Chapter X: Part 10

What is the moral duty of a young minister who finds himself occupying the pulpit of a denomination in whose generally accepted doctrines he has ceased to believe? The New York _Evening Post_ recently declared this to be a plain moral question. If—thus it argues—a man has voluntarily entered the ministry of a church, and afterwards forms opinions which, if known, would have prevented his admission, he is morally bound to resign. But the question is much more complex than that. In a majority of cases the minister has not entered “voluntarily,”—within the genuine moral scope of that term. His orthodox parents, abetted by their preacher, have kept light from him, repressed his reason, imprisoned him in Sunday schools and prayer-meetings; he has been accorded no free choice; he has been led as a captive, before his intellect was capable of judgment, artificially terrified about his soul, and the world’s danger of damnation, and at length found himself in the pulpit. When the victim finds himself disabused of these fictions, what is his duty? In my belief it would be immoral for him to resign without having first secured a public decision of his church on the issue. His paramount obligations are to the community in which he lives. He is morally bound to preach the truth as he sees it, openly, honestly, plainly. He cannot utter the discredited creeds, prayers, or dogmas. But he has a right,—nay he is bound,—to throw upon the church which has entrapped him the responsibility of repudiating his principles and doctrines. He should say to his church: “You are responsible for the unhappy situation in which I find myself. By your zealous propaganda you frightened or persuaded my parents, my friends, myself, into acceptance of dogmas I now find false. The logical result of taking you seriously was to turn from all worldly occupations, and devote my life to the work of saving mankind from a terrible doom. Now, awakened from the nightmare superinduced by you, I find myself past the opportunities of youth, the time for preparations in other professions irrecoverably lost, and a family dependent on me. The situation concerns not only you and me, but others we have involved. For years I have been laboring with you to try and persuade other youths into the same situation as my own. Something is due to them. I have deceived them and must undeceive them. You say I must be true, but you must be true also. I have innocently reached a position which enables me to compel you to publish to the world exactly where you stand. I will clearly define my convictions: if you cannot tolerate them in your pulpit the youth will know the precise limits to their freedom they agree to in entering your ministry. If you can tolerate them they will know your liberalism. Therefore I remain here proclaiming my truth, and will not help you to cover the truth up by a resignation relieving you of the duty of proclaiming your position with equal clearness. You have got me here, and if I go now you must turn me out. So shall the cause of truth be advanced.”

While this may be affirmed, I think, as a general ethical principle, it is equally true that each case must be judged by itself. The above principle depends on the condition that the ministry has been honestly entered from religious motives, there being no mental reservations at that time. It will be observed that in the case of Mr. Call the consideration entered that he had passed through a phase of Shelleyan scepticism in early youth. This had to be weighed, and perhaps may have had much to do with his determination to retire voluntarily from the ministry. He never concealed his views, however, and it is well known that great efforts are made by older preachers to beat down the scepticism that often arises in the minds of young candidates for the ministry. In such case these unwise advisers assume a large share of responsibility for the event, whether enough to justify the subsequent heretic in compelling a conflict must depend on the minister’s conscience. Although, therefore, Mr. Call decided rightly, in accordance with his moral consciousness, it were by no means fair to maintain, with the author of “Robert Elsmere,” that ministers who find themselves more liberal than the majority of preachers in their church should surrender to such mere superiority of physical force without testing its legality and laying on it responsibility for its exercise of power. Robert Elsmere should, on moral principles, have remained in the church. By so remaining Colenso, Dean Stanley, Charles Kingsley, Max Müller, Professor Jowett, Matthew Arnold, and others, have revealed the fact that, in their church, thought is not delivered up by law to the despotism of a majority.

The case, however, is somewhat different again where the new opinions adopted by a minister amount to an abandonment of the fundamental doctrines of his church. That may not exonerate him from demanding a formal and public declaration of the church, but this being secured, it must affect his relation to the general world. Should it be proved that he may be legally tolerated, he must then consider whether it is his legitimate means of influence, or whether he would be substituting for his own expression the mask of an extinct faith. The ethical principle above affirmed relates to the first practical step of the minister whose beliefs have changed. The progressive and inquiring mind that continues in a church where it is barely tolerated does so at great peril. Where the swift foot agrees to march with the halt the pace must be that of the halt. Sceptical minds occupying pulpits even of liberal denominations are likely to discover, should such engagements end, that they have been unconsciously arresting their own development in finding a conciliatory _modus vivendi_ with the reactionary brethren. There is, indeed, a class of fine intellects, like the great English Broad Churchmen already named, whose comparatively advanced views are the result of larger learning; they have discovered that two and two are four, and gathered courage to deny that the amount is five. These constitute the right leaven by which great organisations are raised to higher standards of knowledge and veracity. But there are original and philosophic inquirers whose particular power were only buried in such organisations, without elevating them. These are due to the corps of pioneers in the direction whither the organisations are advancing. Their task is original research. These cannot wisely wear the uniform of any religious or political party.

Mr. Call was such an original mind, and after he had left the English church his course was to the maturity represented in this ripe book on “Final Causes.” But had he not passed eleven of his best years in the church, out of his true habitat, we should have more fruit of this fine flavor. It is therefore a voice from his experience that here reaches us, as from his grave:

“Scepticism has been vigorously advancing in the nation—I
might say, in Europe. And not only has it extended its sphere,
but it includes within that sphere some of the loftiest and
profoundest intellects of the age—men renowned for vast and
exact erudition, for scientific research or critical acumen.
Philosophers, poets, historians, novelists, openly or silently
disavow Christianity. In palaces, in lordly mansions, in
college halls, in secluded homesteads, and here and there in
rectory or vicarage, scepticism, if it has not a bold and
fearless utterance, at least expresses itself in a guarded
whisper. It becomes doubly a duty, then, when notwithstanding
the general diffusion of avowed or latent unbelief, we trace
everywhere the presence of a conservatism that conceals and
hesitates and trembles at the doubts which it cannot suppress,
that individual dissentients should candidly disclose their
theological divergences. Christianity, indeed, which has had
its triumphs in the past, will long conserve a portion of
its power, and continue to furnish guidance not only for the
unreasoning multitude, but for thousands of excellent men and
women who cannot abandon the old religious ideal. But there is
no final arrest for the intellectual progress of mankind.”

We now turn to Mr. Call’s work on “Final Causes.” In an introductory chapter of eight pages he compresses the history of the doctrine of Design in nature from Anaxagoras, B. C. 500, to our own time, stating its modifications, criticisms, denials. In the second chapter a brief account is given of “Natural Theology,” whose modern form is found to rest fundamentally on Newton’s generalisation, that a body at rest continues at rest unless acted upon by some external force; and on the geometrical order of planetary revolutions. Starting anew from this point the human mind has discovered in the varied realms of nature apparent evidences of a supersensuous Intelligence. Kant, however, is brought to criticise Newton. “Kant notes with delight that the ‘harmonical relations which excite the feelings in a more sublime manner than even the contingent beauties of nature originate in the properties of space’; and this inevitable congruity he refers ultimately, indeed, to Divine Wisdom, but directly to a common dependence on a single sovereign ground, to a unity of possibilities which it is no more difficult to conceive as self-existent than it is to conceive an Intelligent Cause as self-existent.” Matter is not, then, naturally inert, but an aggregate of forms and forces, and nature a self-adjusting, self-evolving power. In a chapter on “Order and General Adaptation” it is shown that nature contains vast realms of Disorder; and alleged “special adaptations” are shown too as often as otherwise for cruelty and agony. “With what feelings,” asks G. H. Lewes, “can we contemplate the destruction of such an organism as that of man for the sake of some microscopic animal made to live upon it? With what feelings can we think of a human being sacrificed to the growth of cancer-cells? What is the contrivance and benevolence here?” Particular illustrations of design on which teleologists have depended,—the eye, the bee’s cell, the bird’s wing—are examined with critical and scientific care, and imperfections, gratuitous and cruel if ascribed to omnipotent wisdom, found everywhere. “To assert that the Creator of the world is infinitely powerful and infinitely wise were to deny that he is infinitely good.”

To escape the dilemma just stated, some theists postulate a “limited or constitutional deity.” Dr. Martineau’s idea of a “material datum objective to God” is an effort to relieve the deity of responsibility for the evils of nature, but Mr. Call declares the selection of “power” as the limited attribute is arbitrary. We have, he thinks, no more logical right to limit the deity’s power than his intelligence, or his benevolence. (This is doubtful, however, and requires more consideration than is here given it.) “The Evolutionary God” is next considered, and disproved by the uselessness and unfitness of some structures in various organisations, the often injurious character of others, (e.g. the intestinal canal called the vermiform process,) while the moral sense is still offended by the general predatory method of natural selection.

The validity of the Design argument disposed of, Mr. Call leaves to the theist whatever evidences of a deity he may find in his ideals, emotions, aspirations, intuitions. He points out that the Designer thus disproved has never been able to satisfy the intellect or heart, the like being true of the “Unknowable.” The sole sacred ideal left us is that of humanity; not of the whole race but of the purer, nobler constituents of it.

“As Humanity will be the sole Ideal Object to which dutiful
obligation and exalted sentiment will be referred, so the
world of Humanity will be the world revealed, not by divine
inspiration or metaphysical intuition, but by Positive Science
The shadowy abstractions of the speculative rationalist, the
fanciful conceptions of the theologian, will gradually pass
away. To the Semitic explanation of the world and of man will
succeed that of Laplace and Darwin. The great and majestic
truths of the stellar universe, the mysteries of life, of
light, of heat, of sound; the wonders of natural history,
the magic of geologic lore, the epic of man’s progression in
time; the exaltation, the solace, the delight which flow from
poetry, music, painting, sculpture; the interest in the arts,
industrial no less than æsthetic; in the fellowship of work
which ameliorates the common lot; in friendships of man and
woman, short of passionate love, and in the happier profounder
affection of wife and husband; in all home charities and
patriotic activities, and in the identification of personal
‘feelings with the entire life of the human race’;—all these
incidents of thought and varieties of emotion and action will
possess the intellect and fill the heart of future generations,
in a mode and degree which we can now only imperfectly realise,
and which, in the end, will leave men but little reason to
regret that the raptures of saint or prophet, or the splendours
of ancient theocracy, or the power and glory of the Mediæval
Church, or the imposing premise of Hellenic or of Teutonic
speculation, are as the dreams of a night that has passed
forever away.”

Have we, in this prophetic conclusion, the afterglow of a faith sunk beneath the horizon? Why should we suppose that such beautiful things will come to pass in the future? Such prophecies have hitherto been inspired by belief in an overruling and omnipotent Love. But we are now brought by science and philosophy to the misgiving of Solomon, “We are born at all adventure.” Things, the sceptic may say, will grow better if man compels them so, otherwise they can as easily grow worse.

It appears to me that in the old dogma of Jehovah’s curse on the world and its redemption by Jesus there is buried, as in a sarcophagus, a skeleton of human nature, and of moral history, resembling the man of to-day, and the history we are making. There was an appeal of the human heart from Jehovah to Jesus,—from the cursing to the saving deity. The terrible arraignments of nature written by some of the greatest men since Darwin’s discovery have not found any one to answer them. The severest indictment of the world, perhaps, is that by the late Cardinal Newman, who declares, “Either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from his presence.... _Since_ there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity.” From a deity who having created his own materials, built up a creation liable to such calamity, mankind are once more appealing. The ancient case was Jesus _vs._ Jehovah; the present case is Humanity _vs._ the Creator of Nature. This rebellion of the moral sentiment and of compassionateness is not intellectually conscious; it goes on, and for a long time must go on, with ceremonial respect to the Final Cause of all the evils humanity tries to heal; but it appears to me certain that the heart and enthusiasm which once went out to a personal God are again turning to a crucified humanity. The humanitarian movements of our time have arisen simultaneously with the overwhelming evidences of nature’s cruelty and imperfections revealed by Science. The earlier deists appealed from biblical superstitions and ecclesiastical cruelties to the God visible in the order and beauty of the universe. With the existence of evil in external nature they never grappled. Bishop Butler’s “Analogy” first stated the problem. He answered deistic objections to the inhumanities of the Bible by pointing out the like in nature. Instead of answering the deists he set them on a new departure which has ended in results summed up in Mr. Call’s book. The omnipotent creator of nature is following the biblical Jehovah into extinction. But the instincts and aspirations of the human heart and mind remain the same; the religious sentiment remains. The stream that is dammed up in one direction or another does not lose any force thereby; it streams into other channels if it can find such, or floods field and village if it finds none. It will beat earthward as strongly as it once beat heavenward; it will, if channels be not provided, carry away institutions as it has carried away gods and goddesses.

It has become therefore of great importance to recognise if possible the lines of least resistance along the mighty stream of religious enthusiasm, and provide that its energies shall not be destructive but conservative of human welfare. At present the most conservative force in the earth is ignorance: were the suffering masses of the world to discover, suddenly and universally, that the old creeds are fictions, their evils not providential, their heavenly hopes vain, every nation would be filled with convulsions. Fortunately the sun is not shot up into the heavens. But enlightenment progresses rapidly, and we have begun none too soon turning the rising flood of light and fire into the human channels long obstructed by sanctified inhumanities.

Mr. Call’s little book, which I hope will find publication and wide circulation in America, sums up succinctly and cogently the present religious situation, and the steps by which it has been reached. It remains for us all to sweep the new horizon with eye and telescope, to compare our observations and to catch the first ray of the star that shall point wise men to the new incarnation. To my own mind this book is one of the many signs and promises that the divine will be steadily merged into and identified with the human. Not with humanity as an objective and historical entity, as Comte believed, but with the distinctive characteristics of humanity, the supreme qualities of reason and love: this will become the ideal of the reasoners and the lovers; it will then become the creating Word, instructing all; it will finally be made flesh and dwell among us, and all shall behold in it the glory of the kingdom of Man.

MONCURE D. CONWAY.

FACTS AND MENTAL SYMBOLS.

I perceive from Dr. Carus’s answer to my letter in No. 3 Vol. I of _The Monist_, that amid all the agreement of our mutual endeavors a material difference of opinion exists between us on an important question of special character. As I was not successful in rendering my thought clear on this point, I shall endeavor on the present occasion to explain _what_ it was that forced me to abandon my old position (1863), which is very near to that of Dr. Carus, and to assume a new one. The supposition that our difference of opinion is merely apparent and can be adjusted by a precise agreement as to the terms employed is a very natural one in philosophical discussions. It is hardly tenable, though, when the divergent views in question arise _subsequently_ to one another in the _same_ person.

I must state, in starting, that I pursued in my youth physical _and_ philosophical studies, particularly psychology, with equal ardor. There was hardly the question at that time of an experimental psychology, of a relation of psychological to physiological research. No more so did physics at that day think of a psychological analysis of the notions it was constantly employing. How the notions of “body,” “matter,” “atom,” etc., were come by, was not investigated. Objects were given of which physicists never questioned the inviolability and with which they unconcernedly pursued their labors.

The fields of physical and psychological research thus stood _unconciliated_ the one by the side of the other, each having its own particular concepts, methods, and theories. No one questioned, indeed, that the two departments were connected in some way. _The way_, however, appeared an insoluble riddle; as it yet appears to Dubois-Reymond.

Now although this condition of things was not such as to satisfy my mind, it was nevertheless natural that as a student I should seek to acquire tentatively the prevailing views of both provinces and put them into consistent connection with one another.

I thus formed provisorily the view that Nature has two _sides_—a physical and a psychological side. If psychical life is to be harmonised at all with the theories of physics we are obliged, I thought, to conceive of the atoms as _feeling_ (ensouled). The various dynamic phenomena of the atoms would then represent the physical processes, while the internal states _connected therewith_ would be the phenomena of psychic life. If we accept in faith and seriousness the atomistic speculations of the physicists and of the early psychologists (on the unity of the soul), I still see hardly any other course to arrive at a half-way supportable monistic conception.

It is unnecessary to set forth at length here what a prominent place the artificial scaffolding we employ in the construction of our knowledge assumes in these monadic theories as contradistinguished from the facts that deserve knowledge, and how poorly such theories satisfy in the long run a vigorous mind. As a fact, employment with this cumbrous artifice was in my case the means that effected very soon the appearance of my better conviction, already latently present.[34]

In the further progress of my physical work I soon discovered that it was very necessary _sharply to distinguish_ between what we _see_ and what we mentally _supply_. When, for example, I imagine heat as a substance (a fluid) that passes from one body into another, I follow with ease the phenomena of conduction and compensation. This idea led Black, who established it, to the discovery of specific heat, of the latent heat of fusion and vaporisation, and so forth. _This same_ idea of a constant quantity of heat-substance _prevented_ on the other hand Black’s successors from using their eyes. They no longer mark the fact which every savage knows, that heat is _produced_ by friction. By the help of his undulatory theory Huygens follows with ease the phenomena of the reflexion and refraction of light. The same theory _prevents_ him, for he thinks solely of the longitudinal waves with which he was familiar, from marking the fact of polarisation which he himself discovered, but which Newton on the other hand, undisturbed by theories, perceives at once. The conception of fluids acting at a distance on conductors charged with electricity facilitates our view of the behavior of the objects charged, but it _stood in the way of_ the discovery of the specific inductive capacity, which was reserved for the eye of Faraday undimmed by any traditional theories.

Valuable therefore as the conceptions may be which we mentally (theoretically) supply in our pursuit of facts, bringing to bear, as they do, older, richer, more general, and more familiar experiences on facts that stand alone, thus affording us a broader field of view, nevertheless, the same conceptions may, as classical examples and our own experience demonstrate, lead us astray. For a theory, indeed, always puts in the place of a fact something _different_, something more simple, which is qualified to represent it in some _certain_ aspect, but for the very reason that it is different does _not_ represent it in other aspects. When in the place of _light_ Huygens mentally put the familiar phenomenon of _sound_, light itself appeared to him as a thing that he knew, but with respect to polarisation, which sound-waves lack, as a thing with which he was doubly unacquainted. Our theories are abstractions, which, while they place in relief that which is important for _certain fixed_ cases, neglect almost necessarily, or even disguise, what is important for other cases. The law of refraction looks upon rays of light as homogeneous straight lines, and that is sufficient for the comprehension of the geometrical aspect of the matter. But the propositions that relate to refraction will never lead us to the fact that the rays of light are periodical, that they interfere. Just the contrary, the favorite and familiar conception of a ray as a smooth straight line will rather render this discovery difficult.

Only in rare cases will the resemblance between a fact and its theoretical conception extend _further_ than we ourselves postulate. Then the theoretical conception may lead to the discovery of _new_ facts, of which conical refraction, circular polarisation, and Hertz’s electric waves furnish examples that stand in opposition to those given above. But as a general rule we have every reason to distinguish sharply between our theoretical conceptions of phenomena and that which we observe. The former must be regarded merely as auxiliary instruments that have been created for a _definite_ purpose and which possess permanent value only with respect to that purpose. No one will seriously imagine for a moment that a real circle with angles and sines actually performs functions in the refraction of light. Every one, on the contrary, regards the formula sinα/sinβ = _n_ as a kind of geometrical model that _imitates in form_ the refraction of light and _takes its place_ in our mind. In this sense, I take it, all the theoretical conceptions of physics—caloric, electricity, light-waves, molecules, atoms, and energy—must be regarded as mere helps or expedients to facilitate our viewing things. Even within the domain of physics itself the greatest care must be exercised in transferring theories from one department to another, and above all more instruction is not to be expected from a theory than from the facts themselves.

But instances were not lacking that demonstrated to me, how much greater the confusion was which was produced by the direct transference of theories, methods, and inquiries that were legitimate in physics, into the field of psychology.

Allow me to illustrate this by a few examples.

A physicist observes an image on the retina of an excised eye, notices that it is turned upside down with respect to the objects imaged, and puts to himself very naturally the question, How does a luminous point situated _at the top_ come to be reflected on the retina _at the bottom_? He answers this question by the aid of dioptrical studies. If, now, this question, which is perfectly legitimate in the province of physics, be transferred to the domain of psychology, only obscurity will be produced. The question why we see the _inverted_ retina-image _upright_, has no meaning as a psychological problem. The light-sensations of the separate spots of the retina are connected with sensations of locality from the very beginning, and we _name_ the places that correspond to the parts down, _up_. Such a question cannot present itself to the perceiving subject.

It is the same with the well-known theory of projection. The problem of the _physicist_ is, to seek the luminous object-point of a point imaged on the retina of the eye in the backward prolonged ray passing through the point of intersection of the eye. For the perceiving subject this _problem_ does not exist, as the light-sensations of the retinal spots are connected from the beginning with determinate space-sensations. The entire theory of the psychological origin of the “external” world by the projection of sensations outwards is founded in my opinion on a mistaken transference of a _physically_ formulated inquiry into the province of _psychology_. Our sensations of sight and touch are bound up with, are connected with, various _different_ sensations of space, that is to say these sensations have an existence _by the side of_ one another or _outside of_ one another, exist in other words in a _spatial_ field, in which our body fills but a part. That table is thus self-evidently _outside of_ my body. A projection-problem does not present itself, is neither consciously nor unconsciously solved.

A physicist (Mariotte) makes the discovery that a certain spot on the retina is blind. He is accustomed to associating with every spatial point an imaged point, and with every imaged point a sensation. Hence the question arises, what do we see at the points that correspond to the blind spots, and how is the gap in the image filled out? If the unfounded influence of the physicist’s method of procedure on the discussion of psychological questions be excluded, it will be found that no problem exists at all here. We see _nothing_ at the blind spots, the gap in the image is _not_ filled out. The gap, moreover, is not felt, for the reason that a defect of light-sensation at a spot blind from the beginning can no more be perceived as a gap in the image than the blindness say of the skin of the back can be so perceived.

I have chosen intentionally simple and obvious examples, such as render it clear what unnecessary confusion is caused by the careless transference of a conception or mode of thought which is valid and serviceable in one domain, into another.

In the work of a celebrated German ethnographer I read recently the following sentence: “This tribe of people deeply degraded itself by the practise of cannibalism.” By its side lay the book of an English inquirer who deals with the same subject. The latter simply puts the _question why_ certain South-Sea islanders eat human beings, finds out in the course of his inquiries that our own ancestors also were once cannibals, and comes to understand the position the Hindus take in the matter—a point of view that occurred once to my five-year-old boy who while eating a piece of meat stopped suddenly shocked and cried out, “_We_ are cannibals to the animals!” “Thou shalt not eat human beings” is a very beautiful maxim; but in the mouth of the ethnographer it sullies the calm and noble lustre of unprepossession by which we so gladly discover the true inquirer. But a step further and we will say, “Man _must_ not be descended from monkeys,” “The earth _shall_ not rotate,” “Matter _ought_ not everywhere to fill space,” “Energy _must_ be constant,” and so on. I believe that our procedure differs from that just characterised only in degree and not in kind, when we transfer views reached in the province of physics with the dictum of sovereign validity into the domain of psychology, where they should be tested anew with respect to their serviceability. In such cases we are subject to dogma, if not to that which is forced upon us by a power from without like our scholastic forefathers, yet to that which we have made ourselves. And what result of research is there that could not become a dogma by long habit of use, since the very skill which we have acquired in familiar intellectual situations, deprives us of the freshness and unprepossession which are so requisite in a new situation.

Now that I have set forth in general outlines the position I take, I may be able perhaps to establish my opposition to the _dualism of feeling and motion_. This dualism is to my mind an artificial and an unnecessary one. The way it has arisen is analogous to that in which the imaginary solutions of certain mathematical problems have arisen—by the improper formulation of the questions involved.

In the investigation of purely physical processes we generally employ notions so abstract that as a rule we only think cursorily or not at all of the sensations that lie at and constitute their foundation. For example, when I establish the fact that an electric current of 1 Ampère develops 10½ cubic centimetres oxyhydrogen gas at 0° C. and 760 mm mercury pressure in a minute, I am easily disposed to attribute to the objects defined a reality wholly independent of my sensations. But I am obliged in order to arrive at what I have determined to conduct the current through a circular wire having a definite measured radius, so that the current, the intensity of terrestrial magnetism being given, shall turn the magnetic needle at its centre a certain angular distance out of the meridian. The intensity of terrestrial magnetism must have been disclosed by a definite observed period of vibration of a magnetic needle of measured dimensions, known weight, and so forth. The determination of the oxyhydrogen gas is no less intricate. The whole statement, so simple in its appearance, is based upon an almost unending series of simple sensory observations (sensations), particularly so when the observations are added that guarantee the adjustment of the apparatus, which may have been performed in part long before the actual experiment. Now it may easily happen to the physicist who does not study the psychology of his operations, that he does not (to reverse a well-known saying) see the trees for the woods, and that he slurs over the sensory elements at the foundation of his work. Now I maintain, that every physical notion is nothing more than a definite connection of the sensory _elements_ which I denote by _A_ _B_ _C_ ..., and that every physical fact rests therefore on such a connection. These _elements_—elements in the sense that no further resolution has for the present been effected of them—are the most ultimate building stones of the physical world that we have as yet been able to seize.

Physiological research also may have a purely physical character. I can follow the course of a physical process as it propagates itself through a sensitive nerve to the spinal column and brain of an animal and returns by various paths to the muscles of the animal, whose contraction produces further events in the environment of the animal. I need not think, in so doing, of any feeling on the part of the animal; what I investigate is a purely physical object. Very much is lacking, it is true, to our complete comprehension of the details of this process, and the assurance that it is all motion can neither console me nor deceive me with respect to my ignorance.

Long before there was any scientific physiology people perceived that the behavior of an animal confronted by physical influences is much better viewed, that is understood, by attributing to the animal _sensations_ like our own. To that which I see, to _my_ sensations, I have to _supply mentally_ the sensations of the _animal_, which are not to be found in the province of my own sensation. This contrariety appears still more abrupt to the scientific inquirer who is investigating a nervous process by the aid of colorless abstract notions, and is required for example to add mentally to that process the sensation green. This last can actually appear as something entirely novel, and we can ask ourselves how it is that this miraculous thing is produced from chemical processes, electrical currents, and the like.[35]

Psychological analysis has taught us that this surprise is unjustified, since the physicist deals with sensations in everything on which he employs himself. This analysis is also able to render it clear to us that the mental addition by analogy of sensations and complexes of sensations which at the time being are not present in the field of sense or cannot even come into it, is also daily practised by the physicist, as when for example he imagines the moon an inert heavy mass although he cannot touch the moon but only see it. The totally strange character of the intellectual situation above described is therefore an illusion.

The illusion disappears when I make observations (psychologically) on my own person which are limited to the sensory sphere. Before me lies the leaf of a plant. The green (_A_) of the leaf is united with a certain optical sensation of space (_B_) and sensation of touch (_C_), with the visibility of the sun or the lamp (_D_). If the yellow (_E_) of a sodium flame takes the place of the sun, the green (_A_) will pass into brown (_F_). If the chlorophyl granules be removed,—an operation representable like the preceding one by elements,—the green (_A_) will pass into white (_G_). All these observations are _physical_ observations. But the green (_A_) is also united with a certain process on my retina. There is nothing to prevent me in principle from physically investigating this process on my own eye in exactly the same manner as in the cases previously set forth, and from reducing it to its elements _X_ _Y_ _Z_.... If this were not possible in the case of my own eye, it might be accomplished with that of another, and the gap filled out by analogy exactly as in physical investigations. Now in its dependence upon _B_ _C_ _D_ ..., _A_ is a _physical element_, in its dependence on _X_ _Y_ _Z_ ... it is a _sensation_. The green (_A_) however is not altered at all _in itself_, whether we direct our attention to the one or to the other form of dependence. _I see, therefore, no oppositions of physical and psychical, no duality, but simply identity._ In the sensory sphere of my consciousness everything is at once physical and psychical.

The obscurity of this intellectual situation has arisen according to my conviction solely from the transference of a physical prepossession into the domain of psychology. The physicist says: I find everywhere bodies and the motions of bodies only, no sensations; sensation therefore must be something _entirely different_ from the physical objects I deal with. The psychologist accepts the second portion of this declaration: To him, it is true, sensation is _given_, but there corresponds to it a mysterious physical something which conformably to physical prepossession must be _different_ from sensation. But what is it that is the really mysterious thing? Is it the Physis or the Psyche? or is it perhaps _both_? It would almost appear so, as it is now the one and now the other that is intangible. Or does the whole reasoning involved rest on a fallacious circle?

I believe that the latter is the case. For me the elements designated by _A_ _B_ _C_ ... are immediately and indubitably given, and for me they can never afterwards be volatilised away by any considerations which are after all based in every case on their existence.[36]

To the department of special research having for its subject the sensory, physical, and psychical province which is not made superfluous by this general orientation and Which cannot be forestalled, the relations of _A_ _B_ _C_ ... only remain to be ascertained. This may be expressed symbolically by saying that it is the purpose and end of special research to find equations of the form _f(A, B, C_, ...) = 0.

I hope with this to have designated the point in which I am in opposition to Dr. Carus, with whom I agree so much in other respects. I am obliged, notwithstanding the latter fact, to regard this point as essential, inasmuch as my whole mode of thinking and direction of inquiry have been changed by the view it involves, and because, moreover, I do not believe that the difference in question can be dissipated by any verbal explanations however exact.

This whole train of reasoning has for me simply the significance of negative orientation for the avoidance of pseudo-problems. I restrict myself, moreover intentionally here, to the question of sense-perceptions, for the reason that at the start exact special research will find here alone a safe basis of operations.

ERNST MACH.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] A Greek philosopher to whom change of spatial configuration, pressure, and percussion were probably the only natural processes of which he had any intimate knowledge, thought out the atomistic theory. This theory we retain to-day, though it be in a modified form. And in fact natural phenomena really do exist that act _as if_ the pressure and impact of very small particles were involved in their production (the dynamical theory of gases), phenomena that admit therefore by this conception of being more clearly viewed. However, this conception, like that of caloric, possesses value only in certain fields. We know to-day that pressure and impact are by no means simpler phenomena than are for example the phenomena of gravitation. The contention that in physics everything can be reduced to the motion of smallest particles is, taken at its best, a more than improper draft on the future. Utterances of this kind afford no assistance to the solution of burning special questions, but only confound, and have about the same explanatory value as the utterances of the late physical philosophy of Oken which prescribe for example with the greatest ease the course of the creation of the world by a division of zero-quantities into _+a_ and _-a_ (0 = _+a_ _-a_).

The motion of a _single_ body as a totality does indeed appear simpler at first glance than any other process, and this is the justification of attempts at a _physical_ monadic theory. The thoughts of a _single_ man are connected together; the thoughts of two different men are not. How can the processes of the different parts of the brain of one man be connected? In order to make the connection very intimate, we collect everything which requires to be psychically connected in _a single_ point, although the connection is not explained by this procedure. Thus the psychological monadic theory is created on the basis of a motive and of an illusion similar to that on which the physical rests.

Let us assume for a moment the proposition in the text; viz., that the atoms are endowed with feeling. By the space coördinates _x_, _y_, _z_, _x′_, _y′_, _z′_ ... of the atoms are determined _in the atoms_ internal conditions α, β, γ, α′, β′, γ′ ... and _vice versa_. For we feel by our senses our physical environment, and our physical invasions of our environment are conditioned by our sensations. The idea is then at hand, α, β, γ ... alone being directly given, to set up by the elimination of _x_, _y_, _z_ ... equations directly between α, β, γ, α′, β′, γ′.... This latter point of view would be very near to my present one, aside from the fact that the latter wholly rejects metaphysical considerations.

[35] The following is a legitimate question: To what kind of nervous processes is the sensation green to be mentally added. Such questions can be solved only by special inquiry, and not by a reference in a general way to motion and electric currents. How disadvantageous our remaining satisfied with such general conceptions is, can be seen from the fact that inquirers have been repeatedly on the brink of abandoning the _specific energies_, one of the greatest acquisitions we have made, simply because they were unable to discover any difference in the currents of different sensory nerves. I was impelled as early as 1863 in my lectures on psycho-physics to call attention to the fact that the _most diverse kinds_ of nervous processes can conceal themselves in a current. Current is an abstraction and places in relief but one feature of the process—the passage of energy though a transverse section. A current in diluted sulphuric acid is something entirely different from a current in copper. We must therefore also expect that a current in the acoustic nerve is something entirely different from a current in the optic nerve.

[36] It is the transitoriness of sense-perceptions that so easily leads us to regard them as mere appearances as contrasted with permanent bodies. I have repeatedly pointed out that unconditioned permanent states do not exist in nature, that permanences of connection only exist. A body is for me the same complex of sight-and-touch-sensations every time that it is placed in the same circumstances of illumination, position in space, temperature, and so forth. The supposed constancy of the body is the constancy of the union of _A_, _B_, _C_ ... or the constancy of the _equation f_(_A_, _B_, _C_ ...) = 0.

PROFESSOR CLIFFORD ON THE SOUL IN NATURE.

No one can read Clifford’s Lectures and Essays, without feeling that, if their author is less known and valued as an original thinker than as a master of mathematical analysis, it is only because having turned the force of his genius onto mathematics first he had time to complete some work in that direction, whereas his premature death in 1879 only allowed him to give us an earnest of the philosophical work which he had it in him to perform.

The short biography which Prof. F. Pollock contributed to the first edition of his lectures and essays gives an interesting sketch of the phases of opinion through which Clifford passed. It appears that before he took his degree in 1867 and for a little time after he was a high churchman; but, says Pollock, “there was an intellectual and speculative activity about his belief which made it impossible that he should remain permanently at that stage.” “He never slackened in the pursuit of scientific knowledge and ideas,” and conscious of a hiatus between orthodox views and some of the results of science he yet held that religious beliefs are outside the region of scientific proof and that there is a special theological faculty or insight, analogous to the scientific, poetic, and artistic faculties, the persons in whom this genius is exceptionally developed being the founders of new religions and religious orders. This is not unlike the solution of religious doubts which Hume playfully suggested and which John Henry Newman has seriously adopted, namely that “divinity, or theology, has a foundation in _reason_ so far as it is supported by experience. But its best and most solid foundation is _faith_ and divine revelation.” “When or how,” continues his biographer, “Clifford first came to a clear perception that this position of quasi-scientific Catholicism was untenable I do not exactly know; but I know that the discovery cost him an intellectual and moral struggle, of which traces may be found here and there in his essays. Most readers of these essays would consider that Clifford is very unfair to the Christian beliefs which he had abandoned and beyond doubt he felt a certain grudge against them for having so long duped him.”[37] The theories of Mr. Darwin and Herbert Spencer took the place in Clifford’s mind of the old fashioned creed; Natural selection was to unriddle the universe, to yield a new system of ethics and education. We read that Clifford had an extraordinary power of taking up a theory provisionally, of throwing himself into it, accepting it, applying it, and of rejecting it in case it was not satisfactory; and this may account perhaps for his somewhat dogmatic assertion in many cases of crude views. There is one characteristic of Clifford however which all may emulate, and that is the candor and fearlessness of his thinking and speaking. Let me quote a few words from one of the best and most stirring of these essays:

“If I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence,
there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be
true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in
outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards
man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is
not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is
great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose
the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then
it must sink back into savagery.... If a man, holding a belief
which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards,
keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in
his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company
of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as
impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without
disturbing it—the life of that man is one long sin against
mankind.”

The essay on the nature of things in themselves marks the furthest limit at which Clifford’s speculation arrived. In it Clifford begins by discarding the ordinary distinction between reality and ideas, eternal object and eternal subject, of feeling and thing. The distinction is really between two orders of feeling; there is the subjective or inner order, in which sorrow succeeds the hearing of bad news, and the objective or outward in which the feeling of letting go is followed by sight of falling object. It is with the latter order that physical science concerns itself, and all the inferences of natural science are inferences of my real or possible feeling. Since an object is a set of changes _in_ my consciousness and not anything out of it, is just my feeling real or possible and therefore part of me, it might seem as if we were shut up in ourselves and excluded from participation in any other reality. So we should be, says Clifford, if we made no other inferences beside those of physical science; but when I come to the conclusion that _you_ are conscious and that you have objects in your consciousness similar to those in mine, I am not inferring any actual or possible feelings of my own, but _your_ feelings, which are not and can never be objects in my consciousness. To feelings and consciousness thus inferred to exist in another, Clifford gives the name of _eject_, because in the very act of inference they are _thrown out_ of my consciousness, recognised as outside of it, as _not_ being a part of me. “The existence of my conception of you in my consciousness carries with it a belief in the existence of you outside of my consciousness.... How this inference is justified, how consciousness can testify to the existence of anything outside of itself I do not pretend to say; I need not untie a knot which the world has cut for me long ago.” (Vol. II, p. 73.)

Thus, _objects_ in the sense of things presented in _my_ consciousness, my phenomena, are not the sole or chief reality; ejects are equally real and my conviction of your existence as a conscious being like myself is coeval and of equal weight with my belief in my own conscious existence. You and your feelings are strictly speaking the only things which are real outside of myself and my consciousness. For though my objects or phenomena are external to my body they are not outside my consciousness, but part and parcel thereof. Nay, more than this an individual object, i. e. an object which is mine and mine only, never exists at all, according to Clifford, in the mind of man; for with each object as it exists in my mind is bound up the thought of similar objects existing in other men’s minds. All the objects in fact of which we are ever conscious are objects of consciousness in general, are in Clifford’s phrase social objects. “A fixed habit causes an object as it is found in my mind to be formed as a social object and insensibly embodies in it a reference to the minds of other men.” This belief in ejects is moreover the root of all language and all morals:—of language, because any sound which, becoming a sign to my neighbor, becomes thereby a mark to myself, must by the nature of the case be a mark of the social object and not of the individual object: of morals, because the “first great commandment, evolved in the light of day by healthy processes wherever men have lived together, is, ‘Put yourself in his place.’”

So far there is nothing to distinguish Clifford’s theory from ordinary Idealism, which denies that the universe is real except as a phenomenon or appearance before a Self conscious thereof. The future course of Clifford’s argument turns upon two assumptions. One of these, borrowed from the current physiology of the brain, is this: that the changes in my consciousness—ejective facts he calls them—run parallel with the changes in my brain, which are objective facts. The parallelism between them is one of complexity, an analogy of structure. The complex ejective facts are the same sort of complication of simple ejects as the complex motions of the brain are of simple molecular movements. Clifford illustrates the points from the relation of speech to writing, the sentence spoken is the same function of the elementary sounds as the same sentence written is of the corresponding letters. In like manner the complex human mind is the same function of simple feelings as the brain is of primary atoms.