The case against evolution

by George Barry O'Toole

The nature of conceptual thought is such as to exclude the participation of matter as a constituent of its specific agent and receptive subject. The objects of a cerebral sense like the imagination are endowed with extension, color, shape, volume, mass, temperature, and other physical properties, in virtue of which they can set up vibrations in an extended medium or modify an extended organ by immediate physical contact. But, while imagination makes us conscious of objects capable of stimulating extended material organs, the objects, of which we are conscious in abstract thinking, are divested of all the sensible properties, extension, and specific energies, which would enable them to modify a material neuron, or produce a physical impression upon a material receptor of any kind whatever. Between an extended material receptor, like a sense-organ or a cerebral neuron, and the nondimensional, dematerialized object or content of an abstract thought, like science, heroism, or morality, there is no conceivable proportion. How can a material organ be affected by what is supersensible, unextended, imponderable, invisible, intangible, and uncircumscribed by the limitations of space and time? Extended receptors are necessary for picking up the vibrations of a tridimensional medium (like air or ether), and they are, likewise, essential for the reception of impressions produced by surface-contact with an exterior corporeal mass. In short, sensory neurons are needed to receive and transmit inward the quantitative and measurable excitations of the material stimuli of the external world, and central neurons are required as tablets upon which these incoming excitations may imprint extended neurograms, that are proportionate in intensity and extensity to the external stimulus apprehended, and that underlie and determine the concrete imagery (of which they are the physical basis). But when it comes to perceiving and representing the meaning of duty, truth, error, cause, effect, psychology, means, end, entity, logarithms, etc., our mind can derive no benefit from the coöperation of a material organ. In such thinking we are conscious of that which could not make an impression nor leave a record upon material receptors like neurons. To employ a material organ for the purpose of perceiving abstract essences and qualities would be as futile and pointless as an attempt to stop a nondimensional, unextended, intangible baseball with a catcher’s glove. Hence the services of material centers and receptors may be dispensed with, so far as rational thought is concerned. Rational thought cannot utilize the intrinsic coägency of the organism, and it is therefore a superorganic or spiritual function.

That conceptual thought is in no wise communicated to the organism, but subjected in the spiritual soul alone, is likewise apparent from the data furnished by introspection. The conceiving mind apprehends even material objects according to an abstract or spiritualized mode of representation. In other words, in conceiving material objects we expurgate them of their materiality and material conditions, endowing them with a dematerialized mode of mental existence which they could never have, if subjected in their own physical matter, or in the organized matter of the cerebral cortex. Thus, in forming our concept of a material object like a boat, we spiritualize the boat by separating (representatively, of course, and not physically) its nature or essence from the determinate matter (e.g., wood, or steel) of which it is made, and by divesting it of the material and concrete conditions which define not only its physical existence outside of us, but also its imaginal existence within us as a concrete image in our imagination. In other words, we isolate the type or form of a given object from its material substrate and liberate it from the limiting material and concrete individuation, which confine it to a single material subject and localize it definitely in space and time. Now, it is axiomatic that whatever is received is received according to the nature of the receiver. Water, for example, assumes the form of the receptacle into which it is poured, and a picture painted upon canvas is necessarily extended according to the extension of the canvas. If, therefore, our intellect endows even the material objects, which it perceives, with a dematerialized or spiritualized mode of representation, it follows that the intellect itself is a spiritual power and not an organic sense immersed in concretifying and individualizing matter. Certainly, this ideal or spiritualized mode of existence does not emanate from the material object without nor yet from its vicarious material image in our organic imagination (which, in point of fact, is absolutely impotent to imagine anything except concrete, singular things in all their determinate individuation and quantification). Thought, then, with its abstract mode of presentation, cannot, like imagery, be subjected in the animated or soul-informed cortex, but must have the spiritual mind alone as its receptive subject. Our abstract or dematerialized mode of conceiving material objects is a subjective character of thought, proceeding from, and manifesting, the spirituality of the human mind, which represents even material objects in a manner that accords with its own spiritual nature.

But it is not only in the process of abstraction, but also in that of reflection, that rational thought manifests its superorganic or spiritual character. The human mind knows that it knows and understands that it understands, thinks of its own thoughts and of itself as the agent and subject of its thinking. It is conscious of its own conscious acts, that is to say, it reflects upon itself and its own acts, becoming an object to itself. The thinking ego becomes an object of observation on the part of the thinking ego, which acquires self-knowledge by this process of reflective thought. In introspection, that which observes is identical with that which is observed. Now such a capacity of self-observation cannot reside in matter, cannot be spatially commensurate with a material organ nor inseparably attached thereto. It is possible only to an immaterial or spiritual principle, devoid of mass and extension, and not subject to the law of the impenetrability of matter. In virtue of the law of impenetrability, no two material particles, no two bodies, no two integral parts of the same body, can occupy one and the same place. One part of a body can, indeed, act on another part extrinsic to itself; but one and the same part or particle cannot act upon itself. To become at once observed and observer, a material organ would have to split itself in two, so that the part watched could be distinct from, and spatially external to, the part watching. The power of perfect reflection, therefore, must reside in the spiritual soul, and cannot be bound to, and coëxtensive with, a material organ. Only in this supposition can there be a return of the subject upon and into itself, only in this supposition can there be that identification of observed and observer implied by the process of reflection. H. Gründer, in his “Psychology without a Soul,” gives a graphic reductio ad absurdum of the contrary assumption: “A fairy tale,” he says, “tells of a knight who was beheaded by his victorious foe. But, strange to relate, the vanquished knight rose to his feet, seized his severed head and bore it off, as in triumph. The most remarkable part, however, of the story is that with a last effort of gallantry he took his own head, and—kissed its brow. The climax of this fairy tale is no more absurd than the assumption that a material organ can know itself and philosophize on itself. Only if we admit with the scholastics a simple soul intrinsically independent of any bodily organism, can we explain the possibility of perfect psychological reflexion.” (Cf. pp. 193, 194.)

For the rest the impossibility of introspection on the part of a material organ is so evident that the materialists themselves freely concede it, and being unwilling to admit the spirituality of the human intellect, they are forced to resort to the disingenuous expedient of denying the fact of reflection on the part of the human mind. “It is obvious,” says Auguste Comte, “that by an invincible necessity the human mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own. We understand that a man can observe himself as a moral agent, because in that case he can watch himself under the action of the passions which animate him, precisely because the organs that are the seat of those passions are distinct from those that are destined for the functions of observation.... But it is manifestly impossible to observe intellectual phenomena whilst they are being produced. The individual thinking cannot divide himself in two, so that one half may think and the other watch the process. Since the organ observing and the one to be observed are identical, there can be no self-observation.” (“Cours de philosophie positive,” lière leçon.) But an argument is of no avail against a fact, and, as a matter of fact, we do reflect. It is by introspection or reflective thought that we discriminate between our present and our past thoughts, and become conscious of our own consciousness. Our intellect even reflects upon its own act of reflection, and so on indefinitely, so that, unless we are prepared to accept the absurd alternative of an infinite series of thinkers, we have no choice but to identify the subject knowing with the subject known. That our intellect is conscious of its own operations and attentive to its own thoughts, is an evident fact of internal experience, and it is preposterous to tilt against facts by means of syllogisms. When Zeno concocted his aprioristic “proof” of the impossibility of translatory movement, his sophism was refuted by the simple process of walking—solvitur ambulando. In like manner, the Comtean sophism concerning the impossibility of reflection is refuted by the simple act of mental reflection—solvitur reflectendo. For the rest, we readily concede Comte’s contention that an organ is incapable of reflection or self-observation, but we deny his tacit assumption that our cognitive powers are all of the organic type. Our intellect, which attends to its own phenomena, thinks of its own thought and reasons upon its own reasoning, cannot be bound to, or coextensive with, a material organ, but must be free from any corporeal organ and rooted in a spiritual principle. In a word, reflective thought is a superorganic function expressing the spiritual nature of the human mind.

Another proof of the superorganic nature of the human intellect as compared with sentiency, both exterior and interior, is one adduced by Aristotle himself: “But that the impassivity of the sense,” he says, “is different from that of intellect is clear if we look at the sense organs and at sense. The sense loses its power to perceive, if the sensible object has been too intense; thus it cannot hear sound after very loud noises, and after too powerful colors or odors it can neither see nor smell. But the intellect, when it has been thinking on an object of intense thought, is not less, but even more, able to think of inferior objects. For sense-perception is not independent of the body, whereas the intellect is.” (“Peri Psyches,” Bk. III, Ch. iv, 5.)

This temporary incapacitation of the senses consequent upon powerful stimulation is a common experience embalmed in such popular expressions as “a deafening noise,” “a blinding flash,” “a dazzling light,” “a numbing pain,” etc. Weber’s law of the differential threshold tells us that the intensity of sensation does not increase in the same proportion as that of the stimulus. On the contrary, the more intense the previous stimulus has been, the greater must be the increment added to the subsequent stimulus before it can produce a perceptible increase in the intensity of sensation. In short, stimulation of the senses temporarily decreases their sensitivity with reference to supervening stimuli. The reason for this momentary loss of the power to react normally is evidently due to the organic nature of the senses. Their activity entails a definite and rigidly proportionate process of destructive metabolism in their bodily substrate, the organism. In other words, the exercise of sense-perception involves a commensurate process of decomposition in the neural tissue, which must afterwards be compensated by a corresponding assimilation of nutrient material, before the sense can again react with its pristine vigor. This process of recuperation requires time and temporarily inhibits the reactive power of the sense in question, the duration of this repair work being determined by the amount of neural decomposition caused by the reaction of the sense to the previous stimulus. When, therefore, a weaker stimulus supervenes in immediate succession to a stronger one, the sense is incapable of perceiving it. All organic activity, in short, such as sense-perception and imagination, is rigidly regulated by the metabolic law of waste and repair.

With the intellect, however, the case is quite different. The intellect is neither debilitated nor stupefied by the discovery of truths that are exceptionally profound, or unusually abstruse, or strikingly evident; nor is it temporarily incapacitated thereby from understanding simpler, easier, or less evident truths. On the contrary, the more comprehensive, the more penetrating, the more perspicuous, the more sublime our intellectual vision is, so much the more is our intellect invigorated and enthused in its pursuit of truth, and its knowledge of the highest truths renders it not less, but more, apt for the understanding of simple and ordinary truths. Obviously, then, the intellect is not bound to a corruptible organ like the senses, but has for its subject a spiritual principle that is intrinsically independent of the organism.

In opposition to this contention, it may be urged that a prolonged exercise of intellectual activity results in the condition commonly known as brain-fag. But this fatigue of the brain is not, as a matter of fact, the direct effect of intellectual activity; rather it is the direct effect of the activity of the imagination, and only indirectly the effect of intellectual thought. The intellect, as we have seen, requires a constant flow of associated and aptly coördinated imagery as the substrate of its contemplation. Now, the imagination, which supplies this imagery, is a cerebral sense, whose activity is directly proportionate to, and commensurate with, the metabolic processes at work in the cortical cells. Its exercise is directly dependent upon the energy released by the decomposition of the cerebral substance. Prolonged activity of the imagination, therefore, involves the destruction of a considerable amount of the cortical substance, and results in temporary incapacitation or paralysis of the imagination, which must then be compensated by a process of repair in the cortical neurons, before the imagination can resume its normal mode of functioning. Brain-fag, then, is due to the activity of the imagination rather than that of the intellect. That such is the case appears from the fact that after the initial exertion, which results from the imagination being forced to assemble an appropriate and systematized display of illustrative imagery as subject-matter for the contemplation of the intellect, the latter is henceforth enabled to proceed with ease along the path of a given science, its further progress being smooth and unhampered. Once the preliminary work imposed upon the imagination is finished, the sense of effort ceases and intellectual investigation and study may subsequently reach the highest degrees of concentration and intensity, without involving corresponding degrees of fatigue or depression on the part of the cerebral imagination, just as, conversely speaking, the activity of the cerebral imagination may reach degrees of intensity extreme enough to induce brain-fag in psychic operations wherein the concomitant intellectual activity is reduced to a minimum, e. g., in the task of memorizing a poem, or recitation. Here, in the all but complete absence of intellectual activity, the same fatigue results as that induced by a prolonged period of analytic study or investigation, in which imaginative activity and rational thinking are concomitant. The point to be noted, in this latter case, is that the intellect does not show the same dependence upon the physiological vicissitudes as the imagination. The imagery of our imagination, being rigidly correlated with the metabolic processes of waste and repair at work in the cerebral cortex, manifests correspondingly variable degrees of intensity and integrity, but the intensity of thought is not dependent upon this alternation of excitation and inhibition in the cortex. Hence, while the concomitant imagery is fitful, sporadic, and fragmentary, intellectual thought itself is steady, lucid, and continuous. The intensity of thought does not vary with the fluctuations of neural metabolism, and may reach a maximum without involving corresponding fatigue in the brain. The brain-fag, therefore, which results from study does not correspond to the height of our intellectual vision, but is due to the intensity of the concomitant imaginative process.

The intellect, therefore, is not subject to the metabolic laws which rigidly regulate organic functions like sense-perception and imagination. Man’s capacity for logical thought is frequently unaffected by the decline of the organism which sets in after maturity. All organic functions, however, such as sight, hearing, sense-memory, are impaired in exact proportion to the deterioration of the organism, which is the inevitable sequel of old age. The intellectual powers, on the contrary, remain unimpaired, so long as the cortex is sound enough to furnish the required minimum of imagery, upon which intellectual activity is objectively dependent. There are, in fact, many cases on record where men have remained perfectly sane and rational, despite the fact that notable portions of the cerebral cortex had been destroyed by accident or disease (e. g., tumors). Intellectual thought, therefore, is a superorganic function, having its source in a spiritual principle and not in a corruptible organ.

Such is the spiritualism of Aristotle. That this conception differs profoundly from the ultraspiritualism of Descartes, it is scarcely necessary to remark. The position assumed by the latter was always untenable, but it is now, more than ever, indefensible in the face of that overwhelming avalanche of facts whereby modern physiological psychology demonstrates the close interdependence and correlation existent between psychic and organic states. Such facts are exploited by materialists as arguments against spiritualism, though it is evident that they have force only against Cartesian spiritualism, and are bereft of all relevance with respect to Aristotelian spiritualism, which they leave utterly intact and unscathed. In the latter system, sense-perception, imagination, and emotion are acknowledged to be directly dependent on the organism. Again, spiritual functions like thinking and willing are regarded as objectively or extrinsically dependent upon the imagination, which, in turn, is directly dependent on a material organ, namely: the brain. Hence even the rational operations of the mind are indirectly dependent upon the cerebral cortex. The spiritualism of Aristotle, therefore, by reason of its doctrine concerning the direct dependence of the lower, and the indirect dependence of the higher, psychic functions upon the material organism, is able to absorb into its own system all the supposedly hostile facts amassed by Materialism, thereby rendering them futile and inconsequential as arguments against the spirituality of the human soul. In confronting this philosophy, the materialistic scientist finds himself disarmed and impotent, and it is not to be wondered at, that, after indulging in certain abusive epithets and a few cant phrases, such as “metaphysics” or “medieval” (invaluable words!), he prudently retires from the lists without venturing to so much as break a lance in defense of his favorite dogma, that nothing is spiritual, because all is matter. In this predicament, the Cartesian caricature proves a boon to the materialist, as furnishing him with the adversary he prefers, a man of straw, and enabling him to demonstrate his paltry tin-sword prowess. Of a truth, Descartes performed an inestimable service for these modern “assassins of the soul,” when he relieved them of the necessity of crossing swords with the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle by the substitution of a far less formidable antagonist, namely, the psychophysical dualism of mind and matter.