VIII.
THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE GOD OF THEISM.
THE question may very probably be asked at the present stage of our inquiry—Admitting that the actions of the All-One displayed in the individual are unconscious so far as the individual is concerned, what is the proof that they are not conscious in the All-One Existence itself? The simplest answer to this query consists in transferring the onus probandi to its propounder. It is not for me to prove that the unconscious physical functions which, as such, are sufficient for explanation, may not on the other side be conscious in the All-One; but those, who desire to make this, so far as the explanation of the phenomena is concerned, entirely valueless and gratuitous addition to the hypothesis, have to adduce the proof of their assumption, which until then must be regarded as pure assertion, and accordingly to be scientifically ignored. Although this would suffice for setting aside the foregoing objection, I shall nevertheless enter more fully into the matter, because the consideration of this point will contribute to the more exact comprehension of the Unconscious.
If hitherto Theism has usually eagerly insisted on assigning to God a consciousness of his own in the sphere of his divinity, this has happened for two reasons, both of which had their justification, but from which an illegitimate conclusion was drawn, because the possibility of an unconscious intelligence had never been conceived. These two grounds are,—Firstly, As regards man, repugnance to the thought, in default of a conscious God, of being a product of blind natural forces, unintended, unwatched, purposeless and transient result of a fortuitous necessity. Secondly, As regards God, the fear of thinking this supreme existence, which, to honour to the utmost, it was deemed necessary in scholastic fashion to furnish with the sum of all conceivable perfections, to be destitute of that excellence which passes with the human mind for the highest, viz., clear consciousness and distinct self-consciousness. Both scruples, however, disappear before a correct estimation of the principles of the Unconscious, which hold the golden mean between a Theism constructed of the floating human ideal made absolute and a naturalism, in which the highest flowers of the mind and the eternal necessity of natural law, from which they have sprung, are mere result of a casual actuality, imposing to us on account of our impotence—the right mean between conscious teleology, which is conceived after the human prototype, and entire renunciation of final causes. This right mean just consists in the recognition of a final causality, which however is not represented according to the pattern of conscious human purposive activity by discursive reflection, but as immanent unconscious teleology of an intuitive unconscious intelligence is revealed in natural objects and individuals by means of the same activity which, in the last chapter, we described as continual creation or conservation, or as real phenomenon of the All-One Existence.
In our inability positively to apprehend the mode of perception of this intelligence (comp. above, p. 49), we are only able to indicate it through the contrast to our own form of perception (consciousness), thus only to characterise it by the negative predicate of Unconsciousness. But we know from the previous inquiries that the function of this unconscious intelligence is anything but blind, rather far-seeing, nay, even clairvoyant, although this seeing can never be aware of its own vision, but only of the world, and without the mirrors of the individual consciousnesses can also not see the seeing eye. Of this unconscious clairvoyant intelligence we have come to perceive that in its infallible purposive activity, embracing out of time all ends and means in one, and always including all necessary data within its ken, it infinitely transcends the halting, stilted gait of the discursive reflection of consciousness, ever limited to a single point, dependent on sense-perception, memory, and inspirations of the Unconscious. We shall thus be compelled to designate this intelligence, which is superior to all consciousness, at once unconscious and super-conscious. With this recognition, however, the two preceding scruples with regard to the unconsciousness of the All-One disappear. If the latter possesses a super-conscious intelligence, all-knowing and all-wise, with all its unconsciousness, which teleologically determines the content of creation and of the world-process, we stand here neither as accidental product of the forces of Nature, nor is God dwarfed by denying Him this mode of consciousness.
Accordingly the dread on the part of Theism of degrading its God by denying him consciousness appears so unfounded, that the danger is rather the contrary of degrading him by the predication of consciousness, since his mode of thinking is, in truth, above consciousness. That which is really an unconditional pre-eminence is rational intelligence, which our Unconscious possesses just as truly as the God of Theism, but that which is just the limitation in our human intelligence, the form of consciousness depending on the division of subject and object, of that Theism must too of necessity denude its deity, if it will make it its “most perfect of all” existences. Beyond question for us men, consciousness and self-consciousness are marks of superiority, but yet not, like rational intelligence, absolute marks, but only relative and conditioned, i. e., they pass with us as prerogatives only because we stand within the world of individuation and its limits, and need for the greatest possible furtherance of our individual aims, as sharp a severance as possible of our self from other persons and from the impersonal outer world,—considerations which, as a matter of course, fall away for the All-One Being, which has nothing outside itself. In and by itself, however, and apart from the special problems which arise through a position within the sphere of individuation for a limited intelligence, consciousness is no excellence, but in comparison with the unity of attributes in the Unconscious appears as a defect, as a disturbance in the absolute peace of the clairvoyant unreflecting intuition, as a rent in the harmony of the attributes of the All-One, which posits dissidence in the place of concord, and snatches out of their indifference and sunders subject and object, the moments reconciled and united in the absolute IDEA (comp. “Ges. phil. Abhandlg.,” p. 64), through this disunion. The opposition of attributes for the genesis of consciousness, and the emergence of subject and object from indifference, is not at all possible within the self-sure and self-enclosed absolute Idea as such; it rather presupposes the splitting-up of the total function of the All-One into the plurality of individuation, and the crossing or the collision of the numerous tendencies of will which thus arise with their partially opposite content. Only by such conflict of the partial will with other partial wills, through the disagreement of the ideal content of the partial will with the compromise thrust upon it, does that shock become possible which causes the severance of subject and object in consciousness. (Comp. C. Chap. iii. 1.) This consciousness is based on a representation imposed on the mind by its body, i.e., on sense, and attains a supersensible content only by discursive reflection through the medium of abstraction.
All these limitations must, as Theism itself acknowledges, be removed from its God; but thereby consciousness, which is dependent on these limitations, is itself abolished. If consciousness can only be described as limitation, the negation of this limitation can no longer be regarded as positive defect in the All-One, since freedom from limitation is rather a sign of superiority. Nevertheless, the positive superiority in point of content is formally a defect, just as the absence of poison-glands in the boa-constrictor, which it does not need on account of its greater strength, or the absence of sin in the orthodox picture of Christ is a formal defect.—Already when, in C. Chap. ii., we arrived inductively at the conclusion that there is no consciousness without a brain, ganglia, protoplasm, or other material substratum, the hypothesis of a transcendent and indivisible consciousness of the world-soul was set aside, since the search after a material substratum making possible this unity of consciousness would be hopeless. By the investigations of C. Chap. iii. this knowledge instinctively arrived at was at the same time proved by way of pure speculation, since the metaphysical ground of the impossibility of a consciousness without individuation and without separation of body and mind was made evident. If the limi
ts of sensibility and finite individuality are set aside, as the notion of God of itself demands, and the limited representation be expanded to the Absolute IDEA, still the pure matter of representation remains, and by the removal of all finite opposition and collision we strip off also the form of consciousness. If one still, for one moment, tried to imagine the impossible demand satisfied, that consciousness should be, nevertheless, preserved as form of representation, yet this form also would have to be taken as infinitely elevated above the consciousness known to us, and it would then be at once apparent that the infinite form is equivalent to pure formlessness; that the absolute consciousness demanded for God must again prove to be identical with the absolutely Unconscious; so that thus even for this extreme standpoint, the phraseology being shown to be equivalent, every motive for opposing our absolutely Unconscious must perforce disappear. (Comp. Fichte’s Collected Works, vol. i. pp. 100–253; vol. v. pp. 266 and 457).
Unquestionably, besides its value for the individual as such, consciousness has also in addition a universal significance for the redemption of the world, i.e., for the conversion of the World-will and its return to the original condition before the commencement of the world-process (comp. below, C. Chap. xiv.); for this final purpose the All-One does in fact need consciousness, and accordingly it possesses the same,—namely, in the sum of individual consciousnesses, whose common subject it is.1
We have, namely, seen that the one Unconscious is, in fact, the support or subject of all individual consciousnesses, and that the individuals as such are only phenomenal combinations of an organism with the actions of the Unconscious directed to the same. He who accordingly has, strictly speaking, the consciousness of Peter and Paul, is not Peter and Paul, by which those phenomenal combinations are denoted, but the All-One Unconscious itself. Undoubtedly the consciousness which the Unconscious has in individuals is a more or less limited one, but any other is simply impossible. This consciousness always suffices to lead to the self-consciousness of the Absolute, namely, to the knowledge that the proper self of Peter and Paul is the All-One Existence.2 That this self-consciousness of the Absolute in the individuals is a reflex one, again lies in the nature of self-consciousness, which is impossible except on the basis of reflection. Thus it would be shown to those, whose minds are disquieted by the denial of consciousness and self-consciousness to the All-One, that it really does possess such consciousness and self-consciousness as is compatible with the character of these conceptions, namely, limited consciousness and reflex self-consciousness, which certainly must not be sought in the limitless and unreflective All-One as such, but in it as subject of the individual consciousnesses, since only the functions of the All-One directed to a particular organism form a limited part of its total activity, and attain to reflection in the organ of consciousness of the organism.—
If we for a moment assume what is unthinkable, that the Absolute still possesses over and above the consciousness and self-consciousness which it has in individuals another peculiar to itself, we immediately see insoluble difficulties to arise in respect of the relation of this absolute self-consciousness to those of individuals. We formerly assumed, namely, relying on the presumed unconsciousness of the All-One, agreeably to experience, that consciousnesses which arise at separate places, i.e., not sufficiently connected by nervous communications, are separate consciousnesses. This could, however, scarcely be maintained on the supposition of an absolute self-consciousness. Does such an absolute consciousness once exist in the subject of two individual consciousnesses, the required nervous communication appears to play a right pitiable and superfluous part beside such a metaphysical bond of union, whilst on the contrary its significance is at once evident if there is only an unconscious identical subject of the individual consciousnesses. If the functions of the All-One which the latter determines to the particular organisms are unconscious functions, they are sufficiently separated by their different goals not to allow of any confluence of the consciousness arising in organisms by way of reflection. If, on the other hand, they are conscious functions of a self-conscious being, they are related and connected by this consciousness to the higher unity of that self-consciousness, so that it is no longer at all comprehensible how these functions, after their reflection or turning round in the organs of consciousness, should be able to part into two consciousnesses, instead of enriching the one absolute consciousness with modified content. It accordingly becomes not only incomprehensible how the consciousnesses of Peter and Paul are separate consciousnesses, but how altogether a limited individual consciousness can arise without its matter and its form being immediately swallowed up and digested, bones and all, by the absolute consciousness, i.e., annulled as individual consciousness. But still, supposing a limited disparate individual consciousness to have arisen, the functions of the All-One exercised through the same, in case they were conscious, would allow the absolute consciousness to shine, as it were, in upon the individual consciousness; for one would not be able to see how these functions should denude themselves of the form of the absolute consciousness once adhering to them, and indeed essentially connected with them according to the assumption of the Theists, on their entrance into the individual, and on the formation of his special consciousness. The individual must in all directions be refulgent with the light of the absolute consciousness, and the absolute consciousness lie open to its view. All these consequences, contradicted by experience, fall away when we reject the impossible supposition of the absolute consciousness in the All-One.
Monism can by no means endure any absolute conscious world-substance, and only the declension from Monism to the Pluralism of one creating and many created substances makes possible the anthropopathic assumption of a conscious God; truly also only at the cost of comprehension of the possibility of inner relations between the creature and its transcendent Creator, which can then at the best only be conceived as the magical hocus-pocus of the possession of one personal mind by another.
A God whose reality only consists in his spirituality, and whose spirituality is manifested exclusively in the form of consciousness, undeniably becomes with distinct consciousness also a God parted realiter from the world, an external transcendent Creator. On the other hand, he who seeks and desires an immanent God, a God who descends into our breast and dwells therein, a God in whom we live and have our being, as every profounder religion must demand, and as Christianity and Judaism (Deut. vi. 4, xxx. 11; Isa. lxvi. 1) also actually demand, must make clear to himself that the All-One can only ind well in individuals if it is related to them as the essence to its phenomena, as the subject to its functions, without being parted therefrom by a consciousness of its own, or, in other words, that one and the same activity can only then be simultaneously and without collision of two consciousnesses activity of the individual and of the All-One. if the All-One diffuses itself as impersonal Will and unconscious Intelligence through the universe with its personal and conscious individuals. As God, by granting a personal consciousness, becomes parted from the world, with every action there inevitably arises the clear alternative, either activity of God or activity of the individual; a third, a combination of both activities without collision of the different conscious wills, would be only possible exceptionally and fortuitously, but not as a frequent occurrence or at all as general rule (comp. above, B. Chap. x. pp. 24–27).—
We have admitted that it is the Unconscious itself which attains consciousness in the organised individuals. It follows from this that the sufficient reason of its becoming conscious must be given in the Unconscious, or, more briefly, the Unconscious must be regarded as cause of consciousness. It would, however, be very vicious reasoning to try to draw the inference that Consciousness must already inhere in the said Unconscious, else otherwise it could not come out of it. This conclusion would be just as incorrect as the conclusion often, in fact, drawn by savages and the uncultured, that the fire must always lurk as fire in the steel and flint, since otherwise it could not leap forth as spa
rks on their impact. This much only is correct, that there must be contained in the cause the sum of all the indispensable and sufficient conditions in order that the effect may emerge or result from them; but the requirement that the effect be already contained as such in the cause, i.e., already in the form in which it appears as effect, is by no means coincident with this, for then the occurrence of the effect would be no change at all, thus also no causality, but only the becoming visible of a something long existent. We saw above that the arising of individual consciousnesses from an absolute consciousness can never be rendered intelligible; from an Unconscious, on the contrary, it is quite comprehensible, if only the Unconscious contains in itself all the conditions, which are requisite and sufficient in order to allow of consciousness resulting as form of otherwise given and determined Presentation or Sensation. As these conditions, however, we have in C. Chap. iii. recognised the duality of the attributes and the possibility of an opposition of the functions compounded of them, and these conditions we must accordingly necessarily presuppose in the Unconscious. Whoever regards the stated conditions as incorrectly defined will be obliged to suppose others in their stead in the Unconscious, although he may leave them also quite indefinite if he only guards himself from the error of setting up consciousness itself as the indispensable condition of the origin of consciousness,—an assertion which must be characterised as entirely devoid of foundation,—whereas the most cogent reasons for the contrary have been already partly discussed above, partly will soon come before us for discussion.
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