole body and produce the phenomena of
life. These soul atoms are drawn in with the breath, and, when
they are no longer breathed in, death ensues. Democritus is
assigned by Rhode the distinction of being the first Greek thinker
explicitly to deny that the individual may in any sense survive
the death of the body.

Democritus’ conception of the soul was thus very different
from the primitive ghost-soul ; nevertheless this latter conception
seems to have been familiar to him and to have been used by
him in a novel manner ; he first proposed a theory of percep-
tion, teaching that, when we see solid objects, it is because these
objects throw off shadow-like images of themselves (j’JhwXa,) which
enter the eye and pass through it into the soul. As Professor
Tylor^ has pointed out, there is good reason to believe that
these itboiXa were the ghost-souls of popular belief adapted to
serve a new purpose ; in this changed capacity the ghost-soul
survived for long ages in the literary tradition.

Protagoras, the pupil of Democritus, developed into a
thoroughgoing sensationalism his master’s doctrine that thought
and sensation are identical, and thus provided the mental
atomism which has always been the necessary supplement of
metaphysical materialism.

The pre-Socratic philosophy thus culminated in a thorough-
going Materialism. The doctrine of the Ionian philosophers
was not properly Materialism, for the distinction between matter
and spirit had not yet been clearly drawn. It is impossible to
say that their universal principles {e.g, the air of Diogenes, the fire
of Heraclitus) were more nearly allied to the spiritual or to the
physical, as conceived by later thought Nor did the conception
of the soul entertained by the animistic philosophers imply any
clear distinction between the material or physical and the spiritual
or mental, such as has been commonly maintained in later ages.
For them it seems to have retained something of the nature of
the daemon of the theologians from which it derived, and this in
turn was but the ghost-soul of primitive Animism, glorified by
^ “ Primitive Culture," vol. i p. 497.

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

17

assimilation to the nature of the gods, but still, like them,
incompletely dematerialized.

That the distinction was not clearly drawn by the Pythago-
reans appears from the fact that they saw in the motes, which dance
in the sunbeam with apparently spontaneous movement, discarnate
souls seeking new bodies, in which to take up again their earth-
life. And that Empedocles also failed to achieve this distinction
is shown by his assigning to the body all the mental functions,
save only those which he regarded as of the most exalted kind
and alone worthy of the soul, namely, processes of ecstatic vision
and philosophic intuition.

Democritus, by giving greater definition to the notion of
matter and by describing the universe as composed wholly of
atoms of matter in motion, sharpened the issue between
Materialism and Animism, and prepared the way for the clearer
distinction between matter and spirit which Plato established
in the literary tradition of Europe, and to the abolition of
which the efforts of modern philosophers have been so largely
directed.

Plato's teaching in regard to the soul and its relation to the
body is scattered through a number of the dialogues, which were
written at considerable intervals of time ; and during the long
course of his philosophic activity his views seem to have under-
gone considerable changes. Partly for this reason, and partly
because much of what he wrote of the soul took the form of
symbolism in the myths, whose aim was moral and aesthetic
rather than strictly scientific, it is impossible to summarize his
doctrine in any clear-cut and entirely consistent statement.

The view of the soul expressed in the earlier dialogues is
part of an ontological scheme whose nature was largely
determined by ethical considerations. Two realms of being
are distinguished ; on the one hand the realm of intelligible and
true Being, consisting of the timeless unchanging Ideas ; on the
other hand the realm of Becoming, to which belong all objects of
sense-perception (including, of course, the human body).

Souls are existences of a third class, whose function it is to
mediate between these two realms. Their position in this
ontological scheme is peculiar. They belong in a sense to
both realms, for they are active in both. Souls have affinity to
or kinship with the Ideas, and it is in virtue only of their kinship

1 8 BODY AND MIND

that they are able to contemplate and know the Ideas. Like the
Ideas, they are wholly immaterial and wholly real ; yet they are
necessarily different from them, if only because they know them,
and because they are subject to change in their intercourse
with the realm of becoming. But the soul differs still more
widely from the body, with whose nature it has nothing in
common. The soul’s activities are of two principal kinds,
knowing and moving or causing movement The cognitive
activity is exercised in two very different ways : on the one
hand, by immediate contemplation of the Ideas the soul attains
true knowledge ; on the other hand, by the aid of the bodily
faculties, it becomes aware of the objects of the sensible world ;
and these stir up within it imperfect reminiscences of the Ideas
of which they are the symbols or shadows. These two modes
of cognitive activity, distinguished as Reason (vovg) and Sense
and sometimes referred to by Plato as functions of
different parts of the soul, were regarded as yielding two kinds
of knowledge of very different value, true knowledge and mere
opinion respectively.

In regard to the soul’s function as a principle of movement,
it is to be noted that, whereas earlier philosophers had generally
regarded the soul (or soul-atoms) as moving spontaneously in
space and as capable of imparting its motion to other things,
Plato regarded the soul, not as itself in movement, but as that
which initiates or generates all movement. This at least seems
to be his meaning, if we consider his remarks on this head in the
light of the rest of his teaching ; though Aristotle attributes
to him the older view, and undertakes an elaborate refutation
of it.

This position of the soul intermediate between the two
realms of existence, that of the Ideas and that of sensible
things, is so unsatisfactory that some interpreters ^ have main-
tained that in this earlier period Plato, starting with the two
realms of existence, had failed to grasp, or at anyrate to
offer, any satisfactory solution of the problem of the soul’s
position in his ontological scheme ; and they hold that his
later doctrine of the soul involved a fundamental change of
position. The soul of man, instead of appearing as an appendage
to the ontological scheme, added by an afterthought, acquires a

1 Thus e g. Mr B J. Roberts, in his article, Plato’s View of the Soul,” Mind
N.S., voL xiv.

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

19

position of primary importance ; it, or the world-soul from which
it was said to derive its being, becomes the supreme reality on
which the Ideas are dependent.

So far did this change go that some recent interpreters have
forcibly argued that the Ideas were for Plato, not, as most others,
following Aristotle, have maintained, separate things or realities
subsisting independently of mind, but the logical concepts of the
mind, by aid of which it brings order and intelligibility into the
chaos of sense-experience, and that this was Plato’s meaning
throughout the earlier as well as the later Dialogues.^

Whatever may be the truth as to Plato’s view of the relation
of the soul to the Ideas, his teaching as to the purely immaterial
and immortal nature of the soul is clear enough. The soul
of man, though it is in some sense derived from the world-
soul, is not merely a ray of the universal energy, life, or mind,
as it appears in the systems of the Ionian philosophers. It is a
self-contained individual being, the ground of personality ; as
such it exists in the realm of pure Being before incarnation ;
from that realm it brings the knowledge of the Ideas manifested in
reminiscence ; and as such it endures through all the vicissitudes of
its successive re-incarnations. Apart from its temporary association
with this or that bodily organism, its activity is purely the exercise
of reason and the willing of that which the reason comprehends.
But, when drawn from its pure spiritual existence into the realm
of matter and associated with a bodily organism, the soul
exercises, in conjunction with the body, certain lower functions,
namely, the higher emotions and the bodily appetites. These
three modes of its activity are attributed to different parts of the
soul ; and in one dialogue, the Timaeus^ they are even assigned
to three distinct souls — the rational soul seated in the head, the
spiritual soul in the chest, and the appetitive soul in the abdomen.
But it seems clear that this statement was not meant to be
taken literally. Although Plato sometimes speaks of the two
lower functions as belonging to a mortal soul, and leaves it an
open question how far these lower functions belong to the soul
when it is freed from the body ; the ‘‘ three parts of the soul ”
should, perhaps, be regarded, not as the activities of distinct souls
or even distinct faculties, but rather as three levels of mental
function , the highest only being exercised apart from the body.

^ Especially Prof. J. A. Stewart in his ** Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas,” 1909,
and Prof. Natorp, * Plato’s Ideenlehre ” (1903).

20

BODY AND MIND

Reason controls the lower functions, but not always with com-
plete success ; and when the lower faculties, in their contam-
inating intimacy with the body, get out of control, the soul
suffers a debasement, which must be expiated by future incar-
nation in lower bodily forms, even animal forms. From this
recurring cycle of incarnations the soul can free itself only by
overcoming completely the evil incitations that come to it from
the body ; and only when this is accomplished, does it return to
its true home, the realm of eternal untroubled Being.

There can be little doubt that Plato’s doctrine of the soul and
of its transmigrations was largely drawn from the teachings of
the Orphic theologians. His teaching and prestige raised the
religious belief in the immortality of the soul (which was widely but
not generally entertained at the time he began his work) to the
level of a philosophic theory and secured it a wider acceptance.
In fact, Plato’s doctrine may be regarded as the culminating re-
finement of the stream of Greek Animism, of which the Dionysiac
and Orphic cults were the popular aspect. Plato purified the
conception of the soul of the last remnants of the dualistic
materialism of primitive Animism, which still lingered in the
Orphic doctrine, and, insisting upon the fundamental difference of
nature between soul and body, clearly formulated for the first
time the theory of psycho-physical dualism with reciprocal action
between soul and body.

In spite of the great name of Plato, his psycho-physical
dualism did not find many supporters among the thinkers of the
immediately succeeding period. It seemed for a time almost
completely submerged ; the dominant philosophical trend re-
turned to the line of physical speculation initiated by the Ionian
School : the immortality of the soul was but little discussed, and
Animism was at a low ebb in the philosophic world. In short,
the period was, like the present time, one in which “ souls were
out of fashion.” At the opening of this period stands the great
figure of Aristotle.

Aristotle approached psychology from the point of view of
biology, and by him soul (4'^%??) was ascribed to all material
things that manifest powers of spontaneous movement and
growth, that is to say, to all living organisms ; in fact, he dis-
tinguished them from the inorganic world (ra a-^Pvx^) by the
expression the animate or the besouled (rd e/(^'^pvx<x) The word

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

21

as used by him, would therefore be more correctly trans-
lated by our English term life, or vital principle, rather than soul.
The psyche is, in short, the vital principle, the possession of which
distinguishes the living organism from inorganic things, and by
that word all the peculiarities of living things, including the
mental processes, are denoted ; or perhaps Aristotle's conception
would be more correctly expressed in modern language by saying
that the soul is the sum of the vital functions. Among the vital
activities, or psychic powers, of organisms, Aristotle distinguishes
five principal kinds, namely: (i) the vegetative processes of
nutrition, growth, and reproduction ; (2) appetite, impulse, or
desire, or, as we should now say, conation ; (3) sensation ; (4)
power of spontaneous movement in space ; (5) rational thought.
Of these the plants enjoy only the first. The animals enjoy also
the second, third, and fourth, which naturally go together and
presuppose the first. Man alone enjoys all these powers ; reason
is his alone.

These activities are not the functions of distinct souls, or of
distinct parts of the soul ; for the soul is unitary. Every living
thing is in a sense a combination of soul and body ; yet soul
and body are not distinct things in the sense that they can or do
exist apart from each other. They can only be separated in
thought. (This at least seems to be Aristotle’s most explicit
teaching, but his utterances on this point are not consistent.)
The soul is not to be regarded as material, yet it is inseparable
from matter. The body is the “ material cause ” of the organism ;
the soul is its “ efficient cause,” for it produces its movements ;
it is also its “ formal cause,” for it determines the form of the
individual organism ; and it is its “ final cause,” for it is the end
for the sake of which the body exists.

The dictum which has been generally held to express
most concisely Aristotle’s notion of the psycho-physical rela-
tion is that the soul is the form of the body. This expression
conveys no definite meaning to the modern mind, unless it
is familiar with Aristotelian thought. The reader may find
himself helped to grasp Aristotle’s notion by a collection of
the most significant passages. Among these are the following : —
The soul is the principle by which, in an ultimate sense, we live
and feel and think ; it is a sort of idea and form, not matter and
substrate.” ^ “ Soul is the primary actuality of a natural body en-

^ “ De Anima,” Bk. II. chap. li.

22

BODY AND MIND

dowed with the capacity of life. ... It is, therefore, unnecessary to
ask whether body and soul are one, as one would not ask whether
the wax and the figure impressed on it are one, or, in general,
whether the matter of a particular thing and the thing composed
of it are one.” ^ After likening the relation between soul and
body to that between vision and the eye, he adds : “ It is, there-
fore, clear that the soul cannot be separated from the body.” Yet
in the following paragraph he goes on: “Yet it is uncertain
whether the soul may not be the actuality of the body, as the
sailor is of the ship.” ^ This uncertainty as regards the separability
of the soul applies only to its reasoning part ; and it arises
from the fact that, whereas the other psychical functions are the
actualities or realizations of certain bodily organs, as vision is the
realization or notional essence of the eye, reason is not the real-
ization of any bodily organ. And so his opinion fluctuates : “ In
regard to reason and the speculative faculty there is no certain
evidence, but it seems to be a generically distinct kind of soul,
and it alone is capable of separation from the body, as that which
is eternal from that which is perishable. But the other parts
of the soul are, in view of the foregoing considerations, evidently
inseparable.” ^ Again, he wrote : “ A difficulty presents itself
in regard to the affections of the soul, namely, whether all
its affections are common to the soul and to the body which
contains it, or whether there is something that belongs to the
soul alone. It is necessary, though hard, to solve this difficulty.
In most cases the soul apparently acts, or is acted on, only in
conjunction with the body ; for example, in the feelings of anger,
courage, desire and, in general, in sense-perception. Thought, if
anything, would seem to be peculiar to the soul. Yet, if thought
is a sort of representation in terms of a sense-image, or is impos-
sible without it (which he affirms in another place ^), then even
thought could not exist independently of the body. If, then,
there were any function or affections of the soul that were peculiar
to it, it would be possible for the soul to exist separate and
apart from the body. If, however, there is nothing which belongs
to it exclusively, it cannot exist apart,” ®

^ “ De Anima,” Bk. 11 . chap. i. 2 Ib%d.

® Op. cit.y Bk. II. chap. 11.

* The soul, therefore, never thinks without the use of images” (”De
Anima,” Bk. III. chap. vii.).

® ” De Anima,” Bk. I. chap. i.

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

23

In this passage it is clearly laid down that the question of
the separability of the soul, and therefore of the possibility of its
continued existence after the death of the body, is one to be
decided by empirical research into the extent and nature of the
participation of bodily processes in mental life.

Aristotle’s uncertainty as to the separability of any part or
function of the soul applies only to that which he distinguishes as
the creative reason {voui ^otrirmo^) from the passive reason. To the
latter belong the powers of imagination or sensory representation.
Reason is passive in so far as it receives its content through
sense-perception ; but thought is more than the coexistence and
succession of sensations, perceptions, and images of imagination
and memory. These are but the matter of thought ; that which
gives them form is the active or creative reason. This highest
function of the soul it is which converts the perceptually
acquired contact of the mind to a system of logically ordered
thought, and thus in a sense creates reality by giving it a rational
form. This is the function which seems to Aristotle to have no
bodily organ, to be the realization of no part of the body ; and
it is this to which he refers when he says that “In its separated
state alone reason is its true self, immortal and eternal ” ; ^ that
potential knowledge pre-exists in the individual ; that reason is
of such a nature that on the one hand it becomes all things, and
on the other hand creates all things ; and that “ it is separate,
not passive, unmixed and in its essential nature an energizing

force.” 2

But it seems clear that the immortality tentatively as-
cribed by Aristotle to the creative reason involves no personal
immortality, no survival of the individual soul ; but rather holds
good only of the universal reason. And, since Aristotle explicitly
affirms that “the passive reason is perishable and without it
there can be no thought,” 2 it follows that the immortal reason is
potential only, that it actually operates only in conjunction with
the body, which through the senses supplies it with the matter of
thought.

Aristotle’s few, hesitating, and ambiguous remarks on the
separability and immortality of the creative reason have given
rise to an immense amount of controversy among the reverent
interpreters and commentators. By some modern interpreters
this part of his doctrine is regarded as an element foreign to and
^ “ De Anima,” Bk. III. chap. v. * Ibid.

24

BODY AND MIND

incompatible with the main body of it. These look upon it as
derived through Plato from the Orphic theologians, and as
evidence merely that Aristotle did not completely succeed in
shaking off the influence of his great teacher.

But this explanation of Aristotle’s attitude on this question
is hardly required. Aristotle showed himself generally inclined
to take up a very critical attitude towards Plato’s teaching, and
ready to accentuate the differences between his own views and
those of his great master.

His attitude on this question was thoroughly scientific, and
just such as was demanded by an impartial consideration of the
facts. His interpreters have generally attempted to show either
that he taught the immortality of the soul or of the active reason,
or that he denied it. We shall be wiser if we recognize the plain
implication of his words, namely, that he held it impossible to
return a decisive answer to this great question without further
empirical knowledge of the bodily processes involved in mental
activities ; and we shall see in later chapters that, in spite of
many centuries of heated controversy, the question still remains
just where Aristotle left it, with this difference only — that we are
beginning to acquire that understanding of the nature and extent
of the bodily processes involved in mental activity, the lack of
which necessitated suspension of judgment in the truly scientific
mind of Aristotle.

Whatever degree of truth there may be in the view that
Aristotle’s indecision in the face of this question was due to
Plato’s influence, it is clear that his doctrine of the creative reason
has none of the practical and ethical significance of Plato’s doctrine
of immortality.

As regards the relation of the soul to the parts of the body,
Aristotle called attention to a number of facts which seemed to
him to indicate that such psychical powers as the plants and lower
animals enjoy are exercised equally in or by all parts of the
body. But he held that in the higher animals the psychical
functions are concentrated in, or more especially exercised by,
certain parts of the body ; and, rejecting the brain as the principal
seat of the soul, and assigning to it merely the function of cooling
the blood, he taught that the heart is the principal centre of
vitality or soul life. The heart is the sensorium commune, or seat
of the common sense, by which the common sensibiles (i.e. those
properties of things later distinguished by Locke as the primary

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

25

qualities), are perceived “The dominating^ organ of sensation in
all sanguineous animals is found in the heart, for the ‘ common
sense’ that serves all the special senses must be situated there.
There are two senses, taste and touch, whose channels lead
manifestly to the heart, and what is true of these must be true of
the other senses. Movement in the other sense-organs may be
transmitted to the heart, but with the upper parts of the body
these two senses do not communicate in any way. Apart from
these considerations, if the principle of life of all animals is seated
in the heart, the sensory principle must evidently be there also.” ^

These and other passages make it clear that Aristotle knew
nothing of the functions of the nerves and nervous system.

It is of interest to note that Aristotle foreshadowed our modern
notions of the dependence of all life on combustion or oxydation,
asserting the dependence of the psychical functions (i.e. of life) on
fire or heat. “ Since every living thing has a soul, and the soul,
as we have said, cannot subsist without natural heat, we find that
in plants adequate provision has been made for the preservation
of natural heat through nutriment and the surrounding air.” ^ “ It

was said above that life and the possession of soul are accompanied
by a certain degree of heat. For even the process of concoction,
by which food is made ready for animal life, is not accomplished
without soul and heat ; and all this is effected by fire. . . . And
other functions of the soul cannot be performed independently of
the nutritive principle, and this in turn cannot subsist without
natural heat.” ^ “ Birth is the original suffusion of the nutritive

soul with heat, and life is the maintenance of this heat. Youth
is the period of the growth of the organ of cooling, old age that
of the wasting of this organ, and the prime of life is the middle
period between the two. Death and violent destruction mean
respectively the exhaustion and extinction of the vital heat.”^ It
is curious that while thus correctly, though vaguely, conceiving the
fundamental importance of combustion for the maintenance of life,
.^ristotle attributed old age and death, not to failure of the pro-
cesses of combustion, but rather to exhaustion, due to inadequacy
of the cooling arrangements by which (according to his view) the
processes of combustion are normally kept in check.

The foregoing brief statement of Aristotle’s teaching in regard
to the soul suffices to show that it has more affinity with the

^ “ De Juvent.,*^ ckap. iii. ® “ De Juvent.,’* chap. vi.

® De Respirat.,” chap. vii. ^ ** De Respirat.,** chap. xvih.

26

BODY AND MIND

Hylozoism of the Ionian philosophers and the Materialism of
Democritus and his successors than with the materialistic Animism
of popular thought or the spiritualistic Animism of Plato.

The notion of a radical difference of nature between soul and
body, between spirit and matter, which Plato established in the
culture-tradition of Europe, has never passed wholly away ; but
the great age of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle was followed by
one of which the principal features were Scepticism and a material-
istic reaction against the spiritualistic dualism of Plato. Epicurus,
adopting the Atomism of Democritus, taught that “ the soul is a
fine substance distributed through the whole mass of the body, and
most resembles the air with an infusion of warmth that it is an
organ of the body by means of which the body shares in sensation,
and that it is dissolved with the body. At death the soul-atoms
are dispersed in the air. He distinguished two parts, or modes of
manifestation, of the soul, namely, the reasonless part or vital force
which permeates all parts of the body, and the reasonable part
which resides in the breast and is the organ of understanding and
volition : a distinction which reappears in the teaching of Lucretius.
In his ethical and psychological hedonism, Epicurus provided a
further supplement to the materialism of Democritus, a supple-
ment which in later ages also has usually gone hand in hand
with mental atomism or sensationalism and with metaphysical
materialism.

The teachings of the early Stoics, although so opposed to
Epicurus in respect to ethical doctrines, resembled his in follow-
ing the materialism of Democritus ; but, whereas the matter of
Democritus had only the attributes of extension, hardness, mass,
and capacity of movement, the matter of the Stoics was endowed
with many forces. By them the life-principle was generally
designated the pneuma, and this was regarded as a material
principle composed of air and fire, which pervades the whole
body, presides over its growth and movements, and is also the
principle of intellectual life. Some of the Stoics held that
death is the end of life ; others suspended judgment on this
problem ; others again, adopting a materialistic Pantheism
taught, not without some inconsistency, that the soul of the wise
man maintains itself after death according to the degree of his
ethical development; but that it eventually loses its individu-
^ A. Lange, of Materialism,” vol. i. p. io6.

ANIMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

27

ality and, being consumed in fire, is reabsorbed in the divine
Being. “ The human soul is a part of the Deity, or an emanation
from the same ; the soul and its source act and react upon each
other. The soul is the warm breath within us. Although it
outlives the body, it is yet perishable, and can only endure, at
the longest, till the termination of the world period in which it
exists.” ^

Scepticism and Stoicism remained the dominant modes of
thought from the time of Aristotle till the opening of the Christian
era ; when the contact of the two lines of literary tradition from
which that of modern Europe descends, namely, the Hebrew and
the Greek, gave birth to two philosophies, the Neoplatonic and
the Christian, each of which developed its distinctive theory of
the soul. These developments will be traced in the following
chapter.

^ Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy,”

CHAPTER II

ANIMISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

‘"/TT^HE greatest merit of the Middle Ages/' writes Professor
I Hoffding,^ lies in its absorption in the inner world of
the life of the soul. Classical antiquity had paused at
the harmonious relation between the inner and the outer, and its
interest in the inner life was limited to its relation to outer life
in Nature and the State. To the faith of the Middle Ages the
eternal fate of the personality was determined by the events of
the inner life. . . . No wonder that a fine and deep sense of the
inner life developed. The self-absorption of the mystic was as
important for the development of the psychological sense as the
distinctions and argumentations of the schoolmen for that of the
logical sense. It dawned upon men that the spiritual world is
just as much a reality as the material world, and that in the
former is Man’s true home. The way was prepared for a more
thorough investigation of the great problem of spirit and matter
than was possible to antiquity.”

We have seen that the Stoics gave currency to a new
designation of the animating principle, namely, pneuma'} With
the introduction of the pneuma began ^ that trichotomy of human
personality into body, soul, and spirit which has figured promi-
nently in the speculations of theologians ; it continues to pervade
the popular thought of Christendom to the present day, though
the relation between psyche and pneuma^ soul and spirit, has
fluctuated widely and has never been clearly defined.

The pneuma, which was conceived by the Stoics as a material
vital principle, continued to play an important part in the physio-
logical speculations of physicians and natural philosophers ; in
the hands of Christian theologians, on the other hand, it became

^ " History of Modern Philosophy,” Eng. trans., vol. i. p. 5.

® It would perhaps be more correct to say that pneuma stood for a theory
of the vital processes, the sum of ■which was denoted by the word

8 ggg p ^ view of Dr Charles that a similar trichotomy pervades

the later eschatology of the Old Testament.

28

ANIMISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

29

transformed into a purely spiritual immaterial soul. In this
way, through the inevitable specialization of learning, the con-
ception of the psyche or soul, which through all the Greek
philosophy had covered both the animating principle of all
living things and the intellectual or mental principle of man,
became differentiated into two conceptions, which long continued
to figure in the European culture-tradition more or less inde-
pendently of one another, namely, on the one hand the vital
force of the physiologists, and on the other hand the spirit or
immaterial soul of man.

The latter conception was not taken over by the Fathers of
the Church directly from Plato ; it descended to them indirectly
by way of the Neoplatonists, in whose hands it was developed
under the influence of Eastern mysticism and Hebrew theology.

We have seen that among the Greek philosophers the domi-
nant conception of the soul was that of a material substance, very
thin and mobile, and having the power of spontaneous movement.
The early Fathers, who shaped the doctrines of the Christian
Church up to the fifth century, continued to hold this view of the
soul. They were not materialists in the modern sense of the word,
as applied to those who deny the existence of soul or spirit. But
they were dualistic materialists ; for, while they regarded man as
made up of soul and body, they held both soul and body to be
material. It was even held to be heretical to deny the material
nature of the soul ; for only material substance, it was thought,
could be susceptible of physical pains and pleasures ; therefore a
material soul was required by the doctrine of retribution after
death. A passage from Tertullian, one of the greatest of the
early Fathers,^ may serve to illustrate this doctrine. He wrote,
“All that is real is body. The corporeality of God does not
detract from His sublimity, nor that of the s6ul from its im-
mortality. Everything that is, is body after its kind. What is
not body is nothing. Who shall deny that God is body, though
He is a spirit ? A spirit is a body of its own kind, in its own
form. The soul has the human form, the same as its body, only
it is delicate, clear, and ethereal. Unless it were corporeal, how
could it be affected by the body?'' And St Jerome argued, “ If
the dead be not raised with flesh and bones, how can the damned
after judgment gnash their teeth in hell?” These passages
show how the teaching of the Fathers, according to which both
1 He wrote about the end of the second century of our era.

30

BODY AND MIND

God and the soul are corporeal, involved a return very nearly to
the primitive theory of the ghost-soul, the vapour-like duplicate
of the body. It was the same undifferentiated materialistic
dualism.

The spiritualization of the soul seems to have been achieved
by way of the refinement of the conception of God. This refining
process consisted in successively denying Him all the distinctive
attributes of matter, until the conception of an immaterial spirit
was reached. And then the conception of the human soul was
assimilated to this more refined conception of God. Thus man,
having created God in his own likeness in the course of his first
speculative efforts, reversed the order of procedure at a later
stage and shaped his idea of himself on the model of his more
refined idea of God.

It was probably through the influence of the Neoplatonists
that this refinement was effected. Neoplatonism represents the
culmination of a reaction against the quasi-materialism of the
Stoics and a revival of the influence of Plato.

In Alexandria the men and the thoughts of many races and
peoples came into contact, and Philo the Jew, a forerunner of
the Neoplatonic school, attempted to combine Hebrew theology
with Greek philosophy. He identified the pneuma of the Stoics
with the breath of the Hebrew God and with the reason of both
Plato and Aristotle. The Hebrews, like so many other peoples,
had conceived the soul as air, wind, breath. But this air was
breathed into man by God ; ^ and therefore, as the conception of
God was dematerialized, so also the pneuma emanating from him
to become the soul of man became an immaterial substance.
But in Philo's doctrine the process of dematerialization is not
completed ; the animal soul of man is generated with and
destroyed with the body, and the pneuma, which is the rational
soul breathed into him by God, is the last sublimation of the
physical principle of the Stoics.^

^ See p. 7.

® St Paul’s doctrine of human personality, departing in this respect from the
teachings of the other parts of the New Testament, in which soul and spirit are
not distinguished, involved a similar trichotomy, body, soul, and spirit. Accord-
ing to Prof. Charles, the Apostle adopted the later doctrine of the Old Testament
which regarded the soul as the supreme function of the body quickened by
the spirit. So conceived it naturally perishes on the withdrawal of the latter.
Jt has, therefore, no existence in the next Hfe. And such, in fact, appears to be
the view of the Apostle. The soul, he holds, is the vital principle of the flesh
(cra/)t). Hence the epithets ‘fleshly’ {(rapKtKos) and ‘souhsh’ over

ANIMISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

31

Plotinus, the most prominent figure among the Neoplatonists,
insisted that life and thought are not to be explained by means
of any physical principle, such as the pnemna of the Stoics, no
matter how thin or refined it may be ; he seems to have been
the first to describe the soul as an immaterial substance. In his
doctrine, abstraction and the negation of attributes to God are
carried so far that God becomes the One. This One sends forth
Nous, the universal mind, of which in turn the human soul is an
emanation. “ The soul is the image and product of ihe Nous,
just as the Nous is of the One. As being only the image of the
Nous, the soul is necessarily of inferior rank and character, though
none the less really divine and endowed with generative force. . . .
The soul is an immaterial substance, not a body, nor the harmony,
nor the entelechy of the body and inseparable from the latter,
since not only the Nous, but also memory, and even the faculty
of perception, and the psychical force which moulds the body,
are separable from the body. There exists a real plurality of
souls ; the highest of all is the soul of the world ; but the rest
are not mere parts of the world-soul. The soul permeates the
body as fire permeates air. It is more correct to say that the
body is in the soul than that the soul is in the body ; there is,
therefore, a portion of the soul in which there is no body, a
portion to whose functions the co-operation of the body is
unnecessary. But neither are the sensuous faculties lodged in
the body, whether in its individual parts or in the body as a whole :
they are only present with the body, the soul lending to each bodily
organ the force necessary for the execution of its functions. Thus
the soul is present not only in the individual parts of the body,
but in the whole body, and present everywhere in its entirety, not
divided among the different parts of the body ; it is entirely in
the whole body, and entirely in every part. . . . The soul
resembles God by its unity and by its possession of a centre and

against ‘spiritual’ are taken to be synonymous.” The pnsuma or

spirit comes directly from God, but, since it alone is the immortal part of man,
it IS not reabsorbed into the Godhead on the death of the body, as in the later
Hebrew conception, and is the basis of personal immortality. But, as Prof.
Charles remarks, “ the Pauhne doctrine of the spirit is beset with difficulties ”
{op. cit., p. J.11) , that is to say, the Apostle does not carry through clearly and
consistently his trichotomous doctrine, does not succeed in combining in one
consistent doctrine of personal immortality the conception of the soul as a
function of the body that perishes with it and that of the pneuma as an
emanation from God.

BODY AND MIND

32

hence arises the possibility of its communion with the One ” ; ^
a communion which involves apprehension of a unique kind and
is achieved only during rare moments of ecstasy.

In the later part of the fourth century Gregory of Nyssa
argued for the immateriality of the soul and also for its immor-
tality. Against those who, like the early Fathers, maintained that
the soul is material, he urged that the spiritual nature of God,
which cannot be denied, proves the possibility of immaterial
existence. “We may with the same right conclude from the
phenomena of the human microcosm to the actual existence of
an immaterial soul, as from the phenomena of the world as a
whole to the reality of God's existence. The soul is defined by
Gregory as a created being, having life, the power of thought,
and, so long as it is provided with the proper organs, the power
of sensuous perception. As being simple and uncompounded
the soul survives the dissolution of the composite body, whose
scattered elements it continues and will continue to accompany,
as if watching over its property, until the resurrection, when it
will clothe itself in them anew.” ^

The expression “ immaterial substance ” does not seem to have
been used by the Fathers until the fifth century, when Augustine
applied it to define the nature of the soul of man. He is known
to have been greatly influenced by the Neoplatonists, especially
by Plotinus, and it is probable that he derived the notion and
the expression from them, Augustine seems also to have been
the first to make extension the distinctive attribute of matter,
and the lack of it the distinctive attribute of soul. Nevertheless,
he taught that the soul is present at each moment in every part
of the body ; he wrote, “ when there is any pain in the foot, the
eye looks, the tongue speaks, the hand moves, and this would not
occur unless what of the soul is in those parts felt also in the foot ;
nor, if not present in the foot, could it feel what has there happened.”
And yet the soul was not to be regarded as having extension.
Augustine also laid down the dictum that whatever is not matter
and yet has real existence is properly termed spirit. He thus
clearly distinguished two classes of real existents, the material
and the spiritual, a distinction destined to be so widely accepted
for long ages. And then, having conceived the soul as an
immaterial substance, Augustine seems to have felt the difficulty
of the question so often raised in later ages, namely, How can
1 Ueberweg^s '' History of Philosophy.” * Ueberweg’s History.”

ANIMISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

33

two things so unlike as material body and immaterial soul
influence one another? And in order to mitigate this difficulty
he postulated a third substance intermediate in nature between
matter and spirit, matter of a very subtle kind which should
serve as the medium of interaction.

Augustine of course maintained the survival of the soul after
death of the body, and claimed for it immortality, subject to the
will of God, by which alone it could be annihilated.

No considerable change in the Church’s teaching as regards
the nature of the soul was effected until about the end of the
twelfth century, when the diffusion of translations of the works of
Aristotle and the invasion of Southern Europe by the Mohamedan
commentators set the schoolmen upon the attempt to reconcile
the teaching of Aristotle with the tenets of the Christian Church.

The earlier schoolmen made of the three fundamental
psychical powers distinguished by Aristotle, the vegetative, the
sensitive, and the intellectual, three distinct and almost com-
pletely independent souls, anima vegetativa, anima sensitiva,
anima rationalis ; the last of these only was regarded by them
as immortal. But this strange doctrine was destined soon to be
swept away by the greatest of the schoolmen. Thomas Aquinas
taught in the later part of the thirteenth century a philosophy and
a psychology which were the culmination of the scholastic efforts,
and which have remained with comparatively little change the
accepted doctrines of the Roman Church. His psychological
writings and those of his immediate predecessor, Albertus
Magnus, were largely provoked by the rapid spread of Arabian
heresies in the schools of Europe, and they were mainly directed
towards the refutation of Averroism. Averroes, who flourished in
the later part of the twelfth century, was the most influential of
the Arab philosophers. His doctrines, which claimed to be
the inevitable developments of Aristotle’s teaching, were widely
accepted both in Spain and Italy ; but they were regarded by the
more orthodox schoolmen as involving heretical perversions.

A central topic of discussion throughout the. three hundred
years of the flourishing of the Arab philosophy was the relation of
the creative reason of Aristotle to the soul of man. The master
himself had, as we have seen, expressed himself incapable of
forming a decided opinion on the question of the relation of the
creative reason to the bodily organism. Alexander of Aphrodisias,

34

BODY AND MIND

a Greek writer of the end of the second century, had given wide
currency to a theological development of Aristotle’s uncertain
utterances. According to this doctrine, which was propounded
as a protest against the Materialism of the Stoics and a return to
Aristotle, the creative reason belongs to God alone. The human soul
was regarded as possessing only the passive reason, a capacity or
disposition for rational thought, which remains, however, a mere
potentiality until realized or brought into actuality by the
‘‘ assistance ” of the Divine Reason.^ The doctrine of “ Divine
Assistance” played some part in the development of Neo-
platonism, and, partly through that system and in part directly,
brought into prominence in the Arabian philosophy the question
of the possibility of the mode of “union” or “conjunction” of
the human soul with the one creative reason. The latter came to
be regarded in the Arab schools as a universal superior principle
that mediates between God and man After three centuries of
controversy over this problem, Averroes went back to the doctrine
of Alexander, and improved upon it by denying to the human
soul the passive reason or intellect as well as the active reason ;
for, he argued, this mere potentiality of reason is nothing. Thus
it might seem that in this doctrine the soul of man was stripped
of all that in Aristotle’s view distinguishes it from that of
animals ; but memory and the power of sensory representation
and a quasi-intelligence, which went by the name vis cogitativa,
in fact all but the capacity to form a pure abstract notion, were
allowed it. Reason or intelligence was then a metaphysical
entity, whose relation to individual human souls was purely
external and accidental and temporary. The doctrine involved
the denial to the human soul of immortality and of any existence
apart from the body ; and this implication was explicitly taught by
Averroes, though it was not accepted by all who professed them-
selves his disciples.

It was to the refutation of this doctrine that Aquinas
addressed himself in one of his principal treatises,^ insisting
that wc cannot be content to explain the thought of man by
the aid of a principle which is neither a part of the con-
stitution of man, nor one in which man participates. He
returned to the psychological method, and, instead of making an
absolute distinction between thought and sense-presentation, he

^ “ Pietro Pomponazzi,” by A. H. Douglas, Cambridge, 1910, p 26.

2 ‘‘ De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas.”

ANIMISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

35

traced the play of intelligence through the lower mental
functions, exhibiting their continuity with the higher modes of
intellection. Like his predecessors in the schools, Aquinas
claimed to have returned to the true Aristotelian doctrine, and he
taught that the soul is the form of the body. But he denied the
separability or separateness of the active reason and insisted
that the soul is a unitary being ; consistent adherence to
Aristotle’s principles would then have led him to the denial of
immortality. This, of course, was impossible to him ; therefore,
instead of binding fast the reason in the body together with the
nutritive and sensitive faculties, he rather set free all alike from
the body and declared the whole unitary soul to be immortal :
the soul is the form of the body, but it is the form in a new
sense, for it is a “ separable form.”

In this new doctrine of the soul as a separable form, Aquinas
attempted to combine the teaching of Aristotle with the Neo-
platonic notion of a spiritual substance. The leading features of his
psychology, and the nature of the arguments on which he relied
for the proof of human immortality, have been concisely stated by
a Roman Catholic writer in the following passage : “ The keynote
to Thomistic metaphysical psychology is the essential distinction
between a lower or sensuous, and a higher or rational, grade of
consciousness. The essential irreducibility of attention, abstrac-
tion, comparison, reasoning, self-consciousness, and free will to
organic processes, such as those of the external senses, the
imagination and the sensuous memory, is the ground of spirituality
and immortality. The latter phenomena are accounted for by
admitting the co-operation of the soul or vital principle with the
organic co-factor ; the former demand intrinsic independence of
the organism for their display, and hence point to an inorganic
principle as their exclusive subject. Thought is not a passive
transformation of sensations ; an inner attentive energy of the
mind (intellectus agens) disengages at first the essentials of the
sensuous presentation {abstrahit essentiain)^ and then the mind
itself {intellectus passivus\ out of this prepared datum, proceeds to
generate the pure forms of thought {exprimere intelligendd). This
was an application of the Aristotelic theory of the ‘ active and
passive intellect ’ to the problem of the bridge between sensation
and conception. The intellect is acknowledged to be objectively
dependent on sense for the acquisition of the materials of its know-
ledge ; it is subjectively independent of the organism, however, in

BODY AND MIND

36

the display of its irreducible activities of thought and volition.
This intrinsic independence of the organism which the soul shows
(even while united with the body and conditioned by the health
or disease of the imagination and memory) by the very fact of its
being the exclusive subject of its own higher functions, is the
proof of spirituality and the pledge of immortality. This view of
St Thomas does not imply an ' anima separata' but an ' anhna
separabilis' There is only one specific substance in man — the
compound self or ego. The soul was not a mere thinking
machine, but the life-giving principle of the body as well,
discharging the several functions of thought, feeling, and volition,
either by itself or conjointly with the organism ” ^ There was here
a distinct advance towards the attitude adopted by those moderns
who defend the conception of the soul.

Although Aquinas attributed immortality to the whole of the
human soul, including the vegetative and sensitive powers, he
maintained that the souls of animals are inseparable from their
bodies and that they perish with them. Like Augustine and
other Fathers, he denied the Platonic doctrine of the pre-
existence of the soul, maintaining that each soul is created at the
moment the body is ready for its operation.

During the long period between the great age of Greek
philosophy and the Renascence of European learning, the
conception of the soul was thus refined and developed under the
influence of theological speculation, until it became set over
against matter as a purely spiritual principle of a radically
different nature, an immortal being temporarily associated with
the body and intervening in its material processes with intelligent
purposive activity. But during the same period there were not
wanting speculations on the lines of the Pre-Socratic materialistic
philosophers of Greece, made under the influence of natural
science, rather than of theology.

In the last century B.C. the Roman poet, Lucretius, gave a
complete exposition of Epicurean Materialism in the famous
poem “De Rerum Natura” ; and at the same time developed the
theory in certain respects. His fundamental argument against
the separability of the soul was one which has been reproduced
and relied upon by materialists of all later ages ; “ the soul is born

^ Article, St Thomas,” in Baldwin^s “ Dictionary of Philosophy and Psy-
chology.” ^

ANIMISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

37

with the body, it grows and decays with the body, therefore it
perishes with the body.” He embodied the notion, first suggested
by Empedocles, “ that all the adaptation to be found in the uni-
verse, and especially in organic life, is merely a special case of
the infinite possibilities of mechanical events ” ; ^ a suggestion of
great importance for the materialistic scheme, since it remained
as the only materialistic explanation of the apparently teleo-
logical facts of nature, until in the nineteenth century Darwinism
supplied a less inadequate one.

Lucretius found himself compelled by the observation of
animal behaviour to make at least one assumption not strictly
compatible with the pure materialistic atomism of Democritus
and Epicurus ; namely, he assumed that the atoms move not
always in straight lines, but have the power of deviating sponta-
neously from the straight path. He recognized two forms of soul,
or soul and spirit {anima and animus) ; nevertheless both are
corporeal and are composed of the smallest, roundest and most
mobile atoms.” ^ Lucretius, like Epicurus, seems to have felt the
difficulty of boldly asserting that the motion of atoms is sensa-
tion, and sought to mitigate it by dwelling on the exceeding fine-
ness of the soul-atoms.

Galen, the celebrated Greek philosopher and anatomist who
practised surgery in Rome in the later part of the second century
of our era, studied the structure and functions of the body by
means of dissection. He established the connexion of the nerves
with the central nervous system, and showed that the brain
is somehow intimately concerned in our mental life. He taught
that the brain is the seat of the soul and the medium through
which the sensations are produced.^

Galen’s teaching did much to give currency to the doctrine of
animal spirits,” which figured largely in all later physiological
writings until very recent times. Spirits {Sfiiritus) of many
kinds played a great part in the cosmology and physiology of
the Neoplatonic Scholastic philosophy ; and early in the Middle
Ages, Galen’s doctrine of the animal spirits was fused with the
Aristotelian psychology ; thus arose that conception of spiritus

^ A. Lange, History of Materiabsm,** vol. i. p. 138.

® Lange, op. cit.^ p. 146.

3 The honour of having first demonstrated the intimate connection of the bram
with our mental life is sometimes attributed to Alcmseon of Crotona (500 b.c.).
And it is said that Theophilus of Alexandria (300 b.c.) distinguished the sensory
from the motor nerves.

38

BODY AND MIND

aninialis distilled in the brain from the spirittis viialis of the
blood, which at a later period was taken up by Descartes into his
system. This conception of “spiritus,” which came into the
culture tradition of the Middle Ages from so many different
sources, owed its deep hold to the fact that it seemed to bridge
the gulf between the sensible and the supersensible, a need which
was felt as well by the Neoplatonists as by the Christian theo-
logians, by Lucretius as well as by Augustine and the followers
of Descartes ; for spiritus was the subtlest kind of matter.^

It is interesting to note that in the thirteenth century the
philosophers whose speculations were of a naturalistic tendency,
especially those of the University of Paris, adopted the ingenious
subterfuge of distinguishing two forms of truth, the theological
and the philosophical, in order to free scientific speculation from
the restrictive influence of the Church ; a practice which is
paralleled at the present day by the widely prevalent fashion of
distinguishing between scientific and philosophic truth. To
confound this teaching by demonstrating the harmony of all
truth had been one of the principal aims of Aquinas ; but in
spite of the great authority of his name and doctrine the
distinction became widely accepted , and it continued to be so
well recognized that it was urged by Giordano Bruno in his
defence before the Inquisition in 1592. It was a symptom of
the uneasiness of the spirit of inquiry under the bonds imposed
upon it by the Church. By the loosening of those bonds
the Renascence gave new life to the problem of the soul, and in
the sixteenth century it was discussed with a new freedom and a
renewed vigour.

^ In the sixteenth century the conception of spintus was brought back by
Paracelsus very nearly to its original form, the ghost-soul ; for he conceived
spiritus anthropomorphically, peopled all things, great and small, with innumer-
able demons, and attributed to these all evidences of life and activity.

CHAPTER III

ANIMISM AT THE TIME OF THE RENASCENCE OF
LEARNING

T he philosophy of the Renascence is rightly held, says
Professor Hoffding, to have been introduced by the
treatise of Pietro Pomponazzi on the immortality of the
soul (“ De Immortalitate Animi,’' 1516).

Pomponazzi was a voluminous writer and an influential
teacher in the schools of northern Italy ; he has been called,
with some reason, the last of the schoolmen and the first modern
psychologist. His handling of the problem of the soul is re-
markable for his indifference to authority and for his agnostic
attitude.^ The century that separated him from Aquinas had
been filled with the controversy between Thomists and Averroists,
in which the great question at issue was the relation of the soul
to reason or intellect. Both parties claimed to adhere to the
teaching of Aristotle, though their interpretations of that teaching
were widely different. Pomponazzi approached this problem in
an independent spirit and, setting aside the rival systems of
interpretation, went back to Aristotle himself.

Accepting Aristotle’s fundamental proposition that the soul
is the form of the body, he rejected the Mono-psychism of
Averroes (the doctrine that reason is one divine light which
shines in upon the souls of men), not only because it seemed to
him inconsistent with that proposition, but also on the grounds
that embodiment is of the very nature of intelligence as known
in man, and that the assumption of a universal reason leaves
unsolved the problem of the reasoning power of individual men.

He rejected just as positively the Thomist conception of the
soul as a self-subsistent and separable form or a spiritual substance
capable of existing after the death of the body ; insisting always

^ A full account of Pomponazzi and Ids teaching, based partly on material
only recently brought to light, has been given by Mr A. H. Douglas The Philo-
sophy and Psychology of Pietro Pomponazzi,” Cambridge, 1910). My brief
account is extracted from this work.

40

BODY AND MIND

on the fact that we have direct knowledge of human intelligence
and activity only as it is manifested in bodily life. He thus rejected
both the “ collective immortality of the Averroists and the indivi-
dual immortality of the orthodox scholastics, and explicitly taught
the mortality of the human soul ; this, the most distinctive feature
of his teaching, naturally produced a great stirring in the schools.
Yet, in spite of his denial of immortality and his assertion of the
dependence of all human thought on bodily organs, Pomponazzi
was not a materialist. Nor was he, of course, an idealist in the
sense most usually attached to that ambiguous word ; for the
notion that the material world may be purely a figment of our
minds had not entered into the current of European speculation ;
philosophers still accepted unquestioningly the reality and the
spatial character of physical things. He believed, like most of
his contemporaries, in the existence of higher intelligences whose
reason operated in pure universals, abstract and general ideas
that were not achieved by way of the contemplation of partic-
ular or concrete objects. These pure intelligences constituted
the highest part of a hierarchy of beings. “ There were according
to this scheme, three orders of beings — the immaterial and im-
perishable, including the Deity, and (in their essential nature and
true being) the spheral Intelligences ; at the other extreme,
material and mortal, all sublunary beings with the exception of
man : intermediate between the two, and sharing the attributes
of both, the composite nature of man.”"^ “ Belonging to the three

orders of being, there were three sorts of souls.” For the
superior Intelligences were also to be regarded as in a sense the
informing souls of the spheres to which they belonged. Only
the difference between them and the human soul was that the act
of intelligence in them did not depend in any way upon the
physical spheres to which they were related only as the motor is
to that which is moved ; knowledge in them was a direct intuition
and contemplation of abstract and immaterial objects ; whereas
the soul of man is dependent for the exercise of intelligence upon
matter tanquain de objecto, and the sensitive soul, or the soul of the
lower animal, resides in matter tanquam de subjecto as well.” ^

He held fast to Aristotle’s teaching, that reason in man
operates only with the aid of the presentation in imagination of
the data of sense ; and this dependence of human reason on sense
and imagery for its objects was one of his chief grounds for
^ A. H. Douglas, op, ctt,, p. 124. ^ Op cit,^ p. 125.

42 BODY AND MIND

the power of matter ; human souls only are immediately created
by God.

In Bernardino Telesio, whose comprehensive work, “ De Rerum
Natura,” was published in 1586, the tendency of the philosophy
of the Renascence to appeal to Nature rather than to Aristotle
or the Scriptures found a systematic and thoroughgoing exponent.
His system was thoroughly hylozoistic, i.e. it was metaphysical
materialism of the kind which regards matter as endowed with
mental capacities ; and he saw in sense-perception the empirical
basis of all knowledge. Looking on all matter as animated, he
taught that human consciousness is but a development of the
simple feelings of inorganic matter; he argued, in fact, in the
modern fashion from the human consciousness to the feeling of
inorganic matter, according to the principle of continuity. “ He
maintains, that is to say, the impossibility of explaining the
genesis of consciousness out of matter, unless we suppose matter
to be originally endowed with consciousness.” ^ Telesio did not
deny a soul to man ; but the soul was, as with the Stoics, but
the subtlest form of matter. ‘‘ The spirit to which Telesio con-
stantly refers as the natural soul, is thought of as wholly corporeal,
a very delicate, rarefied substance, enclosed within the nervous
system, and therefore eluding our senses. Its place, the seat of
the soul, is chiefly the brain, but extends also to the spinal cord,
the nerves, arteries, veins, and the covering membranes of the
internal organs. Similar cavities to those visible in the brain
{ie. the ventricles), the spinal cord and the optic nerves are
present in all these organs, and it is there that the spirit is
enclosed, so that it is accessible to any movement from without,
and is able to transmit its own movement to these parts, and
thence to the limbs. The extreme mobility of the spirit, and
its continuity throughout all the nervous system, are the qualities
which fit it to play the part of the soul. . . . Recognizing that
the nervous system is in close connection with soul-life, he
frankly acknowledged that the soul in men differs only in degree
from the soul of animals.” ^

“ Corporeal, however, though the spirit be, yet it is different
from the ordinary parts of the body. It is invisible, is akin to

^ Hoffding, op. cit., p. 97.

* Article on Telesio by J. Lewis McIntyre, in “ British Journal of Psychology,”
vol. i.

ANIMISM AT THE TIME OF THE RENASCENCE 43

the nature of the sun and the sky ; hence the heaviness of a body
from which the spirit has fled, for it was the upward striving soul
that lightened it through life : hence also the soul that has left
the body cannot return, for it flies upward towards its own
element, like fire and air.”^

Telesio was so far under the influence of the orthodox teach-
ings of the Church that he assumed, beside the material soul
in man, a divine non -corporeal soul directly implanted by God,
which unites with the material soul. He did not make clear the
relations between the two souls, and it would seem that this
additional and superfluous soul was added by Telesio to his
scheme either as a prudent concession to the Church, or because
his philosophical and his theological opinions were formed in
separate “ water-tight compartments ” of his mind, while he was
too honest to accept the current convention which admitted two
kinds of truth, the theological and the philosophical. “ The
proof or evidence of this divine soul which Telesio offers is that
men do in fact inquire into supernatural matters, which have no
reference to their bodily needs, that they find real happiness only
in the knowledge and. pursuit of the divine ; that for these they
neglect even those bodily needs which the brutes pursue without
deviation. . . , The divine soul is that in man which understands,
but it does so only through the natural spirit, and it can under-
stand only these things, which the spirit offers to it for
understanding.” ^

The greatest of the philosophers of the Renascence period,
Giordano Bruno, made a remarkable attempt to unite an idealistic
conception of the universe with the principles of physical
Atomism. He is sometimes claimed as a link between ancient
and modern Materialism, but only by those who regard one side
only of his teachings. He distinguished spiritual and material
substances, although he regarded them as ultimately of one single
essence, an original and universal substance. Everything that exists
is animated, and in everything the world-soul operates as the inner
principle of a motion which is both mechanical and purposive.
Nevertheless, the soul of the individual is a distinct being ; and
Bruno favours the belief in transmigration of souls or metempsy-
chosis. The relation of the individual soul to the world-soul
remains as obscure as in all other Pantheistic systems.

Physiology may be said to have been founded during the
1 Ibid, * Ibid,

44

BODY AND MIND

later part of the Renascence period. It began at once to exert
upon the conception of the soul an influence of the kind which in
succeeding centuries, and especially in the nineteenth century, has
been a principal factor in leading to the rejection of Animism by
the greater part of the learned world. In the year 1543 Andreas
Vesalius published his great work, “ Fabrica Humani Corporis/’
which was as important for physiology as for anatomy. He
elaborated the doctrine of animal spirits which had fluttered down
uncertainly from the ancients. He distinguished an inferior form
of spirits, the vital spirits which are concerned in the bodily
functions generally. From the vital spirits brought to the brain by
the blood, and from the air, which makes its way into the brain
directly by the pores of the skull, the brain elaborates the animal
spirits in its ventricles. The animal spirits permeate all parts
of the nervous system, just as the vital spirit is distributed
through the arteries. Vesalius recognized also a third variety,
the natural spirit. These three seem to have been regarded
by him as three stages of elaboration of the spirit from the
blood, the natural spirit being made by the liver, the vital
spirit by the heart, and the animal spirit by the brain ; in the
third stage it attains so high a degree of refinement that it is to
be described as “ a quality rather than an actual thing.” He wrote
of three corresponding souls — the natural, vital, and the chief
soul ; but it seems clear that by each of these souls he meant to
imply nothing more than the sum total of the spirit of the cor-
responding kind. Vesalius insisted upon the essential similarity of
the brains of men and animals ; he seems to have held a thoroughly
materialistic view of the mind, though he cautiously abstained
from maintaining doctrines that might have brought him into
conflict with the Church.

Van Helmont, the leading physiologist of the opening years
of the seventeenth century, who thus in point of time belongs to
the modern period, may be mentioned here ; for his teachings in
respect to the soul belong rather to the mediaeval than the modern
period. Van Helmont took up Vesalius’ doctrine of the elabora-
tion of the animal spirits by successive stages, but distinguished six
such stages. In addition to the animal spirits, he recognized,
unlike Vesalius, a sensitive and motor soul {aniffiu ssnsitivcc
motroaqMe\ This sensitive soul belongs to man alone ; for,
speaking truly and thinking correctly, we must say that there is
no soul residing in plants and in brute beasts. These possess

ANIMISM AT THE TIME OF THE RENASCENCE 45

only a certain vital power, which we may perhaps regard as the
forerunner of a soul. The sensitive soul as it exists in man takes
to itself the reins of that forerunning governing vital power.”
The sensitive soul is the prime agent of all the acts of the body ;
and though it carries out the sensations and movements of the
body by means of the brain and nerves, its actual seat is the
orifice of the stomach. This sensitive soul is mortal, and co-exists
in man with the immortal mind (inens immortalis), The
sensitive soul is, as it were, the husk or shell of the mind, and the
latter works through it.” Before the fall of Adam man possessed
only the immortal mind, which discharged the functions of life.
“ At the fall, God introduced into man the sensitive soul, and with
it death, the immortal mind retiring within the sensitive soul and
becoming, as it were, its kernel.”’- Van Helmonfs teaching as
regards the soul, a strange chaotic mixture of notions derived
from many sources, thus forms a link between the doctrines of
Vesalius and of Descartes.

^ I have extracted these brief accounts of the teaching of Vesalius and Van
Helmont respecting the soul from Sir Michael Foster’s “ History of Physiology.”'

CHAPTER IV

ANIMISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

T he historians of European thought are agreed in regarding
the beginning of the seventeenth century as the date
that separates the distinctively modern from the mediaeval
period. Of the distinctive features of the modern period two are
of predominant importance : first, the rapid and complete eman-
cipation of scientific and philosophical thought from the fetters
of the Church, and a complete reversal of their position of sub-
ordination to theology ; secondly, the increasing definiteness of
the strictly mechanical conception of nature, the continued and
astonishing triumphs of this conception in its application to the
explanation of one field of phenomena after another, and the
consequently increasing confidence with which mechanical ex-
planations were held to be applicable to all events without
exception.

In classical antiquity, Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius
had projected a mechanical scheme of the world, reducing all
things to atoms in motion. But their doctrines remained fanciful
speculations merely, like any others ; they had no demonstrative
force ; the acceptance or rejection of them was as purely a
matter of individual taste, as the preference of sherry to port,
or of Wordsworth to Browning. But in the opening years
of the seventeenth century, Kepler and Galileo laid the sure
foundations of the splendid structure of nineteenth century
Materialism, by initiating the exact quantitative study of motion ;
and the work they began has been carried on by a long line of
brilliant thinkers and investigators — Gassendi, Hobbes, Newton,
Boyle, Kant, Laplace, Holbach, Mayer, Joule, Helmholz, Kelvin
— with such striking success that, in our own day, the truth
of the purely mechanical conception of nature has become a
confidently held dogma of the scientific world, accepted not only
by physicists and chemists, but also by the greater number of the
biologists, psychologists, and philosophers, as a fundamental prin-

46

ANIMISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

47

ciple to which all their assumptions and conclusions must conform*.
Accordingly, the labours of philosophers have been increasingly
concerned with attempts to reconcile a belief in spiritual modes of
action and existence with the mechanical scheme of the world, and
with attempts to show that the belief in purposive or teleological
determination is not merely a mythical survival from the dark ages.

In this great process of the development of modern thought,
which may without exaggeration be described as the reaction of
the human mind on the affirmation by the natural sciences of the
universal sway of mechanical laws, a central place has been
occupied throughout by the problem of the relation of the mental
to the physical, of mind to body.

In all earlier ages men believed implicitly in the real efficiency
of their wills ; they knew themselves able to imagine alternative
courses of events in the physical world ; they believed they could
freely choose to influence this course of events, and that, purpos-
ing or desiring to see one course realized rather than another,
they could by their efforts contribute to the realization of their
purpose. This was the essence of the conception of animation,
and, in attributing animation to beings other than themselves, men
attributed to them a similar capacity for teleological determina-
tion of phenomenal events. Very early in the modern period,
the work of Kepler, Galileo, Gassendi, and their successors,
resulted, for the majority of men of science, in the banishment of
animation (in this full and original sense) from the whole realm of
inorganic nature.

In the course of Kepler's own intellectual development this
decisive step was made : beginning with an animistic conception
of nature, according to which all things, especially the planets, are
moved by souls ; he ended by extruding souls entirely from his
scheme and supplanting them by the conception of forces. And
Galileo made the decisive step by affirming that “it is only
possible to understand the qualitative changes in nature when
these can be traced back to quantitative changes, which means
here to motions in space.” ^ But, with few exceptions, men con-
tinued to believe in the animation of organic beings ; though the
Cartesians, it is true, gave up the whole organic realm, with the
exception of man alone, to the sway of purely mechanical laws
(an intrinsically unstable compromise which owed its career only
to the influence of theology).

1 Hoff ding, op. cit.y i8i.

48

BODY AND MIND

Thus the soul, especially the human soul, became the centre of
interest of all the great controversies of the eighteenth century.
The materialists sought to show that all the phenomena of organic
life (including human actions) are mechanically explicable, and to
exhibit human consciousness as entirely dependent upon matter.
The defence of the conception of animation was conducted along
two different lines ; on the one hand, the vitalists maintained the
inadequacy of mechanical principles to explain the physiological
processes of organic bodies ; on the other hand, philosophers con-
tinued to demand a soul as the substrate of consciousness and the
agent of the intellectual activities of man. Then in the nineteenth
century the rapid progress of mechanical explanations in physi-
ology and the appearance of the Darwinian principles seemed to
deal a final blow at physiological Animism with its vital force ;
about the same time the discovery that the whole brain is a vast
and complex system of reflex nervous paths, in which prevails
unbroken continuity of physical process from sense-organ to
muscle, seemed to be equally fatal to psychological Animism ;
while the establishment of the law of conservation of energy
seemed to clinch the matter in both cases, to establish finally
the universal sway of the law of mechanical causation throughout
both organic and inorganic nature, and to secure the final triumph
of Materialism over Animism.

These results of the splendid progress of the empirical sciences
have been accepted by most of the philosophers. And this
acceptance was not difflcult for them ; for they had learned to
believe that a thoroughgoing Materialism is not the only alterna-
tive to Animism, but that it is possible to reject Animism without
accepting those features of thoroughgoing Materialism which
render it intellectually disreputable. Two such alternatives have
gained wide acceptance among them. On the one hand, a
way was found which seemed to make possible the combination
of mechanical Materialism, of even the most extreme form, with
Animism, and even with a return to the doctrine of universal
animation, namely, by sacrificing the most essential element of
Animism (the power of teleological determination) and retaining only
as the connotation of animation the capacity for feeling or conscious-
ness. This is the alternative of which Fechner was the principal ex-
ponent. On the other hand, philosophers had learnt from Hume,
Berkeley, and Kant how, while giving up Animism, to withdraw
themselves to a position from which they could look down upon both

ANIMISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 49

Materialism and Animism with indifference, namely, the subjectivist
position from which matter and soul are regarded as equally unreal,
as equally existing only as ideas in one’s own consciousness.^

Such, in briefest outline, is the history of the conception of the
soul in the modern period. This history we have now to follow
in a little more detail, in order to arrive at a clear understanding
of the present state of opinion and controversy regarding the
soul, I shall first describe the teachings regarding the psycho-
physical problem of the principal thinkers who have dealt with it
in the modern period ; and afterwards I shall trace those develop-
ments of the natural sciences by which Animism has been, in
the opinion of the great majority of scientists and philosophers,
driven finally from the field.

Although Descartes set himself to lay anew the foundations of
philosophy, a large number of the notions and distinctions throwm
into the European culture-stream by his predecessors were incor-
porated in his system. His principal achievement was to clarify
many of the distinctions and notions current in his time, and to set
them in definite relations to one another in a single large scheme
of things.

Descartes distinguished sharply between matter and spirit,
defining the former as extended substance, the latter as inex-
tended thinking substance. He held that the whole material
world and all its processes are to be explained mechanically by
means of the conceptions of extension, divisibility, and mobility.
He was the first of the moderns to attempt to give a mechanical
theory of the evolution of the world, teaching that purely mechanical
explanation in terms of matter and motion must apply not only to«
the planetary movements and to all the realm of inorganic matter,
but also to the processes of organic bodies ; physiology was to be
made wholly a branch of mechanical science. His confidence in
this bold assertion was greatly strengthened by Harvey’s explana-
tion of the circulation of the blood, according to the mechanical
principles ; for this seemed to show that the general laws of motion
are valid within, as well as without, the body. He wrote : “ All
the functions of the body follow naturally from the sole disposition
of its organs, just in the same way that the movements of a clock

^ I am aware that many readers will regard this as an unfair description of
the attitudes of anti-animistic philosophers ; but I shall attempt to justify it in
later chapters.

BODY AND MIND

SO

or other self-acting machine or automaton follow from the arrange-
ment of its weights and wheels. So that there is no reason on
account of its functions to conceive that there exists in the body
any soul whether vegetative or sensitive, or any principle of move-
ment other than the blood and its animal spirits agitated by the
heat of the fire which burns continually in the heart, and which
does not differ in nature from any of the other fires which are
met with in inanimate bodies.’’ He devised a hypothetical
scheme for the explanation of all the bodily movements of animals
in a purely mechanical fashion ; and, though this was little more
than a brilliant guess, it came strangely near the modern concep-
tion of reflex automatism. Not content with this, he attempted to
show in more or less detail how the whole human body may be
adequately conceived as a machine working on purely mechanical
principles, Descartes thus definitely gave up the vegetative func-
tions of the soul, and taught that animals are inanimate machines
having no capacity for thought.^ But man enjoys consciousness,
or the power of thought ; and this fact, which cannot be ex-
plained from the motions of matter, necessitates the assumption
that in him the thinking substance is somehow conjoined with
matter, that an immaterial soul co-operates with the material
body, intervenes in its otherwise purely mechanical operations,
and is in turn affected by these. The assumption of the soul in
man is also necessitated, he held, by the fact that the bodily
movements of men, unlike those of the animals, reveal by their
complexity and their nice adjustment to an infinity of varied
situations that they are guided by reason.

A third line of reasoning by which he justified the conception
of the soul runs as follows : “ Because I know with certitude that
I exist, and because, in the meantime, I do not observe that aught
necessarily belongs to my nature or essence beyond my being a
thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists only
in my being a thinking being. And although I may, or rather,
as I will shortly say, although I certainly do possess a body with
which I am very closely conjoined : nevertheless, because, on the
one hand, I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in as far as
I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other

^ Descartes’ doctrine seems to imply the denial of aU psychical hfe or con-
sciousness to animals ; and it has generally been interpreted in this way. But
Descartes, inconsistently enough, attributed mere sensation and feeling to the
animals. ®

ANIMISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 51

hand, I possess a distinct idea of body, in as far as it is only an
extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that I myself am
entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist without
it”^ Again, he wrote that we “perceive clearly that neither
extension nor figure nor local motion . . . pertains to our nature,
and nothing save thought alone ; it then becomes plain that I am
not the assemblage of members called the human body; I am not
a thin and penetrating air diffused through all these members, or
wind, or flame, or vapour, or breath ; for the notion we have of
our mind precedes that of any corporeal thing, and is more certain,
seeing that we still doubt whether there is any body in existence,
while we already perceive that we think.” He argued also that
the reasoning soul “ can by no means be educed from the power
of matter, but must be expressly created ; it is of a nature wholly
independent of the body, and consequently is not liable to die
with the latter ; and, finally, because no other causes are observed
capable of destroying it, we are naturally led to judge that it is
immortal.”

Descartes adopted the conception of animal spirits current
among the physiologists of his time ; but he divested it of all
animistic meaning ; for him the animal spirits were purely
material. These animal spirits consist of the finest particles
contained in the blood, which are filtered from the arteries
through minute pores into the central cavity or ventricle of the
brain. From this ventricle they pass into the nerves, and, by
flowing down the motor nerves and from them into the muscles,
they cause the latter to become distended laterally, and therefore
to shorten and so bring about the movements of the parts of the
body. According to Descartes’ scheme of the nervous system, the
motor nerves open from the ventricle of the brain by valved
mouths ; the sensory nerves also have their central terminations
in the ventricle, each being connected with the valve of one of
the motor nerves ; when, then, any impression is made on a sense-
organ, the sensory nerve affected plays the part of a bell- wire,
it pulls open the valve to which it is attached and so allows the
animal spirits to flow down the corresponding motor nerve and to
bring about the appropriate reflex movement. Descartes, having
devised this mechanical scheme of reflex action, and holding that
all other bodily processes also are purely mechanical, did not find
it necessary to assume, as was done by Augustine and others of
^ Meditatpm VI., Veitch’s translation.

52

BODY AND MIND

his predecessors, that the soul is present in every part of the
body ; accordingly he assigned it a seat in the pineal gland, or
rather he assumed that it acts on, and is acted on by, the
body only through the medium of this part of the brain ; being
led to this view by the fact of the central position of the pineal
gland in close proximity to the ventricle. (This was an unfor-
tunate shot in the dark ; for modern research has shown that no
part of the brain is less concerned in our mental processes than
the pineal gland, which seems to be a vestigial remnant of a
median eye carried on the top of the cranium by a remote
ancestor of the human species.) The soul, he taught, is able, by
inclining the pineal gland this way or that, to direct the motion of
the animal spirits of the brain towards this or that motor nerve,
and to secure in this way the execution of the actions that
it wills — a rude foreshadowing of the conception of guidance
without work done, which in more recent times has been adduced
as the probable mode of action of the soul on the bodily
processes.

It is noteworthy that Descartes distinguished two kinds of
memory : — “ one of material things which depends on after-effects
or traces of preceding excitations of the brain, and the other of
mental things, depending on permanent traces in consciousness
itself. Thought proper iintellectid) and imagination {imaginatio}
may be distinguished from one another by this, that in thought
proper the soul alone is active, while in imagination it makes
use of sensuous images. Imagination, like perception and the
material remembrance of the soul, only belongs to the soul in as
far as it is united with the body ; but the soul in its pureness,
anima pura^ can be thought without either imagination or per-
ception. The difference between instinct and will similarly rests
on the fact that while the former arises in the body, the will
belongs to the soul itself. . . . The emotions are due to the
influence of the body upon the soul ; but the inner feelings arise
in the soul as a consequence of its own thoughts and judgments.’"
Thus Professor Hoffding summarizes the main points of Descartes'
consistently dualistic psychology.^

The teachings of Descartes exerted a far-reaching influence
on subsequent science and philosophy, of which, as regards the
conception of the soul, we may distinguish four principal and
diverse line.s. First, his description of the soul as an immaterial

^ op. Clt.y p. 238.

ANIMISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 53

inextended being, interacting with the body through the medium
of the brain and nervous system only, gave the animistic theory a
more definite and more defensible form than it had previously
received. Secondly, by attributing to the soul the function of
thought or of conscious activities only and denying to it the
vegetative functions commonly attributed to it by his predecessors,
he completed the separation of the conceptions of vitalizing
principle and thinking principle which some of his predecessors
had proposed ; and it is largely owing to his influence that this
separation has continued to the present day, the former surviving
as the vital force of the vitalistic physiologists, the latter as the
thinking feeling willing soul, the ground of all individual conscious-
ness. Thirdly, by his bold assertion of the purely mechanical
nature of all animal behaviour and by his ingenious speculations
in support of this assertion, he hastened the advent of the time
when all the behaviour of men also should be asserted with equal
confidence to be the product of purely mechanical factors. Fourthly,
by distinguishing so sharply between the natures of soul and
body respectively, he brought into clearer view the difficulty of
understanding the mode of interaction of soul and body, and
thus provoked attempts to find other formulations of the psycho-
physical relation.

Descartes’ own disciples were not slow to raise this difficulty :
How can there be reciprocal action between two such wholly
unlike things as body and soul ? And some of them, notably
Geulincx and Malebranche, said : It is not possible ; there can
be no such interaction ; the correspondence that clearly obtains
between our thought and our bodily processes is maintained by
the continual interposition of God, a change in one being the
occasion for God to produce a corresponding change in the other.
This doctrine of Occasional Causes,” or “ Occasionalism,” devised
by Geulincx to meet the difficulty of conceiving psycho-physical
interaction, was extended by Malebranche to the explanation of
all transient action.

A different answer to this problem of the correspondence of
bodily and mental changes — one that has had a greater influence
upon subsequent thought — was given by Leibnitz in his doctrine
of pre-established harmony. This can only be understood in
connexion with his metaphysical doctrine of monads. Leibnitz
rejected Descartes’ distinction of thinking and extended sub-

54

BODY AND MIND

stances ; he regarded extension as merely phenomenal, and sought
to describe in other terms the reality which appears to us as
extended matter. He conceived all things after the pattern of
that of which he had the most immediate awareness, namely, the
unity of his own self as a thinking conscious being. He taught
that the universe created by God consists of an infinite number of
real beings, each different from every other, each containing from
the first the potentiality of its whole subsequent history, each
indivisible and incapable of being destroyed save by an act of
God. These enduring beings or substances are the monads, the
elements of which all things are composed. The soul of each man
and of each animal is such a monad ; but the soul of man is a
monad of a higher order than all others and is properly called a
mind, because its consciousness is richer and its psychical activities
are of a higher order ; it knows more of the world, or as Leibnitz
says, it expresses or reflects the world more fully and knows also
God. We learn from our experience of sleep, dreams, states of
fainting, dizziness, confusion, and coma, that the human soul passes
through states of consciousness of many degrees of clearness and
fullness ; and, as we may suppose the soul of any one of the higher
animals to be incapable of a clearer and fuller consciousness than
that of our duller half-waking states, so the soul of an animalcule
must be supposed to be a monad enjoying a consciousness which is
to that of the higher animal, as this is to the fully waking con-
sciousness of man. But there is no lower limit to this descending
scale of psychical life; and what we commonly call a mass of inert
matter, is the phenomenon or appearance to us of an aggregation
of monads of a still lower order than the soul of the animalcule.^
Our bodies, then, and the bodies of animals are orderly aggre-

^ In the following paragraphs of the Monadologie this scheme is expressed,
perhaps more succinctly than m any other of Leibnitz’s writings : ** All simple
substances or created monads may be called JEntelechies because they have in
themselves a certain perfection. There is in them a sufficiency which makes
them the source of their internal activities, and renders them, so to speak, in-
corporeal automatons.” “ If we wish to designate as soul everything which has
perceptions and desires in the general sense that I have just explained, all simple
substances or created monads could be called souls. But since feeling is some-
thmg more than a mere perception, I think that the general name of Monad or
Entelechy should suffice for simple substances which have only perception, while
we may reserve the term Soul for those whose perception is more distinct and
is accompanied by memory. We experience in ourselves a state where we
remember nothing and where we have no distmct perception, as in periods of
fainting, or when we are overcome by a profound, dreamless sleep. In such
a state the soul does not sensibly differ at all from a simple Monad. As this

ANIMISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 55

gations or systems of monads belonging to many different levels
in this scale of psychical being ; and the soul of each man or
animal is but the dominant monad of one such system. Leibnitz
maintained (though why he did so is not clear to my mind) that
every soul exists always in association with some body, i.e. some
system of lower monads.^ What, then, is the nature of the relation
between soul and body, between that higher monad which is the
soul of the man and that system of lower monads which is his
body ? Leibnitz rejected both Descartes’ doctrine of interaction
and the doctrine of occasional causes. In fact, he rejected com-
pletely the conception of causal interaction between monads. The
monads do not influence one another in any "way. How then does
he account for the harmony of the world-order, including the cor-
respondence between the changes of our bodies and the changes
of our consciousness ? The temporal correspondence of changes in
all monads is due to the harmony of their natures pre-established
by God at the moment of their creation. This bold and original
speculation cannot be more clearly expressed than in Leibnitz’s
own words : Every present state of a simple substance (i.e. of a
Monad) is a natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a
way that its present is big with its future.” ^ And again : “ The
union of the soul with the body, and even the action of one sub-
stance upon another, consists only in the perfect mutual accord,
expressly established by the ordinance of the first creation, by
virtue of which each substance following its own laws falls in with
what the other requires, and thus the activities of the one follow or
accompany the activities or changes of the other.” ® In seeking
to make clear to others this conception, as applied to the relation
of soul to body, he wrote, “ Suppose two clocks, or two watches,
which perfectly keep time together. Now that may happen in
three ways. The first way consists in the mutual influence of
each clock upon the other ; the second, in the care of a man who

state, however, is not permanent and the soul can recover from it, the soul is
something more.”

Again, “ But the knowledge of eternal and necessary truths is that which
distinguishes us from mere animals and gives us reason and the sciences, thus
raising us to a knowledge of ourselves and of God. This is what is called in us
the Rational Soul or the Mind” (** Monadology,” paragraphs 18, 19, 20 and 29,
Montgomery's translation),

” Neither are there souls wholly separate from bodies, or bodiless spirits.
God alone is without body” f * Monadologie,” paragraph 72I

® Monadologie,” paragraph 22.

® Letter to Arnauld of March 23rd, 1690.

56

BODY AND MIND

looks after them ; the third, in their own accuracy. Now, put
the soul and the body in the place of the two clocks. Their
agreement or sympathy will also arise in one of these three ways.
The way of influence is that of common philosophy, but as we
cannot conceive material particles, or immaterial species, or
qualities which can pass from one of these substances into the
other, we are obliged to give up this opinion. The way of
assistance is that of the system of occasional causes ; but I hold
that this is to introduce Deus ex machina in a natural and ordinary
matter ; in which it is reasonable that God should intervene only
in the way in which He supports all the other things of nature.
Thus there remains only my hypothesis, that is to say, the way
of the harmony pre-established by a contrivance of the Divine
foresight, which has from the beginning formed each of these
substances in so perfect, so regular, and accurate a manner that
by merely following its own laws each substance is in harmony
with the other, just as if there were a mutual influence between
them.’^

Thus Leibnitz solved to his own satisfaction the problem of
the relation between soul and body. His scheme raises many
difficulties that he did not adequately deal with. Many of these
were pointed out by his correspondent, Arnauld, especially the
problems raised by the association of each soul with a succession
of bodies in the course of its career from the beginning to the end
of the world. This difficulty, like most others, especially every
problem of causation, Leibnitz solved by the easy method of
invoking the designing skill of God at the creation of the world.
In thus abolishing all causation and transient action from his
scheme of the created world, and reducing the relation between
changes to mere temporal concomitance, Leibnitz really abolished
science ; for the work of science is to discover the causal relations
between events.

The objection may be stated more fully in the following way.
To answer, in face of any particular problem, this event takes
place because God ordained it so, is no explanation ; or we may
say that, like the explanation of all events offered by the extreme
Occasionalists, namely, the direct interposition of God, the proposed
explanation is of no value because it explains too much. Admit-
ting, as Leibnitz does, the existence of souls and bodies as distinct
beings, the question all the world asks is : Why do certain
changes in each particular soul correspond in a regular manner

ANIMISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 57

with certain changes in one particular body ? And Leibnitz puts
us off with the answer — Because God has ordained it so.

Moreover, Leibnitz*s scheme of monads does not enable him
to get rid of dualism. He maintains with Descartes and Spinoza
the strictly mechanical ordering of nature, yet he maintains also
the teleological character of psychical activity: “Souls act in
accordance with the laws of final causes, through their desires,
purposes and means. Bodies act in accordance with the laws of
efficient causes or of motion. The two realms, that of efficient
causes and that of final causes, are in harmony, each with the
other.’' ^ This parallelism of the mechanical and of the teleo-
logical we shall have to notice again as a principal difficulty of
all systems akin to that of Leibnitz. It is true that in the
“ Th^odicde ” he gives the primacy to teleological determination,
but only at the cost of inconsistency with his earlier doctrine.

Further, Leibnitz finds himself driven to represent human souls
as differing in several very important respects from other monads ;
thus he writes : “ With regard to spirits, that is to say, substances
which think and which are able to recognize God and to discover
eternal truths, I hold that God governs them according to laws
different from those with which He governs the rest of substances,”
namely, “ according to the spiritual laws of justice,, of which the
others are incapable.” ^ Again, “ Such a creation is true, I admit,
only in the case of reasoning souls, and hold that all forms which
do not think, were created at the same time that the world was ” ® ;
and yet again, “ Intellects or souls which are capable of reflection
and of knowing the eternal truths and God (i.e. human souls),
have many privileges that exempt them from the transformation
of bodies.” ^

It was no doubt owing to these unsatisfactory features of the
doctrine of pre-established harmony that it never became generally
accepted as the solution of the psycho-physical problem.

Descartes’ sharpening of the psycho-physical problem pro-
voked Spinoza to suggest a solution which has had, perhaps, a
greater influence on subsequent thought than that of Leibnitz.
Although in point of time this suggestion preceded Leibnitz’s, I
have dealt with it after the latter, because Leibnitz does not

1 ** Monadologie,*' paxagrapli 79.

* letter to Arnauld, October 6th, 1687. ® Ihid.

* Letter to Arnauld, March 23rd, 1690.

BODY AND MIND

53

mention it among the possible solutions, and because it seems
to come after his scheme in the natural order of evolution of
philosophical speculation.

Spinoza taught that soul and body are not two distinct
substances or things, and that we must regard thought and exten-
sion as but two of the many attributes or aspects of the one real
substance, which is God. Reverting to Leibnitz^s illustration of the
two clocks that keep time, we may say that Spinoza^s suggestion
would constitute a fourth way of explaining their concomitance,
and would consist in saying that the two clocks are but two
reflections at different angles of one real clock. Or we may alter
the illustration a little, and may liken the relation of mental to
bodily events in any individual to the relation between the visual
and the auditory presentations of one clock ; the auditory and
the visual appearances exhibit regular and orderly temporal rela-
tions, but there is no direct causal relation between them : the
seen movements of the hands and the sounds heard are two of
many modes in which the clock might be apprehended. In
Spinoza’s own words : ‘‘ The nnind and the body are one and the
same thing, conceived at one time under the attribute of thought,
and at another under that of extension. For this reason the
order and concatenation of things is one, whether nature be con-
ceived under this or that attribute, and consequently the order of
the actions and passions of our body is coincident in nature with
the order of the actions and passions of the mind.”

Spinoza thus sought to abolish at one stroke the distinction
between body and soul as material and immaterial substances,
which the labours of philosophers through two thousand years
had gradually evolved. It was a bold attempt to avoid the
difficulties of both Animism and Materialism.

Like the doctrines of occasional causes and of pre-established
harmony, the hypothesis was framed to meet, or rather to avoid,
the difficulty of conceiving causal interaction between mind and
matter; but, unlike the authors of those doctrines, Spinoza did
not reject the causal relation as illusory, a figment of our minds
only ; rather he held that the causal relation obtains between the
real events that we apprehend under the two modes of material and
mental events, and that this real causal relation is likewise appre-
hended by us under the two modes of material or mechanical and
of mental causation. Hence each series appears for us as a closed
causal series, the two series having no causal interaction ; ‘‘ so long

ANIMISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 59

as things are regarded as mental phenomena we must explain the
order of nature or the causal connexion by the attribute of
thought alone ; and so long as we regard them as material
phenomena, we must explain the whole order of nature by the
attribute of extension alone/’ ^

“ If,” says Professor Hoffding, “ we ask for the real reason
why the mental side of existence cannot be explained by the
material, nor the material by the mental, we shall find the answer
in Spinoza’s ideal of explanation through causes, according to
which cause and effect must resemble one another. In a letter
Spinoza says clearly : ‘If two things have nothing in common
with one another, the one cannot be the cause of the other : for,
since there would be nothing in the effect that was also in the
cause, everything that was in the effect would have arisen out of
nothing.’ If we keep this fundamental principle consistently
before us we shall have the key to Spinoza’s whole system.” ^

The middle years of the seventeenth century produced yet another
reaction against Descartes’ spiritualistic Dualism in the Materialism
of Thomas Hobbes, a Materialism as consistent and thorough-
going as Materialism can be. For Hobbes, who was acquainted
with the works and the persons of Galileo and Gassendi, every-
thing that exists is corporeal, body and substance are one and the
same ; the essential attributes of body are extension and motion ;
all change is motion. Sensation is nothing else but motion ;
pleasure is really nothing but motion about the heart; mens
nihil aliud erit praterquam motus in partibus quibusdam corporis
organicir

Thus the thinkers of the seventeenth century brought to a
sharper issue than ever before the problem of the soul and of its
relation to the body, and formulated definitely and clearly four
distinct solutions of the problem ; namely, the animistic Dualism
of Descartes, the parallelistic Animism of Leibnitz, the identity-
hypothesis of Spinoza, the Materialism of Hobbes, each of which
has continued to find respectable supporters up to the present
day. These four rival doctrines, each associated with the name
of one of the four most celebrated philosophers of the seventeenth
century, were handed on to the eighteenth century. No wonder,
then, that the problem of the soul was eagerly discussed, and
that, as Lange says, the human soul was the point around which
1 Hoffding, op. cit. 310. ® Op. cit., p. 310-

6o

BODY AND MIND

all controversies turned in the eighteenth century.^ Descartes
had taught that man is compounded of soul and body acting and
reacting upon one another ; Leibnitz that, though he is com-
pounded of soul and body, these do not influence one another ;
Spinoza that mind and body are equally real or unreal, because
but two aspects of one reality ; Hobbes that man consists of body
alone, the soul being a mere figment of his imagination.

Two possibilities only remained, namely, first, that the soul
alone is real, the body being fictitious or appearance only ;
secondly, that both body and soul are fictitious. And the
ingenuity of the eighteenth century proved equal to the task of
propounding and maintaining these doctrines also ; before the
century passed away, these two were added to the list of rival
doctrines by philosophers, namely, Bishop Berkeley and David
Hume, whose penetration and high reputation secured for their
views a respectful hearing and a career whose end no man can
yet foresee.

^ Op. ctt.i vol. i. p. 244.

CHAPTER V

ANIMISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH .CENTURY

I N the metaphysic of the Schoolmen®' the notion of
“substance” occupied a position of fundamental import-
ance. In their mouths, the word implied something
permanently self-identical and unchanging beneath the flux of
appearances, an unalterable substratum or core of real being which
supports the accidents, qualities, or attributes in which substance
manifests itself ; and, as we have seen, the soul was generally
defined as an immaterial substance. The philosophers of the
seventeenth century had continued to use the word substance
in a similar way, though the meanings they attached to the
word were not strictly identical. Descartes had assumed sub-
stances of two kinds, the thinking and the extended substances ;
for Spinoza, all substance was one only ; for Leibnitz, a substance
is an ultimate logical subject, and the infinitely numerous monads
were such substances. The philosophical controversies of the
eighteenth century revolved around this notion of substance.
Conservative thought held fast to substance as to a sheet-
anchor; progressive thought turned to rend it to tatters, and
left it at the end of the century covered with contempt, merely
a discredited shadowy remnant of its former self. And the fate
of the notion of the soul was closely bound up with that of
substance ; it suffered discredit in an almost equal degree.

In the attack upon “ substance,” John Locke was the fore-
runner of both Hume and Berkeley ; and, with that temperate
sagacity which characterizes all his writings, he anticipated the
reasonings of both his brilliant successors upon the psycho-
physical problem, without, however, accepting the extreme
conclusions of either. He wrote, “When we talk or think of
any particular sort of corporeal substances, as horse, stone, etc.,
though the idea we have of either of them be but the com-
plication or collection of those several simple ideas of sensible
qualities which we used to find united in the thing called

61

62

BODY AND MIND

horse ” or “ stone,” yet because we cannot conceive how they
should subsist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them exist-
ing in, and supported by, some common subject ; which support
we denote by the name substance,” though it be certain we
have no clear or distinct idea of that thing we suppose a support
The same happens concerning the operations of the mind ;
namely, thinking, reasoning, fearing, etc., which we concluding
not to subsist of themselves, nor apprehending how they can
belong to body, or be produced by it, we are apt to think
these the actions of some other substance which we call “ spirit,”
whereby yet it is evident, that having no other idea or notion of
matter, but something wherein those many sensible qualities
which affect our senses do subsist ; by supposing a substance
wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of moving,
etc., do subsist ; we have as clear a notion of the substance of
spirit as we have of body ; the one being supposed to be (without
knowing what it is) the sid^bstraimn to those simple ideas we have
from- without ; and the other supposed (with a like ignorance of
what it is) to be the substratum to those operations which we
experiment in ourselves within. It is plain, then, that the idea
of corporeal substance in matter is as remote from our conceptions
and apprehensions as that of spiritual substance, or spirit ; and
therefore, from our not having any notion of the substance of
spirit, we can no more conclude its non-existence than we can,
for the same reason, deny the existence of body ; it being as
rational to affirm there is no body, because we have no clear and
distinct idea of the substance of matter, as to say there is no
spirit, because we have no clear and distinct idea of the substance
of a spirit” ^ That is to say, Locke saw that our conceptions of
matter and of soul are alike hypotheses which we make for the
better interpretation of our experience and the guidance of our
actions, and that what knowledge we have of them is not direct,
but is hypothetical and inferential only, is inferred from the facts
of immediate experience.

Locke strongly insisted that the conceptions of an immaterial
soul and of its action upon the body involved no more obscurity
than those of material substance and of the action of one
body upon another. '' If any one say, he knows not what it is
thinks in him, he means, he knows not what the substance is
of that thinking thing ; no more, say I, knows he what the sub-
^ ''An Essay on the Human Understanding,’* Bk. II. chap, xxiix.

ANIMISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 63

stance is of that solid thing. Farther, if he says, he knows not
how he thinks, I answer, Neither knows he how he is extended ;
how the solid parts of body are united or cohere together to make
extension.” ^ And in the following passage he anticipated Lotze’s
reply to those who raise the difficulty of the Occasionalists.

Another idea we have o'f body, is the power of communication
of motion by impulse ; and of our souls, the power of exciting
motion by thought. These ideas, the one of body, the other of
our minds, every day’s experience clearly furnishes us with ; but
if here again we inquire how this is done, we are equally in the
dark. For in the communication of motion by impulse, wherein
as much motion is lost to one body as is got to the other, which
is the ordinariest case, we can have no other conception but of the
passing of motion out of one body into another ; which, I think,
is as obscure and inconceivable, as how our minds move or stop
our bodies by thought ; which we every moment find they do.” ^
Hence, he contended, '‘we have as many and as clear ideas
belonging to spirit as we have belonging to body, the substance
of each being equally unknown to us ; and the idea of thinking
in spirit, as clear as of extension in body ; and the communication
of motion by thought, which we attribute to spirit, is as evident
as that impulse which we ascribe to body. Constant experience
makes us sensible of both of these, though our narrow under-
standings can comprehend neither.” ®

I.ocke, then, held a distinctly dualistic view of human person-
ality, though he held it, not dogmatically, but only as the most
reasonable and probable view ; for the temper of his mind was
scientific rather than metaphysical. He was prepared to admit
that God may have endowed material substance with the power
of thought ; for, said he, “It is not much more remote from our
comprehension to conceive this than to conceive that God should
superadd to matter another substance with a faculty of thinking ;
since we know not in what thinking consists nor to what sort of
substances the first eternal thinking Being has been pleased to
give that power.”

This passage shows that Locke was familiar with, and regarded
as not altogether untenable, that kind of mechanical materialism,
professed by his great countrymen, Newton, Boyle, and Priestly,
which reconciled itself with religion by postulating God as the
designer and creator of the great machine ; and his adherence to
^ Essay, Bk. II. chap, xxiii. ^ Loc, at, ® Loc. ciL

BODY AND MIND

64

the dualistic view seems to have been determined by the fact that
it was more in harmony with the religious teachings which claimed
to be founded upon divine revelation.

The more fervid temperament and stronger theological bias
of Bishop Berkeley would not allow him to rest content with
Locke's calm, balanced, and strictly scientific attitude towards
the problem of spirit and matter, or to follow him in accepting
the dualistic answer to the problem as the most probable of the
rival possibilities. He was a metaphysician by nature and sought
for absolute truth. Since, then, it had been made clear by Locke
that matter is but an obscure and hypothetical conception based
only on inference from the facts of sensation ; and since Berkeley
was convinced of the absolute reality of Spirit, on grounds which
he never thought of questioning ; he hastened to deny the reality
of matter, in order to stem the dangerous flood of Materialism,
which seemed to him to threaten all true religion. Locke had
ascribed our sensations to the influence of material things,
operating indirectly upon our souls through the medium of the
sense organs. Berkeley insisted that, if we believe in the
omnipotence of God, the assumption of material things as the
causes of our sensations is an unnecessary hypothesis ; for we
must believe that God can evoke our sensations by the direct
action of his Spirit upon ours.

Berkeley sets out by agreeing with Locke that all the objects
of human knowledge are “ideas” — “either ideas actually im-
printed on the senses ; or else such as arc perceived by attending
to the passions and operations of the mind ; or lastly, ideas
formed by help of memory and imagination.” ^ “ But,” he goes

on, “besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of
knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives
them ; and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining,
remembering, about them. This perceiving, active being is what
I call Mind, Spirit, Soul, or Myself. By which words I do not
denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from
them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby
they are perceived — for the existence of an idea consists in being
perceived.” ^

As regards the alleged independent existence of material
things, he writes — “ It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing
^ “ Of the Principles of Human Knowledge,” §1. 2 op. c%t.^ § 2.

ANIMISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY 65

amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all
sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from
their being perceived by the understanding* But, with how
great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may
be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart
to call it in question may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve
a manifest contradiction. For, what are the foremenlioned
objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we
perceive besides our own ideas or sensations ? and is it not
plainly repugnant that any one of these^ or any combination of
them, should exist unperceived ? ^

And again he writes : Some truths there are so near and
obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see
them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir
of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word, all those bodies
which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any
subsistence without a mind — that their being is to be perceived or
known ; that, consequently, so long as they are not actually
perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any
other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or
else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit — it being
perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of abstrac-
tion, to attribute to any single part of them an existence
independent of a spirit. To be convinced of which the reader
need only reflect, and try to separate in his own thoughts the
being of a sensible thing from its being perceived. From what
has been said it is evident there is not any other Substance than
Spirit^ or that which perceivesP ^

As regards the existence of spirit, after denying all power or
agency to ideas, he writes : ‘‘We perceive a continual succession
of ideas; some are anew excited, others are changed or totally
disappear. There is, therefore, some Cause of these ideas, whereon
they depend, and which produces and changes them. That this
cause cannot be any quality, or idea, or combination of ideas
is clear from the preceding section. It must, therefore, be a
substance ; but it has been shown that there is no corporeal
or material substance : it remains, therefore, that the cause of
ideas is an incorporeal active substance or Spirit.” “ A Spirit
is one simple, undivided, active being — as it perceives ideas it
is called the Understandings and as it produces or otherwise
^ Op. cit.s § 4. ^ Op. cit.s §§ 6 and 7.

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BODY AND MIND

operates about them it is called the Will. . . . Such is the
nature of Spirit, or that which acts, that it cannot be of itself
perceived, bul- only by the effects which it produceth,” ^ Then,
after remarking that “ I find I can excite ideas in my mind
at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as often as I think
fit,’^ he goes on, “ But, v/hatever power I may have over
my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by Sense
have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad day-
light I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether
I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall
present themselves to my view ; and so likewise as to the
hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on them are
not creatures of my will. There is, therefore, some other Will
or Spirit that produces them.”

Berkeley, then, regardless of the statement with which his
inquiry opens, namely, the statement that all the objects of
human knowledge are '‘ideas,” goes on to tell us that “from
the Principles we have laid down, it follows Human Knowledge
may naturally be reduced to tv/o heads — that of ideas and that
of Spirits.” ^ “ Thing or Being is the most general name of all :

it comprehends under it two kinds entirely distinct and hetero-
geneous, and which have nothing common but the name, viz.,
Spirits and Ideas. The former are active, indivisible, incor-
ruptible substances : the latter are inert, fleeting, or dependent
beings, which subsist not by themselves, but are supported by,
or exist in minds or spiritual substances.” ^

Other passages that throw light on Berkeley’s conception
of the soul are the following : “ It is a plain consequence that
the soul always thinks ; and in truth, whoever shall go about to
divide in his thoughts, or abstract the existence of a spirit from
its cogitation, will, I believe, find it no easy task.” ^ “ By the

word spirit we mean only that which thinks, wills, and per-
ceives : this, and this alone, constitutes the signification of that
term.” ®

“ The knowledge I have of other spirits is not immediate,
as is the knowledge of my ideas ; but depending on the inter-
vention of ideas, by me referred to agents or spirits distinct
from myself, as effects or concomitant signs.”

^ Op. cit , §§ 26 and 27. 2 Qp^ § 29. 3 Op. cU., § 86.

* Op. ctL, § 89. s Op, ctt.y § 98.

® Op. c%t.y § 138. ’ Op. cit.y § 145.

ANIMISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 67

Nothing can be plainer than that the motions, changes,
decays, and dissolutions which we hourly see befall natural
bodies (and which is what we mean by the course of nature)
cannot possibly affect an active simple, uncompounded substance ;
such a being, therefore, is indissoluble by the force of nature ;
that is to say — the soul of man is naturally immortal.” ^

Locke, then, had shown clearly enough that our conceptions
of matter and spirit, of body and soul, are obscure and uncertain,
and that they are arrived at only indirectly by reflection upon
the facts of immediate experience : but he accepted them as
being useful and reasonably probable : Berkeley, carried away by
his desire to confound the materialists, rejected altogether the
“ unknown somewhat ” that we call matter, while retaining the
equally unknown somewhat that we call spirit ; thus he let loose
the modern flood of subjectivism and scepticism, and led to the
adoption of the critical attitude in philosophy. For Hume,
approaching the same problems without Berkeley’s theological
bias, but in a similar metaphysical spirit, forcibly argued, as
Locke had done, that our conception of spirit is in no better case
than that of matter, and that, if, with Berkeley, we reject the
conception of matter, we must also reject the conception of spirit.

The essential novelty of Hume’s reasoning was his rejection
of the validity of the notion of causation. Both Locke and
Berkeley had accepted and used the principle of causation without
serious question ; noting that our sensations rise to consciousness
independently of our volition, they regarded them as the effects
of some causes lying outside or beyond the mind, and confidently
inferred the reality of the causes from these effects revealed in
our immediate experience — Locke conceiving them as the actions
of matter on mind, Berkeley as the direct actions of God. But
Hume asked : What is our warrant for thus accepting the
principle of causation, and for inferring the existence of causes,
whether material or spiritual, of our sensations ? And to this
question he could find no good answer. “ It is only causation,''
says Hume, “which produces such a connection as to give us
assurance from the existence or action of one object, that it was
followed or preceded by any other existence or action.” ^ “ It

appears that of those three relations which depend not upon the
mere ideas (namely identity, the situation in time and place, and

^ Op. ctt., § 41. ^ “ A Treatise of Human Nature,” Part III. § 2.

68

BODY AND MIND

causation) the only one that can be traced beyond our senses,
and informs us of existences and objects, which we do not see or
feel, is causation ” ^ He then goes on to say that our idea of the
relation of causation obtaining between events is derived from
the observation of their contiguity in space and their immediate
succession in time. But, says he, Shall we then rest contented
with these two relations of contiguity and succession, as affording
a complete idea of causation ? By no means, an object may be
contiguous and prior to another, without being considered as its
cause. There is a necessary connection to be taken into considera-
tion.’^ ^ Hume then investigates through the course of several
chapters “ the nature of that necessary connection which enters
into our idea of cause and effect” And the outcome of his
research is summarized as follows : —

“ The idea of necessity arises from some impression. There
is no impression conveyed by our senses, which can give rise to
that idea. It must, therefore, be derived from some internal
impression or impression of reflection. There is no internal
impression, which has any relation to the present business, but
that propensity which custom produces, to pass from an object
to an idea of its usual attendant. This, therefore, is the essence
of neceesity. Upon the whole, necessity is something that exists
in mind, not in objects, nor is it possible for us ever to form the
most distant idea of it, considered as a quality in bodies. Either
we have no idea of necessity or necessity is nothing but that
determination of the mind to pass from causes to effects, and
from effects to causes, according to their experienced union.” ^
For, “ When any object is presented to us, it immediately conveys
to the mind a lively idea of that object which is usually found
to attend it ; and this determination of the mind forms the
necessary connection of these objects. But when we change the
point of view from the objects to the perceptions, in that case the
impression is to be considered as the cause, and the lively idea
as the effect ; and their necessary connection is that new
determination, which we feel to pass from the idea of the one
to that of the other.” ^ Hence he concludes “ A cause is an
object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with
it that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the
idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more
lively idea of the other.” ®

^ Loc. ctt. ^ Loc, cit, * Op, cit.y chap. xiv. ^ Loc. cit. ^ Loc, cii.

ANIMISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 69

Hume, having thus proved to his own complete satisfaction
that the conception of causal relation is purely subjective, that
it stands for no real action or influence exerted by one thing
on another, has (for those who accept his reasoning) undermined
both the reasoning by which Locke justified our conception of
matter as the cause of our sensations, and that by which Berkeley
sought to prove our sensations to be directly caused by the will
of God.

Hume had already dismissed to the class of baseless fictions
the conception of a thing, or substance, or enduring being, with
the dictum that “the idea of a substance is nothing but a
collection of simple ideas that are united by the imagination and
have a particular name assigned them,” and that “we have no
idea of substance, distinct from that of a collection of particular
qualities, nor have we any other meaning when we either talk
or reason concerning it.”^ But his reasoning about causation
(if it be sound) invalidates even more effectively the conception
of thing or substance ; for a thing is essentially that which exerts
power or action upon another.

Hume undertook to refute also the special arguments by
which Berkeley had sought to establish the reality of God and
of the human soul as real beings, things, or substances.

Berkeley had made merry over those philosophers who
spoke of the substance of matter as the support or substratum
of its accidents or sensible qualities. “ If we inquire into
what the most accurate philosophers declare themselves to
mean by material substance^ we shall find them acknowledge
they have no other meaning annexed to those sounds but
the idea of being in general, together with the relative notion of
its supporting accidents. The general idea of Being appeareth
to me the most abstract and incomprehensible of all other ;
and as for its supporting accidents, this, as we have just
now observed, cannot be understood in the common sense of
those words ; it must, therefore, be taken in some other sense,
but what that is they do not explain. So that when I consider
the two parts or branches which make the signification of the
words material substance, I am convinced there is no distinct
meaning annexed to them.” ^ Yet, when in the course of
the same essay Berkeley came to treat of souls, he nai’vely
described them as spiritual substances by which ideas are
^ Op, ctt,, Part I. § 7. ^ ** Principles of Human Knowledge,’* § 16.

70

BODY AND MIND

supported and in which ideas exist as “ inert, fleeting, or
dependent beings ” ; without in any way rendering more clear
the meaning to be attached to the sounds “ substance and
supporting.”

Hume, regarding the problem in complete freedom from
Berkeley’s theological bias, metes out to spiritual substance
the same treatment that Berkeley gave to material substance
Referring to “ the curious reasoners concerning the material
or immaterial substances in which they suppose our perceptions
to inhere,” he says : “In order to put a stop to these endless
cavils on both sides, I know no better method than to ask these
philosophers in a few words, what they mean by substance and
inhesion ? This question we have found impossible to be
answered with regard to matter and body ; but besides that
in the case of the mind it labours under all the same difficulties,
it is burdened with some additional ones, which are peculiar
to that subject.” And after displaying these, he concludes :

“ Thus neither by considering the first origin of ideas, nor by
means of a definition, are we able to arrive at any satisfactory
notion of substance, which seems to me a sufficient reason
for abandoning utterly that dispute concerning the materiality
and immateriality of the soul, and makes me absolutely condemn
even the question itself. We have no perfect idea of anything
but of a perception. A substance is entirely different from a
perception. We have therefore no idea of a substance. Inhesion
in something is supposed to be requisite to support the existence
of our perception. Nothing appears requisite to support the
existence of a perception. We have therefore no idea of inhesion.
What possibility then of answering that question, Whether percep-
tions inhere in a material or immaterial substance, when we do not
so much as understand the meaning of the question ? ” ^

Berkeley, having opened his essay with the emphatic assertion
that all the objects of human knowledge are ideas and ideas
only; having shown that (in accordance with his general
principles of knowledge) “ it is evident there can be no idea of a
spirit ; and having said “ that this substance (spirit) which
supports or perceives ideas should itself be an idea or like an
idea is evidently absurd ” ; may justly be held to have anticipated
Hume s denial of spirit ; or at least to have shown that,
according to his own principles, we can have no knowledge of
^ " Treatise of Human Nature,” Book I. Part III. § 5.

ANIMISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURA 71

spirit. But, regardless of logic, he went on to say somewhat
lamely that In a large sense indeed, we may be said to have
an idea or rather a notion of spirit.” ^ And in another work he
attempted to defend this “ notion,” this “ sort of an idea,” so
manifestly inconsistent with his own statements and principles, by
saying : “ I know or am conscious of my own being, and that I
myself am not my ideas. But I am not in like manner conscious
of the existence or essence of Matter. On the contrary, I know
that nothing inconsistent can exist, and that the existence of
this abstract matter implies inconsistency. There is, therefore,
no parity of case between Spirit and Matter.” ^

Berkeley’s defence of soul or spirit against his own fundamental
principles being so halting and wanting in logic, it was no great
step for Hume to refute it and so to bring back the discussion
to the position in which it had been left by Locke. But in doing
so he gave the agnostic conclusion as to the existence of both
spiritual and material substances, a more positively sceptical or
negative flavour ; and indeed he showed an inclination towards the
materialistic view, rather than towards Berkeley’s pure spiritualism
or Locke’s attitude of impaitial agnosticism towards both spirit
and matter. In reference to such affirmations of our immediate
awareness of the self as Berkeley had made, he wrote : “Un-
luckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very
experience which is pleaded for them ; nor have we any idea of
self, after the manner it is here explained. For, from what
impression could this idea be derived ? This question it is
impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and
absurdity ; and yet it is a question which must necessarily be
answered if we would have the idea of self pas.*^ for clear and
intelligible. It must be some one impression that gives rise to
every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression,
but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed
to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of
self, that impression must continue invariably the same, through
the whole course of our lives ; since self is supposed to exist
after that manner. But there is no impressionj constant and
invariable^ Pain and pleasure, grief and j^yj passions and
sensations succeed each other, and never all same

time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of theselmpressions, or

1 Op cit., § 140.

2 Third Dialogue between Hylas and Philonoig.

72 BODY AND MIND

from any other, that the idea of self is derived ; and consequently
there is no such idea/'

“But further, what must become of all our particular per-
ceptions upon this hypothesis? All these are different, and
distinguishable, and separable from each other, and may be
separately considered, and may exist separately, and have no
need of anything to support their existence. After w^hat manner,
therefore, do they belong to self, and how are they connected
with it ? For my part, when I enter most intimately into what
I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or
other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or
pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a
perception ; and never can observe anything but the perception.
When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound
sleep, so long am I insensible of myself and may truly be said not
to exist And were all my perceptions removed by death, and
could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after
the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor
do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect
nonentity. If anyone upon serious and unprejudiced reflection,
thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can
i;eason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he
may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially
different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something
simple and continued, which he calls himself, though I am certain
there is no such principle in me.”

“ But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may
venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but
a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each
other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux
and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without
varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable
than our sight ; and all our other senses and faculties contribute
to this change ; nor is there any single power of the soul which
remains unalterably the same perhaps for one moment. The mind
is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make
their appearance ; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an
infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no
simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different, whatever
natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and
identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us.

ANIMISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

73

They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the
rrind, nor have we the most distant notion of the place where
these scenes are represented, or of the materials of which it is
composed.” ^

And, summing up on this question, Hume wrote : “ To
pronounce, then, the final decision upon the whole, the question
concerning the substance of the soul is absolutely unintelligible ;
all our perceptions are not susceptible of a local union, either
with what is extended or unextended ; there being some of them
of the one kind, and some of the other. And as the constant
conjunction of objects constitutes the very essence of cause and
effect, matter and motion may often be regarded as the causes of
thought, as far as we have any notion of that relation.” ^

While Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in this country were
preparing the way for the critical attitude that has been the
presupposition of all subsequent philosophizing, continental
thought was pursuing a different course. In spite of the
attempt of Spinoza to find a new solution of the psycho-physical
problem, the bulk of cultivated opinion remained divided between
the two doctrines that had come down from antiquity ; men were,
in general, either dogmatic spiritualists or dogmatic materialists.

In the earlier part of the eighteenth century the academic
philosophers were, in the main, divided into two parties, the
followers of Descartes and of Leibnitz respectively. The former,
accepting the extreme Dualism of Descartes’ metaphysic, had
developed it in two divergent directions ; on the one hand, those
of strongly religious tendency developed it in the direction of
mysticism, and succeeded in rendering it congenial to the Church
in a degree which rendered it for a time the successor of
Scholasticism ; on the other hand, others laid more stress on the
strictly mechanical view of nature, and on the sceptical attitude
which Descartes had assumed at the outset of his investiga-
tions. By these divergent stresses Cartesianism was dismem-
bered ; and throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century
it was overshadowed by the Leibnitzian philosophy. In the early
part of the century this was made by Christian Wolff the basis
of his rationalistic dogmatic system, which dominated most of the
continental academies of learning till towards the end of the

1 Op. cit., Bk. I. Part IV. § 6, '' Of Personal Identitjr.”

a Op. cU., Bk. I. Part IV. § 5, Of the Immateriality of the Soul.’^

74

BODY AND MIND

eighteenth century. In this system the immortality of the soul
as a spiritual substance was established by some such reasoning
as follows : The unity of self-consciousness implies the simplicity
of the soul substance. Since the soul is simple or unitary it
cannot be a compound or capable of division ; hence it cannot
be extended, for all extended substance is divisible ; therefore it
is a spiritual substance without extension ; and, since it cannot
be divided, it is incapable of being destroyed, and is therefore
immortal.

On the other hand, the materialists, fascinated by the
simplicity of the kinetic view of nature, and fortified by increase
of biological knowledge (which showed that the animal body is
the seat of many chemical and physical processes and that many
of its processes may be mechanically interpreted), accepted with
enthusiasm Descartes’ dictum that all the processes of the animal
body are mechanically explicable, and extended it without ex-
ception to the human body ; thus leaving no place for the inter-
vention of the soul This materialistic tendency was a part of
the movement of the cultivated classes in France (known as the
Enlightenment), which was stimulated by the introduction of
British thought by Voltaire and Montesquieu. The sensation-
alism of Locke and Hume, eagerly taken up and carried to an
extreme length by Voltaire and by Condillac in his “ Traits des
Sensations” (17S4X lent itself well to the materialistic interpreta-
tion of nature and of man. Condillac adhered to Animism in
spite of his reduction of all thought to sensation. But Voltaire
fastened eagerly upon Locke’s assertion that God may have
endowed matter with the power of thought ; and the Enlighten-
ment culminated in the dogmatic and atheistic materialism of
Baron D’Holbach’s “ Systeme de la Nature” (1770), which found
a large following in the polite world.

These acutely opposed dogmatisms were the dominant in-
fluences in the intellectual circles of continental Europe when, in
1781, Kant launched upon the world his “Critique of Pure
Reason.” It fell like a bombshell among the disputants, shat-
tered for ever the dogmatic metaphysics of both parties, and
became the starting-point of a powerful new movement.

Kant’s attempt was, by combining the scepticism he had learnt
from Hume with the idealism of Berkeley, to achieve a position
which might claim to reconcile and to combine in a higher

ANIMISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 75

synthesis all that was most vital in the opposed dogmatisms.
The great and rapid success of his doctrine was due to this fact.
The arguments of the materialists had seemed incapable of refu-
tation ; yet men would not consent to resign at their bidding the
belief in God, freedom, and immortality, whose stronghold was
the Wolffian metaphysic. And, when Kant came forward, offer-
ing to show them how they might consistently accept the
principal tenets of both parties — might reconcile the seemingly
opposed teachings of science and of religion — they eagerly
welcomed him.

Kant held the balance true between Hume and Berkeley, by
maintaining the validity of Berkeley’s inference from our sense-
perceptions to some agent or agencies that evoke our sensations ;
while, with Hume, he denied that we can infer the nature of those
agencies. As to the real nature of these agents, the famous
things-in-themselves, he held that we know and can know nothing ;
that we are not warranted in believing them to be either matter
or thinking beings ; but that it is unnecessary to assume them to
be of more than one kind.

By his doctrine of the subjectivity of Space and Time and
of the purely phenomenal character of all the sensible world, he
robbed Materialism of its offensive power, while maintaining the
validity of mechanical explanation of all phenomenal processes ;
and, by his doctrine of the practical reason, he claimed to establish
on the sure foundation of the moral nature of man the belief in
God, freedom, and immortality. Man’s body belongs, according
to Kant, like all other bodies, wholly to the phenomenal world, and
has only empirical reality ; this mundus sensibilis is known through
the understanding, or theoretical reason ; but the soul belongs to
the mundus mtelligibilis^ or ideal world, which is known through
the practical reason.

Kant taught that the soul has three great faculties — (i)
sentiency, which man has in common with the animals ;
(2) understanding or theoretical reason ; and (3) pure reason,
which in a very partial and imperfect manner man has in com-
mon with God, who is pure reason ; the two latter constitute
the true Ego. Paulsen summarizes as follows Kant’s meta-
physical doctrine of the souP: — *‘The logical nature, understanding
and reason, is really the Ego in itself, while on the other hand,
time and space belong merely to sentiency, to the sense repre-
^ ** Immanuel Kant, his Life and Doctrine,” p. 185.

BODY AND MIND

76

sentation of the Ego which as phenomenal can pass away at
death. But there remains the Ego as a pure, thinking essence,
free from space and time, a spaceless and timeless, pure, thinking
spirit. This is a thought which, although not realizable in
perception, remains nevertheless a true and necessary idea.”

Though Kant claimed that his Critique showed how the pro-
blem of the relation of soul to body is to be overcome (namely by
reducing the body to the level of merely empirical or phenomenal
reality, while assigning the soul to a sphere of higher reality) ; he
did not attempt to show in detail how this solution is to be
worked out. But he threw out a suggestion, which has been
elaborated by later thinkers. His epistemological system neces-
sarily reduced the facts of the world of consciousness, all that we
discover by introspection, to the level of phenomena, if only
because our states of consciousness succeed one another in time ;
they are phenomena perceived by an “ inner sense.” Thus,
mental processes and the bodily processes that accompany them
are alike phenomena ; and there is a parallelism between psychi-
cal and physical phenomena, in the sense that the same thing
which arises in my consciousness, or appears to the inner sense
as sensation, idea, or feeling, would manifest itself to the per-
ception of the external sense as a physical process in my body.^
This is a variation of the psycho-physical doctrine of pheno-
menalistic parallelism which was first enunciated by Spinoza ;
we shall have to examine it in a later chapter. It was
merely thrown out by Kant as a suggestion. That he did

^ ^This suggestion is embodied in the following passage: “If matter were a
thing by itself, it would, as a composite being be totally different from the soul,
a simple being. But what we call matter is an external phenomenon only,'
the substratum of which cannot possibly be known by any possible predicates!

I can therefore very well suppose that that substratum is simple, although m the
manner in which it affects our senses it produces m us the intuition of something
extended, and therefore composite, so that the substance which, with reference
to our external sense, possesses extension, might very well by itself possess
thoughts which can be represented consciously by its own internal sense. In
such wise the same thing which in one respect is called corporeal, would in another
respect be at the same time a thinking being, of which, though we cannot see
Its thoughts, we can yet see the signs of them phenomenally. Thus the ex-
pression that souls only (as a particular class of substances) think, would have
to be dropt, and we should return to the common expression that men think
that is, that the same thing which, as an external phenomenon is extended, is
internally, by itself, a subject, not composite, but simple and intelligent ”

(“ Critique of pure Reason.” Criticism of second paralogism of transcendental
psychology. Max Muller’s translation).

ANIMISM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 77

not mean to adopt it, is shown by the opening words of the
paragraph following the one which contains the suggestion
But without indulging in such hypotheses . . ”) and by an
explicit statement in the next section of the Critique, which
runs as follows : The transcendental object, which forms the
foundation of external phenomena, and the other, which forms the
foundation of our internal intuition, is therefore neither matter
nor a thinking being by itself, but simply an unknown cause of
the phenomena that supplied to us the empirical concept of
both.” 1

In the eighteenth century the division and specialization of
intellectual labour, which had resulted from the revival of learning,,
had gone so far that it was no longer possible for any one man
to attempt to master the whole field of science and philosophy,
after the manner of Descartes and other great thinkers of the
preceding century. Biology had become a relatively independent
science, and was pursued for its own sake by a rapidly increasing
number of workers.

Throughout this century the Animism which had been handed
down from Aristotle continued to be the dominant way of thought
of biologists, in spite of the large influence of Descartes’ mechanical
physiology and the popularity of the Materialism exemplified in
“ La Syst^me de la Nature,” The most influential exponents of
the vitalistic physiology were G. E. Stahl and C. F. Wolff. The
former (1660-1734), rejecting the distinction of vegetative, sensi-
tive, and rational souls, to which in the hands of Aristotle’s
followers the master’s recognition of the corresponding functions
had led, ascribed all vital manifestations, especially growth and
movement, to the rational soul {anima rationalis). C. F. Wolff
departed further from the Aristotelian tradition, and may be
regarded as the father of the later vitalism, which, while denying
that the body is a machine merely, confined its attention to the
vegetative functions, and sought to account for their peculiarities
by means of the conception of some non-mechanical principle.
Wolff named this principle the vis essentalis, and later writers,
more especially the critics of vitalism, have generally denoted it
by the term vital force (Lebens-krafi), Wolff propounded in his
chief treatise, “Theoria Generationis” (i 7 S 9 )^ a- vitalistic doctrine of
development by epigenesis, in opposition to the generally accepted
1 Op. cit., Criticism of Fourth Paralogism of Trausceudental Psychology.”

78

MIND AND BODY

doctrine of evolution, according to which the development of an
organism is merely the growth in size of a minute organism con-
tained within the germ and having all the essential parts and
organs already present within it It has been usual to employ
the word Vitalism to distinguish physiological doctrines of this
type from mechanistic physiology on the one hand and from
Animism on the other ; but it is clear that Vitalism (understood
in this way) cannot be sharply distinguished from Animism, and
that it is but a form of Animism characterized by neglect of the
psycho-physical problem.

CHAPTER VI

ANIMISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

T he most striking and immediate lesult of the success of
Kant s critical philosophy was the rapid rise of the
romantic speculation that dominated Germany during
the first third of the nineteenth century and culminated in the
system of Hegel During this period, the psycho-physical
problem was almost lost sight of, submerged in the flood of
idealistic enthusiasm v/hich, accepting the world of ideas as the
only real world, hardly deigned to take account of the facts
and theories of empirical science. Kant had laid it down that
Materialism, though it is utterly impossible as a metaphysical
doctrine, is necessarily presupposed by the natural sciences ; for
it is, he affirmed, an indispensable presupposition of these sciences
that everything that is real manifests itself in space as a body
or a function of a body. But reflection on the nature of our
knowledge and our cognitive faculties shows that bodies are mere
appearance, that they are real only for a perceiving and think-
ing subject. Therefore it is impossible that the subject and its
activities should be interpreted as a function of a body. The
thinking Ego or subject is the presupposition of the possibility
of the corporeal world, which is a product of its activity.
This was the keynote of the subsequent Idealism : Kant’s
thing-in-itself was rejected, and the body was regarded as but
the creation of the mind ; from which it followed that it is absurd
to suppose that the mind can be in any degree dependent upon
the body. For Idealism of this type the body was reduced to
the level of unreality ; and it carried the psycho-physical problem
with it to that level.

But, after thirty years of dominance of the Speculative
Philosophy, there came a sudden and violent reaction against it ;
purely logical construction fell into disrepute ; men of science
had learnt to regard philosophy as the secret ally of reactionary
theology and an enemy to true science ; and, mistrusting its

79

So

BODY AND MIND

methods and results, they went back to the work of faithful
observation and minute experiment^ Thus Kanfs successors,
by insisting unduly on one part of his doctrine, prepared the
way for the renewed outburst of Materialism of the middle of
the nineteenth century ; and this in turn brought to the front once
more the problem of the relation between soul and body, which
Kant had placed in a new light, but without either solving or
removing it. It was during this period of revived Materialism
that further elaboration of Kant’s psycho-physical suggestion was
undertaken by a philosopher who was, by training and profession,
a physicist rather than a psychologist or metaphysician, namely,
G. T. Fechner.

The modern phase of the psycho-physical discussion m*ay be
said to begin with the publication in i860 of Fechner’s principal
treatise, the “ Elemente der Psycho-physik.” In this and other
works, Fechner elaborated a panpsychic and pantheistic world-
view, basing it upon a psycho-physical theory which dispenses
with the soul and regards all processes of the universe as both
physical and psychical. This theory claims, like Kant’s doctrine,
to enable us to reap the advantages of both Materialism and
Spiritualism, to be materialists in science and idealists in
philosophy ; and it avoids that feature of Kant’s doctrine which
has been felt by so many of its critics to be wholly unacceptable,
namely, the unknowable thing-in-itself. It has become, perhaps,
the most widely accepted of the various allied doctrines that
are commonly classed together as theories of psycho-physical
parallelism. These will be stated in Chapter XL ; here it need
only be said that their common claim to escape the reproach
of Materialism, while accepting whole-heartedly the strictly
mechanistic view of the world, has recommended them through-
out the second half of the century to a constantly increasing
number of philosophers and men of science.

Animism continued to find during the nineteenth century a
certain number of respectable supporters besides the philosophers of
the Roman Church; the latter have continued to teach a rational psy-
chology which descends directly from Thomas Aquinas, and which
implies a dualistic metaphysic of the kind formulated by Descartes.

^ So violent was this reaction against the Natur-pMlosopMe that in the
opinion of Dr Th. Merz (“ History of European Thought ”) it was responsible
for the comparative neglect of the first expositions of the principle of the con-
servation of energy by Mayer and Von Helmholtz respectively.

ANIMISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 8i

Until nearly the middle of the century, Vitalism continued to
flourish and found many defenders among the leading representa-
tives of the several biological sciences. While most of the
vitalists of this period were content to postulate a “ vital force/’
others, like Blumenbach and Treviranus, attempted to give a more
positive content to that vague notion ; while a few, like Johannes
Muller and R. Wagner, held fast to the conception of the souL^
Even in the third quarter of the century the latter notion was
still maintained by a few physiologists of eminence, such as Pfluger
and Goltz ; but the efforts of these defenders were generally re-
garded at this time as merely prolonging the death throes of an
exploded superstition.

Of those few German philosophers who opposed the romantic
school during its period of dominance and yet managed to obtain
a hearing and exert a permanent influence, the most important
was J. F. Herbart. His philosophy claimed to be a development
of the Kantian teachings, but it was more definitely realistic ;
like Kant, he taught that our ideas point beyond themselves, that
we are able to infer the existence of a world of real being behind
the veil of phenomena ; but, not content with the mere affirmation
of the existence of that world, he held that it consists of a plurality
of real beings, or “ Reals,” each of which eternally persists, unchang-
ing and unchanged. The soul of each man is such a “ Real,”
and the play of ideas is the expression of the efforts of this
“ Real ” to preserve its identity unchanged, in spite of the
influences of other “ Reals ” upon it But, though he professed to
found his psychology on this metaphysical conception of an
animating soul, Herbart’s account of the course of mental life
represents it as the strife and interplay of ideas or presentations,
whose relation to the soul is never definitely conceived or cleared
from inconsistencies. And, since the psychology of Herbart, the
part of his teaching of the most enduring influence, really operated
with the presentations, treated these as the foundations of all
psychical life, regarded psychical laws as laws of their operations,
and found no place for the soul, many of the numerous psycho-
logists who have accepted his psychological principles have found
themselves able to do so, while neglecting or rejecting his meta-
physical notion of the soul as a member of the world of Reals.”
Thus, although Herbarfs own teaching was animistic, it has contri-
buted, only less powerfully than the association-psychology, to the
1 See '' Vitalismus, als Gescliichte u. Lehre,’" by Hans Dreiscb, Leipzig, 1902.

82

BODY AND MIND

predominance of the “ psychology without a soul ” which charac-
terizes the later part of the nineteenth century.

Another independent and original psychologist of this period,
F. E. Beneke, continued to hold the conception of the soul as the
ground of mental life ; but he too contributed to bring about the
predominance of the “ psychology without a soul/' by affirming
the validity of purely physiological and anatomical explanations
of mental disorders, and by his sympathetic presentment of
Spinoza's doctrine of the relation of mind to matter.

In the middle of the century. Animism found its most
brilliant and thoroughgoing modern defender in R. H. Lotze.
Trained in the medical sciences, and a master of the physiology
of his time, one of his first efforts was an attack on Vitalism,
He exhibited the futility of the formless notion of the vital force,
and, conceiving the mechanical principles in a very broad spirit,
he attempted to show the adequacy of those principles to the
explanation of all the facts of biology. But in his chief works ^ he
defended in the most thorough and searching manner the notiorx of
psycho-physical interaction and the conception of the soul as a being
distinct from the body. His metaphysic was a realistic but
spiritualistic monism ; for he regarded the physical world as the
appearance to us of a system of psychic existents of like nature
with the soul of man, but of many grades of development. Never-
theless he maintained that “no general scruples must therefore hinder
us from accepting for the two great distinct groups of physical and
of psychical phenomena grounds of explanation equally distinct and
independent." ^ He maintained also that “ anywhere and in any
form, however surbordinate (i.e. animal forms), we may see elements
of mental life, intervening between the operation of the corporeal
organs, and filling gaps between the single links of the chain of
vital processes.”^

It is, I think, impossible to reconcile the views expressed in these
and many similar passages with Lotze’s thoroughgoing rejection
of Vitalism and his defence of the mechanical view of nature ; for,
although his conception of mechanism was so wide that he felt
justified in speaking of the mechanical course of all mental pro-
cesses, he excepted those in which he recognized the operation of
explicit volition, and defended the notion of free-will, looking upon
the free act as a new beginning in the universe ; and Lotze attributed

1 Mcdizinische Psychologic,” “ Microcosmus,” and “ Metaphysik ”

2 Mikrokosmns,” J. p. 149 (Eng, trans,). ^ Op. cit,y p. 135.

ANIMISM IN THE NINETEENTB CfiNTURY 83

all mental retention to the soul alone, thus conceived,

not as an unchanging “ real ” or a mere atoH^ of soul-substance,
but as the bearer of all that essentially constiti^*^^s personality. But
his early opposition to the current Vitalism pre'^^nted him attribut-
ing to the soul any other than purely mental fully conscious
functions ; and, not having grasped the full ^duplications of the
Darwinian principles, he made no attempt to reconcile his
animistic doctrine with evolutionary biology* The argument to
which he repeatedly turned for proof of the clistinctness of the
soul from the body was drawn from the uni^y of consciousness.
But more must be said of this reasoning in a later chapter.

In spite of the high position accorded to Lotze, later German
thought has in the main turned scornfully from Animism ;
and, though the psycho-physical problem has l^een discussed in a
multitude of books and articles, most of these discussions have
aimed at rendering clearer and more intelligible the notion of
psycho-physical Parallelism, very few, howeveU attempting to show
that the principle of Parallelism can be carriecl through in detail.
On the other hand. Animism has continued to find some notable
defenders in academic circles ; among them being Prof. C. Stumpf,^
a friend and pupil of Lotze ; Prof. O. Kiilpe, who briefly defends the
dualistic metaphysic in his “ Einleitung in der Philosophic ^ ; and
the late Prof. L, Busse, whose book,® published in 1903, is at once
the most thorough examination of the psycho-physical question
and a critical defence of Animism on the basis of a spiritualistic
metaphysic. The close of the century has witnessed a revival of
Vitalism among German biologists ; the cortinion note of these
Neo-Vitalists being the insistence that Darwitiism fails to explain
away the evidences of teleological determination presented by
living organisms.

In the early years of the century, French thought on psycho-
logical problems was dominated by the teaching of Condillac
and by that of the physiologist, Cabanis, who, though not strictly
a materialist, gave precedence to physiological explanations of
mental processes : a tendency exemplified by his famous dictum,
the brain excretes thought as the liver bile.

^ “ Leib XL. Seele.” The inaugural address to international Congress of
Psychologists at Munich, 1896.

® First Edition, Leipzic, 1895.

® “ Geist u. Korfer, Seele u. Leib ** Leipzic, 1903. '^^^^ent German psychol-
ogists who have accepted psycho-physical duali MMWR ehmke. Volkmann,
Jerusalem, Pfknder.

84

BODY AND MIND

Maine de Biran, whose psychological writings were perhaps
the most important of this period, was much influenced by
Condillac and Cabanis, but held fast to the conception of the
soul as a being distinct from the body and having a destiny
not limited by the life of the body. He found the surest evidence
for this view in our consciousness of putting forth power or
energy to effect changes in the world, and in man s capacity for
aesthetic, religious, and mystical experience.

But the influence of Comte and the positivist way of thought
predominated in France throughout the century ; until at its
close a new star of great brilliance appeared in the person
of Prof. H. Bergson. His thought, as so far expressed, is
very difficult to characterize on its positive or constructive side ;
but he attacks the mechanistic view of nature by impugning the
intellectual apparatus by means of which it has been built up.
In his treatise on matter and memory ^ he distinguishes sharply
between the habits rooted in the structure of the brain and true
memory, a purely psychical mode of retention, and he regards
traces of these two kinds, the material and the immaterial, as
co-operating in the determination of the course of thought and
action. And in his “ volution Cr^atrice ” he propounds a
distinctly vitalistic doctrine of biological evolution. He must
therefore be ranked among the defenders of Animism.

In Great Britain the scepticism of Hume had provoked by a
natural reaction the common-sense philosophy of Reid and his
followers, who accepted in the main the popular notion of the
soul. Sir William Hamilton, whose influence in Scotland has
been very great, attempted to combine the common sense of Reid
with the critical phenomenalism of Kant. Consciousness, he
maintained, is phenomenal only ; but it points to a reality behind
it, of which it is the property : and this real being, the soul,
cannot be identified with the reality that underlies material
phenomena. But the dominant influence throughout the middle
years of the century was that of the association-psychology of
Locke, Hume, and Hartley, as elaborated by the two Mills,
Bain, Spencer, and Shadworth-Hodgson. This tends naturally
to be a “ psychology without a soul,” for which the fundamental
realities are sensations that cluster and combine together accord-
ing to the laws of association and of “ mental chemistry.” The
Mills hardly attempted to deal with the psycho-physical problem,

^ '' Matiere et Memoire,” Paris.

ANIMISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY 85

though John Mill was troubled with some misgivings as to the
associational doctrine that a series of states of consciousness can
be aware of itself ; but Spencer, B^in, and Shad worth- Hodgson
definitely adopted the doctrine of psycho-physical Parallelism,
the statement of which, in Spencer s “ Principles of Psychology ”
(1855), is perhaps the earliest of the modern formulations.

The British revival of the absolute Idealism of Hegel, which
has been the dominant influence of the later part of the century,
has tended to divert attention from the psycho-physical problem ;
though a few of its prominent exponents have incidentally
defended the animistic conception.^ Prof. James Ward has
maintained that psychology cannot dispense with the notion of
an Ego or Subject, and has argued forcibly against psycho-
physical Parallelism in his “Naturalism and Agnosticism.’^^
Dr F. C. S. Schiller has maintained a Berkeleyan Idealism,^
and the late F. W. H. Myers propounded a psycho-physical
doctrine of a thoroughly animistic type.^

In America Prof. G. T. Ladd has ably expounded and defended
the ideas of Lotze ; and the late Prof. William James, in his celebrated
“ Principles of Psychology,” has defended the notion of psycho-
physical interaction, and in later works has propounded a peculiar
form of Animism, of which something will be said in a later
chapter.

In spite of these defenders. Animism was at a very low ebb in
the last quarter of the century ; its few exponents were generally
regarded as survivors from an earlier age, actuated by some
theological bias to offer a futile opposition to the conquering
march of science

Thoughout the nineteenth century, then, Animism has rapidly
declined. Its claim to figure as the great opponent of Materialism
has been successfully disputed by the parallelistic or monistic
theories, which seek to combine the scientific advantages of
Materialism with the philosophic respectability of Idealism. Of
the three influences that have contributed to bring about this
decline, namely, the critical philosophy of Kant, the absolute
Idealism of the romantic school, and the astonishing and splendid
development of the natural sciences, based in the main upon the

^ Especially Mr F. H. Bradley and Prof. A. E. Taylor. (See The Problem
of Mind and Body m recent Psychology.” Mtnd^ N.S. No 52.)

2 Gifford Lectures, 1899. * ** Riddles of the Sphinx,” London 1892.

** ' Human Personality and its Survival of the Death of the Body,” London,

1903

86

BODY AND MIND

strictly mechanistic view of nature, the last has been the most
far-reaching and decisive. From it the claim of mechanistic
principles of explanation to universal and exclusive sv/ay in the
physical world has gained much greater strength than it derived
from Kant's epistemology or from the natural science of his time ;
and it is the strength of this claim that has well nigh banished
Animism from the culture-tradition of the present age. We must
therefore trace the growth of the strength of this claim and notice
in some detail the bearing of modern scientic discoveries upon
the psycho-physical problem.

CHAPTER VII

MODERN DEVELOPMENTS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE
ADVERSE TO ANIMISM

T he epistemological reflections of Locke, Berkeley, and
Hume, culminating in the critical philosophy of Kant,
not only completed the list of possible answers to the
psycho-physical problem, but also introduced the modern scientific
or critical attitude towards it. In spite of the presence of strong
elements of old-fashioned dogmatism in the teaching of Kant,
and to a less extent in that of Berkeley ; the enduring result
of the discussions of these four thinkers was to make it clear
that we can have no absolute and no immediate knowledge of
either soul or body, and that the two conceptions can only be
justified (or rejected) by showing that they are (or are not) neces-
sary features of the system of conceptions which the human mind
is slowly working out, for the purpose of rendering an intelligible
and consistent explanation of the chaotic flux of individual ex-
perience. Though it was necessary to accept this demonstration,
it was not necessary, it was not possible, to accept the sceptical
attitude towards all knowledge which Hume half-seriously advo-
cated as the only respectable one. To have done so would have
been profoundly irrational and in the last degree cowardly. If
man is to live, he must act ; and, if he must act, he must govern
his actions in accordance with conceptions of his own nature and
of the world in which he is set, conceptions of whose validity he
can have no absolute guarantee, and which he must choose
develop, reshape, or reject, according as he finds them more or
less efficient guides to successful action. And of all conceptions,
the conceptions of the nature of, and of the relations between,
mind and body are those which in the long run affect most pro-
foundly, and are of the first importance for, this guidance of
conduct ; for they must always exert a determining influence
upon man’s view of his place in the world, upon his prospects, his
hopes, and his deepest purposes, and hence upon his conduct.

87

38

BODY AND MIND

Although, then, Hume’s scepticism has continued to secure
the adhesion of certain temperaments, and is represented at the
present day by a few vigorous thinkers,^ it has not gained any
wide acceptance among peoples in whom the tide of life runs
strongly. Its acceptance implies the Eastern doctrine that all is
illusion ; it involves a thoroughgoing Solipsism, the doctrine that
I, or my thoughts, alone exist ; for the consistent follower of Hume
must admit that his principles involve the rejection, not only of
the material world, but of all thought or mental life other than his
own. And among all the wide divergences of thought in our
Western world, one principle has continued to secure a predominance
never yet seriously shaken, namely, the principle, accepted whether
explicitly or implicitly, whether as a reasoned conclusion or as a
venture of faith, that each man lives, not by and for himself alone,
but as a member of a community of beings of like nature with
himself ; that our life is not a mere dream ; that our knowledge is
not mere fantasy, but, however imperfect and inadequate, is yet
real knowledge of a real world, and is capable of indefinitely
great extension and improvement.

Hume's absolute condemnation of all discussion of the
materiality or immateriality of the soul was, then, of no effect in
stemming the tide of discussion. The upshot of his work and that
of his British predecessors was in the main to produce a change
in the mode of approach to the problem. It was made clear that
no solution of it can be achieved by reasoning a priori or from
general principles alone ; but that rather we must work towards
its solution by the aid of the methods of empirical science, by
increasing the stock of well established facts and well grounded
hypotheses.

Accordingly, we find since the time of Hume an increasing
tendency for the psycho-physical problem to be regarded as
belonging to the province of science, rather than that of meta-
physic. We have seen that Kant himself touches on the psycho-
physical problem but lightly, and that what he wrote of the soul
exhibits a curious mixture of dogmatic metaphysics with the
critical procedure. Nevertheless, be too contributed to bring
about the relegation of the problem from metaphysics to em-
pirical science — on the one hand, by furthering that form of

^ Notably by Prof. E Macb of Vienna and by Prof Karl Pearson, who agree
with Hume in asserting that the known and knowable world consists of sensa-
tions only

PHYSICAL SCIENCE ADVERSE TO ANIMISM 89

idealistic metaphysic which regards the body as negligible, because
unreal ; on the other hand, by making clear the impossibility of
establishing the existence and nature of the soul by theoretical
reasoning from general principles in the style of the Wolffian
metaphysic. Accordingly, few of the metaphysicians since Kant
have put the problem of the relation between soul and body in the
foreground of their discussions, after the fashion of earlier ages ;
they have, in fact, for the most part, left it on one side, or treated
of it incidentally only and with uncertain tones, showing a dis-
position to accept the opinions dominant in the scientific world ;
and, if they have continued to speak of the soul of man, they
have done so in a fashion which commits them to no definite
answer to the psycho-physical problem.

The history of the psycho-physical problem since the middle
of the eighteenth century is, then, in the main the history of the
way in which the progress of the physical, the biological, and
the psychological sciences has rendered ever more confident,
and secured wider acceptance for, the belief in the universality
of the laws of mechanism revealed by the study of the realm of
physical phenomena ; a belief which necessarily involves the
rejection of Animism. And this rejection of Animism has been
rendered easier by the wide prevalence of the notion that Kanfs
phenomenalistic epistemology somehow renders it possible to hold
to God, freedom, and immortality, in spite of it

In the following pages I propose to describe concisely the way
in which the modern development of each of these branches
of empirical science has contributed to bring about this result.
The three lines of development of scientific knowledge and
thought have acted and reacted upon one another in a way that
has in the main favoured this result ; but they may be briefly
outlined in succession.

We have seen that, in the seventeenth century, Kepler,
Galileo, Gassendi, and Hobbes had rehabilitated the atomic
Materialism of the ancients. In the eighteenth century the
genius of Newton, especially by the formulation of the funda-
mental laws of motion and of the law of gravitation, gave an
immense impetus to this way of thought. Newton himself
and his leading disciples and successors, Priestly and Boyle,
regarded the laws of mechanism as universally valid, and saved
themselves from the charge of atheistic Materialism only by

90

BODY AND MIND

acknowledging matter and its laws to be the creations of the
one Supreme Being. Laplace went further and, intoxicated
by the intellectual splendour of the nebular hypothesis and by
the wonderful powers of the mathematical instruments of which
he was a master, denied in his famous reply to the great
Napoleon the necessity of the hypothesis of a Creator ; and
he it was who formulated clearly and explicitly the supreme
faith of mechanical Materialism by asserting that, if the state
of the material universe at any one moment of time could be
completely described, it would be possible in principle to arrive
by calculation at the complete description of it at any other
moment of its history.

Laplace’s confidence in the universality of the mechanical
laws was founded in the belief that all physical processes are
essentially the movements of particles of matter ; it was the
apotheosis of atomic Materialism, developed by modern science
into a scheme of universal kinetic mechanism. This scheme
of kinetic mechanism has been of very great value as a working
hypothesis for the guidance of physical research. It has proved
so useful, is so attractive in its simplicity, is so well adapted to
the powers of concrete representation or pictorial imagination
which most men exercise with greater confidence and ease than
any other of our intellectual faculties ; that it has obtained a very
strong hold upon the scientific world. Throughout the nine-
teenth century it continued to win fresh triumphs in various
fields of physical research, notably in acoustics, optics, and the
theory of gases, repeatedly proving itself the most fruitful of
all physical hypotheses. It may be said to have reached its
culmination in Lord Kelvin’s theory of the vortex-atom, the
most successful attempt yet made to describe the nature of
matter and its relation to the ether ; and it has successfully
withstood every attempt to supersede it, so that at the end of
the century Dr Merz, judicially weighing its claims, affirms :

‘‘ there is no doubt that the century ends with a very emphatic
assertion of the rights and the legitimacy of the atomic and
mechanical views of nature.” ^

No wonder, then, that in the minds of very many men this
scheme of kinetic mechanism has stood for a true and, in principle,
an exhaustive description of the nature of the physical universe,
and that it has played a very considerable part, especially in
^ History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century,” vol. ii. p. 198.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE ADVERSE TO ANIMISM 91

the minds of biologists, in determining the rejection of every
form of Animism. It was argued that every physical event
consists in the motion of particles, or the communication of
motion from particle to particle ; such communication of motion
by impact being held to be the only effective cause of acceleration
or change of motion All psychical influence upon the physical
world was thus ruled out by the very definition of the physical
world ; for in a world where all change is motion, and where all
causation is of the nature of communication of motion by
impact, there is no room for psychical influences.

This conception has contributed to bring about the rejection
of Animism in a second way also ; namely, it has served to
strengthen the old argument of the occasionalists, that interaction
between things so diverse as soul and body is inconceivable ; for,,
when all physical process is definitely conceived as motion or
acceleration of particles, the difficulty of conceiving how mind
can in any way modify this motion becomes correspondingly
definite. The difficulty has been forcibly put by a contemporary
writer who bids us try to imagine the thought of a beef-steak
binding two molecules together ; while another brilliant author
has illustrated the manifest absurdity of any belief in psychical
influence upon the physical world, by likening it to the belief
that the wagons of a railway train might be held together by
the friendly feeling of the engine-driver for the guard.^

But the nineteenth century has achieved a physical general-
ization which has played an even greater part than the kinetic
view of nature in expelling Animism from scientific thought. I
mean of course the great generalization known as the law of
conservation of energy.

In spite of the seductiveness of the kinetic view of the
physical world, in spite of the wealth of biological arguments
skilfully arrayed in the “ Syst^me de la Nature,” in spite of Kant’s
epistemological dictum, Animism continued to rear its head from
time to time in the scientific world, like a snake scotched, but not
quite killed. But the law of the conservation of energy has, in the
opinion of many philosophers and men of science, given it its death-
blow ; and in contemporary demonstrations of the impossibility of
Animism, the argument from this law is generally given the place
of honour, as the most weighty of all.

^ Dr C. Mercier in The Nervous System and the Mind*'; W. K. Clifford,
“ Lectures and Essays ”

92

BODY AND MIND

The law of the conservation of energy was enunciated almost
at the same time by R. Mayer and Von Helmholtz in Germany
and by Joule in England (in the year t 847) ; Mayei being led
to it by reflection on biological facts, Helmholtz by physical
and mathematical considerations, Joule by experiments which
proved the exact equivalence of the energy converted into heat
during the performance of mechanical work. The law has
received many different formulations ; but since its first enuncia-
tion, it has been empirically verified by many experiments ; and
the more refined the methods of experimental observation that
have been applied, the more exact have been the demonstrations
that the quantity of energy remains unchanged in every trans-
formation of energy ; further, no exception to the law has been
experimentally demonstrated.

It is claimed, therefore, that these experimental observations
justify us in generalizing the statement of the facts of observation,
so that it runs — The transformation of energy involved in
every physical process results in no change in the quantity of
energy, the quantity of physical energy is exactly conserved in
every case. From this statement it follows that the total sum
of physical processes of the universe result in no change of the
quantity of its physical energy. From this the further deduction
is made that the sum total of the energy of the physical universe
is a constant quantity, remaining without the least increase or
diminution throughout all time.

It has been widely held that this conclusion is confirmed by
a metaphysical view which has found favour with many scientific
authorities, the view namely that energy is a real thing or sub-
stance, constituting, alone or in conjunction with matter, the
substance of the physical universe.^

Now, the law of the conservation of energy, if accepted in
this form, is held to be incompatible with the belief that psychical
influences can modify in any way or degree the course of
physical processes ; for any such influence, it is said, must either
diminish or increase the quantity of physical energy of the
universe and so violate the law of the conservation of energy.
But the nervous changes which are the concomitants of our

^ e.g. the late Prof. P G. Tait, who wrote : ** The only other known thin^ in
the physical universe, which is conserved in the same sense as matter is con-
-served, is energy. Hence we naturally consider energy as the other objective
rea.lity in the physical universe” (Article: Mechanics m “Encyclopaedia
Britannica,” Ninth Edition).

PHYSICAL SCIENCE ADVERSE TO ANIMISM 95

psychical activities are physical processes. Therefore, it is argued,
they must run their course without being in the slightest degree
affected by psychical influences.

But the argument is generally stated more briefly and more
dogmatically and in a way which combines the two great arguments
against Animism drawn from physical science, namely, that from
the kinetic view of nature and that from the law of the conserva-
tion of energy ; I quote the following passage from a lecture by
the late Dr J. G. Romanes as a fair sample of such statements.
Spiritualism (or Animism), said Romanes, is unsatisfactory because
it is opposed to the whole trend and momentum of modern
science. “ For if mind is supposed, on no matter how small a
scale, to be a cause of motion, the fundamental axiom of science
is impugned. This fundamental axiom is that energy can
neither be created nor destroyed — that just as motion can
produce nothing but motion, so, conversely, motion can be
produced by nothing but motion. Regarded, therefore, from the
standpoint of physical science, the theory of Spiritualism is in
precisely the same sense as the theory of Materialism ; that is to
say, if the supposed causation takes place, it can only be supposed
to do so by way of miracle.” ^

If the animist retorts to this argument that the law of
conservation of energy is founded upon measurement of the
quantities of energy undergoing transformation in the course
of inorganic physical processes, and that it is illegitimate to apply
the generalization to organic processes, because these form a
peculiar realm in which the operation of laws of the inorganic
world may be interfered with or suspended by other modes of
influence ; then he is met with the results of recent exact
quantitative investigation of the energy transformations of the
human body. These investigations ^ have shown that the energy
value of the output of the human body in the form of work, heat,
chemical products, and so forth, equals, almost exactly, the energy
value of food and oxygen absorbed, that is, the value of the sum
total of energy supplied to the body ; the difference between the
quantities measured being so small as to fall well within the
margin of error of the most careful experiment.

1 Rede Lecture, published in Contemporary Review,*’ 1885.

2 Atwater, ** Reports of British Association,” 1904-

CHAPTER VIII

THE RISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY AND OF
THE “PSYCHOLOGY WITHOUT A SOUL”

T he development of modem biology has contributed not
less powerfully than that of physical science to bring about
the general rejection of Animism ; though the bearing of
its discoveries has been less simple and direct.

In all earlier ages the peculiarities of living beings, their
powers of growth, assimilation, reproduction, self-restitution and
so forth, had been almost universally attributed to their animation,
that is, to the presence and operation* of the soul within the body.
Descartes was the first of the moderns decisively to reject this
conception and to maintain that all the bodily processes of men
and animals (with the single exception of the movements of the
pineal gland of the human brain) are of a strictly mechanical
nature, needing no psychical guidance or control.

While Descartes’ famous dictum “ Cogito ergo stwi ” became
the starting-point of modern Idealism, his view of the purely
mechanical nature of all bodily processes initiated the wave of
confident Materialism that rose to a great height in the eighteenth
century, especially in France. The most popular exponents
of this doctrine were De la Mettrie^ and Baron D’tlolbach,^
The former, '‘a wit, philosopher and friend of Frederick the
Great, traced his own materialism to Descartes, and maintained
that the wily philosopher, purely for the sake of the parsons, had
patched on to his theory a soul, which was in reality quite
superfluous.” ^ He argued in a lively manner for a materialistic
view of human nature, relying chiefly upon illustrations of the
intimate dependence of our moods, feelings, and mental processes
generally upon physical influences such as food and drink. Like
Diderot and Holbach he was a hylozoist, that is to say, he attributed
psychical life to all material things ; and, though he admitted that

^ * Histoire tLaturelle de I’Ame,*^ I74S» 3-n.d “ L’homme Machine,’* 1748.

® “ Syst^me de la, Nature,” 1770.

® A. Lange, ” History of Materialism,** vol. i, p. 244.

THE RISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY 95

we cannot know what matter is in itself, he made all psychical
life a property of matter, maintaining that sensation and thought
are modifications of matter and entirely dependent upon it.

Man,” he wrote, “ is framed of materials not exceeding in value
those of other animals ; nature has made use of one and the
same paste — she has only diversified the ferment in working it
up. . . . We may call the body an enlightened machine. It
is a clock, and the fresh chyle from the food is the spring.”

D’Holbach's treatise, written under the influence of Diderot
in a more sober and dignified style, made use of similar arguments.
It represents the culmination of the Materialism of the eighteenth
century, and, unlike the Materialism of Newton, Priestly, and
Boyle, was avowedly atheistic. It would seem to have been
the conjunction of Materialism and Atheism affected by these
two writers that secured for their works so wide an influence ;
for they aroused a violent opposition.

But these writers were merely the popular exponents of the
dominant tendencies of physiological science in the eighteenth
century. G. E, Stahl has been mentioned in Chapter V. as one
of the leading physiologists of the earlier part of the century who
continued the older animistic tradition. He “ put forward and
brilliantly maintained the view that all the chemical events of
the living body, even though they might superficially resemble,
were at the bottom wholly different from, the chemical changes
taking place in the laboratory, since in the living body all
chemical changes were directly governed by the sensitive soul,
anima sensitiva^ which pervaded all parts and presided over all
events.” ^

“ Stahl’s fundamental position is that between living things,
so long as they are alive, however simple, and non-living things,
however composite, however complex in their phenomena, there
is a great gulf fixed. The former, so long as they are alive,
are actuated by an immaterial agent, the sensitive soul, the latter
are not. . . . Further, the living body is fitted for special ends and
purposes ; the living body does not exist for itself ; it is constituted
to be the true and continued minister of the soul. The body is
made for the soul, the soul is not made for, and is not the
product of, the body.”^ Stahl himself wrote “We may therefore
rightly and truly conclude that all the actions of the body, both
those which concern its structure and those which relate to the

^ Sir M. Foster, op. cit,^ p. 168. ® Sir M. Foster, op. cit., p. 169.

BODY. AND MIND

96

preservation of its composition, are carried out by the soul itself
for its own uses and ends, and are directed and brought to
completion, knowingly and properly, in the proportions and
relations which fit those ends and uses” And again he wrote
“ Vital activities are directly administered and exercised by the
soul itself, and are truly organic acts carried out in corporeal
instruments of a superior acting cause, in order to bring about
certain effects, which are not only in general certain, and in
particular necessary, but also in each and every particular adapted,
in a special and yet most complete manner, to the needs of
the moment and to the various irregularities introduced by
accidental external causes. Vital activities, vital movements,
cannot, as some recent crude speculations suppose, have any real
likeness to such movements as, in an ordinary way, depend on
the material condition of a body and take place without any direct
use or end or aim.”

Thus Stahl from the side of ph3^siology, as Descartes from
the side of psychology, defined more clearly than any of their
predecessors the issue between Animism and Materialism. By
conceiving the soul as an immaterial teleological factor controlling
the physical processes of the living body, he set upon its modern
lines the controversy as to the reality of a teleological determina-
tion of the processes of living beings. The subsequent history
of modern physiology is the history of the constantly increasing
ascendancy of the purely mechanical view of the processes of
the animal body over the vitalistic and teleological modes of
explanation.

The first great step towards this ascendancy had been made
when, in the year 1628, William Harvey announced and demon-
strated his discovery of the circulation of the blood, explaining it
by purely physical and mechanical reasoning. A little later in the
seventeenth century, the new mode of purely mechanical and
chemical explanation of physiological processes was greatly pro-
moted by Franciscus Sylvius of Leyden and his pupils. Van
Helmont had studied the chemical processes of the body, but had
mingled with his chemistry strange mystical doctrines and obscure
conceptions of animal spirits and Archei, which he had derived
from Paracelsus. “ The spiritualistic fancies of Van Helmont, and
still more the earlier ones of Paracelsus, had had the tendency to
make men think that chemical inquiry, in contrast with physical
inquiry, was in some way necessarily bound up with speculations

THE KISE OE THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY 97

about invisible agencies of a spiritual kind ; and this doubtless
was more or less a bar to men of sober and exact thought enter-
ing upon that line of inquiry. To Sylvius at least is due the
credit of showing that there was no such necessary connexion
between chemistry and spiritualism ; that on the contrary the
newer chemistry in its attempts to solve vital problems trod the
path of the most valued Materialism.” ^

While Sylvius and his pupils set chemical physiology, especi-
ally the chemistry of digestion, upon the path of its modern
development ; the influence of the more exact mechanical concep-
tions introduced by Galileo, the first great victory of which when
applied to physiology was Harvey's discovery of the circulation
of the blood, continued to bear fruit. In Italy, BorelH, a mathe-
matician trained in the school of Galileo, first gave a clear
account of the mechanics of respiration ; and in England a small
band of Harvey's followers, Hooke, Lower, Mayow, applied the
new understanding of the nature of combustion to explain the
chemistry of respiration, the relations of the respiratory and cir-
culatory systems, and the part played by the blood in conducting
air to the tissues to sustain their processes of combustion.

These various mechanical and chemical modes of explanation
of bodily processes were brought together in the teaching of
Boerhave of Leyden, perhaps the most influential physiologist
of the earlier part of the eighteenth century. And the tradition
was given an assured predominance over the animistic doctrines
of Stahl and his successors by the great influence of Albrecht
Haller, generally called the father of modern physiology, whose
Elementa Physiologiae ” was completed in the year 1765.

Thus, when De la Mettrie and D’Holbach wrote their popular
treatises with the avowed purpose of propagating the materialistic
view of the nature of man, their doctrines could find solid support
in the teachings of the most influential physiologists of their
time : they may in fact be regarded as expressing the influence
of those teachings upon minds of a positive and materialistic
tendency.

The rapid progress of the physical sciences in the early
decades of the nineteenth century seemed to bring much nearer
to realisation the possibility of complete physical and chemical
explanations of the processes of living bodies ; and at the same
time much of their technical apparatus of research was found
1 Sir Foster, op, city p. 153.

BODY AND MIND

98

to be applicable in physiological investigations. There was a
renewal of physiological research and progress, in which Johannes
Muller was the leading spirit ; and a confident expectation of
the rapid reduction of all vital processes to terms of physics
and chemistry began to be widely entertained. Although
Muller himself must be reckoned among the vitalists, the
great school of physiology founded by him made splendid
progress along these physico-chemical lines ; and the continued
success of this way of physiological thought and research
secured for it an undisputed predominance over the vitalistic
physiology and seemed to justify to the full the hopes of its
adherents. This triumphant progress of the mechanistic school
of physiology soon gave rise to a fresh outburst of dogmatic
Materialism. This time Germany was the centre of the storm,
and its moving spirits were Moleschott/ Karl Vogt, and Ludwig
Buchner.^ These writers, especially the last, exercised a great
influence on popular thought. Their favourite dictum was —
“No matter without force, no force without matter.” The
language and thought of all three was open to the charge of
confusion, inconsistency, and philosophical crudity, to a degree
that prevented them exerting any serious influence in academic
circles. Nevertheless these materialists, and indeed the French
materialists of the eighteenth century also, had made some
refinement upon the crudity of Hobbes and others of their
forerunners. Their Materialism consisted chiefly in the repudia-
tion of the notion of immaterial or spiritual substances, agents,
forces, or modes of being, rather than in any assertion so crude
as that thought is nothing but matter or motion of matter.
They were concerned ro show that matter consists not merely
of inert solid particles, capable only of moving under the
influence of external forces ; but that it is rather endowed with
intrinsic powers of activity, of which thought and feeling are
special developments. For, as Lotze has pointed out, few
modern materialists have maintained doctrines so crude as
those commonly attributed to them by their opponents.

In our own day Materialism has undergone a further re-
finement which makes it less easy to attack or refute and has
in fact rendered it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to draw
any line between the more subtle forms of Materialism and
doctrines that are classified under the head of Idealism.

1 “ Der Kreislauf des Lebens,** 1852. * “ Kraft und Stoff,’* 1856.

THE RISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY 99

Before noting the position of present day Materialism, let
us follow in more detail those lines of development of biological
science which have done most to bring about a wide acceptance
of it and of the other psycho-physical doctrines that agree with
it in rejecting all forms of Animism.

The Search for the Seat of the Soul

We have seen that the ancients entertained various notions
as to the seat of the soul, assigning the several vital and
psychical functions that they distinguished to this or that
bodily organ, or regarding the soul as equally present and
active in all parts of the body. In the second century of our
era, Galen, the great Roman physician and anatomist, made a
considerable advance upon Aristotle’s physiology ; he showed by
his dissections that the brain is connected with the muscles and
with the sense-organs by the nerves, and taught that it is some-
how concerned in mental process. After Galen no progress in
anatomy and physiology was made for more than a thousand
years ; in fact, the authority of Galen remained supreme until in the
middle of the sixteenth century the labours of Vesalius set these
sciences once more on the path of progress. We have seen that
Vesalius, while he took a materialistic view of the nature of soul,
distinguished three souls, the vital, natural, and chief souls, each
of which was but the sum of the spirits of corresponding function,
and that he assigned to the brain the chief soul, the sum of the
animal spirits, whose functions were distinctly mental. He taught
that the animal spirit is made in the brain and that the brain
influences the muscles and other organs by sending out the
animal spirit along the nerves. “ He was clear that the soul was
engendered in and by the brain, but beyond that he knew next to
nothing. Vivisection taught him that when the brain is removed,
sensation and movement are lost ; but it taught him little more
than this.” ^ He observed also “ that the mass of the brain
attains its highest dimensions in man, which we know to be the
most perfect animal, and that his brain is found to be bigger than
that of three oxen ; and then in proportion to the size of the
body, first the ape, and next the dog exhibit a large train,
suggesting that animals excel in the size of their brains ir|| pro-

Sir M. Foster, op. cit., Lect. x.

lOO

BODY AND MIND

portion as they seem the more openly and clearly to be endowed
with the faculties of the chief soul (i.e. mental powers).”

A hundred years later the brain was still not fully established
as the seat of the soul, for Van Helmont assigned that honour to
the orifice of the stomach.

Willis, Sedleian professor in the University of Oxford, a con-
temporary of Descartes and one of the founders of the “ Royal
Society,” was fully aware of the importance of the brain for
mental processes, the higher modes of which, in the case of man,
he attributed to a rational incorporeal soul ; nevertheless he
distinguished a corporeal soul consisting of two parts, one of
flame residing in the blood, the other of light diffused throughout
the nervous system and in a less degree through other tissues.

Although Descartes was but an amateur in physiology, his
assignment of the rational soul to the brain and his speculative de-
scription of the functions of the brain, mark a distinct epoch in the
search for the seat of the soul For, from his time onwards, the
brain was securely established as the seat of the mental functions
and as the medium through which the soul effects its commerce
with the other parts of the body ; and, though Stahl regarded the
soul as operating directly in all parts of the body, the search for
the seat of the soul followed the lines laid down by Descartes, i.e,
it continued to be the search for that part of the brain in which
the nerves come most closely together.

Stensen and Borelli showed themselves to be clearly aware
that the brain is the seat of sensation and originator of bodily
movements. But no progress was made with this problem until
the middle of the eighteenth century, when Haller applied to it
his penetrating intellect. He rejected Stahl’s view, that the soul
acts directly in all parts of the body ; but he argued “ no narrower
seat can be allotted to the soul than the conjoint origin of all the
nerves ; nor can any structure be proposed as its seat, except that
to which we can trace all the nerves. For it will be easily under-
stood that the sensorium commune ought to lack no feeling of any
part of the whole animated body nor any nerve which can convey
from any part of the body the impression of external objects.
And the same may be said of the nerves of movement. Where-
fore, even quite apart from the experimental results described
above, we cannot admit as the exclusive seat of the soul, either
the corpus callosum or the septum lucidum or the tiny pineal gland,
or the corpora striata or any particular region of the brain.’'

THE RISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY loi

And he concluded that “ both sensation and movement have their
source in the medulla of the brain. This, therefore, is the seat of
the soul.” By medulla he denoted the whole of the central mass
of both cerebrum and cerebellum. Haller nevertheless inclined
to the view that different parts of the brain are specially con-
cerned in different mental functions ; though in summing up he
wrote: “Our present knowledge does not permit us to speak
with any show of truth about the more complicated functions of
the mind, or to assign in the brain to imagination its seat, to
common sensation its seat, to memory its seat.”

In spite of this vague foreshadowing by Haller of the modern
doctrine of cerebral localization of mental functions, the search for
the seat of the soul continued to be prosecuted under the influence
of the reasoning that led Descartes to choose the pineal gland.
It was held that the soul must be present at some one spot in the
brain, where it could receive or be affected by all the agitations
brought from the sense-organs by the converging sensory nerves,
and where it could control the outflow of nervous impulses along
the motor nerves ; for the soul was conceived as playing upon
the central ends of groups of motor nerves and originating
in them impulses appropriate to the production of the movements
it willed, much as a musician plays upon the keys of a piano,
striking them in combinations appropriate to the production of
harmonious chords. According to this way of thinking, it was
necessary that the seat of the soul should be a central and single
organ in the brain, and, since almost all parts of the brain exist
in bilateral symmetrical duplication, the choice was strictly limited
and fell in turn upon each of the single median structures, e.g. the
septum lucidum, the corpus callosum^ the central ventricle ; all of
which, however, were in turn shown to have no immediate
connexion with consciousness.

No less a man than R. H. Lotze was the last psychologist of
note seriously to accept this reasoning ; and though his know-
ledge of anatomy and physiology of the brain forbade him to
designate any one part as the seat of the soul, and though he
afterwards relinquished this view, nevertheless, in his “ Medizinische
Psychologic” (published in 1851), he postulated such a central
seat of the soul.

Early in the nineteenth century, the great anatomist Gall laid
the foundations of our modern doctrine of the localization of
cerebral functions, by means of his comparative studies of the

102

BODY AND MIND

brains of men and animals. From the time of Gall the study of
cerebral functions has been carried on by an ever increasing army
of keen workers. Forty years ago it was still possible for one
party of experimental observers to maintain that there obtains no
specialization of function of the parts of the great brain, that each
part is of similar undifferentiated function with all the rest of its
substance. But Broca’s discovery of the motor speech-centre, a
small part of the cortex of the left frontal lobe of the cerebrum,
rapidly gained general acceptance. Since the establishment of
this instance of the dependence of a special mental function on
the integrity of a particular part of the brain, an immense
amount of labour has been devoted to the problem, and has
proved that the cerebral cortex, the thin surface layer of
grey matter, is the part of the brain most immediately con-
cerned in mental process ^ ; it has been shown also that a large
part of the cerebral cortex can be mapped out into areas, the
integrity of each of which is essential to the enjoyment of certain
modes of consciousness. The evidence is especially clear in
the case of the sensations and perceptions of the higher senses.
Let us glance at the nature of the evidence which has convinced
all physiologists that all the visual perception and sensation and
imagery of any normal human being are invariably accompanied
by certain physico-chemical processes in the cortical grey matter
of the occipital pole of his brain ; and that visual sensation is
normally experienced, only when these processes are excited by
the arrival of nervous impulses travelling from the retina directly
to this part of the cortex.

First, it has been shown that, in man and the higher animals,
the retina is connected with this part of the brain cortex by a
system of nerve fibres more direct and more numerous than those
that connect it with any other part. Secondly, it has been
shown that in animals this part of the cortex remains in a state
of very incomplete development, if the animal is in any way
deprived of the use of its eyes from birth onwards ; while it is
known that, if a human being is blind from birth, or loses his
eyesight within the first two years of life, he remains devoid
of all visual imagery, all power of visual representation or
imagination.

Thirdly, it has been ^hown by the clinical and post mortem

^ There is some ground for believing that some of the masses of grey matter
the base of the brain have equally intimate relation with conscious life.

study of a very large number of cases that, if, in an adult
human being, the tract of nerve fibres which connects the retina
of one eye with this part of the cortex is broken across in any
part of its course, that eye becomes blind ; and that, if both
tracts are thus broken across, total and permanent blindness is
the result, even though the lesion be confined to the upper part
of the tract, and the connections of the retinae with the lower
parts of the brain remain uninjured. In such cases the powers
of visual imagination may remain unimpaired.

Fourthly, it has been shown that destruction of, or serious
injury to, this part of the cortex always impairs more or less
seriously the powers of vision. If the whole of the occipital
cortex of one hemisphere of the brain (say the left) is destroyed
(as by the rupture of a blood vessel in that region), the patient
suffers permanently the defect of vision known as hemianopsia,
Le, the optical impressions made on the left halves of both retinae
no longer excite visual sensation ; for the left halves of both
retinae are connected directly only with the left occipital cortex.^
In rare cases in which the occipital cortex of both cerebral
hemispheres is gravely injured, visual sensation, perception, and
imagination are almost completely destroyed ; and, though no case
of complete destruction of the occipital cortex of both hemispheres
has been carefully studied, the evidence at present available is
held by almost all physiologists to warrant the belief that in such
a case the patient would be completely deprived of all power
of visual sensation, perception, and imagination ; and it seems
highly probable that the deprivation would be permanent and
would be so complete that he would not even be aware of the
nature of the gap in his mental life.

Similar observations have yielded almost equally strong
evidence that the sensations, perceptions, and representations of
each of the other senses are similarly dependent on the integrity
of other circumscribed areas of the cerebral cortex ; that they
are invariably accompanied by nervous processes in those parts
of the brain, and that they are no longer experienced when the
nervous structures of those parts are destroyed. We have
evidence that is, if possible, even more conclusive, showing that

^ This statement is perhaps not strictly true. Some authorities believe that
a small central region of each retina is connected directly with the occipital
cortex of both hemispheres ; for in many cases of hemianopsia this small central
part of both retmse continues to function normally.

BODY AND MIND

104

the production and control of all skilled voluntary movement is
dependent on the integrity of the extensive region of the cortex
known as the Rolandic or sensori-motor area ; and that the
skilled movements of the various parts of the body, the fingers,
thumb, wrist, tongue, lips, etc., are dependent on the integrity of
different specialized parts of this area. For not only is the
power of production of such movements lost when these parts of
the cortex are destroyed, but it has been abundantly shown that
artificial direct stimulation of these parts excites movements of
the corresponding parts of the body. And in this case also, the
anatomical connexions of these parts with the corresponding
muscles has been worked out in considerable detail.

Again, we have now good evidence that outside these sensory
and motor areas of the cortex, which together make up less than
half its total extent, are parts whose integrity seems essential to
such mental processes as the synthetic elaboration of the sensations
involved in intelligent perception ; for example, it is established
that the intelligent appreciation of the significance of written
words depends on the integrity of a small part of the cortex that
lies a little in front of the “ visual area,^' or area directly concerned in
visual sensation. And it seems to be proved that injury to such
parts may leave the patient capable of enjoying the normal range
of sensations, while depriving him of the power of interpreting
certain of them ; so that, he may remain capable of dis-
tinguishing objects in his visual field, though he is incapable of
recognizing them, of naming them, or of reacting upon them in
any intelligent fashion.

It is unnecessary to pursue the evidence in greater detail.
Observation and experiment of the kind we have been con-
sidering seem to have established beyond serious question the
doctrine of the localization of cerebral functions j that is to say
that, although the functions of many parts of the brain remain
obscure, we are compelled to believe that the exercise of various
kinds of mental activity and the enjoyment of various modes of
consciousness, including all that is properly called sensation and
imagery, are invariably bound up with, and are directly dependent
upon, the occurrence of nervous processes in various parts of the
brain, parts consisting of nervous elements of highly specialized
functions, which are distributed widely throughout the cortex of
the cerebral hemispheres, and possibly in other parts of the brain
also.

THE RISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY 105

Thus the search for a punctual seat of the soul, for some one
spot at which the sensory nerves might be supposed to converge
to act upon the soul, and at which in turn the soul might be
supposed to play upon the central ends of the motor nerves, has
been shown to be a hopeless one : it is proved that there is no
such seat of the soul.

The Doctrine of the Reflex Type of all Nervous Process

Closely connected with this search for the seat of the soul,
and closely allied to the failure of this search in its bearing upon
our problem, has been the development of the doctrine of reflex
action.

Descartes' bold speculations anticipated the modern doctrine
of reflex action ; and the writings of Willis and of other physiolo-
gists of the seventeenth century also contain some vague fore-
shadowings of it. But it was not until the middle of the
nineteenth century that the nature of reflex action was clearly
understood. Descartes distinguished between the afferent and
motor modes of nervous conduction, but it is not clear that he
conceived the processes as taking place in two different sets of
nerves ; and it was Sir Charles Bell who first clearly demonstrated,
early in the nineteenth century, that all the peripheral nerves are
of two kinds — the afferent nerves which, entering the spinal cord
by the posterior nerve-roots, carry up impulses from the sense-
organs ; and the efferent nerves which, issuing from the cord by
the ventral roots, carry impulses from the central nervous system
to the muscles and other executive organs.

It had, of course, long been observed that, in both men
and animals, certain simple movements can be evoked in a
regular involuntary machine - like fashion by the application
of certain forms of stimulation to the sense organs ; e.g. the
winking of the eyelid and the contraction of the pupil by the
sudden flashing of a light upon the eye ; the withdrawal of a
hand or foot by the pricking of the skin of the part. It was
known also that some of these reflex movements may be excited
in man, not only without his volition, but even in spite of his
utmost voluntary efforts to prevent them. This remarkable fact
could not fail to excite the attention of students of the nervous
system ; and early in the nineteenth century it was shown that
some of these movements may be equally well excited in both

io6 BODY AND MIND

men and animals, when the brain is destroyed or the spinal cord
severed from the brain ; when, for example, the spinal cord of a
man has been broken across by accident , it is in some cases
possible to evoke movements of the lower limbs by tickling or
pricking the skin ; and in such cases the stimulus evokes in the
patient neither feeling nor sensation. It was clear, then, that
the integrity of the spinal cord is the sufficient condition of
such reflex response. In the middle of the last century a
famous controversy was waged over the question whether such
reflex movements, effected through the spinal cord in the
absence of the brain, imply the presence of some kind of
soul-life, some kind of psychical activity, associated with the
nervous processes of the cord. For some of these movements
are so nicely adapted to effect results beneficial to the organ-
ism, that they seemed to some observers to imply intelligent
and purposive direction. But physiologists, with few exceptions,
soon came to hold very decidedly the opinion that all such spinal
reflex actions are determined in a purely mechanical fashion.
And this opinion has received very strong support from the
modern studies of the minute structure of the nervous system.
These studies have shown that in almost all cases the sensory
fibre, which carries up impulses from some sense-organ and enters
the spinal cord by a dorsal nerve-root, sends across the spinal
cord a branch which (either directly or through the medium of
another neurone) comes into contact with one or more of the
motor neurones, whose long branches or axones pass down to
the muscles as their motor nerves These studies, in fact,
have displayed the material mechanisms by means of which the
incoming impulses of the sensory nerves are distributed to motor
nerves, through systems of nervous connexions in the spinal
cord of various degrees of complexity ; and there is little reason
to doubt that, in all spinal reflexes, the paths taken by the
nervous impulses, and the conjunctions of efferent nerves thus
thrown into action by them, are wholly determined by the
material connexions of the nervous elements, and by their
physico-chemical state at the moment of the arrival of the
afferent impulse.

This revelation of the material mechanism conditioning the
seemingly purposive reflex action, has cut away the ground from
under those who would maintain that the spinal reflexes are
psychically guided in any way. But the conception of reflex

THE RISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY 107

action as a seemingly purposive, though in reality a mechanically
determined, response to the stimulus applied to the sense-organ
has exercised a much more important influence upon the con-
sideration of the psycho-physical problem. For the incessant
labours of a multitude of workers has revealed the fact that not
only the spinal cord, but the whole of the brain also, is built up on
the reflex plan ; that the whole of the brain may properly be
regarded as made up of a multitude of nervous loops, interlacing
and communicating with one another, it is true, in wonderfully
complex fashion, yet still being essentially loops or long bye-
paths ; each of these diverges from the afferent limb of some
spinal reflex arc to ascend to the brain, and, after traversing the
brain, descends to join the efferent or motor limb of some spinal
reflex arc. Just as it is possible to trace the path of the spinal
reflex impulse across the cord from sensory to motor nerve, so it
is possible to reconstruct in imagination the ascent of the various
sensory paths to the lower brain, thence to the appropriate sensory
areas of the cortex, and thence again in great converging systems
to the motor area of the cortex ; whence they descend by the great
pyramidal tract to be distributed to the various motor mechanisms
of the cord. And this reconstruction is no mere piece of fancy,
but is fully warranted by a great quantity of careful observations.
Hence we have to suppose that, when a man sees an object and
stretches out his hand to take it, the nervous excitation follows
such a long loop-path, passing up to the visual cortex, thence by
long association-tracts to the motor cortex, and so down by the
pyramidal tract to the spinal centres through which all movements
of the arm are effected. And we have to believe that the sensa-
tions which are involved in this perceptual reaction are somehow
determined by the nervous current as it traverses the cortex of
the brain in the course of this long journey.

Again, there is good reason to believe, though here we are on
less firm ground, that all the processes of the brain, even those
that accompany the most abstruse thought, conform to the same
fundamental reflex type. Everywhere, then, in the central nervous
system, in the brain no less than in the spinal cord, there seems
to be continuity of the physical processes of nervous conduction ;
nowhere do we find the sensory nerve coming suddenly to an
end at any place where its physical process might be supposed
to terminate in giving rise to a sensation or any other psychical
effect ; and nowhere does the impulse of the efferent nerve seem

io8 BODY AND MIND

to be originated as a physical process without physical cause or
antecedent ; rather there seems always and everywhere to be
continuity of material substance and of physical process, nowhere
and at no time spontaneous or psychical origination of nervous
process.

The study of spinal reflex action has shown us also that the
energy expended in the efferent process need bear no simple and
constant relation to the magnitude or intensity of the excitation
by which it is induced ; that rather the nervous system contains
in its various parts stores of potential energy, which may be
liberated in large quantities by very small excitations, so that
under favourable conditions a very slight sensory stimulus may
provoke a violent reflex action. We can therefore, no longer
see in the disproportion of physical effect to physical cause,
in the case of intense voluntary reaction upon a stimulus, any
evidence of psychical intervention in the chain of physical
events.

It is obvious that the two lines of development of our
knowledge of the brain and its functions reviewed in the
foregoing paragraphs, necessitate the rejection of any such
conception of the interaction of the soul with the body, as
was commonly entertained half a century ago and was clearly
set forth by Lotze in his “ Medizinische Psychologie.^^ For
this conception had postulated the abutting of all sensory paths
about some central part of the brain, the seat of the soul ; the
abrupt termination of all the sensory nervous processes at that
place; and the equally abrupt inception of the excitation of
motor nerves without physical cause or antecedent. And,
though the argument is seldom explicitly set forth, yet there
can be no doubt that these two allied developments of physio-
logical knowledge have done much to banish the belief that
the brain is the seat of psycho- physical interactions, of action
and reaction between soul and body.^ But their influence
in this direction has worked in conjunction with other lines of
physiological thought ; and these we must consider, before we
can appreciate the full force of the physiological argument.

^ Prof. Th. Ziehen regards the absence of any gap in the chains of physical
causation in the brain as the most important of all the grounds on which he
bases his rejection of psycho-physical interaction. “ Gehirn u. Seelenleben,"
Leipzig, 1902, p. 39.

THE RISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY 109

U7ico7isciotts Cereb7'atio7i

We have seen that reflex movements of a seemingly
purposive character may occur without, and even in spite of, the
volition of the subject, and, in fact, without the subject becoming
aware of the stimulus that evokes the movement or of the move-
ment itself. Now, in certain abnormal states, actions of much more
complicated character are performed, while the subject seems
to remain unconscious of them. Thus, epileptics sometimes
execute, in the period succeeding to an acute attack, long trains
of action that imply intelligent design and choice of means, as
well as nice control and regulation of all bodily movements ; and
yet the subject, returning after a time to his normal state,
asserts that of the whole period during which these actions were
performed he retains not the slightest remembrance, that he is
absolutely ignorant of all that he did and of all that happened
to him during this space of time. Similar examples of the
intelligent performance of complex actions of which no recollec-
tion can be evoked, are afforded by subjects in a state of trance
or somnambulism, and by others suffering from lesions of the
brain. Other persons, apparently normal in all respects, have
wakened up from sleep to find that they have written down
original verses or the solution of some problem that had remained
insoluble up to the moment of falling asleep.

The feature common to all these cases is the inability of the
subject to remember anything of the execution or the circum-
stances of actions that seemed to imply perception, feeling,
reasoning, and volition. Now the recollection of any past action
is our only direct evidence that that action was consciously
performed, especially if, as in many of these cases, the subject is
irresponsive to all questioning during the execution of the actions.
It is argued, then, that w^e have in these cases examples of highly
complex, purposive, and intelligently controlled action taking
place without consciousness ; it would seem to follow that in
these cases the material mechanisms of the nervous system suffice
for the execution of such actions, independently of all conscious-
ness or psychical guidance ; and, therefore, we seem compelled
to believe that, when similar actions are executed consciously,
the nervous mechanisms are the only essential conditions ;
that their physico-chemical processes constitute the complete
causal sequences intervening between the sense-impressions and

no

BODY AND MIND

our reactions upon them ; and that consciousness is a superfluous
accompaniment, so far as the causal sequence is concerned,^

The Association-Psychology and the Law of Habit

The association-psychology, founded by Locke and Hume, and
developed by a succession of British writers, reached its climax
of confident explanation of all mental process in the works of
Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer, about the same time that
the physiological facts and inferences described above were brought
to light From the first it had been clear that the association-
psychology lends itself admirably to a physiological interpretation
of mental process j and, as early as the middle of the eighteenth
century. Hartley sketched a system of physiological explana-
tion of mental process, based on the assumption that all mental
processes consist in the association and associative reproduction
of ideas. But the increase of knowledge of the nervous system
brought by the researches of the nineteenth century, provided a
much less inadequate basis for such a system of explanations
than was available to Hartley. According to the association-
psychology, all mental process consists in the reception of im-
pressions by the senses and in the revival of these impressions in
various conjunctions and sequences, as the simple and complex
ideas of memory and of imagination, according to the laws of
association and associative reproduction ; and it was held that,
by the careful analysis of instances of all types, the various laws
of association recognized by the earlier writers may properly be
reduced to a single principle, namely, that of association of ideas
in virtue of their immediate succession in time.

Now, a fixed habit of action resembles very closely a reflex
action ; an habitual action may be effected involuntary, without
design or reflection, and with very little or no consciousness of
the action or of the impressions on the senses by which it is
evoked and guided. We have, therefore, good warrant for
believing that nervous mechanisms, such as have been shown
to be the essential conditions of reflex actions, are the sufficient
conditions of habitual actions. Further, a habit is formed by the
repetition of an action on the repetition of particular sense-
impressions ; that is to say, the repeated sequence of a particular

^ The late Prof. Huxley described a case of such apparently unconscious,
yet intelligent and complex, activities, and attached great weight to such cases
as justifying the denial of psycho-physical interaction (Collected Essays, vol. i.)

THE RISE OE THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY iii

action upon a particular sense-impression results in the formation
of a mechanism consisting of a system of nervous connexions in
the brain, which system is capable of bringing about the appropri-
ate response to the sense-impression in a purely mechanical
fashion. The nervous system, then, is plastic and has a tend-
ency to take on habits ; wherever the nervous current runs from
one part to another, it leaves behind a more or less enduring
tendency for the path it has traversed to be an open path, a
path of low resistance, between the two parts. Here, then, is a
basis for the physiological and mechanical explanation of the
course of all mental process in terms of the association-psych-
ology. We have only to suppose (as we have good warrant for
doing) that the rise to consciousness of each idea is accompanied
by the excitation of some particular group of nervous elements
in the brain ; and to assume that, when one sense-impression
following upon another gives rise to a second idea following
immediately upon another, the nervous current strikes across
from the one group of nervous elements to the other. If so
much be assumed, then it follows from the law of habit that the
revival of the one idea ^ will tend to be followed by, or accompanied
by, the revival of the other ; and we have in outline a scheme
for the explanation of all that clustering, cohesion, and succession
of simple ideas, which, according to the principles of the associa-
tion-psychology, constitute the whole of mental process. For
this scheme is held to afford a mechanical explanation, not only
of the facts of association and reproduction of ideas, but also of
memory itself ; it is said the idea is merely a cluster of simple
ideas or sensational elements (as Locke first taught), which cohere,
in virtue of the principle of habit, in the groupings in which they
are evoked by the fortuitous conjunctions of sense-impressions.

Such is the conception of mental process which has gained a
wide currency, especially among the biologists ; and, since this
conceptual scheme makes use of no other principles and faculties
than those inherent in the nervous system, it has played no
inconsiderable part in banishing the belief in psychical inter-
vention with the course of the physical processes of the brain.^

^ I here use the word idea in the sense given it by Hume and the Associa-
tiomsts, as equivalent to presentation, and as covering both percept and image.

* The most consistent elaboration of this mechanical system of explanation
of mental process may be found in Prof. Ziehen’s “ Outlines of Physiological
Psychology.'*

112

BODY AND MIND

The four lines of development of physiological fact and
theory reviewed in the foregoing pages have, then, all tended
to the one conclusion, namely, that the actions of man are capable
of being fully explained in terms of mechanism — that a sufficient
knowledge of the structure and physico-chemical constitution of
the nervous system would enable us to describe completely in
terms of physical and chemical changes the causal sequence of
events that issues in any action, no matter how much deliberation,
choice, and effort may seem to be involved in its preparation and
determination.

Long ago, Spinoza, in proposing to regard mind and body as
but two aspects of one reality, found himself compelled to make
this assumption. He wrote : '' Certainly no man hath yet deter-
mined what are the powers of the body ; I mean that none has
yet learnt from experience what the body may perform by mere
laws of nature, considering it only as a material thing, and what
it cannot do without the mind’s determination of it. For nobody
has known as yet the frame of the body so thoroughly as to
explain all its operations ; not to say that in brutes much is
noted which doth far surpass human cunning, and that men
walking in their sleep often perform, so sleeping, that which they
would never dare waking : which is proof enough that the body
may, merely by the laws of its own constitution, do much that
its own mind is amazed at. Again, there is none can tell how
and in what manner the mind moves the body, what measure of
motion it can impart to it, or with what velocity.”

Spinoza, in making this great assumption so contrary to all
the accepted ways of thought of his time, could appeal only to
men’s profound ignorance of the body and its processes ; whereas
those who make the same assumption in the present age appeal
with confidence and good show of reason to our knowledge
of the body and its processes, claiming that the knowledge
which we now have amply justifies the assumption and allows
us to understand in a general way the mechanics of human
conduct

In strict logic, the physiological knowledge we have been
considering does not do more than this ; it does not provide any
positive argument against psycho-physical interaction, although
in the minds of many it has seemed to justify and necessitate
this negative conclusion.

But we have now to consider certain other physiological and

THE BISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY 113

biological arguments which are held to prove the dependence of
all mental process on the brain.

The dependence of Thought on B7'ain function.

The materialists of the eighteenth century based their argu-
ments very largely on facts of the kind we have to consider in
this section. But modern research has rendered much more exact
and extensive our knowledge of these facts.

First and foremost, we have to put all the facts which, in the
course of our description of the search for the seat of the soul,
were referred to as proving the localization of cerebral functions ;
especially the facts of brain-lesion, which show that the sensations
and imagery of each of the senses are dependent upon the
integrity of special parts of the cerebral cortex and that other
special mental functions are abolished by injuries of other parts.
But there are many other evidences of the intimate dependence of
mental processes upon the brain-functions, of which the principal
are indicated in the following paragraphs.

There obtains throughout the animal scale, and also within
the course of development of each human being, a close corres-
pondence between the degree of development of the brain and the
degree of development of intelligence or mental capacity in
general. Passing over the facts of the comparative size of the
brain in the various animal species, let us consider for a moment
the parallelism of mental and cerebral development in the human
being. The lack of all but a vague sentiency and appetition in
the new-born infant corresponds to a very undeveloped state of its
brain : not only is its mass very much less than that of the adult
brain ; but also, microscopic study has shown that, for some time
after birth, the majority of the nervous elements of the cerebrum
are in a condition in which they cannot take part in any concerted
nervous activities. Gradually, throughout all the years of child-
hood and adolescence, more and more of these elements become
perfected and organized within the general system or hierarchy of
minor systems ; first, as the sensory powers develop, the neurons
of the sensory areas become organized, later those of the inter-
vening “association-areas,'' which subserve the higher mental
functions ; and this process of the organization of fresh neural
elements continues far on into adult life, multitudes of new
branches and twigs growing out from millions of nerve cells to

BODY AND MIND

1 14

establish a plexus or network of constantly increasing complexity,
in correspondence with the development of knowledge and intel-
lectual power. Then, as middle age begins to pass over into old
age, this multiplication of twigs and branches and this formation
of new connexions between the neural elements come to an end ;
and at the same time the mind becomes less and less capable of
making new acquisitions of knowledge, of skill, of capacity of any
kind ; until in advanced age the powers of acquisition and reten-
tion are reduced to a minimum : the old man lives again in the
scenes of his youth, and remembers hardly, if at all, the events of
yesterday.

Again, we know how, when the surface of the brain becomes
chronically inflamed, the mental powers of the patient exhibit
a progressive deterioration running parallel with the deterioration
of the grey matter of the cortex ; so that a man of splendid
intellect and fine character may be gradually reduced to a state
in which he stands, both intellectually and morally, below the level
of the higher animals ; a state of complete mental degradation,
from which he is released only by death. Surely the most terrible
object the mind of man can contemplate ! And modern medical
science is showing more and more clearly that many mental
disorders are primarily due to disorders of the body which, by
poisoning the blood, secondarily produce a chronic poisoning of
the brain, and thereby a degradation of intellect and character.

We have to take account also of the many modes in which
mental process may be profoundly affected or arrested by physical
agents acting on the body. A very small quantity of laughing
gas, chloroform, or ether in the blood quickly deranges all our
mental processes, and a slightly larger dose seems to arrest all
mental activity and completely to abolish consciousness. In the
case of alcohol, the steps by which the activity of the mind
is arrested and consciousness abolished may be followed, the
change being greater in proportion to the dose of the drug in-
troduced into the blood, and, through it, into the brain-substance :
the highest, most delicate functions seem to be first abolished, and
then in turn the functions successively lower in the scale of
complexity and delicacy ; until, when the dose is large enough, all
the parts of the brain are paralysed, and consciousness seems as
completely abolished as in chloroform narcosis. Various other
drugs, such as Indian hemp and mescal, produce specific altera-
tions of our mental processes, without arresting them.

THE RISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY 1 15

A copious stream of blood, rich in oxygen, is constantly
supplied to the brain during waking life ; the more active the
mind at any moment, the more copious is the supply of blood
pumped up to the brain, the more rapidly is oxygen taken up
from the blood, and the more rapidly is the substance of the
nervous tissues oxidised and consumed and cast out into the blood-
stream, in the form of carbonic acid and other waste products of
combustion. On the other hand, any checking of the stream of
blood flowing through the vessels of the brain, or any diminution
of the quantity of oxygen contained in it, produces at once some
disturbance of mental process ; and a sudden stoppage of the
supply of oxygen to the brain arrests almost instantaneously all
mental process and abolishes consciousness — as we see in the
case of the ordinary fainting caused by insufficiency of the heart's
action.

A mechanical shock or jar of the brain will also instantane-
ously arrest all mental activity and abolish consciousness, if only
it is sufficiently severe.

Not least important among the facts of this order are those
which indicate the dependence of memory upon the nervous
system. A blow on the head seems in some cases to abolish
throughout a period of minutes or hours all memory of experi-
ences preceding the moment of the blow. Local lesions, i.e.
injuries of small parts of the brain, seem in some cases to destroy
memories of some one class, e.g, visual memories ; as we have
noticed in discussing the localization of cerebral functions.

The effectiveness with which we can commit any matter to
memory varies greatly with the bodily state at the moment, with
the degree of fatigue, the state of general bodily vigour and
health, with youth and age.

And, most significant of all perhaps, the minute study in
recent years of the processes of mental association and reproduc-
tion has shown that they obey laws which seem to be identical
with those of the formation and operation of habits. Now, there
is no room for doubt that the acquisition of a habit consists
in the formation of material connexions between nervous elements
and in the consolidation, improvement, or wearing smooth of such
paths of communication between nerve cells, or, as it is commonly
put, in the formation of paths of low resistance in the nervous
system.

A 11 ^1 _ -3 — 4 - 1 «, ^

BODY AND MIND

ii6

that the continuance of our mental processes and consciousness,
in the only form of which we have any positive knowledge, is
intimately dependent upon the metabolism of the brain and upon
the maintenance of certain very complex chemical conditions,
conditions which cannot vary beyond very narrow limits without
producing disorder or arrest of the brain’s metabolism and, with it,
of the stream of mental life.

The Law of Psycho-neural Correlation or Concomitance.

The physiological facts of the kind we have been considering
are generally held, and with good reason, to justify the empirical
generalization known as the law of psycho-neural concomitance,
which runs as follows: — All mental process is accompanied by
neural process in the brain, each thought or idea having its
specific neural correlate, or, in the language of Huxley — every
psychosis is definitely correlated with a netii^osis.

The Composite Nature of the Mind.

In former years, the proposition that the mind of each man
is a unity was very generally accepted as a fundamental and
unquestionable truth. But modern research has shaken very
seriously even this inner stronghold of the castle of Animism.

Biology has made clear that the human body is a vast and
harmoniously cooperating aggregation of cells, each of which is
in a sense a vital unit, which seems to have a life of its own, rela-
tively independent of that of the rest of the body. Embryology
has shown that this aggregation of cells is formed by the repeated
division of a single parent-cell, the germ-cell, and the cohesion of
the many cells thus formed. Now, the principle of continuity
and the analogy presented by the unicellular animals, each of
which divides repeatedly into two or more cells that lead inde-
pendent lives, seem to compel us to suppose that the germ-cell
has not only life but also mind, that it enjoys psychical life in
however lowly a manner or degree, and that, on the division of
the germ-cell, each of the cells derived from it has also its
psychical capacities. This line of thought leads us inevitably to
the view that the developed human being is, as it were, a vast
colony of cells of more or less highly-specialized functions ; that
in the cells constituting the nervous system the psychical functions
are most highly developed and specialized ; and that the con-

THE RISE OF THE MECHANISTIC PHYSIOLOGY 117

sciousness of each man is in some sense the sum, or aggregation,
or resultant, of the consciousnesses of the cells of his brain. This
view of the composite nature of mind and consciousness, which
has now gained very wide acceptance, seems to be borne out by
two classes of very striking and curious facts.

The facts of the one class are those established by the experi-
mental division of lower animals ; their significance did not
escape the observation of Aristotle, but they were first studied
in detail in the eighteenth century by Charles Bonnett.
Many of the lower animals, notably some of the segmented
worms, may be divided by the knife into two or more
portions, each of which continues to live and to manifest all the
indications of psychical life proper to the species. In such cases
we seem compelled to believe that, in dividing the body and
nervous system, the knife divides also the psychical life of the
creature ; if indeed the psychical life of the parts of the intact
creature is integrated to a unitary consciousness.

The reproduction or genesis of each human being takes place
by a process of fission which is essentially analogous to such
simple transection of an animal ; for the inception of the new
individual is a budding off of the germ-cell from the mass of cells
constituting the body of the parent, a cell which seems to carry
with it the rudiment, or at least the potentiality, of the psychical
life of the developed man.

Consideration of these facts has led many competent thinkers ^
to assert that the consciousness of any man is composite, is a great
stream formed by the flowing together of the many little streams
of consciousness, the consciousnesses of the vital units of which his
body or brain is composed ; ^ and they have not hesitated to assert
that, if a man's brain could be mechanically divided into two parts
(as by the transection of the corpus callosum) without arresting
the life of the parts, the nervous activities of each part would be
accompanied by its own stream of consciousness ; that, in fact,
the condition or ground of the unity of personal consciousness is
the material and functional connection between the cells of which
the brain is composed.

Secondly, since Fechner boldly propounded this view fifty
1 Notably G. T. Fechner in the Psycho-physik,” and Von Hartmann in
The Philosophy of the Unconscious.”

* This view is strictly in harmony with the widely accepted speculation of
philosophers that an absolute mind or consciousness comprehends or includes
the consciousness of all lesser minds.

BODY AND MIND

n8

years ago, it has received very strong support from modern
studies in mental pathology. Students of hysteria, of hyp-
nosis, of trance, and of automatic speech and writing, medical
psychologists of the school of Charcot and Janet, loudly proclaim
that the doctrine of the unity of the individual consciousness is an
exploded dogma, and that, even in the normal individual, many
obscure currents of thought and consciousness flow on independ-
ently beside or beneath the main stream ; and that this multiplicity
of consciousness is but accentuated and brought more clearly to
view in the abnormal states that they have studied with so much
success.^ For these abnormal states, known as states of multiple
personality, dual or divided consciousness, and so forth, seem to
afford evidence of the existence of two or more streams of mental
activity and consciousness associated with the processes of a single
brain and body, the two streams of consciousness alternating with
one another in time in cases of the commoner type, but seeming
in rarer cases to run on contemporaneously and independently of
one another.

Now there is very good reason for believing that in all cases
of these kinds, the kinds that are now commonly classed under
the head of mental dissociation^ there obtains some degree of
functional dissociation among the elements of the brain ; in fact,
the evidence of such neural dissociation is much more clear and
direct than the evidence for dual or multiple consciousness.^ It
is, then, easy to see in these facts a confirmation of the view that
such unity of consciousness as we normally enjoy is conditioned
by the functional continuity of the elements of the brain ; for in
these cases we seem to find that rupture of this neural continuity
is accompanied by a rupture or division of consciousness, just such
as, according to the view of Fechner and Von Hartmann, would
result from division of the brain by the surgeon’s knife.

^ For an authoritative statement of this kind see an article by Prof. Th.
Flournoy, ^"Esprits et Mediums,” in the BuUehn deVInstitut giniralpsychologiquef
1909, No. 3 : ” En resume, au cours de ce dernier demi-si^cle, les experiences
d^hypnotisme, retude des alterations spontan^es de la personnalite, et Tobserva-
kion mdme de nos proems psychologiques courants, ont rev616 dans Tdme humaine
line complexite de nature, et des possibilites de dissociation interieure ou de
[lolymorphisme, dont on ne se doubtait gu^re k I’epoque d’ Allan Kardec, et
lui ont totalement mine Taxiome servant tacitement de pilier principal k sa
tJieorie ” (the axiom, namely, that the consciousness of the individual is unitary).

*The nature and production of such states of neural dissociation has been
discussed by the author in a paper in Brain, vol. xxxi., ” The State of the
Brain during Hypnosis.”

CHAPTER IX

THE INFLUENCE OF THE DARWINIAN THEORY

W E have now reviewed the principal ways in which the
development of our knowledge of the nervous system
and its functions has contributed to the rejection of
Animism. But the progress of other branches of biology has
contributed powerfully towards the same result, especially the
establishment of the doctrine of biological evolution through the
influence of the ideas of Charles Darwin.

The multitude of nice adaptations of animal structure and
function to the situations and circumstances and needs of the
animals had always been looked upon as evidence of the
operation of a teleological factor in the determination of those
structures and functions ; whether this factor was regarded as
operating from outside to mould the development of the animals,
or was identified, as by Lamarck, with the minds of the animals,
with their intelligent psychical efforts to achieve their purposes and
to adapt themselves more perfectly to their environment. Then,
in the middle of the nineteenth century, just when the triumphs
of physical science and the rapid progress of physiology were
leading men to regard all animal growth and behaviour as
capable of mechanical explanation, came the Darwinian hypothesis
of the evolution of species and the adaptation of species to their
environment by the blind mechanical operation of natural selection.
Darwin himself retained the hypothesis of Lamarck and con-
tinued to regard mind as a teleological factor in the evolutionary
process. But to a great number, perhaps the majority, of
biologists who came after Darwin, his hypothesis has seemed
capable of explaining as mechanically engendered all instances
of adaptation of structure and function ; and it is maintained
by those who accept the view of this Neo-Darwinian school, of
which Weismann is the leader, that the last ground for the
recognition of any teleological factor in the biological realm has
been washed away for ever by the Darwinian principles.

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BODY AND MIND

The modern doctrine of biological evolution contributes in a
second way also to the abolition of Animism. It compels us to
believe in the continuity of the evolution of the animal kingdom
from the simplest to the most highly developed animal, namely
man ; and it regards man’s mental organization as having been
continuously evolved from that of his animal ancestry, by
means of the same processes of natural selection and in-
heritance of chance variations that have produced his bodily
organization.

Now it is obvious that the acceptance of this view raises
new difficulties for any animistic doctrine. If man has a
soul, what is its relation to the souls of animals? If it is of an
altogether different order from these, at what point in the scale
of evolution did the human soul replace the animal soul ? and so
on and so on. The doctrine of the continuity of the evolution
of man’s mental powers from those of his animal ancestry forbids
us to accept Descartes’ easy way of escape from these difficult
problems, namely, the denial of all psychical life to the animals.
But in addition to the raising of these unanswerable conundrums,
the doctrine of the continuity of evolution seems to make against
Animism in yet another way. It is said that the principles of
continuity and of economy justify us in regarding the world of
living things as having been gradually evolved from inanimate
or non-living matter,^ and that the rejection of this view involves
the assumption of a miraculous interference with the course of
nature for the first production of living organisms. And it is held
that the successes of modern chemistry in analyzing the substance
of living matter and in synthesizing complex organic molecules
from the chemical elements justify us in believing that living
matter will one day, perhaps at no distant date, be synthesized
in the laboratory. If, then, such continuity of evolution of the
organic world of living things from the inorganic world is
established, it justifies the belief that all organic processes, in-
cluding those of the human brain, are determined according to
the laws of mechanism to which all inorganic matter has been
proved by exact experiment to conform ; for we cannot suppose
that the mere aggregation of the chemical elements in the more
complex molecules of organic matter removes them in any
degree from the sway of those laws. Hence there is no room

^ Prof. Lloyd Morgan is one of those who have laid great stress upon t h is
argument : see his " Introduction to Comparative Psychology.’*

THE INFLUENCE OF THE DARWINIAN THEORY 121

for psychical guidance among the strictly mechanical processes of
human brains.

The evolutionary speculations of Herbert Spencer must also
be mentioned here as having played a considerable part in
establishing the psychology without a soul.” For in his
Principles of Psychology ” (the first edition of which preceded
by a few years the “Origin of Species”) Spencer applied the
physiological principles of the association-psychology to explain
not only the development of the individual mind, but also the
evolution of the mental powers of the race ; claiming to show how
all the powers of the human mind have been built up by the
transmission and accumulation from generation to generation of
the experience of each, embodied in the form of associated groups
of nervous elements. And these speculations met with very
general approval and exerted a widespread influence.

Thus, just ten years after physical science had launched its
heaviest bolt against Animism, in the shape of the law of con-
servation of energy, the Darwinian theory seemed to undermine
its last prop. To the scientific world in general it seemed that
Animism was forever dead; and when, in the year 1874,
Prof. Tyndall gave to his presidential address before the British
Association the double character of an inquest into the death of
Animism and a funeral oration over its corpse, the mind of the
cultured public was well prepared to bid it a regretful farewell.
We have it on the authority of a leading newspaper of that
date,^ that “ The Address has been received with a unanimity of
commendation that has fairly bewildered those who make it a
business to study the drifts and currents of public sentiment.”

^ The New York Tribune,

CHAPTER X

CURRENT PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST
ANIMISM

B eside the weighty arguments against Animism provided
by the results of modern physical and biological research,
other arguments of a metaphysical or epistemological
character, which have long been current, have been presented
again and again with great force and liveliness, and still carry
great weight with many minds.

Of these, one of the most widely influential is still undoubtedly
the objection raised by the Occasionalists to Descartes’ teaching.
It is inconceivable, it is said, and therefore impossible, that things
so utterly unlike as body and soul should act upon one another,
that the immaterial inextended soul or thinking substance postu-
lated by Descartes should be capable either of acting upon, or
of being acted upon by, the material extended substance of the
brain. The development of physical science with its more
exact notions of physical causation has strengthened the appeal
of this argument ; it is therefore still much relied upon, and has
been stated again and again in recent years and given a variety
of slightly different forms. To all those who accept the scheme
of kinetic mechanism as a literal description of the constitution
of the physical world, it is most effective when stated in the form
that we cannot conceive how consciousness can affect the move-
ments of molecules.^ One of the best known and authoritative
statements of it is that contained in the late Prof, Tyndall’s
famous Belfast address ; others were cited in Chapter VI L

Some philosophers prefer to give to this argument a logical
flavour. They say that all our conceptions of physical pheno-
mena are built up on the mechanical type, all involve the
notions of extension, of position and of changes of position in
space ; that we can only conceive of physical processes in this
way ; and that to regard psychical agencies as affecting physical

^ See the passage quoted on p. 93 from Romanes^ Rede Lecture.

122

PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 123

processes is to attempt to combine two systems of ideas that
have no relation to one another ; that, in short, any such attempt
is illegitimate, because the two systems of conceptions have been
evolved for dealing with different aspects of experience.

Dr Stout has presented this argument in a way which combines
these two rather different formulations of it, without implying the
acceptance of the scheme of kinetic mechanism. “The main
objection to this view (interaction of soul and body) is that the
kind of interaction presupposed is utterly incongruous with the
conception of causation on which the whole system of our know-
ledge both of physical and psychical process is based. It is the
function of science to explain how events take place, or, in other
words, to make their occurrence intelligible ; but this is only
possible in so far as we can discover such a connection between
cause and effect as will enable us to understand how the effect
follows from the cause ; or, in other words, we must exhibit cause
and effect as parts of one and the same continuous process. To
explain is to exhibit a fact as the resultant of its factors. This
is the ideal of science, and it is never completely attained. But
in so far as it is unattained, our knowledge is felt to be incom-
plete. Now when we come to the direct connection between a
nervous process and a correlated conscious process, we find a
complete solution of continuity. The two processes have no
common factor. Their connection lies entirely outside of our
total knowledge of physical nature on the one hand, and of
conscious process on the other.'’ ^

These may be said to be the modern attenuated forms
of Kant’s epistemological dictum that all processes of the
phenomenal world must be conceived as the movements of
bodies and be regarded as strictly subject to mechanical law.

A thoroughly metaphysical objection to the soul is the
following ; — We have no immediate experience of the soul ; the
conception is reached by inference only ; therefore it is bad meta-
physics to assign a higher or greater reality to the soul than to con-
sciousness ; for of the latter we have immediate knowledge. Pro-
fessor Strong, who makes much of this objection in his discussion
of the question,^ supports it with closely allied arguments, which

^ Manual of Psychology,** chap. iii.

* In his book, “ Why the Mind has a Body,** a lucid and forcible presentation
of the argument for the position designated on a later page (chap, xi.) Psychical
Monism.

124

BODY AND MIND

may best be given in his own words. “ But the hypothesis of a
soul involves a second difficulty equally great, in regard to the
nature to be ascribed to it if assumed. What could the soul
itself, apart from consciousness, be like ? It has been carefully
distinguished from and opposed to consciousness, therefore it
cannot have the latter’s luminous nature. We are forced to
conceive it as a dark and mysterious source from which conscious-
ness in some unintelligible manner flows. Insensibly we are
drawn to picture it by the aid of that illegitimate notion of
matter existing with all its materiality apart from consciousness,
— in short, as a mind-atom. But, no matter how carefully we
define it as immaterial, since we contrast it in nature with
consciousness, the origin of the latter out of it is as irrational,
as much “ the birth of a new nature,” as its origin out of matter.
Thus the nature of the Soul in itself is as unassignable as our
knowledge of it is inexplicable” Other writers who urge this
argument hide its purely metaphysical nature under the disguise
of an argumenium ad hominem ; they say that to posit a soul is
but a disguised Materialism ; they assert that, describe it how we
may, the soul remains essentially of the same nature as our naive
conception of matter, that the two conceptions arose from, and
owe their survival to, the same weakness of the human intellect
Professor Strong goes on to say — ‘^Finally the phenomena-
transcending assumption that occasions these difficulties is
irreconcilable with the fact that our existence is something of
which we are immediately aware. For the existence of conscious-
ness is our existence. If the Soul should continue but conscious-
ness cease, we should be as good as non-existent ; whereas, if
the Soul should be annihilated but consciousness still go on,
we should exist as truly as now. Thus our existence is bound
up with that of consciousness, not with that of the Soul ; or,
as I said before, the existence of consciousness is our existence.” ^
It only remains to point out that the almost universal re-
jection of Animism by the learned world of our time is due
not merely to the force of the arguments provided by the
physical and biological sciences, nor to the reasonings of
epistemologists and metaphysicians, but to the co-operation of
these influences. In earlier ages the materialistic tendencies
of science and the spiritualistic affirmations of philosophy had
generally arrayed the men of science and the philosophers
^ Op. cit. pp. 199 and 200.

PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 125

in hostile parties, the opposition between which reached its
climax towards the close of the eighteenth century. Then
came Kant, who taught the philosophers that ihey might accept
the materialistic conclusions of science without giving up all
that they held most dear ; and the men of science, on the
other hand, mollified by these great concessions to their claims,
and finding their most cherished tenets no longer imperilled
by the prepossessions of the philosophers, have sought to make
what concessions seemed possible, and have found that an agnostic
or neutral Monism is at once more defensible and more
respectable than the crude Materialism of their predecessors.
Hence, in the course of the nineteenth century, these parties have
drawn closer together ; until now they are united in a common
opposition to Animism under the twin banners of Monism and
idealism, each confirmed in its opposition to Animism by the
knowledge that it can claim the support of its powerful
ally.

In this process of reconcilement of science and philosophy
at the cost of Animism, which only in recent years has made
rapid progress, a great part has been played by the exposition of
a variety of solutions of the pyscho-physical problem ; the essen-
tial features common to all these are the denial of all psycho-
physical interaction, and the insistence that all the processes of the
organic world (including all the behaviour of men and animals)
are capable in principle of being fully explained in mechanical
terms. They may therefore be classed together under the head
of automaton theories ; though the clumsy expression, anti-
animistic theories, would bring out more clearly their common
opposition to Animism. In the following chapter I propose to
describe the varieties of the automaton theory most widely
accepted at the present time.

CHAPTER XI

THE AUTOMATON THEORIES

O F the many authors who have adopted and presented an
anti-animistic solution of the psycho-physical problem,
each has given to his doctrine some peculiar turn and

flavour.^

The formulations range from the crudest materialism on the one
hand to the grossest subjective idealism on the other, and not a
few authors oscillate uncertainly between these two extreme
varieties of Monism.

These many formulations fall into four groups, although of
some of them it is difficult to say to which group they properly
belong. I adopt the plan of describing the type formulation of
each of these four groups. The first, generally known as Epi-
pJienomenalism, is the modern representative of Materialism. The
others are often loosely classed together under the title, theories
of psycho-physical Parallelism^ and many writers signify in general
terms their adhesion to “ the theory of psycho-physical parallelism,’’
without specifying which of its three distinct forms they approve,
and, it may be suspected, without distinguishing between them in
their own minds.

Epiphenonienalism

The simplest formulation of the monistic view is of course the
materialistic. Perhaps no reputable writer of the present time
formulates Materialism so crudely as some of the older writers.
Since Hobbes asserted that sensation is nothing but motion, the
statement of the materialistic creed has undergone considerable
refinement. Even the dictum of Cabanis, that the brain secretes
thought as the liver secretes bile, marked a considerable refine-
ment ; and a further refinement is implied by the formula that

^ It is surprising and amusing to anyone who forages among the literature
of this subject to find that so many authors have put forward one or other of
these allied doctrines, claiming it in all good faith as an original discovery.

120

THE AUTOMATON THEORIES

127

consciousness is a function of the brain. But the modern mate-
rialist refines still further upon his predecessors. He will not
commit himself to the statement that the brain secretes con-
sciousness or thought, and he hesitates to say that the processes
of the brain are the cause of sensation or of consciousness of any
kind ; he prefers to say that the stream of consciousness accom-
panies the flow of brain-processes, each detail of the stream of
consciousness being dependent upon some specific feature or detail
of the total brain-process with which it coincides, or to which it
immediately succeeds, in time. Huxley did more than anyone
else to define and to give currency to this formulation, and to
him it owes the name by which it is generally known ; for he it
was who suggested that the stream of consciousness should be
called epiphenomenal, or the epiphenomenon of the brain-process.^
Now, though some of those who have adopted this view are shy
of using the word cause in this connexion, and especially of
describing the relation of consciousness to brain-process as one of
casual dependence, yet others are less reticent ; and it cannot be
denied that the doctrine of Epiphenomenalism as widely enter-
tained by scientific men does imply this casual dependence. The
doctrine may, then, be stated succinctly in the form of the follow-
ing propositions : — (i) The universe is a system of forces, or of
matter and energy, in which every event or process is completely
determined or caused by antecedent physical process accord-
ing to the laws of mechanism (the bodies and brains of all
organisms, including those of men not excepted). (2) Certain
complex physico-chemical processes, taking place in those very
highly specialized collocations of matter which we call brains,
produce or cause (in their own right, as it were) all that we call
consciousness, all sensation and imagery, all feeling, emotion,
thought and sense of effort, or other mode of consciousness ;
that is to say, every feature or element of the content of the
consciousness of any organism is caused by some immediately
preceding physical or chemical change occurring in the brain of
that organism, and all that we call psychical process is merely the
successive and momentary appearance of new elements in the
stream of consciousness, each new element being called into
existence by a corresponding process in the brain, and ceasing to
exist when that process comes to an end.

^ Dr Shadworth Hodgson is perhaps the most thorough and consistent
exponent of this view among contemporary writers.

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BODY AND MIND

According to this doctrine, then, there is no true psychical
activity ; all psychical existence is consciousness only, and con-
sciousness consists of a stream of fragments or elements of
consciousness, appearing simultaneously or successively, merely
subsisting for a moment and then disappearing, without in any
way influencing one another and without reacting in any way
upon the brain-processes by which they are produced ; the causal
sequence and all true activity and effectiveness belong to the
brain- processes. The relation of consciousness is one of
dependence without reciprocity of influence. The consciousness
of any moment is a passive conjunction of “ epiphenomenal’^
elements. Huxley and others have illustrated this doctrine by
likening this stream of epiphenomenal elements to the shadows
cast by the moving parts of a machine, or to the noise fortuitously
produced by them — the creaking of the wheels. Perhaps a better
simile would be the electrical disturbances that always are
incidental to the strains and frictions of the working of a
machine.

Epiphenomenalism may be illustrated and fixed in the mind
by help of the diagram (Fig. i),

Fig. I.

or, less inadequately but less simply, by the second diagram (Fig. 2).

fn these, as in the following diagrams, physical processes of
the brain are indicated by the black discs below ; the circles above
stand for elements of the stream of consciousness ; causal links
are indicated by the lines, and the time-direction by the arrow-
heads. The diagram thus indicates the causal network con-

THE AUTOMATON THEORIES

129

necting the physical processes of the brain, and the causal de-
pendence of each element of consciousness upon some one of the
brain-processes.

This doctrine is very widely held among men of science at
the present time, especially perhaps among the physiologists ; for
the facts with which they are most familiar, those which
seem to indicate the dependence of all mental process upon the
material brain-processes, are those which incline the mind most
strongly towards this view. Although this doctrine escapes some
of the most obvious crudities of the older Materialism, it must be
classed as materialistic ; for it gives the primacy to matter.
Material collocations and their forces are held to be the real and
effective agents in the production of all change and process.
The material universe is held to have existed throughout an
indefinitely long time, and to have undergone an immensely
prolonged evolutionary process of a purely mechanical nature, as
described by Herbert Spencer; which process has resulted at a
certain point of time in the production of living organisms, through
the increasing complexity of the atomic structute of certain
molecules. In these organisms further evolution of the same
kind has resulted in a further increase of complexity of atomic
structure and molecular arrangement ; until, when the brains of
some organisms attained a certain degree of this complexity
of atomic and molecular structure, their physico-chemical
processes began to be accompanied by consciousness. Con-
sciousness, or mind, was thus called into being for the first
time in the history of the universe ; which consciousness continued
to incx'ease in complexity as brains grew larger and more complex
and more highly integrated, and has attained its greatest richness
and complexity in the case of the large and very complex brain
of the human species. It is further implied that, if and when
these very highly specialized collocations of matter which we call
brains shall cease to exist, all mind and consciousness will dis-
appear from the universe.

The material universe is thus regarded as rolling on through
the ages according to eternally fixed mechanical principles, and
as producing nov/ and again, on one or more of the stellar bodies
on which brains happen to be evolved, little flecks of consciousness,
which flash out like sparks of light, flicker for a moment and dis-
appear, coming and going without affecting in the slightest degree
the secular evolution and dissolution of material systems.

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BODY AND MIND

There are no special arguments advanced in favour of this
view, beyond all those objections to Animism which we have noticed.
It is the only alternative to Animism open to the crude realist, who
believes the physical world to consist of matter such as we perceive
or as physical science describes.

An interesting variation of this doctrine has been proposed a few
3rears ago by Professor W. Ostwald,^ who claims that his suggested
modification would remove it from the category of Materialism.
The suggestion is bound up with his attempt to show that the
conception of matter is a false and improper, because useless,
hypothesis, and that we may profitably do away with it altogether
and replace it by the conception of energy. Energy, according to
this doctrine of ‘‘ Energetics,” is the only enduring reality ; it is
capable of assuming, or transforming itself into, many different
modes or species ; and of these species consciousness or psychical
energy is one among the rest. All mental process is thus con-
ceived as the interplay of psychical energy with other species of
energy. It seems possible that this suggestion might be developed
in a way not inconsistent with Animism ; ^ but as presented by
its author it would seem to be very closely allied to Epi-
phenomenalism. It may be illustrated by developing the simile
in which we likened the consciousness that accompanies the brain-
processes to the electrical disturbances that accompany the strains
and frictions incidental to the working of a machine. Just as
man-made machines continued through long ages to develop
incidentally feeble electrical disturbances which played no effective
part, so through long ages natural mechanisms developed inci-
dentally feeble psychical energies which played no effective part.
And, just as man evolved machines (namely dynamos) in which,
by the special arrangement of the parts, the electrical energy
generated became much greater in quantity and was given an
essential and dominant role in the working of the system, so
certain natural mechanisms (namely organisms), through the
evolution of brains, became capable of generating psychical
energy in larger quantity, which energy, with each further
evolution of the brain, has played a more important part in
the working of the whole organism.

^ '' Vorlesungen liber Naturphilosophie,’* Leipzig, 1902.

^ This development (if I rightly comprehend them) seems to be attempted
by several Russian authors, especially Grot, Krainsky, and Bechterew. (See
"Psyche und Leben," W. Bechterew, Wiesbaden, 1901.)

THE AUTOMATON THEORIES

13 ^

Psycho-physical Parallelism

The expression, psycho-physical parallelism, is conveniently
used in a loose way to denote all the doctrines that deny psycho-
physical interaction, but in this section I am concerned only with
that one to which in strictness the designation should be confined.

According to this view physical and psychical processes are
equally real ; but there is no causal relation between psychical
and physical processes ; the two series of events, the psychical
processes of any mind and the physical processes of the brain
with which they are associated, merely accompany one another
in time ; their relation is one of simple concomitance only ; the
two series of events merely run parallel to one another in time,
as two railway trains running side by side on a double track, or
two rays of light projected towards the same infinitely distant
point, run parallel with one another in time and space. Within
each series the law of causation holds good, the successive steps
being related to the preceding and succeeding steps as effects and

^ o o 0 o a

■' > # • • ' • •—

Fig. 3.

causes ; but no causal links stretch across from one series to the
other. The diagrams illustrate this view, the one (Fig. 3) in the

Fig. 4.

simplest possible manner, the other (Fig. 4) rather less inadequately.
In the latter figure the clear circles are supposed to lie in one
plane at right angles to the plane of the paper, the black circles
in another.

This doctrine is held in either of two forms, restricted or
universal parallelism. In the former case, brain-processes alone

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132

of all physical processes are supposed to be accompanied by
psychical events corresponding to them point for point in this
mysterious fashion. In the latter case it is assumed that all physical
processes alike, those of the inorganic realm no less than those of
brains, have their psychical concomitants. This doctrine of par-
allelism without interaction was, as we have seen, suggested by
Leibnitz ; but it may be and is held without accepting the doctrine
or pre-established harmony by means of which Leibnitz sought
to make it intelligible. It may be, and in fact usually is, held
only as a working hypothesis or as a heuristic principle making
no claim to metaphysical validity.

Those who are not content with the bare affirmation of
temporal concomitance of brain-process and consciousness, and
who, while denying all psycho-physical interaction, seek to make
their relation intelligible, find themselves compelled to adopt the
doctrine of the identity of mind and body in one or other of the
two forms in which it is current Both of these necessarily claim
to embody metaphysical or ontological truth, i.e. to give us some
account of the nature of real being, or at least to make certain
assertions in regard to it

Phenomenalistic Parallelism {Identity -Hypothesis A)

Under this heading we may put together the closely allied
formulations of the psycho-physical relation suggested by
Spinoza and by Kant respectively ; for both regarded mind and
body as but two aspects of one reality ; Spinoza’s doctrine is more
properly called the two-aspect view ” ; Kant’s, “ phenomenalistic
parallelism.” The diagram (Fig. 5) may serve to illustrate both

Fig. 5.

varieties. As the diagram implies, the causal links belong wholly
to the unknown series of real processes which appear to us under
the two aspects, the physical and the psychical, although both
series of appearances will seem to be causally linked, just as one

THE AUTOMATON THEORIES

133

shadow may seem to draw another shadow after it This form
of the identity-hypothesis thus implies the metaphysical doctrine
known as realistic Monism. It asserts that reality or real being,
of which mind and body are appearances only, is not immediately
given to or known by us. This underlying reality may be
regarded as an unknown and unknowable X. This was the
teaching of Herbert Spencer, as also of Kant, who declared that it
is “ weder Materienoch ein denkend Wesen.”^ But those who, on
other grounds, adopt a pantheistic metaphysic will naturally follow
Spinoza in affirming that this real being is God.

Psychical Monism (Identity -Hypothesis B)

The alternative formulation of the identity-hypothesis runs as
follows : — Consciousness is the only reality, and the consciousness
of each of us partakes of this real nature ; all that each man calls
matter or the physical world is but the form under which con-
sciousness other than his own is manifested to him, so that, if I
could observe the processes of your brain while you are thinking,
I should be observing the phenomenal manifestation of your
consciousness. According to this doctrine, then, the causal
efficiency is wholly confined to the psychical series ; and matter
and its processes (all that we call the physical world or Nature)
are but, as it were, the shadows thrown by thought It is thus the
converse of Epiphenomenalism, which regards thought as the shadow
thrown by matter. It may be illustrated by the diagram (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6.

This form of the identity-hypothesis implies a metaphysical
doctrine which is usually designated idealistic Monism, but is
better described as realistic or objective psychical Monism. It
must not be confused with subjective Idealism or Solipsism ; this
also is a psychical Monism, for it maintains that my thought or
consciousness alone exists. But, while the latter denies the exist-
ence of the physical world and of other minds than my own
(except as ideas of my own mind), the former mainiains the

1 See p. 77.

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134

objective existence both of the things which appear to me as
composing the physical world and of other minds like my own,
while holding that they are all of the same nature, namely
consciousness. It will be convenient to designate it simply
“ Psychical Monism.” A diagram illustrating Solipsism on the
plan of the foregoing diagrams may help to make clear the
difference between these two forms of psychical Monism. It
would take the form of figure 7, though the links joining the

® ® ® - ®

Fig. 7.

circles would not stand for causal links, since Solipsism necessarily
denies validity to the principle of causation.

In order to complete the series of diagrams illustrating the
various psycho-physical doctrines which reject Animism, I add

— # # • • #

Fig. 8.

figure 8 ; this may stand for the crude Materialism which asserts
that consciousness is matter or the movement of matter.

Of all the anti-animistic answers to the psycho-physical problem
this second form of the identity-hypothesis is the one which is
most widely accepted at the present time and which has been the
most thoroughly elaborated. It is therefore important that it
should be clearty grasped, and I restate it in the words of the late
Professor Paulsen, one of its most enlightened and thorough-
going advocates of recent years. “ Alle korperliche Wirklichkeit
ist durchaus und iiberall Plinweisung auf eine Innenwelt, die der
verwandt ist, die wir in uns selber erleben. Und allerdings
werden wir nun sagen : in der Innenwelt, die uns freilich nur an
einem Punkt unmittelbar gegeben ist, im Selbstbewusstsein,
dariiber hinaus erreichen wir sie nur durch stets unsichere
Interpretation und jenseits der Tierwelt nur durch schematisierende
Konstruktion, und durch idealisirende Symbolik ; in der Innenwelt
offenbart sich die Natur des Wirklichen, wie es an und fur sich
ist : die Korperwelt ist im Grunde nur eine zufallige Ansicht, eine
unadaquate Darstellung der Wirklichkeit in unserer Sinnlichkeit.” ^
And again, “ Das Dasein der Seele besteht in ihrem Leben, in der
1 “ Einleitung in die Philosopliie,** p. 126, twelfth edition, 1904.

THE AUTOMATON THEORIES

135

Einheit aufeinander bezogener pychischer Vorgange ; nehmen
wir diese weg, so bleibt kein Ruckstand, Bewusstseinsvorgange sind
das an und fiir sich Wirkliche, sie bedxirfen nicht eines anderen,
eines Seelensubstantiale, das ihnen erst zur Wirklichkeit helfen
Oder sie in der Wirklichkeit halten und tragen miisste ; so etwas
gibt es iiberhaupt nicht/* ^ “ Seele ist die auf nicht weiter sagbare

Weise zur Einheit verbundene Vielheit innerer Erlebnisse/* This
is the conception of “ the actual soul *’ which we are told on all
hands must replace that of the substantial soul/* ^

More recently, Prof. C. A. Strong, in a book bearing the
significant title “ Why the Mind has a Body,*’ has presented this
form of the identity-hypothesis and the metaphysical argument
for it with admirable force and clearness. He demands that
metaphysic should give some clear account of the nature of the
realities it recognizes ; and defining a reality as “ something that
exists of itself and in its own right, and not merely as a modifica-
tion of something else,** he maintains that consciousness, the only
mode of being of which we have immediate knowledge, has the
best possible claim to be regarded as real being or reality.® Then,
having demonstrated the necessity of the assumption of things-
in-themselves, of which physical objects are the phenomena
or appearances to us ; he asks — Why should we postulate
two modes of real being, namely these things-in-themselves and
consciousness ? Why not make the simplest possible assumption
and regard them as identical? “No solution of the problem, in
fact, could be simpler or more economical. We have two things,
the brain-process and consciousness, and the question is as to
their relation. The brain-process is a phenomenon, and every
phenomenon symbolizes a reality, and consciousness is a reality.
Therefore, conclude the psycho-physical materialists and monists
(i.e. those who accept Epiphenomenalism or identity-hypothesis A),
the brain-process symbolizes a reality of which consciousness is
the manifestation or on which it is dependent. They actually
go out of their way to avoid the solution ! For, if the reality
symbolized by the brain-process is distinct from consciousness,
then the two are loosely and externally attached as we commonly
conceive brain and mind to be attached, and the problem is
simply transferred to another sphere and perpetuated. Whereas,

1 Op. cit., p. 384.

2 Aktualitatsbegriff der Seele,” or Die aktuelle Seele,” in the language

of Wundt. 3 p. 1^4.

BODY AND MIND

136

if the reality symbolized by the brain-process is consciousness
itself, their connexion is explained and the problem solved.
Indeed, this is the only conceivable solution of a problem which
all other hypotheses necessarily perpetuate. On every other
hypothesis, the duality of mind and body is either a duality of
existences or a duality of disparate phenomena ; in either case
their connexion is a new fact, not provided for in their naiure,
and consequently inexplicable. On this hypothesis, the duality
is that of a reality and its phenomenon ; this, for believers in
things-in-themselves, is a vera relatio, and the connexion is
therefore explained by being subsumed under the relation of
phenomenon and thing-in-itself.”^

Professor Strong supports this metaphysical argument for
this form of the monistic doctrine as follows : we have an
ineradicable conviction that our consciousness is a real factor in
the course of things, and a review of the evolution of mind in
the animal world justifies this conviction of the efficiency of con-
sciousness. Now Psychical Monism (the identity-hypothesis B)
does no violence to this well-based belief ; for in a world where all
is consciousness and all causal action is of consciousness on con-
sciousness, our own consciousness finds a natural sphere of
influence. The other monistic doctrines on the other hand
ask us to reject as a delusion our belief in the effective agency
of our consciousness.

Among the clearest statements of this doctrine is that of the
late Prof. W. K. Clifford in his essay entitled “ On the Nature of
Things-in-themselves.” ^ He asserted that “ consciousness is made
up of elementary feelings grouped together in various ways ” ;
that “ the elementary feeling is a thing-in-itself ” ; that “ conscious-
ness is a complex of ejective facts, — of elementary feelings, or
rather of those remoter elements which cannot even be felt, but
of which the simplest feeling is built up ” ; and, proposing to give
to these remoter elements of which the simplest feeling is built
up the name mind-stuff, he asserted that “ mind-stuff is the reality
which we perceive as matter” and that ‘‘the universe consists
entirely of mind-stuff.” He wrote further that “ a moving molecule
of inorganic matter does not possess mind or consciousness, but
it possesses a small piece of mind-stujfr This should have run —
the molecule, or what we conceive as a molecule, is a small piece of

1 ** Why the Mind has a Body,** chap. xv.

2 Lectures and Essays,** vol. li.

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137

mind-stuff. Lastly it must be noted that with complete consistency
Clifford asserted that these eject-elements, these small pieces of
mind-stuff “ are connected together in their sequence and co-
existence by counterparts of the physical laws of matter ” ; that
is to say, what we call laws of matter are the laws of mind-stuff.

Clifford ascribed the first distinct enunciation of this doctrine
to Prof, Wundt, but it appears in the writings of Wundt’s master,
G. T. Fechner. We owe to him, I believe, the first statement and
the most elaborate defence of it

The language in which Fechner sets forth his view is not
always strictly consistent ; it seems sometimes to imply psycho-
physical parallelism in the strict sense defined on page 1 3 1 , some-
times the first, and sometimes the second, form of the identity-
hypothesis ; and it may be doubted whether he always dis-
tinguished clearly between these three formulations. But, as
it was Fechner who, by the publication of his celebrated
treatise Elemente der Psycho-physik,’’ ^ brought the identity-
hypothesis into fashion in the scientific world, I quote from
that work the following passage in which he illustrates his view.

When anyone stands inside a sphere ^ its convex side is for
him quite hidden by the concave surface ; conversely, when
he stands outside, the concave surface is hidden by the convex.
Both sides belong together as inseparably as the psychical and
the bodily sides of a human being, and these also may by way of
simile ivergleichsweise) be regarded as inner and outer sides ; but
it is just as impossible to see both sides of a circle from a stand-
point in the plane of the circle, as to see these two sides of
humanity from a standpoint in the plane of human existence/’ ^
Again, he wrote — “The solar system seen from the sun
presents an aspect quite other than that which it presents when
viewed from the earth. There it appears as the Copernican, here
as the Ptolemaic world-system. And for all time it will remain
impossible for one observer to see both systems at the same time,
although both belong inseparably together, and, just like the
concave and the convex sides of a circle, they are at bottom only
two different modes of appearance of the same thing seen from
different standpoints ; ” ^ and yet again — “ What appears to you,

1 Leipsic, i860.

^ The word used is Kveis^ but a sphere seems to be implied by the first sentence.

^ Elemente der Psycho-physik,” vol. i., Introduction.

^ Loc, cit.

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133

who 3/ ourself are spirit, when at the inner standpoint as spirit,
appears from the outer standpoint as the bodily substratum of
this spirit”^

The first and second passages may seem to imply phen-
omenalistic Parallelism (identity-hypothesis A) ; the last, on the
other hand, would rather imply Psychical Monism (identity-
hypothesis B) ; and the passage following upon the last sentence
makes it clear that this was the view Fechner adopted and
defended with such admirable industry and ingenuity. It runs —
“ The difference of standpoint is whether one thinks with one’s
brain or looks into the brain of another thinker. The appearances
are then quite different ; but the standpoints are very different,
there an inner, here an outer standpoint ; and they are indescrib-
ably more different than in the foregoing example (i.e. the circle
and the solar system), and just for that reason the difference of
the modes of appearance is indescribably greater. For the
double mode of appearance of the circle, or of the solar system,
is after all only obtained from two different outer standpoints
over against it ; at the centre of the circle, or on the sun, the
observer remains outside the line of the circle, or outside the
planets. But the appearance of the spirit to itself is obtained
from a truly inner standpoint of that underlying being over against
itself, namely the standpoint of coincidence with itself, while the
appearance of the bodily self is obtained from a standpoint truly
external to it, namely, one which does not coincide with it.” ^

“ Therefore no spirit perceives immediately another spirit,
although one might suppose that it should most easily apprehend a
being of like nature with itself ; it perceives, in so far as the other
does not coincide with it, only the bodily appearance of that
other. Therefore no spirit can in any way become aware of
another save by the aid of its corporeality ; for what of the spirit
appears outwardly is just its bodily mode of appearance.” ^

Fechner worked for the establishment of his view along two
very different lines. On the one hand he sought an exact
empirical foundation for it by means of laborious psycho- physical
experiment, on the other, he appealed to the aesthetic side of
human nature. We may briefly notice these two main lines of
his argument. Fechnefs view necessarily involves the assumption
that all the objects and events composing the physical world are,
like the processes of the cortex of our brains, the outward
^ Loc. cit. 2 3

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139

appearances of what is really consciousness or consciousnesses.
For to set certain of the processes of the brain apart from all
other physical processes, attributing to them alone this peculiar
relation to consciousness, would be but to deepen the mystery of
the psycho-physical relation. Fechner, far from shrinking from
this necessary implication, revelled in it ; and his two chief lines
of endeavour were, on the one hand to provide some empirical
evidence of the psychical nature of all that we call physical pro-
cesses, and on the other to show how pleasing and inspiring the
world becomes when thus regarded.

The former line he pursued in the following way. His friend,
E. H. Weber, had formulated on the basis of experiment the
empirical generalization know as Weber’s law. This law may be
briefly expounded as follows : the application of a physical
stimulus to a sense-organ evokes a sensation of a certain intensity ;
and, if a second stimulus of greater intensity is then applied, the
subject experiences a sensation of greater intensity, provided the
increase of the stimulus is not too small. Now it is possible to
determine with some exactitude the least increment of stimulus-
intensity which will suffice to evoke a sensation just perceptibly
more intense than that evoked by the weaker stimulus. Weber’s
experiments showed that, in the case of several of the senses, the
amount by which the intensity of a stimulus must be increased in
order to evoke such a just perceptibly more intense sensation is
not a constant quantity, but that it varies with the intensity of the
stimulus, being always a certain fraction of the total value of the
stimulus ; for example, in the case of vision, the intensity of the
light stimulating the retina must be increased by about one per
cent, of its total value, in order to evoke a just perceptibly more
intense sensation.

Fechner saw in this generalization the indication of a definite
mathematical relation between physical and psychical magnitudes,
between the magnitude of a sensation and that of its phenomenon,
the brain-process. He first strove to render the empirical basis
of this generalization more exact and to explain away the
apparent exceptions to it ; and then he sought to deduce from
it a more definite mathematical statement of the relation.

The gist of his argument was this : J ust perceptible
increments of sensation-intensity are equal increments ; therefore
we may state Weber s law more generally thus — Equal increments
of sensation-intensity are determined by increments of stimulus-

BODY AND MIND

140

intensity whose value is in each case a certain fraction or per-
centage of the total value of the stimulus. Now let this percentage
be made equal to one hundred per cent ; that is, let the intensity
of the stimulus be increased by a series of steps such that the value
of the stimulus at each step is double that of the stimulus of the
preceding step ; then from our empirical law we may deduce
that the sensations evoked by this series of stimuli will differ in
intensity by equal amounts. That is to say the sensation-
intensities will form a series of values in arithmetical progression,
while the corresponding stimulus-values will form a series in
geometrical progression. This inference may be stated in the
form of geometrical curves. Construct two curves, Sn and St,
representing the two series of intensities, the sensation-intensities
and the stimulus-intensities respectively, in the following way : —

n

The ordinates of Sn {a, b, Cy </, e) represent the values of the
sensation-intensities, those of St the values of the corresponding
stimulus-intensities a, ft 7, s.

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141

Now, if we apply to any sense organ the slightest possible
stimulation we find that it evokes no perceptible sensation, and
that the intensity of the stimulus must be raised to a certain
definite value, before it suffices to evoke a just perceptible
sensation. Fechner argued that the stimuli which are too feeble
to evoke perceptible sensations cannot be supposed to produce
no effect at all ; and that they must rather be supposed to produce
imperceptible sensations, or, as he preferred to say, sensations
which do not rise above the threshold of consciousness. And
he saw in the definite mathematical relation of the two series of
intensities, represented by the two curves, a proof of the reality of
these sensations below the threshold of consciousness. For, let
C6 be a stimulus of such intensity that it just suffices to evoke the
sensation a of just perceptible intensity. Then the horizontal
line passing through a represents the threshold of consciousness ;
whereas the ordinate expressing the intensity of stimulus a rises
to a definite height above the base line representing zero of
stimulus intensity. Now the two curves having definite mathe-
matical properties may be produced in both directions, each
according to its own law. When we thus produce the curves,,
we find that, while the curve St (representing the stimulus-
intensities) approaches the base line asymptotically, Sn (represent-
ing the sensation-intensities) sinks at once below the line repre-
senting the threshold of consciousness. The part of the curve
St between a and the base line, which represents a series of
subminimal stimuli, implies the corresponding part of the curve
Sn, z.e., the part below the line which represents the threshold of
consciousness. Here, said Fechner, we have proof that a series
of sensations, .r, z, which remain below the threshold of con-
sciousness, is evoked by the series of subminimal stimuli. This
was the line of argument developed at length by Fechner in the
“ Elcmente der Psycho-physik.'*

The aesthetic argument or persuasion was set forth at great
length in several works.^ Professor James has recently pub-
lished 2 a vivid summary of this part of Fechner’s work, and I
may therefore describe it in a very few words.

Fechner, as I said above, did not shrink from the corollary
implied by his psycho-physical doctrine, the corollary that all
the universe consists of consciousness j rather he gloried in it,

^ " Die Seelenfrage,” “ Zendavesta,” “ Nana.*’

2 “ A Pluralistic Universe,” chap. iv.

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regarding it as the chief claim of his view to acceptance. He
called this peculiar view of the constitution of the world, the
‘‘ day- view ” of Nature, and favourably contrasted this view, that all
Nature enjoys or is consciousness, with the view, prevalent in the
scientific world, that the inorganic part of Nature is inert and
unconscious, the “ night-view ” as he called it. He held up his
day- view as revealing a Nature indefinitely more pleasing and
satisfying to our contemplation than the Nature of the night-
view ; he drew a glowing picture of all Nature rejoicing together,
delighting in the sense of its own beauty and orderliness ; he
even regarded each planet and star as enjoying an individual
consciousness and glowing with joyful pride as it rolls on its
majestic way through space. For, just as he regarded the
individual consciousness of each man as in some sense a sum
or aggregate of the feebler poorer consciousnesses of the vital
units, the cells, of which his body is composed, and as in turn
entering as a component into the wider richer consciousness of
the whole human race ; so he regarded the consciousness of each
stellar body as being in a similar way the mighty stream of
consciousness formed by the flowing together of the conscious-
nesses of all its constituent parts, both organic and inorganic,
human and infrahuman, and as in turn entering into a still
mightier stream, the universal consciousness. How much more
satisfying, said Fechner, is the contemplation of the universe
when so conceived, than when we look upon it as consisting of
immense systems of lifeless matter, forming a stage on which
men spend their brief moments of conscious life, oppressed by
the dreary vastness of the spaces, times, and forces that compass
them about !

We have seen that the doctrine or postulate of the continuity
of evolution of the organic and inorganic worlds is used as an
argument against Animism. The same postulate is used in a
rather different way as the basis of a special argument in favour
of the identity-hypothesis in one or other of its two forms, and
by some authors, notably by Tyndall ^ and b}^ Professor Lloyd
Morgan, 2 this argument is regarded as of the greatest weight
It runs thus : — The evolution of organic life has been continuous
From the lowliest unicellular form up to man ; at no point is there

^ The Belfast Addiess to British the Association, 1874.

^ " Introduction to Comparative Psychology,’^ chap, xviii.

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an absolute break in the series, or any indication of the incoming
of mind as a new factor in the evolutionary process. Now we
have evidence that the earth has existed in isolation (so far as
any material continuity is concerned) from all other parts of the
material universe, since a date long preceding that at which the
existence of organic matter upon it became possible ; for such
matter cannot exist at high temperatures and could only begin to
exist when the crust was pretty well cooled down. Hence
organic matter must be presumed to have been evolved from
inorganic matter by a continuous and gradual process ; hence
what we call life and mind or soul or consciousness^ must have
been present in some very lowly forms in the inorganic matter
from which organic matter was evolved, and therefore in all
inorganic matter ; that is to say, all matter must be regarded as
in some sense and degree conscious or endowed with psychical
life ; and, since inorganic matter is wholly subject to the strictly
mechanical laws in spite of its consciousness, so organic matter
must be likewise subject to the strictly mechanical principles, and
psychical life or process accompanying the physical processes of
matter, must be devoid of all influence on the physical processes
— a conclusion which is compatible only with one or other of
the parallelistic theories, and not at all with interaction
theories.

This reasoning from the continuity of the evolution of the
animal kingdom from non-living matter is supplemented by the
following argument, which I give in the form in which it was
presented by F. A. Lange in a well-known passage of his History
of Materialism.’^ Let a pair of mice be shut up in a room with a
sack of flour and allowed to breed undisturbed. After a few
months the whole of the flour has disappeared, the greater part
of its substance having been converted into the bodies of a swarm
of mice. Whatever consciousness or psychical capacity may be
enjoyed by the mice must then, it is said, have been present in
some form in the flour.

In addition to the special arguments in favour of the several
automaton theories that we have now reviewed, we must notice
certain considerations which may be adduced in favour of a
monistic solution in general. These considerations are appeals
to various motives, various sentiments and prejudices, rather
than logical arguments. The motives brought into operation
^ Infra-consciousness is the term ■Dreferred bv Prof. Llovd Moreran, Hoc. cit.).

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by these appeals have played a great part in determining the
choice of the monistic theories by so many moderns.

The most important of these motives is probably the desire
for a well-rounded, self-consistent, conceptual scheme of the
physical world. Now the rejection root and branch of all
psycho-physical interaction enables us to entertain such a
conceptual scheme ; while the adoption of any one of the parallcl-
istic hypotheses enables us to hold it without incurring the
reproach of philosophical crudity or absurdity which, as all
with few exceptions can see, lies against crude Materialism. The
adoption of any one of the monistic hypotheses, then, brings
with it all the advantages of a materialistic metaphysic while
avoiding its principal drawback. And that is, doubtless, the
explanation of the fact that these monistic hypotheses have secured
the adhesion of so large a proportion of the students of the
natural sciences.

The peculiar advantage of the materialistic scheme of things,
to which it chiefly owes its attractiveness, is that its acceptance
brings with it a confident sense of intellectual mastery. So long
as we can confidently believe that all the events to be reckoned
with by science are but the motions of masses, or the transforma-
tions of measurable quantities of energy according to exact
equations that can be calculated and therefore foretold, the mind
feels itself at home and master of what it deals with, and there
lies before it the prospect of a continued approach towards a
completed power of prediction and control of the future course of
events. Under these conditions, the working hypotheses of the
natural sciences become confidently held doctrines from which we
feel ourselves able to deduce the limits of the possible ; and we
seem able to rule out from our scheme of the universe all that con-
fused crowd of obscure ideas which, under the names of magic,
occultism, and mysticism, have been at war with science, ever since
it began to take shape as a system of verifiable ideas inductively
established on an empirical basis. Once admit, on the other hand,
that psychical influences may interfere with the course of physical
nature and — “you don’t know where you are,” you can no
longer serenely affirm that “ miracles ” do not happen ; they may
happen at any moment and may falsify the most confident
predictions of physical science. Thus the gates are opened to all
the floods of Spiritualism and superstition of every kind, which to
some gloomy scientists seem to threaten to light up once more

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145

the fires of persecution and to drag down our civilization
from its hardly - won footing upon the steep path of
progress.

Paulsen urges his Psychical Monism upon our acceptance in
a rather different way. The function of philosophy, says he, is to
mediate between science and religion, to reconcile their teachings
and aspirations. Now, the physical scientists will never tolerate
the intervention of non-physical agencies in their physical world ;
they will always assume that every event is determined strictly
according to the laws of physical or mechanical causation ; that
such explanation of all events in the universe without exception is
possible, is the fundamental axiom of science.^ Therefore a
reconciliation of science with religion can only be effected by
admitting the claim of science to furnish causal explanations of
all events in terms of mechanism, while reserving for religion the
task of providing an idealistic interpretation of the mechanically
caused events. “ Also : A lies muss physisch zugehen und erklart
werden ; und : A lies muss metaphysisch betrachtet und gedeutet
werden. Das ist die Formal, in der Physiker und Metaphysiker
Ubereinkommen konnenP’^ The establishment of the monistic
solution of the psycho-physical problem thus becomes the principal
task of philosophy ; and we ought to welcome and accept this
solution, because it allows us as men of science to be rigid materialists,
to accept without scruple and without regret the most rigidly
materialistic conclusions and tendencies of science, while as
philosophers we remain idealists, asserting that all reality is at
bottom mental.

Another argument for Parallelism or psycho-physical Monism
is found in the desire for a monistic scheme of the universe.
Many philosophers seem to experience this desire to conceive the

^ Daniber tausche man sich nicht : die Naturwissenschaft kann und wird
sich von ihrem Wege nicht wieder abbringen lassen, eine vein physikalische
Erklarung aller Naturerscheinungen zu suchen. Es mag tausend Dinge geben,
die sie gegenwartig nicht erklaren kann, aber das prinzipielle Axiom, dass es
auch fur sie eine physische Ursache imd also eine naturwissenschaftliche Erk-
larung gebe, wird sie nicht wieder fahren lassen. Daher wird eine Philosophie,
die darauf besteht, gewisse Naturvorgange konnten nicht ohne Rest physisch
erklart werden, sondern machten die Annahme der Wirkung eines metaphysischen
Prinzips oder eines supranaturalen Agens notwendig, die Naturwissenschaft
zur unversohnlichen Gegnerin haben. In Frieden kann sie mit ihr nur leben,
wenn sie sich der Emmischung in die hausale Erklarung der Naturerscheinungen
grundsatzlich enthalt und die Naturwissenschaft ruhig ihren Weg bis zu Ende
gehen lasst ” (“ Einleitung in die Philosophie,” p. i8o).

® Op, c%t., p. i8i.

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universe as at bottom consisting of only one kind of real being ;
and not a few claim that this desire is a demand that our intel-
lectual nature inevitably makes, and one that carries with it a
guarantee of the validity of the monistic interpretation. Closely
connected with this in many minds is the conviction that a
universe monistically conceived, that is, conceived as a unitary
whole of which all the parts are of one nature, is indefinitely
nobler than one consisting of ultimate real beings of diverse
natures.

To many, again, it seems that the second form of the identity-
hypothesis is preferable to all others, because it is essentially and
necessarily an idealistic doctrine ; that is to say, because it is one
which regards all reality as of the nature of mind : and such a view
of the universe seems to them aesthetically superior to, or in some
indefinable way nobler than, any scheme which recognizes the real
existence of anything not mental in nature. This was the line of
persuasion which, as we have seen, Fechner developed at great
length.

Least in worth, though not perhaps of least effect, among the
influences that have brought about the very general acceptance of
Parallelism, is the feeling that such a doctrine derives a certain
distinction from being so entirely different from and opposed to
the scholastic doctrine and all popular conceptions and common-
sense views. For to many minds there is something attractive
in any esoteric and difficult doctrine that rises above the reach
of the common herd. And this feeling is given the form of an
appeal to reason, in the following way : it is pointed out that the
doctrine of Animism was originated by the first crude efforts of
speculative reason, at a time when man was but a naked savage
following a bestial mode of life, knowing little of the laws of nature,
ignorant of their harmony and constancy ; that it was a monstrous
birth begot by fear out of greed ; a conception not without its
social uses in the earlier stages of social evolution, serving through
superstitious fear to discipline man in the control of his cruder
impulses ; but one which no longer serves any useful purpose, and
which is fit only to be set up in the ethnographical museums of
primitive customs and beliefs alongside of its monstrous progeny,
totemism and magic, witch - craft and polytheism, vitalism and
possession, free-will, human immortality and divine retribution,
heaven, hell, and the devil, and all the crowd of spectres with
which man's wayward and fearful imagination has for so many

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147

ages oppressed him, cumbering his progress in true knowledge and
in command over the forces of nature.

We have seen now how, in the long course of development of
thought, the conception of the soul, which came into the culture
tradition of Europe as a heritage from our savage ancestors, has
been refined in successive ages, until it has been refined away
altogether : how the soul, beginning as a material or quasi-
material shadowy duplicate of the body, became divested of its
bodily characters ; so that it remained a mere spirituous tenuous
vapour, diffused equally throughout the body or concentrated
more or less in certain of its parts or organs, and somehow play-
ing an essential and dominant role in the life of the body : how
the specialization of learning along the biological and psycho-
logical lines led to the division of the soul into two souls, one
concerned in the governance of the bodily functions, the other
the substrate of the intellectual functions, while those organic
functions in which the co-operation of mind and body is most
strikingly obvious continued to hover uncertainly between the two
souls or to demand a third as their substrate : how the two souls
became, the one the vital principle of the physiologists, the other
the immortal inextended substrate or support of the mental
functions : how then the progress of physiology led to the rejection
of the vital principle, and how increasing insight into the structure
and functions of the nervous system seemed to render superfluous
the notion of the teleological agency of the soul and to reduce con-
sciousness to an epiphenomenon : how the development of exact
quantitative notions in physical science, first under the form of the
scheme of kinetic mechanism, later as dynamic mechanism obeying
the law of the conservation of energy, confirmed the physiologists
in their rejection of both the vital principle and the soul, by affirm-
ing that the physical world constitutes a closed system of causally
related processes insusceptible of being influenced by other than
physical agencies : how the philosophers discovered that the concep-
tions of both soul and body are mere inferences from our immediate
experience and that neither can be regarded as above suspicion :
and how, under the influence of physical and biological science,
they have excogitated solutions of the psycho-physical problem
that escape the absurdities of Materialism and Subjective Idealism,
while claiming to reconcile the materialistic conclusions of modern

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science with our ineradicable belief in the reality and efficiency of
mind, with the principles of the most exacting metaphysic, and
even in some degree with the demands of religion. Who then
would hesitate to accept the conclusion towards which all branches
of science, all those lines of exact research whose results we have
noted, seem to drive us irresistibly ? Who would seek to deny
the universal sway of the laws of mechanism and to subvert the
vast and splendid pyramid of modern science to which the
monistic interpretation of the psycho-physical problem is the very
crown, the glorious consummation which heals the age-long struggle
between scientific Materialism and the philosopher's conviction ot
the reality and primacy of mind ? Who would still hanker after
that vague elusive notion of the soul, first launched into the stream
of thought by the troubled fancy of savage man, while yet he lived
like a beast, knowing nought of the wonderful harmonies of
nature and seeing in all her motions neither law nor order but
only the vengeful caprice of a host of spirits, before which he
grovelled muttering spells and incantations ? Surely only a fool
or a fanatic !

Yet hesitate we must until we shall have critically examined
the arguments, drawn from epistemology, from metaphysic, and
from the natural sciences, which seem to make Animism unten-
able, and the special and general arguments advanced in favour
of the several monistic interpretations ; and until we shall have
inquired whether any one of the automaton theories allows us to
construct an intelligible and self-consistent account of human
personality. This part of our task will occupy us in the
following chapters.

CHAPTER XII

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON-THEORIES AND OF
THE SPECIAL ARGUMENTS IN THEIR FAVOUR

I N this chapter I propose to examine in turn the four principal
monistic interpretations of the relation of mind to body, to
weigh the special arguments advanced in their support, and
to point out the special difficulties in the way of each of them*
Beside these special difficulties there is a number of empirically-
based objections of a more general kind, which may be more
suitably dealt with in later chapters under the head of positive
arguments in favour of Animism.

Epiphenomenalism

To some persons it seems sufficient for the refutation of
Epiphenomenalism to assert the absurdity of the supposition that
the existence of mind should be dependent on that of matter, or
that mind and consciousness should have been generated by the
mere increase in complexity of molecular organization of certain
forms of inanimate matter ; for, they say, it is only through and
by mind that matter can be known. But this assertion does not
confute the epiphenomenalist. He may reply — But suppose for
a moment that my account of the case is the true one, that
matter really did precede mind, did generate it in the course of
the evolution of material processes of ever greater complexity ;
then, he might say, your attitude might still be just what it is
now ; mind, once evolved and once having learnt to reflect upon
itself and its relation to matter, would inevitably use just your
arguments ; it would claim a primacy over matter, the primacy of
the knower over the known, and in the pride of self-consciousness
would despise its parent, matter, and would incline to assert its
independence of it. In face of this reply a repeated assertion
of the conviction of the primacy of mind would have little effect.

Nor will it suffice to assert that the human mind will never
rest satisfied with this account of itself as a mere by-product of

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matter and its evolutions, but will always continue to seek
some position that will do less outrage to the reality of
experience.

Epiphenomenalism must be met in a different way, namely,
by pointing out that just those considerations which are held to
make the doctrine of psycho-physical interaction impossible tell
equally strongly against it, while the motives which make for the
parallelistic doctrines find no satisfaction in it ; that, in fact, it
combines the principal weaknesses of both the parallelist and
the interaction doctrines, while it lacks the principal advantages
of either. Thus, the biological argument from continuity of
evolution makes against Epiphenomenalism ; for the appearance
of consciousness at some undefined point in the course of the
evolution of the animal kingdom, as postulated by it, constitutes
a distinct breach of continuity. The argument from incon-
ceivability also makes against Epiphenomenalism more strongly
than against Animism ; for the notion that material processes
should generate consciousness out of nothing is certainly a more
difficult conception than that of the interaction of soul and body.
Again, Epiphenomenalism, though it may perhaps be consistent
with the law of the conservation of energy, offends against a law
that has a much stronger claim to universality, namely the law
of causation itself ; for it assumes that a physical process, say a
molecular movement in the brain, causes a sensation, but does so
without the cause passing over in any degree into the effect,
without the cause spending itself in any degree in the production
of the effect, namely, the sensation. It thus saves the law of con-
servation of energy at the expense of the law of causation ; and
such similes as those used by Huxley to illustrate his exposition
and offered by him as examples of the production by mechanism of
effects that are indifferent to its workings — the shadow thrown
by the wheel, the whistling of the locomotive engine and so on —
all such similes are misleading and fallacious if regarded as an-
alogies ; for in every case the production of the effect, even
though it be but a shadow or a reflection, leaves the machine and
its processes other than they would have been if the effect had
nor been produced.

Again, the identity-hypothesis claims with some show of
reason to reconcile the teachings of science and philosophy ; but
Epiphenomenalism, in assigning to mind an altogether insignifi-
cant, dependent, and ineffective position in the scheme of the

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 151

universe, sets itself in direct opposition to the overwhelmingly
large majority of philosophers of all times and of all races.

It is for these reasons that Epiphenomenalism has been
accepted by few or none of those who have seriously tried to
think out the psycho-physical problem ; and it is, I hope, un-
necessary to say more in order to convince any reader that, if
the balance of argument seems to him to incline against Animism,
he must not prefer Epiphenomenalism.

Before finally dismissing Epiphenomenalism, I must remark
upon the illegitimate attempt made by some of its defenders to
redeem it from the charge of Materialism. After assuring us
that science has proved the absolute dependence of all mind on
the material processes of animal organisms, and that the evolu-
tion of these material organisms was but a trifling incident in the
life of a universe which consists only of matter and physical
energy in eternal agitation ; they turn round upon matter and
ask — But what is this matter? You charge me with being a
materialist, but I know as well as you that matter is only a
figment of my imagination, that in seeing, touching, tasting,
I perceive only certain states of my own consciousness, that
material phenomena are but my own perceptions or ideas. Have
I not, therefore, as good a right to call myself an idealist as you,
or Bishop Berkeley, or any man? Now, this is Solipsism or
Subjective Idealism pure and simple ; it is the denial of all
existence save one’s own consciousness ; and, in attempting to
save himself in this way from the absurdity of Materialism, the
epiphenomenalist does but take upon himself the additional
absurdity of Solipsism, and crowns himself with the final
absurdity of professing adherence to both of the two most
violently opposed metaphysical dogmas. Yet absurd as this
procedure is, it is not unnecessary to utter a warning against
it, for no less a writer than T. H. Huxley was guilty of it, as
also, to the best of my judgment, the admirable historian of
Materialism, F. A. Lange. The Idealist,” he wrote, “ can and
must in fact in natural science everywhere, apply the same con-
ceptions and methods as the Materialists ; but what to the latter
is definitive truth, is to the Idealist only the necessary result
of our organization.”^ Lange, having accepted whole-heartedly
the teaching of Materialism that mind is evolved from, and
wholly dependent upon, matter, goes on to tell us, in the language

^ Op. cit.

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of a glowing enthusiasm for humanity which commands our
sympathy, that the human mind creates for itself a world of
ideals in which it finds its true home — that man's spirit must
soar above the vulgar real into the realm of ideas which are
symbols of the Unknowable Absolute. It is true that Lange
seems in some passages to accept Kant's notion of the thing-in-
itself ; but, as Professor Hoffding says, he wavers between the
acceptance and the rejection of it, and on the whole his language
justifies the assertion that for him matter is the only reality and
the ideal is the unreal. Lange was thus an idealist only in the
sense in which any materialist may be an idealist, namely, that
he entertained ideals and, in splendid defiance of logical con-
sistency, strove to make them real.

Psycho-physical Parallelism

The doctrine that psychical processes and physical processes
run parallel with one another without any causal relation is not
seriously maintained save in the form of universal parallelism of
the physical and the psychical. To assume that of all physical
processes just certain brain-processes alone are accompanied by
conscious concomitants, would leave the relation too obviously
mysterious ; the coming into being of the sensation, at the
moment of the occurrence of a brain-process of a certain quality,
would be too decidedly miraculous. If we accept the principle
of causation at all, we must assume that the rise of a sensation in
consciousness is in some sense the effect of some cause. And, if
we do not accept the principle of causation, we have no ground
for believing in the existence of the brain-process, save as one's
own thought of it ; and it then would be absurd to speak of
parallelism, for my sensations do not run parallel with, are not
temporal concomitants of, my thoughts of my brain-processes.

This insuperable objection to partial Parallelism is avoided
by universal Parallelism ; for, according to this doctrine, every
physical process has its psychical concomitant, and both series are
closed causal series. Thus, when a sense-stimulus seems to evoke a
sensation in my consciousness, the physical stimulus causes only
the sequence of physical changes in sensory nerves and brain ; and
the sensation is a member of a causal sequence of events which
runs parallel in time with every step of the physical sequence, stim-
ulus, sense-organ-processes, processes of conduction throughout

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doctrines chiefly in that Leibnitz’s view of causation was peculiar
He assigned to each organism a soul, and though the soul was
called a monad, and though the body and all other material things
also were said by him to consist of monads, yet, as we have seen
(p* 57), tie assigned to the human soul a position and a nature very
different from those of other monads. The essential peculiarity of
his view, which marks it off from other animistic doctrines, is
that it substitutes for the principle of causal interaction that
of the pre-established harmony of the internal evolution of all
monads, just as thoroughgoing Occasionalism substitutes for it the
conception of the perpetual action of God. And, since it is the
behaviour of things which we are interested to understand, it
matters little or nothing, from the point of view of science,
whether we call the bond between them which secures the harmony
of their changes one of causal interaction or of transient influence,
or one of harmony pre-established by the design of the Creator,
or one consisting in the perpetual adjustment of their states by
the direct act of God.

Some of those who accept psycho-physical Parallelism in the
strict or narrow sense tell us that we ought to accept it as a
heuristic principle or a necessary working hypothesis for psycho-
logy. Wundt and Munsterberg are the most prominent exponents
of this doctrine ; though I speak with diffidence about Wundt’s
views, because, like some others, I have wrestled long and
earnestly with his exposition of Parallelism, without being able
to discover that he presents a consistent and intelligible doctrine.
For Wundt, Parallelism is an empirical postulate ; for Munsterberg
it is a postulate which we are driven to accept, not by empirical fact,
but by epistemological theory.^ Both agree that the parallelism
is only true of the sensory content of consciousness, and that
therefore psychology can base itself on Parallelism only on the
condition of regarding the whole of our psychical life as con-
sisting in the conjunction and succession of elements of sensation,
or of sensation and feeling.^ Both admit that to describe our
mental life in this way is to falsify it ; and Munsterberg goes so
far as to insist that the “ scientific ” psychology constructed on
the basis of Parallelism has no bearing whatever upon real life

^ Grundzuge der Psychologic,” p. 435.

^ ThUsS Munsterberg {op. cit, p. 429), AUes Psychische besteht aus Empfin-
dungen und aus nichts als Empfindungen.” Wundt adds to the elements of
sensation also elements of feeling.

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 155

and its problems. It is then a little difficult to understand what
it is hoped to gain by basing psychology upon this postulate.
Surely, when it is found that any working hypothesis so falsifies a
science as to render it incapable of having any bearing upon
practical life, only a mind having some curious twist can continue
to retain it.

The culminating absurdity of Wundt's position is that, after
arguing at great length to show that psychology must accept
psycho-physical Parallelism as a ‘‘ heuristic principle " empirically
based, he turns round and tells us that in considering voluntary
movements of the body we must treat them as being psychically
originated, because we cannot ascertain the nature of the
physiological process which initiates them ; and that we must
make use of the conception of psycho-physical interaction, so long
as we cannot complete our account of the brain-processes.^

Miinsterberg’s reductio ad absurdum of his adopted principle
is more elaborate. After writing two books ^ to prove that his
psychology, being based on “ Parallelism," can have no application
to real life, he has produced several very able and interesting
books which are models of the application of psychology to
problems of real life,® and promises others which shall deal with
the whole field of applied psychology,

Phenomenalistic Parallelism {Identity -hypo thesis A.)

Against the doctrine that the psychical process and its
concomitant physical process in the brain are but two different
modes of appearance or aspects of one real process, two very
serious objections must be made, in addition to all those that lie
against all forms of psycho-physical monism.

When we apply the phrase “two modes of appearance" or
“ two aspects " to explain the psycho-physical relation, we are
using a phrase which has meaning for our minds only in virtue
of certain of our experiences connected with physical phenomena.
These experiences are of several kinds and the phrase has
accordingly several corresponding meanings. In experiences of
the one class we observe a series of events of a certain kind on
two successive occasions, on each occasion from a different stand-

^ Physiologische Psychologie," 5th ed., vol. iii., p. 647.

2 “ Grundzuge der Psychologie,” and “ Psychology and Life.”

® “ The Americans,” “ Psychology and Crime,” ** Psychology and the Teacher,*^
** Psycho-therapeutics.”

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point ; thus, to use the illustration suggested by Fechner, it is in
principle possible for one person to observe the passage of the
moon round the earth, at one time from a standpoint on
the earth and at another from a standpoint on the moon.
That is the type of one great class of experiences in which the
difference of the appearances of a thing depends upon differ-
ence of standpoint : the observation of movements in space from
two different points in space.

Another kind of experience which gives meaning to the phrase
“ two aspects of the same thing or process,” is the abstraction by
thought of two features of a process successively ; thus, on
considering the motion of a particle, one may fix one’s attention
successively upon the direction or changes of direction of its
motion and upon the velocity or changes of velocity of its
motion ; or, on observing a series of changes of colour, one may
direct one’s attention to the changes of colour- tone or to the
changes of brightness or of saturation ; on hearing a melody, one
may pay attention to the rhythm or to the harmonic relations.
In all cases of this class the difference of aspect is secured by a
difference of the setting of the attention, and the resulting concep-
tions are abstractions merely. Again one may apprehend a
physical event successively through two different senses, e.g. one
may see the strokes of a hammer upon a gong, or one may hear
them ; the one series of physical events appears then under two
different aspects,

There are, I think, no other radically different classes of
experience that give meaning to the phrase “ two aspects of the
same process.”

The question is then — Does the phrase derive from any one
of these classes of experience a meaning which is applicable to
the psycho-physical relation ? Or, in other words, is the difference
of aspect apprehended in any of these experiences truly analogous
to the difference between physical and psychical processes ?

As regards the experiences of all these classes it is to be
noted that that which appears under two different aspects appears
in every case as of the same order in both aspects, and is
apprehended in a similar way in both cases ; in the first class
both aspects are of the order of paths of motion in space ; in the
second class the two aspects are simultaneously given as qualita-
tive changes of one series of sensations ; in the third class the
two aspects of the one process are the sensations of two different

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 157

classes simultaneously excited in the same consciousness and
referred to the same cause, the physical process. But the
brain-process and the rise of a sensation in consciousness, which
are said to be two aspects or appearances of one real process,,
are two events of radically different orders, and are apprehended in
two radically different ways, the one by sense-perception, the
other by reflective introspection.

Again, in the experiences of the first class we do not really
observe the same process under two aspects, we merely observe
the repetition of a process of a certain kind on two successive
occasions. Further, it is characteristic of the experiences of this
class, that the appearance of the process at the one standpoint can
be inferred or exactly calculated from the appearance at the other
standpoint, by a purely logical process. Nothing of this sort is
true of the relation of the psychical to the physical ; we cannot
in the least degree deduce the nature of the one series from the
observation of the other.

The experiences of the second and third classes fail in
another way to afford a true analogy to the supposed
relation of the physical to the psychical and therefore fail
to give meaning to the phrase in which the relation is
described, It is of the essence of the two-aspect doctrine that,,
as Spinoza explicitly affirmed, the causal sequence shall be
completely given under both aspects, the physical and the
psychical. But, when we abstract the direction of a motion from
its velocity, or the change of quality of a colour-sensation from
the change of its saturation or intensity ; or when we apprehended
simultaneously the series of auditory and visual sensations evoked
by the hammer; in all these cases the causal sequence is not
given or apprehended under both aspects, for in each case we are
dealing with partial aspects achieved only by a process of mental
abstraction and by a deliberate neglecting of the remaining aspects
simultaneously presented.

A still more serious objection to this “ two-aspect doctrine
remains to be stated. A thing or being or process can appear
under two different aspects, can manifest itself in two different
modes, only if and when both aspects are apprehended by the
mind of some observer ; either one observer must occupy the
two standpoints successively, or two or more observers must
apprehend it from the different standpoints. Now, in the case
of the physical and the psychical processes which are said to

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158

be two aspects of one real process, there is no such observer
occupying the inner standpoint and apprehending the inner
or psychical aspect of the real event, except in the altogether
exceptional case of the introspecting psychologist ; in which
case a part of the stream of consciousness may, perhaps, be
said to be apprehended by a later coming part. The process
of apprehending a physical change is itself, according to this
doctrine, the inner aspect of a real process ; but, when the
observer (let us call him A) is apprehending a physical event,
say the fall of a stone, he is not normally at the same time
observing his own consciousness ; he is occupying the outer,
not the inner standpoint. In such a case, then, the real process,
(the two aspects or phenomenal appearances of which are on the
one hand A’s consciousness of the falling stone, and on the other
hand the corresponding process in A’s brain) is apprehended
neither from the inner nor the outer standpoint, although in
principle it is capable of being observed from both ; but now
the phenomenal appearances consist in being apprehended, their
esse is percipi^ they are by the hypothesis merely appearances
for an apprehending mind ; hence, in the case we are considering
and in all similar cases, i.e., fin all cases of perception in which the
subject’s attention is wholly given to his external object), we are
led by the hypothesis to the following conclusion — neither the
phenomenal process in A’s brain nor his consciousness of the fall-
ing stone have any being whatever, since their esse is percipi, and
they are not perceived or apprehended. Now the denial of the
brain-process raises no insuperable difficulty, it is acceptable to
many philosophers ; but the denial of A’s consciousness of the
falling stone is more serious. Suppose A to be yourself, and
suppose that you play a sharp rally in the course of a game
of tennis, or play a difficult ball at the wicket ; then your
attention at the moment of expecting the ball was wholly directed
to the object A moment later you sit down to describe in
detail the way you took that ball ; and a philosopher then
undertakes to prove to you, by the reasoning outlined above, that
you were not conscious of the bail at the moment of its approach.
Will he succeed in convincing you of the truth of his thesis ? I
think not It is true that among a certain class of philosophers
there is still current the dogma that all consciousness is self-
consciousness, and that in all knowing you know that you know.
But, even if this dogma were admissible in the case of human

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 159

knowing, it is certainly not admissible for the infra-human intelli-
gences ; to the animals we cannot deny consciousness or at least
sentiency ; and the double-aspect hypothesis necessitates the
assumption of an inner or psychical aspect to the events of the
infra-organic realm also.

These considerations seem to me to raise an insuperable
objection to this form of the identity-hypothesis ; namely there
is lacking, except in certain special cases, any observer occupying
the inner standpoint The difficulty is not met by saying that
in knowing or perceiving one knows that one knows, or that one’s
knowing is an appearance to oneself. For such knowing as that
is peculiar to the most highly developed minds ; lower types
of mind cannot be credited with reflective introspective self-
consciousness, or self-consciousness of any kind, and yet they
must be allowed to be conscious, their brain-processes must be
allowed to have their psychical correlates : their knowing is
directly known by no one, is not an appearance for any observing
mind, and yet it exists or goes on.

Perhaps at this point some reader will wish to remind me
of Kant’s doctrine of the ‘‘inner sense,” which perceives the
“ phenomena of consciousness ” as the outer sense perceives the
phenomena of the physical world. Of this “ inner sense ” I need
only say that it was merely a faculty invented by Kant to
meet the exigences of his peculiar system, that it is now generally
regarded as indefensible, and that, even if we accept the notion,
the difficulty of the “ two-aspect doctrine,” pointed out in the
foregoing paragraph, is in no way diminished.

As to Spinoza’s form of this hypothesis, it is now generally
admitted, even by ardent admirers of Spinoza’s philosophy, that
it cannot be consistently worked out Sir F. Pollock, for
example, demolishes it with the following unanswerable criticism :
“ Spinoza’s Attributes are in effect defined as objects, or rather
as objective worlds. But the general form of the definition
disguises the all-important fact that the world of thought, and
that alone, is subjective and objective at once. The intellect
which perceives an Attribute as ‘ constituting the essence of
Substance,’ itself belongs to the Attribute of Thought Thus,
if we push analysis further, we find that Thought swallows up
all the other attributes ; for all conceivable Attributes turn out
to be objective aspects of Thought itself.” ^

^ “ Spinoza : His Life and Pidlosopliy,’^ p. 179.

i6o BODY AND MIND

We may then fairly say, with Professor Stumpf, — “ the one
substance which is supposed to manifest itself in the two attri-
butes, the physical and the psychical, is nothing but a word which
expresses the desire to escape from dualism, but which does not
really bridge the gulf for our understanding.” ^

This form of the identity-hypothesis lies open also to all the
metaphysical objections that are raised against the conception of
substance or substantiality, and, though I do not attach great
importance to them, they cannot be set aside as of no weight,
since many acute minds take a different view.

The difficulties of phenomenalistic parallelism are, then, very
great, indeed insuperable ; accordingly we find that the second
form of the identity-hypothesis, namely, Psychical Monism, is the
form of Parallelism that can claim the most influential supporters
at the present day ; and it is this second form that we must
chiefly keep in mind, on weighing against one another the rival
claims of the animistic and the parallelistic interpretations of the
psycho-physical relation.

Psychical Monism {Identity -hypothesis B)

According to the second form of the identity-hypothesis,
consciousness or conscious-process is the thing-in-itself, the
fundamental and only reality, while all physical processes are the
phenomenal appearances of conscious process ; this is now
generally regarded as being the strongest and the most subtle of
the monistic interpretations of the psycho-physical relation. But
this also has its peculiar difficulties, in addition to those common
to all psycho-physical Monism. We must begin our criticism of
this view by insisting that its supporters shall stand faithfully by
the pre- suppositions from which they have chosen to set out and
which they have made the very foundation of their argument.
These fundamental propositions are three : (i) consciousness or con-
scious-process (or something of the same nature, but so very much
simpler as to require a different name, such as mind-stuff or infra-
consciousness) is the only reality, the only mode of existence or of
real being. (2) By each one of us only one tiny fragment of reality
is directly known, namely the stream of his own consciousness ;
although all the rest of the universe consists of other conscious
processes, it can be apprehended by him only under the form of
^ “ Leib und Seele,” p. 16.

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES i6i

material or physical phenomena. (3) The appearances to us of
other real or conscious processes under the forms of physical
objects and processes bear some constant and orderly relation to
those real processes, so that the descriptions and explanations of
the universe given by physical science are valid, though they are
symbolic only ; that is to say, all the processes which constitute
the universe proceed according to, or can be fully explained in
terms of, the laws of mechanical causation.

This last is the pre-supposition on which it is especially
necessary to insist ; for it is this one which is most apt to be
tacitly let slip by those who accept Parallelism in this form.
But it is the acceptance without reserve of the teachings
of physical science, especially of its doctrine that the laws
of mechanical causation hold universal sway, which constitutes,
we are told, the chief claim of the monistic view upon our
acceptance ; while the rejection by Animism of the claim of the
mechanical principles of explanation to universal validity is its
great offence.

Now, according as the psychical monist inclines to an
intellectualistic or a voluntaristic psychology, he regards knowing
or willing as the essence of conscious process. In the former
case, then, he claims that all that exists is “ knowing,” though
there is no one who knows and nothing, save knowing, to be known ;
or, in the latter case, that all that exists is willing,” though
there is no one who wills and nothing to be willed but willing.

I confess that, if a philosophical gourmet should tell me — “All
that exists is ‘ eating,’ though there is no one who eats and
nothing to be eaten but eating,” his statement would seem to me
hardly less paradoxical.

But parody is not serious criticism. The principal positive
superiority over its rivals claimed for this form of Monism is its re-
jection of the notion of substance or thing and its replacement of it
by the notion of activity or process. Substance, whether material
or spiritual, is rejected as an antiquated bit of popular metaphysic ;
and with it to the same limbo must go all such notions as
substantial beings or things, beings that remain self-identical in
spite of partial changes. If we object that we find those notions
essential to our thought, that we cannot think of relations without
terms, of activities without things acting and acted upon, of
changes without things that change, of movements without things
that move, of knowing without subjects that know and objects

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BODY AND MIND

that are known ; we are told that this is a false or psychological
necessity of thought engendered merely by bad habits, a
necessity to be carefully distinguished from true or logical
necessities of thought.^

Let us first examine, from the point of view of physical
science, this proposal to banish things from the universe. Science
distinguishes between rest and change, between potential and
active energy, between the mere persistence of a given state of a
system and its change ; and it regards all changes as involving
transformations of energy. Even though it may resolve all things
into swarms of atoms in perpetual motion and atoms into ether
vortices, yet this is only to drive back the notion of substance
or thing ; for the ether remains as the enduring basis of all this
process. And even when it is proposed to replace mechanics
by energetics and matter by energy, this can only be done by
conceiving energy as something capable of enduring, as some-
thing whose quantity persists unchanged in spite of qualitative
transformations. What then, in the metaphysical translation of
the description of the world given by physical science, is to
correspond to this distinction between systems of matter or
energy at rest or doing no work, and those that are doing work
or transforming energy ? ^

But the impossibility of banishing altogether the notion of
substance is even clearer in the case of psychological than of
physical science. My consciousness is a stream of consciousness
which has a certain unique unity ; it is a multiplicity of distinguish-
able parts or features which, although they are perpetually changing,
yet hang together as a continuous whole within which the changes
go on. This then is the nature of consciousness as we know
it. Now it is perfectly obvious and universally admitted that
my stream of consciousness is not self-supporting, is not self-
sufficient, is not a closed self-determining system ; it is admitted

^ Paulsen, Emleitung,” p. 392

2 Clifford’s doctrine of mind-stuff avoids this dif&culty by pointing to the small
pieces of mmd-stuff ” of which elementary feehngs are composed. Consciousness
is then a composite stuff, and conscious processes are the rearrangements of
the pieces of stuff. But this is to make these atoms of mmd-stuff into enduring
self-identical units of substance It is substantial atomism of the most un-
disguised kind, a simple translation of the material atom of physics into a
psychical atom ; and, since these psychical atoms obey, according to the doctrine,
the laws of mechanism, it is difficult to see that they differ, save in name, from
the physical atom. In any case, Clifford’s conception can claim neither all the
merits nor all the difficulties of the Actuahstische Seele.”

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 163

that each phase of the stream does not flow wholly out of the
preceding phase, and that its course cannot be explained without
the assumption of influences coming upon it from without. What
then are these influences ? The Psychical Monist must reply —
they are other consciousnesses. How then about the process by
which the other consciousnesses, the other streams of conscious-
ness, influence my stream of consciousness? Is this also
consciousness? (For, we are told, all process is conscious
process.) If so, then it also is a stream of consciousness and
it must influence my stream through the agency of yet another
stream, and so on ad infinitum. Thus my consciousness itself,
by reason of the fact that it hangs together as a stream of
process relatively independent of other streams of process, implies
the essence of what is meant by substantiality, namely, the con-
tinuing to have or be a numerically distinct existence, in spite of
partial change.

That consciousness exists or occurs in streams, each of which
is something relatively apart from, demarcated from, other parts
of reality, is a fundamental fact which raises insuperable diffi-
culties for Psychical Monism. The psychical monist cannot escape
them by saying that the stream of consciousness consists of
elements or atoms of consciousness or mind-stuff, and that the
stream is formed by the coming together of a number of such
elements ; that is a psychical atomism involving the notion of
substance,” so abhorrent to his fundamental principle. If any
one, following Clifford and wishing to adopt the psychical monist’s
doctrine without his principles, takes this view of the stream
of consciousness, then it must be pointed out to him that every
stream has its banks which mark it off from others and give
it numerical distinctness, i.e. every stream owes its existence
as a stream to conditions that lie outside itself and impress
upon it the character of a stream. Perhaps he will point to
the Gulf Stream as a stream without banks. Then it must
be answered that this is a fallacious analogy — the Gulf Stream
owes its formation to external influences, and only persists as
a stream so long as the momentum originally impressed upon
it from without is not spent through its interaction with the
waters through which it flows. The numerical distinctness of
streams of consciousness is a fundamental fact with which every
psychological theory and every metaphysical system must deal,
and which especially demands explanation from the system

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164

which asserts that all existence is conscious-process. How
then does Psychical Monism propose to deal with this fact?
Merely by leaving it on one side as inexplicable. “ Gentlemen,
let us look this difficulty boldly in the face and pass on to the
next” That justly famous proposal accurately describes the
attitude of Psychical Monism when confronted with this difficulty.
Thus Paulsen says, Soul is the multiplicity of inner experiences
bound together to a unity in a way of which nothing can be
said.”^ Seele is die auf nicht weiter sagbare Weise zur Einheit
verbundene Vielheit innerer Erlebnisse.”) And again he writes — ■
‘‘ It is a fact that the processes of the inner life do not occur
in isolation, and that each is lived with the consciousness of
belonging to the unitary whole of this individual life. How
this can happen I cannot pretend to say, any more than I
can say how consciousness at all is possible.”

Now the hanging together of a multiplicity of conscious pro-
cesses in a numerically distinct or individual stream is the very
essence of soul or spirit ; for, if the distinguishable elements of all
consciousness (sensations, feelings, ideas, presentations, or whatever
we please to name them) occurred as isolated elements or complexes,
or in one huge jumble in which were no coherent streams
or groups, there would be nothing that could be called spirit
or mind, but rather a mere chaos of mind-stuff. When, then,
Paulsen tells us that there can be no stronger proof of the
insufficiency of any world-view than that it should find itself com-
pelled to declare the existence of spirit to be an insoluble riddle,®
Psychical Monism is condemned by the mouth of its champion.
For it leaves every spirit or mind as “ eine auf nicht weiter sagbare
Weise zur Einheit verbundene Vielheit innerer Erlebnisse.”

Most of the other exponents of Psychical Monism ignore
this problem or, like Paulsen, are content to call it insoluble
and to pass on. F. A. Lange, for example, who would, I
think, have classed himself as a Psychical Monist, speaks of
The metaphysical riddle, how out of the multiplicity of atomic
movements there arises the unity of the psychical image ” ; and
adds, “We hold this riddle, as we have often said, to be in-
soluble.”^ Prof. Strong leaves the problem untouched.^ Fechner

1 Emleitung,” p 387. ^ op. ctL, p. 386, » “Einleitung,’* p. 258.

^ “ History of Materialism,” vol. iii. p. 213.

® It was interesting to me on meeting Prof. Strong recently to find that he
had discovered, and was puzzhng over, this problem, which he formulated in
the sentence, ” What holds consciousness together ^ ”

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 165

alone, so far as I am aware, has made a resolute attempt to
deal with it ; but that this attempt achieved no success I
hope to show in a later chapter on the unity of consciousness.

Now let us turn to another difficulty of Psychical Monism.
The stream of consciousness is in part determined by influences
coming from outside, which we call sense-impressions ; but, when
we take these fully into account, the course of the stream of
consciousness remains still unexplained ; that is to say, its course
is not wholly determined by the two factors, consciousness itself
and the sense-stimuli or sense-impressions. It is determined in
a very important and, in fact, vastly predominant degree by
some other real condition or conditions, which we commonly
call the structure or constitution of the individual mind.i Quite
apart, then, from any question as to what the structure of the mind
may be, what stuff it may be built of, we are able to infer its
presence and operation from the orderly and lawful regularity of the
stream of consciousness, which cannot be explained from the nature
of the stream itself and from the nature and the order of succession
of the sense-impressions ; and we are able to discover a number
of general laws of this structure and operation, and to describe
how it gradually grows, every moment of conscious life leaving
it altered in such a way that its influence upon later coming parts
of the stream of consciousness is modified, until its structure and
its influence upon conscious life become exceedingly complex. But,
as compared with consciousness itself, this conditioning fac-
tor, the structure of the mind, is relatively stable and unchang-
ing ; to its stability is due all that constancy of mode of
conscious reaction which distinguishes one personality from
another. The faithful retention of memories through periods of
many years, manifested by their subsequent return to conscious-
ness, implies in fact a statical or relatively unchanging condition
of something, call it what we may. The psychical monist, if he is
consistent, must affirm that the structure of the mind, the sum of
these statical enduring conditions by which the stream of his
consciousness is at every moment predominantly determined, is
that of which the brain is the phenomenon, and that this enduring
structure itself consists of streams of consciousness.

1 This is admitted by the most thoroughgoing monists ; thus Paulsen, for
example, writes : “ Im Bewusstsein 1st nur ein uberaus geiinger Teil des gesamten
Seelenlebens, das wir doch voraussetzen miissen, urn die Vorgange im Bewusstsein
2u konstruieren ” (“ Einleitung,” p. 158).

BODY AND MIND

1 66

Now this supposition is quite inconsistent with all that we
know of consciousness ; consciousness is essentially and always a
flow, a perpetual flux, a process never enduring without change
for the briefest moment. And the ascription to any consciousness
of the stable unchanging character of these enduring conditions of
our consciousness oversteps the bounds of legitimate analogy.

Some of the psychical monists therefore shrink from this
assertion and, like Professor Strong, assume that this enduring
structure of the mind is a system of psychical dispositions.
Writing of these as conceived by Dr Stout, Strong says, “ We
must therefore raise these hypothetical psychical dispositions to
the rank of extra-mental realities, and a system of such realities,
neither ‘ simple ^ nor ' undivided ' yet quite sufficiently ‘ active,'
will form our substitute for the soul.” But this is to break with
his fundamental metaphysical principles and to go over to the
enemy. Animism. For such a system of psychical dispositions,
neither conscious processes nor material process, yet the enduring
condition of a personal consciousness, is not a substitute for the
soul, but the soul itself. Parallelists are so occupied with pouring
abuse on the old Cartesian metaphysical description of the soul,
and in piling up the private adjectives about it, describing it as a
“ Seelenatoml' a simple, undivided, inextended, immaterial,
immortal atom, “ ein unveranderliches, starres, absolut beharrliches
Realitatspiinktchen,” “ ein Brockchen allgemeines Realitats-
stofles,” ^ that they have no ears for any voice that attempts to
build up the conception, of the soul according to the principles
upon which any other scientific hypothesis is properly fashioned.

This difficulty of Psychical Monism may be briefly presented
in another way, which supplements the foregoing statement. The
doctrine lays it down clearly that the existence of consciousness
is our existence.” Strong and Paulsen are equally explicit on this
point, and it is clearly a necessary part of the doctrine. Well, then,

I fail into profound dreamless sleep, or am stunned by a blow on
the head, or spend an hour in deep chloroform narcosis. During
this period I am unconscious and, therefore, according to this
doctrine, I cease to exist. When I begin to be conscious again,
this is the appearance of a new consciousness, a new self, a new
“ aktuelle Seele.” The absurdity of this statement is manifest.
My personality, my self, all that is characteristic of and essential
to me as a person, survives the period of unconsciousness.

^ Paulsen, op, cit , p, 285.

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 167

Therefore my consciousness is not myself, and its existence is not
essential to my existence ; the continuance of my existence
consists in the continuance of some other reality than my
consciousness. Now, according to the doctrine, this other reality
can only be some other consciousness or consciousnesses ; thus it
is forced to the conclusion (absurd in itself, and opposed to its
fundamental proposition that my consciousness is myself) that
the continuance of my personality consists in the continuance of
other consciousnesses than my own, that my existence, my self,
is essentially consciousness other than my own, presumably a system
of the streams of consciousness of other selves.

The psychical monist, if he has ever pondered this implication
of his doctrine, probably seeks to escape the difficulty by saying
that when, after a period of unconsciousness, my stream of
consciousness flows on again, it is not discontinuous with the
stream that was cut short by chloroform ; he will say that my
consciousness bridges the time-gap and feels and knows itself
continuous across it I do not think that this meets the difficulty.
But to establish the objection, i will point out that in some
cases, when consciousness returns after being abolished by a blow
on the head, it does not feel itself to be continuous with the
consciousness that preceded the blow ; the subject awakes like
a new-born child, having no memory of his previous life, no sense
of resuming or continuing it^ Is, then, such a case really one
of a new self, a new consciousness, the inception of a new
“ aktuelle Seele ” ? Not at all ; for gradually, after a longer or
shorter period of conscious life, the old memories return, the old
ways of thinking, feeling, and doing return, until the old person-
ality is completely restored. All which proves that the personality,
the self, does not consist in the stream of consciousness alone,
but that it consists in a far greater degree in those enduring stable
conditions by which the stream of consciousness is at every
moment determined. Again, I insist, the consistent psychical
monist is forced to the absurd conclusion that my self is not
my own consciousness, but the streams of consciousness of other
selves.2

1 The most remarkable recorded case of this sort is that of Mr Hanna, for
which see “ Multiple Personality,” by B. Sidis and S Goodhart.

2 This inconsistency of Psychical Momsm can hardly be better exhibited
than by the quotation side by side of two sentences from Paulsen’s chapter on
"‘Wesen der Seele.” The one, which is repeated again and again with shght
variations, runs : " Die Seele ist die im Bewusstsem zur Einheit zusammenge-

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BODY AND MIND

And here another difficulty may be touched upon, or per-
haps rather the same difficulty in another form. My brain
is said to be the phenomenon of which my consciousness is the
reality. How, then, when I lie dead ? My brain, the phenomenon,
will still be present for other men, and will still be the seat of
many physical and chemical processes, and for many days it will
lose nothing of its complex organisation. But what has become
of its reality, my consciousness ? To this it may be answered :
Only certain most highly specialized processes of the brain are the
phenomena of which your consciousness is the reality. Then of
what reality is the brain with its marvellously complex structure,
and all its other processes, the appearance ?

Or again, my brain, or part of it, is the appearance of my con-
sciousness to other men. But no one has perceived my brain.
Therefore, it is only a possibility of a phenomenon which has
never been realized, a “permanent possibility of sensations” for other
men. Suppose, then, that some one lays open my skull with the
stroke of an axe ; the latent possibility of the phenomenon is then
actualized, my brain appears to another man : but at the moment
preceding the realization of that possibility, the reality which is
to appear, namely my consciousness, has disappeared, has ceased
to be.

It may be noted, in passing, that these considerations
present difficulties almost equally great to the other form of the
identity-hypothesis, the “ two-aspect-doctrine.” For it is com-
pelled to admit that that part of unknowable reality, which we
are told manifests itself under the two forms of the stream of
consciousness and the life of the brain of any person, continues
to manifest itself as the brain-life, while its other and parallel mani-
festation comes and goes intermittently.

Yet another difficulty of Psychical Monism is its conception
of the flowing together or composition of individual consciousnesses
to form larger consciousnesses. The consciousnesses of men are
held to run together into large streams of collective consciousness,
civic and national consciousness, and so on ; and these again are
said to combine with all infra-human consciousness on earth to form
an earth-consciousness ; and this with the consciousness of other
worlds, to form by successive stages of concurrence the all-inclusive

fasste Vielheit seelischer Erlebnisse ” (p. 145). The other runs : Im Bewusstsein
ist nur em uberaus geringer Teil des gesamten Seelenlebens, das wir doch voraus-
setzen miissen, um die Vorgange im Bewusstsein zu konstruieren ” (p. 158).

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 169

divine consciousness. Not only so, but each human being’s con-
sciousness is already vastly composite, being formed by the con-
currence in successive stages of the consciousnesses of his nerve
centres, his cells, his molecules, the atoms, the a and 3 particles
that compose the atoms, and so on indefinitely.

If we pass over, without insistence on it, the fact that there
is forthcoming no particle of empirical evidence of any such
composition of human consciousness to form greater wholes of
consciousness, two difficulties remain. Each consciousness or
stream of consciousness exists in and for itself of its own right,
for consciousness is reality ; yet each is used over and over again,
first existing for itself, but also at the same time existing as an
element in successively larger consciousnesses. This treatment
of consciousness seems to me compatible only with the concep-
tion of it as mind-stuff, as made up of ultimate atoms of con-
sciousness ; a conception moulded upon our conception of matter,
and inconsistent with the fundamental proposition of Psychical
Monism that our consciousness, as we know it, is absolute reality.
And how, apart from any question of the conditions that deter
mine it, can we conceive this flowing together of consciousness ?
Has the phrase any meaning ? For my part, I think not.
Suppose my consciousness is filled with the glory of colour of a
sunset sky, while yours, as you lie near by under your motor-car,
is filled with a problem in mechanics. What sort of a con-
sciousness would these two make if compounded ? Presumbly a
gorgeously coloured problem in mechanics. This is only one of
the simplest forms of the difflculty. Confining ourselves to human
consciousness on the earth, let us ask how all the pain and all
the pleasure of human consciousnesses are to sum together. Do
all the pains run together to make one big pain, and all the
pleasures to make one big pleasure, and do these co-exist in the
world-consciousness ? Or is it that, as in individual consciousness,
the pain-producing influences and operations, and the pleasure-
producing influences and operations, neutralize one another, if
they are equal, or give an excess of pleasure over pain, if the one
set of influences predominates ? If the latter is the case, then the
pleasure or pain of the world consciousness, is not the sum of
the pains and pleasures of human consciousnesses, but a resultant
formed by their common action, a new pain or pleasure.

The doctrine that consciousnesses flow together, each subsisting
for itself and yet at the same time subsisting as a part of a larger

170 BODY AND MIND

consciousness, implies, I submit, a substantialistic and even a
materialistic view of consciousness ; it implies an atomistic con-
sciousness, a mind-stuff that can be compounded in masses or
scattered like powder, and still remain essentially unchanged.
Such a view jf consciousness is not only incompatible with the
rejection of “substance,” which is the strident keynote of Psychical
Monism, but is inadmissible, no matter what our metaphysical
views may be. It is plausible only to those who think of all
consciousness and all psychical process as consisting in what we
call the sensory content of consciousness ; for the sensory content
does seem like a patchwork. But the sensory content and the
sensations and images that compose it are abstractions only,
achieved by fixing our attention on one aspect of mental process.
Sensations are merely incidents of the process of cognition, and
no amount of compounding of sensations will result in an act of
cognition, a knowing of an object ; still less will it produce a
judgment, an inference, a train of reasoning, or an act of will.

The foregoing discussions may be briefly resumed by saying
that Psychical Monism leaves the most fundamental peculiarity
of our experience entirely unexplained and unintelligible, the
peculiarity namely that consciousness, as we know it, runs always
and only in personal streams, the fact, in short, of personality.
It describes the world as consisting of conscious processes forming
one vast system of consciousness, every part of which is in
functional relation with every other ; a unitary whole whose unity
each of us can only conceive after the pattern of that unique
wholeness or unity which he discovers to be the form of his
personal consciousness ; and it leaves as an unrelieved mystery
the fact, apparently incompatible with this conception of a world-
consciousness, that the consciousness of which alone we have any
knowledge occurs only in the form of personal consciousnesses,
which not only do not run together, but which seem to be
absolutely and completely debarred from all direct communica-
tion. It may be said at once that the alternative form of the
identity-hypothesis leaves equally mysterious the fact of personality.

We find, then, that the fundamental assumption of Psychical
Monism, namely, that consciousness is reality and the only reality,
and its attempt to abolish as illegitimate the conception of any
mode of being other than consciousness, involve it in very great
difficulties, not to say absurdities ; and this result will give force
to the protest against any attempt to solve the psycho-physical

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 171

problem by the metaphysical method, by setting out with any
proposition as to the ultimate nature of reality. Without going
so far as to condemn all attempts to describe the nature of reality,
we may fairly protest that the powers of the human mind
are so little suited to achieve knowledge of absolute reality, that
our conclusions in this direction must be of a tentative character ;
and that it is absurd to profess to decide the question as to
the existence of the soul by deduction from any assertion as to
the nature of reality. To attempt to decide any question of fact
by setting out from an assertion as to the nature of ultimate
reality, is to practise metaphysic in the way which has brought
it into disrepute with the majority of thinking men in almost
all ages.

Let us now glance at certain difficulties common to all forms
of Parallelism. They all alike imply universal psycho-physical
Parallelism or Pan-psychism ; they necessarily assume that every
physical event, the mere fall of a stone to the ground, the rotation
of the earth, the vibratory movements of an atom, the flight of
the solar system through space, the swaying of a dead leaf on a
bough, that all these and all other physical events have their
psychical correlates, or aspects, or underlying realities, just as well
as those obscure changes in certain restricted portions of our
brains, which alone seem on the face of things to be thus accom-
panied. And they imply also that every psychical event has its
physical correlate or manifestation, that every thought or volition
of God, if there be a God who thinks and wills, manifests itself
under the form of physical processes subject to mechanical laws.
These implications of Parallelism are not always fully grasped by
those who accept the doctrine ; yet, in any form less thorough-
going than this, it is so fragmentary and inconsistent as not to be
worth a moment’s consideration, and its principal exponents have,
of course, fully acknowledged and insisted upon these implications.
“ All things,” says Paulsen, are psycho-physical beings.”

If, with these implications in mind, w’e compare the doctrine
with Animism in respect to the strain it throws upon the imagina-
tion, it must be admitted that the advantage lies with Animism,
in spite of all the conundrums it raises as regards the nature,
origin, and destiny of souls. But this is a point of minor import-
ance. The serious difficulty raised by this implication of P arallelism
may be stated as follows. The rich complex consciousness of man

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is correlated with the processes of an enormously complex and
highly developed nervous system. When we survey the scale of
animal life, we see that the lower down we go in the scale the simpler
becomes the structure of the nervous system, until we come to
simple creatures in which it consists of only a few cells but par-
tially differentiated from the rest of the body ; and finally we
come to the unicellular creatures each consisting of a mere speck
of nucleated protoplasm. We have good reason to believe that, if
we could observe the consciousness of the animals throughout this
descending scale, we should find that the stream of consciousness
becomes poorer and thinner in proportion as the nervous system
is less developed. Now, it is sufficiently difficult for us to con-
ceive the nature of the psychical life of such an animal as a fish ;
it would seem to consist in mere sentiency and appetite. But,
when we go down into the invertebrate world, the nervous system,
and indeed the whole organism, becomes indefinitely simpler ; to
conceive of a corresponding reduction in complexity and richness
of the psychical life is difficult. We can conceive the consciousness
of the animalcule as at most but a mere alternation of the vaguest
possible feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction or unrest But
when on the physical side we pass over from the animalcule to
the molecule of inorganic matter, or to the gravitating atom or
particle of negative electricity, or whatever the unit physical
phenomenon may be, we cross an interval in the scale of complexity
of organization as great as that between man and the animalcule.
How, then, are we to conceive consciousness to be correspondingly
reduced. To attempt any such further reduction of the concept of
individual experience (innerer Erlebniss), of psychical existence or
process, is to deprive it of all content, to leave the words empty
of all meaning.

In order to meet this difficulty, Fechner adopted the fashion,
first introduced perhaps by Leibnitz, of speaking of unconscious
psychical processes, unconscious sensations and ideas (Unbewusst-
sein, unbewusste Empfindungen, unbewusste Vorstellungen),^
and spoke of the assumed psychical aspect or reality underlying
the physical processes of the inorganic world as unconscious
psychical processes. Other Parallelists have used other terms in
order to diminish this difficulty; Lloyd Morgan, for example,
prefers to use the word ^ infra-consciousness,’ and Clifford, as we
have seen, spoke of a mind-stuff which is not consciousness, but
^ “Elemente der Psycho-pliysik,’^ vol. ii., p. 43S.

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 173

of small pieces of which the most elementary feelings are com-
posed ; but the expression most in favour is perhaps subconscious-
ness. Parallelism, then, involves the assumption of a vast amount
of unconscious psychical process. Is this a valid conception ?
We start from the unity of individual experience or consciousness,
and we discover the necessity of postulating existences which par-
tially determine the course of that experience, and these we call
our environment ; this environment is directly apprehended by us
only under the form of material objects or physical processes ; we
thus arrive at the conception of processes of two fundamentally
different kinds, conscious process and physical process. Then the
parallelist finds himself compelled, in order to carry through his
scheme, to postulate a third kind of process of which, from the
nature of the case, we can never have any experience, whether
direct or indirect. Thus the endeavour after reduction of Dualism
to Monism really results in the assumption of a third kind of exist-
ence or process which is as utterly unlike conscious process as are
the processes described by physical science. But, in order to cast
a veil over the questionable transaction and to create the illusion
that the third kind of process is not so very unlike conscious-
process, the parallelist calls it unconscious psychical process.
Now I do not wish to deny the propriety of the conception of
unconscious, still less of subconscious, psychical process ; the
conception is perfectly compatible with, and perhaps even de-
manded by, Animism. But my point is, that the attempt to
identify unconscious psychical process with consciousness is a
mere play upon words. The psychical monist begins by using
psychical process as synonymous with conscious process, and goes
on to use psychical as a term of wider connotation than conscious-
ness (as the animist properly and consistently may), hoping,
by speaking of unconscious psychical process, to avoid the bad
impression that must be made by speaking of unconscious con-
scious process. Psychical Monism, whose fundamental proposition
is that all that exists is consciousness, is of course the variety of
Monism which is hit most hard by any refusal to recognize the
possibility of unconscious consciousness, or to admit the legitimacy
of describing the evolution of consciousness, in the individual and
in the race, as a process of aggregation of unconscious processes.

Again, the hypothesis of psycho- physical parallelism, whether
it stands by itself or is supported by the identity-hypothesis in
either of its two forms, is confronted by the difficulty that, while

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the physical processes are mechanically determined, psychical
processes are essentially teleological ; so that mechanical and
teleological determination have to be represented as running
exactly parallel and issuing always in the same results. In a
later chapter I shall say something of the necessity of believing
in the reality of teleological determination of mental process ;
but here it suffices to point out that this is not denied by most of
the philosophical defenders of Parallelism. Wundt and Paulsen,
for example, are agreed upon this, and Strong urges that one of
the chief merits of Psychical Monism is that it satisfies our deep-
rooted conviction of the real efficiency of consciousness. In fact,
to give up the validity of either mechanical explanation of
physical processes or the teleological explanation of mental
process would be to sacrifice the claim of Monism to reconcile
natural science and philosophy.

The same difficulty recurs in still more urgent form in con-
nexion with our higher mental processes, which are not only
teleological but also logical. The parallelist has to believe that
purely mechanical determination runs parallel with logical process
and issues in the same results. He has to believe, or at any rate
assert, that every form of human activity and every product of human
activity is capable of being mechanically explained. Consider, then,
a page of print ; the letters and words of a logical argument are
impressed upon the page by a purely mechanical process. But
what has determined their order ? Their order is such that, when
an adequately educated person reads the lines, he takes the meaning
of the words and sentences, follows the reasoning and is led to,
and forced to accept, the logical conclusion. And in ordering the
words and sentences the author was conscious of their meaning,
of the drift of the whole argument and of the conclusion to
which it leads, and was animated by the purpose or desire of
achieving the end, the demonstration in black and white of the con-
clusion of the argument ; and throughout the period of composition
his choice of words and order was determined by this purpose, by
the desire to achieve an end, a result, which existed only in his
consciousness. Now the parallelist necessarily maintains that all
this process of ordering the words and sentences, in which the
consciousness of their meaning and of their logical connexion and
of the conclusion and purpose of the whole argument seem to
play so important a part, that all this is in principle capable of
being fully explained as the outcome of the mechanical interplay

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 175

of the author’s brain-processes : that a complete description of the
mechanics of these processes would be a complete explanation of
the ordering of the letters, words, and sentences. This is what I,
in common with many others, find incredible, namely, the assertion
that the meaning of the words need not be taken into account in
explaining the way they were brought into their order on the
page. The parallelist will assert that the author’s consciousness of
meaning had as its physical correlate some complex system of brain-
processes, and that this was the causal mechanism that we have to
conceive as ordering the words by governing the movement of
the author’s hand as he wrote them down. This then raises the
question of empirical fact, — Js there or is there not any complete
physical brain-correlate of that part of our consciousness which we
call meaning?

Or suppose the printed page to bear a poem containing
original and delicate similes ; for example :

“ Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tired eye-lids upon tired eyes.”

We are asked to believe that the ordering of these words can
be mechanically explained. We have, then, to suppose a mechanism
so delicate that it is capable of being affected by the resemblance
between ‘‘ tired eyelids upon tired eyes ” and “ gentle music,” or
at least of reacting in the same way to both, namely, with the
production of the sound of the word “ gentle ” ; for the meaning
of the word gentle is here the essential factor in bringing these
unlike things together in the consciousness of the poet. Here we
come back again to the essential question — Can “ meaning ” be
supposed to have its physical correlate in the brain ? To this
question I propose to return later and show reason to believe that
no such correlate can be assumed. At present I merely urge the
incredibility of the assumption that the “meaning” itself can be
left out, w'hen we seek to explain the ordering of our words in
thinking, in writing, or in speaking.

Paulsen maintains the parallelism of the mechanically with the
logically and teleologically determined series, and he illustrates
his view in the following way. “An orator makes a speech ; he
has been attacked, he desires to defend himself and annihilate
his opponent, thoughts and arguments flow in, similes and apt
turns of speech, biting phrases and quotations, sarcasms against
his opponent and flatterings of his hearers, seem to come of

BODY AND MIND

176

themselves. It is the link of association by which each thought
drags up its successor (i.e. a mechanically operative link) ; but,
at each moment, of thousands of possible associative links only
that one which leads to the goal actually operates. Thus the
whole series of processes constituting the oration is both causally
and teleologically conditioned ; the will gives it its general direction
and feels a lively satisfaction in the successful progress.” ^ The
interactionist could not describe the process in terms more in
accordance with his view ; at every step the mechanical factor,
the system of materially conditioned links of association, presents
a number of rival possibilities, and at each step that one of these
mechanically conditioned associations which is most suitable to the
purpose of the orator is brought into operation by the psychical
teleological factor, his will or purpose. On the face of it, then, the
series of events is determined by the co-operation of the material
mechanical factors and the psychical teleological factors. But,
when Paulsen says that the whole series is both causally and
teleologically conditioned, he means that the causal and the
teleological processes are the same identical processes looked at
in two different ways. How then does he seek to render
intelligible this identity of mechanical causation and teleo-
logical determination? He achieves it by making them both
purely subjective, by depriving both conceptions of all objective
validity, and falling back upon Hume’s doctrine that causation is
merely sequence. “If one holds the right notion of causality,
if one understands by it, with Hume and Leibnitz, nothing more
than lawfulness, i.e. regular concomitance of the changes of many
elements, then it is obvious that causality holds good of the spiritual
mental world no less than of the natural.”^ Hence mechanical
causation and teleological determination being alike merely
subjective, i.e. applicable only within our conceptual descriptions
of the real world and not operative in the real world, “ there can
occur no opposition between mechanical explanation and idealistic
interpretation.” ® The solipsistic character of this escape is well
revealed in the following passage. “ I do not see what should
prevent our saying, the logical operation of thought is presented
physically in a brain-process, which according to the assumption
is to be regarded as a part of the course of nature following
physical laws. The brain would not therefore become a calculat-

^ '' Einleitung,'* p. 241. 2 » Einleitung,** p. 243.

® " Einleitung,” p. 18 1.

EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOMATON THEORIES 177

ing machine, but we are led to the thought that there obtains a
kind of pre-established harmony between logical and physical
laws : a thought before which we do not shrink, for the material
world is, according to our assumption, not something absolutely
foreign to the spirit ; it is after all its own creation (sein Produkt).” ^

Wundt’s reconciliation of the universal sway of mechanical
causation with teleological determination is very similar. He
writes — '‘The universality of mechanical causation is an assumption
which needs to be verified by experience. The supposition that
there obtain different modes of connexion, equivocal and
unequivocal, in different provinces of nature, cannot therefore be
rejected as logically impossible. But then for these provinces un-
equivocal mechanical causality does not hold good, and the assertion
that both modes of connexion may be combined in one series of
phenomena is inadmissible in all cases. Final causes and mechanical
causes are mutually exclusive.” ^ And again he writes, “ the
teleologically conditioned cannot be at the same time mechanically
conditioned.” It might be thought that in face of these explicit
statements, Wundt would find it impossible to maintain Parallelism
and its implication that all events must be regarded as both
mechanically caused and teleologically determined. But, like
Paulsen, he succeeds in maintaining Parallelism at the cost of the
reality of all causation or determination by falling back upon Hume;
thus — “ the difference between teleological and causal conception is
not an objectively valid difference (kein sachlicher) that divides
the content of experience into two unlike provinces ; but the two
ways of conceiving things are formally different only, so that to
every purposive relation there belongs a causal connexion as its
complement, and conversely a teleological form can be given, if
required, to every causal connexion.” ^ Cause and effect, goal and
effort, are nothing more than the projection into the world of
objective reality of ground and consequence, which exist only for
our thought and are connected only by a logical band ; and, since
the ground can be inferred from the consequence as readily as
the consequence from the ground, the two ways of describing
phenomenal sequences are equally valid.

Thus the parallelists seek to escape from this difficulty. They
are determined to eat their cake and to hold it, to accept the

^ “ Einleitung,” p. 100.

2 “ Physiologische Psychologie,” vol. iii. p. 728.

3 Op. cit., vol. iii. p. 737.

BODY AND MIND

178

dictum of science that all events are mechanically caused as well
as the dictum of philosophy that mind operates effectively to
achieve its purposes. But they can only do this at the cost of
denying the applicability to reality of our conceptions both of
m.echanical causation and of purposive striving, at the cost, that
is to say, of sinking back into Solipsism ; for only by the aid of
the principle of causation can each of us infer any reality other
than his own consciousness.

CHAPTER XIII

IS THERE ANY WAY OF ESCAPE FROM THE DILEMMA-
ANIMISM OR PARALLELISM ?

I N the foregoing pages we have seen how the development of
the natural sciences has led to the rejection of Animism by
the greater part of the learned world of our time. In the
two preceding chapters we have stated and examined the prin-
cipal formulations of the psycho-physical relation proposed as
substitutes for Animism ; and we have found that these also are
confronted with very serious difficulties, difficulties which, though
they do not leap to the eye as do those of Animism, are never-
theless so great as to forbid us to accept any one of these formu-
lations as an intelligible solution of the psycho-physical problem.
We must, therefore, at this stage of our inquiry, raise the question
— Are the automaton hypotheses (epiphenomenalism and the
parallelistic doctrines) the only alternatives to Animism ? Or,
putting aside Epiphenomenalism as untenable, we may ask. Are
we confronted with the dilemma — Animism or Parallelism ?

This inquiry is the more necessary in an English treatise,
because the lack of interest in the psycho-physical problem
on the part of most of our academic philosophers seems to imply
on their part the opinion that the question may be answered
with a negation. I believe that, in fact, many of our idealistic
philosophers hold, somewhat vaguely, no doubt, the opinion that
Kant’s epistemology has rendered the psycho-physical problem
unreal, has shown that the problem only arises through asking a
question which never should have been asked. They tell us that
all thinkers of the pre-critica) period and those who, since Kant,
still persist in inquiring into the relations between mind and matter,
between soul and body, have taken up the question from a false
starting-point ; that, namely, they have accepted uncritically the
notions of soul and body current in popular thought ; that these
notions were achieved by illegitimate processes of abstraction ; and
that, if, instead of doing this, we begin, as Kant did, by making an

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impartial epistemological inquiry, we shall find that this insoluble
problem never arises.

It might suffice to reply to these insinuations, as follows.
We admit that, when we reflect upon the nature of experience,
we find immediately given neither body nor mind, but only the
duality of subject and object within the unity of experience ; and
we admit that the conceptions of body and mind are arrived at
by abstracting from this unity of experience, on the one hand the
objective and on the other hand the subjective elements. Never-
theless, we do not admit that these processes of abstraction are
illegitimate; rather we affirm that they are necessary steps for
each one of us, if he is to reach out in thought beyond the circle
of his own experience and play a part as a member of a world of
spirits, which, as you tell us, is the only real world.^ He who refuses
to make this step, a step which cannot be justified in strict logic,
remains a solipsist With the solipsist we cannot argue ; but all
of us are agreed that Solipsism is an impossible attitude for a sane
man. We affirm that each of us can escape from Solipsism only
by an act of faith or will that posits a real world, of which he
IS a member. This real world appears to each of us in the
form of the phenomena of sense-perception ; but, if he is not to
remain a solipsist, he must affirm and believe that these appear-
ances are not created by himself, but are rather due to influences
or existences, not himself, yet affecting him. Or, in other words,
he must believe in the validity of the category of causation ; for
only by believing that his perceptions are caused by some in-
fluence, some real being, other than himself, can he escape from
Solipsism. Let him conceive these influences or existences how
he will, and the psycho-physical problem still confronts him and

^ Avenaxius has described the process by which we pass from the unity of
experience to the duality of subject and object, to the conception of the subjective
and objective as psychical and physical worlds, and has named it the process
of introjection {Der menschhche Welthe griff). This doctrine of introjection
seems to be regarded in some quarters as constituting a proof of the unten-
ability of psycho-physical dualism ; but, however true it may be as an abstract
and generalized account of the way in which the human mind has arrived at the
distinction of the physical from the psychical, it does nothing to invalidate
that distinction. As Prof. A. E. Taylor has well said, " To attempt the solution
of this problem by simply reverting to the standpoint of immediate experience,
as it was before the creation of the concept of a physical order, would be to undo
at a stroke the whole previous work of our physical scientific constructions.
From the standpoint of immediate experience there can be no problem of the
connexion between the physical and the psychical” (“Mind,” vol. xiii. p. 481).

THE DILEMMA

i8i

clamours for an answer. For among these appearances is that
which he calls his body, one among many similar appearances,
and this appearance points to some reality beyond it, and the
psycho- physical problem is — What is the relation of my thinking
self to this reality beyond ? He may accept Berkeley’s suggestion,
to the effect that the body and all other appearances are produced
in his thought by the direct action of God, a pure spirit or think-
ing being like himself ; but, even if he brings himself seriously to
believe that God has chosen to play this monstrous joke upon
mankind, he is but solving the psycho-physical problem by arbi-
trarily choosing a peculiar and dogmatic form of Animism.

Or let him, with Herbert Spencer, affirm that this reality is
unknowable ; his need is then all the more urgent for some under-
standing of his relation to the appearances of which his body is
one, since these appearances are all he can ever know.

Or, if he holds that we must be content to affirm that this reality
is of the nature of mind or spirit or consciousness, without further
specifying it, then he still must discover the nature of the relation
between his own consciousness or mind and that other conscious-
ness which appears to him under the form of his body.

But this preliminary inquiry is so important for the whole
course of our subsequent discussion that it seems worth while to
examine the modes of dealing with the psycho-physical problem
followed by several eminent idealistic philosophers. And, first,
we may examine Kant’s own treatment of it.

According to Kant, the body belongs to the phenomenal
world, which we know through the faculty of sentience and
understanding ; within this world of phenomena the law of
mechanical causation holds unbroken sway, yet this world, the
mundus sensibilis^ has but empirical reality. The understanding,
contemplating this phenomenal world, may infer the existence of
some noumenon, some thing-for-itself, of which it is the appear-
ance, but is unable to make any affirmation concerning it other
than the bare affirmation of its existence. By means of a higher
faculty, the practical reason, we discover the existence of a world
of superior reality, the mundus intelligihilis ; to this world belongs
the soul of man, the pure ego, which is the logical nature that
comprises both understanding and reason.

Now it is clear that the recognition of the truth that the
physical world as we perceive or as it appears to us, is an
appearance, does not abolish the psycho-physical problem, so

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BODY AND MIND

long as, with Kant, we hold that this appearance is an appear-
ance of something. What is the relation of my thinking self to
the thing-for-itself which appears to me as the physical world in
space and time? This question still presses for an answer just
as urgently as if we accept the crude realist’s view of the physical
world. And especially, if we accept Kant’s demonstration of the
soul as an immortal being, we wish to know what is the relation
of the soul to the thing-for-itself. Kant, in short, has left us
with two kinds of reality, empirical reality and rational reality ;
with two real worlds, one ruled by mechanical causation, the other
a world of freedom and purpose ; and he has not shown us how they
are related. Kant even wrote : “ The separation of soul and body
forms the termination of the sensible exercise of our faculty of
knowledge, and the beginning of the intellectual. The body would
thus be regarded, not as the cause of thought, but merely as its
restrictive condition, and at the same time as promotive of the
sensuous and animal, but therefore the greater hindrance to the
pure and spiritual life.” ^ And Kant’s suggestion of phenomenal-
istic Parallelism as the solution of the psycho-physical problem
shows that he himself was aware that the problem remained in
spite of his epistemological Phenomenalism.

Kant, in fact, made an elaborate attempt to show how we may
run with the hare and yet hunt with the hounds. Confronted with
eighteenth-century Materialism and Hume’s Scepticism on the one
hand, and with the dogmatic Spiritualism of orthodox philosophy
on the other hand, he boldly accepted the methods and results of

^ I quote this passage from “ The Disciphne of Pure Reason in Relation to
H3q)othesis,” after Paulsen, who affirms that it continued to represent Kant’s view
in his critical period Immanuel Kant, his Life and Doctrine,” p. 254).

Kant wrote also, ‘'The opinion that the thinking subject may be able to
think before having any relation with bodies may be expressed as follows : that
before the beginning of that kind of sense-perception through which things
appear in space, the same transcendental objects, which in our present condition
appear to us as bodies, may have been capable of being perceived in some quite
different manner. But the opinion that the soul may continue to think after
the breaking off of all relations with the bodily world may be stated in this way :
that, if that kind of sensory perception through which transcendental and hitherto
quite unknown objects appear to us as the material world, should cease, then
nevertheless ail perception of the world would not necessarily cease ; and it is
quite possible that these unknown objects might continue to be cognized by the
thinking subject, although, of course, no longer in the guise of bodies. Now no
one can adduce from speculative principles the least ground for such an
assertion, not even show the possibihty of it, but merely assume it; but just
as little also can anyone make any valid dogmatic objection to the assertion”
(“Kritik d. r. V.,” Erdmann’s edition, p. 338).

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both — the world of mechanically determined phenomena, which
is the natural issue of Materialism modified by Scepticism, and
the world of pure and free Spirits which dogmatic metaphysic
affirmed ; and he sought to justify our belief in the existence of
both worlds by dividing our intellect into two distinct faculties.
Thus he achieved a dualism of the intellect with a corresponding
duality of unrelated worlds, which surely is the least defensible of
all forms of dualism. Nor can Kant be given even the credit
of consistent adherence to this strange doctrine ; for, in spite of
his insistence on the absolute sway of mechanical principles in
the phenomenal world, when he has occasion to treat of organic
beings he asserts that they are not to be understood or wholly
accounted for on mechanical principles. If this assertion is con-
sidered in connexion with Kant’s metaphysic of the soul, it will
be seen that Animism might with some plausibility be added to
the long list of doctrines for which his interpreters seek to make
him responsible.

It is clear, at least, that Kant did not discover any way of
avoiding the necessity of accepting either Animism or one of the
parallelistic formulations of the psycho-physical problem, but that
he hovered uncertainly between these alternatives.

Kant’s successors have made many attempts to show how the
defects of his doctrine may be remedied. Three principal groups
may be distinguished. On the one hand are those who, like
Paulsen and Strong, have accepted the thing-for-itself and,
resolutely facing the psycho- physical problem, have attempted to
provide a satisfactory solution of it by developing the notion of
psycho-physical Parallelism ; on the other hand are those who would
purify Kant’s doctrine by throwing overboard the thing-for-itself,
left by him lurking behind the veil of phenomena, and would thus
achieve a pure Spiritual Idealism ; while a third party, accepting,
like the first, the thing-for-itself, admits all the conclusions of
Materialism or its modern equivalent, Epiphenomenalism, and
seeks to retain the ideal world only as the creation of human
fancy, a purely imaginary world to which the human mind may
withdraw itself from time to time for moral uplifting and refresh-
ment and the enjoyment of the illusion of freedom, as a child
gives itself up to the delightful illusions of fairyland. F. A.
Lange, who is generally recognized as the leader of the Neo-
Kantians, may be said to be the principal exponent of this last
form of Idealism ; for, although he wavers unsteadily between the

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acceptance and rejection of the thing-for-itself, and seems bent
on combining Materialism and Solipsism in his creed, he asserts
explicitly that the human spirit must soar above the vulgar real
(by which he means the world of the natural sciences) into the
realm of ideas which are symbols of the unknowable absolute.

Those philosophers who belong to the second class of post-
Kantians mentioned above indignantly repudiate Lange’s inter-
pretation of Kant as a vulgar debasement of his teaching.^ Let us
see, then, how one of the most eminent of this school proposes to
refine upon Kant’s doctrine in a way which will circumvent the
psycho- physical probJem and avoid the necessity of choosing
between Animism and Parallelism or Epiphenomenalism.
Professor James Ward has recently essayed this task in his
Gifford Lectures.^

After an elaborate destructive criticism of Naturalism and its
central tenet, psycho-physical Parallelism, and after offering a
refutation of Dualism, Professor Ward proceeds to set up in their
place a spiritualistic Monism which shall be a pure Idealism, in the
sense that it shall regard the physical world as a mere construction
or figment of the mind, and which shall nevertheless escape the
charge of Solipsism. By a train of lucid and irrefutable epistemo-
logical reasoning he shows ^That Nature, as we conceive is
neither primary nor independent and complete in itself ; that it is,
on the contrary, merely an abstract scheme ; and that, as such, it
necessarily presupposes intellectual constructiveness and motives
to sustain the labours that such construction entails.” ^

Now this result of epistemological reflexion is valid as a
demonstration of the illegitimacy of deducing the impotence and
nullity of mind and purpose from the law of the conservation of
energy or from any other generalization of the empirical sciences ;
but it does not justify the reduction of the physical world to the
status of a figment of the imagination. The statement I have
quoted is only true in virtue of the phrase which is printed in
italics, namely, ‘‘ as we conceive it.” But Professor Ward’s

^ E g. the late Prof. Adamson, in his Lectures on Kant.”

2 “Naturalism and Agnosticism,” London, 1899. I am not sure whether
Prof. Ward regards his doctrine as providing an escape from the dilemma —
Animism or Parallelism ; but it has recently been proclaimed as an alternative to
them by Miss E C. Jones (“Hibbert Journal,” Oct. 1910). I imagine that Prof.
Ward would admit the propriety of Animism as a working h 57 pothesis in
biological and psychological science.

^ Op. cit , vol. ii p. 247. The italics are mine.

THE DILEMMA.

185

argument implies that it should be regarded as true though that
phrase were omitted ; for unless the statement is accepted in this
sense, the whole argument falls to the ground. That is to say,
Professor Ward, like other idealists of this school, shows that our
idea of Nature is only our idea of Nature, and draws from this the
conclusion that Nature itself, or the physical universe, exists only
as a construction of our minds, or is altogether dependent on, and
secondary to, mind. This is the fatal error of idealisms of this
type. The epistemological reasoning shows not that Nature is,
but only that it may be, merely a construction of our minds ;
that is to say, it shows that there is no strictly logical
process by which we can be compelled to admit that the
physical world really exists otherwise than in our thought, and
that we may without logical inconsistency refuse to believe
that it has any other mode of existence. Now it must be
frankly recognized, as I said before, that each one of us can
escape from Solipsism only by affirming the real existence of Nature,
or by affirming the validity of the category of causation, which
enables each of us to infer a world of existing things other than
himself playing its part in the causation of his perceptions. But
if anyone can discover any other mode of escape from Solipsism,
he may, with perfect propriety, regard the physical world as exist-
ing only in or for thought. This is the alternative proposed by
Professor Ward. He is content to deny all extra- mental exist-
ence to the physical world, because he believes he has discovered
that one may escape from Solipsism by a different road, namely,
by recognizing that the physical world is not merely subjective,
but is trans-subjective. By calling the physical world trans-
subjective, he means to imply that it exists, not only for the
thought of the individual thinker, but for the thought of men in
general ; and that the conception of it has been achieved, not by
the thought of any one human mind, but by intersubjective inter-
course,” i.e., by the united efforts and converse of many minds.
By recognizing this fact he escapes the grossest absurdity of the
solipsist, the assumption that he alone exists ; and he escapes also
the solipsist’s assumption that, if he himself should cease to be,
the whole physical universe would also cease to be ; for it would
remain as the conception of other minds. This, then, is the way
in which Professor Ward proposes to escape from the dilemma of
choosing between Solipsism and the acceptance of the physical
world as extra-mental reality. The position proposed is certainly

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1 86

preferable to Solipsism ; but it has two fatal weaknesses : first, it
retains much of the absurdity of Solipsism ; secondly, it is reached
only by an illegitimate step. Ward himself says of it : “ Inter-
subjective intercourse secures us against the Solipsism into which
individual experience by itself might conceivably fall, but it does
not carry us beyond the wider solipsism of Kant’s consciousness
in general.” That is to say, it involves the assumption that all
the objects of the natural sciences are purely mythical ; that the
astronomers, who accurately foretell eclipses and the reappearance
of comets after the lapse of centuries, are foretelling merely the
moment at which men in general will, through some miraculous
process, aided presumably by “ intersubjective intercourse,” agree
to perceive the comet or the onset of the eclipse ; that of the
whole series of geological formations each one first came into
being when it was discovered, or perhaps at the moment at which
it was named and officially recognized by the Royal Society ;
that the story of the evolution of the organic world has no more
objective truth than any extravagant nature-myth which has been
widely entertained by any savage people ; and so on and so on.
Clearly, the impetus of Professor Ward’s spirited attack on
Naturalism has carried him too far and led him “ to pour out the
child with the water.” An Idealism that demands the acceptance
of such conclusions will always remain impotent to heal the
breach between science and religion.

But, even if these conclusions were entirely acceptable, we
should still have to complain of the method by which they are
reached. Like Berkeley before him, Professor Ward has simply
assumed the existence of other spirits than his own : and his position
is less satisfactory than Berkeley’s ; for the great idealist did at
least infer the existence of God from the evidence that our minds
are the recipients of external influences. Each of us learns to
recognize the existence of other human minds only through
sense-perception of the manifestations of their activities in the
phenomenal world ; and, if we deny all extra-mental causes ^ to
these sense-perceptions, we have no means of passing beyond the
sphere of individual experience to the existence of other minds ;
we must, in short, remain solipsists pure and simple. Or does
Professor Ward mean that inters abjective intercourse” is main-
tained by direct action of mind on mind, and that all our sense-
perceptions are induced by such direct action of one human mind on
^ I mean causes extraneous to ttie mmd of the percipient.

THE DILEMMA

187

another, as in the alleged telepathic induction of hallucinations ?
This seems to be, in fact, the position he means to maintain ; if so^
it resembles Berkeley’s, but with this difference, that whereas
Berkeley inferred the existence of God as the cause of his own
perceptions and was unable to infer the reality of other human
spirits. Ward infers the existence of other human spirits, but is
unable to get to God. Which position is preferable must remain
a question of taste ; but it is obvious that though in both cases
the psycho-physical problem is in a sense transcended, yet for
empirical science it is answered in the sense of Animism ; for
that part of the phenomenal world which appears to me as my
body represents or symbolizes a certain system of influences
exerted directly upon me by the divine spirit (Berkeley), or by
other human spirits (Ward) ; and what science calls the voluntary
movements of my body are changes of the appearance of myself
to other spirits (or spirit) directly induced in them by that mode
of activity of my soul or spirit which we call volition.

Thus we see that Idealism, consistently worked out, justifies
Animism as the solution of the psycho-physical problem which
must be adopted by empirical science. But, since it rejects the
demand of Kant’s epistemology and of Naturalism, the demand,
namely, that in the physical world mechanical causation shall
rule without exception, and since it involves the reduction of
all the results of the natural sciences to the level of pure myth,
it would seem that a sober Realism, which accepts Animism,
offers a better prospect of reconciling science with the belief in
the efficiency of mind and purpose. As for the Idealism which
sets out with the dictum that all the phenomena and processes
of nature must be explained according to purely mechanical
principles (whether this dictum be maintained as an epistemo-
logical principle, as by Kant, or as a conclusion forced upon our
acceptance by the successes of empirical science, as by Paulsen),
nothing remains for it but the desperate attempt to save some-
thing from the wreck of religion and philosophy by the aid of
the hypothesis of psycho-physical Parallelism.

I conclude, then, that there is no way of escape from the
dilemma — Animism or Parallelism, and that we must accept
Animism, if we find the difficulties involved in Parallelism to be
fatal to it. Some of these difficulties were displayed in the
foregoing chapter ; in later chapters the fundamental assumption
of Parallelism, namelv. that the course of nature can be explained

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or described in terms of mechanism only, will be shown to be
unwarranted and untenable.

Before going on to this refutation of Parallelism, I shall try
to prepare the reader for the acceptance of its alternative by
showing that neither the arguments against Animism, nor those
directly supporting Parallelism, are of a nature to compel accept-
ance of their conclusion. And I shall deal first with the alogical
arguments.

CHAPTER XIV

«

ARGUMENTA AD HOMINEM

W E have seen that Parallelism is urged upon our accept-
ance by certain argument a ad hominem. In this
chapter I propose to examine these and to show that
arguments of a similar kind, which deserve at least as much
consideration, can be adduced in favour of Animism.

Of the arguments of this kind urged in favour of Parallelism
(more especially of Psychical Monism), the most important is
that the hypothesis allows us to accept all the materialistic
teachings of natural science, while retaining our belief in the
primacy and reality of mind ; that it thus would abolish all strife
between science and philosophy, because, as men of science, we
shall be materialists, while as philosophers we may be spiritualists
or idealists ; it is proposed, in short, to establish a parallelism
without interaction of science and philosophy. Now we all know
men who keep their science and their religion in separate ‘‘ water-
tight compartments ” of their minds, and many of us may be
inclined to approve, or at least to excuse, this arrangement.^ But
what shall we say of the deliberate attempt to do the same with
our scientific and our philosophical convictions ; for that is the
essence of Parallelism. Surely this is Dualism of a kind that is
radically unsound and reprehensible. If science had finally and
completely established the truth of its postulate of the universal
sway of the laws of mechanism and physical causation, we might
regard the efforts of the parallelists as a meritorious attempt to
save something from the wreck of philosophical and religious
beliefs. But so long as this postulate remains very far from
empirical verification, and in fact is carried over from the
inorganic world to the world of life and mind, only at the cost
of flying in the face of all the many unmistakable indications
that the two realms are widely different, why should the philo-

^ Mr W. H. Mallock has even written a brilliant book Religion as a Credible
Doctrine in order to recommend this solution.

189

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BODY AND MIND

sopher or the biologist capitulate to physical science and lay
himself out to give plausibility to its extortionate claim that all
existence must be brought under its laws ? For a capitulation
it is, when the biologist, the psychologist, or the philosopher,
accepts Parallelism. Paulsen assures us that physical science
will never abate one jot of its claim to explain all events as
purely physically caused. But that is his ipse dixit merely, a
piece of gratuitous prophecy. There are not wanting now leaders
of science who reject this claim of physical science to be the
arbiter of the possible and the impossible, and to make of biology
and physiology merely dependent branches of its stem.^

Let us put the matter in the following way. It must be,
and b}^ the more enlightened parallelists it is, admitted that it is
not possible at present to establish the validity of the claim of
physical science that its principles will explain all events, or to
rule out psycho-physical interaction as impossible. Suppose, then,
that psycho-physical interaction is a fact, that it does really occur ;
then the capitulation of biology and philosophy to physical science
must have the effect of bringing the course of the development
of human knowledge into a blind alley, in which further progress
must be ever more difficult and must involve in a sense a
departure from its true goal ; for that goal will only be attainable
by going back upon the track and picking up the true course at
the point where this capitulation was made. Surely, then, it is
the proper task of philosophy to keep the balance true between
the great departments of science, and to show to each how far
short of absolute truth its conceptions fall, to make clear their

^For a clear-sighted repudiation of this claim, see Dr J. S, Haldane’s Presi-
dential Address to the Physiological Section of the British Association Reports,”
1908). The keynote may be indicated by the follov/ing extracts : ” For Biology
we must clearly and boldly claim a higher place than the purely physical sciences
can claim in the hierarchy of the sciences — ^higher, because Biology is dealing
with a deeper aspect of reality,” ” Since our conception of an organism is
different in kind, and not merely in degree, from our conception of a material
aggregate, it is clear that in tracing back life to primitive forms we are getting
no nearer to what is called abiogenesis ” In Physiology, and Biology generally,
we are dealing with phenomena which, so far as our present knowledge goes,
not only differ in complexity, but differ in kind from physical and chemical
phenomena ; and the fundamental working h5rpothesis of Physiology must
differ correspondingly from those of Physics and Chemistry. That a meeting-
point between Biology and Physical Science may at some time be found, there is
no reason for doubting. But we may confidently predict that if that meeting-
point is found, and one of the two sciences is swallowed up, that one will not be
Biology.”

ARGUMENTA AD HOMINEM

191

limits and their true relations, rather than to try to square the
circle of the universe according to the prescriptions of that branch
of science which happens to have made the greatest progress and
to have put forward its claims with the loudest voice. To some
of those who refuse to recognize the claims of physical science to
apply its laws to the whole universe of existence, it seems that
even now we may dimly foresee the taking up of physical science
into a wider synthesis in which it will occupy an important but
subordinate place ; and that in this way will be effected the true
reconciliation between natural science on the one hand and
philosophy and religion on the other, rather than by any pre-
mature capitulation to the exorbitant demands of any one of the
sciences.

We noticed that one of the advantages claimed for Paral-
lelism is that it not only puts an end to the strife between
materialistic science and spiritualistic philosophy, but that, by
enabling us to accept without reserve and without the reproach
of philosophical crudity the materalistic generalizations of physical
science, it brings us the satisfactions that flow (for some minds)
from that acceptance. To this it is added that the acceptance of
Animism raises a number of perplexing questions, such as —
What is the prenatal history of the soul ? What becomes of it at
the death of the body? What part does it play in heredity?
And it is obvious that at the present time science has no means
of answering these questions in any satisfactory manner.

Now, that certain temperaments find satisfaction in the
doctrine that the universe is a vast mechanism all events of
which, even the thoughts and acts of God (if there be a God), are
in principle predictable by calculation as exactly as an eclipse of
the moon, this fact goes far to explain the popularity of Parallelism,
but does nothing to justify it. There are temperaments, pro-
bably equally or more numerous than the others, to which this
view of the world seems little better than a nightmare; and
their feelings have as much right to be considered, when we
are casting our votes for the constitution of the universe.

That Parallelism naturally, if not inevitably, implies and
demands a monistic conception of the universe is undoubtedly
one of the grounds of its popularity ; but there are two good
reasons against allowing this fact to weigh against Animism.^

^ And exactly the same considerations hold good of the claim of Psychical
Monism, based on the ground that it imphes an idealistic metaphysic.

BODY AND MIND

192

First, the desire for a monistic or an idealistic metaphysic is
usually held up by those who experience it as something peculiarly
lofty and deserving of considerate treatment. But the fact that
such forms of metaphysical or ontological doctrine appeal in this
way to certain persons does not in any way strengthen their
claim to our acceptance. Such desires are by no means universal,
and it is only by ranging all those who share one’s taste in
metaphysic as sheep over against the goats, whose tastes are
different, that the desire is made to seem, in the eyes of those who
experience it, to carry with it a warrant of the truth of their views.
Many worthy men have, however, preferred a pluralistic or even
a materialistic metaphysic. Such tastes are merely personal
idiosyncrasies, like a preference for French mustard or for music
in a minor key.

Secondly, Animism is perfectly compatible with a monistic
view of the universe and with an idealistic metaphysic. (Indeed
we have seen that Idealism, when consistently carried through,
implies Animism.) This is sufficiently shown by the fact that a
number of highly competent philosophers, notably Lotze, Bradley
and A. E. Taylor, combine to their own satisfaction their prefer-
ence for Animism or psycho-physical Dualism with Monism and
Idealism.

It is, in fact, one of the great advantages of psycho-physical
Dualism that, whereas each of the rival monistic doctrines
necessarily commits those who accept it to some particular
ontological doctrine (Materialism, Spinozistic agnostic Monism, or
Psychical Monism), we are committed by Animism to no meta-
physical doctrine. We may accept it while remaining wholly
on the plane of empirical science ; and, in view of the strong
dislike of metaphysic expressed by so many workers in the
natural sciences, this fact should be for them a strong recom-
mendation of Animism. It is true that Descartes’ psycho-
physical Dualism was made by him a metaphysical Dualism ;
for he taught that matter and soul are two ultimately different
kinds of reality. But scientific Animism is under no obligation
to accept Descartes’ ontological dogma ; it leaves open the ultimate
questions, about which it is a mere piece of presumption for any
man to express a decided opinion in the present state of human
knowledge. For it the real natures of both body and soul remain
open questions, the answers to which, we may hope, will be
gradually brought nearer to the truth by the labours of after-

ARGUMENTA AD HOMINEM

195

coming generations. For the present the animist may, if he likes,
suppose the body to consist of matter such as is described by
physical science ; or, with Kant, he may regard it as the pheno-
menon of an unknowable thing-for-itself ; or, with Leibnitz and
Lotze, as a system of real beings of like nature with the
soul ; or, with Berkeley, as nothing but the perpetually re-
newed acts of God upon our souls. In any case his ontological
view, whatever it may be, so long as it is not solipsistic, need not
affect, and is perfectly compatible with, his belief in psycho-
physical interaction.

That mechanical or parallelistic Monism seems to render
a coherent account of the world in which no mysteries
or fundamental problems remain, whereas Animism leaves
on our hands, indeed forces upon us, a number of questions
to which we can return no satisfactory answers ; these facts may
and do, no doubt, seem to many minds to afford good reason for
rejecting Animism ; but surely only to those who desire to “ lay
the intellect to rest on a pillow of obscure ideas.” For the
solutions of the deepest problems offered by such Monism are
largely verbal only. Though such Monism became universally
accepted, men, regardless of logic, would still speculate on the
possibility of a future life, or even continue to hope for it, and
would still ask whether there be not somewhere in the universe
“ a power not ourselves that makes for righteousness.’*

And this preference for an account of the universe which
appears as final and complete, leaving no loose ends and no
unfathomed possibilities, is neither universal nor deserving of
special consideration. There are minds of another type to which
Animism recommends itself just because it points to a great
unknown in which great discoveries still await the intrepid
explorer, a vast region at whose mysteries we can hardly guess,
but to which we can look forward with wonder and awe, and
towards which we may go on in a spirit of joyful adventure, con-
fident in the knowledge that, though superstition is old, science is
still young and has hardly yet learnt to spread^ her wings and
leave the solid ground of sense-perception.^

As to the bearing on our problem of the fact that Animism

^ “ The highest philosophy of the scientific investigator is precisely this
toleration of an incomplete conception of the world, and the preference for it
rather than an apparently perfect, but inadequate, conception.” Thus Prof.
Mach in " The Science of Mechanics,” p. 464.

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BODY AND MIND

was first excogitated by savage man, perhaps before he had learnt
the use of fire, tools, or clothing, and that it has in all ages and
amongst almost all peoples been the popularly accepted doctrine ;
I do not know that the modern animist need feel any shame on
that account, or need regard the fact as affording any presumption
against the truth of his view. Many an existing savage tribe
and, probably, that mythical creature, primitive man himself, has
agreed with the psychical monists in believing the stars to be
conscious beings ; and Fechner and Paulsen have not disdained
to call their testimony to the support of their own view, claiming
for primitive men the clear untroubled vision natural to the
childhood of the world. So,Jn this respect, the rival doctrines
may cry “ quits.'’

Let us now glance at certain important consequences that
logically follow from the acceptance of Parallelism. To many the
most important consequence will seem to be the necessity of
rejecting every conception of God, other than the pantheistic.
Epiphenomenalism is of course not properly compatible with any
religious belief or hope ; it can only be so combined by those
who have the water-tight compartment " type of mind. But
both forms of the identity-hypothesis are readily and usually
combined with a pantheistic metaphysic, and will permit of no
other form of religious belief.

I do not wish to urge this as an argument against Parallelism ;
but it is proper that this important implication of it should be
explicitly mentioned in the course of our examination of the
various theories of the relation of mind to body. It must be
clearly recognized, then, that Animism, or the dualistic doctrine
of soul and body reciprocally influencing one another, is the only
psycho-physical theory logically compatible with Theism, with a
belief in a personal God, a Divine Creator, Designer and Ruler of
the World ; and that, when it is claimed for Parallelism that its
acceptance will bring to an end the age-long strife between science
and religion, the claim is only valid on the improbable assumption
that Pantheism, which by the leaders of religion in all past ages
has generally been held to be little better than Atheism, will
prove in the future to be an acceptable and sufficient basis for all
religious thought and feeling.

Another important implication of all forms of psycho-physical
Monism is that human personality does not survive the death of
the body. That Epiphenomenalism necessarily involves this

ARGUMENTA AD HOMINEM

195

implication needs no demonstration. But the implication is not
perhaps so obvious and incontestable in the case of the parallel-
istic hypotheses. In this connexion, only the two varieties of the
Identity-hypothesis need consideration ; for, as we have seen,
Parallelism proper logically implies one or other of these
hypotheses. Fechner held, and sought with much ingenuity and
ardent eloquence to show, that his psycho-physical theory was
compatible with a belief in a life after death. But all unbiassed
minds, I think, will admit that, if either form of the identity-
hypothesis may be made to seem not to rule out the possibility
of survival of human personality after death, it is only because it
leaves the existence and nature of personality, of the individuality of
the conscious self, an absolute mystery unrelieved by any ray of light
Let us glance for a moment at the way in which Fechner
attempted to reconcile his psycho-physical doctrine with his belief
in life after death. In “Das Buchlein vom Leben nach dem
Tode,’' he begins by ascribing immortality to men in so far as
their thoughts and actions continue to affect the thoughts and
lives of after-coming generations.^

Survival of this sort is of course undeniable ; it is equally com-
patible with all psycho-physical theories ; but it is not survival of
the self-conscious personality. After this he plunges at once into
poetical descriptions of the life of the souls of the departed, which,
if the language is to be taken literally, show him to have shared
the beliefs about the dead which are generally regarded as the
exclusive property of the despised spiritists.^ Such language
alternates with passages more consistent with the pantheistic
scheme. We are told that, when a man dies, his spirit pours
itself freely through Nature and no longer merely senses the
waves of sound and light, but itself rolls on through air and ether ^ ;
that the spirits of the dead will dwell in the earth as in a common
body, and that all processes of Nature will be to them what the
processes of our bodies are to us.^

Fechner himself raises the question — How can an individual
•consciousness retain its unity when for its physical or bodily

^ “ Was irgend Jemand wahrend semes Lebens zur, Sebopfung, Gestaltung
Oder Bewabxung der diirch die Menschheit und Natur sich ziebenden Ideen
beigetragen hat, das ist sem unsterbbeber Teil ** (p. 8).

* " At every festival that we make for them the dead rise up ; they hover
about every statue that we set up for them ; they hear with us every song in.
which their deeds are celebrated*’ (p. 35).

®P. 53.

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196

aspect it has the whole earth, and has it in common with all
other departed souls ? But he answers the question only by
asking another — “ Ask first, how consciousness retains its unity
in the smaller extension of the body.” And we are left to infer
that, because Parallelism can find no answer to this urgent
question, it is absolved from the impossible task of finding an
answer to the other. In another work he defines his conception
of the soul in a way very difficult to reconcile with his psycho-
physical doctrine — “ By Soul I understand the unitary being
which appears to no one but itself.” ^ And again — “ I understand
by Spirit and Soul the same being which, as opposed to the
body, appears to itself”^; “the spirit is itself that which unites
the multiplicity of the body.”®

In short, the language used by Fechner in discussing this
subject is woefully lacking in precision and consistency ; the
reasoning is loose to the last degree, consisting in the main of
hints at analogies, suggestions of similes and metaphors ; and it
is only with such reasoning that he attempts to meet the essential
difficulty of reconciling Parallelism with belief in any survival of
personality. The difficulty may be stated as follows : According
to Fechner’s own teaching the consciousness of each individual
is a composite resultant of the conjunction of the minor con-
sciousnesses of the cells of the brain and body, and these again
of their elements ; or, strictly in terms of Psychical Monism, the
spatial and functional conjunction of bodily elements is the
phenomenal manifestation of the conjunction in the unitary
system of personal consciousness of many minor conscious
activities ; or again, in terms of the two-aspect doctrine, the
composition of the bodily elements is a phenomenal appearance
of some composition of real elements, which in its other or
psychical aspect appears as the composite stream of con-
sciousness.^ The dissolution of the body, then, must also be

^ “ Ueber die Seelenfrage ” Leipzig, 1861, p. 9.

^ Op. cxt.y p. IS 3 op, cit.y p. 168.

^ Kant himself and most of his followers have admitted that the spatial
relations of phenomena correspond to some system of real relations between the
things-in-themselves that appear to ns in perception as phenomena in space ;
thus Vaihinger writes ( “ Kant Commentar,” li. p. 143) : “Kant, therefore, re-
cognizes relations of the things-in-themselves which correspond to space, but
regards them as unknowable. On the other hand Lambert’s suggestion still
holds good, and with all the more force, that to reason by analogy from the
spatial relations of appearances to the true relations of things-in-themselves is
not only allowable but required.”

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197

regarded as the phenomenal manifestation of some corresponding
change in the underlying reality, and must be paralleled
by a dissolution of the mental life into its elements.

The following passage will serve to illustrate the way Fechner
attempts to deal with this difficulty. ‘‘ How is it then with the
playing of a violin ? You think, if a violin, which has just been
played upon, is broken up, then it is all over with its music : it
dies away, never to sound again, and so also dies away the
self-conscious music of the human brain, when death destroys
the instrument. But at the destruction of the violin, as also at
the death of the man, there is something that you neglect, in
looking only at that which is most obvious. The notes of the
violin resound in the wide air, and not only the last note of the
music, but the whole of it. Now you suppose that, when the
sound has gone by you, it has died away ; but anyone standing
at a greater distance can still hear it, therefore it must still exist ;
one who stands too far away will not hear it at all, but not
because it has ceased to be ; the sound merely spreads itself out
too widely, becomes too feeble to be heard at a single spot ; but
imagine that your ear accompanies the sound and spreads itself
out with the widening circle of the vibration, then you would
continue to hear it. It is never extinguished ; it remains for
ever. The narrowly bounded violin has spread its music into
infinity. You ask, who could really follow the sound and hear
it whithersoever it goes ? But something really follows it
everywhere : the sound itself follows itself everywhere. How
now, if it could hear itself? Would it not continue to hear
itself for ever ? Vain supposition truly in the case of the lifeless
violin, but is it vain also in the case of the live instrument?
The lifeless one is played upon by others, and so its music is
only heard by others just where they happen to be, and does
not hear itself. But the living violin of our body plays itself,
and so also its music hears itself and only needs to follow after
itself in order to continue to hear itself ^

I think it worth while to cite this passage, because it is a fair
sample of the reasonings employed by Fechner throughout his
many writings on this topic, and illustrates very well their
attractive, fantastic, and unconvincing character.

Paulsen, who was a faithful disciple of Fechner, evidently
recognized the doubtful character of Fechner’s reasonings con-
1 Zend-Avesta,*' Bd. II. S. 293.

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198

cerning the life after death ; he himself dismisses the question of
survival in half a page, saying — “ it is unthinkable that a soul-
life should be annihilated”; and suggesting that, as our past
soul-life continues to exist in present memory, so the individual
life may continue to exist as an enduring element of the life and
consciousness of God. To which he adds, a little lamely, that
nothing prevents our believing that it may continue to enjoy a
certain independence and unity of consciousness within the
whole.^

But, it may be said, Kant has settled this question once for
all — Why then trouble to display the inconsequence of Fechner’s
fantastic reasoning ? Fechner committed the error condemned by
Kant in the metaphysicians who preceded him, namely, he
attempted to apply his understanding to the things of the
mundus intdligibilis, with which only the practical reason can deal.

Now I do not know that any living philosopher who is
seriously to be reckoned with accepts Kant’s reasoning on this
matter ; but the authority and prestige of Kant’s name are so
great that it seems necessary to consider his teaching in lespect
to immortality.

Kant sought to establish the immortality of the soul by
setting up the mundus intelligibilis, which he separated from the
mundus sensibilis or physical wwld by an impassable chasm, in
the dark abysses of which the thing-for-itself hovered uncertainly.
For he taught that, just as the world is two worlds, so man is
two men, one, a phenomenal man belonging to the mundus
sensibilis and wholly subject to mechanical law and, therefore,
to dissolution ; the other a pure thinking being belonging to the
mundus tntelligibilis^ and therefore immortal, like all other things
of that world. And Kant left the relation between these two
men as completely obscure as that between the two worlds.

I have already commented upon the unacceptable character
of this dualism ; and here I have only to insist upon the inad-
missibility of the method by which it is reached. That method
was to divide the human intellect into two intellects, two disparate
faculties of knowing and reasoning, the theoretical and the

Einleitung,” S. 267. In almost the last of his published works, A Plural-
istic Universe,*’ the late William James expressed a general adhesion to Fechner’s
world-view ; and he certainly believed that the mind of man is not wholly de-
stroyed on the death of the body. But he never accepted Parallelism or the
mechanistic assumptions on which it is based, but held a peculiar animistic view
of the psycho-physical relation, which he called the “ transmission theory.”

ARGUMENTA AD HOMINEM

199

practical reasons, and to assign the two worlds to the two
intellects respectively.

To maintain that the human mind comprises these two
intellects, the exercise of which leads to incompatible results, to
an antinomy, is to assert the inadequacy of the human mind to
the tasks of philosophy, especially to the task of reconciling
science with religion, which is commonly regarded as the prime
function of philosophy ; and, if Kant’s epistemology were such as
to compel our adhesion to it, we should have to resign ourselves
to a radical '' scepticism of the instrument.” But the reasoning
by which Kant attempted to establish the practical reason as a dis-
tinct faculty can hardly be seriously maintained at the present day.

He found the surest evidence of the mundus intelligibilis and
of the faculty by aid of which we apprehend it, in man’s conscious-
ness of duty, of vocation, of the worth of spiritual and moral
goods. This moral consciousness, he declared, is the expression
of man’s inmost nature and in it his belief in God, freedom, and
immortality may securely rest.

Thus the nature of man’s moral consciousness, ascertainable
as empirical fact, is made by Kant the guarantee of the mundus
intelligibilis and of all that belongs to it, including the immortal
soul of man. But modern psychology shows that what is
called a man’s moral consciousness is his system of moral senti-
ments ; that he absorbs these moral sentiments in the main from
the moral tradition of his social environment, which has been
slowly evolved throughout the period of civilization by a process
perfectly intelligible in its main outlines ; that the moral senti-
ments are no more and no less peculiar or mysterious than the
other abstract sentiments, the aesthetic or the intellectual
sentiments ; and that, therefore, their existence does not in the
least justify the conception of the practical reason as a special
faculty of an order distinct from that which we use in our ordinary
commerce with the phenomenal world.

That Kant should have thought it possible to erect so great
a superstructure on so fragile a basis can only be understood
when we reflect upon the very peculiar circumstances of his life ;
how all his life long, in an age when books were comparatively
rare and newspapers almost unknown, he lived in a small
provincial city, hardly passing beyond sight of its steeples in all
his eighty years ; how in that narrow space he lived an intensely
artificial life, the life of a bookish celibate recluse, remote from

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all the natural passions and impulses which move the mass of
mankind ; how, owing to these circumstances, he inevitably
remained profoundly ignorant of human nature ^ ; and how his
conception of man and of his moral consciousness was determined
by the fact that he was familiar only with the circle of earnest
pietists in which he was born and bred.^

But, even if we could admit that the moral consciousness of
mankind is as an empirical fact what Kant held it to be, the
argument by which he deduces from it freedom and immortality
would remain unconvincing in the last degree. Jn the “Critique
of Pure Reason,” he bases the belief in a future life on the very
natural demand or desire that happiness shall be proportioned
to morality. But in the “ Critique of Practical Reason,” he bases
belief in immortality on the demand for the attainment of moral
perfection which seemed to him to be implied in the moral
imperative : for a finite being cannot attain to moral perfection,
but is capable of infinite progress towards it ; therefore, if the
moral law is to be fulfilled, we must continue to progress for
ever ; therefore we must be immortal.

This, in brief, was the reasoning by means of which Kant
sought to establish human immortality ; and surely Heine’s
scoffing was not altogether without some slight basis in fact,
when he said that Kant, having completed his scheme of things,
found that the old body-servant who carried his umbrella so
faithfully must have a God and a future life, and therefore gave
him both. The argument has been well characterized by the
late Henry Sidgwick as illustrating equally the ingenuity and
the naiveie of Kant^

Few would undertake at the present day to defend Kant’s
practical reason and his proof of immortality. Paulsen, for
example, who must be reckoned one of the most faithful disciples,
as he was one of the most able exponents of Kant, let go, as
indefensible and tinged with the vices of the precritical dogmatic
metaphysic, the practical reason and the moral philosophy of
which it was the basis.^

^ Be it said with all reverence for his great intellect and fine character.

^ It seems that Kant had a peculiar aversion to literature of the class by
aid of which he might have widened his knowledge of human nature.

^ " The Philosophy of Kant,” p. 19.

^ One must say that anything so internally inconsistent as the ' Critique
of Practical Keason * is perhaps not to be met with again in the history of philo-
sophical thought” (Paulsen’s “Kant,” Eng. trans , p. 321).

ARGUMENTA AD HOMINEM

201

Other psycho-physical monists, more particularly Hegelians
(though not all of them), perfer to dismiss the question as to the
survival of personality as an unmeaning one, or at least as one of
no importance if it has any meaning ; thereby showing that their
thought has risen to a height of philosophical abstraction at which
it ceases to have any bearing upon the problems which to the rest
of mankind seem of the deepest and most urgent interest.

Of contemporary authors. Prof. H. Miinsterberg has adopted
this attitude more boldly perhaps than any other.^ Kant, with
one of those glaring inconsistencies which abound in his writings,
had treated of the future life as a progress in time, and in fact
had based his proof of immortality upon the need for such moral
progress, although our conception of time was in his view
applicable only to the phenomenal world. Miinsterberg boldly
abides by the doctrine of the subjectivity of time and causation ;
causality is the creation of my mind merely, and time is the
creation of causality and therefore equally subjective- But man
is fundamentally will and purpose, and will and purpose are not
causes, and therefore are not in time. Hence, “ if we are really
will, and thus outside of time, there is no longer any meaning in
the desire for a protracted duration, this one hope in which
the open and the matured materialists find themselves together.”

My life as a causal system of physical and psychical processes,
which lie spread out in time between the dates of my birth and
of my death, will come to an end with my last breath. . . . But my
real life as a system of inter-related will attitudes has nothing
before or after, because it is beyond time. ... It is not born and
will not die ; it is immortal, all possible thinkable time is enclosed
in it ; it is eternal.” There is thus no conflict between the
claim of science that we are mental mechanisms bound by law and
the claim of our self-consciousness that we are free personalities.”

This is what Idealism of this kind offers to the mourner ® and
to him who keenly resents the great injustices of life as we know
it. That this doctrine of the timeless and therefore eternal self
has no value from these points of view seems obvious. And that
it is Subjective Idealism and implies Solipsism seems equally
clear ; for it denies the validity of the conception of causation,
which, as we have seen, alone enables each of us to transcend the
sphere of his immediate experience. But even if we pass over

^ It is briefly expounded in bis Ingersol Lecture, The Eternal Life.**

2 Munsterberg’s lecture is actually cast in the form of a consolatory address.

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these objections, can we admit that the phrase the timeless
existence of the self has any meaning? In common with the
great majority of men of trained intelligence, I would say — none
at all Munsterberg tells us repeatedly that we are essentially
will and purpose ; and he repeatedly speaks of our wills as
progressing or making progress, as seeking and longing, as point-
ing backwards. In fact the words will and purpose are deprived
at once of all meaning, if we assign them to a timeless existence ;
the conceptions are inevitably bound up with the idea of the future,
the idea of bringing to pass that which is not yet , and if we
were to take away from Munsterberg’s discourse every word which
implies the time-reference of will, no meaning would be left
to his sentences. The denier of time may object that the use
of these words implying time is the inevitable result of the
poverty of our language. But we have a right to assert that
ideas which cannot be expressed without self-contradiction are
themselves self-contradictory.

That the difficulty, defined above, of reconciling Parallelism
with personal survival after death is very real and great, can
hardly be denied ; and that Fechner’s acute mind should have
been unable to do anything more towards overcoming it, than to
offer such vague analogies as that of the violin, does but
accentuate the difficulty, which to my mind seems insuperable.
I conclude, then, that the view that the mind is dependent on the
body, or that the consciousness and the body of a man are but
two aspects of one thing, or that the body is a mode of appear-
ance of his mental life, is strictly incompatible with belief in any
survival of human personality after the death of the body.

That Animism is the only psycho-physical hypothesis which is
compatible with a belief in any continuance of human personality
after death, cannot, of course, be put forward as evidence of its
truth ; but it does justify a lively interest in the establishment of
its truth ; especially just now when for the first time serious
attempts arc being made to discover empirical evidence of such
survival and the fact that these attempts seem already to justify
hope of their success should at least serve to warn us against
holding dogmatically, as so many now do, to Parallelism, a doctrine
which is incompatible with this belief and therefore liable to be
overthrown at any moment by the success of these efforts.

I do not urge as any support to Animism the fact that so
^ See chap. xxv.

ARGUMENTA AD HOMINEM

205

large a proportion of the human race has always believed in the
life after death, nor the fact that so many ardently desire such
life ; nor should I do so if this belief and this desire were
universal. That all men desire immortality is merely a fiction
of the literary tradition ; ^ but that we ought to desire a proof
of the survival of our personality after death is, I think, de-
monstrable from moral considerations. In the first place, the
great injustices of human life as we know it remain as a dark
shadow that cannot be relieved if each man’s personality ceases
with the grave, a shadow that must darken our whole conception
of the universe and of man’s position in it^ Secondly, apart
from this desire for the possibility of some readjustment of the
injustices of this life, and apart altogether from the influence
upon conduct of belief in the reception of rewards and punish-
ments after death, the desire for evidence of a continuance of
personality after death is justified by the influence such evidence
might be expected to have upon conduct. There can be no
doubt, I think, that, where a belief in a future life obtains
generally among any people, it tends to maintain and to raise
the standards of thought and conduct of that people. In all
ages the national existence of every highly civilized people is
seriously threatened by the tendency that has proved fatal to
so many States, the tendency for each individual to choose to
live for himself alone and to secure for himself as much enjoy-
ment as possible, regardless of all other considerations. An
effective belief in a future life seems to be the only influence
capable in the long run of keeping this tendency in check, when
once men have begun to reflect freely upon their position in the
universe. And this belief operates in this way, even though
we remain entirely in the dark as to the kind of experience that
may be ours after death ; for it widens our outlook, pushes back
the boundaries, forbids us to regard the horizon that we see as
the limit of our world, and so makes us live this life with a
sense that issues are involved in it greater than any we can
define or grasp ; in a word, it preserves in us something of the
religious attitude towards life. Now there can be no doubt
that under the influence of science this belief is rapidly decaying

iSee Dr F. C. S. Schiller's essay oa **The Desire for Immortality,” in
Humanism ”

* It was this consideration that led the late Henry Sidgwick to devote so large
a part of his energies to the search for empirical evidence of a life after death.

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among all the leading nations of the world. Here is, then, not
any new evidence in fav^our of Animism, but good reason for
refusing to give it up, unless we are logically compelled to do so ;
good reason for subjecting the claims of Parallelism to the most
severe criticism ; good reason for keeping open our minds towards
all the evidence that goes to prove the inadequacy of the prin-
ciples of physical science to explain the whole course of the universe.

Lastly, I may properly notice in this chapter a circumstance
which has exerted in recent times a very considerable influence
in securing for the parallelistic interpretations the large following
that they now enjoy among the students of science and philo-
sophy ; I mean the fact that so large a majority of influential
writers have given their adhesion to one or other of these
allied doctrines, especially among those who in recent years have
explicitly discussed the pycho-physical problem. Among this
large number I enumerate the following authors whose activities
have fallen within the distinctly modern period — Fechner,
Paulsen, Wundt, Ebbinghaus, Miinsterberg, Hoffding, Ribot,
Huxley, Spencer, Tyndal, Romanes, Lewes, Bain, Bosanquet,
Lloyd Morgan, Stout.

It is right that these names should carry great weight. But
in view of the imposing character of this array of names (which
might be indefinitely prolonged), it is important that I should
point out that the defenders of Animism are not confined to the
ranks of authors of popular treatises and manuals of devotion,
but that amongst them are a number of men whose philosophical
achievements give them the right to a most respectful hearing.
Among those authors who have been familiar with the achieve-
ments of modern science, and who may be reckoned on the side of
Animism, because they either have explicitly defended it or have
declared themselves unable to accept any one of the parallelistic
doctrines, I name Lotze, Sigwart, C. Stumpf, O. Kiilpe, L.
Busse, Bergson, James Ward, William James, Henry Sidgwick,
F. H. Bradley, G. T. Ladd, A. E. Taylor.^

^ To this list of names I think I may add those of two brothers whose claims
to rank high among philosophers are apt to be forgotten m a world which freely
accords them the higher honours of statesmanship, I mean of course Messrs
Arthur and Gerald Balfour. I add their names with some hesitation, because
they have not dealt explicitly with the psycho-physical problem. Yet their
keen interest in the work of the Society for Psychical Research and various
passages in their published writings seem to justify the inclusion of their names
an the list.

ARGUMENTA AD HOMINEM 205

The reader may therefore approach my defence of Animism
with the comforting assurance that, if he should incline towards
its acceptance, he will find himself, not indeed on the popular side
in the world of science and philosophy, but in highly respectable
company.

CHAPTER XV

EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM
FROM EPISTEMOLOGy, “INCONCEIVABILITY,” AND THE
LAW OF CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

T WO arguments against Animism are put forward with the
claim that they suffice to necessitate the rejection of that
doctrine, because either one standing alone makes un-
tenable the belief in any psychical intervention with the course of
physical process. These must first be examined ; for if their
claims are valid, our discussion may quickly be brought to its
end. It would only remain for us to choose between the rival
parallelistic interpretations. If, however, they prove to be incon-
clusive, we must go on to examine the arguments on the same
side whose claim is less absolute, and which are put forward rather
as supports to these leading arguments, than as in themselves
capable of deciding the issue.

These two principal arguments are that from the law of the
conservation of energy, and that from the inconceivability of
psycho-physical interaction. By those who accept atomistic
Materialism as metaphysical truth they are combined in one great
dogma, v.^hich runs — all real process consists in the movement of
masses, all motion is caused by motion only, and all acceleration or
change of motion of any body is caused by impact of some other
body upon it. This dogma, of course, rules out psycho-physical
interaction, and, if it were well established truth, there would be
nothing more to be said in defence of Animism. But, since
this dogmatic metaphysical Materialism is no longer seriously
defended, we must consider the two contentions separately.

That psycho-physical interaction is impossible because we
cannot conceive it or understand it, is the old argument of the
Occasionalists. By them it was put in the form — We cannot
conceive how things so unlike as inextended immaterial soul and
material extended body can act upon one another. For they
accepted Descartes’ dualistic metaphysic. The premise of their
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GENERAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 207

argument was that action is only possible between things of
like nature. This phrase, in so far as it conveys any meaning, is
merely the expression of an unfounded prejudice which, like many
another, has been given the dignity and importance of a meta-
physical truth. The validity of the proposition is at least as
doubtful as its meaning is obscure.

The various modern dressings of this argument from incon-
ceivability, some of which we have noticed,^ add nothing to its
force. The argument was answered by Lotze for all time when
he wrote — ‘‘ The kernel of this error is always that we believe
ourselves to possess a knowledge of the nature of the action of
one thing on another which we not only do not possess, but
which is in itself impossible, and that we then regard the relation
between matter and soul as an exceptional case, and are astonished
to find ourselves lacking in all knowledge of the nature of their
interaction.^' It is easy to show that in the interaction between
body and soul there lies no greater riddle than in any other
example of causation, and that only the false conceit that we
understand something of the one case, excites our astonishment
that we understand nothing of the other.” ^ As Hume long ago
showed, we have no insight into causal action in the physical world,
even of the simplest kind. The communication of motion by im-
pact, as of one billiard ball upon another, is the kind of causation
or transitive action in the physical world with which we are most
familiar ; and physical science has attempted in the past to
exhibit all physical causation as being of this type. In so far as
we succeed in conceiving any instance of causation as of this most
familiar type, we are apt to feel that we understand it or have
explained it. Now, since psycho-physical interaction can-
not be reduced to the same familiar type (for by the very
terms of the hypothesis it is a kind of interaction sui generis)^
it is true that we cannot understand it in this sense of the
word. But in no other sense than that of reduction to a
familiar type of sequence, such as that of motion or impact, can
we understand physical interaction ; it is admitted by the philo-

^ P. 91 and p. 122.

* ** Medizinisciie Psychologie,” S. 56. In a similar vein Kant wrote: For
all difficulties winch concern the combination of the thinking being with matter
arise without exception from the insidious dualistic idea that matter as such is not
appearance, that is to say, a mere presentation of the mind to which corresponds
an unknown object, but is thar object itself as it exists outside us and independ-
ently of our sensory powers " (** Kritik d. r, V.,” Erdmann^s edition, p. 336).

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sophers and physicists alike that, when we try to penetrate into the
intimate nature of the process of communication of motion by
impact, we find ourselves in the midst of insuperable difficulties.

It is well said by Professor Stumpf that “ the unlikeness of
soul and body can hardly be seriously urged (against the possibility
of psycho-physical interaction) by any person of insight acquainted
with the investigations of David Hume. Cause and effect are
not necessarily of like nature. Only experience can show what
things belong together as cause and effect. And least of all
should those deny the possibility of interaction of these unlike
things, who preach their substantial unity or identity ; for the
relation of the two worlds, the physical and the psychical, implied
by this doctrine of substantial unity, is an even more intimate one
than the causal relation.” ^

The following considerations make this argument from in-
conceivability appear not only invalid, but also a little absurd.
The argument implies, as Lotze said, that we understand
physical causation in some more intimate way than any other
kind of causation. Now if, as Hume maintained, by causation we
mean and can mean nothing more than invariable concomitance
or sequence, then the invariable concomitance of consciousness
and brain-process asserted by the Monists is as good a case
of causation as any other. But the only alternative to
this doctrine of Hume is that provided by psychology and
now generally accepted ; according to this view, our conception
of physical causation is not arrived at only or chiefly by the
observation of invariable concomitance of phenomena ; for such
observation can rarely be made without interruption of the
series of repetitions by apparent exceptions to the rule : it
is achieved rather by the projection into the material mass,
which we set in movement by pushing against it and which
seems to resist our push, a capacity for effort or the exercise
of power such as we are immediately conscious of when we
put forth our strength. That is to say our conception of
causation is principally derived from our experience of volitional
effort, of psychical causation, and is only secondarily applied
to the explanation of physical events. Accordingly, it may
be plausibly maintained, and by many philosophers has been
maintained, that psychical causation is the only kind of causation
of which we have any understanding. And this view is at
^ "Leib und Seele, 1896.”

GENERAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 209

least as true as that which claims that we understand physical
causation only. Now, when we find, as in this case, that
all the persons whose training fits them to form a judgment
on a particular question are ranged in two opposite camps
returning directly opposed answers to the question, the only
philosophical attitude we can assume is one of suspension of
judgment, and of recognition that the peculiar prejudices of
individuals and the limitations of their imaginations, or even
the limitation of the imagination of the whole human race
at any given period of its evolution, ought not to be accepted
as the criterion of what is, or is not, possible in the
universe.

The other less crude way of presenting the argument
fails to render it any more decisive. It is said that the spatial
conceptions which we use for dealing in thought with the
phenomenal world cannot legitimately be intermixed with
conceptions of non-spatial influences. But this is a difficulty
of our own making, which disappears if we admit that the
spatial processes we perceive and conceive are but the phenomenal
manifestation of some underlying real processes. And it must
be admitted that, if the conceptions which we habitually use in
dealing in thought with the physical world are unsuitable for
dealing with the case of psycho-physical interaction, that
fact cannot disprove the reality of such interaction, but merely
points to our need of a more adequate system of conceptions
for dealing with the psycho-physical problem. But perhaps
the shortest and most effective way of meeting this argument
is the following. If you deny all causation you are a solipsist
(for without recognizing the validity of the principle of
causation you cannot get beyond your own consciousness),
and we leave you in your splendid isolation. If you are an
epiphenomenalist, you believe that the brain-processes are the
cause of your thoughts, that is, you believe in the action of
the physical on the psychical, or causation of the psychical
by the physical ; and this is at least as difficult to understand
as the action of the psychical on the physical. If you are a
parallelist in the strict sense of the word, you leave the relation
of the psychical to the physical as a perpetual mystery. If you
accept either of the two remaining alternatives to Animism,
you admit that matter is but phenomenal, and either you assert
that the nature of reality which underlies both body and mind

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is unknown, or you maintain that the reality underlying physical
phenomena is mental in nature ; and in either case the contention
that there can be no action of the mind upon the real process
of which physical processes are the phenomena would be
absurd.

This “ inconceivability argument ” and the closely allied episte-
mological dictum of Kant to the effect that the phenomenal world
must be explained mechanically in terms of extension and motion,
involve the erecting into an exclusive principle or prescription
the natural tendency of our minds to conceive things under
the form of matter and motion, to select “ primary qualities '' of
things as constituting their real nature. This we do because,
as Dr Stout says, we can describe the executive order of the
world better or more effectively in those terms than in any
others. But that our minds work most efficiently in these
terms is no guarantee that this mechanical aspect of the world
is more real than other aspects.

Sense-experiences, such as odours, tastes, and sounds, and
certain bodily sensations such as hunger, of which the spatial
attributes are obscure and in some cases perhaps lacking, enable
us to conceive a creature with intellectual powers otherwise
similar to our own, but incapable of perceiving extension or
position or motion, and whose sense-perceptions involve only
purely qualitative and intensive changes. Such a creature might
build up some conceptual account of the physical world, the
world of his sense-perceptions, which might be valid in the sense
that by the aid of it he would in some degree render intelligible
to himself the order of those perceptions. Yet there would be
nothing spatial in the world so conceived. And for such a crea-
ture, pondering the psycho-physical problem, the “ inconceivability
argument ” would appear quite pointless. Reflexion upon the
way in which such an intellect would conceive the physical
world will help us to realize that the philosophers from Descartes,
Locke, and Spinoza to Kant and to many moderns,^ who have
insisted upon the necessity of conceiving the physical world in
terms of extension and motion only, are merely, as was said
above, erecting a peculiarity of our intellect (which is by no means

E g. Sir F. Pollock, wlio tells us -witli complete assurance that ** we know
a world of things extended in space, to the understanding of which, so far as we
can understand them, the laws of matter and motion are our sole and sufficient
guide ” Spinoza : His Life and Philosophy,” p. 164).

GENERAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 21 1

a necessary peculiarity of intellect in general) into a universal law
of thought and of physical science.^

Of all the arguments against psycho-physical interaction that
drawn from the law of conservation of energy, is regarded as the
chief by many (I believe, the great majority) of those who at the
present day accept Parallelism ^ ; yet it may be shown to be incon-
clusive in so many different ways that the only difficulty with it is
the difficulty of choosing a few of them for presentation here. Let
us begin by admitting the law in the most rigid and thorough-
going form in which it can be stated, and let us make the case
against psycho-physical interaction as strong as possible by
accepting the scheme of kinetic mechanism as a metaphysically
true description of the physical universe. Then all physical
energy becomes kinetic energy or the momentum of masses, and
the law asserts that the kinetic energy of the universe is a con-
stant quantity. If then any psychical influence be supposed to
change the rate of motion of the least particle of matter, it
must increase or diminish the existing quantity of kinetic energy ;
and the supposition is contrary to the law. But ihe course of
physical events might be altered by changing the direction of the
motion of particles without altering their rate ; and this might be
done in such a way as to produce no change in the quantity of
kinetic energy. This is the conception of guidance without work
foreshadowed by Descartes and rendered more definite by modern
physicists.

Clerk Maxwell pointed cut the possibility of applying the fol-
lowing principle to the explanation of the action of mind on body.

1 The following passages written by one who is eminent as both physicist
and philosopher may serve to enlorce what is said above : The French encyclo-
psedists of the eighteenth century imagined that they were not far from a final
explanation of the world by physical and mechanical principles ; Laplace even
conceived a mind competent to foretell the progress of nature for all eternity,
if but the masses, their positions, and initial velocities were given. In the
eighteenth century, this joyful overestimation of the scope of the new physico-
mechamcal ideas is pardonable. Indeed, it is a refreshing, noble, and elevating
spectacle ; and we can deeply sympathize with this expression of intellectual
joy, so unique m history. But now, after a century has elapsed, after our judg-
ment has grown more sober, the world-conception of the encyclopaedists appears
to us as a mechanical mythology in contrast to the animistic of the old religions.*'
The science of mechanics does not comprise the foundations, no, nor even
a part of the world, but only an aspect of it ’* (Prof. Mach's Science of
Mechanics,” Eng. trans , pp 463 and 507).

* E g. by Strong {pp. cit.) and Ebbinghaus (“ Grundziige d. Psychologic”).

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BODY AND MIND

A force or stress applied to a moving body along a line of direc-
tion strictly at right angles to the path of its motion deflects the
path of the body without doing work, without diminishing or
increasing its rate of movement, and therefore without altering its
momentum or kinetic energy. The spokes of a revolving wheel
exert such guidance without work upon the rim. Gravitation
of the planets about the sun approximates to the realization
of such guidance without work, and only fails to realize it
because their paths are not truly circular. If the path of the

planet were truly circular, the

force of gravitation acting be-

I tween sun and planet would be

j \ a perfect example of guidance

* \ without work.

Professor Poynting, if I under-

\ I stand him rightly, has given

\ I greater precision to this notion

1 in the following way.^ Let a

^ ^ — — and b be two equal masses

(atoms, molecules, or what not)
Fig. 10. • L • . .

in a brain, moving in opposite

directions with equal velocities. Then suppose that, at the

moment of greatest approximation of the two masses, mind

establishes a rigid bond between them, so that they cannot

recede from one another. Each must then be diverted from

its path and must follow a circular path about the point c

midway between them ; and the two bodies must continue to

rotate about this centre like a double star, so long as no change

of the conditions takes place. Suppose that, at the moment when

the two bodies are in the positions a ^ and mind resolves its

bond as suddenly as it imposed it ; then the two bodies will

recede from one another along paths at right angles to their

original paths, but with the same velocities as before. Thus mind

would have changed the course of physical events in the brain by

exerting guidance without doing work. The course of events in

the physical universe would have been changed, without the sum

total of kinetic energy having been diminished or increased.

This is a pleasing fancy. And it is impossible to deny that
mind may act in this way on matter ; and that therefore, even if
the scheme of kinetic mechanism were a true picture of the
2 “ Hibbert Journal," vol ii.

GENERAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 215

physical universe, mind might act on matter without breach of the
law of conservation of kinetic energy taken in its most absolute
sense.

But we need not argue the case on the assumption that
atomic Materialism and kinetic Mechanism are the last words of
physical science. The dogmatic uncritical belief that the physical
universe was truly described in these terms was widespread in
scientific circles a generation ago ; but it was a faith and a hope
rather than a reasonably based opinion. It seems to hold its
sway in the minds of many of the older biologists, who absorbed
their notions of physical science in the days of their youth when
this faith was still confidently held by some physicists. But it
has become clear to the more enlightened physicists that this
scheme of kinetic mechanism is at best but a working hypothesis,
and that it is one which, though in its day it has been of very
great use, is now pretty well played out. At no time could it be
accepted save by shutting one’s eyes to a multitude of facts. A
great many of the physical phenomena about us do not in any
way suggest that they are of the nature demanded by the scheme,
e.g. all the phenomena of light, of electricity and magnetism,
of gravity, of chemical attraction and affinity, of latent chemical
energy ; and the long sustained effort of the physicists to bring
these into line with the scheme was only rendered in any degree
hopeful by the invention of the ether, by making it both matter
and not- matter, and by assigning to it a number of properties
which are quite incompatible with one another ; for example, it is
to be a perfect fluid, continuous, imponderable and frictionless
(which in itself is but a limiting conception achieved by taking
away from the notion of fluid several of its essential features), and
this perfect fluid is to be perfectly rigid and elastic. Yet even
when thus described, regardless of its logical inconceivability, the
ether fails to bring into the kinetic scheme of things the facts of
gravitation and of chemical affinity.

Let us then replace the scheme of kinetic mechanism with
that of dynamic mechanism, and, continuing to admit for the
purpose of the argument that the physical energy of the universe
is a quantity which never changes, let us consider another way in
which psychical influence might nevertheless affect the course of
physical events.

We are compelled to recognize the existence of physical
energy under two very different forms, namely, the active and

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BODY AND MIND

the potential or latent ; examples of the latter are potential
chemical energy (in which form the greater part of the energy
contained in the body of an organism always exists) and the latent
energy of position, as that of a stone when it reaches the highest
point of its path after being thrown straight up from the earth.
Now in the organism energy is constantly being rendered latent
and constantly being liberated or converted from the latent to
the active condition ; and Dr Hans Driesch ^ argues that one
essential peculiarity of living organisms is that in their tissues
the conversion of potential into active energy is liable to be
temporarily suspended or postponed by a non-mechanical agency
which he calls the “ entelechy of the organism. We may
see in this suggestion a possible mode in which mind might exert
guidance on brain-process without doing work. The suggestion
may be illustrated by the simple case of the pendulum, and the
case is strictly analogous to the hypothetical case of the vibrating
molecules. As the bob of the pendulum swings to and fro, its
kinetic energy is wholly converted into latent energy of position
at each moment in which it occupies either of the extremities of
its path. Now suppose that mind could arrest it in the position
of latent energy ; then, if it were so held but for the briefest
moment, the course of physical events would have been altered
without change of the quantity of energy of the universe. And,
if the mind could exert such an influence upon the atoms or
molecules of the brain-substance, it might thus play a decisive
part in determining the issue of brain-processes, without breach
of the law of conservation of energy.

The great weight attached to the objection to psycho-physical
interaction which we are now examining will perhaps excuse me
to the reader if I put before him yet another possible mode of
circumventing the objection, while accepting the most extended
formula of the principle of conservation.

If, with most of the philosophers since Kant, we admit that
the spatial ordering of physical phenomena is the work of our
minds, then it follows that, though this spatial order of the things
we perceive may correspond to or symbolize some system of real
relations between the realities underlying the phenomena, we
have no knowledge of the real nature of these relations. What,
then, forbids us to believe that mind may have the power of

^ ** Science and Philosophy of the Organism,” Gifford Lectures, 1908, vol. li,
p. 180,

GENERAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 215

changing these relations while leaving unchanged the quantity of
energy (or capacity for influence or causation) of these realities ?
If mind has such power, it may influence the processes whose
phenomena we conceive as brain-processes in a way which
would appear to us as a spatial redistribution of energy or a
transference of energy from one part of the brain to another,
without intervening phenomenal medium, and without alteration
of the quantity of energy.^

But we may meet the argument from the law of conservation
of energy more boldly and, perhaps, more effectively by asserting
that the “law’’ is merely an empirical generalization whose
validity extends only to those orders of phenomena of which it
has been shown to hold good by exact experiment ; or that at
the most it is a well-based inductive generalization which states
that, whenever one form of physical energy is transformed into
another, the quantity of the second form is equivalent to that of
the first. In this limited and empirically justified form, the law
has no bearing on our problem. It is only when it is given the
form — the physical energy of the universe is a finite quantity
which can be neither diminished nor increased — that the “ law ”
rules out the possibility of the addition of energy to our organisms
by extra-physical influences, if such exist This more general
statement of the law of conservation is arrived at only in the
following way : — the physical universe is a closed system of
energy, a system closed against psychical intervention or any
intervention from without ; it is empirically established that the
transformations of physical energy within any closed system
result in no change of the quantity of energy of the system ;
therefore the quantity of energy of the physical universe is
constant and there can be no influx of energy from without.
This it will be observed is a perfect example of an argument in
a circle. The law of the conservation of energy, then, is only
made to seem to rule out the possibility of the influx of psychical
energy by tacitly assuming in the premise of the argument the
conclusion which is drawn from it

When authors assert that the constancy of the quantity of
physical energy of the universe is an axiom, i.e. a proposition
which all sane competent minds find themselves compelled to
accept, as soon as they understand it, they misuse the word

^ I owe this suffgfestion to Dr Percy Nunn, though I am not sure that he would

2I6

BODY AND MIND

axiom.^ The proposition is, if you like, a postulate, and, like
every postulate, is to be used only as a working hypothesis (or
for the purpose of the particular argument for which it is made),
and is to be given up if it is found to conflict with empirically
ascertained fact.

Twenty years ago the scientific world was oppressed by the
sense of the finality of its own dicta. The indestructibility of
matter, the conservation of energy and of momentum, the eternal
sameness of the chemical atoms, the inevitable extinction of all
life on the earth by loss of heat from the solar system, the
never-ending alternation of evolution and dissolution of material
systems, all these had become axioms ’’ whose rejection was
said to be impossible for any sane mind. It was felt that little
remained for science to do save the working out of equations to
further decimal places. But now all that is changed, ^ the scientific
atmosphere is full of the hope of new insight, the seeming
boundaries of physical knowledge have proved to be spectral
creations of the scientific imagination ; there is a delightful
uncertainty about even so fundamental a distinction as that
between matter and energy ; electricity, which was a wave-
movement of that collection of impossible attributes, the ether, is
now said to consist of corpuscles having mass ; and light itself is
in a fair way to become once more a rain of particles. One even
hears whispered doubts about the law of the conservation of energy.

From all this the biologist should learn that he need not
confine his speculations strictly within the terms prescribed by
the physical science of the moment ; that he should rather work
out whatever explanatory principles he needs, in a certain relative
independence of current physical doctrines.

The arguments against Animism from inconceivability of
psycho-physical interaction, and from the law of conservation of
energy, have one fundamental weakness in common. Both assume
that the notion of physical things or of physical energy is
perfectly clearly defined. It is necessary therefore to insist on
the fact that no one has ever proposed a definition of physical
energy that shall mark it off from psychical energy ; although
physicists and philosophers alike constantly make use of the

^ See the assertion of Romanes, quoted on p. 93. Paulsen also declares it
to be an axiom (“Einleitung,’* S. 95).

See the Presidential Address of Sir J. J. Thomson to the British Association,

2909.

GENERAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 217

phrase “ physical energy ” as though the term stood for a perfectly
clearly defined concept.

Now there seems to be only one way of defining physical
things and physical energy in a perfectly unambiguous manner
and in such a way as to give any force to the two arguments we
are examining, and that is the way of kinetic mechanism,
according to which scheme all physical things are mass-particles,
and all physical energy is their momentum. Yet, no matter how
useful this scheme may have proved, and may continue to prove,
it is idle in view of the present state of physical science to assert
that it represents the actual nature of all physical things or pro-
cesses, or that it is the only useful and therefore the only legitimate
way of conceiving them.

If it be suggested that by the physical world is meant the
world of things and processes that are capable of being perceived
by us through the mediation of the senses, it must be pointed
out that the physical world, as described by science, is quite other
than this world of phenomena or appearances ; nor can it be
described (as Kant demanded that it should be) in terms of
things and processes that are in principle capable of being objects
of sense-perception. Both physical and psychological science
show that such a demand cannot be complied with. If we are
to escape from Solipsism we have to believe that our sense-
perceptions are in part caused by some system of external influences
acting upon us ; and the various conceptions of the world about
us built up by the physical and biological sciences are products
of the attempt to conceive this system of external influences in
the manner which will most effectively increase our power of
understanding, foreseeing, and controlling the order of our sense-
perceptions. Many of the most useful, and perhaps, in certain
stages of the development of science, quite indispensable, concep-
tions employed by it are conceptions of things or processes quite
incapable in principle of becoming objects of sense-perception ;
thus the two most essential and fundamental conceptions of
present-day physical science, namely, those of energy (especially
potential energy) and of the ether, are conceptions of things which
are in principle incapable of being intuited, of being objects of
sense-perception or of pictorial imagination.^ Bather, like all

^ It is instructive in this connexion to reflect upon the way we regard heat
and cold. As sense-experiences heat and cold differ only as any two qualities
of sensation differ ; their conditions, physical, physiological, and psychological.

2I8

BODY AND MIND

conceptions that become current in empirical science, they are
hypotheses that work in some degree, that are useful aids in the
task of bringing some order and intelligibility into the chaos of
individual experience. In this respect the conceptions of energy,
of ether, of entropy, and all the rest of the conceptions which
constitute at present the apparatus of physical science, are on a
par with the conceptions of the soul, of vital force, of psychical
energy, of matter, of disembodied spirits. In so far as any of
these, or any other conceptions, prove themselves valuable as
members of the system of conceptions by which we strive to
render our experience less unintelligible and to increase our means
of controlling its course, they are valid, because useful.

Energy, then, can only be defined as a capacity for exerting
influence or producing change ; and, unless we explicitly or (in
the more usual fashion) tacitly assume that mind can exert no
influence, or, in other words, that psychical energy does not exist,
psychical energy is included under this definition. Here we see
again on a grander scale the argument in a circle as used by
those who raise these objections to Animism. It is tacitly
assumed that mind can exert no influence, and this premise is
implicit in the phrase “ energy ” or physical energy ’’ as it is
used in the formulation of the law of the conservation of energy ;
and only if that is the case, can we deduce from the law the
conclusion (thus introduced as a tacit assumption into the premise
of the argument) that mind cannot affect matter.

And when we are told, as by Paulsen in the passage quoted
on p. 145, that physical scientists will always insist on explaining
all events by the principles of physical causation and that it is
right that they should do so, we must reply — What do you mean
by the physical,” by “ physical energy,” by “ physical causation ?
If you are prepared to stand by the description of the physical
world given by atomic Materialism and to maintain that all
physical things are hard particles and all physical processes the
movements and collisions of those particles, then we understand
you ; but we cannot accept your description,^ we cannot admit

existent, a fluid, a thing, an energy, or a mode of energy ; while cold remains
a mere secondary quality of objects, or a sensation without objective reference,
as when we say I am cold.” This fact may serve to bring home to ns the wide
difl^erence between sense-perceptions and the conceptions of physical science.

^ That Paulsen had constantly in mind this notion of the physical world is
indicated by several passages in the ” Emleitung,’* and the same is true probably
of most of those who insist upon these arguments.

GENERAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 219

your right dogmatically to define the physical world in terms of
the kinetic hypothesis ; and until you can offer some satisfactory
definition your assertions must remain meaningless. Let me
illustrate the impossibility of defining energy in a way that
excludes psychical energy. Let us suppose that Bishop Berkeley’s
account of our sense-perceptions is the true one, and that they are
all due to the direct action of the Divine Spirit upon our spirits ;
then what we call the physical world is merely the sum of these
divine actions, and the distinction between “ the physical ” and
“ the psychical ” disappears. Now no one can prove that Berkeley’s
supposition is false ; we can only show that, for the purpose of
increasing our control over our perceptions, it is less useful than
the scheme devised by physical science.^

^ It seems worth while in connexion with this drscussion to put before the
reader the following considerations. If the theory of Animism and psycho-
physical interaction is true, then in a certain limited sense the double-aspect
doctrine of mind and body is also true. For, if our minds are capable of in-
fluencing those processes or events that appear to us as physical phenomena,
then the effects of such “ action of mind on matter,” if detected by us, will be
detected only by inference (according to the principle of causation) from steps
or changes in the sequence of phenomena or sense-perceptions; and, just as we
infer from certain sense-perceptions a force or influence which, although we
cannot directly perceive it, we conceive by the aid of the names magnetism or
gravity, or chemical attraction, so we shall conceive more definitely by the
aid of some name the force or influence which we infer as the cause of the changes
in the phenomenal sequence produced by mind ; and if we persist in calling
” physical,” all the influences that we find it necessary to conceive in order to
fill our conceptual scheme of the causation of our sense-perceptions, then these
activities of mind will be conceived as physical actions, or, m the loose phrase-
ology current among us, they will appear (though indirectly inferred only) as
physical processes or phenomena. And if mind exerts its influence primarily on
brain-processes (or, pedantically, on those processes which appear to us in sense-
perception as the phenomena of cerebral activity), then certain of the brain-
processes that we conceive will be conceived under two aspects, on the one hand
as the psychical activities of which each of us is directly aware, on the other hand
as parts of the sequence of brain-processes our conceptions of which we build up
by elaborate processes of inference from our sense-perceptions

I may perhaps make my meaning clearer by turning again to Berkeley’s sup-
position, and modifying it in the following way. Let us suppose with Berkeley
that the Divine Spirit and our finite spirits are the only real beings ; but let
us suppose that not only the Divine Spirit acts directly on ours to induce our sense-
perceptions, but that each of our spirits may act either in a similar way and to a
limited extent directly upon other human spirits, or upon the Divine Spirit
to modify in any way the influence that He exerts upon us. Then in either case,
just as we build up our conception of the physical world and infer the occurrence
of various physical processes from the sequence of the acts of the Divine Spirit,
so these acts of human spirits, playing their minor parts in determining the
sequence of our sense-perceptions, would be conceived by us as members of the

220

BODY AND MIND

Since then, it is impossible to separate by definition, physical
energy from psychical energy, and since organisms are, so far as we
can see by the light of analogy, the only beings in which psychical
influences directly operate, we must, if we wish to give any definite
meaning to the word “ physical'' make it synonymous with
“ inorganic " ; physical processes are then such as go on in the
inorganic realm. xA.nd we may accept the law of the conservation
of energy as a well-based generalization for the inorganic realm.
But we have no warrant for extending it to the realm of organisms,
of life. Men we know to be psycho-physical systems or
organisms, and everything points to the view that certain of the
processes of these organisms are psycho-physical processes, or
processes in which psychical influences participate ; and we have
good warrant for believing that all animals are also psycho-
physical organisms. Again all living organisms show certain
peculiarities of behaviour that are not exhibited by any inorganic
aggregations of matter. The peculiarities of behaviour of living
organisms, especially the power of resisting the tendency to
degradation of energy which seems to prevail throughout the
inorganic realm, are correlated with, that is to say they constantly
go together with, the presence of psycho-physical processes in
them ; and this fact of correlation implies causal relation between
the two things.

No matter, then, how well based is the law of conservation of
energy for the inorganic realm, it is quite illegitimate to extend
it to the organic ; indeed, as we have seen, it is only by means of
an argument in a circle that this extension can be given some
appearance of plausibility. The few experiments which go to
show that the energy given out by an organism is equal in amount
to the energy taken in,^ are far too few and too rough to rule out
the possibility that psychical effort may involve increment of energy
to the organism ; for increments far too small to be detected might
effect very important changes in the course of the organic processes.

The issue of this too long discussion is, then, that neither the
difficulty we find in conceiving or imagining the mode of action
of psychical energy, nor the law of the conservation of energy,
rules out the possibility of psycho-physical interaction. So far as

sequence of physical processes; and, in so far as we were aware of them as
psychical activities, we should conceive them under this aspect also and hence
-as both psychical and physical.

1 See p. 93.

GENERAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 221

they are concerned, it remains open to us to believe either that
mind may exert guidance upon the brain-processes, without doing
work and therefore without altering the quantity of energy ; or
that psychical activity may involve an influx of energy to the
organism, which, even though small in amount, may exert a
decisive influence. If on other grounds the reality of psychical
energy or power of influence, as something of a different order
from the energies of the inorganic realm, appears probable, we
shall probably prefer the latter possibility ; and we may believe that
the essential peculiarity of living organisms is that they serve as
channels of communication or of transmission of energy or influence,
from the psychical to the physical sphere ; ^ and we may believe
also that the evolution of organisms has been essentially a process
by which they have become better adapted to play this unique role.

The contentions of this chapter may be further enforced by
the following considerations : — If it is impossible for science to
render an intelligible account of the processes of the phenomenal
world by the aid of the conception of mechanical causation alone
(and that this is true of the organic realm is at least probable
and may be maintained now with much greater force than when
Kant recognized this probability), is science to be condemned, by
the dictum of a highly disputable epistemology or by the natural
prejudice of our minds in favour of mechanical and kinetic
conceptions, to keep running its head for ever against a stone
wall, obstinately refusing to attempt other lines of progress?
If science finds that it is working with conceptions inadequate
to its task, may it not cast about and attempt to develop others
that may prove more fruitful ? ^

Among arguments of this group adverse to Animism there
still remains to be considered that urged by Prof. Strong and
stated on p. 1 2 3. It runs — the conception of the soul is reached by

^ That this is true of the human organism has of course been widely believed
for long ages. Prof. James has recently presented very persuasively some of
the empirical evidence which gives colour to this belief Energies of Men,*'
Philosophical Review ^ 1907).

* The reader who remains unshaken in his prejudice in favour of mechanical
explanations may be urged to make himself familiar with the brilliant and
seductive works of Prof. H. Bergson, especially involution Cr^atrice.” Prof.
Bergson maintains that the human intellect, having been developed for the
guidance of our movements among material objects, is suited only for under-
standing clearly spatial relations and changes, but that we possess other
faculties which we must bring into play if we wish to gam any understanding
of life.

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BODY AND MIND

inference only, we have and can have no direct knowledge of it,
whereas of consciousness we have the most immediate knowledge ;
therefore in assigning the soul as the ground of our consciousness
we are seeking to explain the known hy the aid of the less
known. This argument is only mentioned here lest it should
seem that I have passed it over. It has been sufficiently
answered in the course of my remarks upon the impossibility of
banishing from our account of the world all notion of enduring
things or beings. We saw there how Prof. Strong finds himself
compelled to postulate psychical dispositions as imperfect
substitutes for the soul or the body ; and how his doctrine
leaves on his hands the problem — “ What holds consciousness
together ? This may serve as an admirable illustration of the
general truth that we cannot explain or render intelligible the
whole, or any part, of our experience without postulating the
existence and agency of things that we have no means of
knowing in any direct or immediate fashion.

This argument is but an extreme expression of a curious
tendency that repeatedly crops out in the writings of many
philosophers ; the tendency, namely, to assume that conceptual
knowledge is untrustworthy and in some sense unreal, while in
sense-perception (or in the perceptions of the mythical inner
sense) we attain to knowledge of a much more real or more
trustworthy, because more direct, order. This assumption appears
in many of the discussions directed against the thing-for-itself
and the independent reality of the physical world. It is
thoroughly fallacious, ignoring as it does the fact that all our
perceptions are shot through and through with conceptual
activity, and that, only in proportion as perception is at the same
time conception, is it raised from the level of mere awareness or
feeling to the level of true knowing. If this tendency were
consistently carried out, it would lead to the absurd result that
the ideal knower is the new-born infant, or the lowly animal
whose mental life hardly rises above the level of mere sentiency
and appetite.

We may conclude, then, that neither the argument from
‘'the inconceivability of psycho-physical interaction,’' nor that
from the law of conservation of physical energy, nor any
epistemological reasoning, can rule Animism out of court ^ ; that

^ This IS admitted by the more enlightened opponents of Animism, e.g.
by Paulsen, who wrote, Hieruber hann, als fiber eine Frage, die Tatsachen

GENERAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 223

the issue between Animism and Parallelism is one that must be
settled by the methods of empirical science, i.e., by the appeal to
observation and experiment and the weighing of the claims of
rival hypotheses ; and that it is for us to prefer the hypothesis
which gives most promise of leading us nearer to an understanding
of ourselves and of our environment and to a more effective control
over both.

betrifft, allein durch Erfahrung entschieden werden. An sich sind beide denkbar.
Ich betone ausdrucklich : ich halte auch die Tbeorie der Wechselwurkung fur
denkbar ” ; “ wir konnen der Wirkliclikeit nicht vorschreiben, was moglich
Oder nicht moglich ist : denkbar is aUes, ausgenommen der Widerspruch **
(“ Einleitung,** S. 94).

CHAPTER XVI

EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM
DRAWN FROM PHYSIOLOGY AND GENERAL BIOLOGY

I N this chapter we have to weigh critically the arguments
against Animism provided by the biological sciences, and
we will consider them in the order in which they are set
forth in Chapter VI I L We saw in that chapter how the age-long
search for the seat of the soul in the body seems to have been
brought to a negative conclusion by modern research ; how the
searchers tracked the soul to the brain, and then through many
generations rummaged every corner of the brain to find some one
spot at which the soul might be supposed to be present, to be
acted on by the sensory nerves, and to react upon the motor
nerves ; how the triumph of the doctrine of localization of
cerebral functions in the last decades of the nineteenth century
finally destroyed the hope of the discovery of such a punctual
seat of the soul. We saw also how in the nineteenth century the
study of those simplest actions called reflex actions showed that
the bodily movement is connected with the sense-stimulus that
evokes it by a chain of physical cause and effect, the transmission
of a physical or chemical change through the reflex nervous arc ;
and how at the same time it was shown that the whole nervous
system is built up on a reflex plan, and that all nervous action is
of the reflex type, involving always the transmission of the
nervous impulse through systems of nerve cells and fibres, in
which can be found no breach of physical continuity between
afferent and efferent nerves, no indication of any gap in the chain
of physical causation that might be supposed to be filled by a
psychical link. We saw how this disappointment of the expecta-
tion of finding a punctual seat of the soul, or some evidence of a
gap in the chain of physical causation connecting sense-impression
and bodily response, contributed to establish the view that all
human actions may be physically explained ; for, so the argument
runs, if there is no seat of the soul within the body there can be no

224

SPECIAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 225

soul, and if there is no link missing from the chain of physical
causation, there can be no psychical link.

Now we must accept unreservedly in their main outlines the
doctrines of localization of cerebral functions and of the reflex plan
of the brain structure, but we must recognize that the reasoning
by which they are made to seem adverse to Animism is
unsound.

The former doctrine will seem to make against interaction only
to those who have accepted the scheme of kinetic mechanism as
an actual and faithful picture of reality, and believe that all
process is the movement of particles and all action the trans-
mission of motion. Lotze has dealt with this point so admirably
that I cannot do better than quote his words. He points out
that “ the root of all these difflculties seems to be a confusion in
our idea of the nature of an acting force and of the relation of
this force to space.” “To be in one place,” he says, “ means
nothing but to exert action and to be affected by action in that
place ” ; there can be no other meaning attached to the phrase
“ being in or at a place.” Again he says, “ any force arises between
two elements out of a relation of their qualitative natures ; a relation
which makes an interaction necessary for them, but only for them and
their like ” ; and he illustrates this by reference to the magnet,
which exerts action upon, or rather is in reciprocal interaction
with, bodies of certain qualities (the magnetic substances, iron,
steel, nickel, and so on) in all parts of space surrounding it, but is
indifferent to the great majority of substances scattered through
the same space — wood, stone, organic substances generally. Just
so, he says, “ wherever there are elements with which the nature
of the soul enables and compels it to interact, there it will be
present and active ; wherever there is no such summons to action,
there it will not be or will appear not to be.”

If, then, other objections to the conception of interaction are
not insuperable, the absence of a punctual seat of the soul in. the
brain may be put aside as no difficulty ; and we may agree with Lotze
when he says — “ the soul stands in that direct interaction which
has no gradation, not with the whole of the world, nor yet with the
whole of the body, but with a limited number of elements ; those
elements, namely, which are assigned in the order of things
as the most direct links of communication in the commerce of the
soul with the rest of the world. On the other hand there is
nothing against the supposition that these elements, on account of

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BODY AND MIND

other objects which they have to serve, are distributed in space,
and that there are a number of separate points in the brain which
form so many seats of the soul. At each of these the soul
exercises one of those diverse activities which ought never to
have been compressed into the formless idea of merely a single
outgoing force ^ that is to say, it is reasonable to suppose that
we shall find in the brain a number of parts of very highly
specialized physico-chemical constitution, the most highly
organized forms of organized matter ; and that, whenever any one
of these parts is thrown into activity, an action is exerted on the
soul, which stimulates it to a response of which the first step is the
production of a sensation of a certain quality, this quality being
dependent upon the constitution of that part of the brain-substance
and on the nature of the physical process which takes place in it.

Now the development of brain-physiology has shown that within
each of the sensory areas of the cortex we seem to have just such
elements of supremely highly organized and specific constitution ;
and our present knowledge enables us even to point with some
plausibility to the varieties of this most highly specialized form
of living matter as occupying places where the afferent neurons
pass over their excitement to the efferent neurons. So at least
I ventured to argue some fourteen years ago, in a paper the
reasoning of which has not been refuted.^

Our modern and constantly increasing knowledge of the
cerebral localization of mental functions is, then, not at all incom-
patible with the conception of psycho-physical interaction ; but
rather shows us a state of things in the brain just such as this
conception, properly understood, seems to demand, such a state of
things as is most easily reconcilable with this view. And in
Chapter XXL I shall try to show that the physiological facts of
this group provide a basis for one of the strongest of the argu-
ments that justify the conception of the soul.

The demonstration of the continuity of all nervous processes
within the nervous system, of the absence of any discoverable gap
in the sequence of material causation which connects sense-impres-

^ This and the preceding quotations are taken from Lotze’s “Metaphysic,”
Bk. III. chap. V. (Eng trans.). I should like to cite many other passages,
but instead will urge the reader to make himself acquainted with the whole
of Book III. of that work.

^ “ Contribution towards an Improvement of Psychological Method ” (“Mind,”
N S., vol. vii.), and also “ On the Seat of the Psycho-physical Processes ” (“ Brain,”

Vol. XXIV.).

SPECIAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 227

sion with muscular reaction upon it, will seem to rule out psychical
intervention in the causal series only to those who take an
altogether too simple view of the nature of psycho-physical inter-
action, the view tiamely that the whole causal sequence must,
during some definite period of time, pass over into the psychical
sphere, leaving a positive temporal gap or even a spatial and
temporal gap in the sequence of nervous processes. Such a con-
ception of psycho-physical interaction may be represented diagra-
matically by Fig. 1 1, in which, as in the diagrams of Chapter XL,

• • O • •

Fig. II.

the black circles stand for brain-processes, the clear circle for
psychical process, and the lines between for the causal links.

No causation is adequately represented by a sequence of this
sort — no effect is determined by a single cause, but always by a
conjunction of causes. It is only by a convenient convention
that we commonly single out what seems to us the most
prominent of the causes, and call it the cause of the event and all
the others merely necessary conditions. The false conception of
causation which is engendered by this habit, is apt to be confirmed
by our common use of the phrase, “a chain of cause and effect” ;
for we habitually think of a chain as a series of single links, each
of which is the sole connexion between its predecessor and its
successor in the series. If we wish to use an illustrative analogy
of this sort, we ought to speak of a net-work of cause and effect,
rather than of a chain. As soon as we do that, this particular
objection to psycho-physical interaction falls to the ground. The
observable continuity of the physical sequence seems to rule out
psychical links so long only as we think of the causal sequence
as a chain of single links ; but, clearly, it docs not do so if we
substitute a length, say, of chain-mail for the single strip of chain,
in our pictorial imagining of the causal sequence ; then the fact
that, in a certain transverse section (representing any one moment
of time) of such a woven chain, some links are of steel will not
seem to prove that other links may not be of a different
constitution.

If we would represent diagrammatically the causal relations
of the brain-processes implied by the doctrine of psycho-physical
interaction, the simplest figure that will serve for the purpose

228

BODY AND MIND

must have some such form as Fig. 12. Such a figure is of
course hopelessly inadequate, yet it may serve to warn us against
the common error we are considering.

We may agree, then, with the opponents of Animism, when
they tell us, as they so frequently do, that, if the brain and all its
parts could be so magnified that the physiologists could wander
through all its most delicate fibrils and study with the naked eye
the movements of each molecule or atom, they would nowhere
find any train of physical causation abruptly coming to an end
without any further physical effects, and nowhere any train of
physical events initiated de novo without physical antecedents.
But we may nevertheless believe that, even if all the physical and
chemical processes of the brain were perceptible by the physi-
ologists as movements of particles, there might occur certain
deflexions of the moving particles, or certain accelerations or
restraints, which would remain inexplicable and unpredictable by
mechanical principles.

We saw that the modern doctrine of the reflex type of all
nervous functions has made for the rejection of Animism in
another way also ; namely, in conjunction with the doctrine of
unconscious cerebration and with the physiological interpretation
in terms of nervous habit of the account of mental process given
by the association-psychology,’' it has seemed to justify the
claim that we can now understand in broad outlines the way in
which all human action is mechanically determined, and that we
have good evidence in support of the belief that the mechanism
of the nervous system is adequate to the demands made of it by
this view.

As regards one part of this evidence, that, namely, to which
Huxley attached so much importance and which consists in the
fact that men sometimes perform very complex trains of seemingly

SPECIAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 229

purposive action of which they can afterwards remember nothing,
of all this class of evidence it may be said at once that the
argument based on it is now known to be fallacious ; it involved
the assumption that all acts of which no memory can be evoked
are performed unconsciously or, as it is said, automatically.
Further study of such cases has shown that in many of them the
loss of memory is temporary only, or that memory of the actions
can be evoked by special procedures. And this shows that
absence of memory of any action or train of action is not good
evidence that the action was unconsciously performed, and forbids
us to infer from such lack of memory that complex purposive
action can be carried out unconsciously. This part of the evi-
dence against Animism therefore falls to the ground.

This however does not dispose of the whole basis of the claim
that a sufficiently detailed knowledge of the structure and function
of the nervous system would provide complete explanations of
human behaviour. But at this stage of our inquiry it must
suffice to point out that whatever plausibility this claim may have
is derived in the main from a spurious or undue simplification of
the account of the nature of mental process, and from the ignoring
of enormous gaps in our knowledge of, and even in our hypo-
thetical schemes of, the physiological mechanisms which it is sought
to make responsible for all the course of mental process and of
bodily action ; that “ the association-psychology,” which alone
gives plausibility to this claim, is now universally admitted to have
left out of account the most essential and characteristic aspect of
mental process, namely its purposive selectivity ; and that the
assimilation of all memory to mechanical association presents
difficulties which up to the present time appear to be insuperable.^

We shall have to consider the evidence of this class more fully
when, in a later chapter, we shall approach it from the opposite
point of view and inquire — Does not our knowledge of the bodily
processes now suffice to prove that human conduct cannot be
accounted for on mechanical principles ?

But we must consider for a moment at this point all that class
of physiological evidence which has made strongly in favour of
Epiphenomenalism among the physiologists, by proving the de-
pendence of our mental life upon the integrity of the structure and
chemical constitution of the brain.

Now, it is quite illogical to hold that these facts rule out inter-
^ See cliap. xxiv.

BODY AND MIND

230

action, or prove that the action between soul and body is a one-
sided action of body on soul without reciprocal action of soul on
body. For it is quite possible to match the array of facts which seem
to prove the action of the body on the soul, with an equally im-
posing array of facts which seem to prove the influence of psychical
processes, of feeling, emotion, desire, and volition, upon the body.
And, if we take these two classes of facts at their face value,
without attempting to explain them away by such subtleties as
the identity-hypothesis, they indicate very strongly reciprocal
action and reciprocal dependence of our bodily and our psychical
processes.

The only form of interaction theory which may perhaps be
held to be ruled out by the facts of this group, is that which
assumes that the psychical processes are self contained and inde-
pendent of all bodily correlates and conditions, excepting only
the rise of sensation and the initiation of bodily movement.
Against such a doctrine of interaction the facts of the class we
are considering do tell very strongly. But they are on the other
hand just such as are demanded by a doctrine of intimate inter-
action of soul and body all along the line of mental process ;
for, if our mental life is the interplay of these two factors, soul
and brain, their co-operation is presumably essential to it, and the
fact that the incapacity of the one (the brain) to perform its part
deranges or puts a stop to the interplay, does not prove that the
other (the soul) is not essential, that it plays no effective part, or
that it does not exist

Under the heading, the composite nature of the mind, we
noticed in Chapter VIII. how certain facts of animal morphology
and physiology on the one hand and certain pathological mental
conditions on the other hand seem to force upon us the view that
our individual consciousness is neither strictly unitary nor indi-
visible, and that such unity as it has is conditioned by the func-
tional continuity of the parts of the nervous system. I propose
to devote a later chapter to the discussion of the problem of the
unity of consciousness, and here will only say that, although the
facts of these two orders raise, as it seems to me, the greatest of
all the difficulties in the way of Animism, they present difficulties
no less great whatever view be taken of the relation between mind
and body.

We have seen that the postulate of the continuity of evolu-
tion of the organic from the inorganic realm is made the basis of

SPECIAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM

231

a general argument against Animism (p. 120) as well as of a
special argument in favour of the identity-hypothesis (p. 142).
We may deal with both arguments at this point ; there are more
ways than one in which both may be undermined. One way is
totally to reject the postulate ; but, if we do that, we must be ready
with some alternative suggestion as to the origin of life on the earth.
One such suggestion has been made by a great physicist, the late
Lord Kelvin. He pointed to the fact that the earth as a material
system has not been a closed system, but rather has been con-
stantly receiving new additions of matter from outside in the
form of meteorites ; and he suggested that living matter was
not evolved from inorganic matter upon the earth, but was
perhaps brought to it in some lowly form upon a meteorite
coming from some region in which life already existed, and that
this organic matter was the parent of all the forms of life later
evolved upon the earth.

Now this is not a very satisfactory solution of the difficulty.
For, first, there is the great improbability of organic matter being
conveyed upon a meteorite from some remote region, some
world which had been shattered in some great disaster ; it is
difficult to suppose that any organism could have survived this
disaster as well as the fiery ordeal of the descent upon the earth.
Secondly, apart from this objection, the suggestion does but carry
the difficulty one step further back and transfer it to some other
material sphere, where the same problem confronts us.

The former objection applies less forcibly perhaps to the more
recent suggestion of a similar kind (which comes, I believe, from
another distinguished physicist. Prof S. Arrhenius), namely that
life was brought to the earth in the form of minute germs travelling
through space under the driving power of ‘‘ light-pressure.” But
the second objection applies equally to this form of the
suggestion.

Let us then accept the evolution of organic forms from
inorganic matter on this earth as the most probable view. There
remain two possibilities of reconciliation with interactionism :

(i) We may suppose that, as Lloyd Morgan and other
parallelists have argued, the inorganic matter from which
organic matter was evolved had some germ or rudiment of
capacity for psychical life ; this supposition tells against psycho-
physical interaction only if we accept another supposition, namely
that inorganic matter does absolutely obey purely mechanical

232

BODY AND MIND

laws. But now this cannot be admitted as completely proved.
In the experiments on which the physicists rely as the inductive
empirical foundation of their strict mechanical laws and their sweep-
ing generalizations and predictions of future events, they deal in all
cases according to their own teaching with immense numbers of
material units, atoms, or molecules, or vortex rings, or what not.
Now, if these units have any rudiment of psychical life, as the
argument from continuity of evolution is held to demand, then
they may be truly individuals, psychic beings of like nature with
ourselves ; their behaviour may be to some extent determined by
purpose and psychical striving, and therefore not strictly
mechanical ; yet the experiments of the physicist would fail to
detect the fact, just because their experiments deal always with
immense numbers of units and their empirical laws are statements
of statistical averages. For it is found that even the actions of
human beings, if dealt with in very large numbers, seem to be
capable of being stated in wide generalizations and of being
predicted on the basis of such empirical statistical generalizations,
e.g., it can be predicted with some confidence that a given propor-
tion of the total population of a country will marry in each of the
four seasons of the year, or will commit suicide or murder, and so
on ; the purposive individuality of the units is masked by this
statistical mode of treatment

Now some statisticians have argued that the possibility of
stating such general laws of human behaviour proves it to be
subject to the same rigid mechanical determination as is generally
assumed to rule over the processes of inorganic matter. But
surely a more valid inference is that, if statistical treatment can
make even such undeniably purposive and teleological and in-
dividual events as marriages and suicides appear to be purely
mechanically determined, it must inevitably have the same effect
when applied to events in which the numbers of units dealt with
are much greater, and in which the psychical operations are, by
the hypothesis, of a relatively simple kind ! That is to say, if we
accept the argument from continuity of evolution to the animation
of inorganic matter (as the parallelists do), then it is quite open to
us to believe that psycho-physical interaction prevails throughout
the scale, and that the process of organic evolution has been
essentially the progressive organization of matter in such a way
as will allow always greater and greater influence to the teleo-
logical and psychical laws, relatively to the mechanical. Or, to put

SPECIAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST ANIMISM 233

the supposition in a rather different way, we may suppose that all
things are monads or system of monads and that organic evolu-
tion has consisted in the parallel evolution of those systems of
simple monads which appear to us as the bodies of animals and of
those higher monads which, by reason of their higher powers, play
a dominant role in the life of organisms, controlling the systems
of subordinate simple monads.

But there remains yet another possibility. We may accept the
postulate in the sense that we regard complex molecules of non-
living matter as having begun gradually to exhibit the characteristic
signs of life and mind ; and yet we may maintain that this was
due to the co-operation of a new factor. The assumption of
the continuity of evolution of living things from inorganic matter,
in the sense which rules out the incoming of any new factor, is
a very great assumption which nothing compels us to accept ; it
has in fact but the slender basis of the demand for symmetry and
simplicity made by our minds. The gap between the organic
and the inorganic in nature is an immense one ; the two kinds of
material phenomena present fundamental differences, and there is
every appearance of the incoming of a new factor with the first
living things, a teleological factor which is capable of working
against or controlling the physical law of the degradation of
energy, a law which seems to rule throughout the inorganic
world.

Suppose, then, that we had a full history of the evolution of
organic beings from inorganic matter by slow steps of gradually
increasing complexity of molecular organization ; suppose that
the progress of synthetic chemistry enabled us to reproduce the
steps of this evolution in the chemical laboratory and to bring
about the appearance of living organisms by way of abiogenesis ;
even that would not prove that the psychical did not begin to
intervene in the material processes at the point at which the
increasing complexity of molecular organization rendered possible
or necessary the co-operation of this new factor ; a factor latent
or inoperative up to that point because the conditions which permit
of its co-operation were lacking. For if, as all facts indicate, certain
physico-chemical conditions are necessary conditions of the co-
operation of the psychical factor, then that factor will have begun
to co-operate only when those necessary conditions were realized.

We saw in Chapter IX. that the triumph of the Darwinian
principles is held to make against Animism, not only by compelling

234

BODY AND MIND

us to accept the principle of continuity of evolution, but also
because it provides a mechanical explanation of so much in the
organic world that formerly was confidently regarded as the
product of teleological determination. It must be noted, however,
that only the Neo-Darwinian or Weismann school maintains
the all-sufficiency of the principle of natural selection to explain
biological evolution, and that many eminent biologists find it im-
possible to accept this view. Further, we must note that, even
if the Neo-Darwinian doctrine be accepted, its one great
explanatory principle, natural selection, presupposes the struggle
for life among organisms. And this struggle, though in its lower
stages it may express merely blind craving and impulse without
clear foresight of any end, is essentially teleological ; and such
persistent striving, which is manifested not only by all animals,
but also in less degree by plants, is the most characteristic mark
of organic or living beings.

It is not true, then, that Darwinism has abolished the need for
teleological explanation in biology ; at most it has suggested
the possibility and the hope of complete mechanical explanation.
In a later chapter I shall have occasion to show more fully that
the hope is illusory.

CHAPTER XVII

THE INADEQUACY OF MECHANICAL CONCEPTIONS IN
PHYSIOLOGY

W E have seen in an earlier chapter how, about the middle
of the nineteenth century, the rapid progress of physical
and chemical science gave rise to a new wave of
Materialism ; and how physiologists, with few exceptions, began
to regard Vitalism as finally overcome and to look confidently
forward to the explanation of all the processes of living organisms
in terms of physics and chemistry ; growth was to be explained
as a mere assimilation of molecules after the manner of the growth
of crystals ; secretion as a mere filtration or osmosis or as a con-
junction of these two processes ; all regulation of movement and
of other processes by the nervous system as mere reflex action.

But now, after another half-century of active physiological
research to which many hundreds of able men have devoted their
lives, the achievement of the program so confidently laid down
seems to have been brought no nearer. It has rather to be
admitted that greater knowledge has revealed new difficulties on
every hand ; that no part of the program has been achieved ;
that no single organic function has been found to be wholly
explicable on physical and chemical principles ; that in every
case there is manifested some power of selection, of regulation, of
restitution, or of synthesis, which continues completely to elude
all attempts at mechanical explanation. Even so simple a process
as the secretion of fluid through a very thin membrane shows
itself to be other than, and more than, a process of filtration or
osmosis ; and of even that most characteristic of all the animal
functions, the contraction of muscle fibres, no mechanical explana-
tion has proved acceptable to any considerable number of
physiologists.^ In the address to which I have referred

^ To the best of my judgment, of all the many h3^otheses put forward to
explain muscular contraction, the only one that offers a complete and strictly
mechanical explanation of the process is the one suggested by myself in my
papers in the ** Journal of Anatomy and Physiology,*’ 1897 sind 1898- Neither the
hypothesis itself, nor the attempt on which it is based, namely, the attempt to make
use only of strictly mechanical conceptions, have met with any general approval.

2B&

BODY AND MIND

236

above, ^ Dr Haldane said ; “ If in some ways the advance of Phy-
siology seems to have taken us nearer to a physico-chemical ex-
planation of life, in other ways it seems to have taken us further away.
On the one hand we have accumulating knowledge as to the phy-
sical and chemical sources and the ultimate destiny of the material
and energy passing through the body : on the other hand an
equally rapidly accumulating knowledge of an apparent teleological
ordering of this material and energy ; and for the teleological
ordering we are at a loss for physico-chemical explanations.
There was a time, about fifty years ago, when the rising generation
of physiologists in their enthusiasm for the first kind of knowledge
closed their eyes to the second. That time is past, and we must
once more face the old problem of life/’ ^

He states the case against the view that metabolic processes
are nothing but physico-chemical processes in the following way.
If the mechanical assumption is true, the special complex
functions of each cell imply correspondingly specific and complex
structural mechanism within it. “ To take an example, a secreting
cell in the kidney may be assumed to have a structure which
responds to the stimulus of a certain percentage of urea or sodium
chloride in the blood, and reacts in such a manner that energy
derived from oxidation is so directed as to perform the work of
taking up urea or sodium chloride from the blood and transferring
it against varying osmotic pressures from one end of the cell to
the ether. This mechanism must also be assumed to have the
property of maintaining itself in working order, and probably
also of reproducing itself under appropriate stimuli, besides also
performing various other functions. Its physico-chemical structure
must thus be very definite and complex — to an extent which the
older physico-chemical theories took no account of. If we look
to the cells in other parts of the body we are met with the same
necessity for assuming complexities of structure which seem to
grow in extent with every advance in physiological knowledge,
every discovery of new substances present within or around the
cells, every discovery of new physiological reactions.”

The assumption that all the cells of the active tissues of the

^ P. 190.

® To the same effect Prof E. B. Wilson — -‘^The investigation of cell activity
has on the whole rather widened than narrowed* the great gulf which separates
the lowest forms of life from the phenomena of the inorganic world ” (“ The Cell,”
1900).

INADEQUACY OF MECHANISM IN PHYSIOLOGY 237

body have such extremely complex definite and specific physico-
chemical structure is sufficiently difficult. But this is only the
beginning of the difficulty. The difficulty is increased a thousand-
fold when we try to understand in accordance with the assumption
the way in which these cells, each having its perfectly specific and
highly complex structure, are produced and the way in which
they are arranged to form tissues and organs, reproducing with
extreme faithfulness the plan of the structure of the species.
“ The adult organism develops from a single cell, the fertilized
ovum. It is certain that this cell does not contain in a preformed
condition the structure of an adult organism. The conditions of
environment in which any particular ovum develops itself are
doubtless indefinitely complex from the physico-chemical stand-
point, as indeed is the environment of any particular portion of
matter existing anywhere. But these conditions also vary almost
indefinitely in the case of different ova, whereas the adult organism
to which the ovum gives rise reproduces in minute detail the
enormously complex characters of the parent organism. We are
thus driven to the assumption that the ovum contains within
itself a structure which, given certain relatively simple conditions
in the environment, reacts in such a way as to build up step by
step, from materials in the environment, the structure of the adult
organism. To effect this the germ-cell must have a structure
almost infinitely more definite and complex than that of any cell
in the adult organism.’' In this way we are led to see that the
physico-chemical doctrine of life must postulate in the germ-cell a
physico 'Chemical mechanism of a complexity beside which that
of any tissue-cell of the developed organism, wonderfully great as
that must be supposed to be, seems simplicity itself. For the
mechanism of that germ-cell must, if the assumption be true,
somehow contain the potentiality of the specific, complex, and
widely different mechanisms of all the cells of all the many
different tissues of the body ; and at the same time it must
contain the potentiality of the exact but very complex grouping
of these cells within the tissues, and of the ordering of the various
tissues in relation to one another, relations which again are of
extreme complexity, involving in almost all organs not merely
definite juxtapositions of cells and tissues, but the most complex
interpenetrations of tissues of several kinds, e.g. liver-cells, con-
nective tissues, blood-vessels, nerves and ducts, in the case of
such an organ as the liver. It must be remembered also that.

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238

according to the assumption we are examining, the mechanism of
the germ-cell must contain the potentiality of determining not
only the structure and functions of the organs of the vegetative
life, and of the muscles, bones, skin, and hair, in short, of all that
presents itself to our immediate observation in the adult organism ;
but also, most incredible of all, it must contain the potentiality of
of all that secret structure within the nervous system which is
supposed to be the mechanical basis of all the inherited mental
powers ; all the enormously complex and precise structure which
must underlie such functions as spatial perception and the various
modes of instinctive behaviour that are proper to each species.

And the ovum must somehow contain (according to the
assumption), in the form of precise spatial arrangements of
highly complex molecules, the potentialities not only of all the
characters that the individual has in common with all members of
his species, but also of all the inherited peculiarities which dis-
tinguish him from his fellows, such characters as musical or
mathematical genius, or those idiosyncracies or tricks of thought
and manner and feeling, whose innateness is proved by their
cropping out in various members of a family who have not come
into personal contact with one another.^ Nor is this all ; for,
besides the specific and the individual innate characters of the
adult, we have to attribute to the germ-plasm a large number of
potentialities that remain latent “ Besides visible changes which
it (the germ-cell) undergoes, we must believe that it is crowded
with invisible characters proper to both sexes, to both the right
and the left sides of the body, and to a long line of male and
female ancestors separated by hundreds and even thousands of
generations from the present time ; and these characters, like those
written on paper in invisible ink, lie ready to be evolved whenever
the organism is disturbed by certain known or unknown conditions.’'^

close resemblance sometimes observed in twins brought up under
different circumstances is especially important in this connexion. For such
cases see Galton’s Inquiry into Human Faculty.’' Such peculiarities as the
colour of hair or feathers, or the shape of the comb of fowls, may with some
plausibihty be attributed to the presence or absence of an atom of some element
in some atom-group of the germ-plasm, or to the substitution of an atom of one
element for that of another. But what difference of atoms or of atom-groups in
the germ-plasm can be supposed to determine that of two men, perhaps two
brothers, one shall be a musical genius, appreciating and composing d if ficult
orchestral music at a tender age, while the other remains throughout life in-
capable of reproducing or even of recognizing the simplest melody.

2 Darwin’s “ Variation of Animals and Plants,” ii. p. 26,

INADEQUACY OF MECHANISM IN PHYSIOLOGY 239

Further, this viscid speck of matter, the germ-plasm, has to
be supposed not only to be at any moment or period of its
existence a structure of this enormous complexity, precision, and
definiteness, but also to preserve this structure with extreme
faithfulness through thousands and millions of years and in spite
of all the vicissitudes of constantly repeated division and constant
growth by assimilation of new matter.^

But to all the considerations of the foregoing paragraphs the
convinced mechanist replies that argument of this kind, relying
as it does on our ignorance of the details of cellular structure and
on the limitation of our powers of constructive imagination,
carries no conviction and is incapable of disproving his assumption.
And in his eyes it will probably add nothing to the case against his
view, to point out that we can find in inorganic nature no process
remotely analogous to the growth of the complex organism out of
the germ-cell, no case in which a piece of mechanism can effect
the reproduction of itself by growth and division, let alone the
production of a swarm of other mechanisms of various kinds each
complex and definite and differing widely from all the rest

Hence considerable importance attaches to the results
of experimental interferences with the growth of organisms.
Driesch and others have made many experiments which show
that the development of an organism may be interfered with at
various stages in the most gross mechanical manner without pre-
venting the production of the typical form of the species, a perfect
complex organism. A very few examples only of many similar
cases can be noted here. Many germs pass through a stage in
which they consist of a number of cells arranged in the form of a
hollow sphere or other simple symmetrical solid figure. In some
cases an embryo in such a stage, in which differentiation of its
cells has been clearly manifested, may be subjected to such dis-
tortions as being pressed out into a flat disc or cut into two parts,
and will nevertheless rectify the course of its development, thus
grossly disturbed, and will grow up into the typical form. In
many other cases, if a part of an organism is taken away by
mechanical violence, the remaining part regenerates the lost part,
and so restores the complete organism. The case of the newt’s
limbs is perhaps the most widely known, and is sufficiently strik-

^The necessity of attributing to the germ-plasm this astonishing stability
IS forcibly insisted upon by Dr Archdall Reid, “ Laws of Heredity,” London,
1910, p. 94-

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BODY AND MIND

ing and incompatible with the mechanistic assumption ; for, as
Driesch points out, the trans-section of the limb may be made
through any plane, and in every case just so much as is lopped off
grows anew from the cut surface. In other cases so much may
be cut away from the body of an organism that a mere fragment
of highly specialized function remains ; and yet such a fragment
regenerates the whole organism. A particularly striking case is
that of Clavellina^ an ascidian, that is to say, an animal organism
of considerable complexity. You first isolate the branchial
apparatus from the other part of the body (which other part
contains heart, stomach, and most of the intestine), and then you
cut it in two in whatever direction you please. Provided they
survive and do not die, as indeed many of them do, the pieces
obtained by this operation will each lose its organization (becoming
a mere sphere of cells devoid of specialized structure) . . . and
then will each acquire another one, and this new organization is
also that of a complete little Clavellinar ^

In some cases again, organisms of the same species mutilated
in closely similar fashion will go through two, or even three (e.g.
Tubularia^), very different courses of restitution, all of which
have the same result, namely, complete restitution of the normal
form.3

Now the mechanistic view necessarily assumes that the
course of development must be determined in large part by the
spatial relations between the constituent parts of the physico-
chemical mechanism ; for the reciprocal influences of the parts of
the mechanism are essential causes of the progressive develop-
ment, and these influences must vary with every change of the
spatial relations of the parts. But in experiments of the kind
we are considering the spatial relations of the parts of the
machine ” are very much altered by the experimental interfer-
ences ; in some cases being utterly distorted by violent disloca-
tions, in others some of the parts being entirely removed. And

^ “Philosophy and Science of the Organism,” vol. i. p. 130.

* Jbid.j vol. i. p. 160.

® A specially strikmg instance of regeneration is that of the lens of the eye of
Triton. In the normal course of development, the substance of the lens is
formed from the epidermal or ecto-dermal tissue ; but, when the lens has been
removed from the eye of the adult organism, it is regenerated by growth of
tissue from the edge of the iris, a mesodermal tissue. The first description of
this phenomenon was generally received with scepticism by the biologists. But
it has been confirmed by several observers, and seems to have been fully estab-
lished. (See T. H. Morgan’s “ Regeneration,” p. 204.)

INADEQUACY OF MECHANISM IN PHYSIOLOGY 241

yet in spite of this the normal course of development and the
normal structure are re-established.

This argument, which comprises Driesch’s second and third
proofs of Vitalism or, as he prefers to say, of the autonomy of
life processes, is so important that it seems worth while to restate
it in a rather different way.

According to the mechanistic view, the germ-cell must contain
a number of complex constituents, presumably highly complex con-
stituents, the reciprocal interplay between which largely determines
the course of development. So long as the development consists
merely in the repeated division of the germ-cell into daughter-
cells, each of which resembles all the rest and occupies a similar
position in the whole (which is only possible so long as the whole
remains of spherical shape), we may suppose that every constituent
of the germ-cell is represented in each daughter cell by a similar
constituent derived by fission from that of the mother-cell (in the
way that the chromatin filaments of the nucleus may be seen to
undergo symmetrical division). But, as soon as the embryo
becomes a-sym metrical, or its cells exhibit any degree of differ-
entiation, we are compelled to suppose one of two things, or both
of them: (i) either the divisions of the cells are no longer such
as to render all the constituents of each dividing cell to each of its
progeny, so that the cells become unlike one another in that they
contain different constituents ; or (2) while cell-divisions continue
to be such in every case as to give to both daughter-cells all the
constituents of the mother-cell, the cells begin to play different
parts owing to the differences of their positions in the whole and
the consequent differences of the incidence of the environmental
influences or stimuli on the cells ; e.g. if, while the cells remain of
entirely similar constitution, they hang together forming a solid
sphere, those forming the outer layer of the sphere will be sub-
jected to environmental influences different from those affecting
the cells that remain in the interior of the sphere. The facts of
restitution of form and function after mutilation seem to compel
the mechanist to adopt this second view in the case of some
organisms, notably those of which (as in the case of Begonia) any
small fragment or even, it is said, any one cell regenerates the
complete organism. And, since all organisms are capable in some
degree of restitution of parts-, it would seem necessary to suppose
that all cells of all organisms contain all the constituents of the
germ-cell, and that all differentiation of the functions of the cells is

BODY AND MIND

242

produced by differentiation of the environmental setting of the
cells. It is difficult, if not impossible, to suppose that such
differentiation of the environments of the cells can suffice to
determine all the differentiations of structure and function of the
parts of a complex organism. But it is clear that, in so far as
development depends on this differentiation and specialization of
environmental setting of the cells, it must be seriously disturbed and
diverted irrecoverably from its normal course by any gross mechani-
cal distortion of the spatial relations of the cells within the whole
mass, or by any change of shape forcibly impressed upon the whole
from without. But experiment shows that this is not the case ;
therefore this form of the mechanistic view of development is false.

The alternative possibility is equally incompatible with the
results of experimental interferences with development. Accord-
ing to this view the essential constituents of the germ cells are
apportioned differently to the daughter cells in the processes of
division, one cell receiving one group of constituents, another a
group different in less or greater degree. In this case, then, the
differentiations of environment of the cells are supplemented by the
differentiations of constitution of the cells ; but the preservation of
the normal spatial relations of the cells must be of even more vital
importance than on the previous supposition ; for the cells are of
varied composition, and the course of development of each cell and
tissue must depend largely upon the reciprocal influences exerted
between itself and its neighbours ; and these influences must be
largely a function of the spatial relations between the cells of
different constitution ; hence the slightest dislocation of the
relative positions of the cells within the whole must be fatal to
the development of the normal form ; and still more must it be
impossible for a mere fragment of the whole adult organism to
regenerate the form of the whole.^

The building up of the structure of the organism cannot, then,
be determined only by the reciprocal influences of parts of special-
ized constitution playing upon one another according to their
spatial relations ; that is to say that the building up of the
structure cannot be a mechanically determined process.

The embryo seems to be resolved to acquire a certain
form and structure, and to be capable of overcoming very great
obstacles placed in its path. There is here something analogous
to the persistence of the efforts of any creature to achieve its ends
^ As in the case of Clavellina, mentioned above.

INADEQUACY OF MECHANISM IN PHYSIOLOGY 243

or purposes and the satisfaction of its needs under the driving
power of instinctive impulse or craving. In both cases, mechanical
obstacles turn aside the course of events from their normal or direct
path ; but, in whatever direction or in whatever manner the turn-
ing aside is caused, the organism adjusts itself to the changed
conditions, and, in virtue of some obscure directive power, sets
itself once more upon the road to its goal ; which under the altered
conditions it achieves only by means of steps that are different,
sometimes extremely different, from the normal.

This power of persistently turning towards a particular end or
goal, manifested in these two ways, namely, in growth and bodily
movement, is the most characteristic feature of the life of organisms,
objectively regarded. It seems to involve essentially teleological
determination ; that is to say it seems to be essentially of the same
nature as the striving towards a goal or end that runs through all
our inner experience, the goal being present to consciousness with
extremely different degrees of clearness and fulness. It seems to
be quite impossible to explain such apparently teleological be-
haviour of organisms in terms of mechanism. Nothing analogous
to it can be found in the inorganic realm. Perhaps it may be
suggested that the behaviour of a gyroscope is analogous ; it
resists our attempts to turn it out of its plane of motion. But
really there is no analogy here ; it is merely a special case of the
tendency of any mass to persist in its line of motion ; when
sufficient force is used and the plane of the gyroscope deflected,
it persists just as blindly in the new as in the original plane of
motion, showing no tendency to return to the latter ; whereas, the
organism, when turned aside from its natural course of growth or
of movement, will not rest satisfied with the new conditions, but
tries one thing after another until it regains the path towards its
goal, or restores its original condition.

The development and restitution of the forms of organisms
seem, then, to be utterly refractory to explanation by mechanical
or physico-chemical principles ; and that, from the point of view of
the present argument, is the essential point. The processes seem
to be essentially teleological, that is to say, they seem analogous
to the behaviour of organisms, which from analogy with our own
experience of purposive striving we believe to be prompted by
psychical impulse and, in the more highly developed organisms at
least, governed and guided by some prevision of the end to be
achieved. And these indications cannot be set aside, though we

244

BODY AND MIND

have to confess that we cannot form any conception of the way
in which this teleological guidance of morphogenesis' is effected.

This seems the proper place to draw attention to a fact fre-
quently overlooked by the mechanistic biologists. Putting aside
all consideration of development, the perfected adult organism is
said to be a highly complex machine. The fact of the existence
of machines, the fact that aggregates of inorganic matter may be
so arranged as to effect, without further human interference, purely
mechanical transformations of the energy supplied to them, so as to
produce highly complex products such as woven cloth, melodies,
printed pages ; this fact is held to show the legitimacy of the sup-
position that the bodies of living organisms also may produce
all their seemingly designed effects according to strictly mechanical
principles. But this argument overlooks a fact of fundamental
importance, the fact namely that every machine, though it works
according to strictly mechanical principles, is essentially a teleo-
logical structure ; that is to say its genesis is due to the purpose
and design of which it is the instrument only ; every step of its
construction, every detail of its structure, is determined by human
purpose and intelligence. The man-made machine is then an em-
bodiment of purpose and intelligence, and, if we do not beg the
question in dispute by calling organisms machines, we cannot point
to any machine, however simple, which does not embody human
purpose and intelligence ; inorganic nature produces no machines,
not even of the very simplest kind.

To liken organisms to machines is, then, not to say that they
and their processes can be in principle explained in terms of
mechanism ; it is rather to assert their teleological nature. The
question remains — Are they, like machines, inert embodiments of
purpose, or are they actuated by purpose ? ^

The teleological nature of organisms and their processes is
then one fundamental characteristic which compels us to regard
them as not wholly subject to the purely mechanical or physico-
chemical laws of inorganic nature ; and to say that they are
machines is but one way of asserting this distinction.

Organisms present a second great peculiarity that marks
them off from the inorganic world. In the inorganic realm all

^ Driescli distinguishes these two modes of manifestation of teleological
control as statical and dynamical teleology respectively, and rightly insists
that the latter (which alone imphes true vitalism) is implied by the facts of the
kind we have considered above (“ Vitalismus als Geschicte u. Lehre,” Leipzig,
1905).

INADEQUACY OF MECHANISM IN PHYSIOLOGY 245

transformations of energy involve dissipation of energy, degrada-
tion of energy of higher potential into forms of lower potential ; so
that, if the physical energy of the universe is a finite quantity, it
is brought by all physical changes nearer to a final equilibrium
in which the absence of differences of potential shall render im-
possible further change or work, further transformation of energy ;
or, in more technical language, in the inorganic world energy tends
to become unavailable, entropy tends towards a maximum.

But the processes of organisms seem to be exceptions to
this law ; organisms seem to be capable of overcoming the
tendency of energy to be degraded ; the metabolic processes are
in large part synthetic, and they result in the raising of energy to
higher levels of potential in the form of substances peculiarly
rich in energy : and in the operations of the nervous system we
seem to have positive indications of a similar power of raising
energy to higher levels. This power seems to be one of the
essential marks that distinguish the living from the non-living,
the organic from the inorganic. It is true that chemists
have after long research learnt to effect some very sim.ple
examples of such synthesis, starting with non-living and in fact
inorganic matter ; but that fact does not diminish the significance
of this peculiarity of organisms. The case is parallel to that of
the machines ; here again the peculiarities of organic processes
are reproduced in the inorganic sphere, but only through the
direction of inorganic processes by human purpose and intelligence.
A simile may serve to illustrate both cases. The life processes
of an organism may be likened to a river ; in both cases a
stream of energy undergoes successive transformations and is fed
constantly by minor streams. In the case of the river, flowing
always to lower levels till it reaches the sea and making heat by
friction as it goes, every part or detail of the whole stream of
energy-transformations involves degradation of energy ; nowhere
is the water raised to a higher level or the energy rendered more
capable of doing work. But human purpose and intelligence
may place in the course of the river an arrangement of matter,
a machine, such that part of the energy of the whole stream is
raised to a higher level of potential (as in certain pumps, or in
the case of every watermill). So, in the course of the stream of
energy-transformations that make up the physical life of any
organism, part of the energy is raised to higher levels of potential
in defiance of the law of degradation or entropy.

CHAPTER XVIII

inadequacy of mechanical principles to explain

ORGANIC EVOLUTION

W E have seen how the rapid acceptance of Darwin's
doctrine of the evolution of species through the opera-
tion of natural selection seemed to give Animism its
death-blow ; how it gave greater confidence to those who sought
to show that the organic world is wholly subject to the laws of
mechanism, enabling them to claim not only that organisms are
machines, but also that these machines have been slowly evolved
by mechanically intelligible processes.

But in this sphere also another half century of active research
and controversy has shown that these confident anticipations were
ill-founded. The Neo-Darwinians, under the leadership of Weis-
mann, have attempted to show that all organic evolution can be
accounted for by the principle of the natural selection of favour-
able variations from among a great number of small spontaneous
variations of indefinite or indeterminate character. Darwin and
many other biologists (a minority perhaps at the present time) have
continued to accept the Lamarckian principle of the inheritance of
characters acquired by use during the life of individuals. Now,
such characters are in large part teleologically built up or deter-
mined ; the efforts of the animal (and very possibly of plants
also to satisfy its instinctive needs, and to avoid the painful,
and to secure and maintain the pleasurable, influences of its
environment, result in the formation of habits and in other
modifications of structure and function ; and these modifications,
according to the Lamarckians, are in some degree inherited by
the offspring, or at least, determine in the offspring variations in
the direction of similar modifications.

It is obvious that, if such inheritance takes place, it is a

^ That plants cannot be denied all capacity of effort or teleological striving
may be maintained with great plausibility. See Mr Francis Darwin’s Presi-
dential Address to the British Association, 1908.

MECHANISM AND ORGANIC EVOLUTION

247

cause of determinate variation ; that we must regard these deter-
minate variations as important factors in organic evolution ; and
that in this way mind may operate teleologically as a factor
of evolution to whose importance no limits can be set.^

The Neo- Darwinians deny that any such inheritance takes
place, that any determinate variations are provided in this way for
the operation of natural selection ; and in' denying this they deny
that mind has played any such part in organic evolution.

Now, it must be noted that this denial of the Lamarckian prin-
ciple is effected by way of an argument in a circle. For the principal
ground for the denial of the inheritance of acquired characters is
the fact that such inheritance cannot be made to seem even
remotely compatible with the mechanistic interpretation of life.^
But it was shown in the foregoing chapter that the inheritance
of all the specific characters of an organism is incapable of being
made to seem mechanically explicable. Therefore, in this respect,
the acquired characters are no exception ; and we cannot deny
the transmission of them from parent to offspring on the ground
that we cannot even in the vaguest way suggest the mechanics
of the process. The only remaining ground for the denial is the
fact that, in nearly all cases in which acquired characters seem to
be inherited, a tortuous ingenuity can suggest possible, though
often wildly improbable, ways in which they may have been built
up by selection of indeterminate variations only.

It remains open to us, then, to believe that acquired char-
acters are inherited in some degree, and that in this way mind
has exerted teleological guidance of organic evolution, namely, by

^ Prof. James Ward has sketched in masterly outline the part we may assign
to “ Subjective Selection m organic evolution, if acquired characters are trans-
mitted (‘‘Naturalism and Agnosticism,’* vol. i., Lecture x.).

® In a recent work, “ Die Mneme,” R. Semon has attempted the task which
I have described above as impossible ; but I, for one, cannot see that, in spite
of the introduction of several new words, he has achieved any success.

Prof. Ewald Hering and the late Samuel Butler proposed to regard the
inheritance of acquired characters as a special case of memory. But neither of
them has made clear how he conceived memory to be conditioned. If memory
is conceived as conditioned by the persistence of material collocations (as most
physiologists conceive it), to describe heredity as a special manifestation of
memory does nothing to dimmish the chief difficulty of accepting the inheritance
of acquired characters. But if good reasons can be shown for regarding memory
as conditioned by some immaterial mode of persistence and for holding heredity
to be a function of the same immaterial principle, then a great step is made to-
wards rendering the Lamarckian principle acceptable and the processes of
heredity and evolution in some degree intelligible (see chaps, xxiv. and xxvi.).

BODY AND MIND

248

determining trends of variation, which variations natural selection
has accumulated and fixed as specific characters.

But, if inheritance of acquired characters should eventually be
proved to be an untenable hypothesis, we shall still be driven to
look for other principles of explanation than natural selection
alone. For it is now generally admitted that natural selection can
exert but a negative influence, that it is, as it were, but a pruning-
knife which, by constantly lopping off a bud here, a twig there,
can mould the branches of the tree of life into a thousand different
forms, but cannot cause it to grow or put forth new branches ; that
it can do nothing, in short, unless the tree puts forth of its own
vitality a multitude of buds and twigs.

It has long been clear to those whose eyes were not
obstinately closed to the facts, that natural selection implies the
struggle for existence, and that, as was pointed out in Chapter
XVII., this struggle is essentially teleological ; sticks and stones, as
we said, do not struggle for existence, nor, so far as we can see,
do atoms, molecules, etherial vortex rings, particles of electricity, or
whatever may be the ultimate element of matter fashionable just
now. All inorganic things seem content to remain in whatever
condition it has pleased God to assign to them.

It has long been clear also that, if natural selection be given
nothing to work upon but a multitude of small indeterminate varia-
tions (Le. fortuitous variations equally pronounced in all directions),
the principle meets, as Herbert Spencer showed, immense, if not
certainly insuperable, difficulties in attempting to explain the evolu-
tion of many organs and functions; especially such as in their early
stages cannot be conceived to be of any use to the organism,
and those which can only be of use when several other organs are
simultaneously modified.^ These difficulties are to some extent

1 The inadequacy of the mechanistic principles of Neo-Darwinism to the
explanation of organic evolution has lately been urged with great force by Prof.
Bergson m the following way (“ Involution Cr^atnce,” p. 81) .—He points to the
vertebrate eye, an organ composed of a multitude of anatomical elements and
tissues, all of which are disposed with the greatest precision and harmony to
subserve the function of vision. That this precise and extremely complex
arrangement of a vast multitude of parts, many of which are of very highly
specialised constitution, should have been achieved by the accumulation of
happy accidents, is, he says, a sufficiently incredible supposition. But an eye of
closely similar structure has been independently evolved m some species of
mollusc. The mechanists are therefore driven to suppose that the same long
series of happy accidents has occurred independently m two branches of the tree
of life. This supposition, says Bergson, goes beyond the limits of legitimate

MECHANISM AND ORGANIC EVOLUTION

249

diminished by the recognition of the principle of Organic Selec-
tion ^ ; according to this principle, an incipient organ or function,
still so imperfectly laid down in the inherited constitution as to
be of little or no value in itself, may by intelligent effort be so
developed in each generation afresh as to acquire survival value
for those members of each generation in which the variation
occurs ; and in this way, apart from any transmission of acquired
characters, the purposive efforts of succeeding generations of
organisms may guide or direct the course of evolution, shielding,
preserving, and accumulating the variations that make for struc-
tural changes of the same kind as they themselves produce ; while
other variations are weeded out, or fail to accumulate, for lack of
such shielding.

But, if Neo-Darwinism accepts this principle as an aid to the
surmounting of its difficulties, it renounces its mechanistic
tendency ; for the principle is distinctly teleological.^

But other difficulties in the way of Neo-Darwinism, difficulties
which are not to be overcome by the aid of organic selection, have
been brought to light in recent years.

Of these, one is the negative result of long-continued experi-
ments in artificial selection directed towards the creation of new
characters by the accumulation of small spontaneous indeterminate
variations ; that is to say, the failure of attempts to create new
characters in the way in which Neo-Darwinism holds all evolution
to have taken place, with this difference only that the blind ex-
terminations of nature are replaced by the purposive selection of
man. It has been found in a number of such experiments that
the modifications of structure and function producible in this way
seem to be strictly and narrowly limited ; with each generation
the amount of modification producible is less ; and, as soon as
strict selection is suspended, the new breed rapidly reverts to
the specific type.^

These difficulties are inclining many biologists to look with

hypothesis. As another instance of the independent evolution of complex
functions, Bergson cites the processes of sexual reproduction so strangely similar
in plants and animals ; and this function is not a necessity, but a luxury.

^ Profs. Lloyd Morgan and J. M. Baldwin share the credit of having suggested
this very important principle.

2 See appendix to this chapter.

^ Some of the best of these experiments are cited by H. de Vnes in Plant
Breeding,” London, 1907.

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BODY AND MIND

favour on the view (of which Professors Bateson^ and de Vries ^ are
the principal exponents) that organic evolution has proceeded in
the main by discontinuous variation, Le. by the sudden appearance
in some individuals of a species of large modifications of structure
or function which are transmitted in full to their offspring, and
which, though they will be more likely to be perpetuated if they
are of such a nature as to advantage the creatures in their struggle
for existence, may nevertheless persist as specific characters
independently of, and indeed in spite of, natural selection. It
has been abundantly proved that such variations really occur, and
that they sometimes appear in large numbers of individuals of a
species throughout some generations. It is proposed to use the
name “ mutations ” to distinguish variations of this kind from the
small indefinite or fluctuating variations on which Darwin and
the Neo-Darwinists have chiefly relied.

The supposition that mutations have been the principal factor
in organic evolution certainly diminishes some of the difficulties
of the theory of evolution, but it removes it further than ever
from the hope of mechanistic explanation. For these mutations
cannot be regarded as purely fortuitous variations, or slight
accidental departures from exact transmission of the parental
characters, as the fluctuating indeterminate variations fairly may
be regarded. Nor are they merely monstrosities, resulting from
defects of the morphogenetic process ; such defects can result
only in partial absence of structures, as, for example, cleft-palate,
in changes of colour of parts, in duplication of organs, or in other
monstrous disproportions or overgrowths of tissues of the nature
of tumours, nsevi, warts. Variations of these kinds could produce
no new organs, no new specific characters.® Mutations produce

^ ‘'Mendel^s Principles of Heredity,” Cambridge, 1909.

^ “Mutation,” London, 1910.

® It may be said that the results of the experiments in hybridization made by
the Mendehans diminish the difficulty of imagimng mechanistic evolution by
way of mutation ; for these seem to show that certain characters of animals
and plants must be regarded as umts which are either fully represented m the
germ or quite unrepresented ; and they give some colour to the view that each
organism is a bundle of such unit characters or organs, and that the whole germ
IS a bundle of lesser germs, each of which, the representative of one of these unit-
characters, consists of some atom or molecule, or perhaps side-chain of atoms,
m a complex molecule. Most, if not all, of the characters hitherto dealt with
by the Mendehans are of great simplicity, e.g. coat-colour, shape of wattles or
comb in birds, presence of sugar or starch in seeds, and so on ; and it may be
suggested with some plausibility that each such character has appeared as a
mutation owing to the addition of some atom or atom group, or to the substitu-

MECHANISM AND ORGANIC EVOI.UTION 251

functionally perfect organs or modifications of organs ; and, if
they did not do so, it would be impossible to suppose that they
have played any considerable part in evolution. They demand,
therefore, for their explanation some formative directive principle ;
and evidence of their frequent occurrence in all species, though it
would make clearer to us the actual course of evolution, would do
nothing to diminish the difficulties of mechanistic explanation of
it, but would rather accentuate the difficulty.

Lastly, attention must be drawn to a feature of the constitu-
tion of organisms, which, as Driesch has pointed out,^ cannot be
explained by either the Darwinian or the Lamarckian principle,
nor by that of organic selection ; this feature is the power of
restitution of functions and regeneration of organs after injury,
possessed in some degree by all organisms. The power, for example,
of regenerating a lost limb can have been acquired neither by
use-inheritance nor by natural selection, for the simple reason
that it is a power called into play in but few individuals of each
generation ; it is a power which, though highly advantageous to
the few individuals that have occasion to manifest it, is of little
importance to the species as a whole ; in short, we cannot
suppose all newts to be descended from ancestors that have lost
their legs and have been at the same time so fortunate as to have
varied or mutated in the direction of capacity for complete
regeneration.

In this and in the preceding chapter we have touched upon

tion of one atom group for anottier, in the molecular constitution of the germ.
If this view were tenable we should seem to see in imagination the whole course
of organic evolution as consisting in successive chemical changes of this kind in
the germ, each producing a new mutation. But though this naive way of regard-
ing evolution and inheritance may seem plausible so long as we have regard to
such simple characters as the colour and shape of organs, such as combs and
wattles, seed-pods and petals, it must appear to all unbiassed minds hopelessly
inadequate when applied to account for complex instincts. If a complex tram
of instinctive action is to be accounted for mechanistically, it must be supposed
that the movements making up the tram of action are connected with the initiat-
ing and guiding sense-impression by a complex nervous machinery consisting
of a number of compound reflex-arcs each of very great complexity, and each
comprising a great number of nerve-cells connected together in complex func-
tional series, and each connected with the others m perfectly definite manner.
How, then, can such a complex structure, which is not merely a structure but a
most complex and delicately working machine, be effectively represented by (i.e.
its growth be determined by) some molecule or side-chain of atoms of some
molecule in the germ ? ^ Op. cU.^ vol. i. p> 286.

BODY AND MIND

252

some of the principal difficulties that beset the attempt to explain
the processes of the tissues of organisms, and especially the processes
of growth, restitution, heredity, and evolution, in terms of physics
and chemistry. These difficulties have appeared more and more
clearly thoughout the last half century as our knowledge of the
facts has increased. And so we find that, though at the beginning
of this period the dominant note of biological thought was one of
confident anticipation of the ultimate and indeed rapid solution of
the major problems of biology in mechanical terms, and though
in the earlier part of that period Vitalism was commonly spoken
of as a thing of the past, a mere survival from the dark ages,
to-day vitalists are again numerous amongst the biologists. The
modern vitalists are no longer content to explain ” the
phenomena of organic life by ascribing them to a “ vital force.”
The notions they would introduce into biology to supplement or
replace mechanical conceptions are very diverse, and many of them
do not go beyond the affirmation of the belief that organic
processes involve some undefined factor which cannot be described
in terms of physics and chemistry. This belief, which is the
essence of Vitalism, is in fact the only thing common to the
“ Neo- Vitalists.” Owing to this diversity of view amongst
vitalists, to the purely negative character of their only common
tenet, and to the fact that many of them are very reserved in
regard to it, abstaining from giving it any public expression, and
owing, on the other hand, to the complete agreement between all the
mechanists, the definite and positive nature of their doctrine, and
the confident dogmatic manner in which they continue to affirm it,
the latter still appear to the world as the dominant party among
the biologists. But it is doubtful whether, if a census could be
taken at the present time, they would prove to be more numerous
than the vitalists.^

It is worthy of note, in this connexion, that the exclusive
sv/ay in the organic world of the principles of physical science is
maintained in a more confident and dogmatic manner by the
mechanistic biologists than by many of the leading physicists who
have enunciated these principles and taught them to the biologists.

^ Dr Merz, after displaying the gains that modern biology owes to the use of
mechanical conceptions, remarks — “And yet it may be asked, have we come
nearer an answer to the question, What is Life ^ At one time, for a generation
which is passing away, we apparently had. But a closer scrutiny has convinced
most of us that we have not. , . . The spectre of a vital principle still lurks
behind all our terms.” Op. cit.^ p. 462.

MECHANISM AND ORGANIC EVOLUTION

253

It is perhaps worth while to enumerate here a few of these
physicists of the highest standing who, since the establishment of
the law of conservation of energy, have expressed or implied the
opinion that physical science does not compel us to believe that
the evolution and life-processes of organisms are capable of being
completely described in mechanical terms ; such are or were Sir
G. Stokes,^ Lord Kelvin,^ Maxwell,^ P. G. Tait,^ Balfour Stewart,^
Sir W. Crookes, Sir O. Lodge,® Sir J. J. Thomson, Sir J. Larmor,®
Prof. Poynting.'^

Finally, it is necessary to insist very strongly that, in this
dispute between the mechanistic and the vitalistic biologists, the
onus of proof lies with the former, and not with the vitalists, as is
commonly assumed by their opponents. For it is undeniable
that on the face of things living beings differ very greatly from all
inorganic things, and that their processes seem to be teleologically
governed rather than mechanically caused ; and as we have seen,
the increase of knowledge brought by the research of the last
half-century has done nothing to show that this appearance
is illusory, but rather has revealed the same appearance of
teleological determination in a multitude of organic processes
which formerly were regarded with some plausibility as purely
mechanical. It may, therefore, be said to-day with even more con-
fidence and force than in the time of Democritus or of Lucretius,
of Hobbes or of Huxley, that the mechanical view of the organic
world remains nothing more than a hope, a faith, a postulate, or a
prejudice in the minds of those who hold it.

^ Presidential Address to British Association, Exeter.

2 “ On the Dissipation of Energy,” Popular Lectures, II.

3 “ Life of Clerk Maxwell,” by Campbell and Garnett, chap. xiv. ; and in many
other passages.

4 ” The Unseen Universe ”

5 “ Life and Matter.” In this work Sir Oliver Lodge has argued strongly in
favour of the view that life involves guidance of the mechanical processes of the
bodies of organisms, and that such guidance need involve no breach of the law of
conservation of energy or the other generally accepted principles of physical
science.

® “ Aether and Matter,” p 28 B.

’ Hibbert Journal, vol. ii.

254

BODY AND MIND

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XVIII
ORGANIC SELECTION ”

The principle of “ Organic Selection ” seems to me very important. It
has been heard of, appreciated, or approved by relatively few biologists, and
experience has taught me that it is very difficult to bring some biologists to
understand it. I therefore add the following appendix to this chapter : —

We may take as an example for the illustration of the principle of
organic selection the instinct to lie perfectly still when suddenly con-
fronted by an enemy, an instinct which seems to have been acquired by
several species of animals of widely different groups. It seems obvious
that this instinct cannot have been acquired by the accumulation of
small variations; for, if this instinctive behaviour is to advantage the
creature, it must be perfect from the first ; any restriction of the move-
ments of escape short of complete motionlessness would be worse than
useless. But if we suppose that individuals of a species had sufficient
intelligence to avoid attracting the attention of their enemies
or their prey (and numerous stories imply that foxes at least
display such intelligence) by remaining still in spite of their natural
tendency to run away (or to dash upon their prey), then we may suppose
that, if some individuals varied in the direction of lying still for a moment
whenever startled, they would carry out their intelligent suppression of
movement (especially in early life) more effectively than others in whom
no such fortuitous variation occurred. Spontaneous variation and intelli-
gence thus working together would secure survival more effectively than
either working alone.. Thus intelligence might shield or foster the
accumulation of variations in this direction, until the instinct was perfected
and intelligence was no longer needed to supplement the imperfect instinct.
This is a very simple and perhaps not very probable example, but it may
serve to illustrate the principle.

Few biologists seem to have grasped this principle, and fewer still
the range of its application and the very great part it may have played in
promoting and guiding teleologically the course of organic evolution.
Yet, rightly considered, the principle is an essential part of the Darwinian
theory ; and since, if it is valid, it shows us how organic evolution may have
been teleologically guided and promoted by mind, by psychical effort and
subjective selection, to an extent to which we can set no limits even
though acquired characters be not inherited; and since it seems to have
been impossible hitherto to find conclusive evidence of the inheritance
of acquired characters, it seems worth while to dwell on it a little in the
present connexion, and to attempt to show that the operation of this
teleological principle is necessarily assumed by the theory of the origin of
species by natural selection. ®

Let us try to imagine the operation of organic selection in the evolu-
tion of the prehensile paw of the monkey tribe from the forelimb of an

MECHANISM AND ORGANIC EVOLUTION

2SS

ancestor that lived on the ground only. It seems clear that the prehensile
paw must have been developed as a consequence of the animals taking
to climbing trees and finding the habit advantageous. This habit was
acquired, we must suppose, by some group of the ancestral species which
was brought into a region in which arboreal habits were advantageous and
attractive ; perhaps because it abounded in trees bearing fruit that was
pleasant to the taste of the species and well suited for its nourishment.
At first, members of the species climbed awkwardly upon the trees to
reach the fruit, their limbs being but little suited to the task ; just as
creatures so little adapted for tree-climbing as crabs are known to
have taken to this practice in pursuit of fruit. The practice of tree-
climbing constantly pursued from earliest youth would to some extent
increase the facility of each animal in the execution of the necessary
movements and would at the same time produce in each generation some
degree of adaptation of the limbs to the task. But, if acquired characters
are not inherited, these effects of practice would not be transmitted and
intensified from generation to generation. Nevertheless, according to the
fundamental assumption of Darwinism, the limbs of these creatures were
varying constantly in all possible directions ; i.e. in some individuals of
each generation, variations of the limbs in the direction of better adapta-
tion to climbing would fortuitously appear, in others, variations of different
kinds which would either be adverse to climbing or indifferent from that
point of view ; in this respect then the individuals of each generation would
fall into three classes, namely, (i) those varying in the direction of better
adaptation to climbing; (2) those varying adversely; (3) those whose
limbs remain unvaried from the point of view of tree-climbing. If, then,
the struggle for life, in the form of competition for the food supply, the
fruit of the trees, is severe, all individuals of the second class would be
severely handicapped, and would suffer a higher rate of mortality ; hence
such variations are weeded out of the group ; and of individuals of the
first class a larger percentage will survive and reproduce themselves and
their peculiarities than among those of the third class. In this way the
whole group would achieve, generation by generation, limbs innately belter
adapted for climbing. But the point on which I wish to insist is that, in
this progressive adaptation of the limbs by “ natural selection ” of fortuitous
variations, teleological guidance by psychical effort and subjective selection
plays an essential part without which no such evolution would have taken
place. The desire of the creatures to obtain the fruit, or at least the impulse
to go in search of it, leading to effort after climbing the trees on which it
grows, determines that, of all variations of the limbs, those tending to better
adaptation to climbing should alone be perpetuated and accumulated.^
This truth of fundamental importance, yet so generally overlooked,

1 This hypothetical case makes it obvious that the principle of organic
selection is closely allied to Prof. Ward's “ subjective selection,” as Prof. Ward
has himself pointed out (*' Naturalism and Agnosticism,” n, p. 294). But in
applying his principle Ward assumed the validity of the Lamarckian principle,
and combined the two principles.

BODY AND MIND

256

may be made clearer by imagining a different course of events. Suppose
another group of the ancestral species to be brought into a similar region
in which they find an abundance of a certain edible and nutritious root (say
the yam) which is more to their taste than the fruit growing on the trees ;
their efforts will then be chiefly directed to finding and digging out this
root, to the neglect of the fruit of the trees. The habit of digging out
the root becomes established as a custom which is learnt imitatively by
each generation, while, although by painful efforts the fruit might be
reached, no habit and no custom of seeking it is established.^ If, when
this customary reliance upon the root as food supply has been established,
times of scarcity come, or, in other words, if the “ population ” begins to
press upon the means of subsistence, those individuals whose limbs are
best adapted for discovering the roots by digging will have the best chance
of survival Hence variations of the limbs in this direction will be per-
petuated and accumulated, while variations in opposite directions will be
weeded out. We may then legitimately suppose that in this case the
forelimbs of this group, constituting a divergent species, may become
short and spade-like, like those of the mole; while those of the other
group become elongated and prehensile.

We may imagine a third case in which a group of the ancestral species
finds itself in a region in which the food supply most attractive to it is
the fish of clear ponds or rivers, and that it secures these by swimming
and diving after them. In this case again individual practice will lead in
each generation to increased skill in and increased adaptation of the
limbs to swimming and diving ; and again, in the absence of all trans-
mission of acquired characters, the choice and purposive efforts of
the creatures in this direction will determine that, of the fortuitous varia-
tions of all possible directions, those only will be perpetuated and
accumulated which are in the direction of better adaptation to swimming
and diving. Thus from the one parental species we may suppose that in
three different, but closely similar geographical areas, three new species
are gradually differentiated, one arboreal in habit and with prehensile
forelimbs, one seeking its food by digging with spade-like forelimbs, a
third aquatic in habit with fin-like forelimbs; and in each case habit,
arising from choice and purposive effort, will have determined the differ-
ences of bodily structure and also, it may be added, the differences
of instinct which accompany the structural differences. In each case
the psychical choice and effort plays an essential role, determining,
guiding, or moulding the course of evolution. For suppose the ancestral
species to have been one that fed on herbage only, and that it had too little
intelligence and spontaneity to make experiments in feeding, when any
one of the three more nutritious and abundant kinds of food were within
its reach, or too conservative in taste to have appreciated these dietetic
novelties : then the species would have continued unchanged in all the
three environments we have imagined.

^ That habits determine customs among gregarious animals, and are thus
transmitted by imitation from generation to generation, is, I think, indisputable.

MECHANISM AND ORGANIC EVOLUTION

257

There seem to be hardly any bodily characters of any species the
evolution of which may not be supposed to have been in this way deter-
mined teleologically, by psychical choice and effort, in absence of all
transmission of acquired characters. Coat colour and marking, for
example, seem to be incapable of being directly affected by the choice or
any mental effort of the animal (with certain exceptions in which chromato-
phoric changes are controlled by the nervous system). Yet a protective
colouring and marking, as, e.g., those of the leopard’s skin, must be deter-
mined by the animals’ choice of their environments and the way in which
they apply whatever “little dose of judgment and reason ” they may have
to forward their success in life. If, for example, the lion and the leopard
have diverged from a common stock, and if, as seems hardly deniable,
their coat colours are adaptations to their environments which enable them
to secure their prey more readily by rendering them inconspicuous, this
divergence can only have been effected by natural selection in so far as
the divergent stocks actively sought the kinds of prey that inhabit the
two very different physical environments of the forest and the desert. It
may be said that two groups of the ancestral stock may have been forced
into geographical regions in which no choice was left them — the ancestral
stock of the lion into the desert, that of the leopard into a forest region
in which arboreal habits became necessary to survival. This seems
improbable ; but even if the supposition be admitted, it remains true that
the change of habits necessitated by the new environment was in each case
possible only in virtue of a certain degree of intelligent adaptation and
effort on the part of successive generations ; • which is thus in this case
also a presupposition of the operation of natural selection to produce
divergence of species. If the animals had been incapable of such
intelligent adaptation of their behaviour, they would have died out rapidly
in the new environments.

In short, the doctrine of organic selection is but the working out in
more detail of the fundamental presupposition of Darwinism, namely, the
struggle for existence, which, as was said above, is essentially a psychical
struggle in that it presupposes the will to live.”

CHAPTER XIX

INADEQUACY OF MECHANICAL CONCEPTIONS TO
EXPLAIN ANIMAL AND HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

W E have seen that modern physiology regards all nervous
process as of the reflex type (i.e. as similar to the reflex
processes of the spinal cord by which co-ordinated and
outwardly purposive movements are made in response to par-
ticular sense-stimuli) ; and that this doctrine, in conjunction with
the “ association-psychology,” has played a considerable part in
bringing about the rejection of Animism by biologists. It is
necessary to examine this doctrine more closely and to inquire
whether the conception of compound reflexes of purely mechanical
nature (as elaborated especially by Herbert Spencer) is adequate
to the explanation of the behaviour of men and animals.

We touch here upon the psychological problems of biology ;
but the facts of consciousness may with advantage be left for
consideration in a later chapter, while here we consider behaviour
from an objective standpoint.

If we consider the behaviour of animals of all levels of
complexity of organization, we find that it is everywhere
characterized by certain features that seem to present insuperable
difliculties to all attempts at purely mechanical explanation. This
is true even of the behaviour of the simplest of all animals, the
unicellular protozoa. The mechanists have attempted to exhibit
all the movements of these minute organisms as the direct results
of the incidence of physical stimuli upon their substance ; e.g. the
protrusion of a pseudopodium by Amoeba as the effect of a local
diminution of surface tension by contact with some chemical or
physical agent ; the turning of flagellate or ciliate protozoa (such
as Paramcecium) towards or away from light, or the electric
current, or a bubble of carbonic acid, and their consequent congre-
gation in the greatest possible proximity to or remoteness from
such agents, as due to direct stimulation of the organs of loco-
motion by these agents. Movements thus directly .stimulated

258

MECHANISM AND ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 259

and directed are called tropisms ; and^the mechanists attempt to
show that the behaviour of these lower organisms is nothing but
a series of such tropisms, direct local reactions to physical and
chemical stimuli.^

But, when the movements of these unicellular and very simple
multicellular creatures are minutely and impartially studied, it
appears that, although some of their movements may be plausibly
regarded as tropisms, others present features that make it im-
possible to regard them in this light Thus, the progression of
Amoeba^ which has been mechanically interpreted as due merely
to diminution of surface tension, has been shown by the minute
studies of Mr H. S. Jennings ^ to involve streaming movements
of the protoplasm which are incompatible with that or any other
of the suggested mechanical explanations. The same observer
has shown also that the behaviour of free-swimming infusoria
cannot be regarded as merely a series of tropisms ; the animal
responds to most of the stimuli that affect it, not merely with
some local change of activity in the part on which the stimulus
falls, but with a co-ordinated change of activity of all its organs
of locomotion ; that is, the animal behaves as an organic unity,
or, as Jennings puts it, it responds to local stimulation with a
“ total reaction.” For example, Paramoecu0n (the slipper animal-
cule which swims freely in water by means of the whipping
movements of the hair-like threads or cilia that cover all its
surface), on colliding as it swims with a hard body, suddenly
reverses the movement of all its cilia and backs off; and the
nature of the turning movement is independent of the point of
incidence of the stimulus. So also Amceba^ chasing or being
chased, may be observed suddenly to reverse the direction of its
movement and to set off in a new direction better calculated to
secure its end, namely, capture or escape, and to repeat this
again and again ; ^ its behaviour consists in a series of total
reactions ” each well adapted to secure the biological end. Or
again, Amesha sometimes becomes detached from the solid
surfaces on which it normally crawls ; it then sends out long

^ See the works of Prof. J. Loeb, especially Die Bedeutung der Tropismen,”
Leipsic, 1909, and M. G. Bohn’s, Naissance de 1’ Intelligence.” Paris, 1909.

® ” The Behaviour of the Lower Oiganisms.”

® See especially Jennings’ fascinating account of the pursuit of one Amoeba
by a larger specimen {op. cit.) In this case the meeting of two organisms
of similar constitution resulted in the persistent flight of the smaller and the
persistent pursuit of it by the larger.

26o

BODY AND MIND

slender pseudopodia in all directions, until one of them comes in
contact with, and adheres to, a solid body ; the other pseudopodia
are then quickly withdrawn and the whole substance flows towards
the point of attachment.

Observations reported by the same careful worker bring out
very clearly also in the behaviour of these very lowly animals,
a second very important characteristic, namely, they exhibit
persistent striving towards the biological end of their activity
with variation of the means employed ; i.e. the animal, when
obstructed or checked in the pursuit of an end, neither ceases at
once to strive (to continue its movements), nor persists in the
same movement or attempt at movement, but rather varies the
nature or direction of its movements again and again, until it hits
upon a kind or a direction of movement that meets with no
obstruction. In other words, it seems to work towards the
biological end by the method of persistent “ trial and error.*’
Such behaviour is so commonly exhibited by these lowly
creatures that Jennings asserts — “ In no other group of organisms
does the method of trial and error so completely dominate
behaviour, perhaps, as in the infusoria.” ^

Now, this persistence of movement with variation in detail of
the kind and direction of movement, while the physical environment
remains unchanged, is perhaps the most distinctive feature of the
behaviour of organisms; it is one to which no parallel can be
found in the inorganic world. The falling stone stops dead when
it strikes the earth, the clock-work stops without a struggle if
you thrust a spoke into its wheel ; the locomotive engine, brought
up against a dead wall, continues at most to exert unavailing
pressure in the same direction ; and the same is true of every
merely mechanical contrivance; none exhibits that most rudi-
mentary form of self-direction which consists in spontaneously
changing the direction or nature of movement.

Thus we see that, at the very bottom of the evolutionary
scale, animal behaviour exhibits the two peculiarities which at all
higher levels also distinguish it from the movements of inorganic
things, namely, (i) the “ total” or unitary nature of reaction, i.e.
the reaction of the organism as a whole with co-ordination of the
movements of its parts in response to a stimulus directly affecting
one small part only ; and (2) the persistence of the effect of the
stimulus, a persistence closely analogous to that persistence of

^ Op, cit., p. 243.

MECHANISM AND ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR

261

varied movement which in ourselves and our fellows we recognize
as the expression of a persistent effort after a desired end. And
to this it must be added that these persistent and varied and
total or unitary reactions of the whole organism are in the main
adaptive, i.e. of such a nature as to promote the welfare of the creature.

The mechanist, of course, will argue that, if only we had
intimate knowledge of the physics and chemistry of the Amceba
or the infusorian, we could mechanically explain these peculiarities
in every case. But this is merely to repeat his fundamental
assumption, which, until he shall have justified it in some one
single case, must remain nothing more than the expression of an
ill-founded hope.

If we turn now to the middle level of the animal scale, we
find behaviour characterized by the same fundamental peculiarities ;
and we find a further difficulty in the way of all purely mechanical
explanation. Let us consider the case of a purely instinctive
action, an adaptive action which is performed perfectly when the
animal finds itself for the first time in a particular situation, say
in the presence of an object of a particular kind. Such typical
and purely instinctive actions have been widely and confidently
classed as compound reflexes of purely mechanical type. It is
assumed that every sensory point of the animal’s surface is
connected by some continuous nervous path with some muscle or
group of muscles, and that, when any group of such sensory points
are stimulated simultaneously, a movement is produced which is
the resultant of all these simultaneously excited reflex tendencies.
Some instinctive actions are evoked by simple or relatively simple
sense-impressions, such as odours, simple sounds, simple impressions
of touch or temperature ; these (differ outwardly from reflex actions
only in the greater complexity of the bodily movements evoked ;
and they form a scale of transition from the reflex actions to the
higher or more complex forms of instinctive activity. The higher
or more complex instinctive activities are evoked not by simple
sense-impressions, but only by the complex groups or conjunctions
of sense-stimuli that are received from objects of particular kinds.
Every instinctive act that depends for its initiation on the recep-
tion by the eye of an image of some object is of this kind ; and
that many purely instinctive actions are thus initiated is, I think,
indisputable.^

^ Since some authors (notably Driesch) hold the view that all instinctive
actions are evoked by simple sensory stimuli, it is necessary to point to unmis-

262

BODY AND MIND

Let us consider the case of an insect which emerges from the
chrysalis fully equipped with all its organs and powers, and which,
when it comes within sight of a flower of a particular species,
flies to it and by means of a series of delicately adjusted move-
ments deposits its eggs in just that part of the flower in which
alone they can develop.^

Such behaviour is other than and more than a series of com-
pound reflexes ; the flower is of complex shape and its parts
affect the sense-organs of the insect with a highly complex group
of stimuli ; i.e. the total sense-impression may be analysed by us
into a complex of physical stimuli each affecting the sensory
terminus of a sensory nerve. And the behaviour of the insect
in response to the impression is a series of acts each of which
also may be analysed by us and exhibited as the contractions of a
number of muscles. Now, if it could be shown that of this
complex of muscular contractions each one corresponds to and is
directly evoked by one element of the complex of sensory stimuli
by way of a reflex nervous arc, we should have a mechanical
explanation of the action. But each step of the behaviour of the
insect is more than such a complex of reflexes ; it is a total
complex reaction to a total complex sense-impression, and there
is no point-to-point correspondence between the elements into
which we analyse the reaction and those into which we analyse
the impression. The total reaction, although complex, is unitary.

takable instances of instinctive actions evoked only by complex conjunctions of
stimuli. As examples of sucb I would cite the behaviour of the various species of
solitary wasps in presence of their prey, as described so admirably by M. Pabre
(“Souvenirs entomologiques ”) and Dr and Mrs Peckham (“ Wasps, Social and
Solitary “). The wasps of each species prey only on animals of some one
kind, one species on caterpillars, another on spiders, a third on grasshoppers,
and so on. It might be suggested that the wasp is led to his proper prey by
a simple specific stimulus, namely by scent ; but that can hardly be maintained
in view of the facts, (i) that a wasp will capture caterpillars, or spiders, or grass-
hoppers, etc., of many different species; (2) that vision plays a great part in
the direction of their behaviour. Further, even if it were possible to hold that
the wasp recognizes or is led to its prey by scent, it would be impossible to regard
Its manipulations of its prey (in modes which are distinct, specific, and instinctive
in each species) as guided only by simple stimuH. Rather the wasp’s behaviour
in capturing its prey depends upon its appreciation of its general shape and size
and position. Instances such as that of the Yucca moth are equally decisive I
it is impossible that an insect should execute delicate operations upon the parts
of a flower, while guided only by simple stimuli.

1 A beautiful example is afforded by the Yucca moth. Its behaviour is
described by Lloyd Morgan in “ Animal Behaviour.”

MECHANISM AND ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 263

while the sense-impression is a manifold of stimuli affecting
a manifold of sensory nerves. Somehow the manifold of discrete
impressions (say, of light-rays each affecting one of many of the
facets and end-organs that make up the compound eye of the
insect) has been combined or synthesized to produce a complex
unitary effect, of which each element is an organic and essential
part of the whole, and depends not upon any one of the elements
of the complex impression, but upon all of them.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine in however general
and vague a manner a mechanical explanation of this synthetic
process.

If now we go on to consider the behaviour of the higher
insects, in which the innately prescribed modes of reaction become
complicated by the results of individual experience, we find it
characterized by this same peculiarity, but in a much higher
degree, one which renders the difficulty of mechanical explanation
correspondingly greater.

A solitary wasp, after digging a hole in the ground ^ to serve
as a nest for her eggs, sets out in search of prey to be stored in
the nest as food for her grubs ; having found a caterpillar at any
point within a radius of some hundreds of feet of her nest, she
drags it over the rough ground and between the many obstacles
that obscure for her all vision of the nest or its immediate
surroundings ; in spite of these obstacles she takes approximately
and on the whole the shortest possible course to her nest, and
arrives there with her prey in virtue of a long-sustained series of
varied movements all directed towards the one end, every deviation
from the direct path necessitated by obstacles being rectified as
soon as possible.

At every step of this prolonged journey the wasp is guided
by visual impressions of the surroundings, which by many ex-
plorations she has made familiar to herself How totally different
from a series of reflexes are the movements by which she main-
tains and regains her true direction ! A mere familiarit}^ with,
or power of recognizing, a certain number, even a very large
number, of the objects that she encounters would by no means
suffice to account for her behaviour. In order to guide herself
she must not merely recognize objects previously seen ; she
must recognize objects (or the parts of the landscape immedi-

^ See the admirable descriptions of Dr and Mrs Peckham in their “ Wasps,
Social and Solitary," 7905.

BODY AND MIND

264

ately presented to her vision) as related in some determinate
manner to the whole field of her explorations, and especially
to that point of it at which her nest is situated ; that is
to say, each visual perception that guides her course not only
involves (as in the case of the purely instinctive behaviour of the
Yucca moth considered above) a synthesis of a large number of
details of the field of view to a unitary whole (or a synthesis of
the effects of a manifold of sense -stimuli), but also must be
related in a determinate fashion to a larger whole, namely, the
scheme of the whole region which in some sense and manner
she carries with her. Nor is this all. Her reactions to the
complex visual impressions by which her course is maintained
are determined also by the nature of the task in hand at the
moment ; for her reactions to each part of the landscape are
different according as she is looking for a spot suitable for her
nest, is seeking her prey, or is carrying it back to her nest ; in
psychological terms, each part of the landscape has for her a
meaning or significance which is dependent upon her dominant
purpose at the moment she perceives it ; and this meaning is a
decisive factor in determining the nature of her reaction.

Even, then, if it could be admitted that the synthesis involved
in the successive perceptions may be plausibly supposed to be
capable of being described in chemico-physical terms as neural
events, there would remain two greater difficulties : ( i ) that of
conceiving in similar terms that essential factor in the whole
process which we can only describe as the meaning or significance
of that which is perceived in relation to the purpose or end of the
whole train of activity ; (2) that of similarly conceiving the most
fundamental factor, the purpose, the conation, or will, which sus-
tains the prolonged course of varied efforts and which determines
the nature of the reaction to each complex sense-impression
at each step of the process.

The higher animals, and human beings also, exhibit instinctive
reactions in response to impressions that are still more remote
from the simple sense-impression ; these are in a still higher
degree irreconcilable with the notion of compound reflex action of
a mechanical type.

A clear and relatively simple instance is the instinctive cry of
distress uttered by the human infant, together with the various
bodily activities that normally accompany it to make up the
specific expression of distress. This complex instinctive reaction

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BODY AND MIND

a great variety of nervous processes taking place in a great many
different systems of nervous elements ; and in face of this diversity
of both type and anatomical seat of these processes, both the
hypotheses suggested above seem to break down ; the only
factor common to all the occasions, the only invariable ante-
cedent of the expression of distress, seems to be disagreeable
feeling.

It may be pointed out that a similar problem is presented in
a simpler form by some of the reflex actions of which such an
animal as the dog remains capable wlien deprived of the whole
of its brain, notably by the scratch -reflex so brilliantly studied
by Prof. C. S. Sherrington.^ In this instance the stimulus of a
particular kind applied to any spot of a considerable area of the
skin evokes always a particular sequence of co-ordinated move-
ments of the hind limb, these movements being modified a little
with each change of place of the stimulus. It might be argued
that since it is commonly assumed that spinal reflexes are purely
mechanical processes, the analogy between the conditions of
evocation of the scratch-reflex in the dog and those of the expres-
sion of distress in the infant, justify the belief that the latter is
mechanically explicable. But no adequate mechanical explana-
tion of the scratch-reflex has been suggested ; and it may be
argued with at least equal plausibility that the analogy between
the processes shows that the scratch-reflex, like the instinctive
expression of distress, involves some factor incapable of description
in mechanical terms.

The same difficulty may be illustrated by reference to the
instinct of curiosity as displayed by many of the higher animals
and by ourselves ; and here it appears even more formidable than
in the previous instance. For this instinct is excited not by any
simple .sense-impressions, nor yet by any specific complex of
sense-impressions ; for there is no one class of objects to which it
is especially directed or in the presence of which it is invariably
displayed. The instinct seems to be brought into play in the
animals by any object that resembles some object with which they
are habitually interested or concerned and yet differs from it in
such a degree that, while it attracts their attention, it fails to
excite the ordinary response. And in ourselves the conditions
of excitement of this instinct are not essentially different ; it is

‘ xiie Integrative Action of the Nervous System ” and a long series of papers
in Pync, Roy. Soc.

MECHANISM AND ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 267

evoked by the contemplation of any object which, while sufficiently
similar to familiar objects to enable the mind to play upon it, yet
differs from them sufficiently to prevent our attaching the usual
meaning to the complex sense-impression received from it. In
short, the condition of excitement of the impulse of curiosity seems
to be in all cases the presence of a strange or unfamiliar element
in whatever is partially familiar, whether the object be one of
sense-perception (as exclusively in the animals and very young
children), or one contemplated in thought only. In either case
that element of strangeness, which is the sole invariable antecedent
of the awakening of the impulse of curiosity, is something that
exists only for the organism and is discovered by it only by means
of an intellectual operation of however rudimentary a kind. The
strangeness of the object of curiosity, to which it owes its power
of exciting the impulse, exists only in the mind of the organism,
and is, in fact, the meaning of the object for the organism in so
far as curiosity is av/akened.

These considerations seem to establish the view that the
instinctive actions which constitute the expression of curiosity
cannot be regarded as reflexly excited processes ; and they will, I
hope, have made clear to the reader that it is impossible in the
light of our present knowledge to suggest any, even the vaguest,
mechanical description of the way in which this reaction is excitedc

If we turn now from behaviour of these relatively simple types
to that of developed human beings, we find similar difficulties
in the way of all mechanical explanation ; but they are raised to
a still higher power.

It is usual, among those who wish to show the impossibility of
mechanical interpretation of human behaviour, to seek to reduce
the assumption to absurdity by pointing to particular instances of
its application ; to insist, for example, that, if the assumption is
accepted, we have to regard the order of sequence of all the
letters that make up the text of the Bible, or of a play of
Shakespeare, or of any other work of literary genius, as being in
principle capable of a purely mechanical explanation, one which
makes no reference to the meaning of the words or sentences ;
or that all the movements by which the artist produces a beauti-
ful painting or sculpture are mechanically determined, and that
the appreciation of the beautiful plays no part in the control of
them. And this should perhaps be a sufficient reduciio ad
absurdum of the principle. But the argument seems more capable

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BODY AND MIND

of enforcing conviction if presented in a more special and detailed
fashion. Let us consider the following case. A man receives from
a friend a telegram saying — “Your son is dead.” The physical
agent to which the man reacts is a series of black marks on a
piece of paper. The reaction outwardly considered as a series of
bodily processes consists, perhaps, in a sudden, total, and final
cessation of all those activities that constitute the outward signs
of life ; or in complete change of the whole course of the man’s
behaviour throughout the rest of his life. And all this altered
course of life, beginning perhaps with a series of activities that is
completely novel and unprecedented in the course of his life, bears
no direct relation whatever to the nature of the physical stimulus.
The independence of the reaction on the nature of the physical
impression is well brought out by the reflexion that the omission
of a single letter, namely, the first of the series (converting the
statement into — “Our son is dead”), would have determined none
of this long train of bodily effects, but merely the writing of a
letter of condolence or the utterance of a conventional expression
of regret ; whereas, if the telegram had been written in any one
of a dozen foreign languages known to the recipient, or if the
same meaning had been conveyed to him by means of a series of
auditory impressions or by any one of many different possible
means of communication, the resulting behaviour would have been
the same in all cases, in spite of the great differences between the
series of sense-impressions.

The one thing common, then, to all the widely different physical
impressions that produce the same physical effects, i.e. the same
train of behaviour, is that they evoke the same meaning in the
consciousness of the subject ; hence this meaning is the essential
link in each case between the series of physical impressions and
the series of physical effects.^

^ This argument has been presented independently and m rather different
forms by L. Busse (“ Leib und Seele ”) and by Dr H. Driesch (“ Philosophy
and Science of the Organism,*' vol ii ) As presented by Busse it is some'
times called the “ telegram-argument.” Dnesch offers it as his third proof
of Vitalism ; he sums it up as follows * ” In acting then, there may be no change
in the specificity of the reaction when the stimulus is altered fundamentally,
and again, there may be the most fundamental difference in the reaction when
there is almost no change in the stimulus ” (p. yo). He proposes to denote
the principle of the specific correspondence between complex reaction and com-
plex stimulus as the principle of individuality of correspondence between stimulus
and effect. He further illustrates it by reference to the fact that any familiar
object, such as my dog, may be seen in many positions and from many angles

MECHANISM AND ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR 269

It will be seen that this instance of human reaction presents
just the same difficulty to all attempts at mechanical explanation
as the instances of animal behaviour previously considered ; but
in a still higher degree. And human behaviour affords instances
of the same difficulty raised to a yet higher power. We may
imagine the following variant of our last example ; instead of
receiving a telegram saying, “Your son is dead,” the man reads
in the newspaper the statement that a certain ship has foundered,
carrying to the bottom all its human freight. He has reason to
fear that his son was a passenger on this ship. He ascertains
facts which enable him to reach by a chain of reasoning the
certainty that this was the case and that his son is dead. Here
again a number of highly complex physical impressions of the
most diverse kinds received at various times and places evoke, at
the moment of conclusion of the reasoning process, the same
reaction as the simple written sentence of the telegram ; all these
impressions have been synthesized in a higher unity which is the
meaning of the words of the telegram and is the essential condi-
tion of the specific reaction or train of reactions. And this
instance is typical of all the specifically human modes of reaction.
The reaction is neither a sum nor a resultant of the elementary
reactions proper to any or all of the sense-impressions received ;
it is a total reaction of the whole organism upon some part only
of the whole field of sense-impressions, and it bears no specific
relation to these, but only to the meaning which is suggested by
them, or, rather, is extracted from them, by an intellectual activity
excited by them.

That other great characteristic of behaviour, namely, persistency
of effort with variation of means, is also exhibited by human
beings in a degree far surpassing any of the animals. Consider
the following example, A man receives an insult or an injury which
excites his anger and the impulse to strike down the insulter.
If bystanders intervene, he makes persistent and varied efforts to
get at his foe, just as an angry dog may do. In that respect
his behaviour differs from the animal’s only in that he may evince

and distances, and that in each of an indefinite multitude of such cases the visual
impression may evoke from me the same reaction (e.g. the calling of his name),
though in each case the sum of physical stimuli constituting the impression on
the sense-organ is unique. The object is always recognized as * the same,’
though the actual retinal image differs in every case It is absolutely impossible
to understand this fact on the assumption of any kind of preformed material
recipient in the brain, corresponding to the stimulus in question ” (p. 73).

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BODY AND MIND

greater cunning or intelligence in devising various means for the
attainment of the end. But it differs greatly in one respect,
namely, that separation from the offender in time and place may
do little or nothing to turn the man from the pursuit of his end ;
and in extreme cases the desire of this end, the striking down of
his enemy, may dominate his behaviour for many years. Still
more significant, of course, and still more remote from all possi-
bility of mechanical explanation, is the self-control which enables
another man under similar circumstances to suppress the angry
impulse and, because he has learnt to value highly all nobility of
conduct, to forgive the injury.

We have seen in Chapter IV. how our ignorance of the
mechanical possibilities of the body seemed to Spinoza the best
defence of the assumption that all human behaviour is in principle
capable of mechanical explanation. And in Chapter VI 11. we
have seen that the modern defenders of this assumption claim to
have found in modern physiology an empirical justification of it.
It is true that modern physiology has shown that the nervous
system consists of a vast number of material parts and that these
are connected together in a vastly complex fashion ; so that any
one, pointing to the brain, may plausibly ask — Who can assign
limits to the possible achievements of a mechanism so intricate ?
But the physiological doctrines on which the modern mechanist
chiefly relies are, as we have seen, three : first, that the behaviour
of lower organism consists wholly of series of reflex actions or
tropisms and that these are purely mechanical movements ;
secondly, that instinctive action is compound reflex action ;
thirdly, that all intellectual operations consist in the compounding
of sensations and in the associative reproduction of one sensation,
"‘idea,” or impression by another; to which perhaps should be
added the doctrine that volition is nothing more than the repro-
duction (by some other impression or idea) of an idea of move-
ment, on which the movement follows in a mechanical fashion.

We have seen that increase of knowledge and insight has
shown all of these assumptions to be illegitimate. We have seen
that the behaviour of even the lowest animals presents features
which defy purely mechanical explanation, and that these features
become more and more prominent as we trace the modes of
behaviour up the scale of life; we have seen that instinctive
action is not merely compound reflex action of a mechanical
type, but that it implies a synthetic activity in virtue of which

MECHANISM AND ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR

271

a manifold of sense- stimuli becomes the occasion of a unitary
reaction of the v/hole organism, a reaction whose nature is
dependent, not merely upon the nature of the several stimuli, but
upon the meaning or significance which the organism discovers
in their conjunction, and upon the relation of this meaning to its
own dominant purpose at the moment.

And we have seen that in human behaviour the independence
of the reaction on the nature of the sense-stimuli becomes com-
plete, so that on the one hand very diverse conjunctions of
sense-stimuli evoke the same reaction, and, on the other hand,
conjunctions of sense-stimuli differing only in respect to some
minute detail may evoke totally different reactions ; that, in fact,
the dominant part in the determination of the reaction is pla3^ed
by the meaning which the individual discovers in the sensory
presentation, by the value which he attaches to this meaning, and
by the relation of this value to his settled purposes.

In short, throughout the scale of animal and human behaviour
we see evidence that meaning, value, and purpose, of which we
discern only doubtful traces at the bottom of the scale, play a
part whose importance, relatively to the mechanical factors of
reaction, constantly increases, until in human behaviour they
dominate the scene. It is incumbent, then, on those who regard
behaviour as mechanically explicable, to show how these factors,
meaning, value, and purpose, may be mechanically conceived ; yet
how this demonstration is to be made, or can be at all possible, has
not hitherto been even vaguely foreshadowed. In a later chapter
I shall return to this question and offer a conclusive proof that
such demonstration is impossible.

CHAPTER XX

THE ARGUMENT TO PSYCHO-PHYSICAL INTERACTION
FROM THE “DISTRIBUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS’^

T he enunciation of the doctrine of organic evolution by
natural selection was, as we have seen, a heavy blow to
Animism. We have now to note that the Darwinian
principle provides one strong argument against psycho- physical
Parallelism in all its forms, namely, the argument from the distri-
bution of consciousness.

Let us for the purpose of the argument use the language of
Materialism, which describes the production of consciousness as
one of the functions of protoplasm or of nervous substance. Now,
it is a corollary of the Darwinian principle that only functions
which are of service to the individual organism or to the species
in the struggle for existence can undergo any evolution throughout
any long period of time, or can attain any considerable degree of
development or width of distribution in the organic world. If,
then, any function is found to have undergone a long continued
progressive evolution, and to have attained a high degree of
organization in many species, we may infer that it aids effectively
in the struggle for survival. Now consciousness, or the production
of consciousness, is such a function. Though one cannot of course
attain absolute proof of the existence of any consciousness other
than one's own, yet we all believe that other men have con-
sciousness ; and all men qualified to form an opinion believe that
the higher animals also enjoy consciousness (in the widest sense
of the word in which it denotes sentiency and feeling of every
degree, as well as the developed self-consciousness of man). And
they believe also that, as higher forms of animal life were succes-
sively evolved, each higher form enjoyed a richer more varied
consciousness than the forms that preceded it in the evolutionary
scale. Therefore, if we accept the Darwinian principle, we must
believe that consciousness (or the production of consciousness) is
a function that aids in the struggle for survival, and plays some

272

THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS 273

essential part in the control of the bodily processes and movements
by means of which survival is achieved. The more minutely we
study the distribution or occurrence of consciousness, the more
certain does this inference appear.

To this argument the epiphenomenalist can, I think, find no
answer ; but the adherent of the two-aspect doctrine may say that
all animals are conscious because all physical processes have their
conscious aspect ; and the psychical monist may say that all
animals are necessarily conscious because all things are conscious-
ness ; and both may maintain that the richer consciousness of the
higher forms of animal life is merely the expression of the greater
complexity of their organization. It is necessary, therefore, to
press the argument more in detail, and to say to the parallelists :
If we accept for the moment your assumption that all things are
conscious or are consciousness, you are bound to distinguish two
varieties or modes of consciousness, namely, on the one hand,
integrated or personal or true consciousness, which in human
beings is that of which the other aspect or phenomenon is
certain parts of the cerebrum ; and, on the other hand, all that
consciousness which is the inner aspect or underlying reality of
the rest of the nervous system and bodily organism, which does
not in our own case enter into the stream of our integrated
personal consciousness, and which may be distinguished as sub-
consciousness or secondary consciousness. Now, our argument
applies to consciousness of the former kind only. It is the
integrated consciousness (the only kind of consciousness of which
we have any knowledge) which in the course of organic evolution
has become ever richer and fuller, and has culminated in the personal
consciousness of man. Of this form of consciousness our corollary
from the Darwinian principles holds good ; we infer from the
progressive integration of consciousness that this integration has
brought advantages in the struggle for existence, and that
integrated consciousness plays some part which is impossible to
the hypothetical sub-consciousness. The psychical monist may
reply that progressive integration of consciousness is the essence
of the evolutionary process, and that what appears to us as increas-
ing complexity of organization throughout the evolutionary scale
is the phenomenal appearance of the increasing integration of con-
sciousness. And this reply would be satisfactory, if the degrees of
integration of consciousness throughout the scale ran parallel to the
degrees of complexity of bodily organization. But this is not the

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BODY AND MIND

fact We have good reason to believe that not only in man, but in
all the vertebrate animals, the integrated consciousness is associated
with the brain only, and that the integration of consciousness
runs parallel throughout the scale with the degree of development
of the brain and especially of the cerebrum or great brain Now,
the large brain which we find in man and many of the mammals
of the present day is a product of a comparatively recent evolu-
tion. At the close of the secondary geological period there lived
many species of vertebrates which, as regards their whole bodily
organization (the brain alone excepted), were as complex and as
highly evolved as any existing animals.^ But their brains were,
without exception, very small. The great increase of size of the
brain has, in fact, been the principal feature animal evolution
since that period ; it is as though Nature, having achieved per-
fection in merely bodil}^ organization some millions of years ago,
had then concentrated all her efforts on the further evolution of
mind, of the brain and the integrated consciousness that goes
with it.

Now, if the psychical monist could show that the integration
of consciousness is a necessary by-product of the process of
organization which appears as the evolution of the brain ; or if he
could offer any explanation of the fact that the organization of
all the rest of the body involves no integration of consciousness
such as that of the brain involves, he would escape the point of
the argument ; but just this he cannot do. Before the problem
of the unity of personal consciousness he stands perfectly helpless,
as I shall have occasion to show in the following chapter.

The foregoing argument may be resumed in a few words, as
follows. The parallelists’ fundamental assumption that all is
consciousness, or that all things have their conscious aspect, does
not enable him to escape the corollary of the Darwinian principles
that consciousness aids in the struggle for life ; because he is bound
to recognize two forms of consciousness, namely, real consciousness
and unconscious consciousness or pseudo-consciousness ; and in
the course of animal evolution the former has (according to this
view) been developed out of the latter, and a principal feature of
the later stages of evolution has been the increase of consciousness
proper relatively to the hypothetical lower form of consciousness.

^It seems probable that the Pterodactyle would compare well with any
existing creature in respect to complexity of organization and nicety of adapta-
tion to its mode of hfe, except as regards brain and adaptability.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

275

The above discussion must, I fear, seem grotesque and tedious
to anyone who has not thoroughly grasped the parallelist position
and has not grappled with the task of thinking out its implications.

And now, having shown that the argument from the distri-
bution of consciousness holds good against the parallelist as well
as the epiphenomenalist, we may briefly complete the argument
without delaying to translate the language of it into the special
forms required by each variety of the parallelist doctrine.

The argument to the usefulness of consciousness from its dis-
tribution in the animal scale finds strong confirmation in the facts
of its distribution in the individual organism.

In ourselves a large number of nervous processes, namely, all or
most of those by which the vegetative life is controlled, normally
contribute little or nothing to our personal consciousness ; if they are
in any sense conscious processes or are accompanied by conscious-
ness, this consciousness normally remains shut out from the stream
of personal consciousness ; and we may for convenience speak of
them as unconscious processes. Now there obtains a very striking
and important difference between the unconscious nervous processes
(which for the most part are confined to the spinal cord and lower
brain) and the conscious processes (which go on wholly or chiefly
in the cerebrum or upper brain). The difference is that the
nervous structures in which the former occur are in the main
hereditarily determined, and but little, if at all, modifiable in the
course of individual experience ; whereas the nervous processes of
the other class occur in nervous structures which are extremely
plastic, and whose development is moulded in great degree by the
course of individual experience. The cerebrum of the infant
seems, in fact, to consist in large part of nervous matter not
innately organized, but constituting an immense mass of plastic
material which gradually becomes organized under the touch of
experience ; and all mental acquisition, all formation of habits
and associations, seems to involve the organization of this plastic
tissue into fixed patterns or configurations of nervous channels.
We must recognise, then, a broad difference between the two
types of nervous tissue and process : the conscious are plastic, the
unconscious fixed and invariable.

But more significant still are the following facts : on repetition
the plastic process tends to pass over into the other class ; it be-
comes increasingly fixed and invariable ; and we have good ground
for believing that this implies the formation of definite paths of

BODY AND MIND

276

connexion between the nervous elements involved, so that they
form systems similar to those hereditarily fixed systems by means
of which the vegetative functions are controlled. Now it is a
familiar truth that the first acquisition of a habit or an association
requires attentive effort and clear consciousness of the several
steps of the process, and that with repetition the process goes on
more “ automatically,” more smoothly and easily, with less atten-
tion, and with less clear consciousness of the end, or of the steps,
or of the sense-impressions by which it is guided ; and finally,
after sufficient repetition, it seems to go on without any effort or
attention and without our being conscious of it, save possibly
in an extremely obscure fashion, or, in the common phrase, the
process becomes secondarily automatic, mechanized, and uncon-
scious ; and at the same time it passes more or less completely
out of our power of voluntary control and regulation. In other
words, nervous processes are of two kinds. On the one hand are
those processes which take place in organized and fixed systems of
nervous elements ; whether these systems are organized hereditarily
or in the course of, and under the influence of, individual
experience, the processes that occur in them take place without
affecting personal consciousness, save perhaps in some very
obscure fashion, and without any sense of effort, without attention,
though there is reason to doubt whether they are ever completely
mechanized or completely and finally withdrawn from the possibility
of mental control,^ On the other hand are processes which occur
in nervous tissue that is still plastic, not completely organized in
functional systems ; these processes, and these only, are accom-
panied by clear consciousness, by attention, by effort, by explicit
volition ; and these, on repetition, pass over into the former class ;
the nervous elements in which they occur become more and more
firmly organized, and, in proportion as this organization progresses,
attentive consciousness ceases to be involved in or to accompany
them. All mental growth, or at least all formation of fixed
habits and associations of every kind, seems to involve such
progressive organization of new nervous elements within fixed
systems. Attention, which is essentially conation or will, is, as
Dr Stout has well said,^ the growing point of the mind ; it is
concentrated wherever the process of organization of nervous

^ The facts of hypnosis and alhed conditions in which the power of the mind
over the body seems to be greatly increased necessitate this reservation.

* “ Analytic Psychology.”

THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS 277

elements is going on ; and when, and in proportion as, this
process approaches completion, attention (which means conation
and clear consciousness) is set free to be concentrated upon other
processes involving mental acquisition or growth. For it is a
further distinction between the processes of these two kinds that,
while the mechanized ” processes do not seriously interfere with
other nervous processes, whether of the same or of the other kind,
processes involving attentive consciousness interfere with one
another in proportion to the degree of effort, or of concentration
of attention, required by each of them.

Clear consciousness and conation are then invariable con-
comitants, not of nervous process in general, nor of all nervous
processes occurring in the cerebral cortex or in any other part of
the brain, but of those nervous processes that occur in nervous
elements not yet organized in fixed systems ; and wherever a
new path has to be forced through the untrodden jungle of nerve
cells, there and there only is conscious effort, true mental activity,
involved. Without conation there is no mental growth, and the
stronger the psychical impulse, the desire or effort of will, the
more effectively are the difficulties of new acquisition overcome ;
and an effect of all such processes, an effect whose degree is pro-
portional to the intensity of the conation and the corresponding
concentration of attention involved, is the organization of the
nervous elements, the combination of them in fixed functional
systems.

We have, then, a perfect case of invariable concomitance and
sequence ; the nervous process that occurs in unorganized elements
(and this only) is invariably accompanied by attentive conscious-
ness ; and such process invariably results in some degree of
organization of the nervous elements, a degree which is
proportional to the degree of attentive effort involved. How
different, then, are the facts from the assumptions as to the
relation of consciousness to nervous process necessarily implied
and generally asserted by the parallelists and epiphenomenalists,
namely, an invariable parallelism or concomitance in time of
consciousness and of all nervous process (or all cerebral process)
without distinction ! The relations are such as imply that clear
consciousness and conation play some real part in bringing about
the organization of nervous elements, that the relation between
conation or conscious mental activity and nervous organization is
the causal relation.

278 BODY AND MIND

Well founded views as to the nature of the cerebral processes
enable us to go further and to form some more intimate notion
of the nature of the process of nervous organization, in which
consciousness and conation seem to play this essential role. The
building up of neural systems seems to be essentially the
establishment of paths of low resistance between the various
elements or neurons concerned ; the establishment of such a path
seems to be the effect of the passage of a stream of nervous energy
across the synapses, the places at which the neurons are in
contact or close proximity with one another ; for the synapses
seem to be not only the places of connexion of neurons, but also
the seats of the resistances by which the spread of the nervous
excitation from neuron to neuron is limited and directed.

Organized systems of neurons are such as have low internal
resistances ; and systems of neurons and unorganized neurons are
separated from others by synapses that present a high degree of
resistance to the passage of the current of nervous energy. The
essential feature of the process of organization is, then, the forcing
of a passage across synapses of high resistance ; and it would
seem that for this forcing of a passage a concentration of nervous
energy, resulting in a high potential of charge of nervous energy
in the neurons, is an essential condition.^ This process of
concentration of nervous energy, resulting in its accumulation
from places of lower potential into one system of neurons where
the potential is raised to a high level and in its discharge across
synapses of high resistance (and not nervous process in general)
is, then, the process that is invariably and proportionally
accompanied by clear consciousness and conative effort. Now
this process is one that seems to be mechanically inexplicable ; it
involves just such antagonism of the tendency to dissipation and
degradation of energy as we have seen to be characteristic of
living organisms ; it seems, in fact, to be the supreme manifestation
of this power. It is just here, then, that we should expect to
find operative any power of psychical intervention in the

^ This IS implied by the fact that in proportion to the effort required, the free
nervous energy of the brain (or neurokyme) seems to be withdrawn from all
other tracts of the brain, so that they are inhibited in proportion to the degree
to which their activities require a high potential of energy, or, in other words, in
proportion as the various systems active at the moment fall short of complete
organization or “ mechanization.” It is implied also by many other physiological
facts which cannot be detailed here (see paper by the author on ” Nature of
Inhibitory Processes within the Nervous System,” “Brain,” vol. xxvi,).

THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

279

mechanical sequence of events, and it is here that we might
attempt to apply any one of those conceptions of guidance
without work, which, as we saw in Chapter XIV., would permit
of psychical intervention in the course of the brain-processes'
without breach of the law of conservation of energy in its strictest
form. And it is just of this process that conation or psychical
effort seems to be an invariable and necessary condition.^

The facts, then, point strongly to the view that conation or
psychical effort really intervenes in the course of the physical
processes of the brain, and that it plays an essential role in the
building up of the organization of the brain. And it may be
plausibly maintained that all other modes of consciousness serve
but to guide or determine the incidence of conation, the primary
and most fundamental form of psychical activity.

The argument from the Darwinian principles to the usefulness
of consciousness to the organism may be put in a rather different
way, which I will indicate very briefly only.

All the immense variety of qualities of sensation that we
experience seem to be in some sense compounded from a limited
number of primary or elementary qualities of sensation ; and it is
generally agreed that we have to regard all the primary qualities
of sensation as having been differentiated step by step from some
primordial germ of sensation of undifferentiated quality.

Now we are compelled to believe that to each of these primary
qualities of sensation there corresponds as its invariable accom-
paniment a neural process of peculiar or specific quality ; and
there is very strong ground for believing that each such process
owes it unique quality to the peculiar physico-chemical constitution
of the nervous substance in which it takes place.^ These very

^ This argument was presented b3^ the author in some detail in a series of
papers in ‘‘Mind,” N.S , vol. vu. (** A Contribution towards an Improvement
of Psychological Method ”), and has been elaborated in later papers, especially
Physiological Factors of the Attention-process ” (“Mind,” N.S., vol. x.), “ The
Seat of the Psycho-physical Processes ” (“ Brain,” vol. xxiv ).

2 1 have argued in the papers referred to above that these substances of
specific constitution, presumably the most highly specialized of all forms of
organic matter, reside at the synapses of the cerebrum, and that the immediate
occasion of sensation is the discharge of nervous energy across such substance
from neuron to neuron. But this suggestion, though it harmonizes well with
the argument of the foregoing pages, is not a necessary part of the present
argument It may be pointed out in passing that these highly specialized sub-
stances and their exact distribution in various parts of the cerebrum are among
the innate characters of the adult organism, and that they have to be regarded
as provided for, or determined by, the constitution of the germ cell, if the
mechanical view of the process of heredity is accepted.

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BODY AND MIND

highly specialized substances have, then, been gradually evolved
and differentiated in the course of evolution of the animal kingdom,
and they must therefore be of value to the organisms that possess
them. But, so far as we can at present see, the specific characters
of these substances are without significance for the mechanical
operations of the brain ; they seem to subserve no other function
in the life of the organism than just the production of a rich variety
of qualities of sensation. If further research should prove this
view to be true (and the evidence we already have strongly
supports it), then we shall have in these facts another strong
reason for believing in the value of consciousness to the organism
and in the intervention of psychical factors in the course of the
mechanical processes of the brain.

CHAPTER XXI

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

I N this chapter we have to consider from several points of view
the fact of the unity of personal consciousness and the
difficulties which this fact raises for all forms of Parallelism.
The problem of the unity of consciousness has been much dis-
cussed, and the discussion has been conducted along two rather
different lines ; the one line of discussion, neglecting physiological
considerations, has relied on purely psychological and meta-
physical reasoning ; the other has kept constantly in view the
bearing of physiological facts. We may with advantage follow
up these two lines separately ; but we shall see that they
converge to a common conclusion.

Every form of Parallelism necessarily assumes that the con-
sciousness of any complex organism is in some sense composite,
that it is compounded from, or made up of, elements which in
principle are capable of existing in separation from the whole of
which they form part, and that it is a unity only in the same
sense as the bodily organism is a unity. Most of the parallelists
frankly accept this corollary of their doctrine. The late Professor
Ebbinghaus, for example,^ likened the unity of human conscious-
ness to the unity of a plant. Like the plant, he said, consciousness
has many distinguishable parts, namely the various sensations, the
details of imagery, and the feelings, which introspective analysis
discovers in any section of its stream ; between these parts or
elements obtain systematic functional relations, in virtue of which
they constitute an organic whole or unity, just as the leaves,
flowers, stem, and roots of a plant form an organic unity in virtue
of the functional relations that obtain between them.

This doctrine that consciousness is compounded from elements
is the essence of what has been well named the atomistic
psychology. The parallelists, who are logically compelled to
subscribe to this atomistic doctrine, are the more ready to do so
^ “ Grundzuge d. Psychologie,” Bk. I. § 2.

281

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BODY AND MIND

because the “ association- psychology,” which had been developed
with little or no reference to this special problem, had made this
doctrine the foundation of all its reasonings and had in some
measure justified it by its partial success in throwing light on our
mental operations. The association-psychology owed its rise to
Locke’s doctrine of the compounding of simple ideas to form
complex ideas, and it has always retained this as its most funda-
mental assumption. But in one respect later exponents, notably
J. S. Mill, found themselves compelled to modify it, namely by
the introduction of the conception of ‘‘ Mental Chemistry.” For
it was realized that introspection cannot always discover in the
complex idea the simple ideas or elements of consciousness of which
it is said to be compounded ; it was assumed therefore that the
elements or smaller fragments of consciousness do not merely
cohere side by side to form the complex ideas, but that they
coalesce or combine, yielding up more or less completely their
original natures to form compounds whose nature is more or less
different from that of each of the coalescing parts.

Thus, it is said that, when I experience a sensation of the
quality purple, that sensation is produced by the compounding of
two simple sensations, one of the quality red and one of the quality
blue ; or that, w'-hen I perceive a spot of light to be in a certain
direction, my consciousness of the light-in-that-direction is a com-
plex which is formed by the coalescence of the visual sensation with
certain sensations of the muscular sense ” excited by the position
or movements of the head and eyeballs ; or that, when I judge
one piece of bread to be larger than a second piece, my mental
process is essentially the association of the idea of the one piece with
the idea “ larger ” or with the idea of largeness, and that my state
of consciousness is the complex idea produced by the compounding
of these two simpler ideas. And, according to this doctrine, when
I will a certain movement, my volition is merely a state of con-
sciousness compounded of the idea of the movement that I am
about to make with some obscure sensations of muscular strain in
the scalp, or throat, or elsewhere, and perhaps also with the idea
of myself, which in turn is a compound of many simple sensations
and ideas.

On the other hand the Animist, who believes that the soul is
something more than the fleeting stream of consciousness, main-
tains that the consciousness of any individual is or has a unity of
a unique kind which has no analogue in the physical realm, and

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 283

that it cannot properly be regarded as consisting of elements,
units, or atoms of consciousness, put together or compounded
in any way. He maintains that the unity of individual con-
sciousness is a fundamental and primary fact, and that we are
logically bound to infer some ground of this unity other than
consciousness itself ; he holds that each man’s consciousness is a
unitary whole and is separate and distinct from the consciousness
of every other organism, just because it is a state or activity of a
psychical subject, the ego, soul, or spirit, which is essentially a
unitary and distinct being. He regards as illegitimate the con-
ception of fragments or atoms of consciousness, particles of
sensation or feeling, of mind-stuff or mind-dust of any kind, and
rejects the motion that such fragments come into being or exist
independently and are capable of being combined according to
the laws of a mental chemistry.” He insists that no one has
ever come upon such a fragment of consciousness lying about
loose or unattached anywhere in the world ; that each of us knows
sensations and feelings only as introspectively distinguishable, but
inseparable, parts of the stream of his own consciousness, and
that nothing in our experience justifies us in believing that such
mind-dust exists or can exist.

This doctrine of “ mental chemistry ” assumes that the
atoms of consciousness, say two elementary sensations, come
together and, fusing, yield up their own natures to form
a third thing unlike both. But this is in itself an inadmissible
notion ; the quality of a sensation is its very being, its esse
is truly percipi, and to suppose that, on being compounded
with a second sensation, it ceases to be itself and becomes
something else, is strictly absurd. The supposed chemical
analogy of the compounding of atoms of hydrogen and oxygen
to form water does not in the least justify this conception ; for in
this case the atoms do not change their natures on being com-
bined ; they merely appear different, because the compound
affects our senses and other things in other ways than the pure
substances. That the atoms retain their essential nature un-
changed appears clearly, if the compound is decomposed. When,
however, simultaneous stimulation by red and blue lights gives
rise to sensation of the quality purple, this sensation is not
merely two sensations of red and blue qualities, appearing
different in virtue of their being conjoined ; rather it is in itself
something different from both the red and the blue qualities.

BODY AND MIND

284

To all this it may be added that, when the psychical monist
claims that his position is superior to all others because it
postulates or infers no form of existence not directly known to
us, he is making a false claim ; for the mind-dust which he is
compelled to postulate as the raw material of consciousness is,
like the soul of the Animist, a hypothetical form of existence
reached only by inference from immediate experience.

Most of the arguments briefly indicated in the foregoing
paragraph have been presented by Lotze, the greatest modern
defender of Animism, and it is impossible to state them more
forcibly than in his words. “ A mere sensation without a
subject,” he wrote, “is nowhere to be met with as a fact. It
is impossible to speak of a bare movement without thinking
of the mass whose movement it is ; and it is just as impossible
to conceive a sensation existing without the accompanying idea
of that which has it, or rather of that which feels it ; It

is thus, and thus only, that the sensation is a given fact ; and
we have no right to abstract from its relation to its subject
because the relation is puzzling, and because we wish to obtain
a starting-point which looks more convenient, but is utterly
unwarranted by experience,”

Even if we were to admit the conception of fragments of
consciousness capable of being compounded and associated
together, such compounding and associating could yield at most
only the content of consciousness ; we could not admit the
further assumption necessarily made by the parallelists, the
assumption namely that we can explain in terms of such com-
pounding and associating the processes of knowing, judging, com-
paring, desiring, willing, and reasoning. For these processes
involve psychical activities which are more than and other than the
processes of associative reproduction. Lotze made this his principal
argument for the existence of the soul and for its interaction with
the body. He wrote — “ Any comparison of two ideas, which
ends by our finding their contents like or unlike, presupposes the
absolutely indivisible unity of that which compares them, and it
must be one and the same thing which first forms the idea of
then that of and which at the same time is conscious of the
nature and extent of the difference between them. Then again
the various acts of comparing ideas and referring them to one
another are themselves in turn reciprocally related ; and their
relation brings a new activity of comparison to consciousness.

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 285

And so oui: whole inner world of thoughts is built up, not as a
mere collection of manifold ideas existing with or after one
another, but as a world in which these individual members are
held together and arranged by the relating activity of this single
pervading principle. This then is what we mean by the unity of
consciousness, and it is this that we regard as the sufficient
ground for assuming an indivisible soul.”

To these two arguments from the unity of consciousness,
Lotze added a third, namely that from the consciousness of the
self as a unity. This argument has been much insisted upon by
a class of writers who assert — lam aware of myself as a spiritual
unity, therefore I am no mere system of minor selves or of frag-
ments of consciousness, but an immortal soul ” ; and some of them
go so far as to assert that the consciousness of self as a unity
is always present in all forms of mental process. This, of course,
is merely bad psychology constructed in the interests of a priori
speculation. But Lotze gave the argument a more subtle form.
“ Our belief in the souFs unity,” he said, “ rests not on our appear-
ing to ourselves such a unity, but on our being able to appear to
ourselves at all. Did we appear to ourselves something quite
different, nay, did we seem to ourselves to be an unconnected
plurality, wre would from this very fact, from the bare possibility
of appearing anything to ourselves, deduce the necessary unity
of our being, this time in open contradiction with what self-
observation set before us as our own image. What a being
appears to itself to be, is not the important point ; if it can appear
anyhow to itself, or other things to it, it must be capable of
unifying manifold phenomena in an absolute indivisibility of its
nature.” Again, he wrote — “ What is apt to perplex us in
this question is the somewhat thoughtless way in which we
so often allow ourselves to play fast and loose with the
notion of appearance. We are content with setting in con-
trast to it the being that appears, and we forget that the
appearance is impossible without another being that sees
it. We fancy that appearance comes forth from the hidden
depths of being-in-itself, like a lustre existing before there is any
eye for it to arise in, extending into reality, present to and
apprehensible by him who will grasp it, but none the less con-
tinuing to exist even if known by none. We here overlook that
even in the region of sensation, from which this image is borrowed,
the lustre emitted by objects only seems to be emitted by them,

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and that it can even seem to come from them, only because cur
eyes are there, the receptive organ of a cognitive soul, to which
appearances are possible. The lustre of light does not spread
itself around us, but like all phenomena dwells only in the
consciousness of him for whom it exists. And of this conscious-
ness, of this general capacity that makes the appearance of
anything possible, we maintain that it can be an attribute only of
the indivisible unity of one being, and that every attempt to
ascribe it to a plurality, however bound together, will, by its
failure, but confirm our conviction of the supersensible unity of
the soul.’’ ^

That, to my mind, is a beautiful piece of reasoning which
carries great weight. Nevertheless it would seem that this
reasoning, though it cannot be refuted, is incapable of compelling
assent to its conclusion ; for, since Lotze wrote these words,
Parallelism has gained ground rapidly against Animism — if
success be reckoned in terms of the numbers of those who
accept the rival doctrines. I believe that the argument from
the unity of consciousness to the real being of the soul may
be made more compelling by keeping the facts of cerebral
physiology closely in view, especially facts which have been
discovered since Lotze wrote the passages cited above.

From the early days of speculation, physiologists have mani-
fested a tendency to seek some unitary organ within the body
the physical processes of which might be regarded as correspond-
ing to the unity of consciousness. Aristotle postulated such an
organ, ascribing to it more especially the perceptual functions
that are common to the several senses. The notion of a sensorium
commune, thus launched into the culture-tradition by Aristotle, has
served many later thinkers of anti-animistic tendency as a substi-
tute for the soul j and the search for a sensorium commune has
been at various times confused with the search for the seat of
the soul. We have seen in Chapter VIII. that the long search
for a punctual or central seat of the soul has proved fruitless
and that this result has contributed to bring about the rejec-
tion of Animism. We have now to see that the search for a
sensorimn commune has proved equally fruitless, and that this
result provides one of the strongest arguments in support of
Animism.

The fundamental fact which requires explanation may be
^ Metaphysik,” Bk. III. chap. i.

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 287

stated in the following concrete form : — when the eye and the ear
of any person are simultaneously stimulated, the sensory effects
of the stimuli applied to the two organs and of the excitations of
the two nerves, the optic and the auditory, somehow cohere or
belong together in the peculiar way which consists in being partial
modifications of one consciousness : the stimuli and their im-
mediate effects in the nerves are separate and distinct, yet their
effects in consciousness belong together as parts of one whole.
This fact has been very commonly held to imply that some-
where in the brain the two nervous excitations must become one.
And, since the effects of ail stimuli sirnultaneously applied to the
senses of one organism become compounded in this way to form
parts of one complex whole, the stream of consciousness, it seemed
necessary to suppose that all the sensory nerves transmit their
excitations to some one part of the brain, in which they are com-
pounded to a complex physical resultant, the physical correlate
of the complex psychical resultant. It was to this hypoihetical
common sensory centre that the name sensorium commune was
appropriately applied.

Before the issue between Parallelism and Animism had be-
come clearly defined, this hypothetical centre was identified in some
minds with the seat of the soul. This view was, perhaps, first
formulated by Descartes, but Lotze (who afterwards rejected it) has
given the clearest presentation of it in his “ Medizinische Psycho-
logic.” ^ He argued that we must expect to find somewhere in the
brain a central chamber filled with a structureless jelly or paren-
chyma, as he called it, upon which all the sensory nerves abut in
such a way that the excitation passing up any one of them must
be communicated to the jelly. He assumed, as many others have
done, that the nervous excitation is a vibration or undulation,
whose form is different in the several nerves, and that, when several
such vibrations are simultaneously imparted to the central jelly,
it becomes the seat of a complex vibration which is the physical
resultant of all the simpler waves. The jelly was thus to serve as
the sensorium commune or physical medium of composition of the
effects of sensory stimuli.

Other modern writers, feeling the need of such a medium of
composition of the effects of sensory stimuli, have seen it in various
parts of the brain ; W. B. Carpenter,^ for example, claimed the
optic thalamus as such an organ, and Herbert Spencer the pons
^ Publislied in 1852. Mental Physiology.”

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BODY AND MIND

cerebri}- Others have postulated, at the apex of a hierarchy of
cells, a pontifical cell which might play this role.

But the progress of our knowledge of the brain has shown
conclusively that there exists no one part to which all sensory
paths converge, and which might be regarded as a sensorium
cofumune in the sense defined above. It has been shown on the
contrary that the tracts of fibres ascending to the brain from the
sense-organs of different functions pass to widely separated parts
of the cerebral cortex, the sensory areas, and that the various
qualities of sensation depend upon or are evoked by the processes
of these several areas.

Faced with these facts, some of those who have seen the
necessity of postulating some medium of composition of the
effects of sensory stimuli have suggested other possibilities of
physical composition. E. von. Hartmann,^ for example, suggested
that, whenever any two (or more) sensory nerves are simultaneously
excited, the excitation-process in the central station of each pro-
pagates itself through some intervening tract of fibres to that of
the other, so that this tract becomes the seat of a complex
vibration which is the physical resultant of the two processes,
and that it thus serves as the medium of composition required.

One other view only of the nature of the hypothetical material
medium of composition seems possible, namely the one forcibly
advocated by G. H. Lewes.® Lewes’ knowledge of the nervous
system forbade him to accept the notion of any central part or
pontifical cell of the brain that might serve as the sensorium
commune ; he therefore heroically proposed to identify it with the
whole of the brain ; he supposed that vibrations of various forms
are impressed on the sensory nerves in the sense-organs, and that
each such vibration propagates itself throughout the whole nervous
system, which is thus pervaded in all its parts at any moment by
a complex vibration, the physical resultant of the vibrations
initiated at the preceding moment in the several sensory nerves.

Now all three views of the nature of the assumed physical
medium of composition (and no others have been or can be
suggested) are purely speculative ; no particle of evidence directly
supporting any one of them can be adduced. The knowledge we
now have of the nervous system and its functions enables us to
reject the second and third views as decisively as the first, and

^ “ Principles of Psychology 2 » Philosophy of the Unconscious.’*

® “ The Physical Basis of Mind.”

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 289

to assert confidently that there exists in the brain no such
physical medium of composition, and that the processes of the
several sensory nerves simultaneously excited do not affect any
common material medium to produce in it a complex physical
resultant I might substantiate this statement by showing that
each of these three views is incompatible with well-established
general principles of cerebral physiology, e.g. the principle that
the primary qualities of sensation are determined by the specific
constitutions of the nervous substances in the cerebral terminals of
the sensory nerves and that these are widely scattered through
the cerebral cortex and, perhaps, in part in the basal ganglia ^ ;
the principle, recently established, that nervous conduction is not
a mere physical vibration, but involves chemical change ; and the
principle of localization of cerebral functions in general These
and other general considerations render it in the highest degree
probable that the physical conditions or accompaniments of the
complex state of sensation obtaining at any moment in the
individual consciousness (and our consciousness always involves a
complex of sensations more or less obscure or clear) are a number
of physico-chemical processes running their courses separately in
many widely scattered parts of the cerebrum.

But the strongest evidence against the view that the effects
of simultaneous sense-stimuli are physically compounded may be
provided by the demonstration that no such compounding occurs
in one particular instance in which it has been and still is most
confidently assumed, namely the instance of binocular vision.
When we look at any object with both eyes, both retinae and
both optic nerves are stimulated ; why then do we see one object
only ? The commonly accepted answer runs — Because the fibres
from each pair of corresponding points of the two retinae converge
in the brain to a common path or centre. I propose to show very
briefly that this answer is untrue. Let us consider the facts in
their most simple and striking form, in order to appreciate as
clearly as possible the nature of the problem. Two men, A and

1 This is the modem form of the doctrine of specific energies of sensory nerves.
Many attempts have been made to overthrow this principle, but without
success. Prof. Wundt, for example, claims to have replaced it by the doctrine
of the original indifference of function of cerebral centres ; but his doctrine,
even if tenable, only differs from the more generally accepted principle in main-
taining that the specific constitutions of sensory centres are impressed upon
them in the course of individual development (*' Grundzuge der Phys.
Psychologic ”).

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BODY AND MIND

B, are in a dark room in which is a single small illuminated area
or spot of white light. A puts a red glass before his left eye and
looks directly at the spot with that eye only. B puts a blue
glass before his right eye and looks at the spot with that eye
only. A sees a red spot, B a blue one ; a sensation of quality
red is experienced by A, blue by B. Then A, keeping the red
glass before his left eye, puts the blue glass before his right eye,
and, looking at the spot with both eyes, sees a purple spot, i e.,
he experiences a sensation of which the quality is neither red nor
blue, but rather blue- red, a composite quality which has affinity to
both blue and red, but which is widely different from both. Why
this difference between the two cases ? ^

The ordinarily accepted answer runs — In the former case the
red and blue lights excite nervous processes which run their
courses separately in the brains of A and B respectively ; the
physical causes of the red and blue sensations are separate and
distinct, and therefore the sensations are distinct; but in the
second case the nervous pirocesses excited by the red and the
blue lights respectively are transmitted to the same part, or
same group of nervous elements, of the one brain and are there
physically compounded, and therefore only one sensation is
excited and this is of neither red nor blue quality, but partakes
of both qualities.

I cannot display here the evidence in detail which proves that
no such physical composition of effects takes place, since much of
it is of a highly technical character ; and I must refer the reader
who wishes to study it to a separately published paper in which
it is set out more fully.^ But it seems worth while to set down
here the main heads of this evidence as follows : —

f I ) The spot of light seen with red and blue glasses before
the two eyes respectively does not always appear purple ; at
moments it appears pure red, and at others pure blue, an instance
of the phenomenon known as the struggle of the two visual helds,
or retinal rivalry. And by voluntary effort either colour may be
made to predominate over the other. It is difficult to reconcile
this alternation of the two colours in consciousness with the view
that the excitations of the two optic nerves become physically com-

^ The problem may be presented in a form rather more striking perhaps,
but more complicated^ by substituting a bluish-green glass for the blue one. The
subject A will then see a white spot, though his left eye is stimulated by red light
and his right eye by blue-green light,

* The Relations between Corresponding Retinal Points,’’ Brain, vol. 34.

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 291

pounded in the visual centres of the cerebrum ; and it is still more
difficult to reconcile with this view the possibility of re-enforcing
by voluntary effort either process to the exclusion of the other.

(2) If, instead of red and blue glasses, a single darkly-smoked
glass is used before one eye (so as to diminish the intensity of
the stimulus to that retina), and if then the illuminated area is
looked at with the uncovered eye only, and after a few seconds
the other eye is opened behind the smoked glass, the illumination
of the area appears to be diminished at this moment ; and, if one
continues to observe it under these conditions, it may appear to
become alternately brighter and darker every few seconds. This is
the phenomenon known as Fechner's paradox. The fact of chief
importance from our present point of view is that the opening of
the eye behind the smoked glass diminishes the apparent brightness
of the area ; and if (according to the assumption) we regard the
two eyes as the terminals of a single sense-organ, we must say
that an addition to the total physical stimulus to the sense-organ
diminishes the intensity of the sensation. But, if the excitations
initiated in the corresponding areas of the two retinae were trans-
mitted to a common centre and there compounded, the effects of
the two stimuli should be summed together, and the effect of
opening the eye behind the smoked glass should be to increase
the intensity of the sensation.

(3) Allied to the last and even more significant, though its
significance is apt to be obscured by our familiarity with it, is
the fact that, when we look at any illuminated surface with both
eyes, it appears no brighter (or so little brighter that it is very
difficult to be sure of the difference) than when looked at with
one eye only ; that is to say the doubling of the physical stimulus
produces no increase (or only a very slight increase) in the
intensity of sensation. This fact clearly is incompatible with
the common view that the two optic nerves transmit their excita-
tions to be summed in a common centre ; for if that were the case,
the opening of the second eye on any illuminated surface should
produce the same well-marked degree of increase of brightness or
of intensity of the sensation, as doubling the illumination of the sur-
face, i.e. as doubling the intensity of stimulation of the one retina.

(4) In certain cases of hysteria the patient becomes for a
time wholly blind of one eye ; and a similar condition may be
temporarily induced in many subjects by verbal suggestion
during hypnosis. Now such functional blindness is in all pro-

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bability due to an arrest of the activity of the sensory centre
of the cerebral cortex ; it is impossible to suppose that the
verbal suggestion can paralyze the optic tract below the cortex,
while leaving the cortical centre of the tract in activity ; yet this
would have to be supposed to occur, if the cortical centres of the
two retinae are identical.^

(5) In certain rare cases a lesion of the visual cortex has
produced a small area of blindness in one retina only ; a fact fatal
to the common view.

(6) If the corresponding points of the two retina sent their
fibres to a common cortical centre, this relation of “ correspondence ”
should be definitely fixed and incapable of being altered ; but we
find that in some cases of squint there is set up a correspondence
between other than the normally corresponding points, which
permits of single binocular vision in spite of the squint ; and
further it is found that, if the squint is cured by operation so that
the normally corresponding points receive the optical images of
the same object, then at first the patient sees objects double, but
gradually ceases to do so, reacquiring by practice the normal
system of correspondences. These facts are clearly irreconcilable
with the view that single vision with the two eyes depends upon
any fixed system of anatomical connexions.

(7) If the retina is stimulated intermittently, the rate of
succession of the stimuli may be increased until the subject ceases
to perceive any intermittence or flicker of the sensation. This
rate of succession is known as flicker-point ; it varies with the
intensity of the stimulating light ; but we may take for illustration
a case in which flicker-point is reached when the stimulus is
repeated twenty times a second. Now, if each retina is stimulated
intermittently twenty times a second, but in such a way that the
stimuli fall alternately on the two retinae, the flicker- point is not
changed ; whereas, if the fibres from corresponding points converge
to a common centre, flicker-point should be reached when the
stimulus falls ten times a second on each retina ; for then the
centre would still be stimulated twenty times a second.

These are the principal facts which go to prove that the
physical processes simultaneously initiated in corresponding points
of the two retinae undergo no physical compounding or fusion ;
and taken together they make an overwhelmingly strong proof
that, in such a case as that of the fusion of the effects of red and
1 For further discussion of the facts, see chap. xxv.

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293

blue lights applied to the two retinse, the fusion of effects (which
undeniably occurs) is not dependent on any composition or fusion
of the physical processes. The fusion of effects, therefore, takes
place only in the psychical sphere. In the illustrative case we
have considered, the two physical processes initiated by the red
and the blue lights respectively in the two retinae of the man A,
remain as distinct as the two physical processes initiated by the
red and blue lights respectively in the left eye of the man A and
in the right eye of the man B ; yet in the one case the effect in con-
sciousness produced by them is a single sensation of the quality
purple in one consciousness, and in the other case they excite two
sensations, one of quality red in the consciousness of A, and one
of quality blue in the consciousness of B.

The fusion of effects of simultaneous sensory stimuli to a
unitary resultant is, then, not a physiological or physical fusion or
composition, but a purely psychical fusion ; the unitary resultant
exists only in the psychical sphere. Is this fact compatible with
any form of Parallelism ?

Any unbiased mind must, I think, answer this question in the
negative. For it is clear that these psychical fusions of effects of
sensory stimuli obey, or take place according to, purely psychical
laws that have no physical counterparts ; or that, if the two sensa-
tions of different quality really come into existence and afterwards
fuse together producing the third quality, the fusion is a psychical
process to which no physical process runs parallel. This fact
appears clearly enough when we consider only the fusions that
result in our complex sensations ; but it will appear still more
clearly, and its full significance will be more obvious, when in a
later chapter we deal with the higher mental processes.

Before going on to that part of our discussion, I wish to show
that the fact we have established is not only incompatible with
all forms of Parallelism and therefore indirectly an evidence of
Animism, but that it affords a more direct and positive proof of
the truth of Animism.

We have seen that, while most of the exponents of
Parallelism meet this problem of the ground of the unity of
individual consciousness with the untenable doctrine of the
physical unity of the brain -processes that accompany individual
consciousness, and while others ignore it completely, some
of the most thorough of them recognize the existence of
the problem but fail to offer any solution of it ; thus Lange and

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Paulsen (Chapter XII) frankly assert that it is an insoluble
problem, while Professor Strong is still pondering the problem —
“ What holds consciousness together ? ”

Only one exponent of Parallelism seems to have clearly
grasped this problem and to have grappled seriously with it,
namely Fechner. Fechner was a clear-sighted, as well as a
boldly original, thinker and, unlike many other philosophers, he
had a wide knowledge of, and a great respect for, empirical facts ;
and, though most of the evidence set forth above was not accessible
to him, he realized clearly the fact that the brain-processes which
are the physical correlates of any complex state of consciousness
are a number of discrete processes taking place in various parts
of the brain (a fact which curiously enough Lotze failed to
recognize). In his celebrated work, Elemente der Psycho-
physik,” he wrote “The psychically unitary and simple are
resultants of a physical manifold, the physical multiplicity gives
unitary or simple resultants/^ ^ And Fencher saw that in this
fact lies a crucial problem for his whole psycho-physical doctrine,
one that urgently demands some solution. The solution he pro-
posed was his doctrine of psycho-physical continuity and dis-
continuity. Surveying the types of nervous system, he regarded
it as probable that in such animals as the lower arthropoda,
whose nervous system consists of a chain of ganglia connected
with one another only by slender bands of nerve fibres, each
ganglion has its own separate consciousness ; and he thought it
highly probable also that the spinal cord and perhaps the basal
ganglia of the higher vertebrates (including man) have their own
streams of consciousness separate from the chief or cerebral
consciousness. And he held that empirical facts justified the view
that, if the human cerebrum could be divided by the knife into
two halves, each half would enjoy its separate consciousness ; and
that, if the brains of two men could be effectively joined by a
bridge of nervous matter, as the two halves of the human cerebrum
are joined by the corpus callosum^ the two men would have a single
common consciousness. It seemed, then, to him that a condition of

^ Vol ii. p. 526. Again, on p 456 we read : Dabei haben wir nns zu erinnern,
dass nicht nur unser Allgemeinbewusstsein in jedem Momente von einem
Systeme von Bewegungen getragen wird, sondern dass auch alle Phanomene,
die sich als besondere vom Grunde des Allgemeinbewusstseins abheben, wenn
schon sie fiir das Bewusstsein einfach erscheinen, doch nicht an einfachen Be-
wegungsniomente emzelner 'J'lieilc lungen sondern an dem Zasaminenwirken
einer Mehrheit von Theilchen und Momenten.''

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 295

the unity of a consciousness is continuity in space of the nervous
matter ; and that a condition of separateness of consciousnesses is
spatial separation of their nervous bases or material aspects. But
this is not the sole and essential condition, else every intact
nervous system would have one consciousness only (i.e. the con-
scious aspect of all its processes would run together to form a single
consciousness) ; whereas each man's personal consciousness is (ac-
cording to Fechner’s doctrine) the combination of the processes of
certain parts of his brain only (in their conscious aspect). The
further and essential condition of the running together of lesser
consciousnesses to form the larger consciousness of the individual
organism is, Fechner suggests, that their material aspects shall
form a spatially continuous system, every part of which in its
psychical aspect rises about the threshold of consciousness ” of
that individual. In a similar way Fechner would explain, or
rather state, the essential condition of the flowing together of the
consciousnesses of individual men to form the larger aggregations
of consciousness which he assumed to exist. Such a hypothetical
larger consciousness he regarded as that of an individual of a more
comprehensive type than the human individual, a consciousness
which is more inclusive because its ‘‘ threshold ” is lower, so much
lower that the psycho-physical processes of the inorganic matter
which connects the bodies of human beings are of sufficient
intensity to rise above that “ threshold."

What shall be said of this strange doctrine ? In the first
place it must be frankly admitted that modern studies of multiple
personality seem to lend it some support. For there is some
reason to believe that in these cases there exists a rupture of
functional continuity between two or more parts of one nervous
system, each of these parts serving as the physical basis of one of
the partial personalities.

But there are many good reasons for rejecting this doctrine,
(i) In the first place, the distribution in the brain of the processes
that are the immediate correlates of consciousness is in all
probability not such as is demanded by it ; for example, the two
hemispheres of the cerebrum are directly connected only by the
strands of fibres that make up the corpus callosum^ and it is highly
probable that the processes in these fibres are not immediate
correlates of consciousness or (in Fechner’s language) that their
processes do not rise above the threshold of consciousness ; if this
is the fact, each hemisphere is in Fechner’s sense psycho-physi-

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296

cally discontinuous with the other, and each should therefore have
its separate consciousness : which is certainly not normally the
case. There are also cases on record in which the corpus callosum
was completely lacking and which nevertheless afforded no indica-
tion of dual consciousness.” ^

(2) The doctrine involves all the objectionable features of
psychical atomism and “ mental chemistry,” and all the difficulties
of the compounding of individual consciousnesses to larger wholes
which we have noted on other pages.

(3) The conception of the ‘‘threshold,” which is fundamental
to Fechner’s whole psycho-physical scheme and especially to the
doctrine of psycho-physical continuity, remains utterly obscure, a
metaphor of extreme vagueness merely. The phrase “ threshold of
consciousness” possesses a misleading plausibility, which has
secured for it a wide popularity. The consciousness, it is assumed,
exists whether above or below the “threshold,” and its being
above the “ threshold ” is merely the condition of its aggregation
in the complex whole of individual consciousness. The “thres-
hold,” above which consciousness is said to rise, must be then
in every case the “ threshold ” peculiar to the individual whose
consciousness is in question ; yet (according to the doctrine) this
individual has no existence as such apart from the “ threshold ” ;
the “ threshold ” is in short constitutive of the individual. It
it must, I think, be admitted that a “ threshold ” pure and simple,
regarded as the bond that holds consciousness together, is in no
way superior, rather vastly inferior, to the conception of a soul
as a unitary psychical being.

(4) If we could put aside all these objections and difficulties,
and if it could be empirically established that the condition of
the unity of consciousness is the material continuity of brain
matter and of the processes in it which are the immediate
correlates of consciousness ; still the doctrine of psycho-physical
continuity would not render in the least degree intelligible the
fact that a unitary consciousness is correlated with a multitude of
discrete brain-processes. The doctrine, if empirically established,
would remain the statement of an absolutely unintelligible fact.

(5) If the doctrine were established, it would be incompatible
with the fundamental principal of Parallelism, the principle namely
that every psychical process has its physical aspect. As was
pointed out above, the fusions of sensations and other elements to

^ See paper by Dr A. Bruce in Brain^ 1889.

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

297

form a unitary consciousness, as assumed by the doctrine, would
remain purely psychical processes having no phenomenal or
physical aspect ; for, as Fechner himself recognized, there are no
corresponding fusions of the physical processes of the brain ;
and the “ threshold of consciousness,” which is regarded as
constitutive of the unitary stream of consciousness or of psychical
individuality in general, would remain as a law or attribute or
conditioning factor of psychical existences without parallel or
counterpart in the physical world.

The demonstration that the fusion of effects of simultaneous
sensory stimuli does not take place in the nervous system thus
forces upon us the problem of the ground of the unity of in-
dividual consciousness in a form which brings out clearly the
impossibility of finding any solution compatible with the funda-
mental assumption of all forms of Parallelism ; and it forces us
to choose between adopting the plain and straightforward solution
offered by Animism and leaving this fundamental fact utterly
mysterious and unintelligible. The issue is simple and direct.^
When two stimuli are simultaneously applied to the sense-organs of
any normal human being, they produce a change in his conscious-
ness which is their combined effect or resultant This composition
or combination of their effects does not take place in the nervous
system ; the two nervous processes are nowhere combined or com-
pounded ; they remain throughout as distinct as if they occurred
in separate brains ; and yet they produce in consciousness a single
effect, whose nature is jointly determined by both nervous
processes. These facts can only be rendered intelligible by
assuming that both processes influence or act upon some one
thing or being ; and, since this is not a material thing, it must be
an immaterial thing. Our intellect demands this conclusion, and
to refuse to accept it is to mistrust the human intellect in a way
which amounts to radical Scepticism or Pyrrhonism. We cannot
be content to say that each of the tw'o processes generates or
creates a sensation, which two sensations then float off to come
together and join the stream of consciousness of that individual ;
for, even if we could admit that sensations can exist in this isolated
manner, the essential problem would still remain — Why do these
two sensations come together and why do they join that particular
stream of consciousness, rather than any other one ? The only

^ I will ask the reader to keep in mind here the special instance of red and
blue lights falling separately on corresponding areas of the two retinae.

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possible alternative to the hypothesis that this immaterial thing
is an enduring psychic entity, is to assert that it is the stream of
consciousness itself. Now to say that the cerebral processes act
upon consciousness is a convenient and common usage ; but, if
the statement is to be taken seriously, it implies that the stream
of consciousness is not merely the sum of the effects of, or the
psychical aspects of, the brain-processes, but that it has an
independent existence, that it is itself an entity or being. And
this would be Animism, but Animism of a peculiarly unsatisfactory
kind.^ We should still have to assert that the stream of individual
consciousness as it exists at any moment is not the whole of this
immaterial being, and does not reveal its whole nature ; we
should have to recognize that the constancy of the effects in
consciousness produced by the cerebral processes, and their
relative independence of the state or content of consciousness at
the moment of the incidence of the cerebral influences, are
evidences that the immaterial being is more than consciousness
and is the enduring possessor of capacities of reacting upon
cerebral influences in a number of different ways of which some
only are realized at any moment. The psychic being is then
more than the stream of consciousness j and the sensory changes
of consciousness produced by cerebral changes are only a partial
expression of its enduring nature. And, when the effects of two
or more sense-stimuli appear in consciousness combined to a
common resultant, this is because the separate cerebral processes
act upon this one being and stimulate it to react according to the
laws of its own nature with the production of changes in the
stream of consciousness. This psychic being, whose nature is thus
partially expressed by the production of the unitary sensory content
of consciousness in response to the manifold of cerebral influences,
is that medium of composition of effects, that ground of the unity
of consciousness and of psychical individuality, which the intellect
demands and which cannot be found in the substance of the brain.

The facts of the relation of sensory consciousness to cerebral
events thus render the conception of a unitary psychic being, call
it soul or what you will, a necessary hypothesis ; for the rejection
of this hypothesis involves either Pyrrhonism or the acceptance
of a confused tangle of obscure conceptions (conceptions of
fantastic entities such as the “threshold of consciousness,” or
unattached fragments of consciousness, sensations flying about
^ This variety of Animism is further discussed in chap. xxvi.

THE UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

299

loose and coming together to yield up their own natures in
creating new entities) ; and, even if the prejudice against the
conception of a soul is so strong as to lead one to prefer to it
this tangle of fantastic ideas, this still proves to be inconsistent
with the fundamental principles of Parallelism.

In view of the discussion of the following chapter it is
important to make clear the sense in which the phrase "'the
fusion or synthesis of elementary qualities of sensation or of other
psychical elements ” may be legitimately used and will be there
used. When we speak of the fusion of sensations we mean the
fusion of effects in consciousness of sensory processes in the brain.
Each sensory brain-process which is the immediate correlate of a
change in consciousness produces a partial affection of the soul ;
the nature of this effect, like that of all other effects, is determined
both by the nature of that which acts and the nature of that
which is acted upon. The total sensory content of consciousness
at any moment is the complex reaction of the soul upon many
such cerebral influences simultaneously affecting it as qualitatively
distinct and spatially separate processes. The sensations or
other psychical elements have no more a separate existence
than have the several accelerations impressed upon a particle
of matter by several simultaneously acting forces. The motion
of the particle is the resultant effect of these forces upon the
particle and may be analytically reduced to the sum of the
several accelerations ; just so the sensory content of consciousness
(in so far as determined by brain-processes) is the resultant of
the incidence of these influences upon the soul, and this complex
resultant also may be analytically exhibited as the sum of
elements which introspection discovers. But, without a particle
to act upon, the several forces could produce no accelerations,
and their effects are only combined in virtue of their acting upon
one and the same particle ; just so the brain-processes could
produce no sensations except by acting upon the soul, and their
effects are combined in one consciousness only in virtue of their
acting upon one soul.

To some reader the question of the seat of the soul in the
body may remain a difficulty. Such I would remind that to be
in a place means nothing but to exert action or to be effected
by action in that place ; and, if he doubts this, I would ask him
to attempt to attach any other clear meaning to the phrase.
And, if this is agreed upon, it will be admitted that Lotze has

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admirably said in the following passage all that can or need be
said on the question of the seat of the soul. “ The soul stands
in that direct interaction which has no gradation, not with the
whole of the world, nor yet with the whole of the body, but with
a limited number of elements ; those elements, namely, which
are assigned in the order of things as the most direct links of
communication in the commerce of the soul with the rest of the
world. There is nothing against the supposition that these
elements, on account of other objects which they have to serve,
are distributed in space ; and that there are a number of
separate points in the brain which form so many scats of the
soul. Each of these would be of equal value with the rest ; at
each of them the soul would be present with equal completeness.” ^

Before bringing this chapter to an end, it seems necessary
to revert to the problem presented by the cases of multiple
personality in which there seems to be good reason to believe
that two streams of consciousness accompany the processes of one
brain. We seem compelled to believe that in these cases the
brain, which normally is a single functional system of nervous
elements, becomes divided into two systems that are functionally
discontinuous, and that the cerebral processes which accompany
the two streams of consciousness run their courses as two separate
streams of cerebral processes in these two systems.

I shall have occasion to touch upon these cases again in a
later chapter. Here I wish merely to make the following
remarks. If we could prove that functional continuity of the
parts of the brain is a condition of the unity of consciousness,
this empirical fact would be equally compatible with Parallelism
and with Animism. The parallelist would interpret the fact by
saying that, when the matter of the brain is divided into two or
more functionally discontinuous systems, the psychical correlates
of the processes of each system form a separate stream ; and the
Animist would interpret it by saying that under these conditions
each functional system is in relation of reciprocal action with a
separate psychic being, just as the brains of any two men
according to his view interact with two distinct psychic beings.
And neither interpretation would in any real sense make the
empirical fact intelligible ; each would be merely a special ap-
plication of a fundamental supposition as to the ground of unity
of consciousness involved in the general psycho- physical doctrine.

^ Metaphysik,’’ Bk. iii. chap. v.

CHAPTER XXII

THE PSYCHO-PHYSICS OF ‘‘MEANING’’

W E are now prepared to deal with another question the
careful consideration of which leads to results incom-
patible with Parallelism ; namely, the question whether
“consciousness of meaning” has any immediate correlate or
counterpart among the brain-processes which might be regarded
as its physical aspect, its phenomenon, or its immediate cause.
This question is of crucial importance, for, as we have already seen,
meaning appears as the essential link between sense-impression
and action in all, save possibly the simplest, instances of animal
and human behaviour. We have already touched upon the ques-
tion in discussing the behaviour of animals and have found reasons
to believe that actions in the control of which appreciation of
“ meaning ” appears to play a role are not mechanically explicable.
But for the completion of the argument it is necessary to examine
directly the problem of the psycho-physics of meaning.

The history of the treatment of meaning at the hands of
psychologists is one of great interest ; but it must suffice here to
point out that the association-psychology from Locke and Hume
onwards has ignored meaning as a fact of consciousness, almost
completely. The simple idea of Locke was a sensation, and his
complex ideas were groups or aggregates of sensations or of the
images of corresponding quality, and these, it was said, are what
a man is conscious of when he thinks. That in thinking a man
is commonly conscious of, or means, some object wffiich is not an
idea but something existing independently of his ideas or of
his thinking of it, is a fundamental fact that was obscured and
neglected from the outset by the psychology of this school.

In spite of Locke’s assertion that a man is conscious of his
ideas, perceives them, makes them the objects of all his thought
and reasoning, subsequent psychologists, guided largely by Hume,
neglected more and more completely the facts of consciousness
implied by this language, the perceiving the idea, the thinking and

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reasoning about it : they made the sequence of the ideas, regarded
as mere complexes of sensations and images, the whole of thought
and of consciousness. It was this neglect of all that is com-
prised in consciousness except the sensory content that made
possible association-psychology of the cruder kind, and rendered
plausible the attempt to explain all mental process as consisting
merely in the kaleidoscopic shifting and sorting and compounding
of the sensory content by the machinery of the brain.

Yet, that, when we think or are conscious, we think of objects
that are not identical with our ideas, that we mean and are
conscious of meaning such objects, is an obvious and indisputable
fact> And it is equally clear that the thought of an object is
more than the having present to consciousness a picture of it
made up of sensations or images. To appreciate the fact we
have only to reflect that some persons, who can think as well
as others, carry on their thinking without the use of images,
or at least with nothing but verbal images and, at most, fragments
of representative imagery which are so irrelevant and obscure that
they cannot be regarded as playing any essential part, or as con-
stituting the thinker s consciousness of the objects of which he
thinks.

When, not many years ago, psychology began to be actively
cultivated as an independent empirical science, it was inevitable that
these facts should be brought back to light For some time there
prevailed a tendency to regard verbal thinking as carried on with
no consciousness other than that of the words, this consciousness
consisting of sensory images, the revivals of sensory impressions
received on hearing, seeing, or speaking words. Beyond this,
pure thinking involved no consciousness, but merely the unconscious
operations of the cerebral machinery.^

Then the late William James propounded his doctrine of the
psychic fringe. He taught that the complex of sensational
elements, which introspection easily seizes upon and which had
been widely regarded as the whole of the consciousness involved
in thinking, is, as it were, constantly surrounded by, or set upon
a background of, very obscure consciousness, which in spite of its
obscurity is important But this psychic fringe seems to have
been regarded by him as composed of elements or processes of

^ Tins remains true even though the subjective idealist be in the right in
affirming that such objects have no existence.

* This stage is well represented by M. Ribot’s Evolution of General Ideas.”

THE PSYCHO-PHYSICS OF ^‘MEANING

303

the same nature as that which it fringed, namely, sensations, and
to be, in fact, the sensations accompanying cerebral processes that
are in process of waning from or of waxing towards their full
intensity.

But, if we set aside the prejudice which arises from the fact
that the sensory content is so easily seized by introspection, while
all else in consciousness is so much more elusive, a prejudice
which has been fostered by long tradition and countenanced by
great names, it appears perfectly obvious and indisputable that on
thinking of or being conscious of an object, especially an abstract
or a highly general object such as virtue or ambiguity or colour
or animal, the imagery is an altogether subordinate part of my
total consciousness ; it appears that the essential part of my
consciousness is the part which eludes introspection, and which
eludes it just because it is the meaning or reference to the object,
and because, when I turn to examine my thought or my idea of
the object, the object to which I now refer or which I mean is no
longer the original object, but the idea or thought of that object.
Such introspective examination of an “ idea thus illustrates very
well the point which I wish to bring out ; for the sensory content
of consciousness remains unchanged or but little changed, while
the object of my thought is entirely different — in the one case I
mean and am conscious of the object, apple, virtue, animal, or
what not ; in the other case, I mean and am conscious of my
idea of the object The same point is well brought out by
reflexion on the experience of hearing or reading a word whose
meaning we fail for the moment to apprehend. For the moment, the
word is seen as so many printed letters only, and perhaps one pro-
nounces it aloud or mentally only ; but it has no further meaning,
or perhaps one is filled with a sense of the absurdity of this concate-
nation of visual or auditory impressions ; then suddenly comes
the consciousness of its meaning, something in consciousness over
and above the sensory content. And it is not until this conscious-
ness of meaning is added to the merely sensory content of
consciousness that the word can play any significant part in a
process of reasoning.

Again, the same point is illustrated by reflexion upon the
reverse experience, namely, one thinks of an object, or means and
is conscious of meaning an object, which one can neither picture
nor name. And, if the object is an abstract object, one seeks the
word which will embody or convey the meaning already present

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304

to consciousness, perhaps rejecting one after another, saying — No,
that does not express my meaning.

These few examples may serve to illustrate the fact that
meaning is the essential part of a thought or a consciousness of
an object, and that the sensory content, whether vivid and rich
in detail or dim and scanty, is but a subordinate part, a mere cue
to the meaning. If we call the consciousness of an object an
idea of it, then we must recognize that “ Every idea is a concrete
whole of sign and meaning, in which the meaning even when
unanalysed and ‘ implicit ' is what is essential and prominent in
consciousness. The sign, on the other hand, which we saw reason
to identify with certain sensational elements in this complex
experience is normally subordinate.” ^

The further question arises : Is that part of consciousness
which is meaning merely a complex of obscure waning or waxing
sensational elements, as the doctrine of the “ psychic fringe ”
implies? If it is admitted (and it must be admitted) that in all
thought the meaning is at the focus of consciousness, then it
follows that the psychic fringe of obscure sensory content, which
no doubt exists, is not the meaning. It would be manifestly
absurd, after recognizing that the clear imagery present to con-
sciousness is not in itself meaning or the essential feature of
conscious thought, to represent this essential part as consisting in
obscure and vague sensory content which is admittedly present, if
at all, only in the background of consciousness, round about, but
not in, the field of attention.

That meaning is an essential feature of consciousness ^ over
and above, and of a nature different from, its sensory content
appears still more clearly if we consider, not merely an idea of a
simple object, but our consciousness of the meaning of a sentence
heard or read, especially perhaps of a long German sentence in which
the essential word which determines the meaning of the whole is
found at the end of the sentence. In so far as the sentence is

1 The passage is taken from an article by Mr R. F. A. HoernM in Mind^
N.S., No. 61, entitled, Image, Idea, and Meaning.’* The reader may be referred
to this article for a fuller discussion of the question.

® The word meaning may be used in a sense different from that here given it,
namely, it may be said that the object of the thought is the meaning of it, that,
when I think or speak of an apple, the apple itself is the meaning of my words
or my thoughts. That may be a legitimate usage, but throughout these pages
I use the word meaning to denote the consciousness of meaning, or the meaning
part of consciousness or of an idea.

THE PSYCHO-PHYSICS OF MEANING”

305

understood, each word, as heard, comes to consciousness not merely
as a familiar sound but also as a meaning ; and the meanings of
the successive words qualify one another, until, as the last word
is heard and its meaning comes to consciousness, the meaning of
the whole sentence comes also to consciousness. When this happens,
the earlier words as mere sounds, as sensory contents of conscious-
ness, may have faded away ; and a moment later the meaning
conveyed by the words may remain present to consciousness,
while the words themselves are no longer present ; and the hearer
may be unable to recall them or even, if he be a polyglot, may be
unable to say in which of several languages the meaning was
conveyed. And the converse of this case also is interesting ; one
hears sometimes a sentence spoken and perceives all the words
clearly, and yet for a moment the meaning delays, the sentence
remains a mere string of auditory impressions or of words each
having its seperate meaning, until suddenly the meaning of the
whole comes to consciousness. It would be absurd to pretend
that the meaning of the sentence is merely the sum or aggregate
of the psychic fringes of the words, each fringe being in turn a
complex of obscure sensations or images. The meaning of the
sentence is present to consciousness as a unitary whole. And, as
was said in connexion with the “ telegram-argument ” (Chapter
xix. p. 268), this whole is an essential link between the sense-
impressions made by the spoken words and the actions which the
sentence evokes. If, then, this psychical whole, the meaning of
the sentence, has not for its physical correlate in the brain a
corresponding unitary whole, the fundamental principle of
Parallelism is shattered.

The question is so important that I must ask the reader to bear
with me while I return to processes of a simple type, in order to
demonstrate still more fully that there exists no unitary neural
process correlated with meaning, that in fact meaning has no
immediate neural correlate which can be regarded as its immediate
cause, or its phenomenon, or of which it can be regarded as the
psychical aspect.

Let us consider the perception of a point of light lying in a
certain direction. The ray from the point entering my pupil is
brought to a focus on the retina, and there initiates a dis-
turbance in the optic nerve, which is propagated to the cortex
of the occipital or posterior pole of the cerebrum. As this
excitement spreads through some chain or group of nervous

3o6

BODY AND JVIIND

elements in that part of the cortex, consciousness is affected, an
element of visual sensation is added to consciousness. If no
further nervous process resulted from the stimulus, there would
result no further change in consciousness. But, if my attention
is drawn by the impression, the effect in consciousness is more
complex and constitutes what we call the perception of a spot
of light in a certain direction ; that is to say, the consciousness
evoked is not a mere sensation, but is the sensation plus a certain
relatively simple meaning which consists largely of an awareness
of the spatial character and relations of the object. Of this
meaning the direction of the spot is one part, and we may, for
the sake of simplicity, consider this part of the meaning only.
Now it is certain that the awareness of direction depends upon
the appreciation in some sense of the position of the eyeball in
its socket ; and that this in turn depends upon afferent impulses
sent up to the brain along sensory nerves of the kinaesthetic
sense. The associationist account of the process of perception
asserts that these afferent impulses excite kinaesthetic sensations,
and that these coalesce with the visual sensations to form the
resultant spot-of-light-in-the-given-direction ; and a consistent
Parallelist would assert also that the processes initiated in the
optic nerve and in the nerves of the kinaesthetic sense respectively
fuse somewhere in the brain to a complex resultant which is the
physical aspect of the unitary psychical process, the perception.
Nov/ it is certain that these hypothetical kinaesthetic sensations can-
not be discovered by introspection, and we have therefore no right
to say that they come into existence. The spatial meaning of the
percept is certainly not to be identified with any kinaesthetic
sensations, and it is extremely improbable that there occurs any
central fusion of the excitations of the optic and kinaesthetic
nerves. Prof. Wundt (one of the very few who have made any
serious attempt to work out the correlation of consciousness with
brain-process) realizes this and offers a rather different account.
He tells us that the kinaesthetic sensations fuse with the visual
sensations, and, yielding up their own natures, impart to the result-
ant formed by this fusion its spatial characters. This takes place
according to a principle which he calls “ the principle of creative
resultants ” ; the process Is, he says, a creative synthesis, a psychical
process or activity that has no parallel among the brain processes.^
He recognizes that all but the most rudimentary mental processes
^ “ Grundztige d. phys. Psychologie,” fifth edition, vol. iii, p. 778.

THE PSYCHO-PHYSICS OF « MEANING

307

involve such creative syntheses, and that the higher processes
involve them on a very extended scale, in the form of higher
syntheses of syntheses of lower orders ; each higher synthesis
involving a further remove of the content of consciousness from
its physical basis Thus, according to Wundt, only the ultimate
elements of consciousness have their physical correlates or aspects
among the brain-processes ; and they are combined or synthesized
to form new modes of consciousness by purely psychical processes
and according to purely psychical laws that have no parallels or
counterparts in the physical realm. And he recognizes that the
unitary consciousness has for its physical correlate a multiplicity
of discrete processes in the brain. This account certainly distorts
the facts less crudely than does the more usual associationist
account ; and, coming from one who claims to be a Parallelist
and is usually reckoned as one of the leading exponents of
that doctrine, it is highly significant ; for clearly the account
is wholly inconsistent with the principles of Parallelism, and
illustrates very well the fact that, when it is attempted to
work out in detail the psycho-physics of even very simple
mental processes, the principles of Parallelism cannot be carried
through.

But there is no justification for WundPs assertion that the
excitation of the kinsesthetic nerves evokes kinaesthetic sensations
which proceed to fuse or to undergo a process of synthesis. In
this matter of spatial perception, all the ingenuity devoted to the
problem since Lotze enunciated his doctrine of local signs has not
advanced us beyond that celebrated but much misrepresented
doctrine. According to that doctrine, processes of the kind which
in the foregoing accounts are said to excite kinaesthetic sensations
constitute the local signs of the visual sensation ; but they are not
said to excite kinaesthetic sensations ; rather they are said to affect
the soul in a way which prompts it and enables it to exert its
power of spatially ordering its visual sensations within the spatial
system that it conceives. And this power of spatially ordering
the visual and other sensations is a psychical power or faculty,
which cannot be explained or reduced to a fusing of sensations
that in themselves have no spatial character or attribute. In the
terminology adopted in these pages, we can only say that the
soul responds to or reacts upon the particular manifold of sense-
impressions by producing not merely a visual sensation, but also
a consciousness of the spatial setting or relations of the sensation,

308 BODY AND MIND

which consciousness is the meaning, or part of the total meaning,
of the perception.

Thus, in this very simple instance of perception, the content
of consciousness is sensation plus a meaning, which is supplied
by a psychical activity according to purely psychical laws (i.e.
laws of the souFs own nature or being) in response to a given
complex of cerebral influences.

But now let us complicate the case ; instead of a single point
of light, let there be four occupying the corners of a square.
Then the perception (i.e. the consciousness of the subject at the
moment of perceiving) has a richer spatial meaning ; there are
not merely four sensations each in a particular direction ; rather
the sensations with their spatial meanings are synthesized within
a new whole which is the consciousness of the square , a meaning

Fig. 13.

which is more or less rich according to the degree of geometrical
knowledge of the subject and the degree of attention paid by him
to the impressions. And it would be manifestly absurd to say
that this meaning consists of the kinsesthetic sensations clustering
round each of the visual sensations and coalescing into a larger
mass.

Again, let there be many points of light and let them form the
outline of a cube drawn on the flat like the lines of figure 13.
This time the spatial meaning is still richer than before. The
spatial meanings of the many points are synthesized to a still
larger and more complex psychic whole, the consciousness of a cube.

The perception of an outline drawing of this sort presents three
features of special interest in connexion with our topic.

First, the size or distance of the drawing and, consequently, the
size of the retinal image may be varied within very wide limits ;

THE PSYCHO-PHYSICS OF MEANING

309

and the drawing may be turned through any angle in the plane
of the paper ; and the plane of the paper may be turned through
many angular degrees ; and by combinations of these three changes
an indefinitely great number of different combinations of retinal
elements may be made the recipients of the stimuli ; yet, as I per-
ceive the drawing, my consciousness of its meaning remains
unchanged, or changes only in a manner of quite subsidiary im-
portance ; the synthesis of the spatial relations or meanings of the
parts still comes to consciousness as a cube.

Secondly, though no one of the sides of the cube as drawn
is a square or appears as a square, if lcx)ked at in isolation
from the rest of the figure, and though all the sides may be of
different shapes, yet when the figure is looked at as a whole,
each side appears as a square. That is to say, the meaning of the
whole, which is synthesized from the meanings of the parts, reacts
upon those meanings and modifies them.

Thirdly, the drawing of the cube may be ambiguous, so that
it may be interpreted in different ways, i.e. two or more meanings
may be attached to it. If drawn without perspective, it may be
seen as a cube of which the edge a b is nearest to the eye, or as
one of which the edge ^ ^ is nearest. Or again, the whole figure
may be seen as a system of lines drawn on the flat ; and any one
of these meanings may be imposed on it at will. That is to say,
the system of retinal stimuli and of visual sensations evoked by
them may remain unchanged, while the meaning of the whole and
of all its parts is changed by the volition or intention of the
observer ; by a distinct act of will he holds fast one meaning of
the whole, and, so long as he does so, that meaning continues to
determine the meanings of all the parts ; and then, at will, he calls
up another meaning, which combines with the same complex of
visual sensations and transforms the meanings of all the parts of
the system.^

Suppose now that a sufficient description or definition of the
figure is read by a geometer. The printed words stimulating his
retina evoke a complex of sensations wholly different from those
evoked by the drawing of the cube, yet they evoke in his con-

^ It has been attempted to show that these changes of meaning are dependent
upon changes of the innervations of the eye-muscles ; but observations reported
by the author ('* Physiological Factors of the Attention-process,*’ N.S.,

vol. X.) show that, though such changes of innervation may facilitate the changes
of meaning, and though they tend to accompany the changes of meaning, they
are nevertheless not essential conditions of these changes.

310

BODY AND MIND

sciousness the same meaning, even though he is quite incapable of
picturing the figure in representative imagery.

Suppose, further, that a written train of geometrical reasoning
about the figure is read by a geometer. The words evoke in
him the same meanings that were in the mind of him who wrote
them down ; and these meanings, interacting with one another, lead
him to the same conclusion or final meaning, even though the
writer reasoned with the aid of visual symbols and the reader with
the aid of verbal symbols only. As regards sensory content the
consciousnesses of the two men, even during the process of reason-
ing, were very different ; yet the essential meanings were through-
out the same, else the same conclusion would not have been
reached.

Nothing perhaps could illustrate more forcibly than this instance
the degree of independence of the sensory content possessed by
the meaning, the complete difference of nature between them, and
the fact that, in proportion as in mental process the meanings, the
true thought-factors, predominate over the sensory content of con-
sciousness, they are remote from the sensory basis and its nervous
correlates ; all this being true in the highest degree of the conclusion
of the train of reasoning, which is a higher synthesis of the
meanings of the various words and images used in the process.

The same facts might be illustrated by reference to musical
compositions. A series of notes is struck in succession ; to the
unmusical hearer they may come to consciousness as a series of
auditory sensations merely ; but to the musical hearer they come to
consciousness as a medody, a psychic whole of which the sensations
are a subordinate part and the musical meaning the part of pre-
dominant importance. The melody may be transposed to other
keys, or it may be written down as a series of black marks on
paper, and yet in each case the very different sensations evoke in
the consciousness of the musical hearer or reader the same mean-
ing. And that here too the meaning is independent of any par-
ticular auditory or kinaesthetic sensations or imagery, is shown by the
fact that one can mean a certain melody, though one may be unable
to reproduce the notes or even the name of it ; and, if then the
notes be struck or even only some few of them, we know at once
— that is the melody we meant ; and under the guidance of the
meaning we can reproduce the melody. Some persons accustomed
to read music can appreciate the written symbols (i.e. can take
the meaning of them) though they are incapable of humming.

THE PSYCHO-PHYSICS OF ^‘MEANING

singing, whistling, or imaging the notes ; they can intelligently
criticize the music, and, if they afterwards hear it, can at once
recognize it as the same they have read.

That thought is essentially an interplay of meanings, and that
these are relatively independent of the sensory cues, whether
verbal or other, by means of which meaning is conveyed or com-
municated or embodied, is now becoming widely recognized by
psychologists, and of late years the results of a number of minute
introspective studies made under experimental conditions have
given a new support to this doctrine of imageless thought” It
may, in fact, be regarded as established that thought is not the
mere sifting and sorting of aggregates of sensational elements by
the mechanical processes of the brain which evoke these elements in
consciousness ; and that these sensory elements and complexes are
merely cues which evoke higher forms of psychical activity, which
in turn bring meanings to consciousness. Meanings are, then,
essential links between sense-impressions and the behaviour they
evoke : not the sensations, nor any aggregate or synthesis of
them, nor yet the physical correlates in the brain of the sensory
content of consciousness, but these products in consciousness
of a purely psychical activity are the factors which awaken within
us the appropriate emotion and stir up the impulse to appropriate
action, that psychic impulse or conation without which no action
is initiated or sustained.

We have seen that even the sensory content of the conscious-
ness of an object has for its physical correlate a number of
discrete processes in the brain which in no sense constitute a
unitary whole. How much less, then, are we justified in assuming
that the unitary psychic whole of sensory-content-plus-meaning
has any physical correlate in the brain which is a unitary whole
and v/hich can discharge in mechanical fashion the function of
mediating between sense-impression and bodily response ! Mean-
ing, we conclude, plays an essential part in the determination of the
sequence of bodily reaction on sense-impression, and meaning has
no immediate physical correlate in the brain that could serve as its
substitute and discharge its functions.

CHAPTER XXIII

PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION

F rom the consideration of the conditions and effects of
pleasurable and painful or disagreeable feeling, conclusions
may be drawn incompatible with Parallelism and directly
supporting Animism. It is necessary at the outset to ask the
reader to avoid a confusion that is very commonly made. The
tingling, smarting, and other allied disagreeable qualities of
sensation that commonly result from violent stimulation of the
nerves of the skin and other parts, and are commonly called pain-
sensations, must not be confused with painful-feeling, which is a
mode of consciousness distinct in nature and conditions from all
sensations and is in a very complete and special sense the opposite
of pleasurable feeling.^ The so-called pain-sensations have,
except perhaps when at minimal intensity, painful or disagreeable
feeling-tone ; but the feeling-tone is distinguishable from the quality
of the sensation. The sensations are the simplest conditions of
feeling; we commonly say that each sensation-quality has its
feeling-tone, and that this may vary from pleasurable, through
a neutral point, to disagreeable, according to the intensity
of the sensation. This is a crude way of stating the facts ; for
pleasurable or disagreeable feeling qualifies the whole of con-
sciousness and does not attach itself exclusively to any sensation
or other distinguishable element of the stream of consciousness.
The statement that the feeling-tone of a particular sensation is
pleasurable, means that the presence of this sensation-quality in
consciousness tends to give the whole of consciousness a pleasant
feeling-tone, and that, if the sensation is prominent in conscious-

^ In order to avoid the ambiguity of the word pain I shall follow Stout, James,
and other authorities in using the word displeasure as a technical term for painful
or disagreeable feeling or feeling-tone. In common speech this word is used to
imply anger as well as disagreeable feeling ; but since a word is needed to denote
disagreeable feeling-tone, it may justifiably be specialized for this purpose. The
words pleasure and displeasure so understood are the equivalents of the German
words Lust and Unlust,

313

PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION

ness and its feeling-tendency is not counteracted by opposed
tendencies, the tone of feeling will be pleasurable. When
several sensations of pleasurable tendency are present together,
their tendencies re-enforce one another ; and when sensations of
opposed tendency are present together, the opposed tendencies
partially or completely neutralize one another. Or, if the pleasur-
able feeling tendencies be regarded as of positive sign, and the dis-
agreeable tendencies as of negative sign, we may express the facts
by saying that the feeling-tendencies of the various sensations
simultaneously present to consciousness are algebraically summed,
and, according as the resultant is of positive or negative sign, the
feeling-tone of consciousness is pleasurable or disagreeable, or
in other words, the individual feels pleasure or displeasure. But
the sensations are only one class of occasions of pleasure and
displeasure. Every form of mental activity tends to affect the
feeling-tone of consciousness positively or negatively, and the
stronger or the more intense the activity, the stronger is its feeling-
tendency. In general terms it may be said that the smooth flow
of mental process towards its proper end tends to pleasure ; the
baffling or hindering of it by any obstruction, conflict of tendencies,
or difficulty of any kind, tends to displeasure. And of all such
feeling-tendencies the law of algebraic summation holds good,
perhaps not absolutely, but in the main and in general.^ The
feeling-tone of consciousness at any moment is, then, the reaction
of the subject as a whole upon all the many feeling-tendencies
simultaneously influencing it.

These are the elementary facts of feeling broadly stated. It
is obvious that they raise the problem of the unity of conscious-
ness even more urgently than does the psycho-physic of sensation,
and in a form which is, if possible, even more difficult for Parallelism
to cope with. They could be reconciled with any form of Parallelism
only if some physical unity corresponding to the unity of con-
sciousness could be discovered. Failing that, how is the genesis of

1 It may be objected that we commonly and properly speak of disagreeable
sensations as persisting throughout periods which in the main axe pleasurable.
Prof. Stout, in his very admirable chapter on the feeling-tone of sensation, seems
to countenance this way of speaking when he says that a total state of conscious-
ness may be agreeably toned ** in spite of the presence of this or that disagreeable
item ” Manual of Psychology,” vol. i. p. 231). The more accurate statement
of the facts would seem to be that, durmg the period of agreeably toned conscious-
ness, there may be present in the marginal field of consciousness sensations
which would determine disagreeable feeling if the attention were turned to them.

314

BODY AND MIND

the unitary state of feeling, in the determination of which so many
brain-processes play a part, to be accounted for on parallelistic
principles ? We have seen that no composition of brain- processes
to a common physical resultant occurs. Nor will the facts allow
us to postulate a special brain centre for feeling. The physical
correlate of the consciousness, which, as a whole, has a certain
feeling-tone, is a multiplicity of separate processes each of which
plays some part in determining the nature and intensity of the
feeling-tone ; and these processes may occur in very many
different and widely separated parts of the brain.

The impossibility of reconciling the facts with Parallelism
appears most clearly if we consider some instances of psychical
fusion or synthesis. Let us take first the simplest possible case,
that of fusion of effects of two simple sensory stimuli ; and we
may take the case of the stimulation of corresponding areas of
the two retinae by red and blue lights respectively, which we dis-
cussed in the foregoing chapter. A certain subject finds, let us
suppose, that, on stimulation of the right eye with the red light,
the resulting sensation of red quality is pleasing, and also that,
on stimulation of the left eye with blue light, the sensation of blue
quality is pleasing ; but on stimulation with red and blue lights
simultaneously he finds the purple quality of the resulting sensa-
tion to be displeasing. We have shown in the foregoing chapter
that the physical correlate of the sensation of purple quality is
two separate processes in the brain ; when they occur successively
their sensory effects, the sensations of red and blue qualities, are
pleasing ; when they occur simultaneously, their common sensory
effect, the sensation of purple quality, is displeasing. Hence the
sensation itself, and not its two separate physical correlates, is the
condition or cause of the unpleasant feeling ; or, in other words,
the feeling-tone is a purely psychical reaction upon the sensation
of particular quality and has no immediate physical correlate.

Again, two qualities of visual sensation which, when experienced
successively, are pleasing, may be found displeasing, if simultaneously
present to consciousness in spatial separation ; or, on the other
hand, the spatial juxtaposition of two colours which in themselves
are indifferent or but little pleasing may produce a very pleasing
effect. In such cases the jesthetic effect depends upon our
attending to both areas as parts of one whole. And it is
especially significant that the same two colours in spatial juxta-
position may give a pleasing or a displeasing effect, according to

PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION 315

the manner of their distribution ; the combination may be pleasing,
if the two colours are distributed in such a way as to imply a
contrast and a separation of the differently coloured parts of the
surface ; and the same combination may be displeasing, if the
colours are distributed in a way that implies their inherence in a
single object. That is to say, the aesthetic effect is not determined
by the parts independently, but depends upon the consciousness
of the meaning of the whole.

Now let us turn to a rather more complicated instance, that
of the pleasure we feel on hearing a melody, or on seeing a
harmoniously coloured surface of beautifully shaped design or
pattern. In such circumstances the pleasure we feel is not wholly
conditioned by the qualities of the sensations ; though these, if in
themselves pleasing, contribute their share towards the result It
is due in chief part to the relating synthetic activity by which the
parts, the successive notes (or the several areas of colour) are
combined in one harmonious whole, the melody (or the pattern).
That is to say, the aesthetic pleasure is not determined by the
mere co-existence or sequence of sensations in themselves pleasing ;
for it is only in so far as we become aware of, or apprehend, the
harmonious relations between the parts as parts of the whole,
that the aesthetic pleasure proper is added to the purely sensuous
pleasure determined by the feeling-tendencies of the several
sensations. This we see clearly, if we reflect that the same
tones (or the same colours) may be grouped in such orders
that the apprehension of their inharmonious relations to one
another, as parts of the whole, determines feeling-tone strongly
in the direction of displeasure ; then the feeling-tendencies of the
several sensations cannot make themselves felt and the total effect
is disagreeable. The aesthetic pleasure arises, then, from the
synthetic psychical activity by which the sensory elements are
combined to form an “ object of a higher order,’’ rather than from
the mere complex or series of sensations ; and, as we have seen, this
synthetic activity has no immediate correlate in the physical order.

The same conclusion thrusts itself still more forcibly upon us
when we consider higher forms of aesthetic appreciation, such, for
example, as that of Mozart on mentally contemplating a musical
composition just achieved. According to Mozart’s own account,
he had, at the moment of completing the composition, the whole
of it present to his mind. This must have been a moment at
which the synthetic activity attained a rare degree of intensity

3X6

BODY AND MIND

and untroubled success, bringing the musical meaning of the
whole to consciousness ; and, as Mozart tells us, the experience
was intensely pleasurable.^

Or consider the conditions of the pleasure we find in reading
a poem, say Wordsworth’s “ Solitary Reaper.” For those who
visualize vividly the scene depicted, the pleasing effect depends
no doubt, in part, upon the pleasing imagery evoked by the words ;
but this source of pleasure is in itself extremely complex, and the
pleasure depends far more on the meaning of the imagery than
on the qualities of the sensory contents or on the harmony of
their composition. How much of the charm of the whole depends
upon the “ loneness ” of the girl, on the subtle awakening in us of a
romantic interest in her personality, on the suggestion of a wealth
of unknown possibilities, beauties of person and character, set
upon a background of wild nature ! How much, too, upon the
suggestion of the intangibility, the delicateness, and the unreality,
one might almost say, of the whole impression, which a single
word or gesture might have marred ! How much upon the
sudden carrying of the mind to far-off scenes 1 How much to
the music of the words I How much to the unity and distinct-
ness of the whole impression ! The sources of the pleasure are
thousandfold, and the balance of them different for every reader.
But, for all who keenly appreciate the poem, the play of meanings
predominates vastly over the sensuous content of consciousness
in determining the pleasure we feel. And in poems of a more
reflective kind, such, for example, as the “ Lines composed above
Tintern Abbey,” the play of highly abstract meanings predominates
still more. In such cases the sensory contents, the mere words
and the imagery they evoke, play a quite subordinate part

If the conditions of pleasure and displeasure are incapable of
being stated in terms of Parallelism, the consideration of their
effects points just as strongly to a conclusion incompatible with
that doctrine ; for we find that in ourselves and throughout the
scale of animal life feelings of pleasure and displeasure seem to
guide and control in some degree the course of mental process

^ I cite (after Prof. James) the following passage : Even when it is a
long piece ... I can see the whole of it at a single glance in my mind, as if it
were a beautiful painting or a handsome human being ; in which way I do not
hear it in my imagination at all as a succession — ^the way it must come later —
but all at once, as it were. It is a rare feast ! All the inventing and making
goes on in me as in a beautiful, strong dream. But the best of all is the hearing
of it all at once.’*

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PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION

and, with it, the course of the brain-processes ; pleasure seems to
promote and sustain the mental process which it accompanies or
qualifies, and seems to fix traces of it in the brain, so that it is
more readily repeated ; disagreeable feeling seems always to check
or turn aside the course of the mental activity which it accom-
panies, and to diminish the tendency to repetition of the process.

Let us glance at some instances. It is generally recognized
that objects which please us hold the attention more strongly
than those to which we are indifferent or which are disagreeable
to us ; that when, for example, we perceive a melody or a design,
say the pattern of a wall-paper, our attention is held by it and
tends the more strongly to dwell upon it spontaneously or invol-
untarily the greater the pleasure or aesthetic satisfaction we derive
from it. It is equally indisputable that we tend to remember the
object, and to be able to reproduce or represent it, more faithfully
the more pleasing it is ; presumably just because of the more
effective and prolonged attention given to it at the moment of
perception ; for example, after an evening at the opera, we
remember best the melodies that we found most pleasing.

Now, we have seen in the foregoing pages that these “ objects
of higher orders which yield us these aesthetic satisfactions are
constructed by our mental activity ; that the pleasure depends
upon this synthesis of the parts to a unitary whole in conscious-
ness ; and that this synthesis and this unitary whole and the
resulting pleasurable feeling-tone of consciousness are purely
psychical facts that have no immediate correlates among the
brain-processes. If this conclusion is valid, and I sec no escape
from it, then it follows that the feeling itself, and not any
physical correlate, must be regarded as sustaining and intensify
our attention.

Again, pleasurable or disagreeable feeling evoked by ‘'an
object of a higher order ” of this kind, or in any other way, seems
to play an effective part in determining the course of trains of
association, more particularly the relatively passive train of
associative reproduction that we call reverie. When the feeling-
tone of consciousness is pleasurable, ideas of similar feeling-tone
tend to predominate ; and similarly, when consciousness is dis-
agreeably toned, whether owing to organic disorder or to aesthetic-
ally displeasing surroundings or to the baffling of intellectual
effort, disagreeably toned ideas tend to predominate in the train
of reverie.

BODY AND MIND

3tS

Feeling seems also to exert a powerful influence upon the
organic functions. Music or other pleasures of the higher aesthetic
and intellectual orders can drive away pain, improve digestion,
and benefit the health generally. Yet the pleasurable feeling
arising from these activities is a purely psychical fact without
physical correlate.^

The consideration of the processes of acquisition of new
powers of movement, of new modes of bodily reaction, and of
dexterity or skill of every kind, points to the same conclusion.
There can be no doubt that such processes of acquisition involve
the setting up of nervous habits, and that this means the establish-
ment of neural associations or paths of diminished resistance
between groups of neurons. The nervous system contains a
number of innately or hereditarily organized systems of motor
neurons ; such a system consists of a number of cells so
intimately connected that excitement transmitted to any part at
once spreads through the whole system, and connected also in
such a way that the excitement of the system issues along motor
nerves to a synergic group of muscles, i.e. one whose contractions
produce an orderly movement of some part of the body. These
innately co-ordinated movements constitute, as Lotze said, an
alphabet of movement ; or perhaps they are more closely
analogous to a vocabulary. The contraction of each muscle corre-
sponds to a single letter of the alphabet, that of any synergic group
to a word. The processes of acquisition of new modes of bodily
response to impressions are of two main types: (i) the learning
to respond to a particular sense-impression with one or other
of the words of the vocabulary of movement, or, in other words,
the association of one of these innately co-ordinated movements
with a sense-impression of a kind with which it is not innately
associated ; this process may be called the adaptation of move-
ment : ( 2 ) the other mode of learning is the process of acquisition
of skill, and consists in the combining of the words of the
vocabulary to form sentences, i.e. in learning to combine the simple
synergic contractions into more complex conjunctions and series.

^ It seems possible to suggest a plausible account of the way in which these
effects are produced. We may suppose that when for any reason the feeling-
tone of consciousness is predominantly pleasurable (or disagreeable), all psycho-
physical processes of opposed feeling tendency are repressed, just because their
feeling tendency is incongruous with, and conflicts with, and is overpowered by,
the dominating feeling-tendencies; and this repression may be supposed to
affect the processes of incongruous feeling-tendency not only in so far as they
are conscious, but also their cerebral concomitants.

PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION 319

Under the former head, that of adaptation of movement or of
behaviour, fall most instances of modification of animal behaviour
through experience, and notably such classical instances as the
burnt child who withholds his finger from the candle-flame, and
Professor Lloyd Morgan’s chicks that learnt to refuse certain dis-
agreeably-tasting caterpillars after one or two attempts to eat
them. I will not dwell upon these, but will only remark in
passing that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to suggest
any satisfactory explanation of the results in terms of neural
structure and processes only.

The best instances for our present purpose are such instances
of animal learning as have been carefully studied by Mr
Thorndike ^ and by many others who have adopted and extended
his methods. A single instance, typical of many, may suffice.
A hungry cat is confined in a cage, the door of which is kept
closed by some latch that is liable to be opened by the cat
in the course of its struggles to escape. The cat, stimulated by
the sight of food placed near the cage, makes a great variety of
random movements, clawing, scratching, and squeezing in all parts
of the cage ; it runs through its vocabulary of movement without
the least indication that it appreciates the presence of a door, or
of a latch by moving which the door may be opened. Sooner or
later in the course of these random movements, the latch is moved
by happy accident and the cat escapes to enjoy the food. Now
it is found that in nearly all cases, if the cat is put back in the
same cage on many successive occasions, it gradually learns to
escape more and more quickly ; until eventually it goes straight
to the latch and makes the necessary movement. This is the
process of adaptation of movement by random trial and error ;
by processes of this kind much of the adaptation of animal
behaviour is effected.

It might seem at first sight that the slow gradual character of
the process of adaptation shows it to be a purely mechanical
process, namely, the setting up, by simple repetition of the liberat-
ing movement made in a certain part of the cage, of an association
between that movement and the sense-impression received from
that part of the cage. And this is the explanation of such
processes commonly offered by unthinking physiologists. Now,
it is no doubt true that a habit is gradually formed, a neural

^ ” Animal Intelligence.” Monograpli supplement to the ‘‘Psychological
Review,” vol. ii. No. 4.

BODY AND MIND

320

association between the visual impression of one part of the cage
and the appropriate movement, or rather between the neural bases
of these two things.

But the essential problem remains — Why did this particular
movement become associated with this particular sense-impression ?
The law of the formation of neural associations, as usually stated,
throws no light on the problem ; for it affirms merely that when
two processes, a and b, occur simultaneously or in immediate
succession, the recurrence of a tends to bring about the recurrence
of b. Now, the cat makes many other movements than the
successful one in sequence upon the sense-impressions received
both from this part of the cage and from other parts ; and no doubt
many of these various sequences of movements on sense-impressions
(especially those that were often repeated in the course of the
cat's random efforts) become in some degree habitual. But if so,
the fact still remains that, out of all these many sequences of
movements on sense-impressions, one becomes an effective habit
much more rapidly than all the others ; so that it takes precedence
of all others, and, after many repetitions of the escape, is called
into play whenever the cat casts his glance around the walls of
his cage. That is the fact which is not explained by the law of
association as stated above.

Mr Thorndike, in discussing the results of his experiments,
says that the pleasure of escape, attending and following upon
the successful movement, stamps in this particular sensory-motor
association, while the pain (or displeasure) of failure tends to
stamp out all other associations. We need not lay stress on the
stamping out, because that is not clearly proved ; but the “ stamping
in ” of the successful association, the more rapid increase of its
effectiveness relatively to all other associations of movement with
sense-impression, can only be attributed to the pleasure or
satisfaction of success.

Now let us consider a simple instance of acquirement of skill,
and let us take the case of the young child learning to reach out
after, and to seize, seen objects.

The visual impression of an object near at hand provokes in
the young child that has not yet acquired this power random
movements directed very roughly only (if at all) towards the object.
When in the course of these movements the palm of the hand is
brought in contact with the object, the fingers close upon it and
carry it to the mouth. On repetition of these efforts, success is

PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION 321

achieved more and more rapidly and effectively ; each success
brings an increase of facility, which means an increase of
effectiveness of the neural association between the visual im-
pression made by an object at a particular distance and the
several motor mechanisms by which the appropriate movement
of the hand is carried out. If the law of association as stated
above expressed fully the facts, and if the formation of the
neural associations were a purely physical process consisting merely
in the passage of the neural impulse from one cell-system to
another, we should expect to find that all the random movements
made by the hand, while the eyes are directed upon an object in a
particular position, should become habitual in the same degree, or
rather in proportion to the frequency of their repetition ; therefore,
the successful movement of the hand should become associated
with that particular position of the eyes less rapidly than
other of the random movements ; for at each attempt to seize
an object in that position, some of the random movements
may be repeated several or many times, whereas the success-
ful movement brings the series to an end and is made only
once.

It is clear, therefore, that, for the explanation of the fact that
the successful movement alone becomes an established habit or
automatic process, some other factor must be taken into account ;
and this other factor seems to be the feeling-tone of consciousness,
the pleasure of success and the displeasure of failure. Professor
Stout has concisely expressed the facts in the following generalized
statement : “ Lines of action, if and so far as they are unsuccessful,
tend to be discontinued or varied ; and those which prove success-
ful, to be maintained. There is a constant tendency to persist in
those movements and motor attitudes which yield satisfactory
experiences, and to renew them when similar conditions recur ;
on the other hand, those movements and attitudes which yield
unsatisfactory experiences tend to be discontinued at the time of
their occurrence, and to be suppressed on subsequent similar
occasions.” That is a more precise and guarded statement of
the facts which Mr Thorndike expresses by saying that pleasure
stamps in and pain stamps out the neural associations. It will
be noticed that Professor Stout cautiously avoids in this passage
any attribution of causal efficacy to the feelings themselves ; for
Professor Stout is a Parallelist, and it is wellnigh impossible to
admit the efficacy of feeling in checking or promoting mental

322 BODY AND MIND

process, without admitting the influence of psychical process upon
brain-process.

The late Professor James, contemplating the same facts, wrote
as follows : “ Let one try as one will to represent the cerebral
activity in exclusively mechanical terms, I, for one, find it quite
impossible to enumerate what seem to be the facts and yet to
make no mention of the psychic side which they possess. How-
ever it be with other drainage currents and discharges, the
drainage currents and discharges of the brain are not purely
physical facts. They are psycho-physical facts, and the spiritual
quality of them seems a co-determinant of their mechanical
effectiveness. If the mechanical activities in a cell, as they
increase, give pleasure, they seem to increase all the more rapidly
for that fact ; if they give displeasure, the displeasure seems to
damp the activities. The psychic side of the phenomenon thus
seems, somewhat like the applause or hissing at a spectacle, to be
an encouraging or adverse comment on what the machinery
brings forth. The soul presents nothing herself, creates nothing,
is at the mercy of the material forces for all possibilities, but
amongst these possibilities she selects, and by re-enforcing one
and checking others, she figures not as an ‘ epiphenomenon,' but
as something from which the play gets moral support.” ^

That pleasure and displeasure play effective parts in sustaining
and repressing or diverting the course of mental activity is so
clearly implied by the facts that it would be absurd to deny it ; ^
but the consistent Parallelist, while admitting that a causal
relation is implied, maintains that, when we consider these facts
from the side of brain-processes, we have to postulate some two
kinds of neural process, or some two peculiarities of nervous
process in general, which are the neural correlates of pleasure and
displeasure and which are the causes of those effects in the brain
that seem to be due to the feelings themselves. Many attempts
have been made to formulate the nature of these hypothetical
neural counterparts of pleasure and displeasure, yet no one has
succeeded in suggesting any tenable hypothesis of this kind.^

^ Principles of Psychology,** vol. ii. p. 583.

® Thus, e.g. Prof. Stout affirms that ** the disagreeable sensations positively
disorder and enfeeble thought and action, when the endeavour is made to think
or act ” (“Manual of Psychology,” vol. i. p. 231).

® It is unnecessary for me to examine here the many attempts of the kind,
because Mr H. R. Marshall, in an acute and learned work (“ Pain, Pleasure and
-Esthetics, * London, i894)> has shown that none of the suggestions previously

PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION 323

Without attempting to exhibit the insuperable difficulties which
all such attempts must encounter, I will merely point out that
this failure supports the conclusion reached in the first part of this
chapter, namely, that the immediate conditions of feeling-tone
are purely psychical and that feeling-tone has no immediate
physical correlate in the same sense that the sensations have.
If this is the case, it follows that pleasure and displeasure
themselves somehow exert an influence over the course of
cerebral process. But finally to establish a negative is always
a matter of great difficulty, and therefore the following reasoning,
which reaches the same conclusion by a different route, affords a
welcome confirmation of it.

The part played By pleasure and displeasure in determining
mental process, the law of subjective selection, may be concisely
stated as follows. Pleasure determines appetition, displeasure
determines aversion ; the words appetition and aversion being
used in the widest sense to denote modes of mental and bodily
action that make respectively for and against the continuance and
repetition of any particular experience.

The problem before us, then, is — Are these opposed forms of

made can be accepted, and Prof. Stout has shown (" Manual,” Bk. ii., chap, viii,),
conclusively as it seems to me, that Mr Marshall’s own hypothesis is untenable.

More recently Prof. Max Meyer Psychological Review,” 1908, Pleasantness
and Unpleasantness ”) has exhibited the unsatisfactory nature of the later
suggestions, and has in turn put forward a novel one, namely, that ” the correlate
of pleasantness and unpleasantness is the increase or decrease of the intensity
of a previously constant current [of nervous energy in the brain], if the increase
or decrease is caused by a force acting at a point other than the point of sensory
stimulation.” I find myself in close agreement with most of Prof. Meyer's
prehminary discussion, but his h3^othesis seems to me, for many reasons, no
more tenable than any of its predecessors. It will suffice to mention two such
reasons : (i) it is incredible that a nervous current should discriminate so nicely
between the remote causes of the increase or decrease of its intensity ; (2) accord-
ing to the author’s showing, the h3^othesis involves the consequences that the
more intellectual processes have more intense feeling-tone than the less intellectual,
that only man and the highest of the animals are capable of pleasure and dis-
pleasure, and that adults experience pleasure and displeasure in greater intensity
than children. Prof. Meyer does not hesitate to maintain that these conse-
quences are in harmony with the facts. But general experience wiU surely
affirm that the displeasure of such low-level experiences as toothache, sea-sick-
ness, migraine, giddiness, and instinctive terror, vastly exceeds in intensity
the displeasures of the intellect, and that the pleasures also of the organic life,
in those in whom the tides of hfe run strongly, exceed in mere intensity those
of the intellect. The superiority of the higher pleasures is to be found not in
their intensity, but in moral considerations and in the fact that they are capable
of rational cultivation.

BODY AND MIND

324

bodily activity, in which appetition and aversion find expression,
determined by pleasure and displeasure themselves, or by some
two hypothetical specific forms of neural process which are their
physical correlates ?

Now, it is generally recognized that, in the main, pleasant
experiences are beneficial to the organism and unpleasant ex-
periences hurtful. The principle seems to be almost strictly true
for the animals ; and, though in its application to man its truth
is partly obscured by the complexities of his mental life and
social relations and by the frequent perversions of the tastes
natural to him, yet there can be no doubt that, in the main, it
holds good for man also. If, then, pleasure and displeasure are
themselves the determinants of movements of appetition and
avoidance, we can understand how this general agreement between
the beneficial and the pleasurable and between the hurtful and the
disagreeable has been brought about by natural selection. For
all animals that varied in the direction of finding hurtful influences
pleasant would have sought them and consequently would have
been heavily handicapped in the struggle for existence ; while all
that varied in the direction of finding beneficial influences pleasant
would have sought them and have been correspondingly benefited.
And, if we adopt the parallelist assumption that two neural
processes, the physical correlates of pleasure and displeasure
(which we may call ;ir and jk), are the determinants of appetition
and aversion, then the correlation throughout the animal world of
X with the beneficial, and of y with the hurtful, bodily affections
follows in the same way from the Darwinian principles. But
that X should express itself in consciousness as pleasure and y as
displeasure would remain an insoluble problem. For the opposi-
tion between pleasure and displeasure is the most profoundly
significant we can imagine, and this correlation of pleasure with
X (the neural process that determines appetition), and of dis-
pleasure with y (the process that determines avoidance), cannot be
regarded as the result of happy accident That there remains a
real problem here we may see if we suppose the correlation
reversed, pleasure correlated with y and displeasure with x. For
then natural selection would have evolved an animal world all
members of which would have constantly sought those things
that were beneficial but unpleasant, would have avoided the things
that were hurtful but pleasant, and would have experienced a
great predominance of displeasure over pleasure. Such a state

32S

PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION

of things would seem to us profoundly irrational and absurd. If
pleasure and displeasure differed only as two qualities of sensa-
tion differ, say red and blue, there would be no such problem ;
for it would seem just as intelligible that all animals should
seek to prolong and to repeat all experience qualified by
blueness, and to avoid all qualified by redness, as that the
reverse should be the rule.

The parallelist assumption, then, leaves us with this problem,
on which biological principles can throw no light ; and we shall
be driven to suppose that the correlations which obtain between
pleasure and bodily appetition and between displeasure and bodily
avoidance have been imposed by beneficient divine power at some
stage of the process of organic evolution. But this supposition
would be incompatible with the principles that Parallelism holds
most dear, especially the principles of continuity of evolution and
of the universal sway of mechanical principles in nature.

In short, it is only if feeling itself, and not its hypothetical
neural correlates, directs bodily movement that the facts are in
intelligible accordance with the principles of organic evolution.
We are, in fact, compelled to choose between two alternatives,
both of which are incompatible with the fundamental tenets of
Parallelism. We may believe, then, that appetition and aversion
are rooted in our psychical nature, and that the facts of subjective
selection are the expressions of a fundamental law of that nature,
a law which has no counterpart among the laws of the physical
w’-orld. And if it be asked — Are we then to believe that the feelings
themselves act directly upon the cerebral processes ? the answer
must be, I think — No ; they act only indirectly, namely, by exciting
conation or psychical effort, for conation is essentially the putting
forth ot psychical power to modify the course of physical events.

Conation or Will

A few words must be added to bring together what has been
said or implied of conation on earlier pages. Following Dr Stout
and other high authorities, I use the word conation as the most
general term denoting all the active or striving side of our nature,
as the equivalent of will in its widest sense, as comprehending
desire, impulse, craving, appetite, wishing, and willing.^ We

^ For a statement of my views on the relation of developed volition to simpler
modes of conation I may refer the reader to my “ Introduction to Social Psycho-
logy,’* London, 1908.

BODY AND MIND

326

arrive at the conception of conation in two ways ; ( i ) by the
observation of the outward behaviour of men and animals ;
(2) by introspection. In consciousness conation expresses itself
in so obscure a fashion that it has long been and still is a matter
of dispute whether it really constitutes a specific mode of being
conscious. Dr Stout seems to me to have fully established the
affirmative answer to this question ^ ; but it does not seem to me
one of primary importance from the point of view of the psycho-
physical problem.

The principal points of importance have been indicated in
Chapter XIX. ; but on two heads something remains to be said ;
First, I would draw attention to the concentration of the energy of
the whole organism in support of the conative effort, when such
concentration is required. If the circumstances are such as to
render the end of the conative process attainable only by long sus-
tained effort, this concentrated output of the energies of the whole
organism may go so far as to induce complete exhaustion. This
we see illustrated by some of the instinctive efforts of animals ; as
when birds, under the driving power of the migratory impulse, con-
tinue their flight until utterly exhausted. But it is illustrated most
strikingly by human behaviour in those rare instances in which
circumstances and character conspire to produce the most
magnificent displays of sustained volition ; efforts so incredibly
great and prolonged that only the adjective superhuman seems
adequately to describe them ; efforts which, when they cease to be
demanded by the circumstances, leave the organism depleted of
energy.2 Ail this is utterly incompatible with the view of the
animal organism necessarily held by the Parallelist, namely, the
view that it is merely a bundle of cunningly contrived mechanisms
bound up together, and mechanically connected in a way that
effects certain co-operations and reciprocal interferences. For
each of these mechanisms contains within itself its stores of
potential energy in chemical form, and draws new stores of
such energy from the common source of supply, the blood. But
the facts of the order I refer to show that the energies of these
various mechanisms are capable of being drawn upon to contribute
towards the attainment of one particular end ; they illustrate in
the most striking manner that subordination of the parts to the

^ See especiaUy liis paper on “Conation in the British Journal of Psychology ^
vol. i.

connexion I would refer the reader to an article by William James,
on The Energies of Men,” in the Philosophical Review^ 1907.

PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION 327

whole which is the essence of organic unity and which is
incapable of being accounted for on purely mechanical principles.

Another aspect of conative process on which I wish to add
to what has been said in Chapter XIX. is the persistence of the
conative process, its persistent self-direction towards its end in
spite of obstacles and deflecting forces. Psychologists have only
recently begun to gain some insight into the great extent of the
influence of persistent conative tendencies upon the course of mental
process and of behaviour. The persistence of the effect of a
resolution of the will, even though the main stream of conscious-
ness is turned in other directions, is a fact of great importance,
frequently illustrated in the course of daily life. A very simple
instance is the persistent operation of the intention to go on
walking. The mind may be actively engaged in thought or
conversation, but, except at moments of unusual concentration of
thought, the intention to go on walking continues to operate.
It is commonly said that the movement of the legs goes on
automatically, and by this it is usually implied that their
movement is a purely reflex mechanical process ; but the continu-
ance of their movement is in reality a conative process dependent
upon the initial intention. The same is true of the maintenance
of particular attitudes and demeanours, of the intention or resolution
to preserve a grave or a cheerful expression, to speak slowly, to
hold up one’s head, to read or write quickly ; in all such cases
we succeed in some degree (perhaps succeed eventually in
modifying old habits) only in virtue of the fact that the intention
once formed continues to operate in some degree when no longer
present to consciousness.

The same fact is illustrated more strikingly by the long-
distance cyclist who falls asleep and yet continues to pedal ; by
the woman who continues to knit while actively conversing or
reading ; by the sleeper who wakens early in virtue of a resolution
taken before going to bed.

But the most striking illustrations of the persistent operation
of conative tendencies, even when the subject is unaware of their
existence, have been brought to light by the recent psycho-
pathological investigations of the school of Prof. Freud of Vienna.^

^ Prof. Freud’s ideas are embodied in a number of works of which the most
important are perhaps “ Die Traumdeutung,” “ Der Witz,” and ** Die Psycho-
pathologie des Alltagsleben.” One only, namely ” Studies of Hysteria,” has
been translated into English. The English reader may find several good expos
tions of these ideas in American Journal of Psychology , 1910.

BODY AND MIND

328

The ideas of Prof. Freud are at present the subject of lively
controversy, and opinions are widely divided as to their value as a
contribution to medical science ; but the success of Freud's thera-
peutic methods in his own hands and in those of a numerous and
rapidly increasing band of disciples proves that there is a large basis
of truth in his doctrines. The discovery to which I would draw
attention in the present connexion is that strong conative
tendencies, whose operation in the mind is for any reason
suppressed or repressed by a voluntary effort (or by reason of
their incompatibility with the organized system of conative
tendencies which constitutes the character of the individual), may
continue, not merely for hours and days, but for weeks, months,
and years, to exert a strong influence, which manifests itself
indirectly in consciousness and in behaviour. Dreams seem in
some cases (Freud says in all cases) to be the indirect and
perverted and partial expression of such tendencies ; and the
symptoms, both subjective and objective, of hysteria seem to be
traceable in many cases to the subconscious operation of such
repressed conative tendencies.

I have no space to dwell upon these most interesting dis-
coveries. I wish only to insist that the peculiar nature of conative
process is illustrated by a great body of facts which reveal it as
something that cannot be mechanically conceived, something of
an order entirely different from the working of any mechanism ,
a self-sustaining and self-directing activity, to which no mechanical
process is even remote^ analogous.

It is to be remarked also that the conditions of conation are
psychical, and that in many cases these psychical conditions are
such as have no immediate correlates among the brain - pro-
cesses. It is generally held that pleasure excites conation ; how-
ever that may be, it is at least clear that both pleasure and
displeasure modify conation, pleasure sustaining and intensifying
it, displeasure diverting or depressing it ; and, as we have seen,
these feelings (in all cases, as I have argued, but most evidently
in the case of those arising out of the higher forms of aesthetic
appreciation) cannot be supposed to have any immediate physical
correlates.

But the great springs of conative energy are the instincts ;
and we have seen that, even in the case of the purely instinctive
activity of animals, it seems to be impossible to describe or
conceive the conditions that evoke instinctive activity in purely

329

PLEASURE, PAIN, AND CONATION

mechanical terms ; we have seen, in fact, how an intellectual
factor, namely, the consciousness of meaning, seems to be an
essential link between sense impression and instinctive reaction.
In man also instinctive or innate specific tendencies are the great
springs of conative energy ; ^ and in him they are commonly
brought into play by intellectual processes of a high degree of
complexity and abstraction, the essential condition of the excite-
ment of a conative tendency being in many cases an idea of
which the meaning is achieved only by a psychical synthesis of
other meanings, and of which the sensory content with its physical
correlates is a very subordinate part.

Now objects have value for us in proportion as they excite our
conative tendencies ; our consciousness of their value, positive or
negative, is our consciousness of the strength of the conation they
awake in us. Hence consciousness of value, like consciousness of
meaning, is a mode of consciousness which has no counterpart in
the physical sphere ; value, like meaning, is a purely psychical
fact. The impossibility of expressing values in terms of brain-
processes is recognized by some Parallelists, who, therefore, like
Prof Miinsterberg, propose to escape the difficulty for Parallelism
by sundering the whole world known to us into two worlds that
have nothing in common, a physical world of mechanical sequences
and a world of values. But this method of escaping the difficulties
of Parallelism cannot be admitted to be any more legitimate than
any of the other ways of sundering experience into unrelated parts,
some of which we have noted in earlier chapters.^

^ See my “ Introduction to Social Psychology.”

2 I add here a note reporting the result of experiments which are still in pro-
gress at the time of going to press, a result which illustrates m a striking manner
the role of conation. The experiments consist in learning series of nonsense
syllables in the manner described in the following chapter. In one series of
experiments the subject maintains an attitude as completely passive as possible,
consistent with regularly accentuated repetition of the syllables. In a parallel
series of experiments he makes an efiort of the will to learn and retain the
syllable-rows as rapidly as possible. It appears that in the former series he
requires from three to four times as many repetitions as in the latter series, in
order to be able to repeat the syllables “ by heart.” Yet m all outward respects
the behaviour of the subject is the same during the process of learning.

CHAPTER XXIV

MEMORY

L ooked at broadly from the biological standpoint the
essential function of mental process appears as the bringing
of past experience to bear in the regulation of present be-
haviour. This influence of the past over the present reveals itself
objectively as modification of behaviour upon the recurrence of
similar conditions, and subjectively as familiarity, recognition,
remembering, recollecting, and also as that anticipation or fore-
sight of the probable course of events which enables us to prepare
for them and to intervene effectively to modify their course.

If we use the phrase “ the structure of the mind to denote
comprehensively the sum of those enduring internal conditions
by which the play of mental process and the mode of behaviour of
an organism are determined at each moment of its life, then we
may say that experience modifies the structure of the mind, and
that it is through the persistence of these modifications that past
experience influences present behaviour and present mental pro-
cess. Some part of the structure of the mind is innately
determined or inherited ; and all that is added to it or changed
in it by the course of experience is usually and conveniently
included under the term memory.

It is an implication of all forms of Parallelism that the
structure of the mind may in principle be fully described in terms
of cerebral structure. We have already found reason to believe
that this assumption is untenable as regards the innate structure
of the mind. We have now to enquire whether it is tenable in
regard to the modifications of its structure induced by experience ;
whether, in short, all that is implied by the word memory can be
regarded as consisting in modifications of cerebral structure.^

1 Epiphenomenalism identifies the structure of the mind with that of
the brain; Parallehsm in both its principal forms maintains that it appears
as, and may be adequately described as, brain-structure. In examining the
problem of memory in this chapter the argument will, for the sake of brevity,
be directed to Epiphenomenahsm ; but with some cumbrous paraphrasing it

MEMORY

33 ^

The psychologists of the association- school were generally
content to assume that each idea, or some trace of it, was de-
posited or stored in a single cell of the brain ; that these cells
become linked together by fibres in such a way that excitement of
one cell spreads to another and in doing so brings to consciousness
the idea stored within it ; mental activity thus consisting in the
ringing up ” of one cell after another and the appearance in con-
sciousness of a corresponding train of ideas. At the present day
no one, perhaps, would seriously defend this notion ; unless
“ idea be taken in the sense of element of consciousness ; for we
cannot form the vaguest notion of the nature of such a material
trace in a single cell, nor of the way such a trace could be im-
pressed upon it.^ It is recognized that the physical correlate in

would apply equally well to the other forms of Parallelism. I have already
in Chapter XII. insisted that the mere fact that the mind has a structure, or is
a system of enduring capacities which is only very partially revealed in the
consciousness of any moment, is one with which Psychical Monism cannot deal ;
and I say nothing further on that head.

^ Prof. T. Ziehen has recently maintained the doctrine of " the memory-ceU.^'
“We assume, therefore, that the sensation of the rose is produced in certain ganghon-
cells, and that these numerous sensory cells transmit their excitation further
to one other ganglion-cell, a memory-cell . . . where it leaves a merely material
trace or change, the image of memory ** (“ Introduction to Physiological
Psychology,’^ p. 1 58). But he does not attempt to suggest how we may conceive
all this to happen. Ziehen is here writing of the visual impression of a rose.
The following objections to this doctrine seem to me fatal to it : (i) We have
no warrant for believing that the sensory centres that are concerned in the rise
of the sensations of various qualities can propagate their specific modes of excita-
tion to other cells. (2) But if it be admitted that this may happen and that the
many sensory cells (and presumably many hundreds or thousands would be
concerned in bringing to consciousness the fine gradations of colour of the petals
of a tea-rose) propagate their excitations to one “ memory-cell,” can we suppose
that, arrived in this cell, each of these peculiar excitations (mode of vibration
or physico-chemical change) makes its own peculiar mark upon the “ memory-
cell ” distinct from the mark or trace of all the rest ? Yet that is implied by the
doctrme. (3) If even this be admitted as possible, there remains the impossibility
of conceiving what can be the nature of these enduring marks, each of which
is to determine, whenever the cell is re-excited after a long interval of time, the
recurrence within it of a physical or physico-chemical process identical m char-
acter with that by which the mark was impressed. (4) Lastly, there remains the
still greater difficulty of conceiving how these marks axe to condition not only
the recurrence of the manifold of sensation qualities, but also their relative
intensities and their spatial distribution in the memory-image.

Prof. Wundt writes : “ Every content of consciousness, be it never so
simple and regarded as isolated from all its connexions, and therefore as not
capable of being further analysed, is nevertheless, physiologically regarded,
always a comphcated system of different neural processes, which are distributed
through numerous nervous elements ” (“ Grundziige d. phys. Psychologic,” vol.

332

BODY AND MIND

the brain of the perception of a relatively simple object must run
its course in a large number of neurons, and that the memory-
image or representation of that object must also have for its physical
correlate a very complex process distributed throughout a large
number of the same neurons and, perhaps, through others also. The
only conception that we can form of a memory-trace in the brain
as a neural disposition, the continuance of which might be the
condition of the possibility of representation, is, then, that of a
number of neurons intimately linked together to form a functional
system ; and the linking together of the members of the system
must be supposed to be brought about by the spread of the ex-
citation process or current of nervous energy from member to
member throughout the system at the moment of perception.

Some such notion as this is now generally entertained by
those who hold that all memory is a function of the brain.^
Now, there can be little doubt that the linking up of neurons in
this way is the basis of all that can properly be called habit ; that
in the course of life each of us forms a great number of habits ;

i., p. 328). With this view, which seems to me quite indisputably correct, the
doctrine of ‘‘ the memory-cell ” is of course wholly incompatible.

Prof. J. V. Knes (“XJeber die materiellen Grundlagen der Bewusstseins-
Erschemungen,” Leipzig, 1901) has clearly shown the impossibility of finding an
adequate physical basis for memories of general and abstract objects in terms
of the linking together of neurons ; and he rejects decisively the crude con-
ception of a memory-cell. Of the latter he writes: “ Es 1st die oberflachhchste
und platteste aller Vorstellungen ” (p. 43)- Yet he proposes to regard the
retention of general ideas as ** intracellulare Leistungen ” (p. 45), and writes,
Soli als Spur einer optischen Wahrnehmung eine verwickelte Differenzierung
einer Zelle hinterlassen werden, so musste man diese mit dem System ihrer Aus-
laufer etwa durch das ganze Gebiet verzweigt und erstreckt denken, mnerhalb
dessen in anderen Gebilden die den Netzhautbildern direkt entsprechende
Verteilung der Thatigkeits-zustande angeordnet ware. Zellen solcher Art
konnte man dann die Function einer verallgemeinernden Aufbewahrung
optischer Bilder zuschreiben.*^ Von Kries admits that his suggestion encounters
great difficulties ; and I think that the unprejudiced reader will find it difficult to
regard it as essentially different from, or superior to, that most superficial and
banal of all notions,” the memory-cell.

^ In all my reading of physiological psychology I have nowhere found any
attempt to think out the possibilities of the nature and mode of formation of
a neural basis for both habit and memory which in definiteness and plausibility
surpasses the scheme very briefly indicated in my httle book, ” A Primer of
Physiological Psychology.” Yet no one could be more acutely aware than
myself of the inadequacy of this attempt as regards memory proper. The casual
way in which most writers on these topics speak of brain-traces and memory-
cells and so forth, without making any attempt to conceive the nature of these
assumed traces, is to my mind astonishing.

MEMORY

333

and that the neurons of the cerebrum, a large proportion of which
are not innately organized in definite systems, become so organ-
ized in systems which are the neural bases of habits. For we
have to recognize not only that all the acquired dexterities of the
limbs are of the nature of habits rooted in neural dispositions, but
also that the education of our powers of sense perception, the co-
ordination of hand and eye, and the acquirement of speech, all
involve and depend upon the gradual building up of similar neural
dispositions that render possible finer and more extensive co-ordina-
tions of movements.

We have to recognize, then, that the building up of habit
plays a very great part in our mental development. But Paral-
lelism implies the assumption that all memory, all mental reten-
tion, is of the nature of habit ; that conscious remembering and
recollecting is but one way in which cerebral habits manifest
themselves. This assumption must be carefully examined. If it
should appear that there are no essential differences between the
ways in which on the one hand undoubted habits and on the
other hand true memory-traces are acquired, retained, and mani^-
fested, we shall have to accept tjie parallel istic assumption as a well-
founded hypothesis ; but, if it can be shown that there are funda-
mental differences, that habit and memory do not obey the same
laws, this assumption will be discredited and we shall have gone far
towards showing that memory proper is not conditioned only by
material dispositions in the brain.^

Of recent years a large number of exact experiments have
been reported as investigations into memory.^ The experiments
have in most cases consisted in committing to heart by repetition
rows of words, letters, numbers, or more frequently nonsense
syllables, series of syllables that convey no meaning ; and in
determining the laws of the association and reproduction of such

1 The distinction between habit and true memory is urged with great force
by Prof. Bergson in his fascinating work, Mati^e et M6moire,” and in much
of the discussion of this chapter I am following his lead and reproducing his
arguments. But limitations of space and of capacity make it impossible for
me to present the argument and the evidence so persuasively as he has done,
and I must refer the reader to his book for the full statement of it. There is
much in that book which I cannot accept, because I cannot understand it, notably
the doctrine of “ pure perception,*' which seems to me to leave the relation
of sensation to perception extremely obscure.

* The most important and best-known are those of Ebbinghaus (“ Ueber das
Gedachtniss *’) and of Prof. G. E. MUller (in conjunction with Prof. Schumann and
Dr Pilzecker), reported in Zeitschvififuv Psycholope , vol. 6 and Supplem. vol, i.

BODY AND MIND

334

series. Great refinement of method and nicety of results have
been attained, and many im.portant laws have been thus empirically
established. One of the most striking of the results thus achieved
is that the associations established by serial repetitions of this kind
obey, in the main, in regard to their formation, operation, and decay,
the laws of motor habit. It may be said, then, that here is sub-
stantial evidence justifying the identification of memory with
habit But these experiments, though generally called investiga-
tions into memory, are so conducted that the factor of true
memory hardly enters into the operations. They are in the main
investigations of verbal habit ; for there is no reason to doubt that
such a process as the repetition of the alphabet is essentially the
operation of a habit ; and the investigations to which I refer have
dealt almost exclusively with processes closely approximating to
this type.^

That true remembering is a process of a different type is shown
clearly by the following considerations : — A written series of eight
nonsense syllables is presented to me one by one by a mechanical
arrangement, as rapidly as 1 can comfortably read them. After
four repetitions of the reading, the first syllable alone is presented,
and I attempt to say the series by heart and fail utterly. The
presentation of the series is repeated again and again, I reading
the syllables as presented. Then on trying again, perhaps after
twelve repetitions, I succeed in saying them by heart without a
hitch ; my organs of speech seem to roll out the sounds, and all I
have to do is to avoid anything that may interfere with the
process ; for, just as in executing any habitual series of manipula-
tions with the hands, the process goes on best if left to itself.
But now I can throw my mind back and can remember any one of
the twelve readings more or less clearly as a unique event in my
past history. I can remember perhaps that during the fifth
reading I began to despair of ever learning the series, that I
made a new effort, that someone spoke in the adjoining room and
disturbed me disagreeably ; I may perhaps remember what he
said.

^ The reason alleged for the choice of nonsense syllables as the material for
most of this work is that they are devoid of previously formed associations.
Really they are devoid of meaning, and to regard them as differing from words
only m that they are devoid of associations, is to assume that meaning is nothing
but a number of mechanical associations or reproduction-tendencies. This is
the unjustified assumption which underlies the description of such experiments
as investigations into the laws of memory.

MEMORY

335

If the repetition by heart of the nonsense syllables and the
remembering of any one of the readings of the series are both
to be called evidences of memory, it must be admitted that two
very different functions, two very different modes of retention, are
denoted by the one word. Let us glance at the principle
differences, (i) The one depends mainly upon the formation
of a habit ; with each repetition I approach by a definite step
towards the condition in which smooth reproduction is possible.
In this process the successive readings contribute, then, to the
production of a common effect, the habit, each adding a little to
it. The remembering, on the other hand, depends wholly upon a
single act of apprehension ; the whole process and effect, the appre-
hension and the retention and the remembering, are absolutely
unique and distinct from all other apprehensions, retentions, and
rememberings.

(2) The one process of reproduction does not necessarily
involve any explicit reference to the past ; it involves rather a
forward-looking attitude. Whereas the other is essentially retro-
spective and involves a reference of that which is remembered
to a particular moment or position in the past series of events.

(3) The smooth reproduction of the syllables is not aided,
but rather hindered, by any effort to cast back my thought to the
moment of apprehension. The remembering on the other hand
is aided by voluntary rumaging in the past.; I can by such
efforts develope more fully and vividly my remembrance of the
events of the successive moments.

(4) The “ learning of the syllables involves only the linking
together in serial order of eight simple impressions ; and in order to
accomplish this I find it necessary to repeat the series attentively
some twelve times, or perhaps more, the whole process occupying
the main part of my attention for some two or three minutes.
The remembrance of a particular event may involve the repro-
duction of a vastly more complex set of sense-impressions made
simultaneously or within a period of two or three seconds. These
then are somehow linked together, and, though they are far more
numerous and more complexly related than the row of syllables,
their linking is effected in a single act of apprehension.

(5) The power of reproducing the syllable-row declines very
rapidly in a way which can be accurately measured ; even after
five minutes or less it may have declined so far that it can only
be effectively restored by reading the row again several times.

BODY AND MIND

336

The remembrance of the particular event on the other hand,
though it seems to become less vivid and trustworthy, may be
effected after indefinitely long intervals.

Between the two modes of retention there are clearly great
differences ; and, if we ask what is the essential difference between
the impressions that are retained in these very different ways,
the answer cannot be in doubt : the nonsense syllables convey
a minimum of meaning, the impressions truly remembered convey
a more or less rich meaning. Even the row of eight syllables is
not altogether meaningless. I apprehend it as meaning a row
which in relation to my purpose is a unity, not merely eight
impressions, but eight members of one whole each having its
definite place in the whole ; and, in so far as I clearly apprehend
this whole and the parts of it as whole and parts, the process of
“ learning is greatly aided. The importance of the meaning is
well brought out by consideration of the following example. I
set myself to learn a row of twenty nonsense syllables, and I find,
perhaps, that one hundred or more repetitions are needed to
enable me to reproduce the row. Then I take a passage of prose
or verse containing twenty syllables, and I find that I can
reproduce this row of twenty syllables after a single reading.
How immense is the difference between the two cases ! This
difference is due partly to the fact that in the second case the
syllables form words each of which has meaning for me ; but chiefly
it is due to the fact that their several meanings are synthezised to
one whole in my consciousness, namely, the meaning of the whole
passage. The meaning seems to bridge the series of sense-
impressions and to bind them together. But, just as in the
case of the reproduction of the nonsense syllables the factor of
meaning is not altogether inoperative, though reproduction depends
chiefly upon the links of mechanical association, so in this case
the mechanical factor is not altogether lacking, though meaning
plays the predominant part ; for I may find after an interval that,
though the meaning of the passage may return to consciousness,
I am unable accurately to reproduce the words of the original.^

^ I add here the results of some experiments made with the aim of bringing
out this difference.

Binet and Henri set children to reproduce on the one hand rows of words
conveying no connected meaning, and on the other hand rows of words con-
stituting intelligible sentences. They found that on the average, when only
seven unconnected words were presented, the children remembered five of them ;
whereas, when words conveying seventeen distinct notions were presented.

MEMORY

337

Everywhere in memory we find these two factors, habit and
meaning, co-operating in various proportions ; and always meaning
is immensely more effective than habit as a condition of reproduc-
tion or remembering.^ In an earlier chapter I have shown that
we cannot with any plausibility assume that meaning has any
immediate physical correlate among the brain-processes. We find
here independent evidence of the truth of this view that meaning
is a purely psychical product of psychical activity ; for it appears
as a factor in the process of remembering that is of an entirely
different order from the other factor, habit ; and habit is rooted
in material dispositions of the brain of the only kind that we can
conceive as playing any part in mental retention.

The distinction under discussion is so important that it seems
worth while to illustrate it by reference to other instances of
remembering. The visualization of complex scenes is perhaps
the most wonderful of all forms of remembering. Consider the
following simple instance. A number, say ten, points of light are
thrown simultaneously, for a small fraction of a second, upon a screen,
and I am required to draw a map of the spots. If the spots are
irregularly distributed I find this quite impossible to achieve ; and
perhaps it is necessary to repeat the flash from thirty to fifty times,
before I can succeed in constructing a tolerably correct map of

fifteen of them were remembered. Ebbinghaus learnt on the average verses
containing fifty-six words (and a much larger number of syllables) by six or seven
readings ; whereas, in spite of much practice in memorizmg nonsense-syllables,
he required fifty-five readings in order to be able to reproduce a series of thirty-
six such syllables Grundzuge d. Psychologic,” by H. Ebbinghaus, p. 654).

In a paper recently published Uber den Unterschied der logischen u d.
mechanischen Gedachtnisses,” Zettschr.f Psychologie, Bd. Ivi.), Herr A. Balaban
reports results of experiments directed to this question. Pairs of words of two
syllables were presented successively to subjects who were instructed to try
to retain alternate pairs on the one hand in purely mechanical fashion (i e. with-
out reference to their meanings), and on the other hand by combining or con-
necting their meanings in some larger whole of meaning. The latter mode of
learning appeared, according to the author’s estimate, about twenty-five times
as effective as the mechanical mode , yet in such experiments the conditions are
not favourable to the development of meanings.

^ M. Bergson speaks of habit and “ pure memory ” as the two kinds of
memory. The ** pure memory,” corresponding to what I call meaning, he holds
to be a purely psychical factor, and he constructs a peculiar theory of pure memory,
which seems to be (if I understand him rightly) a refinement of the doctrine of
the generic image of Huxley and Romanes. For my purpose it is not necessary
to try to follow Tiitn in this more metaphysical part of his doctrine of memory.
For the purpose of this chapter it suffces to insist upon the indisputable fact
that meaning plays this great part m memory, and that it is a factor of a kind
entirely different from habit.

BODY AND MIND

33B

the arrangement of the spots. But, if the spots are so arranged
as to mark the principal points of any geometrical figure familiar
to me, I am able to make a correct map after one or two flashes
only ; but only on the condition that the complex of visual sensa-
tions suggests or evokes in my consciousness the meaning of that
figure.^ In the former case, the only way to remember the
arrangement of the spots is to apprehend at successive flashes the
relations of sub-groups of three or four spots, each of which has
some meaning for me, and at subsequent flashes to synthesize
these sub-groups into a whole of some sort, which is then
remembered as a whole. In the second case the complex of
visual sensations serves as a cue that brings to consciousness a
meaning that was latent in the memory ; and this meaning of the
whole group in turn serves at the moment of reproduction to
bring to consciousness the spatial relations of the parts.

The experiment shows how small is our capacity for re-
membering the spatial relations of a number of seen points, if
those relations suggest no definite meaning to our minds. Bear-
ing this in mind, and noting also that every spot added to the
group adds very greatly to the difficulty of reproducing the group,
let us consider now the following case. My eye rests for a
moment on a photograph or drawing of a striking face that is
unknown to me. The drawing consists of a great number of
points, lines, and areas, arranged in an extremely complex fashion ;
yet after that brief glance I am able to picture the face with
considerable accuracy, perhaps even after the lapse of days or
months ; or I am able to single it out from among a large
number of similar drawings, and my capacity to do this is not
appreciably affected by considerable changes in the distance of
the drawing from my eyes ; yet with every change of distance
the retinal points stimulated are widely different.

It may be said that my remembrance of the face is rendered
possible by my familiarity with faces in general. This is true ;
but it does not make any more plausible the attempt to exhibit
my remembrance as wholly dependent on a material disposition
formed after the pattern of a habit. If we compare the two tasks,
that of remembering the meaningless group of dots and that of
remembering the face, and consider each as consisting in the

^ This general description is based upon considerable experience of experi-
ments of this kind. There are considerable differences between individuals in
respect to the ease with which they achieve such a task , but those who arc good
visualizers do not seem to excel others.

MEMORY

339

linking together of a complex of sensations in a particular
system of spatial relations, the latter task is enormously more
complicated than the former, yet it is accomplished much more
rapidly and certainly. The fact that I am familiar with faces
does not render more plausible the assumption of a wholly
material memory-trace. I have looked attentively at many
thousands of faces ; and, if the result of this were merely that I
could produce a fairly adequate ''generic image'' of a face,
that result would lend itself well to interpretation in terms of
cerebral traces. But the fact is that, of all these many thousands
of faces, I can clearly and distinctly picture some hundreds at
least, and could recognize as having been seen by me on some
previous occasion probably some thousands, certainly many
hundreds. How, on any conceivable scheme of cerebral traces,
are these thousands of successive perceptions to co-operate in
facilitating my perception and my remembering of a particular
face, and yet to leave separate and distinct traces, each in itself
an immensely complex neural disposition capable of conditioning
the remembrance of a particular face ?

Association - psychologists have generally adopted as their
fundamental proposition some such assertion as that impressions
received simultaneously or in immediate succession tend to
cohere or to be associated together and to return to consciousness
together or in immediate succession. And they have generally
deduced from this so-called law a corresponding neural law, to
the effect that the excitement, simultaneously or in immediate
succession, of neural elements (nerve-cells or groups of them)
results in the formation of paths of low resistance between them,
by which they are put in functional association or made part of
one system. ^ Now, if this deduction were correct, the assumption
that all memory can be described in terms of brain-traces would
be far more plausible than it actually is. But neither the
premise nor the conclusion of the argument is justified by the

^ The formation of motor habits certainly consists in the establishment of
such neural associations, and, as we have seen, if all memory is conditioned by
brain- traces, such neural association must be the basis of .all memory. It might,
then, have been expected that those who confidently assert that all facts of
memory can be described in terms of neural mechanism would have some definite
notions as to how such neural associations are effected. But that is by no means
the case. The only plausible view of the formation of such neural associations
is that indicated in my “ Primer of Physiological Psychology,” and based upon
the hypothesis of ” inhibition by drainage.” Yet few physiologists or psychol-
ogists have accepted that hypothesis.

340

BODY AND MIND

facts. Our consciousness comprises again and again complex
conjunctions of sensations which show no appreciable tendency
to become associated together. It is only when the attention is
turned upon the objects that excite sensations, and when the
sensations enter into the process of perception (serving as cues
that bring some meaning to consciousness) that associations are
formed. And even then, the formation of an effective neural
association is by no means an immediate and invariable result ;
rather it may require frequent repetition of the perceptive
processes ; especially if the impressions to be associated belong to
different sense-provinces. The fact is well illustrated by the
following experience.

I began to teach one of my children his letters and
numbers. The boy was six years old, bright, and fairly keen
to master his tasks. He quickly learned to repeat the alphabet ;
and he quickly learnt also to recognize the letters printed in
large type on cards ; so that, the alphabet being laid out before
him, he could pick out a second set of the letters and place each
one without hesitation beneath its exemplar. Each letter was
always named by me and generally by him, as it was taken up ;
and he frequently repeated the alphabet, pointing to each letter
as he named it. Now the statements commonly current about
association would lead one to expect that the child would be able
to name the separate letters at sight (i.e. would acquire an effective
association between the visual impression and the name of each
letter) after a very few namings. But this was by no means
the case. It was not until the naming had been repeated
attentively many hundreds of times throughout some months
that he acquired such effective associations. The learning to
name the numbers from one to ten illustrated even more strik-
ingly the difficulty of forming simple mechanical associations ;
since, though only ten visual forms and ten names were to be
associated, an even larger number of repetitions of the naming
were required to establish really effective associations.^

This experience brought home to me very vividly the great
difference between memory and mechanical association. For the
boy, who required so many hundred repetitions for the establish-
ment of these simple mechanical associations, would often surprise

1 It should be added that the naming was not repeated on any one day so
often as to induce in the child a distaste for the task ; also that the learning to
name the numbers came first.

MEMORY

341

me by referring to scenes and events observed by him months or even
years previously, sometimes describing them in a way that seemed
to imply vivid and faithful representation. Yet the memory-
pictures of such scenes involved far more complex conjunctions
of partial impressions than did the remembering the name of a
printed letter or number. ^

The essential difference between the rememberings of these two
kinds was that in the one case meaning was at a minimum, and
remembering depended almost wholly upon mechanical or neural
association of the nature of a habit ; whereas the complex scenes
and events remembered (in some instances after a single percep-
tion only) were full of meaning.

The hardened associationist will seek to reconcile these facts
with his doctrine by asserting that what is here called richness of
meaning of an impression consists in the existence of many
associations previously formed between that impression and other
impressions or sensations. But that contention will not enable
him to meet the difficulty ; for it has been abundantly established
by the experimental investigators ^ of association that an impres-
sion which is already associated with others acquires new associa-
tions with more difficulty than one which is free from previously
formed associations, and that the difficulty is greater the greater
the number of the previously formed associations. Hence, if this
view of the nature of meaning were true, the richer the meaning
the greater should be the difficulty of combining any complex of
sense impressions and of reproducing them as one memory
picture ; it is therefore impossible to account in this way for the
fact that impressions which convey much meaning are combined
and remembered with so much less difficulty than those of little
meaning.^

^ It may be that to this boy the acquirement of associations of this kind was
more difficult than to most children ; but even so, the significance of the facts
remains.

^ Prof. G. E. Muller, op. cit.

® It seems possible to throw light upon this question by the aid of the principle
of correlation. If all memory or retention is of one type, the type of habit, and
depends upon one fundamental factor, such as the plasticity of the brain-structure,
then if a number of persons are tested as regards their excellence in a number
of memorizing tasks, there should appear a high degree of correlation between
the achievements of this group of persons under the several tests ; i.e. if the
persons are arranged in order of merit in respect to their execution of each of
the tasks, there should be a consideraWe degree of correspondence between the
several orders. If, on the other hand, memorizing involves two fundamentally
different factors, namely habit and pure memory, and if these co-operate in very

342

BODY AND MIND

We have, then, very strong grounds for maintaining that all
mental retention and reproduction are conditioned in two very
different ways ; one of these ways, the way of motor habit and
automatism and mechanical association, is adequately accounted
for by the conception of the formation of neural associations by
the repeated passage of the current of nervous energy between
neuron and neuron, each passage leaving the track more open
for subsequent passages.^ This is the only plausible, and in fact
seems to be the only possible, conception of the way in which
mental retention can be conditioned by cerebral structure or
function ; but the strict limitations of this mode of retention,
especially the need of many repetitions of the impressions even in
very simple instances of mechanical association, show that we
cannot regard it as the sole or principal condition of the higher
form of retention or true memory. This we see depends upon
meaning ; and meaning, as we have seen, is just that all important
factor in mental process to which we can assign no immediate
physical correlate among the brain-processes.

The foregoing considerations point to a view of the conditions
of memory or mental retention intermediate between the two
extreme views that have long been opposed to one another, the
view that it is wholly conditioned by neural structure, and the
view that it is conditioned wholly in some immaterial fashion. I
venture to offer the following suggestion towards a theory of
memory. We have regarded every perception or idea as a
conjunction of sensory content with meaning. The sensory
content, a complex of sensations or of images or of both, is
essentially the expression of psycho- physical interaction. The

diiferent proportions in diiferent kinds of memorizing, as we have maintained,
and if these two factors vary m effectiveness from one mind to another inde-
pendently of one another, then we may hope to obtain evidence of the truth of
this view by testing a group of persons m respect to tasks which involve pre-
dominantly habit-formation and true memory respectively. If such experiments
revealed high correlation between the orders of achievement in respect to tasks of
the first kind, and also between orders of achievement in respect to tasks of the
second kind, but low correlation of the achievements in tasks of the one kind
with those in tasks of the other kind, such a result would go far to establish the
distinction between the two kinds of memory. Experiments directed along
these lines are in progress, but are not yet ready for publication. The results
so far achieved bear out the distinction in the way indicated

^ It IS highly probable that the chief resistances to the passage of the current
he at the synapses, or junctions between neurons, and that the essential effect
of the passage of the current is a diminution of these synaptic resistances.

MEMORY

343

idea, as a compound of sensory content and meaning, does not
continue to exist as such in the interval between its acquisition and
its reproduction. Neural associations or habits may so link groups
of sensory elements of the brain as to lead to successive revival
of the corresponding sensory complexes ; something of this sort is
the main condition of the predominantly mechanical reproduction
of the alphabet or of rows of nonsense syllables learnt by frequent
repetition. On the other hand, in so far as each sensory complex
has evoked meaning in the past, it tends to revive it upon its
reproduction and thus to reinstate the idea in consciousness. This
is the process of evocation of an idea from the neural side. It
plays only a subordinate part in the higher processes of remember-
ing. These are determined mainly from the psychical side.
What, then, is it that persists in the psychical realm ? Shall
we say it is the meanings themselves?^ Clearly they do not
persist as facts of consciousness. But the development of the
mind from infancy onwards consists largely in the development
of capacities for ideas or thoughts of richer, fuller, more abstract
and more general meanings. If then meanings have no immediate
physical correlates or counterparts in the brain, and if the mean-
ings themselves do not persist, we must suppose that the persistent
conditions of meanings are psychical dispositions.

We must believe, then, that there persist psychical dispositions,
each of which is an enduring feature of the psychical structure
and an enduring condition of the possibility of the return to
consciousness of the corresponding meaning. These dispositions
are elaborated in the course of experience and linked according
to logical principles in processes of judgment and reasoning ;
whenever meanings become synthesized to larger logical wholes,
the corresponding dispositions become linked as functional wholes,
so that, when an appropriate sensory cue recalls one meaning to
consciousness, the whole of which it is a part is also restored
(under conditions otherwise favourable). And we may suppose
that each meaning, as it comes into consciousness, tends to restore
the sensory content which serves as its cue when the idea is
evoked from the physical side. And we may suppose further
that the restoration to consciousness of the sensory content

^ The view that meanings persist in the mind as such, but m a reduced or
subconscious condition, has been suggested by Mr W. M. Keatinge in chap. VIII.
of his “ Suggestion in -Education ** Although the view I am presenting differs
in certain respects from his, I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to his interest-
ing suggestion.

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344

involves the re-excitement of the system of neural elements,
whose processes are the inseparable concomitants of the sensation
elements. In this way the train of representation is determined
all along the line from both the neural and the psychical sides,
with constant psycho-physical interaction initiated now from this
side, now from that In thinking, judging, and in reasoning proper,
the train of ideas is determined predominantly by the play of
meanings, according to the principle of reproduction of similars
under the guidance of the dominant purpose at the time ; the
images evoked may be verbal only, the neural correlate being
reduced to a minimum, and habit being completely subordinated
to thought.

This difficult and perhaps somewhat vague conception may
perhaps be made clearer by a simile. Let the sensory brain ele-
ments of specific constitution be likened to the wires of a great
piano. Each when struck gives out the tone (the quality of sensa-
tion) peculiar to itself. Habit may be likened to material con-
nexions between the wires which bind them into groups and compel
the members of each group to vibrate together. So far our simile
illustrates only the conception of memory as materially con-
ditioned. But the frame of piano wires may not only be struck
from below by the hammers connected with the keyboard (the
sense-organs), but may also be set vibrating in harmonious groups
by action from above, namely, they may take up by resonance the
notes of a melody vibrating in the air. The total system of
wires vibrating at any moment will then be determined in three
ways, (i) by operations on the keyboard (sense-stimuli), (2) by
the nature of the mechanical ties established between the wires
(habit), (3) by the air-borne chords and melodies reaching them
(meanings). The simile fails of course in that, in the case of the
piano, the vibrations of the air which act upon the wires are but
forms of motion similar to those of the wires themselves. And,
even if we try to improve it by adding a phonographic plate,
which may store up the vibrations in static form and at a later
time return them to the air and through it to the piano-wires, it
still fails in that the trace upon the plate is merely the trace of
one particular series of impressions ; whereas the psychical dis-
position is the product of a gradual growth renewed upon many
occasions.

According to this scheme, then, the sensory content of con-
sciousness is essentially the expression of psycho-physical inter-

MEMORY

345

action, and can be initiated either from the neural side (in
accordance with the conjunctions of sense-stimuli and preformed
habits or neural associations), when it brings meanings to con-
sciousness ; or, from the psychical side, by meanings which demand
specific sensory complexes for the completion of the ideas, and
which thus in turn through the medium of sensation bring neural
dispositions into play. Or, in other words, we may say that
sensation and imagery are the medium through which the bodily
processes provoke the thought activities of the soul and through
which thought in turn plays back upon the brain-processes.^

Here, it seems to me, we have in rough outline a theory of
memory which is consistent with all the empirical data, especially
all those which show the dependence of sensation and imagery
upon the integrity of the brain, and which yet relieves us of the
impossible task of conceiving a physical basis for all memory,
and allows us to believe that true memory is conditioned by the
persistence of modifications of psychical structure or capacities.

This view of the twofold nature of the conditions of mental
retention finds support in certain cases in which a physical shock
to the brain seems to have destroyed or temporarily abolished the
whole content of memory in so far as it depends on physical
traces in the brain ; the most notable of such cases is that of Mr
Hanna.^ A violent concussion of the brain reduced this patient
to a condition which in many respects resembled that of a new-
born infant He was found to have lost all acquired facilities of
movement, including those of speech and locomotion ; although
an educated man, he could understand neither written nor spoken
language, nor could he interpret the most familiar sense-impres-
sions ; yet according to his own account, which there seems no
reason to suppose is not in the main trustworthy, he puzzled over

^ The most striking evidence of the determination of the sensory content of
consciousness by meaning is afiorded by the study of the struggle of two unhke
visual fields presented to the right and left eyes respectively. If the two fields
are not of very unequal brightness, attention may be directed at will to either
field one may think of the objects presented in either field) ; the sensory
content excited through the corresponding eye then predominates to the partial
or complete suppression of the sensations excited through the other eye. In this
way one learns to use a monocular microscope while keeping both eyes open.

It is especially significant that when one’s purpose is to combine the objects of the
two fields, this also is possible (as when one draws an object under the microscope
with the aid of the camera lucida ) ; and that then the sensory contents of the
two fields coexist in consciousness.

* “ Multiple Personality,” by B. Sidis and S. P. Goodhart, London, 1905.

BODY AND MIND

346

his condition, used almost at the first moment of recovery of
consciousness the category of causation,^ and intelligently experi-
mented in order to regain an understanding of his surroundings.
He reacquired in the course of a few months almost all the
stock of common facilities and knowledge that is acquired by a
child in the course of many years. “ He learned so rapidly in
those days that it was almost miraculous.” Six weeks after the
accident he was able to talk freely and to give an intelligent account
of his condition. Now it might be suggested that all this rapid
reacquisition was not a new learning, but a mere restoration under
practice of the temporarily paralysed memory-traces in his brain.
But that interpretation seems to be ruled out by the fact that for
a long time the content of his memory was entirely new ; and,
though his old memories were eventually restored, that restoration
seems to have set in at a later date as a process quite distinct
from the new learning. The case, then, lends itself very well to
interpretation in terms of the theory of memory proposed above.
If we suppose that all brain-traces of the nature of acquired habits
were paralysed by the shock and remained incapable of functioning
during the period of new learning, we may explain the great
rapidity of the processes of acquisition by the assumption that
the psychical dispositions elaborated in the course of his earlier
experience remained ready to be brought into play by appropriate
conjunctions of sense-stimuli, and that under their guidance the
neural dispositions, whose co-operation is necessary for effective
thought and expression, were rapidly organized.

Without, then, maintaining that the theory of the material
conditioning of all memory can as yet be absolutely disproved, I
conclude that it remains an extremely improbable hypothesis
resting upon the general arguments in favour of Parallelism, rather
than upon any evidence directly supporting it. And I submit
that to regard the conditions of mental retention as of two
disparate natures, namely, material and psychical, is more in
harmony with all the empirical evidence at present available.

^ He noted, for example, that when his attendants moved their lips he
heard sounds, and he inferred that in this way they communicated with one
another ; and, after discovering that he had the power of moving the parts of
his body, he noted the movement of another object (a man) and inferred that he
himself had caused it to move {op. cit , pp 109, 1 10).

CHAPTER XXV

the bearing of the results of ‘‘PSYCHICAL
RESEARCH” ON THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL PROBLEM

D uring the last thirty years the Society for Psychical
Research has investigated in a strictly scientific manner
certain obscure phenomena, the occurrence of which
has been accepted by the popular mind in all ages and in all
countries, but which have been rejected by the official world of
modern science as merely superstitious survivals from the dark
ages, reinforced by contemporary errors of observation due to the
influence of these traditional superstitions.

At the present day, no one undertaking to review the psycho-
physical problem can ignore the results of these investigations
without laying himself open to the charge of culpable ignorance
or unscientific prejudice.

The principal aim of the Society for Psychical Research
has been to obtain, if possible, empirical evidence that human
personality may and does survive in some sense or degree the
death of the body. A considerhble mass of evidence pointing in
this direction has been accumulated. Its nature is such that
many of those who have devoted attention to the work and
have had a full and first-hand acquaintance with the investigations
and their results, have become convinced that survival is a fact.
And among these persons so convinced are several who, in
respect to their competence to form a sane and critical judgment
on this difficult question, cannot be rated inferior to any other
persons.

Nevertheless, in my judgment, the evidence is not of such a
nature that it can be stated in a form which should produce con-
viction in the mind of any impartial inquirer. Again and again
the evidential character of the observations has fallen just short
of perfection ; the objections that stand between us and the
acceptance of the conclusion seem to tremble and sway ; but still
they are not cast down, the critical blow has not been struck ; and,

347

BODY AND MIND

348

perhaps, they will remain erect in spite of all efforts, This being
the state of affairs, I shall not adduce any of this evidence,^ but
will merely point out that one of the advantages of the animistic
solution of the psycho-physical problem is that its acceptance
keeps our minds open for the impartial consideration of evidence
of this sort ; and that it is possible and seems even probable that
Animism may receive direct and unquestionable verification
through these investigations whereas Parallelism (including under

^ For full accounts of the work the reader must turn to the Proceedings of the
S. P. R. He will find excellent samples and discussions of the evidence in Sir
O. Lodge's Survival of Man," and in the late Mr Podmore’s “ The Newer
Spiritualism." The former accepts, the latter rejects the evidence for survival.

®Some of my readers may object that empirical evidence of the survival
of personality is in principle impossible. This was the opinion forcibly expressed
by Kant in his ** Traume eines Geister-sehers," and never abandoned by him.
The question is important, and a brief discussion of it here may serve to reinforce
what was said on an earher page in criticism of Kant's arbitrary restriction of
empirical science to mechanistic conceptions. The unjustified assumption implied
by the objection is that conceptions based upon empirical evidence must be concep-
tions of objects capable in principle of being perceived through the senses. It has
already been pointed out that many of the most valuable conceptions of physical
science do not conform to this requirement. In order to bring home to our minds
the invalidity of the assumption, let us imagine the following case. After the death
of an intimate friend you seal up a pencil and a writing-block in a glass vessel.
Then, whenever mentally or verbally you address questions to your deceased
friend as though he were beside you, the pencil stands up and writes upon the
paper, giving intelligent replies to your questions. In this way you conduct
elaborate and oft-renewed conversations, in which the writing seems always
perfectly to express the personality of your friend, even to reveahng many facts
which, as you are able afterwards to discover, must have been known to him
but to no other person, facts such as the contents of a private writing-desk,
or a sealed personal journal. If this occurred, it would constitute an empirical
proof of the continued existence of the personality of your friend in some manner
not directly perceptible by the senses, in spite of the complete dissolution of his
bodily organism. You would infer his continued existence from the phenomena,
though you would remain unable to imagine the mode of his existence ; and to
refuse to do so would be irrational and absurd. No one asserts that such pheno-
mena have been observed ; but to assert that it is impossible that they should
occur is to beg the question in dispute and to argue m a circle ; for the dem'al
of its possibility could only be based on a priori grounds. But nothing is im-
possible save the self-contradictory. Now, although the phenomena we have
imagined have not been observed, something similar, something constituting
evidence of a similar nature, does occur. Pencils do produce what seem to be
messages written by deceased persons ; but in the observed cases (I leave out
of account the alleged cases of ** direct writing ") the pencil is held and moved
by the hand and arm of a living person, who, however, remains ignorant of its
doings and of the thought expressed in the writing. This fact, that the pencil
is moved by the hand of a living person, complicates immensely the task of
evaluating the significance of the writing, but does not in principle affect the
validity of the inference that may be drawn from it.

THE RESULTS OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH" 349

that term all forms of the anti-animistic hypotheses) closes our
minds to this possibility, and is liable at any moment to be finally
refuted by improvement of the quality of this empirical evidence
for survival

For if, as was argued in Chapter XIV., Animism is the only
solution of the psycho-physical problem compatible with a belief
in any continuance of personality after death, the empirical proof
of such continuance would be the verification of Animism ; it
would be proof that the differences between the living human
organism and the corpse are due to the presence or operation
within the former of some factor or principle which is
different from the body and capable of existing independently
of it

But though, in my judgment, this verification of Animism has
not been furnished by psychical research," a very important posi-
tive result has been achieved by it, namely, it has established the
occurrence of phenomena that are incompatible with the me-
chanistic assumption. I refer especially to the phenomena of
telepathy.^

I cannot attempt to present here the evidence for the reality of
telepathy. It must suffice to say that it is of such a nature as to
compel the assent of any competent person who studies it im-
partially. Now, so long as we consider only the evidence of
telepathy between persons at no great distance from one another,
it is possible to make the facts appear compatible with the
mechanistic assumption by uttering the ‘‘ blessed " word “ brain-
waves." 2 But the strain upon the mechanistic assumption
becomes insupportable by it when we consider the following
facts : Minute studies of automatic writings, and especially those
recently reported ^ under the head of “ Cross-Correspondences,"
have shown that such writings frequently reveal knowledge of facts
which could not have been acquired by the writer by normal
means, and could not have been telepathically communicated
from any living person in the neighbourhood of the writer. In

^ “ The communication of mind with mind by means other than tlie recognized
channels of sense.” The evidence is reviewed iuEficyl. Brit, nth Ed. Art.
“ Telepathy.”

® The explanation of telepathy at close quarters by the hypothesis of “ brain-
waves ” transmitted through the ether cannot be absolutely rejected. But to
my mind the difficulties are so great that the h3q)othesis is incredible. It is
usual to support this hypothesis by pointing to the facts of wireless telegraphy.

® Proceedings of the S.P.R. from 1907 onwards.

BODY AND MIND

350

short, the evidence is such that the keenest adverse critics ^ of the
view which sees in these writings the expression of the surviving
personalities of deceased persons, are driven to postulate as the
only possible alternative explanation of some of them the
direct communication of complex and subtle thoughts between
persons separated by hundreds and even thousands of miles,
thoughts of which neither is conscious or has been conscious at
any time, so far as can be ascertained. There is good evidence
also that in some cases three persons widely separated in space
have taken part in expressing by automatic writing a single
thought Unless, then, we are prepared to adopt the supposition
of a senseless and motiveless conspiracy of fraud among a number
of persons who have shown themselves to be perfectly upright
and earnest in every other relation,^ we must recognize that we
stand before the dilemma — survival or telepathy of this far-
reaching kind. The acceptance of either horn of the dilemma
is fatal to the mechanistic scheme of things. For, even if the
hypothesis of “ brain-waves ” be regarded as affording a possible
explanation of simple telepathic communication at short range, it
becomes wholly incredible if it is suggested as an explanation of
the co-operation of widely separated “ automatic ” writers in the
expression of one thought. This, then, is the principal import-
ance I attach to the results hitherto achieved by “psychical
research, namely, I regard the research as having established the
occurrence of phenomena which cannot be reconciled with the
mechanistic scheme of things ; and I adduce the results here in
order to add them to the great mass of evidence to the same effect
set forth in the foregoing chapters.

Besides the evidence that leads to this dilemma, so fatal to the
mechanistic dogma, “psychical research'' has established the
reality of other phenomena very difficult to reconcile with it.
Of these I will cite here only two classes. First, it has been shown
that under certain conditions (especially in the hypnotic and post-
hypnotic states) the mind may exert an influence over the organic
processes of the body far greater than any that had been gener-
ally recognized by physiologists. Especially noteworthy are the

^ This was the alternative hypothesis adopted by the late Mr F. Podmore, whose
acquaintance with the facts was intimate and extensive, and who during many
years had built up for himself a reputation as the keenest critic of the advanced
wing of the S. P. R. (See his posthumous work, “ The Newer Spiritualism.”)

2 I may add that my personal knowledge of leading members of this group
of workers renders this supposition ridiculous to my mind.

THE RESULTS OF ^'PSYCHICAL RESEARCH^’ 351

production of blisters, erythemata, and ecchymoses, of the skin
(the so-calkd stigmata) in positions and of definite shapes deter-
mined by verbal suggestions, and the rapid healing of wounds or
burns with almost complete suppression of inflammation ; and
with these may be put the complete suppression or prevention of
pain, even pain of such severity as normally accompanies a major
surgical operation. ^

Now it is true that the production of these and similar effects
involves only an extension or intensification of powers normally
excerised by the mind over the bodily processes. But to say that,
is not to deprive the facts of the significance that I would attribute
to them. Rather, these instances of hypernormal mental control
over bodily processes serve merely to place in a clearer light, to
bring home more forcibly to us, the impossibility of explaining
these processes on mechanical principles, the impossibility of
exhibiting these psycho-physical processes as purely chemico-
physical or mechanical processes. By the free use of speculation
I have myself carried the hypothetical account of the nervous
changes involved in hypnosis as far, perhaps, as any other
physiologist,^ But it must be frankly recognized that even though
my account, or any other yet proposed, be accepted as approxi-
mately true, the processes are by no means explained ; the chief
part of the facts remains refractory to explanation by mechanical
hypotheses. Let us consider for a moment one of the simplest
and most familiar instances of such control ; the production of
local anaesthesia or the allied process of the suppression of local
neuralgic pain. I touch the left eye of a subject in hypnosis ^ as
he sits with closed eyes, and tell him that he can see nothing
with that eye. On opening his eyes he is then blind of the left
eye,^ and remains so until its vision is restored by a new

^ For the evidences of such effects I refer the reader to Dr Milne BramwelPs
Hypnotism, its History, Theory, and Practice,” London, 1903.

“‘‘The State of the Brain during Hypnosis,” Bratn^ vol. 31, and Art.

“ Hypnotism” in Ency. Bnt,., nth Ed.

“This and similar effects can be obtained in a considerable proportion of
subjects, but the reader must not be misled into supposmg that they can be
readily produced in every subject.

'^Any critically disposed reader unfamihar with experiments of this kind,
will be inclined to assume that the subject feigns blindness of the left eye, out of
complaisance or obedience to the operator. But that the blindness of the left
eye is genuine and involuntary may easily be shown by the following procedure.
The lateral parts of the normal field of view are fields of monocular vision, the
middle part only being a field of binocular vision ; the ordinary working man is
ignorant of the boundaries between the monocular and the binocular parts

3S2

BODY AND MIND

suggestion to that effect. Or a subject who has been racked for
days, or weeks, with intense neuralgic pain becomes completely
free of the pain almost instantaneously upon mere verbal
suggestion to that effect during hypnosis. Now it seems highly
probable that in every such case the sensory path or centre of
the brain concerned in the production of the sensation which
is, as it were, cut out of the subject’s consciousness, becomes
functionally dissociated from the rest of the brain, i.e, circumscribed
or isolated. But how is this dissociation or circumscription
effected ? The subject himself knows nothing of the anatomy of
his brain ; and, even if his brain could be so enlarged that all the
members of the International Congress of Physiologists could walk
about inside his nerve fibres and hold a conference in one of his
“ ganglion cells,” their united knowledge and the resources of all
their laboratories would not suffice to enable them to effect such
an operation as the isolation of the sensory centres of the left eye
from those of the right eye, and from the rest of the brain. If it
be suggested that the anaesthesia of the left eye is produced by
some paralysis of the optic nerve, comparable to the application
of a ligature to it (and this of course would be within the com-
petence of the physiologist), the case is brought no nearer to the
possibility of a mechanistic explanation ; for it is utterly im-
possible to conceive that the neural impulses initiated in the
auditory nerve by the sound of the words, “ Your left eye is
blind,” should find their way to the fibres of the left optic nerve ;
nor, if arrived there, could they in any conceivable fashion paralyse
the conductivity of the nerve.

These processes in short remain no less mysterious and no less
refactory to mechanistic explanations than the processes of growth
and repair by which complex organisms develop from the germ-
cells and maintaip or restore the integrity of their organs. The
similarity to normal processes of growth and repair of these
processes of control of organic function initiated by verbal

of the field, and if, while his eyes are directed to a spot before him, an object is
brought slowly forward from behind his head, it passes at a given moment from
the monocular to the binocular part of his field of view, without affording him
any indication of the fact. Now if this experiment be made with a subject
whose left eye has been rendered anaesthetic by suggestion, an object being
brought slowly forward on his left side and the subject being instructed to indicate
the moment at which it becomes perceptible to him, he will signal his perception
of the object at the moment that it crosses the boundary between the monocular
and the binocular parts of his normal field of view, the moment at which
it enters the field of the right eye.

THE RESULTS OF ^^PSYCHICAL RESEARCH’’ 353

suggestion, Le. by mental influences (though carried out in
detail by processess of which the subject remains wholly un-
conscious), goes far to justify the assimilation of the processes
of these two types, and to justify the belief that the normal
processes of growth and repair are in some sense coratrolled by
mind, or by a teleological principle of which our conscious
intelligence is but one mode of manifestation among others.

Hypnotic experiments of another class seem to me
to call for special mention in the present connexion, namely
those which have revealed in several subjects an astonishing
power of appreciating time or duration.^ The essence of the
experiments was that the subject, having been instructed during
hypnosis to make some simple written record at some future
moment (generally stated in thousands of minutes), carried out
the instruction in a great majority of cases with hardly appreciable
error.2 Many interesting problems are raised hy thiese experi-
ments ; but, leaving on one side the evidence of subconscious
calculations of considerable complexity, I wish to insist only on
the main point, the awareness of the arrival of the prescribed
moment. It is usual to seek to explain simpler cases of apprecia-
tion of the passage of time by some vague suggestion of a
subconscious counting of some physiological rhythiiii. But in
these cases, even if the ordinary means of learning the time
(e.£‘. a reliable watch) had been used by the suEject at the
moment of the reception of the suggestion, this explanation
would remain very far-fetched and improbable ; for we know of
no bodily rhythm sufficiently constant to serve as the basis of
so accurate an appreciation of duration as would have enabled
the subject to carry out the suggestion with the high degree of
accuracy shown. And in some cases the subject had no normal
means of learning the time of day for considerable periods before
and after the reception of the suggestion, and yet the accuracy
of the result was not diminished. What then can be made of
these cases ? They are too numerous, too carefully studied and
reported by competent observers, to be set aside as merely in-

^ The principal instances are those carefully studied and reported by the late
Prof. Delbceuff, by Dr Milne Bramwell {op. cit.)y and by Dr T. W. Mitchell,
""A Case of Post Hypnotic Appreciation of Time'' (Proc. S. P. R., vol. xxi.).
At the time of going to press I am engaged in studying a subject who seems to
exhibit this power in a very striking manner, as well as the production of blisters
and extravasations of blood from the skin in response to verbal suggestion.

® The time-errors were frequently less than one minute, seldoxn raore than five

354

BODY AND MIND

stances of mal -observation. The most commonplace hypothesis
that seems adequate to account for them is one of subconscious
telepathy. But, whatever the true explanation may be, they
must, I think, be added to the class of phenomena manifestly
irreconcilable with the mechanistic dogma.

CHAPTER XXVI

CONCLUSION

I N this final chapter it remains to draw together the threads of
the long discussion and to state succinctly what conclusions
seem to be justified by the evidences and reasonings we
have reviewed.

We have seen how the great successes of the mechanical
principles of explanation in the physical sciences, and their more
limited success in the biological sciences, have led the greater
part of the modern world of science confidently to assume that
these principles are adequate for the explanation of all biological
phenomena, and to reject as unnecessary the hypothesis of the
co-operation of some teleological principle in their determination.
We have seen how this opinion has seemed to find support in the
law of the conservation of energy, in the Darwinian principles,
and in the modern developments of cerebral anatomy and
physiology. We have seen that the belief thus engendered in
the adequacy and the exclusive sway of mechanical principles in
both the inorganic and organic realms has been and remains the
principal ground of the rejection of Animism by the modern
world. We saw also that the more enlightened of the opponents
of Animism, recognizing the uncertain nature of this ground, have
rested their case mainly upon certain metaphysical arguments
that make against the acceptance of the notion of psycho-
physical interaction. We then examined the chief types of the
current monistic formulations of the relation of mind to body ; and
we found that each of them encounters great difficulties peculiar
to itself, as well as others common to all of them. After
ascertaining that there is no escape from the dilemma, Animism
or Parallelism, we proceeded to the defence of Animism ; and
first, we found that none of the arguments, neither those of a
metaphysical or epistemological nature, nor those drawn from the
natural sciences, render impossible or untenable the notion of
psycho-physical interaction. We then surveyed a mass of

BODY AND MIND

3S6

evidence which shows that the mechanical principles are not
adequate to the explanation of biological phenomena, neither the
phenomena of racial evolution nor those of the development of
individual organisms, nor the behaviour of men and animals.
In the psychological chapters evidence was adduced which
conclusively proves that a strict parallelism between our psychical
processes and the physical processes of our brains does not as a
matter of empirical fact obtain ; and it was shown that facts of
our conscious life, especially the fact of psychical individuality,
the fact of the unity of the consciousness correlated with the
physical manifold of brain-processes, cannot be rendered intelli-
gible (as admitted by leading Parallelists) ^ without the postula-
tion of some ground of unity other than the brain or material
organism.

The empirical evidence, then, seems to weigh very strongly
against Parallelism and in favour of Animism. And we saw that,
though the acceptance of either horn of the dilemma involves the
acceptance of a number of strange consequences and leaves on
our hands a number of questions to which we can return no
answer, Animism has this great advantage over its rival, namely,
that it remains on the plane of empirical science, and, while
leaving the metaphysical questions open for independent treat-
ment, can look forward to obtaining further light on its problems
through further scientific research. It is thus a doctrine that
stimulates our curiosity and stirs us to further efforts ; whereas
Parallelism necessarily involves the acceptance of metaphysical
doctrines which claim to embody ultimate truth and which set
rigid limits to the possibilities of further insight into the nature
of the world, and it finds itself forced to regard certain of its
problems as ultimately inexplicable.

Finally, we have seen that Parallelism rules out all religious
conceptions and hopes and aspirations, save those (if there be
any) which are compatible with a strictly mechanistic Pantheism,
a Pantheism which differs from rigid Materialism not at all in
respect to practical consequences for the life of mankind ; whereas
Animism in this sphere also leaves open the whole field for
further speculation and inquiry, and permits us to hope and even
to believe that the world is better than it seems ; that the bitter
injustices men suffer are not utterly irreparable ; that their moral

^ I remind the reader of Panlsen^s dictum, " Die Seele ist eine auf nicht
welter sagbarer Weise zusammen gebundene Vielheit innerer Erlebmsse.”

CONCLUSION

357

efforts are not wholly futile ; that the life of the human race may
have a wider significance than we can demonstrate ; and that the
advent of a '' kindly comet,” or the getting out of hand of some
unusually virulent tribe of microbes, would not necessarily mean
the final nullity of human endeavour.

These seem to me overwhelmingly strong reasons for
accepting, as the best working hypothesis of the psycho-physical
relation, the animistic horn of the dilemma. I shall now very
briefly consider the principal varieties of the animistic conception,
and attempt to estimate the relative strengths of their claims on
our acceptance.

We may consider first a peculiar view, which might be called
Animism of the lowest or most meagre degree. It is not perhaps
new in the history of speculation, though it was not, I think,
clearly formulated until recent years.^

It is allied to the view oif Ostwald, Bechterew, and others,^
which regards consciousness as a form of energy that undergoes
transformations to other forms and is generated by transforma-
tions of the other forms of energy. It may perhaps be most
easily described by saying that, like Epiphenomenalism^ it re-
gards consciousness as generated by the physical processes of the
brain, but (unlike Huxley’s doctrine) conceives the elements of
consciousness as forces that influence one another and, in turn,
react upon the brain-processes. It might also be described as
the combination of the notion of the ‘‘ Actuelle-Seele ” ^ with the
belief in psycho-physical interaction. It sacrifices the advantages
of Parallelism, namely, those which follow from the acceptance of
a clean-cut mechanistic scheme of things, and involves many of
the difficulties of Animism without bringing it important advan-
tages. Its chief merit, and its only superiority to Epipheno-
menalism, is that it finds a place, a function, and a raison d'itre

^ It was advocated in my first publication touching on the psycho-physical
question (“Mind,” N.S,, vol. vii.), and has more recently been urged by several
writers, especially by Dr Archdall Reid (“ Laws of Heredity,” London, 1910) and
by Miss E. B. M'Gilvary (“/owm. of Phil.^ Psychology and Sci. Method^ 1910).

* See p. 130.

* Wundt’s notion of the ” Actuelle-Seele ” (as consisting in the stream of
consciousness composed of elements that causally interact with one another
and synthesize themselves undergoing transformations in the process) differs
from this view chiefly in that it denies any causal relation between the elements
of the stream of consciousness and the brain-processes of which they are the
invariable temporal concomitants.

BODY AND MIND

358

for consciousness as a factor in biological evolution, and avoids
the absurdity of postulating effects which have no causes.

A second type of animistic theory is that advocated by
William James ^ and Prof. Bergson. It was called by James “ the
transmission theory’’ of the function of the brain in relation to
consciousness. It holds that consciousness is a stuff which is
capable of being divided and compounded like putty or any plastic
matter, its parts enduring or retaining their identity in the various
aggregations into which they enter. It is conceived as existing
independently of material organisms, either (a) in disseminated
particles ; and then our brains are organs of concentration, organs
for combining and massing these into resultant minds of personal
form. Or it may exist (^) in vaster unities (absolute ‘world-
soul,’ or something less); and then our brains are organs for
separating it into parts and giving them finite form.” ^

According to this view, then, the brain is the ground of our
psychical individuality. Matter is regarded as “ a mere surface-
veil of phenomena, hiding and keeping back the world of genuine
realities,”^ and our brains are regarded as translucent spots or
systems of pores in this veil, whereby beams of conscious-
ness “ pierce through into this sublunary world.” And all the
beams thus transmitted by one brain are regarded as normally
cohering to form a stream of personal consciousness, which swells

^ “ Human Immortality,*’ IngersoU Lecture, 1898. The Animism of Bergson
as expounded in his “ Evolution Creatrice” is in many essential respects similar
to James’ view. But though Bergson has more fully elaborated this doctrine, I
have chosen to present it in the form given it by James. Their formulations
agree in the following essential points : both reject the claims of mechanism to
rule in the organic world ; both regard all psychical existence as of the form
of consciousness only ; both assume that consciousness exists independently of
the physical world in some vast ocean or oceans of consciousness ; both maintain
that the consciousness or psychical life of each organism is a ray from this source ,
that the bodily organisation of each creature is that which determines individu-
ality ; that the brain is a mechanism which lets through, or brings into operation
in the physical world, a stream of consciousness which is copious in proportion
to the complexity of organisation of the brain.

* James, op. cit., note 3. James distinguished these two views as alternatives
in his IngersoU Lecture, but later (“ Pluralistic Universe ”) he seems to have
realized that they imply one another ; that if consciousness can be split off from
larger wholes, its fragments must also be capable of being compounded. Else-
where he speaks of a cosmic sea or reservoir of consciousness in impersonal forms.
James, in fact, recognized that the transmission theory implies the doctrine of
mind-stuff, the metaphysical notion that consciousness as we know it consists of
compounded or aggregated atoms of mind-stuff.

® James, op. otU, p. 33.

CONCLUSION

359

and grows rich, or contracts and grows thin and poor, according to
the functional condition of the brain.

This theory seems to me very unsatisfactory for the following
reasons:^ (i) It is open to all the objections that are made
against psycho-physical interaction, since it implies such inter-
action and the rejection of the mechanistic dogma. (2) It
is open also to all the objections to the notion of the compound-
ing of consciousness, the notion that a number of elements or
fragments of consciousness can cohere together to form a logical
thought, or that a thought may be formed by the chipping off of
a fragment of a larger whole of consciousness, and the notion also
that each fragment of consciousness functions simultaneously as an
element of larger and smaller aggregates.^ (3) Like Parallelism, it
leaves the fundamental fact of psychical individuality completely
obscure and unintelligible ; for we can see no reason in the
nature of things, or of the hypothesis, why the several beams or
elements of consciousness transmitted through any one brain
should normally cohere to form the thoughts of one personality,
while those transmitted through separate brains should remain
separate. (4) In identifying mind with consciousness (i.e. making
consciousness coextensive with mind or soul and its operations) it
holds out no prospect of aiding in the solution of the physiological
problems that remain refractory to mechanical principles, and it
would seem to necessitate the assumption of the operation in
organisms of a second teleological factor other than consciousness.
(5) It seems incapable of giving any intelligible account of the
facts of memory.^

It seems, then, worth while to inquire why James, one of the
most prominent exponents of this form of Animism, preferred it to
what he called the soul-theory. The history of James’ thought on
this question, as revealed in his published works, is interesting and
relevant to our discussion. James approached the study of the
mind, in which he attained so pre-eminent a mastery, from the
side of physiology, and, in accordance with the dominant physio-

^ My very condensed statement of it inevitably fails to do justice to it, and
the reader should consult the original sources. Mr 'Schiller^s very readable
" Riddles of the Sphinx ” present a psycho-physical hypothesis which in some
respects is allied to the transmission theory.**

* See p. 169.

® I cannot discover that Prof. Bergson has brought the theory of memory of
the “ Mati^re et M6moire ** into intelligible relation with the psycho-physical
doctrine of the “ Evolution Crdatrice.**

BODY AND MIND

360

logical teaching of that time, he identified thought and feeling
and will with sensation ; and throughout his first great book ^
he endeavoured to build up a consistent account of our mental life
on a sensationalistic basis. At the same time he rejected the
mechanistic dogma and affirmed the reality of psycho-physical
interaction ; he gave a brilliant and convincing refutation of
the notion of the compounding of consciousness, and frankly
recognized that the soul-theory seemed to him the necessary
alternative to that doctrine. He affirmed the logical respecta-
bility of the soul-theory, gave a sympathetic statement of it, and
confessed “that to posit a soul influenced in some mysterious
way by the brain-states and responding to them by conscious
affections of its own, seems to me the line of least logical
resistance, so far as we yet have attained.” ^ Nevertheless, he
did not accept the soul-theory, though he gave no reasons for
his hesitation, unless his characterization of it as the doctrine of
Scholasticism and of common sense can be regarded as such. In
his later works he showed himself more decidedly opposed to
the soul-theory. In the Ingersoll Lecture of 1898 he hardly
mentioned it, but advocated the “ transmission theory.” And, in
his Oxford lectures of 1908,^ he definitely rejected it in favour of
the conception of a hierarchy of consciousnesses such as Fechner
had dreamt of, the members of each level being conceived as
formed by the compounding of lesser streams of consciousness
of a lower level. In doing so, he recognized that he was re-
pudiating his own demonstration of the illegitimacy of the notion
of the compounding of consciousness, and explained that, after a
long struggle with the problem, the magic of Prof. Bergson's attack
upon the human intellect had given him courage to throw logic to
the winds and to accept the notion of the compounding of con-
sciousnesses in spite of its logical absurdity. He struggled in
vain to reconcile with logical principles^ the notion that a
consciousness can be at the same time both itself and an element
or part of a different and more inclusive consciousness. “ How
can many consciousnesses be at the same time one consciousness ?
How can one and the same identical fact experience itself so
diversely ? The struggle was vain ; I found myself in an
impasse. I saw that I must either forswear that * psychology
without a soul ' to which my whole psychological and Kantian

^ The Principles of Psychology.” * " Principles,” p. 181.

® ” A Pluralistic Universe.”

CONCLUSION

361

education had committed me — I must, in short, bring back
distinct spiritual agents to know the mental states, now singly
and now in combination, in a word, bring back Scholasticism and
common sense — or else I must squarely confess the solution of the
problem impossible, and then, either give up my intellectualistic
logic, the logic of identity, and adopt some higher (or lower) form
of rationality, or, finally, face the fact that life is logically irrational.
Sincerely, this is the actual trilemma that confronts every one of
us.” ^ And James chose to give up logic and the soul, and to
accept the Fechnerian conception.

There can be no doubt that James, in making choice of this
alternative, was greatly influenced, on the one hand, by the modern
studies in psycho-pathology, which seemed to him to have shown
that the normal stream of personal consciousness may be split into
two or more coexistent streams, and, on the other, by his studies of
those experiences of mystics in which they seem to themselves to
transcend the normal limits of individuality and to become one
with some larger whole of consciousness.^ But he did not claim
that these considerations compel us to this renunciation of our
most fundamental logical principles. Rather he seemed driven
to this renunciation by his strong objection to the soul-theory,
which, as he so clearly showed, is the only alternative to it.
What, then, are the grounds of this objection put forward by
James ? They are stated in less than two pages of large print ;
and for the purpose of our inquiry it is so important to have
these grounds fully before us that I quote the entire passage.
‘‘It is not for idle or fantastical reasons that the notion of the
substantial soul, so freely used by common men and the more
popular philosophies, has fallen upon such evil days, and has no
prestige in the eyes of critical thinkers. It only shares the fate
of other unrepresentable substances and principles. They are,
without exception all so barren that to sincere inquirers they
appear as little more than names masquerading — Wo die begrifle
fehlen da stellt ein wort zur rechten zeit sich ein. You see no
deeper into the fact that a hundred sensations get compounded
or known together by thinking that a ‘ soul ’ does the compound-
ing than you see into a man’s living eighty years by thinking of
him as an octogenarian, or into our having five fingers by calling
us pentadactyls. Souls have worn out both themselves and their

^ “ A Pluralistic Universe,” p. 207.

- “ Varieties of Religious Experience,” 1902.

BODY AND MIND

362

welcome, that is the plain truth. Philosophy ought to get the
manifolds of experience unified on principles less empty. Like
the word ‘ cause,* the word ‘ soul * is but a theoretic stop-gap — it
marks a place and claims it for a future explanation to occupy.’*

“ This being our post-humian and post-kantian state of mind, I
will ask your permission to leave the soul wholly out of the pre-
sent discussion and to consider only the residual dilemma.
Some day, indeed, souls may get their innings again in philosophy
— I am quite ready to admit that possibility — they form a category
of thought too natural to the human mind to expire without
prolonged resistance. But if the belief in the soul ever does
come to life after the many funeral-discourses which humian and
kantian criticism have preached over it, I am sure it will be only
when some one has found in the term a pragmatic significance
that has hitherto eluded observation.”^

In spite of my profound admiration for William James, I am
driven to exclaim — Could anything be more perverse ! On one
page he tells us that the only alternatives to the acceptance of
the soul-theory are either to give up our belief in logic, or to declare
that life is logically irrational.^ On the next page he tells us that
the conception of the soul is otiose, that it explains nothing, that it
has no pragmatic significance and does not help us to any under-
standing. But surely, if any hypothesis is so logically necessary
that its rejection must involve the rejection of our belief in the
most fundamental logical principles, it is, ipso facto y justified,
and bears the highest possible credentials. Has any scientific
hypothesis any better justification, or can any better one be
conceived ? Why do we believe that the earth is round ? Surely
only because to deny it would involve the mistrust of logical
reason ! No one has directly perceived the earth as a round
object. Why do we believe that the earth was at one time a fiery
mass ; that it is not now a hollow shell ; or that the remote side of
the moon, which no man has seen, is approximately spherical and
is illuminated by the sun at new moon ? Why do we believe in
those “ unrepresentable principles and substances,” the ether, energy,
magnetic force, electricity, atoms, electrons? These and many
other things we believe in for the same good pragmatic reason,
namely, that our intellect finds the conceptions of these things neces-

^ “ A Pluralistic Universe,*' p. 209.

2 Surely these are but two way^ of stating one alternative, the radical mistrust
of the intellectual powers of the human race.

CONCLUSION

3^3

sary for the building up of the conceptual scheme of things by
means of which we seek to render intelligible the facts of immediate
experience. If we choose to resign our belief in man’s powers of
reason, we may believe in the flatness of the earth, in perpetual
motion, in the existence of atoms of mind-stuff, in the compound-
ing of consciousnesses, or in any other absurdity. “ But I can
take no comfort in such devices for making a luxury of intellectual
defeat They are but spiritual chloroform. Better live on the
ragged edge, better gnaw the file forever ! ” ^ Or — as a less desperate
alternative — retain a modest confidence in human reason, and
accept the hypothesis of the soul !

In the passage quoted above (page 362), James places the
notion of the soul on a level, as regards pragmatic significance,
with the notion of causation. I am very willing to accept the
classification ; for no conception has proved of greater pragmatic
value than that of cause. Wellnigh the whole of such superiority
to savagery as our civilization can boast is due to our successful
application of the conception of causation.

If James had belonged to that group 01 high and dry
methodists who frown on all hypotheses, and teach that the
function of science and philosophy is not to explain facts or
render them intelligible, but merely to describe them with the
utmost accuracy, his position would be comprehensible. But he
explicitly demands explanation and intelligibility, and, in order
to explain certain results of “psychical research,” himself pro-
pounds the hypothesis of a cosmic reservoir of consciousness, or
the existence in the universe of “ a lot of diffuse mind-stuff, unable
of itself to get into consistent personal form, or to take permanent
possession of an organism and yet always craving to do so.” ^

I conclude, therefore, that the trans-mission theory, implying
as it does the overthrow of human reason, encounters immense
difficulties and gratuitously raises more problems than it solves,
and that James’ objections to the soul-theory were of the
flimsiest, were in fact little more than the current prejudice in
favour of that “psychology without a soul” to which, as he said, his
whole psychological and Kantian education had committed him.^

^ James, " Principles,^* vol. i. p. 179.

Article on Psycliical Research,” in the ” American Magazine ” for 1909,
p. 588.

• It seems necessary to insist in this connexion that agreement with conclu-
sions of ” common sense ** or even of scholastic philosophy does not in itself
suj£ce to render an hypothesis absurd or untenable.

BODY AND MIND

Those readers who prefer the soul-theory will perhaps bear with
a little longer, while I inquire how we may best conceive and de-
be the soul in the light of the empirical evidence now available.
First, let us see what negative assertions can be made with
le confidence. We can say that the soul has not the essential
■ibutes of matter, namely, extension (or the attribute of
upying space) and ponderability or mass ; for if it had these
ibutes it would be subject to the laws of mechanism ; and it
iust because we have found that mental and vital processes
not be completely described and explained in terms of
:hanism that we are compelled to believe in the co-operation
some non-mechanical teleological factor, and to adopt the
)othesis of the soul.

The Scholastics and Cartesians have generally described the soul
an inextended immaterial substance. In doing so they meant
only to deny it the attributes of matter, which they defined as
ended substance, but, in applying the term substance, they
ant also to imply certain positive attributes, especially the attri-
e of permanence or indestructibility ; and, curiously enough, they
ned to believe that, by applying this word substance in their
cription of the soul, they guaranteed the immortality of human
sonality. Now, it is hardly necessary to say that we cannot
ve the immortality of the soul by this simple expedient. Nor
we accept the description of it as substance in the old
olastic sense of the word. In that old-fashioned sense of the
•d, substance denoted a core or substratum underlying and
:inct from all the attributes of a thing, which substratum might
3rinciple remain unchanged as the identical substance though
its attributes were changed or stripped off it ; a sort of inert
figure that might be dressed up in many garments. That
a notion which pretty nearly all moderns are agreed to
:ct; for a thing can only be known through the effects or
vites it exerts, and its capacities for exerting these effects are
attributes, and we can only conceive the thing as the sum of
attributes. But we may conceive the thing as possessing these
acities for action or influence, not only at the moments at
ch they are exerted, but also during periods in which they
lain latent A material thing or being is then a sum, not
as J. S. Mill said, of ‘‘ permanent possibilities of sensation,^’
also of enduring possibilities or capacities of definite kinds of
on and reaction upon other material things.

CONCLUSION

365

In a similar way we may describe a soul as a sum of
enduring capacities for thoughts, feelings, and efforts of deter-
minate kinds. Since the word substance retains the flavour of
so many controversial doctrines, we shall do well to avoid it as the
name for any such sum of enduring capacities, and to use instead
the word thing or being. We may then describe a soul as a being
that possesses, or is, the sum of definite capacities for psychical
activity and psycho-physical interaction, of which the most funda-
mental are (i) the capacity of producing, in response to certain
physical stimuli (the sensory processes of the brain), the whole
range of sensation qualities in their whole range of intensities ;

(2) the capacity of responding to certain sensation-complexes with
the production of meanings, as, for example, spatial meanings ;

(3) the capacity of responding to these sensations and these
meanings with feeling and conation or effort, under the spur of
which further meanings may be brought to consciousness in
accordance with the laws of reproduction of similars and of
reasoning ; (4) the capacity of reacting upon the brain-processes
to modify their course in a way which we cannot clearly define,
but which we may provisionally conceive as a process of guidance
by which streams of nervous energy may be concentrated in a
way that antagonizes the tendency of all physical energy to
dissipation and degradation.

These are the fundamental capacities of conscious activity that
we may assign to the soul, and we may say that in the laws or
uniformities that we can discover in these processes we may
discern the laws or the nature of the soul ; and the view that the
soul is this sum of psychical capacities we may express by saying
that the soul is a psychic being.

The Carterians described the soul as a thinking being, using
thinking (cogitatio) as the most inclusive term for what in modern
terminology we call being conscious. But we cannot accept this
description without reservation. Our evidence at present allows
us to say only that the soul thinks or is conscious (realizes its
capacities or potentialities) when interacting with some bodily
organism ; psycho-physical interaction may be, for all we know, a
necessary condition of all consciousness. For all the thinking or
consciousness of which we have positive knowledge is of embodied
minds or souls ; and a great mass of evidence goes to show that
whatever prevents the body from playing its part in this process
of psycho-physical interaction arrests the flow of consciousness.

BODY AND MIND

366

i.e. brings the soul’s activities also to rest, at least so far as they
are conscious activities. Rather than say that the soul is a
thinking being, we must then say that it is a being capable
of being stimulated to conscious activities through the agency of
the body or brain with which it stands in relations of reciprocal
influence.

Further, we must maintain that the soul is in some sense a
unitary being or entity distinct from all others ; for we found that
prominent among the facts which compel us to accept the animistic
hypothesis are the facts of psychical individuality, the fact that
consciousness, as known to us, occurs only as individual coherent
streams of personal consciousness, and all the facts summed up
in the phrase “ the unity of consciousness.” We found that these
facts remain absolutely unintelligible, unless we postulate some
ground of this unity and coherence and separateness of individual
streams of consciousness, some ground other than the bodily
organisation.

This conclusion seems to rule out the notion that the soul of
man or of any complex organism may be compounded of the souls
of lesser organisms, or of the cells of which the body is made up.
But it does not rule out the possibility that more than one psychic
being may be associated with one bodily organism. It may be
that the soul that thinks in each of us is but the chief of a
hierarchy of similar beings,^ and that this one alone, owing to the
favourable position it occupies (I do not mean spatial position), is
able to actualize in any full measure its capacities for conscious
activity ; and it may be that, if the subordinated beings exercise
in any degree their psychic capacities, the chief soul is able, by a
direct or telepathic action, to utilize and in some measure control
their activities. We may see in this possibility the explanation
of those strange and bizzare phenomena which have been so
zealously studied in recent years under the head of secondary or
dual personality, and which constitute evidence that has seemed
to many to justify the notion of a division or splitting of the mind
of a human being into two minds.^ The animistic hypothesis

^ I remind the reader of the metaphysical doctrine (of Leibnitz, Lotze, and
others) that the body is in its real nature an organized system of beings of hke
nature with the soul.

2 The cases of alternating personality are not in question here, hut only
the rarer cases of seemingly concurrent dual personahty or co-consciousness.
Almost all those who have treated of these cases have started out from the
assumption that, if the two streams of consciousness and mental activity coexist,

CONCLUSION

367

may seek to explain also in this way the fact that the bodily
organism of certain animals may be divided into two or more
parts, each of which continues to lead indefinitely an independent

they must be regarded as formed by the splitting of the normal stream of con-
sciousness ; the uncritical acceptance of this assumption renders these writers
incapable of impartially weighing the evidence. Now, if we examine the very
full and careful description of one of the most striking of these cases, that of Sally
Beauchamp ('' The Dissociation of a Personality,” by Dr Morton Prince, London,
1903), we find that there were two or more alternating personalities, both of
which were continuous with the original normal personality, and by the synthesis
or combination of the memories of which the normal personality was restored.
These alternating personalities may, therefore, properly be regarded as formed,
not by the splitting of the normal stream of consciousness, but by the alternation
of two phases of the empirical self, or of the organic basis of personal consciousness,
each of which brings back to consciousness only memories of experiences enjoyed
during former periods of its dominance.

But the most striking feature of the case was the existence of a personality
(Sally by name) which dominated and controlled the whole organism at times,
and claimed to be conscious, though incapable of expressing herself (save in a
fragmentary manner) in bodily movement, during the periods of dominance
of the other personalities. This claim was supported (r) by the fact that Sally
seemed to have knowledge of all or most of the experiences, even the dreams,
reflections, and emotions of the other personalities ; claiming to become aware
of them in some immediate fashion, though regarding them always as not her
own experiences, but as those of the other personahties ; (2) by the fact that
during the dominance of these others, involuntary, forced, or automatic move-
ments, sometimes speech or writing, expressing the personality of Sally, were
sometimes made by the bodily organs; which movements SaUy claimed to
have willed, when afterwards she came into full control; (3) by the fact that
the other personalities were hable to unaccountable inhibitions of the will, which
also Sally claimed to have effected in some direct fashion.

Now the point I wish to insist upon is this : there is in the whole very full
account no evidence to support the view that Sally, the seemingly co-conscious
personality, resulted from the division of the normal personahty. Rather there
is positive evidence that she was not so formed ; she claimed to have existed
before the time of the emotional shock which led to the alternation of phases
of the original personahty, and (what is more important), when the normal
personality was restored, this was effected by the recombination of the alternating
phases, and there was no indication that SaUy was in any sense synthesized
within this normal and complete personahty ; rather she gave indications from
time to time of her continuance in a repressed and relatively inactive condition.

I would put alongside this fact the following remarks of Prof. Pierre Janet,
who has had a very large experience of cases of this type, and to whose statements
great weight must be assigned. After expressing the opinion (” L’Automatisme
psychologique,” p. 343) that, if in such cases of co-consciousness as he describes
a complete cure were effected, the normal personality would regain the memories
of the co-conscious secondary personality, he adds, ” I ought to say that I have
never observed this return of the memory, and that this opinion is founded upon
the examination of my schematic diagram and upon reasoning rather than upon
experience. ... I have never seen these hysterical persons recover after their
apparent cure the memory of their second existences'* And he adds that he sup-

BODY AND MIND

368

existence and develops all the parts and functions of the complete
organism. For we may hold that, as Lotze wrote, '^Section would
have cleft in two, not the soul of the polyp, but the corporeal bond
that held together a number of souls, so as to hinder the individual
development of each ” ^

The unity of the soul does not necessarily imply that all
impressions made upon it and all its activities must be combined
in the stream of personal consciousness. It remains open to us
to suppose that, as Prof. Pierre Janet maintains, the bringing
together or synthesizing of many impressions in the unitary
field of attentive self-consciousness is only effected by the
expenditure of psychical energy, the available quantity of which
varies from time to time, and that the quantity of this energy is
deficient in those states of “ psychical poverty ” (la misere psycho-
logique)^ characterized by sub-conscious mental activities of an
abnormal kind.^

We may, then, suppose that abnormal conditions of two distinct
types are commonly confused together under the head of co-
consciousness or subconscious activity. In the one type (of
which Sally Beauchamp remains the best example) the co-conscious
activities become so highly developed and organized that we can-
not refuse to recognize them as the activities of an independent
synthetic centre, a numerically distinct psychic being, which,
owing to insufficient energy of control of the normally dominan

poses, therefore, that, though they seemed cured to his experienced eye, they were
nevertheless not completely cured.

1 submit, therefore, that we have no sufficient ground for the assumption
that the co-conscious personality is formed by splitting off from the normal
personality, that rather the facts justify the view that they are radically distinct.
The facts may, therefore, be reconciled with the Animistic hypothesis by assuming
that a normaUy subordinate psychic being obtains through the weakening of
the control of the normally dominant soul an opportunity for exercising and
developing its potentialities in an unusual degree.

^ “ Microcosmus ” (Eng. trans ), vol. i. p. 154.

2 op, ctt , p. 444.

® “ Comme le disaient les anciens philosophes, dtre c’est agir et cr6er, et la
conscience, qui est au supreme degre une reality, est par 1^ m6me une activite
agissante. Cette activity, si nous cherchons k nous repr6seuter sa nature, est
avant tout une activity de synthase qui r6unit des ph^nom^nes donnes plus ou
moms nombreux en un phenom^ne nouveau different des 616ments. C’est 1^
une veritable creation, car, k quelque point de vue que Ton se place, la multiplicite
ne contient pas la raison de runit6, et I’acte par lequel des 616ment h6t6rog^nes
sont reunis dans une forme nouvelle n’est pas donn6 dans les 616ments.

La conscience est done bien par elle-m§me, dds ses debuts, une activity de
synthase ” {pp. cit.y p. 484).

CONCLUSION

369

centre, escapes from its position of subordination and repression,
and, not without a prolonged struggle/ actualizes and develops
in an abormal degree its latent capacities. In the other type we
have to do with a mere insufficiency of synthetic energy of the
one centre, from which results a temporary narrowing of the
field of attentive consciousness, and the automatic or semi-
mechanical functioning of parts of the psycho-physical organiza-
tion. Into this class would fall all or most of the cases of
functional anaesthesia and most of the instances of post-hypnotic
obedience to suggestion in spite of lack of all conscious memory
of the nature of the suggestion given.

The capacities and functions enumerated above seem to me
the minimum that can be attributed to the soul. If we asign it
these, while denying it any share in memory (regarding all
mental retention as conditioned by the nervous system), we have
a peculiar view of the soul, which might be concisely expressed
by saying that the soul conditions the forms of mental activity,
while the bodily processes (through the senses and the mechanically
associated memory-traces of the brain) supply the content of con-
sciousness. According to this view ^ the soul is to be regarded as

^ The feature of the Beauchamp case which most strongly supports this
view is, perhaps, the occurrence of sustained and seemingly very real conflicts
of will between Sally and the alternating phases of Miss B.^s personality ; these,
if we accept the description given (and it is perhaps permissible to say here that
the good faith and scientific competence of the reporter of the case are indisput-
able), were no mere conflicts of opposed impulses, such as anyone of us may
experience, but conflicts of the volitions of two organized and very different
personalities. Another fact brought out clearly in the description of this case,
one very difiSicult to reconcile with the view that Sally was merely a fragment
of the normal personality, is that Sally’s memory was more comprehensive than
that of the normal personahty, since it included all or most of the latter’s ex-
periences as well as her own. Now, in what manner or under what form Sally
became aware of the thoughts and emotions of Miss B. remains one of the
obscurest and most interesting of the problems presented by this and similar
cases. For Sally seemed to become directly aware of these thoughts and emo-
tions and yet to know them as Miss B.’s, and to regard them in a very objective
manner. I may say that, thanks to the kindness of Dr Morton Prince, I have
had the opportunity of closely questionmg upon this point a secondary personal-
ity very similar to Sally, and, though she seemed highly intelligent and willing
to reply to the best of her ability, it was impossible to obtain any light on
this problem. I have discussed the case of Sally at more length in the Proc.
S. P. R., vol. xix.

* This is the view sympathetically presented, if not actually accepted, in
James’ "Principles of Psychology” and defended by myself in my "Primer of
Physiological Psychology.” James, after expounding the laws of association and
reproduction, wrote, " The schematism we have used is, moreover, taken immedi-
ately from the analysis of objects with their elementary parts, and only extended

BODY AND MIND

370

undergoing no development in the course of the individual’s life.
Rather, the soul is a system of capacities which are fully present
as latent potentialities from the beginning of the individual’s life ;
and these potentialities are realized or brought into play only
in proportion as the brain-mechanisms became developed and
specialized. The mental differences exhibited by any person at
different stages of his life would thus be wholly due to the
developmental and degenerative changes of his brain-structure.
And it would follow also that the mental differences between one
person and another may be, and presumably arc, wholly conditioned
by differences of brain-structure. It would follow also that just
as we should have to conceive the soul of any human being as an
unchanging system of potentialities at all stages of the individual
life, mental development being purely development of the bodily
mechanisms by which the psychical potentialities are brought
more fully into play, so we might conceive the mental
differences between man and animals of all levels as wholly due
to differences of kind and degree of bodily organization ; the
souls of all animals, from the lowliest upward to man, would have
the same potentialities, and these potentialities would be actual-
ized in proportion to the degree of evolution of the bodily
organization. Mental evolution would thus be regarded as con-
sisting wholly in progressive evolution of bodily organization ; a
view which is implied also in the “ transmission theory ” of J ames
and Bergson.^

by analogy to the brain And yet it is only as incorporated in the brain that
such a schematism can represent anything causal. This is, to my mind, the con-
clusive reason for saying that the order of presentahon of the mtnd^s materials is
due to cerebral physiology alone. . . . The effects of interested attention and
volition remain. These activities seem to hold fast to certain elements, and by
emphasizing them and dwelhng on them, to make their associates the only ones
which are evolved. This is the point at which an anti-mechanical psychology
must, if anywhere, make its stand in deahng with association. Everything else
is pretty certainly due to cerebral laws (** Principles,” 1. p. 594).

And again he wrote: "The soul presents nothing herself; creates nothing;
is at the mercy of the material forces for all possibilities ; but amongst these
possibilities she selects, and by reinforcing one and checking others, she figures
not as an ' epiphenomenon,’ but as something from which the play gets moral
support” (op. cit., 11 p. 584) i That this view is not consistent with James’s
transmission theory and later utterances seems to me clear.

^ Lotze expressed himself as follows on this view of the essential similarity
of all souls : " What causes determine the various levels of development reached
by the various races of a n imated beings ? Now here it was a possible opimon
that all souls are homogeneous in nature, and that the combined infiuence of
all external conditions, as well those whose seat is the organization of the body

CONCLUSION

371

This view of the soul would satisfy all the empirical evidence,
except that which points to “ memory as being, in part at least,
immaterially conditioned. But, though this view is compatible with
the belief that the soul survives the death of the body, and even
with a belief in its immortality, it signally fails to satisfy those
demands of our moral and aesthetic nature which have in all ages
inclined the mass of men to believe in the life-after-death. In
accordance with these demands the popular view has always held
that all “memory,*' all mental retention and reproduction, all
mental and moral growth, is rooted in the soul, that, in short,
the soul is the bearer of all that is essential to the developed
personality of each man. For the demand for a future life
has two principal sources (beyond the promptings of personal affec-
tion and the mere personal dislike of the prospect of extinction),
namely, the desire that the injustices of this life may be in some
way made good, and the hope that those highest products of
evolution, the personalities built up by long sustained moral and
intellectual effort, shall not wholly pass away at the death of
the body. And the survival of a soul which bears nothing
of that which distinguishes one personality from another,
one which bears no marks of the experiences it has undergone in
its embodied life, and enjoys no continuity of personal memory,
would satisfy neither this desire nor this hope. But the popular
view, though it has been maintained in modern times by Lotze, a
philosopher of the first rank, cannot be reconciled with the fact
that the make-up of human personality includes many habits that
are unquestionably rooted in the structure of the nervous system.
It conflicts also with all the large mass of evidence which indicates
the dependence of all the sensory content of consciousness, all
sensation and all imagery on the integrity of the brain.

If we accept the hypothesis of the dual conditions of memory
set forth and defended in Chapter XXIV., we are led by it to a
conception of the soul intermediate between these two extreme
views, that on the one hand which denies to the soul all develop-

as those which supply the seat and issues of life, is the cause of the definite
psychical development of each species, in one case of the inferiority of the
animal kingdom, in the other of the superiority of human civilization. We did
not feel ourselves Justified in decidedly rejecting this opinion ; on the contrary,
one cannot help following its attempts at explanation with interest, for un-
doubtedly they are to a great extent justified*’ (“ Microcosmus,” Eng. trans., i

p. 643)-

372

BODY AND MIND

ment and therefore all that constitutes personality, and on the other
hand that popular view which ascribes all development of mental
power and character to the persistence of psychical modifications.
For though, according to that hypothesis, all habits belong to the
body, the soul does undergo a real development, an enrichment of
its capacities ; and, though it is not possible to say just how much of
what we call personality is rooted in bodily habit and how much in
psychical dispositions,^ yet it is open to us to believe that the soul,
if it survives the dissolution of the body, carries with it some large
part of that which has been gained by intellectual and moral
effort ; and though the acceptance of the view we have suggested
as to the essential part played by the body in conditioning the
sensory content of consciousness, would make it impossible to
suppose that the surviving soul could enjoy the exercise of thought
of the kind with which alone we are familiar, yet it is not incon-
ceivable that it might find conditions that would stimulate it to
imageless thought (possibly conditions of direct or telepathic
communication with other minds) or might find under other
conditions (possibly in association with some other bodily
organism) a sphere for the application and actualization of the
capacities developed in it during its life in the body.^

Before bringing this long inquiry to an end, it is necessary to
touch on the very obscure and difficult problem of the part played
by the soul in the development of the body and the control of the
organic functions. We have seen that many of the thinkers of
earlier ages regarded chiefly these biological functions in con-
sidering the nature and activities of the soul ; and we have seen
that there has appeared and on the whole has increasingly
predominated a tendency to separate these from the distinctively
mental functions, and to ascribe the vital and the mental functions
to distinct principles, to the soul and to the spirit respectively,
or to the vital force and to the soul or mind. Among those
modern writers who have continued to accept the notion of the
soul, this tendency has culminated in the view, first definitely

^ It must be admitted that the distinction appears especially difficult on the
side of the volitional and emotional developments of personality.

* I venture to throw out to those who are mterested in the problems of
" psychical research the suggestion that in this line of thought may be found
the explanation of the fragmentariness, the seeming triviality, and the incon-
sistencies of so many of those " automatic movements ” which claim to be
expressions of surviving personalities, defects which are generally felt to be a
serious difficulty in the way of accepting these expressions as what they claim
to be.

CONCLUSION

373

propounded by Descartes and in more recent times best repre-
sented by Lotze, which regards all bodily processes, except those
of the central nervous system, as wholly withdrawn from direct
psychical influences, and as governed by purely mechanical
principles.

But we cannot accept this position, for we have found reason
to believe (Chapter XVL) that the bodily processes, especially
those of growth and repair, are not susceptible of purely
mechanical explanation. If, then, we deny to the soul or thinking
principle all part in these bodily processes, we shall have to
postulate some second and distinct teleological factor operative in
organisms. The principle of economy of hypothesis, therefore,
directs us to attempt to conceive that the soul may be operative
in the guidance of bodily growth, either directly or by means of
a general control exercised by it over some system of subordinate
psychic agents.

Lotze rejected the view we are considering for two reasons,
first, because in the adult human being all the direct interactions
of soul and body seem to be confined to certain parts of the
brain ; secondly, because we are not normally conscious of
exercising any control over the body, otherwise than in the
production of voluntary movements through the contractions of
the skeletal muscles. These objections may be partially answered
or diminished by the following considerations. The lowliest
animal organisms exhibit no specialization of organs and tissues ;
and whatever psychic powers they enjoy must be exercised equally
in or through and upon all parts of the body ; and it is not until
in ascending the evolutionary scale we come upon animals of
very considerable complexity, that we find a centralized nervous
system which we must suppose to be the organ specially con-
cerned in psycho-physical interactions. And even in the verte-
brate phylum we find good reason for believing that in the lower
members the psychical functions are distributed throughout all
parts of the central nervous system, at least, and that only
gradually, with the increasing specialization of the brain, do they
become more and more restricted to its higher levels.

It is, then, reasonable to believe that in this respect, as in so
many others, the human and higher animal organisms recapitulate
in their individual development the history of the evolution of the
race. If we take this view, we may believe that in the early
stages of bodily development, during which the main lines of the

BODY AND MIND

374

bodily structure are laid down, the direct influence of the soul
makes itself felt throughout all parts of the body as a controlling
power, and that only gradually, as the specialization of the tissues
progresses, it becomes circumscribed and confined to higher levels
of the central nervous system. These psychic operations of
embryonic life may well be in some sense conscious ; but we can
hardly expect to have any power of recollecting them, seeing
that we consciously remember little or nothing of the experiences
of early childhood, although in those early years we make a
greater volume of acquisitions than in any later period. And
we must not forget that, even when the early years are past, and
all the bodily organs have been developed to their full size, our
mental life still exercises a very considerable influence upon the
bodily form, moulding our features and, to a less extent, our
general structure and bearing to the more adequate expression of
our characters.

It is in harmony with this view that the lower vertebrates,
when deprived of the brain, exhibit more spontaneity and adapta-
bility of movement than the higher members of the group ; that
the lower animals exhibit a much greater power of repair and
regeneration after injury or ablation of parts of their bodies, a
power which is reduced to its minimum in man ; and that in
every species this power of repair and of rectification of disturb-
ances of the normal growth of the body seems to be greater, the
earlier the stage of development at which such disturbances are
inflicted.

To the other objection to the notion of control of growth
by psychical influences, namely, that we are not conscious of
exerting any such control, no great importance can be attached in
view of the modern demonstrations of the large range and scope of
subconscious processes, processes which imply intelligence and yet
find no expression in consciousness that can be introspectively
seized. Lotze himself recognized in several connexions the
necessity of postulating psychical activities that remain uncon-
scious or subconscious, though forming essential links in the
chain of psychical process. And, since he wrote, evidence of the
great extent of such processes has accumulated rapidly. The
clearest of such evidence is perhaps that afforded by automatic
speech and writing; but every successful experiment in post-
hypnotic suggestion affords similar evidence. Successful thera-
peutic suggestions and others that effect definite tissue changes

CONCLUSION

375

are especially significant in the present connexion ; for in all
such cases we have definite evidence of control of bodily pro-
cesses which, though unconsciously effected, must be regarded as
psychical. Of the limits of this power of mental control over
the organic processes of the body we are altogether ignorant, and
new evidence, much of it ill-reported and therefore valueless, but
much of it above suspicion, repeatedly warns us against setting
up any arbitrary limit to what may be effected in this way.

The view that the soul, even in the human adult, may exercise
extensive vegetative functions finds some support in the following
considerations. All routine bodil}^ functions may be regarded as
habits or as closely allied in nature to habits. And, if there is
any truth in what was said above as to the psychical control of
the growth of the embryo, we may regard each routine function
of the body as originally acquired and fixed, like the motor habit
of the skeletal system, under conscious psychical guidance. Now,
though our motor habits or secondarily automatic movements
undoubtedly imply the existence of well-organized systems of
neurons, there is some ground for saying that they never become
purely mechanical processes, but that rather they always retain
something of the character of psycho-physical processes. For, first,
they are initiated, controlled, and sustained by volition ; even so
thoroughly ingrained a habit as the movements of the legs in
walking continues (as was pointed out in Chapter XXIII.) not
merely as the repetition of a self-sustaining mechanical sequence,
but in virtue of the intention or volition to walk, which continues
to be effective, even when the attention is wholly withdrawn from
the process. Secondly, the least disturbance or obstruction of a
habitual movement causes the process to spring back into full
consciousness, thereby showing that the soul has, as it were, its
hand upon the process, ready at any moment to intervene and con-
sciously effect the adjustment of the process required by the
unusual situation; at the least we feel, however obscurely, an
impulse, an unrest, until the obstruction is overcome or the
adjustment achieved.

The same is obviously true of those old racial habits by which
our organic life is so largely regulated, e.g. our respiratory move-
ments. Of these movements, so long as they go on gently and
smoothly, we remain unconscious; they seem to be purely
mechanical. But let there arise any obstruction or mal-adjustment
of the processes, and we become acutely aware of them ; they

BODY AjSfD MIND

376

become conscious and distinctly volitional processes ; and if the
obstruction is serious, as in an attack of asthma, our whole
psychical activity becomes concentrated in the effort to main-
tain and reinforce the process, to the almost complete exclusion
from consciousness of all other things. In this respect then
these processes closely resemble our secondarily automatic move-
ments, and there is nothing fanciful or improbable in the view that,
like these, they are habits which have been built up under psychical
guidance, but at an early period of life of which no recollection
is possible. These organic hereditary habits form, then, a link
which connects the habits, of whose formation under psychical
guidance we retain a distinct memory, with other routine processes
of the body, the acquirement of which we cannot recollect;
and analogy justifies us in maintaining the possibility that these
also have not been established without psychical control.^
Biologically regarded, the function of mind is the effecting of
new adjustments of the bodily processes ; consciousness plays its
part only in the process of adjustment, and the more completely
is the adjustment effected, the more completely is the process
withdrawn from consciousness ; hence the routine processes of our
bodies normally find but very obscure expression in conscious-
ness, contributing only to that vague background which is usually
called the coencesthesia.

An alternative to this view would consist in adopting the
conception that each complex organism comprises (or consists
of) a system of psychic beings of like nature with the soul, but
subordinated to it ; it might then be held that each such being is
a centre of a partially independent psychical control of some part
of the organic processes.

Lastly, I M^ould maintain that if the soul is to be taken
seriously as a scientific hypothesis, we shall have to face the
question of its part in heredity and of its place in the scheme of
organic evolution. I do not propose to attempt any speculation
on these extremely difficult and obscure problems, but merely
to point to them as rising above the scientific horizon. We

^ It should be remembered also in this connexion that in many of the lower
animals instinctive behaviour is so intimately interwoven with processes of
structural development and modification, that it is impossible to draw any sharp
line between them. As a single illustration of the facts I have in mind, I remind
the reader of the process of “autotomy” observed among various species of
arthropods , this consists in shedding a limb or appendage by means of violent
muscular action.

BODY AND MIND

378

continuity of psychical constitution of succeeding generations of
a species, a stock, or a family is maintained, it seems not
improbable that the experience of each generation modifies in
some degree the psychic constitution of its successors. The
Neo-Darwinians have denied that any such modification takes
place, chiefly because it seems impossible that such experiences
should impress themselves upon the structure of the germ-plasm.
But if the structure of the germ-plasm is not the only link
between the generations, this positive objection to the Lamarckian
principle disappears ; and we are free to accept the mass of
evidence which points to some partial transmission of the effects
of experience. Such modification of the hereditary basis would
be least in respect of those characters which have long been
established in the race and are least susceptible to modification
in the individual by psycho-physical activities ; among these
would be all the specific bodily characters and all the fundamental
forms of psychical activity. It would be greatest in respect to
those more recently acquired mental characters which are the
peculiar property of man ; and it is just these characters, such as
mathematical, musical, and other artistic talents, and the capacity
for sustained intellectual and moral effort, that seem to exhibit the
clearest indications of the effects of experience and of psychical
effort, cumulative from generation to generation.

I will illustrate the conception of the evolutionary process
that I have in mind by reference to a single psychical capacity,
namely, our capacity of spatial apprehension. Whether or no
space and spatial relations be objectively real, it seems to me
quite indisputable that Kant and Lotze (among many others)
were in the right in regarding the capacity of spatial apprehension
as an innate power of the mind, which awaits only the touch of
experience to bring it into operation. Space in the terminology
used in these pages, is a meaning rooted in an enduring psy-
chical disposition,^ a disposition which, like others that we are

of his earlier works, but not to the Hylozoism to which he inclined in his later
years.

^ It has been argued in Chapter XXI. that no system of neural elements, how-
ever complex, can be the sufficient ground of the capacity of spatial conception.
But, even if we put aside those objections and adopted Herbert Spencer’s view
of the conditions of spatial conception as some immensely complex inherited
system of associated nerve-cells, the impossibility of this view would force itself
upon us again when we sought to conceive how this enormously complex system
could be hereditarily transmitted by means of the structure of the germ-plasm.

CONCLUSION

379

constantly building up and extending as experience enriches the
meanings that we have made our own, has been elaborated and
fixed by the experience of countless generations, but which
nevertheless may be capable of still further development.

According to this view then, not only conscious thinking, but
also morphogenesis, heredity, and evolution, are psycho-physical
processes. All alike are conditioned and governed by psychical
dispositions that have been built up in the course of the experi-
ence of the race. So long as the psycho-physical processes in
which they play their part proceed smoothly in the routine fashion
proper to the species, they go on unconsciously or subconsciously.
But whenever the circumstances of the organism demand new
and more specialized adjustment of response, their smooth
automatic working is disturbed, the corresponding meanings are
brought to consciousness and by conscious perception and
thinking and striving the required adjustment is effected.

INDEX

Abiogenesis, 233
“ Actuelle Seele,” 135, 357
Esthetic feeling, 315, 331
Albertus Magnus, 33
Alcmseon, 37

Alexander of Aphrodisias, 33

Alogical arguments for Monism, 144

Amoeba, 258

Anaxagoras, 15

Anaximenes, 12

Animal behaviour, 3 19

Animalism, 4

Animism, leading representatives, 204

compatible with Monism, 19a

, four types of, 357

Apollo, cult of, 1 1
Aquinas, 33, 35
Aristotle, 20

Arrhenius on origin of life, 231
Association- psychology, no, 282, 301
Augustine, 32

Automatism, secondary, 276
Automaton theories, 126
Avenarius, 180
Averroes, 33

Bain, Alex., 84

Balaban on memory, 337

Baldwin, J. M. , on organic selection, 249

Bateson, W., 250

Beauchamp, Sally, 367, 369

Bechterew, 130, 355

Bell, Sir C., 105

Beneke, 82

Bergson, H., 84

on Neo-Darwinism, 248

on intellect, 221

on memory, 333

, his psycho-physic, 358

Berkeley, Bishop, 64, 69, 71, 181

Binet, A., on memory, 336

Binocular vision, 289

Biology and p|iysics, 216

Biran, Maine de, 83

Blindness, functional, 291, 351

Bluraenbach, 81

Boerhave, 97

Bohn, G. B.f 259

Borelli, 97

Boyle, 89

Bradley, F. H., 85
Bramwell, Milne, 353
Bruno, Giordano, 38
Buchner, L., 98

Busse, L., 83, 268

Butler, Samuel, on heredity, 247

Caban IS, 83

Capitulation of philosophy to physics, 190
Carpenter, W. B., 287
Causation and teleology, 176
Charles, R. H., on Hebrew beliefs, 7, 30
Christian theology and pneumay 28
Clifford, W. K., 91, 136
Co-consciousness, 366

, two types of, 368

Cold and heat, 217
Comte, 84

Conation and guidance, 279

and persistence, 326

Condillac, 74
Composite mind, 116
Compounding of consciousness, 169
Conservation of energy, 92

not an axiom, 216

Continuity of evolution, 142, 320

of neural process, 217

Corresponding points, 289
Crawley, E. A., 4
Creative reason of Aristotle, 23
“ Creative synthesis,’* 307
Crookes, Sir W., on life, 253
Cross-correspondences, 349
Curiosity, instinct of, 266

Demons, io
Darwin, Charles, 119
— , Francis, 246
Deism, 89
De la Mettrie, 94
Delbceuf, 353
Delphic oracle, 10
Democritus, 15
Descartes, 49
Diogenes, 12
Dionysiac cult, 1 1
Discontinuous variation, 250
Dissipation of energy in organisms, 245
Dissociation, mental, 118
“Divine Assistance,” doctrine of, 34
Double aspect, limited truth of, 219
Douglas, A. H., 39
Driesch, H., 81, 268

on restitution,

on non-mechanical agency, 214

Dualism of philosophy and science, 189

Ebbinghaus, H., on unity of conscious-
ness, 28 1

381

BODY AND MIND

382

Ebbinghaus, H. , on memory, 332
Eidola, 16

Eleusinian mysteries, 1 1
Elysian fields, 9

Embryology and mechanism, 241
Empedocles, 15
Energetics, 130
Epicurus, 26
Epigenesis, 77
Epiphenomenalism, 126

examined, 149

Evolution, psycho-physics of, 377
ofspacial perception, 378

Fechner, G, T., 80, 137

on day- view, 142

on psycho-physical continuity, 294

on future life, 195

Feeling- tone, 313

and Darwinism, 324

Flournoy, Th., 118
Foster, Sir M., 45
Freud, S., 327

Fusion of sensations, 292, 299
Future life and Parallelism, 197

and morality, 203

and soul-theory, 372

Galen, 37

Galileo, 47

Gall, 10 1

Gassendi, 47

Geulincx, 53

Ghost-soul, 3

God, a mechanical, 191

Gregory of Nyassa, 32

Guidance without work, 212

Habit, law of, no

and memory, 333

Hades, 8

Haldane, J. S., on mechanism, 190, 236

Haller, 9, 97, 100

Hamilton, Sir W., 84

Hanna, Mr, case of, 345

Hartley, 84, no

Harvey, W., 49, 96

Hartmann, Ed. von, 117, 288

Head, H., 265

Hebrew Animism, 7

Hegel, 79

Helmholtz, von, 92

Helmont, van, 44, 96

Heraclitus, 13

Herbart, J. F., 81

Hering, E., on heredity, 247

Heredity, psycho-physics of, 377

Hesiod’s golden age, 10

Hobbes, 59

Hodgson, Shadworth, 85, 127
Hoernl6, R. F. A., 304
Hoffding, H., on Middle Ages, 28

on Spinoza, 59

Holbach, 74, 95

Homeric Animism, 8
Hume, 67, 71

Huxley, T. H., no, 127, 15 1
Hylozoism in Greece, 1 5
Hypnotism, 351
Hypothesis, function of, 218

Idealism and materialism, 151

and psycho-physics, 179

Identity hypothesis, 132, 133
Immaterial substance, 32
Immortality, Greek, n

, collective, 40

Individuality, 163

Infra-consciousness, 1 72

Instinct in man, 264

Instinctive action, 262

Interaction, inconceivability of, 206, 209

Introjection, 180

Ionian philosophers, 12

James, W., 85

on feeling, 322

on psychic fringe, 302

on transmission-theory, 358

on soul-theory, 370

Janet, Pierre, on dual personality, 367

Jennings, H., 259

Jerome, St, 29

Jones, E. C., 184

Joule, 92

Kant, 74

, definition of soul, 75

and parallelism, 76

on immortality, 348, 198

, dualism of, 183

on moral consciousness, 200

on interaction, 207

, problem not solved by, 182

— ~ on inner sense, 159
Kayans, 2, 343
Keatinge, W. M., 343
Kelvin, 90, 231, 253
Kepler, 47

Knowledge and immediate awareness, 222
Kries, J. von, on memory, 332
Kulpe, 0 ., 83

Ladd, G. T., 85
Lamarck, 119
Lamarckism, 246
Lang, A , 4

Lange, F. A., 26, 37, 151

on idealism, 184

Laplace, 90
Larmor, Sir J., 253
Leibnitz, 53

Lens of Triton regenerates, 240
Lewes, G. H., on lonians, 12, 15

on psychical unity, 288

Lloyd Morgan, 120, 142, 249
Localisation of cerebral functions, 102
Locke, 61

INDEX

Locus of psychical action, 226
Lodge, Sir 0 . , on life, 253
Loeb, J., on tropism, 259
Logic and mechanism, 175
Lotze, R. H., 82, loi

on interaction, 207

on seat of soul, 300

of interaction, 225

on atomism, 284

on unity of consciousness, 285

on animal division, 368

Lucretius, 36
and adaptation, 37

Mach, E., on mechanism, 88, 211

on incompleteness, 193

Machines and organisms, 244

Malebranche, 53

Mallock, W. H., 189

Marett, R. R., 4

Marshall, H. R., on feeling, 322

Materialism, Greek, 16, 59, 98, 129

, advantages of, 144

Maxwell, Clerk, 21 1, 253
Mayer, R., 92
M^Gilvary, E. B., 357
M ‘Intyre, J. L., 42
Meaning, I 7 S> 269, 303, 305

and sensation, 310

Medium of composition, 287
Memory and brain traces, 115, 330
Mendelism, 250
Mental chemistry, 282
Mercier, C., 91
Merz, T., 80, 90

on vitalism, 252

Meyer, M., on feeling, 323
Metaphysics and Animism, 124
Mill, J. S., 84, 282
Mind-stuff, 136
Mitchell, T. W , 353
Mohaniedan philosophy, 33
Moleschott, 98

Monism, verbal solution by, 193

Monopsychism, 39

Montaigne, 41

Montesquieu, 74

Morgan, T. H., 240

Morphogenesis and mechanism, 240

Mozart, 3 15

Muller, G. E., 333

Miiller, Joh., 98

Multiple personality, 300, 345

Miinsterberg, H., 15$, 201

Mutation, 250

Myers, F. W. H., 85

Mysticism, 361

Natorp on Plato, 19
Neo-Darwinism, 119, 234, 246
Neo-Platonism, 29
Neo-Vitalism, 252
Neural association, 339

Newton, 89
Nunn, P., 215

Objects of higher orders, 316
Occasionalism, 53
Organic selection, 249, 254
Orphic cult, 1 1
Ostwald, W., 130

Pain, 312

Pantheism, Stoic, 26
Paracelsus, 38
Paradox of Fechner, 291
Parallelism, psycho- physical, 131

implies Pantheism, 194

, leading exponents of, 204

examined, 155

, phenomenalistic, 132

Patamoecium, 258
Paul, St, on soul, 30
Paulsen, F., 134, 145

on Kant, 75

on future life, 200

on possibilities, 223

Pearson, K., 88
Peckham, Dr and Mrs, 262
Persistent effort, 270
Personality, dual, 366
Philo, 30

Physical, definition of, 217

science still developing, 216

Physicists on life, 253
Physiology founded, 44

and mechanism, 236

Plasticity of nerve, 275
Plato, 17

Pleasure and association, 320

Plotinus, 31

Pneuma, 26, 28, 30

Podmore, F., 350

Pollock, SirF., on Spinoza, 1 59

Pomponazzi, 39

Pontifical cell, 288

Post-Homeric Animism, 10

Post-Kantians, three groups of, 183

Poynting on guidance, 212, 253

Pre-established harmony, 55

Pre-existence, 36

Priestly, 89

Primitive Animism, i

Prince, Morton, 367

Protagoras, 16

Protozoa, behaviour of, 258

Psyche and pneuma, 28

Psychic fringe, 302

Psychical fusion, 297

monism, 133

examined, 160

poverty, 368

Psycho-neural correlation, 116
Psycho^physical interaction, 228

continuity, 294

Pythagoras, 14

Rationalism, dogmatic, 74

BODY AND MIND

384

Keflex process, 105, 224
Reid, 84

, Archdale, 357

Restitution of organs, 241

and Darwinism, 251

Rhode, Erwin, on lonians, I2
— on Greek Animism, 9
Ribot, T., 302
Roberts, E. J., on Plato, 18
Romanes, J. G., 93

Scepticism, 27, 88
Schiller, F, C. C., 85, 359
Schoolmen, early, 33
Scratch-reflex, 266
Seat of soul, search for, 99, 299
Semon, R., on Lamarckism, 247
Sensation and meaning, 345
Sensorium Commune^ 25, 100, 286
Sensory qualities, evolution of, 279
“ Separable forms,” 35
Sheol, 7

Sherrington, C. S., 266
Sidgwick on Kant, 200, 203
Skill, acquirement of, 320
Solipsism, 134, 180, 185
Soul, vegetative functions of, 373
Spatial meaning, 307, 386
Specific energies, 289

receptors, 265

Speculative philosophy, 79
Spencer, H,, 85, 121, 288
Spheral intelligences, 40
Spinoza, 57, 112
Spirittts^ 37

animalis, 38

vitalis, 38

Stahl, G. E., 77, 95
Statistics and mechanism, 232
Stewart, J. A., on Plato, 19

■ , Balfour, 253

Stigmata, 351
Stoics, 26
Stokes, Sir G., 253
Stout, G. F., 123

on feeling, 321

Stream of consciousness coherent, 164
Strong, C. A., 123, 135, 164, 222
Structure of the mind, 330, 166
Stumpf, C., 83, 160

on interaction, 208

Subconsciousness, 173, 368
Substance, 364

• attack on, 61

defended, 162

Survival of death, 195

implies Animism, 202

and empirical evidence, 348

Sylvius, 96

Synthesis, mental, in instinct, 264

Tait, P. G , 253

Taylor, A. E., 85, 180

Telegram-argument, 267

Teleology, statical and dynamical, 244

Telepathy, 349

Telesio, Bernardino, 43

Tcrtullian, 29

Thales, 12

Theism implies Animism, 194
Theophilus of Alexandria, 37
Thomson, Sir J. J., 210, 216, 253
Thorndike, E., 319
Thought and brain-functions, 113

not necessarily spatial, 210

' Threshold of consciousness, 141, 295
Time, post-hypnotic appreciation of, 3i;3
Total reactions, 260
Transmission-theory, 35$

Transubjectivity of physical world, 185

Treviranus, 8i

Trial and error, 260

Trichotomy, 7, 28, 30

Tropisms, 259

Truth, two forms of, 38

Tylor, E. B., 2, 4, 16

Tyndall, 121

Ueberweg, 27, 32
Unconscious cerebration, 109, 229

consciousness, 172

psychical process, 14 1

Unity of consciousness, 168

Vaihinger, 196
i Values, 329
Vesalius, 44, 99
Vitalism, 78, 81
Vives, Ludovicus, 41
Vogt, IC, 98
Voltaire, 74
Vries, H. de, 249

Ward, James, 85

on subjective selection, 247, 255

on idealism, 184

Wasps, 263
Weber’s law, 139
Weismann, 119
Willis, too

Wilson, E. B., on cell mechanism, 236
Wolff, Chr , 73
Wolff, C. F., 77
Wordsworth’s poems, 316
Wundt, W., 154, 331

on primitive Animism, 5

on causation, 177

on creative synthesis, 305

Ziehen, T., 108, ni
on memory, 331