The Mind and the Brain / Being the Authorised Translation of L'Âme et le Corps

by Alfred Binet

Unfortunately; we must confess that if it be right to relegate to metaphysics the discussion on the concept of the soul, it does not really suffice to purge our minds of all metaphysics; and a person who believes himself to be a simple and strict experimentalist is often a metaphysician without knowing it. These excommunications of metaphysics also seem rather childish at the present day. There is less risk than some years ago in declaring that: "Here metaphysics commence and positive science ends, and I will go no further." There is even a tendency in modern psychologists to interest themselves in the highest philosophical problems, and to take up a certain position with regard to them.

The second kind of definition is, we have said, that by enumeration. It consists in placing before the eyes of the reader an assortment of psychological phenomena and then saying: "These are the things psychology studies." One will take readily as samples the ideas, reasonings, emotions, and other manifestations of mental life. If this is only a strictly provisional definition, a simple introduction to the subject, we accept it literally. It may serve to give us a first impression of things, and to refresh the memories of those who, by a rather extraordinary chance, would not doubt that psychology studies our thoughts. But whatever may be the number of these deeply ignorant persons, they constitute, I think, a negligible quantity; and, after these preliminaries, we must come to a real definition and not juggle with the problem, which consists in indicating in what the spiritual is distinguished from the material. Let us leave on one side, therefore, the definitions by enumeration.

Now comes the definition by method. Numbers of authors have supposed that it is by its method that psychology is distinguished from the other sciences.

To the mind is attached the idea of the within, to nature the idea of being without the mind, of constituting a "without" (un dehors). It is a vague idea, but becomes precise in a good many metaphors, and has given rise to several forms of speech. Since the days of Locke, we have always spoken of the internal life of the mind as contrasted with the external life, of subjective reality as contrasted with objective reality; and in the same way we oppose the external senses to the inner sense (the internal perception), which it has at times been proposed to erect into a sixth sense. Though no longer quite the Cartesian dualism, this is still a dualism.

It has also been said that psychology is the science of introspection, and, in addition, that scientific psychology is a controlled introspection. This science of the "internal facts of man" would thus be distinguished from the other natural sciences which are formed by the use of our outer senses, by external observation—that is to say, to use a neologism, by externospection. This verbal symmetry may satisfy for a moment minds given to words, but on reflection it is perceived that the distinction between introspection and externospection does not correspond to a fundamental and constant difference in the nature of things or in the processes of cognition. I acknowledge it with some regret, and thus place myself in contradiction with myself; for I for a long time believed, and have even said in print, that psychology is the science of introspection. My error arose from my having made too many analyses of detail, and not having mounted to a sufficiently wide-reaching conception.

The definition I have given of consciousness is the implied condemnation of the above ideas. Consciousness, being nothing but an act of revelation, has neither a within nor a without; it does not correspond to a special domain which would be an inner one with regard to another domain.

Every consideration on the position of things is borrowed from the sphere of the object, and remains foreign to the sphere of the consciousness. It is by an abuse of language that we speak of the outer world in relation to the world of consciousness, and it is pure imagination on the part of philosophers to have supposed that our sensations are first perceived as internal states and states of consciousness, and are subsequently projected without to form the outer world. The notion of internal and external is only understood for certain objects which we compare by position to certain others.

In fact, we find that the opposition between an external and an internal series is generally founded on two characteristics: sensation is considered external in relation to the idea, and an object of cognition is considered as internal when it is accessible only to ourselves. When these two characteristics are isolated from each other, one may have doubts; but when they co-exist, then the outwardness or inwardness appears fully evidenced. We see then that this distinction has nothing to do with the value of consciousness, and has nothing mental about it.

It is thus that our ideas are judged from internal events. It is our microcosm opposed to the macrocosm. It is the individual opposed to the social. Looking at an external object, we remain in communion with our fellows, for we receive, or think we receive, identical sensations. At all events, we receive corresponding sensations. On the other hand, my thought is mine, and is known to me alone; it is my sanctuary, my private closet, where others do not enter. Every one can see what I see, but no one knows what I think.

But this difference in the accessibility of phenomena is not due to their peculiar nature. It is connected with a different fact, with the modes of excitement which call them forth. If the visual sensation is common to all, it is because the exciting cause of the sensation is an object external to our nervous systems, and acting at a distance on all.[34] The tactile sensation is at the beginning more personal to the one who experiences it, since it requires contact; and the lower sensations are in this intimacy still in progress. And then, the same object can give rise, in common-place circumstances, to a sensation either common to all beings or special to one alone. The capsule of antipyrine which I swallow is, before my doing so, visible to all eyes; once in my mouth, I am the only one to perceive it. It is therefore possible that the same sensation, according to the displacements of the object which excites it, may make part of the internal or of the external series; and as all psychic life is sensation, even effort, and, as we are assured, emotion, it follows that our argument extends to all the psychical elements.