Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  Every human being accordingly brings the main part of his character with him into the world; how large in proportion to this is the part which he acquires in addition, depends on the uncommonness and abnornal nature of the circumstances in which he moves. In most cases the habits of one man’s life do not suffice to produce far-reaching changes in the inherited character. Usually the acquired part of character is confined to fresh unimportant qualities, or the strengthening of existing ones, or the weakening of others by disuse. The latter takes place relatively in least degree, for as in all learning the most difficult is the forgetting of what has been learnt, so of all changes of character the most difficult is the suppression and weakening of existing qualities. It is this in particular that caused Schopenhauer to maintain the unalterableness of character.1

  Whoever is disposed to doubt the fact of inheritance of acquired qualities of character, I refer to examples of the transmission of distinctly acquired qualities. Nobody will doubt that the tendencies to disease hereditary in families must, if one retraces the pedigree, be found in an ancestor who did not inherit but acquired them. That amputated arms and legs and such-like mutilations are commonly not inherited proves nothing against our assertion, for they are too rough and palpable infractions of the typical idea of the species for us to expect their realisation in the child, and yet even here there are remarkable exceptions. According to Häckel, a bull whose tail had accidentally been wrenched off engendered nothing but tailless calves, and by continuous cropping of the tail for several generations a tailless breed of oxen has been obtained. Guinea-pigs, who had been made epileptic by artificial injuries of the spinal cord, transmitted this disease to their descendants. In general acquired qualities are more easily transmitted; the less they derange the type of the species, the more minute are the organic changes in which they consist. The latter is, however, in high degree the case with all cerebral dispositions to certain nervous vibrations. It is a well-known experience that the young of tame animals become tamer than the captured young of savage animals; that of domestic animals, again, those young promise to be most tame, most tractable, most teachable, &c., that spring from the tamest, most tractable, most teachable parents. Any taming of an animal in a particular direction affords so much the more prospect of success the further the taming of the parents has gone in the same direction. Young untamed hunting-dogs from superior parents act in the chase, almost of their own accord, tolerably correctly, whilst with dogs derived from parents who have never been employed for hunting training for the chase is a fearful work. Sons of generations of horsemen attain a good seat and balance at the very first trial. All these are examples of acquired qualities which are nevertheless inherited. They belong entirely to the subject of our inquiry, individual character in the wider sense, i.e., to the sum of bodily and mental marks which distinguish an individual of a higher order (apart, too, from his spatial distinction through the occupation of place and the possession of a material body) from all other individuals.

  If, in contemplating human individual character, we have hitherto kept in view the narrower sense of character, this happened only because the controversy specially turns upon the latter, not as if the difference in mental tendencies, faculties, and talents were not just as essential in the establishment of individual distinctions. But whoever has followed with approval our explanation of character in the narrower sense will at once see that the latter distinction can far less be conceived as arising in some other way, and a repetition of the explanation would be quite superfluous. How little character in the narrower sense is separable from mental endowment follows from this: that, on the one hand, the possession of an intellectual disposition or capacity is always accompanied by the impulse to use it; and, on the other hand, that character in the narrower sense always includes mental endowment, since it is the source of the modes of reaction of the will on different descriptions of motives, and every mode of reaction becomes a special one only because the volition following on a given motive possesses a special ideal content diverging from that of other individuals. If, then, the character is innate (i.e., inherited), so also is the special matter of thought innate, the willing of which on a given motive makes up the special character of the innate mode of reaction. A mental representation can, however, only be innate as(inherited) slumbering idea of memory, i.e., as molecular cerebral disposition to certain kinds of vibration (comp. vol. i. pp. 33–34). In this way, e.g., the behaviour of the untrained young hunting-dog (its attention to game, the pricking up of its ears, its tendency to fetch and carry thrown objects), is to be explained by a memory inherited from its ancestors, in such a way, however, that the ideas (of memory) arising on suitable occasion from inherited cerebral dispositions do not become conscious as memories, but only make their appearance as the content of the acts of will called forth by those occasions (motives). (Here appears a special confirmation of Plato’s explanation of learning and reminiscence from a former life, except that the validity of this explanation is a very limited one, and the earlier life did not belong to the same individual.) In man, too, a large part of the external manners and peculiarities of deportment of movement and of behaviour is composed of inherited cerebral dispositions of ancestors affected with the same peculiarities. That certain mental talents are hereditary for several generations in a family is proved by numerous examples (painters, mathematicians, astronomers, actors, generals, &c.) All such inherited predispositions contribute their quota, however, to the constitution of the total individuality of the man in his uniqueness.

  I only add, that, whilst the character in the narrower sense is always again equalised by cross-breeding, and in the main remains at about the same level in the human race—although the contrasts within the same become ever more abundantly worked out and more sharply drawn—that the mental endowments and faculties in the human race are liable to a progressive enhancement. This is owing to the circumstance that the various characters, provided they are not eccentric, get through life about equally well; but the man endowed with higher mental capacities has always the advantage in the struggle for existence. Still more than in individuals does the truth of this contrast appear in nations; the character of the latter has for their struggle for existence but very small importance in proportion to their mental fitness and education. Now the open, upright, and brave, now the cunning, treacherous, and cowardly, now the slow and enduring, now the ready and quickly recovering, now the morally strict, now the corrupt, but always for the length of time the intellectually higher nation comes off conqueror in the struggle for existence, which accordingly in this sphere also acts on the individual differences, confirming and enhancing them, whether these have first arisen fortuitously or unconsciously in generation, or through the outward circumstances of life or personal conscious industry (comp. Chap. x. pp. 10–13).

  If, on the other hand, we throw our glance backward beyond the commencement of human history on the history of development of organic life, of which humanity only forms the ripest fruit, there appears an advance of character and intelligence preserving a perfectly equal pace. We must ascend tolerably high in the animal kingdom before we find manifestations of an intelligence which are more than the immediate content of an act of will that takes its direction from the present motive. Hence the innate modes of reaction or inherited slumbering ideas of memory have in those lower mental spheres a relatively far higher importance (vol. i. pp. 88–89). But as the Unconscious creates for itself in these cerebral or ganglionic dispositions mechanisms for the easier performance of certain voluntary reactions (e.g., the tendency of bees to construct hexagonal cells), so very well may something similar take place also with abstract human ideas, which frequently recur, and are of special importance for the organisation of thought (e.g., mathematical notions, logical categories, forms of language, &c.) Should we have recourse for describing such latent dispositions of brain to the term “innate ideas,” this would be just as improper a designation as the other, “slumbering ideas o
f memory” (comp. i. 301 note), since the idea or presentation is something added to the material function through the ideal reaction of the Unconscious, and is not dispensed with, but only facilitated by, the predisposition. It is also never to be forgotten that even if the hitherto quite unproved supposition of cerebral dispositions answering to the concepts in question is correct, yet the unconscious psychical function must always be the prius of the first formation of a mode of vibration, from which the corresponding disposition originally arose, and that further, in the case of other formal elements of thought, special reasons oppose the above supposition (comp. i. 343–344). But at all events, one may regard this much as settled, that the enhancing of conscious intellect in the history of development of organisation and of humanity depends not only on an increase of the intensive and extensive capacity and faculty of combination, but also on an enhancement of the inherited cerebral dispositions for all practically useful intellectual directions of activity. We must not be puzzled by the circumstance that in man (and even in the anthropoid apes) the embryonic evolution of the brain goes on for a tolerably long time after birth (comp, also i. 352–353).

  The same results, which we preferred to obtain here by another path, we might of course have also got if we had directly built upon the results of the last two chapters, and had kept in view the different causes of the individual variations from the origin of the cell. The agreement of the goal to which both roads lead may serve for corroboration. The difference which would still have to be adjusted is the following:—

  In lower organisms, where the variations are found essentially in the bodily structure and the organic functions, we sought the origin of the individual variations more especially in that period of life which opposes the least resistance to modifications; in Man, however, where the variations of the mental qualities are far more interesting than those of the bodily, we must of course seek the origin of these variations in that period of life when the mental functions are already active, thus after birth, and indeed some little time after that; but yet not in the later periods of life, when the development is, as it were, indurated, but in the receptive age of childhood and youth.

  Essentially, however, the source of individual differences is the same in the whole domain of organisation: external circumstances condition a varying structure of the organism, and the varying structure of the organism conditions a variation of the activity of the All-One Unconscious directed to it. These differences are added to that already conditioned by the diversity of the material substratum, and together form that total of differences which secures to every individual his peculiar oneness.

  1 For the fuller discussion of this theory, as well as on the relation of will and motive, I may refer to my essay on Julius Bahnsen’s writings (“Beiträge zur Charakterologie,” and “Zum Verhältniss zwischen Wille und Motiv”) in the Philos, Monatshefte, Bd. iv. Hft. 5.

  XII.

  THE SUPREME WISDOM OF THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE PERFECTION OF THE WORLD.

  AT all times, and among all peoples, the wisdom of the Creator, World-orderer, or World-governor has been the theme of admiration and of praise. None of all the peoples who in the course of history have attained even a moderate degree of civilisation, whatever may have been their other opinions in religion and philosophy, has been so barbarous as not to have attained this perception, and to have given it more or less rapturous expression. Although this expression must, in part, be laid to the account of a flattery of the gods with self-interested objects, yet at all events the greater part of it remains the announcement of a genuine conviction. This conviction thrusts itself already on the mind of the child as soon as it begins to comprehend the remarkable combination of means and ends in Nature. He only who denies natural ends can close his mind against this conviction; such a view can, however, only be evolved from systematically ordered philosophical abstractions, since it runs counter to the first natural apprehension of the phenomena of Nature. Before men form abstractions, they are most strongly moved by the power of the concrete case, and the deeper heads of a childlike nation may be lost in astonishment and reverence at the perception of a striking natural purpose even in a single case. Thus it is related of an ancient Brahmin that he was so affected with astonishment at the sight of an insect-capturing plant, that, forgetful of meat and drink, he remained seated before it till the end of his life.—Then when man arrives at inductions from the concrete instances, it is such propositions as “Nature does nothing in vain,” “Nature does everything for the best,” “Nature employs for its ends the simplest means and ways,” in which he already early acknowledges the wisdom ruling in Nature. This conviction finds its strongest rational expression in the period of Leibniz and Wolf. Although Leibniz, in his denial of evil in the world, overshot the mark, although a great part of the extravagant laudations of the iterators of the “best world” was only hollow bombastic declamation, which merely injured their case in the eyes of posterity, yet a core of truth still remains.

  If we consider the matter in connection with our former conclusions, it will take somewhat the following shape:—According to C. Chap. i., the Unconscious can never err, nay, not even doubt or hesitate, but when the entrance of an unconscious idea is wanted, it follows instantaneously, implicity enclosing the process of reflection occupying time in consciousness in the one moment of its occurrence, and undoubtedly correctly, since all the data that can in any way be taken account of stand at the command of the Unconscious in virtue of its absolute clairvoyance, and indeed always and momentarily stand at command, not as the data in conscious reflection that have first to be dragged out by severe meditation from memory one after the other, and still oftener are entirely wanting. All future ends, the nearest as the most distant, and all considerations of the possibility of intervention in this or that wise, act together in this manner at the moment of origin of the required idea, and thus it happens that every interposition of the Unconscious occurs precisely at the most suitable moment, when the whole purpose-frame of the world requires it, and that the unconscious idea which determines the manner of the interposition is the most suitable of all possible ones for this whole machinery of ends. Such an interposition of the Unconscious in a manner adapted to the peculiarity of the case according to our investigations takes place at every moment in the department of organic life; both the preservation consisting in a replacement of the used-up material by nutrition and in a ceaseless struggle against invading disturbances, as well as the plastic energy manifesting itself partly in a re-creation of accidentally destroyed parts, partly in an enhancement of the individual form of life, and also the plastic energy becoming reproduction through the settingup of fresh individuals; they all three are only conceivable as a ceaseless ever-renewed interposition of the Unconscious at every single point of the organism at once; each of these interpositions being modified according to the particular circumstances to which it refers, and each uniformly keeping in view the important ends which they all subserve in common.

  Every natural cause shows itself accordingly as means for the great ends of Providence; every natural cause in the organic realm presents itself as including a direct participation of the Unconscious. But these continual interpositions of Providence are themselves natural, i.e., not arbitrary, but according to law, namely, determined with logical necessity by the main design fixed once for all, and the circumstances of the moment in which the interposition takes places.

  When the Christian theory emphatically declares that God’s action is not merely a guidance on the large scale, but that his immeasurable greatness is most remarkably displayed in this, that it is everywhere active in the smallest detail, this view is only confirmed by our researches in regard to organic life.

  The fitness of the activity of the Unconscious is not however herewith exhausted, but as the cleverness of a person is much more to be commended, who relieves himself of an ever-recurring work by the construction of an ingenious machine, than that of one who himself performs the sam
e in each single case with the utmost skill, so must we also far more admire the wisdom of the Unconscious, when it saves itself a part of its interposition by mechanical arrangements contrived for the purpose or even by a clever use of external circumstances (e.g., of the struggle for existence, or of the existing atomic forces), than when it solves its problems by continuous direct interposition in the most excellent fashion. Examples of this we have already found in such numbers in the course of our inquiries that I consider a special reference, to say nothing of enumeration, to be scarcely necessary here. The most comprehensive and important of all these mechanisms, however, is the system of the physico-chemical laws of Nature.