Problems of Life and Mind. Second series by George Henry Lewes (best contemporary novels TXT) 📕

be the familiar and indispensable method of explaining the little known by the better known. The objective aspect of things is commonly represented in the visible and palpable; because what we can see we can also generally touch, and what we can touch we can taste and smell; but we cannot touch an odor nor a sound; we cannot see them; we can only connect the odorous and sonorous objects with visible or palpable conditions. Everywhere we find sensations referred to visible or palpable causes; and hence the desire to find this objective basis for every change in Sensibility. The sensation, or state of consciousness, is the ultimate fact; we can only explain it by describing its objective conditions.

81. Thus much on the philosophical side. Returning to our physiological point, we must say that a sensation is, objectively, the reaction of a sensory organ, or organism; subjectively, a change of feeling. Objectively it is a phenomenon of movement, but distinguishable from other phenomena by the speciality of its conditions. It is a vital phenomenon, not a purely mechanical phenomenon. Although the molecular movement conforms, of course, to mechanical principles, and may be viewed abstractly as a purely mechanical result, yet, because it takes place under conditions never found in machines, it has characters which markedly separate it from the movements of machines. Among these differential characters may be cited that of selective adaptation,112 which is most conspicuous in volition.

82. In the early stages of animal evolution there is no differentiation into muscle and nerve. The whole organism is equally sensitive (or irritable) in every part. Muscles appear, and then they are the most sensitive parts. Nerves appear, and the seat of Sensibility has been transferred to them; not that the muscles have lost theirs, but their irritability is now represented by their dominant character of Contractility, and the nerves have taken on the special office of Sensibility. That is to say, while both muscle and nerve form integral elements of the sensitive reaction, the process itself is analytically conceived as a combination of two distinct properties, resident in two distinct tissues.

83. Carrying further this analytical artifice, I propose to distinguish the central organs as the seat of Sensibility, confining Neurility to the peripheral nerves. In physiological reality both systems, central and peripheral, are one; the separation is artificial. Strictly speaking, therefore, Neurility—or nerve-action—is the general property of nerve-tissue, central and peripheral. But since Neurility may be manifested by nerves apart from centres, whereas Sensibility demands the co-operation of both, and since we have often to consider the central process in itself, without attending to the process in the nerves, it is well to have two characteristic terms. I shall therefore always use the term Sensibility for the reactions of the nervous centres,—Sentience being its psychological equivalent; although the reader will understand that in point of fact there is no break, nor transformation, as the wave of change passes from sensory nerve to centre, and from centre to motor nerve: there is one continuous process of change. But just as we analytically distinguish the sensory from the motor element of this indissoluble process, so we may distinguish the ingoing and outgoing stages from the combining stage. Sensibility, then, represents the property of combining and grouping stimulations.

84. Fully aware of the misleading connotations of the term, and of the difficulty which will be felt in disengaging it from these, especially in reference to Consciousness, I have long hesitated before adopting it. But the advantages greatly outweigh the disadvantages. Sensibility has long been admitted to express the peculiar modes of reaction in plants and animals low down in the scale. No one hesitates to speak of a sensitive plant, or a sensitive surface. The tentacles of a polype are said to be sensitive; though probably no one thereby means that the polype has what psychologists mean by Consciousness. By employing the general term Sensibility to designate the whole range of reactions peculiar to the nerve-centres, when these special organs exist, it will be possible to interpret all the physiological and psychological phenomena observed in animals and men on one uniform method. The observed variations will then be referable to varieties in organisms.

85. Suppose, for illustration, an organism like the human except that it is wholly deficient in Sight, Hearing, Taste, and Smell. It has no sense but Touch—or the general reaction under contact with external objects. It will move on being stimulated, and will combine its movements differently under different stimulations. It will feel, and logically combine its feelings. But its mass of feeling will be made of far simpler elements than ours; its combinations fewer; and the contents of its Consciousness so very different from ours that we are unable to conceive what it will be like; we can only be sure that it will not be very like our own. This truncated Organism will have its Sensibility; and we must assign this property to its central nerve-tissue, as we assign our own. If now we descend lower, and suppose an organism with no centres whatever, but which nevertheless displays evidence of Sensibility—feelings and combinations of movements—we must then conclude that the property specialized in a particular tissue of the highly differentiated organism is here diffused throughout.

It is obvious that the sensations or feelings of these supposed organisms will have a common character with the feelings of more highly differentiated organisms, although the modes of manifestation are so various. If we recognize a common character in muscular movements so various as the rhythmic pulsation of the heart, the larger rhythm of inspiration and expiration, the restless movements of the eye and tongue, the complexities of manipulation, the consensus of movements in flying, swimming, walking, speaking, singing, etc., so may we recognize a common character in all the varieties of sensation. The special character of a movement depends on the moving organ. The special character of a sensation depends on the sensory organ. Contractility is the abstract term which expresses all possible varieties of contraction. Sensibility—or Sentience—is the abstract term which expresses all possible varieties of sensation.

86. The view here propounded may find a more ready acceptance when its application to all physiological questions has been tested, and it is seen to give coherence to many scattered and hitherto irreconcilable facts. Meanwhile let a glance be taken at the inconsistencies of the current doctrine. That doctrine declares one half of the gray substance of the spinal cord to be capable only of receiving a sensitive stimulation, the other half capable only of originating a motor stimulation. We might with equal propriety declare that one half of a muscle is capable only of receiving a contractile stimulation, and the other half of contracting. The ingoing nerve, passing from the surface to the posterior part of the spinal cord, excites the activity of the gray substance into which it penetrates; with the anterior part of this gray substance an outgoing nerve is connected, and through it the excitation is propagated to a muscle: contraction results. Such are the facts. In our analysis we separate the sensory from the motor aspect, and we then imagine that this ideal distinction represents a real separation. We suppose a phenomenon of Sensibility independent of a phenomenon of Contractility—suppose the one to be “transformed” into the other—and we then marvel “how during this passage the excitation changes its nature.”113

87. Before exerting ingenuity in explaining a fact, it is always well to make sure that the fact itself is correctly stated. Does the neural excitation change its nature in passing from the posterior to the anterior gray substance? I can see no evidence of it. Indeed the statement seems to confound a neural process with a muscular process. The neural process is one continuous excitation along the whole line of ingoing nerve, centre, and outgoing nerve, which nowhere ceases or changes into another process, until the excitation of the muscle introduces a new factor. So long as the excitation keeps within the nerve-tissue, it is one and the same process of change; its issue in a contraction, a secretion, or a change in the conditions of consciousness, depends on the organs it stimulates.

88. I have already called attention to the artificial nature of all our distinctions, and the necessity of such artifices. They are products of that