Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  1 Comp. Gobineau, “Inquiries on Different Expressions of Sporadic Life,” 2d part, in the “Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Philosophische Kritike,” vol. lii. p. 181 ff.

  VII.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THOUGHT.

  IN the last chapter but one (pp. 283–285) we saw that every effort at recollection with a definite object requires the aid of the Unconscious, if the right idea is to be recalled, because consciousness does not embrace the slumbering ideas of memory,1 accordingly cannot choose among them. If an unsuitable idea crops up, consciousness immediately perceives it to be inappropriate and rejects it; but all memories which have not yet emerged, but are only on the point of emerging, lie beyond its field of view, thus also outside of its choice; the Unconscious alone can make the appropriate choice. It might, perhaps, be suggested that past ideas are revived quite accidentally, and that consciousness keeps on rejecting the wrong one, until, at last, the right one makes its appearance. In abstract thinking such cases certainly do occur, where one rejects five or even more ideas before the right one occurs. In such cases, however, the process is pretty much the same as in the guessing of riddles, or the solution of a problem by trial, in that consciousness of itself does not exactly know what it wants, i.e., that it knows the condition of fitness only in the form of abstract formulæ of words or numbers, but not in immediate intuition; so that, in every single case, it must first insert the concrete value into the formulæ, and see whether the thing agrees. By this, however, it is evident that the reaction of the Unconscious on a motive, which is itself so obscure that it can only become clear by application to the concrete case, must be a more imperfect one than when the object is apparent in an immediately concrete and intuitive manner, as in the search for an appropriate partial presentation to complete an image, or verse, or melody, when so protracted a trial much more rarely takes place. In the flash of wit this will happen still more rarely; witticisms obtained by a process of trial generally fall very flat. But even in those cases, where experience shows a repeated rejection of the revived ideas, it should not be forgotten that all these rejected ideas are by no means absolutely fortuitous in respect of the particular object, but always tend to this goal, although they may not hit the nail upon the head. But even when this mark is wanting to them, one is obliged to admit that the ideas, which, apart from the particular end in view, would merely arise according to other laws of thought-succession, are just as numerous, and that then in very rare cases, after five or ten ideas have been rejected, the appropriate one would be revived, but in most cases a far greater number of attempts would be requisite. The consequence of this would be the impossibility of producing any regular train of thought; we should soon give up the disproportionate effort through sheer fatigue, and surrender ourselves only to spontaneous dreaming and impressions of the senses, like the inferior animals.

  In thinking, the point is, that the right idea occur at the right moment; the intellectual genius (apart from the rapidity of the movement of thought) is only hereby distinguished from the stupid, fools, boobies, imbeciles, and madmen. For inference is always of the same kind. No madman and no dreamer has ever drawn a false simple conclusion from his premisses, only their premisses are frequently valueless. Sometimes they are intrinsically erroneous, sometimes they are too narrow or too wide, sometimes certain irrelevant premisses are assumed, sometimes several successive inferences are run into one; and these errors are committed, because it is not every simple conclusion that is actually thought; moreover, every following conclusion tacitly implies new premisses. But wrongly to draw a simple conclusion from given premisses is, in my view, just as much beyond the bounds of possibility, as that an atom pushed by two forces should move otherwise than in the diagonal of the parallelogram of forces.

  The essence of thinking is that the right ideas occur at the right time. Let us examine this proposition a little more closely. By thought, in the narrow sense, is meant the dividing, combining, and comparing of ideas. The division may consist in the cutting up of a space or time-whole, or in abstracting certain attributes. Every idea is divisible into an infinite number of species. The essential point, then, is how the line is drawn between the portion which one wishes to retain and that which one desires to let go. The main object of abstraction is to grasp many sensible particulars into a common notion. This can only contain what is alike in all; the partition must, then, be so made that, of all the simple ideas, only what is similar is retained, and the dissimilar let go. In other words, the idea of the common portion must occur to one possessed of the particulars. This is as distinctly a flash which cannot be forced, as in our former examples; for millions of men stare at the same objects, and only one gifted brain grasps the concept. How much richer in ideas is not the educated than the uneducated man! And the only reason of this is the interest in the idea with which the former has been inspired by education and instruction; for one cannot directly furnish anybody with a conception; one may assist him in his abstraction by bringing forward very many sensuous particulars and excluding already familiar conceptions, but he must in the end find the notion for himself. A considerable difference in talent cannot, however, be supposed between educated and uneducated on the average; accordingly, it can only be the interest in the discovery which conditions the difference in the abundance of conceptions. The like also holds good of the different mental resources of man and brute, although here, certainly, natural endowment co-operates. The greatest discoveries of theoretical science often consist merely in the discovery of a new conception, in the cognition of a piece common to several other notions which has hitherto been disregarded, e.g., the discovery by Newton of the conception gravitation. If it is interest which conditions the eliciting of the common element, the first flash of the conception is the appropriate reaction of the Unconscious on this stimulus of interest.

  If this holds good of notions, which consist only in the separation of a common portion of many given ideas, so much the more must it hold of such as contain the relations of different ideas to one another, e.g., equality, inequality, unity, plurality (number), totality, negation, disjunction, causality, &c.; for here the concept is a true creation, certainly out of given material, but still a creation from something not at all to be found as such in the given ideas. E.g., equality cannot as such inhere in the dice A and B, for if B is not, A cannot have equality with B, but when B arises, this cannot change the constitution of A; thus A cannot acquire a quality through the origin of B which it had not before, consequently also not equality with B. The notion of equality can, therefore, not lie in the things, just as little in the perceptions as such produced by things, for the same line of argument may be adopted, consequently the notion of equality must be first created by the mind; but the mind also cannot arbitrarily declare two presentations to be equal or unequal, but only when the ideas, apart from place and time, are identical, i.e., if the two presentations, succeeding one another at the same spot in the field of vision without a time-interval, would give the impression of a single fixed unchanged presentation. Since this condition can never be satisfied realiter, the process can only be that the mind conceptually separates the identical portion of the two ideas. If it then perceives that the individual residue only consists of the space and time elements of the ideas, and does not affect their matter, it calls them equal, and thus acquires the notion of equality. It is, however, easy to see that, if this whole process is to be carried on consciously, the mind must already possess the faculty of abstraction, and consequently the notion of resemblance, in order to be able to separate the common portion of two representations, i.e., must possess what it has to find, which is a contradiction. There remains then, since every human and animal mind has this conception, nothing but the assumption that this process is in the main carried on unconsciously, and only the result as concept of equality, or this judgment, “A and B are alike,” comes into consciousness.

  How indispensable the faculty of abstraction and the notion of resemblance c
ontained therein is even for the first foundations of all thinking I shall briefly show by the instance of memory.

  All human beings and animals know, when an idea or a perception occurs, whether they are already familiar with the matter of the same or not, i.e., whether the perception is new, arises for the first time, or whether they have had it before. A mere idea, united with the consciousness that it has had a previous existence as a sense-percept, is called Memory. The recognition of sensuous perceptions is not denoted by this term, but is at least as important. The question is, How does the mind discover the mark of former knowledge, which indeed cannot lie in the idea itself, since every idea in and by itself appears as something new? The most obvious answer is, Through the association of ideas; for similarity is one of the main conditions of revival. When, then, a perception makes its appearance a second time, the slumbering memory is aroused, and the mind has now, in place of one image, two, a vivid and a weak one, and the latter an instant later, whilst it only finds a single one in the case of new perceptions. Since it does not know itself as cause of the second weak image, it assumes the earlier vivid one to be the cause of the same; but since, on the other hand, the reason why the weak image appears in some cases, not in others, cannot well lie in the perceptions themselves, it assigns the cause of this appearance to a different disposition of the presentative faculty. If, along with the faint idea, the mind had without more ado the consciousness that the idea had been, in the mind before, the matter would be explicable, but what is incomprehensible in the affair is just this: how it can come by this consciousness from what has gone before? The problem would not thereby be solved, but only its object pushed back a step farther. But here, now, we are helped by the consideration of similar sense-impressions, which follow one another in such quick succession, that the after-image of the first has not yet died away when the second occurs. Here the mind knows accordingly (1.) the identity of the after-image with the original impression, in virtue of the continuous fading of the latter; (2,) it knows from the weakened impression that the external object has ceased to act, and that only its copy remains; (3.) it knows that the sudden strengthening of the after-image occurring immediately on the second impression is an effect of the latter; (4.) it perceives the equality in content of the second impression with the strengthened copy of the first. From these premises it concludes that the disposition of the representative faculty, which conditioned the rise of the weak image after the second impression, was the existence of the after-image of the first, and that the second impression was the same, as the first, As, now, such examples are repeated with different degrees of the fading of impressions, it is analogically concluded that there, too, when the after-image of the first is no longer present on the occurrence of the second impression, the disposition in question of the representative faculty consists in a slumbering copy, and consequently the consciousness of previous knowledge results every time an idea calls up a weaker one resembling it. Thus, e.g., when images rise before the mind in reverie, they must first attain to a certain degree of completeness, before by association they bring the whole situation lived through for a moment before the mind as a second image, and only at that moment does the consciousness suddenly spring up that one has experienced the thing before; not till then is the awakened memory consciously apprehended as memory.

  One sees what an enormous apparatus of complicated reflection is requisite in order to produce so apparently simple a fundamental phenomenon, and that it is quite impossible in those times of the infancy of man and animal, when these notions were formed, that such a process should take place in consciousness, especially as all the inferences here drawn already presuppose the ability to recognise the ideas as well known. There therefore remains nothing for it but to suppose that this process also takes place in the Unconscious, and only its result instinctively appears in consciousness. The certainty also of a prior experience, which memory affords with not too great an interval between the two impressions, could never be attained by means of this artificial fabric of hypotheses and analogies.

  Another example is afforded by Causality. Without doubt this idea is to be evolved logically, namely, by a calculation of probabilities, starting from the bare presupposition of pure chance, i.e., absence of causation. If, namely, under such and such circumstances an event has occurred n times, the probability that under the same circumstances it will occur next time is Suppose, now, we call the occurrence of the event necessary when its probability becomes = I, then from this the probability can be evolved that the occurrence of the event is necessary or not necessary. But, as Kant showed, there is no meaning in causation beyond the necessity of the occurrence under the circumstances in question, since the notion of production is one arbitrarily introduced, and is, in fine, only an improper figure of speech.

  Thus we can show the probability that this or that phenomenon is caused by these or those circumstances, and, in fact, our knowledge reaches no farther. Assuredly no one will believe that this is the way in which children and animals arrive at the notion of causality, and yet there is no other way to advance beyond the notion of mere succession to that of necessary sequence or effect; consequently this process also must take place in the Unconscious, and the notion of causality enter into consciousness as its ready-made result.

  The same proof may also be given of the other ideas of relation: they can all only be developed discursively by way of logic, but these developments are all so delicate and in part so complicated, that they cannot possibly be wrought out in the consciousness of beings which form these conceptions for the first time; accordingly they appear in consciousness as something ready formed. Now he, who sees the impossibility of getting these conceptions from without and the necessity of forming them himself asserts their a priority; whoever, on the other hand, takes his stand on the fact that such formative processes have no place at all in consciousness, but that their results are rather given to it as something ready formed, must maintain their a posteriority. Plato had a feeling of the two-sided truth when he called all learning Reminiscence. Schelling expresses it in the assertion, “So far as the Ego produces everything from itself, all … knowledge is a priori; but so far as we are not conscious of this productivity, so far is … everything a posteriori. … There are thus a priori ideas without there being innate ideas” (comp. above, p. 24). Thus all the really a priori is a something posited by the Unconscious, which only comes into consciousness as result. So far as it is the prius of what is given, of the immediate content of consciousness, so far is it still unconscious; in that consciousness reflects on the content it finds, and concludes therefrom to the prim producing it, it perceives a posteriori the unconsciously active a priori (comp. in addition “Das Ding an Sich,” pp. 66–73, 83–90). The ordinary empiricism fails to perceive the a priori element in the mind; philosophical speculation fails to see that everything a priori in the mind is only cognisable a posteriori (inductively).

  The uniting of presentations, again, may be a joining together in space or in time, as in plastic or musical compositions, then it belongs to artistic production; or a compounding of conceptions into an indivisible idea, as in the formation of definitions; or an union of ideas through forms of relation, where one seeks the reason for the consequent, the matter for the form, the like for the like, for the one alternative the other, for the particular the general, or conversely. In every case one idea is possessed, and another is sought to satisfy the given relation. One has either in oneself what is sought as latent memory or not. In the latter case we have first to discover it, either directly or indirectly; in the former, the important point is that just the right one among the many ideas of memory comes to the surface. In both cases a reaction of the Unconscious is required.

  The relation of the general to the particular has its simplest verbal expression in the judgment, when the subject represents the particular, the predicate the general. To every particular, however, there are very many universals, which are all contained in it;
therefore every subject may very well receive several predicates; but which is the appropriate one depends solely on the aim of the train of thought. In judging, therefore, the same difficulty recurs how the right idea is to come into the mind, no matter whether a predicate is sought for a subject or a subject for a predicate, since several particulars are in truth included under one universal.

  The relation of reason and consequent possesses special importance for thought. It is always presented in the form of the syllogism, which in its simple form must always be correctly drawn, and may be proved by the law of contradiction. But now it is pretty evident that the syllogism does not bring out anything new whatsoever, as has been proved by John Stuart Mill and others, for the universal major premiss implicitly contains the special case in itself, which is only made explicit in the conclusion. But now as anybody can be convinced of the major as universal only by being convinced of all its applications, he must also be already convinced of the conclusion, or he is not convinced of the truth of the major premiss; and if the major has no certain but only probable validity, the conclusion also must have the same coefficient of probability as the major. It is hereby proved that syllogism in no way increases knowledge if once the premises are given, which is in perfect agreement with the circumstance that no rational human being thinks in syllogisms, but along with the thought of the premises has eo ipso already thought the conclusion at the same time, so that the syllogism never enters into consciousness as a special mode of thought. Accordingly, syllogism can have no immediate, but only a mediate significance for cognition. In truth, in all particular cases (where the minor is supplied) we are concerned with discovering the appropriate major; when this is found, the conclusion is at once in our consciousness—nay, even the major often remains an unconscious term of the process. Of course the same proposition can serve as minor for many majors, just as a subject may be supplied to many predicates; but just as, for the particular purpose of a judgment, only one predicate affords that determination of the subject which can serve to carry the train of thought forward to the desired goal, so also only one determinate major premiss can help to produce that conclusion which can advance this train of thought. The point then is, from among those universal propositions suspended in memory with which the given case may be combined as minor premiss, to summon just that one which is wanted into consciousness, i.e., our general assertion is confirmed here too. Kg., if I want to prove that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal to one another, I only need to remember the general proposition that in every triangle equal angles are opposite to equal sides; as soon as this has become clear to me and I remember it, the conclusion also is eo ipso there. As when somebody asks me what I think of the weather, and at the same time makes the remark that the barometer has considerably fallen, I only need to remember the general proposition that after every considerable fall of the barometer the weather changes, then I have my conclusion as a matter of course: “The weather will change to-morrow.” Here, even beyond the shadow of a doubt, the universal major premiss will remain unconscious, and the conclusion appear as a matter of course.