CHAPTER VIII

The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes--Refined first by

Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into the doctrine of Harmonia

praestabilita--Hylozoism--Materialism--None of these systems, or any

possible theory of association, supplies or supersedes a theory of

perception, or explains the formation of the associable.

To the best of my knowledge Des Cartes was the first philosopher who

introduced the absolute and essential heterogenity of the soul as

intelligence, and the body as matter. The assumption, and the form of

speaking have remained, though the denial of all other properties

to matter but that of extension, on which denial the whole system of

Dualism is grounded, has been long exploded. For since impenetrability

is intelligible only as a mode of resistance; its admission places the

essence of matter in an act or power, which it possesses in common

with spirit; and body and spirit are therefore no longer absolutely

heterogeneous, but may without any absurdity be supposed to be different

modes, or degrees in perfection, of a common substratum. To this

possibility, however, it was not the fashion to advert. The soul was a

thinking substance, and body a space-filling substance. Yet the apparent

action of each on the other pressed heavy on the philosopher on the one

hand; and no less heavily on the other hand pressed the evident truth,

that the law of causality holds only between homogeneous things, that

is, things having some common property; and cannot extend from one world

into another, its contrary. A close analysis evinced it to be no less

absurd than the question whether a man’s affection for his wife lay

North-east, or South-west of the love he bore towards his child.

Leibnitz’s doctrine of a pre-established harmony; which he certainly

borrowed from Spinoza, who had himself taken the hint from Des Cartes’s

animal machines, was in its common interpretation too strange to survive

the inventor--too repugnant to our common sense; which is not indeed

entitled to a judicial voice in the courts of scientific philosophy;

but whose whispers still exert a strong secret influence. Even Wolf,

the admirer and illustrious systematizer of the Leibnitzian doctrine,

contents himself with defending the possibility of the idea, but does

not adopt it as a part of the edifice.

The hypothesis of Hylozoism, on the other side, is the death of all

rational physiology, and indeed of all physical science; for that

requires a limitation of terms, and cannot consist with the arbitrary

power of multiplying attributes by occult qualities. Besides, it answers

no purpose; unless, indeed, a difficulty can be solved by multiplying

it, or we can acquire a clearer notion of our soul by being told that we

have a million of souls, and that every atom of our bodies has a soul

of its own. Far more prudent is it to admit the difficulty once for all,

and then let it lie at rest. There is a sediment indeed at the bottom

of the vessel, but all the water above it is clear and transparent. The

Hylozoist only shakes it up, and renders the whole turbid.

But it is not either the nature of man, or the duty of the philosopher

to despair concerning any important problem until, as in the squaring of

the circle, the impossibility of a solution has been demonstrated. How

the esse assumed as originally distinct from the scire, can ever unite

itself with it; how being can transform itself into a knowing, becomes

conceivable on one only condition; namely, if it can be shown that the

vis representativa, or the Sentient, is itself a species of being;

that is, either as a property or attribute, or as an hypostasis or self

subsistence. The former--that thinking is a property of matter under

particular conditions,--is, indeed, the assumption of materialism; a

system which could not but be patronized by the philosopher, if only it

actually performed what it promises. But how any affection from without

can metamorphose itself into perception or will, the materialist has

hitherto left, not only as incomprehensible as he found it, but has

aggravated it into a comprehensible absurdity. For, grant that an object

from without could act upon the conscious self, as on a consubstantial

object; yet such an affection could only engender something homogeneous

with itself. Motion could only propagate motion. Matter has no Inward.

We remove one surface, but to meet with another. We can but divide

a particle into particles; and each atom comprehends in itself the

properties of the material universe. Let any reflecting mind make

the experiment of explaining to itself the evidence of our sensuous

intuitions, from the hypothesis that in any given perception there is

a something which has been communicated to it by an impact, or

an impression ab extra. In the first place, by the impact on the

percipient, or ens representans, not the object itself, but only its

action or effect, will pass into the same. Not the iron tongue, but

its vibrations, pass into the metal of the bell. Now in our immediate

perception, it is not the mere power or act of the object, but the

object itself, which is immediately present. We might indeed attempt to

explain this result by a chain of deductions and conclusions; but that,

first, the very faculty of deducing and concluding would equally

demand an explanation; and secondly, that there exists in fact no such

intermediation by logical notions, such as those of cause and effect. It

is the object itself, not the product of a syllogism, which is present

to our consciousness. Or would we explain this supervention of the

object to the sensation, by a productive faculty set in motion by

an impulse; still the transition, into the percipient, of the object

itself, from which the impulse proceeded, assumes a power that can

permeate and wholly possess the soul,

And like a God by spiritual art,

Be all in all, and all in every part.

And how came the percipient here? And what is become of the

wonder-promising Matter, that was to perform all these marvels by force

of mere figure, weight and motion? The most consistent proceeding of

the dogmatic materialist is to fall back into the common rank of

soul-and-bodyists; to affect the mysterious, and declare the whole

process a revelation given, and not to be understood, which it would be

profane to examine too closely. Datur non intelligitur. But a

revelation unconfirmed by miracles, and a faith not commanded by the

conscience, a philosopher may venture to pass by, without suspecting

himself of any irreligious tendency.

Thus, as materialism has been generally taught, it is utterly

unintelligible, and owes all its proselytes to the propensity so common

among men, to mistake distinct images for clear conceptions; and vice

versa, to reject as inconceivable whatever from its own nature is

unimaginable. But as soon as it becomes intelligible, it ceases to be

materialism. In order to explain thinking, as a material phaenomenon, it

is necessary to refine matter into a mere modification of intelligence,

with the two-fold function of appearing and perceiving. Even so did

Priestley in his controversy with Price. He stripped matter of all its

material properties; substituted spiritual powers; and when we expected

to find a body, behold! we had nothing but its ghost--the apparition of

a defunct substance!

I shall not dilate further on this subject; because it will, (if God

grant health and permission), be treated of at large and systematically

in a work, which I have many years been preparing, on the Productive

Logos human and divine; with, and as the introduction to, a full

commentary on the Gospel of St. John. To make myself intelligible as

far as my present subject requires, it will be sufficient briefly to

observe.--1. That all association demands and presupposes the existence

of the thoughts and images to be associated.--2. That the hypothesis of

an external world exactly correspondent to those images or modifications

of our own being, which alone, according to this system, we actually

behold, is as thorough idealism as Berkeley’s, inasmuch as it equally,

perhaps in a more perfect degree, removes all reality and immediateness

of perception, and places us in a dream-world of phantoms and spectres,

the inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation of motions in our own

brains.--3. That this hypothesis neither involves the explanation, nor

precludes the necessity, of a mechanism and co-adequate forces in the

percipient, which at the more than magic touch of the impulse from

without is to create anew for itself the correspondent object. The

formation of a copy is not solved by the mere pre-existence of an

original; the copyist of Raffael’s Transfiguration must repeat more or

less perfectly the process of Raffael. It would be easy to explain a

thought from the image on the retina, and that from the geometry of

light, if this very light did not present the very same difficulty.

We might as rationally chant the Brahim creed of the tortoise that

supported the bear, that supported the elephant, that supported the

world, to the tune of “This is the house that Jack built.” The sic

Deo placitum est we all admit as the sufficient cause, and the divine

goodness as the sufficient reason; but an answer to the Whence and Why

is no answer to the How, which alone is the physiologist’s concern.

It is a sophisma pigrum, and (as Bacon hath said) the arrogance of

pusillanimity, which lifts up the idol of a mortal’s fancy and commands

us to fall down and worship it, as a work of divine wisdom, an ancile or

palladium fallen from heaven. By the very same argument the supporters

of the Ptolemaic system might have rebuffed the Newtonian, and pointing

to the sky with self-complacent grin [26] have appealed to common sense,

whether the sun did not move and the earth stand still.