Part 19

The relation of the consciousness-of-an-object to the object-in-consciousness may be made clear by the analogy, which is something more than an analogy of vision and the visual field. For clear and distinct vision, a well-illuminated object of vision, and a healthy organ of vision are necessary as coöperating factors. So, too, for distinct consciousness a definite object-in-consciousness and a well-defined consciousness-of-the-object are necessary as coöperating factors. More than this. Unless there be some object of vision, however vague, and some organ of vision, however dim, no vision at all is possible. The coöperation of the two factors is essential. So, too, unless there be some object-in-consciousness, however vague, and some consciousness-of-the-object, however dim, no consciousness at all, in anything like the human sense of the word “consciousness,” is possible. Here, again, the coöperation of the two factors is essential. _And neither factor is ever given in experience without the other._

Writing as I am, for readers of _The Monist_, I need hardly turn aside to explain what I mean by an object-in-consciousness. And yet perhaps a few words on the subject may not be out of place, and may prevent possible misunderstanding. An object-in-consciousness is not necessarily a tangible, visible object, like an orange. The yellowness, the sweetness, the weight, the bare existence of the orange, may each in turn be an object in consciousness. For the physicist the tangible orange may be represented in terms of swift, infinitesimal motions; and these, not less than the phenomenal orange, are objects in consciousness. A conception of consciousness itself, an imperfect conception, but the best we can frame, may be an object of consciousness, just as a reflected image of the eye may be to the eye an object of vision.

It is generally believed by modern psychologists that all objects-in-consciousness are derivable by processes of abstraction, generalisation, and so forth, from the primitive datum of a perceptual object. And it must be remembered that it is only in abstraction that we distinguish between the object-in-consciousness and the consciousness-of-the-object. The two terms of this, for us, inevitable relation are given in inseparable coördination. But in abstract thought we can distinguish the inseparable terms; distinguish in thought, that is to say, what is inseparable in actual experience. To continue the analogy of vision, we can make the one term focal, while the other term remains marginal in the field of view. And we can neglect, for the purposes of our thought and reason, the marginal term. But we cannot get rid of it. We may deal, as in physics, with motion, neglecting the consciousness in and through which it is appreciated; but we cannot get rid of this consciousness. Or we can deal, as in psychology, with the consciousness, neglecting the object-in-consciousness; but we cannot get rid of this object. The object-out-of-consciousness and the consciousness-without-an-object, are alike unknown—or, if the reader prefers it, unknowable, which he may write with as many capital letters as seemeth to him good. The common-sense realist believes in the existence of objects-out-of-consciousness. The analytical psychist believes in the existence of consciousness-without-an-object. Both are, if the views here advocated be sound, attributing independent existence to that which, so far as human knowledge is concerned, has only dependent or relative existence.

It is unfortunate that the terms “real” and “reality” should ever have been applied to the independent existence of so-called things-in-themselves. I think such terms as Dr. Stoney’s “autic” and “autic existence” would be far preferable. For the word “real” has a meaning and force which is quite definite. The orange that I hold in my hand and see with my eyes is as real as real can be. And if a philosopher steps in and says, “My dear sir, _that_ is not real! The real reality is, according to some, mind-stuff or consciousness; according to others, motion of—well I don’t quite know what, so let us simply call it motion; and according to others this real reality is unknowable”—I say if a philosopher steps in and talks like this, one is reminded of Lamb’s remark on Coleridge. Coleridge had been maundering on, as was his wont, on “subject” and “object” and all the rest of his second-hand German metaphysics, when Lamb broke in, with his forcible stammer, in a stage whisper: “N-n-n-never mind C-c-c-coleridge; it’s only his f-f-f-fun.”

I repeat that the orange I hold in my hand and see with my eyes is as real as real can be; and that we have here the standard and criterion of reality not only for plain men but for philosophers. In the perceptual object we have reality given in its clearest, fullest, and most forcible form. Every step in the analysis of the perceptual object-in-consciousness; every step in the analysis of the consciousness-of-the-object takes us so far further from reality at its best. The orange as an object-in-consciousness is far more real to me than either the swift infinitesimal motions of the physicist, or the “syntheton” of related and integrated sensations of the psychologist. And when we reach the autic existence which is supposed to underlie both motion and consciousness, we seem to get just as far as it is possible for the human mind to get from the real orange with which we started. And yet it is to this autic existence that metaphysicians apply the term “real” in a different sense. For so far I have used the word “real” for that which is given in experience. But metaphysically the word “real” is used to indicate independence of experience. I repeat that for this independent existence some such word as Dr. Stoney’s “autic” would be far better and less misleading. It would emphasise the distinction between _real_, that is to say given in direct experience, and _autic_, that is to say independent of experience.

Accepting at any rate for our present purpose this distinction, we have as coördinate realities the object-in-consciousness and the consciousness-of-the-object. And these two are only different aspects of the one great reality, the reality of experience. Of these two aspects neither is more real than the other. The object-in-consciousness is every bit as real as the consciousness-of-the-object; the orange as real as our perception thereof. Both are intensely and vitally real; but—here I am in opposition to Dr. Stoney—_neither is autic_. I can find no warranty for such autic existence in direct experience or the so-called deliverance of consciousness. Nor am I aware of any process of reasoning by which it can be demonstrated.

But, it may be said, is it not in accordance with scientific method to make an assumption and then see how far such assumption is justified by the results it enables us to reach? Assuredly such procedure is allowable and often fruitful. It is not on such grounds, however, that Dr. Stoney, if I rightly understand him, bases his doctrine of the psychical nature of _auta_. Let us, nevertheless, pay a moment’s attention to this assumption and the correlative assumption of analytic materialism. Consciousness and matter-in-motion (or bare motion perhaps) are the ultimate elements reached by the psychologist on the one hand and the physicist on the other. Neither, if he knows his business, pretends by this analysis to have reached autic existence. But it is open to each to make an assumption. The materialist says: I assume that motion is the true autic existence, of which, under appropriate conditions, human consciousness is merely a psychical aspect. The psychist says: I assume that consciousness is the true autic existence, of which motion is merely the phenomenal aspect. I confess that if I were forced to choose one of these two, (which fortunately I am not,) I should elect to throw in my lot with the materialists. For if justification by results is to be the criterion, I hold that the results the materialists have to show far outweigh any results which the analytic psychists can produce. But the fact of the matter is that in neither case do the results flow from the autic assumption. All the results are equally valid for the student who holds fast to the relativity of object-in-consciousness to consciousness-of-the-object. Since therefore the assumption is valueless so far as practical results are concerned, and since it is somewhat repugnant to sound reason to assume that either term of a given relationship is the same out of relationship as it is in relation to its fellow, I contend, as against both materialist and psychist, that it fails to make good its claim to acceptance.

What shall we say then of _auta_ or _things in themselves_? Simply that we do not know anything about them—that they are outside the pale of human knowledge. If we even say they exist we are using the word “exist” in an autic and unreal sense. It is phenomenal Nature which constitutes the real Universe; of its autic _shadow_, supposing that there be such a _shadow_, we know nothing. Need we then stay to criticise this unknown _shadow_?

Even if we take Dr. Johnstone Stoney’s hypothesis as it stands we find a marked distinction between the sense-compelling _auta_ and the egoistic _auta_, or between the sense-compelling aspect of _auta_ and the egoistic or perceptive aspect. How is this distinction to be explained and accounted for? I can see no answer to this question save that the distinction is a matter of experience. Why not, then, trust experience fully? Why go beyond it at all? Why not say that both the sense-compelling aspect and the perceptive aspect are part of the relation which is given in experience? If Dr. Stoney could only see his way to this concession and could be led to adopt scientific monism, which is based on relativity, he would still secure all that is valuable in his hypothesis, and at the same time get rid of the difficulties which as it stands encumber it. But it would no longer be a doctrine of _auta_.

For scientific monism is not a doctrine of _auta_ but a doctrine of phenomena—phenomena regarded not only in their physical but also in their psychological aspect. Unifying these two diverse aspects, it contends that the conscious organism is one and indivisible; that it is a product of evolution; that in its physical or material aspect this evolution has given rise to the body and brain; that in its psychical or immaterial aspect it has given rise to the mind and human consciousness; that these two aspects, though distinguishable in analytic thought, are inseparable in phenomenal existence; that just as the complex modes of energy of the human brain have been evolved from the simpler modes of energy that are found throughout organic and inorganic nature, so too the complex modes of consciousness of the human mind have been evolved from the simpler modes of infra-consciousness[19] that are associated with merely organic and inorganic modes of energy. The last clause is admittedly hypothetical. But it is submitted that the hypothesis is one that is founded on strictly scientific and in no sense metaphysical or autic analysis.

C. LLOYD MORGAN.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] See _Mental Evolution_ in _The Monist_, Vol. II, No. 2 (Jan. 1892), p. 161.

EVOLUTIONARY LOVE.

AT FIRST BLUSH. COUNTER-GOSPELS.

Philosophy, when just escaping from its golden pupa-skin, mythology, proclaimed the great evolutionary agency of the universe to be Love. Or, since this pirate-lingo, English, is poor in such-like words, let us say Eros, the exuberance-love. Afterwards, Empedocles set up passionate-love and hate as the two coördinate powers of the universe. In some passages, kindness is the word. But certainly, in any sense in which it has an opposite, to be senior partner of that opposite, is the highest position that love can attain. Nevertheless, the ontological gospeller, in whose days those views were familiar topics, made the One Supreme Being, by whom all things have been made out of nothing, to be cherishing-love. What, then, can he say to hate? Never mind, at this time, what the scribe of the apocalypse, if he were John, stung at length by persecution into a rage unable to distinguish suggestions of evil from visions of heaven, and so become the Slanderer of God to men, may have dreamed. The question is rather what the sane John thought, or ought to have thought, in order to carry out his idea consistently. His statement that God is love seems aimed at that saying of Ecclesiastes that we cannot tell whether God bears us love or hatred. “Nay,” says John, “we can tell, and very simply! We know and have trusted the love which God hath in us. God is love.” There is no logic in this, unless it means, that God loves all men. In the preceding paragraph, he had said, “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.” We are to understand, then, that as darkness is merely the defect of light, so hatred and evil are mere imperfect stages of ἀγάπη and ἀγαθόν, love and loveliness. This concords with that utterance reported in John’s Gospel: “God sent not the Son into the world to judge the world; but that the world should through him be saved. He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already.... And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and that men loved darkness rather than the light.” That is to say, God visits no punishment on them; they punish themselves, by their natural affinity for the defective. Thus, the love that God is, is not a love of which hatred is the contrary; otherwise Satan would be a coördinate power; but it is a love which embraces hatred as an imperfect stage of it, an Anteros—yea, even needs hatred and hatefulness as its object. For self-love is no love; so if God’s self is love, that which he loves must be defect of love; just as a luminary can light up only that which otherwise would be dark. Henry James, the Swedenborgian, says: “It is no doubt very tolerable finite or creaturely love to love one’s own in another, to love another for his conformity to one’s self: but nothing can be in more flagrant contrast with the creative Love, all whose tenderness _ex vi termini_ must be reserved only for what intrinsically is most bitterly hostile and negative to itself.” This is from “Substance and Shadow: an Essay on the Physics of Creation.” It is a pity he had not filled his pages with things like this, as he was able easily to do, instead of scolding at his reader and at people generally, until the physics of creation was well-nigh forgot. I must deduct, however, from what I just wrote: obviously no genius could make his every sentence as sublime as one which discloses for the problem of evil its everlasting solution.

The movement of love is circular, at one and the same impulse projecting creations into independency and drawing them into harmony. This seems complicated when stated so; but it is fully summed up in the simple formula we call the Golden Rule. This does not, of course, say, Do everything possible to gratify the egoistic impulses of others, but it says, Sacrifice your own perfection to the perfectionment of your neighbor. Nor must it for a moment be confounded with the Benthamite, or Helvetian, or Beccarian motto, Act for the greatest good of the greatest number. Love is not directed to abstractions but to persons; not to persons we do not know, nor to numbers of people, but to our own dear ones, our family and neighbors. “Our neighbor,” we remember, is one whom we live near, not locally perhaps, but in life and feeling.

Everybody can see that the statement of St. John is the formula of an evolutionary philosophy, which teaches that growth comes only from love, from—I will not say self-_sacrifice_, but from the ardent impulse to fulfil another’s highest impulse. Suppose, for example, that I have an idea that interests me. It is my creation. It is my creature; for as shown in last July’s _Monist_, it is a little person. I love it; and I will sink myself in perfecting it. It is not by dealing out cold justice to the circle of my ideas that I can make them grow, but by cherishing and tending them as I would the flowers in my garden. The philosophy we draw from John’s gospel is that this is the way mind develops; and as for the cosmos, only so far as it yet is mind, and so has life, is it capable of further evolution. Love, recognising germs of loveliness in the hateful, gradually warms it into life, and makes it lovely. That is the sort of evolution which every careful student of my essay “The Law of Mind,” must see that _synechism_ calls for.

The nineteenth century is now fast sinking into the grave, and we all begin to review its doings and to think what character it is destined to bear as compared with other centuries in the minds of future historians. It will be called, I guess, the Economical Century; for political economy has more direct relations with all the branches of its activity than has any other science. Well, political economy has its formula of redemption, too. It is this: Intelligence in the service of greed ensures the justest prices, the fairest contracts, the most enlightened conduct of all the dealings between men, and leads to the _summum bonum_, food in plenty and perfect comfort. Food for whom? Why, for the greedy master of intelligence. I do not mean to say that this is one of the legitimate conclusions of political economy, the scientific character of which I fully acknowledge. But the study of doctrines, themselves true, will often temporarily encourage generalisations extremely false, as the study of physics has encouraged necessitarianism. What I say, then, is that the great attention paid to economical questions, during our century has induced an exaggeration of the beneficial effects of greed and of the unfortunate results of sentiment, until there has resulted a philosophy which comes unwittingly to this, that greed is the great agent in the elevation of the human race and in the evolution of the universe.

I open a handbook of political economy,—the most typical and middling one I have at hand,—and there find some remarks of which I will here make a brief analysis. I omit qualifications, sops thrown to Cerberus, phrases to placate Christian prejudice, trappings which serve to hide from author and reader alike the ugly nakedness of the greed-god. But I have surveyed my position. The author enumerates “three motives to human action:

The love of self;

The love of a limited class having common interests and feelings with one’s self;

The love of mankind at large.”

Remark, at the outset, what obsequious title is bestowed on greed,—“the love of self.” Love! The second motive _is_ love. In place of “a limited class” put “certain persons,” and you have a fair description. Taking “class” in the old-fashioned sense, a weak kind of love is described. In the sequel, there seems to be some haziness as to the delimitation of this motive. By the love of mankind at large, the author does not mean that deep, subconscious passion that is properly so called; but merely public-spirit, perhaps little more than a fidget about pushing ideas. The author proceeds to a comparative estimate of the worth of these motives. Greed, says he, but using, of course, another word, “is not so great an evil as is commonly supposed.... Every man can promote his own interests a great deal more effectively than he can promote any one else’s, or than any one else can promote his.” Besides, as he remarks on another page, the more miserly a man is, the more good he does. The second motive “is the most dangerous one to which society is exposed.” Love is all very pretty: “no higher or purer source of human happiness exists.” (Ahem!) But it is a “source of enduring injury,” and, in short, should be overruled by something wiser. What is this wiser motive? We shall see.

As for public spirit, it is rendered nugatory by the “difficulties in the way of its effective operation.” For example, it might suggest putting checks upon the fecundity of the poor and the vicious; and “no measure of repression would be too severe,” in the case of criminals. The hint is broad. But unfortunately, you cannot induce legislatures to take such measures, owing to the pestiferous “tender sentiments of man towards man.” It thus appears, that public-spirit, or Benthamism, is not strong enough to be the effective tutor of love, (I am skipping to another page,) which must therefore be handed over to “the motives which animate men in the pursuit of wealth,” in which alone we can confide, and which “are in the highest degree beneficent.”[20] Yes, in the “highest degree” without exception are they beneficent to the being upon whom all their blessings are poured out, namely, the Self, whose “sole object,” says the writer in accumulating wealth is his individual “sustenance and enjoyment.” Plainly, the author holds the notion that some other motive might be in a higher degree beneficent even for the man’s self to be a paradox wanting in good sense. He seeks to gloze and modify his doctrine; but he lets the perspicacious reader see what his animating principle is; and when, holding the opinions I have repeated, he at the same time acknowledges that society could not exist upon a basis of intelligent greed alone, he simply pigeonholes himself as one of the eclectics of inharmonious opinions. He wants his mammon flavored with a _soupçon_ of god.

The economists accuse those to whom the enunciation of their atrocious villainies communicates a thrill of horror of being _sentimentalists_. It may be so: I willingly confess to having some tincture of sentimentalism in me, God be thanked! Ever since the French Revolution brought this leaning of thought into ill-repute,—and not altogether undeservedly, I must admit, true, beautiful, and good as that great movement was,—it has been the tradition to picture sentimentalists as persons incapable of logical thought and unwilling to look facts in the eyes. This tradition may be classed with the French tradition that an Englishman says _godam_ at every second sentence, the English tradition that an American talks about “Britishers,” and the American tradition that a Frenchman carries forms of etiquette to an inconvenient extreme, in short with all those traditions which survive simply because the men who use their eyes and ears are few and far between. Doubtless some excuse there was for all those opinions in days gone by; and sentimentalism, when it was the fashionable amusement to spend one’s evenings in a flood of tears over a woeful performance on a candle-litten stage, sometimes made itself a little ridiculous. But what after all is sentimentalism? It is an _ism_, a doctrine, namely, the doctrine that great respect should be paid to the natural judgments of the sensible heart. This is what sentimentalism precisely is; and I entreat the reader to consider whether to contemn is not of all blasphemies the most degrading. Yet the nineteenth century has steadily contemned it, because it brought about the Reign of Terror. That it did so is true. Still, the whole question is one of _how much_. The reign of terror was very bad; but now the Gradgrind banner has been this century long flaunting in the face of heaven, with an insolence to provoke the very skies to scowl and rumble. Soon a flash and quick peal will shake economists quite out of their complacency, too late. The twentieth century, in its latter half, shall surely see the deluge-tempest burst upon the social order,—to clear upon a world as deep in ruin as that greed-philosophy has long plunged it into guilt. No post-thermidorian high jinks then!