* * * * *
Summing up then, we may say, that with regard to their contents the phenomena produced by the agency of the magic mirror proceed from the realm of subconsciousness; and that with regard to their form they belong to the category of hallucinations. Their contents, not regarded as a performance of memory, appear to possess no great value—so grotesque and ordinary are the few ideas brought up from this invisible storehouse. But they often supply us with a deep view into the secrets of character, and inculcate with terrible emphasis the truth that nothing is lost in the realms of the soul, any more than in the external world which is ruled by the law of the conservation of energy. Every thought that ever traversed our brain, every emotion that has ever thrilled our heart, every wish that has ever animated for a fleeting moment our breast—has all been entered in ineffaceable characters in the day-book of our earthly existence. Would that this knowledge could strengthen our feeling of moral responsibility!
Thus does the expansion of our psychological conceptions not infrequently lead to an enrichment of our notions of morality. But whether we place a higher value upon this aspect last mentioned, or upon the purely scientific object to which we referred at the beginning of our article, or finally upon a factor connected therewith, namely the enlightenment of society—at any rate we must confess that in the much abused "magic mirror" a rich and attractive source of treasures has been opened.
MAX DESSOIR.
HÖFFDING ON THE RELATION OF THE MIND TO THE BODY.
Few topics are of greater speculative or indeed practical interest than that of the relation of the body to the mind. Rarely has the subject been treated with such perspicuity and at the same time with such candor and avoidance of hasty dogmatism as by Professor Harald Höffding, of Copenhagen, in his "Psychology" (translated into German from the Danish and published in Leipsic, Reisland). A leading American professor of philosophy remarked to me recently that this for its size (the volume contains 452 pages) was the best all-around work on Psychology; and an examination of the section entitled Seele und Körper (Mind and Body) certainly gives countenance to the statement.
Professor Höffding does not indeed oppose himself to metaphysical speculation; he believes that the human mind will never consent to being shut out from the task of searching after the ultimate principles of the universe, of which it is a part. But his standpoint in this work is the purely empirical one, as one's standpoint must be in every positive science. Positive science deals with the facts of experience; metaphysics with their ultimate explanation. He regards it as a misfortune to confuse the two, as popular thinking in psychology does; and scientific thinking in this realm is characterised by the effort to avoid the confusion and keep solely to the facts of observation and experience. Accordingly both materialism and spiritualism are excluded from the field—each theory involving a transcending of the realm of experience, i. e., being metaphysical.
There are two subdivisions of the realm of experience according to Professor Höffding,—one coextensive with psychical phenomena, such as feelings, thoughts, and volitions, the other with physical phenomena, i. e., with what moves in space. They may be called respectively inner experience and outer experience. Each must be grasped in its distinct features; and only after doing so can we feel the problem involved in the question of their relation to or connection with one another. For it happens that one set of outer experiences stands in an indisputably peculiar relation to the phenomena of consciousness, namely, the set which we describe by the term "body" and, more particularly, by that of "nervous system" or "brain." Much of what we call the physical world stands in relation to consciousness as the thing known to the knower; but a part of the physical world (i. e., the body or brain) seems a part of the knower as well—a body or nervous system of some kind seems an indispensable requirement or at least concomitant of anything like feeling, or thought, or act of volition.
Now, different as the movements of the nervous system, the processes of the brain are from the phenomena of consciousness, there are a number of resemblances between them. Professor Höffding specifies six: (1) As the nervous system is the central, unifying organ of the body, so does consciousness bring together into a unity all the varied phenomena of experience, scattered though they be in time and space. (2) Just as a change is necessary that consciousness may be awakened, (an absence of contrasts tending in the direction of unconsciousness,) so a stimulus is necessary that the nerves may act. (3) A stimulus may produce a commotion in the nervous system out of all proportion to its immediate efficacy, just as a spark may act on a magazine of powder; so a simple sensation may set in motion a whole train of ideas and emotions, owing to the complicated structure and multitudinous inner relations of consciousness. (4) The movements of the body are slow in proportion as they are conscious; now the nerves which appear to be closely related to consciousness act more slowly than those which direct purely physiological (i. e., unconscious) processes. (5) The lower nerve-centres form a system comparatively independent of the higher ones; corresponding to this is the fact that many bodily processes go on unconsciously and only make us aware of them when the circumstances attending them are particularly favorable or unfavorable. The consciousness of the physical state corresponds to the excitation of the higher nerve-centres. Similarly the action of the will has its physiological counterpart; in the struggle between "the flesh and the spirit," the lower nerve-centres with their reflex and involuntary actions correspond to the flesh, the higher centres to the spirit. (6) The construction of the nervous system is similar to the constitution of consciousness; just as consciousness is at once receptive and active, with more or less of intervening reflection or thought, so the nervous system has both sensory and motor organs, with an intervening sphere.
Not only are there these formal resemblances, there is a real connection, according to Professor Höffding, as is shown by the fact that with the evolution of the nervous system go higher and higher forms of consciousness, that irritation on the surface of an organism must be communicated to the brain that conscious sensations may arise, and that when arterial blood fails to reach the brain unconsciousness supervenes. What hypothesis do these facts conduct to us? All of them must be born in mind that any special hypothesis may be legitimated. There are only four possibilities: (1) Either consciousness and the brain, mind and body, act upon one another as two separate things or substances; (2) or the mind is only a form or product of the body; (3) or the body is only a form or product of one or more mental substances; (4) or mind and body, consciousness and the brain, grow and develop as different manifestations of one and the same substance. It must be admitted that the author at this point somewhat deserts the empirical standpoint to which he declared at the outset that he should keep. The facts of correspondence or parallelism are all that come within the realm of experience; their explanation must be more or less a matter of inference and theoretical construction and involves a departure in the direction of metaphysics. Professor Höffding is aware of this and says that these hypotheses belong to the border-land between positive science and metaphysics. Moreover, he confesses that any conclusion he may reach will have only a provisional value and may need revision, before it can serve as a final part of a philosophical system. He will, however, follow as closely as possible the leadings of experience, as indeed he says we should do in all metaphysical speculation.