When we observe some very simple process in nature, e. g. the fall of a stone, we represent it as a motion. We formulate the operation of the stone's fall into a law, describing its mode of action as it holds good in all cases of the same kind. But the motion observable and representable in our mind is not all that takes place. There must be some additional feature which in a further development will appear as man's consciousness.
To regard the fall of a stone as only a very simple instance of essentially the same process that takes place when a man does an act, i. e. performs a motion accompanied with consciousness, appears at first sight strange or even absurd. But we cannot escape the assumption that in a certain respect it is the same thing. We are inevitably driven to adopt this monistic conception of things by inexorable logical arguments; and we are supported in it by the observation of natural processes.
#Human activity and energy.#
Human action develops by degrees out of other natural processes, and we have sufficient evidence to believe that humanity with its civilisation, science, art, and all its ideals—so far as the energy alone, spent in human activity, is considered—is but a differentiation of natural forces that has come to pass on the cooled off surface of the earth under the influence of solar heat. Man is transformed solar heat. All the forces animating the planetary system are differentiations from the heat of which our solar system was possessed when in a nebular state. And what is the heat of which nebular masses are possessed? It is the motion of celestial bodies, of comets, or of so called world-dust, changed by collision into molecular motion.
But in human activity there is some additional element, that of purely subjective awareness, which is neither energy in itself nor can have been transformed from energy; it must have existed potentially. Accordingly we assume that also in the more primitive processes of nature there is some additional element which in its full development appears as feeling and reaches its highest stage known to us, in the consciousness of man.
IV. THE ORIGIN OF ORGANISED LIFE.
#Organised life and feeling.#
There is a very original view concerning the origin of life advocated in this number of The Monist by Dr. George M. Gould in his article on "Immortality."[84] The problem of the origin of life (namely, of organised life) is so closely connected with the problem of the origin of feeling, that the one cannot be solved without solving the other. Feeling such as we are familiar with is an exclusive property of organised life and a few incidental remarks on Dr. Gould's proposition will therefore not be out of place.
[84] It cannot be denied that many ideas set forth by Dr. Gould in his presentation of the problem of immortality contain a deep truth. The brilliant and forcible language in which the author treats his subject is admirable. But the passages on the externality of life present a conception which stands in direct opposition to the views that have been editorially upheld in The Open Court as well as the Monist.
#Dr. Gould's dualism.#