All these thirteen conditions are necessary for the existence and maintenance of normal vision; they are all there at the birth of the child, although the occasion for their exercise has not yet been afforded; the circumstances preceding and accompanying their origin (n.n.) are accordingly to be sought in procreation and the life of the fœtus. The physiologists, however, it may safely be said, will never succeed, with the least show of probability, in exhibiting the sufficient cause for the origin of all these conditions in the blastoderm of the fertilised ovum and the material fluids which supply it: one cannot see why the child should not develop even without optic nerve or without eye at all. Suppose now, however, that we fell back upon our ignorance, although that is a bad ground for positive probabilities, and assumed a tolerably high probability for the development of any of the thirteen conditions from the material conditions of embryonic life, say (a probability which but a small portion of our most certain knowledge possesses), still the probability that all these conditions follow from the material relations of the embryonic life is only 0.913 = 0.254. The probability, therefore, of a spiritual cause being required for the sum of conditions = 0.746, i.e., almost . In truth, however, the several probabilities perhaps = 0.25, or at the most 0.5, and accordingly the probability of a spiritual cause for the whole = 0.9999985 or 0.99988, i.e., certainty.
We have just seen, how from material events we may conclude to the co-operation of spiritual causes, without the latter being open to immediate inspection. From this to the recognition of final causes there is but one step. A spiritual cause for material events can only consist of spiritual activity; and, moreover, where the spirit has to work outwardly, Will must be present, and the idea of what the Will wills cannot be wanting, as is more fully discussed in Chap. iv, A. The spiritual cause is thus Will in union with Idea, the idea namely of the material event which is to be brought about (M). We assume here, for the sake of brevity, that M proceeds directly from a spiritual cause, which is by no means necessary. Let us ask further, what can be the cause of M being willed? Here the causal chain is at once broken, if we do not adopt the simple natural hypothesis, the willing of Z. Now, it is obvious that Z cannot influence the event as real existence, but only idealiter, i.e., as mental object, according to the axiom that the cause must be prior to the effect. That, however, willing-of-Z is a sufficient motive for willing-of-M is likewise a self-evident proposition, for whoever wishes to produce the effect must also will to produce the cause. To be sure on this hypothesis we only obtain a genuine explanation, if the willing-of-Z is in itself more comprehensible to us than the willing-of-M. The sufficient motive of the willing-of-Z must then lie either in the realisation of Z, or in a willing of Z1, which Z1 follows on Z as its effect; a consideration admitting of indefinite repetition. The more evident is the last motive at which we stop, the more probable does it become that the willing-of-Z is cause of the willing-of-M.—It is easy to see that this is, in point of fact, the course of our speculation with regard to natural ends. We have seen, for example, that the bird broods because it wills to brood. We must either be satisfied with this barren result and forego all explanation, or we must ask why is brooding willed? Answer: because the development and hatching of the young bird is willed. We are still in the same plight; we therefore inquire further, why is the development of the young bird willed? Answer: because propagation is willed; and this, because the continued duration of the species, despite the shortness of the individual life, is willed; and here we get a motive which may provisionally satisfy us. We are accordingly entitled to assume, that the willing of the development of the young bird is the cause (no matter whether direct or indirect) of the willing of the brooding, i.e., that the former is aimed at through the mean of brooding. (The point is not, whether the bird is conscious of this aim or not, although the supposition would be absurd in the case of a young bird bred in seclusion, for whence could it have derived the conscious knowledge of the effect of incubation?) Certainly there always remains the possibility that an immaterial cause is at the bottom of the event M, without its being motived by the will to produce Z; consequently the probability that Z is purposed will be a product of the probability that M has a spiritual cause and of the probability that this spiritual cause has the willing of Z for its cause ; the product must, however, of course be smaller than either of the factors, since every probability is less than 1. Here, too, the probability may be considerably increased, if the several conditions (P1, P2, P3, P4), of which M is usually compounded, be taken into account. The probability that Z is aimed at by means of is, according to the foregoing, , if is the probability that the immaterial cause has for its cause the willing of Z: accordingly the probability that P1 has not Z in view = . Consequently the probability that neither P1, nor P2, nor P3, nor P4 lias Z for end, i.e., that Z is in nowise aimed at through M = the product of the several probabilities
Consequently the probability that M in any part thereof has Z for its end, i.e., the probability that Z is at all an end with respect to M, is equal to the complement of this quantity in respect of &c., are genuine fractions, just as , &c., consequently also
and so on, consequently also their product,
Hence it follows, that this product becomes smaller the larger the quantity n becomes; for if n increases to 1 the newly-introduced factor is
This factor, like the product, is a genuine fraction, therefore the product of both must be a genuine fraction, which is smaller than either of the two factors, e. d.—From the circumstance that n increasing becomes smaller, it follows that n increasing becomes larger; accordingly this probability also grows with the number of conditions of which M is compounded. Let
be on the average = , i.e., let the probability, that each of the conditions of Z taken singly has this particular end in view, be on the average = consequently very improbable. Then is on the average = ; this raised merely to the fourth power gives , consequently
i.e., there results on the whole a very fair probability, for any one, who should bet 2 to i on the existence of Design, would still win. The application to the example of vision is obvious.
We learn from the above, that those effects in particular can safely be regarded as ends, which need for their production a considerable number of causes, each of which has a certain probability of being means to the particular end. It is, therefore, no wonder that just the most general phenomena of Nature have always been most widely admitted to be ends. For example, the existence and continuance of organic nature as end of its own arrangements, as well as of those of inorganic nature. It is precisely here that an infinite number of causes co-operate to secure one grand result, the continuance of organisms. So far as these causes lie in the organisms themselves, they are divisible into those which conduce to the maintenance of the individual, and those which subserve the preservation of the species. Both of these points have seldom wanted recognition as natural ends. If we now call such an end cognised with the greatest possible certainty Z, we know that none of its many causes can be wanting, if it is to be attained; thus, e.g., not M. Now since I know that both Z and M were willed and imagined before their real existence, and I see that among others the external cause M1 is requisite for the occurrence of M, the assumption, that M1, too, was willed and imagined before its real existence, obtains a certain probability through this regressive inference. Whether, namely, M be realised through the immediate action of a spiritual cause, or indirectly in that it follows from material causes, of which a few or several are spiritually caused, in both cases M1 may be willed and represented before its real existence as means to the end M. In the latter case this is perfectly clear, but also in the former case the immediate interweaving of a spiritual cause in the realisation of M does not preclude the material causes of M, and therefore of M1, springing in larger or smaller part, from spiritual causes, which had M and Z for their ends. In organic nature this is even the normal state of the case. The result of this reasoning in any case is a certain probability that M1 is
also aimed at, and although it may not be in itself great, still it is always a strengthening of the directly obtained degree of probability which is not to be despised, since all later links in the chain have the benefit of this probability by its repetition at every stage.
From these considerations it is evident that the ways, in which ends are perceived in Nature, are multifariously combined. No claim is set up for the application of such calculations in practice, but they serve to clear up the principles which more or less unconsciously regulate the logical procedure of every one who correctly reflects on this subject, and who does not dogmatise thereon from the lofty heights of some à priori system. The examples adduced in this chapter are not intended to serve as a proof of the truth of Teleology, but only for the elucidation and illustration of the abstract expositions, which likewise will assuredly convert no opponent to the hypothesis of ends in Nature, for only examples en masse can do that; but perhaps they will lead some, who thought themselves to have outgrown the belief in Purpose as manifested in Nature, to weigh alleged instances thereof more carefully and impartially; and no other than this, viz., as a preparation for Section A. of our inquiry, was the design of the present chapter.
1 It must always be remembered, that events are never probable, but always necessary, to an omniscient being, and that it is only our ignorance which makes possible that uncertainty, which is the foundation of the calculus of probability. Only when our ignorance is utterly disproportionate to the knowledge available for calculation does the probable error, which every coefficient of probability possesses, become so great as to make the value of the latter illusory. Otherwise, if the probable errors in the statement of the problem are confined within moderate limits, the probable error in the result in our examples becomes inappreciable.
1 To ascertain the actual independence of the co-operating conditions in any given case may often be very difficult, and a main source of error, This material difficulty in practical application, however, does not here concern us, where we are only dealing with the establishment of the formal side of the purposive thought process.
A.
THE MANIFESTATION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE.
“The Materialists endeavour to show that all, even mental phenomena, are physical: and rightly; only they do not see that, on the other hand, everything physical is at the same time metaphysical.”—SCHOPENHAUER.
I.
THE UNCONSCIOUS WILL IN THE INDEPENDENT FUNCTIONS OF THE SPINAL CORD AND GANGLIA.
THE time has gone by when the animals were contrasted with the free man as locomotive machines, as soulless automata. Deeper insight into the life of animals, strenuous effort to understand their language and the motives of their actions, has shown that with respect to mental capacity man differs from the brutes in degree and not in kind, just as the brutes differ among themselves; that in virtue of this higher capacity he has created a more perfect form of speech, and thereby has gained in the course of generations that perfectibility which is wanting to the brutes, owing to their imperfect means of communication. We accordingly know now, that we cannot compare the educated man of to-day with the animals, without being unjust to the latter, but only the peoples which are but little removed from the state in which they were fashioned by the hand of Nature; for we know that even our own race, privileged as it now is by higher aptitudes, was once what these still are, and that our present higher qualities of brain and mind have been only gradually attained through the law of hereditary transmission of acquired power. Thus the animal kingdom is presented to us as a finished scale of being, with pervading analogies. The fundamental spiritual faculties must be essentially the same in all, and what in the higher members appear to be new faculties are only secondary powers, which have been developed in certain directions by the higher culture of common elementary capacities. In all beings these fundamental or primitive activities of the mind are willing and thinking; for feeling (as I shall show in Chap. iii. B) may, with the help of the Unconscious, be developed from these two.
We shall speak in this chapter only of the Will. It is scarcely to be doubted, that what we regard as immediate cause of our action and call Will is to be found in the consciousness of animals as causal moment of their action, and must also be called Will, if we cease to give ourselves airs of superiority by employing different names for the very same things (as devouring, swilling, littering, for eating, drinking, child-bearing). The dog will not separate from its master; it wills to save the child which has fallen into the water from the well-known death; the bird will not let its young be injured; the cock will not share his hen with another, &c. I know there are many people who think they elevate man, when they ascribe as much as possible in the life of animals, especially the lower ones, to “reflex action.” If these persons have in their minds the ordinary physiological sense of the term reflex action, involuntary reaction on an external stimulus, it may safely be said that either they have never observed animals, or that they have eyes but they see not. If however they extend the meaning of reflex action beyond its usual physiological acceptation, they are assuredly right, but then they forget: firstly, that man, too, lives and moves in pure reflex actions—that every act of will is a reflex action; and secondly, that every reflex action is an act of will, as we shall show in Chap. V.
Let us then retain provisionally the usual narrower acceptation of reflex action, and speak only of such acts of will as are not reflexes in this sense, i.e., are not involuntary reactions of the organism on external stimuli. There are two marks in particular whereby volition may be distinguished from reflex actions: firstly, emotion, and secondly, consistency in carrying out an intention. Reflex actions are mechanical and passionless; but one need not be skilled in the art of physiognomics to clearly perceive the presence of an emotion even in the brutes. It is well known that several species of ants wage war with one another, one state subjugating and enslaving the citizens of another state, in order to obtain labourers for its operations. These wars are waged by a warrior caste, whose members are larger and stronger, and provided with more powerful nippers. It is only necessary to have once witnessed this army knocking at the hostile edifice, to have seen the workers withdraw and the warriors come out to do battle, with what bitterness the fight is carried on, and how, after an unsuccessful contest, the constructors of the building surrender themselves captive, to have no longer any doubt that this premeditated raid shows a very decided will, and is something altogether different from reflex action. The like is the case with the swarms of robber-bees.
Reflex action disappears and reappears with the external stimulus, but it cannot form a purpose, which it pursues under changed external circumstances with appropriate change of means. E.g., when a decapitated frog, having remained quiet a long time after the operation, suddenly begins to make natatory movements or to hop away, one might be inclined to look upon this as mere physiological reflex action, as result of the irritation of the terminations of the divided nerve by the air. But when the frog in various experiments, the cutaneous irritation and the part affected being the same, overcomes different obstacles in a different way, but equally suited to the purpose; when, having taken a fixed direction, and being turned therefrom, it tries with rare obstinacy constantly to regain it; when it creeps away under a cupboard or into other odd corners, manifestly to seek protection from its persecutors,—there is unmistakable evidence of non-reflectorial acts of will, regarding which even the physiologist Goltz justly concludes from his careful experiments, that there is no avoiding the assumption of an intelligence not confined to the cerebrum, but astricted to various central organs for the exercise of different functions (e.g., to the corpora quadrigemina for the maintenance of equilibrium).
From this example of the decapitated frog and the volition of all invertebrate animals (e.g., insects) it follows that no brain at all is requisite for the exercise of will. Since in the invertebrata the œsophageal ganglia take the place of the brain, we must assume that these also
suffice for the act of will, and in the above-mentioned frog cerebellum and spinal cord must have supplied the place of the cerebrum. But we cannot confine the will of invertebrate animals to the œsophageal ganglia; for when the anterior part of one bisected insect continues the act of devouring, and the posterior part of another the act of propagation, when praying crickets with their heads cut off even seek their females for days, find them and copulate, just as if they were unscathed, it is tolerably clear that the will to devour has been an act of the œsophageal ring, but the will to propagate, in these cases at least, an act of other ganglia of the trunk. The like independence of the will in the different ganglia of one and the same animal is observed, when the two halves of a divided earwig, or of an Australian ant, turn against one another, and, under the unmistakable influence of the passion of anger and lust of fighting, contend furiously with their antennæ till exhaustion or death ensues. But we must not limit the activity of the will even to ganglia; for we find voluntary action even in animals of a very low type, where the microscope of the anatomist has discovered no trace either of muscular fibrin or of nerves, but only the fibroin of Mulder (now called protoplasm). Here probably the semifluid slimy substance of the animal, as in the first stages of embryonic development, fulfils in an inferior manner those conditions to which the nerve substance owes its irritability, and special fitness as an instrument of the will, viz., the easy mobility and polarisability of the molecules. Let any one take a glass of water containing a polype, and place it in such a position that a part of the water is illuminated by the sun; the polype will instantly propel itself out of the dark towards the illuminated part of the water. If now a living infusorion be placed therein and it approaches within a few lines of the polype, the latter perceives it—God only knows how—and produces a whirlpool with its arms, in order to draw it within its grasp. On the other hand, should a dead infusorion, a small vegetable organism, or a particle of dust, approach quite as close, it does not trouble itself at all about it. The polype then perceives the animalcule to be living, draws therefrom the inference that it is fit for food, and adopts means to bring it within reach of its mouth. Not seldom also one may see two polypes in bitter conflict over a prize. No one will venture to call a will guided by a sense-perception so fine and so clearly manifested physiological reflection in the ordinary sense of the term, otherwise we should have to term it reflex action when the gardener bends the bough of a tree to reach its fruit. Accordingly, when we see acts of will in animals destitute of nerves, we can certainly not hesitate to recognise the same in ganglia.
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