B OOK S.
DR. MORELL'S MENTAL PHILOSOPHY.*
THIS is a very unequal book; and the space and care devoted to the various branches of the inquiry it takes up are so disproportionate as to convey a somewhat ragged effect. The earlier part, on the philosophy of Perception and Consciousness, Association, and the logical processes, is, though an outline merely, yet a full outline of the subject ;—the latter, except a careful chapter on the free- dom of the Will, is not even an outline of the philosophy of the subject, and the so-called analysis of the Feelings and Emotions is a mere wreath of mist. The psychology of Ethics proper, is passed over without even a discussion, on the strange ground that "we must leave it for the metaphysician to determine what are the qualities of human actions objectively considered, according to which our judgment separates them into the two great categories of good and evil." Does not Dr. Morel see that this assumes that moral good and evil are "objective" qualities in action, for the discernment of which there is no distinct faculty in man,—and is he willing entirely to ignore all discussion of that great subject in a work which professes to be an Introduction to Mental Philosophy ? To do so is, in fact, to abdicate his functions as a guide in one of the very richest departments of mental philosophy. The whole discussion of the origin of ethical laws, and their binding influence over man, is as essential a part of mental philosophy as the discussion of the- forms of thought to which Dr. Morell devotes so much attention. And if he is convinced that all the peculiarity in the proper phenomena of moral obligation can be analyzed away, without assuming such a special faculty, then in a work which professes to give the outlines of this great subject synthetically, he should have indicated at least his own mode of constructing it out of the general basis or our intel- lectual nature. In the case of the theory of beauty, Dr. Morel has thought it necessary to hint (very- vaguely) a theory of his own; but in the far more important one of ethics, he has re- legated the whole question from the psychologist' to the meta- physician. Undoubtedly it is, in the first instance, a ques- tion for the psychologist,—if only to show how to dispense with a special moral faculty, as in the earlier portions of his work Dr. Morell has shown,how he would dispense with a special psychological basis for geometry and arithmetic. Under the unsatisfactory circumstances. of the case, we think we shall criticize Dr. Morel's book to the best advantage, if we bring forward one or two comparatively isolated theories; on the substantia- tion of which he has expended real force, instead of rambling over the whole thread of a very ill-proportioned book. We will select first his theory of what he calls "preconscious mental activity." It is a well-known fact of our menial history that many operations which we must regard as intellectual operations appear to be performed beneath the surface of consciousness—that is to be at once intellectual and non-intellectual—instinctive processes resulting in clear thoughts. Dr. Moron uses these facts to establish a theory that all the individualizing organization of man, physical as well as mental, is carried on by an "unconscious soul"—a kind of latent intellect adapting means to ends without being in the secret of its own skill—producing, in fact, all the effects of what we call design without intending them—a contriving power that does not ponder—a mechanical intelligence that does not think. We will quote Dr. Morell's exact words : "The only inference we can possibly draw is, that these preconscio activities are carried on by virtue of an inherent principle of intellige —by an imminent teleological law—in one word, by an unconscious sand. From the first moment in which the mind-principle and the mateiAal- principle were brought into conjunction through the agency of the pmAnts, a distinctive individuality came into existence—the formative power repre- senting the mind, the matter itself representing the body. This Indivi- duality grows up by the mutual co-operation of the primary mental and vital forces, until the organism is prepared, an independent hum' exis- * An In to Mental Philosophy on the reductive Method. By .1, . 1dorell, A.St, LLD. Longman. tense is commenced, and a new era, of development takes its start, accom- panied by an ever-opening and ever self-enriching consciousness."
Now let us consider the class of facts on which Dr. Morell bases this rather startling theory of an "unconscious soul," whose office it is to elaborate an organization infinitely more delicate and compli- cated than any work of art which the conscious soul—when it has once attained consciousness—has any power to create. The phenomena on which this theory is based are simply these : that latent knowledge and latent powers do often lie concealed or forgotten, and even un- suspected, in the mind, and that hereditary tendencies likewise lark in the character without giving any sign of their existence until they betray themselves on occasion of some revealing emergency. Thus knowledge which we have once acquired and forgotten is not really as though it had never been acquired, but is recoverable by a com- paratively slight effort from beneath the surface of consciousness, sometimes even without any effort, by a mere physical affection of the brain. So, too, all our most accurate knowledge is for the greater part of every day outside the field of our actual consciousness, and is knowable by us at any moment rather than known. So again in many persons, under special influences on the nerves, powers both intellectual and physical develop themselves of which no one had any conception. Again, after puzzling over a hard problem at night till we have quite lost ourselves, and find no clue to the true solution, we sometimes wake up in the morning with all the bearings clear before us, as if the mind had continued or improved its processes beneath the field of consciousness, and done for, us what we could not consciously do for ourselves. Dr. Morel also instances the transmission of carious physical and mental tricks from father to son, in cases where they could not have been contracted in personal companionship, as proofs that tendencies and thoughts sleep in the organization which have never been developed by any con- scious life at all. Well, then, Dr. Morel argues, it is clear that there are plenty of properly intellectual and personal pheno- mena which are not grasped by the living and conscious mind, which are not even always within its reach. If, under proper stimulus, I can recover a whole world of knowledge and powers of which I am not ordinarily possessed, and which yet no other person except myself could recover under this stimulus, this must, in some sort, be called personal to myself and yet not a part of my conscious self; it must be, in short, an "unconscious soul." Habits which belong- to me either by descent, or by acquisition in times long past, lan- guages which I had learnt and forgotten, thoughts which I had been hunting for and could not find, all come back in a moment by some Jaw of their own, and are as much facts of me as if they were now for the first time born out of my own thought. Shall we not say that they are the products of an unconscious nature lying beneath the small conscious field whose operations I watch ? Grant it ; grant at least that there are innumerable habits, attitudes, and ten- dencies to attitudes which the mind either has acquired for itself or has had forced upon it by laws of circumstance and descent beyond its own control and vision, and which-as properly belong to the per- sonality as the mental attitude of the moment; yet how far does this go towards proving Dr. Morel's extraordinary position that the physical processes by which our organization is built up, and the marvellous original instincts by which it is protected and developed, are in any sense explained by being attributed to an "unconscious intelligence or teleological principle," whatever that phrase may mean? It seems to us that in thus speaking, .Dr. Morell loses sight of the real bearing of the evidence he adduces. No doubt the facts to which we have referred prove that whatever has once been appro- priated by our intellect or our will—nay, in certain cases, whatever habits have once been appropriated by the intellects or wills of the ancestors through whom we derive our physical constitution—beccane a modifying unconscious influence in our mental nature which unites our present selves with the past causes in which it originated. In other words, one of the causes of the unconscious tendencies of our mental life now, is our own or our ancestors' conscious life and effort at some past time. If, then, the analogy has any bearing at all on Dr. Morell'a theory, it ought to indicate that the acts which he ascribes to an "unconscious soul" have at some time previous been introduced into our personal or hereditary character by a conscious soul. For example, 1)r. Morell says : "If we ga back to the verge of unconscious life—I mean to the first days of infancy—we find a number of aetMns performed of a purely instinctive nature, which show, in their adaptation to certain ends, that there must be an intelligent principle within, which impels and shapes them. The wink- ing of the eyes—the contraction and extension of the limbs—the action of themouth in seeking the appropriate nutriment, and many other similar instinctive movements, all prove that there are teleological changes going on internally, altogether anterior to consciousness,—changes out of which consciousness itself has to be gradually evolved."
Now, does he mean that it could be admissible to suppose that this "preconscious intellectual activity" of the infant in wanking, stretch- ing, lie., nay more, as he says, in the era of actual birth and physiolo- gical growth in the embryo state, in the cell-formation of its vital tis- sues, and the elaboration of its nervous system, could be referred to any previous conscious' intellectual acts of either the individual or its ac..e.stry I Certainly he does not mean this, as the individual was net b'efore at all ; and tradition gives us no vestige of any man who ever had any conscious share in a single vital process of his own frame, a singki. beat of his own heart, or thrill of his own nerves. But if this be so4 how do the analogies brought forward in any way bear upon the subje_et ? They show that habits and knowledge, consciously csainedits. are not easily obliterated—that, indeed, they continue to exert anities. ance long after they are forgotten. But they do not help us
i,. co. ty to account for the origin of moral habits or processes of
thought which have never sprung out of the- conscious life at all. Indeed, to refer such tendencies to an " unconscious intellect or soul," seems to us to be simply equivalent to referring them to an absolutely unknown origin. We gain something when we can lay our finger on some really conscious act in the past, and say, " Here is the source of the subterranean stream which is rising here again from the earth." But we gain nothing at all when we simply utter the mord intellect, and neutralize all its meaning by denying that it has ever had any connexion with what we mean by intellect. Admit the wonderful adaptation of means to ends in the physical constitution of man ; admit, too, as we do most fully, that this implies an intellectual origin, yet what we mean by saying this, is that it implies a real personal forethought, contemplating the end and adapting the means ; and if you deny that this forethought, this contemplation exists, we are left with the bare fact of means and ends, without any of the intellectual selection and adaptation which alone help us to conceive those marvellous facts. If I unconsciously adapt my means to my ends, for the first time, I really doit by chance. 1 may have learnt to do it by forethought until I can do it without any express attention, nay, until I may even transmit a sort of instinct or art of so doing it to my posterity. But it is no intellectual process except so far as it either does originate or has originated in conscious thought. If it has never had any conscious origin, it. has never been intellectual at all; is non-intellectual or accidental, and Dr. Morel must either give up all the meaning and advantage of his theory, or he must give up the eccentricity of it, and consent to go back to the old view which he appears to despise, that the forethought and intellectual adaptation which is not in man, is in some higher power than man—in fact, in God. He may call this Pantheistic, but there is no Pantheism in ascribing. all the creative power of pure nature to God ; Pantheism consists in mixing up the nature of God with the voluntary agency of lower beings. To the other point, on which we had intended to discuss Dr. Morel's analysis, the principle of Association, we must refer very briefly. There runs throughout the book a curious habit of speaking of ideas, as if they had a vital hold on the mind, rather than the mind a vital hold upon them. He speaks of the "action and re- action" between ideas as if they were the centres of intellectual force, and the mind the mere theatre on which they perform. This leads to what we regard as a stream of error, which calminates in the chapter on Association. Without giving us any hint of what his unit of idea is, Dr. Morel says : "The mind being a perfect unity, it can only entertain one idea at the same moment—it is perfectly easy to think of a cube and a sphere alternately, but we cannot have our consciousness occupied with both at the same in- stant. As soon as the one comes in, it immediately excludes the other. It is perfectly easy again to think of a lion and an elephant alternately, nay we can even think at one and the same moment of what is common to both, but we cannot have the idea of the lion and the idea of an elephant, in so far as they differ, actually present to the consciousness at the same. instant. Our ideas, in fact, always take the form of a series."
And then he deduces two great laws :
"1. Everything which we hold in our memory is gradually weakened by all the dissimilar ideas which occupy the consciousness.
"2. The association between any two ideas in the mind is represented by the amount of force which the one has expended in order to repress the other."
Now, there seemsto us to be a whole mass of errors in this theory. First, the unit of consciousness is very vaguely and obscurely shadowed forth. If I can think a whole elephant, inclusive of trunk, ears, body, and tail, I clearly have a very complex unity in my mind ; and why I should not put a lion on his back, or even at his side, and, include them both in the same unit of thought, I cannot understand. Can I think a sphere and a cube, but not a sphere with an inscribed cube ? The truth is, the amount of complexity admissible in a single unit of con- sciousness is a practical question, and probably very different in dif- ferent minds. We make this remark because this notion of the absolute simplicity of the consciousness, and the resolution into successive instead of synchronous elements, leads to, as we deem it, a very false law of association. It is not the "action and reaction" between the ideas, the struggle between them for the possession of the mind, which determines the closeness of their association, but simply the closeness of their identification in consciousness. The law of association is merely the law of the tendency of the mind to recover a former attitude completely, whenever- it par- tially does so. The reason I think of a man when I see his picture or hear his name, is not because the picture or the name have struggled with the man's character for the possession of my attention,—but, on the other hand, because they have always occupied my attention at the same moment. To say that the idea of the sound "lion" "weakens" the idea.of the creature called up, that the one presses the other out of my consciousness and is there- fore strongly associated with it, is surely one of the most extraordinary pieces of psychological analysis of which we ever heard. Is my idea of a friend's face in any way likely to expel and supersede my idea of his character ? Will not the one be the symbol and expres- sion of the other, keeping it before me instead of pushing it out of my mind even for a moment ? We believe the truth to be that associative force between two ideas susceptible of distinction depends, first, on their organic connexion within the limits of one state of consciousness, and only secondarily on the connexion of their succes- sion in thought. All those espreuive ideas which do not follow each other in consciousness, but actually exhibit as through a glass the realities which they represent, are far more closely associated with theca than any merely contiguous phenomena. For some such reason it is, we believe, that on occasion of very sudden and vehement moral shocks the minutest details of the external scenery become burned in upon the memory as they do at no other time. The stunned mind recoiling from the contemplation of the chasm that has sud- denly opened at its feet throws itself into external perception with far more than its usual force, but without ever for a moment losing con- sciousness of the startling reality in the background. Hence the two become welded together almost as substance and attribute, and that particular scene or phase of nature seems to be the vesture, as it were, of the special emotion. We are convinced that the assumed absolute simplicity ofconscious- nets is totally at variance with the facts and laws of the mental nature, which imply that man is conscious of multiplicity in unity. The features of man, the blackness of the storm, the deep blue of a summer night, are all far more closely associated with the thought of character, of terror, of sublime beauty, which they directly ex- press, than are any mere connected phenomena, and for this reason, that a law of mind identifies the former, as it were, as soul and body, and only establishes a relation between the latter. It is not the "action and reaction among ideas" but the extent to which the mind itself identifies or relates them, that determines the associative force between them.
These are specimens of the looseness of thought which pervades everywhere even the most careful and elaborate parts of a book which, in its earlier portions, evinces considerable insight and much knowledge. The first three-quarters of it will be found full of sug- gestion, though never very trustworthy; the last fourth is so hasty and vague as to be of little if any value.
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