It follows further from the deductive method of the philosophers, that discussion can only arise on special points in so far as they follow from principles with respect to which there is no dispute. But now, inasmuch as the whole system is enounced as a consequence of first principles, even supposing all conclusions to be correctly drawn, it can only be accepted or rejected as a whole, according as one rejects or accepts the first principles; whilst in a philosophy of induction which has been built up from below, i.e., on generally admitted and empirically established facts, assent may be granted up to a certain point, and then the observer may go his own road, having gained many hints for future use from a careful study of the solid sub-structure. It is accordingly evident why every deductive system stands more or less alone, like the spider in its web, because all differences are enclosed in the first principles, with regard to which there will never be agreement, if we are bound to make a commencement with them. On the other hand, in the different inductive philosophical systems (which, alas! do not yet exist), a feeling of solidarity would arise through the possession of a common foundation, just as in inductive science in general, where every strictly scientific step, once taken, is always a step gained, and where even the smallest gift is gratefully accepted. Lastly, it is obvious from what has been said, why the deductive philosophy has never yet succeeded in reaching the majority of the educated, but has had to be contented with a limited public, and why it has been just as little successful in bridging over the vast gulf which separates it from the reality to be explained.
Those philosophies, on the contrary, where the inductive method has been adopted, and all the natural sciences in the widest sense of the term, have undoubtedly obtained precious results of a secondary kind and gained ground for the future, but still are very far indeed from having reached ultimate principles and the true unity of science.
Thus a chasm yawns between the methods; induction cannot attain to first principles and to system, nor can pure speculation arrive at explanation of the actual or communicate its wisdom. It may be concluded from this that the whole truth cannot be comprehended from one side alone, but that the matter must be approached simultaneously from both sides, and a survey made from opposite stations in order to find out the salient points, where a bridge can be thrown across. For the case is not an entirely hopeless one. Thoughts crystallise both from above and from below, as the mass of melted sulphur coalesces when the most prominent needles interlace, but not before. We have arrived at a point in the history of science where the pioneers meet, like two miners who, in their subterranean galleries, hear each other’s knocking through the party-walls. For inductive science has in recent times made such vast progress in all branches of inorganic and organic nature, and even in the region of mind, that attempts of the kind indicated find a very different ground on which to work than, e.g., those of an Aristotle, Paracelsus, Bacon, and Leibniz. On the other hand, however, the period embracing the close of the last and beginning of the present century, brilliant beyond all former periods, has enriched the speculative mind in so many ways, that both parties once more face each other as equals. But at the same time the world has become more aware of a direct antagonism of method which before was less apparent, and hence it has come to pass that each investigator is wont to declare himself for one of the two tendencies much more definitely than was formerly the case. The present time needs a spokesman who has comprehended both sides with equal love and devotion, who is capable, if not of mystical production, yet of reproduction, and at the same time has made a survey of exact science and appreciates the strictness of the exact inductive method. He should clearly recognise, too, the nature of the problem before him, viz., to combine the speculative (mystically gained) principles with the highest results hitherto attained of inductive science according to inductive method, in order to bridge over the gulf between the two, and to elevate what have hitherto been merely subjective convictions to the rank of objective truths. It was in reference to this great and seasonable problem that I chose the motto, “Speculative results according to inductive scientific method!” Not that I thought myself to possess a mind sufficiently comprehensive for the solution of this problem, or at all believed that I had offered in the present work a satisfactory solution,—that is far from me. If I merit any praise, it is for having distinctly declared a problem, already recognised and attacked in different ways, to be the philosophic problem of a time suffering conspicuously from speculative exhaustion, for resolving to contribute my mite towards its solution, and so giving to others a possibly needed stimulus; but above all, because I have taken up the matter on a side hitherto neglected, but rich in promise beyond all others.1 At the same time my design imposes upon me the duty of submitting myself to the judgment of both tribunals, the scientific as well as the philosophical.1 Gladly do I do this, however; for I hold all speculation to be baseless, which contradicts the clear results of empirical investigation, and conversely hold all conceptions and interpretations of empirical facts to be erroneous, which contradict the strict results of a purely logical speculation.
I may perhaps be allowed to say also a few words upon the mode of exposition. My first rule has been general intelligibility and brevity. The reader will accordingly find no citations except such as could be worked into the text; all polemic has been avoided as far as possible, unless it was indispensable for the elucidation of a conception. My trust is greater in the convincing power of what positive truth there may be contained in my work than in negative criticism, however incisive. Further, instead of dwelling upon the errors and weaknesses of great men, which receive sentence in being forgotten in course of time, I have preferred to render prominent their grandest ideas, where they presagingly foreshadow in vague outline what only the future can establish in complete detail. Further, the opportunity for interesting side-remarks, for more thorough but prolix proofs, detailed deductions, &c., has often been left unused, so as to avoid a lengthened treatment, which would be serviceable to but a few readers. Accordingly, in the majority of instances, with the exception of those which deal with fundamentals, the chapters are almost aphoristic, because I believe that most readers will prefer a short exposition affording stimulus to self-reflection to an exhaustive treatment of the subject. In the handling of the topics the reader’s convenience has also been considered as far as possible, in that each chapter forms a little treatise by itself on a limited subject (a few only making an exception to this which belong inseparably together, as, e.g., Chap. C. vi. and vii.) The chapters of the first two sections together and severally prove the existence of the Unconscious; their concord and demonstrative force is a source of mutual support, and they sustain each other reciprocally like a pile of arms; thus the later support the earlier. I therefore beg the reader kindly to reserve his judgment, at least until he has finished Section A. Should, however, the proof of this or that chapter appear to be faulty, the inferences of the others are not necessarily thereby condemned, just as one or many of the weapons may be taken from a pyramid of piled arms without its collapsing. Lastly, I crave indulgence so far as the several physiological and zoological facts employed as examples are concerned, in respect to which a layman may easily make a slip, without, however, prejudicing the main argument.
(c) Predecessors in respect of the Conception of the Unconscious.
What a time elapsed before in the history of Philosophy the antithesis of Spirit and Nature, Thought and Being, Subject and Object, emerged into clear consciousness, an antithesis which now governs all our thinking! For the primitive man as natural existence felt his body and soul to be one, he instinctively anticipated this identity, and his understanding must have reached a high degree of consciousness, before he could so far free himself from this instinct as to perceive the full force of the contrast. Nowhere in all Greek philosophy do we find this opposition clearly expressed, still less its significance recognised, but least of all in the classical period. If this holds good of the opposition of the Real and the Ideal
, ought we to be surprised that the contrast of the Unconscious and the Conscious should still less occur to the primitive understanding, and therefore should arise much later in the history of Philosophy; nay, that at this very day most educated people hold it to be absurd to speak of unconscious thinking? For the Unconscious is so much terra incognita to the natural consciousness, that it regards the identity of having an idea and being conscious of a thing as quite self-evident and indubitable. This naive point of view was taken by Descartes (Prin. Phil., i. 9), and still more decidedly by Locke (Essay on the Human Understanding, book ii. chap. 1, sec. 9): “To ask at what time a man has any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive, having Ideas and Perception being the same thing;” or sec. 19: “For it is altogether as intelligible to say that a body is extended without parts, as that anything thinks without being conscious of it. They who talk thus may, with as much reason, if it be necessary to their hypothesis, say that a man is always hungry, but that he does not always feel it; whereas hunger consists in that very sensation, as thinking consists in being conscious that one thinks.” It is clear that Locke postulates these propositions in all simplicity. The assertion, repeatedly made, that Locke has proved the possibility of unconscious ideas is therefore quite incorrect He only proves from a proposition taken for granted, that the mind can have no idea without the man being conscious thereof, because otherwise the consciousness of the man and that of the mind would constitute two different persons, and that consequently the Cartesians were wrong in asserting that the soul, as thinking being, must think incessantly. Locke is accordingly the first and only one to give full and scientific expression to this tacit supposition of the naive understanding. By this step, however, an opportunity was naturally afforded Locke’s great opponent, Leibniz, of perceiving its one-sidedness and untruth, and of making the discovery of unconscious ideas, whereas all earlier philosophers silently inclined to the one or the other view, but in general failed to distinctly envisage the problem.
Leibniz was led to his discovery through the endeavour to save innate ideas and the ceaseless activity of the perceptive faculty. For when Locke had proved that the soul cannot consciously think if the man is not conscious thereof, and yet should be always thinking, there remained nothing for it but to assume an unconscious thinking. He therefore distinguishes perception, ideation, and apperception, conscious ideation or simply consciousness (Monadologie, sec. 14), and says: “II ne s’en suit pas de ce qu’on ne s’apperçoit pas de la pensée, qu’elle cesse pour cela” (Nouveaux Essais sur l’Entendement Humain, book ii. chap. 1, sec. 10). What Leibniz contributes to the positive establishment of his new conception is certainly very scanty, but he deserves immense credit for instantly perceiving with the eye of genius the range of his discovery, for penetrating (sec. 15) into the dark inner laboratory of human feelings, passions, and actions, and for recognising habit and much else as effects of an important principle only too briefly expounded. He declares unconscious ideas to be the bond “which unites every being with all the rest of the universe,” and explains by their means the pre-established harmony of the monads, in that every monad as microcosm unconsciously represents the macrocosm and its position therein. I cheerfully confess that it was the study of Leibniz which first incited me to the present investigation.
With regard to the so-called innate ideas, he likewise finds a point of view which has obtained general acceptance (book i. chap. 3, sec. 20): “They are nothing but natural aptitudes, that is to say, active and passive dispositions;” (chap. I, sec. 25): “Actual knowledge is certainly not innate, but only what one may call virtual knowledge, just as the figure outlined by the veins of the marble is in the marble before these are discovered in the process of working them.” Leibniz meant to say what Schelling later (Works, div. i. vol. iii. pp. 528, 529) more precisely expressed in the words: “So far as the Ego produces everything out of itself, so far is all … knowledge à priori. But in so far as we are not conscious of this productivity, so far is there nothing in us à priori, but everything is à posteriori. … There are thus notions à priori without there being innate notions. Not conceptions, but our own nature and its whole mechanism is that which is innate to us. … In that we place the origin of the so-called notions à priori outside the sphere of consciousness, where for us also the objective world takes its rise, we assert with the same evidence, and with equal right, that our knowledge is in origin out-and-out empirical and entirely à priori.”
But now comes the weak side of Leibniz’s theory of unconscious ideas, already apparent in their usual name, “petites perceptions.” Having in his discovery of the infinitesimal calculus, and in many parts of Natural Philosophy, in Mechanics (Rest and Motion), in the Law of Continuity, &c., introduced with the most brilliant success the notion of the (so-called mathematical) infinitely little, Leibniz was tempted to conceive the petites perceptions as ideas of too low an intensity to affect consciousness. He thereby destroyed with one hand what he seemed to have built up with the other—the true notion of the Unconscious as a province opposed to Consciousness, and its significance for feeling and action. For if, as Leibniz himself maintains, natural disposition, instinct, the passions—in short, the mightiest influences in human life—take their rise in the sphere of the Unconscious, how are they to be shaped by ideas which are withdrawn from consciousness simply on account of their weakness? Would not the more powerful conscious ideas prevail at the decisive moment? This, however, is of minor interest to Leibniz, and for the main objects of his consideration, innate ideas and the constant activity of the soul, his assumption of the infinitely little consciousness certainly suffices. Accordingly, most of his examples of petites perceptions have reference to ideas of a low degree of consciousness, e.g., sensuous perception during sleep. For all that, Leibniz retains the glory of having been the first to affirm the existence of ideas of which we are not conscious, and to recognise their vast importance.
Nearer to Leibniz than is commonly thought stands Hume, whose theoretical philosophy, it is true, is almost limited to a single point, Causality, but who within that limited sphere has looked round him with a clearer and bolder eye than even Kant. Hume does not dispute the fact of Causality, he only opposes the empiricists (Locke) with respect to its abstraction from experience, the à priorists (Cartesians) with respect to its apodictic certainty. On the other hand, he concedes to the empiricists the applicability of Causality to experience and practical affairs, and the à priorists through his indirect proof of the principle affords a support for the assertion, that our thinking and inferring according to causal relations is a manifestation unconsciously to ourselves of an instinctive power far removed from our discursive thinking, which, like the astonishing instinct of animals, must be looked upon as an original gift of nature (“Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding”). The reality of an objectively real world, independent of the perception of the subject, is immediately inferred from sensuous perception by means of such a natural, blind, but powerful instinct. As, however, we directly know only our own mental representation, it is certainly directly indemonstrable, that it is the effect of an external object different from, but resembling it. In his acute criticism of the Berkeleian Idealism, Hume, however, shows himself so thoroughly penetrated by the consciousness, that every subjective idealism carried out to its last consequence can only end in a scepticism absolutely infertile and practically repudiated by its champions, that he is protected from the Kantian error of an exclusively subjective conception of causality; and at the conclusion of his inquiries he advocates the hypothetical restitution of the critically purified causal instinct as the only justifiable point of view. (I have taken a similar course in my work, “Das Ding an sich und seine Beschaffenheit,” C. Duncker, 1871.)
That Kant borrowed the notion of unconscious ideation from Leibniz is easily to be detected from the passage quoted at the beginning of this treatise. That he also attributed great importance to the subject is proved by the following passage of sec. 5
of the “Anthropology:”—“Innumerable are the sensations and perceptions whereof we are not conscious, although we must undoubtedly conclude that we have them, obscure ideas as they may be called (to be found in animals as well as in man). The clear ideas, indeed, are but an infinitely small fraction of these same exposed to consciousness. That only a few spots on the great chart of our minds are illuminated may well fill us with amazement in contemplating this nature of ours.” If Kant in this passage identifies the unconscious and the obscure ideas for the purposes of his “Anthropology,” the “Critique of the Pure Reason” shows that he recognised and indicated the distinction, but did not comprehend its full importance. The clear is opposed to the obscure, the conscious to the unconscious idea; but not every conscious idea is a clear idea, nor is every obscure idea unconscious. Only that conscious idea is clear in which the consciousness reaches to the consciousness of the discrimination of that very idea from others: when consciousness is not adequate to that, the conscious idea is obscure. Not all obscure ideas are therefore unconscious; “for a certain degree of consciousness, which, however, does not suffice for memory, is not wanting in several obscure ideas” (Kant’s Werke ed. Rosenkranz, ii. p. 793, Obs.) If for the practical ends of anthropology the contrast of clear and obscure ideas seems to Kant to be sufficient, for the theory of knowledge in general it yields in importance to that of the conscious and unconscious idea. “Idea is the genus (repraesentatio). Under it falls the idea accompanied by consciousness (perceptio)” (ibid., ii. 258). Consciousness, whose presence distinguishes perceptio from the unperceived repraesentatio, is not so much itself idea, “but its form in general, so far as it can be called knowledge” (ii. 279). It is the absence of this form which distinguishes the unconscious from the conscious idea. According to Kant the pure concepts of the understanding (categories) seem to belong to the unconscious ideas, so far as they lie beyond cognition, which cognition only becomes possible through a blind function of the soul (ii. 77) spontaneously binding up the given manifold of the perceived ideal material into a synthesis (ii. 76). If we penetrate by the aid of consciousness into the nature of this synthesis, we certainly recognise therein, so far as it is generally presented, the pure concept of the understanding (ii. 77); but the part that the unconscious category as “germ or foundation” (ii. 66) plays in bringing about conscious knowledge (the “Schematism of the pure understanding”) remains an “art hidden in the depths of the soul,” hardly ever to be laid bare (ii. 125). Unfortunately Kant did not attain the same degree of insight in reference to the à priori forms of intuition as in the case of the forms of thought. One example of the rare keenness of his perception, however, may be mentioned. Kant was the first who sought in the Unconscious for the essence of sexual love (Anthropology, sec. 5).
Philosophy of the Unconscious Page 5
