Mind and Motion and Monism

by George John Romanes

Of course in saying this I am aware that some of the more clear-sighted of the materialists have plainly perceived this difficulty in all its magnitude, and so have felt that unless it can be met, any theory of Materialism must necessarily contain a radical contradiction of principles. Some few materialists have therefore sought to meet the difficulty in the only way it can be met, viz. by boldly asserting the possibility of thought and energy being transmutable. On this view thought becomes a mode of motion, and takes its rank among the forces as identical in nature with heat, light, electricity, and the rest. But this view is also inherently impossible. For suppose, as a matter of argument, that physiologists should discover a mechanical equivalent of thought, so that we might estimate the value of a calculation in thermal units, or the 'labour of love' in foot-pounds: still we should not be out of our difficulties; we should only have to cut a twist of flax to find a lock of iron. For by thus assimilating thought with energy, we should in no wise have explained the fundamental antithesis between subject and object. The fact would remain, if possible, more unaccountable than ever, that mind should present absolutely no point of real analogy with motion. Involved with the essential idea of motion is the idea of extension; suppress the latter and the former must necessarily vanish, for motion only means transition in space of something itself extended. But thought, as far as we can possibly know it, is known and distinguished by the very peculiarity of not having extension. Therefore, even if we were to find a mechanical equivalent of thought, thought would still not be proved a mode of motion. On the contrary, what would be proved would be that, in becoming transformed into thought, energy had ceased to be energy; in passing out of its relation to space it would cease to exist as energy, and if it again passed into that relation it would only be by starting de novo on a new course of history. Therefore the proof that thought has a mechanical equivalent would simply amount to the proof, not that thought is energy, but that thought destroys energy. And if Materialism were to prove this, Materialism would commit suicide. For if once it were proved that the relation of energy to thought is such that thought is able to absorb or temporarily to annihilate energy, the whole argument of Materialism would be inverted, and whatever evidence there is of causation as between mind and matter would become available in all its force on the side of Spiritualism. This seems plain, for if it even were conceivable—which most distinctly it is not—that a motor could ever become a motive, and so pass from the sphere of dynamics into the sphere of consciousness, the fact would go to prove, not that the motor was the cause of the motive, but rather that the motive was the cause of destroying the motor; so that at that point the otherwise unbroken chain of physical sequences was interrupted by the motive striking in upon it, and in virtue of the mysterious power supposed to have been proved by physiology, cancelling the motor, so allowing the nerve-centre to act as determined by the motive.

Of course I wish it to be understood that I believe we are here dealing with what I may call, in perhaps suitably contradictory terms, inconceivable conceptions. But let it be remembered that I am not responsible for this ambiguity; I am only showing what must be the necessary outcome of analysis if we begin by endeavouring phenomenally to unite the most antithetical of elements—mind and motion. Materialism, at least, will not be the gainer should it ever be proved that in the complex operations of the brain a unique exception occurs to the otherwise universal law of the conservation of energy in space.

We may, therefore, quit the suggestion that the difficulty experienced by Materialism of showing an equivalency between neurosis and psychosis can ever be met by assuming that some day mental processes may admit of being expressed in terms of physical. But before leaving this difficulty with regard to equivalency, I may mention one other point that seems to me of importance in connexion with it. I have already said that if we suppose causation to proceed from brain to mind, we must suppose this essential requirement of equivalency between the cerebral causes and the mental effects to be satisfied somewhere.

But where are we to say that it is satisfied? Even if we suppose that thought has a mechanical equivalent, and that causation proceeds in the direction from energy to thought, still, when we have regard to the supposed effects, we find that even yet they bear no kind of equivalency to their supposed causes. The brain of a Shakespeare probably did not, as a system, exhibit so much energy as does the brain of an elephant; and the cerebral operations of a Darwin may not have had a very perceptibly larger mechanical equivalent than those of a banker's clerk. Yet in the world of thought the difference between our estimate of the results, or 'work done,' in these cases is such as to drive all ideas of equivalency to the winds. Doubtless, a materialist will answer that it is not fair to take our estimate of 'work done' in the world of mind as the real equivalent of the energy supposed to have passed over from the world of motion, seeing that our estimate is based, not on the quantitative amount of thought produced, but rather on its qualitative character with reference to the social requirements of the race. But to this it is enough to answer that we have no means of gauging the quantity of thought produced other than by having regard to its effects in the world of mind, and this we cannot do except by having regard to its qualitative character. Many a man, for instance, must have consumed more than a thousand times the brain-substance and brain-energy that Shelley expended over his 'Ode to a Skylark,' and yet as a result have produced an utterly worthless poem. Now, in what way are we to estimate the 'work done' in two such cases, except by looking to the relative effects produced in the only region where they are produced, viz. in the region of mind? Yet, when we do so estimate them, what becomes of the evidence of equivalency between the physical causes and the psychical effects?

Now if thus, whether or not we try to form an estimate, it is impossible to show any semblance of equivalency between the supposed causes and the alleged effects, how can any one be found to say that the evidence of causation is here as valid as it is in any other case? The truth rather is that the alleged effects stand out of every relation to the supposed causes, with the exception only of being associated in time.

There still remains one other enormous difficulty in the way of the theory of Materialism; it necessarily embodies the theory of conscious automatism, and is therefore called upon to explain why consciousness and thought have ever appeared upon the scene of things at all. That this is the necessary position of Materialism is easily proved as follows. We have already seen that Materialism would commit suicide by supposing that energy could be transmuted into thought, for this would amount to nothing short of supposing the destruction of energy as such; and to suppose energy thus destructible would be to open wide the door of spiritualism. Materialism, therefore, is logically bound to argue in this way: We cannot conceive of a conscious idea, or mental change, as in any way affecting the course of a cerebral reflex, or material change; while, on the other hand, our knowledge of the conservation of energy teaches us as an axiom that the cerebral changes must determine each other in their sequence as in a continuous series. Nowhere can we suppose the physical process to be interrupted or diverted by the psychical process; and therefore we must conclude that thought and volition really play no part whatever in determining action. Thoughts and feelings are but indices which show in the mirror of the mind certain changes that are proceeding in the matter of the brain, and are as inefficient in influencing those changes as the shadow of a cloud is powerless to direct the movements of that of which it is the shadow.

But when Materialism reaches, in a clear and articulate manner, this inference as a conclusion necessary from its premises, it becomes opposed at once to common sense and to the requirements of methodical reason. It becomes opposed to common sense because we all feel it is practically impossible to believe that the world would now have been exactly what it is even if consciousness, thought, and volition had never appeared upon the scene—that railway trains would have been running filled with mindless passengers, or that telephones would have been invented by brains that could not think to speak to ears that could not hear. And the conclusion is opposed to the requirements of methodical reason, because reason to be methodical is bound to have an answer to the question that immediately arises from the conclusion. This question simply is, Why have consciousness, thought, and volition ever been called into existence; and why are they related, as they are related, to cerebral action? Materialism, by here undertaking to prove that these things stand uselessly isolated from all other things, is bound to show some reason why they ever came to be, and to be what they are. For observe, it is not merely that these things exist in a supposed unnecessary relation to all other things; the fact to be explained is that they exist in a most intimately woven and invariable connexion with certain highly complex forms of organic structure and certain highly peculiar distributions of physical force. Yet these unique and extraordinary things are supposed by automatism to be always results and never causes; in the theatre of things they are supposed to be always spectators and never actors; in the laboratory of life they are supposed to be always by-products; and therefore in the order of nature they are supposed to have no raison d'être. Such a state of matters would be accountable enough if the stream of mental changes were but partly, occasionally, and imperfectly associated with the stream of material changes; but as the association is so minute, invariable, and precise, the hypothesis of the association being merely accidental, or not requiring explanation, becomes, at the bar of methodical reasoning, self-convicted of absurdity.

The state of the case, then, simply is that two distinct facts stand to be explained by the theory of conscious automatism—first, why psychosis should ever have been developed as a mysterious appendage to neurosis; and, secondly, why the association between these things should be so intimate and precise. Assuredly, on the principles of evolution, which materialists at least cannot afford to disregard, it would be a wholly anomalous fact that so wide and general a class of phenomena as those of mind should have become developed in constantly ascending degrees throughout the animal kingdom, if they are entirely without use to animals. If psychosis is, as supposed, a function of neurosis, the doctrine of natural selection alone would forbid us to imagine that this function differs from all other functions in being itself functionless. If it would be detrimental to the theory of natural selection that any one isolated structure—such as the tail of a rattlesnake—should be adapted to perform a function useless to the animal possessing it, how utterly destructive of that theory would be the fact that all the phenomena of mind have been elaborated as functions of nerve-tissue without any one of them ever having been of any use either to the individual or to the species. And the difficulty that thus arises is magnified without limit when we remember that the phenomena of mind are invariable in their association with cerebral structure, grade for grade, and process for process.

It is of no argumentative use to point to the fact that many adaptive movements in animals are performed by nerve-centres apart from any association with consciousness or volition, because all the facts on this head go to prove that consciousness and volition come in most suggestively just where adaptive movements begin to grow varied and complex, and then continue to develop with a proportional reference to the growing variety and complexity of these movements. The facts, therefore, irresistibly lead to the conclusion (if we argue here as we should in the case of any other function) that consciousness and volition are functions of nerve-tissue super-added to its previous functions, in order to meet new and more complex demands on its powers of adaptation.

Neither is it of any argumentative use to point to the fact that adaptive actions which originally are performed with conscious volition may by practice come to be performed without conscious volition. For it is certain that no adaptive action of quite a novel kind is ever performed from the first without consciousness of its performance, and therefore, although it is true that by repetition its performance may become mechanical or unconscious, this does not prove that consciousness was without use in producing the adaptive action. It only proves that after a nervous mechanism has been elaborated by the help of consciousness, consciousness may be withdrawn and leave the finished mechanism to work alone; the structure having been completed, the scaffolding necessary to its completion may be removed.