27. The second question proposed was, In what sense can Feeling be correctly spoken of as an Agent in organic processes? This brings us face to face with a much-debated topic, the relation of Body and Mind; and demands a theoretic interpretation of that First Notion which expresses universal experience, namely, that what I know as Myself is a Body, in one aspect, and a Soul, in the other. What I call my Body is a persistent aggregate of objective phenomena; and my Soul is a persistent aggregate of subjective phenomena: the one is an individualized group of experiences expressible in terms of Matter and Motion, and therefore designated physical; the other an individualized group of experiences expressible in terms of Feeling, and therefore designated psychical. But, however contrasted, they are both simply embodiments of Experience, that is to say, are Modes of Feeling. All Existence—as known to us—is the Felt. The laws of our organism compel us, indeed, to postulate an Existent which is extra mentem—a Real not Ourselves—but the same laws debar us from any knowledge whatever of what this is, or is like. We know Things absolutely in so far as they exist in relation to us; and that is the only knowledge which can have any possible significance for us.
28. It is impossible for me to doubt that I am a Body, though I may doubt whether what is thus called is anything more than a group of feelings. It is impossible for me to doubt that I am a Soul; though I may doubt whether what is thus called is more than a group of bodily functions. In separating what is unquestionable from what is questionable, we separate the fundamental facts of consciousness from the theoretic interpretations of those facts: no theoretic interpretation can efface or alter the facts. Whatever Philosophy may discover, it cannot displace the fact that I know I am a Soul, in every sense in which that phrase represents Experience: I know the Soul in knowing its concretes (feelings), and in knowing it as an abstraction which condenses those concretes in a symbol. The secondary question is, Whether this abstraction represents one Existent, and the abstraction Body another and wholly different Existent, or the two abstractions represent only two different Aspects? this may be debated, and must be answered according to theoretic probabilities.
29. What are the probabilities? We are all agreed that Consciousness is the final arbiter. Its primary deliverance is simply that of a radical distinction. It is silent on the nature of the distinction—says nothing as to whether the distinction is one of agents or of aspects. It says, “I am a Soul.” With equal clearness it says, “I am a Body.” It does not say, “I am two things.” Nor does the fact of a radical distinction imply more than a contrast of aspects, such as that of convex and concave. The curve has at every point this contrast of convex and concave, and yet is the identical line throughout. A mental process is at every point contrasted with the physical process assumed to be its correlate; and this contrast demands equivalent expression in the terms of each. The identity underlying the two aspects of the curve is evident to Sense. The identity underlying the mental and physical process is not evident to Sense, but may be made eminently probable to Speculation, especially when we have explained the grounds of the difference, namely, that they are apprehended through different modes. But although I admit that the conclusion is only one of probability, it is one which greatly transcends the probability of any counter-hypothesis. Let us see how this can be made out.208
30. We start from the position that a broad line of demarcation must be drawn between the mental and the physical aspect of a process, supposing them to be identical in reality. Nothing can be more unlike a logical proposition than the physical process which is its correlate; so that Philosophy has hitherto been forced to forego every attempt at an explanation of how the two can be causally connected: referring the connection to a mystery, or invoking two different agents, spiritual and material, moving on parallel lines, like two clocks regulated to work simultaneously. But having recognized this difference, can we not also discern fundamental resemblances? First and foremost, we note that there is common to both the basis in Feeling: they are both modes of Consciousness. The Mind thinking the logical proposition is not, indeed, in the same state as the Mind picturing the physical process which is the correlate of that logical proposition—no more than I, who see you move on being struck, have the same feelings as you who are struck. But the Mind which pictures the logical proposition as a process, and pictures the physical process as a bodily change, is contemplating one and the same event under its subjective and objective aspects; just as when I picture to myself the feelings you experience on being struck I separate the subjective aspect of the blow from its objective aspect. Secondly, between the logical proposition and the physical process there is a community of causal dependence, i. e. the mode of grouping of the constituent elements, whereby this proposition, and not another, is the result of this grouping, and not another. In fact, what in subjective terms is called Logic, in objective terms is Grouping.
31. Let us approach the question on a more accessible side. Sensation avowedly lies at the basis of mental manifestations. Now, rightly or wrongly, Sensation is viewed alternately as a purely subjective fact—a psychological process—and as a purely objective fact—the physiological reaction of a sense-organ. It is so conspicuously a physiological process that many writers exclude it from the domain of Mind, assign it to the material organism, and believe that it is explicable on purely mechanical principles. This seems to me eminently disputable; but the point is noticed in proof of the well-marked objective character which the phenomenon assumes. In this aspect a sensation is simply the reaction of a bodily organ. The physiologist describes how a stimulus excites the organ, and declares its reaction to be the sensation. Thus viewed, and expressed in terms of Matter and Motion, there is absolutely nothing of that subjective quality which characterizes sensation. Yet without this quality the objective process cannot be a sensation. Exclude Feeling, and the excitation of the auditory organ will no more yield the sensation of Sound by its reaction, than the strings and sounding-board of a piano when the keys are struck will yield music to a deaf spectator. Hence the natural inference has been that inside the organism there is a listener: the Soul is said to listen, transforming excitation into sensation. This inference only needs a more systematic interpretation and it will represent the biological theory, which demands something more than the reaction of the sensory organ—namely, the reaction of the whole organism through the sensory organ. I mean, that no organ isolated from the organism is capable of a physiological reaction—only of a physico-chemical reaction; and sensation depends on (is) the physiological reaction. When a sense-organ is stimulated, this stimulation is a vital process, and is raised out of the class of physico-chemical processes by virtue of its being the indissoluble part of a complex whole. Interfere with any one of the co-operant conditions—withdraw the circulation, check respiration, disturb secretion—and the sense-organ sinks from the physiological to the physical state; it may then be brought into contact with its normal stimuli, but no stimulation (in the vital sense) will take place, there will be no vital reaction.
Condensing all vital processes in the symbol Vitality, we may say Vitality is requisite for every physiological process. A parallelism may be noted on the subjective side: all the sentient processes may be condensed in the one symbol Sensibility (Feeling), and we must then say, No psychological process is possible as an isolated fact, but demands the co-operation of others—it is a resultant of all the contemporaneous conditions of Sensibility in the organism. In ordinary language this is what is meant by saying that no impression can become a sensation without the intervention of Consciousness—an ambiguous phrase, because of the ambiguity of the term Consciousness, but the phrase expresses the fact that in Sensation a process in the organism is necessary to the reaction of the organ.
32. Having recognized the distinction between the two processes objective and subjective, physical and mental, we have recognized the vanity of attempting to assign their limits, and to say where Motion ends and Feeling begins, or how Feeling again changes into Motion. The one does not begin where the other ends. According to the two-clock theory of Dualism, the two agents move on parallel lines. On the theory of Monism the two aspects are throughout opposed. Both theories explain the facts; which explanation is the most congruous with experience? Against the first we may object that the hypothesis of two Agents utterly unallied in nature wants the cardinal character of a fertile hypothesis in its unverifiableness: it may be true, we can never know that it is true. By the very terms of its definition, the Spirit—if that mean more than an abstract expression of sentient states—is beyond all sensible experience. This is indeed admitted by the dualists, for they postulate a Spirit merely because they cannot otherwise explain the phenomena of Consciousness. Herein they fail to see that even their postulate brings no explanation, it merely restates the old problem in other terms.
33. Up to the present time these same objections might have been urged with equal force against Monism. Indeed, although many philosophers have rejected the two-clock theory of Leibnitz, they have gained a very hesitating acceptance for their own hypothesis of identity. To most minds the difficulty of imagining how a physical process could also be a psychical process, a movement also be a feeling, seemed not less than that of imagining how two such distinct Agents as Matter and Mind could co-operate, and react on each other, or move simultaneously on parallel lines. Although for many years I have accepted the hypothesis of Monism, I have always recognized its want of an adequate reply to such objections. Unless I greatly deceive myself, I have now found a solution of the main difficulty; and found it in psychological conditions which are perfectly intelligible. But knowing how easily one may deceive one’s self in such matters, I will only ask the reader to meditate with open-mindedness the considerations now to be laid before him, and see if he can feel the same confidence in their validity.
34. One of the early stages in the development of Experience is the separation of Self from the Not-Self. I look out on “the vast extern of things,” and see a great variety of objects, included in a visible hemisphere. All these objects in various positions, having various forms and colors, I believe to be wholly detached from, and in every way unallied to, Myself. And what is that Self? It is my Body as a visible and tangible object, separated from all other visible and tangible objects by the constant presence of feelings connected with it and its movements, and not connected with the other objects. This constant presence of feelings is referred to a Soul, which I then separate from my Body, as an Inner Self; and from this time onwards I speak of the Body as mine, and learn to regard it in much the same light as other outer objects. In my naïve judgment the external objects are supposed to exist as I see and touch them, whether I or any one else see and touch them or not: they in no sense belong to the series of feelings which constitute the Me. And since my Body resembles these objects in visible and tangible qualities, and also in being external to my feelings, it also takes its place in the objective world. Thus arises the hypothesis of Dualism which postulates a Physis, or object-world, and an Æsthesis, or subject-world: two independent existents, one contemplated, the other contemplating.
35. Philosophy, as we know, leads to a complete reversal of this primitive conclusion, and shows that the contemplated is a synthesis of contemplations, the Physis being also the Æsthesis. Psychological investigation shows that the objects supposed to have forms, colors, and positions within an external hemisphere, have these only in virtue of the very feelings from which they are supposed to be separated. The visible universe exists only as seen: the objects are Reals conditioned by the laws of Sensibility. The space in which we see them, their geometrical relations, the light and shadows which reveal them, the forms they affect, the lines of their changing directions, the qualities which distinguish them,—all these are but the externally projected signs of feelings. They are signs which we interpret according to organized laws of experience; each sign being itself a feeling connected with other feelings. We project them outside according to the “law of eccentric projection”—which is only the expression of the fact that one feeling is a sign of some other, and is thereby ideally detached from it. According to this law I say, “my Body”; just as I say, “my House”; or, “my Property.” Misled by this, Dualism holds that in the very fact of detaching my Body from my Self, calling it mine, is the revelation of a distinct entity within the body. But that this is illusory, appears in the application of this same law of eccentric projection to sensations and thoughts, which are called mine, as my legs and arms are mine. If it is undeniable that I say my Body—and thus ideally detach the Body from the Soul—it is equally undeniable that I say my Soul; and from what is the Soul detached? In presence of this difficulty, the metaphysician may argue that neither Body nor Soul can be coextensive with its manifestations, but demands a noumenal Real for each—a substratum for the bodily manifestations, and a substratum for the mental manifestations. This, however, is an evasion, not a solution of the difficulty. If we postulate an unknown and unknowable noumenon, we gain no insight: first, because Philosophy deals only with the known functions of unknown quantities, and therefore leaves the x out of the calculation; secondly, because, granting the existence of these noumena, we can have no rational grounds for asserting that they are not of one and the same nature; for we have no grounds for any assertion whatever about them. And if it be urged against this, that Consciousness testifies to a distinction, I answer that on a closer scrutiny it will be found to testify to nothing more than a diversity of manifestation. All therefore that comes within the range of knowledge is, How does this diversity arise?
36. There are two ways, and there are only two, in which differences arise. These are, 1°, the modes of production of a product, and, 2°, our modes of apprehension of the product. Things may be very different, and yet to our apprehension indistinguishable, so that we regard them as identical; and they may be identical, yet appear utterly unlike. A mechanical bird may seem so like a living bird, and their actions so indistinguishable to the spectator, that he will not suspect a difference, or suspecting it, will not be able to specify it. Of both objects, so long as his modes of apprehending them are circumscribed, he can only say what these imply: he sees familiar forms, colors, and movements, which he interprets according to the previous experiences of which these are the signs. But by varying the modes of apprehension, and gaining thus a fuller knowledge, he finds that the two products have very different modes of production; hence he concludes the products to be different: the mechanism of the one is not the organism of the other; the actions of the mechanical bird are not the actions of the living bird. The fuller knowledge has been gained by viewing the objects under different relations, and contemplating them in their modes of production, not as merely visible products. He sees the mechanism performing by steel springs, wheels, and wires, the work which the organism performs by bones, muscles, and nerves; and the farther his analysis of the modes of production is carried, the greater are the differences which he apprehends.
37. Now consider the other side. One and the same object will necessarily present very different aspects under different subjective conditions, since it is these which determine the aspect. The object cannot be to Sight what it is to Hearing, to Touch what it is to Smell. The vibrations of a tuning-fork are seen as movements, heard as sounds. In current language the vibrations are said to cause the sounds. Misled by this, philosophers puzzle themselves as to how a material process (vibration) can be transformed into a mental process (sensation), how such a cause can have so utterly different an effect. But I have formerly209 argued at some length that there is no transformation or causation of the kind supposed. The tuning-fork—or that Real which in relation to Sense is the particular object thus named—will, by one of its modes of acting on my Sensibility through my optical apparatus, determine the response known as vibrations; but it is not this response of the optical organ which is transformed into, or causes the response of the auditory organ, known as sound. The auditory organ knows nothing of vibrations, the optical nothing of sounds. The responses are both modes of Feeling determined by organic conditions, and represent the two different relations in which the Real is apprehended. The Real is alternately the one and the other. And if the one mode of Feeling has a physical significance, while the other has a mental significance, so that we regard the vibrations as objective facts, belonging to the external world, and the sounds as subjective facts, exclusively belonging to the internal world, this is due to certain psychological influences presently to be expounded. Meanwhile let us fix clearly in our minds that both vibrations and sounds are modes of Feeling. My consciousness plainly assures me that it is I who see the one, and hear the other; not that there are two distinct subjects for the two distinct feelings. Add to which, manifold uncontradicted experiences assure me that the occasional cause—the objective factor—of the one feeling, is also the cause of the other, and not that the two feelings have two different occasional causes. From both of these undeniable facts we must conclude that the difference felt is simply a difference of aspect, determined by some difference in the modes of apprehension.
38. Assuming then that a mental process is only another aspect of a physical process—and this we shall find the more probable hypothesis—we have to explain by what influences these diametrically opposite aspects are determined. From all that has just been said we must seek these in the modes of apprehension. There can be no doubt that we express the fact in very different terms; the question is, What do these terms signify? Why do we express one aspect in terms of Matter and Motion, assigning the process to the objective world; and the other aspect in terms of Feeling, assigning the process to the subjective world?
Let the example chosen be a logical process as the mental aspect, and a neural process as its physical correlate. The particular proposition may be viewed logically, as a grouping of experiences, or physiologically, as a grouping of neural tremors. Here we have the twofold aspect of one and the same reality; and these different aspects are expressed in different terms. We cannot be too rigorous in our separation of the terms; for every attentive student must have noted how frequently discussions are made turbid by the unconscious shifting of terms in the course of the argumentation. This is not only the mistake of opponents who are unaware of the shifting which has occurred in each other’s minds, so that practically the adversaries do not meet on common ground, but cross and recross each other; it is also the mistake of the solitary thinker losing himself in the maze of interlacing conceptions instead of keeping steadily to one path. Only by such shifting of terms can the notion of the physical process causing, or being transformed into, the mental process for a moment gain credit; and this also greatly sustains the hypothesis of Dualism, with its formidable objections: How can Matter think? How can Mind act on Matter causing Motion?
39. Those who recognized that the terms Matter and Mind were abstractions mutually exclusive, saw at once that these questions, instead of being formidable, were in truth irrational. To ask if Matter could think, or Mind move Matter, was a confusion of symbols equivalent to speaking of a yard of Hope, and a ton of Terror. Although Measure and Weight are symbols of Feeling, and in this respect are on a par with Hope and Terror, yet because they are objective symbols they cannot be applied to subjective states, without violation of the very significance they were invented to express. No one ever asks whether a sensation of Sound can be a sensation of Color; nor whether Color can move a machine, although Heat can, yet the one is no less a sensation than the other. On similar grounds no one should ask whether Matter can think, or Mind move Matter. The only rational question is one preserving the integrity of the terms, namely, whether the living, thinking organism presents itself to apprehension under the twofold aspect—now under the modes of Feeling classified as objective or physical; now under the modes classified as subjective or mental.
40. We are told that it is “impossible to imagine Matter thinking,” which is very true; only by a gross confusion of terms can Thought be called a property of cerebral tissue, or of Matter at all. We may, indeed, penetrate beneath the terms which relate to aspects, and recognize in the underlying reality not two existences, but one. Our conceptions of this reality, however, are expressed in symbols representing different classes of feelings, objective and subjective; and to employ the terms of one class to designate the conceptions of the other is to frustrate the very purposes of language. Matter and Mind, Object and Subject, are abstractions from sentient experiences. We know them as abstractions, and know the concrete experiences from which they are abstracted. Philosophers, indeed, repeatedly assure us that we neither know what Matter is nor what Mind is, we only know the phenomenal products of the action and reaction of these two unknown noumena. Were this so, all discussion would be idle; we could not say whether Matter was or was not capable of thinking, whether Mind was or was not the same as Matter, we could only abstain from saying anything whatever on the topic. What should we reply to one who asked us to name the product of two unknown quantities? So long as x and y are without values their product must be without value. If the value of x be known, and that of y unknown, then the product still remains unknown: x + y = x + 0 = x. Therefore, unless the Objective aspect were the equivalent of the Subjective aspect, it could never be subjectively present. Feeling is but another aspect of the Felt.
41. It is because we do know what Matter is, that we know it is not Mind: they are symbols of two different modes of Feeling. If we separate the conception of citizenship from the conception of fatherhood, although the same man is both citizen and father, how much more decisively must we separate the conception of Matter, which represents one group of feelings, from the conception of Mind, which represents another? One element in the former is common to the whole group, namely, the reference to a Not-Self, induced by the sensation of Resistance, which always ideally or sensibly accompanies the material class. The axiom, I feel, ergo I exist, has its correlative:—I act, ergo there are other existents on which I act; and these are not wholly Me, for they resist, oppose, exclude me; yet they are also one with Me, since they are felt by me. In my Feeling, that which is not Me is Matter, the objective aspect of the Felt, as Mind is the subjective aspect.
But since Hunger and Thirst, Joy and Grief, Pain and Terror, are also felt, yet are never classed under the head of Matter, the grounds of the classification of feelings have to be expressed. Professor Bain makes the distinction between Matter and Mind to rest solely on the presence or absence of Extension: this is the decisive mark: Matter he defines as the Extended. The definition is inadequate. When I see a dog and its image reflected in a pool, or see a dog and think of another, in the three cases dog, image, and idea have Extension; but I recognize the dog as a material fact, the idea as a mental fact; and although the image of the dog has material conditions by which I am optically affected, just as the idea has material cerebral conditions, I recognize a marked difference between them and the dog, due to the different modes of apprehension. The dog is known as a persistent reality, which, when Sight is supplemented by Touch, will yield sensations of Resistance, and thus disclose its materiality. The image vanishes if I attempt to touch it; I see its outlines waver and become confused with every disturbance of the surface of the pool; the idea vanishes when another idea arises; whence I conclude that neither has material reality, because neither has the Resistance which characterizes the Not-Self. The image and the idea may be referred to material conditions, but so may pains, terrors, volitions, yet these are all without Extension, simply because they are not visual feelings.
42. Matter does not represent all feelings, but only the objective sensibles; and these are not all characterized by Extension, but only those which directly or indirectly involve optico-tactical experiences accompanied by muscular experiences. Matter is primarily the Visible and Resistant; and secondarily, whatever can be imagined as such; so that ether, molecules, and atoms, although neither visible nor tangible, are ranged under the head of Matter. Color is a feeling as Sound and Scent are feelings, and although material conditions are equally presupposed in all three, yet Color alone has Extension, and because it can be imaged it has a more objective character than the others, which having no lines and surfaces, want the optical conditions for the formation of images, and are less definitely connected with tactical and muscular experiences. Nevertheless, since Sound and Scent are obviously associated with objects seen and touched, they have a degree of materiality never assigned to such feelings as Hunger and Thirst, Pleasure, Terror, and Hope.
43. When we refer feelings to material conditions, we follow the natural tendency to translate the little known in terms of the better known, and employ the symbols Matter and Motion, because these furnish the intellect with images, i. e. definite and exact elements to operate with. In hearing a sound, there is nothing at all like “vibrations,” nothing like “aerial waves” and “neural processes,” given in that feeling; but on attempting to explain it, we remove it from the sphere of Sensation to carry it into the sphere of Intellect, and we must change our symbols in changing our problem; here our only resource is to translate the subjective state into an imaginable objective process, which can only be expressed in terms of Matter and Motion. What we heard as Sound is then seen as Vibration. When we are optically or mentally contemplating vibrations and neural processes, we are supplanting one source of feeling by another, translating an event in another set of symbols. But we can no more hear the sound in seeing the vibrations, than a blind man can see the fly in the amber which he feels with his fingers, or than we can feel the amber he holds, while we are only looking at it. The phrase “material conditions of Feeling” sometimes designates the objective aspect of the subjective process, and sometimes the agencies in the external medium which co-operate with the organism in the production of the feelings. In each case there is an attempt to explain a feeling by intelligible symbols.
44. The Animal probably never attempts such explanation; satisfied with the facts, it is careless of their factors. Man is never satisfied: is restless in the search after factors; and having found them, seeks factors of these factors; so that Lichtenberg felicitously calls him “das rastlose Ursachenthier”—“the animal untiring in the search for causes.” And thus sciences arise: we translate experiences into geometrical, physical, chemical, physiological, and psychological terms—different symbols of the different modes of apprehending phenomena.
45. “I see an elephant.” In other words, I am affected in a certain way, and interpret my affection by previous similar experiences, expressing these in verbal symbols. But I want an explanation, and this the philosopher vouchsafes to me by translating my affection into his terms. He takes me into another sphere—tells me of an undulating Ether, the waves of which beat upon my retina—of lines of Light refracted by media and converged by lenses according to geometric laws—of the formation thereby of a tiny image of the gigantic elephant on my retina as on the plate of a camera-obscura—this, and much more, is what he sees in my visual feeling, and he bids me see it also. Grateful for the novel instruction, I am compelled to say that it does not alter my vision of the elephant, does not make the fact a whit clearer, does not indeed correspond with what I feel. It is outside knowledge, valuable, as all knowledge is, but supplementary. It is translation into another language. And when I come to examine the translation, I find it very imperfect. I ask my instructor: Is it the tiny image on my retina which I see, and not the big elephant on the grass? And how do I see this retinal image, which you explain to be upside down?—how is it carried from my retina to my mind? I have no consciousness of tiny reversed image, none of my retina, only of a fact of feeling, which I call “seeing an elephant.” The camera-obscura has no such feeling—it reflects the image, it does not see the object. Here my instructor, having reached the limit of his science,210 hands me over to the physiologist, who will translate the fact for me in terms not of Geometry, but of Anatomy and Physiology. The laws of Dioptrics cease at this point: the image they help to form on the retina is ruthlessly dispersed, and all its beautiful geometric construction is lost in a neural excitation, which is transmitted through semifluid channels of an optic tract to a semifluid ganglion, whence a thrill is shot through the whole brain, and is there transformed into a visual sensation. Again I fancy I have gained novel instruction of a valuable kind; but it does not affect my original experience that I am enabled to translate it into different terms; the less so because I cannot help the conviction that the translation is imperfect, leaving out the essential points. If a phrase be translated for me into French or German, I gain thereby an addition to my linguistic knowledge, but the experience thus variously expressed remains unaffected. When the fact is expressed in geometrical or physiological terms, the psychical process finds no adequate expression. Neither in the details, nor in the totals, do I recognize any of the qualities of my state of feeling in seeing the elephant. I do not see the geometrical process, I do not see the anatomical mechanism, I see the elephant, and am conscious only of that feeling. You may consider my organism geometrically or anatomically, and bring it thus within the circle of objective knowledge; but my subjective experience, my spiritual existence, that of which I am most deeply assured, demands another expression. Nay more, on closely scrutinizing your objective explanations, it is evident that a psychical process is implied throughout—such terms as undulations, refractions, media, lenses, retina, neural excitation, overtly refer, indeed, to the material objective aspect of the facts, but they are themselves the modes of Feeling by which the facts are apprehended, and would not exist as such without the “greeting of the spirit.”
46. What, then, is our conclusion? It is, that to make an adequate explanation of psychical processes by material conditions we must first establish an equivalence between the subjective and objective aspects; and, having taken this step, we must complete it by showing wherein the difference exists; having established this entity and diversity, we have solved the problem.
Let us attempt this solution. When I speak to you, the spoken words are the same to you and to me. You hear what I hear, you apprehend what I apprehend. But there were muscular movements of articulation felt by me and not felt by you; to feel these you also must articulate the words; but so long as you merely hear the words, there is a difference in our states of feeling. Some of my movements you can see, others you can imagine; but this is not my feeling of them, it is your optical equivalent of my muscular feeling. On a similar assumption of equivalence, a neural process is made to stand for a logical process. In thinking a proposition, we are logically grouping verbal symbols representative of sensible experiences; and this is a quite peculiar state of Consciousness, wholly unlike what would arise in the mental or visual contemplation of the neural grouping, which is its physiological equivalent. But this diversity does not discredit the idea of their identity; and although some of my readers will protest against such an idea, and will affirm that the logical process is not a process taking place in the organism at all, but in a spirit which uses the organism as its instrument, I must be allowed in this exposition to consider the identity established, my purpose being to explain the diversity necessarily accompanying it. Therefore, I say, that although a logical process is identical with a neural process, it must appear differently when the modes of apprehending it are different. While you are thinking a logical proposition, grouping your verbal symbols, I, who mentally see the process, am grouping a totally different set of symbols: to you the proposition is a subjective state, i. e. a state of feeling, not an object of feeling: to become an object, it must be apprehended by objective modes: and this it can become to you as to me, when we see it as a process, or imagine it as a process. But obviously your state in seeing or imagining the process must be different from your state when the process itself is passing, since the modes of apprehension are so different. There may be every ground for concluding that a logical process has its correlative physical process, and that the two processes are merely two aspects of one event; but because we cannot apprehend the one aspect as we apprehend the other, cannot see the logical sequence as we see the physical sequence, this difference in our modes of apprehension compels us to separate the two, assigning one to the subjective, the other to the objective class. Between the sensible perception of an object and the reproduced image of the object there is chiefly a quantitative difference in the physiological and psychological processes: the image is a faint sensation. Yet this quantitative difference brings with it the qualitative distinction which is indicated in our calling the one a sensation, the other a thought. The consequence has been that while all philosophers have admitted the sensation to be—at least partly—a process in the bodily organism, the majority have maintained that the thought is no such process in the organism, but has its seat in a spirit independent of the organism.
47. The states of Feeling which are associated with other states characterized as objective because overtly referring to a Not-Self, we group under the head of Matter: we assign material conditions as their antecedents. Whereas states of Feeling which are not thus associated we group under the head of Mind, and assign internal conditions as their antecedents. Color and Taste are very different states of Feeling, yet both are spontaneously referred to external causes, because they are associated with visual and tactical states; whereas Hunger, Nausea, Hope, etc., have no such associations, and their material conditions are only theoretically assigned.
Our intelligible universe is constructed out of the elements of Feeling according to certain classifications, the broadest of which is that into external and internal, object and subject. The abstractions Matter and Mind once formed and fixed in representative symbols, are easily accredited as two different Reels. But the separation is ideal, and is really a distinction of Aspects. We know ourselves as Body-Mind; we do not know ourselves as Body and Mind, if by that be meant two coexistent independent Existents; and the illusion by which the two Aspects appear as two Reals may be made intelligible by the analysis of any ordinary proposition. For example, when we say “this fruit is sweet,” we express facts of Feeling—actual or anticipated—in abstract terms. The concrete facts are these: a colored feeling, a solid feeling, a sweet feeling, etc., have been associated together, and the colored, solid, sweet group is symbolized in the abstract term “fruit” But the color, solidity, and sweetness are also abstract terms, representing feelings associated in other groups, so that we find “fruit” which has no “sweetness”; and “sweetness” in other things besides “fruits.” Having thus separated ideally the “sweetness” from the “fruit”—which in the concrete sweet-fruit is not permissible—we easily come to imagine a real distinction. This is the case with the concrete living organism when we cease to consider it in its concrete reality, and fix our attention on its abstract terms—Body and Mind. We then think of Body apart from Mind, and believe in them as two Reals, though neither exists apart.
There is no state of consciousness in which object and subject are not indissolubly combined. There is no physical process which is not indissolubly bound up with the psychical modes of apprehending it. Every idea is either an image or a symbol—it has therefore objective reference, a material aspect. Every object is a synthesis of feelings—it has therefore subjective reference, a material aspect. Thus while all the evidence points to the identity of Object and Subject, there is ample evidence for the logical necessity of their ideal separation as Aspects. This I have explained as a case of the general principle which determines all distinctions—namely, the diversity in the modes of production of the products, which—subjectively—is diversity in the modes of apprehending them. The optico-tactical experiences are markedly different from the other experiences, as being more directly referred to the Not-Self which resists; and because these lend themselves to ideal constructions by means of images and symbols, it is these experiences into which we translate all the others when we come to explain them and assign their conditions. For—and this is the central position of our argument—all interpretation consists in translating one set of feelings in the terms of another set. We condense sets of feelings in abstract symbols; to understand these we must reduce them to their concrete significates. They are signs; we must show what they are signs of.
Now the symbols Object and Subject are the most abstract we can employ. Because they are universal, they represent what cannot in reality be divorced. We can, indeed, ideally separate ourselves from the Cosmos; in the same way we can ideally separate our inner Self or Soul from our outer Self or Body; and again our Soul from its sentient states, our Body from its physical changes. But not so in reality. The separation is a logical artifice, and a logical necessity for Science.
The necessity will be obvious to any one who reflects how the ideal constructions of Science demand precision and integrity of terms. The problem of Automatism brings this very clearly into view. The question is, Can we translate all psychological phenomena in mechanical terms? If we can, we ought; because these terms have the immense advantage of being exact, dealing as they do with quantitative relations. But my belief is that we cannot—nay, that we cannot even translate them all into physiological terms. The distinction between quantitative and qualitative knowledge (p. 354) is a barrier against the mechanical interpretation. Physiology is a classificatory science, not a science of measurement. Nor can the laws of Mind be deduced from physiological processes, unless supplemented by and interpreted by psychical conditions individual and social.