NIVERSITY OF CA RIVERSIDE, LIBRARY 3 1210 01658 7287 THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE t : >«" IP* KnRS it * • ^'^M.-)-iT.Ma« W . ^ WW& MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS Nach ewigen, ehrnen, Grossen Gesctzen Miissen wir alle Unscres Daseins Kreise vollcnden. Nur allein der Mensch Vermag das Unmogliche; Er unterscheidet, Wahlet und richtet; Er kann dem A ugeriblick Dauer vcrlcihen. Er allein darf Den Gutcn lohnen, Den Boscn strafen, Heilen und retten ; Alles Irrendc, Schwcifende Niitdich verbinden." — Goethe, "Das Gottliche." MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS OTHER ESSAYS A. SETH PRINGLE-PATTISON, LL.D. PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON M C M 1 1 PREFACE. The title of this volume may seem disproportioned to its contents. A systematic discussion of: "man's place in the cosmos " would obviously involve the whole range of science and of metaphysics. These essays make no pretence to be such a discussion. Nevertheless it is not unadvisedly that the title of the first paper has been extended to the volume as a whole, and thus used to indicate the general character of its contents. The papers of which it is composed were written within the last six years, and are, in the first instance, a criticism of some of the more significant contributions to philosophy which have appeared during that period. They cannot, there- fore, be taken as a series, in which there is a systematic progress from the earlier essays to those which follow. But it will be found that they are all, at bottom, treat- ments of the same theme — man's relation to the forces of nature and to the absolute ground of things, or, in the words of the title, man's place in the cosmos. The books or pamphlets criticised were originally selected for Vl PREFACE. criticism because of their bearing upon this fundamental question, in which all vital interest in philosophy centres. And whatever the starting-point of the discussion may be, the main concern of every essay is to enforce the same view of the world and of man. That view I have described in one of the papers as humanism, in opposition to naturalism ; in another ref- erence, it might be described as ethicism, in opposition to a too narrow intellectualism. Man as rational, and, in virtue of self-conscious reason, the free shaper of his own destiny, furnishes us, I contend, with our only in- defeasible standard of value, and our clearest light as to the nature of the divine. He does what science, oc- cupied only with the laws of events, and speculative metaphysics, when it surrenders itself to the exclusive guidance of the intellect, alike find unintelligible, and are fain to pronounce impossible — he acts. As Goethe puts it in a seeming paradox, Man alone achieves the im- possible. But inexplicable, in a sense, as man's personal agency is — nay, the one perpetual miracle — it is never- theless our surest datum and our only clue to the mystery of existence. This position is maintained in several of the essays against the lower monism of the naturalistic systems. In the long essay entitled "A New Theory of the Ab- solute," it is defended against the Spinozism which per- meates Mr Bradley's statement of metaphysical monism. This essay emphasises, on the one hand, the necessary limitations of human insight, and, on the other hand, the validity or practical truth of our human rendering PREFACE. Vll of the divine. Such a view of the cosmos must rest ultimately, I think, upon a conviction of the absolute value of the ethical life. For there is no such thing as a philosophy without assumptions. Every idealistic theory of the world has for its ultimate premiss a logic- ally unsupported judgment of value — a judgment which affirms an end of intrinsic worth, and accepts thereby a standard of unconditional obligation. On account of this unity of contention, the essays have been brought together, in the hope that they may serve a useful purpose. The paper on Professor Huxley's " Evolution and Ethics " appeared in ' Blackwood's Maga- zine,' three of the others in the ' Contemporary Keview,' and the short paper on " The Use of the Term ' Natural- ism,' " in the ' Philosophical Eeview.' To the editors and proprietors of these Eeviews I am indebted for their courtesy in sanctioning this republication. The essays are republished without substantial alteration, but I have availed myself of the opportunity of revision, and have also reinserted a few passages which had been omitted, in order to bring the treatment within the ordinary compass of review-articles. The second part of the essay on " The ' New ' Psychology and Automatism," though written in 1892 as an integral part of the discussion, is now printed for the first time. It gives the question a wider range, and will be found, I hope, to make the treatment more complete. Mechanism in physiology, " presentationism " in psychology, materialism and sheer pantheism in philosophy, may be regarded as different aspects of the same preconception — the denial of the Vlll PKEFACE. presence of a real cause at any point in the sequence of events. I desire, in conclusion, to express my thanks to my colleague, M. Charles Sarolea, for his kindness in read- ing the proofs and making many helpful suggestions. University of Edinburgh, February 1897. NOTE TO SECOND EDITION. A second edition of these essays having been called for, I have taken the opportunity of including two papers, more recently written, whose subjects seemed germane to the main theme of the volume. Eor permission to reproduce these I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr John Murray, and the Editors of 'Blackwood's Magazine' and the ' Contemporary Review.' The other essays are reprinted from the first edition substantially without alteration, but account has been taken in the third of the new setting which Professor Miinsterberg has given to his theory in his later works. University of Edinburgh, October 1902. CONTENTS. MAN S PLACE IN THE COSMOS PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN ... 1 THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES AN INAUGURAL LECTURE, OCTOBER 1891 ... 22 THE " NEW " PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM (a) munsterberg's analysis of will ... 45 (6) knowledge and activity . . . . .81 A NEW THEORY OP THE ABSOLUTE mr bradley's ' appearance and reality ' . . .92 MR BALFOUR AND HIS CRITICS . . . .159 NOTE A. THE USE OF THE TERM " NATURALISM " . . 203 NOTE B. THE LEGITIMACY OF THE ARGUMENT FROM CONSEQUENCES 214 THE VENTURE OF THEISM ..... 218 THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE . 254 MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S Romanes Lecture on " Evolu- tion and Ethics " deservedly attracted a large amount of attention on its appearance. That attention was due not only to the importance of the subject handled and the reputation of the lecturer, but quite as much to the breadth and scope of the treatment, to the nobility of tone and the deep human feeling which characterised a singularly impressive utterance. Popular interest was also excited by the nature of the conclusion reached, which, in the mouth of the pioneer and prophet of evolu- tion, had the air of being something like a palinode. Criticisms of the lecture appeared at the time by Mr Leslie Stephen in the ' Contemporary Review,' and by Mr Herbert Spencer in a letter to the ' Athenaeum ' ; 1 and many discussions appeared in theological quarters. But the subject as a whole was perhaps dismissed from public attention before its significance had been exhausted, or 1 The Romanes Lecture was delivered on the 18th May 1893, and pub- lished shortly thereafter. Mr Spencer's letter appeared in the ' Athe- naeum ' of August 5, and Mr Leslie Stephen's article in the ' Contemporary Review ' of August 1893. The present paper was published in ' Black- wood's Magazine,' December 1893. A 2 man's place in the cosmos. indeed properly grasped. Professor Huxley's argument and the criticisms it called forth illuminate most in- structively some deep-seated ambiguities of philosophical terminology, and at the same time bring into sharp relief the fundamental difference of standpoint which divides philosophical thinkers. The questions at issue, moreover, are not merely speculative ; already they cast their shadow upon literature and life. The opportunity of elucidation is therefore in the best sense timely, and no apology seems needed for an attempt to recall attention to the points in dispute and to accentuate their significance. The outstanding feature of Professor Huxley's argument is the sharp contrast drawn between nature and ethical man, and the sweeping indictment of "the cosmic pro- cess" at the bar of morality. The problem of suffering and the almost complete absence of any relation between suffering and moral desert is the theme from which he starts, and to which he continually returns. " The dread problem of evil," " the moral indifference of nature," " the unfathomable injustice of the nature of things " — this is the aspect of the world which has burned itself deeply into the writer's soul, and which speaks in moving eloquence from his pages. The Buddhistic and the Stoic attempts to grapple with the problem are considered, and are found to end alike in absolute renunciation. " By the Tiber, as by the Ganges, ethical man admits that the cosmos is too strong for him ; and, destroying every bond which ties him to it by ascetic discipline, he seeks salva- tion in absolute renunciation " (p. 29). Is the antagonism, then, final and hopeless, or can modern science and philosophy offer any better reconciliation of ethical man with the nature to which as an animal he belongs, and to whose vast unconscious forces he lies open on every side ? As Professor Huxley puts the question himself in his PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 3 opening pages — Is there or is there not "a sanction for morality in the ways of the cosmos " ? Man has built up " an artificial world within the cosmos " : has human society its roots and its justification in the underlying nature of the cosmos, or is it in very truth an " artificial " world, which is at odds with that nature and must be in perpetual conflict with it ? The Stoic rule which places virtue in " following nature " is easily shown to be a phrase of many meanings, and to demand qualification by reference, first, to the specific nature of man, and then to a higher nature or guiding faculty within the mind of man himself. But the modern ethics of evolution ap- parently claim to have bridged the gulf and to have made the ethical process continuous with the cosmic process of organic nature, — they claim, in short, to exhibit the ethical life as only a continuation, on another plane, of the struggle for existence. If this claim is well founded, and the two worlds are really continuous, then the maxim, "Follow nature," will have been proved to be, after all, the sum and substance of virtue. It is against this naturalisation of ethics that Professor Huxley protests in the strongest terms. He readily allows that the ethical evolutionists may be right in their natural history of the moral sentiments. But " as the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as the other. . . . Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about ; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil, than we had before " (p. 31). That is to say, the origin of a belief and the validity of a belief, or the origin of a tendency and the ethical quality of that tendency, are logically two distinct questions. But the evolutionist is apt to make the answer to the first do 4 MAN S PLACE IN THE COSMOS. duty as an answer to the second also, because he has in reality no standard of appreciation to apply to any phenomenon except that of mere existence. "Whatever is, is right," or at all events, " Whatever is predominant, is right," is the only motto of the consistent evolutionist. This is embodied in the phrase " survival of the fittest," which is used — illegitimately, as we shall see — to effect the transition from the merely natural to the ethical world. In opposition to such theories, Professor Huxley con- tends that the analogies of the struggle for existence throw no light on the ethical nature of man. Cosmic nature is no school of virtue, but the headquarters of the enemy of ethical nature (p. 27). Self-assertion, the unscrupulous seizing upon all that can be grasped, the tena- cious holding of all that can be kept, . . . constitute the essence of the struggle for existence. . . . For his successful progress as far as the savage state, man has been largely indebted to those qualities which he shares with the ape and the tiger (p. 6). So far is this struggle from explaining morality that the practice of what is ethically best — what we call goodness or virtue — involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-assertion, it demands self-restraint ; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall help, his fellows. ... It repudiates the gladiatorial theory of existence. . . . Laws and moral precepts are directed to the end of curbing the cosmic process and reminding the individual of his duty to the community, to the protection and influence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at least the life of something better than a brutal savage. In short, " social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the substitution for it of PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 5 another which may be called the ethical process." This leads up to the characteristic call to arms with which the address concludes : " Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it" (pp. 33, 34). Such is the logical framework of the lecture. It is obvious that the important points of the treatment are : (1) The emphasis laid upon the division between man and nature, which a reviewer in the ' Athenaeum ' x called "an approximation to the Pauline dogma of nature and grace " ; and (2) the mood of militant heroism, not un- touched, however, by stoical resignation, which naturally results from contemplation of the unequal struggle be- tween the microcosm and the macrocosm. Before proceeding to consider the consistency of Pro- fessor Huxley's argument and the ultimate tenabi'ity of his position, I wish to say, in regard to the first point, how timely, it seems to me, is his insistence on the gulf between man and non-human nature ; how sound is the stand he takes upon the ethical nature of man as that which is alone of significance and worth in the "transitory adjustment of contending forces," which otherwise constitutes the cosmos. Whether the breach is to be taken as absolute or not, it is at least apparent that if man with his virtues and vices be included simpliciter and without more ado in a merely natural order of facts, we inevitably tend to lose sight of that nature within nature which makes man what he is. The tendency so to include man has become a settled habit in much of our current literature. I need not speak of the documents of so-called Naturalism, with their never-ending analysis of la bete humaine — analysis from which one would be slow to gather that any such 1 July 22, 1893. 6 MANS PLACE IN THE COSMOS. qualities as justice, purity, or disinterested affection had ever disturbed the brutish annals of force and lust. But in other quarters, even where the picture is not so dark, the fashion still is to treat man as a natural -product, — not as the responsible shaper of his destiny, but, void of spiritual struggles and ideal hopes, as the unresisting channel of the impulses which sway him hither and thither, and issue now in one course of action, now in another. This literature is inartistic, even on its own terms, for, blinded by its materialistic fatalism, it does not even give us things as they are. The higher litera- ture never forgets that man, as Pascal put it, is nobler than the universe ; and freedom (in some sense of that ambiguous term) may be held to be a postulate of true art no less than of morality. But besides being bad art, literature of this sort has a subtly corrosive influence upon the ethical temper. For the power of will, as Lamennais said, is that in us which is most quickly used up : " Ce qui s'use le plus vite en nous, c'est la volonteV' Hence the insidious force of the suggestion that we do not will at all, but are merely the instruments of our desires. For this is to justify, or at least to excuse, every passion on the ground of its " natural " origin. This temper of mind is found invading even more serious writers, and it is traceable ultimately to the same con- fusion between the laws of human conduct and the workings of nature in the irresponsible creatures of the field. M. Eenan, it will be remembered, delicately ex- cuses himself in his ' Souvenirs ' — rallies himself, as we may say — on his continued practice of chastity : — I continued to live in Paris as I had lived in the seminary. Later, I saw very well the vanity of that virtue as of all the rest. I recognised in particular that nature cares not at all whether man is chaste or not. I cannot rid myself [he says elsewhere in the same volume] of the idea that after all it is PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATDRE AND MAN. 7 perhaps the libertine who is right, and who practises the true philosophy of life. Many will remember, too, how Matthew Arnold took up this parable when he discoursed in America on the cult of the great goddess Lubricity, to which, as he said, contemporary France seemed more and more to be devot- ing herself. After much delicate banter and much direct plain-speaking, Mr Arnold turns upon M. Renan and cuts to the root of the fallacy in a single sentence. " Instead of saying that nature cares nothing about chastity, let us say that human nature, our nature, cares about it a great deal." And when we meet the same fallacy invading our own literature, the same answer will suffice. I think it may be worth pointing out a notable instance in a novel widely read and highly praised within the last few years. Mr Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles ' is unquestionably a powerful work, but it suffers, in my opinion, both artistically and ethically, from this tendency to assimilate the moral and the natural. To smack of the soil is in many senses a term of praise ; but even rustic men and women are not altogether products of the soil, and Mr Hardy is in danger of so regarding them. What I wish, however, to point out here is the pernicious fallacy which underlies a statement like the following. Tess, after she has fallen from her innocence, is wont to wander alone in the woods, a prey to her own reflections, " terrified without reason," says the author, by " a cloud of moral hobgoblins." It was they [he continues] that were out of harmony with the actual world, not she. "Walking among the sleeping birds in the hedges, watching the skipping rabbits on a moonlit warren, or standing under a pheasant-laden bough, she looked upon herself as a figure of guilt intruding into the haunts of innocence. But all the while she was making a distinction 8 man's place in the cosmos. where there was no difference. Feeling herself in antagonism, she was quite in accord. She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly. The implication of such a passage is that the "accepted social law " is a mere convention, and that the deeper truth, " the actual world," is to be found in the hedgerows and the warrens. To satisfy an animal prompting without scruple or hesitation, and without the qualms of a fan- tastical remorse, is only to fufil the law of nature, and to put one's self in harmony with one's surroundings. The shallowness of such revolt against "accepted social laws" is too apparent to need further exposure. A convention truly, in one sense, the moral law in question is ; but upon this convention the fabric of human society and all the sanctities of the family rest. He must be strangely blinded by a word who deems this sanction insufficient, or who would pit in such a case a " natural " impulse against a " social " law. In view of pervasive misconceptions and fallacies like these, it is eminently salutary, I repeat, to have our attention so impressively recalled by Professor Huxley to the idea of human life as an wvperium in imperio — a realm which, though it rises out of nature, and remains exposed to the shock of natural forces, requires for its laws no foreign sanction, but bases them solely on the perfection of human nature itself. For, even though Professor Huxley's way of stating the opposition should prove ultimately untenable, the breach between ethical man and pre-human nature constitutes without exception the most important fact which the universe has to show ; and for a true understanding of the world it is far more vital to grasp the significance of this breach than to be misled by a cheap desire for unity and system into mini- mising, or even denying, the fact. PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 9 It is time, however, to examine Professor Huxley's position and arguments more closely. His critics have not been slow to remark upon the ambiguity lurking in the phrase " cosmic process," which occurs so often throughout the lecture, in antithesis to the ethical process — to the moral and social life of man. And they point with one accord to Note 19 as containing, in effect, a retractation of his own doctrine by Professor Huxley himself. " Of course, strictly speaking," we read in the note, "social life and the ethical process, in virtue of which it advances towards perfection, are part and parcel of the general process of evolution." As Mr Spencer pointedly asks, "If the ethical man is not a product of the cosmic process, what is he a product of ? " Or as Shakespeare expressed it in the often-quoted lines — " Nature is made better by no means But nature makes that means : so, o'er that art, Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes." If the cosmic process be understood in the full latitude of the phrase, this is, indeed, so obvious, and the critic's victory so easy, that it is hard to believe Professor Huxley's position rests altogether on a foundation so weak. The term "nature," and still more an expression like "the cosmic process," may be taken in an all-in- clusive sense as equivalent to the universe as a whole or the nature of things ; and if so, it is obvious that human nature with its ethical characteristics is embraced within the larger whole. The unity of the cosmos — in some sense — is not so much a conclusion to be proved as an inevitable assumption. Professor Huxley appar- ently denies this unity in the text of his lecture, and is naturally obliged to reassert it in his note. This con- stitutes the weakness of his position. The part must 10 man's place in the cosmos. be somehow included in the process of the whole ; there is no extra-cosmic source from which a revolt against the principles of the cosmos could draw inspiration or support. Now the strength of the evolutionary theory of ethics lies in its frank recognition of the unity of the cosmos ; and in this it is, so far, at one with the philosophical doc- trine of Idealism to which it is otherwise so much opposed — the doctrine which finds the ultimate reality of the universe in mind or spirit, and its End in the perfecting of spiritual life. But each of these theories exhibits the unity of the world in its own way. The way taken by the ethical evolutionists is to naturalise morality, to assimilate ethical experience to nature, in the lower or narrower sense in which it is used to denote all that happens in the known world except the responsible ac- tivities of human beings. And it is against this removing of landmarks that Professor Huxley, rightly, as it seems to me, protests. For though Mr Spencer and Mr Leslie Stephen may be technically in the right, inasmuch as human nature is unquestionably part of the nature of things, it is the inherent tendency of their theories to substitute for this wider nature the laws and processes of that narrower, non-human world, to which the term nature is on the whole restricted by current usage. This tendency is inherent in every system which takes as its sole principle of explanation the carrying back of facts or events to their antecedent conditions. And, as it happens, this is explicitly formulated by Mr Stephen, in his article in the ' Contemporary Review,' as the only permissible meaning of explanation : "To ' explain ' a fact is to assign its causes — that is, give the preceding set of facts out of which it arose." But surely, I may be asked, you do not intend to challenge a principle which underlies all scientific procedure, and which may PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 11 even claim to be self-evident ? I certainly do not pro- pose to deny the formal correctness of the principle, but I maintain most strongly that the current application of it covers a subtle and very serious fallacy, for the true nature of the cause only becomes apparent in the effect. Now, if we explain a fact by giving " the preceding set of facts out of which it arose," we practically resolve the fact into these antecedents — that is to say, we identify it with them. When we are dealing with some limited sphere of phenomena, within which the facts are all of one order — say, the laws of moving bodies as treated in mechanics — there may be no practical disadvantage from this limited interpretation of causation. But when we pass from one order of facts to another — say, from the inorganic to the organic, or, still more, from animal life to the self-conscious life of man — the inadequacy of such explanation stares us in the face. For " the preceding set of facts," which we treat as the cause or sufficient explanation of the phenomenon in question, is ex hypothesi different from the phenomenon it is said to explain ; and the difference is, that it consists of simpler elements. To explain, according to this view, is to reduce to simpler conditions. But if the elements are really simpler, there is the fact of their combination into a more complex pro- duct to be explained, and the fact of their combination in such a way as to produce precisely the result in ques- tion. And if we choose to take the antecedent conditions, as they appear in themselves, apart from the all-important circumstance of the production of this effect, we have, no doubt, a "preceding set of facts," but we certainly have not, in any true sense, the cause of the phenomenon. We have eliminated the very characteristic we set out to explain — namely, the difference of the new phenomenon from the antecedents out of which it appears to have been evolved. Hence it is that, in the sense indicated, all 12 man's place in the cosmos. explanation of the higher by the lower is philosophically a hysteron proteron. The antecedents assigned are not the causes of the consequents ; for by antecedents the naturalistic theories mean the antecedents in abstraction from their consequents — the antecedents taken as they appear in themselves, or as we might suppose them to be if no such consequents had ever issued from them. So conceived, however, the antecedents (matter and energy, for example) have no real existence — they are mere entia rationis, abstract aspects of the one concrete fact which we call the universe. The true nature of the antecedents is only learned by reference to the consequents which follow ; or, as I put it before, the true nature of the cause only becomes apparent in the effect. All ultimate or philosophical explanation must look to the end. Hence the futility of all attempts to explain human life in terms of the merely animal, to explain life in terms of the inor- ganic, and ultimately to find a sufficient formula for the cosmic process in terms of the redistribution of matter and motion. If we are in earnest with the doctrine that the universe is one, we have to read back the nature of the latest consequent into the remotest antecedent. Only then is the one, in any true sense, the cause of the other. Applying this to the present question, we may say that, just as within the limits of the organic world there may be exhibited an intelligible evolution of living forms, so within the moral world we may certainly have an evolution of the moral sentiments and of the institutions which subserve ethical conduct. But as, in the one case, we must start with the fact of life — that is to say, with the characteristic ways of behaving which are found in living matter and which are not found in dead matter — so, in the other case, we must carry with us from the outset the characteristics or postulates of moral experience — namely, self-consciousness, with the sense of respon- PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 13 sibility, and the capacity for sympathy which is based on the ability to represent to one's self the life and feelings of another. Such an evolution within the moral sphere does not justify us in presenting morality as an "evolution" from non-moral conditions — that is, in re- solving morality into non-moral elements. And this Mr Leslie Stephen seems to admit in an important passage of the article already referred to. " Morality proper," he says, " begins when sympathy begins ; when we really desire the happiness of others, or, as Kant says, when we treat other men as an end, and not simply as a means. Undoubtedly this involves a new principle no less than the essential principle of all true morality." I cannot but regard this as an important admission, but at the same time I am bound to say that, till I met this unex- pected sentence of Mr Stephen's, I had supposed that the admission of " a new principle " was precisely what the evolutionists were, of all things, most anxious to avoid. It seems to me, therefore, that though Professor Huxley may have put himself technically in the wrong by speaking of "the cosmical process," his contention is far from being so inept as a verbal criticism would make it appear. It is really directed against the sub- mergence of ethical man in the processes of non-ethical and non-human nature; and if any justification is to be sought for the use of the phrase, we may find it in the tendency inherent in the evolutionary method of explanation — the tendency already explained to sub- stantiate antecedents in abstraction from their conse- quents, and thus practically to identify the cosmos with its lowest aspects. If the evolutionists do not make this identification in their own minds, they are at least singularly successful in producing that impres- sion upon their readers. 14 man's place in the cosmos. On another important point connected with, and indeed involved in, the foregoing, Professor Huxley, by an unguarded statement, laid himself open to a pretty obvious and apparently conclusive rejoinder. " The cosmic process," he says in one place, " has no sort of relation to moral ends." But " the moral indif- ference of nature," even in the restricted sense of the term, cannot be maintained so absolutely. Nature undoubtedly puts a premium upon certain virtues, and punishes certain modes of excess and defect by decrease of vitality and positive pain. As Mr Stephen says, " that chastity, temperance, truthfulness, and energy are on the whole advantages both to the individual and the race does not, I fancy, require elaborate proof, nor need I argue at length that the races in which they are common will therefore have inevitable advantages in the struggle for existence." But if so, then it would seem that cosmic nature is not, as it was represented, " the headquarters of the enemy of ethical nature " ; to a certain extent it may even be regarded as a " school of virtue." The sphere, however, in which this holds true is a comparatively limited one, being substantially restricted to temper- ance, in the Greek sense of the word — that is to say, moderation in the indulgence of the animal appetites, to which may, no doubt, be added, with Mr Stephen, energy. But nature, as distinct from that human nature which organises itself into societies and adds its own sanctions to the moral ideal which it is con- tinually widening and deepening — non-human nature seems to have no sanctions even for such fundamental virtues as truthfulness, justice, and beneficence, still less for the finer shades and higher nobilities of char- acter in which human nature flowers. And even in regard to the list of virtues cited, it might be argued PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 15 that cosmic nature sanctions and furthers them only when we deliberately restrict our survey to the present stage of the evolutionary process — the stage during which man has grown to be what he is on this planet. Within this limited period nature, through the struggle for existence, may be said to have favoured the evolu- tion of the morally best. But it is no intrinsic quality of the struggle to produce this result. Here, it appears to me, we strike upon the deeper truth which prompted Professor Huxley's somewhat unguarded statement, and we are under an important obligation to him for the exposure of what he appropriately calls "the fallacy of the fittest." Fittest [he writes] has a connotation of " best " ; and about best there hangs a moral flavour. In cosmic nature, however, what is " fittest " depends upon the conditions. Long since, I ventured to point out that if our hemisphere were to cool again, the survival of the fittest might bring about, in the vegetable kingdom, a population of more and more stunted and humbler and humbler organisms, until the " fittest " that survived might be nothing but lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic organisms as those which give red snow its colour ; while, if it became hotter, the pleasant valleys of the Thames and Isis might be unin- habitable by any animated beings save those that flourish in a tropical jungle. They, as the fittest, the best adapted to the changed conditions, would survive (p. 32). Mr Spencer has been forward to emphasise his agree- ment with this position, and has recalled attention to an essay of his own, twenty years old, in which he makes the same distinction: — The law is not the survival of the " better " or the " stronger," if we give to these words anything like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under, the conditions in 16 man's place in the cosmos. which they are placed ; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival. Superiority, whether in size, strength, activity, or sagacity, is, other things equal, at the cost of diminished fertility ; and where the life led by a species does not demand these higher attributes, the species profits by decrease of them, and accompanying increase of fertility. This is the reason why there occur so many cases of retrograde metamorphosis. . . . When it is remembered that these cases outnumber all others, it will be seen that the expression " survivorship of the better" is wholly inappropriate. 1 Out of the mouth of two such witnesses this point may be taken as established. But if so, I entirely fail to see where, on naturalistic principles, we get our standard of higher and lower, of better and worse. If changed conditions of life were to lead to the de- humanising of the race, to the dropping one by one of the ethical qualities which we are accustomed to commend, whence the justification for pronouncing this process a " retrograde metamorphosis " ? There can be no other sense of better or worse on the theory than more or less successful adaptation to the conditions of the environment, and what survives is best just because it survives. The latest stage of the process must neces- sarily, therefore, be better than all that went before, from the mere fact that it has maintained itself. Mere existence is the only test we have to apply, and at every stage it would seem that we are bound to say, Whatever is, is right. But this is tantamount to saying that when the theory of evolution is taken in its widest scope, it is not really legitimate to say that nature abets or sanctions morality ; since the result of further evolution — or, to speak more properly, of further cosmical changes — might be to dethrone our present ethical 1 Essays, vol. i, p. 379, "Mr Martineau on Evolution." PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 17 conduct from its temporary position as the fittest, and to leave no scope for what we now regard as virtue. The type of conduct which would then succeed, and which would so far have the sanction of nature on its side, we should be constrained, it seems to me, to pro- nounce superior to the conduct which, from our present point of view, seems to us better, because the latter, if adopted, would in the altered circumstances set us at variance with our surroundings, and so fail. Failure or success in the struggle for existence must, on the theory, be the sole moral standard. Good is what survives ; evil is what once was fittest, but is so no longer. Thus, our present good may become — nay, is inevitably becoming — evil, and that not, as might be contended, in the sense of merging in a higher good. We have no guarantee that the movement of change, miscalled evolution, must continue in the line of past progress : it may gradually, and as it were imperceptibly, assume another direction — a direction which our present moral ideas would condemn as retrograde. Yet, none the less, the mere fact of change would be sufficient to convert our present good into evil. Such, I must insist, is the only logical position of a naturalistic ethics. But an important outcome of the recent discussion has been to show that the most prom- inent upholders of the theory do not hold it in its logical form. Mr Spencer, as we have seen, has strongly insisted that survival of the fittest does not mean sur- vival of the better, or even of the stronger ; and Mr Stephen tells us that the struggle for existence, instead of being the explanation of morality, " belongs to an underlying order of facts to which moral epithets cannot properly be applied. It denotes a condition of which the moralist has to take account, and to which morality has to be adapted, but which, just because it is a ' cosmic B 18 MANS PLACE IN THE COSMOS. process,' cannot be altered, however much we may alter the conduct which it dictates." Surely this comes very near to admitting Professor Huxley's contention, that our moral standard is not derived from the struggle for existence, but rather implies its reversal, substituting for selfishness sympathy for others, and, in Mr Stephen's own words, " the sense of duty which each man owes to society at large." Mr Spencer speaks of an "ethical check " upon the struggle for existence : it is our duty, he says, " to mitigate the evils " which it entails in the social state. " The use of morality," says Mr Stephen, " is to humanise the struggle, to minimise the sufferings of those who lose the game, and to offer the prizes to the qualities which are advantageous to all, rather than to those which serve to intensify the bitterness of the conflict." But this is neither more nor less than to say that, as soon as man becomes social and moral, he has to act counter to the leading characteristics of the struggle for existence. He becomes animated by other ideals, or, to speak more strictly, he then first becomes capable of an ideal, of a sense of duty, instead of obey- ing without question the routine of animal impulse. But if this is so, I still ask the evolutionist who has no other basis than the struggle for existence, how he accounts for the intrusion of these moral ideas and standards which presume to interfere with the cosmic process, and sit in judgment upon its results ? This question cannot be answered so long as we regard morality merely as an incidental result, a by-product, as it were, of the cosmical system. It is impossible on such a hypothesis to under- stand the magisterial assertion by itself of the part against the whole, its demands upon the universe, its unwavering condemnation of the universe, if these demands are not met by the nature of things. All this would be an in- congruous, and even a ludicrous, spectacle if we had here PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 19 to do with a natural phenomenon like any other. The moral and spiritual life remains, in short, unintelligible, unless on the supposition that it is in reality the key to the world's meaning, the fact in the light of which all other phenomena must be read. We must be in earnest, I have already said, with the unity of the world, but we must not forget that, if regarded merely as a system of forces, the world possesses no such unity. It acquires it only when regarded in the light of an End of absolute worth or value which is realised or attained in it. Such an End-in-itself, as Kant called it, we find only in the self-conscious life of man, in the world of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness which he builds up for himself, and of which he constitutes himself a citizen. If it were possible to consider the system of physical nature apart from the intelligent activities and emotions of rational beings, those worlds on worlds, " Rolling ever From creation to decay," would possess in themselves no spark of the value, the intrinsic worth, which we unhesitatingly assert to belong, at least in possibility, to the meanest human life. The endless redistribution of matter and motion in stupendous cycles of evolution and dissolution would be a world without any justification to offer for its existence — a world which might just as well not have been. 1 But if we are honest with ourselves, I do not think we can embrace 1 Without encumbering the main argument by inopportune discussion, one may perhaps ask in a note in what sense even existence could be attributed to a system of unconscious forces — a material world per se. We cannot perform the abstraction required of us in conceiving such a system. Nature refuses to be divorced from the thoughts and feelings of her children and her lords, and we need not be subjective idealists to hold the literal truth of the poet's words that " in our life alone does Nature live." 20 man's place in the cosmos. the conclusion that the cosmos is a mere brute fact of this description. The demand for an End-in-itself — that is, far a fact of such a nature that its existence justifies itself — is as much a rational necessity as the necessity which impels us to refund any phenomenon into its ante- cedent conditions. And further, unless we sophisticate ourselves, we cannot doubt that we possess within our- selves — in our moral experience most conspicuously — an instance and a standard of what we mean by such in- trinsic value. As Carlyle has put it in one of his finest passages, — What, then, is man ! What, then, is man ! He endures but for an hour, and is crushed before the moth. Yet in the being and in the working of a faithful man is there already (as all faith, from the beginning, gives assurance) a something that pertains not to this wild death-element of Time ; that triumphs over Time, and is, and will be, when Time shall be no more. This conviction of the infinite significance and value of the ethical life is the only view-point from which, in Professor Huxley's words, we can "make existence intelligible and bring the order of things into harmony with the moral sense of man." And it is impossible to do the one of these things without the other. To under- stand the world is not merely to unravel the sequence of an intricate set of facts. So long as we cannot " bring the order of things into harmony with the moral sense of man," we cannot truly be said to have made existence intelligible : the world still remains for us, in Hume's words, "a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery." What, then, is Professor Huxley's final attitude ? The lecture breathes throughout the loftiest temper of ethical idealism. It is the writer's keen sense of the superiority of ethical man to non -ethical nature that prompts him PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 21 to pit Pascal's " thinking reed " in unequal struggle against the cosmic forces that envelop him ; and the noble words at the close stir the spirit by their impressive insistence on the imperishable worth of human effort inspired by duty. Yet this unflinching conviction does not lead Professor Huxley to what seems the legitimate conclusion from it — namely, that here only, in the life of ethical endeavour, is the end and secret of the universe to be found. It serves but to accentuate the stern pathos of his view of human fate. His ultimate attitude is, theo- retically, one of Agnosticism ; personally and practically, one of Stoical heroism. Substantially the same attitude, it appears to me, is exemplified in the Eeligion of Human- ity — the same despair. I mean, of harmonising human ideals with the course of the universe. The Eeligion of Humanity rightly finds in man alone any qualities which call for adoration or worship ; but it inconsistently sup- poses man to develop these qualities in a fundamentally non-ethical cosmos, and so fails to furnish a solution that can be accounted either metaphysically satisfying or ethi- cally supporting. But we must bear in mind, I repeat, the principle of the unity of the world. The attitude of the Agnostic and the Positivist is due to the separation which they unconsciously insist on keeping up between nature and man. The temptation to do so is intelligible, for we have found that nature, taken in philosophical language as a thing in itself — nature conceived as an independent system of causes — cannot explain the ethical life of man, and we rightly refuse to blur and distort the characteristic features of moral experience by submerging it in the merely natural. We easily, therefore, continue to think of the system of natural causes as a world going its own way, existing quite independently of the ethical beings who draw their breath within it. Man with his ideal standards and his infinite aspirations appears con- 22 man's place in the cosmos. sequently upon the scene as an alien without rights in a world that knows him not. His life is an unexplained intrusion in a world organised on other , principles, and no way adapted as a habitation for so disturbing and pretentious a guest. And the consequence is that he dashes his spirit against the steep crags of necessity, finds his ideals thwarted, his aspirations mocked, his tenderest affections turned to instruments of agony, and is driven, if not into passionate revolt or nerveless despair, then at best into stoical resolve. Some such mood as this appears also in much of Matthew Arnold's poetry, and is to my mind the explanation of its insistent note of sadness. " No, we are strangers here, the world is from of old, . . . To tunes we did not call, our being must keep chime." It is powerfully expressed in the famous monologue or chant in "Empedocles on Etna," with its deliberate renunciation of what the poet deems man's "boundless hopes " and " intemperate prayers." It inspires the fine lines to Fausta on " Kesignation," and reappears more incidentally in all his verse. But calm, as he himself reminds us, is not life's crown, though calm is well ; and the poet's " calm lucidity of soul " covers in this case the baffled retreat of the thinker. We have, in truth, no right to suppose an independent non-spiritual world on which human experience is incongruously superinduced. If we are really in earnest, at once with the unity of the world and with the necessity of an intrinsically worthy end by reference to which existence may be explained, we must take our courage in both hands and carry our convictions to their legitimate conclusion. We must con- clude that the end which we recognise as alone worthy of attainment is also the end of existence as such — the open secret of the universe. No man writes more pessi- PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON NATURE AND MAN. 23 mistically than Kant of man's relation to the course of nature, so long as man is regarded merely as a sentient creature, susceptible to pleasure and pain. But man, as the subject of duty, and the heir of immortal hopes, is restored by Kant to that central position in the universe from which, as a merely physical being, Copernicus had degraded him. To a certain extent this conclusion must remain a con- viction rather than a demonstration, for we cannot emerge altogether from the obscurities of our middle state, and there is much that may rightly disquiet and perplex our minds. But if it is in the needs of the moral life that we find our deepest principle of explanation, then it may be argued with some reason that this belongs to the nature of the case, for a scientific demonstration would not serve the purposes of that life. The truly good man must choose goodness on its own account ; he must be ready to serve God for naught, without being invaded by M. Kenan's doubts. As it has been finely put, he must possess " that rude old Norse nobility of soul, which saw virtue and vice alike go unrewarded, and was yet not shaken in its faith." l This old Norse nobility speaks to us again, in accents of the nineteenth century, in Pro- fessor Huxley's lecture. But because such is the temper of true virtue, it by no means follows that such virtue will not be rewarded with "the wages of going on, and not to die." 1 R. L. Stevenson, Preface to ' Familiar Studies of Men and Books.' THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 1 YOU will not find it wonderful if my feelings are deeply stirred in appearing before you to-day for the first time in my new capacity. There is no honour or privilege which I could possibly esteem higher than to teach philosophy in my own alma mater, and in the capital of my native land — to teach, moreover, in the Chair which, through the lustre of its occupants for half a century, is, in the mind of the country (I think I may say it without offence) in some respects the most famous of Scottish philosophical Chairs. All this is deeply grati- fying. But it also lays a heavy responsibility upon him 1 An Inaugural Lecture on assuming the duties of the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh, October 26, 1891. The Lecture is printed exactly as it was delivered, and the nature of the occasion will perhaps be held to excuse the personal references with which it opens. The general survey of the philosophical field which it under- takes, and the philosophical point of view indicated in the concluding pages, seem to give it a useful place in the present volume. But to pre- vent misconception, it may be well to append here the Prefatory Note which accompanied it on its original appearance : " The title of this Lec- ture may seem to promise too much. The Lecture does not profess to deal with the circle of the philosophical sciences, but only with the sub- jects traditionally associated with a Chair of Logic and Metaphysics in Scotland. Moreover, as the occasion demanded, it is addressed not so much to the expert as to the large general public interested in philosophy. " PRESENT POSITION OF PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 25 who succeeds to such great traditions. He who did not feel diffident at stepping into the place of these eminent men would be unworthy of the trust committed to him. I am deeply sensible of my own deficiencies, but I hope, if it is granted me, to live and learn. It is also a very gratifying experience to join as a col- league those who were the guides of one's youth. All are not here ; but of the seven Professors of the Arts cur- riculum in my time only two have been removed by death. One, the genial and universally beloved Kelland, passed away in the ripeness of his years. The other leaves an untimely gap, which speaks of recent loss and a common sorrow. One whose welcome to-day would have sounded with peculiar pleasantness in my ears, the generous and high-souled Sellar, has gone from us too soon ; and to those who knew him, his loss seems not less but greater as the days go by. All the more is it matter of heartfelt satisfaction to me that no such painful gap exists in connection with my own Chair — that I succeed my honoured and beloved teacher while he is yet among us in full health and in the unimpaired vigour of his powers. Long may he live to counsel us wisely and inspire us by his example, and to embody in literary form the ripe results of a life's re- flection. In these circumstances, and in his presence, it is not for me to pronounce any eulogy upon his thirty- five years of strenuous and fruitful work in this uni- versity, or to attempt to sum up his happily unfinished achievement. But I will at least record a little of what I personally owe to him. He taught me to think ; and' in the things of the mind that is the greatest gift for which one man can be indebted to another. Seventeen years ago I entered the Junior Logic class of this univer- sity, with a mind opening perhaps to literature, but still substantially with a schoolboy's views of existence ; and 26 THE PRESENT POSITION OF there, in the admirably stimulating lectures to which I listened, a new world seemed to open before me. What the student most needs at such a period is to be intellec- tually awakened. The crust of custom has to be broken, and the sense of wonder and mystery stirred within him. He should not be crammed with ready-made solutions of difficulties he has never been made to feel. Bather should he be sent " voyaging through strange seas of thought alone." He has to be induced to ask himself the world- old questions, and to ponder the possible answers. Above all, the listener should be made to feel that the questions of which the Professor speaks are not merely information which he communicates — that they are to him the most real things in the world, the recurring subjects of his deepest meditation. All this his students found realised in Professor Fraser's teaching. His sympathetic exposi- tion enabled us to catch the spirit of the most diverse systems, while his searching criticism prevented us from resting in any of those facile solutions which owe their simplicity to the convenient elimination of intractable elements. The sense of mystery and complexity in things, which he brought so vividly home to us, inspired a wise distrust of extreme positions and of systems all too per- fect for our mortal vision. This union of dialectical subtlety with a never-failing reverence for all that makes man man, and elevates him above himself, lives in the memory of many a pupil as no unworthy realisation of the ideal spirit of philosophy. I shall count myself happy if, with his mantle, some portion of his spirit shall be found to have descended upon his successor. I hope that, in the days to come, the dingy but famous class- room will be distinguished as of old by searching intel- lectual criticism and impartial debate, not divorced from that spirit of reverence and humility which alone can lead us into truth. THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 27 That reminds me that you will expect to hear from a new Professor some indication of the view he takes of his subject, and of the present outlook in connection with it. Anything that can be said on an occasion like the present must necessarily be of a very general character, but even so it may have a certain interest and usefulness. The discipline of the Chair, then, seems to me to be of a threefold character — logical, psychological, and meta- physical or philosophical in the strict sense. That is to say, we study, in the first place, the nature of the reason- ing process, or, to be more accurate, the nature of proof or evidence — the conditions to which valid reasoning- must conform. In the second place, we study, intro- spectively and otherwise, the phenomena of consciousness. We bring observation and experiment to bear upon those internal facts which are for each of us the only facts immediately present to us, the facts through which we know all other facts. We try to analyse and lay bare the inmost nature of those functions of knowing, feeling, and willing which lie " closer to us than breathing, nearer than hands or feet," — which constitute, in fact, our very life, the expression of the self in time. In the third place, we study, under the title of philosophy proper, the twofold question of Knowing and Being. On the one hand, we investigate human knowledge as to its con- stitutive notions and its scope or validity ; we discuss the question of the possibility of knowledge, as it is called, or the relation of knowledge to reality. This is what is termed Epistemology or Theory of Knowledge. On the other hand, so far as the discussion has not been already anticipated, we approach those questions as to the ultimate nature, the origin and destiny, of all that is, which have occupied the speculative intellect of mankind from the dawn of history, and will occupy it till its close. These may be embraced under the special title of Meta- 28 THE PRESENT POSITION OF physics, both Epistemology and Metaphysics falling under the wider designation of Philosophy. These three lines of training — the logical, the psycho- logical, and the philosophical — are cognate, and the first two are in a measure introductory or propaedeutic to the third. Both logic and psychology, at all events, if we go beneath the surface, lead us into the very heart of philosophical difficulties; and most treatments of either subject involve a tissue of metaphysical assumptions, of which the writer is, in all probability, either quite un- conscious or only half aware. But though the subjects are thus cognate and continuous, and so fitly combined under one Chair, the discipline they afford has in each case a character of its own. Logic gives a training almost purely abstract or formal, comparable in some respects with the mental discipline of mathematics — a training in clearness of thinking, in accuracy of definition, in appre- ciation of what is meant by demonstration or proof. Psychology brings us face to face with a concrete subject- matter — the actual facts of mental life. It views these facts, partly in themselves, but largely in their connection with material conditions and accompaniments. So far as it approaches these facts by the ordinary methods of observation and experiment, classifying them and en- deavouring to resolve complex phenomena into their simplest constituents or causes, — so far it affords a scien- tific discipline comparable to that gained, say, in the study of one of the natural sciences. And if it often lacks the exactness of the sciences of external nature, it has the advantage, as compared with them, of cultivating fresh powers of mind through the attitude of " reflection " or introspection which it is forced to take up. Self- observation or introspection is by no means so easy as the observation of a foreign object. We can more easily analyse a substance in a phial before us than we can THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 29 analyse the exact nature of what passes at any moment in our own mind. Hence Psychology, which incessantly calls for the exercise of this faculty, and sharpens and perfects it by constant use, was justly praised by Hamilton as one of the best gymnastics of the mind. Philosophy carries us into a more difficult region ; for here we deal not with any particular department of fact, but with the ultimate principles of knowledge and the ultimate con- stitution or meaning of the cosmos as such, including the prior question whether we are justified in speaking of a cosmos or orderly unity at all. These are questions of supreme and intimate concern to us all, seeing that they embrace the question of man's place and destiny in re- lation to the system of things. He to whom they have no voice must be either less or more than man. And I fail to see how any one can lay claim to a liberal educa- tion who is ignorant of what has been thought by the great minds of the past upon these subjects, or who is unacquainted with the elements of the problems as they face us to-day. The rudiments of such a knowledge are necessary, were it for nothing else, to enable any one to take an intelligent part in the incessant discussion and conflict of opinion which is so marked a feature of the present time. This threefold discipline may be justified, therefore, in a liberal curriculum, whether we look at it, from the formal side, as a discipline of mental powers otherwise untrained — as the cultivation of one whole side of human nature — or, on the concrete side, as a communication of knowledge of singular importance and interest. And its permanent value seems to me so high and unimpeachable, in both these respects, that it needs no defence at my hands. A defence is generally a confession of weakness. In offering such for philosophy, " we do it wrong, being so majestical." 30 THE PRESENT POSITION OF I turn, therefore, by preference, to say a little about the present outlook in the three departments to which reference has been made, and the way in which it seems to me that a philosophical Professor should shape his work at the present time. Logic I will pass over lightly — almost with a word — because, of the three, its dis- cussions are most technical in character. It appeals, therefore, least to a general audience. Moreover, if we penetrate beneath the surface and examine the foundations on which it rests, we are immediately involved in difficult questions of general philosophy ; and it becomes impossible to maintain a rigid distinction between Logic and Epis- temology and Metaphysics. For that reason the very conception or definition of the science has long been matter of keen debate, and at present the aspect of things is confessedly chaotic. The activity, however, in the higher theory of logic has of late been great both in this country and in Germany. I need only refer to the important treatises of Lotze, Sigwart, and Wundt in Germany, and of Bradley and Bosanquet in this country, not to speak of the more distinctively English work of Jevons, Venn, and others. The chaos, moreover, if at first bewildering, is not of the kind which should be disheartening to the serious student. It is of the kind which portends and accompanies growth, and bears in it the promise of future order. Evidently, however, such discussions do not lend themselves to exoteric exposition ; they belong to the labours of an advanced class of metaphysics. The other aspect of Logic is the elementary doctrine which has so long formed part of the curriculum of educated Europe — the ordinary formal logic, originally based upon Aristotle, to which has come to be added some discussion of the theory of scientific method and the conditions of inductive proof. It has been the fashion THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 31 of late with many philosophers to sneer at the logic of the schools ; but this is only justifiable, as it seems to me, when extravagant claims are made on its behalf. No doubt the ordinary logic depends on many uncriticised assumptions ; its analysis of the process of thought is often superficial ; it cannot stand as a coherent philo- sophical doctrine. All this is granted. The whole discipline is essentially of an elementary and propaedeutic character ; it is a continuation, in a more abstract form, of the grammatical training received at school. But just this circumstance, that it continues and attaches itself to the studies of the school, gives it a peculiar claim to stand as the gateway of the philosophical sciences ; whilst, on the other hand, the very defects and ambiguities which discussion reveals in many of its conceptions form an excellent stimulus to the opening mind, and introduce the student insensibly to important psychological and metaphysical problems. The formal mechanism may certainly, in great part, be relegated with advantage to text-book work and tutorial instruction. But even this is not to be despised ; I have always found it an admirable test in picking out the really clear-headed members of a class. Here there are no cloudy phrases in which to take refuge ; the issue is as clear and definite as in a mathematical proposition, and inaccuracy of mind is tracked remorselessly down. In view of these merits, which the study undoubtedly possesses, I cannot share the contempt frequently expressed for the logic of the schools. Its names and distinctions, moreover, have entered so largely into the thought, and even the familiar language, of the civilised races, that a certain acquaintance with its forms and processes may well be demanded in the interests of historical culture. It is not so long since a somewhat similar contempt for Psychology was current in the leading idealistic 32 THE PRESENT POSITION OF school of this country. The horror of the true-blue experientialist for what he calls " metaphysics " was amply repaid by the tone of condescension and indifference which the idealists * adopted towards " empirical psychology." Misled by a name, they visited upon the head of an unoffending science the inadequacies of Empiricism as a philosophical theory. Because the chief cultivators of psychology in England had been of the Empiricist per- suasion, and had frequently confounded the limits of psychology and metaphysics, the transcendentalists ta- booed the science as beneath the notice of a philosopher. Hence a state of unnatural division and mutual distrust — a distrust rooted in both cases largely in ignorance. To- day the situation is greatly changed. Psychology has become more scientific, and has thereby become more conscious of her own aims, and, at the same time, of her necessary limitations. Ceasing to put herself forward as philosophy, she has entered upon a new period of develop- ment as science ; and in doing so she has disarmed the jealousy, and is even fast conquering the indifference, of the transcendental philosopher. For whatever be the bearing of these psychological investigations upon philos- ophy—be their importance in that connection great, or be it small — it is at least certain that in the near future no philosopher will speak with authority, or will deserve so to speak, who does not show a competent acquaintance with the best work in psychology. The marvellous activity displayed just at present in the department of psychology constitutes, indeed, to an expert perhaps the most notable feature in the state of the philosophical sciences. In Germany and France, in America, and now in England, there may almost be said to be a " boom " in that direction. In Britain the study of psychology is a native growth, and it had long flourished in the hands of the Associationists, such as Hartley, James THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 33 and John Mill, and Professor Bain. But before such a school was heard of by name, the works of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume had brilliantly exemplified the national genius in that direction. As already indicated, however, the British thinkers of the past were far from keeping their psychology unadulterated. Betraying fre- quently an insular ignorance of the great metaphysical systems of ancient Greece and modern Europe, they gave us, in general, psychology and philosophy inextricably intermingled. The impulse towards a differentiation of provinces came from Germany, where the clearer form- ulation of aims and methods may be regarded as one beneficial result of the training which the German intellect has enjoyed at the hands of Kant and succeeding thinkers. But the influence of Germany upon psychological inves- tigation has not been limited to this formal or methodic stimulus. There has been much good work done there in psychology since the time of Kant. The psychology of Herbart and his followers is in many respects the more elaborate counterpart of English Associationism ; and artificial as his constructions often seem, it is acute and able work, which no modern student of the subject can afford to neglect. The names of Lotze and Wundt represent work at once brilliant and patient on in- dependent lines, and bring before us also the close connection between psychology and physiology, which is the distinguishing mark of most recent investigation in this department. Some of Lotze's most characteristic work was contained in the book he called 'Medical Psychology ' ; and ' Physiological Psychology ' is the name Wundt gives to his important treatise. Psychology, physiology, and physics meet in the great works of Helmholtz on ' Sensations of Tone ' and ' Physiological Optics.' Another mark of recent investigation is the potent influence exerted on psychology, as on all other C 34 THE PRESENT POSITION OF departments of knowledge, by the conception of evolution. Wherever life is met with, there the psychologist now finds material for illustrating and enlarging his science. The old meaning of yjrvxv has been revived, and the beginnings of a comparative psychology have come into being. The observation of abnormal mental developments, such as insanity, hysteria, the hypnotic state, and similar phenomena, forms another field assiduously cultivated by modern observers, especially in France, where, no less than in Germany and America, there is a large amount of psychological activity among the younger men. All these influences may be said to meet and come to fruition in the best English work of the last few years — such work, I mean, as Mr Ward's masterly treatise in the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' and Professor James's rich and stimulating volumes. Such work may not unreasonably be taken as marking the new departure that has been achieved in psychology — the critical maintenance of a purely psychological standpoint, the wider range of mate- rial, the more minute and experimental analysis. For one of the most striking results of the rapproche- ment between psychology and physiology just referred to has been the attempt to introduce experiment into psychological science. Starting from the experiments of Weber and the more extended psycho-physical researches of Fechner, but taking a wider scope, there has sprung up a new line of inquiry, which, under the name of Experimental Psychology, sometimes aspires to the dignity of a separate discipline, and looks back with no little condescension upon the observational and descrip- tive science with which we are familiar. Wundt has been the leader of this movement, and Leipzig its great centre ; but it is now widely spread in Germany, and has been enthusiastically taken up in America, where every well- equipped college aims at the establishment of a psycho- THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 35 logical or psycho -physical laboratory. England shows some disposition to follow in the wake. At least the University of Cambridge has voted a small sum for the same purpose, and the younger generation of Oxonians are found deserting the philosophy of Green to work in the laboratories of Freiburg, Leipzig, and Berlin. 1 Let me say at once, to prevent misconception, that I think the experimental psychologists magnify their office overmuch. The field of experiment is necessarily limited; it is limited to those cases where we are able to manip- ulate the physical and physiological processes which condition mental facts. The facts of sensation, the phenomena of movement, and the time occupied by the simpler mental processes, constitute, therefore, practically the whole accessible area. Within these limits, moreover, the results are often so contradictory as to leave every- thing in doubt; where definite results are obtainable, their value is often not apparent. Finally, many of the results are of a purely physiological nature, and are only by courtesy included in psychological science. These are the serious deductions which I think require to be made by a dispassionate observer of all this eager work. But the appetite for facts is a healthy symptom, and the whole movement is one which every student of psychology must take note of. We need not look for light from this quarter upon the problems of philosophy and the deeper mysteries of being; but it is impossible that so much patient ingenuity should be devoted to analysing the substructure of our mental life without ultimately im- portant effects upon our knowledge of the psychological mechanism. A collateral effect of this scientific development of 1 Some provision has been made for experimental work in London and other places since this was written, but the British] universities still lag far behind Germany and America in this respect. 36 THE PRESENT POSITION OF psychology has been an immense increase of detail-work. Already it is becoming more and more the practice for psychologists to publish elaborate monographs on special phenomena, or on comparatively small departments of the subject. The number of psychological journals has also largely increased. One result of this is obvious. As psychology becomes increasingly scientific in character, and as the literature of the subject becomes more and more voluminous, the severance between philosophy and psychology must necessarily become more pronounced; for it will become impossible for the same man to do original work in both departments. From the point of view of philosophy there might seem to be a certain advantage in this, as effectually preventing any further confusion between the two spheres and sets of problems. But this advantage is more apparent than real. For psychology, as the science of mental life, must always stand to philosophy in a more intimate relation than any of the other sciences can. If the divorce, then, be carried so far that the philosopher and psychologist are no longer on speaking terms, the old evils will recur ; for a critical severance of provinces can be effected and maintained only by one who is familiar with both departments, even though his original work should lie only in one. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the psychologists of the future will all be trained in philosophy, and the philosophers in psychology. With this view, and in the present situation of affairs, I cannot help adding that it seems to me extremely desirable, in a great university like this, that there should be a third man connected with the philo- sophical department — a Lecturer or Assistant- Professor — specially charged with the teaching of psychology in its most recent developments. Such work would lie, of course, largely with Honours students ; for psychological detail could not profitably replace to the Passman that in- THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 37 troduction to the problems of philosophy and the history of thought which the retention of the Chair in a liberal curriculum is meant to ensure. To Philosophy, then, we come in the last place. It is by philosophy that this Chair and others like it in the Scottish universities must ultimately justify their exist- ence ; and it is to the inbred Scottish bent towards philosophy that the public interest felt in them is due. The outlook here is not discouraging. Within the present century, as is well known, Comte promulgated his law of the three stages, representing metaphysics as a disease of childhood, like measles, which the race was in the act of outgrowing. And since then, Comtian and other influences have undoubtedly produced in many quarters a positivistic or agnostic attitude of mind, which gives itself great airs of finality from time to time in our newspapers and reviews. But metaphysics shows no inclination to die, by way of obliging these prophets of her decease. It is sufficient answer to their vaticinations to point to the marked revival of interest in philosophical discussion within recent years. There was a period, perhaps, when philosophical interest languished ; but there has seldom been a time when people were more anxious than they are at present to listen to any one who has anything to say. For indifferentism here, as Kant says, can be, in the nature of the case, no more than a temporary phase of feeling. " It is in reality vain to profess indifference in regard to such inquiries, the object of which cannot be indifferent to humanity." Apart from indifference, there was a time when the vast strides made by science — more especially by the natural sciences in the third quarter of the nineteenth century — fascinated men's attention, and diverted it from » the problems which lie beneath and behind all science. But the very progress of science has brought men face to 38 THE PRESENT POSITION OF face once more with ultimate questions, and has revealed the impotence of science to deal with its own conditions and presuppositions. The needs of science itself call for a critical doctrine of knowledge as the basis of an ultimate theory of things. The idea entertained in some quarters that all difficulties would be solved by a scientific conception like that of evolution, has been found illusory, inasmuch as that conception itself requires a philosophical interpretation before it can throw any light at all upon the metaphysical question. History is not philosophy, and nothing is explained merely by being thrown back in time. Evolution notwithstanding, the old questions all reappear in a slightly altered form. They are brought to light again by the very success of science in dealing with her own problems. Philosophy is first, then, at the present day, a doctrine of knowledge ; and as such the critic of scientific cate- gories, to purge us of bad metaphysics. For the sweeping away of bad metaphysics is not the least important part of the philosophical task, and there is no metaphysics so bad as the metaphysics of the physicist or biologist when, in the strength of his own right arm, he makes a raid into philosophical territory. This critical office of Philosophy must also be extended to the metaphysical systems of the past. And in this connection we have one of the richest parts of the training afforded by a philosophical Chair ; for here the teacher must constitute himself the historian of thought, and, with a wise ad- mixture of sympathy and criticism, introduce his hearers to the typical thinkers of the world — " The dead but sceptred sovrans who still rule Our spirits from their urns." But this critical, and to a certain extent negative, work is not all. Philosophy must finally endeavour to be itself THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 39 critically constructive, or, if that is a contradiction in terms, it must endeavour to be constructive without for- getting its own critical strictures. The criticism of past philosophies, therefore, should not be purely negative. Truly light-giving and helpful criticism should seek to lead the learner, through the very consciousness of defects and inconsistencies in the systems examined, to a truer statement of the problem, and a more adequate solution. In this way, the systems of the past become so many stepping-stones on which we rise to fuller and clearer insight. And if, at the end, a completed system should still prove beyond our reach, the philosophical teacher will at least seek to indicate the general lines upon which an ultimately satisfactory theory must move. I have only time here to mention one or two points on which I think that a true philosophy should lay stress, and on which it should lay special stress at the present time. The first is the necessity of a teleological view of the universe. Trendelenburg, the eminent German Aris- totelian, devotes one of the most interesting of his essays to illustrating what he calls the fundamental difference or antithesis between philosophical systems, — the differ- ence, namely, between the teleological and the mechanical point of view. Whether an exhaustive classification of systems is possible on this basis or not, I believe with him that the antithesis he signalises is fundamental for philosophy ; and there is nothing of which I am more profoundly convinced than that philosophical truth lies, in this case, altogether with the teleological point of view. Any system which abandons this point of view lapses thereby from philosophy to science. The word teleology acts upon some people like a red rag upon a bull, from its association with certain old- fashioned arguments which explained particular pheno- mena from their supposed adaptation to external ends, 40 THE PRESENT POSITION OF more especially from their adaptation to the require- ments and conveniences of man. This paltry mechanical teleology was never at any time convincing to strong and sincere thinkers, and after being riddled by modern science, it may be held as finally beaten off the field. Its unsatisfactory character arose in great part from its taking facts in isolation, and then endeavouring arti- ficially to fit them together in the relation of means and end. The philosophical teleology of which I speak con- cerns itself only with the End of the whole evolution. It concentrates itself upon the proof that there is an End, that there is an organic unity or purpose binding the whole process into one and making it intelligible — in one word, that there is evolution and not merely aimless change. For it is only when contemplated in the light of a realised idea that any one speaks of a series of changes as steps in an evolution. A speculation which does not see that evolution spells purpose has not made clear to itself the difference between progress and aimless variation. Such speculation rests ultimately on a purely mechanical view of the universe. Let us try, therefore, in a sentence or two, to illu- minate by contrast these two opposite points of view. The mechanical view explains the universe as a colloca- tion of mere facts — so many real existences which just happen to be there. They are not there to express any idea, meaning, or purpose : they have no further sig- nificance ; they simply are. Every change in these facts is completely determined by its immediate antecedents, acting as a blind vis a tergo. A cause may thus be assigned for every change, but a reason can be given for none ; for where there is no question of realising any idea or purpose, all change must be entirely motiveless. One collocation of facts is just as good as another. The mechanical explanation of things is thus a constant look- THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 41 ing backward ; the teleological or philosophical explana- tion, a looking forward to the end or ultimate purpose which is being realised — to the reason of the whole development, which is also in the deepest sense its cause. The mechanical explanation of any phenomenon is not false in itself. Nor need there be any quarrel between the causal and the teleological view of things, for they move upon different planes. The mechanically causal view only becomes false, when it professes to be a com- plete explanation of any phenomenon, and therefore, by implication, a philosophy of the universe. True, under certain limitations, as science, it is false when it puts itself forward as philosophy. Mechanical explanation is a progressus in infinitum, which can ultimately explain nothing. In the last resort, causce efficientes iienchnt a finalibus ; the complete explanation of anything is only reached when we are able to view it in the light of a purpose, of which it forms an integral part or element. Philosophy, therefore, stands or falls with the possibility of discovering a reasonable meaning or end in the uni- verse. Every true philosophy is in this sense an at- tempted theodicy — the vindication of a divine purpose in things. The antithesis of teleology and mechanism is, as you perceive, substantially the old opposition of Idealism and Materialism more strictly expressed. And it is equally obvious that while the mechanical view, through looking ever backward, finds an explanation of things in reducing them to their lowest terms, and presents us, for example, with matter and motion as philosophical ultimates, the teleological or idealistic view seeks the true explanation of the lower in the higher, of which it is the germ. For if the lower carries in it the promise and potency of the higher, then it must involve no less than a falsifica- tion of the facts to substantiate the lowest terms as 42 THE PRESENT POSITION OF independent self- existent facts, out of relation to the ultimate term in which we read the meaning of the whole development. That, however, is precisely what is done by all materialistic and quasi-materialistic systems. If philosophy, then, is the indication of an end, meaning, or purpose in the universe, what has phil- osophy to say, finally, as to the nature of the End ? Here again, it seems to me that philosophy has to wage unsparing battle against certain tendencies of our time. As it defends the truth of teleology in spite of former abuses of the principle, so it has to champion the truth underlying the old view which made man the centre of the universe. In a material aspect, man is but an atom or a point in the system of things, and we smile when we read in Cicero of the heavenly aadile who nightly lights the candles of the sky for our mortal comfort and convenience. But the Copernican view of the universe is pressed too far when we are invited, on the strength of it, to efface ourselves before the im- mensities of external nature. Much current thought is naturalistic at heart — that is to say, it makes human nature only a part of nature in general, and seeks, there- fore, to explain away the most fundamental character- istics of intelligence and moral life. As against this naturalistic tendency, philosophy must be unflinchingly humanistic, anthropocentric. Not to man as a creature specially located upon this earth, but to man and all creatures like him who are sharers in the life of thought, and called thereby to be authors of their own perfection — to man as rational, all things are relative. To him the creation looks ; for him all things are made. This is the imperishable grandeur of Hegel's system that he has given such sonorous utterance to this view, and expressed it with such magnificent confidence. I cannot always emulate THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. 43 his confidence, nor can I adopt as perfectly satisfactory his universalistic mode of expression. The achievements of the world-spirit do not move me to unqualified ad- miration, and I cannot accept the abstraction of the race in place of the living children of men. Even if the enormous spiral of human history is destined to wind itself at last to a point which may be called achievement, what, I ask, of the multitudes that perished by the way ? " These all died, not having received the promises." What if there are no promises to them ? To me the old idea of the world as the training-ground of individual character seems to offer a much more human, and, I will add, a much more divine, solution than this pitiless procession of the car of progress. Happily, however, the one view does not necessarily exclude the other ; we may rejoice in the progress of the race, and also believe in the future of the individual. Nature's profusion and nature's waste will doubtless be urged against us, when we plead for the rights of the individual life. But these are objections which every theodicy has to meet. I do not wish to minimise them : on the contrary, they appeal to me with painful force. But the possibility of any theodicy depends on our being able to show that nature and nature's ways of working are not the last word of creation. Nature is non-moral, indifferent, and pitiless ; but man is pitiful, and human nature flowers in love and self-denial, in purity and stainless honour. If these have no root in the nature of things, then indeed " The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble." But we do well, as Goethe teaches in one of his finest poems, to recognise in such attributes of human-kind 44 PRESENT POSITION OF PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES. our nearest glimpse into the nature of the divine. The part is not greater than the whole; and we may rest assured that whatever of wisdom and goodness there is in us was not born out of nothing, but has its fount, somewhere and somehow, in a more perfect Goodness and Truth. THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 1 I. ALL who take an intelligent interest in the movement of contemporary thought — whether it be philosophy more strictly so called, or the advance of science — are aware of the great activity which has been shown of late years in the department of psychology. Till within the last half century or thereabouts, psychology had been an appanage of the philosophers ; and it cannot be said that they neglected this province of their dominion. In this country in particular — in England and Scotland — psychology has formed the bulk of our philosophic treatises; and Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hartley, Dr Thomas Brown, and the Mills, Reid, Stewart, and Hamilton, must always remain among the classics of the science. But it may be admitted that their work often shows a crossing of interests and of points of view. Questions of logic and theory of knowledge were mixed up with the more properly psychological inquiry. And, at other times, the investigation was subordinate to the establishment of some metaphysical theory. The dis- 1 An Address to the Edinburgh University Philosophical Society, Nov- ember 9, 1892. 46 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. tinguishing note of most recent psychology has there- fore been insistence on the separation of psychology from philosophy, and on the maintenance of a purely psychological standpoint. In psychology, it is argued, we have a realm of phenomena, a moving world of causes and effects, which it is our business to investigate in the ordinary scientific way, with all the resources of observation and experiment. Imitating the example of physics, we have to reduce this world of complex pheno- mena to its ultimate constituents and the laws of their interaction, and we have to do this without any arri&re jyensee as to the bearing of our results on the ultimate problems of philosophy. No advice could be more excellent ; disinterestedness is the very watchword of science. But it seems to me that a good many of those who talk most loudly of " the new psychology " are exposed to the usual danger of re- action. The rise of this " scientific " psychology, as it also calls itself, is connected with the great development of science, especially of the natural sciences, which has marked the nineteenth century. The growth of biology and physiology has naturally reacted powerfully upon the whole conception and method of psychological in- vestigation. And it is worth observing that the general scientific movement referred to, coincided, especially in Germany, with a revulsion against the idealistic specu- lation which ushered in the century. Probably the two were partly connected as cause and effect, the hunger for hard facts and patient detail-work being a healthy protest of the human spirit against over-hasty and over-confident attempts at universal synthesis. Any way, the new psychology, as I have said, has its roots in this move- ment. And therefore its absorbing concern was and is to keep itself clear of metaphysics, and of every hypo- thesis which it imagines to savour of that region of THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 47 mysteries. To a large class of scientific and would-be scientific thinkers, metaphysics is what clericalism is to the French Liberal : it is the enemy, to be fought at all points. These two characteristics of this militant psychology — its renunciation of metaphysics and its affiliation to biology — are concisely put by Eibot, one of its standard - bearers : " The new psychology differs from the old in its spirit : it is not metaphysical. It differs in its aim : it only studies phenomena. It differs in its methods : it borrows them as far as possible from the biological sciences. Consequently the sphere of psy- chology specifies itself; it has for its subject nervous phenomena accompanied by consciousness." 1 I am far from asserting that this distrust is without historical justification. Natural explanations — i.e., regu- lated sequences and coexistences of phenomena — are what every science has to seek in its own sphere ; and, accord- ingly, science justly regards as suspect the explanation of any phenomenon by the immediate causality of a meta- physical agent. The interjection of such a causality into the empirical connections which she seeks to unravel, she treats as a form of ignava ratio. " It makes the investi- gation of causes a very easy task," says Kant, " if we refer such and such phenomena immediately to the unsearch- able will and counsel of the Supreme Wisdom, whereas we ought to investigate their causes in the general mechanism of matter. This is to consider the labour of reason as ended, when we have merely dispensed with its employment." 2 In the old psychology, this otiose method 1 ' La Psychologie Allemande,' Introduction. Ribot's deliverance dates from 1879, but precisely the same position is formulated in the opening and closing sentences of one of the more recent manuals on the subject, Ziehen's ' Introduction to the Study of Physiological Psychology.' If the polemic against metaphysics is not always so marked, it is because the enemy is supposed to have been beaten off the field. 2 Werke, iii. 468 (ed. Hartenstein). 48 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. of explanation, by means of the soul and its faculties, was no doubt often resorted to. Hence, in shaking the dust of metaphysics off their feet, the new psychologists ac- cepted from Lange 1 as their badge the somewhat para- doxical motto " psychology without a soul." As Bibot puts it triumphantly : " The soul and its faculties, the great entity and the little entities, disappear; and we have to do only with internal events, — events which, like sensations and images, are translations (so to speak) of physical events, or which, like ideas, movements, voli- tions, and desires, translate themselves into physical events." In this respect, however, the new psychology was not so original as it perhaps imagined. The attempt to dis- pense with a soul had been systematically made by Hume and the Associationists long before the second half of the nineteenth century. It was not simply the determination to discard the soul that stamped the new movement ; the second and more characteristic feature was the affiliation of psychology to physiology and to general biological science — the study of the facts of consciousness consist- ently and exclusively in correlation with the organic facts of nerve and brain. This method of explanation was declined, as we know, by Locke and Hume ; and it has been made matter of reproach against a modern associa- tionist like Mill, that he held by the old psychological method and went on " exactly as he might have gone on if he had lived in the days of Aristotle, ... at a time when a new method highly fertile in fact and of more fruitful promise was available." 2 The physiological method, in short, is the distinguishing mark, and " physi- ological psychology " is the term very generally given to the recent developments of "psychology as a natural 1 Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. ii. p. 381. 2 Maudsley, Physiology of Mind, p. 76. THE " NEW " PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 49 science." It is to be noted also that in speaking of the conditions of mental states (and it is agreed that the dis- covery of conditions constitutes scientific explanation) writers of this way of thinking have exclusively physio- logical conditions in view. Professor James tells us, for example, that he has " treated our passing thoughts as integers, and regarded the mere laws of their coexistence with brain-states as the ultimate laws for our science ; " 1 and Mr Shadworth Hodgson defines psychology as " that positive and special science which takes its stand upon the results of physiology and biology, and studies the phenomena of sentience and consciousness in connec- tion with their proximate conditions in individual living organisms." 2 Let me say at once that it is far from my intention to object to this intimate linking of the psychological and the biological. It may be taken as a postulate generally admitted, that our mental life is at every point physio- logically conditioned ; and the physiological method of study does indeed promise, as its votaries say, to be most fruitful in its application. It alone furnishes the basis for introducing experiment into mental science ; and though it can only lay siege, as it were, to the outworks of the mental citadel, to the phenomena of sense-percep- tion and movement and a few of the simpler aspects of the mental processes, yet the amount of patient detail- work accumulated in these departments, and the light thrown on other departments by the scientific study of abnormal mental states in their physiological relations, are already enriching the science in no ordinary degree, and transforming the very look of our psychological text- books. The philosopher would be singularly cross-grained who did not welcome this accumulation of material, and 1 Principles of Psychology, Preface. 2 Mind, vol. xi. p. 489 (October 1886). D 50 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. who did not congratulate himself that all this detail-work was taken out of his hands by those who from their train- ing and aptitudes can do it so much better. But he will reserve to himself, as philosopher, the ultimate verdict on the validity and sufficiency of the theory on which physi- ological psychology proceeds. Tor it is the most inde- feasible function of philosophy to act as critic of the sciences. The philosopher has to examine the concep- tions which each science accepts without criticism, and on which it proceeds in working out its results ; he has to point out the limits or conditions within which the con- ception or theory holds true. In other words, he has to restrain the ardour of the specialist who would build upon his results a philosophic theory of the universe, by showing that the results which the investigation seems to establish are really involved in the conceptions or stand- point from which it started, and are therefore in no sense to be accepted as an independent proof of the theory. I propose to show that this is pre-eminently the case with the main thesis of the " new " psychology — at least in the hands of its most advanced representatives. In abjur- ing the soul and limiting itself to the concomitance of physical and psychical events, it is really dominated by a very definite theory which dictates the character of its results beforehand. The result supposed to be proved, it had best be stated at once, is the complete parallelism of the bodily and the mental — the denial, therefore, of any real causality to consciousness, which remains the inert accompaniment of a succession of physical changes over which it has no con- trol. In a word, the result is the doctrine of human auto- matism. The doctrine of conscious automatism has been ventilated a good deal since 1870, or even earlier, by Mr Shadworth Hodgson, Professor Huxley, Professor Clifford, THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 51 and others ; but, though no doubt definitely embraced by a few, it is safe to say that by the most it has been rather talked about, and toyed with, than fully conceived, much less believed. The doctrine has, however, been recently expressed with great clearness and force by Dr Miinster- berg, who is perhaps the ablest and most stirring of the younger generation of physiological psychologists, and one whose theories have attracted considerable attention both in England and on the Continent. He teaches in the most unequivocal fashion that consciousness is simply, as he calls it, a " Begleiterscheinung," a concomitant pheno- menon, or inactive accompaniment of a series of mechan- ical changes. Miinsterberg's work, which has appeared in a succession of pamphlets since the year 1888, takes largely the form of a polemic against Wundt's doctrine of Apperception. Wundt's ' Physiologische Psychologies first published in 1874, still remains, in its later editions, the most authori- tative work on the subject ; and the psychological labora- tory established by him in Leipzic in 1879, as the first of its kind, is still probably the chief centre of experi- mental work. But, although he may thus fairly be called the father of the whole movement, inasmuch as he has organised experimental psychology and induced the world to accept it as a new science, Wundt has never lent his countenance to the automatist conclusions which the young bloods are now drawing from their experimental labours. His doctrine of Apperception is far from clear, and its precise meaning has given rise to considerable con- troversy, but it seems to imply a function of subjective selection or central initiative analogous to what Dr Ward calls Attention ; and this is apparently in harmony with the general philosophical position which the author has elaborated in his more recently published 'System of Phil- osophy.' But, be that as it may, it is at any rate certain 52 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. that Wundt has been attacked by the upholders of thorough-going mechanism as an inconsistent and retro- grade thinker for attributing activity to the Subject. So much by way of explanation was necessary for the right understanding of Miinsterberg's work. His first pam- phlet in this controversy was ' Die Willenshandlung,' an analysis of the act of will, published early in 1888. This was followed by a series of ' Contributions to Experi- mental Psychology/ in which, after an elucidation of principles, he endeavoured, by a number of carefully de- vised experiments, to assimilate the apperceptive process to the type of reflex action and thus reduce the whole conscious action to a play of association. In 1891, he published an introduction to the study of psychology, 1 in the course of which we get a re-statement of his own position. The standpoint does not vary throughout the different expositions, and therefore, though illustrating freely from all, so far as they throw light upon my points, I will draw chiefly from the first and fullest statement — that contained in his very acute analysis of the act of will. The ' Willenshandlung ' is divided into three parts, the first treating of the voluntary act as "movement-process" (Bewcgungsvorgang) ; the second treating of it as a phe- nomenon or appearance in consciousness {Bewusstseinser- scheinung) ; and the third, which is intended to combine the results of the preceding parts, considering the act of will in its totality as " conscious movement " (bewusste Beivegung). Miinsterberg makes a start from the well- known saying of Kant : " That my will moves my arm is no whit more intelligible to me than if some one were to tell me that it could hold back the moon in its orbit." He accepts the problem as thus indicated : How does my 1 'Ueber Aufgaben unci Methoden der Psychologie,' 1891. Professor Miinsterberg's more recent works are referred to below, p. 80. THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 53 will move my arm ? The first part of his treatise deals with the voluntary act exclusively from the physiological side, and analyses it into a series of movements. We may say analyses it necessarily into a series of movements, for the succession of bodily movements, whether visible movements of the limbs or molecular movements of the nerves and brain, are all of the process that could by any possibility be seen ; and reduction to processes which are intelligible in the sense of being pictorially presentable, is the postulate of explanation which he lays down. 1 There is not much that is peculiar to Munsterberg in this first section ; the same has been vividly put by many writers, 2 and in a sense this purely physical explanation 1 Zuruckfiihrung auf auschaulich verstiindliche Vorgange, p. 10. 2 Never better perhaps than by Lauge, ' Geschichte des Materialisnius,' ii. 370. The passage has been often quoted, but may do duty again : — ' ' A merchant is sitting comfortably in his easy-chair, and would find it hard to say with what the greater part of his Ego is occupied — whether with smoking, sleeping, reading the newspaper, or digestion. Suddenly the servant enters with a telegram which runs — ' Antwerp, Jonas and Company failed.' 'Tell James to put the horses to.' The servant flies. The master has sprung to his feet, completely sobered ; some dozen paces through the room, down to his office, instructions given to the confi- dential clerk, letters dictated, telegrams despatched, then into the carriage. The horses pant ; he visits the bank, the exchange, his business friends. Before an hour is over, he throws himself again into his easy -chair with the sigh, ' Thank heaven, I have secured myself against the worst : now let me consider further. ' A splendid occasion for a picture of the soul. Terror, hope, feeling, calculation — ruin and victory compressed into one moment. And that all aroused by a single idea ! What does not the human consciousness comprise ! " Softly, let us look at our man as an object in the material world. He springs up, why ? His muscles contract in the appropriate way. Why so ? They were moved by an impulse of nervous force which discharged the stored - up stock of elasticity. Whence this impulse ? From the centre of the nervous system. How did it arise there ? Through the . . . soul. The curtain falls, — the salto wiortale is made from science to mythology." On the contrary, Lange proceeds, "We must trace back the physical series of causes through the brain to the first occasion of the whole sudden movement without taking any account whatever of 54 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. is true from the physiological side, though I think it is possible to show that, even from the physiological stand- point, it is not the whole truth. Meanwhile it is enough to note the purely mechanical point of view and the explicit reduction of all physiological facts to physico- chemical processes. Passing to the more characteristic the so-called consciousness. Or let us take it in the opposite direction. What came into the man ? The picture of certain strokes with blue pencil upon a white ground. Certain rays of light fell upon the retina, rays which in themselves do not develop more vital force in their vibra- tions than other light-rays. The vital force for the propagation of the impact is ready in the nerve, as that for muscular contraction in the muscles : it can be discharged by the infinitely weak impact of the light- wave only as the elastic forces of the powder-cask are set free by the glimmering spark. But how comes it, then, that just these lines pro- duce in this man just this effect ? Every answer which falls back here upon ideas and the like is as good as no answer at all. I wish to see the channels, the paths of the vital force, the extent, the mode of propa- gation, and the sources of the physical and chemical p>rocesses from which the nervous impulses proceed which call into activity, and that precisely in the manner required for springing to one's feet, first the musculus psoas, then the rectus femoris, the vasti, and all the co-operating com- pany. I wish to see the far more important nervous streams which dis- tribute themselves to the organs of speech, the muscles of breathing, producing command, word, and call, and which, by way of sound-waves and the auditory nerves of other individuals, renew tenfold the same performance. I will, in a word, make a present for the time being of the so-called psychical action to the pedants of the schools, and will have the physical action which I see explained by physical causes." In like manner, Miinsterberg concludes that, " from the physiological stand- point there must correspond to every centrally initiated movement a complex of centripetal stimuli ; and in these stimuli acting from with- out, taken together with the existing structure and condition of the nervous mechanism, must lie the absolutely sufficient causes for the necessary occurrence of the definite act of will." Innumerable past stimuli in the life of the individual and the race are stored up as poten- tial energy in the nervous mechanism. Hence the sound-waves of a spoken word (on which, as in the case put by Lange, action follows), may represent "scarcely a millionth part of the joint -causes which bring about that particular movement in the hearer." But the mechanical determination by the joint -causes is as absolute here as in the case of the simplest reflex (pp. 17-20). It is, indeed, the avowed "postulate" of the whole investigation that the act of will shall be explained "als Mechanik der Atome " (p. 9). THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 55 psychological analysis, contained in the second part of the treatise, we find that Munsterberg is at some pains at the outset to define the problem he sets himself. It is purely a problem of empirical psychology, and does not raise the metaphysical question as to the ultimate ground of phenomena or as to how consciousness exists at all. In that connection, Munsterberg seems to indicate that he regards Will, conceived as Schopenhauer conceived it, 1 to be the most probable metaphysical hypothesis. His pres- ent investigation, however, has to do only with Will as a conscious fact ; it seeks " only to establish the conscious phenomena which are peculiar to the act of will " (p. 56). "Wherein consists the content of our inner experi- ence, empirically given to each of us, which we designate will " (p. 60). Or, again, " For our investigation, limited as it is to facts, the will is a phenomenon like other phe- nomena ; and accordingly we have only to ask in what it consists, what regularly precedes it in consciousness, and what follows it" (p. 61). This strictly empirical character of the inquiry has one important consequence : — It is well known [he proceeds] that modern psychology des- ignates as sensations the ultimate irreducible constituents into which the content of consciousness (Bewusstseinsinhalt) may be analysed ; ascribing to sensations a quality, an intensity, and a tone of feeling which expresses their relations to con- sciousness. But, if sensation is the element of all psychical phenomena, and if, on the other hand, the will, so far as we are concerned with it, is only a phenomenon of consciousness (Beivusstseinserscheinung), it follows necessarily that the will too is only a complex of sensations. 2 1 This is the impression produced by the Willenshandlung , but see the note on p. 80 for Munsterberg's more fully elaborated metaphysical theory. 2 Page 62. The italics are Munsterberg's own. It need hardly be pointed out that this astonishing invocation of " modern psychology " begs everything which is afterwards put forward as proved. Wundt criticises the assumption, ' Philosophische Studien,' vol. vi. p. 382 ct .seq. We shall return to it in discussing the theory as a whole. 56 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. Having thus marked out his goal beforehand, Mlin- sterberg proceeds to the actual analysis of the facts. He analyses first what he calls the inward activity of will — i.e., the voluntary guidance of the train of thoughts in the form of attention ; and secondly, the outward activity of will in bringing about muscular contractions. Under the first head, then, the question is, "Wherein consists the inner activity in the direction of the current of our ideas ? or, more precisely, what must be the nature of the feelings present in consciousness, if they are to produce in us the feeling of inward freedom, of active will ? " This more precise way of putting the question, it will be ob- served, is not without significance for the nature of the answer which it is to elicit. Let us get to the details, however. Four cases of the inward directive activity of will are analysed by Miinsterberg : (a) the case of volun- tary recollection or trying to remember ; (b) the exercise of choice between different ideas presented, the concen- tration of attention upon one of these and its retention in the field of consciousness to the exclusion of the others ; (c) the case of logical thinking or reasoning, in which we pass along a definite and apparently self-directed path from premisses to conclusion ; and (d) the case of simple atten- tion to an idea or precept which presents itself in con- sciousness. The analysis is most ingenious in the case of voluntary recollection and logical thinking. How is voluntary recol- lection distinguished from involuntary reminiscence ? If a fact a has been connected in experience with b, and the appearance of b calls up in consciousness the idea of a, I do not attribute to myself any voluntary action in the matter; I take it as an instance of the ordinary play of association. On the other hand, when I cannot remember a, when I seek it in my memory, recall to myself the place where I saw it, the- THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 57 connection in which I heard it, and when at last a actually emerges in consciousness, then it was plainly my will (we say) which dragged to light the object of my search (p. 64). How does the case stand, however, when more closely analysed ? If I try to remember a, if I seek it in my memory, a is of course not itself present in consciousness, but what I do per- ceive does unquestionably correspond in content with a. So long as I have not found a, I feel, it is true, only an x, but I feel this a; in a series of relations, such that x can be only a and nothing else. I try to remember a word. In doing so, I see in memory the passage where I read the word, I remember the moment at which I heard it, I know exactly, too, the meaning of the word ; but the word itself is not present to- me. At last it rises in consciousness. Can it be denied that that word was already given in its full content {vollinhaltlich gegeben) in the series of ideational relations which I remem- bered 1 No doubt it was represented in consciousness by entirely different qualities ; it was given in its relations to- other things, whereas it is afterwards distinguished by its own characteristics. But the two states of consciousness coincided with one another as to their inner meaning (p. 67). The only peculiarity, accordingly, which Miinsterberg is prepared to admit in this process as contrasted with a case of involuntary association is that " the clear con- sciousness of the idea a was preceded by another state of consciousness which, in respect of its content, already- contained the idea «." He italicises this as the standing- mark of voluntary control of our ideas. Eeasoning is dis- tinguished, he argues, by the same characteristic. The premisses already contain the conclusion, or, to put it more pointedly, the whole process of thought is deter- mined from the outset by the idea of the end to be reached. In the second case mentioned above, where several ideas are presented, and we purposely retain one 58 the "new" psychology and automatism. of them, a, the same thing manifestly holds. " Here," says Miinsterberg, " there is no need to prove that this a was in consciousness beforehand. The reasons why just a and not b remained in consciousness, are admittedly only the occasions or motives of the voluntary act ; they are left therefore unnoticed here, the remaining behind is itself the achievement of the will (das Zurilckbleiben selbst ist die Willensleistung)." The same line of argument ex- plains his fourth case, the case of simple attention to any idea presented in consciousness. " In the first moment in which a sensation emerges in us, the perception appears involuntary, because the a was till then preceded by a not-a ; in the second moment, however, it appears to us as intentionally retained, just because we were already conscious of it in the preceding first moment." The solemnity with which this is propounded as a serious account of the facts in question would provoke amusement if it stood alone ; but Miinsterberg hastens to supplement it by reference to the bodily sensations which usually accompany acts like attention and selection or efforts of thought and memory. He cites the admitted fact that there are feelings of innervation in the sense- organ, when ideas of that particular sense are present in consciousness for any length of time. Whenever there is a strain of attention, other sensations are usually present — such, for example, as feelings of tension in the skin of the head and the knitting of the brow in trying to remember or in thoughtful consideration. Nor are such feelings con- fined to the head ; they may be traced all over the trunk and even in the extremities. Miinsterberg does not hold, however, that such feelings of innervation necessarily accompany all voluntary activity. In reasonings or cal- culations that proceed without any particular difficulty, for example, they are not observable ; but just in these processes, he hastens to add, we are not specially con- THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 59 scious of our voluntary activity. It is only in subsequent reflection that we class them as acts of will, and in so doing we fall back upon the criterion already signalised — namely, the pre-existence of the idea in the preceding moment of consciousness. He concludes the first part of his psychological investigation thus : — The inner will has thus shown itself on analysis to be a very complicated group of ideas (ein sehr mannigfaltiges Vorstel- lungsgebilde) composed of certain definite series of ideas plus feelings of innervation. Nothing unknown, nothing which stands over against the ideas as something heterogeneous, has been found, as we saw, in the first group of ideas or sen- sations; it only remains, therefore, to ask whether any mys- terious element is concealed in these innervation processes. Should these also be found to be a mere complex of sensations, the inner will would then be reduced to a series of sensations, each one of which is of the same order as blue, hard, sweet, or warm (p. 73). The consideration of the feelings of innervation can- not, however, be conveniently separated from the external action of the will upon the body, and so we pass to the second head of this psychological investigation. The stock example will suffice — I lift an object with my hand. But the result of this experiment is usually a very poor one : the feeling of will which I seek {die gesuchte Willensempfind- ung) I cannot discover in myself. I perceive just a slight feeling of tension in the head. For the rest, I am only con- scious that I actually execute the movement — viz., bending the joints of the elbow and hand ; I feel no special impulse to the movement, lying in time between the theoretical inten- tion and the practical execution of it. It is quite different, however [he proceeds], when I do not simply have the inten- tion of lifting an object, and carry this out, but slowly analyse the movement for myself, and direct my attention to the in- dividual parts of the bendings. Now I really perceive more 60 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. than the actually executed movements ; the bending in the elbow is now preceded by the feeling of a peculiar impulse. It is not a general feeling of exertion, but a quite specific impulse, which is different for every movement, and plainly stands in relation to the special performance intended. What, then, has analysis to say of these feelings of in- nervation which immediately precede the movement, and seem to be its cause ? Munsterberg turns round triumph- antly to apply his former criterion. What we call impulse in the case of muscular contraction is simply the circum- stance that the idea of the effect to be produced precedes the effect as actually produced. The feeling of innervation is just the memory-idea of the movement anticipating the movement itself. There has been much discussion as to the precise nature of the so-called feelings of innervation ; but, as Wundt, who had formerly held an opposite theory, has explicitly accepted this view of them as the one most consonant with the present state of our knowledge of the subject, there is no need to reproduce here the argu- ments which go to establish the position. It commends itself by its naturalness and simplicity. When we are on the point, say, of making a stroke at a ball, we have a premonitory feeling of the energy which we are about to expend ; it seems to flow forth toward the limb which we are about to use. One theory, formerly a good deal in evidence, explained this feeling as due to an im- mediate consciousness of outgoing energy ; but the phy- siological difficulties in the way of such a conception are great. It is not necessary here to decide whether an immediate consciousness of effort is or is not possible ; but, in any case, this theory leaves unexplained the specific character of the feeling in question. For it is to be observed, that it is a premonitory feeling of the exertion of that limb, not merely a general consciousness THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 61 of virtue going out from us. This is satisfactorily ex- plained by supposing, as Munsterberg does, that it is due to the reproduction in memory of previous move- ments of the same nature. Plainly, however, Miinsterberg's theory of the feelings of innervation may be accepted, without admitting that this sequence of memory-image and actual perception constitutes, as he contends, the differentia and sufficient explanation of the voluntary act. But it will be ob- served how ingeniously Miinsterberg has reduced all cases of voluntary action, internal and external, to examples of the same phenomenon — namely, to cases of an idea or perception A preceded by a, — the same idea in a different form. "The feeling of innervation," as he puts it, "is an anticipated idea of the actual movement" (p. 88). Exactly the same analysis applies to those voluntary actions which do not end in a muscular contraction but aim at the production of some effect in the external world. When I move my finger, not in order to practise the different movements, but to write something down ; when I contract the muscles of my organs of speech, in order to make a com- munication to somebody ; when I bend my arm in order to greet a passer-by ; in all these cases I perceive in the first stadium the more or less distinct, more or less clearly rep- resented, idea of the end ; and in the second stadium I have a sensation of (ich enipfinde) the end as attained. That alone is the type of the external act of will (p. 89). However complicated the action is, extending possibly over a longer period of time (a journey, the erection of a building), it may always be resolved into the ultimate end in view and the subordinate actions which have to be performed in order to attain that end. In the pro- cess of execution, the ultimate end falls temporarily into the background, and the subordinate actions or means become, each in turn, in a definite series, the proximate 62 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. end before the mind. And, step by step, the same an- alysis holds good : the end is first present as idea, then as a perception of accomplished fact. Miinsterberg goes on courageously to apply his analysis to the usually received distinction between desire and will. " In order that the desire of an attainable object pass into the corresponding act of will, neither more nor less requires to be added, than just the carrying out of the desire, so that the idea of the end may be completed by the percep- tion of its attainment" "The liveliest feeling of practical freedom cannot alter the fact that the will itself is noth- ing more than the perception (frequently accompanied by associated sensations of tension in the muscles of the head) of an effect attained by the movement of our own body, along with an antecedent idea of the same effect drawn from imagination — i.e., in the last resort from memory ; this anticipated idea being given as feeling of innervation, when the effect is itself a bodily movement. "A theory of the soul does justice, therefore, to the ivhole field of psychical phenomena, if it assumes, as the only function of the soul, sensation characterised by quality, in- tensity, and tone of feeling ; a definite group of sensations we call will" (p. 96). 1 This is the conclusion of the second part of the in- vestigation. The first, or purely physiological part, re- duced the phenomenon to a series of reflex movements; the second, or purely psychological part, has reduced it to a series of sensations. The third, or psycho-physical part, investigates the relation of these two series to one another. We cannot believe that the two series are quite independent, and if we are driven to suppose that the one is conditioned by the other, there can be little hesitation in settling which is the conditioning factor. The psychical series is discontinuous, constantly inter- 1 The italics are Munsterberg's. THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 63 rupted by perceptions which are shot inexplicably into its midst, without the possibility of causal explanation from the foregoing train of ideas ; there are many bodily functions which, so far as we know, are not represented in consciousness. These and similar considerations make the psychic series unfit to be the explaining factor, and accordingly Miiusterberg reaches the conclusion that " the series of conscious phenomena is conditioned by the reg- ular course of material occurrence." This leads to the inquiry, What are the processes in the sensory - motor apparatus which correspond, when inwardly contemplated, to the sensational complex called a volition ? Miinsterberg's results are reached in the course of an interesting, and in some respects brilliant, discussion as to the localisation of brain-function. It is beyond our interest to follow him in his detailed criticism of different theories. His own positions are mainly two — (1) that there are no specifically motor centres ; and (2) that perception and memory are connected with the same material substratum — or, to put it otherwise, that ideas of sensation and the corresponding ideas of memory are connected, not with different parts of the brain, but with the same set of material processes differently excited. There is much to be said for these conclusions. Whether the will is analysable into sensations and ideas or not, it is at least inseparable from them, and therefore we may reasonably conclude that the centres concerned in voluntary movement cannot be separated physiologically from the sensory regions of the brain. Similarly, it may be argued that in perception and memory the same brain- tracts are excited, the liveliness and strength of the im- pression being greater when its stimulus proceeds from its peripheral end-organs than when it is conducted by fibres of association from other parts of the cortex. On the physiological truth of these hypotheses I do not 64 the "new" psychology and automatism. feel competent to decide, nor is it necessary for my pur- pose to do so. It is with Miinsterberg's application of them that we are concerned. " Every ganglion of the cerebral cortex," he resumes, "is thus end -organ of a centripetal path — but every ganglion is also the initial organ of a motor path. Motor centres do not exist, there- fore, or, more properly, every centre is sensory and motor at once ; every motor impulse has its source in a sensory stimulus, and every sensory stimulation presses on into a motor path " (pp. 141, 142). What happens in conscious- ness, then, when a response to stimulus takes place ? At first, nothing precedes the movement except the sensa- tion or perception which causes its discharge. The move- ment, in other words, " goes off," in a purely reflex way, through the force of the incoming stimulus. But as soon as the movement actually takes place, consciousness has something new before it — namely, the feeling of move- ment produced in the contracted muscle. This feeling of movement follows, therefore, immediately upon the per- ception of the stimulus which discharged the movement ; and the sensory excitation of the central ganglion which corresponds to this feeling of movement becomes con- nected accordingly by an association-path with the first excitation, which gave the impulse to the movement. If, now, this process is several times repeated, the connection becomes so close that the first excitation inevitably calls forth the second directly, by the path of association, before it has time to be produced by the actual contraction of the muscle. Psychologically expressed, that is as much as to say, the per- ception of the stimulus must call forth by association the memory-idea of the corresponding sensation of movement, before that sensation itself is produced by the actual execution of the movement. The former process takes place by the shorter way of the association -paths in the hemisphere; the latter requires first to be conducted to the muscle, the inertia of the THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 65 muscle has to be overcome, the contraction to be actually produced, the sensory nerve to be affected, and the sensory stimulus conducted back to the cortex. All this occupies an appreciable time, and the sensory stimulus arrives accord- ingly considerably later. And now we see clearly why our feeliug of innervation precedes the perception of the actual movement. In it, as the constant signal of movement, a signal that is also the actual counterpart of the movement, we involuntarily believe that we see the movement's cause. This is the type of voluntary action, from which all other forms may be developed (p. 145). Take, for example, an act of choice. Here we have, let us say, two stimuli, both alike in strength, but incapable of combination in a common reaction. At first no motor reaction can result, but each stimulated ganglion rouses the centres which are connected with it by association- paths ; and now it is not an opposition of stimulus against stimulus, but on both sides there collect the associations won by former experiences. In the first place, naturally, there is the associated idea of the movement correspond- ing to the stimulus. If this is stronger upon the one side than upon the other, or if it rouses more pleasurable feelings upon the one side than upon the other, then the corresponding movement will result. This is the type of any act of choice ; but there may be indefinite com- plication, both in the nature of the stimulus and in the mass of associations brought to bear upon it. Still, how- ever great the complication may be, the sensory stimuli with their associated ideas constitute the sufficient and only verifiable cause of the resultant movement ; or, as he puts it in another place, " the act of will is the motor discharge of sensory excitation, whether it be the sen- sation of a single stimulus, or a world of internally and externally combined ideas. As soon as the sensory ex- citation-complex, the conscious content of ideas, is there, the movement is necessarily given too" (p. 156). And E 66 the "new" psychology and automatism. thus the only psychical criterion of the will remains what it was found to be at the end of the psychological section — namely, that before the perception of the actual result, the idea of the result is present in consciousness. We have the theory now pretty fully before us, and, as has been indicated, there is much in the physiological analysis that is freshly put and that claims consideration. It seems important to remember, alike in physiology and psychology, that the sensory centre in the brain, the central ending of the sensory nerve, does not constitute a terminus, and, consequently, that there is no such thing as passive sensation, sensation which is simply received without producing further effects. All consciousness is impulsive. If the stimulus received does not find an im- mediate vent in movement, it irradiates other brain-tracts in the form of association. The phenomena of imitation, suggestion, and many other considerations, reinforce this conception of the dynamic quality which all sensations and ideas possess. Munsterberg, however, has skilfully woven these truths into the texture of a preconceived theory. In the very act of emphasising movement and the dynamic aspect of ideas, he eliminates altogether the notion of action or activity. Ideas " go off" or explode, as it were, in movement of their own accord. There is first the idea of the movement, as in contemplation ; and secondly, the perception of the movement, as executed. In other words, there is a series of happenings somehow passing before us, but no real activity, no real actor in the whole affair. In all so-called action, we only seem to act ; a sequence of ideas exhausts the phenomena of will. The conscious subject is reduced to an inactive spectator of these psychological happenings, which are themselves the inert accompaniments of certain transformations of matter and energy. There results, in fact, as indicated THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 67 at the outset, the doctrine of conscious automatism in the most unqualified sense of the words. Now, I do not hesitate to say that this conclusion is in the strictest sense incredible ; * no amount of so-called " evidence " in its favour would avail to make it even momentarily believable. But as the theory airs itself with a great deal of confidence, and troubles a good many minds, I will endeavour to show that such results are not reached by any cruel "logic of facts," but are all involved in a few erroneous psychological presupposi- tions, perhaps I ought to say one fundamental prejudice, by which the analysis is vitiated from the outset. This prejudice may be called Phenomenalism or perhaps best Presentationism ; Wundt calls it in one place Intellect- ualism. It is the foregone conclusion that the conscious life is analysable without remainder into ideas or presen- tations. Evidently, if phenomena or objects of conscious- ness are alone to be accepted as facts, then all real activity on the part of the subject is necessarily eliminated ; the subject remains only nominally, as a static impersonal condition of the series of events. If we insist upon phenomenalising the act of will, doubtless all the pheno- mena in the case are the ideas that precede and the perceptions that follow, with perhaps some feelings of tension in the head thrown in. But does it not require some effrontery to offer us these antecedent, concomitant, and sequent ideas as an account of the volition itself. To attempt to analyse a volition into ideas is about as hope- 1 Professor Miinsterberg has since explained, in his interesting volume ' Psychology and Life ' (1899), that this is really his own view. " Popular ideas about psychology," he says in the Preface to that work, "suggest that the psychological description and explanation of mental facts ex- presses the reality of our inner experience. . . . These papers endeav- our to show that psychology is not at all an expression of reality, but a complicated transformation of it, worked out for special logical purposes in the service of our life." Cf. note on p. 80. 68 the "new" psychology and automatism. ful as trying to reduce miles and furlongs to pounds avoirdupois ; there is no common denominator. In the course of such analysis, the real fact of volition is neces- sarily dropped ; it is overlaid by the mass of antecedents, concomitants, and sequents which acute introspection en- ables us to discover. But, as M. Fouillee says, the phy- siological psychologists might fill volumes with their analysis of the sensations which accompany the volun- tary act, without touching the essence of the act itself. 1 The result of analysis infected with this phenomenal- istic prejudice is necessarily a Panphenomenalism essen- tially similar to that of Hume. There is the same elimi- nation of all real causality : sequent ideas are all. And if, in deference to a quasi-Kantian theory of Knowledge, the Self or subject is apparently retained, this seeming difference from Hume is only skin-deep. For, as Miin- sterberg tells us twice over, " the subject in question is entirely impersonal;" 2 it is the static or logical condition of consciousness in general. The individual self is re- duced, as with Hume, to groups and sequences of ideas ; it is an object in consciousness — an object, presumably, for this impersonal spectator-subject. I pointed out in passing how entirely Munsterberg's psychology was dominated by this phenomenalistic point of view. It appears, incidentally, in the very expressions he uses, as a reference to the passages already quoted abundantly shows. In his equation of phenomenon with fact, in the constantly repeated use of the term Inhalt or content, it is presupposed that objects or presenta- tions in consciousness are the only elements that will be allowed to stand as real. At times, Munsterberg speaks, even more naively, of " the sensation of will," of which he is in quest. This recalls, even verbally, Hume's famous 1 Revue philosophique, vol. xxxii. p. 238. 2 Aufgabe der Psychologie, pp. 99 and 130. THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 69 expedition into his own interior, in order to discover the perception of the Self. Show me the impression from which the idea is derived, says Hume ; and be- cause no particular impression can be found, the idea is pronounced a fiction, the Self is resolved into a bundle of perceptions. Show me the sensation to which the word " will " corresponds, says Miinsterberg ; and rinding a number of accompanying sensations, he mis- takes these for the act of will itself, and concludes roundly, as we saw before, that " the will is only a com- plex of sensations." But this conclusion depends, on Miinsterberg's own showing, upon two all-important " ifs." If sensation is the sole element of all psychical pheno- mena, and if the will is only a phenomenon in con- sciousness, then, and only then, does it follow necessarily that the will is resolvable into a complex of sensations. In support of the first "if," Miinsterberg, as we have seen, has nothing to offer but a vague reference to " modern psychology." Wundt, in criticising his specu- lation, 1 justly censures this attempt to clothe an assump- tion with the air of an accepted truth, and to cover it with the aegis of " modern psychology." Wundt's own phraseology has wavered in his different editions, and its looseness may be partly responsible, as Dr Ward suggests, 2 for the extreme conclusions of his followers. Perhaps in view of these conclusions, he now explicitly disavows the resolution of all consciousness, including feeling and will, into sensational elements. Sensations, he holds, are the ultimate elements of " those conscious contents which we refer to external objects" — that is to say, of our perceptions or presentations. Whether this revised statement is unexceptionable or not, such a position is at least intelligible ; but it contains no war- 1 Philosophische Studien, vol. vi. p. 382 et seq. 2 In an article in 'Mind,' January 1893. 70 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. rant for identifying feeling and will with any presenta- tion or combination of such. There is, in fact, no distinction more fundamental to a sound psychology than that between the feeling-directed activity, which under all its forms, from the simplest act of attention and response to stimulus, may be sum- marised as Will, and the content or matter with which that activity deals. Doubtless the two cannot be separ- ated; each is an abstraction without the other. But one thing at least is certain, that to resolve the fact of conscious experience into a sequence of presentations or conscious phenomena is to omit the vital characteristic of all consciousness. It is to offer us a machinery with- out any motor force ; and when we mildly point out the omission, we are met by the ready but somewhat brazen retort, that the machinery is self-acting. Wundt comments acutely on the way in which this "intellect- ualistic " psychology substantialises ideas or presenta- tions, treats them as if they were things or entities that could independently exist and interact. Even when it is admitted that presentations have an existence only in and for consciousness, so that the unity of conscious- ness is acknowledged to be their necessary complement or point of reference, the ideas still seem to stand over against the consciousness to which they are referred, and to carry on their evolutions independently. Con- sciousness, according to this way of thinking, becomes a mere form inclusive of a certain matter, but without influence upon it: it is regarded as purely speculative or contemplative ; an eye (shall we say ?) contemplating the movement, or, to be strict and to avoid metaphor, merely an ideal point of unity. Metaphor or no metaphor, the result of this way of looking at things is obvious. The whole weight is thrown upon the objects — the ideas or phenomena, thus quasi-independently conceived THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 71 — and the recognition of the subject becomes an empty acknowledgment. It is entirely denuded of activity, all action being refunded into the play of presentations. 1 For this assumption, however, there is an entire ab- sence of warrant. A psychology which aims at keeping in touch with fact must strenuously resist this subtle tendency to reduce everything to knowledge. Experi- ence is, in this reference, a wider term than knowledge; and feeling and will are inexpugnable and irreducible features of experience. Knowledge, feeling, and will are three aspects of experience — inseparable aspects, it may be freely admitted — but none of them can be ex- pressed in terms of the others ; no one of them can be reduced to simpler elements, no one of them can, pro- perly speaking, be defined or explained otherwise than by pointing to the living experience in which it is ex- 1 Dr Ward has very aptly called attention ( ' Mind,' xii. 50) to a current form of words which favours this habit of thought — viz., the way we have of speaking of "conscious states" in abstraction from the activity of the conscious subject whose states they are. We get into the habit of think- ing of the "states" — "phenomena" is another word — as if they existed separately, as if they interacted and established relations between them- selves, evolving in course of time the idea of the subject. But, in strict- ness, we have no right to speak of a state as conscious ; in so doing we are making an entity of it, and conferring upon an abstraction attributes which it can possess only as an element in the activity of a unitary con- scious being. Dr Ward declaims with justifiable warmth against the con- fusion in which our psychological nomenclature is involved. Even the favourite term "states of consciousness," of which "conscious states" may be supposed an abbreviation, is open to a similar objection. Con- sciousness, as the form of the word proclaims, is an abstraction ; it is the quality or characteristic of a subject or conscious being. States are states of the conscious being, then, not states of consciousness. This is not a mere piece of verbal purism. A great deal of vague thinking — thinking that has not faced an inevitable issue and made up its mind clearly — finds a convenient refuge under the quasi-abstract term consciousness. People make no scruple about admitting or postulating a transcendental unity, a unity of consciousness, who would think their reputation for modernity at stake if they were taxed with upholding a soul or subject as a real being. 72 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. emplified. Miinsterberg's position here is rather incon- sistent ; he denies will as more than a complex of sen- sations, but he contrives to smuggle in feeling by calling- it an attribute which every idea possesses. He follows "Wundt in saying that every sensation, in addition to its intensity and its quality (as touch or taste, red or blue, and so forth) also possesses a tone of feeling, or, as Professor Bain puts it, an emotional side; and to this third aspect of sensation, curiously enough, he allows that there is no material counterpart. 1 This statement is curious, not in itself, of course, but as coming from Miinsterberg. There can be no material counterpart, in Miinsterberg's sense, just because feeling is not itself an object, phenomenon, presentation, or stim- ulus, but the attitude of the subject towards a given stimulus — the relation of the stimulus to the life of the individual as a whole. This subjective appreciation cannot, in the nature of the case, be represented in objective terms. Feeling, as Dr Ward says after Ham- ilton, is something subjectively subjective. If we are to be strict, we do not know feeling ; for knowledge is of objects, of phenomena, and feeling cannot be pheno- menalised. We experience feeling, and we know about it by its results ; but, using the term in this sense, we know only the causes, accompaniments, and consequents of feeling. It may be said that we remember our feel- ings and emotions, and that we must know them at the time, in order to remember. But we remember feeling only in the sense that, when the ideas which caused or accompanied it are recalled, they are recalled with the same tone of feeling ; in other words, we re-experience in a fainter degree the feeling which we then felt. It is this characteristic of feeling that explains its frequent neglect by psychologists. For feeling cannot be recalled 1 Willenshandlung, p. 137. THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. 73 or considered, except in connection with its objective causes or accompaniments ; in recording the facts, there- fore, the psychologist is apt to forget the subjective tinge of the ideas or presentations, and to report upon them in an impersonal way, as, so to speak, ideas-in- themselves. But it was only in virtue of what I have called the subjective tinge that the ideas were his ideas at all, and had any relation to his life. As they pre- sented themselves, they were felt to be either a further- ance or a hindrance to the vitality of the subject, to be either relevant to the dominant interests of the in- dividual, or discordant. Interest and desire are the re- sult in the one case, indifference or repulsion in the other. And it can hardly be too strongly emphasised that the dynamic efficacy of ideas is entirely excited through the feeling subject. Ideas have hands and feet, as Hegel finely said, and how often are we told that ideas move the world. It is true, or at least we hope so. But every one must acknowledge that to speak in that way is to use a vivid metaphorical shorthand. Ideas entertained tend to pass into action ; a plan con- ceived and cherished tends to execute itself ; but, as Fichte long ago said, the real force is not in the ideas, but in the will of the person who adopts them as his. So, when psychologists like Miinsterberg attribute the whole march of the conscious life to the dynamic in- fluence of idea upon idea, it is well to remember again that this is at best a convenient shorthand. Ideas in themselves are pale and ineffective as the shades of Homeric mythology ; they are dynamic only as they pass through the needle's eye of the subject. It is the subject which acts upon its appreciation of the stimulus, and the emotional attitude of welcome or repulse is what is meant by feeling. In its earliest and simplest forms, such an emotional 74 THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. wave passes immediately into the appropriate motor re- sponse. The food is clutched or somehow absorbed, the disagreeable intrusion is evaded, edged away from, as far as the powers of the being admits of. Feeling, thus conceived, and allied thus closely with action, forms what may be called the driving-power in all life. Here we strike upon the roots of individuation, and when we say that, is it going too far to add, upon the funda- mental characteristic of real existence ? In this con- nection, I am confident that, whether we look at the matter psychologically or physiologically, we are shut up to the conclusion that all action of living beings was originally feeling-prompted, and that what we call re- flex action is everywhere a secondary product, a de- graded form of purposive action. We know that many actions at first performed voluntarily, actions learned with effort by repeated forth-puttings of concentrated attention, become by degrees habitual, and are performed automatically without attention — i.e., without any need for express volition to come into play at all. Great part of the detail of our daily life is handed over to mechanism in this way, and psychologists and physiolo- gists have not been slow to emphasise the beneficent operation of this fact. It is, indeed, the very condition of progress, that aptitudes once acquired should estab- lish themselves as definite tendencies within our mental and physical organism — definite co-ordinations of stim- ulus and response which do their work without our active superintendence. The powers of intelligence and will — the powers of personality, if I may so speak — are thus set free for new tasks and further achievements, till these in turn are, as it were, built into the structure of the Self. Only thus is the spirit fitted to advance upon its endless path. But mechanism is thus, in every sense, posterior to intelligence and will ; it is a means created and used by THE "NEW" PSYCHOLOGY AND AUTOMATISM. /& will. In a strict sense, will creates the reflex mechanism to which it afterwards deputes its functions. Mechanism, in fact, here as everywhere, is a means, something secondary ; it is impossible to conceive it as something primary, existing on its own account, much less as carrying in it the explanation of the higher conscious and voluntary processes. Intelligent volition is not reflex action grown complicated, and so become conscious of it- self. That is precisely to invert the true relation — an inversion that would be ludicrous, if it were not disastrous. Eeflex action is purposive action grown unconscious or sub-conscious, according to the economy of nature, because consciousness is no longer necessary to its proper perform- ance. It is not to be supposed, of course, that this takes place within the life -history of the individual human being, or of any highly developed organism. In such an organism, many reflex paths, many co-ordinations of stim- ulus and response, are doubtless fixed; they have been established in the long process of race-evolution, and in virtue of their establishment that evolution has proceeded. But follow the process as far back as we may, all analogy points to the same conclusion — namely, that feeling- prompted action, — i.e., action which is germinally pur- posive, germinally voluntary, — is the irporepov