Unable as he was to explain how the same consciousness could persist throughout a succession of really and adequately distinct substances (except by virtually substantializing consciousness), Locke nevertheless persisted in holding that consciousness and consciousness alone (including memory, which, however, is inexplicable on any other theory than that of a subsisting and persisting substance or nature which remembers), constitutes personality and personal identity. We have dwelt upon his teaching mainly because all modern phenomenists try to explain personality on the same principles—i.e. independently of the doctrine of substance.
As a corollary from his doctrine he inferred that if a man completely and irrevocably loses consciousness [or rather memory] of his past life, though he remains the same “man” he is no longer the same “person”: “if it be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same man would at different times make different persons”;[319] and he goes on in this sense to give a literal interpretation to the modes of speech we have referred to above.[320] He likewise [pg 283] admitted that two or more “persons,” i.e. consciousnesses, can be linked with the same individual human being, or the same individual human soul, alternately appearing and disappearing, giving place successively to one another. When any one of these “personalities” or consciousnesses ceases to be actual, it must in Locke's view cease to be in any sense real: so that there could not be two or more personalities at the same time in the same individual human being. Modern psychologists, however, of the phenomenist school, convinced that sub-conscious mental activities are not only possible, but that the fact of such activities is well established by a variety of experiences, have extended Locke's conception of personality (as actual consciousness) to embrace groups of mental activities which may emerge only intermittently “above the threshold of consciousness”. Hence they explain the abnormal cases of double or multiple consciousness already referred to, as being manifestations of really distinct “personalities” in one and the same human individual. In normal human beings there is, they say, only one normally “conscious personality”. The sub-conscious mental activities of such an individual they bulk together as forming this individual's “sub-liminal” or “sub-conscious” Ego or “self”: presumably a distinct personality from the conscious one. In the abnormal cases of “double-consciousness” the subliminal self struggles for mastery over the conscious self and is for a time successful: the two personalities thus for a time changing places as it were. In the rarer or more abnormal cases of treble or multiple consciousness, there are presumably three or more “personalities” engaged in the struggle, each coming to the surface in turn and submerging the others.
It is not the fancifulness of this theory that one might object to so much as its utter inadequacy to explain the facts, nay, its utter unintelligibility on the principles of those who propound it. For we must not lose sight of the fact that it is propounded by philosophers who purport to explain mental life and human personality without recourse to a substantial soul, to any substantial basis of mental life, or indeed to the concept of substance at all: by philosophers who will talk of a mental process without admitting mind or soul as a substance or subject of that process, of a “series” or “stream” of mental functions or activities without allowing any agent that would exercise those functions, or any substantial abiding principle that would unify the series or stream and know it as such; philosophers who regard the Ego, “self,” or “person,” as nothing other than the group or series or stream of mental states, and not as anything of which these are the states; and, finally, who speak of these groups of functions or activities as “personalities”—which they describe as “struggling” with one another—apparently oblivious of the fact that by using such language they are in their thought at least transforming these activities into agents, these states into subjects of states, in a word, these accidents into substances; or else they are making their language and their thought alike unintelligible.[321]
Of course those numerous modern philosophers who, like James, try to “find a place for all the experiential facts unencumbered by any hypothesis [like that of an individual substantial soul, presumably] save that of passing states of mind” [ibid., p. 480], do not really leave these “states” suspended in mid-air as it were. The imperative need for admitting the reality of substance always ultimately asserts itself: as when James recognizes the necessity of admitting something “more than the bare fact of co-existence of a passing thought with a passing brain-state” [Principles of Psychology, i., p. 346—apud Maher, ibid., p. 483]. Only his speculation as to what constitutes this “something ‘more’ which lies behind our mental states” [ibid., p. 485] is not particularly convincing: “For my own part,” he says, “I confess that the moment I become metaphysical and try to define the more, I find the notion of some sort of an anima mundi thinking in all of us to be a more promising hypothesis, in spite of all its difficulties, than that of a lot of absolutely individual souls” [ibid., p. 346—apud Maher, ibid.]. This restatement of the medieval pantheistic theory known as Averroïsm, Monopsychism, or the theory of the intellectus separatus [cf. De Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophy, pp. 381 sqq.], is a somewhat disappointing contribution to Metaphysics from the most brilliant of our modern psychologists. The “difficulties” of this “more promising hypothesis” had discredited it a rather long time before Professor James resurrected it [cf. criticisms—apud Maher, ibid.].
Chapter X. Some Accident-Modes Of Being: Quality.
76. Ontology and the Accident-Modes of Being.—Under the ultimate category or genus supremum of Substance experience reveals to us two broadly distinct sub-classes: corporeal substances, “bodies” or “material” things, and spiritual substances or “spirits”. Of these latter we have direct experience only of one class, viz. embodied spirits or human souls. The investigation of the nature of these belongs to Psychology, and from the data of that science we may infer, by the light of reason, the possibility of another class of spirits, viz. pure spirits, beings of whose actual existence we know from Divine Revelation. The existence of a Supreme Being, Whom we must conceive analogically as substance and spirit, is demonstrated by the light of reason in Natural Theology. The investigation of the nature of corporeal substances belongs properly to Cosmology. Hence in the present treatise we have no further direct concern with the substance-mode of reality;[322] but only with its accident-modes, and not with all of these.
Not with all of them; for those which belong properly to spiritual substances, or properly to corporeal substances, call for special treatment in Psychology and Cosmology respectively. In the main, only such species of accidents as are common to matter and spirit alike, will form the subject of the remaining portion of the present volume. Only the broader aspects of such categories as Quality, Quantity and Causality—aspects which have a more direct bearing on the Theory of Being and the Theory of Knowledge in general,—call for treatment in General Metaphysics. A more detailed treatment must be sought in other departments of Philosophy.