There is a certain class of philosophers who look upon feeling as an incidental effect, as a fortuitous by-play of the interacting elements of matter. This conception has little if anything in its favor. On the contrary, if the elements of feeling are throughout inseparably connected with the elements of objective existence, it must appear natural that wherever the conditions fitted for organised life appear, irritable substance will originate. We may fairly assume that feeling will arise on the cooled surface of a planet with the same necessity as, for instance, a collision between non-luminous celestial bodies will cause them to blaze forth in the brilliant light of a nebula containing all the elements for the production in the course of ages of a planetary system.
Wherever a combination of substances originates that displays the quality of feeling, it will form a basis for given facts of soul-life. Feeling substance having been exposed to a special stimulus, or having performed a certain function, has thereby undergone a rearrangement in its molecular parts. The structure has suffered a change in its configuration, the form of which is preserved in the general flux of matter, and there is thus produced in the feeling substance a disposition to respond more quickly to impressions of the same kind. The feeling accompanying a subsequent impression of the same nature is coincidently felt to be a revival of a former feeling, similar or the same in kind. In other words, feeling substance, preserving the forms of its functions, is possessed with memory.[24] The preservation of form in a function which is accompanied with feeling makes it possible that the feeling accompanying a special form of function will become a mark of signification. By being felt to be the same in kind as a former feeling it will come to denote a certain condition of feeling tissues. A feeling that is felt to be the same as or similar in kind to a former feeling, the revival or memory of which it causes, is in this way endowed with meaning; by which we understand the awareness of the congruence or similarity of two or several feelings. Thus in the lapse of time, by constantly renewed experience, one special feeling, whenever repeated, will naturally become the indicator showing the presence of certain external facts that cause it. An isolated feeling is naturally meaningless; yet through a preservation of form, viz., through memory, it is by repetition necessarily changed into a symbol of representative value.
[24] Memory is no mysterious power; it is the preservation of form in feeling organisms. See Ewald Hering's treatise on Memory, English translation in Nos. 6 and 7 of The Open Court. Compare also the author's article Soul-life and the Preservation of Form, in No. 143 of The Open Court.
Feelings, accordingly, in the course of time, necessarily acquire meaning; they naturally and spontaneously develop mind. They can as little avoid co-ordinating into a mental organism, as water at a low temperature can escape congealing into ice; or as a seed can keep from sprouting when it is exposed, with sufficient moisture, to the light. Mind, accordingly, is the necessary outcome of a combination of feelings. It is as necessary an effect of special causes, as, for example, a triangle is the product of a combination of three lines. The first step in the organisation of feeling, which will throughout remain the determining feature of its development, is the fact that with the help of memory the different sets of feeling acquire meaning, and in this way the mere feelings are transformed from given facts into deduced facts.
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#Subjectivity and objectivity.#
The nature of given facts is subjectivity, while the character of inferred facts is objectivity. The latter having grown out of the former will nevertheless, so far as they are states of consciousness, always remain subjective; yet they contain representations of that which is delineated by certain given facts. Thus they contain an element which stamps upon them the nature of objectivity. They represent objects, the existence of which the feeling subject cannot help assuming, because this is the simplest way of indicating certain changes that are not caused within the realm of its own subjectivity.
Objectivity, accordingly, does not mean absolute objectivity. Objectivity means subjective states, i. e., given facts or feelings representative of outside facts, i. e., of facts that are not subjective, but objective.
#The projection of objective facts.#
The sense-impression of a white rectangle covered with little black characters is a given fact; yet the aspect of a sheet of paper is an inferred fact. The former is a subjective state within; the latter is the representation of an objective thing without. The process of representing is a function of the subject, but the fact represented is projected as it were into the objective world, where experience has taught us to expect it. And the practice of projection grows so naturally by inherited adaptation and repeated experience that the thing represented appears to us to be external. We no longer feel a sensation as a state of consciousness but conceive it as an independent reality.