But now arises a second question: Why did not God in the first moment when he became seeing, i.e., his all-wise intelligence entered into being, repair the error blindly committed, and turn his will against himself? Incomprehensible and unpardonable as the first commencement would be without the hypothesis of a blind action, no less incomprehensible and unpardonable would be the laisseraller of this misery with open eyes if the possibility of an immediate recall remained open. Here we are again aided by the inseparability of the idea from the will in the Unconscious, the unfreedom and dependence of the idea on the will, in consequence of which the former has indeed to determine its “What,” its goal and its content, but not its “That and whether.” We shall see that the whole world-process only serves the one purpose of emancipating the Idea from the will by means of consciousness, in order by the opposition of the Idea to induce the peace of the will. Were now this end attainable without consciousness, or did such a consciousness in the sense of an emancipation of the Idea from the will exist at the beginning of the world-process in God, the whole cosmic process would be foolish and aimless, in that it would be struggling to attain somewhat that either is not at all requisite for the object, or that existed long ago. This consideration affords the last decisive reason against the assumption of a transcendent consciousness in God in the sense of an emancipation of the idea from the will, if the contrary reasons assigned above were not more than sufficient. This last argument, be it observed, is thoroughly inductive, drawn from the empirical fact of the misery of the world, and derives its force solely from this, that no hypothesis involving a conscious God is able to explain the fact without contradiction.
Although, since Spinoza’s identification of God, Substance, and Nature, the God-idea has to a certain extent obtained a citizen’s rights in philosophy, I still hold the origin of an idea to be so important for its comprehension, that it seems to me advisable to avoid as far as possible in philosophy an idea with an origin so exclusively religious as God. I shall therefore continue as a rule to employ the expression, “The Unconscious,” although the previous discussion has shown that I should have more right to the use of the word “God” than Spinoza and many others. Although the formal negativity of my terminology for an out-and-out positive Being must for a length of time be inadequate, yet it will retain its proper prophylactic value as long as the anthropopathic error of the consciousness of the Absolute prevails to a considerable extent. When, however, the negative predicate of unconsciousness is universally recognised as a self-evident predicate of the Absolute no longer needing distinct enouncement, then undoubtedly this negative designation will, in the historical progress of philosophy, have long been replaced by one more appropriate and positive.
1 With Spinoza, likewise, the infinite intellect of God (comp. Ethics, Part I. Proposition 31, Dem.), to be distinguished indeed from the attribute of the absolute thought, is only the sum of the infinitely numerous finite intellects, of which it is compounded as of its integral parts (Part V. Proposition 40, Obs.) Each of these infinitely numerous intellects is the Idea of a body or extended thing 2 Proposition 11 and 13), and by that not merely human intellects are to be understood, but the Ideas of all natural objects in general, which indeed are all more or less animated (2 Obs. 13), whose sum thus exhausts the ideal content of the universe.
2 In Hegel also the Absolute Idea possesses no other self-consciousness than this. Much as Hegel insists that the Absolute is not merely substance, but also subject (of consciousness), yet it always becomes conscious, even according to his own doctrine, only in the limited individuals. From the erroneous presupposition that consciousness is a necessary and eternal moment in the Absolute, there logically follows for Hegel nothing more than the eternity of the process of Nature, thus the infinite duration of a world filled with things so highly organised that the self-consciousness of the Absolute never dies out; but there by no means follows from that false premiss the persistence of a transcendent consciousness in the Absolve in itself.
3 Only in this sense does Spinoza speak of a self-knowledge of God. The idea, which in God is actual, is ever unique, all-embracing (Ethics, Part ii. Prop. 4), which includes in itself all individual intellects as the ideas of the modes of extension (comp, above p. 250 Obs.) and the ideas of all these intellects, or the ideas of these ideas (Ethics, ii. Props. 20 and 21), i.e., the pure forms of these ideas without regard to their extended objects (2 Prop. 21 Obs.), and, moreover, includes as posited with logical necessity. God as subject or natura naturans therefore does not know himself as subject of the cognitive activity or of the attribute of thought, but as object of the same, i.e., as natura naiurata (comp. 1 Prop. 29 Obs.)
4 Only in this sense is Schelling willing in his later “Philosophy of Revelation” to understand Theism as doctrine of the One tri-personal God (comp, his definition of personality: Werke, ii. 7, p. 281, and my memoir, “Schelling’s Positive Philosophie,” pp. 42, 43, Obs.)
5 Those readers who have been accustomed to think the conception of freedom inseparably united with the ethical conception of personality are reminded: (1.) That freedom may be temporarily abolished along with accountability, without personality being thereby abolished. (2.) That this concept of freedom only contains a relation to the concept of personality when it is opposed to the freedom of individual assertion on the part of other individuals, but that then, for the before-mentioned reason, it is not transferable to the All-One, since the latter has nothing whatever to oppose itself to. (3.) That the notion of the freedom of human will rests altogether on an illusion (comp. the commencement of Chap. xi., sect. B.), and accountability does not rest on a quality of the will, but of the intellect, and, moreover of the discursive intellect, cannot therefore be applied to the All-One. If there were a human freedom, it could not be analogically transferred to the All-One; if it were transferable it would still import no trace of a notion of personality into the All-One; but if it were purified from amalgamation with this alien concept, there would finally be nothing ascribed to the All – One by this transference which does not already appertain to our Unconscious as such. The contrast of a foreign compulsion, which is necessary to give the notion of freedom its special content, is wanting here, but the Unconscious is undoubtedly absolutely free inasmuch as it derives all its decisions from itself, and can be affected by nothing external. It further actually possesses, according to our investigations, the ability only erroneously ascribed to man, to intervene at any moment spontaneously as cause in the lawfully given phenomenal series, which adds a new factor determining the process to the existing ones, and continually exercises this faculty in its teleological interpositions. Lastly, it shows itself, as we shall see in Chap. xv. C., before the decision, by which it certainly ties its own hands until the reintroduction of the status quo ante, as free to comport itself rationally or irrationally, i.e., to remain in the place of non-volition or to elevate itself to Volition, i.e., to the world-creation; man, on the contrary, even then acts according to the absolutely rational plan of the world, i.e., rationally, where he imagines he is acting counter to the same, i.e., irrationally. The All-One Unconscious accordingly possesses all possible freedom, and can by no means acquire any not yet possessed freedom in addition to the same through the erroneous assumption of a human freedom.
6 By this expression we must, of course, not in the remotest manner think of the “subjective appearance” of the theory of knowledge, which is the correlate to the conception of the “thing of itself” of the same theory, whilst we have here to do with the notion of the divinely or objectively posited, or objective phenomenon, which is the correlate to the metaphysical conception of the “essence” (comp, above, p. 241).
IX.
THE ESSENTIAL NOTION OF GENERATION FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE UNIVERSALITY AND UNITY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS.
WE will now employ our recently obtained point of view to clear up a few questions, which either have occupied philosophers for thousands of years, or precisely at the pr
esent time have acquired special interest among the general public. It will be shown how the solutions which flow from the principles already obtained are in full accordance with what the facts to be explained require, and what an unlaboured criticism of possible explanations leaves over.
The first of these questions concerns the nature of Generation. Formerly two theories contended concerning generation, Creatianism and Traducianism. The former assumed a psychical new creation on every occasion of procreation; the latter, a transference of parts of the paternal souls to the child. The former accordingly affirms in every case of procreation a creation out of nothing, a new miracle; and is, therefore, unacceptable to the more sober thinking of modern times; the latter, however, contradicts the facts. For if a man with the requisite number of women could easily beget over a hundred children in the course of a year, during the time of his procreative power, accordingly, many thousands, and yet notoriously no diminution of his soul takes place; on each act of generation the part given off to the child must have been much less than the thousandth part of the minimum which could just be traced as the soul’s loss. With such a tiny piece of soul manifestly the child could not for the length of time get along, still less his children and children’s children, which, in decreasing progression, would soon acquire only the billionth part of a soul; accordingly, the transferred piece could only be regarded as a germ, which is capable of growth. Under a germ one understands, however, a formal power which is able to draw to itself and to assimilate foreign material elements, and thereby to grow. If, then, the infant soul were, at its engendering, only a germ, the question occurs, Where are the foreign elements to be sought by which it is augmented? The materialists answer very simply: The soul is only a result of material combinations; accordingly with the growth of the organism and its noble parts the soul also grows. This view we can of course not accept, but it is at least clear and self-consistent. But if we still ask where the elements to be drawn upon are to be sought, there remains nothing but the general spirituality, the impersonal psychical, in a word, the Unconscious. From this, accordingly, the piece given off from the parent-souls to the child-soul must draw its stock of increase.
But why, then, is a soul-germ wanted, as the organic germ can take the place of the same? Does the child in the womb need another kind of psychical activity than that of organic formation? And when by means of this unconscious psychical activity an organ is created in the brain for conscious mental activity, is there then needed yet another medium of attraction, in order that the Unconscious may turn its activity in this direction, than the presence of this organ itself? Why, then, this unnatural hypothesis of the given-off soul-germs, by which one must either think of one-sided tendencies of the parental souls, which are no aid to explanation, or diminutive souls, hatched and detached, as it were—a horrible idea?
And how, then, came these soul-buds first to get into the organic procreative germs, since both must be conceived as arising independently of one another? Is there on every seminal emission with each of the millions of spermatozoa a piece of soul carried away at random, or does the detached diminutive soul of the father travel into the particular spermatozoon, if the same has had the good fortune to light upon an ovum of its own species capable of fecundation? And how does the diminutive soul of the father, held in reserve, learn which spermatozoon, emitted during coitus hours or days before, causes the fertilisation of an ovum?
If the child’s soul is drawn from the well of the universal world-spirit, represents as it were the psychical appurtenance crystallised round the newly arisen organic germ, this conveys an essentially different idea from that of Creatianism, where the soul in the moment of generation is created by God out of nothing. Further, this view does not, like Creatianism, render unintelligible the transmission of psychical qualities, in that the organic germ is conditioned by the qualities of the parents and the spirit crystallising, as it were, from the Unconscious, is again modified according to the qualities of the organic germ. In this sense, by transmission of the constitution of the brain spiritual qualities may just as well be transferred from parents to children as a finger in excess or a morbid diathesis. On the other hand, the addition of a genius to the infant soul, demanded by higher historical considerations, remains unrestricted; for if the Unconscious needs special organs for its revelation, it prepares them also in due time; it will create in an organism which offers itself as especially appropriate an organ of consciousness, which is capacitated for unusually lofty psychical achievements.
If in this way we escape the main inconvenience of Traducianism and Creatianism, it is still always not to be denied that as long as one regards the soul of the individual not merely in its activity, but also in its essence, its substance, as something self-enclosed and limited, both with respect to other individual souls and also with respect to the universal spirit, that so long the theory of generation has its great difficulties; for the rending of a new soul from the universal, and the attaching of the same to the new organic germ, is a very dubious proceeding, whether we regard this individualising of a new soul as a process of gradual crystallisation going hand-in-hand with the bodily development of the germ, or whether we regard it as a single momentary act, in which the new soul is engrafted ready made on the germ.
However, as soon as one remembers the results of our last chapter but one, the matter begins to grow clear, for now the soul both of each of the parents as well as of the child is only the sum of the activities of the one Unconscious directed to the particular organism.1
Now the souls of the parents are not separate, self-existing substances, can accordingly give off nothing of their substance, and the child has no need to acquire any special individualised soul, but its soul is likewise only the sum of the activities of the Unconscious directed at any moment on its organism. Could the parents really give off a portion of their souls to the child, they would still only draw from the great dish from which they, as all three, are fed.
Now there is also nothing wonderful in this, that the infant soul only grows gradually in proportion to the body, for the more developed becomes the organism, the more varied, rich, and noble becomes the sum of the activities of the Unconscious directed upon it. With our principle not only is the miraculous lost, but also that unique character that generation otherwise possesses; it becomes an act essentially similar to conservation and renovation even in spiritual reference, as it has long been so acknowledged in material reference. Should the Unconscious cease to direct its activity (as sensation, ideation, will, organic formation, instinct, reflex action, &c.) at any moment whatsoever upon any existing organism, the latter would at the same moment be bereft of soul, i.e., be dead, and would be unsparingly crushed by the laws of matter, just as the matter of this organism would cease to be as soon as the Unconscious intermitted the acts of will in which its atomic forces consist. Just as well, however, as the Unconscious at any moment animates every organism capable of animation, will it also animate the newly arising germ according to its capability of being animated. Add to this, that the moment is not at all to be determined when the germ becomes from a part of the maternal the independent organism, if one does not let the solution at birth pass for such. As long, however, as the organism of the child is a part of the maternal organism, and is nourished by it, so long we have still to do with a process which in essence is not distinguishable from any other organic formation. This will become more clear if we glance at the gradual progress from the lower kinds of propagation to sexual generation.
The simplest kind is fission, an ordinary case of the increase of cells, but also not rare in infusoria and other animals. That in a division of one animal into two there can be no talk of a division of the substance of the soul has been already repeatedly mentioned. There is a gradual transition from fission to gemmation, for the bud too is developed as part of the maternal organism, until, rendered capable of independent existence, it drops off (polyps, &c.)
A difference in principle in th
e process of formation cannot be asserted, whether the animal replaces lost parts or forms buds for multiplication. In the cases, however, where the buds are characteristically presented as such, and are no longer to be confused with simple fission, their development from a single cell deposited in the maternal tissue at any part of the body—germ-cell—is always to be recognised. Now it can manifestly make no essential difference at what part of the maternal organism the germ-cell is found from which the new organism is developed, whether this place lies at the side, or at an extremity, or on the arms, or in the abdominal cavity of the animal, or in a distinct ovarium. The two latter cases are distinguished from increase by gemmation as increase by germ-cells in the narrower sense. The germ-cells, which are developed in the abdominal cavity or in a special sac, mostly exhibit a marked external resemblance in form and size to the ova of the higher animals. Nay, one may even assert they are not to be distinguished morphologically from these.
In many animals (e.g., plant-lice) multiplication by germ-cells already alternates with sexual propagation, or one generative act is sufficient to fertilise the germ-cells (or ova) for several successive broods. An insect belonging to the Diptera, Cecidomyia, by sexual propagation begets larvæ which, living under the bark of decaying apple-trees, develop without copulation in a species of ovary offspring so advanced, that they come into the world in a form resembling that of the mother. In some butterflies also the remarkable phenomenon of virgin generation or parthenogesis takes place, likewise in a whole series of lower crustacea; in both the offspring born without fertilisation are exclusively females; in the black humblebees, wasps, and bees, on the other hand, conversely, the males come forth from unfertilised, the females from fertilised eggs. Whilst among the bees only the queen lays eggs, which it can at will bring into contact with spermatozoa reserved from a former copulation or not, in the humblebees and wasps the bearers of the male and female offspring are separate individuals; the females, namely, that have survived the winter, which had copulated in the autumn, bring forth female young; these females born in spring, however, now produce without being fecundated the males for the autumn coupling.—The germ-cell or the unfertilised ovum develops in a manner perfectly analogous to the fertilised ovum, only that the former does not need the appulse of fertilisation; yet there are accredited examples of the ova of animals that only increase sexually, which were notoriously unfertilised, entering into the process of yolk-furrowing, as if they were fertilised. (Such cases were, e.g., observed years ago in the ova of pigs by the anatomist Bischof in Munich.) It is true their energy did not reach very far, and they remained at the first stages of embryonic development. Under certain circumstances, however, even here the process of growth of the egg can proceed to a tolerably advanced stage; thus, e. g., it has long been known that hens without contact with a cock sometimes lay unfertilised eggs, which have accordingly traversed a tolerably long course of development from their microscopic origin.
Philosophy of the Unconscious Page 69
