The Mind and the Brain

Materialism, we know, argues quite differently; it imagines that a particular state of the nerve centres has the virtue of generating a psychical phenomenon, which represents, according to various metaphors, property, function, effect, and even secretion. Critics have often asked how, with matter in motion, a phenomenon of thought could be explained or fabricated. It is very probable that those who admit this material genesis of thought, represent it to themselves under the form of something subtle, like an electric spark, a puff of wind, a will-of-the-wisp, or an alcoholic flame. Materialists are not alone responsible for these inadequate metaphors, which proceed from a metaphysics constructed of concepts. Let us recollect exactly what a psychical phenomenon is. Let us banish the will-o'-the-wisps, replace them by a precise instance, and return to the visual perception we took as an example a little while back: without intending a pun, "revenons à nos moutons." These sheep which I see in the plain are as material, as real, as the cerebral movement which accompanies my perception. How, then, is it possible that this cerebral movement, a primary material fact, should engender this secondary material fact, this collection of complicated beings which form a flock?

Before going any further, let us invite another philosophical system to take a place within the circle of our discussion; for the same answer will suffice for it as well as for the preceding one, and it will be as well to deal with both at once. This new system, parallelism, in great favour at the present day, appears to me to be a materialism perfected especially in the direction of caution. To escape the mystery of the genesis of the mind from matter, this new system places them parallel to each other and side by side, we might almost say experimentally, so much do parallelists try to avoid talking metaphysics. But their position is untenable, and they likewise are the victims of the mirage of concepts; for they consider the mental as capable of being parallel to the physical without mingling with it, and of subsisting by itself and with a life of its own. Such a hypothesis is only possible by reason of the insufficient definition given to the mind. If it be recognised that the mind has an incomplete existence and is only realised by its incarnation in matter, the figure which is the basis of parallelism becomes indefensible. There is no longer on the one hand the physical, and on the other the mental, but on one side the physical and the mental combined, and on the other the same combination; which amounts to saying that the two faces to a reality, which it was thought had been made out to be so distinct, are identical. There are not two faces, but one face; and the monism, which certain metaphysicians struggle to arrive at by a mysterious reconciliation of the phenomenal duality within the unity of the noumenon, need not be sought so far afield, since we already discover it in the phenomenon itself.

The criticisms I have just pointed out to you, only too briefly, are to be found in several philosophers, confusedly in Berkeley, and with more precision in M. Bergson's book on Matière et Mémoire. The latter author, remarking that our brain and the outer world are to us images of the same order, refuses to admit that the brain, which is only a very small part of these images, can explain and contain the other and much larger part, which comprises the vast universe. This would amount to saying that the whole is comprised in the part. I believe that this objection is analogous to the one just stated with less ingenuity.

It is interesting to see how M. Bergson gets out of the difficulty which he himself raised. Being unwilling to bring forth from the molecular movement of the brain the representation of the world, or to superpose the representation on this movement as in the parallelist hypothesis, he has arrived at a theory, very ingenious but rather obscure, which consists in placing the image of the world outside the brain, this latter being reduced to a motor organ which executes the orders of the mind.

We thus have four philosophical theories, which, while trying to reconcile mind with matter, give to the representation a different position in regard to cerebral action. The spiritualist asserts the complete independence of the representation in relation to cerebral movement; the materialist places it after, the parallelist by the side of, the cerebral movement; M. Bergson puts it in front.

I must confess that the last of these systems, that of M. Bergson, presents many difficulties. As he does not localise the mind in the body, he is obliged to place our perception—that is to say, a part of ourselves—in the objects perceived; for example, in the stars when we are looking at them. The memory is lodged in distant planes of consciousness which are not otherwise defined. We understand with difficulty these emigrations, these crumblings into morsels of our mind. This would not matter if our author did not go so far as to maintain that the sensory nerves of the brain are not sensory nerves, and that the severance of them does not suppress sensations, but simply the motor efforts of these sensations. All the physiologist in me protests against the rashness of these interpretations.

The principal difficulties of the problem of the union between the mind and the body proceed from the two following facts, which seem incompatible. On the one hand, our thought is conditioned by a certain intra-cerebral movement of molecules and atoms; and, on the other hand, this same thought has no consciousness of this molecular movement. It does not know the path of the wave in our nerves; it does not suspect, for example, that the image of the objects is reversed in the retina, or that the excitements of the right eye for the most part go into the left hemisphere. In a word, it is no anatomist. It is a very curious thing that our consciousness enters into relation only with the extra-cerebral, the external objects, and the superficies of our bodies.

From this, this exact question suggests itself: a molecular wave must come as far as our visual cerebral centre for us to have the perception of the object before our eyes; how is it that our consciousness is unaware of this physiological event from which it depends, and is borne towards the distant object as if it sprang forth outside our nervous system?

Let us first remark, that if we do not perceive this wave, yet it must contain all we know of the external object, for it is evident that we only know of it that part of its properties which it transmits to our nerves and our nerve centres. All the known substance of the external object is, then, implied in this vibration; it is there, but it is not there by itself. The vibration is the work of two collaborators; it expresses at once the nature of the object which provokes it, and the nature of the nerve apparatus which transports it, as the furrow traced in the wax of the phonograph implies the joint action of an aërial vibration with a stylus, a cylinder, and, a clock-work apparatus.

I therefore suppose—and this is, I say it plainly, but an hypothesis—that if the nervous vibration so little resembles the external excitant which generates it, it is because the factor nervous system superadds its effect to the factor excitant. Let us imagine, now, that we have managed to separate these two effects, and we shall understand that then the nervous event so analysed might resemble only the object, or only the nervous system. Now, of these two effects, one is constant, that one which represents the action of the nervous system; there is another which varies with each new perception, and even with every moment of the same perception—that is to say, the object. It is not impossible to understand that the consciousness remains deaf to the constant and sensitive to the variable element. There is a law of consciousness which has often been described, and fresh applications of which are met with daily: this is, that the consciousness only maintains itself by change, whether this change results from the exterior by impressions received, or is produced from the interior by movements of the attention. Let us here apply this empirical law, and admit that it contains a first principle. It will then be possible for us to understand that the consciousness formed into a dialyser of the undulation may reject that constant element which expresses the contribution of the nervous system, and may lay bare the variable element which corresponds to the object: so that an intestinal movement of the cerebral substance, brought to light by this analytical consciousness, may become the perception of an object. By accepting this hypothesis, we restore to the sensory nerves and to the encephalic centres their property of being the substrata of representation, and avoid the objection made above against materialism and parallelism, that they did not explain how a cerebral movement, which is material, can engender the perception of an object which differs greatly from it and is yet as material as the movement itself. There is not here, properly speaking, either generation, transformation, or metamorphosis. The object to be perceived is contained in the nerve current. It is, as it were, rolled up in it; and it must be made to go forth from the wave to be seen. This last is the work of the consciousness.

1

L'Ame et la Corps.—Disagreeable as it is to alter an author's title, the words "Soul and Body" had to be abandoned because of their different connotation in English. The title "Mind and Body" was also preoccupied by Bain's work of that name in this series. The title chosen has M. Binet's approval.—Ed.

2

Étude experímentale de l'Intelligence. Paris: Schleicher.

3

Connaissance.—The word cognition is used throughout as the English equivalent of this, except in places where the context shows that it means acquaintance merely.—Ed.

4

J. S. Mill, An Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy, pp. 5 and 6. London. 1865.

5

A few subtle philosophers have returned to it, as I shall show later in chapter iv.

6

Thus, the perplexity in which John Stuart Mill finds himself is very curious. Having admitted unreservedly that our knowledge is confined to sensations, he is powerless to set up a reality outside this, and acknowledges that the principle of causality cannot legitimately be used to prove that our sensations have a cause which is not a sensation, because this principle cannot be applied outside the world of phenomena.

7

See p. 18, sup.—Ed.

8

I would draw attention to a recent volume by Gustave Le Bon, on Evolution de la Matière, a work full of original and bold ideas.

9

See [Note 1] on p. 3 .—Ed.

10

See p. 22, sup.—Ed.

11

See J. S. Mill's Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy, chap. x. p. 176, et. seq.

12

See p. 18, sup.—Ed.

13

See [Note 3], sup. on p. 15.—Ed.

14

The word "conscience" is one of those which has been used in the greatest number of different meanings. Let it be, at least, understood that I use it here in an intellectual and not a moral sense. I do not attach to the conscience the idea of a moral approbation or disapprobation, of a duty, of a remorse. The best example to illustrate conscience has, perhaps, been formed by Ladd. It is the contrast between a person awake and sleeping a dreamless sleep. The first has consciousness of a number of things; the latter has consciousness of nothing. Let me now add that we distinguish from consciousness that multitude of things of which one has consciousness of. Of these we make the object of consciousness. [Conscience has throughout been rendered "consciousness."—Ed.]

15

Ch. Renouvier et L. Prat, La Nouvelle Monadologie, p. 148.

16

An American author, Morton Prince, lately remarked this: Philosophical Review, July 1904, p. 450.

17

This Flournoy recently has shown very wittily. See in Arch. de Psychol., Nov. 1904, his article on Panpsychism.

18

This extract, together with the two subsequent, are borrowed from an excellent lecture by Flournoy, on Métaphysique et Physiologie. Georg: Geneva, 1890.

19

Let me say, in passing, that this separation that Descartes thinks he can establish between perception and ideation, is only conceivable on condition that it be not too closely examined, and that no exact definition of ideation be given. If we remark, in fact, that all thought is a reproduction, in some degree, of a sensation, we arrive at this conclusion: that a thought operated by a soul distinct from the body would be a thought completely void and without object, it would be the thought of nothingness. It is not, therefore, conceivable. Consequently the criterion, already so dangerous, which Descartes constantly employs—to wit: that what we clearly conceive is true—cannot apply to thought, if we take the trouble to analyse it and to replace a purely verbal conception by intuition.

20

I somewhat regret that Taine fell into the common-place idea of the opposition of the brain and thought; he took up again this old idea without endeavouring to analyse it, and only made it his own by the ornamentation of his style. And as his was a mind of powerful systematisation, the error which he committed led him into much wider consequences than the error of a more common mind would have done.

21

I have just come across them again in an ingenious note of C. L. Herrick: The Logical and Psychological Distinction between the True and the Real (Psych. Rev., May 1904). I entirely agree with this author. But it is not he who exercised a suggestion over my mind; it was M. Bergson. See Matière et Mémoire, p. 159.

22

In order to remain brief, I have not thought fit to allude in the text to a question of metaphysics which closely depends on the one broached by me: the existence of an outer world. Philosophers who define sensation as a modality of our Ego are much embarrassed later in demonstrating the existence of an outer world. Having first admitted that our perception of it is illusory, since, when we think we perceive this world, we have simply the feeling of the modalities of our Ego, they find themselves powerless to demonstrate that this illusion corresponds to a truth, and invoke in despair, for the purpose of their demonstration, instinct, hallucination, or some a priori law of the mind. The position we have taken in the discussion is far more simple. Since every sensation is a fragment of matter perceived by a mind, the aggregate of sensations constitutes the aggregate of matter. There is in this no deceptive appearance, and consequently no need to prove a reality distinct from appearances. As to the argument drawn from dreams and hallucinations which might be brought against this, I have shown how it is set aside by a distinction between perceptibility and truth. It is no longer a matter of perception, but of reasoning. In other words, all that we see, even in dreams, is real, but is not in its due place.

23

This second method of expression, which I consider inexact, is constantly found in Descartes. Different philosophers have explicitly admitted that every act of cognition implies a relation subject-object. This is one of the corner-stones of the neo-criticism of Renouvier. He asserts that all representation is double-faced, and that what is known to us presents itself in the character of both representative and represented. He follows this up by describing separately the phenomena and laws of the representative and of the represented respectively.

24

The preceding ten lines in the text I wrote after reading a recent article of William James, who wishes to show that the consciousness does not exist, but results simply from the relation or the opposition raised between one part of our experience (the actual experience, for instance, in the example of the perception of an object) and another part, the remembrance of our person. But the argument of James goes too far; he is right in contesting the relation subject-object, but not in contesting the existence of the consciousness (W. James: "Does consciousness exist?" in J. of Philosophy, &c., Sept. 1904).

25

At the risk of being deemed too subtle, I ask whether we are conscious of a relation between objects, or whether that which occurs is not rather the perception of an object which has been modified in its nature by its relation with another object.

26

This conclusion may seem contradictory to that which I enunciated when studying the constitution of matter. I then asserted that we only know our sensations and not the excitants which produce them. But these sensations are matter; they are matter modified by other matter, viz. our nervous centres.

We therefore take up very distinctly an opposite standpoint to the principle of relativity: in other terms, we reject the phenomenism of Berkeley.

When we go into metaphysics we are continually astounded to see how different conceptions of things which have a classic value are independent of each other. In general, phenomenism is opposed to substantialism, and it is supposed that those who do not accept the former doctrine must accept the latter, while, on the contrary, those who reject substantialism must be phenomenists. We know that it is in this manner that Berkeley conquered corporeal substantialism and taught phenomenism; while Hume, more radical than he, went so far as to question the substantialism of mind. On reflection, it seems to me that, after having rejected phenomenism, we are in no way constrained to accept substance. By saying that we perceive things as they are, and not through a deluding veil, we do not force ourselves to acknowledge that we perceive the substance of bodies—that is to say, that something which should be hidden beneath its qualities and should be distinct from it. The distinction between the body and its qualities is a thing useful in practice, but it answers to no perception or observation. The body is only a group, a sheaf of qualities. If the qualities seem unable to exist of themselves and to require a subject, this is only a grammatical difficulty, which is due to the fact that, while calling certain sensations qualities, we suppose a subject to be necessary. On the other hand, the representation which we make to ourselves of a material substance and its rôle as the support of the qualities, is a very naïve and mechanical representation, thanks to which certain sensations become the supports of other and less important sensations. It would suffice to insist on the detail of this representation and on its origin to show its artificial character. The notion we have of the stability of bodies and of the persistence of their identity, notwithstanding certain superficial changes, is the reason for which I thought proper to attribute a substance to them, that is to say, an invariable element. But we can attain the same end without this useless hypothesis; we have only to remark that the identity of the object lies in the aggregate of its properties, including the name it bears. If the majority of its properties, especially of those most important to us, subsists without alteration, or if this alteration, though of very great extent, takes place insensibly and by slow degrees, we decide that the object remains the same. We have no need for that purpose to give it a substance one and indestructible. Thus we are neither adherents of phenomenism, nor of substantialism.

27

I borrow from Rabier this argument, which has thoroughly convinced me (see Psychologie, p. 281).

28

Pilon is the psychologist who has the most forcibly demonstrated that resemblance acts before being perceived. I refer the readers to my Psychologie du Raisonnement, where I have set forth this little problem in detail.

29

We think spontaneously of the general and the necessary. It is this which serves as a basis for the suggestion and the catchword (réclame), and it explains how minds of slender culture always tend towards absolute assertions and hasty generalisations.

30

That is to say, the sense of the multitude.—Ed.

31

In metaphysics we reason, not on facts, but most often on conceptions. Now just as facts are precise so conceptions are vague in outline. Facts are like crystallised bodies, ideas like liquids and gases. We think we have an idea, and it changes form without our perceiving it. We fancy we recognise one idea, and it is but another, which differs slightly from the preceding one. By means of distinctions we ought to struggle against this flowing away and flight of ideas.

32

I think I have come across in Aristotle the ingenious idea that the enfeeblement of the consciousness and its disorder may be due to the enfeeblement and disorder of the object. It is a theory which is by no means improbable.

33

Lange, Histoire du Matérialisme, II., 2me. partie, chap. iii.

34

Let us remark, in passing, how badly nature has organised the system of communication between thinking beings. In what we experience we have nothing in common with our fellows; each one experiences his own sensations and not those of others. The only meeting point of different minds is found in the inaccessible domain of the noumena.

35

E. Rabier, Leçons de Philosophie, "Psychologie," p. 33.

36

This seems to have been the opinion of Democritus. The modern doctrine of radiation from the human body, if established, would go nearly as far as the supposition in the text. Up till now, however, it lacks confirmation.—Ed.

37

I am compelled, much against my will, to use throughout this passage an equivocal expression, that of "mental law," or law of consciousness, or psychological law. I indicate by this the laws of contiguity and of similarity; as they result from the properties of the images, and as these are of a material nature, they are really physical and material laws like those of external nature. But how can all these laws be called physical laws without running the risk of confusing them one with the other?

38

Finality seems to be here used in the sense of the doctrine which regards perfection as the final cause of existence.—Ed.

39

See a very interesting article by E. Goblot, "La Finalité sans Intelligence," Revue de Métaphysique, July 1900.

40

See [Note 1] on p. 3.

41

For reference, see [Note 18] on p. 73. —Ed.

42

i.e. rendering actual.—Ed.

43

It is, perhaps, needless to point out that by "spiritualism" M. Binet does not mean the doctrine of the spirit-rappers, whom he, like other scientific writers, designates as "spiritists," but the creed of all those who believe in disembodied spirits or existences.—Ed.

44

I do not insist on the difference between my conception and the spiritualistic conception; my distinction between consciousness and matter does not correspond, it is evident, to that of "facts of consciousness" and "physical facts" which spiritualism sets up.

45

Archives de Psychologie, vol. iv. No. 14, Nov. 1904, p. 132 (article on Panpsychism).

46

I can quote two observations in support of this. M. Brieux, to whom I was relating this part of my argument, stopped me, saying, "You have guessed right; I represent to myself thought issuing from brain in the form of an electric gleam." Dr. Simon also informed me, during the reading of my manuscript, that he saw "thought floating over the brain like an ignis fatuus."