Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  5. The Unconscious does not err.—The proof of this proposition must be confined to establishing that that which, on a superficial view, might be taken for errors of the Unconscious, on nearer inspection could not be so regarded. Thus, e.g., the supposed errors of instinct may be reduced to the four following cases:—

  (a.) Where no special instinct exists, but merely an organisation, which, owing to the exceptional strength of certain muscles, preferentially contracts these muscles. Thus, e.g., the aimless butting of young cattle as yet destitute of horns, or when the secretary-bird (serpent-eater) crushes all its food with its strong legs before devouring it, although this has only a purpose in the case of living snakes. In these cases the organisation is there to render superfluous, and to supply the place of, a special instinct which would be suitable in certain cases; the organisation, however, urges to the same movements that are appropriate in certain cases, in other cases, also, where they are superfluous and useless. But as the Unconscious does the work once for all through the machinery of the organisation which it otherwise would have to do in each single case, one would still have to recognise this arrangement itself as suitable on account of the saving of energy to the Unconscious, if in certain cases this organisation acted not only superfluously but even inappropriately and injuriously, and if only the number of the cases where it is suitable considerably preponderates. But of this no single example is known to me.

  (b.) Where instinct is killed by unnatural habits, a case which frequently occurs in man and the domestic animals, e.g., when the latter devour on the pastures poisonous weeds and plants which they avoid in a state of nature, or when man artificially accustoms many animals to a food contrary to their nature.

  (c.) Where instinct, for accidental reasons, is not functional; thus the inspiration of the Unconscious is entirely wanting, or occurs in so feeble a degree that other opposing impulses overcome it, e.g., when an animal does not shun its natural enemy, and thereby falls a sacrifice to one whom other animals of its kind are wont instinctively to flee, or when maternal affection is so slight in a pig that the desire for food leads it to devour its offspring.

  (d.) Where instinct, indeed, performs its functions correctly on the occurrence of a conscious idea, but this conscious idea contains an error. If, e.g., a hen broods on a piece of chalk rounded like an egg that has been placed under it, or the spider carefully nourishes a bundle of cotton substituted for its ovisac, in both cases it is the conscious idea that errs in consequence of defective sense-perception, which takes the chalk for an egg, the ball of cotton for an ovisac. Instinct, however, does not err, for it quite rightly makes its appearance on the presentation. It would be unreasonable to require that the clairvoyance of instinct should be here manifested to correct the error of conscious representation; for the clairvoyance of instinct always is only concerned with just those points which conscious perception is in general not able to attain, but not with those for which the mechanism of sense-knowledge suffices in all ordinary cases. But even if this claim were set up, one could never say that the Unconscious erred, but only that it did not come into play with its clairvoyance when it should have come into play.

  To these four cases everything might easily be referred which one might be tempted to regard as apparent errors of instinct. What in the human mind might be taken for false and bad inspirations of the Unconscious might be still more easily refuted. When one hears of mistaken clairvoyance, one may be as sure one is dealing with intentional or unintentional deception, as in dreams which do not prove true, that they are not suggestions of the Unconscious. In the same way, one may take it for granted beforehand that all the morbid and worthless excrescences of mysticism or in artistic conceptions do not spring from the Unconscious, but from consciousness, namely, from morbid excesses of the fancy, or from perverted education and formation of principles, judgment, and taste. Lastly, one must distinguish how far, and to what degree, the influence of the Unconscious has reached in any particular case. For I may, e.g., brood over some invention, and have already made a start in a particular direction; when, now, I am cracking my brain over a certain point which seems to me to be alone wanting to complete the whole, I shall certainly have to thank the Unconscious if this suddenly occurs to me. But now the invention need by no means be herewith finished in a serviceable fashion, for I may possibly have erred in my belief that only this one point was wanting to complete the whole, or the whole may be completed but be worth nothing at all; and yet one cannot assert that the suggestion of the Unconscious was mistaken or bad, for it was decidedly good and right as regards the point which I was in search of, only the point sought was not the right one. If another time a suggestion of the Unconscious instantly shows the invention complete in all its outlines, this latter inspiration has only gone further; but correct and apt for the purpose, so far as they go, they are both, as are all influences of the Unconscious.

  6. Consciousness only acquires its value by means of memory, i.e., through the property of the cerebral vibrations to leave behind abiding impressions or molecular changes of such a kind, that in future the same vibrations are more easily excited than heretofore, in that the brain now responds more easily, as it were, to the same stimulus. This makes possible the comparison of present perceptions with former ones, without which all formation of conceptions would be almost impossible; in general terms, it renders possible the collection of experiences. Conscious thought increases in perfection according to the abundance of the materials of memory, the store of conceptions and judgments, and the exercise of thought. To the Unconscious, on the other hand, we can ascribe no memory, since we can comprehend the latter only with the help of the impressions persisting in the brain; and memory may, in whole or in part, be temporarily or for ever lost by injuries of the brain. The Unconscious also thinks everything which it needs for a special case implicitly in an instant; it therefore needs to institute no comparisons; just as little does it need experiences, since, in virtue of its clairvoyance, it knows or can know everything as soon only as the will requires it with sufficient urgency. The Unconscious is therefore always perfect, so far as it can be in conformity with its nature, and a further perfection in this direction is unthinkable. If advance is to be made beyond that, it must take place through a change of the direction itself, i.e., through the transition from the Unconscious into consciousness.

  7. In the Unconscious, Will and Representation are united in inseparable unity; nothing can be willed which is not presented, and nothing can be presented which is not willed. In consciousness, on the contrary, undoubtedly also nothing can be willed which is not presented, but something may be presented without its being willed. Consciousness is the possibility of the emancipation of the intellect from the will.—The impossibility of a volition without presentation has been already discussed in Sect. A., chap. iv.; here we are concerned with the impossibility of an unconscious idea without the conscious will to its realisation, i.e., without this unconscious idea being at the same time content or object of an unconscious will. This relation is clearest in instinct and the unconscious presentations which have reference to bodily processes. Here every single unconscious idea is accompanied by an unconscious will, which stands to the general will of self-preservation and preservation of the species in the relation of willing the means to the willing of the end. For that all instincts, with few exceptions, follow the two main purposes in nature—preservation of self and of the race—can hardly be doubted, whether we look to the origin of reflex movements, the healing actions of nature, organic formative processes and animal instincts, or to the instincts concerned with the understanding of sensuous perception, the formation of abstractions and indispensable ideas of relation, the formation of language, or to the instincts of shame, disgust, selection in sexual love, &c. It would be a bad look-out for men and animals if even only one of these were wanting to them, e.g., language or the formation of ideas of relation, both alike important for animals and man. All instincts that do not appe
rtain to the preservation of self or the species have reference to the third chief end in the world—perfection and ennoblement of the species—a something that especially makes its appearance in the human race. Under the general willing of this end falls the willing of all special cases as means, where the Unconscious furthers historical progress, be it in thoughts (mystical acquisition of truths) or deeds, whether in the individual (as in heroes of history), or in masses of the people (as in the constituting of states, migrations of nations, crusades, revolutions of a political, ecclesiastical, or social kind, &c.) There still remains the action of the Unconscious in the sphere of the beautiful and in that of conscious thought. In both cases we have already been obliged to confess that the incursion of the Unconscious is, indeed, independent of the conscious will of the moment, but rather altogether dependent on the interior interest in the object, on the deep needs of the mind and heart for attaining this particular goal; that it is, it is true, tolerably independent of the circumstance whether one is consciously occupied just at the moment with the subject, but that it very much depends on a lasting and urgent occupation with the same. If, now, the profound spiritual interest and need of the heart is already itself a will essentially unconscious, only in slight degree entering into consciousness, or at least, like the earnest occupation with a subject, is highly adapted to arouse and to excite the unconscious will; if, further, the suggestion ensues the more easily, the more profound is the interest, and the more it has withdrawn from the clear heights of consciousness into the dark abysses of the heart, i.e., into the Unconscious, we shall certainly be authorised in assuming in these cases likewise an unconscious will. In the mere apprehension of the beautiful, however, we shall certainly be obliged to acknowledge an instinct which belongs to the third main purpose, the perfection of the race, for one has only to think what the human race would be, what, in the most fortunate case, it could attain to at the end of history, and how much more wretched this wretched human life would become, if nobody knew the feeling of the beautiful.

  There only remains yet one more point, which perhaps will present no difficulty to most readers; I mean clair voyance in dreams which come true, visions, spontaneous and artificial somnambulism. But whoever accepts these phenomena will be soon convinced that the unconscious will is always co-operative. When clairvoyance refers to the prescribing of remedies to one’s self, this is at once evident, and a clairvoyant prescription of remedies for other persons I should be strongly inclined to doubt, unless they were intimates, whose welfare was almost as much a matter of concern to the clairvoyants as their own. Prophetic dreams, forebodings, visions, or flashes of thought, which have other objects, refer either to important points of one’s own future, warning against danger, consolation for sorrow (Goethe’s vision of his double), and the like, or they make disclosures concerning beloved persons, wife and child, announce, e.g., the death of the absent, or imminent misfortune; or, lastly, they relate to events of awful magnitude and extent, which touch every human heart, e.g., the conflagration of large cities (Swedenborg), especially of one’s native town, &c. In all these cases one sees how closely the suggestion of the Unconscious is bound up with the inmost volitional interest of mankind; in all these cases one is also, therefore, entitled to assume an unconscious will, which stands for the universal interest made specific for this particular case yet unknown to consciousness. Never will the clairvoyance of a human being light of itself on things which are not most intimately interwoven with the core of his own being; but as for the answers of artificial somnambulists to indifferent questions, I may be permitted to doubt their derivation from the Unconscious, as much as I feel bound to contemn those magnetisers as vain braggarts or deceitful charlatans, who do not scruple to put other questions to somnambules than such as have reference to personal well-being. Although the somnambulistic state is more receptive for the suggestions of the Unconscious than any other, yet only a very small part of what occurs to a somnambulist is the suggestion of the Unconscious, and experienced magnetisers know well enough how much one has to take care lest the fancies and dissimulation peculiar to women deceive even in the somnambulist state, without the somnambulist herself having the conscious intention to deceive.

  We may assume, as result of this inquiry, that we know no unconscious idea which may not be united with unconscious will, and that, too, when we consider that the unconscious idea is something quite other than that which appears in consciousness as conception or inspiration of the Unconscious; the former and the latter are rather related as essence and phenomenon, but at the same time also as cause and effect. We shall thus find it very instructive that the unconscious will directly united with the unconscious presentation, which represents the application of the general interest to the particular case, consists in nothing else than in the willing of the realisation of its unconscious representation, if by realisation we understand manifestation in the natural world, and, moreover, immediately in consciousness as representation in the form of sensibility by excitation of the appropriate cerebral vibrations. This is, however, the true unity of will and idea, that the will wills absolutely nothing but the realisation of its own content, i.e., the representation united with it. On the other hand, if we consider consciousness and the grand apparatus brought into play for its production, and remember from the last chapter of the foregoing section what we shall more exactly prove in chapter xiii. of the present section, that all progress in the scale of beings and in history consists in the expansion of the sphere where consciousness prevails, but that this extension of rule can only be conquered by liberation of consciousness from the sway of passion and interest, in a word—the will—and by sole subjection to conscious reason, the conclusion is obvious that the progressive emancipation of the intellect from the will is the proper motive and main purpose of the creation of consciousness. This would be, however, absurd if the Unconscious as such already contained the possibility of this emancipation, for the whole vast apparatus for introducing consciousness would then, with this intention, be superfluous. From this, and from the phenomenon that we are nowhere acquainted with an unconscious idea without unconscious will, I conclude that will and idea can only exist in inseparable unity in the Unconscious; for it would be, to say the least, very wonderful if unconscious representation separately existed and we nowhere observed it.—To this may be added the following confirmatory consideration.—

  Thought or ideation, as such, is perfectly self-contained, has no volition at all, no endeavour, or anything like it; it has also, as such, no pain or pleasure; is therefore also quite unconcerned. All this does not attach to ideation, but to volition. Consequently, ideation can never find in itself a moment impelling to change; it will comport itself absolutely indifferently, not only with respect to its being thus or thus, but also with respect to its being or not-being, since all this is quite indifferent to it, because it is in fact altogether unconcerned. It follows from this that ideation, since it has neither an interest in its own existence, nor any endeavour after the same, can also find in itself no ground at all for passing from non-being into being, or, if one prefers, from potential being into actual being, i.e., that it requires for the existence of every actual representation a basis outside ideation itself. This basis is, for conscious ideation, matter in the form of sense-impressions or cerebral vibrations; for unconscious ideation it cannot be this, otherwise it too would attain to consciousness, as will be shown in the third chapter; consequently for this material substratum there only remains the unconscious will. This perfectly accords with our experience, for everywhere it is the interest, the definite will, which, directed to the particular case, compels the idea into being. The particular will, however, besides the power of volition, shows also a definite (ideational) content, and this content it is which determines the quality or essence of the unconscious idea of the next moment, which it, however, could not determine if its existence were not demanded by the willing of the foregoing moment, and made possible by the persis
tence of the form of volition even up to this moment.—I will here once more add the remark, that since the act immediately follows the will, there can be no spiritual activity in the Unconscious save at the moment of the commencing act. Even when the will is too weak for the realisation of its content and for overcoming the present resistance, this holds good; for either the deed consists in the abortive attempt, or the Unconscious immediately thinks the appropriate preparatory1 means instead of the end. But, possibly repeated impulses on the part of the Unconscious may be requisite, namely, when the mechanical progress of the act stumbles upon obstacles which must be overpowered by modified action.