Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  If we, however, once more consider the question whether in general an unconscious will can produce bodily effects, we have in preceding chapters arrived at the conclusion that every action of the mind on the body, without exception, is only possible by means of an unconscious will; that such an unconscious will can be called forth partly by means of a conscious will, partly, also, through the conscious idea of the effect without conscious will, even in opposition to the conscious will. Why should it not, then, also be called forth through the unconscious idea of the effect with which here, even to demonstration, the unconscious will of the effect is bound up, because the effect is end? But, lastly, that the mind, in the first period of embryonic life, must work without nerves, can certainly not militate against our view, since, indeed, not only in nerveless animals do we see all psychical effects follow without nerves, but even in the case of man have cited above sufficient examples of the kind, and, moreover, the embryo in the first period has just that semifluid structure of highly organised matter, which forms an excellent substitute for nerve-tissue proper.

  If now, in the first place, we perceive materialistic attempts at explanation to be insufficient; if, in the second place, a predestined fitness of development appears impossible, considering that any set of circumstances occurs only once in a lifetime, and yet each set of circumstances requires a novel reaction, and calls forth just that which is demanded; if, thirdly, the only remaining mode of explanation, that this unconscious psychical activity itself appropriately forms and maintains its body, has not only nothing to be said against it, but has all possible analogies from the most different departments of physiology and of animal life in its favour, the verification of individual providence and plastic energy appears to be as scientifically certain as is possible in inferences from effect to cause. (Comp. further, Ges. philos. Abhandlungen, No. vi., “Ueber die Lebenskraft.”)

  I close then this section with the fine words of Schopenhauer: “Thus even empirically every being stands before itself as its own handiwork; but the language of Nature is not understood, because it is too simple.”

  B.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE HUMAN MIND.

  “The key to the knowledge of the essence of the conscious life of the soul is to be found in the region of Unconsciousness.”—C. G. CARUS.

  I.

  INSTINCT IN THE HUMAN MIND.

  IMPOSSIBLE as it is to draw a strict line of demarcation between body and mind, no less impossible is it to discuss apart the instincts relating to our physical and to our psychical needs. Thus we have already in the preceding section alluded to several instincts of the human mind, as the capricious appetites of the sick or the pregnant, and the curative instincts of children or somnambules. A few others border on the bodily instincts, e.g., the fear of falling on the part of young animals and children, who, e.g., are quiet when carried upstairs, but become restless when carried downstairs; the greater caution and circumspection of the movements of pregnant horses and women; the instinct of mothers to place the new-born at the breast, of children to suck; the peculiar talent of children to distinguish genuine from feigned friendship; the instinctive shyness in the presence of certain strangers which is wont to be manifested especially by pure, inexperienced girls; the good and bad presentiments, with their great motive power to commit and omit actions, especially in the female sex, &c.—We shall consider in the present chapter those human instincts which are more connected with the bodily life, and to which, therefore, the name instinct is willingly accorded, whereas an empty sentiment of human dignity dictates the refusal of the term to all manifestations of the unconscious more remote from the bodily life, but otherwise perfectly analogous, on account of its animal associations.

  In the first place, we have to consider some instincts of aversion, i.e., such as do not compel to actions, but to omissions, or merely to those actions whereby the object of aversion is got rid of or avoided. The most important is the fear of death; this is only a particular form of the instinct of self-preservation, other forms of which we already know as the vis medicatrix, plastic energy, migratory impulse, reflex protective movements, &c. It is not the fear of the last judgment or other metaphysical hypotheses, not Hamlet’s doubt of what will come hereafter, not Egmont’s simple delight in being and doing, which restrains the hand of the suicide, but instinct does it with its mysterious shudder, with its wild heart-beats chasing the blood madly through the veins.

  A second instinct of repulsion is Shame; it has such exclusive reference to the generative region that these bodily parts are even named after it. It appertains in an especial degree to the female sex, and excites in them a characteristic defensive attitude, and is determinative of the whole life of man, of savage and civilised alike. The milder form of heat due to non-periodicity1 and shame are the two foundations which allow of the elevation of the sexual relations of man into a higher sphere than that of the animals. Shame is something so little due to consciousness that we already find it among savage tribes; certainly in their case limited to the main point, whereas civilisation draws within its sphere whatever has any sort of connection with sexual relations.

  An analogous instinct of aversion is Disgust. It relates to food as shame to sex, and serves to put us on our guard against those food-ingredients which are easily mixed with dirt and impurity, i.e., organic excretions and organic matter in a state of semi-decomposition. Its senses are taste and smell, and it is scarcely correct when Lessing regards it as possible for other senses. At the same time it is of course not necessary that the idea of eating the things for which one feels disgust should have been already entertained; one is often previously so disgusted as to prevent the thought of eating arising. There is, moreover, another much deeper disgust which has reference to purity of the skin, in order that perspiration may not be suppressed through the stopping-up of the pores. Here, at any rate, the sense of sight may be directly concerned.—Man can by habit more or less repress these, as all other instincts, just because with him consciousness has become a power which, in most things, except those of supreme importance, is able to oppose the Unconscious, and habitual action truly belongs indeed also to the sphere of consciousness. But the Unconscious can also be repressed when that which would have been done instinctively without consciousness and habit is done with consciousness and from habit; then the repugnance which one feels towards the contrary is rather a repugnance to the unusual than an instinctive repulsion.

  Look at a young girl and boy: the one neat and smart, elegant and mannerly, graceful as a kitten; the other with trousers torn in a recent shindy, awkward and clumsy as a young bear. She is fond of dress and of showing herself off, tenderly dandles her doll, and plays at cooking and washing and ironing; while he builds a house in the corner, plays robber and soldier, rides on every staff, sees a sabre or a gun in every stick, and is especially pleased with the manifestation of his own energy, which of course consists, for the most part, in useless destruction. What a delightful anticipation of the future vocation, which is often to be observed in the most charming details! If much of it is imitation of adults, still a presaging instinct is unmistakable, which guides children, even in their sports, to the exercises which they will require in the future, and makes them capable and trains them in advance, just as among young animals we see the sportive instinct always leading them to activities which they will require hereafter in their independent life (think of the kitten and the reel). In the play-instinct the will often procures itself resistances which it has to overcome. This paradox is likewise only comprehensible if the play-impulse is instinctive, and unconsciously subservient to the aims of the future life. If the play-impulse were only imitative, boys and girls would imitate the same things, since they do not understand the distinction of sex, and in strictness do not even possess it. How unique is the rage for dancing, the whimsicalness, love of dress, grace, one might almost say childish coquetry, in little girls, which points to their future destiny of conquering men, all of which is utte
rly foreign to boys with healthy minds! How characteristic is the indefatigable assiduity with which they tend, dress, and dandle their dolls; how in harmony is it with the tenderness with which grown-up girls kiss and caress all strange children in arms, which young men commonly find more repulsive than young monkeys!

  How deeply such instincts as purity, love of dress, modesty are rooted in the Unconscious may be particularly observed in the blind who are at the same time deaf and dumb. Let any one who has never reflected on this condition try to form a clear idea of it, and of the poverty of the means of communication with the outer world which are at the command of such an unfortunate. Laura Bridgman, in the Blind Institution at Boston, who in her second year had lost all her senses save touch, was clean and orderly and very fond of dress. If she had on a new article of clothing, she wished to go out to be seen and observed. She was often in raptures over the bracelets, brooches, and other ornaments of the ladies who visited her. Julia Brace (who had become blind and deaf in her fifth year) was just the same. She examined the style of hair of the ladies who paid her visits, in order that she might imitate it. The same passion for dress was found in all other similarly unfortunate girls, so that it became a chief means of reward and punishment. Lucy Reed always wore a silk kerchief over her face, probably because she thought her face was disfigured, and when she entered an institution, was only with the greatest trouble dissuaded from wearing it. She recoiled from the touch of a person of the male sex, and would not permit caresses of any kind from the same, although she gladly received and responded to those of women, even when strangers. Laura Bridgman showed in this respect a still greater delicacy of feeling, without any one being able to guess how she attained to a notion of sexual relations, since usually no man ever approached her except the director of the institution, Dr. Howe. She had heard much of Oliver Caswell, likewise blind, deaf, and dumb, as his arrival in the institution was expected, and was very curious about her companion in suffering. When he arrived, she kissed him; but then flew back like lightning, as if terrified at having done something improper. She repaired the smallest disorder in her dress, like a girl very strictly educated in rules of decorum. Nay, she even transferred her modesty to lifeless objects. Thus, e.g., when one day she wanted to put her doll to bed, she previously went about the room to discover if any one was present; and when she found Dr. Howe, she turned back laughing, and only after he had departed did she undress her doll, without being shy before her instructress.—To teach a blind, deaf, and dumb child the laws and conceptions of decency would be almost impossible if instinct did not correctly point them out, and opportunity alone or the slightest hint did not suffice for the realisation in conduct of this immediate unconscious intuition. That this feeling of modesty really arises from the depths of the psychical nature, is proved by the concurrence of its higher development with the attainment of puberty. Thus, e.g., in the case of a blind deaf mute in Rotherhithe workhouse, who had previously lived a completely animal life, an entire change took place in her seventeenth year: she became all at once just as attentive to dress and decency as other girls of her age.

  Sympathy or fellow-feeling is a reflex mental instinct. As feelings are divisible into pleasure and displeasure or into joy and sorrow, so fellow-feeling into sympathetic rejoicing and compassion. Jean Paul says, “For sympathy in sorrow a man is sufficient, but sympathy in joy requires an angel;” for the reason that sympathy in joy can only arise if it is not hindered by another feeling, envy. This is, however, the case more or less with all men, whereas compassion is less obstructed, since pleasure at the misfortune of others is usually very slight in most cases, if hate and vindictiveness do not give birth to it. Thus it comes to pass that sympathy in joy is almost insignificant, whilst compassion has the greatest importance. Now compassion arises by way of reflection through the sensuous perception of another’s suffering. The convulsive motions and writhings of pain, the looks and gestures of grief and distress, the tears of sorrow, the groaning and moaning, the whimpering and rattling in the throat, are material signs which are immediately comprehensible to a being of like nature through an unconscious intelligence; they do not, however, act merely on the intellect, but also on the heart, and reflectorially call forth similar pains. Cheerfulness and sadness in a similar way infect other people like convulsions. When the sense-perception only apprehends the signs of pain in general, the compassion is only general, a shudder, or a quiet woe, or a thrilling horror, according to the intensity and duration of the observed pain; but if this is specially known, reflex action reveals the same kind of pain in the compassion, as soon as the latter has surmounted the lowest stage of general lamentation. That the degree of compassion is dependent on the momentary receptivity of the mind for reflex actions, and also on the degree of interest which is otherwise entertained for the sufferer, is undoubted; it is, nevertheless, purely reflex action, as is strictly proved by this, that compassion is, cœteris paribus, in direct ratio to the clearness with which the senses perceive the signs of suffering. For example, when we read of a battle where ten thousand dead and wounded are counted on either side, we are scarcely at all affected, only when the dead and wounded are summoned before our imagination does our compassion stir; but when we ourselves go about among the pools of blood, the corpses and the limbs, and the groaning and dying men, then indeed a deep horror overcomes us. What value the instinct of compassion has for man, who only through mutual help truly becomes man, is tolerably plain. Fellow-feeling is the metaphysical bond which overleaps the limit of individuality on the side of feeling; it is the most significant impulse for the begetting of such actions as consciousness declares to be morally good or beautiful, more than merely dutiful. It mainly imparts reality to that province of ethics which is usually termed “the duties of affection,” the reality from which the general notion is subsequently abstracted.

  As sympathy is the chief instinct for the production of benevolent actions, whose effects extend beyond the sphere of egoism, so the instinct of Gratitude appears in the light of a multiplier of the same. Although gratitude sometimes leads us to injure a third person, yet the case is rare, and the expediency of this instinct upon the whole is not to be misapprehended if it be also supplemented, nay, even superseded, in a perfect system of ethics. As the impulse of retaliation in respect of benefits received becomes a multiplier of morally beautiful actions, so in respect of injuries does it become, in the character of the instinct of revenge, the original source of the sentiment of justice. For as long as the community has not taken upon itself to satisfy the passion of revenge, self-vindication is rightly looked upon as something holy, as a primitive institution of justice; and this it is which must gradually form, enhance, and clarify the feeling of right, until such conception of right gains a solid foundation in the national habits, when the duty of requital may be transferred to the community at large. It is by no means intended by this to assert that sympathy and the retaliatory impulse are the moments from which ethics and jurisprudence must be theoretically derived and established, which, on the contrary, I should not grant; it is only asserted that they are in fact practically the roots from which those feelings and actions have sprung, whence mankind have gained, through abstraction, the conceptions of the morally beautiful and of law.

  The next human instinct of importance is Maternal Love. For the sake of comparison, let us glance back once more at the animal kingdom.—Most of the lower animals have no need to trouble themselves about their young ones, because these emerge from the ovum sufficiently developed; or because, by means of the various instincts which have been already mentioned, they have, directly or indirectly, brought their eggs to those places where the creatures when hatched find the conditions of their further development until the age of independence, or are still provided by the mother with additional means of subsistence. The place which yields the necessary conditions of development is with the wolf-spider a spun egg-bag, which it fastens to itself by means of a web; for the Monoculus, a par
t of the oviduct turned inside out, which protrudes as ovisac; with birds, the nest, together with the brood-heat of the maternal body; in some fishes and amphibia, the body of the female itself, just as in all mammals, but with this great difference, that in the latter an organic connection of mother and fœtus persists till the time of birth (the marsupial mammals excepted). It is evident that here again the same thing is achieved in one case by instinct and maternal foresight as is effected in another case by organic formative activity, i.e., the instinctive maternal care for the development of the young till independence is only in form, not in essence, different from the procreation and formation of the fœtus.