Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  Lastly, it should be remarked that we must recognise a clairvoyance of the Unconscious in the purposiveness of the creative impulse as in that of instinct, since all organs are developed earlier in the fœtal life than they enter into use, and often even very considerably earlier (e.g., sexual organs). The child has lungs before it breathes, eyes before it sees, and can, indeed, have knowledge of future states in no other way than by clairvoyance, whilst the organs are being formed; but this can be no objection to the plastic activity of the individual soul, since this is not a whit more wonderful than the clairvoyance of instinct.

  Let us now pass on to consider the close relationship of organic formation to the operations of instinct.—The nests, buildings, and holes which animals build and make are regarded by everybody as effects of instinct. The Teredo bores for itself with its shell a hole in wood, the Pholas in soft rocks; the Arenicola bores in the sand, and cements the sand into a tube by means of the moisture secreted on the surface of its skin. Some small beetles form for their tender skin a covering of dust, sand, and earth; the grubs of moths make for themselves tubes of hair or wool, which they carry about with them. The larva of most of the Phryganeæ weaves with the threads produced from its spinning organs wood, leaves, shells, &c., into a tube, wherein it dwells, and which it carries about with it. The larva of the caterpillar needs no foreign material for spinning its cocoon, in order to maintain the necessary seclusion and rest for the future change. Here, then, the dwellings of animals, just as the web of spiders and the covering of skin which some beetle-larvæ form of their excrement, is entirely formed by the organ itself.

  Nautilus and Spirula periodically emerge from their hemispherical shell and form for themselves a larger one, corresponding to their growth in the interim, which, however, is united with the old one in such a manner that in process of time the shell of the animal consists of a series of such chambers, ever increasing in size. In a similar way the shells of snails grow with their growth, whilst the Crustaceæ annually burst and throw off their shells by voluntary movement, just as the spiders, snakes, and lizards their skin, birds and mammals their feathers and hair, whilst the skin of the higher animals continually peels.—What we have seen hitherto in the structure as a whole can also be observed in the several parts, e.g., the operculum. A spider (Mygale cementaria) lives in a hollow in marl, which it makes fast with a door consisting of a dab of earth hinged on to the web. The vineyard snail in winter closes its dwelling with a lid, which it fashions together with its hinge from exudations of its own body, but which yet is not united in any way with its body. In other snails, on the contrary, the covering is permanently connected with the animal by means of muscular bands. Thus we have arrived at organic formation by a gradual passage from the building instinct, and can we believe that where the junction is so natural the fundamental principles are different? As instinct teaches squirrels and other animals to collect and garner more copiously when a cold winter is imminent, so dogs, horses, and game acquire in such years a thicker skin; but when horses are transferred to hot climates, after a few years they get no more winter hair. That the cuckoo imagines that its own eggs will have the colour of the eggs of the nest which it has elected to lay them in, has been already repeatedly mentioned. The instinct of the spider directs it to spin, the creative activity gives it the organ for spinning. The instinct of the working-bees leads them specially to collect, and the means of transport correspond thereto; they are even peculiarly favoured by possessing brushes on their feet to sweep together the pollen, and baskets for collecting. The insects, which in accordance with their instinct lay their eggs on freely creeping larvæ, have formed for themselves only a quite short ovipositor; whilst others, which are compelled to lay their eggs in grubs that are deeply concealed in old wood (Chelostoma maxillosa), or in fir-cones, have very long ovipositors. The ant-eater, which, in obedience to its instinct, is directed to the white ants, and dies with any other food, has with this object been furnished partly with short legs and strong claws for burrowing, partly with its long, narrow, toothless snout, provided with a filiform adhesive tongue. The owls, which are destined for night-prey, have their gentle, spectral flight, in order not to waken the sleepers. Beasts of prey, which, owing to their digestion, are instinctively destined for flesh-food, have been provided with the necessary strength, speed, weapons, and keenness of sight. As instinct has taught many birds to conceal their nests by assimilating the colour of the same to the environment, so has the creative activity given protection to innumerable beings by causing them to resemble their place of abode (especially parasites). Can it be really a different principle which implants the impulse for action, and bestows the means to give it effect?

  Here is the place to refer once more to the phenomenon of the formation of bubbles presented in Arcella vulgaris, which, although manifestly a result of the plastic energy of Nature, yet wears the appearance of an arbitrary exercise of instinct in suitable adjustment to the perceived external circumstances.

  As concerns reflex movements, we see a great number of the digestive processes effected by them. From the act of swallowing downwards, the peristaltic movements of gullet, stomach, and intestines are effected for the most part by reflex movements, in that the stimulus of the food at each spot gives occasion to further progress through appropriate movements. In the same way the increase of the secretions of saliva, gastric juice, chyme, &c., occurring on the stimulus of food, is reflex action. The discharge of the mass of excretions likewise ensues through reflex action. We have seen above that reflex action is by no means mechanical, but an effect of the unconscious intelligence.

  We come now to the most important parallelism, that with the recuperative power of Nature. As we shall see in Chap. ix. C., propagation is only a modified species of plastic energy, a creation of such fresh formations as, on arriving at maturity, reproduce the types of the parental organism (no matter whether a distinct separation of the sexes take place or not). But now, since, as will be shown in Chap. vi. C., the conception of the organic individual is a very relative one, as in certain circumstances it is hardly to be determined whether the new product represents the type of the entire individual or only of a part, there is manifestly no natural break between the new formation of certain organs in one individual and the self-multiplication of a complex organism embracing several individuals of a lower order, which unfolds a many-membered individual from a single germ.

  Another parallelism between propagation and the vis medicatrix consists in this, that unusual fertility of an unprotected species frequently serves as a means of maintaining in the face of pursuers an existence which without this would be imperilled. The question is here then to a certain extent concerning a more intense application of the natural sanative force of the species as a collective whole, which provides for the sufficient reparation of an unusually severe loss by over-abundant propagation, i.e., formation of fresh individuals. This law is even discernible in the case of mankind, since after depopulating wars or epidemics there is perceived an increase of the percentage of births beyond the average. (Unfortunately the converse does not hold good with over-population, for then only increased mortality acts as regulator.)

  We have already considered how the maintenance of a constant temperature is one of the most wonderful achievements of the organism, which can only be brought about by a marvellously accurate regulation of respiration, of egestion and ingestion. The future, however, must here be taken into account, namely, whenever future disturbances can be predicted through the occurrence of their causes. In conformity with this, we very soon see a correspondingly increased egestion follow every ingestion, before the blood can have received the new materials (e.g., immediately after drinking increased micturition or perspiration, increased salivary and bilious secretion on eating, independently of local stimulation of the organs). Since at every moment there takes place an alteration of the quantity of heat, however slight, the vis medicatrix or plastic energy must continually be occupied e
ven with this point alone. Further, there belongs to the digestion of all food a special kind of mechanical and chemical manipulation. We see that flesh cannot at all, or only imperfectly, be digested by herbivores, or plants by carnivores; that bones can be digested by birds of prey, but not by crows; that instinct assigns a single kind of food to many animals, without which they perish; and that conversely among men and animals idiosyncrasies of the race, or of the individual, are found, owing to which certain materials remain unassimilated, and act injuriously on the organism. It follow from this that the digestion of every substance require other conditions, and that it remains undigested or i injurious, if the organism is not in a position to establish these conditions. Accordingly, every act of digestion presupposes the inducing of particular conditions, without which it deranges the organism; here then we have again a continual occupation of the vis medicatrix in warding of disturbances, or, if it be preferred, of the formative activity in the assimilation of material.

  We have seen that in every injury the operation of the vis medicatrix or regeneration is only possible through reformation, by the instrumentality of inflammation, which furnishes neoplasm, whence the parts to be replaced are developed. Just as much does every increase of one egestion upon the suppression of another depend on a new formation, namely, the now increased secretion of egestion.

  The whole nutrition of the body, in which, after completed growth, the main function of the formative impulse consists, is one and the same with new formation, and is related to the renewal of all the parts of the body, as the continuous peelings of the skin in man to the periodical sloughing of snakes and lizards, i.e., nutrition is a sum of infinitely numerous, infinitely little, new formations; new formation merely nutrition rapidly gaining ground, and therefore more obtrusive. Having thus already recognised the re-formation in regeneration as a purposed effect of the unconscious soul, the like must hold good of nutrition, if we are obliged to recognise this too, as we cannot help doing, to be in conformity with a purpose. Certainly the psychical influence is less claimed in the gradual process of nutrition than in rapid new formations, because catalytic action is more serviceable; but that it can by no means be dispensed with is proved by the considerable disturbances of nutrition in the parts whose nervous connections with the centres of the ingoing sympathetic fibres have been cut (partly emaciation, partly deterioration of the secretions, partly decomposition of the blood, in the more sensitive parts, as the eyes: inflammation and destruction). The capillary blood-vessels, from which by endosmosis the structures derive their nutritive fluid, may be ever so finely distributed, yet for every vessel there remains a relatively large area, in which the parts lying farthest from the vessel will also have to be cared for, also muscles, sinews, bones, and nerve-substance must frequently be equally provided for by the same vessel; every particle must thus extract from the nutritive fluid that which suits it. But now if we know that, according to chemical laws, both the structures to be nourished as well as the nutritive fluid have constantly a tendency to decomposition, which they obey as soon as, through death, or even before, after great bodily weakness, the power of the unconscious soul over it has ceased, we cannot possibly believe that this assimilation in all its fine local gradations, such as is necessary for the continuance of the organism, can go on without any psychical influence. This chemical stability of the organic tissues is quite analogous to the constant mechanical tension in tonus; both are only explicable by an infinite summation of small impulses antagonistic to natural decomposition and natural relaxation, and these impulses can only issue from the will. There thus follows from a priori considerations what is confirmed by empirical observation on division of nerves.

  But now suppose these two reasons, together with the identity of renovation and nutrition, were not found sufficiently to the point to prove the psychical influence in ordinary nutrition, and one assumed that the catalytic action of the existing tissues were a sufficient cause, still the question would arise, Whence comes this constitution of the cause? Then one would be obliged to say, These structures have now this constitution because they formerly had it. Thus, with further questioning, a point would be arrived at when the nature of the tissues would have become different, and this change would first have to be explained; for this change is the reason why the structures were from that moment adapted to a purpose, and so remained in virtue of their constitution; and since no materialistic explanation exists for this adaptation, it must be ascribed to the purposive activity of unconscious will. But then this also becomes the cause of the maintenance of the adjustment, and the necessity of having recourse to a psychical influence is not removed, but only postponed. Setting aside that at every moment of life we stand at such a point of change, we might go back still farther, for the present constitution of the tissues is not conditioned merely by the change itself, but also by their constitution before the change. If we regressively follow this series, we arrive at the first origin of the structure, which requires an explanation, whilst in the course of development we must intercalate at least as many psychical influences as there have been fresh adjustments. Now, as no structure of the organism is superfluous, but each has a definite purpose, which again serves as means to the preservation of the individual or the race, one will also see at this very commencement a purposive action of the will. And, as certainly as the first origin and the more considerable changes are important aids to the persistence and the nutrition of a structure, and facilitate the work of the will—nay, first makes it possible for the whole extent of the organism—so certainly are they not the sole conditions of nutrition, but the omnipresent unconscious will in the organism, together with the unconscious intelligence, is concerned in the smallest chemical or physical process simply because this organism is threatened in the smallest untoward event, if only by the tendency to chemical decomposition, and because in presence of these ceaseless material disturbances nothing else can maintain the equilibrium but a psychical influence. On the other hand, however, life is only possible when this psychical influence is reduced, for the ordinary processes, to a minimum, and the rest of the work is performed by means of appropriate mechanisms. These appropriate mechanisms we meet with everywhere in the body, but so contrived that the unconscious will reserves to itself at every moment the modification of the purpose (e.g., in different stages of development), as well as the independent interference with the wheels of the machine, and the immediate execution of a task to which the mechanism is unequal. This cannot diminish, but only increase, our astonishment at the unconscious intelligence; for how much higher does not the being stand, which spares itself the recurring performance of a work by constructing an efficient machine, than one who is always doing the same thing over and over again with his own hands? And in the last resort there always remains to the soul that unavoidable minimum of immediate work, because each moment brings other relations and other disturbances, and no mechanism can be adapted for more than one fixed class of relations. This, then, is the answer to all objections which might possibly have been urged in the course of this investigation so far, with the notorious appeal to purposive mechanisms:—(1.) The concept “mechanism” does not exhaust the facts, but the performances of a mechanism, when it exists, always leave a something over to be immediately performed by psychical action; and (2.) the fitness of the mechanism includes the fitness of its origin, and this again always remains the work of the soul.

  If, with the consideration that every organic event has two causes, a psychical and a material, we recede farther in the chain of material causes, we arrive in all strictness, whatever point of departure we may choose, at the first fertilised ovum as the final material cause. When the development of the ovum, wholly or partially, takes place within the maternal organism, the material influences of the latter also certainly co-operate; but in the ova of fish and amphibia, which are fertilised outside the female body, this is never the case. In this regress it is, however, to be remarked, that the psychical causes beco
me in general so much the more important than the material the younger is the individual (as we saw in the strength of the vis medicatrix). At a more advanced age the organism for the most part lives on the acquisitions of better times; before puberty, on the other hand, it is ceaselessly occupied either with processes of simple growth or with producing new structures, and in the life of the embryo the importance of the psychical influences increases the earlier the period to which we recede.

  The just-fertilised ovum is a cell (consisting only of the yolk), the wall of which is represented by the vitelline membrane, the contents by the yolk, and its nucleus by the germinal vesicle. Among the higher animals the blastodermic vesicle within the germinal membrane (in man about one two-hundredth of a line) is the part from which alone the embryo, certainly with the assistance of the yolk, is developed. Every part of the egg exhibits a thoroughly uniform structure (partly granular with imbedded droplets of fat, partly membranous and mucous), and these homogeneous elements suffice to produce, under generally similar external circumstances (brood-heat in birds, temperature of air and water with fishes and amphibia), the most diverse races with their finest differences and their immense multitude of systems, organs, and tissues; for among the higher animals, the young, on emerging from the egg, contain almost all the tissues and differentiations of the adult animal. Here the influence of the will is most clearly manifested in the transformation of the elements, as one may see in the ova of fish a few hours after (artificial) fertilisation the meridional and equatorial furrowings of the whole yolk, with which the development commences, and which is followed by a number of parallel interlacings. During the greater part of the embryonic life the soul is occupied with the establishment of mechanisms which are destined later on to save in great measure the labour of moulding the material. We can see no reason, however, why we should not ascribe the new formations which here make their appearance, just as much as the new formations of after-life, to the purposive activity of the unconscious will; for the greater extent of these first formations, in comparison with the already existing body, can in truth establish no qualitative distinction, and that the moment of the individualisation of the new mind, if such a one may be assumed at all, is that of fertilisation, can certainly not be involved in doubt. That, however, the mind in that period affords no indication of consciousness can neither excite astonishment, since it has first to form the organ of consciousness, nor can it be anything but helpful to its concentration on the unconscious performances, since, indeed, even in after-life, the power of the Unconscious is most forcibly displayed when consciousness is entirely suppressed, as in remedial crises during deep sleep; and the embryo, indeed, lies too in deep sleep.