In the end, nothing will be changed, and this second opinion must gradually merge into the one first stated by me, and of which I take the responsibility. We may, therefore, put it out of consideration.

I have mentioned a third opinion, stating that it appeared to me to be radically false. Outwardly it is the same as the last; looked at superficially it seems even confused with it; but, in reality it is of a totally different nature. It supposes that sensation is an entirely psychological phenomenon. Then, having laid down this thesis, it undertakes to demonstrate it by asserting that sensation differs from the physical fact, which amounts to supposing that we cannot know anything but sensations, and that physical facts are known to us directly and by another channel. This is where the contradiction comes in. It is so apparent that one wonders how it has been overlooked by so many excellent minds. In order to remove it, it will be sufficient to recollect that we do not know anything other than sensations; it is therefore impossible to make any distinction between the physical object and the object of cognition contained in every sensation. The line of demarcation between the physical and the moral cannot pass this way, since it would separate facts which are identical.

We can, therefore, only deplore the error of all those who, to express the difference between mind and matter, have sought a contrast between sensation and physical facts. Physiologists, with hardly an exception, have fallen into this error; when contemplating in imagination the material working of the brain, they have thought that between the movement of cerebral matter and sensation there was a gulf fixed. The comparison, to have been correct, required to be presented in quite another way. A parallel, for instance, should have been drawn between a certain cerebral movement and the act of consciousness, and there should have been said: "The cerebral motion is the physical phenomenon, the act of consciousness the psychical." But this distinction has not been made. It is sensation en bloc which is compared to the cerebral movement, as witness a few passages I will quote as a matter of curiosity, which are borrowed from philosophers and, especially, from physiologists.

While philosophers take as a principle of idealism, that the mental can only know the mental, physiologists take, as a like principle, the heterogeneity existing, or supposed to exist, between the nerve impression and the sensation. "However much we may follow the excitement through the whole length of the nerve," writes Lotze,[18] "or cause it to change its form a thousand times and to metamorphose itself into more and more delicate and subtle movements, we shall never succeed in showing that a movement thus produced can, by its very nature, cease to exist as movement and be reborn in the shape of sensation...." It will be seen that it is on the opposition between molecular movement and sensation, that Lotze insists. In like manner Ferrier: "But how is it that the molecular modifications in the cerebral cells coincide with the modifications of the consciousness; how, for instance, do luminous vibrations falling upon the retina excite the modification of consciousness called visual sensation? These are problems we cannot solve. We may succeed in determining the exact nature of the molecular changes which take place in the cerebral cells when a sensation is felt, but this will not bring us an inch nearer to the explanation of the fundamental nature of sensation." Finally, Du Bois Reymond, in his famous discussion in 1880, on the seven enigmas of the world, speaks somewhat as follows: "The astronomical knowledge of the encephalon, that is, the most intimate to which we can aspire, only reveals to us matter in motion. But no arrangement nor motion of material particles can act as a bridge by which we can cross over into the domain of intelligence.... What imaginable link is there between certain movements of certain molecules in my brain, on the one hand, and on the other hand primitive, undefinable, undeniable facts such as: I have the sensation of softness, I smell the odour of a rose, I hear the sound of an organ, I see a red colour, &c...."

These three quotations show very conclusively that their authors thought they could establish the heterogeneity of the two phenomena by opposing matter to sensation. It must be recognised that they have fallen into a singular error; for matter, whatever it may be, is for us nothing but sensation; matter in motion, I have often repeated, is only a quite special kind of sensation; the organic matter of the brain, with its whirling movements of atoms, is only sensation. Consequently, to oppose the molecular changes in the brain to the sensation of red, blue, green, or to an undefined sensation of any sort, is not crossing a gulf, and bringing together things which cannot be compared, it is simply comparing one sensation to another sensation.

There is evidently something equivocal in all this; and I pointed this out when outlining and discussing the different theories of matter. It consists in taking from among the whole body of sensations certain of them which are considered to be special, and which are then invested with the privilege of being more important than the rest and the causes of all the others. This is about as illegitimate as to choose among men a few individuals to whom is attributed the privilege of commanding others by divine right. These privileged sensations which belong to the sight, the touch, and the muscular sense, and which are of large extent, are indeed extensive. They have been unduly considered as objective and as representing matter because they are better known and measurable, while the other sensations, the unextensive sensations of the other senses, are considered as subjective for the reasons that they are less known and less measurable: and they are therefore looked on as connected with our sensibility, our Ego, and are used to form the moral world.

We cannot subscribe to this way of establishing the contrast between matter and thought, since it is simply a contrast between two categories of sensations, and I have already asserted that the partitioning-out of sensations into two groups having different objective values, is arbitrary.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: CH. RENOUVIER et L. PRAT, La Nouvelle Monadologie, p. 148.]

[Footnote 16: An American author, MORTON PRINCE, lately remarked this: Philosophical Review, July 1904, p. 450.]

[Footnote 17: This FLOURNOY recently has shown very wittily. See in Arch. de Psychol., Nov. 1904, his article on Panpsychism.]

[Footnote 18: This extract, together with the two subsequent, are borrowed from an excellent lecture by FLOURNOY, on Metaphysique et Physiologie. Georg: Geneva, 1890.]



CHAPTER III

DEFINITION OF THE IMAGE

Going on with our inventory, after sensations come images, ideas, and concepts; in fact, quite a collection of phenomena, which, are generally considered as essentially psychological.

So long as one does not carefully analyse the value of ideas, one remains under the impression that ideas form a world apart, which is sharply distinguished from the physical world, and behaves towards it as an antithesis. For is not conception the contrary of perception? and is not the ideal in opposition to reality?

Thoughts have some characteristics of fancy, of freedom, even of unreality, which are wanting to the prosaicness of heavy material things. Thoughts sport with the relations of time and space; they fly in a moment across the gulf between the most distant objects; they travel back up the course of time; they bring near to us events centuries away; they conceive objects which are unreal; they imagine combinations which upset all physical laws, and, further, these conceptions remain invisible to others as well as to ourselves. They are outside the grip of reality, and constitute a world which becomes, for any one with the smallest imagination, as great and as important as the world called real. One may call in evidence the poets, novelists, artists, and the dreamers of all kinds. When life becomes too hard for us, we fly to the ideal world, there to seek forgetfulness or compensation.

It is, therefore, easy to understand, that it should have been proposed to carry into ideation the dichotomy between the physical and the moral. Many excellent authors have made the domain of the mind begin in the ideal. Matter is that which does not think. Descartes, in his Discours de la Methode (4th part), remarking that he may pretend "not to have a body, and that there is no world or place in which he exists, but that he cannot pretend that he does not think," concludes by saying that the mind is "a substance, all whose essence or nature is merely to think, and which has no need of either place or any other material thing, in order to exist;" in short, that "the soul is absolutely distinct from the body."[19]

Let us, then, examine in what measure this separation between perception and ideation can be legitimately established. If we accept this separation, we must abandon the distinction I proposed between acts and objects of cognition, or, at least, admit that this distinction does not correspond to that between the physical and the moral, since thoughts, images, recollections, and even the most abstract conceptions, all constitute, in a certain sense, objects of cognition. They are phenomena which, when analysed, are clearly composed of two parts, an object and a cognition. Their logical composition is, indeed, that of an external perception, and there is in ideation exactly the same duality as in sensation. Consequently, if we maintain the above distinction as a principle of classification for all knowable phenomena, we shall be obliged to assign the same position to ideas as to sensations.

The principal difference we notice between sensation and idea is, it would seem, the character of unreality in the last named; but this opposition has not the significance we imagine. Our mental vision only assumes this wholly special character of unreality under conditions in which it is unable to harmonise with the real vision. Taine has well described the phases of the reduction of the image by sensation: it is at the moment when it receives the shock of an image which contradicts it, that the image appears as illusory.[20] Let us suppose that we are sitting down dreaming and watching the passing by of our images. If, at this moment, a sudden noise calls us back to reality, the whole of our mental phantasmagoria disappears as if by the wave of a magic wand, and it is by thus vanishing that the image shows its falsity. It is false because it does not accord with the present reality.

But, when we do not notice a disagreement between these two modes of cognition, both alike give us the impression of reality. If I evoke a reminiscence and dwell attentively on the details, I have the impression that I am in face of the reality itself. "I feel as if I were there still," is a common saying; and, among the recollections I evoke, there are some which give me the same certitude as the perception of the moment. Certain witnesses would write their depositions with their blood. One does not see this every day; but still one does see it.

Further, there are thousands of circumstances where the ideation is neither in conflict with the perception nor isolated from it, but in logical continuity with it. This continuity must even be considered as the normal condition. We think in the direction of that which we perceive. The image seems to prepare the adaptation of the individual to his surroundings; it creates the foresight, the preparation of the means, and, in a word, everything which constitutes for us a final cause. Now, it is very necessary that the image appear real to be usefully the substitute of the sensation past or to come.

Let us establish one thing more. Acting as a substitute, the image not only appears as real as the sensation, it appears to be of the same nature; and the proof is that they are confounded one with the other, and that those who are not warned of the fact take one for the other. Every time a body is perceived, as I previously explained, there are images which affix themselves to the sensation unnoticed. We think we perceive when we are really remembering or imagining. This addition of the image to the sensation is not a petty and insignificant accessory; it forms the major part, perhaps nine-tenths, of perception. Hence arise the illusions of the senses, which are the result, not of sensations but of ideas. From this also comes the difficulty of knowing exactly what, under certain circumstances, is observation or perception, where the fact perceived ends, and where conjecture begins. Once acquainted with all these possibilities of errors, how can we suppose a radical separation between the sensation and the image?

Examined more closely, images appear to us to be divisible into as many kinds as sensations: visual images correspond to visual sensations, tactile to tactile, and so on with all the senses.

That which we experience in the form of sensation, we can experience over again in the form of image, and the repetition, generally weaker in intensity and poorer in details, may, under certain favourable circumstances, acquire an exceptional intensity, and even equal reality: as is shown by hallucinations. Here, certainly, are very sound reasons for acknowledging that the images which are at the bottom of our thoughts, and form the object of them, are the repetition, the modification, the transposition, the analysis or the synthesis of sensations experienced in the past, and possessing, in consequence, all the characteristics of bodily states. I believe that there is neither more nor less spirituality in the idea than in the sensation. That which forms its spirituality is the implied act of cognition; but its object is material.

I foresee a final objection: I shall be told that even when the unreality of the image is not the rule, and appears only under certain circumstances, it nevertheless exists. This is an important fact. It has been argued from the unreality of dreams and hallucinations in which we give a body to our ideas, that we do not in reality perceive external bodies, but simply psychical states and modifications of our souls. If our ideas consist—according to the hypothesis I uphold—in physical impressions which are felt, we shall be told that these particular impressions must participate in the nature of everything physical; that they are real, and always real; that they cannot be unreal, fictitious, and mendacious, and that, consequently, the fictitious character of ideation becomes inexplicable.

Two words of answer are necessary to this curious argument, which is nothing less than an effort to define the mental by the unreal, and to suppose that an appearance cannot be physical. No doubt, we say, every image, fantastical as it may seem as signification, is real in a certain sense, since it is the perception of a physical impression; but this physical nature of images does not prevent our making a distinction between true and false images. To take an analogous example: we are given a sheet of proofs to correct, we delete certain redundant letters, and, although they are printed with the same type as the other letters, we have the right to say they are false. Again, in a musical air, we may hear a false note, though it is as real as the others, since it has been played. This distinction between reality and truth ought to be likewise applied to mental images. All are real, but some are false. They are false when they do not accord with the whole reality; they are true when they agree; and every image is partly false because, being an image, it does not wholly accord with the actual perceptions. It creates a belief in a perception which does not occur; and by developing these ideas we could easily demonstrate how many degrees of falsehood there are.

Physiologically, we may very easily reconcile the falsity of the image with the physical character of the impression on which it is based. The image results from a partial cerebral excitement, which sensation results from an excitement which also acts upon the peripheral sensory nerves, and corresponds to an external object—an excitant which the image does not possess. This difference explains how it is that the image, while resulting from a physical impression, may yet be in a great number of cases declared false—that is to say, may be recognised as in contradiction to the perceptions.

To other minds, perhaps, metaphysical reasoning will be more satisfactory. For those, we propose to make a distinction between two notions, Existence or Reality, on the one hand, and Truth, on the other.

Existence or Reality is that of which we have an immediate apprehension. This apprehension occurs in several ways. In perception, in the first place. I perceive the reality of my body, of a table, the sky, the earth, in proportion to my perception of them. They exist, for if they did not, I could not perceive them. Another way of understanding reality is conception or thought. However much I may represent a thing to myself as imaginary, it nevertheless exists in a certain manner, since I can represent it to myself. I therefore, in this case, say that it is real or it exists. It is of course understood, that in these definitions I am going against the ordinary acceptation of the terms; I am taking the liberty of proposing new meanings. This reality is, then, perceived in one case and conceived in the other. Perceptibility or conceivability are, then, the two forms which reality may assume. But reality is not synonymous with truth; notwithstanding the custom to the contrary, we may well introduce a difference between these two terms. Reality is that which is perceived or conceived; truth is that which accords with the whole of our knowledge. Reality is a function of the senses or of ideation; truth is a function of reasoning or of the reason.

For cognition to be complete, it requires the aid of all these functions. And, in fact, what does conception by itself give? It allows us to see if a thing is capable of representation. This is not a common-place thing, I will observe in passing; for many things we name are not capable of representation, and there is often a criticism to be made; we think we are representing, and we are not. What is capable of representation exists as a representation, but is it true? Some philosophers have imagined so, but they are mistaken; what we succeed in conceiving is alone possible.

Let us now take the Perceptible. Is what one perceives true? Yes, in most cases it is so in fact; but an isolated perception may be false, and disturbed by illusions of all kinds. It is all very well to say, "I see, I touch." There is no certainty through the senses alone in many circumstances that the truth has been grasped. If I am shown the spirit of a person I know to be dead, I shall not, notwithstanding the testimony of my eyes, believe it to be true, for this apparition would upset all my system of cognitions.

Truth is that which, being deemed conceivable, and being really perceived, has also the quality of finding its place, its relation, and its confirmation in the whole mass of cognitions previously acquired.

These distinctions,[21] if developed, would readily demonstrate that the advantages of observation are not eclipsed by those of speculation; and that those of speculation, in their turn, do not interfere with those of observation. But we have not time to develop these rules of logic; it will be sufficient to point out their relation to the question of the reality of mental images. Here are my conclusions in two words. Physical phenomena and images are always real, since they are perceived or conceived; what is sometimes wanting to them, and makes them false, is that they do not accord with the rest of our cognitions.[22]

Thus, then, are all objections overruled, in my opinion at least. We can now consider the world of ideas as a physical world; but it is one of a peculiar nature, which is not, like the other, accessible to all, and is subject to its own laws, which are laws of association. By these very different characteristics, it separates itself so sharply from the outer world that all endeavour to bring the two together seems shocking; and it is very easy to understand that many minds should wish to remain faithful to the conception that ideas form a mental or moral world. No metaphysical reasoning could prevail against this sentiment, and we must give up the idea of destroying it. But we think we have shown that idea, like sensation, comprises at the same time the physical and the mental.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Let me say, in passing, that this separation that DESCARTES thinks he can establish between perception and ideation, is only conceivable on condition that it be not too closely examined, and that no exact definition of ideation be given. If we remark, in fact, that all thought is a reproduction, in some degree, of a sensation, we arrive at this conclusion: that a thought operated by a soul distinct from the body would be a thought completely void and without object, it would be the thought of nothingness. It is not, therefore, conceivable. Consequently the criterion, already so dangerous, which DESCARTES constantly employs—to wit: that what we clearly conceive is true—cannot apply to thought, if we take the trouble to analyse it and to replace a purely verbal conception by intuition.]

[Footnote 20: I somewhat regret that TAINE fell into the common-place idea of the opposition of the brain and thought; he took up again this old idea without endeavouring to analyse it, and only made it his own by the ornamentation of his style. And as his was a mind of powerful systematisation, the error which he committed led him into much wider consequences than the error of a more common mind would have done.]

[Footnote 21: I have just come across them again in an ingenious note of C. L. HERRICK: The Logical and Psychological Distinction between the True and the Real (Psych. Rev., May 1904). I entirely agree with this author. But it is not he who exercised a suggestion over my mind; it was M. BERGSON. See Matiere et Memoire, p. 159.]

[Footnote 22: In order to remain brief, I have not thought fit to allude in the text to a question of metaphysics which closely depends on the one broached by me: the existence of an outer world. Philosophers who define sensation as a modality of our Ego are much embarrassed later in demonstrating the existence of an outer world. Having first admitted that our perception of it is illusory, since, when we think we perceive this world, we have simply the feeling of the modalities of our Ego, they find themselves powerless to demonstrate that this illusion corresponds to a truth, and invoke in despair, for the purpose of their demonstration, instinct, hallucination, or some a priori law of the mind. The position we have taken in the discussion is far more simple. Since every sensation is a fragment of matter perceived by a mind, the aggregate of sensations constitutes the aggregate of matter. There is in this no deceptive appearance, and consequently no need to prove a reality distinct from appearances. As to the argument drawn from dreams and hallucinations which might be brought against this, I have shown how it is set aside by a distinction between perceptibility and truth. It is no longer a matter of perception, but of reasoning. In other words, all that we see, even in dreams, is real, but is not in its due place.]



CHAPTER IV

DEFINITION OF THE EMOTIONS

After sensations and images, we have to name among the phenomena of consciousness, the whole series of affective states—our pleasures and our pains, our joys and our griefs, our sentiments, our emotions, and our passions. It is universally admitted that these states are of a mental nature, for several reasons. (1) We never objectivate them as we do our sensations, but we constantly consider them as indwelling or subjective states. This rule, however, allows an exception for the pleasure and the pain termed physical, which are often localised in particular parts of our bodies, although the position attributed to them is less precise than with indifferent sensations. (2) We do not alienate them as we do our indifferent sensations. The sensations of weight, of colour, and of form serve us for the construction of bodies which appear to us as perceived by us, but as being other than ourselves. On the contrary, we constantly and without hesitation refer our emotional states to our Ego. It is I who suffer, we say, I who complain, I who hope. It is true that this attribution is not absolutely characteristic of mental phenomena, for it happens that we put a part of our Ego into material objects, such as our bodies, and even into objects separate from our bodies, and whose sole relation to us is that of a legal proprietorship. We must guard against the somewhat frequent error of identifying the Ego with the psychical.

These two reasons sufficiently explain the tendency to see only psychological states in the emotional ones; and, in fact, those authors who have sought to oppose mind to matter have not failed to introduce emotion into their parallel as representing the essence of mind. On this point I will recall the fine ironical image used by Tyndall, the illustrious English physicist, to show the abyss which separates thought from the molecular states of the brain. "Let us suppose," he says, "that the sentiment love, for example, corresponds to a right-hand spiral movement of the molecules of the brain and the sentiment hatred to a left-hand spiral movement. We should then know that when we love, a movement is produced in one direction, and when we hate, in another. But the Why would remain without an answer."

The question of knowing what place in our metaphysical theory we ought to secure for emotion seems difficult to resolve, and we even find some pleasure in leaving it in suspense, in order that it may be understood that a metaphysician is not compelled to explain everything. Besides, the difficulties which atop us here are peculiarly of a psychological order. They proceed from the fact that studies on the nature of the emotions are still very little advanced. The physical conditions of these states are pretty well known, and their psychical and social effects have been abundantly described; but very little is known as to what distinguishes an emotion from a thought.

Two principal opinions may be upheld in the actual state of our acquaintance with the psychology of the feelings. When we endeavour to penetrate their essential and final nature, we have a choice between two contrary theories.

The first and traditional one consists in seeing in emotion a phenomenon sui generis; this is very simple, and leaves nothing more to be said.

The second bears the name of the intellectualist theory. It consists in expunging the characteristic of the affective states. We consider them as derivative forms of particular modes of cognition, and they are only "confused intelligence." This intellectualist thesis is of early date; it will be found in Herbart, who, by-the-by, gave it a peculiar form, by causing the play of images to intervene in the formation of the feelings. However, this particular point is of slight Importance. The intellectualist theory is more vast than Herbartism; it exists in all doctrines in which the characteristic difference between thought and feeling is expunged and feeling is brought back to thought. One of the clearest means of so doing consists in only seeing in the feeling the fact of perceiving something. To perceive is, in fact, the property of intelligence; to reason, to imagine, to judge, to understand, is always, in a certain sense, to perceive. It has been imagined that emotion is nothing else than a perception of a certain kind, an intellectual act strictly comparable to the contemplation of a landscape. Only, in the place of a landscape with placid features you must put a storm, a cataclysm of nature; and, instead of supposing this storm outside us, let it burst within us, let it reach us, not by the outer senses of sight and condition, but by the inner senses. What we then perceive will be an emotion.

Such is the theory that two authors—W. James and Lange—happened to discover almost at the same time, Lange treating it as a physiologist and W. James as a philosopher. Their theory, at first sight, appears singular, like everything which runs counter to our mental habits. It lays down that the symptoms which we all till now have considered as the physiological consequence, the translation, and the distant effects of the emotions, constitute their essential base. These effects are: the expression of the physiognomy, the gesture, the cry, and the speech; or the reflex action on the circulation, the pallor or blushing, the heat mounting to the head, or the cold of the shiver which passes over the body. Or it is the heart, which hastens or slackens its beats, or makes them irregular, or enfeebles, or augments them. Or the respiration, which changes its rhythm, or increases, or is suspended. Or else it is the secretion of the saliva or of the sweat, which flows in abundance or dries up. Or the muscular force, which is increased or decays. Or the almost undefinable organic troubles revealed to us by the singing in the ears, constriction of the epigastrium, the jerks, the trembling, vertigo, or nausea—all this collection of organic troubles which comes more or less confusedly to our consciousness under the form of tactile, muscular, thermal, and other sensations. Until now this category of phenomena has been somewhat neglected, because we saw in it effects and consequences of which the role in emotion itself seemed slight, since, if they could have been suppressed, it was supposed that emotion would still remain. The new theory commences by changing the order of events. It places the physical symptoms of the emotions at the very beginning, and considers them the direct effects of the external excitant, which is expressed by this elegant formula: "It used to be said, 'I perceive a danger; I am frightened, I tremble.' Now we must say, 'I tremble before a danger, first, and it is after having trembled that I am frightened.'" This is not a change in order only; it is something much more serious. The change is directed to the nature of emotion. It is considered to exist in the organic derangements indicated above. These derangements are the basis of emotion, its physical basis, and to be moved is to perceive them. Take away from the consciousness this physical reflex, and emotion ceases. It is no longer anything but an idea.

This theory has at least the merit of originality. It also pleases one by its great clearness—an entirely intellectual clearness, we may say; for it renders emotion comprehensible by enunciating it in terms of cognition. It eliminates all difference which may exist between a perception and an emotion. Emotion is no longer anything but a certain kind of perception, the perception of the organic sensations.

This reduction, if admitted, would much facilitate the introduction of emotion into our system, which, being founded on the distinction between the consciousness and the object, is likewise an intellectualist system. The definition of emotion, as it is taught by W. James, seems expressly made for us who are seeking to resolve all intellectual states into physical impressions accompanied by consciousness.

By the side of emotion we may place, as demanding the same analytical study, the feeling of effort. We ought to inquire with effort, as has been done with emotion, what is the psychological nature of this phenomenon; and in the same way that there exists an intellectualist theory of the emotions, viz. that of James, who reduces all the history of the emotions to intelligence, so there exists an intellectualist theory of effort, which likewise tends to bring back, all will to intelligence. It is again the same author, that true genius, W. James, who has attempted this reduction. I do not know whether he has taken into account the parallelism of the two theories, but it is nevertheless evident. Effort, that basis of activity, that state of consciousness which so many psychologists have described as something sui generis, becomes to James a phenomenon of perception. It is the perception of sensations proceeding from the muscles, the tendons, the articulations, the skin, and from all the organs directly or indirectly concerned in the execution of movement. To be conscious of an effort would then be nothing else than to receive all these centripetal sensations; and what proves this is, that the consciousness of effort when most clearly manifested is accompanied by some muscular energy, some strong contraction, or some respiratory trouble, and yields if we render the respiration again regular and put the muscles back into repose.

To my great regret I can state nothing very clear regarding these problems. The attempt to intellectualise all psychical problems is infinitely interesting, and leads to a fairly clear conception, by which everything is explained by a mechanism reflected in a mirror, which is the consciousness. But we remain perplexed, and we ask ourselves whether this clearness of perception is not somewhat artificial, whether affectivity, emotivity, tendency, will, are really all reduced to perceptions, or whether they are not rather irreducible elements which should be added to the consciousness. Does not, for instance, desire represent a complement of the consciousness? Do not desire and consciousness together represent a something which does not belong to the physical domain and which forms the moral world? This question I leave unanswered.



CHAPTER V

DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS—THE RELATION SUBJECT-OBJECT

After having separated from the consciousness that which it is not, let us try to define what it is. This and the two following chapters are devoted to this study.

A theory has often been maintained with regard to the consciousness; namely, that it supposes a relation between two terms—a subject and an object, and that it consists exactly in the feeling of this relation. By subject is understood the something that has consciousness; the object is the something of which we are conscious. Every thought, we are told, implies subject and object, the representer and the represented, the sentiens and the sensum—the one active, the other passive, the active acting on the passive, the ego opposed to the non ego.

This opinion is almost legitimised by current language. When speaking of our states of consciousness, we generally say, "I am conscious; it is I who have consciousness," and we attribute to our I, to our Ego, to our personality, the role of subject. But this is not a peremptory argument in favour of the above opinion; it is only a presumption, and, closely examined, this presumption seems very weak.

Hitherto, when analysing the part of mind, we have employed non-committal terms: we have said that sensation implied consciousness, and not that sensation implied something which is conscious.[23] The difference may appear too subtle, but it is not; it consists in taking from consciousness the notion of a subject being conscious and replacing it by the very act of consciousness.

My description applies very exactly, I think, to the facts. When we are engaged in a sensation, or when we perceive something, a phenomenon occurs which simply consists in having consciousness of a thing. If to this we add the idea of the subject, which has consciousness, we distort the event. At the very moment when it is taking place, it is not so complicated; we complicate it by adding to it the work of reflection. It is reflection which constructs the notion of the subject, and it is this which afterwards introduces this construction into the states of consciousness; in this way the state of consciousness, by receiving this notion of subject, acquires a character of duality it did not previously possess. There are, in short, two separate acts of consciousness, and one is made the subject of the other. "Primitively," says Rabier, "there is neither representative nor represented; there are sensations, representations, facts of consciousness, and that is all. Nothing is more exact, in my opinion, than this view of Condillac's:—that primitively, the inanimate statue is entirely the sensation that it feels. To itself it is all odour and all savour; it is nothing more, and this sensation includes no duality for the consciousness. It is of an absolute simplicity."

Two arguments may be advanced in favour of this opinion. The first is one of logic. We have divided all knowledge into two groups—objects of cognition, and acts of cognition. What is the subject of cognition? Does it form a new group? By no means; it forms part of the first group, of the object group; for it is something to be known.

Our second argument is one of fact. It consists in remembering that which in practice we understand by the subject of cognition; or rather, metaphorically we represent this subject to ourselves as an organ—the eye that sees or the hand that touches—and we represent to ourselves the relation subject-object in the shape of a material relation between two distinct bodies which are separated by an interval and between which some action is produced which unites them. Or else, confusing the subject and the Ego, which are nevertheless two different notions, we place the Ego in the consciousness of the muscular effort struggling against something which resists. Or, finally and still more frequently, we represent the subject to ourselves by confusing it with our own personality; it is a part of our biography, our name, our profession, our social status, our body, our past life foreshortened, our character, or, in a word, our civil personality, which becomes the subject of the relation subject-object. We artificially endow this personality with the faculty of having consciousness; and it results from this that the entity consciousness, so difficult to define and to imagine, profits by all this factitious addition and becomes a person, visible and even very large, in flesh and bone, distinct from the object of cognition, and capable of living a separate life.

It is not difficult to explain that all this clearness in the representation of ideas is acquired by a falsification of the facts. So sensorial a representation of consciousness is very unfaithful; for our biography does not represent what we have called acts of consciousness, but a large slice of our past experience—that is to say, a synthesis of bygone sensations and images, a synthesis of objects of consciousness; therefore a complete confusion between the acts of consciousness and their objects. The formation of the personality seems to me to have, above all, a legal and social importance.[24] It is a peculiar grouping of states of consciousness imposed by our relations with other individuals. But, metaphysically, the subject thus understood is not distinguished from the object, and there is nothing to add to our distinction between the object and the act of consciousness.

Those who defend the existence of the subject point out that this subject properly constitutes the Ego, and that the distinction of the subject and the object corresponds to the distinction of the Ego and non-Ego, and furnishes the separation between the physical and the moral so long sought.

It is evidently very enticing to make of the Ego thus a primitive notion of the consciousness; but this view of the Ego as opposed to the non-Ego in no way corresponds to that of the mental and the physical. The notion of the Ego is much larger, much more extensible, than that of the mental; it is as encroaching as human pride, it grasps in its conquering talons all that belongs to us; for we do not, in life, make any great difference between what is we and what is ours—an insult to our dog, our dwelling, or our work wounds us as much as an insult to ourselves. The possessive pronoun expresses both possession and possessor. In fact, we consider our body as being ourselves.

Here, then, are numbers of material things introducing themselves into the category of mental things. If we wished to expel them and to reduce the domain of the Ego to the domain of the mental, we could only do so if we already possessed the criterion of what is essentially mental. The notion of the Ego cannot therefore supply us with this criterion.

Another opinion consists in making of the subject a spiritual substance, of which the consciousness becomes a faculty. By substance is understood an entity which possesses the two following principal characteristics, unity and identity, this latter merging into unity, for it is nothing else but the persistence of unity through the course of time. Certain philosophers have asserted that through intuition we can all establish that we are a spiritual substance. I am compelled to reject this idea, because I think the expression spiritual substance has no meaning; nothing but the sonorous value of six syllables. It has also been supposed, that there exists a corporeal substance hidden under the sensations, in which are implanted the qualities of bodies, as the various organs of a flower are in its calyx. I will return later to this conception of a material substance. That of a spiritual substance cannot be defended, and the chief and fatal argument I urge against it is, that we cannot represent it to our minds, we cannot think it, and we cannot see in these words "spiritual substance" any intelligible idea; for that which is mental is limited to "that which is of the consciousness." So soon as we endeavour to go beyond the fact of having consciousness to imagine a particular state which must be mental, one of two things happen; either we only grasp the void, or else we construct a material and persistent object in which we recognise psychical attributes. These are two conclusions which ought to be rejected.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 23: This second method of expression, which I consider inexact, is constantly found in DESCARTES. Different philosophers have explicitly admitted that every act of cognition implies a relation subject-object. This is one of the corner-stones of the neo-criticism of RENOUVIER. He asserts that all representation is double-faced, and that what is known to us presents itself in the character of both representative and represented. He follows this up by describing separately the phenomena and laws of the representative and of the represented respectively.]

[Footnote 24: The preceding ten lines in the text I wrote after reading a recent article of WILLIAM JAMES, who wishes to show that the consciousness does not exist, but results simply from the relation or the opposition raised between one part of our experience (the actual experience, for instance, in the example of the perception of an object) and another part, the remembrance of our person. But the argument of JAMES goes too far; he is right in contesting the relation subject-object, but not in contesting the existence of the consciousness (W. JAMES: "Does consciousness exist?" in J. of Philosophy, &c., Sept. 1904).]



CHAPTER VI

DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS—CATEGORIES OF THE UNDERSTANDING

It has often been said that the role of intelligence consists in uniting or grasping the relations of things. An important question, therefore, to put, is, if we know whereof these relations consist, and what is the role of the mind in the establishment of a relation?

It now and then happens to us to perceive an isolated object, without comparing it with any other, or endeavouring to find out whether it differs from or resembles another, or presents with any other a relation of cause to effect, or of sign to thing signified, or of co-existence in time and space. Thus, I may see a red colour, and occupy all the intellect at my disposal in the perception of this colour, seeing nothing but it, and thinking of nothing but it. Theoretically, this is not impossible to conceive, and, practically, I ask myself if these isolated and solitary acts of consciousness do not sometimes occur.

It certainly seems to me that I have noticed in myself moments of intellectual tonelessness, when in the country, during the vacation, I look at the ground, or the grass, without thinking of anything—or at least, of anything but what I am looking at, and without comparing my sensation with anything. I do not think we should admit in principle, as do many philosophers, that "we take no cognisance save of relations." This is the principle of relativity, to which so much attention has been given. Taken in this narrow sense, it seems to me in no way imperative for our thoughts. We admit that it is very often applied, but without feeling obliged to admit that it is of perpetual and necessary application.

These reserves once made, it remains to remark, that the objects we perceive very rarely present themselves in a state of perfect isolation. On the contrary, they are brought near to other objects by manifold relations of resemblance, of difference, or of connection in time or space; and, further, they are compared with the ideas which define them best. We do not have consciousness of an object, but of the relations existing between several objects. Relation is the new state produced by the fact that one perceives a plurality of objects, and perceives them in a group.

Show me two colours in juxtaposition, and I do not see two colours only, but, in addition, their resemblance in colour or value. Show me two lines, and I do not see only their respective lengths but their difference in length. Show me two points marked on a white sheet of paper, and I do not see only the colour, form, and dimension of the points, but their distance from each other. In our perceptions, as in our conceptions, we have perpetually to do with the relations between things. The more we reflect, the more we understand things, the more clearly we see their relations; the multiplication of relations is the measure of the depth of cognition.[25]

The nature of these relations is more difficult to ascertain than that of objects. It seems to be more subtle. When two sounds make themselves heard in succession, there is less difficulty in making the nature of these two sounds understood than the nature of the fact that one occurs before the other. It would appear that, in the perception of objects, our mind is passive and reduced to the state of reception, working like a registering machine or a sensitive surface, while in the perception of relations it assumes a more important part.

Two principal theories have been advanced, of which one puts the relations in the things perceived, and the other makes them a work of the mind. Let us begin with this last opinion. It consists in supposing that the relations are given to things by the mind itself. These relations have been termed categories. The question of categories plays an important part in the history of philosophy. Three great philosophers, Aristotle, Kant, and Renouvier have drawn up a list, or, as it is called, a table of them, and this table is very long. To give a slight idea of it, I will quote a few examples, such as time, space, being, resemblance, difference, causality, becoming, finality, &c.

By making the categories the peculiar possession of the mind, we attribute to these cognitions the essential characteristic of being anterior to sensation, or, as it is also termed, of existing a priori: we are taught that not only are they not derived from experience, nor taught us by observation, but further that they are presupposed by all observation, for they set up, in scholastic jargon, the conditions which make experience possible. They represent the personal contribution of the mind to the knowledge of nature, and, consequently, to admit them is to admit that the mind is not, in the presence of the world, reduced to the passive state of a tabula rasa, and that the faculties of the mind are not a transformation of sensation. Only these categories do not supplement sensation, they do not obviate it, nor allow it to be conjectured beforehand. They remain empty forms so long as they are not applied to experience; they are the rules of cognition and not the objects of cognition, the means of knowing and not the things known; they render knowledge possible, but do not of themselves constitute it, Experience through the senses still remains a necessary condition to the knowledge of the external world. It may be said that the senses give the matter of knowledge, and that the categories of the understanding give the form of it. Matter cannot exist without form, nor form without matter; it is the union of the two which produces cognition.

Such is the simplest idea that can be given of the Kantian theory of categories, or, if it is preferred to employ the term often used and much discussed, such is the theory of the Kantian idealism, This theory, I will say frankly, hardly harmonises with the ideas I have set forth up to this point. To begin with, let us scrutinise the relation which can exist between the subject and the object. We have seen that the existence of the subject is hardly admissible, for it could only be an object in disguise. Cognition is composed in reality of an object and an act of consciousness. Now, how can we know if this act of consciousness, by adding itself to the object, modifies it and causes it to appear other than it is?

This appears to me an insoluble question, and probably, even, a factitious one. The idea that an object can be modified in its nature or in its aspect comes to us through the perception of bodies. We see that, by attacking a metal with acids, this metal is modified, and that by heating a body its colour and form become changed; or that by electrifying a thread it acquires new properties; or that when we place glasses before our eyes we change the visible aspect of objects; or that, if we have inflammation of the eyelids, light is painful, and so on. All these familiar experiments represent to us the varied changes that a body perceived can undergo; but it must be carefully remarked that in cases of this kind the alteration in the body is produced by the action of a second body, that the effect is due to an intercourse between two objects. On the contrary, when we take the Kantian hypothesis, that the consciousness modifies that which it perceives, we are attributing to the consciousness an action which has been observed in the case of the objects, and are thus transporting into one domain that which belongs to a different one; and we are falling into the very common error which consists in losing sight of the proper nature of the consciousness and making out of it an object.

If we set aside this incorrect assimilation, there no longer remains any reason for refusing to admit that we perceive things as they are, and that the consciousness, by adding itself to objects, does not modify them.

Phenomena and appearances do not, then, strictly speaking, exist. Till proof to the contrary, we shall admit that everything we perceive is real, that we perceive things always as they are, or, in other words, that we always perceive noumena.[26]

After having examined the relations of the consciousness with its objects, let us see what concerns the perception, by the consciousness, of the relations existing between these objects themselves. The question is to ascertain whether the a priorists are right in admitting that the establishment of these relations is the work of the consciousness. The role of synthetic power that is thus attributed to consciousness is difficult to conceive unless we alter the definition of consciousness to fit the case. In accordance with the definition we have given and the idea we have of it, the consciousness makes us acquainted with what a thing is, but it adds nothing to it. It is not a power which begets objects, nor is it a power which begets relations.

Let us carefully note the consequence at which we should arrive, if, while admitting, on the one hand, that our consciousness lights up and reveals the objects without creating them, we were, on the other hand, to admit that it makes up for this passivity by creating relations between objects. We dare not go so far as to say that this creation of relations is arbitrary and corresponds in no way to reality; or that, when we judge two neighbouring or similar objects, the relations of contiguity and resemblance are pure inventions of our consciousness, and that these objects are really neither contiguous nor similar.

It must therefore be supposed that the relation is already, in some manner, attracted into the objects; it must be admitted that our intelligence does not apply its categories haphazard or from the caprice of the moment; and it must be admitted that it is led to apply them because it has perceived in the objects themselves a sign and a reason which are an invitation to this application, and its justification. On this hypothesis, therefore, contiguity and resemblance must exist in the things themselves, and must be perceived; for without this we should run the risk of finding similar that which is different, and contiguous that which has no relation of time or space. Whence it results, evidently, that our consciousness cannot create the connection completely, and then we are greatly tempted to conclude that it only possesses the faculty of perceiving it when it exists in the objects.[27]

According to this conception, the role of the consciousness in the perception of a connection is that of a witness, as in the perception of objects. The consciousness does not create, but it verifies. Resemblance is a physical property of objects, like colour; and contiguity is a physical property of objects, like form. The connections between the objects form part of the group object and not of the group consciousness, and they are just as independent of consciousness as are the objects themselves.

Against this conclusion we must anticipate several objections. One of them will probably consist in accentuating the difference existing between the object and the connection from the dynamical point of view. That the object may be passively contemplated by the consciousness can be understood, it will be said; but the relation is not only an object of perception—it is, further, a principle of action, a power of suggestion, and an agent of change.

It might, then, he supposed that the consciousness here finds a compensation for the role that has been withdrawn from it. If it is not the thing that creates the relation, it will be said, at least it is that which creates its efficacity of suggestion. Many psychologists have supposed that a relation has the power of evocation only when it has been perceived. The perception of resemblance precedes the action of resemblance. It is consequently the consciousness which assembles the ideas and gives them birth by perceiving their relations.

This error, for it is one, has long been wide-spread—indeed, it still persists.[28] We have, however, no difficulty in understanding that the perception of a resemblance between two terms supposes them to be known; so long as only one of the terms is present to the consciousness, this perception does not exist; it cannot therefore possess the property of bringing to light the second term. Suggestion is therefore distinct from recognition; it is when suggestion has acted, when the resemblance in fact has brought the two terms together, that the consciousness, taking cognisance of the work accomplished, verifies the existence of a resemblance, and that this resemblance explains the suggestion.

Second objection: we are told that the relations between the objects—that is, the principal categories—must be of a mental nature, because they are a priori. That they are a priori means that they are at once anterior and superior to the experience. Let us see what this argument is worth.

It appears that it is somewhat misused. With regard to many of the categories, we are content to lay down the necessity of an abstract idea in order to explain the comprehension of a concrete one. It is said, for example: how can it be perceived that two sensations are successive, if we do not already possess the idea of time? The argument is not very convincing, because, for every kind of concrete perception it is possible to establish an abstract category.

It might be said of colour that it is impossible to perceive it unless it is known beforehand what colour is; and so on for a heap of other things. A more serious argument consists in saying that relations are a priori because they have a character of universality and of necessity which is not explained by experience, this last being always contingent and peculiar. But it is not necessary that a function should be mental for it to be a priori. The identification of the a priori with the mental is entirely gratuitous. We should here draw a distinction between the two senses of the a priori: anteriority and superiority.

A simple physical mechanism may be a priori, in the sense of anteriority. A house is a priori, in regard to the lodgers it receives; this book is a priori, in regard to its future readers. There is no difficulty in imagining the structure of our nervous system to be a priori, in regard to the excitements which are propagated in it. A nerve cell is formed, with its protoplasm, its nucleus and its nucleoli before being irritated; its properties precede its functions. If it be possible to admit that as a consequence of ancestral experiences the function has created the organ, the latter is now formed, and this it is which in its turn becomes anterior to the function. The notion of a priori has therefore nothing in it which is repugnant to physical nature.

Let us now take the a priori in the sense of superiority. Certain judgments of ours are, we are told, universal and necessary, and through this double character go beyond the evidence of experience. This is an exact fact which deserves to be explained, but it is not indispensable to explain it by allowing to the consciousness a source of special cognitions. The English school of philosophy have already attacked this problem in connection with the origin of axioms. The principle of their explanation lies in the virtue of what they have termed "inseparable association." They have supposed that when an association is often repeated it creates a habit of thought against which no further strife is possible. The mechanism of association itself should then add a special virtue to the contingency of facts. A hundred repetitions of related facts, for example, would give rise to so firm an association, that no further repetition would increase it.

I consider this explanation a very sound one in principle. It is right to put into association something more than into experience. I would only suggest a slight correction in detail. It is not the association forged by repetition which has this virtue of conveying the idea of necessity and universality, it is simply the uncontradicted association. It has been objected, in fact, and with reason, to the solution of Mill, that it insists on a long duration of experience, while axioms appear to be of an irresistible and universal truthfulness the moment they are conceived. And this is quite just. I should prefer to lay down as a law that every representation appears true, and that every link appears necessary and universal as soon as it is formed. This is its character from the first. It preserves it so long as no contradiction in fact, in reasoning, or in idea, comes to destroy it.[29]

What seems to stand out most clearly after all these explanations is the role which we ought to attribute to the consciousness. Two rival theories have been maintained: that of the mirror-consciousness and that of the focus-consciousness. It would seem—I merely say it would seem—that the first of these best harmonises with the preceding facts. For what seems most probable is, that the consciousness illuminates and reveals but does not act. The theory of the focus-consciousness adapts itself less to the mechanism of the association of ideas.

From this we come quite naturally to see in the intelligence only an inactive consciousness; at one moment it apprehends an object, and it is a perception or an idea; at another time it perceives a connection, and it is a judgment; at yet another, it perceives connections between connections, and it is an act of reason. But however subtle the object it contemplates may become, it does not depart from its contemplative attitude, and cognition is but a consciousness.

One step further, and we should get so far as to admit that the consciousness serves no purpose whatever, and that it is a useless luxury, since, if all efficacious virtue is to be found in the sensations and the ideas which we consider as material facts, the consciousness which reveals them adds nothing to, takes nothing from and modifies nothing in them; and everything would go on the same, nor would anything in this world be changed, if one day the light of consciousness were, by chance, to be put out. We might imagine a collection of automatons forming a human society as complicated as, and not different in appearance from, that of conscious beings; these automatons would make the same gestures, utter the same words as ourselves, would dispute, complain, cry, and make love like us; we might even imagine them capable, like us, of psychology. This is the thesis of the epiphenomenal consciousness which Huxley has boldly carried to its uttermost conclusions.

I indicate here these possible conclusions, without discussing them. It is a question I prefer to leave in suspense; it seems to me that one can do nothing on this subject but form hypotheses.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 25: At the risk of being deemed too subtle, I ask whether we are conscious of a relation between objects, or whether that which occurs is not rather the perception of an object which has been modified in its nature by its relation with another object.]

[Footnote 26: This conclusion may seem contradictory to that which I enunciated when studying the constitution of matter. I then asserted that we only know our sensations and not the excitants which produce them. But these sensations are matter; they are matter modified by other matter, viz. our nervous centres.

We therefore take up very distinctly an opposite standpoint to the principle of relativity: in other terms, we reject the phenomenism of Berkeley.

When we go into metaphysics we are continually astounded to see how different conceptions of things which have a classic value are independent of each other. In general, phenomenism is opposed to substantialism, and it is supposed that those who do not accept the former doctrine must accept the latter, while, on the contrary, those who reject substantialism must be phenomenists. We know that it is in this manner that Berkeley conquered corporeal substantialism and taught phenomenism; while Hume, more radical than he, went so far as to question the substantialism of mind. On reflection, it seems to me that, after having rejected phenomenism, we are in no way constrained to accept substance. By saying that we perceive things as they are, and not through a deluding veil, we do not force ourselves to acknowledge that we perceive the substance of bodies—that is to say, that something which should be hidden beneath its qualities and should be distinct from it. The distinction between the body and its qualities is a thing useful in practice, but it answers to no perception or observation. The body is only a group, a sheaf of qualities. If the qualities seem unable to exist of themselves and to require a subject, this is only a grammatical difficulty, which is due to the fact that, while calling certain sensations qualities, we suppose a subject to be necessary. On the other hand, the representation which we make to ourselves of a material substance and its role as the support of the qualities, is a very naive and mechanical representation, thanks to which certain sensations become the supports of other and less important sensations. It would suffice to insist on the detail of this representation and on its origin to show its artificial character. The notion we have of the stability of bodies and of the persistence of their identity, notwithstanding certain superficial changes, is the reason for which I thought proper to attribute a substance to them, that is to say, an invariable element. But we can attain the same end without this useless hypothesis; we have only to remark that the identity of the object lies in the aggregate of its properties, including the name it bears. If the majority of its properties, especially of those most important to us, subsists without alteration, or if this alteration, though of very great extent, takes place insensibly and by slow degrees, we decide that the object remains the same. We have no need for that purpose to give it a substance one and indestructible. Thus we are neither adherents of phenomenism, nor of substantialism.]

[Footnote 27: I borrow from RABIER this argument, which has thoroughly convinced me (see Psychologie, p. 281).]

[Footnote 28: PILON is the psychologist who has the most forcibly demonstrated that resemblance acts before being perceived. I refer the readers to my Psychologie du Raisonnement, where I have set forth this little problem in detail.]

[Footnote 29: We think spontaneously of the general and the necessary. It is this which serves as a basis for the suggestion and the catchword (reclame), and it explains how minds of slender culture always tend towards absolute assertions and hasty generalisations.]



CHAPTER VII

DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS—THE SEPARABILITY OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS FROM ITS OBJECT—DISCUSSION OF IDEALISM

One last question suggests itself with regard to the consciousness. In what measure is it separable from the object? Do the consciousness and its object form two things or only one?

Under observation these two terms constantly show themselves united. We experience a sensation and have consciousness of it; it is the same fact expressed in two different ways. All facts of our perception thus present themselves, and they are one. But our reason may outstrip our observation. We are able to make a distinction between the two elements being and being perceived. This is not an experimental but an ideological distinction, and an abstraction that language makes easy.

Can we go further, and suppose one of the parts thus analysed capable of existing without the other? Can sensation exist as physical expression, as an object; without being illuminated by the consciousness? Can the consciousness exist without having an object?

Let us first speak of the existence of the object when considered as separated from the consciousness. The problem is highly complicated.

It has sometimes been connected with the idealist thesis according to which the object of consciousness, being itself a modality of the consciousness, cannot exist apart from it—that is to say, outside the periods in which it is perceived. It would therefore result from this that this separation between existence and perception might be made, when it is admitted (contrary to the idealist hypothesis) that the object perceived is material and the consciousness which perceives it mental. In this case, it will be thought, there is no link of solidarity between the consciousness and its continuity. But I am not of that opinion. The union of the consciousness and its object is one of fact, which presents itself outside any hypothesis on the nature of the object. It is observation which demonstrates to us that we must perceive an object to be assured of its existence; the reason, moreover, confirms the necessity of this condition, which remains true whatever may be the "stuff" of the object.

Having stated this, the question is simply to know whether this observation of fact should be generalised or not. We may, it seems to me, decline to generalise it without falling into a contradiction in terms. It may be conceived that the objects which we are looking at continue to exist, without change, during the moments when we have lost sight of them. This seems reasonable enough, and is the opinion of "common" sense.[30]

The English philosophers, Bain and Mill, have combated this proposition with extraordinary ardour, like believers combating a heresy. But notwithstanding their attacks it remains intelligible, and the distinction between being and being perceived preserves its logical legitimacy. This may be represented, or may be thought; but can it be realised?

So far as regards external objects, I think we all, in fact, admit it. We all admit a distinction, between the existence of the outer world and the perception we have of it; its existence is one thing, and our perception of it is another. The existence of the world continues without interruption; our perception is continually interrupted by the most fortuitous causes, such as change of position, or even the blinking of the eyes; its existence is general, universal, independent of time and space; our perception is partial, particular, local, limited by the horizon of our senses, determined by the geographical position of our bodies, riddled by the distractions of our intelligence, deceived by the illusions of our minds, and above all diminished by the infirmity of our intelligence, which is able to comprehend so little of what it perceives. This is what we all admit in practice; the smallest of our acts implies the belief in something perceptible which is wider and more durable than our astonished perceptions. I could not write these lines unless I implicitly supposed that my inkstand, my paper, my pen, my room, and the surrounding world subsist when I do not see them. It is a postulate of practical life. It is also a postulate of science, which requires for its explanations of phenomena the supposition in them of an indwelling continuity. Natural science would become unintelligible if we were forced to suppose that with every eclipse of our perceptions material actions were suspended. There would be beginnings without sequences, and ends without beginnings.

Let us note also that acquired notions on the working of our nervous system allow us to give this postulate a most precise form: the external object is distinct from the nervous system and from the phenomena of perception which are produced when the nervous system is excited; it is therefore very easy to understand that this object continues to exist and to develop its properties, even when no brain vibrates in its neighbourhood.

Might we not, with the view of strengthening this conclusion as to the continuous existence of things, dispense with this postulate, which seems to have the character of a grace, of an alms granted to us? Might not this continuous existence of objects during the eclipses of our acts of consciousness, be demonstrated? It does not seem to me impossible. Let us suppose for a moment the correctness of the idealist thesis: all our legitimate knowledge of objects is contained within the narrow limits of actual sensation; then, we may ask, of what use is the reason? What is the use of the memory? These functions have precisely for their object the enlarging of the sphere of our sensations, which is limited in two principal ways, by time and by space. Thanks to the reason, we manage to see in some way that which our senses are unable to perceive, either because it is too distant from us, or because there are obstacles between us and the object, or because it is a past event or an event which has not yet taken place which is in question.

That the reason may be deceived is agreed. But will it be asserted that it is always deceived? Shall we go so far as to believe that this is an illegitimate mode of cognition? The idealist thesis, if consistent, cannot refuse to extend itself to this extreme conclusion; for a reasoned conclusion contains, when it has a meaning, a certain assertion on the order of nature, and this assertion is not a perception, since its precise object is to fill up the gaps in our perceptions. Not being a perception, it must be rejected, if one is an idealist.

The idealist will therefore keep strictly to the perception of the moment, and this is so small a thing when deprived of all the conjectures which enrich it, that the world, if reduced to this alone, would be but the skeleton of a world. There would then be no more science, no possibility of knowledge. But who could make up his mind thus to shut himself up in perception?

I suppose, indeed, that there will here be quibbling. This objection will be made: that in the hypothesis of a discontinuous existence of things, reason may continue to do its work, provided the intervention of a possible perception be supposed. Thus, I notice this morning, on going into my garden, that the pond which was dry yesterday is full of water. I conclude from this, "It has rained in the night." To be consistent with idealism, one must simply add: "If some one had been in the garden last night, he would have seen it rain." In this manner one must re-establish every time the rights of perception.

Be it so. But let us notice that this addition has no more importance than a prescribed formula in a notarial act; for instance, the presence of a second notary prescribed by the law, but always dispensed with in practice. This prescribed formula can always be imagined or even understood. We shall be in accord with idealism by the use of this easy little formula, "If some one had been there," or even by saying, "For a universal consciousness...." The difference of the realist and idealist theory becomes then purely verbal. This amounts to saying that it disappears. But there is always much verbalism in idealism.

One more objection: if this witness—the consciousness—suffices to give objects a continuity of existence, we may content ourselves with a less important witness. Why a man? The eyes of a mollusc would suffice, or those of infusoria, or even of a particle of protoplasm: living matter would become a condition of the existence of dead matter. This, we must acknowledge, is a singular condition, and this conclusion condemns the doctrine.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 30: That is to say, the sense of the multitude.—ED.]



CHAPTER VIII

DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS—THE SEPARATION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS FROM ITS OBJECT—THE UNCONSCIOUS

I ask myself whether it is possible, by going further along this road of the separation between the consciousness and its object, to admit that ideas may subsist during the periods when we are not conscious of them. It is the problem of unconsciousness that I am here stating.

One of the most simple processes of reasoning consists in treating ideas in the same manner as we have treated the external objects. We have admitted that the consciousness is a thing superadded to the external objects, like the light which lights up a landscape, but does not constitute it and may be extinguished without destroying it. We continue the same interpretation by saying that ideas prolong their existence while they are not being thought, in the same way and for the same motive that material bodies continue theirs while they are not being perceived. All that it seems permissible to say is that this conception is not unrealisable.

Let us now place ourselves at the point of view of the consciousness. We have supposed up to the present the suppression of the consciousness, and have seen that we can still imagine the object continuing to exist. Is the converse possible? Let us suppose that the object is suppressed. Can the consciousness then continue to exist? On this last point it seems that doubt is not possible, and we must answer in the negative. A consciousness without an object, an empty consciousness, in consequence, cannot be conceived; it would be a zero—a pure nothingness; it could not manifest itself. We might admit, in strictness, that such a consciousness might exist virtually as a power which is not exercised, a reserve, a potentiality, or a possibility of being; but we cannot comprehend that this power can realise or actualize itself. There is therefore no actual consciousness without an object.

The problem we have just raised, that of the separability of the elements which compose an act of consciousness, is continued by another problem—that of unconsciousness. It is almost the same problem, for to ask one's self what becomes of a known thing when we separate from it the consciousness which at first accompanied it, is to ask one's self in what an unconscious phenomenon consists.

We have, till now, considered the two principal forms of unconsciousness—that in nature and that in thought. The first named unconsciousness does not generally bear that name, but is rather discussed under the name of idealism and realism. Whatever be their names, these two kinds of unconsciousness are conceivable, and the more so that they both belong to physical nature.

If we allow ourselves to be guided by the concept of separability, we shall now find that we have exhausted the whole series of possible problems, for we have examined all the possible separations between the consciousness and its objects; but if we use another concept, that of unconsciousness, we can go further and propound a new problem: can the consciousness become unconscious? But it is proper first to make a few distinctions. It is the role of metaphysics to make distinctions.[31]

Unconsciousness presupposes a death of the consciousness; but this death has its degrees, and before complete extinction we may conceive it to undergo many attenuations. There is, first, the diminution of consciousness.

Consciousness is a magnitude capable of increase and decrease, like sensation itself. According to the individual, consciousness may have a very large or a very small field, and may embrace at the same time a variable number of objects. I can pay attention to several things at the same time, but when I am tired it becomes more difficult to me. I lose in extension, or, as is still said, the field of consciousness is restricted. It may also lose not only in extent of surface, but in depth. We have all of us observed in our own selves moments of obscure consciousness when we understand dimly, and moments of luminous consciousness which carry one almost to the very bottom of things. It is difficult to consider those in the wrong who admit, with Leibnitz, the existence of small states of consciousness. The lessening of the consciousness is already our means of understanding the unconscious; unconsciousness is the limit of this reduction.[32]

This singular fact has also been noticed, that, in the same individual there may co-exist several kinds of consciousness which do not enter into communication with each other and which are not acquainted with each other. There is a principal consciousness which speaks, and, in addition, accessory kinds of consciousness which do not speak, but reveal their existence by the use of other modes of expression, of which the most frequent is writing.

This doubling or fractionation of the consciousness and personality have often been described in the case of hysterical subjects. They sometimes occur quite spontaneously, but mostly they require a little suggestion and cultivation. In any case, that they are produced in one way or other proves that they are possible, and, for the theory, this possibility is essential. Facts of this kind do not lead to a theory of the unconscious, but they enable us to understand how certain phenomena, unconscious in appearance, are conscious to themselves, because they belong to states of consciousness which have been separated from each other.

A third thesis, more difficult of comprehension than the other two, supposes that the consciousness may be preserved in an unconscious form. This is difficult to admit, because unconsciousness is the negation of consciousness. It is like saying that light can be preserved when darkness is produced, or that an object still exists when, by the hypothesis, it has been radically destroyed. This idea conveys no intelligible meaning, and there is no need to dwell on it.

We have not yet exhausted all the concepts whereby we may get to unconsciousness. Here is another, the last I shall quote, without, however, claiming that it is the last which exists. We might call it the physiological concept, for it is the one which the physiologists employ for choice. It is based upon the observation of the phenomena which are produced in the nervous system during our acts of consciousness; these phenomena precede consciousness as a rule, and condition it. According to a convenient figure which has been long in use, the relations of the physiological phenomenon to the consciousness are represented as follows: the physiological phenomenon consists in an excitement which, at one time, follows a direct and short route from the door by which it enters the nervous system to the door by which it makes its exit. In this case, it works like a simple mechanical phenomenon; but sometimes it makes a longer journey, and takes a circuitous road by which it passes into the higher nerve centres, and it is at the moment when it takes this circuitous road that the phenomenon of consciousness is produced. The use of this figure does not prejudge any important question.

Going further, many contemporary authors do not content themselves with the proposition that the consciousness is conditioned by the nervous phenomenon, but suggest also that it is continually accompanied by it. Every psychical fact of perception, of emotion, or of idea should have, it is supposed, a physiological basis. It would therefore be, taken in its entirety, psycho-physiological. This is called the parallelist theory.

We cannot discuss this here, as we shall meet with it again in the third part of this book. It has the advantage of leading to a very simple definition of unconsciousness. The unconscious is that which is purely physiological. We represent to ourselves the mechanical part of the total phenomenon continuing to produce itself, in the absence of the consciousness, as if this last continued to follow and illuminate it.

Such are the principal conceptions that may be formed of the unconscious. They are probably not the only ones, and our list is not exhaustive.

After having indicated what the unconscious is, we will terminate by pointing out what it is not and what it cannot be.

We think, or at least we have impliedly supposed in the preceding definitions, that the unconscious is only something unknown, which may have been known, or which might become known under certain conditions, and which only differs from the known by the one characteristic of not being actually known. If this notion be correct, one has really not the right to arm this unconsciousness with formidable powers. It has the power of the reality to which it corresponds, but its character of unconsciousness adds nothing to this. It is the same with it as with the science of the future. No scholar will hesitate to admit that that science will be deeper and more refined than that already formed. But it is not from the fact that it is unknown that it will deserve its superiority: it is from the phenomena that it will embrace. To give to that which is unconscious, as we here understand it, an overwhelming superiority over the conscious as such, we must admit that the consciousness is not only a useless luxury, but the dethronement of the forces that it accompanies.

In the next place, I decline to admit that the consciousness itself can become unconscious, and yet continue in some way under an unconscious form. This would be, in my opinion, bringing together two conceptions which contradict each other, and thus denying after having affirmed. From the moment that the consciousness dies, there remains nothing of it, unless it be the conditions of its appearance, conditions which are distinct from itself. Between two moments of consciousness separated by time or by a state of unconsciousness, there does not and cannot exist any link. I feel incapable of imagining of what this link could be composed, unless it were material—that is to say, unless it were supplied from the class of objects. I have already said that the substantialist thesis endeavours to establish a continuity between one consciousness and another separated by time, by supposing a something durable, of which the consciousness would be a property of intermittent manifestation. They would thus explain the interruptions of consciousness as the interruptions in the light of a lamp. When the light is extinguished, the lamp remains in darkness, but is still capable of being lighted. Let us discard this metaphor, which may lead to illusion. The concept of consciousness can furnish no link and no mental state which remains when the consciousness is not made real; if this link exists, it is in the permanence of the material objects and of the nervous organism which allows the return of analogous conditions of matter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 31: In metaphysics we reason, not on facts, but most often on conceptions. Now just as facts are precise so conceptions are vague in outline. Facts are like crystallised bodies, ideas like liquids and gases. We think we have an idea, and it changes form without our perceiving it. We fancy we recognise one idea, and it is but another, which differs slightly from the preceding one. By means of distinctions we ought to struggle against this flowing away and flight of ideas.]

[Footnote 32: I think I have come across in ARISTOTLE the ingenious idea that the enfeeblement of the consciousness and its disorder may be due to the enfeeblement and disorder of the object. It is a theory which is by no means improbable.]



CHAPTER IX

DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Let us resume the study of the preceding ideas in another form. Since, moreover, to define mind is at the same time to define psychology, let us seek for the truth which we can glean from the definitions of this science. Our object is not to discover an exact definition, but to make use of those already existing.

To define psychology is to describe the features of the domain over which this science holds sway, and at the same time to indicate the boundaries which separate it from its neighbours. At first sight this is an affair of geometric survey, presenting no kind of difficulty; for psychology does not merge by insensible transitions into the neighbouring sciences, as physics does with chemistry, for example, or chemistry with biology.

To all the sciences of external nature psychology offers the violent opposition of the moral to the physical world. It cannot be put in line with the physical sciences. It occupies, on the contrary, a position apart. It is the starting point, the most abstract and simple of the moral sciences; and it bears the same relation to them that mechanics does to the physical.

All this is doubtless true; and yet a very great difficulty has been experienced in condensing into a clear definition the essence of psychology. This is proved by the multiplicity of definitions attempted. They are so many because none of them has proved completely satisfactory. Their abundance shows their insufficiency. I will try to introduce a little order into these attempts, and propose to distribute the definitions of psychology into the following categories:—

1. The definition by substance; the metaphysical definition par excellence.

2. The definition by enumeration.

3. " " method.

4. " " degree of certainty.

5. " " content.

6. " " point of view.

7. " " the peculiar nature of mental laws.

We will rapidly run through this series of efforts at definition, and shall criticise and reject nearly the whole of them; for the last alone seems exact—that is to say, in harmony with the ideas laid down above.

Metaphysical definition has to-day taken a slightly archaistic turn. Psychology used to be considered as the science of the soul. This is quite abandoned. Modern authors have adopted the expression and also the idea of Lange,[33] who was, I think, the first to declare that we ought to cultivate a soulless psychology. This categorical declaration caused an uproar, and a few ill-informed persons interpreted it to mean that the new psychology which has spread in France under cover of the name of Ribot, sought to deny the existence of the soul, and was calculated to incline towards materialism. This is an error.

It is very possible, indeed, that several adepts of the new or experimental psychology may be materialists from inward conviction. The exclusive cultivation of external facts, of phenomena termed material, evidently tends—this is a mystery to none—to incline the mind towards the metaphysical doctrine of materialism. But, after making this avowal, it is right to add at once that psychology, as a science of facts, is the vassal of no metaphysical doctrine. It is neither spiritualist, materialist, nor monist, but a science of facts solely. Ribot and his pupils have proclaimed this aloud at every opportunity. Consequently it must be recognised that the rather amphibological expression "soulless psychology" implies no negation of the existence of the soul. It is—and this is quite a different thing—rather an attitude of reserve in regard to this problem. We do not solve this problem; we put it on one side.

And, certainly, we are right to do so. The soul, viewed as a substance—that is, as a something distinct from psychical phenomena, which, while being their cause and support, yet remains inaccessible to our direct means of cognition—is only an hypothesis, and it cannot serve as objective to a science of facts. This would imply a contradiction in terms.

Unfortunately; we must confess that if it be right to relegate to metaphysics the discussion on the concept of the soul, it does not really suffice to purge our minds of all metaphysics; and a person who believes himself to be a simple and strict experimentalist is often a metaphysician without knowing it. These excommunications of metaphysics also seem rather childish at the present day. There is less risk than some years ago in declaring that: "Here metaphysics commence and positive science ends, and I will go no further." There is even a tendency in modern psychologists to interest themselves in the highest philosophical problems, and to take up a certain position with regard to them.

The second kind of definition is, we have said, that by enumeration. It consists in placing before the eyes of the reader an assortment of psychological phenomena and then saying: "These are the things psychology studies." One will take readily as samples the ideas, reasonings, emotions, and other manifestations of mental life. If this is only a strictly provisional definition, a simple introduction to the subject, we accept it literally. It may serve to give us a first impression of things, and to refresh the memories of those who, by a rather extraordinary chance, would not doubt that psychology studies our thoughts. But whatever may be the number of these deeply ignorant persons, they constitute, I think, a negligible quantity; and, after these preliminaries, we must come to a real definition and not juggle with the problem, which consists in indicating in what the spiritual is distinguished from the material. Let us leave on one side, therefore, the definitions by enumeration.

Now comes the definition by method. Numbers of authors have supposed that it is by its method that psychology is distinguished from the other sciences.

To the mind is attached the idea of the within, to nature the idea of being without the mind, of constituting a "without" (un dehors). It is a vague idea, but becomes precise in a good many metaphors, and has given rise to several forms of speech. Since the days of Locke, we have always spoken of the internal life of the mind as contrasted with the external life, of subjective reality as contrasted with objective reality; and in the same way we oppose the external senses to the inner sense (the internal perception), which it has at times been proposed to erect into a sixth sense. Though no longer quite the Cartesian dualism, this is still a dualism.