Where several, cells coalesce to form an individual of higher order, the consciousnesses of the single cells by no means need be united into a higher unity, for this depends on the presence and excellence of the communication. However, the assertion may not appear venturesome, that between fresh, vitally active cells there always takes place a certain amount, however small, of communication—at least always between two neighbouring cells; the question is only whether the degree of excitement also exceeds the threshold of stimulation. If through the sensation of a cell there is likewise produced a sensation in the adjoining parts owing to irradiation, there manifestly takes place an indirect influence from each cell to every other; and although so indirect and manifestly minute an influence on several cells, on account of the increasing resistance, must necessarily remain very soon below the threshold, and consequently does not authorise us to speak of a conscious individuality of the whole, yet a certain solidarity of interests is here not to be mistaken. If, according to this, a conscious individual of higher order by no means need correspond to every external individual of higher order, yet this much is certain, that different conscious individuals can only then unite to form a conscious individual of higher order, if the external individuals corresponding to them are fused into an individual of higher order; for the communication necessary for the unity of consciousness can only be set up through the medium of highly organised matter, but this directly sets up the unity of the form, of the organic interaction, &c., in short, the external individual of higher order.
Our assertion is thus verified in every respect—that the external individuality is possibly condition, but not sufficient cause of the conscious individuality, because the latter also presupposes three further conditions—a certain mode, a certain strength of material movement, and, in individuals of higher order, a certain excellence of conduction. If one of these three conditions is not satisfied, no conscious individual can correspond to the external individual.
I believe that the division and discussion of the outer and inner individual here worked out may essentially contribute to the clearing up of the question of individuality; it is the necessary complement to the cognition of the relativity of the conception of individuality.
The relativity of the conception of individuality is for the rest no new cognition of the last decennia. Spinoza says, as already mentioned above: “The human body consists of several individuals of various nature, each of which is very composite;” and Goethe: “Each living thing is no single thing, but a manifold; even if it appears to us as individual, it still remains a collection of living, independent existences, which resemble one another in idea, in design, but may phenomenally be like or similar, unlike or dissimilar. The more imperfect the creature is, the more are these parts like or similar to one another, and the more do they resemble the whole. The more perfect the creature is, the more dissimilar are the parts to one another. The more similar the parts are to one another, the less are they subordinated to one another. The subordination of the parts points to a more perfect creation.” (The latter observation expresses what we have tried to illustrate by the simile of the monarchical and republican form of government.)
The relativity of the notion of individuality was discussed most thoroughly by Leibniz, although his mode of regarding the matter is essentially distinguished from ours, in consequence of his different conception of “body.” With Leibniz, each monad has an unchangeable and imperishable body peculiar to it, which forms its fence, and through which its finitude is established. This body is not substance, any more than the soul of the monads, partially conceived, is substance; and between this body and the soul there exists no pre-established harmony, since it would here be superfluous; but they are both only moments, differently directed forces, of one and the same simple substance, the monad, which is its natural unity; and this is Leibniz’s identity of soul and body (thought and extension). This inalienable body is, however, something purely metaphysical, and nothing physical; at the most, in the case of the atoms, can we, in a certain sense, allow the Leibnizian conception to pass in physical respects. In all individuals or monads of higher order, on the contrary, the idea of an inalienable body in addition to the visible body, compounded of other monads or atoms (an idea which has long made a spectral appearance under the name of an ethereal body), has been happily set aside by science: we now know that all organisms only maintain their existence by means of change of matter. We will, however, do Leibniz no injustice; what he conceived by the body peculiar to the monad is, at all events, a metaphysically far more tenable thought. I suppose that he intended thereby to express nothing more than the capacity of the immaterial monad to produce certain spatial effects,—a faculty which doubtless pertains to all monads, the highest as well as the lowest, and which only by means of the peculiar reference of the lines of action to a point in the atom-monads, and their combination for sensuous perception from outside, evokes the phenomenon of corporeity. But, at any rate, “body” is not a happily selected word for describing the power of acting in space, as only the combination of the lowest kind of spatial forces has a right to this term. Let us leave on one side, however, this inalienable monadic body, and consider how Leibniz conceives the composition of the monads.
When several monads come together, they form either an inorganic aggregate or an organism. In the organism are contained higher and lower monads, in the inorganic aggregate only inferior monads; therefore in the former there takes place subordination, in the latter only co-ordination of the monads. The higher the grade of the organism, the more prominent is the predominance of one monad in perfection in comparison with all the others. This is then called central monad. The higher monads are obscurely and imperfectly represented by the lower ones; the lower by the higher, on the other hand, clearly and perfectly. “Et une créature est plus parfaite q’une autre en ce qu’on trouve en elle ce qui sert à rendre raison a priori de ce qui se passe dans l’autre, et c’est par là, qu’on dit, qu’elle agit sur l’autre. Mais dans les substances simples ce n’est qu’une influence idéale d’une monade sur l’autre” (“Monodologie,” Nos. 50, 51, p. 709).
Leibniz denies the influxus physicus between the monads when he says these have no windows through which anything could shine; the influxus idealis which he puts in its place consists for him only in an accord a priori of that which the monads picture, i.e., in a pre-established harmony. But now the relation of the central monad in an organism to the sum of the subordinate monads is that which has at all times been called the relation of soul and body. Between this body and the soul there exists, then, according to Leibniz, certainly pre-established harmony.
The relation between the soul and the complex changeable body Leibniz adopted from Aristotle. It is the relation of and , spontaneously operative form or Idea, and the material in which the Idea works. The relation of soul and inalienable proper body, on the other hand, Leibniz adopted from Spinoza, according to whom the one substance everywhere appears with the two inseparable attributes—Thought and Extension. Both relations coincide in a remarkable manner in the lowest, the atom-monads, and that too through the simple artifice of Nature, of referring all the efficient tendencies of such a monad to a point. Unfortunately Leibniz did not sufficiently separate these two meanings of body, tending to confusion, and has therefore been frequently misunderstood.
What is essential for us in the Leibnizian doctrine is the aggregation of several monads or individuals into a compound which (as body) is subordinate to a monad or an individual of higher order (as soul). Had the results of modern physics, anatomy, physiology, been at the command of Leibniz, he would not have neglected to carry further his theory with respect to atoms, cells, and organisms; but as it was, it remained only a stroke of genius without the necessary empirical supports.—What, on the other hand, we can not accept is the artificial and unsatisfactory hypothesis of the pre-established harmony, by which all real happening is altogether abolished, and the world-process is disintegra
ted into an unrelated juxtaposition of separate trains of ideas in inactive isolated monads. If Leibniz expressly excludes all real influence of the monads on one another, yet the influxus idealis which he puts in place of the influxus physicus is an ill-chosen, because misleading expression. For undoubtedly, according to him, the content of the chain of ideas in each monad must at any given point of time correspond to the ideal chain of every other monad in a certain fashion, but this correspondence (chiming, harmony) is by no means said to result from this, that (say) the idea of a monad determines by an ideal influence the simultaneous idea of another (as one might indeed suppose from the wording influxus idealis), but from this, that the content of the flow of ideas has been predetermined or predestined from all eternity and for ever and ever for every monad, and is predestined, moreover, in such a way, that between the various trains of ideas there always exists a certain harmony. The harmony thus predetermined or pre-established is accordingly a sportive mechanism, which, moreover, is quite aimless; for if, for example, the various ideal currents had a velocity so different that harmony never took place between them, the monads would notice nought thereof, and would behave themselves just the same as in the contrary case. This theory, which abolishes all influence of the monads on one another, thus all causality, is consequently perfectly useless.
What further distinguishes us from Leibniz is the knowledge we have gained—firstly, that the organic individual of higher order only subsists in the particular unity of the individuals of lower order, and that the conscious individual altogether only arises through a reciprocal action of certain material parts of the organic individual with the Unconscious. It follows from this that the central monad or the central individual, neither in respect of the organism nor in respect of consciousness, is something standing beyond or outside the subordinate monads or individuals, but that if, in the higher individual, something else is contained in addition beyond the union of the inferior individuals, this can only be an unconscious factor. But in regard to this unconscious factor, which we have come to know as the regent in the organic and conscious life of the individual, the question may arise whether we have to do with a central monad separate for each individual, or whether the functions of the Unconscious proceed from a being identical and common for all individuals? Since, in conclusion, even Leibniz saw himself compelled to transform the unrelated coadjacency of his windowless monads into their coinherence, i.e., to take up all monads into an absolute central monad, one may also put the question thus: Do the bundles of rays of unconscious psychical functions in the different individuals point directly to one and the same absolute centre, or do they in the first instance lead to different relative centres, and only mediately through these to the universal centre of the world? In this culminates the question with respect to the individuality of the Unconscious, after one has assured oneself in general of the unity of the Unconscious as such. In conformity with the importance of this problem we discuss it in a chapter of its own
1 Comp, his “Generelle Morphologie der Organismen.” Berlin, Reimer, 1866, vol. i. p. 251. Chapters viii. and ix. of this work, which unfortunately I only became acquainted with after the appearance of the fourth edition of the “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” form the best and most thorough confirmation of the opinion I have here expressed concerning the conception of individuality.
2 On this ground I cannot assent to Häckel’s distinction between morphological and physiological individuality, since the latter is only an ill-selected expression for vital self-sufficiency or biological independence. Certainly one must ascribe individuality to every independent and self-preserving living being, but not because it is physiologically independent, but because the physiological independence pre-supposes the coinherence of those various unities in which individuality consists. Häckel himself declares (“Generelle Morphologie,” vol. i. p. 333) the “physiologic individual” to be in its nature divisible, in contrast to the infinitely indivisible “morphological individual,” and therewith openly allows the contradiction of the notion in respect of its name. Certainly it is physiologically important to settle with what order of individuals in each class of animals and plants biological independence begins; but why substitute for this perfectly sufficient and clear notion of the “Bion” or independent vital existence that of the “physiological individual”? On the other hand, Häckel’s conception of the morphological individual itself contains physiological elements, which are smuggled in unnoticed by means of the indispensable unities of purpose and of the reciprocal action of the parts. We, therefore, do not think we are going far astray when we stop at the unitarian conception of the organic individual, and reject Häckel’s attempted division of the same.
VII.
THE ALL-ONENESS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.
THAT to the Unconscious, as actively manifested in an organic and individual consciousness, there is not wanting strict unity, is probably at once evident We altogether know the Unconscious only by means of causality; it is just the cause of all those events in an organic and conscious individual which lead us to suppose a psychical and yet not conscious cause. All that we have found within this Unconscious of distinctions or parts is limited to the two moments Will and Idea, and of these we have also indeed again perceived the inseparable unity in the Unconscious. But in case some one should insist that Will and Idea are to be conceived as different parts of the one Unconscious, yet their reciprocity in the motivation of the Will through the Idea and arousing of the Idea by means of the interest of the Will would be quite unmistakable. What in the organism we were still compelled to apprehend as unity through mutual action of the parts is in the One cause of these events taken up into the unity of the end, to which these several activities of the one and another part are all posited only as common means. The unity of Time in the continuity of action is likewise present. The unity of Space can here, of course, be no longer spoken of, because we have to do with a non-spatial being; in the effects, however, it is just as much present as the unity of Time. Thus much, then, is settled, that the unity of the psychically Unconscious in the individual is the strictest one can find. It is, however, not implied in this that there are unconsciously psychical individuals, for if the unity of the Unconscious were so strict that it undividedly embraced in itself all the unconsciously-psychical, wherever it might be operative in the world, there would be only one Unconscious, and not several Unconscious; then there would be also no longer individuals in the Unconscious, but the entire Unconscious would be as one single individual, without subordinate, coordinate, or super-ordinate individuals. Since also Matter and Consciousness are phenomenal forms of the Unconscious, this being would then be the all-embracing individual which is all-being, the absolute individual, or the individual κατ’ .
In organisms we had no occasion to raise the question whether we then had actually several things and not one before us, because the spatial distinction of the form answered it by anticipation. In the case of consciousness we have answered the question, which could hardly be decided à priori, in conformity with internal experience, which teaches us that the consciousness of Peter and Paul, of brain and abdominal ganglia, are not one, but many and different. In the Unconscious, however, this question is robbed of half its force; since the essence of the Unconscious is non-spatial, and the inner experience of consciousness of course says nothing at all about the Unconscious. Nobody is directly aware of the unconscious subject of his own consciousness. Everybody knows it only as the in itself unknown psychical cause of his consciousness. What ground could he have for the assertion that this unknown cause of his consciousness is another than that of his neighbour, whose immediate knowledge is just as limited as his own? In a word, immediate inner or outer experience affords us no aid in deciding this important alternative, which accordingly is provisionally a perfectly open question. In such a case the maxim carries full authority that principles are not to be unnecessarily multiplied, and that in the absence of direct experience the simpl
est assumptions are always to be entertained. According to this, the unity of the Unconscious would have to be supposed so long as the opponent of this simplest assumption had not satisfactorily relieved himself of the onus probandi incumbent upon him. But of this no attempt is yet known to us; for Herbart’s proposition, “As much appearance, so much indication of existence,” can manifestly only serve to prove the many-sidedness, but not the multiplicity of being, since, as is well known, one and the same being appears for the most part quite different according to different aspects. That the assumption of direct unity is really much simpler hardly needs special proof, since here there is only question of the relations of the actor to his activities, and of the reciprocal action of the activities of one and the same actor; whereas, on the opposite assumption, the relations of different actors to their activities, and, moreover, those of the actor and his activities inter se, are in question, the latter of which must either be acknowledged to be quite inexplicable, or be explained by the further perfectly inaccessible and incomprehensible relations of these many actors to the Absolute standing over them and including them.
Only because the one part of my brain has a direct communication with the other is the consciousness of the two parts unified (conf. C. Chap. iii. 5. pp. 113–118); and could we unite the brains of two human beings by a path of communication equivalent to the cerebral fibres, both would no longer have two, but one consciousness. Could a union of two consciousnesses into one, such as actually occurs, be at all possible if the Unconscious, from which consciousness is born as a sequel of natural stimulation, were not already in itself one?
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