Z/OJUVJ-JO"*^ "^^OJIIVOJO^ "^/Sa^AINAiWV^ OFCALIFOi?^ ?Aavaani^ ^OFCAUFOft^ AWEUNIVERS/a ^lOSANCElfj-^ o "^/Sa^AINIUVW IrtEUNIVERJ/y) f 7133NVS01^ ^lOSANCElf;^ o ^^mmtiW ^5M•LIBRARYQ^ »<7 "1 i /""^ tS '^&Aav«8ll-^^N'^ ^6'Aavaaii^"^'^ iUBRARY^:;/ § 1 I r^ ^. tfOJIlVDJO^" ,-S\\EUHIVERJ/A 03 "■ — =3 ^lOSANCfia> O CJ 3 %a3AiNn3i\v^ aFCAUFOAij^ ^OFCAllFOft^ .^'rtE•UNIVERi•/A ^^AiiVJllin-l^ ^XiUQNVSOl^"^ ^lOSANCElfrv > I i\EUNIVE«% ^lOSANGEli-j> ^•UBRARYQ^ A^\StUBRARY<9/- /"^v-^a S 1 ir^i ^ 1 ir-- ^ '■^ "V^M- Liuiirui I t^ LWd miuii •^ o »7 4$> ^., i vvlOSANCflfj> g >»-S X m "^/iaJAlNll-JWV^ ^5^1UBRAHYQ< ^^^l•UBKARYQ<^ I i J ^•lOSANCElfx> O ^OFCALIFOi?^ ^•OFCAllFOftjj^ ^aiAiNft-jy^^ ^OAnviiaiii^ ^^AavaaiH^ I' ee < CO =3 . '■^ ^ 1 ir^ ^ s s «^5jaM)NIVERiV^ o • %0dllV3J0"^ ^lOSANCElij)> <^iUBRARYa^, ^j\l-UBRARY<3r , ^p ti)c ^amc Slutijor. THE LITERARY REMAINS OF HENRY JAMES. Edited, wiih an Introduction, by William James. With Portrait. Crown 8vo, $2.00. HUMAN IMMORTALITY. Two Supposed Objec- tions to the Doctrine. i6mo, $1.00. . HOUGHTON, MIFFl-IN & CO. Boston and New York. THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 2 vols. 8vo. New York; Henry Holt & Co. i8go. PSYCHOLOGY. Briefer Course. i2mo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1892. IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? i8mo. Philadelphia: S. B. Weston, 1305 Arch St. 1896. THE WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYS IN POPULAR PHILOSOPHY. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1897. HUMAN IMMORTALITY TWO SUPPOSED OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE BY WILLIAM JAMES FROFBSSOK OF PHILOSOPHY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AND INGERSOLL LECTURER FOR 1897-1898 BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY (9ti)C mtcxfiitit pre??, CambciDge OOFVBIGHT, 1898, BY WILLIAM JAMBS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SIXTH IMPRESSION ~3T THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP SLxtract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll^ •who died in Keene, Cou7tty of Cheshire, New Hampshire, Jati. z6, i8qj. First. In carrying out the wishes of my late beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as declared by him in his last will and testament, I give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cam- bridge, Mass., where my late father was graduated, and which he always held in love and honor, the sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for the establishment of a Lectureship on a plan some- what similar to that of the Dudleian lecture, that is ■ — one lecture to be delivered each year, on any con- venient day between the last day of May and the first day of December, on this subject, "the Im- mortality of Man," said lecture not to form a part of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by any Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine of instruction, though any such Professor or Tutof may be appointed to such service. The choice of said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious denomination, nor to any one profession, but may be that of either clergyman or layman, the appoint- ment to take place at least six months before the delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be safely invested and three fourths of the annual in- terest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for his services and the remaining fourth to be expended in the publishment and gratuitous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which is always to be fur- nished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same lecture to be named and known as '* the Ingersoll lecture on the Immortality of Man." 849080 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION O many critics have made one and the same objection to the door- ^ way to immortality which my lec- ture claims to be left open by the " trans- mission-theory " of cerebral action, that I feel tempted, as the book is again going to press, to add a word of explanation. If our finite personality here below, the objectors say, be due to the transmission through the brain of portions of a preex- isting larger consciousness, all that can remain after the brain expires is the larger Consciousness itself as such, with which we should thenceforth be perforce recon- founded, the only means of our existence i«* finite personal form having ceased. But this, the critics continue, is the vi Preface to Second Edition pantheistic idea of immortality, survival, namely, in the soul of the world ; not the Christian idea of immortality, which means survival in strictly personal form. In showing the possibility of a mental life after the brain's death, they conclude, the lecture has thus at the same time shown the impossibility of its identity with the personal life, which is the brain's func- tion. Now I am myself anything but a pan- theist of the monistic pattern ; yet for sim- plicity's sake I did in the lecture speak of the " mother-sea " in terms that must have sounded pantheistic, and suggested that I thought of it myself as a unit. On page 30, I even added that future lecturers might prove the loss of some of our per- sonal limitations after death not to be mat- ter for absolute regret. The interpretation of my critics was therefore not unnatural ; and I ought to have been more careful to guard against its being made. In note 5 on page 58 I partially guarded Preface to Second Edition vii against it by saying that the "mother- sea " from which the finite mind is sup- posed to be strained by the brain, need not be conceived of in pantheistic terms exclusively. There might be, I said, many minds behind the scenes as well as one. The plain truth is that one may conceive the mental world behind the veil itt as individ- ualistic a form as one pleases, without any detriment to the general scheme by which the brain is represented as a transmissive organ. If the extreme individualistic view were taken, one's finite mundane consciousness would be an extract from one's larger, truer personality, the latter having even now some sort of reality behind the scenes. And in transmitting it — to keep to our extremely mechanical metaphor, which confessedly throws no light on the actual modus operandi — one's brain would also leave effects upon the part remaining behind the veil ; for when a thing is torn, both fragments feel the operation. viii Preface to Second Edition And just as (to use a very coarse figure) the stubs remain in a check-book whenever a check is used, to register the transaction, so these impressions on the transcendent self might constitute so many vouchers of the finite -experiences of which the brain had been the mediator ; and ultimately they might form that collection within the larger self of memories of our earthly pas- sage, which is all that, since Locke's day, the continuance of our personal identity beyond the grave has by psychology been recognized to mean. It is true that all this would seem to have affinities rather with preexistence and with possible re-incarnations than with the Christian notion of immortality. But my concern in the lecture was not to discuss immortality in general. It was confined to showing it to be not incompati- ble with the brain-function theory of our present mundane consciousness. I hold that it is so compatible, and compatible moreover in fully individualized form. The Preface to Second Edition ix reader would be in accord with everything that the text of my lecture intended to say, were he to assert that every memory and affection of his present life is to be pre- served, and that he shall never in scecula scEcidorimi cease to be able to say to him- self : " I am the same personal being who in old times upon the earth had those experiences." HUMAN IMMORTALITY T is a matter unfortunately too often seen in history to call for much remark, that when a living want of mankind has got itself officially protected and organized in an institution, one of the things which the institution most surely tends to do is to stand in the way of the natural gratification of the want itself. We see this in laws and courts of justice ; we see it in ecclesiasticisms ; we see it in academies of the fine arts, in the medical and other professions, and we even see it in the universities themselves. Too often do the place-holders of such institutions frustrate the spiritual purpose to which they were appointed to minister, by the technical light which soon becomes 2 Human Immortality the only light in which they seem able to see the purpose, and the narrow way which is the only way in which they can work in its service. I confess that I thought of this for a moment when the Corporation of our Uni- versity invited me last spring to give this IngersoU lecture. Immortality is one of the great spiritual needs of man. The churches have constituted themselves the ofificial guardians of the need, with the re- sult that some of them actually pretend to accord or to withhold it from the individ- ual by their conventional sacraments, — withhold it at least in the only shape in which it can be an object of desire. And now comes the IngersoU lectureship. Its high-minded founder evidently thought that our University might serve the cause he had at heart more liberally than the churches do, because a university is a body so much less trammeled by traditions and by impossibilities in regard to choice of persons. And yet one of the first things Human Immortality ^ which the university does is to appoint a man like him who stands before you, cer- tainly not because he is known as an en- thusiastic messenger of the future life, burning to publish the good tidings to his fellow-men, but apparently because he is a university official. Thinking in this way, I felt at first as if I ought to decline the appointment. The whole subject of immortal life has its prime roots in personal feeling. I have to con- fess that my own personal feeling about immortality has never been of the keenest order, and that, among the problems that give my mind solicitude, this one does not take the very foremost place. Yet there are individuals with a real passion for the matter, men and women for whom a life hereafter is a pungent craving, and the thought of it an obsession ; and in whom keenness of interest has bred an insight into the relations of the subject that no one less penetrated with the mystery of it can attain. Some of these people are known 4 Human Immortality to me. They are not official personages ; they do not speak as the scribes, but as having direct authority. And surely, if anywhere a prophet clad in goatskins, and not a uniformed official, should be called to give inspiration, assurance, and instruction, it would seem to be here, on such a theme. Office, at any rate, ought not to displace spiritual calling. And yet, in spite of these reflections, which I could not avoid making, I am here to-night, all uninspired and official as I am. I am sure that prophets clad in goatskins, or, to speak less figuratively, lay- men inspired with emotional messages on the subject, will often enough be invited by our Corporation to give the Ingersoll lecture hereafter. Meanwhile, all negative and deadening as the remarks of a mere professional psychologist like myself may be in comparison with the vital lessons they will give, I am sure, upon mature reflec- tion, that those who have the responsibility of administering the Ingersoll foundation Human Immortality 5 are in duty bound to let the most various kinds of official personages take their turn as well. The subject is really an enor- mous subject. At the back of Mr. Alger's 'Critical History of the Doctrine of a Fu- ture Life,' there is a bibliography of more than five thousand titles of books in which it is treated. Our Corporation cannot think only of the single lecture : it must think of the whole series of lectures ift futuro. Single lectures, however emotionally in- spired and inspiring they may be, will not be enough. The lectures must remedy each other, so that out of the series there shall emerge a collective literature worthy of the importance of the theme. This unquestionably was what the founder had in mind. He wished the subject to be turned over in all possible aspects, so that at last results might ponderate har- moniously in the true direction. Seen in this long perspective, the Ingersoll foun- dation calls for nothing so much as for minute division of labor. Orators must 6 Human Immortality take their turn, and prophets ; but narrow specialists as well. Theologians of every creed, metaphysicians, anthropologists, and psychologists must alternate with biologists and physicists and psychical researchers, — even with mathematicians. If any one of them presents a grain of truth, seen from his point of view, that will remain and accrete with truths brought by the others, his will have been a good appointment. In the hour that lies before us, then, I shall seek to justify my appointment by offering what seem to me two such grains of truth, two points well fitted, if I am not mistaken, to combine with anything that other lecturers may bring. These points are both of them in the nature of replies to objections, to difficul- ties which our modern culture finds in the old notion of a life hereafter, — difficulties that I am sure rob the notion of much of its old power to draw belief, in the scien- tifically cultivated circles to which this audience belong. Human Immortality y The first of these difficulties is relative to the absolute dependence of our spiritual life, as we know it here, upon the brain. One hears not only physiologists, but num- bers of laymen who read the popular sci- ence books and magazines, saying all about us. How can we believe in life hereafter when Science has once for all attained to proving, beyond possibility of escape, that our inner life is a function of that fa- mous material, the so-called 'gray mat- ter ' of our cerebral convolutions ? How can the function possibly persist after its organ has undergone decay ? Thus physiological psychology is what is supposed to bar the way to the old faith. And it is now as a physiological psychologist that I ask you to look at the question with me a little more closely. It is indeed true that physiological sci- ence has come to the conclusion cited ; and we must confess that in so doing she has only carried out a little farther the common belief of mankind. Every one 8 Human Immortality knows that arrests of brain development occasion imbecility, that blows on tht head abolish memory or consciousness, and that brain-stimulants and poisons change the quality of our ideas. The anatomists, physiologists, and pathologists have only shown this generally admitted fact of a dependence to be detailed and minute. What the laboratories and hospitals have lately been teaching us is not only that thought in general is one of the brain's functions, but that the various special forms of thinking are functions of special portions of the brain. When we are think- ing of things seen, it is our occipital convo- lutions that are active ; when of things heard, it is a certain portion of our tem- poral lobes ; when of things to be spoken, it is one of our frontal convolutions. Pro- fessor Flechsig of Leipzig (who perhaps more than any one may claim to have made the subject his own) considers that in other special convolutions those pro- cesses of association go on, which permit Human Immortality g the more abstract processes of thought, to take place. I could easily show you these regions if I had here a picture of the brain. ^ Moreover, the diminished or exag- gerated associations of what this author calls the Kdrperfuhhphdre with the other regions, accounts, according to him, for the complexion of our emotional life, and eventually decides whether one shall be a callous brute or criminal, an unbalanced sentimentalist, or a character accessible to feeling, and yet well poised. Such special opinions may have to be corrected ; yet so firmly established do the main positions worked out by the anatomists, physiolo- gists, and pathologists of the brain appear, that the youth of our medical schools are everywhere taught unhesitatingly to be- lieve them. The assurance that observa- tion will go on to establish them ever more and more minutely is the inspirer of all contemporary research. And almost any of our young psychologists will tell you that only a few belated scholastics, or pos- lo Human Immortality sibly some crack-brained theosophist or psychical researcher, can be found hold- ing back, and still talking as if mental phenomena might exist as independent variables in the world. For the purposes of my argument, now, I wish to adopt this general doctrine as if it were established absolutely, with no possibility of restriction. During this hour I wish you also to accept it as a postulate, whether you think it incontrovertibly es- tablished or not ; so I beg you to agree with me to-day in subscribing to the great , psycho-physiological formula : Thought is 3 a function of the brain. \ The question is, then. Does this doctrine j logically compel us to disbelieve in immor- \ tality ? Ought it to force every truly con- ) sistent thinker to sacrifice his hopes of an hereafter to what he takes to be his duty of accepting all the consequences of a sci- V entific truth ? Most persons imbued with what one may call the Puritanism of science would feel Human Immortality ir themselves bound to answer this question with a yes. If any medically or psycho- logically bred young scientists feel other- wise, it is probably in consequence of that incoherency of mind of which the majority of mankind happily enjoy the privilege. At one hour scientists, at another they are Christians or common men, with the will to live burning hot in their breasts ; and, hold- ing thus the two ends of the chain, they are careless of the intermediate connection. But the more radical and uncompromising disciple of science makes the sacrifice, and, sorrowfully or not, according to his tem- perament, submits to giving up his hopes of heaven.2 This, then, is the objection to immortal- ity; and the next thing in order for me is to try to make plain to you why I be- lieve that it has in strict logic no deter- rent power. I must show you that the fatal consequence is not coercive, as is com- monly imagined ; and that, even though our soul's life (as here below it is revealed to 12 Human Immortality us) may be in literal strictness the function of a brain that perishes, yet it is not at all impossible, but on the contrary quite pos- sible, that the life may still continue when the brain itself is dead. The supposed impossibility of its contin- uing comes from too superficial a look at the admitted fact of functional dependence. The moment we inquire more closely into the notion of functional dependence, and ask ourselves, for example, how many kinds of functional dependence there may be, we immediately perceive that there is one kind at least that does not exclude a life here- /O after at all. The fatal conclusion of the \ physiologist flows from his assuming off- \ hand another kind of functional depend- t ence, and treating it as the only imagina- \ ble kind.^ /" When the physiologist who thinks that V. his science cuts off all hope of immortality ) pronounces the phrase, " Thought is a I function of the brain," he thinks of the / matter just as he thinks when he says, Human Immortality i ^ " Steam is a function of the tea-kettle," " Light is a function of the electric cir- cuit," " Power is a function of the moving waterfall." In these latter cases the sev- eral material objects have the function of inwardly creating or engendering their effects, and their function must be called productive function. Just so, he thinks, it must be with the brain. Engendering con- sciousness in its interior, much as it engen- ders cholesterin and creatin and carbonic acid, its relation to our soul's life must also be called productive function. Of course, if such production be the function, then when the organ perishes, since the produc- tion can no longer continue, the soul must surely die. Such a conclusion as this is indeed inevitable from that particular con- ception of the facts.* But in the world of physical nature pro- ductive function of this sort is not the only kind of function with which we are familiar. We have also releasing or per- missive function ; and we have transmis- sive function. 14 Human Immortality The trigger of a crossbow has a releas- ing function : it removes the obstacle that holds the string, and lets the bow fly back to its natural shape. So when the hammer falls upon a detonating compound. By knocking out the inner molecular obstruc- tions, it lets the constituent gases resume their normal bulk, and so permits the ex- plosion to take place. In the case of a colored glass, a prism, or a refracting lens, we have transmissive function. The energy of light, no mat- ter how produced, is by the glass sifted and limited in color, and by the lens or prism determined to a certain path and shape. Similarly, the keys of an organ have only a transmissive function. They open successively the various pipes and let the wind in the air-chest escape in various ways. The voices of the various pipes are constituted by the columns of air trembling as they emerge. But the air is not engen- dered in the organ. The organ proper, as distinguished from its air-chest, is only an Human Immortality 75 apparatus for letting portions of it loose upon the world in these peculiarly limited shapes. My thesis now is this : that, when we "n think of the law that thought is a function / of the brain, we are not required to think ■/ of productive function only ; we are entitled ^ also to consider permissive or transmissive j function. And this the ordinary psycho- \ physiologist leaves out of his account. y Suppose, for example, that the whole uni- ^ verse of material things — the furniture of earth and choir of heaven — should turn out to be a mere surface-veil of pheno- mena, hiding and keeping back the world of genuine realities. Such a supposition is foreign neither to common sense nor to philosophy. Common sense believes in realities behind the veil even too supersti- tiously ; and idealistic philosophy declares the whole world of natural experience, as we get it, to be but a time-mask, shatter- ing or refracting the one infinite Thought which is the sole reality into those millions 1 6 Human Immortality of finite streams of consciousness known to us as our private selves. " Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity." Suppose, now, that this were really so, and suppose, moreover, that the dome, opaque enough at all times to the full su- per-solar blaze, could at certain times and places grow less so, and let certain beams pierce through into this sublunary world. These beams would be so many finite rays, so to speak, of consciousness, and they would vary in quantity and quality as the opacity varied in degree. Only at particular times and places would it seem that, as a matter of fact, the veil of nature can grow thin and rupturable enough for such effects to occur. But in those places gleams, however finite and unsatisfying, of the absolute life of the universe, are from time to time vouchsafed. Glows of feeling, glimpses of insight, and streams of knowledge and perception float into our finite world. \^ Admit now that our brains are such thin Human Immortality ly and half - transparent places in the veil. What will happen ? Why, as the white radiance comes through the dome, with all sorts of staining and distortion imprinted on it by the glass, or as the air now comes through my glottis determined and limited in its force and quality of its vibrations by the peculiarities of those vocal chords which form its gate of egress and shape it into my personal voice, even so the genuine matter of reality, the life of souls as it is in its fullness, will break through our sev- eral brains into this world in all sorts of restricted forms, and with all the imperfec- tions and queernesses that characterize our finite individualities here below. According to the state in which the brain finds itself, the barrier of its obstruc- tiveness may also be supposed to rise or fall. It sinks so low, when the brain is in full activity, that a comparative flood of spiritual energy pours over. At other times, only such occasional waves of thought as heavy sleep permits get by. And when 1 8 Human Immortality finally a brain stops acting altogether, or decays, that special stream of conscious- ness which it subserved will vanish entirely from this natural world. But the sphere of being that supplied the consciousness would still be intact ; and in that more real world with which, even whilst here, it was continuous, the consciousness might, in ways unknown to us, continue still. You see that, on all these suppositions, our soul's life, as we here know it, would none the less in literal strictness be the function of the brain. The brain would be the independent variable, the mind would vary dependently on it. But such dependence on the brain for this natural life would in no wise make immortal life impossible, — it might be quite compatible with supernatural life behind the veil here- after. As I said, then, the fatal consequence is not coercive, the conclusion which mate- rialism draws being due solely to its one- sided way of taking the word 'function.' Human Immortality 19 And, whether we care or not for immortal- ity in itself, we ought, as mere critics doing police duty among the vagaries of man- kind, to insist on the illogicality of a denial based on the flat ignoring of a palpable alternative. How muc h, more ough t we to insist^^as^ jovers of truth, wjien.Lhg,dgn ial is that of such a vital hope of mankind! In strict logic, then, the fangs of cere- bralistic materialism are drawn. My words ought consequently already to exert a re- leasing function on your hopes. You may believe henceforward, whether you care to profit by the permission or not. But, as this is a very abstract argument, I think it will help its effect to say a word or two about the more concrete conditions of the case. All abstract hypotheses sound unreal; and the abstract notion that our brains are colored lenses in the wall of nature, admit- ting light from the super-solar source, but at the same time tingeing and restricting it, has a thoroughly fantastic sound. What 20 Human Immortality is it, you may ask, but a foolish metaphor ? And how can such a function be ima- gined ? Is n't the common materialistic notion vastly simpler ? Is not conscious- ness really more comparable to a sort of steam, or perfume, or electricity, or nerve- glow, generated on the spot in its own peculiar vessel ? Is it not more rigorously scientific to treat the brain's function as function of production ? The immediate reply is, that, if we are talking of science positively understood, function can mean nothing more than bare concomitant variation. When the brain- activities change in one way, conscious- ness changes in another; when the cur- rents pour through the occipital lobes, consciousness sees things ; when through the lower frontal region, consciousness says things to itself ; when they stop, she goes to sleep, etc. In strict science, we can only write down the bare fact of con- comitance ; and all talk about either pro- duction or transmission, as the mode of Human Immortality 21 taking place, is pure superadded hypothe- sis, and metaphysical hypothesis at that, for we can frame no more notion of the details on the one alternative than on the other. Ask for any indication of the exact process either of transmission or of production, and Science confesses her imagination to be bankrupt. She has, so far, not the least glimmer of a conjecture or suggestion, — not even a bad verbal metaphor or pun to offer. Ignoramus, ignorabimns, is what most physiologists, in the words of one of their number, will say here. The production of such a thing as consciousness in the brain, they will reply with the late Berlin professor of physio- logy, is the absolute world-enigma, — some- thing so paradoxical and abnormal as to be a stumbling block to Nature, and almost a self-contradiction. Into the mode of pro- duction of steam in a tea-kettle we have conjectural insight, for the terms that change are physically homogeneous one with another, and we can easily imagine 22 Human Immortality the case to consist of nothing but altera- tions of molecular motion. But in the production of consciousness by the brain, the terms are heterogeneous natures alto- gether; and as far as our understanding goes, it is as great a miracle as if we said, Thought is 'spontaneously generated,' or * created out of nothing.' The theory of production is therefore not a jot more simple or credible in itself than any other conceivable theory. It is only a little more popular. All that one need do, therefore, if the ordinary materi- alist should challenge one to explain how the brain ca7t be an organ for limiting and determining to a certain form a conscious- ness elsewhere produced, is to retort with a tti quoque, asking him in turn to ex- plain how it can be an organ for producing consciousness out of whole cloth. For polemic purposes, the two theories are thus exactly on a par. But if we consider the theory of trans- mission in a wider way, we see that it has Human Immortality 23 certain positive superiorities, quite apart from its connection with the immortality question. Just how the process of transmission may be carried on, is indeed unimagina- ble ; but the outer relations, so to speak, of the process, encourage our belief. Con- sciousness in this process does not have to be generated de novo in a vast number of places. It exists already, behind the scenes, coeval with the world. The trans- mission-theory not only avoids in this way multiplying miracles, but it puts itself in touch with general idealistic philosophy better than the production-theory does. It should always be reckoned a good thing when science and philosophy thus meet.^ It puts itself also in touch with the con- ception of a 'threshold,' — a word with which, since Fechner wrote his book called 'Psychophysik,' the so-called 'new Psycho- logy ' has rung. Fechner imagines as the condition of consciousness a certain kind of psycho-physical movement, as he terms 24 Human Immortality it. Before consciousness can come, a cer- tain degree of activity in the movement must be reached. This requisite degree is called the ' threshold ; ' but the height of the threshold varies under different cir- cumstances : it may rise or fall. When it falls, as in states of great lucidity, we grow conscious of things of which we should be unconscious at other times ; when it rises, as in drowsiness, conscious- ness sinks in amount. This rising and lowering of a psycho - physical threshold exactly conforms to our notion of a per- manent obstruction to the transmission of consciousness, which obstruction may, in our brains, grow alternately greater or less.^ The transmission-theory also puts itself in touch with a whole class of experi- ences that are with difficulty explained by the production-theory. I refer to those ob- scure and exceptional phenomena reported at all times throughout human history, which the * psychical - researchers,' with Human Immortality 25 Mr. Frederic Myers at their head, are do- ing so much to rehabihtate ; "* such phe- nomena, namely, as religious conversions, providential leadings in answer to prayer, instantaneous healings, premonitions, ap- paritions at time of death, clairvoyant vi- sions or impressions, and the whole range of mediumistic capacities, to say nothing of still more exceptional and incomprehen- sible things. If all our human thought be a function of the brain, then of course, if any of these things are facts, — and to my own mind some of them are facts, — we may not suppose that they can occur without preliminary brain-action. But the ordinary production-theory of consciousness is knit up with a peculiar notion of how brain- action can occur, — that notion being that all brain-action, without exception, is due to a prior action, immediate or remote, of the bodily sense-organs on the brain. Such action makes the brain produce sensations and mental images, and out of the sensations and images the higher forms of thought and 26 Human Immortality knowledge in their turn are framed. As transmissionists, we also must admit this to be the condition of all our usual thought. Sense-action is what lowers the brain-bar- rier. My voice and aspect, for instance, strike upon your ears and eyes ; . your brain thereupon becomes more pervious, and an awareness on your part of what I say and who I am slips into this world from the world behind the veil. But, in the mys- terious phenomena to which I allude, it is often hard to see where the sense-organs can come in. A medium, for example, will show knowledge of his sitter's private af- fairs which it seems impossible he should have acquired through sight or hearing, or inference therefrom. Or you will have an apparition of some one who is now dying hundreds of miles away. On the produc- tion - theory one does not see from what sensations such odd bits of knowledge are produced. On the transmission - theory, they don't have to be 'produced,' — they exist ready - made in the transcendental Human Immortality 27 world, and all that is needed is an abnor- mal lowering of the brain-threshold to let them through. In cases of conversion, in providential leadings, sudden mental heal- ings, etc., it seems to the subjects them- selves of the experience as if a power from without, quite different from the ordi- nary action of the senses or of the sense- led mind, came into their life, as if the latter suddenly opened into that greater life in which it has its source. The word 'influx,' used in Swedenborgian circles, well describes this impression of new insight, or new willingness, sweeping over us like a tide. All such experiences, quite para- doxical and meaningless on the production- theory, fall very naturally into place on the other theory. We need only suppose the continuity of our consciousness with a mother sea, to allow for exceptional waves occasionally pouring over the dam. Of course the causes of these odd lowerings of the brain's threshold still remain a mys- tery on any terms. 28 Human Immortality Add, then, this advantage to the trans- mission-theory, — an advantage which I am well aware that some of you will not rate very high, — and also add the advantage of not conflicting with a life hereafter, and I hope yon will agree with me that it has many points of superiority to the more familiar theory. It is a theory which, in the history of opinion on such matters, has never been wholly left out of account, though never developed at any great length. In the great orthodox philosophic tradition, the body is treated as an essential condition to the soul's life in this world of sense ; but after death, it is said, the soul is set free, and becomes a purely intellectual and non- appetitive being. Kant expresses this idea in terms that come singularly close to those of our transmission-theory. The death of the body, he says, may indeed be the end of the sensational use of our mind, but only the beginning of the intellectual use. " The body," he continues, "would thus be, not the cause of our thinking, but merely a Human Immortality 2g condition restrictive thereof, and, although essential to our sensuous and animal con- sciousness, it may be regarded as an im- peder of our pure spiritual life.^ And in a recent book of great suggestiveness and power, less well-known as yet than it de- serves, — I mean * Riddles of the Sphinx,' by Mr. F. C. S. Schiller of Oxford, late of Cornell University, — the transmission- theory is defended at some length.^ But still, you will ask, in what positive way does this theory help us to realize our immortality in imagination ? What we all wish to keep is just these individual restric- tions, these selfsame tendencies and pecu- liarities that define us to ourselves and oth- ers, and constitute our identity, so called. Our finitenesses and limitations seem to be our personal essence ; and when the finiting organ drops away, and our several spirits revert to their original source and resume their unrestricted condition, will they then be anything like those sweet streams of feeling which we know, and which even now ^o Human Immortality our brains are sifting out from the great reservoir for our enjoyment here below ? Such questions are truly living questions, and surely they must be seriously discussed by future lecturers upon this Ingersoll foundation. I hope, for my part, that more than one such lecturer will penetratingly discuss the conditions of our immortal' ity, and tell us how much we may lose, and how much we may possibly gain, if its finiting outlines should be changed ? If all determination is negation, as the phi- losophers say, it might well prove that the loss of some of the particular determina- tions which the brain imposes would not appear a matter for such absolute regret. But into these higher and more tran- scendental matters I refuse to enter upon this occasion ; and I proceed, during the remainder of the hour, to treat of my sec- ond point. Fragmentary and negative it is, as my first one has been. Yet, between them, they do give to our belief in immor- tality a freer wing. Human Immortality ^j My second point is relative to the in- credible and intolerable number of beings which, with our modern imagination, we must believe to be immortal, if immortal- ity be true. I cannot but suspect that this, too, is a stumbling-block to many of my present audience. And it is a stum- bling-block which I should thoroughly like to clear away. It is, I fancy, a stumbling-block of alto- gether modern origin, due to the strain upon the quantitative imagination which recent scientific theories, and the moral feelings consequent upon them, have brought in their train. For our ancestors the world was a small, and — compared with our modern sense of it — a comparatively snug affair. Six thousand years at most it had lasted. In its history a few particular human he- roes, kings, ecclesiarchs, and saints stood forth very prominent, overshadowing the imagination with their claims and merits, so that not only they, but all who were 52 Human Immortality associated familiarlywith them, shone with a glamour which even the Almighty, it was supposed, must recognize and respect. These prominent personages and their as- sociates were the nucleus of the immortal group ; the minor heroes and saints of minor sects came next, and people with- out distinction formed a sort of background and filling in. The whole scene of eter- nity (so far, at least, as Heaven and not the nether place was concerned in it) never struck to the believer's fancy as an overwhelmingly large or inconveniently crowded stage. One might call this an aristocratic view of immortality ; the im- mortals — I speak of Heaven exclusively, for an immortality of torment need not now concern us — were always an 61ite, a select and manageable number. But, with our own generation, an entirely new quantitative imagination has swept over our western world. The theory of evolution now requires us to suppose a far vaster scale of times, spaces, and numbers Human Immortality ^^ than our forefathers ever dreamed the cos- mic process to involve. Human history grows continuously out of animal history, and goes back possibly even to the tertiary epoch. From this there has emerged in- sensibly a democratic view, instead of the old aristocratic view, of immortality. For our minds, though in one sense they may have grown a little cynical, in another they have been made sympathetic by the evolu- tionary perspective. Bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh are these half-brutish pre- historic brothers. Girdled about with the immense darkness of this mysterious uni- verse even as we are, they were born and died, suffered and struggled. Given over to fearful crime and passion, plunged in the blackest ignorance, preyed upon by hide- ous and grotesque delusions, yet steadfastly serving the profoundest of ideals in their fixed faith that existence in any form is better than non-existence, they ever res- cued trimphantly from the jaws of ever-im- minent destruction the torch of life, which, ^4 Human Immortality thanks to them, now lights the world for us. How small indeed seem individ- ual distinctions when we look back on these overwhelming numbers of human beings panting and straining under the pressure of that vital want ! And how inessential in the eyes of God must be the small surplus of the individual's merit, swamped as it is in the vast ocean of the common merit of mankind, dumbly and undauntedly doing the fundamental duty and living the heroic life ! We grow hum- ble and reverent as we contemplate the prodigious spectacle. Not our differences and distinctions, — we feel — no, but our common animal essence of patience under suffering and enduring effort must be what redeems us in the Deity's sight. An im- mense compassion and kinship fill the heart. An immortality from which these inconceivable billions of fellow - strivers should be excluded becomes an irrational idea for us. That our superiority in per- sonal refinement or in religious creed Human Immortality ^5 should constitute a difference between our- selves and our messmates at life's banquet, fit to entail such a consequential difference of destiny as eternal life for us, and for them torment hereafter, or death with the beasts that perish, is a notion too absurd to be considered serious. Nay, more, the very beasts themselves — the wild ones at any rate — are leading the heroic life at all times. And a modern mind, ex- panded as some minds are by cosmic emo- tion, by the great evolutionist vision of universal continuity, hesitates to draw the line even at man. If any creature lives forever, why not all 1 — why not the pa- tient brutes ? So that a faith in immortal- ity, if we are to indulge it, demands of us nowadays a scale of representation so stu- pendous that our imagination faints before it, and our personal feelings refuse to rise up and face the task. The supposition we are swept along to is too vast, and, rather than face the conclusion, we abandon the premise from which it starts. We give up 5(5 Human Immortality our own immortality sooner than believe that all the hosts of Hottentots and Aus- tralians that have been, and shall ever be, should share it with us itt secula seculorum. Life is a good thing on a reasonably copi- ous scale ; but the very heavens themselves, and the cosmic times and spaces, would stand aghast, we think, at the notion of preserving eternally such an ever-swelling plethora and glut of it. Having myself, as a recipient of modern scientific culture, gone through a subjec- tive experience like this, I feel sure that it must also have been the experience of many, perhaps of most, of you who listen to my words. But I have also come to see that it harbors a tremendous fallacy ; and, since the noting of the fallacy has set my own mind free again, I have felt that one service I might render to my listeners to- night would be to point out where it lies. It is the most obvious fallacy in the world, and the only wonder is that all the world should not see through it. It is the Human Immortality 57 result of nothing but an invincible blind- ness from which we suffer, an insensibility to the inner significance of alien lives, and a conceit that would project our own inca- pacity into the vast cosmos, and measure the wants of the Absolute by our own puny needs. Our christian ancestors dealt with the problem more easily than we do. We, indeed, lack sympathy ; but they had a positive antipathy for these alien human creatures, and they naively supposed the Deity to have the antipathy, too. Being, as they were, 'heathen,' our forefathers felt a certain sort of joy in thinking that their Creator made them as so much mere fuel for the fires of hell. Our culture has humanized us beyond that point, but we cannot yet conceive them as our com- rades in the fields of heaven. We have, as the phrase goes, no use for them, and it oppresses us to think of their survival. Take, for instance, all the Chinamen, Which of you here, my friends, sees any fitness in their eternal perpetuation unre- ^8 Human Immortality duced in numbers ? Surely not one of you. At most, you might deem it well to keep a few chosen specimens alive to represent an interesting and peculiar variety of human- ity ; but as for the rest, what comes in such surpassing numbers, and what you can only imagine in this abstract summary collective manner, must be something of which the units, you are sure, can have no individual preciousness. God himself, you think, can have no use for them. An im- mortality of every separate specimen must be to him and to the universe as indiges- tible a load to carry as it is to you. So, engulfing the whole subject in a sort of mental giddiness and nausea, you__drift along, first doubting that _th£., mass can b e_ immi^ ltal. then losing a ll assuran ce in the immortality of j^r own p articu lfir petgo rij, precious as you all the while feel aj id rea L ize~nie latter to be7 ThisTlam sure, is the~attitu3e of mind of some of you before me. But is not such an attitude due to the Human Immortality 59 veriest lack and dearth of your imagina- tion ? You take these swarms of alien kinsmen as they are for you : an external picture painted on your retina, represent- ing a crowd oppressive by its vastness and confusion. As they are for you, so you think they positively and absolutely are. / feel no call for them, you say ; therefore there is no call for them. But all the while, beyond this externality which is your way of realizing them, they realize themselves with the acutest internality, with the most violent thrills of life. 'Tis you who are dead, stone-dead and blind and senseless, in your way of looking on. You open your eyes upon a scene of which you miss the whole significance. Each of these grotesque or even repulsive aliens is animated by an inner joy of living as hot or hotter than that which you feel beating in your private breast. The sun rises and beauty beams to light his path. To miss the inner joy of him, as Stevenson says, is to miss the whole of him.^^ Not a being 40 Human Immortality of the countless thron g is there whos econ- tinuei lifejsnoiLcalledfQr^jiid called for intensely, by the ^con scious ness that ani- mates the being's form. That you neither realize nor understand nor call for it, that you have no use for it, is an absolutely irrelevant circumstance. That you have a saturation-point of interest tells us no- thing of the interests that absolutely are. The Universe, with every living entity which her resources create, creates at the same time a call for that entity, and an appetite for its continuance, — creates it, if nowhere else, at least within the heart of the entity itself. It is absurd to suppose, simply because our private power of sym- pathetic vibration with other lives gives out so soon, that in the heart of infinite being itself there can be such a thing as plethora, or glut, or supersaturation. It is not as if there were a bounded room where the minds in possession had to move up or make place and crowd together to accommodate new occupants. Each new Human Immortality 41 mind brings its own edition of the universe of space along with it, its own room to in- habit ; and these spaces never crowd each other, — the space of my imagination, for example, in no way interferes with yours. The amount of possible consciousness seems to.be governed by no law analogous to that of the so-called conservation of en- ergy in the material world. When one man wakes up, or one is born, another does not have to go to sleep, or die, in order to keep the consciousness of the universe a constant quantity. Professor Wundt, in fact, in his ' System of Philosophy,' has formulated a law of the universe which he calls the law of increase of spiritual en- ergy, and which he expressly opposes to the law of conservation of energy in physi- cal things.^i There seems no formal limit to the positive increase of being in spir- itual respects ; and since spiritual being, whenever it comes, affirms itself, expands and craves continuance, we may justly and literally say, regardless of the defects of 42 Human Immortality our own private sympathy, that the supply _ of individual life in the universe can never possibly, however immeasurable it may. become, exceed the demand. The de- mand for that supply is there the moment the supply itself comes into being, for the beings supplied demand their own con- tinuance. I speak, you see, from the point of view of all the other individual beings, real- izing and enjoying inwardly their own ex- istence. If we are pantheists, we can stop there. We need, then, only say that through them, as through so many diver- sified channels of expression, the eternal Spirit of the Universe affirms and realizes its own infinite life. But if we are theists, we can go farther without altering the result. God, we can then say, has so in- exhaustible a capacity for love that his call and need is for a literally endless accu- mulation of created lives. He can never faint or grow weary, as we should, under the increasing supply. His scale is infinite Human Immortality 4^ in all things. His sympathy can never know satiety or glut. I hope now that you agree with me that the tiresomeness of an over -peopled Heaven is a purely subjective and illusory notion, a sign of human incapacity, a rem- nant of the old narrow-hearted aristocratic creed. " Revere the Maker, lift thine eye up to his style and manners of the sky," and you will believe that this is indeed a democratic universe, in which your paltry exclusions play no regulative part. Was your taste consulted in the peopling of this globe .'' How, then, should it be consulted as to the peopling of the vast City of God } Let us put our hand over our mouth, like Job, and be thankful that in our personal littleness we ourselves are here at all. The Deity that suffers us, we may be sure, can suffer many another queer and won- drous and only half -delightful thing. For my own part, then, so far as logic goes, I am willing that every leaf that ever grew in this world's forests and rustled in 44 Human Immortality the breeze should become immortal. It is purely a question of fact : are the leaves so, or not ? Abstract quantity, and the ab- stract Heedlessness in our eyes of so much reduplication of things so much alike, have no connection with the subject. For big- ness and number and generic similarity are only manners of our finite way of think- ing ; and, considered in itself and apart from our imagination, one scale of dimen- sions and of numbers for the Universe is no more miraculous or inconceivable than another, the moment you grant to a uni- verse the liberty to be at all, in place of the Non-entity that might conceivably have reigned. The heart of being can have no exclu- sions akin to those which our poor little hearts set up. The inner significance of other lives exceeds all our powers of sym- pathy and insight. If we feel a signifi- cance in our own life which would lead us spontaneously to claim its perpetuity, let us be at least tolerant of like claims made Human Immortality 4^ by other lives, however numerous, however unideal they may seem to us to be. Let us at any rate not decide adversely on our own claim, whose grounds we feel directly, because we cannot decide favorably on the alien claims, whose grounds we cannot feel at all. That would be letting blindness lay down the law to sight. NOTES Note i, page 9. The gaps between the centres first recognized as motor and sensory — gaps which form in man two thirds of the surface of the hemispheres — are thus positively interpreted by Flechsig as intellectual centres strictly so called. [Compare his Gehirn uJid Seele, 2te Ausgabe, 1896, p. 23.] They have, he considers, a common type of microscopic struc- ture ; and the fibres connected with them are a month later in gaining their medullary sheath than are the fibres connected with the other centres. When disordered, they are the starting-point of the insanities, properly so called. Already Wernicke had defined insanity as disease of the organ of asso- ciation, without so definitely pretending to circum- scribe the latter — compare his Grundriss der Psy- chiatric, 1894, p. 7. Flechsig goes so far as to say that he finds a difference of symptoms in general par- alytics according as their frontal or their more poste- rior association-centres are diseased. Where it is 48 Notes the frontal centres, the patient's consciousness of self is more deranged than is his perception of purely objective relations. Where the posterior associa- tive regions suffer, it is rather the patient's system of objective ideas that undergoes disintegration (loc. cit. pp. 89-91). In rodents Flechsig thinks there is a complete absence of association-centres, — the sensory centres touch each other. In car- nivora and the low^er monkeys the latter centres still exceed the association -centres in volume, Only in the katarhinal apes do we begin to find anything like the human type (p. 84). In his little pamphlet, Die Grenzen gets tiger Gesundheit und Krankheit, Leipzig, 1896, Flech- sig ascribes the moral insensibility which is found in certain criminals to a diminution of internal pain-feeling due to degeneration of the ' Korper- fiihlsphare,' that extensive anterior region first so named by Munk, in which he lays the seat of all the emotions and of the consciousness of self \Gehirn U7id Seele, pp. 62-68 ; die Grenzen, etc., pp. 31-39, 48]. — I give these references to Flechsig for concreteness' sake, not because his views are irreversibly made out. Note 2, page 11. So widespread is this conclusion in positivistic circles, so abundantly is it expressed in conversa- Notes 4g tion, and so frequently implied in things that are written, that I confess that my surprise was great when I came to look into books for a passage explicitly denying immortality on physiological grounds, which I might quote to make my text more concrete. I was unable to find anything blunt and distinct enough to serve. I looked through all the books that would naturally suggest themselves, with no effect ; and I vainly asked vari- ous psychological colleagues. And yet I should al- most have been ready to take oath that I had read several such passages of the most categoric sort within the last decade. Very likely this is a false impression, and it may be with this opinion as with many others. The atmosphere is full of them ; many a writer's pages logically presuppose and involve them ; yet, if you wish to refer a student to an express and radical statement that he may employ as a text to comment on, you find almost nothing that will do. In the present case there are plenty of passages in which, in a general way, mind is said to be conterminous with brain-func- tion, but hardly one in which the author thereupon explicitly denies the possibility of immortality. The best one I have found is perhaps this : " Not only consciousness, but every stirring of life, de- pends on functions that go out like a flame when nourishment is cut off. . . . The phenomena of 50 Notes consciousness correspond, element for element, to the operations of special parts of the brain. . . . The destruction of any piece of the apparatus in- volves the loss of some one or other of the vital operations ; and the consequence is that, as far as life extends, we have before us only an organic function, not a Ding-an-sich, or an expression of that imaginary entity the Soul. This fundamental proposition . . . carries with it the denial of the immortality of the soul, since, where no soul exists, its mortality or immortality cannot be raised as a question. . • . The function fills its time, — the flame illuminates and therein gives out its whole being. That is all ; and verily that is enough. . . . Sensation has its definite organic conditions, and, as these decay with the natural decay of life, it is quite impossible for a mind accustomed to deal with realities to suppose any capacity of sensation as surviving when the machinery of our natural existence has stopped." [£". Duhring : der Werth des LebenSf 3d edition, pp. 48, 168.] Note 3, page 12. The philosophically instructed reader will notice that I have all along been placing myself at the ordinary dualistic point of view of natural science and of common sense. From this point of view mental facts like feelings are made of one kind of Notes 57 stuff or substance, physical facts of another. An absolute phenomenism, not believing such a dual- ism to be ultimate, may possibly end by solving some of the problems that are insoluble when pro- pounded in dualistic terms. Meanwhile, since the physiological objection to immortality has arisen on the ordinary dualistic plane of thought, and since absolute phenomenism has as yet said nothing articulate enough to count about the matter, it is proper that my reply to the objection should be expressed in dualistic terms — leaving me free, of course, on any later occasion to make an attempt; if I wish, to transcend them and use different cate- gories. Now, on the dualistic assumption, one cannot set more than two really different sorts of dependence of our mind on our brain : Either (i) The brain brings into being the very stxiff of consciousness of which our mind consists ; or else (2) Consciousness preexists as an entity, and the various brains give to it its various special forms. If supposition 2 be the true one, and the stuff of mind preexists, there are, again, only two ways of conceiving that our brain confers upon it the spe- cifically human form. It may exist {a) In disseminated particles ; and then our brains are organs of concentration, organs for combining 52 Notes and massing these into resultant minds of personal form. Or it may exist {b) In vaster unities (absolute 'world- soul,' or something less) ; and then our brains are organs for separating it into parts and giving them finite form. There ar"^ thus three possible theories of the brain's function, and no more. We may name them, severally, — I. The theory of production ; 2a. The theory of combination ; ■zb. The theory of separation. In the text of the lecture, theory number 2b (spe- cified more particularly as the transmission-theory) is defended against theory number i. Theory 2a, otherwise known as the mind-dust or mind-stuff theory, is left entirely unnoticed for lack of time. I also leave it uncriticised in these notes, having already considered it, as fully as the so-far pub- lished forms of it may seem to call for, in my work, 'The Principles of Psychology, New York, Holt & Co., 1892, chapter VI. I may say here, however, that Professor W. K. Clifford, one of the ablest champions of the combination-theory, and originator of the useful term ' mind-stuff,' considers that theory incompatible with individual immortal- ity, and in his review of Stewart's and Tait's book. The Unseen Universe, thus expresses his convic- tion : — Notes 5^ " The laws connecting consciousness with changes in the brain are very definite and precise, and their necessary consequences are not to be evaded. . . . Consciousness is a complex thing made up of ele- ments, a stream of feelings. The action of the brain is also a complex thing made up of elements, a stream of nerve-messages. For every feeling in consciousness there is at the same time a nerve- message in the brain. . . . Consciousness is not a simple thing, but a complex ; it is the combination of feelings into a stream. It exists at the same time with the combination of nerve-messages into a stream. If individual feeling always goes with individual nerve-message, if combination or stream of feelings always goes with stream of nerve-mes- sages, does it not follow that, when the stream of nerve-messages is broken up, the stream of feelings will be broken up also, will no longer form a con- sciousness ? Does it not follow that, when the mes- sages themselves are broken up, the individual feel- ings will be resolved into still simpler elements? The force of this evidence is not to be weakened by any number of spiritual bodies. Inexorable facts connect our consciousness with this body that we know ; and that not merely as a whole, but the parts of it are connected severally with parts of our brain-action. If there is any similar connection with a spiritual body, it only follows that the spirit- ^4 Notes ual body must die at the same time with the natu- ral one." \Lectjtres and Essays, vol. i. p. 247-49. Compare also passages of similar purport in vol. ii. pp. 65-70.] Note 4, page 13. The theory of production, or materialistic the- ory, seldom ventures to formulate itself very dis- tinctly. Perhaps the following passage from Ca- banis is as explicit as anything one can find : — " To acquire a just idea of the operations from which thought results, we must consider the brain as a particular organ specially destined to produce it ; just as the stomach and intestines are destined to operate digestion, the liver to filter bile, the pa- rotid and maxillary glands to prepare the salivary juices. The impressions, arriving in the brain, force it to enter into activity ; just as the alimen- tary materials, falling into the stomach, excite it to a more abundant secretion of gastric juice, and to the movements which result in their own solution. The function proper to the first organ is that of re- ceiving \_percevoir\ each particular impression, of attaching signs to it, of combining the different im- pressions, of comparing them with each other, of drawing from them judgments and resolves ; just as the function of the other organ is to act upon the nutritive substances whose presence excites it, Notes ^^ to dissolve them, and to assimilate their juices to our nature. " Do you say that the organic movements by which the brain exercises these functions are un- known ? I reply that the action by which the nerves of the stomach determine the different oper- ations which constitute digestion, and the manner in which they confer so active a solvent power upon the gastric juice, are equally hidden from our scru- tiny. We see the food-materials fall into this vis- cus with their own proper qualities ; we see them emerge with new qualities, and we infer that the stomach is really the author of this alteration. Similarly we see the impressions reaching the brain by the intermediation of the nerves ; they then are isolated and without coherence. The viscus en- ters into action ; it acts upon them, and soon it emits [renvoie'] them metamorphosed into ideas, to which the language of physiognomy or gesture, or the signs of speech and writing, give an outward expression. We conclude, then, with an equal certitude, that the brain digests, as it were, the im-^ pressions ; that it performs organically the secre- tion of thought." {Rapports dn Physique et di^ Moral, 8th edition, 1844, p. 137.] It is to the ambiguity of the word ' impression ' that such an account owes whatever plausibility it may seem to have. More recent forms of the pro- ^6 Notes duction-theory have shown a tendency to liken thought to a ' force ' which the brain exerts, or to a ' state ' into which it passes. Herbert Spencer, for instance, writes : — " The law of metamorphosis, which holds among the physical forces, holds equally between them and the mental forces. . . . How this metamor- phosis takes place; how a force existing as mo- tion, heat, or light can become a mode of con- sciousness ; how it is possible for aerial vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound, or for the forces liberated by chemical changes in the brain to give rise to emotion, — these are mysteries which it is impossible to fathom. But they are not profounder mysteries than the transformations of the physical forces into each other." IF't'rsf Principles, 2nd Edition, p. 217.] So Biichner says : " Thinking must be regarded as a special mode of general natural motion, which is as characteristic of the substance of the central nervous elements as the motion of contraction is of the nerve-substance, or the motion of light is of the universal-ether. . . . That thinking is and must be a mode of motion is not merely a postulate of logic, but a psoposition which has of late been demonstrated experimentally. . . . Various ingen- ious experiments have proved that the swiftest thought that we are able to evolve occupies at least Notes ^y the eighth or tenth part of a second." {Force and Matter, New York, 1891, p. 241.] Heat and light, being modes of motion, 'phos- phorescence ' and ' incandescence ' are phenomena to which consciousness has been likened by the production-theory: "As one sees a metallic rod, placed in a glowing furnace, gradually heat itself, and — as the undulations of the caloric grow more and more frequent — pass successively from the shades of bright red to dark red («V), to white, and develope, as its temperature rises, heat and light, — so the living sensitive cells, in presence of the incitations that solicit them, exalt themselves progressively as to their most interior sensibility, enter into a phase of erethism, and at a certain number of vibrations, set free {digagenf) pain as a physiological expression of this same sensibility superheated to a red-white." [J. Luys : le Cer- veau, p. 91.] In a similar vein Mr. Percival Lowell writes : " When we have, as we say, an idea, what happens itiside of us is probably something like this : the neural current of molecular change passes up the nerves, and through the ganglia reaches at last the cortical cells. . . . When it reaches the cor- tical cells, it finds a set of molecules which are not so accustomed to this special change. The cur- rent encounters resistance, and in overcoming this ^8 Notes resistance it causes the cells to glow. This white- heating of the cells we call consciousness. Con- sciousness, in short, is probably nerve-glow." [^Oc- cult Japan, Boston, 1895, p. 311.] Note 5, page 23. The transmission - theory connects itself very naturally with that whole tendency of thought known as transcendentalism. Emerson, for exam- ple, writes : " We lie in the lap of immense intelli- gence, which makes us receivers of its truth ana organs of its activity. When we discern justice. when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselveS; but allow a passage to its beams." \_Self-Relianct^ p. 56.] But it is not necessary to identify the con- sciousness postulated in the lecture, as preexisting behind the scenes, with the Absolute Mind of tran- scendental Idealism, although, indeed, the notion of it might lead in that direction. The absolute Mind of transcendental Idealism is one integral Unit, one single World-mind. For the purposes of my lec- ture, however, there might be many minds behind the scenes as well as one. All that the transmis- sion-theory absolutely requires is that they should transcend oiir minds, — which thus come from something mental that pre-exists, and is larger than themselves. Notes ^g Note 6, page 24. Fechner's conception of a * psycho - physical threshold ' as connected with his ' wave-scheme ' is little known to English readers. I accordingly subjoin it, in his own words, abridged : — " The psychically one is connected with a physi- cally many : the physically many contract psychi- cally into a one, a simple, or at least a more sim- ple. Otherwise expressed : the psychically unified and simple are resultants of physical multiplicity ; the physically manifold gives unified or simple re- sults. . . . " The facts which are grouped together under these expressions, and which give them their mean- ing, are as follows : . . . With our two hemispheres we think singly; with the identical parts of our two retinae we see singly. . . , The simplest sensation of light or sound in us is connected with processes which, since they are started and kept up by outer oscillations, must themselves be somehow of an oscillatory nature, although we are wholly unaware of the separate phases and oscillations. . . . " It is certain, then, that some unified or sim- ple psychic resultants depend on physical multipli- city. But, on the other hand, it is equally certain that the multiplicities of the physical world do not always combine into a simple psychical resultant, 6o Notes — no, not even when they are compounded in a single bodily system. Whether they may not nev- ertheless combine into a unified resultant is a matter for opinion, since one is always free to ask whether the entire world, as such, may not have some unified psychic resultant. But of any such resultant we at least have no consciousness. . . . " For brevity's sake, let us distinguish psycho- physical continuity and discontinuity from each other. Continuity, let us say, takes place so far as a physical manifold gives a unified or simple psy- chic resultant ; discontinuity, so far as it gives a distinguishable multiplicity of such resultants. In- asmuch, however, as, within the unity of a more general consciousness or phenomenon of conscious- ness, there still maybe a multiplicity distinguished, the continuity of a more general consciousness does not exclude the discontinuity of particular phenomena. "One of the most important problems and tasks of Psycho-physics now is this : to determine the conditions (Gesichtspunkte) under which the cases of continuity and of discontinuity occur. " Whence comes it that different organisms have separate consciousnesses, although their bodies are just as much connected by general Nature as the parts of a single organism are with each other, and these latter give a single conscious re- Notes 6 1 sultant ? Of course we can say that the connec- tion is more intimate between the parts of an organism than between the organisms of Nature. But what do we mean by a more intimate connec- tion ? Can an absolute difference of result depend on anything so relative ? And does not Nature as a whole show as strict a connection as any organism does, — yea, one even more indissoluble ? And the same questions come up within each organism. How comes it that, with different nerve-fibres of touch and sight, we distinguish different space- points, but with one fibre distinguish nothing, although the different fibres are connected in the brain just as much as the parts are in the single fibre? We may again call the latter connection the more intimate, but then the same sort of ques- tion will arise again. " Unquestionably the problem which here lies before Psycho - physics cannot be sharply an- swered ; but we may establish a general point of view for its treatment, consistently with what we laid down in a former chapter on the relations of more general with more particular phenomena of consciousness." [The earlier passage is here inserted :] " The O essential principle is this: That human psycho- 'jN physical activity must exceed a certain intensity ^ for any waking consciousness at all to occur, and 62 Notes that during the waking state any particular specift cation of the said activity (whether spontaneous or due to stimulation), which is capable of occasion- ing a particular specification of consciousness, must exceed in its turn a certain further degree of inten- sity for the consciousness actually to arise. . . . " This state of things (in itself a mere fact need- ing no picture) may be made clearer by an image or scheme, and also more concisely spoken of. Imagine the whole psycho-physical activity of man to be a wave, and the degree of this activity to be symbolized by the height of the wave above a hori- zontal basal line or surface, to which every psycho- physically active point contributes an ordinate. . . . The whole form and evolution of the conscious- ness will then depend on the rising and faUing of this wave; the intensity of the consciousness at any time on the wave's height at that time; and the height must always somewhere exceed a certain limit, which we will call a threshold, if waking con- sciousness is to exist at all. " Let us call this wave the total wave, and the threshold in question t\\t principal threshold." [Since our various states of consciousness recur, some in long, some in short periods], "we may represent such a long period as that of the slowly fluctuating condition of our general wakefulness and the general direction of our attention as a wave Notes 6^ that slowly changes the place of its summit. If we call this the ufider-wave, then the movements of shorter period, on which the more special con- scious states depend, can be symbolized by wave- lets superposed upon the under-wave, and we can call these over-waves. They will cause all sorts of modifications of the under-wave's surface, and the total wave will be the resultant of both sets of waves. "The greater, now, the strength of the move- ments of short period, the amplitude of the oscil- lations of the psycho-physical activity, the higher will the crests of the wavelets that represent them rise above, and the lower will their valleys sink be- low the surface of the under-wave that bears them. And these heights and depressions must exceed a certain limit of quantity which we may call the upper threshold, before the special mental state which is correlated with them can appear in con- sciousness " [pp. 454-456]. " So far now as we symbolize any system of psy- cho-physical activity, to which a generally unified or principal consciousness corresponds, by the image of a total wave rising with its crest above a certain * threshold,' we have a means of schematizing in a single diagram the physical solidarity of all these psycho-physical systems throughout Nature, to- gether with their pyscho - physical discontinuity. 64 Notes For we need only draw all the waves so that they run into each other below the threshold, whilst above it they appear distinct, as in the figure be- low. a be " In this figure a, b, c stand for three organisms, or rather for the total waves of psycho-physical ac- tivity of three organisms, whilst A B represents the threshold. In each wave the part that rises above the threshold is an integrated thing, and is con- nected with a single consciousness. Whatever lies below the threshold, being unconscious, separates the conscious crests, although it is still the means of physical connection. " In general terms : wherever a psycho-physical total wave is continuous with itself above the threshold, there we find the unity or identity of a consciousness, inasmuch z& the connection of the psychical phenomena which correspond to the parts of the wave also appears in consciousness. When- ever, on the contrary, total waves are disconnected, or connected only underneath the threshold, the corresponding consciousness is broken, and no con- nection between its several parts appears. More briefly : consciousness is continuous or discontinu- Notes 6^ ous, unified or discrete, according as the psycho- physical total waves that subserve it are them- selves continuous or discontinuous above the threshold. . . . " If, in the diagram, we should raise the entire line of waves so that not only the crests but the valleys appeared above the threshold, then these latter would appear only as depressions in one great continuous wave above the threshold, and the discontinuity of the consciousness would be con- verted into continuity. We of course cannot bring this about. We might also squeeze the wave to- gether so that the valleys should be pressed up, and the crests above the threshold flow into a line ; then the discretely-feeling organisms would have become a singly - feeling organism. This, again, Man cannot voluntarily bring about, but it is brought about in Man's nature. His two halves, the right one and the left one, are thus united ; and the number of segments of radiates and articulates show that more than two parts can be thus psycho- physically conjoined. One need only cut them asunder, i. e. interpolate another part of nature between them under the threshold, and they breai: into two separately conscious beings." . . . \_Ele- mente der Psyfhophysik, i860, vol. ii. pp. 526- 530.] One sees easily how, on Fechner's wave-scheme, 66 Notes a world-soul may be expressed. All psycho-phy- sical activity being continuous 'below the thresh- old,' the consciousness might also become contin- uous if the threshold sank low enough to uncover all the waves. The threshold throughout nature in general is, however, very high, so the conscious- ness that gets over it is of the discontinuous form. Note 7, page 25. See the long series of articles by Mr. Myers in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, beginning in the third volume with automatic writ- ing, and ending in the latest volumes with the higher manifestations of knowledge by mediums. Mr. Myers's theory of the whole range of pheno- mena is, that our normal consciousness is in con- tinuous connection with a greater consciousness of which we do not know the extent, and to which he gives, in its relation to the particular person, the not very felicitous name — though no better one has been proposed — of his or her * subliminal ' self . Note 8, page 29. See Kritik der reinen Vernunft, second edition, p. 809. Note 9, page 29. I subjoin a few extracts from Mr. Schiller's work : " Matter is an admirably calculated machin- Notes 6y ery for regulating, limiting, and restraining the consciousness which it encases. ... If the mate- rial encasement be coarse and simple, as in the lower organisms, it permits only a little intelligence to permeate through it ; if it is delicate and com- plex, it leaves more pores and exits, as it were, for the manifestations of consciousness. ... On this analogy, then, we may say that the lower ani- mals are still entranced in the lower stage of brute lethargy, while we have passed into the higher phase of somnambulism, which already permits us strange glimpses of a lucidity that divines the real- ities of a transcendent world. And this gives the final answer to Materialism : it consists in showing in detail . . . that Materialism is a hysteron prote- ron, a putting of the cart before the horse, which may be rectified by just inverting the connection between Matter and Consciousness. Matter is not that which produces Consciousness, but that which limits it, and confines its intensity within certain limits : material organization does not construct consciousness out of arrangements of atoms, but contracts its manifestation within the sphere which it permits. This explanation . . . admits the con- nection of Matter and Consciousness, but contends that the course of interpretation must proceed in the contrary direction. Thus it will fit the facts alleged in favor of Materialism equally well, be- 68 Notes sides enabling us to understand facts which Mate- rialism rejected as ' supernatural.' It explains the lower by the higher, Matter by Spirit, instead of vice versa, and thereby attains to an explanation which is ultimately tenable, instead of one which is ultimately absurd. And it is an explanation the possibility of which no evidence in favor of Mate- rialism can possibly affect. For if, e. g., a man loses consciousness as soon as his brain is injured, it is clearly as good an explanation to say the injury to the brain destroyed the mechanism by which the manifestation of the consciousness was rendered possible, as to say that it destroyed the seat of consciousness. On the other hand, there are facts which the former theory suits far better. If, e.g., as sometimes happens, the man, after a time, more or less, recovers the faculties of which the injury to his brain had deprived him, and that not in consequence of a renewal of the injured part, but in consequence of the inhibited functions being performed by the vicarious action of other parts, the easiest explanation certainly is that, after a time, consciousness constitutes the remaining parts into a mechanism capable of acting as a substitute for the lost parts. And again, if the body is a me- chanism for inhibiting consciousness, for prevent- ing the full powers of the Ego from being prema- turely actualized, it will be necessary to invert also Notes 6g our ordinary ideas on the subject of memory, and to account for forgetfulness instead of for mem- ory. It will be during life that we drink the bitter cup of Lethe, it will be with our brain that we are enabled to forget. And this will serve to explain not only the extraordinary memories of the drown- ing and the dying generally, but also the curious hints which experimental psychology occasionally affords us that nothing is ever forgotten wholly and beyond recall." [^Riddles of the Sphinx, Lon- don, Swan Sonnenschein, 1891, p. 293 ff.] Mr. Schiller's conception is much more com- plex in its relations than the simple ' theory of transmission ' postulated in my lecture, and to do justice to it the reader should consult the original work. Note 10, page 39. I beg the reader to peruse R. L. Stevenson's magnificent little essay entitled ' The Lantern Bearers,' reprinted in the collection entitled Across the Plains. The truth is that we are doomed, by the fact that we are practical beings with very limited tasks to attend to, and special ideals to look after, to be absolutely blind and insensible to the inner feelings, and to the whole inner sig- nificance of lives that are different from our own. Our opinion of the worth of such lives is abso- JO Notes lutely wide of the mark, and unfit to be counted at all. Note ii, page 41. W. Wundt : System der Philosophie, Leipzig, Engelmann, 1889, p. 315. THE END. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS U. S. ; ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO. o o>- 2-^ t d! 15 IXBRART _^ UlYh OF CALIFORMI iAiS AN6ELM :AIJF0% ^OFCAUFOi?^ ^\WEUNIVER% ^lOSANCFUr^ <^uoKvsoi=<^ "^AaaAiNrtJViV :«r JNIVERr//v f 3NVS01^ '^mmmm' ^lOSAUCElfj-^ o ^ 1 tr^ ^ ^UIBRAHYO/:^ '^AOJIIVOJO'*^ ^OFCAllFOi?^ >i,OFCAllF0ft||^ %ii3AiNftjuv* >&Aiiv^jan# ^* aiFO% ^.OFCAIIFO/?^ LWJ fintUCLti 3 1158 ^TiUONVSOl^ 00038 5749 ams//. o ivsoi^ -^/saaAwn-jiw^ \^myi^ \'^i\m\^ IIVER^/yv o ^ WSOV^^ 6 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 001272137 9 '^^6'Aiivyaiii^N^ '^^OAavaani'^ RARYO/ ^vM-llBRARYQ^ .\WEl)NIVERJ/A o ivDjo^ \< o %a3AiNa]v\v ^NNiUBRARYik^ ^^^^MIBRARYO/^ "^(I/OJIWDJO^ ^JIIVDJO"^