A Modern Zoroastrian

by S. Laing

There are some other curious effects produced by hypnotism, in the way of inducing a sort of double consciousness and memory, which makes people in this condition totally forget things which they remember when awake, and remember things which were totally forgotten in the waking state.

These and a variety of other instances point to the conclusion that man is only a conscious machine. In other words, that the original impress, to use Dr. Temple’s words, was so perfect that it provided a pre-established harmony not only for the innumerable phenomena of the material universe as unfolded by evolution, but for the still more innumerable phenomena of life in all its manifestations and all its complex relations to outward environment. I say of life, for we clearly cannot confine the theory to human life. A dog, who with the two courses before him of doing wrong and chasing a rabbit, or doing right and remaining at his master’s heel, chooses one of them, is in exactly the same position as Hercules between the rival attractions of virtue and pleasure. If Hercules acted as a machine, yielding to the pre-established preponderance of the stronger attraction, so did the dog; but if Hercules exerted free-will and felt the approval or blame of conscience, so did the retriever. There is no fundamental distinction, but merely a question of degree, between human conscience and the shame which a dog feels when it knows that it has done wrong, and the pleasure which it manifests when conscious that it has behaved properly.

Shall we thus conclude, as Leibnitz and other great philosophers have done, in favour of the mechanical theory? But if we do, how are we to account for the instinctive ineradicable feeling, which comes home to every one with a conviction even stronger than the evidence of the senses, that we really have a choice between opposite courses, and can decide on our own actions—a conviction which is obviously the foundation of all conscience and of all morality?

Let us try to analyse more closely what Will really means, and under what conditions it is manifested. The circuit which connects any one single perception with action, through sensory nerve, sensory centre, motor centre, motor nerve and muscle, is as purely mechanical as that of an electric circuit. Reflex motions such as breathing, and even more complex motions which by repetition have become reflex or instinctive, are also mechanical and involve no exercise of will. But when perceptions become complex, and one primary evokes a number of secondary perceptions—in other words, when the cells of the corresponding portions of grey matter in the cortex of the brain are set vibrating by a variety of complex and conflicting molecular motions, the feeling of free-will inevitably arises. We feel the conviction that there is a something which we call soul, mind, or in the last analysis, ‘I myself I,’ which sits, as Von Moltke might do, in a cabinet receiving conflicting telegraphic messages from different generals, and deciding then and there what order to flash out in reply.

What can we say to this? That it is like space and time, one of the categories of thought, or primary moulds in which thought is cast. We do not know what space and time really are in their essence, or why they are the necessary conditions of thought, any more than we do in the case of will. They may be illusions, but we accept them, and of necessity accept them, as facts. For all practical purposes it is the same to us, as if we understood their essence and knew them to be realities. A man can no more doubt that he is an individual being, with a will which, in a great many cases, enables him to decide which of a variety of impulses shall prevail, than he can hesitate, if he is furnishing a room, to regulate his purchase of carpeting and paper by space of three dimensions, without regard to possible speculations as to quaternions.

Perhaps the principle of polarity may assist us in understanding that both theories may be true; or rather that matter and spirit, necessity and free-will, may be opposite poles of one fundamental truth which is beyond our comprehension. We cannot shake off this principle of polarity, and arrive at any knowledge, or even conception, of the absolute truth in regard to the atoms, energies, and natural laws, which make up the universe of matter and of all the ordinary and material functions of life; why should we expect to do so in the higher manifestations of the same life, which have been arrived at in the later stages of one unbroken course of evolution from monad to man?

This, at any rate, is the theory which best satisfies my own mind and enables me to reduce my own individual chaos into some sort of a cosmos. I draw from it the following conclusions:—

For all practical purposes assume that ‘right is right,’ and that the moral instincts, however they have been formed, are imperative laws. Assume also that

Man is man and master of his fate,

and that we have, to a great extent, the power of deciding what to do and what not to do. But in doing so, keep the mind open to all conclusions of science, and admit freely that these assumptions are indissolubly connected with natural laws and with material organs, and that man is to a very great extent dependent on his environment and his place in evolution, both for his moral code and for the force of will and conscience which enable him to conform to it. Learn therefore the lesson of a large toleration and of charity in thought and deed, towards those who, from inherited constitution or unfortunate conditions of education and outward circumstances, fall under the sway of the principle of evil, and lead bad, useless, and unlovely lives. Had you and I, reader, been in their place, should we have done better?