SUBJECT AND OBJECT.

CHAPTER I

THE SUBJECT OR SOUL

"To write a chapter for the purpose of showing that nothing is known, or can be known, of the subject which the title of the chapter indicates, will be thought strange." These are the words with which Mr. H. Spencer opens the chapter in his Psychology on the "Substance of Mind." The present discussion has its occasion in the conviction that the human mind is a permanent entity or substance, which can be and is known; and the primary purpose of the discussion is to expound and defend that conception. This statement is made for the convenience of the reader, that at the very beginning he may know clearly and certainly the point of view and aim of the essay; and it is hoped he will not be repelled by the frank avowal.

But this purpose, it must be admitted, goes against what seems to be the main psychological tendency of the time. It is the contention of many that "the explanation of psychic life demands the complete elimination of the concept of substance"; and that the concept prevails only among "unreflective minds." Some of the most zealous opponents deride mental substance as an "accursed idol."

1 Psychology, I, p. 145.

1

It might be supposed that, of all realities, the Mind, Soul, Self, Ego, should be the most directly and certainly known; and that there should be complete agreement among men in all their main tenets and decisions regarding its nature and functions. Respecting agreement in doctrine, the truth is just the contrary. Hardly a wider variety and opposition of theories are found on any other subject than on what for us, as some would say, is the immediate centre and focus of all reality and knowledge-the Self.

The theory of mind now most prevalent apparently among professional psychologists is, that mind is the stream, flux, process, of our thoughts, feelings or conscious states. The process-mind is conceived to be purely successive, purely temporal. It is the flow of the rapidly rising and perishing thoughts. It has no relation to a real or knowable permanent spiritual subject or substratum, or to one entitled to consideration in psychology. Hume is the most distinguished representative of this hypothesis of mind. He is the chief protagonist for modern times of psychology without a soul.

Another theory defines mind as the permanent possibility of feeling of sensation, idea, volition—or as consisting of the present feeling and the permanent possibility of other feelings. Its most distinguished advocate is J. S. Mill, who has expounded it especially in the chapter on the "Psychological Theory of Mind," in his Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy. An important question regarding the theory is as to what we are to understand by a "permanent possibility," or as to what a "permanent possibility" is when yet in its unrealized state or before actualization, or after feeling ceases. Mr. Mill does not furnish a clear

answer to this question. He tells us what the permanent possibility is not, rather than what it is.1 It appears to be an abstract, non-substantial capability or potentiality suspended in the void, having no rest for the soles of its feet. If this be its character, then we must admit the conception is one of the most cunningly devised and elusive ever fabricated by the human intellect. It is scepticism respecting mental substance developed to the limit. We remark further now only on this specific point, namely, that, whatever mind may be as a possibility of feelings, it is, according to this theory, not a pure succession or stream; for permanence is postulated of the ultimate possibility; and identity, time, and memory are thus apparently conceived as supported by permanence, and not only by a pure flow of momentary and perishing experiences.2

1 He says of the permanent possibility of sensation [Matter]: "But though the sensations cease, the possibilities remain in existence; they are independent of our will, our presence, and everything which belongs to us." (Exam. Hamilton, I. p. 241.) The permanent possibilities are not supposed to be, or to be in, a universal mind that embraces or governs the particular finite minds and is the immediate author of all their conscious experiences.

2 Mr. Mill makes some statements respecting memory and the unconscious which are worthy of note. In speaking of "stored-up knowledge," he denies that it is an unconscious state or action of mind. "It is not a mental state, but a capability of being put into a mental state. When I am not thinking of a thing it is not present to `mind at all." (Exam. Hamilton, II. p. 7.) He says again of latent memory: "It is not the mental impressions that are latent, but the power of reproducing them. Every one admits, without any apparatus of proof, that we have powers and susceptibilities of which we are not conscious; but these are the capabilities of being affected, not actual affections" (p. 9). He remarks also: "I am myself inclined to agree with Sir W. Hamilton, and to admit his unconscious mental modifications, in the only shape in which I can attach any very distinct meaning to them, namely unconscious modifications of the nerves" (p. 22). Mill here seems to favor the theory that the capabilities or possibilities of memories, and probably of all other mental states, are wholly in the permanent nervous matter. But it will be remembered that matter itself he defines as the permanent possibility of sensation; by which definition,

A third hypothesis declares that mind and body constitute one reality, a psycho-physical organism; and that a mental change and a bodily or nervous change are phases of the same event. There is no interaction between mind and body, because they are one; but there is an established parallelism between conscious states and nervous motions. The theory of psycho-physical unity and parallelism often ends in giving great supremacy to the physical side of the organism, or in making it the "whole thing." The mental modes are treated as if products or creations of the physical motions. The latter have not a reciprocal like dependence upon the former.

An older and long popular theory holds that mind or soul is a substance distinct from the body, and that the human constitution is a duality of mental and material substances. Mind, in its essence a permanent and identical entity, is the producer of the procession of the various conscious phenomena. It is supposed to be the permanent support or subject of the procession, just as a material body is generally regarded as the permanent subject of its own successive and transient motions. Though mind is substantially distinct from body, it is united with body in a close relation of interdependence and interaction. With this theory is commonly combined the belief that the soul survives in its integrity, with its memories and identity, the dissolution of the body.

It is our purpose now to return to the theory of the process-mind, the mind of the pure temporal series of feelings without substrate, that is, the mind of Hume and his followers, and to subject it to a more full and

with these other statements, we are at length involved in an almost bewildering maze.