Through these elucidations, in part forestalling the contents of subsequent chapters, our exposition of the origin of consciousness may have received illumination, and this may serve as an excuse for the digression from the regular course of the inquiry. Hints, intelligible to a certain degree, of such an origin of consciousness from an opposition of different moments in the Unconscious, I have only found in Jacob Böhme and Schelling. The former says (of the divine contemplation, c. i. 8): “Nothing can become manifest to itself without repugnance; for if it has nothing to oppose it, it is ever going out of itself, and does not return to itself; but as it does not return to itself, as to that whence it originally proceeded, it knows nothing of its primitive state.”——Similarly Schelling says (Werke, i. 3, p. 576): “If, however, the Absolute is to appear to itself, it must on its objective side be dependent on something else, on something foreign. But this dependence does not belong to the Absolute itself, but merely to its appearance.”——
The contrast between Will and Idea is still more heightened by the idea not being directly given through material movement, but only through the uniform reaction of the unconscious psychical on this action. It accordingly follows, that the unconscious individual mind must answer with an activity (of sensation) which is, as it were, peripherally thrust upon it through the impression produced on its volition by a foreign manifestation of will. In this manner chiefly arise the simple qualities of sense-impressions, as sound, colour, taste, &c., from whose mutual relations all sensuous perception is built up, from which again, by reproduction of the cerebral vibrations, memories, and by partial dropping out of the content of the latter abstract conceptions arise. In all cases of conscious thought we have to do with cerebral vibrations, which affect the individual mind and compel to uniform reaction; in all cases the sensible qualities are the results of this reaction, and of these elements the total conscious presented world is composed. If, now, these elements always excite the process which produces consciousness, and thereby become conscious, it will not surprise us that also the combinations of these elements takes part in consciousness, although the hind of combination is often produced by the will itself.
Hereby the apparent contradiction is explained that ideas which are evoked by the will, consequently not opposed to this will, may yet become conscious because they just consist of elements which have become ideas through extorted reactions of the Unconscious. The will, namely, can only evoke a conscious idea through the particular memory being aroused, i.e., by former cerebral vibrations being reproduced. Before the conscious idea is there, it must be contained as content in the unconscious will, certainly in non-sensuous form, otherwise the will indeed would not be able to excite this idea. Further, as means to this end, the point of attack in the brain must be unconsciously represented, whence the particular vibrations of memory may be excited and the stimulation of the same be willed. Further, however, even the unconscious will does not go, for it can only produce the idea in the sensuous form as reaction on these vibrations; now occur the vibrations and the reaction of the Unconscious happens, compelled, as ever, by a lawful reaction, and therewith the consciousness of the representation is also given. The like holds good also of the co-operation of the Unconscious in the coming to pass of sensuous perception, as before taken note of. It also holds good when the conscious representation becomes content of a will, which is then termed conscious will; for the conscious representation must previously be present in conscious form before the will can grasp it in this form and make it its content. But if the idea once possesses the conscious form, it does not lose the same again, on account of the will combining with it, because its elements, which, as long as it exists, must reproduce themselves ever and ever anew, always do this in conscious form.
2. The Becoming Conscious of Pain and Pleasure. —If we have always hitherto spoken of the becoming conscious of the Idea, it was not thereby meant that the idea is the sole object of consciousness. The exclusive reason for this limitation was rather the endeavour not to make more difficult the penetration into this difficult province by prematurely increasing the objects and complexity of the points of view. This is the sole reason why we have, instead of speaking of the general “object of the becoming conscious,” treated the problem from its especially characteristic side. But now, if the principle thus gained of the origin of consciousness is to be held correct, it must be adapted to every possible content of the becoming conscious. There must be logically deducible from it what elements can enter into consciousness, what not, in that they are brought one after another within the formula. This we will now do with Pain, Pleasure, and Will, which remain along with the Idea as possible objects of consciousness. What we thus a priori derive as consequences of our principle must prove to be correct a posteriori in the face of experience. In this a posteriori confirmation we have, then, the controlling test of the principle that everything which experience offers us as a something to be explained also actually flows from it, whilst we gained the principle itself originally a priori by elimination of the incorrect assumptions from all possible ones, when finally only one remained to us.
If, after the principle is thus justified a priori and a posteriori, it may possibly be desired that I should show how and in what way there results from the process indicated just that which we know in inner experience as consciousness, this demand would be just as improper as one made upon the physicist to show how from the aerial waves and the arrangement of our ear that results which in inner experience we know as sound. The physicist only shows us, and can only show, that that which is subjectively felt as sound consists, objectively regarded, in a process which is compounded of such and such vibrations. In the same way I can only show that that which we know in subjective apprehension as consciousness, objectively regarded is a process, which is built up in such and such a way out of such and such terms and factors. To experience more I hold to be impossible, and therefore to ask for more improper; for in order to understand the How of the transmutation of the objective process into subjective sensation, one would be obliged to adopt a third point of view, which is neither subjective nor objective, or, what is the same thing, is both at once. This standpoint, however, the Unconscious alone possesses, whereas consciousness is just the division into subject and object.
Feeling can be pleasure or pain, satisfaction or non-satisfaction of the will; all else, as shown in B. Chap. iii., are more precise determinations, which belong to the department of ideation. The non-satisfaction of the will must always become conscious, for the will can never will its own non-satisfaction; consequently non-satisfaction must be thrust on it from without; consequently the condition of the origin of consciousness is fulfilled in the startling of the will at something not issuing from itself, and yet really existing and making itself felt, the partial compulsion to yield on the collision with another will, and the contrast of this rebound with the goal striven after; and experience corresponds to it entirely, in that nothing speaks more emphatically to consciousness than pain—pain conceived also as freed from the nearer determinations belonging to the idea.
The feeling of pleasure or the satisfaction of the will cannot be conscious in and for itself, for while the will realises its content, and thereby brings on its own satisfaction, nothing takes place which could come into opposition with the will; and since all compulsion from without is wanting, and the will only gives place to its own consequences, it can arrive at no consciousness. Otherwise does the matter appear when a consciousness has already established itself, which collects and compares observations and experiences. This soon learns from the many non-satisfactions to know the resistances which oppose every will in the external world, as well as the external conditions which are necessary if the realisation of the will is to succeed. As soon as it is compelled to acknowledge these external conditions of success, and therewith satisfaction as something partially or wholly conditioned from without, consciousness appertains to pleasure also.—All this is thoroughly confirme
d by experience.
One sees especially in infants that they give very expressive signs of pain for weeks before the slightest trace of pleasure is legible in their countenances and gestures. Clear confirmation is afforded by the case of pampered children, who are wont always to get their way, and who accordingly do not know what to make of it when for once their wish is not complied with. These children have, in fact, as good as no enjoyment at all from the satisfaction of their desires; however, the latter remain, for the most part, unconscious. About the only enjoyment they have is from satisfaction of the senses (eating of sweetmeats), because the solicitude of the environment cannot here save them disagreeable comparisons. How much, however, our assertion fits even the case of adults, doubtless every observer of his race will admit; for any kind of satisfaction which permanently recurs without interruption by non-satisfaction ceases to be a conscious satisfaction, i.e., a conscious enjoyment, as soon as one begins to think: it must be so indeed, and cannot be at all otherwise. On the other hand, even a slight satisfaction enters into consciousness as pleasure, the more vividly the more distinctly it is seen that we owe it to external circumstances, because, in spite of its being always willed, one has rarely been able to procure it.
3. The Unconsciousness of the Will. —Now as concerns the Will itself, we have hitherto called it conscious when it has a conscious, unconscious, when it has an unconscious idea for its content. It is, however, easy to see that this is only a figurative expression, since it only refers to the content of the will; but the will itself can never become conscious, because it can never contradict itself. There may very well be several desires at variance with one another, but volition at any moment is in truth only the resultant of all the simultaneous desires, consequently can always be only conformable to itself. If now consciousness is an accident which the will bestows upon that of which it is compelled to recognise not itself, but something foreign as its cause, in short, what enters into opposition with it, the will can never impart consciousness to itself, because here the thing to be compared and the standard of comparison are one and the same; they can never be different or at all at variance with one another. The will also never gets so far as to recognise something else as its cause; rather the appearance of its spontaneity is indestructible, since it is the primal actuality, and all that lies behind it potential, that is, unreal. Whilst displeasure, then, must always become conscious, and pleasure can become so under certain circumstances, the will is said never to be able to become conscious. This latter result perhaps appears unexpected, yet experience fully confirms it.
We have seen in A. Chap. vii. that only a conscious idea is able to excite the unconscious will to any movement or action, even without a motive proper being contained in the idea. But if the idea contains a motive at all, a proper ground of excitement, the excitation of the unconscious desire must certainly follow. If, now, the man has the conscious idea of a movement, and thereupon sees himself execute this movement with the certainty of not being necessitated from outside, he instinctively concludes that the cause of the movement lies in himself, and this inner unknown cause of movement he calls will. That the conception thus attained only rests on causality just as little detracts from the instinctive apprehension of its reality, as it detracts from that of the external objects, that we possess them only as unknown external causes of our sense-impressions, and as it detracts from the subject of ideation or the intellectual ego that we know it only as unknown internal cause of ideation. The one as the other we fancy we directly apprehend because we do not attain it by conscious reflection, but through unconscious processes, and philosophic contemplation must first teach us that all these notions are for us intangible essences, whose only hold on our thought lies in their causality, without this knowledge being detrimental to the immediate instinctive certainty of their direct possession. In the same way a writer thinks he has the feeling directly in the point of the pen itself, whilst the simplest consideration teaches him that he has it only in his fingers, and unconsciously applies the principle of causality without being able to avoid the unconscious illusion of his tactile sense, only that here the correction succeeds much sooner than in those deeply rooted psychological illusions.
When a man has once in the way indicated grasped the conception of will (albeit by a process of unconscious thinking), he very soon observes that ordinary ideas rarely draw after them phenomena of motion, but always such as contain the feeling of a pleasure or displeasure, and that too, according as actions are persistent and in themselves attractive, or repellent. From this he becomes acquainted empirically with the law of motivation, according to which each representation of pleasure excites positive desire, each idea of displeasure negative or repellent desire. This law is exceptionless, and all instances to the contrary rest on an error; e.g., when a past enjoyment is represented, and yet not again desired or wished over again, it follows from that that it would now no more be enjoyment. If other opposed desires, which simultaneously arise, suppress the emergence of this desire, so much force is consumed in the suppression as the desire would have had had it arisen. When, now, the man has perceived this law of motivation to be exceptionless, he knows that every time a desire is united with the representation of a feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and supposing other desires or external circumstances not to hinder the execution of the corresponding movement, he sees the latter ensue. This process, again, goes on unconsciously, and whereas the man before only possessed the notion of volition as cause of an effect, he has it now as effect of a cause. With that, however, he has the possibility of perceiving it also then in himself, if its effect, the execution, is prevented by other desires or external circumstances.
Further, the man sees a gradual proportion between the sensuous vividness of the presentation and the magnitude of the presented pleasure and displeasure, on the one hand, and the violence of the movements, the energy of the action, the duration of the attempts at action, on the other, and concludes therefrom that also the link intermediate between the two ends of the causal chain must stand in a proportional relation to each of them; hereby he obtains a measure of the intensity of the will.—The points mentioned would certainly suffice for mediate knowledge and the appearance of a direct cognition of the will; however, they are still somewhat of an external nature, and the illusion becomes still much greater through other accompanying circumstances. It is, namely, only in the very rarest cases that the desire can obtain satisfaction at the very moment of its arising; there always elapses a shorter or longer time before realisation takes place, and so long lasts a feeling of non-satisfaction, of unpleasant expectation and deprivation (tension, impatience, longing, yearning), certainly for the most part sweetened by hope, which either is prolonged until the gradual disappearance of the desire, or induces by a perception of impossibility and destruction of hope the full non-satisfaction and displeasure (with an undiminished persisting violent desire despair), or finally passes into satisfaction and pleasure. These feelings are the constant attendants or successors of desire, and can only arise through it. They also enter into consciousness, and are here the proper and most immediate representatives of the desire, which it is true one can again only properly apprehend as cause of the same, but which one thinks to grasp immediately through the above-mentioned illusion. Just as desire in general is perceived in the feelings spoken of, so every special kind of desire is perceived through the special and peculiar kind of the feelings accompanying it. The constant connection of the two hereby becomes visible, that the special kind of desire is indeed already determined for consciousness by the kind of motive and the kind of ensuing actions. Yet the possibility of error still remains open, especially in the cases where the accompanying feelings (longing and hope in general) are the sole signs of the presence of the will. Then the mistake easily occurs of seeking the desire giving rise to these feelings in other well-known desires, whereas the same are entirely guiltless thereof.
This case, for example, occurs in the in
stincts, most distinctly in love, where the willing of the metaphysical end is unknown to the lover, who, on this account, erroneously lays the extravagant longing and hope merely to the account of the willed means (intercourse with this particular individual), and accordingly imagines a quite special enjoyment in intercourse with such individual, and is then so disagreeably smitten with disillusion. This is not contradicted by the fact that there may notwithstanding be consummate bliss, because the unconscious clairvoyance of the metaphysical goal begets an extravagant longing, which again awakens an extravagant hope of an extravagant enjoyment, whose essence, however, consciousness is unable to express, and which is never realised. Here, too, the saying holds: “Hope was thy allotted portion.”
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