III. THE ORIGIN OF FEELING.
Concerning the origin of feeling Professor Mach says: "The question how feeling arises out of the physical element has for me no significance." I agree that we cannot ask how feeling arises out of the physical element. But feeling being a fleeting phenomenon, to propose the problem of the origin of feeling has a significance.
#Physical elements with and without feeling.#
Some physical elements—namely, those of our own body—are indubitably possessed of the subjective phenomena of feeling. And as to certain other physical elements, observable in our fellow creatures, that is in men and animals, no one would think of denying their presence either. But there are physical elements which we regard as bare of all feeling. The wind that blows, and the avalanche that plunges into the valley are not supposed to be feelings. Yet the energy of the wind and the energy of the avalanche may be utilised and ultimately stored up in food. The food may be changed into human energy and then the element of feeling appears as if called forth out of the void. We agree that feeling has not been changed from motion. But if feeling was not motion before, what was it? Feeling cannot be a creation from nothing. Consequently it must in its elements have existed before. Feeling, namely actual feeling, must be regarded as a special mode of action of the elements of feeling. If all that which we can observe in motion, all that which the term motion comprises, constituting the objective changes taking place in nature, contains nothing of feeling or of the elements of feeling, we must yet attach to every motion the presence of this element of feeling.
#Elements of feeling not observable.#
That the potential subjectivity of the physical elements, namely the elements of feeling, cannot be seen; as motions can be seen and objectively observed, is not a reason that militates against this view; for it is the nature of all subjective states to be felt only by the feeling subject. If all feelings are objectively unobservable except by their correspondent motions, the elements of feeling can form no exception to the general rule.
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#The animation of all nature.#
Professor Mach says: "Some years ago I should have agreed in toto with the passages in which Dr. Carus speaks of the animation of all nature and of the feeling that accompanies every motion."
#Nature not all feeling.#
Let me here emphasise that I have termed nature "alive" not in the sense that every motion is supposed to be accompanied with sensation, nor with any kind of feeling, but with an element of feeling only. I am aware that the term element of feeling may be easily misunderstood, and it seems advisable to guard against such misconceptions. Actual feeling I suppose originates from the elements of feeling similarly as an electric current originates under certain special conditions. Sulphuric acid dissolves zinc and sets energy free which appears in the copper wire as electricity. It is an instance of the transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy.
#The term "elements of feeling" inappropriate.#
To use the expression "elements of feeling" is no more or less allowable than to speak of the stored up energy from which electricity is produced, as elements of electricity. The latter expression is inappropriate, because we are in possession of better terms, because our range of experience in the subject is wider. But suppose that among all molar and molecular motions we were only acquainted with electricity and knew nothing of potential energy, could we not for want of a better word form the term "elements of electricity"?
#What the elements of feeling are not.#
The elements of feeling should not be supposed to be feelings on a very small scale. The elements of feeling may be and for aught we know are as much unlike actual feelings as mechanical motion, or chemical dissolution is unlike electricity. The essential features of feeling may be, and I believe they are, produced through the form in which their elements co-operate. Similarly the different pieces of a clock and the atoms of which it consists contain nothing of the clock; and if we should call the heaviness of a weight, the swinging property of the pendulum, the tension of the spring, etc., etc., elements of chronometry, it might appear ridiculous, because we know so many other processes, viz. all different ways of performing work, for which these qualities can be used. The action of a spring, of a suspended weight, of a mere pendulum are not by themselves elements of chronometry; they become a chronometrical arrangement only by their proper combination with a dial and hands attached, and by being correctly regulated in adaptation to temperature and many other conditions.
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It is not plausible that the earth, when in its gaseous state, was the habitation of any feeling beings, and it is actually impossible that it harbored feeling beings as they exist now. Feeling accordingly must have originated, and the question how feeling originates is a problem that suggests itself naturally to the psychologist as well as the philosopher.
#Vital energy a unique form of energy.#
The kinetic energy liberated in our actions, in brain-activity as well as muscular motions, is produced from the potential energy stored up in our tissues. This energy, qua energy, is the same energy which we meet everywhere in nature. All kinds of energy are interconvertible. Yet we must bear in mind that the vital energy displayed in animal organisms is a special and indeed a unique form of energy. It is as different from other forms of energy as is, for instance, electricity from molar motion.
#Physiology and psychology not applied mechanics.#
In former times physics and chemistry were considered as applied mechanics, and physiology as applied chemistry. This position, however, is wrong and had to be abandoned. Mechanical, chemical, physiological, and psychical processes exhibit radically different conditions. The student of mechanics, the chemist, the physiologist, the psychologist, each one of them attempts to solve a different problem. They accordingly deal with different sets of abstractions. The processes which constitute the subject-matter of the physiologist's and psychologist's work are different from those of the mechanical philosopher and of the chemist. The abstraction of the so-called purely mechanical excludes such processes as chemical combinations; it is limited to molar mechanics only. The term molecular mechanics is an attempt at widening the domain of mechanics. But the terms of neither molecular nor molar mechanics contain anything of the properly physiological nature observed in vegetal and animal life. The latter is a very complicated process which may briefly be described as assimilation of living forms. The laws of molar and molecular motions are not annulled, yet they are superseded; they remain, yet some additional important traits appear. Different conditions and complications show different features and the characteristics of organised life are not the molar or molecular mechanics of their motions but their properly physiological features.
Mechanical laws accordingly cannot explain physiological action, and still less have they anything in common with ideas, or thoughts, or feelings. Accordingly, the attempt to apply mechanics to any other than mechanical considerations is prima facie to be rejected. We must never forget that all our scientific inquiries deal with certain sides of reality only.
#The higher view of the whole.#
The abstractions of the mechanical philosopher as well as those of the physiologist and psychologist are one-sided aspects only of reality. Yet it is quite legitimate to take a higher standpoint in order to classify our notions so that the general views comprise the special views and to determine the relations among the several in their kind most general views. In this way we can shape our entire knowledge into an harmonious world-conception representing the whole as a whole. This I tried to do when, following the precedent of Fechner and Clifford, I proposed the problem of the origin of actual feelings from the non-feeling elements-of-feeling, the former depending upon a special combination or form of action of the latter, and the latter being a universal feature of reality.
#The additional feature in a stone's fall.#
When we observe some very simple process in nature, e. g. the fall of a stone, we represent it as a motion. We formulate the operation of the stone's fall into a law, describing its mode of action as it holds good in all cases of the same kind. But the motion observable and representable in our mind is not all that takes place. There must be some additional feature which in a further development will appear as man's consciousness.
To regard the fall of a stone as only a very simple instance of essentially the same process that takes place when a man does an act, i. e. performs a motion accompanied with consciousness, appears at first sight strange or even absurd. But we cannot escape the assumption that in a certain respect it is the same thing. We are inevitably driven to adopt this monistic conception of things by inexorable logical arguments; and we are supported in it by the observation of natural processes.
#Human activity and energy.#
Human action develops by degrees out of other natural processes, and we have sufficient evidence to believe that humanity with its civilisation, science, art, and all its ideals—so far as the energy alone, spent in human activity, is considered—is but a differentiation of natural forces that has come to pass on the cooled off surface of the earth under the influence of solar heat. Man is transformed solar heat. All the forces animating the planetary system are differentiations from the heat of which our solar system was possessed when in a nebular state. And what is the heat of which nebular masses are possessed? It is the motion of celestial bodies, of comets, or of so called world-dust, changed by collision into molecular motion.
But in human activity there is some additional element, that of purely subjective awareness, which is neither energy in itself nor can have been transformed from energy; it must have existed potentially. Accordingly we assume that also in the more primitive processes of nature there is some additional element which in its full development appears as feeling and reaches its highest stage known to us, in the consciousness of man.