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

quality. In fact, psychological analysis shows that even Motion and Quantity, the two objective terms to which subjective Quality is reduced, are themselves Fundamental Signatures of Feeling;205 so that here, as elsewhere, it is only by analytical artifice that the objective can be divorced from the subjective. Matter is for us the Felt; its Qualities are differences of Feeling.

6. Not that this result is to be interpreted as freeing our Theoretic Conception from its objective side, and landing us in Idealism, which suppresses the real universe. The denial of all reality apart from our minds, is a twofold mistake: it confounds the conception of general relations with particular relations, declaring that because the External in its relation to the sentient organism can only be what it is felt to be, therefore it can have no other relations to other individual reals. This is the first mistake. The second is the disregard of the constant presence of the objective real in every fact of Feeling: the Not-Self is emphatically present in every consciousness of Self.

The legitimate conclusion is neither that of Dualism nor of Idealism, but what I have named Reasoned Realism (Problems, Vol. I. p. 201), which reconciles Common Sense with Speculative Logic, by showing that although the truth of things (their Wahrheit) is just what we perceive in them (our Wahrnehmung), yet their reality is this, and much more than this. Things are what they are felt to be; and what they are thought to be, when thoughts are symbols of the perceptions. Idealism declares that they are nothing but this. It is against this nothing but that Common Sense protests; and the protest is justified by Reasoned Realism, which, taking a comprehensive survey of the facts, thus answers the idealist: “Your synthesis is imperfect, since it does not include all the data—notably it excludes the fact of an objective or Not-Self element in every feeling. You may, conceivably, regard the whole universe as nothing but a series of changes in your consciousness; but you cannot hope to convince me that I myself am simply a change in yourself, or that my body is only a fleeting image in your mind. Hence although I conclude that the Not-Self is to you, as to me, undivorceable from Self, inalienable from Feeling, in so far as it is felt, yet there must nevertheless be for both of us an existence not wholly coextensive with our own. My world may be my picture of it; your world may be your picture of it; but there is something common to both which is more than either—an existent which has different relations to each. You are not me, nor is the pictured Cosmos me, although I picture it. Looking at you and it, I see a vast whole of which you are a small part; and such a part I conclude myself to be. It is at once a picture and the pictured; at once subjective and objective. To me all your modes of existence are objective aspects, which, drawing from my own experience, I believe to have corresponding subjective aspects; so that your emotions, which to me are purely physical facts, are to you purely mental facts. And psychological analysis assures me that all physical facts are mental facts expressed in objective terms, and mental facts are physical facts expressed in subjective terms.”

7. But while Philosophy thus replaces the conceptions of Dualism and Idealism by the conception of the Two-fold Aspect, the special sciences in their analytical career have disregarded the problem altogether. The mechanical theory of the universe not only simplified research by confining itself solely to the objective aspect of phenomena, but by a further simplification set aside all vital and chemical relations, to deal exclusively with mechanical relations. In ascertaining the mathematical relations of the planetary system, no elucidation could possibly be gained from biological or chemical conceptions; the planets therefore were provisionally stripped of everything not mechanical. In systematizing the laws of motion, it was necessary to disengage the abstract relations from everything in any way resembling spontaneity, or extra-mechanical agency: Matter was therefore, by a bold fiction, declared to be inert, and its Motion regarded as something superadded from without.

7a. And this was indispensable for the construction of those ideal laws which are the objects of scientific research. Science, as we often say, is the systematization of Experience under the forms of ideal constructions. Experience implies Feeling, and certain fundamental Signatures, all reducible to the primary discernment of Likeness and Unlikeness. Hence Science is first a classification of qualities or discerned likenesses and differences; next a measurement of quantities of discerned likenesses and differences. Although measurement is itself a species of classification, it is distinguished by the adoption of a standard unit of comparison, which, being precise and unvarying, enables us to express the comparisons in precise and unvarying symbols. Whether the unit of length adopted be an inch, a foot, a yard, a mile, the distance of the earth from the sun, or the distances of the fixed stars, the quantities thus measured are symbols admitting of one invariable interpretation. The exactness of the mathematical sciences is just this precision and invariability of their symbols, and is not, as commonly supposed, the source of any superior certainty as to the facts. The classificatory sciences, which deal with qualities rather than with quantities, may be equally certain, and represent fuller knowledge, because involving more varied feelings, but they cannot pretend to exactness. Even on the quantitative side, certainty is not identical with exactness. I may be quite certain that one block of marble is larger than another—meaning that it affects me more voluminously—but I cannot know how much larger it is, without interpreting my feelings by the standard of quantity—the how-muchness as represented by that standard. The immense advantages of exact measurement need not be insisted on. The Biological Sciences, which are predominantly classificatory, can never rival the Cosmological Sciences in exactness; but they may reach a fuller knowledge; and their certainty will assume more and more the character of exactness as methods of measurement are applied to their classifications of qualities. The qualitative and quantitative aspects of phenomena are handled by the two great instruments, Logic and Mathematics, the second being only a special form of the first. These determine the general conceptions which are derived from our perceptions, and the whole constitute Experience.

8. What is the conclusion to which these considerations lead? It is that the separation of the quantitative from the qualitative aspect of phenomena—the objective mechanical from the subjective psychological—is a logical artifice indispensable to research; but it is only an artifice.206 In pursuance of this artifice, each special science must be regarded as the search after special analytical results; and meanwhile this method should be respected, and no confusion of the boundaries between one science and another should be suffered. Mechanical problems must not be confused by the introduction of biological relations. Biological problems must not be restricted to mechanical relations. I do not mean that the mechanical relations present in biological phenomena are not to be sought, and, when found, to be expressed in mechanical terms; I mean that such an inquiry must be strictly limited to mechanical relations. Subjective relations are not to be denied, because they are provisionally set aside, in an inquiry into objective relations; but we must carefully distinguish which of the two orders we are treating of, and express each in its appropriate terms. This is constantly neglected. For example, nothing is more common than to meet such a phrase as this: “A sensory impression is transmitted as a wave of motion to the brain, and there being transformed into a state of consciousness, is again reflected as a motor impulse.”

The several sciences having attained certain analytical results, it remains for Philosophy to co-ordinate these into a doctrine which will furnish general conceptions of the World, Man, and Society. On the analytical side a mechanical theory of the universe might be perfected, but it would still only be a theory of mechanical relations, leaving all other relations to be expressed in other terms. We cannot accept the statement of Descartes that Nature is a vast mechanism, and Science the universal application of mathematics. The equation of a sphere, however valuable from a geometrical point of view, is useless as an explanation of the nature and properties of the spherical body in other relations. And so a complete theory of the mechanical relations of the organism, however valuable in itself, would be worthless in the solution of a biological problem, unless supplemented by all that mechanical terms are incompetent to express.

9. The course of biological speculation has been similar to the cosmological. It also began with a First Notion, which compendiously expressed the facts of Experience. Nor can any Theoretic Conception be finally adopted which does away with these facts, known with positive certainty, and popularly expressed in the phrase: “I have a body, and a soul.” We may alter the phrase either into “I am a body, and I am a soul”; or into, “My body is only the manifestation of my soul”; or, “My soul is only a function of my body”; but the fundamental experiences which are thus expressed are of absolute authority, no matter how they may be interpreted. That I have a body, or am a body, is not to be speculatively argued away. That I move my arm to strike the man who has offended me, or stretch out my hand to seize the fruit which I see, is unquestionable; that these movements are determined by these feelings, and are never thus effected unless thus determined, is also unquestionable. Here are two sets of phenomena, having well-marked differences of aspect; and they are grouped respectively under two general heads, Life and Mind. Life is assigned to the physical organism, or Body—all its phenomena are objective. Mind is assigned to the psychical organism, or Soul—all its phenomena are subjective. Although what is called my Body is shown to be a group of qualities which are feelings—its color, form, solidity, position, motion—all its physical attributes being what is felt by us in consequence of the laws of our organization; yet inasmuch as these feelings have the characteristic marks of objectivity, and are thereby referred to some objective existence, we draw a broad line of demarcation between them and other feelings having the characteristic marks of subjectivity, and referring to ourselves as subjects. Psychological analysis shows us that this line of demarcation is artificial, only representing a diversity of aspect; but as such it is indispensable to science. We cannot really separate in a sensation what is objective from what is subjective, and say how much belongs to the Cosmos apart from Sensibility, and how much to the subject pure and simple; we can only view the sensation alternately in its objective and subjective aspects. What belongs to extra-mental existence in the phenomenon of Color, and what to the “greeting of the spirit,” is utterly beyond human knowledge: for the ethereal undulations which physicists presuppose as the cosmic condition are themselves subjected to this same greeting of the spirit: they too are ideal forms of sensible experiences.

10. This conclusion, however, was very slowly reached. The distinction of aspects was made the ground of a corresponding distinction in agencies. Each group was personified and isolated. The one group was personified in Spirit—an existent in every respect opposed to Matter, which was the existent represented in the other group. One was said to be simple, indestructible; the other compound, destructible. One was invisible, impalpable, beyond the grasp of Sense; the other was visible, tangible, sensible. One was of heaven, the other of earth. Thus a biological Dualism, analogous to the cosmological, replaced the First Notion.