Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  That Wundt, with the latter inference, so far as it relates to a conscious knowledge of one’s own body, overshoots the mark he himself allows in the observation that even man, with his very clear consciousness, and though perfectly master of his will, does not possess the same; whence he should conversely have concluded that in those actions of the spinal cord also consciousness and will may be present without the need of a conscious knowledge of the relative position of the parts of the body. Had he not omitted this conclusion he would also have found no reason in the mechanical conception of the reflex processes for doubting the existence of consciousness and will in the same, since indeed the same mechanical conception in the case of the functions of the cerebral hemispheres does not seem to give rise in him to any doubt.

  He says: “It is certainly admitted that the self-regulations, which must be presupposed in order to explain the manifold modifications of animal movements without consciousness, are partly of an extraordinarily complicated nature; but if one once admits the principle of mechanism, where is the limit to the animal machine?” (p. 822). However, Wundt would have to apply the same remark also to the mechanics of the cerebral hemispheres, thus by his argumentation would arrive at the denial of consciousness and will altogether. If the argument fails in this latter case, it has no weight at all—an inevitable consequence of its dependence on the opposition of mechanism and will, already declared by him himself to be faulty.—The Cartesian doctrine that animals are walking automata, which merely ape us with the semblance of a psychical life, is looked upon to-day by every feeling man as an almost revolting error. How long will it still last before our modern physiologists finally free themselves from the not smaller error in principle, that the organic manifestations of life of the lower central organs of the nervous system are mere mechanical contrivances without any spark of inner life?

  It is precisely physiological psychology which must feel itself compelled to conclude in a contrary sense and to say: “If the whole life of the central organs when objectively regarded consists in molecular mechanics, and yet in our consciousness a purposive thinking and willing corresponds to this mechanics, this purposiveness which makes its appearance in the cerebrum also in the form of consciousness must already inhere from the first in all the functioning of ganglion-cells, although it be not everywhere conscious as such, for in the last resort nothing can emerge but that for which a foundation has already been laid in the lower phases of development.” It is just the materialistically inclined physiologist, who looks upon conscious thought and volition as a merely passive reflex of the external order, as a transitory accidental appendix in certain phases of the molecular mechanics of nerve, who is entirely precluded from ascribing independent activity to consciousness, and consequently has no choice at all but to explain the undeniable purposiveness which appears in conscious thought and volition as a purposiveness of molecular nerve-mechanics, i.e., it is precisely Materialism which cannot avoid recognising purposiveness in the function of the ganglion-cell, if it will not cut itself off from every explanation of purposiveness in consciousness, in its own reflections and resolutions.

  Actual purposiveness Materialism can of course only acknowledge with the help of Darwinism, which represents the purposive molecular dispositions as arising in the ganglion-cells by natural selection. If this attempted explanation proves generally insufficient1 without the foundation of metaphysical teleological principles, it particularly does so in this special case; for it is not exactly clear how, beside so many other far more important individual variations, an altogether trifling more or less of reflex dispositions in the grey matter of the spinal cord can be decisive for the competitive capacity of an animal. Lamarck’s principle of gradual perfection by exercise avails here just as little; for even if we conceive the purposive modifications of function which are to be established by exercise as proceeding from the spinal cord or higher centres,2 yet passive consciousness cannot explain the purposiveness of these modifications, because the purposiveness of its own psychical associations is, according to the materialistic view, only to be itself explained by the purposiveness of molecular mechanics. Wherefore Wundt is also entirely in the right when he warns us to hold fast to this, that the assumption of a spinal consciousness and will does not in any way contribute to the clearing up of the problem of purposive actions (p. 829); only he ought in consistency to go further, and admit that a higher degree of consciousness can just as little contribute thereto as a lower one; that a brain-consciousness is for the explanation of design in bodily movements just as much a fifth wheel in the waggon as a spinal consciousness; that the brain consciousness can least of all serve to explain the purposiveness of the spinal reflexes, and that therefore the principle of Lamarck also, so long as merely conscious consideration is regarded as cause of the purposive modification of function, moves in a circle.1

  One only escapes this fallacious revolution in a circle by assuming that those purposive modifications of function, which come about with frequent repetition by the fixing of molecular tendencies and diminished resistance, proceed from an unconscious teleological principle, whose efficacy in this perfecting of the nerve-centres is only a special case of its general teleological efficiency as organising principle. As the external mechanics of the material processes and the inner mechanics of conscious ideas and desires are co-ordinate phenomena of one and the same metaphysical substance, so is also the regularity of this outer and inner mechanic (not the parallelism of a pre-established harmony, but) a coherent efflux from the indivisible essence of this metaphysical substance. Even at this point of view there remains the passivity of consciousness, but the latter now no longer appears as an attribute of matter, but of an immaterial substance, whose other attribute is the manifestation of material energy; thus the psychical is not here confined to the sphere of consciousness, but reaches deeper than this, namely, into the metaphysical Ens itself. Then also conscious design in thinking and resolving is no longer regarded as a passive reflection from the sphere of purposive molecular mechanics, but it is like this, an immediate manifestation of the teleological nature of the metaphysical substance itself (the unconscious spirit); what is there dead externality, whose spiritual stamp is first discovered by a thinking mind, is here immediate perception of the inmost nature of the spirit itself in itself.

  Without comprehending the parallelism of the two problems, both remain insoluble, i.e., both the teleological character of the external mechanisms and their origin, and also the conscious purposive activity of the human mind must in their isolation from one another appear as transcendent questions, to penetrate into which is a hopeless undertaking. On the other hand, from the moment when inner and outer are perceived to be two-sided phenomena of One Being, and the sameness of the teleological problem in both forms of the phenomenon is comprehended, the single reason for the teleological character both of the external material mechanics and of the conscious mental function must be sought in one and the same constitution of the metaphysical substance, of which both sides of the phenomena are only accidents, and it is now the purposive character immediately known to us of our own mind which affords the key to the understanding of that nature of the metaphysical substance which is in question, to wit, causes us to perceive it as the unconsciously Logical, which must be teleologically active as content of a will or a force. Therefore is it also so important to see clearly that the inner psychical aspect of the process intervening between stimulus and reaction and conscious perception appertain to all, even the lowest nerve-centres,—not as if the attribution of consciousness to the same could contribute anything directly to the explanation of the purposiveness of the functions (which I have never asserted), but because it is important to remain always aware of the two-sidedness of the phenomenon, and never to let the key which most directly opens the teleological nature of the metaphysical substance drop from our hands.

  How the higher unity of causality and teleology which is here maintained is to be conceived cann
ot be more fully entered upon in this place.1 I will here only remark this much, that the time is approaching with giant strides when our natural science will cease to speak of “dead matter.” Already the most distinguished natural philosophers recognise the interior, psychical side of atoms;2 and already there is the glimmering of an apprehension that the key to the nature of the simplest laws of the mechanics of the atom, which hitherto has been considered to be an absolute datum, must be sought in this psychical aspect of the atoms, and is to be found in the analogies of our own psyche.3

  The law of the conservation of energy signifies in metaphysical reference only the unchangeableness of the actual world-will on the side of its intensity; this law is, however, purely formal, and only teaches us: if this quantum of mechanical energy is converted into another form, e.g., into heat, then it will furnish such and such a quantum of heat. But whether this mechanical energy is in the given case converted into heat or any other form, or whether it is transformed into tension by removal from its centre, or whether it is for the nonce not converted at all, on these points the abstract formal law of the conservation of energy says nothing. On the decision of these questions in every single instance depends, however, the whole content of the world-process; therefore all that determines the content of the cosmic process, i.e., the whole sphere of the logical IDEA, is not affected by the law of the conservation of energy. Accordingly the law of the conservation of energy only proves to be the abstract formal framework, within which the logical necessity of the material content is manifested, and the qualitative determination of things, by means of causality and teleology obtains scope for display. The law of the immutability of the absolute quantum of force accordingly requires to be supplemented by other natural laws which determine the “How” of the force at every point of the unchangeable total; and only in these latter laws can, nay, must the teleological character of the metaphysical substance of the atoms attain expression: their striving after satisfaction of their special will and their instinctive warding off of pain (which springs from repression of this will). As, metaphysically speaking, the cosmic process is compounded of Will and unconscious-logical IDEA, of which two moments the former determines the “That,” the latter the “What and How” at every instant of the process: so, scientifically speaking, the world-process is compounded of the unchangeable cosmic quantum of energy and of the laws determining the conversion of energy in the particular cases, and this exact parallelism of the two ways of regarding the cosmic process may pass for a new proof that the metaphysical distinction of the moments Will and IDEA should be called anything but arbitrary, but is deeply founded in the essence of things, and is precisely adapted to enlighten natural science on the deeper significance of its first principles.

  There is a further question whether the teleological laws of Nature that materially determine the conversion of force in respect to the mechanics of the atom are also sufficient to explain the uniform teleological behaviour of the ganglion-cell, or whether with this union of atoms and molecules into an organic-psychical individual of a higher order new laws must be supposed to come into play, which point to a specific difference between the unconscious individual aim of a ganglion-cell and the combined unconscious ends of the atoms and molecules that constitute it. From such a varying unconscious purpose, coincident with a variously constituted individual will or individual character, varying laws of motivation would then at once follow, inasmuch as a differently constituted unconscious individual will is compelled to feel pain and pleasure by different external circumstances.—An imperfect example may make this clear. In chemistry, the law holds good that if several substances are brought together in a condition capable of reaction, the molecular displacements are such that the algebraic sum of the positive and negative amounts of heat thereby developed to become a maximum. To this law the actions in the cell of the spinal cord poisoned with strychnine or in the cerebral cell of the maniac seems to correspond, where the chemical processes tend to the squandering of the stored-up potential energy. The influences in the healthy ganglionic cell, on the other hand, running counter to this conversion, which we have called the inhibitory potencies, and in which the specific fitness of the function of the ganglia is first manifested, seem to point to a new law of a higher order limiting the play of the chemical molecular laws. However, this is to be considered as merely an illustrative example, and must not be taken for more than it is worth.

  If now it should turn out that the teleological-uniform mechanics of the ganglion-cell rests on natural laws which do not result from the mere combination of the mechanical laws of the atom, the atoms also could no longer be looked upon as the substrata of such laws of a higher order, because one and the same individual subject cannot be substrate of opposite mutually limiting natural laws. A metaphysical substratum must then be introduced for the additional laws of a higher order, which, together with the material atoms composing the cell, would in combination constitute the entire individual of this ganglion-cell.

  From the side on which we have entered upon this investigation, it might perhaps appear premature to attempt to give a definitive decision on this question. But as we have already seen that this ultimate substratum would coincide with the organising principle which directs the teleological perfecting of the ganglion-cell as an integral element of the perfection of the collective organic type, and as this organising principle, as metaphysical support of the universal organic law of development, must necessarily be conceived as something superadded to the material atoms, we shall from this side likewise venture to decide our foregoing alternative in favour of an additional metaphysical agent, which connects the manifold of the outer and inner atomic functions in the ganglion cell into an external-teleological as well as into an internal-psychical unity, and thus exalts the cell into an internally as well as externally indivisible organic-psychical individual.

  To be sure, whoever either denies the teleological character of molecular mechanics in the ganglion-cell (as the older Materialism), or ignores it as an intrinsically insoluble transcendent problem having no point of contact with science (as Maudsley), or, lastly, admits it indeed as fact, but thinks to explain it from blindly necessary and accidental causes (as Darwinism and Wundt), such an one will only act consistently when he declines at the outset every metaphysical or unconscious-psychical principle in addition to the atoms, and conceives the conscious as well as the unconscious psychical phenomena in the ganglion-cell as simply phenomenal combinations of the psychical functions of the atoms concerned.1 He, on the other hand, who regards the teleology of material mechanics as of consciousness as parallel emanations of the unconsciously logical and teleological nature of the metaphysical substance (underlying both aspects of the phenomenon), will (even apart from the necessity of an organising principle as supporter of the law of organic development) rather incline to the other side of the alternative, and expect that the (as compared with the laws of the mechanics of the atom) higher forms of manifestation of teleology which come to light in the ganglion-cell, and the internal and external unity which exalts the ganglion-cell to the rank of individuality, spring from superadded functions of the metaphysical substance, which subordinate the isolated atomic functions to the single unconscious individual purpose of a higher order.

  A play of innumerable atoms, acknowledging no superior but the One substance to whom they owe their being, must be more congenial to the democratic, levelling, disorganising tendency of the Romance nations, which however cannot dispense with the sway of one all-powerful Cæsar if universal anarchy is not to prevail. An organic construction of the cosmos, in which the atomic forces or individuals of the first order only play the part of the simplest and lowest building-stones, and in each individual of a higher order are held together by an inner tie for a concrete purpose, in order again on their part to serve as building material for still higher individual aims, such a gradual construction will be more agreeable to the Germanic mind which knows that wherever a living arch
itectonic work of art is to be brought to pass, levelling must be foregone, and submission be willingly given to the higher purpose.

  6. The Four Chief Grades of Nerve-Centres .—“In dealing with the function of the nervous system in man, it is, then, most necessary to distinguish different nervous centres:—

  “1. The primary centres, or ideational centres, constituted by the grey matter of the convolutions of the hemispheres. They are superordinate to

  “2. The secondary nervous centres, or sensory centres, constituted by the collections of grey matter that lie between the decussation of the pyramids and the floors of the lateral ventricles. These are subordinate to the primary and superordinate to

  “3. The tertiary nervous centres, or centres of reflex action, constituted mainly by the grey matter of the spinal cord; which again are superordinate to