M IND.*
WHATEVER else may be said of this able journal, no one who has read it carefully from its commencement will doubt that it is written by very able men, and by men of much learning too. We Mind. No. IX. January, 15713. rarely happen to agree with its general philosophical doctrine, and we note with a certain regret that we get much fewer contri- butors from among thinkers of the school of Kant or Hamil- ton, than from thinkers of the school of Hume or Mill. Still, no doubt, this is due to the fact that most of the able young men of the day have been imbued early with the intellectual teaching of Mill, while the remarkable physical investigations of Helmholtz have done much to add to the weight attaching to the physical antecedents of psychology, as distinguished from the study of mind properly so called. But though Mind might, having regard to the character of the articles contained in it, be almost as accurately called " Brain,"— since it certainly deals almost as much with the nervous as with the psychological phenomena which throw a light on the nature of man, seldom, indeed, do we find in it an article which is not able of its sort, and which fails to inspire respect for the intellectual force of the writer.
In the present number of Mind, for example, there are several articles of remarkable ability. To say nothing of the careful paper on the recent German investigations into the 'question of visual perception, of which Mr. Sully gives an account, there is, first, a very able paper by the Editor on the "Physical Basis of Mind," in which he discusses Mr. Lewes's second series of Problems of Life and Mind with great acuteness. Only Professor Croom Robertson is not so careful as he should be to explain what he really means when he intimates a sort of half-assent to Mr. Lewes, or at all events, refuses to dissent from him, in regard to his doctrine that some kind of mental process may always be assumed as "the obverse aspect" of the reflex actions of the spinal centres. What ordinary students find it almost impossible to understand in Mr. Lewes is his curious use of the word "sensibility," to imply a property which has apparently nothing at all to do with consciousness. If you tickle the feet of a man whose spine is injured so that he has ceased to be conscious of anything which affects the lower part of his body, the feet are withdrawn, through the agency of the nerves centred in the lower spinal ganglia, just as if he had really felt the tickling, and Mr. Lewes holds that this is due to the 'sensibility' of some of the nerves implicated. And if he means to say that there is some sort of consciousness seated in these ganglia which, by the injury to the spine, is broken off from all connection with the consciousness of the man himself, we understand his meaning, though we do not see how he can ever offer even the ghost of evidence for his case, since the fragmentary consciousness in ques- tion,—when separated from that of the man,—is clearly not pro- vided with a voice or any means of declaring itself to the world. If that were what he meant,—which, however, almost certainly it is not,—though we should understand him, he would seem to be- lieve what is in the strictest sense unknown and unknowable. But if he does not mean as much as this, but only that the word " sensi- bility " ought to be applied to describe phenomena which resemble those in which conscious feeling is an important factor, even though that important factor has disappeared, he seems to us to make the precise mistake of the man who proposed to act the tragedy of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted. And when a most accurate and learned thinker like Professor Croom Robert- son appears to countenance or half-countenance this curious assumption, we must say we wish he had explained his meaning more fully. We have not the remotest idea of what is meant by saying that "some kind of mental process may always be assumed as the obverse aspect of a spinal reflex,"—supposing, what is of course known in the case we refer to, that the only consciousness which we can interrogate, or of the existence of which we have any evidence as being in organic relations with the nervous centres in question, denies all feeling, all sensitive experience, except such as other observers also have, in relation to these phenomena. Surely, then, Professor Robertson should have told us what he would understand by sensibility which is not felt, and how we can have evidence of the existence of mental pro- cesses of which no mind can give any account. We do not say that the Editor of Mind supports Mr. Lewes, for the criticism he directs against him mainly turns on this one point. But certainly he is half inclined to respect his view, if limited to the assertion that there always is "feeling" behind reflex action, though it may not be the cause of the reflex action. Whose feeling can be behind that of which no one is aware ?
And that leads us to Professor Clifford's striking and very amusing paper on "The Nature of Things in Themselves." For he goes straight to the point, and maintains roundly that there can be " feeling " without consciousness at all,—indeed, without a
"who" at all,—and that it requires a great complexity of feelings to make up a consciousness :— "The conclusion that elementary feeling co-exists with elementary brain-motion in tho same way as consciousness co-exists with complex brain-motion, involves more important consequences than might at first sight appear. We have regarded consciousness as a complex of feel- ings, and explained the fact that the complex is conscious, as depending on the mode of complication. But does not the elementary feeling itself imply a consciousness in which alone it can exist, and of which it is a modification ? Can a feeling exist by itself, without forming part of a consciousness? I shall say no to the first question, and yes to the second, and it seems to me that these answers are required by the doc- trine of evolution. For if that doctrine be true, we shall have along the line of the human pedigree a series of imperceptible steps connecting inorganic matter with ourselves. To the latter members of that series we must undoubtedly ascribe consciousness, although it must, of course, have been simpler than our own. But where are we to stop ?. In the case of organisms of a certain complexity, consciousness is inferred. As we go back along the line, the complexity of the organism and of its nerve-action insensibly diminishes ; and for the first part of our course, we see reason to think that the complexity of consciousness insensibly diminishes also. But if we make a jump, say to the tunicate molluscs, we Bee no reason there to infer the existence of consciousness at all. Yet not only is it impossible to point out a place where any sudden break takes, place, but it is contrary to all the natural training of our minds to suppose a breach of continuity so great."
Evidently Professor Clifford, while rejecting with disdain a vast deal for which there is, in our opinion, a great mass of evidence, finds it very easy to believe the most wonderful things in the world on what appears to us less than no evidence at all. Professor Clifford's argument amounts to this,—that as there must be all sorts of gradations between the feeling (if any) of an Ascidian, and the consciousness of a man, therefore inorganic matter may have something bearing the same relation to the feeling (if any) of an Ascidian, which that feeling bears to the consciousness of a man. But he need not go down to the lower animals in search of organised matter which appar- ently has much less complexity of feeling in it than has the material of our sensitive nerves. There are plenty of tissues in the human body, like the hair and the upper surface of the skin and the grey matter of the brain, which, as far as we know, are as far removed from connection with human feeling as the body of a jelly-fish or a shelf of granite. No man is 'con- scious' of his hair or of a loose piece of the upper skin being cut away, if it is done behind his back and in a way not to attract his ear. If, then, these organised tissues have "a piece of mind- stuff" at the heart of them, as Professor Clifford thinks all matter has, we have at least no more reason for supposing it to be part of our "mind-stuff" than we have for supposing that the gravel-bed we live on is furnished with a part of our mind-stuff. So far as the argument from analogy goes, Professor Clifford might just as well reason from the absolute unconsciousness which accompanies the cutting of our hair, if done without our knowledge, to the probable absence of any 'piece of mind-stuff' in. what we call matter, as from the clear consciousness which accom - panics impressions on those parts of the body provided with sensi- tive nerves to the probable presence of some piece of mind-stuff in all matter. To assume that mind is the inside aspect, so to speak,
of that which, when viewed from outside, is called matter, on the strength of the strong consciousness which accompanies some kinds of nervous action, seems to us neither more nor less wild and fanciful than it would be to assume that matter, as such, can have no necessary relation with mind, on the
ground that various parts of a man's body may be severed from it without the man. being conscious of it at all. The whole of Professor Clifford's article seems to us one of the cleverest bits of pure superstition we ever met with, and none the less
so that he does not seem to be quite alone in the drift of his thought, but rather the exponent of a rising school who solve
in this way,—for the want of a more natural solution,—the problem as to the relation between mind and matter, between thought and motion, in the universe.
Lastly, let us notice a very subtle essay by Mr. A. J. Balfour, ALP., on the "Philosophy of Ethics." This essay is well worth reading, though we confess its doctrine seems to us a trifle eccentric in parts, while very sound and forcibly put in other parts. He puts most ably, and to our minds unanswerably, the
doctrine that a scientific truth,—a fact of knowledge merely,— can never be the sole basis of an ethical judgment :—
" A man (let us say) is not satisfied that he ought to speak the truth. He demands a reason, and is told that truth-telling conduces to the welfare of society. He accepts this ground, and apparently, therefore, rests his ethics on what is a purely scientific assertion. But this is not in reality the fact. There is a suppressed premiss required to justify his conclusion, which would run somewhat in this way,—' I ought to do that which conduces to the welfare of society.' And this proposition, of coarse, is ethical. This example is not merely an illustration, it is a typical case. There is no artifice by which an ethical statement can be evolved from a scientific or metaphysical proposition, or any combi- nation of such ; and whenever the reverse appears to be the case, it will always be found that the assertion, which seems to be the basis of the ethical superstructure, is in reality merely the minor of a syllogism, of which the major is the desired ethical axiom."
We cannot conceive of any reply to that, and it touches the very heart of the inadequacy of the Utilitarian system. Even if utili- tarianism could give us a perfect clue to the rule of life, it could not give the magic of authority attaching to that clue. But when Mr. Balfour goes on to identify, as be seems to us to do, the true criterion of ethics,—the sense of obligation,—with that very dif- ferent thing indeed, the selection of an end in itself desirable, we are quite unable to follow his meaning :— "If a man contemplates any action as one which he chooses to per- form, he must do so either because he regards the action as one which be chooses for itself, or because he expects to obtain by it setae object which he chooses for itself. And similarly, if he contemplates any object as one he chooses to obtain, he must do so either because he re- gards that object as chosen for itself, or because it may be a means to one that is. In other words, deliberate action is always directed mediately or immediately to something which is chosen for itself alone; which something may either be itself an action, or what I loosely term an object. Including both, then, under the term end,' I define an ethical proposition thus :—An ethical proposition is one which prescribes an action with reference to on end. Nobody will deny that this definition is true of all moral propositions (most people, indeed, will think that it is too obvious to need stating); but they will probably say, and say truly, that it is also true of a great many propositions which are not usually called moral. Now my object is to show that the distinction between what are usually called moral propositions and that larger class which I have defined above, has no philosophic import,—has nothing, that is, to do with the grounds of obligation. And for this purpose let me analyse more carefully this larger class (which I have- called ethical) from a philosophic point of view, that is, with reference- to the rational foundation and connection of its parts."
And accordingly Mr. Balfour maintains that amongst ethical pro- positions we should include all the propositions which prescribe an end desirable and desired for its own sake, whether they be evil or good. But then he must cast away at once the whole idea implied in the word " ought " as the true criterion of ethics. I desire food for its own sake, when I am hungry. But I do not say, or think, that I am under an obligation to take food whenever I am hungry. Indeed if it be incompatible with health, I may be under an obligation very frequently not to take it when I am very hungry. The meaning of a desire' is not the same as the meaning of an obligation,' and it seems to us a most eccentric freak of definition to use the word ' ethics ' to cover all the propo- sitions prescribing the pursuits of ends, unless we include in the word 'prescribe' the whole meaning of the word 'obligation.' But Mr. Balfour's eccentricity is one of language only, if we understand him rightly, for he says :— " Ethics, then, rests on two sorts of judgments, neither of which can be deduced from the other, and of neither of which can any proof be given or required. Tho first sort declares an end to be final, the second declares which of two final ends is to be preferred, if they are incom- patible. This second sort, of course, is not essential to an ethical system, but can only be required when an individual regards more than one end as final."
And this shows that Mr. Balfour really does provide for dis- criminating between the higher and lower, where two ends are incompatible. But then what does he mean by calling an end 'final' which is to be rejected directly another end of a nobler character turns out to be incompatible with it ? Surely the first end is not final,' but only provisional, and the feeling of obliga- tion would not in such a case appear at all, except in relation to the preference of the second end over the first. If I have a diseased appetite, and, having clearly had as much as is good for me, desire some more, but refrain because I know health is a higher object than the satisfaction of appetite, the satisfaction of appetite is not final.' Nor does the sense of obligation occur at all where a good leg of mutton creates the desire to cat, if I am aware that I have already eaten as much as will conduce to my health, until it occurs as enforcing abstinence. It seems to us a sheer eccentricity which makes Mr. Balfour extend the meaning of Ethics to the impulses urging us to the satisfaction of all desires. Many of our desires carry with them no sense of obliga- tion at all. The words ' ought ' and ought not' do not arise in connection with them. And surely not only usage, but good_ sense, demands that Ethics should be limited to the extent of the word obligation,' and should not run off into all fields of simple desire.
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