Part 3

Nevertheless this point cannot be disposed of simply by exhibiting the flaw in Moleschott's rhetoric. His remark rests upon the assumption that conscious mental phenomena are products of the organic tissues with which they are associated. This is of course the central stronghold of materialism. A century ago the case was very boldly put when we were asked to believe that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. Nobody to-day would think of making such a comparison, but it is more cautiously stated that consciousness is a "function" of the brain, or at all events of the nervous system, even as bile-making is a function of the liver. Before we yield any modicum of assent to this statement we may observe that "function" is a word with a wide range of meaning, and we must insist upon some closer definition. Here materialism calls to its aid the discovery of the correlation and equivalence of forces, one of the most stupendous achievements of our century. We now know that heat and light and electricity and actinism are not forces generically distinct and isolated each from the others. All are specific modes of molecular motion, transformable one into another at any moment as naturally as a cloud condenses into raindrops. Any such molecular motion, moreover, may come from the arrested visible motion of a mass, and may in turn be liberated so as to resume the form of visible motion, as when an electric current is transformed into the onward movement of the trolley car. The change in our conception of Nature that has been wrought by this wonderful discovery is more profound than all changes that went before. The balance in the hands of the chemist had already proved that no matter is ever lost but only transformed, and that every material form at any moment visible owes its existence to the metamorphosis of some previous form. So now it was further shown that the myriad properties or qualities of matter are simply the expression of myriads of activities which are all in a final analysis motions; that no motion is ever lost but only transformed, and that every kind of motion at any moment perceptible--whether in the form of movement through space, or of light, or heat, or electricity, or the actinism that builds up the green stuff in the leaves of plants--owes its existence to the metamorphosis of some previous kind of motion. Every living organism is a marvellous aggregate of divers forms of matter performing divers characteristic motions, and the sum total of these motions is the whole of life, as regarded purely on its physical side. When we take food we bring into the system sundry nitrogenous and hydrocarbon compounds, each of which is alive with little energies or latent capacities for certain kinds of motion. The oxygen of the air, especially in its unstable form of ozone, is a powerful inciter of chemical motions, and when we breathe it in, the little latent capacities presently become actual motions. Some of them are realized in the rhythmical movements of heart and lungs, some in the undulations that sustain the animal temperature, some in the formation of the tiny drops that collect in a secreting gland, some in the repair of tissue by the substitution of new complex molecules for old ones that are broken down, some in the contraction of a group of muscles, some in the changes within the substance of nerve that accompany conscious thought, sensation, and volition. Ah, yes, here we come to it at last! We do not doubt that all these myriad motions are members in a series of transformations, wherein the appearance of each results from the disappearance of its predecessors. We have neither the instruments nor the calculus to prove this in the infinite multitude of details, but the general theory has been so completely established wherever it is accessible to instruments and calculus that we can have no hesitation in granting its universality wherever matter and motion are concerned in any shape or amount. No scientific man will for a moment doubt that the little vibratory discharge between cerebral ganglia which accompanies a thought is one member in a series of molecular motions that might be measured and expressed in terms of quantity if we only possessed an apparatus sufficiently delicate and subtle.

Now if such is the case with the little physical motion within the brain, how is it with the accompanying thought? Does the correlation obtain between physical motions and conscious feelings? Are states of consciousness links in the Protean series of motions, in such wise that the vibration within the brain produces the thought or feeling? In other words is the thought or feeling merely a transformed vibration? Does a certain amount of vibration perish to be replaced by an exact equivalent in the shape of thought? and then does the thought perish in the act of giving place to other vibrations which end in a visible motion of muscles? as when, for example, you hear the sound of a bell and start toward the door.

On this point there has been much confusion of ideas. When I put the question to Tyndall in conversation, nearly thirty years ago, he seemed to think that there must be some such completeness of correlation between the physical and the psychical; but his mind was not at ease on the subject. Herbert Spencer, in his "First Principles," rather cautiously took the same direction and tried to show how a certain amount of motion might be transformable into a certain amount of feeling. He observed that the consciousness of effort or muscular strain in lifting a heavy weight is more intense than in lifting a light weight, and that when a loud sound sets up atmospheric vibrations of great amplitude the shock to our auditory consciousness is correspondingly greater than in the case of a gentle sound which sets up vibrations of small amplitude. But when he comes to the inner regions of thought and emotion which are not reached by percussion and strain, he is less successful in finding illustrations. It is especially worthy of note that in the final edition of "First Principles," published in this year 1900 and in Spencer's eighty-first, he goes very far toward withdrawing from his original position, while in his Preface he calls attention to this change as one of the most important in the book. In my "Cosmic Philosophy," published in 1874, I maintained that to prove the transformation of motion into feeling or of feeling into motion is in the very nature of things impossible. In order to be convinced of this, let us go back a few years and ask how the great doctrine of the correlation of forces became established. Its first absolute verification occurred about 1846, when Dr. Joule showed "that the fall of 772 lbs. through one foot will raise the temperature of a pound of water one degree of Fahrenheit."[2] When this was proved it gave us the mechanical equivalent of heat, and the theory acquired a truly scientific character. Similar quantitative correlations were established in the case of heat and chemical action by Dulong and Petit, and in the case of chemical action and electricity by Faraday. The truth of the theory is wholly a question of quantitative measurement. Now you can measure heat, you can measure electricity, and since the action of nerves in all probability consists of undulatory motions it is to some extent measurable, and doubtless would be completely measurable had we the means. But when you come to thoughts and emotions, I beg to know how you are going to work to give an account of them in foot-pounds! It is not simply that we have no means at hand, no calculus equal to the occasion; the thing is absurd on its face. It is as true to-day as it was in the time of Descartes that thought is devoid of extension and cannot be submitted to mechanical measurement.

[2] Herbert Spencer, _First Principles_ (final ed.), p. 185.

It appears to me, therefore, that what we should really find, if we could trace in detail the metamorphosis of motions within the body, from the sense-organs to the brain, and thence outward to the muscular system, would be somewhat as follows: the inward motion, carrying the message into the brain, would perish in giving place to the vibration which accompanies the conscious state; and this vibration in turn would perish in giving place to the outward motion, carrying the mandate out to the muscles. If we had the means of measurement we could prove the equivalence from step to step. But where would the conscious state, the thought or feeling, come into this circuit? Why, nowhere. The physical circuit of motions is complete in itself; the state of consciousness is accessible only to its possessor. To him it is the subjective equivalent of the vibration within the brain, whereof it is neither the cause nor the effect, neither the producer nor the offspring, but simply the concomitant. In other words the natural history of the mass of activities that are perpetually being concentrated within our bodies, to be presently once more disintegrated and diffused, shows us a closed circle which is entirely physical, and in which one segment belongs to the nervous system. As for our conscious life, that forms no part of the closed circle but stands entirely outside of it, concentric with the segment which belongs to the nervous system.

These conclusions are not at all in harmony with the materialistic view of the case. If consciousness is a product of molecular motion, it is a natural inference that it must lapse when the motion ceases. But if consciousness is a kind of existence which within our experience accompanies a certain phase of molecular motion, then the case is entirely altered, and the possibility or probability of the continuance of the one without the other becomes a subject for further inquiry. Materialists sometimes declare that the relation of conscious intelligence to the brain is like that of music to the harp, and when the harp is broken there can be no more music. An opposite view, long familiar to us, is that the conscious soul is an emanation from the Divine Intelligence that shapes and sustains the world, and during its temporary imprisonment in material forms the brain is its instrument of expression. Thus the soul is not the music, but the harper; and obviously this view is in harmony with the conclusions which I have deduced from the correlation of forces.

Upon these conclusions we cannot directly base an argument sustaining man's immortality, but we certainly remove the only serious objection that has ever been alleged against it. We leave the field clear for those general considerations of philosophic analogy and moral probability which are all the guides upon which we can call for help in this arduous inquiry. But it may be suggested at this point that perhaps our argument has acquired a wider scope than was at first contemplated. Consciousness is not peculiar to man, but is possessed in some degree by the greater portion of the animal kingdom. Among the higher birds and mammals the amount of conscious life is very considerable, and here too it must be argued that consciousness is not a product of molecular motion in the nervous system but its concomitant. The same argument which removes the objection to immortality for man removes it also for an indefinite number of animal species. What, then, is to be said of the reasonableness of supposing a future life for sundry lower animals? and if we were to reach a negative conclusion in their case, while reaching a positive conclusion in the case of man, on what principle are we to draw the line? Sometimes we hear this question propounded as a difficulty in the Darwinian theory of man's origin. How could immortal man have been produced through heredity from an ephemeral brute?

The difficulty is one of the sort which we are apt to encounter when we try to designate absolute beginnings and to mark off hard and fast lines, for in Nature there are no such things. Voltaire asked the same kind of question more than a hundred years before Darwinism had been heard of. When does the immortal soul of the human individual come into existence? Is it at the moment of conception, or when the new-born babe begins to breathe, or at some moment between, or even perhaps at some era of early childhood when moral responsibility can be said to have begun? Some of the answers to these questions would transform an ephemeral creature into an immortal one in the same person. The most proper answer is a frank confession of ignorance. Whether it be in the individual or in the race, we cannot tell just where the soul comes in. A due heed to Nature's analogies, however, is helpful in this connection. The maxim that Nature makes no leaps is far from true. Nature's habit is to make prodigious leaps, but only after long preparation. Slowly rises the water in the tank, inch by inch through many a weary hour, until at length it over-flows and straightway vast systems of machinery are awakened into rumbling life. Slowly grows the eccentricity of the ellipse as you shift its position in the cone, and still the nature of the curve is not essentially varied, when suddenly, presto! one more little shift, and the finite ellipse becomes an infinite hyperbola mocking our feeble powers of conception as it speeds away on its everlasting career. Perhaps in our ignorance such analogies may help us to realize the possibility that steadily developing ephemeral conscious life may reach a critical point where it suddenly puts on immortality.

If this suggestion is a sound one, we must probably regard the conscious life of animals as only the ephemeral adumbration of that which comes to maturity in man. The considerations adduced this evening must convince us that we are at perfect liberty to treat the question of man's immortality in the disinterested spirit of the naturalist. In the course of evolution there is no more philosophical difficulty in man's acquiring immortal life than in his acquiring the erect posture and articulate speech. In my little book "The Destiny of Man" I insisted upon the dramatic tendency or divine purpose indicated in the long cosmic process which has manifestly from the outset aimed at the production and perfection of the higher spiritual attributes of humanity. In another little book, "Through Nature to God," I called attention to the fact that belief in an Unseen World, especially associated with the moral significance of life, was coeval with the genesis of Man, and had played a predominating part in his development ever since, and I argued that under such circumstances the belief must be based upon an eternal reality, since a contrary supposition is negatived by all that we know of the habits and methods of the cosmic process of Evolution. No time is left here to repeat these arguments, but I hope enough has been said to indicate the probability that the patient study of evolution is likely soon to supply the basis for a Natural Theology more comprehensive, more profound, and more hopeful than could formerly have been imagined. The Nineteenth Century has borne the brunt, the Twentieth will reap the fruition.

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