‘I,’ writes Professor Huxley, ‘know nothing whatever, and never hope to know anything, of the steps by which the passage from molecular movement to states of consciousness is effected.’[27] And again, ‘All our knowledge is a knowledge of states of consciousness. “Matter” and “force” are, so far as we can know, mere names for certain forms of consciousness.‘[28]
Such disparity is there, then, between matter and mind, that it would be apparently as congruous to conceive of a thought as solidifying itself into a material object, as to conceive of any affection of material molecules as being the sole cause of thought. Hence, it follows that the Spencerian philosophy, which affirms the absolute distinctness of mind from matter, on the one hand; but, having no other structural elements than matter in motion, on the other hand, seeks to educe mind from these, is surely incongruous, and fails.
The demand is, that the primal atoms of the cosmic cloud, without a single logically added agent besides, have, by combining and recombining, by changing size and shape and intensifying the complexity of their motions, at last emerged into ‘I am,’ ‘I can,’ ‘I ought;’ that in effect they have written Faust and Hamlet, produced philosophies, discovered gravitation, calculated eclipses, realized the eternal nobility of right and the eternal baseness of wrong: in brief, have brought about the moral and intellectual manhood that is ours. What we know by scientific evidence is this: that the persistence of force makes the relations of matter and force permanent. Says Faraday: ‘A particle of oxygen is ever a particle of oxygen, nothing can in the least wear it. If it enters into combination and reappears as oxygen—if it pass through a thousand combinations, animal, vegetable, mineral—if it lie hid for a thousand years and then be evolved—it is oxygen with its first qualities, neither more nor less. It has all its original force, and only that.’[29]
Then, in all the area of the universe as we know it, that is, within the range of our experience and experiment, infinite vicissitude leaves what we know as an elementary body, with its first qualities intact, neither more nor less. But we must transcend experience, disregard the evidence before us, and believe that if we give the primal atoms with their inalienable motion time enough, they will emerge at last, not only as life, but as intellect!
Can it avail to repudiate materialism, and yet to philosophically conjure mind out of matter? We must indeed recast our definition of matter to do this; but how? Says Professor Max Müller: ‘Mill declares in one place (Logic v. 3, 3) that it is a mere fallacy to say that matter cannot think. Here again he ought to define first of all what he means by matter, and according to his definition it may or may not be a fallacy to say that matter cannot think. If we say that matter cannot think, we do not say so because we cannot conceive thought to be annexed to any arrangement of material particles ... the reason why we are justified in saying “matter cannot think” is our having in our language and thought separated matter from thought, our having called and conceived what is without thought matter, and what is without matter thought. Having done this, we are as certain that our matter cannot think as that A=A and not =B.‘[30]
The verdict of consciousness is the immovable base of all mental action. Our consciousness affirms our personality and insists on our identity. The Ego is conscious of itself as the hidden thread of unity on which are strung all the past and present states of consciousness and thought. Separate ‘states of consciousness’ as affections of matter we have seen are impossible. But even if they could exist, to whom is their existence? A pang of unutterable remorse, a thrill of keenest pleasure, do not feel themselves. I feel them; what is that I, to whom the feeling is? It is always there, and in the language of Spencer already quoted ‘is the unknown permanent nexus which is never itself a state of consciousness, but which holds all states of consciousness together.’ Then it is as real and more absolute than the ‘states of consciousness’ themselves.
The personal pronouns are as plentiful in the language of modern materialists as in the language of sentiment or theology. What do they represent?
Looking back and looking forward, thinking of ‘what might have been’ and anticipating what will be; and being absolutely conscious that it is ‘I’ in unchanged and unchanging identity that am looking back upon myself, and looking forward to myself, is unthinkable, unless something to which all successive states of consciousness have been, are, and shall be, is admitted. If I deny the separate existence of the Ego, I to all intents and purposes deny that I am, and yet it is I that am there, perjuring myself by the denial.
Not only is there consciousness and thought, memory and prevision, power and volition; but the person, the identity that is conscious and thinks, that remembers and anticipates, that is able and that wills, is an inextinguishable factor of being. And for this there is no provision in the formula of the Spencerian Philosophy.
True, as we have seen, it is fain to admit, outside its formula, the existence of a permanent somewhat lying beneath and outlasting all the flow of mental states; that it has always existed, that it must exist for evermore; that it is a ‘power’ sometimes identified with ‘force;’ but it is contended that this is infinitely and for ever unknowable. With this we cannot be concerned; in practice it is an abstraction equal to nothing. But it is no element of our analysis; it is no factor of the formula which contained the only data required by this philosophy to construct the universe. We cannot assume that this power was the cause of matter, or the cause of motion; for we are shown that we can know nothing concerning it. But this also is of no moment; for matter, motion, and the combinations they bring about, over countless millenniums of time, clearly understood, and fully interpreted, are supposed to contain in themselves, the explanation of all that is. But surely the promise of this philosophy is unfulfilled, its pledge is broken; it left its formula at the very outset of its career, and has employed structural principles, which to it are absolutely alien.