of the one with, the various implications of tlie other; and we have found that, from the simplest to the most complex cases,, physical principle and psychical manifestation agree. Regarding as superposed, each on the preceding., the struc- " tural effects produced generation after generation and' species after species, we have formed a general conception of the manner in which the most complex nervous systems have arisen out of the simplest. Simultaneously, we have; been helped to understand more clearly the natures of the; various modes of consciousness — perceptions, ideas, emo--tions, &c. And, by pursuing the reasoning to its remoter; consequences, we have found that both normal and abnormal f variations of mental processes, even up to the changes of:: rnood accompanying bodily changes and the ecstatic feelings f aroused by certain drugs, are rendered comprehensible.
The sufficiency of this general principle to account for the facts, can of course be alleged only on the assumption that changes wrought in nervous structures by. nervous functions are inheritable. Tacitly throughout the divisions preceding it, ancf avowedly throughout this Physical Synthesis, it has been taken for granted that from generation to. generation there descend alterations of structure; both of the kind called spontaneous, and of the kind arising from functional actions. Throughout the earlier stages of nervous evolution, a leading and perhaps most active cause, has been the survival of individuals in which indirect influences have produced favourable variations of nervous structure. But throughout its later stages, the most active cause has been the direct production by functional changes of corresponding changes of nervous structure, and the transmission of these to posterity. Considering how involved are the nervous systems <s>f superior creatures, there apply here with especial force the reasons before given (Principles of Biology § 166) for concluding that natural selection is an i^ad^guate ^,: cause _ of ^plution where' many co-operative parts have to be simultaneously modified; and that in such cases the inheritance of functionaliy-produced modifications becomes the leading agency — survival of the fittest serving as an aid.
But these processes of direct and indirect equilibration being postulated as acting on all organisms throughout all time,, we see that joining with them the inferred effect of every nervous discharge upon every channel passed through, we get an adequate explanation of nervous evolution,, and the concomitant evolution of Mind.
§ 269. Cf Thus, then, we are brought face to face with unl mistakable materialism/' will exclaim many a reader.
I " Thus, then, it is positively asserted that Mind is a growth, I and that it grows after the same general method as does the meanest fungus or the most degraded worm. Thus, 1 then, we must infer that the profoundest intuitions of the \ discoverer and the subliniest inspirations of the poet — the .most abstract conceptions of the mathematician as well as the noblest emotions of self-sacrificing sympathy — are but properties of certain matters arranged in particular ways."
Notwithstanding the explanations that have been from time to time given, such will, I doubt not, be a frequent apostrophe. So favourite a mode of meeting the inferences drawn, is sure to be again employed; though, as shown already, it tells only against a doctrine that has been repudiated. The general relation between mental manifestations and material structures traced out in the foregoing chapters, has implications identical with, and no wider than, those which familiar experiences thrust upon us. That drowsiness impedes thinking, that wine excites or stupefies according1 to amount and circumstances, that great loss of blood produces i^niporary unconsciousness, and that th© unconsciousness of death results if breathing be stopped for a few minutes; are facts admitted by every one be his theory of things what it may. That you cannot get out of the undeveloped child, thoughts and feeling's like those you get out of the developed man; that the idiot, witli brain permanently arrested in Its growth,! remains permanently incapable of any but tlie simplest mental actions; are propositions not denied by the most intemperate reviler of physiological psychology. Bat one who recognizes such facts and propositions, is just as much chargeable with materialism, as one who puts together facts1 and propositions like those which constitute the foregoing exposition. Whoever grants that from the rudimentary consciousness implied by the vacant stare of the infant, up^ to the quickly- apprehensive, far-seeing, and variously-, feeling consciousness of the adult, the transition is through! slow steps of mental progress that accompany slow steps oft bodily progress, tacitly asserts the same relation of Mind| and Matter which is asserted by one who traces out the evo- { lution of the nervous system and the accompanying evolu- \ tion of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest forms of | life.
But, as said here and before, the supposed implication is not the true implication. Let me once more point out what the true implication is. By way of preparation, however, we will first observe how the above apostrophe might be met by those to whom it would be fitly addressed.
§ 270. "Your reproaches seem to me strangely inconsis-y tent with your avowed beliefs and sentiments/'' might say the! materialist to his opponent. " You profess the profoundest? reverence for the Creative Power, from which you hold the ] Universe to have proceeded. Yet of the visible and tangible I part of the Universe, yon speak in a way that would be ap- \ propriate were its origin diabolical; and you taunt me be- j cause I recognize in that which you treat wrA. so much: scorn, powers no less marvellous than those manifested in the human mind.
" You see this piece of steel — cold, motionless? and, as -you suppose, insensitive to all that goes on around. An jartizan uses a portion of it for making the balance-wheel of I a watch.. Immediately it proves itself modifiable by changes of temperature which, our dull senses fail to appreciate. " Though by no direct measures can we detect an alteration, in the length of its beat; yet, indirectly,, by finding that it loses one beat in a hundred thousand, we get proof that an •; imperceptible increase in the molecular agitation propagated I to it by surrounding things., has augmented its diameter and; expanded all its parts in the same ratio. Take another bit of this same apparently inert substance; shape it appropri-, ' ately; bring it under tne influence of an adjacent magnet; and throughout its mass there is wrought., in some incomprehensible way, an invisible change which enables it to do — what? ' To point north and south/ you say. Yes; but to i do far more than this. Its perturbations will now show to '|an instructed eye, the rise and progress of a cyclone in "And what is the constitution of this seemingly-simple .matter, which thus tells of things near and remote that re- 4 main otherwise unknown? In the minutest visible fragment 4. of it there are millions 0$ units severally oscillating with un- I imaginable speed; and physicists show us that the ampli- ;i J.tudes of their oscillations vary from moment to moment, I according as the temperatures of surrounding objects vary.
"Nay, much more than this is now inferable. Each unit is not simple but compound — not a single thing but a system ; of things. Spectrum-analysis has made it manifest that ' '. ' every molecule of this so-called- elementary substance is a , l cluster of minor molecules differing in their weights and j \ rhythms. Such being the complexity of matters we lately > 'j thought simple, judge what is the complexity of matters I * we know as*corapounds. In each molecule of an oxide or J,1} an acid, the chemist sees one of these systems united with J •» one, two, three, or more systems of another kind that j,|, are similarly involved. Ascending to orders of com- ,i | (J S pounds successively more heterogeneous, he finds him* '! if self obliged to recognize molecular complexities unve- '* EBST7LTS.
presentable in thought; until, on reacting organic matter,.• lie conies to molecules each of which (taking into account'' the composite nature of its so-called elements) contains literally more atoms than the visible heavens contains stars — atoms combined, system within system, in such ways that • each atom, each system, each compound system, each. doubly-compound system, has its motion in relation to the: rest, and is capable of perturbing the rest and of being per-; turbed by them.
"This activity and this sensitiveness, which the investigator I marvels at the more the deeper his discoveries.reach, is pos-f sessed in common by ponderable matter and by the seem-? ingly-imponderable matter ^pervading. space. That the ether, { so extreme in tenuity that we can scarcely represent it to ourselves as having materiality, is nevertheless composed of units which move in conformity to mechanical laws, is now a common-place of science. Hypo the tically endowing these units with momenta, and assuming that in each undulation their courses are determined by composition of forces, mathematicians long ago found themselves able not only to interpret known properties of the. light constituted by ethereal':' undulafions, but to assert that it had unobserved proper-' ties; which were thereupon proved by observation to exist.-Far greater community than this has been disclosed between the ponderable and the imponderable: the activities of either are unceasingly modified by the activities of the other. Each complex molecule of matter oscillating as a '• whole — nay, each separate member of it independently oscillating, causes responsive movements in adjacent ethereal. molecules, and these in remote" ones without limit; while, conversely, each ethereal wave reaching a composite molecule, changes more or less its rhythmical motions, as well as the rhythmical motions of its component clusters and those of their separate members. *> cc Nor do the revelations end here. The discovery that matter, seemingly so simple, is in its ultimate structure so t amazingly Involved; the discovery that, while it appears to De inert, it is the seat of activities immense in quantity and complication; and the discovery that its molecules, pulsating with almost infinite rapidity, propagate their pulses into the all-surrounding ether which carries them through inconceivable distances in infinitesimal times; serve to introduce us to the yet more marvellous discovery that molecules of each kind are specially affected by molecules of the same kind existing in the farthest regions of space. Units of sodium on which sunlight falls, beat in unison with their kindred units more than ninety millions of miles off, by which the yellow rays of the Sun are produced. Nay, even this is a totally inadequate illustration of the sympathy displayed by the matter composing the visible Universe. The elements of our Earth are thus connected by bonds of interdependent activity, with the elements of stars so remote that the diameter of the Earth's orbit scarcely serves as a unit of measure to express their distances.
" This, then, is the form of being you speak of so con-.temptuously. And, because I ascribe to this form of being powers which, though not more wonderful than these, are more involved, you scowl at me. If, instead of saying that I degrade Mind to a level with Matter, you were to say that I elevate Matter to a level with Mind, you would express the fact more nearly.1" § 271. Such we may imagine to be the reply of a materialist of the cruder sort., who failed to present his belief,under its right aspect. Let us now listen to one of the same general school, whom we may suppose to understand better the meanings of these truths which science has revealed.
" The name you give me is intended to imply that I identify Mind with Matter. I do no such thing. I identify Mind 5fith Motion; and Motion is inconceivable by us as in:any"sense_m_ateri_al. Observe thisj$£igto. Now it is motionless; now I relax my grasp and it begins to move towards the Eartla. What lias suddenly entered into it?;« Though apparently nnclianged in all its properties., this, or any other mass,, needs but to have a quantity of motion im~ pressed on it by impact or otherwise, and it thereafter goes on changing its place in space at the same velocity; so long as it meets with no other matter and has no other motion impressed on it. What is this source of activity?: How does it dwell in.the weight? and in what manner does it cause the weight to take every instant a new place?i On the one hand,, we cannot assert that Motion exists as air something separate from Matter; since asserting this implied that we can think of it as having independent attributes. On the other hand,, we cannot assert that Motion has no separate^ existence • since, if it has not,, how can we think of it as* transferred from one body to another? Moreover, the ap^ pearance and disappearance of Motion raise the questions — I Where was it previously? and where is it now? When this weight falls, we have not only to ask — Whence has its motion come? but when it strikes the pavement we have to ask — Tc4 what place has its motion gone? Part of it was passed on* to the particles deranged by the blow; part of it, transformed^ into sound-waves, has been dispersed through the surround-l ing air; and, even while I speak, part of it has already: travelled millions of miles away in the shape of ethereal undulations. This Motion, then — now diffused and imperceptible, now suddenly individualized and producing visible changes, now re-diffused in various forms and part of it injstantly transferred to immeasurable distances — is of a nature wholly inscrutable; andjfj^ identify Mind with it, I identify! Mind with something no less mysterious tha^ itself." < " You think of me as seeing no essential difference between Mind and the material properties of brain. As well might I think of you as seeing no essential difference between music and the material properties of tbe piano from which it is evoked. Because you assert that music is produced from, the piano, do you therefore assert any goo PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS.
kizi.-liip in nature between a piano-string and the aeri Dulses it generates when struck? Or do you t-herefo ••assert an identity • between such pulses and the rel •lions among1 them which constitute cadences and ha T.i'.-nies? Xo more then do I, in asserting the depen "slice of ilind on nervous structure, assert any kinship nuruiv between the matter of a nerve-cell and the actio: tl.ar arise from it, or between these actions and tho r luri'jns among them which constitute thought. Do y< t~'; -•: to the? parallel because the piano remains silent t t<-iuhi?d, while the brain acts without external help? r^-plv iliTir in either case the power is derived from without, ai that the effect of the structure is simply that of transformii it. As the motion given to an automatic musical instr Bient passes through its specialized structure and comes o in the form of particular combinations of asrial pulse simultaneous and successive; so the motion locked up in man's food, added to. that directly received through his sense is transformed while passing through his nervous system in those combinations of nervous, actions which, on their su jective faces, are thoughts and feelings. ^ fk Bat this analogy is far too rude to convey a true co 'e^piion. Xot with sensible Motion, even though it be th ui the invisible air., has Mind any direct /...kinship; b I only with insensible Motion, of kinds inconceivably mo j subtle and "immeasurably more, rapid. Not, to cqmbini f, undulations of ponderable substance, however rare, is Mil <tr» be assimilated; _but only' to combined undulations...
Yiie all-pervading imponderable substance which we knc fA only by inference from their effects. The activities of tit 'iiuponderaile substance, though far simpler, and in t'L Tuspect far lower, than the activities we call Mia are at the same time far higher than those we ci 'Mind im respect of their intensity, their velocity, tht subtlety. What has been gained in adaptability L Leen lost in vivacity. Though Mind brings into adjustme the apparatus "by which certain etliereal undulations emanating from tlie Sun are brought to a focus, yet Mind cannon, like these concentrated undulations, dissipate the diamond placed in that focus. Though Mind is capable of devising an electric telegraph,, yet it remains wholly insensible to those slight molecular agitations on the other side of the Earth which transform themselves into sensible motions on this side. And now that the rates of our ideas and volitions have been measured, we learn that though jbhought is quick, light is many millions of times quicker.
"*" Your conception, 0 Spiritualist, is far too gross for me. I know not what may be the extent to which you have refined this creed which you inherit from aboriginal men. Disembodied spirit was conceived by your remote ancestors (as it is still conceived by various existing savages) as material enough to take part in battle, and even to be killed over again. Becoming less concrete and definite as knowledge increased, the idea of a ghost continued, till quite modern days, to be that of a being which could cause alarming noises and utter words. Even your quite-recent ancestors, transparent as they supposed the substance of a ghost to be, nevertheless supposed it visible. Possibly you Lave still further purified their belief. But whether you confess it or not, you cannot think of disembodied spirit without thinking of it as occupying a separate place in space — as having position, and limits, and such materiality as is implied by limits. This idea, not commended to me by its genealogy, quite unsatisfactory in its nature, and wholly unsupported by evidence, I cannot accept. Mind, I identify with that which ^js not relatively.. irmn ateria] but absolutely immaterial. It has not even the inconceivably refined* materiality of the ether which fills what you call empty space; but it is assimilable to the activities manifested by this* ether, as well^ as by_all sensible ft>rnL?, c-f being. Everywhere in unceasing influx and efflux, it ii that which is for ever dissolving and re-forming sensible existefices of all orders — organic and inorganic. Pervading alike tlie smce which is occupied and the space which, seems to us unoccupied, it gives to the ponderable substance filling the one its powers of action and reaction, and to the inmonderable substance filling the other its powers o: convevins1 actions and reactions from one body to another. Sc that when there happens some vast catastrophe like that o: which the star near s Coronce was lately the seat, it is at once the airent bv which the transformation, is wrought and the fluent ijr which is conveyed, with almost infinite speed through the Universe, the resulting tremor felt on the surtaees of its countless worlds/'' § 272. Comparatively consistent as is this answer, and serving though it does to throw back with added force the reproaches of the spiritualist, it is not the answer to be here iriven. In the closing paragraphs of First Principles, and as-'ain in the earlier parts of the present work, the position taken was, that the truth is not expressible either by Materialism or by Spiritualism, however modified and however refined. Lee rne now, for the last time, set forth the ultimate implications of the argument running through this volume, as well as through preceding volumes.
Carried to whatever extent, the inquiries of the psychologist do not reveal the ultimate nature of Mind; any more than do the inquiries of the chemist reveal the ultimate I nature of Matter, or those of the physicist the ultimate 1 nature of Motion. Though the chemist is gravitating towards the belief that there is a primitive atom, out of which by variously-arranged unions are formed the socalled elements, as out of these by variously-arranged unions are formed oxides, acids,, and salts, and the multitudinous more complex substances; yet he knows no more than.h.e^id_at_first about this hypothetical/ primitive atom. And similarly, though we have seen* reason for thinking I that there is a primitive unit of consciousness, that sensations of all orders are formed of suck units combined in various relations, that by the compounding of these sensations and their various relations are produced perceptions and ideas., and so on up to the highest thoughts and emotions; yet this unit of consciousness remains inscrutable. Suppose it to have become quite clear that a shock in consciousness and a molecular motion, are the subjective and objective faces of the same thing; we continue utterly incapable of uniting the two, so as to conceive that reality of which they are the opposite faces. Lefc us consider how either face is framed in our thoughts.
The conception of a rhythmically-moving mass of sensible matter, is a synthesis of certain states of consciousness that stand related in a certain succession. The conception of a rhythmically-moving molecule, is one in which these states and their relations have been reduced to the extremes t limits of dimension representable to the mind, and are then assumed to be further reduced far beyond the limits of representation. So that this rhythmically-moving molecule,/' which is our unit of composition of external phenomena, is; mental in a three-fold sense — our experiences of a rhythm i--Gaily-moving BJ§SS, whence the conception of it is deriyed, are states of mind, having objective counterparts that are unknown; the derived conception of a rhythmically-moving -molecule, is formed of states of mind that have no directlypresented objective counterparts at all; and when we try to think of the rhythmically-moving molecule as we suppose it to exist, we do so by imagining that we have re-represented these representative states, en an infinitely-reduced scale. jSojhat the unit out of which we build pur interpretation of material phenomena, is^ triply ideal. > ' J On the other hand, what are we to think of this ideal unit, considered as a portion of Mind? It arises, a3 we have seen, by synthesis of many feelings, real arsd ideal,; and of the many changes among them. What are feelings? What is changed? And what changes it? If to avoid s s obvious implications of a materiality,, we call each element of this ideal unit, a state of consciousness, we only get into other similar implications. The conception of a state of consciousness implies the conception of an existence which has the state. "When on decomposing certain of our feelings we find them formed of minute shocks, succeeding one another with different rapidities and in different combinations; and when we conclude that all our feelings are probably formed of such units of consciousness variously combined, we are still obliged to conceive this unit of consciousness as a change wrought by some force in something. ISTo effort of imagination enables us to think of a shock, however minute, except as undergone by an entity. We are compelled, therefore, to postulate a substance of Mind that is affected, before we can think of its affections. But we can form no notion of a substance of Mind absolutely divested of attributes connoted by the word substance; and all such attributes are abstracted from our experiences of material phenomena. Expel from the conception of Mind every one of those attributes by which we distinguish a.n external something from an external nothing, and the conception of Mind becomes nothing. If to escape this difficulty we repudiate the expression " state of consciousness/' and call each undecomposable feeling ' c a consciousness," we merely get out of one difficulty into another.
A consciousness, if not the state of a thing is itself a thing* And as many different consciousnesses as there are, so many different things there are. How shall we think of these so many independent things, having their differential characters, when^we have excluded all conceptions derived from external phenomena? We can think of entities that differ from one another and from nonentity, only by bringing into oitr thoughts the remembrances of entities which we distinguished as objective and material. Again, how are we to conceive these consciousnesses as either being changed one into another or as being replaced one by another? We cannot do this without conceiving of cause; and we know nothing of cause save as manifested in existences we class as material — either our own bodies or.surrounding things.
See then our predicament. "We can think of Matter only in terras, of Mind. We can thinTE of Mind only in terms of Matter. When we have pushed our explorations of the first to the uttermost limit, we are referred to the second for a final answer; and when we have got the final answer of the second we are referred back to the first for an interpretation of it. We find the value of x in terms of y; then we find the value of y in terms of &; and so on we may continue for ever without coming nearer to a solution. The antithesis of subject and object, never to be transcended wliile consciousness lasts,, renders impossible all knowledge of that Ultimate Keality in which subject and object are united.
§ 273. And this brings us to the true conclusion implied/ throughout the foregoing pages — the conclusion that it isjf ltimate Reality which_ is manifested to»S and objectively. For while the nature of that which is manifested under either form proves to b^ inscrutable, the order of its manifestations throughout all mental phenomena proves to be the same as the order of its * manifestations throughout all material phenomena.
The Law of Evolution holds of the inner world as it does of the outer world. On tracing up from its low and vague beginnings the intelligence which becomes so marvellous in the highest beings, we find that under whatever aspect! contemplated, it presents a, progressive transformation off like nature with the progressive transformation we trace in \ theJDmverse as a whole, no less than in each of it® parts.; If we study the development of the nervous system, we see ifcf advancing in integration, in complexity, in definiteness. If we turn to its functions, we find these similarly show an everincreasing inter-depQndence, an augmentation in number and I heterogeneity,, and a greater precision. If we examine the relations of these functions to the actions going on in the world around, we see that the correspondence between; them progresses in range and amount, becomes continually;more complex and more special, and advances through differentiations and integrations like those everywhere going on. And when we observe the correlative states of consciousness, we discover that these, too, beginning as ^simple, vague, and incoherent, become increasingly-numerous in their kinds, are united into aggregates which are | larger, more multitudinous, and more multiform, and evenjtually assume those finished shapes we see in scientific! generalizations, where definitely- quantitative elements are '; co-ordinated in definitely- quantitative relations.
Such are the results of a synthesis which we shall presently find verified by analysis. These are the conclusions to which Objective Psychology has brought us; and these are the conclusions to which we shall find ourselves led by that Subjective Psychology to.which we now pass.
APPENDICES.
ON THE ACTIONS OF ANAESTHETICS AND NARCOTICS.
WHILE omitting them from the text, I cannot refrain from here appending certain conclusions respecting the actions of Anaesthetics and Narcotics, to which I have been led while seeking an explanation of the anomalies referred to.
It is commonly supposed that these agents have special relations to nervous tissue, rather than to other tissues; and, because of the different effects they work, it is even assumed that some of them have elective affinities for the matter composing certain nervous centres rather than for that composing others. This last supposition, made without other warrant than that it renders certain of the facts intelligible, must be carried much further to account for all the facts. As the same anesthetic does not act in the same way on all persons, but here affects one centre more and here another, it must be assumed that the chemical compositions of these centres are in such cases interchanged — nay, as one drunken man becomes morose while another becomes affectionate, it must be supposed that different parts of the cerebral hemispheres have iu such cases interchanged their chemical compositions. Nor is even this the extreme of the difficulty. For since in the same individual the same quantity of the same anaesthetic will produce quite different effects in different states of the circulation; the hypothesis requires us to suppose that these contrasts of chemical composition among the nervous centres interchange from hour to hour.
If instead of a gratuitous assumption that leaves many of the effects unaccounted for, we make an assumption that is not gratuitous and renders the facts, general and special, intelligible, there cannot be a doubt which of the two is preferable. Setting out, then, with the generalization that these various substances that affeftt the nervous system — the vegeto-alkalies, the alcohols and ethers, nitrous oxide, ammonia, arsenic, the mineral acids, &c. — are substances that produce changes in albuminous matters, let us consider how their respective effects will be modified by the various conditions under which they act. Agents having powerful affinities for components of die tissues and fluids, given in small quantifies to avoid destruction of the membranes can scarcely reach the nervous system in uncombined states; and may be expected to work their respective effects through the instrumentalities of the compounds they have formed.