Part 14 (1/2)
The Ego.
It was customary in earlier psychology, as it still is in all apologetic psychology, to regard the soul as a unified, immaterial, indivisible and therefore indestructible _substance_, as a monad, which, as a unity without parts, superior to its own capacities and the changes of its states, is at all times one and the same subject. Many attempts have been made since the time of Plotinus to acc.u.mulate proofs of this substantial unity. We may leave this question untouched here, and need not even inquire whether these definitions are not themselves things of the external world employed as images and a.n.a.logies and pushed too far. But there are three factors which may be established in regard to the psychical in spite of all naturalistic opposition; and those who have attempted to find proofs for the traditional idea we have noted, have usually really had these three in mind, and quite rightly so: they are, self-consciousness, the unity of consciousness, and the consciousness of the ego.
Self-Consciousness.
1. Our consciousness is not merely a knowledge of many individual things, the possession of concrete and abstract, particular or general conceptions and ideas, the cheris.h.i.+ng of sensations, feelings and the like. We not only know, but we know that we know, and we can ponder in thought over the very fact that we are able thus to reflect in thought. Thought can turn its attention upon itself, can establish that it takes place, and how it runs its course, can reflect upon the forms in which it expresses itself, its powers, its laws, possibilities, and limits, and can ponder over the general nature of thought and the contingent individual nature of the particular thinking subject. (The very possibility and preliminary condition of moral freedom is implied in this.) How naturalism is to do justice to this fact it is not easy to see. Even if it were possible that the mental content was gained through mere experience, that comparisons, syntheses, and abstractions were formed simply according to the laws of a.s.sociation, and that these were sublimed and refined to general ideas, and could grow into axioms of logic and of geometry, or crystallise into necessary and axiomatic principles-none of which can happen-yet it would always be a knowledge of something. But how this something could be given to itself remains undiscoverable. The soul is a _tabula rasa_ and a mere mirror, says this theory. But it would still require to show how the silver layer behind the mirror began to see itself in the mirror.
The Unity of Consciousness.
2. The same holds true of the unity of consciousness, of which we are directly convinced. It is quite inexplicable if consciousness is a function of the extended and divisible physical substratum which is built up of nerve-cells and nerve-fibres. And yet this unity is the fundamental condition of our whole inner life.
Even the facts of a.s.sociation demonstrate it. Two images could not come together, the one could not call up the other, if they were not possessed in the same consciousness, and could unite in it. It is the preliminary condition of every higher mode of thought, of every relating of things, of every comparison and abstraction. No judgment can be formed, no conclusion drawn without this. How could a predicate become a.s.sociated with its subject, or a princ.i.p.al clause with its subordinate clause, if they were in separate consciousnesses, and how could the conclusion be drawn from them?
Consciousness of the Ego.
3. This unified self-consciousness is consciousness of the ego. It is only by means of an artificial abstraction that we can leave out of account in the consideration of processes of thought the peculiar factor of personal relations.h.i.+p that absolutely attaches to every thought within us. There are no thoughts in general that play their part of themselves alone. ”It”
never ”thinks” in me. On the contrary, all sensation, thought, and will has in every human being a peculiar central relations.h.i.+p to which we refer when we say ”my idea,” ”my sensation.” What the ”I” is cannot be defined.
It is that through which the relation of all experiences and actions is referred to a point, and through which the treasuring of them for good or ill, the appreciation, the valuation of them is accomplished. And it plays its part even in the case of cold and indifferent items of knowledge. For instance, that twice two are four is not simply a perception, it is _my_ perception. Of the ego itself nothing more can be said than that it is the thought of me as the subject of all experience, willing, and action, and if we try to take hold of it nothing more than this formula remains. Yet the fact that the ego is the subject of all this, gives conduct, will, and experience that peculiar character which distinguishes them from mere action and reaction. For it is directly certain that all the psychical contents are not only co-existences in one consciousness but that they are possessed by it.
Thus in summing up we have to say, that it is through the ego that all psychical activities and experiences are centred and related, that the ego is itself the point of relation, that it is the reason of the unity of consciousness and of the possibility of self-consciousness, and that in all this it is the most certain reality, without which the simplest psychical life would be impossible. At the same time, it is difficult to state what the ”ego” is in itself, apart from the effects in which it reveals itself.
CHAPTER XI. FREEDOM OF SPIRIT.
The consciousness of the ego leads us naturally to the consciousness of freedom. Freedom of the mind is no simple idea; it embraces various contents which bear the relation of stages to one another, and each higher stage presupposes the one below it. Freedom is, first of all, the word which expresses that we are really agents, not mere points of transit for phenomena foreign to ourselves, but starting-points of phenomena peculiar to us, actual causes, beings who are able to initiate activity, to control things and set them in motion. Here the whole question of freedom becomes simply the question of the reality and causality of the will. Is the will something really factual, or is it only the strange illusion to which Spinoza, for instance, referred in his ill.u.s.tration of the flying stone?
It would be purely an illusion of that kind if materialism were the true interpretation of things, and the psychical were nothing more than an accompaniment of other ”true” realities, and even if the doctrine of psychical atoms we have already mentioned were correct.
This idea of freedom speedily rises to a higher plane. Freedom is always freedom from something, in this case from a compulsion coming from outside, and from things and circ.u.mstances foreign to us. In maintaining freedom of the mind it is a.s.serted that it can preserve its own nature and laws in face of external compulsion or laws, and in face of the merely psychological compulsion of the ”lower courses of thought,” even from the ”half-natural” laws of the a.s.sociation of ideas. Thus ”freedom” is pre-eminently freedom of thought. And in speaking thus we are presupposing that the mind has a nature of its own, distinguished even from the purely psychological nature, and has a code of laws of its own, lying beyond the scope of all natural laws, which psychical motives and physical conditions may prevent it following, but which they can never suspend or pull down to their own level.
”Der Mensch ist frei, und war' er in Ketten geboren.”
Here at last we arrive at what is so often exclusively, but erroneously, included under the name of freedom, or ”freedom of the will,” that is practical freedom, the freedom to recognise moral laws and ideals, and to form moral judgments against all psychological compulsion, and to will to allow ourselves to be determined by these. From this question of moral freedom we might finally pa.s.s to that with which it is usual over-hastily to begin: the problem of so-called freedom of choice, of the ”equilibrium”
of the will, a problem in which are centred all the purely theoretical interests of the doctrine of the will in general, and ethical interests in particular. The whole domain is so enormous that we cannot even attempt to sketch it here. The general bearing of the whole can be made clearest at the second stage, but we cannot entirely pa.s.s over the first.
In this inquiry into the problem of the will it is not necessary to discuss whether we are able by it to bring about external effects, movements, and changes in our bodies. We may postpone this question once more. The most important part of the problem lies in the domain of the psychical. To move an arm or a leg is a relatively unimportant function of the will as compared with the deliberate adoption of a rule of conduct, with inward self-discipline, self-culture, and the development of character.
That we ”will,” and what it is to will, cannot really be demonstrated at all, or defended against attacks. It simply _is_ so. It is a fundamental psychical fact which can only be proved by being experienced. If there were anywhere a will-less being, I could not prove to him that there is such a thing as will, because I could never make clear to him what will is. And the theories opposed to freedom of the will cannot be refuted in any way except by simply saying that they are false. They do not describe what really takes place in us. We do not find within ourselves either the cloud-shadows or the play of psychical, minima already referred to, with their crowding up of images, bringing some into prominence and displacing them again while we remain pa.s.sive-we find ourselves _willing_. These theories should at least be able to explain whence came this marvellous hallucination, this appearance of will in us, which must have its cause, and they should also be able to say whence came the idea of the will.
Spinoza's example of the stone, which seemed to itself to fly when it was simply thrown, does not meet the facts of the case. If the thrown stone had self-consciousness, it would certainly not say, ”I am flying,” but would merely wonder, ”What has happened to me suddenly?”