第80章

Once more there is the question -- if feeling is not a factor how is itsexistence to be accounted for? To any one who holds in full the Cartesiandoctrine that animals are automata, and that a howl no more implies feelingthan does the bark of a toy dog, I have nothing to say. But whoever doesnot hold this, is obliged to hold that as we ascribed anger and affectionto our fellow-men, though we literally know no such feelings save in ourselves,so must we ascribe them to animals under like conditions, if so, however-- if feelings are not factors and the appropriate actions might be automaticallyperformed without them -- then, on the supernatural hypothesis it must beassumed that feelings were given to animals for no purpose, and on the naturalhypothesis it must be assumed that they have arisen to do nothing. §71c. But whether feeling is only a concomitant of certain nervousactions, or whether it is, as concluded above, a factor in such actions,the connexion between the two is inscrutable. If we suppose that in whichconsciousness inheres to be an immaterial something, not implicated in thesenervous actions but nevertheless affected by them in such way as to producefeeling, then we are obliged to conceive of certain material changes -- molecularmotions -- as producing changes in something in which there is nothing tobe moved; and this we cannot conceive. If, on the other hand, we regard thissomething capable of consciousness, as so related to certain nervous changesthat the feelings arising in it jot them in producing muscular motions, thenwe meet the same difficulty under its converse aspect. We have to think ofan immaterial something -- a something which is not molecular motion -- whichis capable of affecting molecular motions: we have to endow it with the powerto work effects which, so far as our knowledge goes, can be worked only bymaterial forces. So that this alternative, too, is in the last resort inconceivable.

The only supposition having consistency is that that in which consciousnessinheres is the all-pervading ether. This we know can be affected by moleculesof matter in motion and conversely can affect the motions of molecules; aswitness the action of light on the retina. In pursuance of this suppositionwe may assume that the ether which pervades not only all space but all matter,is, under special conditions in certain parts of the nervous system, capableof being affected by the nervous changes in such way as to result in feeling,and is reciprocally capable under these conditions of affecting the nervouschanges. But if we accept this explanation we must assume that the potentialityof feeling is universal, and that the evolution of feeling in the ether takesplace only under the extremely complex conditions occurring in certain nervouscentres. This, however, is but a semblance of an explanation, since we knownot what the ether is, and since, by the confession of those most capableof judging, no hypothesis that has been framed accounts for all its powers.

Such an explanation may be said to do no more than symbolize the phenomenaby symbols of unknown natures.

Thus though the facts oblige us to say that physical and psychical actionsare correlated, and in a certain indirect way quantitatively correlated,so as to suggest transformation, yet how the material affects the mentaland how the mental affects the material, are mysteries which it is impossibleto fathom. But they are not profounder mysteries than the transformationsof the physical forces into one another. They are not more completely beyondour comprehension than the natures of Mind and Matter. They have simply thesame insolubility as all other ultimate questions. We can learn nothing morethan that here is one of the uniformities in the order of phenomena. §72. If the general law of transformation and equivalence holds ofthe forces we class as vital and mental, it must hold also of those whichwe class as social. Whatever takes place in a society results either fromthe undirected physical energies around, from these energies as directedby men, or from the energies of the men themselves.