mmmmmammm a ' v/* 5^ THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. Philosophical Inquiry is essentially the chief intellectual study of our age. It is proposed to produce, under the title of " The English and Foreign Philosophical Library," a series of works of the highest class connected with that study. The English contributions to the series consist of original works, and of occasional new editions of such productions as have already attained a permanent rank among the philosophical writings of the day. Beyond the productions of English writers, there are many recent publications in German and French which are not readily accessible to English readers, unless they are competent German and French scholars. Of these foreign writings, the translations have been entrusted to gentlemen whose names will be a guaran- tee for their critical fidelity. " The English and Foreign Philosophical Library" claims to be free from all bias, and thus fairly to represent all develop- ments of Philosophy, from Spinoza to Hartmann, from Leibnitz to Lotze. Each original work is produced under the inspection of its author, from his manuscript, without intermediate sugges- tions or alterations. As corollaries, works showing the results of Positive Science, occasionally, though seldom, find a place in the series. The series is elegantly printed in octavo, and the price regu- lated by the extent of each volume. The volumes will follow in succession, at no fixed periods, but as early as is consistent with the necessary care in their production. THE FOLLOWING HAVE ALREADY APPEARED: Vols. I. III.] In Three Volumes, post Svo, pp. 350, 406, and 384, with Index, cloth, 1, us. 6d. A HISTORY OF MATERIALISM. By Professor F. A. LANGE. Authorised Translation from the German by Ernk.st C. Thomas. "This is a work which has lon^ and impatiently been expected by a largo circle of readers. It has been well praised by two eminent scientists, and their words have created for it, as regards its appearance in our English longuc, a sort of ante-natal reputation. The reputation is in many respects well deserved The hook is marked throughout by singular ability, abounds in striking and suggestive reflections, suhtle and profound discussions, felicitous and graphic descriptions of mental and social move- ments, both in themselves and in their mutual relations." Scotsman. THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. " Although it is only a few years since Lange's book was originally published, it already ranks as a classic in the philosophical literature of Germany. ... So far as he has proceeded, Mr. Thomas has done his work with great spirit and intelligence." Pall Mall Gazette. " We see no reason for not endorsing the translator's judgment, that it is raised far above the level of ordinary controversial writing by its thoroughness, comprehensiveness, and impartiality." Contemporary Review. Vol. IV.] Post 8vo, pp. xii. 362, cloth, 10s. 6d. NATURAL LAW : An Essay in Ethics. By EDITH SIMCOX. Second Edition. "Miss Simcox deserves cordial recognition for the excellent work she has done in vindication of naturalism, and especially for the high nobility of her ethical purpose." Alheiut vi. " A book which for the rest is a mine of suggestion." Academy. " This thoughtful and able work is in many respects the most important contribution yet made to the ethics of the evolution theory." Mind. Voi,s. V, VI.] In Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. 268 and 288, cloth, 153. THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM: ITS FOUNDATIONS CONTRASTED WITH ITS SUPERSTRUCTURE. By W. R. GREG. Eighth Edition, with a New Introduction. "No candid reader of the 'Creed of Christendom' can close the book without the secret acknowledgment that it is a model of honest investigation and clear exposition, conceived in the true spirit of serious and faithful research." Westminster Review. "This work remains a monument of his industry, his high literary power, his clear intellect, and his resolute desire to arrive at the truth. In its present shape, with its new introduction, it will be still more widely read, and more warmly welcomed by those who believe that in a contest between Truth and Error, Truth never can be worsted." Scotsman. Vol. VII.] Second Edition. Post 8vo, pp. xix. 249, cloth, 7s. 6d. OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGION TO THE SPREAD OF THE UNIVERSAL RELIGIONS. By C. P. TIELE, Dr. Theol., Professor of the History of Religions in the University of Leiden. Translated from the Dutch by J. Estlin Carpenter, M.A. " Few books of its size contain the result of so much wide thinking, able and laborious study, or enable the reader to gain a better bird's-eye view of the latest results of inves- tigations into the religious history of nations. . . . These pages, full of information, these sentences, cut and perhaps also dry, short and clear, condense the fruits of long .tii' 1 thorough research." Scotsman. Vol. VIII.] Post 8vo, pp. 276, cloth, 7s. 6d. RELIGION IN CHINA: Containing a Brief Account of the Three Religions of the Chinese, with Observations on the Prospects of Christian Conversion amongst that People. By JOSEPH EDKINS. D.D., Peking. " We confidently recommend a careful perusal of the present work to all interests in this great subject." London and. China Express. " Dr. Edkins has been most careful in noting the varied and often complex phases of opinion, so as to give an account of considerable value of the subject." Scotsman. THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. Vol. IX.] Post 8vo, pp. xviii. 198, cloth, 73. 6d. A CANDID EXAMINATION OF THEISM. By PHYSICUS. " An essay of marked ability that does not belie its title." Mind. " On the whole a candid, acute, and honest attempt to work out a problem which is of vast and perpetual interest." Scotsman. " It is impossible to go through this work without forming a very high opinion of his speculative and argumentative power, and a sincere respect for his temperance of state- ment and his diligent endeavour to make out the best ca.se he can for the views he rejects." Academy. " This is a telling contribution to the question of questions. The author has pushed a step further than any one before him the bearing of modern science on the doctrine ot Theism." Examiner. Vol. X.] Post 8vo, pp. xii. 282, cloth, 10s. 6d. THE COLOUR SENSE : Its Origin and Development. AN ESSAY IN COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. By GRANT ALLEN, B.A., Author of "Physiological Esthetics." " The book is attractive throughout, for its object is pursued with an earnestness and singleness of purpose which never fail to maintain the interest of the reader." Saturday Jtecieic. "A work of genuine research and bold originality." Westminster Ileviac. "All these subjects are treated in a very thorough manner, with a wealth of illustra- tion, a clearness of style, and a cogency of reasoning, which make up a most attractive volume." Nature. Vol. XL] Post Svo, pp. xx. 316, cloth, ios. 6d. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC. BEING TIIE SUBSTANCE OE A COURSE OF LECTURES Delivered at the Royal Institution ok Great Britain, in February and March 1S77. By WILLIAM POLE, Mus. Doc. Oxon. 1\ How ol the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh ; one of the Examiners in Music to the University of London. "Wo may recommend it as an extremely useful compendium of modern research into these entitle basis of music. There is no want ol completeness." I'all Moll tinzittc. "The book must lie interesting to all musical students, and to candidates for t e musical degrees at I.oiid n University (where the author is an examiner) it will be indispensable." Tonic-Snl-ja Krimrtu: " The ' Philosophy ol Music' will he read with eagerness by .1 large rlass of readers who might turn over with a certain impatience tnc laboriously reasoned pi-es of lUluiholU." J/ c .ut whatever Heine wrote that captivates the reader and wins his sympathies before criticism steps in. liul I ei e can be none who would fail to admit the power as well as the beauty ef the wide-ranging pictures of the intellectual development of the country of deep thinkers, licn.ath his rraee the writer holds a mighty grip of fact, stripped of all disguise and made patent over all confusing surroundings." Ilookm lb r. "No better selection could have been made from the prose writings of an author who, though until lately known in ties country only, or at least elderly, as a song writer, produced as much German prose as tills nearly a scoieof volumes." Ar. I . !>,<:. lki Mr. James Simc has been reserved the honour of presenting to the English public a full-length portrait of Lessing, in which no portion of the canvas is uncovered, and in which there is haidly a touch but tells. We can say that a clearer or more compact piece of biographic criticism has not been produced in England for many a day. ' Westminster Review. " An account of Lessing's life and work on the scale which he deserves is now for the first time offerod to English readers. Mr. Sime has performed his task with industry, knowledge, and sympathy ; qualities which must concur to make a successful biogra- pher." Pall Mall Gazette. " Tins is an admirable book. It lacks no quality that a biography ought to have. Its met In. d is excellent, its theme is profoundly interesting : its tone is the happiest mixture of sympathy and discrimination : its style is clear, masculine, free from effort or affecta- tion, yet eloquent by its very sincerity." Standard. "He has given a life of Lessing clear, interesting, and full, while he has given a study of his writings which bears distinct marks of an intimate acquaintance with his subject, and of a solid and appreciative judgment." Scotsman. Vol.. III.] Vol. I., post Svo, pp. 264, cloth, 7s. 6d. AN ACCOUNT OF THE POLYNESIAN RACE : ITS ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS, AND THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HAWAIIAN PEOPLE TO THE TIMES OF KAMEHAMKIIA I. By ABRAHAM FORNANDER, Circuit Judge of tho Island of Maul. H.I. "Mr. Fomander has evidently enjoyed excellent opportunities for promoting tho study which lias produced this work. Unlike most foreign residents in Polynesia, he has acquired a good knowledge of the language spoken by the people among wnotn lie dwelt. Tiiis has enabled him, dining his thirty-four years' residence in the Hawaiian I -land*, to collect material whicn could be obtained only by a person possessing such in advantage. It i* so seldom that a private settler in the Polynesian Islamist ikes an intelligent interest in local ethnology and archaeology, and makes use of the advantage he ]K.sse-ses, that ue feel especially thankful to Mr." V <\ nan u r for his labours in tins comparatively little- kin. wn tield of research." Aca.t, THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. Vols. IV., V.] In Two Volumes, post 8vo, pp. viii. 408 ; viii. 402, clotii, 21s. ORIENTAL RELIGIONS, AND THEIR RELATION TO UNIVERSAL RELIGION. By SAMUEL JOHNSON. I. INDIA. Vol. VI.] Vol. II., post 8vo, pp. 408, cloth, 10s. 6d. AN ACCOUNT OF THE POLYNESIAN RACE : ITS ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS, AND THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HAWAIIAN PEOPLE TO THE TIMES OF KAMEHAMEHA I. By ABRAHAM FORNANDER, Circuit Judge of the Island of Maui, H.I. THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES ARE IN PREPARATION: Post 8vo, cloth. THE LIFE AND WORKS OF GIORDANO BRUNO. Three Vols., post 8vo. THE GUIDE OF THE PERPLEXED OF MAIMONIDES. Translated from the Original Text, and Annotated by M. Fkieolander, Ph.D. Vol. I. has already been published under the auspices of the Hebrew Litera- ture Society ; but it has now been determined that the complete work, in three volumes, shall be issued in the English and Foreign Philosophical Library. LONDON : TliUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. I'RINTKD BY BAI.I.ANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON. 500 24 '3/84 13. THE ENGLISH AND FOREIGN PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. VOLUME XXV VOL. T. PHILOSOPHY THE UNCONSCIOUS. EDUAED VON HAETMANN. SPECULATIVE RESULTS ACCORDING TO THE INDUCTIVE METHOD OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. authorise!} translation BY WILLIAM CIIATTERTOX COUPLAND, M.A. B.Sc. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: TltUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL 1S84. [All rijlils restrved.] BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON 3 CI UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA C ' ' E "! LIBRAWT V . CONTENTS OF VOL. I. translator's preface ...... extracts from the author's prefaces to the seventh, eighth, and ninth editions .... PACE vii INTRODUCTORY. I. GENERAL PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ... I (a) OBJECT OF THE WORK .... I (b) METHOD OF RESEARCH AND MODE OF EXPOSITION 6 (c) PREDECESSORS IN RESPECT OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS . . . 1 6 II. HOW DO WE COME TO ASSUME AN AIM IN NATURE? . 43 ( A) THE MANIFESTATION OK THE UNCONSCIOUS IX BODILY LIFE. I. THE UNCONSCIOUS WILL IN THE INDEPENDENT FUNCTIONS OF THE SPINAL CORD AND GANGLIA II. UNCONSCIOUS IDEATION IN THE EXECUTION OK VOLUN TARY MOVEMENT ..... III. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN INSTINCT IV. THE UNION OF WILL AND IDEA V. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN REFLEX ACTIONS VI. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE REPARATIVE POWKI! NATURE .... 59 I4.i vi CONTENTS. PAGE VII. THE INDIRECT INFLUENCE ON ORGANIC FUNCTIONS OF CONSCIOUS PSYCHICAL ACTIVITY . . . 1 69 ( I.) THE INFLUENCE OF THE CONSCIOUS WILL . 169 (2.) THE INFLUENCE OF CONSCIOUS IDEATION . 1 79 VIII. THE PLASTIC ENERGY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS . . 184 (B) THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE HUMAN MIND. I. INSTINCT IN THE HUMAN MIND . . . .205 II. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN SEXUAL LOVE . . . 220 III. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN FEELING .... 243 IV. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN CHARACTER AND MORALITY . 260 V. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE ^ESTHETIC JUDGMENT AND IN ARTISTIC PRODUCTION ..... 269 VI. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE . 293 VII. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THOUGHT . . . 30 1 VIII. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN THE ORIGIN OF SENSE-PERCEPTION 325 IX. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MYSTICISM .... 354 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. The author of the following work has so clearly explained its purport, both in the course of the work itself and in the prefatory remarks, that few words are required by way of introduction from a foreign pen. It is true the class of books to which the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " be- longs is all but unrepresented in our literature, but the absence of similar home-productions can no longer be held to imply either an inability to comprehend their scope or an indifference to their results. To what shall we attribute the welcome accorded of late to certain reproductions and elucidations of the master- works of modern Transcendental- ism, if not to the awakening of a long-repressed desire to re-examine the foundations of a spiritual fabric, for whose stability an instinctive confidence alone made answer ? To many two attitudes of mind have become insupport- able that of total unconcern about fundamental truth, and that of unthinking acquiescence in the admission of merely juxtaposed and uncommunicating spheres of posi- tive knowledge and impenetrable nescience. What would you have, says the scientist, but an ever-widening view of Nature's operations? is it not enough, cries the theologist, to be sure that there is a God, although "His ways are past finding out?" To questions so different in sub-lance. but so alike in their flavour of self-complacency, this book is in effect an answer. That Yon Hartmann appr ciates viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. the gains of positive inquiry no reader of a work replete with illustrations from all the sciences will for a moment doubt; but, on the other side, he is an unfaltering ontologist, and believes no less firmly that he that hath eyes to see can divine the riddle of the universe, and that there is no peace for the intellect and heart until Eeligion, Philo- sophy, and Science are not merely " reconciled," but are seen to be one, as root, stem, and leaves are organic ex- pressions of one same living tree. The English reader may wish to know something of the author himself, and the circumstances of the production of this book. More than enough has been written on this subject in Germany, but all that need be said on the matter here may be told in a very few words. Dr. Ed- uard von Hartmann is a retired military officer, compelled almost at the outset of his career to abandon his profession through a serious affection of the left knee-cap. Con- strained to alter his plan of life, the width and varied nature of his attainments (mostly independently acquired) caused him not a little embarrassment. After some waver- ing, and after casting many longing looks on the fair realms of art, in some of whose departments his talents would doubtless have commanded success, he obeyed the whispers of his most powerful genius, and yielded himself up once and for all to the calls of a career of philosophical author- ship. It will be noticed by the reader with what keen satire he speaks of the professed students and teachers of the Science of Sciences. In this he is at one with his immediate forerunner, and a far older and more potent name. But the circumstances of modern life are quite other than they were in the age of the Sophists ; and posi- tions that did not cramp the genius of a Kant, a Schelling, and a Hegel, can hardly of necessity be the fortresses of orthodox opinion the modern free-lance would have the world believe. At the same time we can well imagine that the atmosphere of a University would hardly have been favourable to that direct intercourse with the mind TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ix of the people which the literary spirit of our author craved ; and Von Hartmann, like Socrates, doubtless took good counsel of his " Daemon," when he went straight to the public, and confided in his own intellectual strength to give him a wide and attentive hearing. In the spring of 1868, when in his twenty-seventh year, Eduard Von Hartmann placed in the hands of a well-known Berlin bookseller the original draught of the work now translated, with the title " Philosophy of the Unconscious, Popular Physiological-Psychogical- Philosophical Inquiries on the Manifestation and Es- sential Nature of the Unconscious, and the Origin and Meaning of Consciousness." The publisher, with unusual penetration, saw the value of the work, and in November 1868 the book appeared in one volume, the first words of the proposed title alone being retained. Since 1868 Von Hartmann has been an untiring and voluminous writer. The full list of his publications ex- tends to about a score of volumes, some of them running to 700 or 800 pages, to say nothing of magazine articles and such like trifles. Any one who would pronounce an ade- quate judgment on the author's philosophical powers would have undoubtedly to make acquaintance with the more important of these ; and, in justice to the author, I append a few words of his own concerning the book which has made his reputation. " It is not the product of reflection and maturity, but the bold experiment of juvenile talent, presenting all the defects and qualities of the work of youth. Fifteen years have passed since the manuscript first went to press, and I should conceive many things differently to-day than I presented then." This unripe- ness has been in a measure corrected by the Appendix and supplementary notes, and the reviewer should bear these in mind when exercising his critical function. That the work is open to criticism of various kinds the present translator does not for a moment doubt; but, when criti- cism has done its worst, he believes that there will be x TRANSLA TOR'S PREFA CE. enough of worth left to justify the enthusiasm the " Philo- sophy of the Unconscious " has evoked in the land of its birth, as also to secure it a welcome from a wide circle of new and appreciating readers. London, March 1 884. AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. That I am in general no friend of prefaces, the previous six editions of this book have proved. When, however, a work meets with so kindly and indulgent a reception as the present one, it might be interpreted as a kind of affec- tation in the author if he persistently avoided that direct communication with his readers which is customary in prefaces. As I know myself to be as free from such prudery as from obtrusiveness, I will no longer abstain from appearing before the curtain in the usual fashion, and from discussing certain points of a somewhat external or even personal nature, the less, as the attacks of opponents on my character and private life have already compelled me, by a frank description of my course of life, 1 to afford my readers the requisite materials for forming a judgment of their own on the value of those attacks. I can truly say that never was author more surprised by the success of his book than I by that of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious." A moderate acquaintance with the history of the book-trade as regards philosophical literature would alone have sufficed to destroy any possible illusion of a young author's vanity ; the lamentations of Schopenhauer <>n the tardiness with which a really important work makes its way, bore emphatic testimony to the compatibility of a certain self-consciousness with incredulity concerning out- ward literary results ; public opinion at the time of the 1 Cf. "Die Gegenwart," 1875, Nr. Aufsiitze geinuinverdtiindlichi'ii In- 1 '. The article has been reprinted halts." in the "Gesammelte Studien uiul xii PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. formation of the North German Alliance appeared more- over as unfavourable as possible for the reception of a systematic philosophical work ; and lastly, I was, at the bottom of my heart, far too much of a Pessimist not to be prepared for the worst, as was only naturally to be ex- pected from the apathy of the public as regards philoso- phical things in general, and the ill-will of the professional class towards the dilettante interloper in particular. If the result proved this prognosis to be erroneous, the reason was partly that it had been founded only on an obser- vation of symptoms discernible on the mere fringe of the spiritual life ; partly that journalism busied itself with un- wonted energy with the new venture ; partly, lastly, that my publisher had taken an especial interest in my efforts, and zealously exerted himself to push the sale of the book (all risks being from the first taken on his own shoulders). The importance of the latter fact had been entirely over- looked by Schopenhauer, who had imagined that it was enough to write an important book and to print it at his his own cost, and the rest was the affair of the public. This view is, however, just as one-sided as the opposite one, that an altogether worthless book of an unknown author without any attraction for the public, even in a bad sense, could be helped to a trade success by a mere publisher's puff. Whilst all the industry of a publisher in respect of a book, that is not recommended by one reader to another, always leads only to commercial loss, it is true that what is good and important, commonly at the end of a chapter of accidents, is preserved from total oblivion, but it may have to make its way with extreme slowness. If Schopenhauer had had my good fortune to find a publisher, who would have personally interested himself for his great work, those long decennia of entire neglect would have been spared him, which contributed so much more and more to embitter his peculiarly constituted mind, and to paralyse his rich creative powers. The consequence PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. xiii would have been, that the German nation would have been imbued a generation earlier with the rich spirit of the Schopenhauerian Philosophy, and that the leisured philo- sopher would have received a powerful stimulus to apply his extraordinary talent during his long lifetime to the accomplishment of far more numerous and varied under- takings. In both respects the indirect effects, as regards the present mental horizon of the educated public in Germany, might have been simply incalculable. That Reviews of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " appeared in so unusually large a number, was doubtless owing to the circumstance that this book was discovered to afford a fit subject for discussion, not only by the pro- fessed philosophical magazines and the ordinary literary journals, but also by most of the more considerable re- views both at home and abroad, by the majority of the theological periodicals, by the most influential political newspapers of Germany and Austria, as well as, lastly, by certain educational and medical papers, and that the pub- lishing house had not omitted to send copies for review to all these categories of periodical literature. The book was acknowledged, even by its chief opponents, in spite of the utmost deprecation of its fundamental tendency and par- ticular assertions, to be yet for the most part a noteworthy phenomenon of recent philosophical authorship, and found perhaps among the reviewers of the literary and political journals so many warm friends, because among these the philosophy of Schopenhauer had prepared the ground for its comprehension. The two critics who were the first decidedly to point out the significance of tin 1 book were Councillor Dr. Pudolph Gottschall, and Dr. David Asher; those who perhaps exercised the relatively largest in- fluence on the rapid diffusion of the book. Dr. Heinrirh Landesmann (Hieronynius Lorm), and Dr. Carl Paron du Prel. All four stood substantially under the inflm nee of Schopenhauer. But, likewise, on the part of certain Hege- lians, the book earlv received warm acknowledgments, r.> me the first reading through of what I have myself written is an extremely painful task; but to be obliged to be always xvi PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. reading one's own production over and over again be- comes at last so loathsome, that one gets to wonder how a third person can find any interest in it. Accordingly I felt it as a kind of release when the publishing firm proposed, on the preparation of the fifth edition, to stereo- type the text. I felt very sensibly what important con- siderations oppose such a fixation of the work of a living author, but it still remained open to me to supplement subsequent additions, and the wish to free myself from the annual corrections, and once for all to have done with the book, was too urgent for me to be deterred by such scruples. It is a painful position, when a writer has given his interest and thought to new tasks, and is con- stantly hindered and distracted by the firstlings of his brain, who have become real powers, ever anew claiming at the hands of their father their right to further care and culture. That part of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious," which for some years had least satisfied my augmented demands, was Section A, on " The Manifestation of the Unconscious in Bodily Life." No one will wonder at this who is familiar with the progress of Physiology in general and that of Nervous Physiology in particular in the last decennium. When in the winter 1864-65 I wrote this section, the sources from which I had drawn my material were even then not of the newest date; I name in particular "Wagner's Dictionary of Physiology," and the manuals of Physiology by Johannes Miiller, Valentin, and Burdach. 1 For certain chapters {e.g., that on the Preparative Power of Nature) I was simply compelled to have recourse to older works, or to the writings of Burdach, because the more recent Physiology carefully ignored 1 That to preserve the popular my disparagement by some of my character of my hook I have studi- opponents, wherefore I now in the ously refrained from quoting the Appendix and Addenda furnish my authorities for my examples in do- vouchers, tail has been largely laid hold of to PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. xvii everything that could not be forced into the materialistic mould. Here, however, a change for the better deserves to be signalised. On the preparation of the third and fifth editions I hesi- tated considerably whether I should not subject Section A to a complete reconstruction, but, after mature reflection, came to a negative conclusion. A philosophical, far more than any other scientific work, is bound to take account in its disposition and architectonic of artistic considera- tions, which of course need only have unconsciously co- operated in its composition. And as it is a dubious affair to alter an architectural plan or a drama, so too in the architectonic of a philosophical work, one removes undeniable errors and defects, and introduces fresh in- congruities and disharmonies, of which there had been no thought. The connoisseur always sees, thereafter, that the work is not out of one mould, that he has patch- work and piece-work before him. Letter is it, in such a case, one leaves the old with its defects just as it is, and adds something altogether new. This holds good not only for works of art, but also for philosophical works ; for no- where is it less imperative to set forth the truth as finished result than in Philosophy, where, on the contrary, what is strictly instructive and stimulating for the reader is to be sought in the opening the mental eye to a growing and broadening truth. Accordingly I have preferred nut to withhold from the new readers, whom the " Philosophy of the Unconscious" hopes to obtain in this new edition, the original draught of Section A, but instead of a re- modelling of the same, to add as an Appendix a disserta- tion "On the Physiology of the Nerve-Centres," from which they may perceive in what mnnner I should now treat this part in the event of a fresh composition. Al the same time this Appendix serves as a si/]>j>ff//it n( to Section A, the knowledge of which it pivsupposfS in respect to the present advanced stage of our knowle !ge of the physiology of the Nervous System. LV frum VOL. I. b xviii PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. the text of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " I have endeavoured to avoid, so far as the necessary connection of the dissertation admitted. As this Appendix is a physiological, so my book, " Truth and Error in Darwinism " [reproduced entire in the " Journal of Speculative Philo- sophy " (St. Louis, 1877-78)] forms a biological comple- ment to the natural-philosophical part of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious," especially to Chapter VIII. A; the close connection of the two supplementary writings will not escape the attentive reader. I am quite conscious of the difficulty of my position with regard to contemporary representatives of Physical Science. They are either adherents of the old school, i.e., they pay homage to a so-called exact empiricism, which never ventures to elevate its glance from the scrutiny of the particular to a more general survey of the great whole, and cross themselves in the presence of all philosophy ; or they aim at a natural-philosophical theory of the world are thus adherents of Darwinism in its crass mechanical and anti-teleological form. The one class, as matter of course, has a horror of all philosophy as such, no matter whether the latter endeavours on its part to strike up an alliance with Physical Science or not; the other class recognises, indeed, in principle the necessity of an under- standing between Natural Science and Philosophy, but thinks it sees in the teleological metaphysic espoused by me the opponent of that philosophy, to which alone it hopes to throw a bridge. Thus it comes to pass that the one part of scientists ignores me because I am jihilosojrficr, the other combats me because I am such a philosopher. But already the first signs of a rising generation are discernible, which recognises not only the title of philosophy in general, but also the title of an idealistic philosophy beside and above the mechanical cosmic theory of the Sciences of Matter, a union, which alone is able to reconcile that Idealism, to which the German people owes its great- ness, with the results of the most recent investigation, PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. xix and to obviate a total breach between the Future and the Past, between the Intellect and the Heart. It is my firm conviction that the exclusively mechanical Cosmism of Darwinism is only an historical transition from the prior shallow Materialism to a complete and whole Ideal-realism, and will only serve to effect and facilitate the passing of the living and rising generation of physical inquirers from one pole to the other. In furthering this indispen- sable and inevitable reconciliation of modern Physical Science, and its grand but one-sided results, with the idealistic culture of our nation, I believe that I am in fact doing a better service to Natural Science than those exclusive devotees of the same, who possess the in itself estimable courage of consistency, of desiring to subject the whole modern theory of the world to a radical trans- formation, according to the partial method of Physical Science, in which the highest spiritual treasures of our civilisation must perforce fall a sacrifice to consistency. Until the coming race of naturalists acknowledges my efforts in this direction I must be satisfied with the recognition, which has already been accorded thereto in rich measure by those representatives of our idealistic culture, who, far removed from ignoring or condemning the results of modern physical science, perceive the necessity of an organic fusion of the same with idealism, but have hitherto missed a suitable leader in the solution of this problem declared impossible by the exclusive repre- sentatives of Physical Science itself. On this ground for some time even Theology has begun to prize in me a valuable ally, although hardly any one lias more plainly declared than I, that Christianity is no longer a vital factor of our developing civilisation, and has already traversed all its phases. On this point I am perfectly clear, that in future as hitherto 1 shall please no party and no school; 'out jus! as certain also am 1 that this is at least a negative con- dition for evervthimr important, although this character- xx PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. istic applies just as well to the fanciful and absurd. Although, however, I may give satisfaction to no party and to no school, yet at least all know precisely and un- ambiguously where I stand, since what I will and what I mean, I have at all times said straight out, and sometimes perhaps all too clearly. In fact, this frank attitude of mine has made it very easy for the dissident schools to take up on their part likewise a clear position in regard to me, what is displeasing to them to blame and reject, and what is congenial to them to acknowledge with respect. EDUAED VON HAETMANN. Berlin, October 1875. AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION. Although, since the appearance of the seventh edition the unfavourable circumstances of the times have pressed in an unusual degree on the whole book trade, and scientific literature in particular has been most seriously affected by the contraction of the literary budget of the reading public, yet it is permitted me to issue an eighth edition, and I feel the greater debt of gratitude to the public for this persistent and unusual sympathy, as two years ago it was considered that the demand for the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " in Germany had been sufficiently met for some time to come by the first six editions. If the erroneousness of this conjecture forms, on the one side, for the author a grateful encouragement to his labours, yet, on the other hand, it is also not to be denied that in the extensive sale which the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " has found in the circles of the general public (the first seven editions represent over ten thousand copies) there lies a not inconsiderable danger for the cor- rect estimate of the collective philosophical tendencies of the author, because a historically established judgment on the part of experts, which might serve as a standard to the laity, has not yet been formed, and the judgment of the laity is commonly determined more by what strikes the eye than by the less readily discernible inner nature of things. Only too many of those, who buy or borrow the " Philosophy of the Unconscious," feel their " metaphysical need" satisfied when they have turned over the chapters on Love and the Misery of Existence, and think th< y may xxii PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION. now chime in with a good conscience when the topic of conversation is the " Philosophy of the Unconscious." " Philosophy of the Unconscious, Continuator of Schopen- hauer, fashionable representative of Pessimism," such one- sided and often uncomprehended catchwords are sufficient to legitimate them as connoisseurs ; the phrases get attached to the name " Hartmann " like a label, which must henceforth adhere to it as if they were a part of the author's own signature. Had the " Philosophy of the Un- conscious " lived through its two or three instead of eight editions in nine years, and had it not broken through the sphere of a scientific circle of readers in this time, it is probable the fame of its author would have been less in advance of his performances, but in compensation his name would not have been linked with so one-sided a signature, which at present forms a hindrance to the un- prejudiced estimation of his later achievements. My opinion by no means implies that the conquest of the strata of the reading public, who hitherto have stood aloof from all philosophy, is to be deplored because obtained through the " Philosophy of the Unconscious," but only that the stopping half-way of such readers is to be deplored. The clearness and intelligibility of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " has been abundantly praised; but this is still only very relative, merely conspi- cuous by comparison with other philosophical works. And no one has ever asserted that for the sake of general intelli- gibility I have anywhere omitted to dig below the problems as deeply as lay in my power; the " Philosophy of the Un- conscious " is thus anything but popular in the sense of the popularisation of scientific results. In fact we hear, even from most laymen, who approach its reading unpre- pared, that they have not understood the main discussions. What then alone can give the key for judging, remains -zr/i-understood ; but what also without this key appears in itself clear and intelligible, is, because conceived out of its systematic connection, necessarily r/u's-understood. PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION. xxiii As an introduction to the author's sphere of thought, are now to be mentioned in the first rank, the " Gesammelte Studien und Aufsiitze gemeinverstandlichen Inhalts," especially their first three sections, which may serve the purpose of obviating at the outset many errors and mis- understandings with regard to the tendencies of the author. In the second rank, the writings on " The Self- Disintegration of Christianity" [translated in the "lieli- gio-Philosophical Journal," vols. 29-31, appearing in Chicago], and "Truth and Error in Darwinism" [see p. xviii.], of which the former appears suited to render clear the contrast of the author to the shallow negativity of a D. F. Strauss, and to show, that if he combats Christianity, he does this not to combat religion, but to serve religion, and to bring again to honour and to render possible that which has become impossible through its defenders. The study on Darwinism is certainly only to be recommended to such readers as have already been instructed by a more detailed work on the aims and argumentations of Darwin- ism ; as the knowledge of this burning question, however, belongs at the present time to the elements of a higher culture, "this supposition will for the most part be already fulfilled, or if not, yet be readily enough made good. Together witli the " natural philosophical contributions " (sec. C.) of the "Gesammelte Studien und Aufsiitze," this writing forms a suitable naturalistic preparation fur the reading of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious." As every philosophical system is the product of its time, and its historical and scientific significance can only be rightly estimated in its connection with the history of philosophy, the most important preparation for the under- standing of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " is an ac- quaintance with the preceding systems of German specu- lation, and with the position which the former, according to the author's aim, is intended to occupy as regards the latter. To afford tins historical introduction is the func- tion of sect. D of the "Gesammelte Studien und Auf.-atxe,'' xxiv PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION. entitled " The philosophical starry triad of the nineteenth century." Here, without doubt, the layman will en- counter many a difficulty ; but if he allows himself to be deterred thereby, he has no prospect of overcoming the like difficulties in the still more condensed hints of the "Philosophy of the Unconscious," whilst that which remains obscure in the reading of that introduction can very well be cleared up subsequently by acquaintance with the author's circle of ideas in their systematic connection. If the above-mentioned natural-philosophical prepara- tion serves the purpose of making intelligible to the reader the reconciliation and fusion of modern physical science and philosophy attempted by me, this historical introduction will enable him to comprehend the synthe- sis accomplished by my philosophy of two philosophical mental tendencies apparently so antipathetic, which have been fruitful and decisive for the mental life of Germany in the last two generations : Hegelianism and Schopenhauerianism. The historical significance of my philosophy must essentially be sought in the two men- tioned syntheses; which of the two in an historical point of view deserves the pre-eminence, might be difficult for contemporaries to determine. From the historical point of view the chief value of the Principle of the Uncon- scious may have to be sought in this, that only by this principle are those two syntheses rendered possible. The most important test for the verifying of philosophi- cal systems in real life is to be seen in the solution of the ethical problems resulting from them. The author of a highly defective theoretical philosophy obtains, if not a justification, yet to a certain extent an excuse and per- sonal rehabilitation, if he at whatever cost of philoso- phical consistency advances a powerful and valuable moral cosmic theory. Put when such an one makes good its claim in a form possessing certain advantages over all earlier moral standpoints as a natural conse- quence of the theoretical principles, then the latter obtain PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION. xxv thereby a highly-important indirect confirmation, and the whole system acquires in such a case a far higher phi- losophical and practical value. The exposition of the ethical standpoint will be the more important for a philosopher, and he will the more urgently wish the cog- nisance of the same before the pronouncing of a general judgment on his point of view, the more original his theo- retic cosmic theory is, the more it contains elements de- viating from current opinion, i.e., paradoxical, and the more occasion it gives on this ground to erroneous inferences respecting the practical consequences flowing therefrom. That the " Philosophy of the Unconscious," particularly in consequence of the incoherent apprehension of its pessi- mism and confusion with the system of Schopenhauer, has led to the grossest misunderstandings as regards its practi- cal consequences, and has thereby called forth reproaches as severe as groundless, is sufficiently well known; and in order that such mistakes may be avoided for the future, I would emphatically advise that, where it is practicable, my readers should make themselves previously acquainted with my ethical views before they undertake the reading of the "Philosophy of the Unconscious." The " Phanome- nologie des sittlichen Pewusstseins," now in the press, in which those views are expounded, is an altogether popular work, which, in contrast to the " Philosophy of the Uncon- scious," requires no previous knowledge in a philosophical or scientilic reference, is independently constructed from its foundation, and is therefore very suitable for being read without any previous acquaintance with the rest of my philosophical efforts. Whoever has first made acquaint- ance with my second chief work will without doubt regard my first main work with quite other eyes, because he brings with him at Starting a definite opinion on the practical fertility of the ideas developed therein, which may be described as the counterpart of the paradoxical im- pression commonly received by unprepared readers. However much weight may be assigned, in judging a xxvi PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION. system, to the sides hitherto discussed, it will yet remain indisputable that the decisive point for the theoretical estimation of such must be sought in the fundamental theory of knowledge. The theory of knowledge is the true philosophies prima ; with the right or wrong attitude to the problems of the theory of knowledge the decision is already made, whether the particular thinker is on the right or wrong road in his efforts to solve the metaphysical prob- lems, and this holds more than ever good of a system of the present time, which has brought to full consciousness the importance of the theory of knowledge, first placed in the right light by Kant, after its treatment had been pushed on one side by the great successors of Kant as a matter already settled by Kant. The whole reach of the theoretical con- trast, in which I find myself with respect to Schopenhauer as to all others standing theoretically on Kantian ground, he alone is able to appreciate who has taken the trouble to go through my writings specially devoted to these ques- tions. Such an one will, however, no longer be able to mis- understand the relation of my system, merely hinted at in the "Philosophy of the Unconscious," to the problems of the theory of knowledge, as has happened on the part of those readers of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " who ima- gined they could characterise me, despite that diametrical opposition to Schopenhauer, simply as his continuator. All readers, who stand substantially on the ground of the Kantian transcendental Idealism, as represented by Fichte, by Schelling in his youth, by Schopenhauer, and by a part of the Hegelian school, I must beg to read my writings con- cerning the theory of Cognition before the " Philosophy of the Unconscious," and the same holds good in a metaphy- sical respect of my memoir "on the Dialectical Method" for all adherents of Hegel, who still see in his method an essential and inseparable element of his philosophical achievements. For laymen, on the contrary, who have hitherto kept off the mistaken paths of subjective Ideal- ism and the Hegelian Dialectic, the reading of the speci- PREFACE TO THE EIGHTH EDITION. xxvii lied writings may be less necessary and not even recom- mendable before acquaintance with the Philosophy of the Unconscious, because the material difficulties to be over- come in them might easily deter from further philosophical studies. Only the preface to the second edition of the "Kritische Grundlegung des transcendentalen Eealismus" I could wish to see read also by laymen he/ore the Philo- sophy of the Unconscious, because they will get there- from at any rate an inkling, that I raise the claim, to have made the first decided step in the Theory of Knowledge since Kant. I conclude with some words from my preface to the French Translation, p. iii., "La philosophe de l'lncon- scient n'est pas un systeme : elle se borne a tracer les lineaments principaux d'un systeme. Elle n'est pas la conclusion, mais le programme d'une vie entiere de travail: pour achever l'ceuvre, la sante et une longue vie seraient necessaires." May there be found in the sum of my other publications the honest attempt at a payment on account of the assumed obligation, and the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " be henceforth read and judged as an integral part of the totality of my philosophical works. EDUAED VOX HAETMAXX. Berlin, January 1878. AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION. As the eighth edition of this work appeared simultaneously with my second principal work, so I issue the ninth simultaneously with my third principal work. If at the close of the preface of the eighth edition I described the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " as the programme of my life, the two other extant chief works yield the proof that hitherto at any rate good will has not been wanting to carry out the programme. The " Phanomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins," which appeared at the end of the year 1878, is no com- plete system of Ethics, but only the first introductory part of such, and therefore described by its title as "Prolegomena to every future Ethics." The System of Ethics would with me embrace, besides this introductory ethical doctrine of Principles, a Social Ethic and an Individual Ethic. The working out of an Individual Ethic appeared to me least urgent, that of Social Ethic, on the contrary, very desirable indeed, but yet bound up with considerable material difficulties, which it is hoped will receive some illumination by the progress of social-political legislation. Accordingly, while for the treatment of Social Ethics some delay might appear desirable, I had excellent reasons for the speedy presentation of my "Religious Philosophy;" for, for the treatment which Social Ethics might eventually experience at my hands then; were numerous hints to he found, both in the " Phanomenologie des sittlichen !'-- wusstseins" as well as in other of my writings; 1 ut my attitude towards Religious Philosophy could on the las..- xxx PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION. of the "Philosophy of the Unconscious" and the little monograph on the Self-disintegration of Christianity hardly even approximately be rightly estimated. The " Phanomenologie des sittlichen Bewesstseins " turned the polemic of the philosophers and theologians against me into a new phase. Hitherto I had been met with the argument that Pessimism must be intrinsically with- out an Ethic; but now, when the Ethics of Pessimism had in principle come to light, that argument could no longer hold water, and it was now contended that this Ethics was worth nothing, because it was the Ethics of Pessimism. Thereby the contest concerning Pessimism was renewed, but also at the same time carried over to a new battlefield. I felt moved to plunge into this dis- cussion with some journalistic disquisitions and essays, which, at the end of 1880, were collected, and appeared in pamphlet form under the title " Zur Geschichte und Becrriindun^ des Pessimismus." The first shows that not Schopenhauer but Kant is the father of the Pessimism advocated by me, whereas Schopenhauer has one-sidedly disfigured and spoilt the Kantian Pessimism ; the second refutes the objections which deny that Pessimism is a problem of science, or soluble by science ; the third has the task of sharply separating the ethically valuable Pessi- mism advocated by me from sundry ethically questionable and injurious varieties of Pessimism, and the fourth gives a phenomenology of Suffering, as it were, which already serves as a transitional chord from Ethics to the Philosophy of Beligion. The effects of my " Phanomenologie " on the public reach manifestly less widely and more deeply than those of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious ; " the polemic called forth by the former is, it is true, not yet free from obli- quities and misunderstandings, but it is far more scientific, more intelligent and thorough than that, which, in the first four years after the appearance of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious," saw the light. The polemic on the PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION. xxxi " Phanomenologie " has manifestly not a little contributed to correct the previous judgment of the " Philosophy of the Unconscious," and to silence much superficial chatter. I hope that this will be the case in still higher degree with my " Philosophy of Beligion," which yields the proof that my philosophy is just as little non-religious as non-ethical, but in both respects stands in perfect continuity with the previous course of development of the consciousness of humanity. In the " Philosophy of Religion" my standpoint, as I have already indicated in the closing section of the " Self-dis- integration of Christianity," specially represents a syn- thesis of the Christian and Indian Eeligions, or a synthesis of Hegelianism and Schopenhauerism. For that purpose it was important to me to come to terms with the present leading representatives of a speculative Christian Theo- logy, as this has been developed from the twofold starting- point of Hegel and Schleiermacher. I have done this in the memoir : " Die Krisis des Christenthums in der mo- dernen Theologie." As in the " Self-disintegration " I had criticised the vulgar liberal Protestantism, so here specu- lative Protestantism, and by how much the latter is phi- losophically more considerable and of greater religious worth than the former, so much the more important is also the critique of the latter than that of the former, lint as the subject is more difficult and requires a subtler handling, the later writing has by no means received the s;ime amount of notice as the former; it may be that this is owing in part to the circumstances of the times. My third principal work consists now of two parts; the first, historically critical part, appeared at the end of 1SS1, under the title : " Das religiose Pewusstsein der Menschheit im Stufengang seiner Kntwickelung;" the second, sy.-te- mat ic part, is issued simultaneously with tins ninth edition "i the " Philosophy of the Unconscious," under the title, " Die lieligion ties Ceistes." The first part deduces from the previous course of evolution of the religious com i i - xxxii PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION. ness of humanity by immanent criticism that stage as his- torical postulate, to which Eeligion must accordingly in consistency be elevated ; the second part systematically carries out the point of view merely hinted at in the first, not, however, in dogmatic, but in phenomenological form, i.e., by a psychological analysis of the religious conscious- ness and by deduction of its metaphysical postulates and ethical consequences. EDUARD VON HARTMANK Berlin, August iSc PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. INTEODUCTOEY. General Preliminary Observations. (a.) Object of the Work " To have ideas, and yet not be conscious of them, there seems to bo a contradiction in that ; for how can we know that we have them, if we are not conscious of them ? Nevertheless, we may become aware indirectly that we have an idea, although we be not directly cognisant of the same" (Kant, " Anthropology," sec. 5, " Of the ideas which we have without being conscious of them"). These clear words of the great clear thinker of Konigsberg offer at once a starting-point for our in- vestigation, and the field of inquiry itself. The sphereof Consciousness is like a vine-clad hill which has been so often ploughed up in all directions, that the thought of further labour has become almost loathsome to the public mind ; for tin; looked-for treasure is never found, although rich and unexpected crops have sprung from the well - worked soil. Mankind very naturally began its researches in Philosophy with the examination of what was immeliately given in Consciousness; may Vol.. I. A 2 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. it not now be lured, by the charm of novelty and the hope of a great reward, to seek the golden treasure in the mountain's depths, in the noble ores of its rocky beds, rather than on the surface of the fruitful earth ? Undoubtedly auger and chisel and prolonged irksome labour will be needed before the golden veins are reached, and then a tedious dressing of the ore ere the treasure be secured. Let him, however, who is not afraid of toil follow me. Is not indeed the supreme enjoyment to be found in labour itself? The conception " unconscious idea " is certainly some- what paradoxical to the naive understanding, but the contradiction contained therein is as Kant says only apparent. For if we can only be cognisant of the actual contents of consciousness thus can have no knowledge of aught out of consciousness by what right do we assert that that, whose existence is revealed in conscious- ness, could not also exist outside our consciousness ? Truly in such a case we should be able to affirm neither existence nor non-existence, and accordingly would have to rest content with the assumption of non-existence, until in some other way we acquired the right to make a positive affirmation of existence. This has gene- rally been the view adopted up to the present time. The more, however, Philosophy has abandoned the dogmatic assumption of immediate cognition through sense or understanding, and the more it has perceived the highly indirect cognisability of everything previously regarded as immediate content of Consciousness, the higher naturally has risen the value of indirect proofs of existence. Accordingly, reflective minds have from time to time appeared, who have felt constrained to fall back upon the existence of unconscious ideas as the cause of certain mental phenomena otherwise totally inexpli- cable. To collect these phenomena, to render probable the existence of unconscious ideas and unconscious will from the evidence of the particular cases, and through their INTRODUCTORY. 3 combination to raise this probability to a degree border- ing on certainty, is the object of the first two sections of the present work. The first treats of phenomena of a physiological and zoopsychological nature, the second deals with the department of mental science. By means of this principle of the Unconscious the phenomena in question at once receive their only possible explanation, an explanation which either has not been expressly stated before, or could not obtain recognition, for the simple reason that the principle itself can only be established through a comparison of all the rele- vant phenomena. Moreover, by the application of this as yet undeveloped principle, a prospect opens up of quite novel modes of treating matters hitherto supposed to be perfectly well known. A number of the contra- rieties and antinomies of earlier creeds and systems are reconciled by the adoption of a higher point of view, embracing within its scope opposed aspects as incom- plete truths. In a word, the principle is shown to be in the highest degree fruitful for special questions. Far more important than this, however, is the way in which the principle of the Unconscious is imperceptibly ex- tended beyond the physical and psychical domains to achieve the solution of problems which, to adopt the common language, would be said to belong to the province of metaphysics. These consequences How so simply and naturally from the application of our prin- ciple to physical and pyschological inquiries, that the transition to another department would not be remarked at all, if the subject-matter of those questions were not otherwise familiar to us. There is a genera! tendency of thought towards this single principle. In each succeed- ing chapter one piece more of the world cri/.slu Ui.<<.<, w< w were, around this nucleus, until, expanded to all-unit //. it embraces the Cosmos, and at last is suddenly revealed as that which has funned the core of all great philosophies, the Substance of Spinoza, the Absolute Kgo of Fh lite, 4 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. Schelling's Absolute Subject-Object, the Absolute Idea of Plato and Hegel, Schopenhauer's Will, &c. I beg, therefore, no one to take offence at this notion of unconscious representation if at first it have little positive significance. The positive content of the con- ception can only be gradually acquired in the course of the investigation. Let it at first suffice that an un- known cause of certain processes, outside of and yet not essentially foreign to Consciousness, is thereby signi- fied, receiving the name " idea," because it has in common with, what is known in Consciousness an ideal content, which itself has no reality, but can at the most resemble an external reality in the ideal image. The notion of unconscious will is clearer in itself, and appears less paradoxical (comp. Chap. A. i. conclusion). As it will be shown in Chap. B. iii. that Feeling can be resolved into "Will and Idea, these two being thus the only fundamental psychical functions which, according to Chap. A. iii., are inseparably one, so far as they are conscious, I designate the united unconscious will and unconscious idea " the Unconscious." Since, however, this unity again only rests upon the identity of the unconsciously willing and unconsciously thinking sub- ject (Chap. C. xv. 4), the expression " the Unconscious " denotes also this identical subject of the unconscious psychical functions, a something in the main unknown, it is true, but of which we may at least affirm, that besides the negative attributes " being unconscious and exercising functions unconsciously," it possesses also the essentially positive attributes " willing and represent- ing." As long as our speculation does not transgress the limits of individuality, this may be sufficiently clear. When we, however, view the world as a whole, the expression " the Unconscious " acquires the force not only of an abstraction from all unconscious individual functions and subjects, but also of a collective, com- prehending the foregoing both extensively and inten- INTRODUCTORY. 5 sively. Lastly, it will appear from Chap. C. vii. that all unconscious operations spring from one same subject, which has only its phenomenal revelation in the several individuals, so that " the Unconscious " signifies this One Absolute subject. This must suffice as a general indica- tion of our theme. " Philosophy is the history of philosophy," to that I subscribe with all my heart. He, however, who should take this assertion to mean that truth is to be found in the past alone would fall into a very serious error ; for there is a dead and a living past in the history of Philo- sophy, and life is only to be found in the present. Thus in a tree, the solid stem of dead-wood which defies the storm is formed by the growth of earlier years, and a thin layer alone contains the life of the mighty plant, until in the next year it too is numbered with the dead. It was not the leaves and flowers, which captivated the beholders in bygone summers, that gave enduring strength to the tree, these at the most contributed, when fallen and faded, to manure its roots, it was the slight and unregarded annular growth of the stem, and the insigni- ficant young shoots, that increased its girth, height, and solidity. It is not merely strength for which the living ring is debtor to its dead forefathers, but by holding them in its embrace, expansion likewise ; wherefore for the newly sprouting ring, as for the tree, the first law is really to embrace and enfold all its predecessors, the second, to grow from the root upwards self-dependently. The pro- blem how to fulfil these two conditions in Philosophy verges on the paradoxical, for they who overlook the situation have usually lost the ingenuousness necessary for making a true beginning, and he, who attempts a new departure, generally presents some crude dilettante product from having insufficiently appreciated the pre- vious historic evolution. I believe that the principle of the Unconscious, which forms the focus in which all the rays of our inquiry 6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. meet, when conceived in its generality, may not improperly be regarded as a new point of view. How far I have succeeded in penetrating into the spirit of the previous development of Philosophy I must leave to the judgment of the reader. I will only remark that, having regard to the plan of the work, the proof, that nearly everything that can be looked upon as genuine heart-wood in the history of Philosophy is embraced in the final results, must be limited to brief hints, which have in part been more elaborated in various special inquiries, to which reference will be made at the proper place. (b.) Method of Research and Mode of Exposition. Three leading methods of research are to be distin- guished the dialectic (Hegelian), the deductive (from above downwards), and the inductive (from below up- wards). The dialectic method I must, without now entering upon reasons pro or con} entirely exclude, for the reason that, at least in the accepted form of it, it is ill-adapted for common comprehension, a feature which cannot here be overlooked. The advocates of that method, who are above all others bound to recognise the relativity of truth, will, it is hoped, not condemn the present work on account of its naturalistic character, especially when they consider the positive stand made against common opponents, and its utility as a pro- pedeutic for non-philosophers. We have then to weigh the comparative advantages of the deductive or descend- ing, and of the inductive or ascending method. Man arrives at the scientific stage when he tries to comprehend and explain to himself the totality of the phenomena which surround him. Phenomena are effects whose causes he desires to know. As different causes 1 My own opinion will be found in a monograph entitled "Ueber die dialektische Methodo" (Berlin, 1864, C. Duncker). INTRODUCTORY. 7 may have the same effect {e.g., friction, the galvanic current, and chemical changes, Heat), so, too, a single effect can have different causes. The cause assumed for an effect is consequently only a hypothesis, which can by no means possess certainty, but only a probability, to be determined by extraneous considerations. Let the probability that XJ 1 is the cause of the pheno- menon E be = u lt and the probability that U 2 is the cause of \J 1 be u.-,, then the probability that U 2 is the remote cause of E =: u lt u 2 ; from which it is clear that at every stage backwards in the chain of causation the coefficients of probability of the several causes in respect of their proximate effects go on multiplying, i.e., become continually smaller (e.g., -^ multiplied by itself nine times becomes about -jL_.) If the degree of probability of the causes did not again rise through the number of hypo- thetical causes becoming fewer, and through more effects being explicable by a single cause, 1 the probabilities would soon by continual multiplication reach values so small as to be unserviceable. Now if the causes of all cosmical phenomena could be regressively traced, until they were referred to one or a few ultimate causes or principles, Science, which is one, as the world is one, might attain perfection by way of the inductive method. Supposing, however, any one to have solved this pro- blem in a more or less complete form, the question still remains, whether, in imparting his convictions to others, he would do better to follow the track from phenomena backwards and upwards to the original causes, or to deduce the existing world from such first principles ? We are dealing here with an alternative; for when Schelling in his final system asserts the necessity of a combination of both processes, beginning (see Werke, Abth. ii. r>d. 3. S. 151, Anin.) with a negative ascending philosophy, and concluding with a positive descending 1 The increase takes place according to the formula develop d on pp. 53 and 54. 8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. philosophy, this duplication is only made possible by assigning a distinct sphere to each, and by retaining the former for the purely logical domain. In other words, he applies the inductive method only to facts of inner thought - experience (comp. Werke, ii. I , pp. 321 and 3 26), whilst in his positive philosophy he seeks to exhibit the highest Idea thus obtained as result as the really Exis- tent and the principle of all Being (comp. ii. 3, p. 150), endeavouring to derive therefrom the facts of outer ex- perience by means of the deductive method. (Krause's ascending and descending didactic order is somewhat similar.) Even if the results thus deductively obtained in any way satisfied the demands of Science, still such an arbitrary separation of inner and outer experience could not be scientifically justified ; and in any case, as regards the latter province, the oef ore-mentioned alter- native would again present itself, whether the ascending or descending method be preferable for exposition. The decision must undoubtedly be given in favour of the ascending or inductive method ; for 1. As the person to be guided dwells in the lower region of fact, his proper starting-point is there, and his upward course is always from the known to the \mknown. On the other hand, to place him at the outset at the point of view of first principles would necessitate a salto mortalc, and then he would have to proceed from one unknown point to another, only reach- ing the known again at the conclusion of his journey. 2. Every one is persuaded that his own opinion is the correct one, and consequently distrusts any novel doctrine. lie must, therefore, know hoio another has arrived at his sublime results, if his own distrust is to be removed, and this requires the employment of the ascend- ing method. 3. Men are secretly inclined to distrust their own understandings, as well as obstinately to stand by opinions once adopted. It is therefore exceedingly difficult to INTRODUCTORY. 9 convince any person by deduction, because lie always dis- trusts the method, even when he has no specific objec- tion to raise; whereas in induction he needs think less strenuously and exactly, but can, as it were, touch the truth by sight and direct perception. 4. Deduction from first principles, supposing it to be absolutely flawless, may perhaps be imposing by its vastness, compactness, and subtlety, but does not produce conviction. For since the same effects can arise from different causes, in the most favourable case deduction only proves the possibility of these principles, by no means their necessity; it does not even give them a coefficient of probability, as the inductive method does, never advancing beyond the bare notion of pos- sibility. To speak figuratively, it is undoubtedly in- different, if we want to become acquainted with the lihine, whether we travel up-stream or down-stream; but for the dweller at the mouth of the lihine the natural course is up-stream, for if a magician should come and transport him in a twinkling to the source of a certain river, he would be wholly unable to tell if it were really the source of the Rhine, and whether he is not about to undertake a long, tedious journey in vain. And when he arrives at this river's mouth, and finds himself in an unfamiliar region instead of in his own home, the wizard perhaps tries to persuade him that it really is his home, and many a one readily credits him for the sake of the beautiful journey itself. After what has been stated, it would be inexplicable how anybody who had arrived at his principles by the inductive path should take the deductive method for their communication and proof ; and, in fact, this never occurs. The truth is, that philosophers who deduce their systems (whether the method be revealed or concealed), have arrived at their principles by the only way save induction which is open to them, viz., by a sort of mystical flight, as will be shown in Chap. 13. ix. In their case io PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. deduction is the attempt to descend from the mystically acquired results to the reality to be explained, and that too by a path, which has always possessed a fascination for system-loving minds dazzled by the certainty of the results attained in the very different science of mathe- matics. For such philosophers deduction is certainly the appropriate method, since their given starting-point is the upper region of thought. Apart from the circumstance that both the method of proof itself as well as the prin- ciples to be proved must always, as everything human, be defective, and that accordingly deduction always leaves an unfilled interval between primary principles and the reality to be explained, the worst feature of the case is that deduction cannot prove its own principles, as Aristotle long ago showed, in the most favourable case obtaining for them only a bare possibility, but not a definite probability. The principles may perhaps gain somewhat in comprclicn- sibility by the process, but no power of convincing, and the attainment of a conviction of their correctness is left exclusively to mystic reproduction, as their discovery consisted in mystical production. It is the greatest misfortune for Philosophy, so far as it employs this method, that the assurance of the truth of its results is not communicable as in the case of inductive science ; and even the comprehension of its content, as is well known, is no easy matter, because it is infinitely diffi- cult to pour a mystical conception into an adequately scientific mould. Philosophers, however, only too fre- quently deceive both themselves and their readers with regard to the mystical origin of their principles, and try, in the absence of good proofs, to give them a scientific support by subtle sophisms, the worthlessness of which escapes notice through the firm belief of the truth of the result, Here is the explanation of the circumstance, that people (save in the rare exception of a certain mental affinity) feel an extreme repugnance to the study of the philosophers, when they turn to their proofs and INTRODUCTORY. u deductions, but, on the other hand, are attracted and fascinated in the highest degree by the imposing com- pactness of their systems, their grand views of the world, their flashes of genius illuminating the darkest recesses, their deep conceptions, their ingenious apereus, their psychological acumen. It is the mode of proof that inspires the man of science with his instinctive aversion to Philosophy, an aversion which in our own time, when in every department of life Eealism is triumphant over Idealism, has risen to supreme con- tempt. It follows further from the deductive method of the philosophers, that discussion can only arise on special points in so far as they follow from principles with respect to which there is no dispute. But now, inasmuch as the whole system is enounced as a consequence of first principles, even supposing all conclusions to be correctly drawn, it can only be accepted or rejected as a whole, according as one rejects or accepts the first principles ; whilst in a philosophy of induction which has been built up from below, i.e., on generally admitted and empirically established facts, assent may be granted up to a certain point, and then the observer may go his own road, having crained many hints for future use from a careful study of the solid sub-structure. It is accord- ingly evident why every deductive system stands more or less alone, like the spider in its web, because all differences are enclosed in the first principles, with regard to which there will never be agreement, if we are bound to make a commencement with them. On the other hand, in the different inductive philosophical systems (which, alas ! do not yet exist), a feeling of solidarity would arise through the possession of a common foundation, just as in inductive science in general, where every strictly scientific step, once taken, is always a step gained, and where even the smallest e.ift is grate- fully accepted. Lastly, it is obvious from what has 12 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. been said, why the deductive philosophy has never yet succeeded in reaching the majority of the educated, but has had to be contented with a limited public, and why it has been just as little successful in bridging over the vast gulf which separates it from the reality to be ex- plained. Those philosophies, on the contrary, where the in- ductive method has been adopted, and all the natural sciences in the widest sense of the term, have un- doubtedly obtained precious results of a secondary kind and gained ground for the future, but still are very far indeed from having reached ultimate principles and the true unity of science. Thus a chasm yawns between the methods; induction cannot attain to first principles and to system, nor can pure speculation arrive at explanation of the actual or communicate its wisdom. It may be concluded from this that the whole truth cannot be comprehended from one side alone, but that the matter must be approached simultaneously from both sides, and a survey made from opposite stations in order to find out the salient points, where a bridge can be thrown across. For the case is not an entirely hopeless one. Thoughts crystallise both from above and from below, as the mass of melted sulphur coalesces when the most pro- minent needles interlace, but not before. We have arrived at a point in the history of science where the pioneers meet, like two miners who, in their subterranean galleries, hear each other's knocking through the party- walls. For inductive science has in recent times made such vast progress in all branches of inorganic and organic nature, and even in the region of mind, that attempts of the kind indicated find a very different ground on which to work than, e.g., those of an Aristotle, Paracelsus, Bacon, and Leibniz. On the other hand, however, the period embracing the close of the last and beginning of the present century, brilliant beyond all INTRODUCTORY. 13 former periods, lias enriched the speculative mind in so many ways, that both parties once more face each other as equals. But at the same time the world has become more aware of a direct antagonism of method which before was less apparent, and hence it has come to pass that each investigator is wont to declare himself for oik; of the two tendencies much more definitely than was formerly the case. The present time needs a spokesman who has comprehended both sides with equal love and devotion, who is capable, if not of mystical production, yet of reproduction, and at the same time has made a survey of exact science and appreciates the strictness of the exact inductive method. He should clearly recog- nise, too, the nature of the problem before him, viz., to combine the speculative (mystically gained) principles with the highest results hitherto attained of inductive science according to inductive method, in order to bridge over the gulf between the two, and to elevate what have hitherto been merely subjective convictions to the rank of objective truths. It was in reference to this great and seasonable problem that I chose the motto, " Specu- lative results according to inductive scientific method ! " Xot that I thought myself to possess a mind sufficiently comprehensive for the solution of this problem, or at all believed that I had offered in the present work a satis- factory solution, that is far from me. If I merit any praise, it is for having distinctly declared a problem, already recognised and attacked in different ways, to be the philosophic problem of a time suffering conspicuously from speculative exhaustion, for resolving to contribute my mite towards its solution, and so giving to others a possibly needed stimulus; but above all, because 1 have taken up the matter on a side hitherto neglected, but rich in promise beyond all others. 1 At the same time 1 Tlio astonishingly favourable re- mo to he essentially ilue to a reco^- coption, which the previous editions 11 it ion of the seasonable!!' of m_\ of this work have met with, seems to efforts. 14 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. my design imposes upon me the duty of submitting my- self to the judgment of both tribunals, the scientific as well as the philosophical. 1 Gladly do I do this, however; for I hold all speculation to be baseless, which contradicts the clear results of empirical investigation, and conversely hold all conceptions and interpretations of empirical facts to be erroneous, which contradict the strict results of a purely logical speculation. I may perhaps be allowed to say also a few words upon the mode of exposition. My first rule has been 'eneral intelligibility and brevitv. The reader will accordingly find no citations except such as could be worked into the text ; all polemic has been avoided as far as possible, unless it was indispensable for the elu- cidation of a conception. My trust is greater in the convincing power of what positive truth there may be contained in my work than in negative criticism, however incisive. Further, instead of dwelling upon the errors and weaknesses of great men, which receive 1 The criticisms and replies, whe- ther philosophical or scientific, which have come under my notice, have not succeeded in shaking my opin- ions on any material point, but have rather strengthened them in several instances. In the Addenda to the earlier editions I sought as much as possible to avoid polemics, and allowed myself for the first time in the Appendix to the seventh edition somewhat greater liberty in this respect. I have permitted my- self more freedom in respect to controversy in some minor writings. A fuller treatment of strictly scien- tific questions will be found in " Truth and Error in Darwinism," and "Contributions to a Philosophy of Nature" (Section G. of "Gesam- melte Studien und Aufsiitze ge- meinvcrstiindlichen Inhalts";, as well as in the Appendix to the present volume, "On the Physiology of the Nerve-Centres." My place in the historical development of philosophy is indicated in " Das philoso- phische Dreigestirn des 19. Jahr- hunderts" (Section 1). of the " Ges. Studien u. Aufsiitze " ), and the " Elucidations of the Metaphysic of the Unconscious." The following writings give a clue to my position in respect to the problems of the theory of knowledge and metho- dology : " Kritische Grundlegung des transcendentalen Realismus," 2<1 ed. ; " J. II. v. Kirchmann's erkenntnisstheoretischer Realismus" and " L'eber die dialektische Me- thode." On the religious ques- tions of the present day I have expressed my opinions in the tractate " Die Selbstzersetzung des Christenthums und die Reli- gion der Zukunft," 2d ed.. and a few excursuses in the field of ,Es- thetics are to be found in " Aesthe- thische Studien" (Section B. of the "Gesamnielte Studien und Auf- siitze " . INTRODUCTORY. 15 sentence in being forgotten in course of time, I have preferred to render prominent their grandest ideas, where they presagingly foreshadow in vague outline what only the future can establish in complete detail. Further, the opportunity for interesting side-remarks, for more thorough but prolix proofs, detailed deductions, &c, has often been left unused, so as to avoid a lengthened treatment, which would be serviceable to but a few readers. Accordingly, in the majority of instances, with the exception of those which deal with fundamentals, the chapters are almost aphoristic, because I believe that most readers will prefer a short exposition affording stimulus to self-reflection to an exhaustive treatment of the subject. In the handling of the topics the reader's convenience has also been considered as far as possible, in that each chapter forms a little treatise by itself on a limited subject (a few only making an excep- tion to this which belong inseparably together, as, e.g., Chap. C. vi. and vii.) The chapters of the first two sec- tions together and severally prove the existence of the Unconscious ; their concord and demonstrative force is a source of mutual support, and they sustain each other reciprocally like a pile of arms; thus the later support the earlier. I therefore beg the reader kindly to reserve his judgment, at least until he has finished Section A. Should, however, the proof of this or that chapter appear to be faulty, the inferences of the others are not neces- sarily thereby condemned, just as one or many of the weapons may be taken from a pyramid of piled arms without its collapsing. Lastly, I crave indulgence so far as the several physiological and zoological fads employed as examples are concerned, in respect to which a. layman may easily make a slip, without, however, prejudicing the main argument. 1 6 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. (c.) Predecessors in respect of the Conception of the Unconscious. What a time elapsed before in the history of Philo- sophy the antithesis of Spirit and Nature, Thought and Being, Subject and Object, emerged into clear conscious- ness, an antithesis which now governs all our thinking ! For the primitive man as natural existence felt his body and soul to be one, he instinctively anticipated this identity, and his understanding must have reached a high degree of consciousness, before he could so far free himself from this instinct as to perceive the full force of the contrast. Nowhere in all Greek philosophy do we find this opposition clearly expressed, still less its signi- ficance recognised, but least of all in the classical period. If this holds good of the opposition of the Peal and the Ideal, ought we to be surprised that the contrast of the Unconscious and the Conscious should still less occur to the primitive understanding, and therefore should arise much later in the history of Philosophy ; nay, that at this very day most educated people hold it to be absurd to speak of unconscious thinking ? For the Unconscious is so much terra incognita to the natural consciousness, that it regards the identity of having an idea and being conscious of a tiling as quite self-evident and indubitable. This naive point of view was taken by Descartes (Prin. Phil., i. 9), and still more decidedly by Locke (Essay on the Human Understanding, book ii. chap. 1, sec. 9): " To ask at what time a man has any ideas is to ask when he begins to perceive, having Ideas and Perception being the same thing ; " or sec. 19:" Por it is altogether as intelligible to say that a body is extended without parts, as that anything thinks without being conscious of it. They who talk thus may, with as much reason, if it be necessary to their hypothesis, say that a man is always hungry, but that he does not always feel it ; whereas hunger consists in that very sensation, as think- INTRODUCTORY. 17 ing consists in being conscious that one thinks." It is clear that Locke postidatcs these propositions in all simplicity. The assertion, repeatedly made, that Locke has proved the possibility of unconscious ideas is there- fore quite incorrect, lie only proves from a proposition taken for granted, that the mind can have no idea with- out the man being conscious thereof, because otherwise the consciousness of the man and that of the mind would constitute two different persons, and that consequently the Cartesians were wrong in asserting that the soul, as thinking being, must think incessantly. Locke is accordingly the first and only one to give full and scientific expression to this tacit supposition of the naive understanding. By this step, however, an opportunity was naturally afforded Locke's great opponent, Leibniz, of perceiving its one-sidedness and untruth, and of making the discovery of unconscious ideas, whereas all earlier philosophers silently inclined to the one or the other view, but in general failed to distinctly envisage the problem. Leibniz was led to his discovery through the endeavour to save innate ideas and the ceaseless activity of the perceptive faculty. For when Locke had proved that th" soul cannot consciously think if the man is not con- scious thereof, and yet should be always thinking, there remained nothing for it but to assume an iinconscion* thinking. He therefore distinguishes j^rccption, ideation, and apperception, conscious ideation or simply conscious- ness (Monadologie, sec. 14), and says: "11 no s'en suit pas de ce qu'on ne s'appereoit pas de la pensee, qu'elle cesse pourcela" (Xouveaux Essais sur l'Lntendement llumain, book ii. chap. 1, sec. 10). What Leibniz c >n- tributes to the positive establishment of bis new con- ception is certainly very scanty, but be deserves immense credit for instantly perceiving with the eye of genius the ranje of his discovery, for penetrating (sec. 1 5) into the dark inner laboratory of human feelings, passions, and actions, and for recognising habit and much else as effects Vol.. I. I'. 1 8 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. of an important principle only too briefly expounded. He declares unconscious ideas to be the bond " which unites every being with all the rest of the universe," and explains by their means the pre-established harmony of the monads, in that every monad as microcosm uncon- sciously represents the macrocosm and its position therein. I cheerfully confess that it was the study of Leibniz which first incited me to the present investigation. With regard to the so-called innate ideas, he likewise finds a point of view which has obtained general accept- ance (book i. chap. 3, sec. 20): "They are nothing but natural aptitudes, that is to say, active and passive dis- positions ; " (chap. 1, sec. 25): "Actual knowledge is certainly not innate, but only what one may call virtual knowledge, just as the figure outlined by the veins of the marble is in the marble before these are discovered in the process of working them." Leibniz meant to say what Schelling later (Works, div. i. vol. iii. pp. 528, 529) more precisely expressed in the words : " So far as the Ego produces everything out of itself, so far is all . . . knowledge a priori. But in so far as we are not con- scious of this productivity, so far is there nothing in us a priori, but everything is d posteriori. . . . There are thus notions a priori without there being innate notions. Not conceptions, but our own nature and its whole mechanism is that which is innate to us. . . . In that we place the origin of the so-called notions d priori out- side the sphere of consciousness, ivherc for us also the objective world tahes its rise, we assert with the same evidence, and with equal right, that our knowledge is in origin out-and-out empirical and entirely d priori." But now comes the weak side of Leibniz's theory of unconscious ideas, already apparent in their usual name, " pctitcs perceptions." Having in his discovery of the in- finitesimal calculus, and in many parts of Natural Philo- sophy, in Mechanics (Best and Motion), in the Law of Continuity, &c, introduced with the most brilliant success INTRODUCTORY. 19 the notion of the (so-called mathematical) infinitely little, Leibniz was tempted to conceive the petites perceptions as ideas of too low an intensity to affect consciousness. He thereby destroyed with one hand what he seemed to have built up with the other the true notion of the Uncon- scious as a province opposed to Consciousness, and its significance for feeling and action. For if, as Leibniz himself maintains, natural disposition, instinct, the pas- sions in short, the mightiest influences in human life take their rise in the sphere of the Unconscious, how are they to be shaped by ideas which are withdrawn from consciousness simply on account of their weakness ? Would not the more powerful conscious ideas prevail at the decisive moment ? This, however, is of minor interest to Leibniz, and for the main objects of his consideration, innate ideas and the constant activity of the soul, his assumption of the infinitely little consciousness certainly suffices. Accordingly, most of his examples of petite* perceptions have reference to ideas of a low degree of con- sciousness, e.g., sensuous perception during sleep. For all that, Leibniz retains the glory of having been the first to affirm theexistence of ideas of which we are not conscious, and to recognise their vast importance. Nearer to Leibniz than is commonly thought stands Hume, whose theoretical philosophy, it is true, is almost limited to a single point, Causality, but who within that limited sphere has looked round him with a clearer and bolder eye than even Kant, Hume does not dispute the fact of Causality, he only opposes the empiricists (Locke) with respect to its abstraction from experience, the Obs.) If for the practical ends of anthro- pology the contrast of clear and obscure ideas seems to Kant to be sufficient, for the theory of knowledge in general it yields in importance to that of the conscious and unconscious idea. " Idea is the genus (rcpracscntatio). Under it falls, the idea accompanied by consciousness (perccptio) " (ibid., ii. 258). Consciousness, whose pre- sence distinguishes perceptio from the unperceived rcprac- scntatio, is not so much itself idea, " but its form in general, so far as it can be called knowledge" (ii. 279). It is the absence of this form which distinguishes the unconscious from the conscious idea. According to Kant the pure concepts of the understanding (categories) seem to belong to the unconscious ideas, so far as they lie beyond cognition, which cognition only becomes possible through a Mind function of the soul (ii. 77) spontaneously binding up the given manifold of the perceived ideal material into a synthesis (ii. 76). If we penetrate by the aid of consciousness into the nature of this synthesis, we certainly recognise therein, so far as it is generally nted, the pure concept of the understanding (ii. 77) ; but the part that the unconscious category as 'genu or foundation" (ii. 66) plays in bringing about conscious knowledge (the " Schematism of the pure understanding") 22 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. remains an " art hidden in the depths of the soul," hardly ever to be laid bare (ii. 125). Unfortunately Kant did not attain the same degree of insight in reference to the d priori forms of intuition as in the case of the forms of thought. One example of the rare keenness of his per- ception, however, may be mentioned. Kant was the first who sought in the Unconscious for the essence of sexual love (Anthropology, sec. 5). Kant's glances beyond the sphere of conscious human knowledge extend, however, still further than we have hitherto shown ; but he himself touched this other pro- vince only in the way of suggestion, because his philoso- phic goal was always apodictic certainty, and he was obliged to confess that in this department our knowledge rests only on probability, i.e., according to his terminology, is pro- blematical (ii. 211). The above-mentioned classification of ideas is incomplete in so far as the second species, opposed to the conscious idea, is unnamed. This is, however, according to Kant's terminology, the " intel- lectual intuition," which does not appear in the classifica- tion. The conscious presentation (perception) further falls, according to Kant, into (subjective) feeling and (objective) knowledge, and the latter again into intuition and conception. Feeling and intuition are not intellectual, but sensuous ; conception is not intuitive, but discursive ; sensuous intuition is derived intuition, not original as the intellectual (ii. 720) ; discursive knowledge, again, effected by the mediation of the categories, is, it is true, intel- lectual, but not intuitive (ii. 211). Intellectual intuition 1 is accordingly left for the non-perceived idea. The per- ceived or conscious idea is different from its object ; the non-perceived idea is one with it, in that it itself gives 1 Spinoza also has, besides cogni- This has the mind, so far as it is tion through sense-perception and eternal, not the finite and perishable abstract conception, a third kind individual mind (part v. prop. 31), of cognition by way of intellectual for its formal cause, and it alone intuition or intuitive knowledge furnishes really adequate ideas on (Ethics, part ii. prop. 40, obs. 2). the nature of God and of things. INTRODUCTORY. 23 it or produces it (ii. 741, 742). It is not the derived and dependent human understanding (conscious intellect) as such which possesses such an intellectual intuition, but only the primordial Being (ii. 720) or the divine understanding (ii. 741), for which the production of its " intelligible objects " is at the same time the creation of the world of noumena (viii. 234). Whether, and how far, the obscure ideas without any consciousness are to be explained by the penetration of the original intellectual intuition of the primordial Being into the derived human understanding, are points on which Kant never expressed himself: Schelling was the first energetically to pursue that line of inquiry. It is interesting, however, to see, how Heinrich Heine adopted the Kantian notion of intel- lectual intuition to explain the mysterious lightning- Hashes of genius (comp. Heine's Works, vol. i. pp. 142, and 168, 169). Although Kant had by no means intended to enounce a metaphysic proper, still he had pretty plainly fore- shadowed the only metaphysic possible in a system of pure reason in the above-mentioned intellectual intuition of the Absolute which produces the intelligible world, so that his immediate continuator, Ficlite, could only proceed further on the path indicated. According to the latter, " God's existence " is " merely knowledge itself" (Fichte's Werke, ii. pp. 129, 130), substantial knowledge only however, to which, as infinite, consciousness can never be ascribed. Without doubt it is necessary for knowledge to become, self-consciousness, but with equal necessity is ii thereby riven into the plural consciousness of manifold individuals and persons (vii. 130. 132). As substantial knowledge (i.e., as inert; content of knowledge without the form of consciousness . God is///'' infinite licason in which the finite is contained; he is likewise the infinite Will which supports and retains all individual wills in their spheres, and the medium of their communication (ii. }Oi. ^02). If it be necessarv to denv consciousness to 24 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. the Unity of the infinite Eeason and the infinite Will, in spite of its absolute infinite knowledge, or rather precisely on that account, still more must personality, the very conception of which implies limitation, be refused (ii. 334, 33 5). It is clear from this that all the elements of the Unconscious are to be found in Fichte, but they appear only casually, as vague hints scattered here and there, and these promising thought- blossoms were soon buried under later growths without having borne any fruit. The conception of the Unconscious was much more closely related to the Faith Philosophy (Hamann, Herder, and Jacobi), which properly rests upon it ; but that philosophy was so obscure and incapable of rationally comprehending its own basis, that it never got so far as to discover its proper cue. On the other hand, we find in Schelling the concep- tion of the Unconscious in its full purity, clearness, and depth ; it is worth while therefore to glance aside for a moment to observe the way in which he arrived at it. The following passage throws most light on the subject (Schelling's Werke, div. i. vol. x. pp. 92, 93): " The meaning of this (the Fichtean) subjective Idealism could not be that the Ego freely and voluntarily posited the world of things, for far otherwise would the Ego will if upon it depended external existence. . . . Put all this gave Fichte no concern. ... It falling now to my lot to take up the Problem of Philosophy at the point where Fichte had left it, I had above all to see how that undeniable and inevitable necessity " (with which its representations of the external world confront the Ego), " which Fichte only seeks as it were to scold away with words, could be united with the Fichtean notions, with the asserted absolute substance of the Ego. It soon became clear that the external world is certainly only here for me, so far as I myself am here and conscious to myself (that is self-evident), but INTRODUCTORY. 25 that also conversely, in the act of self-presentation, I am conscious that, along with the revealed / am, I lind also the world already there existing, that thus in no case does the already conscious Ego produce the world. Nothing, however, prevented the receding with this now self-conscious Ego to a moment when it was nut yet conscious of itself, and the assuming a region beyond the present consciousness, and an activity which no longer itself, but only through its result, comes into conscious- ness." (Cf. also Schelling's Werke, Abth. i. Bd. 3, S. 348, 349.) The circumstance, that Schelling had to derive the notion of the Unconscious from the hypothesis of the Fichtean Idealism, is probably the reason why his many line observations concerning this conception exerted so little influence on the culture of his time, since the Litter needed an empirical derivation in order to perceive its necessity. Besides the passage previously quoted when speaking of Leibniz other citations will be made from Schelling in the course of our inquiries. At this point I must content myself with transcribing the following suggestive remark (Werke, i. 3, p. 624): "In all, even' the commonest and most everyday production, there co-operates with the conscious an unconscious activity." The working out of this principle in the dif- ferent departments of empirical psychology would have supplied an it jiosferiori foundation for the notion of the Unconscious. Schelling, however (except in the ease of lesthetic production), not only failed to do this, but he even asserts elsewhere (Werke, i. 3, p. 349): " The ajsthetie alone is such an activity" (one at the same time conscious a:, i unconscious). Nevertheless, with what purity and depth Schelling in his original thinking had seized the notion of lie l'n- conscious is proved by the following important passage (i. 3,]). 600) : " This eternally Unconscious, which, as were it the eti rnal sun in tin' kinyrfom of spirits, is hidden by it ; own untroubled liitht, and although itself never becoming 26 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. Object, impresses its identity on all free actions, is withal the same for all intelli^ents, the invisible root of which all intelligences are only the powers, and the eternal mediator between the self-determining subjective in us and the objective or intuited, at once the ground of con- formity to law in freedom, and of freedom in conformity to law." He denotes by this mode of expression what Fichte named the substantial Knowledge without con- sciousness, or the impersonal God as Unity of infinite Reason and infinite Will, a unity embracing the many individual wills with their finite reason. Schelling too went so far as in 1801 to fix upon the absolute Reason as the first and highest principle of his Philosophy of Identity, and therewith to give a concrete realisation to his "eternally Unconscious," to which in the year 1809 he added the Will as a principle of even higher import- ance (i. 7, 350). As in the course of Schelling's historical development the Idealism of Fichte retreated into the background, so did the conception of the Unconscious experience the same fate. Whilst in the Transcendental Idealism it plays a leading part, in the writings which appeared soon after it is hardly even mentioned, and later still it disappears almost entirely. The mystical Philosophy of iSTature also of Schelling's school, which (especially Schubert) is so much occupied with the sphere of the Unconscious, has. so far as I know, nowhere concerned itself with a development and examination of this concep- tion. Far better did the divining poet-mind of Jean Paul Friedrich Bichter know how to appreciate Schelling's Un- conscious, and we quote the following passages from his last, unfinished work "Selina:" "Our measurements of the rich territory of the IMe are far too small or narrow when we omit the immense realm of the Unconscious, this real interior Africa in every sense. In every second only a few illuminated mountain-tops of the whole wide globe of memory are turned towards the mind, and all INTRODUCTORY. 27 the rest of the world remains in shadow." " Nothing is left for the receptacle and throne of the vital energies hut the great kingdom of the Unconscious in the soul itself." " In the case of certain men we immediately survey the whole cultivated soul, even to the borderland marked by emptiness and sterility ; but the kingdom of the Unconscious, at once a kingdom of the unfathomable and the immeasurable, which possesses and rules every human mind, makes the barren rich and pushes back their boundaries into the invisible." " Is it not a con- solatory thought, this concealed wealth in our soul ? May we not hope that we perhaps unconsciously love God more heartily than we know, and that a calm instinct for the second world works in us, while we yet con- sciously give ourselves up so entirely to the external one ? " " We see indeed daily how the conscious be- comes the unconscious, how the soul without conscious- ness guides the fingers according to the laws of harmony, whilst it incites consciousness to new relations and actions. When we behold the complicated relations of muscle and nerve, we are astonished at contractions and pressures of the most delicate kind without conscious volition." In Hegel, just as in Schelling's later works, the notion of the Unconscious does not clearly appear, except in the introduction to the lectures on the " Philosophy of His- tory," where he reproduces the ideas of Schelling on this subject, quoted below in Chap. Y>. x. Nevertheless Hegel's absolute Idea, in its pure selfhood, before its unfolding into Nature, thus also before its return to itself as Spirit, in that condition in which it is the unveiled Truth, the (Jodhead, as it were, in its eternal essence before the creation of the world and a Unite mind, thoroughly agrees with Schelling's " eternally Unconscious," if it is also only one aspect of the same, viz., tin 1 , logical or the ideational, coincident with Fichte's " substantial knowledge." and his infinite Reason devoid of consciousness. With Hegel, too, Thought only attains to consciousness when, tin 28 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. mean of its externalisation into Nature, it passes from mere being-in-self to being-for-self, and having become an object to itself, has come to itself as spirit. The Hegelian God as starting-point is at first being per se and uncon- scious, only God as result is being " for-self " and con- scious, is Spirit. That the attaining-to-being-for-self, the becoming-an-object to self is really a coming-to-conscious- ness, is clearly expressed by Hegel in vol. xiii. pp. 3 3 and 46 of his collected works. The theory of the Unconscious is the necessary, if also hitherto for the most part only tacit presupposition of every objective or absolute Idealism, which is not unambiguously Theism. Every metaphysic which looks upon the Idea as the prius of Xature (from which again the subjective mind arises) must think the Idea as unconscious, so long as it is still plastic and has not yet emerged from its being before and in Xature into intuitive consciousness in the subjective mind, unless the shaping Idea take the form of the conscious thought of a self-conscious God. As highest form of absolute Idealism, Hegelianism most certainly has to yield to this necessity, since its Idea is something very different from the conscious thought of an originally self-conscious God ; rather " God " is only a convenient name for the (self-unfolding) Idea. It may be said, therefore, that the theme of the present book is mainly the elevation of Hegel's unconscious Philo- sophy of the Unconscious into a conscious one (cf. my essay, " Ueber die nothwendige Umbildung der Hegel'- schen Philosophic aus ihrem Grundprincip heraus," in the "Gesammelte philosoph. Abhandlungen," No. II., Eerlin, C. Duncker). But also all those who, influenced more or less by Plato and Hegel, generally assume only Ideas as the moulding principles of Xature and History, and a guiding objective Peason revealing itself in the world-process, without being willing to confess to a self-conscious God-creator, all these are already uncon- scious adherents of the Philosophy of the Unconscious. INTRODUCTORY. 29 The task of an author of the same way of thinking, when addressing sympathetic readers, can have no other object than to show what consequences flow from the principles they have adopted, and to confirm them in their opinions by the most cogent reasoning. Schopenhauer acknowledges as metaphysical principle only the Will, whilst Ideation is, according to him, a cerebral product in a materialistic sense an assertion not made clearer by the explanation that the matter of the brain is merely the visibility of a (blind, that is unthink- ing) Will. The Will, the sole metaphysical principle of Schopenhauer, is therefore, of course, an unconscious Will. Thought, on the other hand, which with him is only the phenomenon of a metaphysical principle, and therefore, as thought, not itself metaphysical, can, even where it is unconscious, never be comparable with the unconscious Idea of Schelling, which I myself place by the side of unconscious Will, as metaphysical principle of equal value. Ikit also, apart from this distinction of the metaphysical and phenomenal, the " unconscious rumination," of which Schopenhauer speaks in two passages, which are in per- fect accord (W. a. W. u. V. 3, Auil. ii. S. 148, and Parerga- 2 Aufl. S. 59), and which he assigns to the interim - of the brain, refers indeed only to the obscure and confused ideas of Leibniz and Kant ideas which are too weakly illuminated by the light of consciousness to stand out clearly, which are thus merely below the threshold of distinct consciousness, and are differentiated from the clearly conscious ideas only in degree (not essentially). Schopenhauer thus gets no nearer the true conception of the absolutely unconscious idea in these two apereus (which for the rest have had no iniluenee on his philo- sophy) than in another place, where he speaks < f the separate consciousness of subordinate norve-ceiitivs in the organism (YY. a. W. u. V., ii. 291 ). An opening f<>r the true, absolutely unconscious idea is certainly ali by the system of Schopenhauer, but only at :h p<>!::i 30 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. where it becomes faithless to itself and self-contradictory, when the Idea, which is originally only another kind of intuition of the cerebral intellect, becomes a metaphy- sical entity, preceding and conditioning real individuation (cf. the essay, " Ueber die nothwendige Umbildung der Schopenhauer'schen Philosophie aus ihrem Grundprincip heraus," in my " Gesammelte philosophische Abhand- lungen," No. III., Berlin, C. Duncker, 1872). Schopen- hauer himself, however, shows no apprehension of this, so that, for example, it does not occur to him to bring forward the Idea to explain the adaptation of means to ends in Nature, which rather in genuine idealistic fashion he regards as a merely subjective appearance, arising through the disruption of the One Eeality into the co-existence and succession of Space and Time, whereby essential unity is revealed in the form of a teleological relation essentially non-existent, so that it would be to turn things upside down to seek Reason in the purposive activity of Nature. But in this he altogether fails to perceive that the unconscious Will of Nature co ipso presupposes an unconscious Idea as goal, content, or object of itself, without which it would be empty, indefinite, and objectless. Accordingly, in the acute and instructive observations on instinct, sexual love, life of the species, &c, the unconscious Will com- ports itself precisely as if it were bound up with uncon- scious representation, without Schopenhauer knowing or admitting it. To be sure Schopenhauer, who as all philo- sophers and human nature generally in mature life im- perceptibly gravitated more and more from Idealism to Realism, secretly felt a certain compulsion to take the step which Schelling long ago had taken beyond Fichte, the step from subjective to objective Idealism ; but he himself could not summon up suflicient courage to disavow decidedly the standpoint of his youth (in particular, the first book of his chief work), and left this task to his dis- ciples (Frauenstiidt, Bahnsen). Accordingly we only find INTRODUCTORY. 31 a few hints, which, carried further, would have changed the whole character of his system, e.g., the passage "Parerga," 2d edit. ii. 291 (to which Freiherr du Prel has referred in Cotba's " Deutscher Vierteljahrsschrift," No. 129), where he suggests the possibility, that after death a higher form of the incognitive consciousness might be added to the " intrinsically incognitive Will," devoid of the contrast of subject and object. I3ut now every consciousness is co ipso consciousness of an object with more or less clearly conscious reference to the correlative notion of subject, therefore a consciousness in which this opposition ceases is inconceivable ; but an unconscious cognition without this object were conceivable, and Schopenhauer very nearly approached it in his descrip- tion of the intuitive idea (W. a. W. u. V., i. 34 ; cf. also my above-named essay). It must therefore be granted that Schopenhauer divined the truth, but gave it a faulty expression, and thereby was prevented from inserting this conception in his system in its only possible place. His odious prejudice against Schelling alone hindered him from finding in that writer the very thing he wanted, and that which in the passage alluded to he vainly struggles to obtain. Only after these citations from European philosophers do I venture to refer to the Oriental philosophy, parti- cularly that of the Yedas. As it is characteristic of the Oriental mind to be less systematic in its thinking but quicker in divining the occult, and to be more open to the slight whispers of genius, there are in the philosophical systems of the Hindoos and the Chinese yet unlifted treasures, in which we are often surprised to find anti- cipated the results of many thousand years of Western development. In the philosophy of the Vcdas the Absolute is called llrahma, and has the three attributes Sat (being, substantiality), ("it (absolute unconscious knowledge), and Amanda (intellectual rapture). As absolute Knowinjness. Drahma is called C'aitanja (S ':. 32 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. penhauer's eternal Eye of the world, absolute subject of knowledge, at the same time intelligible Ego of all per- cipient individuals, Kutasta-Giva Saksin). The identity of the real and the ideal is most emphatically asserted ; for if the ideal were not the real, it would be unreal, and if the real were not the ideal, it would be degraded to dead matter without sustaining i'orce (Graul, Tamulische Bibliothek, vol. i. p. 78, No. 141). "There is no dis- tinction of knowcr, knowledge, and knowable in the highest mind, (rather) this (Brahma) is illuminated by itself in virtue of its own essence, which is spirit and bliss " (ibid., p. 188, No. 40). "Teacher. That purely spiritual C'aitanja perceives all bodies. Since, however, he is not himself body, he is also perceived in nothing. Pupil, If he, although knowledge, is yet cognised by nothing, how can he be knowledge ? Teacher. The syrup-juice also does not bring itself into experience, yet in virtue of the senses different from that juice which perceive it, we say that it is of a sweet nature. So one cannot doubt that knowledge belongs to the self which perceives all things (as its substance). Pupil. Is then Brahma a somewhat that is perceived or that is not perceived ? Teacher. Neither. That which lies beyond (above these two categories) (substantial knowledge), that is Brahma. Pupil. How then can we perceive it ? Tectclier. That is just as if somebody should say : Have I speech or not ? Although thy essence be knouiedge, dost thou yet ask : How is knowledge ? Art thou not ashamed ? " (ibid., p. 148, No. 2). Absolute knowledge is, ac- cording to this, neither conscious of itself (because then without distinction of subject and object), nor immediately conscious to another, because it lies be- yond the sphere of the directly discernible. Still it is existentially cognisable by us, because in all knowledge it is that which knows, in all perception that which perceives, and is even intrinsically cognoscible, if only negatively (according to the foregoing examination), as INTRODUCTORY. 33 un-conscious and un-limited knowledge. The Unconscious has, in fact, been'as clearly and exactly characterised in this old Indian book of the Vedanta philosophy (Panrfadasa- prakarana) as by any of the latest European thinkers. Eeturning now to the latter, we may cite Herbart, who understands by " non-conscious ideas " such " as are in consciousness without our being aware of them " (Werke, v. p. 342), i.e., without our " observing them to be ours and referring them to the Ego," or, in other words, without connecting them with self-consciousness. There is no danger of this conception being confounded with the true Unconscious ; but there is another notion of Herbart's which must be noticed on account of the application of it by Fechner, viz., that " of ideas below the threshold of consciousness," which only stand for an endeavour after representation more or less removed from realisation, but themselves are " by no means actual re- presentation," rather signify for consciousness less than nothing, " an impossible quantity " (Herbart, Works, v. PP- 339~34 2 )- Herbart arrives at this rather puzzling conception through his desire to retain, in the spirit of Leibniz, a gradual continuity in the passage from actual ideas to the slumbering ideas of memory, and conversely, as well as the possibility of a reciprocal action of these slumbering ideas, without condescending to a materialistic mode of explanation of these processes, in the sense of seeing in them only material cerebral processes of a strength insufficient for excitation of con- sciousness. Put now, at the present stage of science, it is not difficult to see that the so-called slumbering ideas of memory are not ideas in acta, in activity, but merely dispositions of the, brain facilitating the revival of ideas. As a string, when caused to sound by aerial vibrations, always yields the same note, the note A or C, for instance, if it be attuned to A or C; so does one or another idea arise more easily in the brain, according as the distribution vol. 1. c 34 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. and tension of the cerebral molecules induces a more ready response with one or another kind of vibrations on an appropriate stimulus. And just as the string does not respond merely to homologous vibrations, but also to those which only slightly differ from or are simply related to its own ; so the vibrations of the pre- disposed molecules of a cerebral cell are not aroused merely by one kind of vibratory impulse, but also by stimuli slightly disproportional or harmonically related to the predisposition (a connection discernible in the laws of association of ideas). What tuning is to the string, is the permanent change, which a vivid idea leaves behind it in distribution and tension of the molecules, to the brain. Although these cerebral predispositions are of the highest importance, since the quality of the feeling with which the mind reacts depends on the form of the brain- waves, (on the one hand all memory depending on them, and on the other the character of the individual being essentially conditioned by the sum of the various inherited predis- positions cf. Chap. C. x.), still such an arrangement of passive material molecules, favouring the genesis of certain ideas, cannot be termed Ideation, albeit it may, according to circumstances, co-operate as condition in the production of an idea, and, indeed, of a conscious idea. But now, as the endless continuance of vibrations once excited in the brain is out of the question, (for the powerful resistances there encountered must put an end to every movement in a finite, and indeed tolerably brief time), Herbart's unconscious condition of the idea could only obtain within the limits, which are fixed on the one hand by the cessation of movement, and on the other by the cessation of conscious representation with unarrested movement of the cerebral vibrations, supposing the two limits not to coincide. The question then is: (i.) Do all degrees of intensity of cerebral vibrations give rise to ideation, or does ideation only commence when a certain degree of intensity is reached ? and (2.) Is a conscious mental state INTRODUCTORY. 35 excited by cerebral vibrations of any intensity, or only by those of a certain strength ? Fechner has approached these questions in his cele- brated work " Psychophysik." His train of thought is as follows : It is not every sensuous stimulus that causes sensation, but only a stimulus of a certain amount, which is called the threshold of stimulation ; e.g., a sounding bell is heard only at a certain distance. If several homogeneous stimuli, imperceptible when taken singly, are added to- gether, there arises conscious sensation, as in the case of several distant bells sounding simultaneously which would not be separately heard, or the rustling of the leaves in the forest. It might be suggested that the stimulus below the threshold produces no sensation, for the simple reason that it is not strong enough to overcome the re- sistance offered in the sense-organ and nerves as far as the central organ, but that the mind reacts with the appro- priate sensation on the smallest stimulus when the latter has reached the centre itself. This assumption alone, however, is not sufficient, since it does not fit the case of differential sensation. For homogeneous stimuli, when varying in intensity, arouse different sensations ; but here, too, the variations must exceed a certain degree (the threshold of differential stimulation), if the sensations are to be perceived as different. Here clearly the resistances of the nerve-iibres cannot be made responsible for the phenomenon, since each of the sensations is large enough to overcome them. On the other hand, different principles cannot bo sot up for the threshold of simple stimulation and the threshold of differential stimulation, since the first is reducible to the second case, when in the latter one stimulus 0. Consequently there only remains the assumption that the vibrations at the centre must exceed a certain degree before feeling ensues. What here holds good for sensation holds of course for every other mental slat' 1 , and thus the second question is decided. It remains to ascertain whether the stimuli below the 36 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. threshold cause the mind to react at all, the result being unconscious sensation or idea, or whether the mind's re- action only begins at the threshold. Let us hear Fechner further. The so-called Law of Weber runs, " Constant differences in the intensities of homogeneous sensations correspond to constant quotients of their respective stimuli ; " and the highly ingenious for- mula hence derived by Fechner is y h log j, where y is the sensation following on the stimulus /3, b the threshold of stimulation, i.e., the value of the stimulus, which being exceeded y exceeds the value 0, and k is a con- stant, which contains the relation of the measuring units of ft and y. (J. J. Miiller gives a very interesting ideo- logical deduction of this formula in the " Proceedings of the Eoyal Academy of Sciences of Saxony," 12th De- cember 1870, where he shows that only by assuming this relation between stimulus and sensation is " the difference of sensation conditioned by diversity of stimuli indepen- dent of the excitability, and the difference of sensation conditioned by diversity of excitability independent of the stimulus," two conditions on which alone consciousness is in a position to keep asunder, and thereby to recognise, the effects due to the stimuli and the excitability respectively.) If now (3 becomes smaller than b, i.e., the intensity less than the threshold- value of the stimulus, y becomes nega- tive, and sinks as much below 0, as (3 sinks below b (with /3=0 y is =z oc). These negative ys now Fechner calls " unconscious sensations," with the full consciousness, however, of hav- ing only employed a license of speech, to signify that the sensation y is the more removed from reality the further y sinks below 0, i.e., that an ever greater increment of stimulation is required in order first to restore the zero value of y, and then to recall the latter to the limit of reality. The negative sign before y accordingly signifies here (as elsewhere often the imaginary) the insolubility INTRODUCTORY. 37 of the problem, from the given quantity of a stimulus to calculate a sensation. The real meaning of the negative sign, Fechner very properly says, can only be disclosed by the comparison of the rational calculation with the explained facts. Accord- ingly he dismisses the common illustration of heat and cold as not to the point, and discountenances the alge- braic summation of positive and negative roccsses of the silenfh/ creatm forces of nature, which urge stem, leaves, and blossom ui;t of the seed-grain uf the plant." It is the same thought 42 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. carried further, that underlies the works of Lazarus on " Volkerpsychologie " (cf. my essay, " Ueber das Wesen des Gesammtgeistes," in the " Gesammelte philosophische Abhandlungen," Xo. v.) In ^Esthetics, Carriere in particular has laid stress on the importance of unconscious mental activity, and, sup- porting himself on Schelling, shows the interposition of conscious and unconscious mental activity to be indis- pensable for every artistic achievement. An interesting contribution to the Unconscious in ^Esthetics is made by llotscher in an essay on the Demonic (in his " Dramatur- gische und asthetische Abhandlungen"). Of the various ways in which the conception of the Unconscious has been turned to account since the appearance of the first edition of the present work, no notice can, of course, be taken here. ( 43 ) II. HOW DO WE COME TO ASSUME AN AIM IN NATURE ? ONE of the most important and familiar manifestations of the Unconscious is Instinct, and the conception of Instinct rests on that of Purpose. An examination of the latter is therefore indispensable to our inquiry, and as it does not well fit into Section A., I have relegated it to the Introduction. It is possible that the ensuing treatment will incur the reproach of aridity ; and any one with an aversion for discussions involving calculations of probability may, if already convinced of the validity of the assumption of an Aim in Nature, pass over the present chapter. But I cannot refrain from adding that the way in which this important problem is here resolved, at least' on its formal side, is, so far as I know, both novel and also the only possible one. The notion of Design has played a highly important part in the speculations of many great thinkers, and has formed the foundation of a considerable portion of their systems ; as in the case of Aristotle and Leibniz. Kant was, of course, obliged to deny its reality outside conscious thought, as he did not admit the reality of time (cf. Trendelenburg, " Logische Untersuchungen," chap. viii. 5). Modern Materialism likewise denies its reality, because it refuses to admit the existence of mind apart from an animal brain. In our modern physical science the notion of Design, chiefly through the inlluenee of Hanm, has rightly fallen into discredit, because it had so often served as the convenient resource' of indolent reasoners to avoid the arduous search after efficient causes, and because in 44 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. the part of natural science concerned with matter alone, Design as a spiritual cause must necessarily be excluded. Spinoza was completely blinded to the fact of Purpose in Nature, because he believed final causality to be in con- tradiction with logical necessity, whereas it is in truth identical with it (Chap. C. xv. 3). Darwinism denies adaptation in Nature, not as fact, it is true, but as principle, and thinks itself able to comprehend the fact as result of mindless causality ; as if Causality itself were anything more than a logical necessity, discernible by us ' only as fact (not on the side of the internal principle), and as if the adaptation, actually manifested as result at the end of a series of events, must not have been from the very first the prius of these adjustments as plan or principle ! But if, on the one hand, so great and honest a spirit as Spinoza could look in Nature's face and deny Design, if, on the other hand, Purpose seems to others to play a part so important, and even the freethinking Voltaire does not venture to explain away the evidence of an Aim in Nature, however inconvenient and incompatible with the rest of his opinions its admission might be, there must indeed be something very peculiar about the idea. The notion of a purposed End is derived in the first instance from the experience of our own conscious mental activity. My end is a future event imagined and willed by me, the realisation of which I am not in a position to bring about directly, but only through a chain of causa- tion (means). If I do not imagine the future occurrence, it does not exist for me ; if I do not will it, I do not purpose it ; it is indifferent or repugnant to me. If I can directly realise it, the causal link, the means, falls away, and along with it disappears also the notion of a designed end (which is only the term of a relation the other member of which is the concept, means), for action then follows immediately upon volition. When I see that I am not able to realise my will directly, and recognise the means as efficient cause of the end, the INTRODUCTORY. 45 willing of the end becomes to me a motive, i.e., efficient cause for the willing of the means ; this in its turn becomes efficient cause for the realisation of the means through my act, and the realised means becomes efficient cause of the realisation of the end. Thus we have a triple causality with the four terms : Willing of the end, willing of the means, realising of the means, realising of the end. Only in rare cases is all this confined to the purely subjective mental sphere, e.g., in the composition of a poem, the elaboration in the mind of any artistic conception, or other mental effort. More commonly we find three of the four different modes of causality imme- diately presented, namely, causality between mental and mental event (willing of the end, willing of the means), mental and material event (willing and realisation of the means), and between material and material event (means and end). The fourth kind of causality too, that between material and mental event, also often occurs ; it lies then, however, before the beginning of our reflection in the motivation of the willing of the end through impressions of sense. It is, therefore, evident that the union of willed and realised end, or final causation, is by no means some- thing existing by the side of or even despite causality, but that it is only a particular combination of different kinds of causality, such that the first and last terms are identical, only the one ideal and the other real, the one presented in the willed idea, the other in reality. Far from destroying the exceptionless charaeter of the law of causation, it rather prcsujyoscs it, and that too not only between matter and matter, but also between mind and matter, and mind and mind. It denies freedom to the single empirical mental act, and brings it too under the necessity of the law of causality. This may lie 1111' first word towards coming to an understanding with the oppo- nents of the doctrine of final causes. Let us assume that M has been observed to be an efficient cause of Z, and let all the material circumstances 46 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. n.n. existing at the moment of the occurrence of M have been ascertained. Farther, let the proposition be ad- mitted that M must have a sufficient efficient cause. !N~ow three cases are possible : either the sufficient cause of M is contained in n.n., or certain other circumstances, but those material, which have escaped observation, are still wanting, or, lastly, the sufficient cause of M is not to be found on the material plane, consequently must be sought in the spiritual sphere. The second case con- tradicts the assumption, that all the material circum- stances, which immediately preceded the occurrence of M, are contained in n.n. If such a condition is, strictly speaking, incapable of being satisfied, since the whole position of the system of the world would have to be taken into account, yet it is easy to see that the cases are very rare, where conditions essential to the occurrence can lie outside a well-defined region, and no unessential circumstance need be taken note of ; e.g., the circumstances essential to the spider's spinning nobody will look for outside the spider, (say) in the moon. If we then assume the probability, that any material circumstance essential to the event has not been taken note of, and therefore not contained in n.n., to be so small that it may be neglected, 1 there remain only the two cases, that the sufficient cause is contained in n.n., or is of a spiritual nature. That the one or the other case must occur is their certainty, i.e., the sum of their probabilities is equal to 1 (which signifies certainty). If now the pro- bability that M is caused by n.n. = - , then the pro- \ 1 Z-l; bability that it has a mental cause = 1 - ~ = i It must always be remembered, able for calculation does the probable that events are never probable, but error, which every coefficient of pro- alwavs necessary, to an omniscient bability possesses, become so great being, and that it is only our ignor- as to make the value of the latter illu- ance which makes possible that mi- sory. Otherwise, if the probable errors certainty, which is the foundation in the statement of the problem are of the calculus of probability. Only confined within moderate limits, the when our ignorance is utterly dis- probable error in the result in our proportionate to the knowledge avail- examples becomes inappreciable. INTRODUCTORY. 47 the smaller 1 becomes, the larger x becomes, the more x -i approaches to 1, i.e., to certainty. The probability X - would become equal to 0, if we had the direct proof in x our hands that M is not caused by n.n. ; if, for instance, a case could be established where n.n. is present and M has not occurred. This is certainly impossible with the whole of n.n., since every spiritual cause must have ma- terial connections, but we shall often succeed in eliminat- ing at least one or more of the circumstances n.n., and the fewer the number of the circumstances n.n. to be regarded, which being present the event M at any time occurs, the easier becomes the determination of the proba- bility that they do not contain the sufficient cause of M. To make the matter clearer let us take an example. That brooding on the egg; is the cause of the young bird being hatched is an observed fact. The material circum- stances (n.n.) immediately preceding the brooding (M) are the existence and the constitution of the egL r , the existence and the bodily constitution of the bird, and the temperature of the place where the egg lies ; further material circumstances are inconceivable. The probability is in the highest degree small, that these circumstances are sufficient to cause the cheerful and lively bird to abandon its customary and instinctive way of life and to prompt it to a wearisome brooding over its eggs; for though the increased pressure of blood in the abdomen may produce a heightened feeling of warmth, this is not diminished, but increased, through the quiet sitting in the warm nest on the blood-hot egizs. We already se 1 1 that the probability is very small, and ' approa X X 1. If we, however, put the question the other way, viz., whether a case is known to us where bird and egjs ;;! the same and yet incubation does not take place, we aiv met bv the case of birds which have made their lies: in 48 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. hot forcing-houses and have omitted to brood, just as the ostrich hatches its eggs only in the night in hot Nigritia not at all. Accordingly of the circumstances n.n., bird and eggs are obvious]y not sufficient causes of the brooding (M), and there remains as the only material circumstance, which could avail to make the cause sufficient or complete, the temperature of the nest. No one will think it probable that the lower temperature is the direct occasion of the incubation, consequently for the particular event the existence of a spiritual cause, through which alone the ascertained influence of temperature on the event can be thought to be brought about, becomes as good as certain, although at the same time the question of the precise nature of this spiritual cause still remains open. The estimation of the probability is not always as easy as in this instance, and very rarely when M is simple will it approach so near to certainty. In lieu thereof we are usually helped by the circumstance that M, the observed cause of Z, for the most part is not simple, but consists of different independent 1 events, P x P 2> P 3j P 4< &c. If we now, again, in the first instance, leave on one side the question whether all the essential material circumstances have been taken into account, we have to ascertain : The probability, that P : has its sufficient cause in n.n. P, 3J - 1 > 15 55 55 ^ r* l ih l i ih i 2' A i To ascertain the actual indepen- application, however, does not here dence of the co-operating conditions concern us. where we are only deal- in any given case may often be very ing with the establishment of the difficult, and a main source of error, formal side of the purposive thought- This material difficulty in practical process. INTRODUCTORY. 49 Hence the probability, that M has its sufficient cause in n.n. = - ' ; for M is the sum of the events 7h Pt ; 3 P* Pj, P 2 , P 3 , P 4 ; consequently, if M is to be produced by n.n., both P v and P 2 , also P z , 1\, must at the same time be produced by n.n. This probability is, however, the product of the several probabilities. (If, e.g., on the first throw of a die, the probability of throwing 2 = r , on the second likewise = -, the probability of throwing 2 with both dice at once = s ' z.) Consequently, the probability that M is not sufficiently accounted for by n.n., that it accordingly still requires a spiritual cause = 1 1 = Pi Pi Pa Pi ~ 1 Pi Pt Pa P* Pi P2 Pa Pi Here, then, p x p 2 p 3 p i is what x was before, and it appears from this that p x> p 2> p 3t and p only need to be individually a little greater than s/ 2 = 1*189, conse- quently , , , and each a little less than , S4, 1 J Pi Ih Ps Pi for p x p- 2 p s pi as product of the four factors to become T) 1) 11 7) " 1 greater than 2, and ' ! : greater than ~. In Pi Pi Pa Pi V other words, if, for the several events P x , P 2 , P :5 , P 4 , the probability of a spiritual cause ( 1 - , &c. j is only small (< OiG), yet for their sum M its value rises as the number of distinct events which go to make up M becomes larger. l^O-i ^ the probability of a spiritual cause bo for each on the average onlv . ( 1 M n 1 1 1 1 4 1 - , then = = -_ = O'S, conse- V PI Pi P-i Pi J'i ; > quently = 0-4096 and 1- - = 0-5901, " Pi ft P.: Pi Pi Pi ft 1 . a very respectable probability of about '.. One easih Vol.. I. D ;i,. 50 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. sees that those parts of M, which undoubtedly result merely from n.n., are self- eliminated from the calculation, since their probability enters as 1 into the product of the rest, i.e., leaves it unchanged. Let us consider an example of this case also. As cause of vision (Z) a multitude (M) of conditions (P 1? P 2 , P 3 , P 4 ) have been observed, the most important of which are the following: (i.) Special bundles of nerves issue from the brain, which are of such a nature that each stimulus affecting them is perceived in the brain as a sensation of light; (2.) They terminate in a peculiarly formed very sensitive nervous tissue (retina) ; (3.) Be- fore the latter is placed a camera-obscura ; (4.) The focal distance of this camera is in general adapted to the indices of refraction from air into the ocular humours (except in the case of aquatic animals) ; (5.) By means of various contractions the focal distance is capable of being changed for longsighted persons from a few inches to infinity ; (6.) The quantity of light to be admitted is regulated by the contraction and dilatation of the iris, whereby an addi- tional aid to clear vision is afforded by the cutting off of the peripheral rays ; (7.) The segments of the rods or cones continuous with the nerve-endings form a mosaic, so contrived, that each segment changes light- waves of definite wave-lengths (colour) into stationary waves, and thus produces in the appropriate primitive nerve-fibre the physiological colour- vibrations ; (8.) Bi- nocular vision conditions the perception of solidity and reveals the third dimension of space ; (9.) The two eyes may be simultaneously moved by means of special nerve- bundles and muscles, but only in the same direction, thus unsymmetrically in reference to the muscles ; (10.) The clearness of the visual pictures increasing from periphery to centre prevents the otherwise unavoidable distraction of the attention; (11.) The reflex turning of the visual axis to the brightest point of the field of vision facilitates education by the medium of sight and the for- INTRODUCTORY. 51 mation of the ideas of space; (12.) The constant flow of tears keeps the surface of the cornea transparent and re- moves the dust ; (13.) The secluded position in the bony socket, tiie lids which close reflectorially on the approach of danger, the eyelashes and eyebrows, protect the organ from being rendered useless by external influences. All these thirteen conditions are necessary for the existence and maintenance of normal vision ; they are all there at the birth of the child, although the occasion for their exercise has not yet been afforded ; the circum- stances preceding and accompanying their origin (n.n.) are accordingly to be sought in procreation and the life of the foetus. The physiologists, however, it may safely be said, will never succeed, with the least show of probability, in exhibiting the sufficient cause for the origin of all these conditions in the blastoderm of the fertilised ovum and the material fluids which supply it : one cannot see why the child should not develop even without optic nerve or without eye at all. Suppose now, however, that we fell back upon our ignorance, although that is a bad ground for positive probabilities, and assumed a tolerably high probability for the development of any of the thirteen conditions from the material conditions of embryonic life, say -A- (a probability which but a small portion of our most certain knowledge possesses), still the probability that all these conditions follow from the material rela- tions of the embryonic life is only 09 13 = 0-254. The probability, therefore, of a spiritual cause being required for the sum of conditions = O740, i.e., almost |[. In truth, however, the several probabilities perhaps = 0"25, or at the most0"5,and accordingly the probability of a spiritual cause for the whole = 099999S;) or 0-99988, i.e., certainty. We have just seen, how from material events nr ma if eonelii'le to the co-operation of spiritual causes, witliout tin latter beinj open to immediate inspect i'Oi. From this to the recognition of final causes there is but one step. A spiritual cause for material events can only consist of 52 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. spiritual activity ; and, moreover, where the spirit has to work outwardly, Will must be present, and the idea of what the Will wills cannot be wanting, as is more fully discussed in Chap, iv, A. The spiritual cause is thus Will in union with Idea, the idea namely of the material event which is to be brought about (M). We assume here, for the sake of brevity, that M proceeds directly from a spiritual cause, which is by no means necessary. Let us ask further, what can be the cause of M being willed ? Here the causal chain is at once broken, if we do not adopt the simple natural hypothesis, the willing of Z. Now, it is obvious that Z cannot influence the event as real existence, but only idealiter, i.e., as mental object, according to the axiom that the cause must be prior to the effect. That, however, willing-of-Z is a suffi- cient motive for willing-of-M is likewise a self-evident proposition, for whoever wishes to produce the effect must also will to produce the cause. To be sure on this hypo- thesis we only obtain a genuine explanation, if the willing- of-Z is in itself more comprehensible to us than the willing- of-M. The sufficient motive of the willing-of-Z must then lie either in the realisation of Z, or in a willing of Z lt which Z x follows on Z as its effect ; a consideration admitting of indefinite repetition. The more evident is the last motive at which we stop, the more probable does it become that the willing-of-Z is cause of the willing-of-M. It is easy to see that this is, in point of fact, the course of our speculation with regard to natural ends. We have seen, for example, that the bird broods because it wills to brood. We must either be satisfied with this barren result and forego all explanation, or we must ask why is brooding willed ? Answer : because the development and hatching of the young bird is willed. We are still in the same plight; we therefore inquire further, why is the development of the young bird willed ? Answer : because propagation is willed ; and this, because the con- tinued duration of the species, despite the shortness of INTRODUCTORY. 53 the individual life, is willed ; and here we get a motive which may provisionally satisfy us. We are accordingly entitled to assume, that the willing of the development of the young bird is the cause (no matter whether direct or indirect) of the willing of the brooding, i.e., that the former is aimed at through the mean of brooding. (The point is not, whether the bird is conscious of this aim or not, although the supposition would be absurd in the case of a young bird bred in seclusion, for whence could it have derived the conscious knowledge of the effect of incubation ?) Certainly there always remains the possibility that an immaterial cause is at the bottom of the event M, without its being motived by the will to produce Z ; consequently the probability that Z is purposed will be a product of the probability that M has a spiritual cause (l - -J, and of the probability that this spiritual cause has the willing of Z for its cause -; the product (l - 7^ must, however, of course be smaller than either of the factors, since every pro- bability is less than 1. Here, too, the probability may be considerably increased, if the several conditions (l\, P 2 , P 3 , P 4 ), of which M is usually compounded, be taken into account. The probability that Z is aimed at by means of P x is, according to the foregoing, ( 1 - ) , if is the probability that the immaterial cause 1\ 'J 1 'h has for its cause the willing of Z : accordingly the proba- bility that 1\ has not Z in view = 1 - ( 1 - ~ ) '- Con- v lh' 'A- sequently the probability that neither 1\, nor P 2 , nor P :! , nor P 4 has Z for end, i.e., that Z is in nowise aimed at through M = the product of the several probabilities -[i-(i- '-)-!] [i-(i- 1 ) 1 ][&c l..n_ V lh ) < h 54 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. Consequently the probability that M in any part thereof has Z for its end, i.e., the probability that Z is at all an end with respect to M, is equal to the complement of this quantity in respect of 1, = 1 - { ' 1 - (l - ^-. -,-, &c, are 1..M V pj qi Pl *p a genuine fractions, just as , > &c, consequently also 1 - I, and (l - I) I, and 1 - (l - I) -, Pi x Pi 9i Pi 2i and so on, consequently also their product, 1 . . n \ Vx > ?1 Hence it follows, that this product becomes smaller the larger the quantity n becomes ; for if n increases to 1 the newly-introduced factor is \ wT+lv qii + i" This factor, like the product, is a genuine fraction, there- fore the product of both must be a genuine fraction, which is smaller than either of the two factors, q. e. d. From the circumstance that n increasing ) ( becomes smaller, it 1 . . n follows that n increasing 1 ) ( becomes larger ; ac- 1 . .71 cordingly this probability also grows with the number of conditions of which M is compounded. Let (i-i)l,(i-L) i> \ p l ) q, \ pJ (J, 3 . 4 ' be on the average = 4 r , i.e., let the probability, that each of the conditions of Z taken singly has this particular end in view, be on the average = ^, consequently very improbable. Then 1 - (1 - ) is on the average this raised merely to the fourth power gives ^ p conse- quently ,_[l_(l _!)!]* ="<>'*; INTRODUCTORY. 55 i.e., there results on the whole a very fair probability, for any one, who should bet 2 to 1 on the existence of Design, would still win. The application to the example of vision is obvious. We learn from the above, that those effects in particular can safely be regarded as ends, which need for their pro- duction a considerable number of causes, each of which lias a certain probability of being means to the particular end. It is, therefore, no wonder that just the most general pheno- mena of Nature have always been most widely admitted to be ends. For example, the existence and continuance of organic nature as end of its own arrangements, as well as of those of inorganic nature. It is precisely here that an infinite number of causes co-operate to secure one grand result, the continuance of organisms. So far as these causes lie in the organisms themselves, they are divisible into those which conduce to the maintenance of the indi- vidual, and those which subserve the preservation of the species. Both of these points have seldom wanted recog- nition as natural ends. If we now call such an end cognised with the greatest possible certainty Z, we know that none of its many causes can be wanting, if it is to be attained ; thus, e.g., not M. Now since I know that both Z and M were willed and imagined he/ore their real existence, and I see that among others the external cause M t is requisite fur the occurrence of M, the assumption, that M,, too, was willed and imagined before its real exist- ence, obtains a certain probability through this regressive inference. "Whether, namely, M be realised through the immediate action of a spiritual cause, or indirectly in that it follows from material causes, of which a few or several are spiritually caused, in both cases M, may be willed and represented before its real existence as means to the end M. In the latter case this is perfectly clear, but also in the former case the immediate interweaving of a spiritual cause in the realisation of M does not preclude the mate- rial causes of M, and therefore of M,, springing in larger 56 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. or smaller part, from spiritual causes, which had M and Z for their ends. In organic nature this is even the normal state of the case. The result of this reasoning in any case is a certain probability that M 2 is also aimed at, and although it may not be in itself great, still it is always a strengthening of the directly obtained degree of probability which is not to be despised, since all later links in the chain have the benefit of this probability by its repetition at every stage. From these considerations it is evident that the ways, in which ends are perceived in Xature, are multifariously combined. No claim is set up for the application of such calculations in practice, but they serve to clear up the principles which more or less unconsciously regulate the logical procedure of every one who correctly reflects on this subject, and who does not dogmatise thereon from the lofty heights of some d 'priori system. The examples adduced in this chapter are not intended to serve as a proof of the truth of Teleology, but only for the elucidation and illustration of the abstract exposi- tions, which likewise will assuredly convert no opponent to the hypothesis of ends in Xature, for only examples en masse can do that ; but perhaps they will lead some, who thought themselves to have outgrown the belief in Purpose as manifested in Xature, to weigh alleged in- stances thereof more carefully and impartially ; and no other than this, viz., as a preparation for Section A. of our inquiry, was the design of the present chapter. A. THE MANIFESTATION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. '' The Materialists endeavour to show that all, even mental pheno- mena, are physical : and rightly : only they do not see that, on the other hand, everything physical is at the same time metaphysical." Schopenhauer. ( 59 ) THE UNCONSCIOUS WILL IN THE INDEPENDENT FUNCTIONS OF THE SPINAL COED AND GANGLIA. The time has gone by when the animals were con- trasted with the free man as locomotive machines, as soulless automata. Deeper insight into the life of animals, strenuous effort to understand their language and the motives of their actions, has shown that with respect to mental capacity man differs from the brutes in degree and not in kind, just as the brutes differ among them- selves ; that in virtue of this higher capacity he has created a more perfect form of speech, and thereby has gained in the course of generations that perfectibility which is wanting to the brutes, owing to their imperfect means of communication. We accordingly know now, that we cannot compare the educated man of to-day with the animals, without being unjust to the latter, but only the peoples which are but little removed from the state in which they were fashioned by the hand of Nature ; for we know that even our own race, privileged as it now is by higher aptitudes, was once what these still are, and that our present higher qualities of brain and mind have been only gradually attained through the law of hereditary transmission of acquired power. Thus the animal kingdom is presented to us as a finished scale of being, with pervading analogies. The fundamental spiri- tual faculties must be essentially the same in all, and what in the higher members appear to be new faculties arc only secondary powers, which have been developed 60 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. in certain directions by the higher culture of common elementary capacities. In all beings these fundamental or primitive activities of the mind are willing and think- ing ; for feeling (as I shall show in Chap. iii. B) may, with the help of the Unconscious, be developed from these two. We shall speak in this chapter only of the Will. It is scarcely to be doubted, that what we regard as imme- diate cause, of our action and call Will is to be found in the consciousness of animals as causal moment of their action, and must also be called Will, if we cease to give our- selves airs of superiority by employing different names for the very same things (as devouring, swilling, littering, for eating, drinking, child-bearing). The dog will not separate from its master ; it wills to save the child which has fallen into the water from the well-known death ; the bird will not let its young be injured ; the cock will not share his hen with another, &c. I know there are many people who think they elevate man, when they ascribe as much as possible in the life of animals, especially the lower ones, to " reflex action." If these persons have in their minds the ordinary physiological sense of the term reflex action, involuntary reaction on an external stimulus, it may safely be said that either they have never observed animals, or that they have eyes but they see not. If however they extend the meaning of reflex action beyond its usual physiological acceptation, they are assuredly right, but then they forget : firstly, that man, too, lives and moves in pure reflex actions that every act of will is a reflex action ; and secondly, that every reflex action is an act of will, as we shall show in Chap. V. Let us then retain provisionally the usual narrower acceptation of reflex action, and speak only of such acts of will as are not reflexes in this sense, i.e., are not in- voluntary reactions of the organism on external stimuli. There are two marks in particular whereby volition may be distinguished from reflex actions : firstly, emotion, and THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 61 secondly, consistency in carrying out an intention. Reflex actions are mechanical and passionless ; but one need not be skilled in the art of physiognomies to clearly perceive the presence of an emotion even in the brutes. It is well known that several species of ants wage war with one another, one state subjugating and enslaving the citizens of another state, in order to obtain labourers for its opera- tions. These wars are waged by a warrior caste, whose members are larger and stronger, and provided with more powerful nippers. It is only necessary to have once wit- nessed this army knocking at the hostile edifice, to have seen the workers withdraw and the warriors come out to do battle, with what bitterness the fight is carried on, and how, after an unsuccessful contest, the constructors of the building surrender themselves captive, to have no longer any doubt that this premeditated raid shows a very decided will, and is something altogether different from reflex action. The like is the case with the swarms of robber-bees. Iteflex action disappears and reappears with the ex- ternal stimulus, but it cannot form a purpose, which it pursues' under changed external circumstances with ap- propriate change of means. E.g., when a decapitated frog, having remained quiet a long time after the operation, suddenly begins to make natatory movements or to hop away, one might be inclined to look upon this as men: physiological reflex action, as result of the irritation of the terminations of the divided nerve by the air. But when the frog in various experiments, the cutaneous irritation and the part affected being the same, overcomes different obstacles in a different way, but equally suited to tin; purpose; when, having taken a fixed direction, and being turned therefrom, it tries with rare obstinacy constantly to regain it ; when it creeps away under a cupboard or into other odd corners, manifestly to seek protection from its persecutors, there is unmistakable evidence of non-reflectorial acts of will, regarding which 62 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. even the physiologist Goltz justly concludes from his careful experiments, that there is no avoiding the assump- tion of an intelligence not confined to the cerebrum, but astricted to various central organs for the exercise of different functions (e.g., to the corpora quadrigemina for the maintenance of equilibrium). From this example of the decapitated frog and the voli- tion of all invertebrate animals (e.g., insects) it follows that 110 brain at all is requisite for the exercise of will. Since in the invertebrata the oesophageal ganglia take the place of the brain, we must assume that these also suffice for the act of will, and in the above-mentioned frog cere- bellum and spinal cord must have supplied the place of the cerebrum. But we cannot confine the will of inver- tebrate animals to the oesophageal ganglia ; for when the anterior part of one bisected insect continues the act of devouring, and the posterior part of another the act of propagation, when praying crickets with their heads cut off even seek their females for days, find them and copulate, just as if they were unscathed, it is tolerably clear that the will to devour has been an act of the oesophageal ring, but the will to propagate, in these cases at least, an act of other ganglia of the trunk. The like independence of the will in the different ganglia of one and the same animal is observed, when the two halves of a divided earwig, or of an Australian ant, turn against one another, and, under the unmistakable influence of the passion of anger and lust of fighting, contend furiously with their antennre till exhaustion or death ensues. But we must not limit the activity of the will even to gan- glia ; fur we find voluntary action even in animals of a very low type, where the microscope of the anatomist has discovered no trace either of muscular fibrin or of nerves, but only the fibroin of Mulder (now called pro- toplasm). Here probably the semifluid slimy substance of the animal, as in the first stages of embryonic de- velopment, fulfils in an inferior manner those conditions THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 63 to which the nerve substance owes its irritability, and special fitness as an instrument of the will, viz., the easy mobility and polarisability of the molecules. Let any one take a glass of water containing a polype, and place it in such a position that a part of the water is illuminated by the sun; the polype will instantly propel itself out of the dark towards the illuminated part of the water. If now a living infusorion be placed therein and it approaches within a few lines of the polype, the latter perceives it God only knows how and produces a whirl- pool with its arms, in order to draw it within its grasp. On the other hand, should a dead infusorion, a small vegetable organism, or a particle of dust, approach quite as close, it does not trouble itself at all about it. The polype then perceives the animalcule to be living, draws therefrom the inference that it is fit for food, and adopts means to bring it within reach of its mouth. Not seldom also one may see two polypes in bitter conllict over a prize. No one will venture to call a will guided by a sense-perception so fine and so clearly manifested phy- siological reflection in the ordinary sense of the term, otherwise we should have to term it reflex action when the gardener bends the bough of a tree to reach its fruit. Accordingly, when we see acts of will in animals destitute of nerves, we can certainly not hesitate to recognise the same in ganglia. This result is also suggested by comparative anatomy, which teaches that the brain is an aggregation of ganglia connected with nerve-iibres, and that the spinal cord in its central grey matter is likewise a series of ganglia which have coalesced. The Articulata are the first to show a weak analogue of the brain in the form of two nodules connected by the (esophageal ring and also of the spinal cord in the so-called ventral cord, the latter containing ganglia united by fibivs, each of which answers to a segment and pair of legs. Ac- cordingly physiologists assume as many independent 64. PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. centres in the spinal cord as there are pairs of spinal nerves issuing therefrom. Among the Vertebrata there are fishes, whose brain and spinal cord consist of a number of ganglia, which lie in a row behind one another. The composition of a central organ from several ganglia is positively confirmed by the metamorphosis of insects, when certain ganglia, which are separate in the larva state, appear consolidated at a more advanced stage of development. These facts may suffice to prove the essential resem- blance of brain and ganglia, brain-will and ganglia-will. But now, if the ganglia of lower animals have their inde- pendent wills, if the spinal cord of a decapitated frog has its will, why should not the so much more highly organised ganglia and spinal cord of the higher animals and of man also have their will ? If in insects the will to devour lies in anterior, the will to procreate in posterior ganglia, why in man should not such a division of labour be likewise provided for his will? Or is it conceivable that the same natural phenomenon should in the less perfect form exhibit effects which are entirely wanting in the more perfect form ? Or must we suppose that in man the conduction is so good, that every gan- glionic volition is immediately transmitted to the brain and appears in consciousness undistinguishable from the volition generated in the brain ? This may, perhaps, be true to a certain extent for the upper parts of the spinal cord, certainly not for all the rest, since the channels of sensation from the hypogastric plexus are almost imperceptible. Xo other course is left open, then, but to ascribe independent wills to the human ganglia and spinal cord, the manifestations of which it only remains empirically to prove. That in the case of higher animals the muscular movements which effect external actions are more and more under the control of the cerebellum, and consequently centralised, is well kncwn. Facts, there- fore, will not be forthcoming here to any great extent ; THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 65 and tins is doubtless the reason why hitherto the inde- pendence of the ganglionic system in higher animals has been so little recognised by physiologists, although de- fended by the most recent investigators. Those volun- tary acts, on the contrary, which are actually to be ascribed to the ganglia, have been usually regarded as reflex actions, whose stimuli are said to exist in the organism itself, which stimuli accordingly were arbitrarily assumed when they were not assignable. In part these assumptions may be justified ; they then belong to the chapter on Reflex Actions. It is not a large part, how- ever, in any case, and, moreover, it cannot do any harm, to consider here even those which are reflex actions proper from the point of view of the Will, since it will be hereafter proved that every reflex action contains an unconscious Will. The independent movements effected by the sym- pathetic nervous system, i.e., without the co-operation of brain and spinal cord, are : ( I .) The beating of the heart ; (2.) the movements of the stomach and the intestines ; (3.) the tonic contractions of the lower part of the alimentary canal and muscular coats of the arteries; (4.) an important part of the processes of organic life, so far as they depend on nervous action. The intermittent type of movement is shown in the beating of the heart, tone of the arteries, and movements of the intestines; and the persistent move- ments are illustrated by the other processes. The beating of the heart, as may be seen in an exposed frog's heart, begins with the contraction of the veme cava) ; the contraction of the auricles follows, then that of the ventricles, and finally that of the bulbus aorta'. In an excised frog's heart, sprinkled with salt water the cardiac ganglia continue to perform their function of stimulating the heart to beat for hours together. In the case, of the intestines the movement begins at the lower part of the oesophagus, and progresses vermicularly from above downwards, one wave hardly completing its course before the next begins. Have VOL. I. ] 66 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. not these movements of the intestines the most surprising resemblance to the creeping of a worm, with the simple difference that the worm propels itself forward on its sup- port, whilst here the worm is fastened, and the (inner) support, the masses of food and the faeces are pushed forward ? Should the one be called Will and not the other ? The " tone " is a slight muscular contraction, which is ceaselessly exhibited by all muscles during life, even in sleep or swoon. In the case of muscles subser- vient to volition (the cerebral will), it is maintained by the spinal cord, and there is only no movement of the limbs, because the actions of the opposing muscles (antagonists) neutralise one another. Where, therefore, there are no opposing muscles (as, e.g., in the circular sphincters), the contraction is clearly manifested, and can only be over- come by strong pressure of the fa3ces. The tone of the intestines, arteries, and veins depends on the sympathetic system, and the latter is absolutely necessary for the cir- culation of the blood. Lastly, as concerns secretion and nutrition, these can be influenced by the nerves, partly by means of dilatation and contraction of the capillary vessels, partly by tension and relaxation of the membranes concerned in osmosis, partly through the setting up of chemical, electrical, and thermal currents. All these functions are carried on exclusively by subordinate ganglia through the agency of the sympathetic fibres found in all nerve-trunks, which are chiefly distinguishable from the sensory and motor fibres by the absence of a medullary sheath. The surest proofs of the independence of the ganglionic system are derived from Bidder's experiments on frogs. The spinal cord having been completely destroyed, the animals lived often six, sometimes ten weeks (with gra- dually slackening heart-beat). On destruction of the brain and spinal cord, the medulla oblongata alone being spared (for breathing), they lived six days ; when this also was destroyed, the beating of the heart and circulation THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 67 of the blood could be still observed even on the second day. The frogs whose medulla oblongata had been pre- served ate and digested their worms after six-and-twenty days, whilst micturition took place regularly. Besides the above-mentioned tone of the voluntary muscles, the spinal cord (including the medulla oblongata) regulates all involuntary movements of the voluntary muscles (reflex movements, see Chap. V.) and the respi- ratory movements. The latter have their central organ in the medulla oblongata; and not merely a large number of the spinal nerves, but also the i\ r . phrenicus, acccssorius, Willisii, vagus, and facialis, co-operate in the production of these highly complicated movements. Although the cerebral will is able for a short time to strengthen or to suppress the respiratory movements, it can never entirely abolish them, since, after a little pause, the will of the spinal cord regains the upper hand. The independence of the spinal cord on the brain is likewise proved by many beautiful physiological experi- ments. A hen, from which Plourens had removed the entire cerebrum, sat indeed motionless as a rule ; but on going to sleep it tucked its head under its wings ; on waking, it shook itself and preened its feathers. When pushed, it ran forward in a straight line ; when thrown into the air, it Hew. It did not eat spontaneously, but <>nly swallowed the food thrust into its bill. Voit re- peated these experiments with pigeons. They first fell into a deep sleep, from which they only awoke after a few weeks; then, however, they flew and moved of their own accord, and comported themselves in such a manner as to leave no doubt of the existence of their sensations . only intelligence was lacking, and they did not spontane- ously take food. Thus a pigeon, having thrust its beak against a suspended wooden pendulum, caused it to swing for upwards of an hour till Voit's return, so that the pen- dent spool over and over again struck its heal-;. On lie other hand, such a brainless pigeon endeavours to eva i .. 68 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. hand trying to grasp it, to carefully avoid obstacles in its flight, and can settle cleverly on narrow supports. Babbits and guinea-pigs, whose cerebrum has been removed, run freely about after the operation ; the behaviour of a de- capitated frog has been already mentioned. All these movements, as the preening of its feathers by the hen, the leaping of rabbits and frogs, take place without noticeable external stimulus, and are so like the same movements in uninjured animals that it is impossible to assume a difference in the underlying principle in the two cases : in the one case as in the other, there is a manifes- tation of will. Now we know that the higher animal con- sciousness is conditional on the integrity of the cerebrum (see Chap. ii. C), and when this is destroyed, it is said these animals are without consciousness, and accordingly act and will unconsciously. But the cerebral conscious- ness is by no means the sole, but merely the highest con- sciousness of the animal, the only one which in higher animals and in man attains to self-consciousness, to the ego, therefore also the only one which I can call my consciousness. That, however, the subordinate nerve- centres must also have a consciousness, if of a vaguer description, plainly follows from the continuity of the animal series, and a comparison of the ganglionic con- sciousness of the Invertebrata with that of the independent ganglia and central parts of the spinal cord of the higher animals. It is beyond a doubt that a mammal deprived of its brain is always capable of clearer feeling than an uninjured insect, because the consciousness of its spinal cord stands in any case higher than that of the ganglia of the insect. Accordingly this will, which gives evidence of itself in the independent functions of the spinal cord and the ganglia, is by no means to be at once declared to be in itself unconscious ; we must rather provisionally assume that for the nerve-centres from which it proceeds it certainly may become more or less clearly conscious. On THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 69 the other hand, compared with the cerebral consciousness which a man exclusively recognises as his consciousness, it is certainly unconscious, and it is accordingly shown that there exists in us an unconscious will, since these nerve-centres are all contained in our corporeal organism, therefore in us. It seems requisite to add, in conclusion, a remark with respect to the sense in which the word Will is here taken. We started with understanding by this word a conscious intention, which is the ordinary signification. We have found, however, in the course of our investigation, that in a single individual, but in different nerve-centres, there may exist consciousnesses and wills more or less independent of one another, each of which can at the most be conscious for the nerve-centre through which it is expressed. In say- ing this, the usual limited meaning of Will is necessarily abandoned ; for I must now recognise another will in me than that which has been exerted through my brain, and lias thereby become conscious to me. After these limita- tions of meaning have fallen away, we can no longer avoid understanding by Will the immanent cause of every movement in animals, which is not produced reflectorially. This may also be taken as the sole characteristic and in- fallible mark of the will of which we are conscious, that it is a cause of preconceived action. It is now seen, that it is somewhat accidental to the will, whether it passes through the cerebral consciousness or not; its essence remains thereby unaffected. What then in the present work is denoted by the word "Will " is no other than the same essential principle in both cases. If, however, it is particularly desired to distinguish the two kinds of will, for conscious will language already offers a term exactly cover- ing this conception Freewill whilst the word Will must retained for the general principle. Will, we know, is the resultant of all contemporaneous desires; if this struggle ui desire is consciously waged, it appears as choice of ihe result, or freewill, whilst the origin of the unconscii us will 70 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. is withdrawn from consciousness, consequently even the semblance of choice among desires cannot here occur. One sees from the existence of this term Freewill, that the idea of a more general will with non-selected content or aim, whose actions thus appear to consciousness not as free, but as inward compulsion, has long been in the popular consciousness. I do not merely rely upon the precedent of Schopen- hauer and the wide-spread acceptance (even abroad) that this use of the word Will has already found, but upon the fact, that no other word in general use in the Teutonic lan- guages is more appropriate to designate the broad principle which is treated of in the present and following chapter. "Desire" is volition still incomplete, in the making, as it were, one-sided as not having yet stood the test of resisting other desires. It is only an unfinished product of the psychological laboratory of Volition, not the final collective expression of the activity of the whole indi- vidual (be it of higher or of lower order). It is only a component of the will, which, in consequence of being paralysed by other opposite desires, may be condemned to remain velleity. If "desiring" cannot be substituted for " willing," still less can "Impulse ;" since it not only suffers from the same one-sidedness and limitation as desire, but does not even include the notion of actuality. It rather only represents the latent disposition to certain one-sided tendencies to action, which, if they become actual in consequence of some motive, are no longer called impulse but desire. Every impulse thus denotes a definite aspect, not of volition, but of the character, i.e., the tendency of the latter to react on certain classes of motives with desires of a fixed direction {e.g., sexual impulse, migratory impulse, acquisitive impulse, &c ; cf. the phrenological " instincts " or " primitive faculties "). As specific predispositions the impulses rightly stand for inner springs of action, just as motives represent the outer ones. Impulse then, as guch, has necessarily a definite concrete content, which is THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 71 conditioned by the physical predispositions of the general bodily constitution and the molecular constitution of the central nervous system. Will, on the other hand, as uni- versal formal principle of movement and change, stands altogether behind the concrete dispositions, which, when conceived as informed by the will, are called impulses, and is realised in the resulting volition, which receives its particular content through the psychological mechanism of motives, impulses, and desires (cf. Chap. iv. B.) Although in the lower animals and in the subordinate central organs of man this mechanism is simple in comparison with that of the human brain, it is none the less present, and easily reveals itself in reflex movements. Even in the case of the independent functions of the spinal cord and ganglia the inherited innate material predisposition of the medulla oblongata to effect the respiratory movements may very well be called a " respiratory impulse," if only it be not forgotten that behind this material arrangement stands the principle of the will, without which it could as little be functional as, say, the innate cerebral disposition for compassion, and that the exercise of the respiratory move- ments themselves is an actual willing, whose direction and content is conditioned by such predisposition. ( r- ) ii. UNCONSCIOUS IDEATION IN THE EXECUTION OF VOLUNTARY MOVEMENT. I will to lift my little finger, and the finger is lifted. Does, then, my will directly move my finger ? Xo ; for if the brachial nerve be divided the will cannot move it. Experience teaches that for every movement there is only one part, namely, the central ending of the nerve- fibres concerned, which is able to carry into effect the volitional impulse for this particular movement of this particular member. Should this one part be injured, the will would have just as little power over the member, as it would have if the nervous communication between that place and the muscles were interrupted. The motor impulse itself we cannot, intensity apart, imagine to be different for different nerves ; for since the excitation in all motor nerves is to be looked upon as homogeneous, it cannot be otherwise with the excitation at the centre, whence the current issues ; consequently movements only differ in this, that the central endings of different motor nerves are affected by the volitional impulse, and thereby different muscles are constrained to contract. "We may thus picture to ourselves the central termination of motor fibres in the brain as a kind of keyboard. The. touch is, inten- sity apart, always the same ; the touched keys alone are different. If, then, I intend a specific movement, e.g., the lifting of the little finger, what is required is to compel those muscles to contract which by their combination produce this movement, and for that purpose to strike THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 73 with the will that chord in the keyboard of the brain, the single keys of which set the related muscles in motion. If in framing the chord one or more false keys are struck, there occurs a movement which does not correspond with the one intended ; e.g., in making a slip in speaking, mis- writing, tripping, in the awkward handling of children, &c. It is true the number of the central endings of fibres in the brain is considerably smaller than that of the motor fibres in the nerves, provision being made through the intervention of a peculiar mechanism, to be further men- tioned in Chap. V., for the simultaneous excitation of many peripheral fibres by means of one central fibre. However, the number of dilferent movements within the power of the conscious will, consequently dirigible by the brain, is, by means of a thousand little modifications of direction and combination, for each single limb sufficiently large for the whole body, indeed, simply immeasurable ; so that the probability would be infinitely small that the conscious idea of the lifting of the little linger should, without causal connection, coincide with the actual elevation. The mere mental representation of the lifting of the little finger cannot act on the central nerve-endings, since they have nothing to do with one another ; the mere will, however, as motor impulse, would be absolutely blind, and there- fore the striking of the right key would be left to pure chance. If there were no causal connection at all, prac- tice could avail nothing ; for nobody finds in his conscious- ness an idea or a feeling of this infinite number of central endings. Thus, if accidentally once or twice the conscious idea of the lifting of the finger should coincide with the executed movement, experience would have nothing to go upon; and on the third occasion when the man v. to raise his finger, the touch of the right key would bo as much left to chance as in the former cases. It is. then, clear that practice can aid the linking of intention and execution only if there be a causal nexus between the two, in which case certainly the passage from one t 1 the 74 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. other is facilitated by repetition of the process. The pro- blem placed before us, then, is to find the causal nexus ; without it practice would be an empty word. It is, besides, in most cases not at all necessary, namely, in the case of almost all animals, which run and leap just as well at the first attempt as after long practice. From this it follows, in the second place, that all attempts at explanation are unsatisfactory, which intercalate such a causal link as can only be perceived by the accidental association of idea and movement. The conscious muscular feeling preceding the intended movement, for example, which can only be ac- quired and imprinted on the memory by repetition, might perhaps suffice for explanation in the case of man, but not for the far larger part of natural existences, the animals, since before any experience of muscular feeling they exe- cute with marvellous accuracy the most extensive combined movements agreeably to the conscious idea of the end. For instance, an insect just born correctly alternates its six logs, as if locomotion were nothing new to it, and a young brood of partridges, hatched by a domestic hen in the stable, invariably, in spite of all precautions, imme- diately and correctly employ the motor muscles of their legs to reconquer freedom for their parents, and know how to use their beaks for picking up and crushing any insect they meet with, as if they had already performed the operation a hundred times. It might perhaps be thought that the cerebral vibra- tions answering to the conscious idea, " I will to lift the little finger," occur in that region of the brain where the nerves have their central terminations ; this is, how- ever, anatomically incorrect, since the conscious ideas have their seat in the cerebrum, but the motor nerve- endings are found in the medulla oblongata or cere- bellum. Just as little can a mechanical propagation of the vibrations of the conscious representation to the nerve- endings afford an explanation of the touching the right keys. We should then be obliged to assume that the con- THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 75 scious idea, " I will to move my little finger," is localised clscvshcre in the cerebrum than the other conscious idea, ' ; I will to move my fore-finger," and that each of the places in the cerebrum corresponding to a particular idea of any sort of movement to be executed stands, in virtue of an inherited mechanism, in intimate connection with the central ending of the motor nerves needed for realising these ideas, and with that alone. The consequences of this strange supposition would be stranger still ; e.g., the conscious idea, " I will to lift the five fingers of the right hand," would occur simultaneously in the five places of the cerebrum which are appropriated to the several ideas of the five liftings of the fingers ; whereas one would be much more inclined to assume, that the ideas of willing to lift this or the other finger are distinguished in the material substratum of the brain rather by a small modification of the form of vibration than by definite localisation. Further, were it only the propagation of the molecular vibrations to the central endings of the motor nerves resulting from such a conscious idea, which sufficed for the performance of the movement, such a conscious idea as " I will to lift the little finger," should always call forth movement. With such a mechanism of fixed and isolated channels, not only would error be impossible, but also that indescribable impulse of the will would be superfluous, which, as experience teaches, must first be added to that conscious idea before an effect takes place. Lastly, where no mistake was possible, no increase of accuracy or cer- tainty, as result of any influence whatever, would be conceivable; practice also could have no influence on the causal link between conscious idea and executed movement. This consequence, however, contradicts ex- perience as much as the impossibility of error, and therefore discredits the hypothesis of a mechanical com- munication. Suppose, however, there really did exist such a mechanism, Materialism would be obliged further to assume that it is transmitted by inheritance, and was 76 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. gradually formed in our primitive ancestors by practice and habit. In this genetic theory, where a part of this mechanism comes into existence from time to time, the problem of a causal connection between conscious idea and execution of movement would again arise in the form in which we now have it its possibility, to wit, without the help of an already existing mechanism for the given case. The theory of transmitting mechanisms would therefore only push our problem farther back, not solve it, and the solution given below would even then, if that theory were correct, be the only possible one. Lastly, to return once more to the ascription of the muscular feeling of intended movement to the memory of earlier cases of casual association, this explanation is shown to be one-sided and insufficient, not only because at the best it could only claim to explain the possibility of exercise and perfection with an already existing causal connection, not the connection itself, but also because, in fact, it rfces not even explain that, but only pushes the problem one step farther back. Before it was not clear how the striking of the right brain-keys by the volitional impulse is to be effected through the idea of the lifting of the finger ; now it is not clear, how this result is to be brought about by the idea of the muscular feeling in the finger and lower arm, since the one has as little to do with the position of the motor nerve-endings in the brain as the other, yet it is these which have to be affected if the right event is to take place. Of what direct use is an idea referring to the finger for the selection of the point to be excited in the brain by the will ? That there exists an idea of the mus- cular feeling somclhics, but comparatively rarely, I do not at all deny ; that if present it may be an important link in the chain terminating with movement, I just as little deny; but this I do deny, that for the comprehension of the sought-for union anything is gained by its intercala- tion, the problem is only carried a little farther back. For the rest, this intercalation has the less importance, as THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 77 in the majority of cases where this muscular feeling at all exists prior to movement it exists unconsciously. Let us once more gather up what we know concerning the problem, and the solution will press on us of itself. A will is given whose content is the conscious idea of the lifting of a finger, indispensable as means for executing a voluntary impulse at the fixed point P in the brain ; required a method by which the voluntary impulse may strike precisely the point P and no other. The mechanical solution of a transmission of vibrations appeared impos- sible ; practice before the problem was solved an empty, meaningless word ; the interpolation of the muscular feeling as conscious causal middle term one-sided and no explanation. From the impossibility of a mechanical material solution it follows that the intermediate link must be of a spiritual nature ; from the decided absence of a sufficient conscious link it follows that the same must be unconscious. Prom the necessity of a voluntary impulse at the point P it follows that the conscious will to lift the finger produces an unconscious will to excite the point P, in order, by means of the excitation of P, to attain' the object, lifting the finger ; and the content of the will to excite P, again, presupposes the uncon- scious idea of the point P (cf. Chap. iv. A.) The idea of the point P can, however, only consist in the idea of its position with reference to the other points of the brain, and herewith the problem is solved: "Every involuntary movement presupposes the unconscious idea of the position of the corresponding nerve-endings in the brain." Now also is it comprehensible how their dexterity is innate in the animals, the knowledge just spoken of and the skill to apply it being born with them, whilst man, in consequence of the immature and pulpy state of his brain at birth, only gradually, by long practice, succeeds in turning to good account his innate unconscious knowledge in accurate and powerful muscular innervation, it is now also intelligible how muscular feeling can sometimes annear as the con- 78 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. necting link. The excitation of this muscular feeling is related to the lifting of the finger as means to end, in such a way, however, that it is one step nearer to the idea of the excitation of the point P than the idea of the lifting of the finger. It is thus a medium which can be interpolated, but is better overleaped. We may then regard it as established that every, even the slightest movement, whether due to conscious or unconscious intention, presupposes the unconscious idea of the appropriate central nerve-endings and the uncon- scious will to stimulate the same. We have accordingly made a great advance beyond the results of the first chapter. There (cf. pp. 68, 69) we only spoke of the relatively unconscious ; there the reader was only to be accustomed to the thought that mental processes go on within him (as an indivisible spiritual-corporeal organism) of which his consciousness (i.e., his cerebral consciousness) does not dream ; here, however, we have come across mental events which, if they do not attain to conscious- ness in the brain, cannot certainly be conscious for the other nerve-centres of the organism : we have thus found something unconscious for the entire individual. ( 79 ) III. THE UNCONSCIOUS IN INSTINCT. Instinct is purposive action without consciousness of the purpose. No one would call Instinct purposive action 1 accompanied by consciousness of the purpose, where therefore the action is a result of reflection; just as little a purposeless blind action, such as the furious outbursts of rabid or irritated animals. I do not think that the above definition can be objected to by those who assume the existence of instinct ; but whoever thinks it possible to refer all actions usually called instinctive to conscious reflection does, in fact, deny instinct altogether, and oucrht accordinglv to strike the word "instinct" out of his vocabulary. But of this later on. First of all, assuming the existence of instinctive actions in the sense of the definition, they might be explained : (i.) As a mere consequence of corporeal organisation ; (2.) as a cerebral or mental mechanism contrived by Nature ; (3.) as a result of unconscious mental activity. In the first two cases the idea of purpose lies far back; in the last it immediately precedes action. In the first two an arrangement given once for all is used as means, and purpose is only once concerned in constituting this arrange- ment ; in the latter, the end is imagined in every single case. Let us take the three cases in order. Instinct is not the mere result of bodily organisation-, for: (((.) Instincts are quite different with simiher lodilj/ structures. All spiders have the same spinning apparatus, hut one kind constructs its web radiallv, another in an So PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. irregular manner ; a third does not construct a web at all, but lives in hollows, over the walls of which it spins, closing the entrance with a door. Almost all birds have essentially the same organisation for building nests (beak and feet), and how infinitely diverse are their nests in form, architecture, mode of fastening (standing, clinging, hanging), locality (caves, holes, corners, forked branches, shrubs, the ground), and excellence, how different often in the species of the same genus, e.g., Parus (titmouse), Several birds do not build nests at all. Most birds with webbed feet swim, but some not, e.g., upland geese, which seldom or never enter the water, or the frigate-bird, which is always hovering in the air, and which no one except Audubon has ever seen alight on the surface of the sea. Just as little do the different varieties of the song of birds depend on the difference in their vocal organs, or the peculiar architecture of bees and ants on their bodily organisation; in all these cases the organisation only capa- citates for singing or building in general, but has nothing to do with the mode of execution. Sexual selection, likewise, has nothing to do with organisation, since the disposition of the sexual organs in any animal would be as well adapted for the members of numberless foreign species as for an individual of its own species. The nur- ture, protection, and training of the young can still less be considered dependent on the bodily structure. The same may be said of the place where the insect lays its eggs, or the selection of the spawn of their own kind on which the male fish discharge their seed. The rabbit burrows, but not the hare with similar organs for digging, but it less needs a subterranean place of refuge on account of its greater speed. Some birds that fiy remarkably well are stationary birds (e.g., kites and other birds of prey), and many moderate iiyers {e.g., swallows) take the longest journeys. (b.) The same instincts appear with different organisations. Birds with and without climbing feet, monkeys with and without prehensile tails, squirrel, sloth, puma, &c, live THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 81 on trees. The Mole-Cricket burrows with the prominent fossorial organs of its anterior extremities, the Burying Beetle digs without any arrangement for the purpose. The Hamster carries in its winter stores with its cheek- pouches, 3 centim. long and ij centim. broad, the field- mouse does the same without any special apparatus. Birds live in the water just as well without as with web feet ; at any rate, Divers (Podiceps) and Waders (Fulica) are excel- lent aquatic birds, although their toes are only fringed by a web. Birds with elongated tarsus and long unconnected toes are for the most part marsh- birds, but with the same structure of the feet the Moor-hen (Ortygometra) is almost as much an aquatic bird as the Water-hen, and the Crake (Crex) is almost as much a land-bird as the quail or the partridge. The migratory impulse is manifested with equal intensity by animals of the most different orders, and irrespective of the outfit with which they undertake their journey by water, land, or air. It must accordingly be admitted that Instinct is in a high degree independent of bodily organisation. That a certain kind of bodily organisation is conditio sine qua non of its manifestation is a matter of course ; for without sexual parts no procreation, without certain appro- priate organs no artificial construction, without spinnerets no spinning ; but in spite of this no one can say that organisation is the cause of instinct. The mere existence of an organ does not furnish the slightest motive for the exercise of a corresponding activity; for that there must be at tcast a feeling of pleasure in the use of the organ; this may then serve as motive to action. But even then, if the agreeable feeling affords an incentive to action, only the ///'//, not the how, of this activity is determined by the organisation. The law of action, however, is pre- cisely that which constitutes the problem to be solved. Xobody would call it instinct if the spider caused the secretion to How from its over-filled spinning-glands in order to procure the satisfaction of tiie discharge, or VOL. I. 1 82 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. if the fish, for the same reason simply discharged its seed into the water. The instinct and the marvel consist in this, that the spider spins threads and makes the threads into a web, and that the fish discharges its seed only on the eggs of its own species. Lastly, the agree- able sensation in the use of the organs is an altogether insufficient motive for the activity itself ; for what is at once grand and awe-inspiring in instinct is, that its behests are obeyed with utter disregard of all personal well-being, even at the cost of life itself. Were merely the pleasant feeling of the emptying of the spinning glands the motive why the caterpillar spins, it would only continue to spin till its glandular sac was emptied, but it would not per- petually repair a continually destroyed web till it died of exhaustion. It is just the same with all other instincts, the causes of which are apparently personal pleasure. As soon as the circumstances are altered, so that in place of individual weal individual sacrifice occurs, their higher origin is unmistakably shown. Thus, e.g., it might be said that birds tread for the sake of sexual enjoyment, but why then do they no longer repeat the treading when the proper number of eggs is laid ? The sexual impulse indeed still exists, for, if an cg.g be taken from the nest, they recommence treading and the hen lays another egg, or, if they belong to the cleverer birds, they quit the nest and rear a fresh brood. A hen of Igncx torquilla (Wryneck), whose deposited egg was continually removed from the nest, kept on laying, each egg being smaller than the preceding, until at the twenty-ninth egg the bird was found dead in the nest. If an instinct does not stand the test of a sacrifice imposed at the cost of individual well-being, if it really merely proceeds from the endeavour after bodily pleasure, it is not true instinct, and can only be so deemed by mistake. Instinct is not a cerebral or mental mechanism implanted lij Nature, so that the instinctive action could be executed without individual (if also unconscious) mental activity, THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 83 and without an idea of the purpose of the action, after the manner of a machine, the end being conceived once for all by Nature or a Providence, which had so contrived the psychical organisation that only a mechanical use of the means remained to the individual. The suggestion now is, that a psychical, not a physical, organisation is the cause of instinct. This explanation would be at once acceptable, if any instinct appertaining to an animal were functional vnthout intermission. This is not true, however, of any instinct, for each waits upon a motive; which, according to our view, signifies the occurrence of appro- priate external circumstances making possible the attain- ment of the end by those means which instinct wills ; not till then is instinct functional as actual will, with action at its heels; before the motive is present, instinct remains latent, as it were, and is not functional. The motive appears in the mind in the form of sensuous pre- sentation, and the connection is constant between the active instinct and all sense-perceptions, which indicate that the opportunity has arrived for the attainment of the purpose of the instinct. The psychical mechanism would accordingly have to be sought in this constant connection. We should again have to imagine a sort of keyboard; the struck keys would be the motives, and the resounding notes the functional instincts. This might be satisfactory in spite of the remarkable fact that keys altogether different give out the same sound, if only instinct were really comparable to definite tones, i.e., if one and the same instinct really always reacted in one and the same way on the appropriate motives. This, however, is not tin' case, but the only constant element is the uiicou- sciiius purpose of the instinct; the instinct itself, however, like tin: willing of the menus, varies just as much a- the means to be appropriately applied vary according to ti.e external circumstances. A\i hypothesis which rejYets ;>,,. unconscious idea of the end in each single ease is a<-i 0:0- iinjlv condemned; for if it were desired to ivmin hi 84 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. addition the idea of this mental mechanism, for every variation and modification of the instinct a special con- stant arrangement according to external circumstances, a new key with a tone of another timbre would have to be inserted, whereby the mechanism would be infinitely complicated. That, however, with every variation in the means selected by instinct the end is constant should be a sufficiently clear indication, that such an endless mental complexity is not needed, but in lieu thereof the unconscious representation of an end is all that need be assumed. Thus, e.g., for the bird which has laid its eggs, the constant end is to hatch the chickens ; accordingly, if the external temperature is insufficient, it sits upon them, a proceeding omitted only in very warm countries, because the animal sees the goal of its instinct attained without its assistance. In warm countries many birds only brood by night. With us, too, if by chance small birds have made their nests in hot forcing-houses, they sit but little or not at all. How repugnant is the supposition of a mechanism which con- strains the bird to brood as soon as the temperature falls below a certain degree ; how simple and clear the assump- tion of an unconscious purpose which compels the willing of the appropriate means, but of which process only the final term, as a will immediately preceding action, comes into consciousness ! In South Africa the sparrow begirds its nest with thorns as a protection against snakes and apes. The eggs laid by the cuckoo always resemble in size, colour, and marking the eggs of the nest wherein they are laid ; e.g., in that of Sylvia rufa, they are white with violet spots ; of Sylvia hippolais, rose-coloured with black spots; of Beguhis ignicapellus, dark red; and the resem- blance is so perfect that the eggs are scarcely to be dis- tinguished save by the structure of the shell. And yet Drehm enumerates some fifty species of birds in whose nests cuckoos' eggs were found (Illustrirtes Thierleben, vol. iv. p. 197). Only through an oversight, when the cuckoo is THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 85 surprised, is an egg ever deposited in a wrong nest, as well as occasionally left to perish on the ground, if the mother was unable to find a suitable nest at the right time. Huber by special contrivances prevented bees from carry- ing on their instinctive mode of building from above down- wards, whereupon they built from below upwards, and even horizontally. Where the outermost cells are attached to the roof of the hive or lean against the wall, the prisms, which are agglutinated together by their base alone, are not hexagonal but pentagonal, for more durable fastening. In autumn bees lengthen the existing honey cells, if there are not enough of them; in spring they shorten them again in order to obtain broader passages between the combs. If the honeycombs have become too heavy, they replace the waxen walls of the highest (supporting) cells by thicker ones, formed of wax and propolis. If working- bees are introduced into the cells destined for drones, the workers apply the corresponding flat rootlets instead of the round ones belonging to the drones. In the autumn they regularly kill the drones, but allow them to live if the queen is lost, that they may impregnate the young queen which is to be reared from the larvae of female workers. Huber observed that they barred the entrance of their hive against raids of hawk-moths with artificial constructions of wax and propolis ; they only carry in propolis when they want to make any improvements or for special purposes. Spiders and caterpillars also show a remarkable skill in repairing their ruined web, which is quite a different kind of work from the first manufac- ture of a web. The examples cited, which might be indefinitely added to, sufficiently prove that instincts are not actions mechani- cally performed in accordance with fixed rules, but that they are rather very closely adapted to circumstances, and are capable of such great modifications and variations, that they sometimes seem to be converted into their oppusites. Many will be inclined to ascribe this modification to con- 86 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. scious reflection on the part of the animals ; and certainly in animals more highly endowed in most cases a combina- tion of instinctive activity and conscious reflection is not to be denied. However, I believe that the examples a Jduced satisfactorily prove that there are also many cases where, without any intervention of conscious reflection, the ordinary and extraordinary actions arise from the same source ; that they are either both true instinct or both results of conscious reflection. Or is it really a different power which causes the bee to build in the middle hexagonal, at the edge pentagonal prisms; which leads the bird to brood over its eggs in the one set of circumstances, and not to brood in the other set; which causes the bees now pitilessly to murder their brethren, now to give them their life ; which teaches birds the architecture of their species and their special measures of precaution; which leads the spider to spin its web, and mend it when injured ? If it be granted that the modifications of instinct, together with its most usual fundamental form, which is often quite indeterminable, spring from a single source, then the allegation of con- scious reflection is self-refuted later on, where the same objection is brought against instinct in general. It may, perhaps, not be improper to anticipate here the conclu- sion of a subsequent chapter, namely, that instinct and organic formative activity contain one and the same prin- ciple, only manifested under different circumstances, and that they shade into one another without any definite boundaries. Admit this, and it is evident that instinct cannot depend on the organisation of the body or of the brain, since it would be much more correct to say that organisation arises through a manifestation of instinct. This, however, only by the way. On the other hand, we have now to direct our atten- tion again more closely to the notion of a psychical mechanism, when it will appear that, apart from the fact that it explains very little, it is so obscure that it hardly THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 87 conveys any idea at all. The motive appears in the mind in the form of a conscious sensuous presentation. This is the first term of the process ; the last term appears as conscious will to some particular action. Both, however, are quite heterogeneous, and have nothing in common with ordinary motivation, which consists exclusively in this that the idea of pleasure or displeasure begets the desire to attain the former and avoid the latter. In instinct, pleasure, for the most part, appears as a concomitant phenomenon, although, as we have already seen, it is not at all necessary; but the full power and grandeur of instinct is only shown in the sacrifice of the individual. But the real problem is here a far deeper one, for every idea of a pleasure presupposes that this pleasure has been already experienced. It follows again from this that in the former case a will was present, in the satisfaction of which pleasure consisted, and whence the will comes heforc the pleasure is known, and without a bodily pain, as in the case of hunger, urgently demanding relief, is the very ques- tion, since one may see in the case of any solitary animal that the instinctive impulses appear before it can have got to know the pleasure of their satisfaction. In instinct there must, therefore, be a causal connection between the sensuous presentation which serves as motive and tin; will to aet instinctively, with which the pleasure of the satisfaction that follows has nothing to do. This causal connection, as we know from our human instincts, does not enter exponentially into consciousness ; consequently, if it is to be styled a mechanism, it can only be either a (non-conscious) mechanical conduction and conversion of the vibrations of the presented motive into the vibra- tions of the willed action in the brain, or an unconscious mental mechanism. In the first case, it would be very wonderful that this transaction should remain unc mscious, since the process is so powerful that the will resulting from it overcomes all other considerations, every other will, and such cerebral vibrations alwavs become conscious. 88 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. It is also difficult to form an idea of the way in which this conversion could take place, so that the end set up once for all should be attained by the resulting will with the varying circumstances. If the other case, an unconscious mental mechanism, be assumed, the process cannot well be con- ceived under any other form than that which holds good of mind in general, thinking and willing. Between the con- scious motive and the will to the instinctive action a causal connection has to be imagined by means of unconscious ideation and volition, and I know not how this connection can be more simply conceived than by represented and willed purpose. We have now reached the mechanism peculiar to mind, and immanent of Logic, and have found the unconscious idea of purpose to be the indispensable link in the case of each single instinctive action. Accord- ingly, the notion of a dead, external, preordained mental mechanism is abolished of itself, and changed into the immanent mental life of Logic ; and we have reached the only remaining mode of conceiving a real instinct : Instinct is conscious willing of the means to an unconsciously willed end. This conception explains in an unforced and simple way the whole problem offered by instinct, or, more correctly, in thus declaring the true nature of instinct everything problematical vanishes. In a separate essay on Instinct, the notion of unconscious mental activity, as yet unfamiliar to our educated public, would perhaps arouse opposition ; but here, where in each chapter new facts are adduced, proving the existence of this unconscious mental activity and its striking significance, any scruple due to the novelty of this thought will be evanescent. Although compelled decidedly to reject the notion that instinct is merely the action of a pre-arranged mechanism, I did not at all intend to exclude the supposition of con- stitutional tendencies of the brain, of the ganglia, and of the body as a whole, determining the nervous current more easily and more conveniently into one channel rather than into another. This predisposition is then either a THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 89 result of habit, graving its lines deeper and deeper, and at last leaving indelible traces behind it, either in the special individual or by inheritance in a series of genera- tions, or it is expressly called forth by the unconscious formative impulse, in order to facilitate action in a particular direction. The latter case will have more application to the external organisation e.g., the weapons and working implements of animals the former more to the molecular constitution of brain and ganglia, especially in respect to the ever-recurring fundamental power of instinct e.g., the hexagonal form of the cell of the bee. We shall see later on (B. Chap, iv.) that the sum of individual modes of reaction on all possible kinds of motives is called the individual character, and (C. Chap, xi. 2) that this character is essentially dependent on a constitution of brain and body in lesser degree acquired by the individual by habit, in greater part inherited. Since, now, in the case of instinct, we have to do with a mode of reaction on certain motives, we may speak here too of character, although we are not so much con- cerned with the character of the individual as of the race. Accordingly, in the case of character in respect of instinct, the question is not how one individual is dis- tinguished from another, but how one animal class is distinguished from another. If such a predisposition of brain and body for certain active tendencies be called a mechanism, in a certain sense that may be allowed to pass ; but it should be re- marked: (1.) that all deviations from the customary form of any instinct, so far as they cannot be ascribed to con- scious reflection, are not specifically provided for in this mechanism; (2.) that inheritance is only possible through the continual guidance of the embryonic development by a well-adjusted unconscious formative activity (certainly again influenced by the predispositions given in the germ : 13.) that the engraining of the tendency in the transmit- ting individual could only take place by long hahituath n 90 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. to the same mode of action, accordingly instinct without auxiliary mechanism is the cause of the origin of the auxiliary mechanism ; (4.) that all instinctive actions which only occur rarely or merely once in the lifetime of an individual {e.g., those relative to propagation and metamorphosis in the case of the lower animals, and all such instinctive forbearance when a contrary effect would be followed by death) cannot well be engrained by habit, but a ganglionic constitution predisposing thereto could only be produced by purposive creation ; (5.) that even the ready-made auxiliary mechanisn does not precisely necessitate, but merely 'predisposes the Unconscious to this particular instinctive action (as is shown by deviations from the type), so that the unconscious purpose always remains stronger than the ganglionic predisposition, and only finds occasion to choose among the means lying ready to hand those nearest and most suitable to the constitution. We now approach more closely the question we have reserved to the last : " Is there such a thing as a true instinct, or are the so-called instinctive actions only results of conscious premeditation ? " In favour of the latter hypothesis there might be cited the well-known experience that the more limited the range of the con- scious mental activities of any being, the stronger is wont to be the executive faculty in the particular limited direc- tion relatively to the extent of the total capacity. This experience, frequently confirmed in the case of man, and certainly applicable to animals also, finds its explanation in the circumstance that the degree of this performance is only in part dependent on the mental structure, in part also, however, on the exercise and improvement of the natural disposition in this special direction. Tims, e.g., a philologist is unskilful in legal processes of thinking, a naturalist or mathematician in philological, an abstract philosopher in poetic invention, quite apart from special talent, solely in consequence of one-sided mental cultiva- tion and practice. Xow the narrower the sphere of the THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 91 mental activity of any being, the more is the whole culture and training concentrated in this single direction, conse- quently it is no wonder that the resulting performances in this line are enhanced through the narrowing of the field of view relatively to the total capacity. But if this pheno- menon be used to explain the action of instinct, the limitation "relatively to the total capacity" must not be left out of sight. Since, however, the lower the rank in the animal scale the less the total capacity, and yet the instinctive performances remain in respect to perfection tolerably equal at all stages of the animal kingdom, whereas those effects which unquestionably proceed from con- scious reflection are manifestly proportional to the mental capacity, it seems to follow that in the case of instinct we have to do with some other principle than conscious understanding. "We further see that the conscious per- formances of animals are in fact similar in kind to our own ; that they are made possible through teaching and instruction and are perfected by exercise. Even in the case of animals it is said understanding only comes with years. On the other hand, in the case of instinctive actions, the peculiarity is just this, that they are performed just as perfectly by animals growing up in solitude as by such as have enjoyed the instruction of their parents, and that the success is as great on the very first occasion, prior to all experience and exercise, as at any later period. Here too, the difference in principle is unmistakable. Then experience teaches: the more limited and weak an under- standing, the more sluggish the flow of idea-, i.e., the slower and heavier its conscious thinking. This is . t rated both by human beings of di He-rent mental and by the brutes, so far as instinct does not come into play. Hut instinct has this peculiarity, that it never t; lavs and hesitates, but instantaneously openitcs, ::' the motive for its operation consciously occurs. This rapidity 1 :' resolution in instinctive action is met with alike i:i the lowest and in the highest animals. This is , :. 92 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. circumstance pointing to a difference in principle of instinct and conscious reflection. Lastly, as concerns the pitch of performance, a hurried glance at once detects the want of proportion between the same and the stage of mental development. Look at the caterpillar of the Emperor Moth (Saturnia pavonia minor). It devours the leaves of the shrub whereon it was hatched; at the most, moves when it rains to the underside of the leaf, and changes its skin from time to time ; that is its whole life, which hardly allows one to look for even the most limited education of the intelli- gence. But now it spins its cocoon for the chrysalis state, and constructs for itself a double arch of bristles meeting at their apices, very easy to open from within, but which opposes on the outside sufficient resistance to any attempts to penetrate into it. If this contrivance were a result of its conscious understanding, it would require the following train of thought : " I shall enter the chrysalis state, and, immovable as I am, be at the mercy of every adver- sary ; therefore I will spin myself a cocoon. Since, how- ever, as butterfly I shall not be able to make a breach in the web either by mechanical or chemical means as many other caterpillars do, I must leave an aperture for egress ; but that my persecutors may not make use of it, I shall close it with elastic bristles, which I can easily bend apart from the inside, but which will offer resistance ex- ternally, according to the theory of the arch." That is really asking too much of the poor caterpillar ! And yet each step of this argumentation is indispensable if the result is to be correctly got at. This theoretical discrimination of Instinct from the conscious activity of the understanding could easily be misinterpreted by the opponents of my way of regarding the matter, as if I asserted a wide gulf to exist between the two in practice likewise. The latter, however, is by no means my opinion; on the contrary, I have already pointed to the possibility of both kinds of psychical activity THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 93 being combined in different proportions, so that through their intermixtures in different degrees, there occurs a gradual transition from pure instinct to pure conscious reflection. We shall, however, see later on (B. Chap, vii.) that even in the highest and most abstract rational acti- vity of the human consciousness there are certain factors of the highest importance, which essentially agree with that of instinct. On the other side, however, the most wonderful mani- festations of instinct not only occur in the vegetable kingdom (as we shall see in C. Chap, iv.), but also in those lowest organisms of the simplest structure, in part unicellular, which in any case stand far below the higher plants in conscious intelligence, but to which such a power is usually denied. If in such microscopic unicel- lular organisms, in respect of which the question whether they are of animal or of vegetable nature is devoid of meaning, we must admire instinctive adjustments which far exceed merely reflectorially stimulated movements, then every doubt must be laid to rest, whether there really exists an instinct, the derivation of which from conscious rational activity appears radically hopeless. I adduce as an example a recently observed phenomenon, which is perhaps more astonishing than anything previously recognised, because the problem is therein solved of accomplishing, with incredibly simple means, various ends to which in higher animals a complicated system of motor organs is subservient. Arcclla vulgaris is a lump of protoplasm in a concavo- convex, brown, finely perforated shell, from the concave side of which it protrudes through a circular opening, by means of processes (pseudopodia). If a drop of water, containing living arcella! be observed through a miero- . a specimen may usually be seen accidentally lyinu' on its back at the bottom of the drop of water, making vain efforts for one or two minutes to grasp a firm point with its psi udopo iia. Then there suddenly appear generally 94 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. from two to five, sometimes even more, dark specks in the protoplasm at a mean distance from the periphery, and usually at regular intervals from each other, which are quickly enlarged to distinct spherical air-bubbles, and at last fill a respectable part of the hollow of the shell, thereby thrusting out a portion of the protoplasm. The number and size of the several bubbles are in inverse proportion. After five to twenty minutes the specific gravity of the Arcella is so far reduced that the animalcule, lifted from the water by its pseudopodia, is carried towards the upper surface of the drop, on which it now walks. Then after five to ten minutes the bubbles disappear, the last little speck by jerks, as it were. If, however, as the result of an accidental twist, the Arcella comes up to the surface of the drop, the vesicles continue to grow, but only on one side, becoming smaller on the other; in consequence of which the shell assumes a position more and more oblique, and at last vertical, until finally one of the pro- cesses takes firm hold, and the whole turns over. Trom the moment that the animal gains a firm footing the vesicles become smaller, and the experiment may be repeated as often as it pleases after their disappearance. The places of the protoplasm which form the bubbles continually change ; the non-nucleated protoplasm of the pseudopodia alone does not contain air. With longer fruitless endeavours there occurs visible exhaustion ; the animal abandons the attempt for a time, and renews it after a pause for refreshment. Engelmaun, the discoverer of this phenomenon, says (Pfliiger's Arcliiv fiir Physiologic, vol. ii.) : ''The changes of volume usually take place in all air-bubbles of the same animal simultaneously, in the same way and in the same degree. There are, however, not a few exceptions. Frequently some grow or diminish much quicker than others. It may even happen that one air-bubble beeomes smaller while another increases. All these changes are throiKjltout perfectly adapted to their end. The formation and growth of the air-bubbles has for object THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 95 the bringing the animal into such a position that it can maintain itself by means of its pseudopodia. When this end is attained the air disappears, without our being in a position to discover any other reason for this disappear- ance. ... If these circumstances be taken note of, it is possible, with almost complete certainty, to foretell whether an Arcella will develop air-bubbles or not, and, in case gas-bubbles are already in existence, whether they will expand or become smaller. ... In the power of chang- ing their specific gravity the Arcelke possess a remarkable expedient for rising to the surface of the water or for settling at the bottom. They not only avail themselves of these means under the abnormal circumstances in which they find themselves during microscopic investi- gation, but also under normal circumstances. This is concluded from the fact that at the surface of the water, where they live, a few specimens are always found to contain air-bubbles." Those whom the foregoing instances do not constrain to reject the explanation of instinct by conscious reflec- tion must admit the demonstrative force of the follow- ing highly important testimony of facts. Thus much is certain, that the reilection of conscious understanding can only take into account such data as are given in con- sciousness ; if, then, it can be definitely proved that data indispensable for the result cannot possibly be conscious! 1/ known, it is thereby proved that the result cannot spring from conscious deliberation. The only way, according to the common assumption, whereby the knowledge of ex- ternal facts can be obtained is sensuous perception; we have then to show that knowledge indispensable to the result cannot possibly be obtained by means of sensuous perception. The following are the points to be proved: Firstly, that the facts in question belong to the future, and all data are wanting in the present circumstances w herefrom to infer their occurrence in the future ; secon iiy, that the facts in question do indeed exist at the present 96 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. time, but are manifestly closed to conscious apprehension by the circumstance, that only the experience of former cases can supply material for the interpretation of the data afforded by sensuous perception, and this experi- ence, so observation shows, is excluded. It would make no difference, as far as our argument is concerned, if, as I hold to be probable, in the progress of physiological knowledge, all examples about to be cited for the first case should turn out to belong to the second, as has undeniably happened with many examples formerly adduced. For an a priori knowledge without any ap- pulse from the side of sense is hardly to be called more wonderful than a knowledge which is evinced, indeed, on occasion of certain sensuous perceptions, but can only be conceived to be connected therewith by such a chain of inferences and applied knowledge, that its possibility must be decidedly denied in the state of the faculties and development of the particular animals. An example of the first case is afforded by the instance of the larva of the Stag-beetle in digging for itself a suitable cavity, on occasion of passing into the chrysalis state. The female larva digs a hole as large as itself; the male, however, though of the same size, one as large again, because the horns which will hereafter be developed are about the length of the animal. The knowledge of this circumstance is indispensable to the result, and yet every indication is wanting at the time whereby to infer this future event. The following is an example of the second case : Ferrets and buzzards fall upon blind-worms or other non-poisonous snakes without more ado, and seize them just as they come in their way ; the adder however, even if they have never seen one before, they grasp with the greatest circumspection, and try first of all to crush its head, in order to avoid being bitten. Since there exists nothing else capable of inspiring fear in the adder, if this behaviour is to proceed from conscious reflection, the conscious knowledge of the dangerous char- THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 97 acter of its bite is indispensable. But now, as this can only be gained by experience, and yet the same precaution is observed by animals that have been kept in confine- ment from their birth, it cannot proceed from reflection. On the other hand, there evidently follows from these two examples the fact of an unconscious cognition of particular circumstances, the existence of an immediate knowledge without the intervention of sensuous percep- tion and consciousness. This has always been recognised and indicated by the words fore-feeling and presentiment. But, on the one hand, these terms have reference only to the future, not to that which exists at the present time but is imperceptible owing to its remoteness ; on the other, they denote only the slight, vague, undefined resonance in consciousness of the unerring and sure state of unconscious knowledge. Accordingly, the word fore-feeling is appropriate so far as vagueness and indefiniteness are suggested, whilst at the same time it is easy to see that no mere feeling devoid of all, even unconscious ideas, can have any influence on the result, but only a mental representation, since this alone contains knowledge. The presentiment reverberat- ing in consciousness may certainly, in certain circum- stances, be tolerably distinct, so that among human beings it can be fixed in thoughts and words; but even in man, as our experience teaches us, this is not the case with the instincts proper, for in their case the resonance of uncon- scious knowledge in consciousness is mostly so weak, as to be actually expressed only in accompanying feelings or moods, and to form only an infinitely small fraction of common feeling. That such an obscure sympathy on the part of consciousness is quite insufficient to give the cue 1 1 1 conscious reflect ion is evident. On the other hand, it is also clear that conscious reflection would be superfluous, since the particular rational process must have been already unconsciously performed: for every vague Tire- sentiment in consciousness is only the consequence of a VOL. I. O 93 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. definite unconscious knowledge, and the knowledge, of which we are here speaking, is almost always the idea of the purpose of the instinctive action, or one closely con- nected therewith. E.g., in the case of the larva of the Stag-beetle, the aim is to have room for the two sprout- ing horns ; the means, to procure room by excavation ; the unconscious perception, the future growth of the two horns. Lastly, all instinctive actions give the impression of absolute certainty and self-assurance, and there never occurs in them, as in conscious resolution, any delay, doubt, or hesitation, never (as will be shown in C. Chap, i.) any genuine error, so that one cannot possibly ascribe to the obscure nature of the presentiment such an invariable precise result; indeed this feature of absolute accuracy is so characteristic, that it may pass for the only clear defining mark of action from instinct when compared with action from conscious reflection. From this, however, it again follows that a principle altogether different from that which underlies conscious action must be at the bottom of instinct, and that can only be found in the determination of the will by a process lying in the Unconscious, for which this character of undoubted self-assurance is claimed in all the following inquiries. Some may be surprised that I have ascribed to instinct an unconscious knowledge, produced by no sensible expe- rience, and yet unerring ; but this is no consequence of my view of Instinct, but rather a strong support of this view, derived directly from the facts. Accordingly we cannot be spared the trouble of considering a number of examples illustrative of this point. In order to be able to use a single word for the unconscious knowledge, which has not been acquired by way of sensuous perception, but is met with as an immediate possession, I shall (as " presen- timent," for the reasons assigned, is not suitable) employ the term " clairvoyance," which, it must be clearly under- stood, will here only have the force of the given definition. Let us now consider in order a few examples from the THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 99 instincts of fear of enemies, appetence, the migratory impulse, and propagation. Most animals know their natural enemies before any experience of their hostile intentions. Thus a flock of young pigeons becomes alarmed, even without an older guide, and scatters if a bird of prey approaches. Oxen and horses, indigenous in regions where there are no lions, no sooner scent a nocturnal prowler than they become restless and anxious. Horses, on crossing a bridle-path which ran past the old house of the beasts of prey of the Berlin Zoological Garden, were wont to become terrified and restless on scenting their wholly unknown enemies. Sticklebacks swim quietly about among the rapacious pikes, which do not attempt to attack them ; for if by oversight a pike ever actually attempts to swallow a stickleback, the latter with its projecting dorsal spines sticks in his throat, and the pike must infallibly die of hunger; accordingly cannot transmit his painful experience to posterity. The fore- sight of the ferret and buzzard in regard to adders has been already mentioned ; similarly it was observed that a young Honey-buzzard, on being presented with its first wasp, only devoured the animal after it had crushed the sting out of its body. In some countries the people live chiefly on dog's flesh. Bogs in the presence of these people are said to become quite wild and ungovernable, as if they recognised in them foes whom they would like to attack. This is the more remarkable, as dog's fat out- wardly applied (e.g., rubbed on the shoes), attracts dogs by its smell. A young chimpanzee, at the first sight of a gigantic snake, was observed by Grant to fall into the greatest alarm ; and even among us human beings, too, it is not so rare for a Gretchen to spy out a Menhistophcles. Very remarkable is it that the insect Hombex attacks ami slays a L'arnope wherever it finds one, without making any use of the corpse. We know, however, that the latter lies in wait for the eggs of the Bombex, and is thereto: e the natural foe of its race. The phenomenon well k: ioo PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. to the tenders of oxen and sheep as "the goading of cattle by the gadfly " furnishes analogous evidence. If a " breeze " or gadfly approaches a herd, the latter become quite wild and run hither and thither in confusion as if beside themselves, because the hatched larvae from the eggs of the fly deposited on their hide penetrate the skin and cause painful festerings. These gadflies, which have no sting, very much resemble the stinging gadflies, and yet the latter are but slightly, the former extremely, feared by cattle. As the consequences of the painless deposition of the eggs only make their appearance after a consider- able lapse of time, a conscious inference of the connection cannot be assumed. Xo animal, whose instinct has not been killed out by unnatural habits, eats poisonous herbs; even the ape, spoiled by residence among men, may with safety be employed in the primitive forests as a fruit-taster, as it rejects with a cry the poisonous fruits which are offered it. Every animal chooses just those vegetable or animal substances for its food which suit its digestive organs, without having received any instruction on the matter, even without a previous use of the organ of taste. If now it must certainly be assumed that smell, and not sight, is the critical organ for the discrimination of materials, still it is no less enigmatical how the animal recognises that which suits its digestion by odorous rather than by visual impression. Thus the kid cut from the womb by Galen enjoyed milk alone of all the proffered food and drink, refusing to touch aught else. The Hawfinch splits the cherry-stone by turning it in such a way that the beak exactly hits the suture, and it does this as well with its first cherry-stone as with its last. Pinches, martens, and weasels make little holes on the opposite side of the egg about to be drained of its contents, that the air may rush in and facilitate suction. Animals not merely know their proper food, but also often seek appropriate remedies with correct personal diagnosis and unacquired therapeutic THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 101 knowledge. Thus dogs often eat a good deal of grass, especially couchgrass, when they are sick ; as, for instance, according to Lenz, when they are afflicted with worms, which are evacuated enveloped in the undigested grass, or if they want to remove splinters of bone from their stomach. They make use of thorny rest-harrows as laxa- tives. Fowls and pigeons pick lime from walls and roofs if their food does not afford enough lime to form egg-shells. Little children eat chalk when they have heartburn, and pieces of charcoal if they suffer from flatulence. We also find, under certain circumstances, these special nutritive or curative instincts in adult human beings when unconscious nature gains the upper hand, e.g., among the pregnant, whose capricious appetites probably make their appearance, when a certain state of the foetus renders a particular com- position of blood desirable. Field-mice bite out the germs of the gathered grain, that they may not sprout in winter. A few days before the coming of cold weather the squirrel gets in its stores most diligently, and then closes its dwelling. The birds of passage go from our regions to warmer lands at a time when they have no lack of food, and when the temperature is considerably higher than at the period of their return ; the like holds good of the time when animals go into winter quarters, which beetles frequently do in the warmest days of autumn. When swallows and storks find their way home again, travelling hundreds of miles over lands totally different in appearance, it is ascribed to the keen- ness of their sense of locality; but when pigeons and dogs, after having been turned round twenty times in a sack and carried off to an unknown region, nevertheless run home in a straight line, no one can say anything more than that their instinct has guided them, i.e.. the clairvoyance of the Unconscious has enabled them to divine the right path. In years when there will he an early winter, most birds of passage begin to make pre- parations for their departure sooner than usual. If a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA COLLEGE LIBRA: 102 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. very mild winter is imminent, many species do not de- part at all, or migrate only a short distance southwards. If a severe winter occurs, the tortoise makes its winter abode deeper. If grey geese, cranes, &c, soon withdraw from the spots in which they had made their appearance at the beginning of spring, there is a prospect of a hot and dry summer, when the deficiency of water in those places would render breeding impossible to marsh and w^ater birds. In years when floods occur, the beaver builds its dwelling higher; and in Kamtchatka, when a flood is imminent, the field-mice suddenly withdraw in a body. If a dry summer is approaching, in April or May spiders weave their pensile toils several feet in length. When in winter house-spiders run to and fro, boldly contend with one another, construct new and numerous webs one over another, cold will set in in from nine to twelve days ; on the other hand, if they conceal themselves, there will be a thaw. I do not by any means doubt, that many of these precautionary measures in view of future states of the weather are conditioned by a sensitive appreciation of certain present atmospheric states, which escape our notice; these perceptions, however, invariably have re- ference only to present states of the weather, and what can the conscious common sensations produced by the present state of the weather have to do with the idea of the future weather? Surely no one will credit the animals with the power of calculating the weather months in advance from meteorological indications, and with the faculty of foreseeing floods. A mere feeling of this kind of present atmospheric influences is nothing more than the sensuous perception which serves as motive, for a motive must, indeed, always be present if an instinct is to become active. 1 Xevertheless, it is certain that the 1 When such a motive in the form premonitory instinct. Thus, e.g., of an actual perception is entirely when birds of passage at the usual wanting, there is wanting also the time leave their winter quarters for occasion for the manifestation of the the far north, they may on their THE UNCONSCIOUS IN BODILY LIFE. 103 prevision of the state of the weather is a case of uncon- scious clairvoyance ; the stork departing for the south four weeks earlier than is customary, knowing as little as the stag, which, when a cold winter is at hand, 'allows a thicker skin than usual to grow. Animals have in their consciousness a feeling of the present state of the weather ; on this their action follows precisely as if they had the idea of the future state of the weather. They do not, however, possess the latter idea in their consciousness. Accordingly, there only remains as natural connecting link the unconscious idea, which, however, is always a clairvoyant intuition, because it contains something which is neither directly given to the animal by sense-perception, nor can be inferred from the perception through its powers of understanding. Most wonderful of all are the instincts relating to the propagation of the race. Every male discovers the female of its species with a view to sexual union, but certainly not guided merely by outward resemblance to itself ; for in many kinds of animals, e.g., hermit-crabs, the sexes are so radically different in form, that the male would in that case be led to copulate with the females of thousands of other species rather than with those of its own. In some butterflies there exists a polymorphism, according to which not only male and female are distinct, but even in the female sex itself there occur two quite distinct forms of the same species, of which one commonly belongs to the natural mimicry of a remote and well-protected species. And yet the males have intercourse only with the females of their own specie-, never with strangers which perhaps bear a closer resemblance to themselves. In the insect- order Strcpsiptera the female is an ill-shaped worm, which dwells ;ill its life long in the posterior segment of the body ot a wasp, and only protrudes with its lenticular horny arrival suffer distress by an unu.su- away, thoy could not have had 1 v< n ally lati' spring, of which, of course, the slightest intimation through at- in a spot many hundreds of miles niospherie influences. 104 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. head between two abdominal rings of the latter. The male, which lives only a few hours, resembling a moth in appearance, recognises its female by this stunted protu- berance, and fecundates the eggs through a canal opening immediately below the animal's mouth. Before any experience of the significance of child- bearing, the pregnant animal is impelled to seek seclusion, in order to prepare a couch for its young in a cave or other sheltered spot ; the bird builds its nest as soon as the eggs mature in the ovary. Land-snails, crabs, tree-frogs, toads, enter the water, marine tortoises go upon land, many sea-fish ascend rivers, to lay their eggs where the fit condi- tions of their development are alone to be found. Insects lay their eggs in very various places in the sand, on leaves, under the skin and nails of other animals, often in places where the future food of the larva is not yet in existence, e.g., in the autumn on trees which do not sprout till the spring, or in the spring on blossoms which only bear fruit in autumn, or on caterpillars, which only in the pupa-state serve as food and protection to the parasitic larvae. Other insects lay their eggs in places, whence they are conveyed to the proper place of their de- velopment by many circuitous courses, e.g., certain gadflies on the lips of horses, others on those parts which horses are wont to lick, whereby the eggs pass into the entrails as their place of development, and when matured are voided with the ordure. The bovine gadflies select the most powerful and soundest animals with such accuracy, that cattle-dealers and farmers entirely rely upon them, and take by preference the animals whose skins show most traces of being the pasture of the gadfly's grubs. This selection of the best oxen by the gadflies can scarcely be the result of conscious trial and reflection, when experienced traders take them for their masters. The wall-wasp makes a hole in the sand several inches deep, deposits its eg