Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  Then it is almost certain that the lowest animals (polyps, infusoria, several intestinal worms) have no nerves, for nerves and muscles go everywhere hand in hand; and according to Dujardin and Ecker they have no muscles at all: in place of muscular fibrine and nerve matter, only the fibroine of Mulder is found in them. This substance comports itself pretty much as the neoplasm of wounds, and is therefore at the present time generally called protoplasm. It is becoming continually clearer that the proper support of life is in every cell its protoplasm, and that the protoplasm of the cells of the grey matter of the brain, mediating the highest functions of thought, is altogether not different in type, but only in degree, from the protoplasm of the lowest organisms. This nitrogenous, albuminous substance, called protoplasm, is thus the special substance in which the organic and motor acts of will of the animal mind operate in conformity with its ends; in it alone can we therefore look for that constitution of organic matter, which is adapted and able to allow material effects to directly influence the mind.

  Add to that the relatively high psychical manifestations of these animals; for the fresh-water polyp distinguishes, even at the distance of a few lines, a living infusorium, a vegetable, a dead and an inorganic object. Of all these he only draws to himself the first mentioned by a whirlpool created by his arms, whilst he does not trouble about the others; or if he by chance grasps one of them, he immediately lets it go again. The polyp must thus, indeed, have different perceptions of these different things, and these can only be given as sensations above the threshold, i.e., as conscious sensations. Further, it moves out of the shadow towards the part of the vessel illuminated by the sun, and often two polyps struggle over their prey. The latter is only possible if the polyp possesses the consciousness that the other will deprive him of his booty. If, then, a nerveless animal displays such high manifestations of consciousness, we should not be surprised to find manifestations of consciousness at the next lower grade of the infusoria, and its many lower plants at the same level. This, however, one would hardly venture to maintain, that with the penultimate animal grade sensation and consciousness ceases; for why precisely at the penultimate, which yet exhibits so rich a content of consciousness that indefinitely many poorer stages can be imagined before complete disappearance, to which nothing in the world would correspond except just those infusoria and simple plants? In fact, however, a more exact observation of the lowest animal genera of all renders evident quite distinct perceptions, as follows from the appropriate use of the given (perceived) circumstances for the vital purposes of the animal. I need only mention the manifestly voluntary movements of Arcella vulgaris by means of appropriately developed air-bubbles (in vol. i. pp. 93–95).

  What makes the protoplasm of nerves so well adapted both for mediating the execution of acts of will and for the production of sensations is the semi-fluid consistency of the whole mass, which furthers the displacement and rotation of the molecules and the polar nature of the individual molecule, which has a high degree of chemical organisation of matter for its condition. The former is equally well shown by the protoplasm of lower animals and plants. In every cell there is to be made out at least a fluid content and a solid wall, commonly also a nucleus; both the nucleus, or at any rate its environment, as well as the boundary of wall and content, frequently, however, the whole content of the cell, exhibit this semi-fluid consistency of high chemical organisation, from which physical and chemical elements one may conclude with probability to a polar constitution of the molecules, if also in a less degree than in nerves, and of the central ganglion cells, which likewise consist of nucleus, wall, and content, especially if one takes note of the phenomena of contraction of all animal and vegetable protoplasm after electrical stimulation. These conditions, however, recur in all properly living parts of higher plants, probably even in heightened forms, since the chemical organisation of matter manifestly increases in higher organisms, but in no case sinks. But quite specially vegetable protoplasm, which, as we have seen, brings to pass the quick reflex movements of the higher plants, shows apparently a perfect identity with the protoplasm of the Protista and lowest animals, as is proved by the same behaviour with respect to the most different stimuli and narcotics. This protoplasm has, however, also in higher animals a very wide distribution; and if attention was at first turned to its vital action by those examples, where its movements achieve results which become visible and startling even to the naked eye, at the present moment vegetable physiology already studies with zeal the movements of protoplasm going on within the cells on the irritation of light, heat, and other stimuli, which manifestly stand in the closest relation to the life and propagation of the cells.1 There is thus quite certainly no ground for the assertion that the sensation and the consciousness of higher plants stand below that of the lowest plants and animals; on the contrary, we may presume that, although the total and partial mobility of plants of higher forms decreases in conformity with their vital conditions, the sensations, at least in certain privileged parts, rank above that of the lower plants.

  The lower we descend in the animal scale, the more does the importance of the sensations related to digestion and the genital region increase in comparison with those arising from outer stimuli. In plants where the surface is more and more secluded from the insignificant external stimuli, this augmentation will go still further. For the plant, the outer world, except light and the chemical constitution of the atmosphere, is continually losing all interest, and we only owe to special cases the knowledge that also higher plants take notice of certain events which obtain for them importance, e.g., the plants which capture insects, of stimuli which affect the leaves, the climbers of supports, &c.

  After the foregoing it will no longer surprise us if we attribute to plants a sensation (and of course conscious sensation) of the stimuli on which they, whether reflectorially or instinctively, react; if we assert that the Oscillatoria as well as the polyp feels light if it wanders towards the illuminated part of its vessel, and that just in the same way the vine-leaf feels the light, to which it endeavours by all means to turn its right side, and every flower feels the light, to which it on expanding turns its tiny head. We maintain that the leaf of the Dionœa and of the Mimosa pudica feels the struggling of the insect before it reacts on this sensation by folding up; for it lies indeed in the notion of reflex action, as a psychical reaction, that a psychical perception must precede the same. This is, however, conscious sensation. We further maintain that the plant has a sensation of the physical events of the organisation which answer to animal digestion and of sexual life; that the latter especially takes place in parts where the higher vitality of vegetable existence is concentrated, where the plastic activity during flowering time effects no longer compounding, but decompounding chemical processes (as the inhaling of oxygen and exhaling of carbonic acid of the flowers proves); whence it follows that here the formative forces have withdrawn from material construction into a certain animal-like internalisation, and become disposable for more receptive processes. That the content of this consciousness must always be still very poor, much poorer, e.g., than that of the wretch-edest worm, hardly admits of doubt; for whence should wealth and definiteness come, such as is afforded the animals through the lowest sense-organs?

  We have thus, in fact, found consciousness in the plant. But now how far can a UNITY of consciousness exist in the plant?—We have seen that the unity of the consciousness of two ideas or sensations depends on the possibility of comparison, and this on the presence of a sufficient communication between the two places producing sensation. The question then is this: Does such a communication exist in the plant? Already in the animal the converse between different nerve-centres, although mediated by nerve-cords, was exceedingly deficient and the unity of consciousness in fact only extant for very energetic excitements. The velocity of propagation of the nerve-current in man, according to Helmholtz amounts to about a hundred feet in a second; that in the Mimosa pudica, as before mentioned, only to a fe
w millimeters. One can draw from these velocities a tolerable conclusion as to the resistances to conduction, and accordingly to the disturbances and changes of the propagated results. It is possible that the spiral vessels serve such purposes of communication, but it is not proven. At all events, with regard to the unity of consciousness of two neighbouring anthers, the connection must be infinitely weaker than with that of brain and ganglia in man. A sufficiently faithful and strong conduction will always only be able to exist between the parts lying quite near to one another. I would not affirm that one is at liberty to speak of the indivisible consciousness of a flower,—hardly perhaps of that of a stamen. The plant does not, however, need such a unity of consciousness as the animal; it needs to institute no comparisons, and does not need to reflect on its actions. It needs only surrender itself to the single sensations, and let the same serve as motives for the incursions of the Unconscious. Then have these fulfilled their purpose; and this is accomplished just as well by sensations with separate consciousness as by those with one indivisible consciousness.

  1 As in lower animals (e.g., Amœbæ), so also in the protoplasm of living vegetable cells, there are to be distinguished a state of activity and another of perfect rest, which may alternate with one another even several times. Although both states uniformly belong to life, yet only in the former does there appear to be present a distinct sensibility, whereas there is in the latter a lowering of irritability, which resembles the anæsthesia of protoplasm brought about by narcotic vapours, and perhaps forms an analogue of animal sleep, or still better of hibernation. As certain infusoria, after a period of active vitality, enter upon a period of incrustation, so also do many vegetable cells that at maturity surround themselves with a thicker cell-wall, which cell-wall may even remain after their death (e.g., ligneous cells). The acme of sensibility in every vegetable cell one must therefore only seek in a particular, sometimes perhaps very short, epoch of their life, which forms the culminating point of their vital activity, and accordingly for the most part falls into their youthful period.

  V.

  MATTER AS WILL AND IDEA.

  PHYSICAL science is concerned with three inter-connected objects: laws, forces, and matter. This division is entirely deserving of approval, for it summarily embraces different groups of phenomena under single points of view and facilitates expression. The question now is, whether these three are really of different nature; or whether, strictly speaking, they are only one, which, looked at merely from different points of view, appears in three different modes? Of the laws this may well be allowed without discussion, for it is obvious that they are not existences hovering in the air, but mere abstractions of forces and substances. Only because this force and this matter are so and so, only on that account do they act in a particular manner; and as often as we meet with such a force, we must find it acting in just such a way. This constancy of the so-acting, however, it is which we call Law. This relation is also pretty generally acknowledged, and we hear, in fact, materialists always speak of force and matter as their principia, as something which of course includes laws. We have in C. Chap. ii. defended Materialism, so far as it maintains organised matter to be the conditio sine qua non of conscious mental activity; we have in the preceding inquiries established an unconscious psychical principle as superior to matter, and thereby already shown the one-sidedness of that Materialism which knows no other than material principles. We have now arrived at the point where we must occupy ourselves with that, which this one-sided Materialism sets up as exclusive principles of all existence, i.e., as philosophical first principles, force and matter.1

  I should consider it useless to enter here into a dialectical discussion of these conceptions; one would thereby neither be sure of actually treating of precisely the same notion as Materialism, nor would a materialist ever be induced to change his opinion by such a method. I hold the deepening of the natural scientific investigation of matter to be the only suitable course. It is true the future may yet bring inestimable light in this direction which we have not hitherto suspected, yet I believe that the outlines of the only possible mode of apprehending Matter are not only rendered so certain by the most recent results of physics and chemistry that no time will ever shake them, but that they offer also perfectly satisfactory resting-places for penetrating into the last depths of this mystery. If this has not been the case hitherto, or at least not yet on the part of physical science, the reason simply is that physical science has at bottom always only so far an interest in hypotheses as the latter either afford it guidance to new experiments, or as they are indispensable for the application of the calculus: in what goes beyond that it sees no practical value, and therefore is indifferent to it. We shall thus have first to recapitulate what physical science knows of the constitution of matter, and the forces inhering therein, and then see whether these results are capable of being fathomed in a simple and unforced way.

  If we imagine a chemically homogeneous body, e.g., chalk, continuously divided, we arrive at parts of a certain size which cannot be further divided if they are to remain chalk; if we succeed in splitting them up, we get as separate portions one part carbonic acid and one part lime. These smallest parts of a body are called molecules.1 These act in different directions with different force, because they have in general the crystalline ground-form of the particular chemical substance, or such an one from which this can be easily formed. The molecules of different substances are thus distinguished by different forms, also, moreover, by different weight (molecular weight); on the other hand, in their grouping into bodies in the gaseous state they fill equal spaces with equal temperature. If two bodies of different kinds come together, the forces of the molecules differently active in different directions, mutually disturb one another at the borders of both bodies in their conditions of equilibrium, which disturbances are presented as electrical excitement, or are propagated as galvanic vibrations; if the disturbance is sufficiently strong, a permanent rearrangement and chemical union of the different molecules into more compound molecules takes place. The various chemical compounds are distinguished by the number and position of the combining molecules. Those molecules which we have not as yet succeeded in decomposing we call chemically simple, although we know with tolerable certainty of several that they are compound (e.g., iodine, bromine, chlorine are possibly combinations of oxygen, as the change of their spectra at very high temperatures appears to indicate; the metals perhaps are all combinations of hydrogen), so that possibly the number of chemical elements may be very much simplified. Moreover, modern chemistry distinguishes the elementary molecules according to their behaviour in chemical combinations into univalent and multivalent molecules, and conceives the latter as compounds of several equivalent parts, each of which is chemically equivalent to a univalent molecule. It calls these parts atoms, and their relative weights atomic weights. But already this difference of weight proves that even these chemical atoms can just as little be the ultimate elements of matter as the chemical molecules in their manifold morphological fundamental forms. The simple numerical relations of the atomic weights permit us to conclude that all these parts of matter are in the last resort only different dispositions of a varied number of homogeneous primitive elements or primitive atoms, as only in this way does the agreement of the atomic weights with the specific heat and that of the molecular weight with the specific weight of gases appear intelligible. These homogeneous primitive atoms, which I shall immediately call without ceremony atomic bodies, must act in all directions with equal force, and can thus, if they are to be conceived as material, only be imagined spherical.

  Besides these body-atoms there are ether-atoms, which are distributed both in every body between the corporeal molecules and also between the heavenly bodies, and which are perceived by their property of radiating heat. (A certain part of the thermal scale is, owing to the structure of our eyes, only perceived by us as light.) The ethereal atoms it is which, as environing envelopes of the corporeal molecules, p
roduce electrical phenomena, and by revolution of the corporeal molecules (Ampère’s molecular current) magnetic phenomena; further, it is these which, in the mutual rebound of the molecule of a gas, cause the elastic repulsion; in short, they are a hypothesis which is nowhere to be dispensed with when manifestations of energy are to be explained, in which, besides attraction according to the Newtonian law of gravitation, repellent forces also play a part.

  Bodies and corporeal atoms attract one another, and that too in the inverse square of their distance; i.e., the force of a corporeal atom, in all directions of space taken together, remains equal at all distances.

  Ether and ethereal atoms repel one another, and that too in the inverse ratio of a higher than the second power of the distance, the third at least; i.e., the force of an ethereal atom, in all directions of space taken together, increases at least inversely as the distance.1 All body-atoms would converge to a point if the environing ether-atoms did not form, as it were, envelopes round every material molecule, preventing actual contact. Two ether-atoms can never collide, because their repulsion at infinitely small distances becomes infinitely great. Two body-atoms, however, could never separate again, supposing they once touched, because then their attraction would be infinitely great. Therefore the corporeal molecules must also be kept asunder within the chemical combinations by ether-atoms, because they can again be separated by ethereal vibrations (heat, electricity).