INTRODUCTION
IN this "Life and Death" portion a definite side is unobtrusively taken in connexion with two outstanding controversies; and though the treatment is purposely simple and uncontroversial, the author is under no delusion that every philosophical reader will agree with him. Explicit argumentation on either side is no novelty, but this is not the place for argument; moreover, the opposing views have already been presented with ample clearness by skilled disputants.
Briefly then it may be said that Interactionism rather than Epiphenomenalism or Parallelism is the side taken in one controversy. And the non-material nature of life—the real existence of some kind of vital essence or vivifying principle as a controlling and guiding entity—is postulated in another: though the author never calls it a force or an energy.
Philosophical literature teems with these topics, but it may suffice here to call the attention of the general reader to two or three easily readable summaries—one an explanatory article by Mr. Gerald Balfour, in The Hibbert Journal for April 1910, on the Epiphenomenon controversy, and generally on the alternative explanations of the connexion between Mind and Body, in the light thrown on the subject by Telepathy and Psychical Research; while on the vitality controversy a small book embodying a short course of lectures by the physiologist and philosopher Dr. J. S. Haldane under the title Mechanism, Life, and Personality, or a larger book by Professor M'Dougal called Body and Mind, may be recommended. On this subject also the writings of Professor J. Arthur Thomson may be specially mentioned.
The opinions of the present author on these topics, whatever they may be worth, are held without apology or hesitation, because to him they appear the inevitable consequence of facts of nature as now known or knowable. Some of these facts are not generally accepted by scientific men; and if the facts themselves are not admitted, naturally any conclusion based upon them will appear ill-founded, and the further developed structure illusory. He anticipates that this will be said by critics.
In so far as the author's manner of statement is in terms of frank Dualism, he regards that as inevitable for scientific purposes. He does not suppose that any form of Dualism can be the last word about the Universe; but, for practical purposes, mind and matter, or soul and body, must be thought of separately, and it must be the work of higher Philosophy to detect ultimate unity—a unity which he feels certain cannot possibly be materialistic in any sense intelligible to those who are at present studying matter and energy.
It may be doubted whether Materialism as a philosophy exists any longer, in the sense of being sustained by serious philosophers; but a few physiological writers, of skill and industry, continue to advocate what they are pleased to call Scientific Materialism. Properly regarded this is a Policy, not a Philosophy, as I will explain; but they make the mistake of regarding it as a Philosophy comprehensive enough to give them the right of negation as well as of affirmation. They do this in the interest of what they feel instinctively to be the ultimate achievement, a Monism in which mind and matter can be recognised as aspects of some one fundamental Reality. We can sympathise with the aim, and still feel how far from accomplishment we are. Nothing is gained by undue haste, and by unfounded negation much may be lost. We must not deny any part of the Universe for the sake of a premature unification. Simplification by exclusion or denial is a poverty-stricken device.
The strength of such workers is that they base themselves on the experience and discoveries of the past, and, by artificial but convenient limitation of outlook, achieve practical results. But they are not satisfied with results actually achieved—they forget their limitations—and, by a gigantic system of extrapolation from what has been done, try to infer what is going to be done; their device being to anticipate and speak of what they hope for, as if it were already an accomplished fact. Some of the assumptions or blind guesses made by men of this school are well illustrated by an exposition in The Hibbert Journal for July 1916, where an able writer states the main propositions of Scientific Materialism thus:—
1. The law of universal causation;
2. The principle of mechanism—i.e. the denial of purpose in the universe and all notions of absolute finalism or teleology;
3. The denial that there exists any form of 'spiritual' or 'mental' entity that cannot be expressed in terms of matter and
motion.
These appear to be its three propositions, and they are formulated by the exponent "as being of the first importance in the representation of materialistic thought."
Now proposition 1 is common property; materialistic thought has no sort of exclusive right over it; and to claim propositions 2 and 3 as corollaries from it is farcical. Taking them as independent postulates—which they are—all that need be said about proposition 2 is that a broad denial always needs more knowledge than a specific assertion, and it is astonishing that any sane person can imagine himself to know enough about the Universe as a whole to be able complacently to deny the existence of any "purpose" in it. All he can really mean is that scientific explanations must be framed so as to exhibit the immediate means whereby results in nature are accomplished; for whether, or in what sense, they are first or simultaneously conceived in a Mind—as human undertakings are—is a matter beyond our scientific ken. Thus Darwinian and Mendelian attempts to explain how species arise, and how inheritance occurs, are entirely legitimate and scientific. For our experience is that every event has a proximate cause which we can investigate. Of ultimate causes we as scientific men are ignorant: they belong to a different region of inquiry. If the word "denial," therefore, in the above proposition is replaced by the phrase "exclusion from practical scientific attention," I for one have no quarrel with clause 2; for it then becomes a mere self-denying ordinance, a convenient limitation of scope. It represents Policy, not Philosophy.
But attention may be more usefully directed to the extravagantly gratuitous guess involved in hypothesis 3. As a minor point, it is not even carefully worded; for entities which cannot be expressed in terms of matter and motion are common enough without going outside the domain of physics. Light, for instance, and Electricity, have not yet proved amenable, and do not appear likely to be amenable, to purely dynamical theory.
Certain phenomena have been reduced to matter and motion,—heat, for instance, and sound, the phenomena of gases and liquids, and all the complexities of astronomy. And in a famous passage Newton expressed an enthusiastic hope that all the phenomena of physics might some day be similarly reduced to the attractive simplicity of the three laws of motion—inertia, acceleration, and stress. And ever since Newton it has been the aim of physics to explain everything in its domain in terms of pure dynamics. The attempt has been only partially successful: the Ether is recalcitrant. But its recalcitrance is not like mere surly obstruction, it is of a helpful and illuminating character, and I shall not be misleading anyone if I cheerfully admit that in some modified and expanded form dynamical theory in mathematical physics has proved itself to be supreme.
But does dominance of that kind give to that splendid science—the glory of Britain and of Cambridge—the right to make a gigantic extrapolation and sprawl over all the rest of the Universe, throwing out tentacles even into regions which it has definitely abstracted from its attention or excluded from its ken? There is not a physicist who thinks so. The only people who try to think so are a few enthusiasts of a more speculative habit of thought, who are annoyed with the physicists, from Lord Kelvin downwards, for not agreeing with them. And being unable to gather from competent authority any specific instance in which dynamics has explained a single fact in the region of either life or mind or consciousness or emotion or purpose or will,—because it is known perfectly well that dynamical jurisdiction does not extend into those regions,—these speculators set up as authorities on their own account, and, on the strength of their own expectation, propound the broad and sweeping dogma that nothing in the Universe exists which is not fully expressible in terms of matter and motion. And then, having accustomed themselves to the sound of some such collocation of words, they call upon humanity to shut its eyes to any facts of common experience which render such an assertion ridiculous.
The energy and enthusiasm of these writers, and the good work they may be doing in their own science, render them more or less immune from attack; but every now and then it is necessary to say clearly that such extravagant generalisations profane the modesty of science: whose heritage it is to recognise the limitations of partial knowledge, and to be always ready to gain fresh experience and learn about the unknown. The new and unfamiliar is the vantage ground, not of scientific dogmatism, but of scientific inquiry.
The expository or theoretical part of this book may at first appear too abstract for the general reader who has had no experience of the kind of facts already described. Such reader may fail to see a connexion between this more didactic portion and the illustrations or examples which have preceded it; but if he will give sufficient time and thought to the subject, the connexion will dawn upon him with considerable vividness.
It has always seemed to the author legitimate, and in every way desirable, for an experimenter to interpret and make himself responsible for an explanation or theory of his observations, so far as he can. To record bare facts and expect a reader of the record to arrive at the same conclusion as that reached by one who has been immersed in them for a long time, is to expect too strenuous an effort, and is not a fair procedure. Such a practice, though not unusual and sometimes even commended in physical science, is not followed by the most famous workers; and it has been known to retard progress for a considerable time by loading the student with an accumulation of undigested facts. The hypothesis on which an observer has been working, or which he has arrived at in the course of his investigations, may or may not be of permanent value, but if his experience has led him to regard it as the best solution so far attainable, and if he is known not to be a specially obstinate or self-opinionated person, his views for what they are worth should be set forth for the guidance of future inquirers. If he mauls the facts in his direction, he will be detected; but such an accusation is a serious one, and should not be made lightly or without opportunity for reply.
The string on which beads are strung may not be extremely durable, and in time it may give place to something stronger, but it is better than a random heap of beads not threaded on anything at all.
The main thread linking all the facts together in the present case is the hypothesis not only of continued or personal psychical existence in the abstract, but a definite inter-locking or inter-communication between two grades of existence,—the two in which we are most immediately interested and about which we can ascertain most,—that of the present and that of the immediate future for each individual; together with the added probabilities that the actual grades of existence are far more than two, and that the forthcoming transition, in which we cannot but be interested even if we do not believe in it, is only one of many of which we shall, in some barely imaginable way, in due time become aware.
The hypothesis of continued existence in another set of conditions, and of possible communication across a boundary, is not a gratuitous one made for the sake of comfort and consolation, or because of a dislike to the idea of extinction; it is a hypothesis which has been gradually forced upon the author—as upon many other persons—by the stringent coercion of definite experience. The foundation of the atomic theory in Chemistry is to him no stronger. The evidence is cumulative, and has broken the back of all legitimate and reasonable scepticism.
And if by selecting the atomic theory as an example he has chosen one upon which supplementary and most interesting facts have been grafted in the progress of discovery—facts not really contradicting the old knowledge, even when superficially appearing to do so, but adding to it and illuminating it further, while making changes perhaps in its manner of formulation—he has chosen such an example of set purpose, as not unlikely to be imitated in the present case also.
CHAPTER I
THE MEANING OF THE TERM LIFE
"Eternal process moving on."—Tennyson
THE shorter the word the more inevitable it is that it will be used in many significations; as can be proved by looking out almost any monosyllable in a large dictionary. The tendency of a simple word to have many glancing meanings—like shot silk, as Tennyson put it—is a character of high literary value; though it may be occasionally inconvenient for scientific purposes. It is unlikely that we can escape an ambiguity due to this tendency, but I wish to use the term 'life' to signify the vivifying principle which animates matter.
That the behaviour of animated matter differs from what is often called dead matter is familiar, and is illustrated by the description sometimes given of an uncanny piece of mechanism—that "it behaves as if it were alive." In the case of a jumping bean, for instance, its spasmodic and capricious behaviour can be explained with apparent simplicity, though with a suspicious trend towards superstition, by the information that a live and active maggot inhabits a cavity inside. It is thereby removed from the bare category of physics only, though still perfectly obedient to physical laws: it jumps in accordance with mechanics, but neither the times nor the direction of its jumps can be predicted.[32]
We must admit that the term 'dead matter' is often misapplied. It is used sometimes to denote merely the constituents of the general inorganic world. But it is inconvenient to speak of utterly inanimate things, like stones, as 'dead,' when no idea of life was ever associated with them, and when 'inorganic' is all that is meant. The term 'dead' applied to a piece of matter signifies the absence of a vivifying principle, no doubt, but it is most properly applied to a collocation of organic matter which has been animated.
Again, when animation has ceased, the thing we properly call dead is not the complete organism, but that material portion which is left behind; we do not or should not intend to make any assertion concerning the vivifying principle which has left it,—beyond the bare fact of its departure. We know too little about that principle to be able to make safe general assertions. The life that is transmitted by an acorn or other seed fruit is always beyond our ken. We can but study its effects, and note its presence or its absence by results.
Life must be considered sui generis; it is not a form of energy, nor can it be expressed in terms of something else. Electricity is in the same predicament; it too cannot be explained in terms of something else. This is true of all fundamental forms of being. Magnetism may be called a concomitant of moving electricity; ordinary matter can perhaps be resolved into electric charges: but an electric charge can certainly not be expressed in terms of either matter or energy. No more can life. To show that the living principle in a seed is not one of the forms of energy, it is sufficient to remember that that seed can give rise to innumerable descendants, through countless generations, without limit. There is nothing like a constant quantity of something to be shared, as there is in all examples of energy: there is no conservation about it: the seed embodies a stimulating and organising principle which appears to well from a limitless source.
But although life is not energy, any more than it is matter, yet it directs energy and thereby controls arrangements of matter. Through the agency of life specific structures are composed which would not otherwise exist, from a sea-shell to a cathedral, from a blade of grass to an oak; and specific distributions of energy are caused, from the luminosity of a firefly to an electric arc, from the song of a cricket to an oratorio.
Life makes use of any automatic activities, or transferences and declensions of energy, which are either potentially or actually occurring. In especial it makes use of the torrent of ether tremors which reach the earth from the sun. Every plant is doing it constantly. Admittedly life exerts no force, it does no work, but it makes effective the energy available for an organism which it controls and vivifies; it determines in what direction and when work shall be done. It is plain matter of fact that it does this, whether we understand the method or not,—and thus indirectly life interacts with and influences the material world. The energy of coal is indirectly wholly solar, but without human interference it might remain buried in the earth, and certainly would never propel a ship across the Atlantic. One way of putting the matter is to say that life times, and directs. If it runs a railway train, it runs the train not like a locomotive but like a General Manager. It enters into battle with a walking-stick, but guns are fired to its orders. It may be said to aim and fire: one of its functions is to discriminate between the wholesome and the deleterious, between friend and foe. That is a function outside the scope of physics.
Energy controlled by life is not random energy: the kind of self-composition or personal structure built by it depends on the kind of life-unit which is operating, not on the pabulum which is supplied. The same food will serve to build a pig, a chicken, or a man. Food which is assimilable at all takes a shape determined by the nature of the operative organism, and indeed by the portion of the organism actually reached by it. Unconscious constructive ability is as active in each cell of the body as in a honeycomb; only in a beehive we can see the operators at work. The construction of an eye or an ear is still more astonishing. In the inorganic world such structures would be meaningless, for there would be nothing to respond to their stimulus; they can only serve elementary mind and consciousness. The brain and nerve system is an instrument of transmutation or translation from the physical to the mental, and vice versa.