Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  “4. The organic nervous centres, as we might call them, belonging to the sympathetic system. They consist of a set of ganglionic bodies distributed mainly over the viscera, and connected with one another and with the spinal centres by internuntiant cords.

  “Each distinct centre is subordinated to the centre immediately above it, but is at the same time capable of determining and maintaining certain movements of its own without the intervention of its supreme centre. For example, the rhythmical contractions of the heart are kept up by the ganglia distributed through its substance, and accordingly continue for a time after the removal of the organ from the body. But these local powers are not left uncontrolled: terminal branches of the vagus nerve, or rather branches of a motor nerve called the spinal accessory, which go with the vagus to the heart, are connected in some way with the ganglia; and when the vagus is irritated the ganglia are controlled and cease to act upon the heart, which comes to a standstill in a relaxed condition. The organisation of the entire nervous system is such that a due independent local action is compatible with the proper control of a superior central authority. The ganglionic cells of the sympathetic co-ordinate the energy of the separate elements of the tissue in which they are placed, and thus represent the simplest form of a principle of individuation. Through the cells of the spinal centre the functions of the different organic centres are so co-ordinated as to have their subordinate but essential place in the movements of animal life; and herein is witnessed a further and higher individuation. The spinal centres are similarly controlled by the sensory centres; and these, in their turn, are subordinate to the controlling action of the cerebral hemispheres, and especially to the action which, revealing itself in consciousness as will, represents the most complete co-ordination of the functions of the hemispheres, and is the highest display of the principle of individuation” (Maudsley, p. 109–110).

  Two remarks may be made on the above division: in the first place, that a preferable succession would be an inverse one, and the denomination “primary centres” would better suit the “organic” ganglia; and, secondly, that the designation of spinal centres as reflex centres is misleading, since even the “organic” centres and sensory and ideational centres are only reflectorially active, as already discussed. Moreover, it must be held as settled that the differences between the ganglion-cells of the different centre are only gradational, which have only been formed by differentiation from the common structure of the ganglion-cell in the succession of animal life, and that this universal foundation of each single ganglion-cell—in spite of any partial elaboration in a particular direction—has been preserved. There are in the ganglion-cells, just as in the nerve-fibres, specific energies in the sense of impregnated dispositions to definite functions; but here, as there, this specification is only relative, not absolute, and everywhere it works in the frames previously indicated by the general nature of the ganglion-cell: stimulus and reaction, perception and will.

  Corresponding to the relativity of the specific energies of the ganglion-cells, the transition from the centres of one kind to those of another is also rather gradual than abrupt. If the ganglia of an excised frog’s heart incite the latter to beat for hours, and react on a stimulus with a rhythmical contraction, the different position in the body more than the specific reflex energy serves to differentiate these ganglia from the lower centres of the spinal cord. The medulla oblongata forms a kind of transition between the spinal cord and the sensory ganglia of the brain, and, so far as its historic evolution is concerned, certainly belongs to the brain, but functionally stands far closer to the spinal cord. The increasing extent of the sphere of motor innervation as we ascend the spinal cord is especially noticeable in the medulla oblongata. The latter is also, moreover, distinguished from the other reflexes of the spinal cord by a more ingenious combination of numerous movements for obtaining definite effects, “so that the mode of combination is often brought about by a self-regulation which is founded in the reciprocal relation of several reflex mechanisms” (Wundt, p. 178). In the spinal cord the ganglion cells at the different levels are tolerably uniformly ordered in the four columns of the grey medulla. Only in the medulla oblongata is this symmetrical distribution interrupted, in that larger groups of ganglion-cells are fused into compact distinctly isolated nuclei, which are united with one another, as with the parts above and below, by means of conducting fibres. Such nuclei then serve definite groups of complicated processes of movement, that partly, like the regulation of the heart-beat and inspiration, are persistent rhythmical functions which approximate to those of the vegetative ganglia (e.g., movement of the intestines, tone of the vessels). By the union of two or several reflex centres with one another an alternating action is made possible, e.g., between a centre of inspiration and another of exspiration (p. 181); the former (like most of the so-called automatic functions of lower centres) is set agoing by the stimulus of insufficiently aerated blood, the latter by the sensation of the inflation of the lungs mediated by the sensory nerves (p. 177). Similarly Wundt assumes special centres in the medulla oblongata for the acceleration of the beating of the heart and for its slowing and inhibition, for the distension of the vessels and for their contraction (p. 185), for vomiting, for the act of swallowing, and, lastly, for coughing and sneezing, which pass over into the mimic reflexes of laughing, crying, sobbing, &c. (pp. 176, 178). In the latter, reflexes of the sensory ganglia already co-operate with those of the medulla oblongata to produce a combined indivisible action.

  Those centres which Maudsley comprehends under the name of sensory centres (although this name will not altogether fit the cerebellum, which is included among them) form in many lower animals, in which the Fore-brain (or cerebrum) essentially acts only as olfactory ganglion, the highest stage of development of their central nervous system, and is quite sufficient for their vital purposes. These animals move about with pretty much the same security and adjust their actions with the same appropriateness to the sensibly perceived external circumstances as a human somnambulist whose cerebral functions are completely suspended (M., p. 252). “Trousseau mentions a young amatev.r musician subject to epileptic vertigo who sometimes had a fit lasting for ten or fifteen seconds whilst playing the violin. Though he was perfectly unconscious of everything around him, and neither heard nor saw those whom he was accompanying, he still went on playing in time during the attack” (M., p. 151).

  Similarly is it with the capability of certain idiots to master certain difficult feats of skill with long-continued training, which they at last perform with astonishing adroitness (M.) If one removes from a rat the cerebral hemispheres along with the corpora striata and optic thalami, on every repetition of a loud and abrupt noise, such as cats are wont to make, it makes a spring to escape (M.) Mammals or birds from which all the parts of the brain lying above the corpora quadrigemina are removed follow the movements of a burning taper with their head, thus still perceive the impression of light; and likewise “frogs [under operation], which are constrained to make movements of escape by cutaneous irritation, avoid an obstacle placed before them” (W., p. 194).

  All this proves that, besides the perception of sense-impressions through the consciousness of the cerebral hemispheres, there must be an additional perception through a special consciousness of the sensory ganglia not included within the former, which Maudsley expressly acknowledges and very decidedly emphasises. One must only distinguish between a perception in the sphere of self-conscious intelligence and one in the sphere of (merely) conscious sense-activity (M.) But just in the same way we must also assume a will in the sensorimotor sphere, which for the rest does not need to be like the perception of the sense-impression serving as a motive to a conscious one. When Maudsley assumes a “sensorial madness” arising through disease of the sensory ganglia (p. 248), in which hallucinations of sense or morbid reaction lead to a pathological coudition, with the cerebral consciousness either suspended or persisting, but incapable of resisting the sensori-motor will, th
e action of the ganglia motived by sense-perception, entering into conflict with the cerebral will and emerging victorious from this struggle, must necessarily be itself designated will.1

  We arrive at the same result when we compare this sensori-motor sphere in man and the higher animals with the psychical life of those animals whose nervous system has not yet at all risen beyond the stage of sensory centres: as little as we can deny these animals a will, so little can we refuse it to the functions of the human sensory ganglia. The same holds good of the fitness of the sensori-motor reflexes. In those animals where the presence of conscious perception and will is beyond dispute, the purposive character of their relations to the external world is too evident for us to doubt the existence of an intelligence, which it is true has not yet reached so far as the formation of abstract ideas or even to self-consciousness, but yet is a preliminary step to this cerebral intelligence of the higher animals.

  Here, too, the parallelism with the well-known performances of the sleep-walker, indicative in part of highly developed intelligence, forms a good illustration. In both there occurs an adhesion of impressions, i.e., a memory; but the stage of reflection, which is indispensable for a recognition, is wanting in them, i.e., a conscious recollection, and the memory therefore manifests itself not so much on the side of representation as on that of will, i.e., consists essentially only in the ease of the connection between perception and voluntary reaction. This memory therefore furthers the elaboration of the instinctive facility and accuracy with which the most frequent and most important vital actions are performed by animals and man. Even in somnambulists who periodically lapse into their spontaneously somnambulistic condition, a certain memory is unmistakable. For example, they continue tasks which were left unfinished on the last attack at the right point, and the finished work shows that the intellectual bond with what went before had been unbroken. But at the same time, of course, the consciousness of the cerebral hemispheres can have no memory of that which the intelligence of their cerebral ganglia wrought in the somnambulistic state, just because it was suppressed during that activity, and could consequently receive no impression for revival.

  In the psychical functions of the sensory centres, also, just as in those of the centres of the spinal cord, there is exhibited the interweaving of conscious and unconscious psychical activity. I need only mention the circumstance that most of the animal instincts fall into the department of sensori-motor action, e.g., all building instincts. To whom would not occur the comparison of the singing-bird, which monotonously repeats the melodic-rhythmical period of its species, with the epileptic violin-player who plays the once-learned piece during his attack? Save that the singing-bird is at once aware of and enjoys his song with his cerebral consciousness, which was not possible for the epileptic.

  It will not be necessary to repeat at this place the argumentation of the preceding section, which here only acquires still greater force. The ganglionic cells of the sensory centres also act reflectorially and mechanically, not therefore less purposively however, but only the more so, as their sphere of motor innervation and their inner faculty of elaborating perceptions is greater than in the case of the spinal cord. In the sensory centres, likewise, the psychical subjectivity goes hand in hand with the external mechanism of the molecular motions, and their consciousness is so much richer and clearer as the impressions conducted from the higher sense-nerves are more numerous and precise than those which the centres of the spinal cord receive from the general nerves of the body, and as their faculty of elaborating perceptions is greater than that of the latter. This higher development of the purposive external mechanics and of the intelligence is, however, merely the two-sided phenomenal expression of a higher (unconscious) purpose, which determines the individual life of the organ in question. Here, as there, the reaction of the will on a motive, the mental elaboration of impressions by the co-operation of many cells, and the purposive modification of function, by whose repetition the purposive disposition of the organ is perfected, go on altogether unconsciously. These three highest performances of the organic-psychical individual, which are fundamentally only one and the same function looked at from different sides, make up, however, the inmost core of the individuality of the organ. It might be called the actuality of its individual purpose, which is the same thing as the teleological function of the metaphysical substance, whose accidents or modes are the inner psychical and external material phenomenon of the individualised organ.

  It would be a great error to try to see in this preponderating importance of the unconscious psychical function in the sensory centres any difference in kind from the functions of the cerebrum. What is added in the cerebrum is in essence only the degree of the elaboration of the perceptions, or, to speak in physiological language, the path within the organ which the stimulus traverses from its first entrance till the discharge into motor reaction. While this stimulus in passing from one cell to another liberates afresh in each a reflexion (perception and reaction), it unfolds into a successive chain of conscious ideas, forming the discursive reflexion which is intercalated between sense-perception and visible reaction, and determines the nature of the latter. But in this increase of the absolute number of conscious moments, the proportion of this number to that of the co-operating unconscious acts is by no means increased; for every progression of a stimulus from one cell to another is a reflex act, which is per se unconsciously performed; and the same holds good of the reception of the stimulus by the cell in question and its conversion into conscious perception. All advance in discursive reflection is unconscious, and it is as it were only the footsteps of this advance which attain to consciousness. But it is rarely that several such footsteps stand so near one another that we can follow the individual steps; for the most part, their relation to one another points to more or fewer great leaps of unconscious psychical function, in which the links of the logical chain are only implicitly contained between the conscious extremes.

  The development which these thoughts have received above in Section B. has been so frequently misconstrued from the scientific side as speculative mysticism, that it is a peculiar satisfaction to me to be able to cite in confirmation the opinion which the English empiricist Maudsley has formed through his own medical treatment of mental disease and psychological observation. The testimony will be the less carped at by naturalists, as Maudsley himself inclines to Materialism, and tries to go as far as he can with a materialistic interpretation of his psychological observations. He certainly does not everywhere succeed, even in his own opinion, and least of all at the critical points, as we have already seen in one instance.

  The existence of an “unconscious life of the mind” Maudsley declares to be established beyond a doubt, and says: “It is a truth which cannot be too distinctly borne in mind, that consciousness is not co-extensive with mind” (p. 25); and adds, that “the most important part of mental action, the essential process on which thinking depends, is unconscious mental activity” (p. 34). “He whose brain makes him conscious that he has a brain is not well, but ill; and thought that is conscious of itself is not natural and healthy thought” (p. 41). “An active consciousness is always detrimental to the best and most successful thought; the thinker who is actively attentive to the succession of his ideas is thinking to little purpose. What the successful thinker observes is that he is conscious of the words which he is uttering or writing, while the thought, unconsciously elaborated by the functional action of the brain, flows from unpenetrated depths into consciousness. … Reflection is then, in reality, the reflex action of the cells in their relation to the cerebral ganglia; it is the reaction of one cell to a stimulus from a neighbouring cell, and the sequent transference of its energy to another cell—the reflection of it” (p. 308). “The brain not only receives impressions unconsciously,1 registers impressions without the co-operation of consciousness, elaborates material unconsciously, calls latent residua again into activity without consciousness, but it responds also as an orga
n of organic life to the internal stimuli which it receives unconsciously from other organs of the body” (p. 35). “Not only is the actual process of the association of our ideas independent of consciousness, but that assimilation or blending of similar ideas, or of the like in different ideas, by which general ideas are formed, is in no way under the control or cognisance of consciousness” (p. 30). “In composition the writer’s consciousness is engaged chiefly with his pen and with the sentences which he is forming; while the results of the brain’s unconscious working, matured by an insensible gestation, emerge from unknown depths into consciousness, and are by its help embodied in appropriate words” (p. 30). “When the individual brain is a well-constituted one, and has been duly cultivated, the results of its latent activity rising into consciousness suddenly sometimes seem like intuitions; they are strange and startling, as the products of a dream ofttimes are, to the person who has actually produced them” (p. 32). “The best thoughts of an author are always the unwilled thoughts which surprise himself; and the poet under the inspiration of creative activity is, so far as consciousness is concerned, being dictated to. If we reflect, we shall see that it must be so; the products of creative activity, in so far as they transcend the hitherto experienced, are unknown to the creator himself before they come forth, and cannot therefore be the result of a definite act of his Will; for to an act of will a conception of the result is necessary” (p. 33). “Therefore it comes to pass at times that, in the investigation of a new order of events by an intellect which is in genial sympathy with Nature, the law of them explicitly declares itself as by a flash of intuition after comparatively few observations. The imagination successfully anticipates the slow results of patient and systematic research, flooding the darkness with the light of a true interpretation, and thus illuminating the obscure relations and intricate connections. Therein a well-endowed and well-cultivated mind manifests its unconscious harmony with Nature. The brightest flashes of genius come unconsciously and without effort; growth is not a voluntary act, although the gathering of food is” (p. 531). “As in the child there is no consciousness of the ego, so in the highest development of humanity, as represented by these our greatest, a similar unconsciousness of the ego seems to have been reached; and the individual, in intimate and congenial sympathy with Nature, carries forward in organic evolution with a child-like unconsciousness and a child-like success” (p. 6l). “Rules and systems are necessary for the ordinarily endowed mortals, whose business it is to gather together and arrange the materials; the genius, who is the architect, has, like Nature, an unconscious system of his own. It is the fate of its nature, and no demerit, that the caterpillar must crawl: it is the fate of its nature, and no merit, that the butterfly must fly” (p. 64). “It is not by introspective prying and torture of its own self-consciousness that mankind evolves the genius; the mature result of its unconscious development flows at due time into consciousness with a grateful surprise, and from time to time the slumbering centuries are thus awakened” (p. 66).1