A Modern Zoroastrian

by S. Laing

So much for the organ of mind; the other factor, that of outward stimulus, is still more obvious. If thought cannot exist without grey nerve-tissue, neither can it without impressions to stimulate that tissue. A perfect brain, if cut off from all communication with the external universe, could no more think and have perceptions, than impressions from without could generate them without the appropriate nerve-tissue. Once generated, the mind can store them up by memory, control them by reason, and gradually evolve from them ever higher and higher ideas and trains of reasoning, both in the individual and the species:—in the individual passing from infancy to manhood, partly by heredity from ancestors, and partly by education—using the word in the large sense of influences of all sorts from the surrounding environment; in the species, by a similar but much slower development from savagery to civilisation.

Thus the whole fabric of arithmetic, algebra, and the higher calculi are built up from the primitive perception of number. The earliest palæolithic savage must have been conscious of a difference between encountering one or two cave-bears or mammoths; and some existing races of savages have hardly got beyond this primitive perception. Some Australian tribes, it is said, have not got beyond three numerals, one, two, and a great number. But by degrees the perceptions of number have become more extensive and accurate, and the number of fingers on each hand has been used as a standard of comparison. Thus ten, or two-hand, the number of fingers on the two hands has gradually become the basis of arithmetical numeration, and from this up to Sir W. Hamilton’s ‘Quaternions’ the progression is regular and intelligible. But Newton could never have invented the differential calculus and solved the problem of the heavens, if thousands of centuries before some primitive human mind had not received the perception that two apples or two bears were different from one.

In like manner geometry, as its name indicates, arises from primitive perceptions of space, applied to the practical necessity of land-measuring in alluvial valleys like those of the Nile and Euphrates, where annual inundations obliterated to a great extent the dividing lines between adjoining properties. The first perceptions of space would take the form of the rectangle, or so many feet or paces, or cubits or arm-lengths, forwards, and so many sideways, to give the proper area; but as areas were irregular, it would be discovered that the triangle was necessary for more accurate measurement. Hence the science of the triangle, circle, and other regular forms, as we see it developed in Euclid and later treatises on geometry, until we see it in its latest development in speculations as to space of four dimensions.

But in all these cases we see the same fundamental principle as prevails throughout the universe under the name of the ‘conservation of energy’; always something out of something, never something out of nothing.

This, therefore, defines the limit of human knowledge, or boundary line between the knowable and the unknowable. Whatever is transformation according to existing laws is, whether known or unknown, at any rate, knowable—whatever is creation is unknowable. We have absolutely no faculties to enable us to form the remotest conception of what the essence of these primary atoms and energies really is, how they came there, and how the laws, or invariable sequences, under which they act, came to be impressed on them. We have no faculties, because we have never had any perceptions upon which the mind can work. Reason and imagination can no more work without antecedent perceptions than a bird can fly in a vacuum.

Thus, for instance, the imagination can invent dragons, centaurs, and any number of fabulous monsters, by piecing together fragments of perceptions in new combinations; but ask it to invent a monster whose head shall be that of an inhabitant of Saturn and its body that of a denizen of Jupiter, and where is it? Of necessity all attempts to define or describe things of which we have never had perceptions, must be made in terms of things of which we have had perceptions, or, in other words, must be anthropomorphic.

So far as science gives any positive knowledge as to the relations of mind to matter, it amounts to this: That all we call mind is indissolubly connected with matter through the grey cells of the brain and other nervous ganglia. This is positive. If the skull could be removed without injury to the living organism, a skilful physiologist could play with his finger on the human brain, as on that of a dog, pigeon, or other animal, and by pressure on different notes, as on the keys of a piano, annihilate successively voluntary motion, speech, hearing, sight, and finally will, consciousness, reasoning power, and memory. But beyond this physical science cannot go. It cannot explain how molecular motions of cells of nerve-centres can be transformed into, or can create, the phenomena of mind, any more than it can explain how the atoms and energies to which it has traced up the material universe were themselves created or what they really are.

All attempts to further fathom the depths of the unknown follow a different line, that of metaphysics, or, in other words, introspection of mind by mind, and endeavour to explain thought by thinking. On entering into this region we at once find that the solid earth is giving way under our feet, and that we are attempting to fly in an extremely rare atmosphere, if, indeed, we are not idly flapping our wings in an absolute vacuum. Instead of ascertained facts which all recognise, and experiments which conducted under the same conditions always give the same results, we have a dissolving view of theories and intuitions, accepted by some, denied by others, and changing with the changing conditions of the age, and with individual varieties of characters, emotions, and wishes. Thus, mind and soul are with some philosophers identical, with others mind is a product of soul; with some soul is a subtle essence, with others absolutely immaterial; with some it has an individual, with others a universal, existence; by some it is limited to man, by others conceded to the lower animals; by some located in the brain, by others in the heart, blood, pineal gland, or dura mater; with some it is pre-existent and immortal, with others created specially for its own individual organism; and so on ad infinitum. The greatest philosophers come mostly to the conclusion that we really know nothing about it. Thus Descartes, after having built up an elaborate metaphysical theory as to a spiritual, indivisible substance independent of the brain and cognisable by self-consciousness alone, ends by honestly confessing ‘that by natural reason we can make many conjectures about the soul, and have flattering hopes, but no assurance.’ Kant also, greatest of metaphysicians in demolishing the fallacies of former theories, when he comes to define his ‘noumenon,’ has to use the vaguest of phrases, such as ‘an indescribable something, safely located out of space and time, as such not subject to the mutabilities of those phenomenal spheres, ... and of whose ontological existence we are made aware by its phenomenal projections, or effects in consciousness.’ The sentence takes our breath away, and makes us sympathise with Bishop Berkeley when he says, ‘We metaphysicians have first raised a dust, and then complain we cannot see.’ It prepares us also for Kant’s final admission that nothing can really be proved by metaphysics concerning the attributes, or even the existence, of the soul; though, on the other hand, as it cannot be disproved, its reality may for moral purposes be assumed.

It appears, therefore, that the efforts of the sublimest transcendentalists do not carry us one step farther than the conclusions of the commonest common-sense, viz. that there are certain fundamental conditions of thought, such as space, time, consciousness, personal identity, and freedom of will, which we cannot explain, but cannot get rid of. The sublimest speculations of a Plato and a Kant bring us back to the homely conclusions of the old woman in the nursery ballad, in whose mind grave questions as to her personal identity were raised by the felonious abstraction of the lower portion of her petticoat.