Mind and Motion and Monism

by George John Romanes

If once we see plainly that the idea of causation is derived from within, and that what we call the evidence of physical causation is really the evidence of mental modifications following one another in a definite sequence, we shall then clearly see, not merely that we have no evidence, but that we can have no evidence of causation as proceeding from object to subject. However cogent the evidence may appear at first sight to be, it is found to vanish like a cloud as soon as it is exposed to the light of adequate contemplation. In the very act of thinking the evidence, we are virtually denying its possibility as evidence; for as evidence it appeals only to the mind, and since the mind can only know its own sequences, the evidence must be presenting to the mind an account of its own modifications; from the mere fact, therefore, of its being accepted as thinkable, the evidence is proved to be illusory.

To uneducated men it appears an indisputable fact of 'common sense' that the colour of a flower exists as perceived in the flower, apart from any relation to the percipient mind. A physiologist has gone further into the thicket of things, and finds that the way is not so simple as this. He regards the quality of colour as necessarily related to the faculty of visual perception; does not suppose that the colour exists as such in the flower, but thinks of the something there as a certain order of vibrations which, when brought into relation with consciousness through the medium of certain nerves, gives rise to the perception experienced; and in order to account for the translation into visual feeling of an event so unlike that feeling as is the process taking place in the flower, physiologists have recourse to an elaborate theory, such as that of Helmholtz or Hering. In other words, physiologists here fully recognize that colour, or any other thing perceived, only exists as perceived in virtue of a subjective element blending with an objective; the thing as perceived is recognized as having no existence apart from its relation to a percipient mind. Now, although physiologists are at one with the philosophers thus far, it is to be feared that very frequently they are in the same position as the above-mentioned 'uneducated men,' when it becomes needful to press still further into the thicket. For after having distinguished the necessity of recognizing a mind-element in any possible theory of perception, they forthwith proceed to disregard this element when passing from the ground of perception to that of thought. Although the ideas of matter, motion, causation, and so on, are themselves as much the offspring of a thinking mind, with its environment, as the perception of colour is a conceiving of the percipient mind, with its environment, these ideas are inconsistently supposed to stand for equivalent realities of the external world—to truly represent things that are virtually independent of any necessary relation to mind. Or, as the case has recently been well put by Principal Caird:

'You cannot get mind as an ultimate product of matter, for in the very attempt to do so you have already begun with mind. The easiest step of any such inquiry involves categories of thought, and it is in terms of thought that the very problem you are investigating can be so much as stated. You cannot start in your investigations with a bare, self-identical, objective fact, stripped of every ideal element or contribution from thought. The least and lowest part of outward observation is not an independent entity—fact minus mind, and out of which mind may, somewhere or other, be seen to emerge; but it is fact or object as it appears to an observing mind, in the medium of thought, having mind or thought as an inseparable factor of it. Whether there be such a thing as an absolute world outside of thought, whether there be such things as matter and material atoms existing in themselves before any mind begins to perceive or think about them, is not the question before us. If it were possible to conceive of such atoms, at any rate you, before you begin to make anything of them, must think them; and you can never, by thinking about atoms, prove that there is no such thing as thought other than as an ultimate product of atoms. Before you could reach thought or mind as a last result you must needs eliminate from it the data of the problem with which you start, and that you can never do, any more than you can stand on your own shoulders or outstrip your own shadow.... In one word, to constitute the reality of the outward world—to make possible the minimum of knowledge, nay, the very existence for us of molecules and atoms—you must needs presuppose that thought or thinking self, which some would persuade us is to be educed or evolved from them.... To make thought a function of matter is thus, simply, to make thought a function of itself[5].'

From this reasoning there can be no escape; and it is more rational for a man to believe that colour exists as such in a flower than, after having plainly seen that such cannot be the case, forthwith to disregard the teaching of this analogy, and to imagine that any apparent evidence of mind as a result of matter or motion can possibly be entertained as real evidence.

Remembering, then, that from the nature of this particular case it is as impossible for mind to prove its own causation as it is for water to rise above its source, it may still be well, for the sake of further argument, to sink this general consideration, and to regard such spurious evidence of causation as is presented by Materialism, without prejudice arising from its being primâ facie inadmissible.

Materialists, as already observed, are fond of saying that the evidence of causation from neurosis to psychosis is as good as such evidence can be proved to be in any other case. Now, quite apart from the general considerations just adduced to show that from the peculiar nature of this case there can here be no such evidence at all—quite apart from this, and treating the problem on the lower ground of the supposed analogy, it may be clearly shown that the statement is untrue. For a little thought will show that in point of fact the only resemblance between this supposed case of causation and all other cases of recognized causation, consists in the invariability of the correlation between cerebral processes and mental processes; in all other points the analogy fails. For in all cases of recognized causation there is a perceived connexion between the cause and the effect; the antecedents are physical, and the consequents are physical. But in the case before us there is no perceived, or even conceivable, connexion between the cause and the effect; for the causes are supposed to be physical and the effects mental. And the antithesis thus posited is alone sufficient to separate toto coelo the case of causation supposed from that of all cases of causation recognized. From the singularly clear and well-balanced statement of this subject given by Professor Allman in his Presidential Address before the British Association, I may here fitly quote the following:—

'If we could see any analogy between thought and any one of the admitted phenomena of matter, we should be justified in the first of these conclusions (i. e. that of Materialism) as the simplest, and as affording a hypothesis most in accordance with the comprehensiveness of natural laws; but between thought and the physical phenomena of matter there is not only no analogy, but no conceivable analogy; and the obvious and continuous path which we have hitherto followed up in our reasonings from the phenomena of lifeless matter through those of living matter here comes suddenly to an end. The chasm between unconscious life and thought is deep and impassable, and no transitional phenomena can be found by which, as by a bridge, we may span it over[6].'

And, not unduly to multiply quotations, I shall only adduce one more from another of the few eminent men of science who have seen their way clearly in this matter, and have expressed what they have seen in language as clear as their vision. Professor Tyndall writes:—

'The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one phenomenon to the other. They appear together but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electrical discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem. How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness? The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable[7].'

Next, in all cases of recognized causation there is a perceived equivalency between cause and effect, such equivalency belonging to the very essence of that in which we conceive causation to consist. But as between matter and motion on the one side, and feeling and thought on the other, there can be no such equivalency conceivable. That no such equivalency is conceivable may be rendered apparent on grounds of Materialism itself. For Materialism is bound to accept the fundamental doctrine of modern physics—that, viz. as to the conservation of energy—and therefore it becomes evident that unless we assimilate thought with energy, there is no possibility of a causal relation, or a relation of equivalency, as obtaining between the one and the other. For however little we may know about brain-dynamics, materialists, at least, must take it for granted that in every process of cerebration the matter and force concerned are indestructible quantities, and therefore that all their possible equations are fully satisfied, could we but follow them out. Howsoever complex we may suppose the flux and reflux of forces to be within the structure of a living brain, it is no more possible for any one of the forces concerned to escape from brain to mind, than it would be for such an escape to occur in a steam-engine or a watch; the doctrine of the conservation of energy forms an insuperable bar to the supposition that any equation in the region of physics can be left unsatisfied, in order to pass over and satisfy some other equation in the region of psychics.