BOOK I. CH. III. $ 49. ject and subject, or, in other words, the perception of the Moment of arising of consciousness having Combination existed. And this moment of reflection arises in redintegration of direct perceptions. (§ 22.) of physiology with meta physic. 4. The moment of arising of consciousness is the most important break in the world of phenomena or nature taken as a whole; the phenomena above and the phenomena below it can never be reduced completely into each other; there is a certain heterogeneity between them. But this is not the only instance of such a heterogeneity. There is, for instance, heterogeneity between the form of Time and that of Space; in space itself, between curves and straight lines; in physical phenomena, between physical and vital forces, at least as usually supposed; and, until Mr. Darwin propounded his law of natural selection, it was supposed also between species of living organisms in physiology. Again in consciousness itself there is heterogeneity between the different special sensations and emotions. But all these are subordinate to the break between conscious and unconscious existence, which divides the whole of nature without residuum. The perception of this break of the two members and the distinction between them is objectively the object, subjectively the act, of Reflection. The perception in mere or direct consciousness, that is, at the moment of arising of consciousness in the diagram, includes no perception of the distinction between itself and its objects; this is given in reflection, or reflective perception; but reflective perception, self-consciousness, the perception of the two correlatives self and not-self, is, as an act, homogeneous with consciousness, and presupposes the direct mode of it. Then and then only is the nature of the moment of consciousness perceived, namely, that it is a break in the world of phenomena. 5. It will perhaps be worth while briefly to compare this view with Spinoza's, criticised in § 15. Spinoza conceived the connection between mind and body as perception of the latter by the former, the distinction between them as that between perceiving and things perceived; a true and profound thought, and the same distinction which is now expressed as that between Subject and Object, or between the subjective and objective aspects. But Spinoza did not see that this new distinction was far more general than the old one, being applicable alike to both its members separately, both mind and body being objects of consciousness; that the new distinction, turning on a new feature, perception, had the things distinguished by it different, that is, that it did not coincide with the old distinction between mind and body, a supposed immaterial substance and the body inhabited by it; that consequently the new distinction could not replace, but was additional to, the old one. Accordingly he substituted the one for the other, and was thus led to confuse the object with the cause of consciousness, the whole world of qualities with that part of it which is visible and tangible only, that is, with body, and to make body with its movements and affections, which are the cause, not the cause but the object of consciousness. (§ 15, 4.) He thus scants both distinctions; the one by restricting the ultimate objects of perception to body and affections of body; the other by denying the causation of states of mind by states of body. The objects of mind are not visible and tangible qualities only, but all or any qualities whatever. These are the Воок І. $ 49. Combination of physiology with meta physic. Воок І. $49. of physiology with metaphysic. objects of perception in consciousness previous to reflection, but there undistinguished from the percepCombination tions of them which are their subjective aspect. That we perceive bodies, as such, at all, that we distinguish them from the qualities inherent in them, and from the perceptions of these qualities, is the fruit of further experience and reasoning. Body and Mind are not, Perception and Quality are, ultimate categories of existence, or members of an ultimate and most general distinction. The two distinctions must therefore be referred, first, to different times, and secondly, since body and mind are both part of the objective world as perceived in reflection, to different modes of enquiry, namely, Subject and Object or Perception and Quality to statical and metaphysical, Mind and Body to dynamical and historical, analysis. While, therefore, I hold fast Spinoza's distinction between perceiving and things perceived, I place it historically at the moment of Reflection or Self-consciousness; perception itself, without the perception of this distinction, I place historically at the moment of arising of consciousness; and the distinction between body and mind I place historically later than Reflection, as one of its consequences, and also as the distinction which stands at the head of the empirical, historical, and psychological, branch of the whole enquiry. Yet, notwithstanding that the two distinctions are thus left standing each in its place, there is one thing which Spinoza must be held to have done, namely, to have shaken to its very foundations the old conception of one of the two members of the older distinction, the old conception of Mind as an immaterial substance inhabiting the body. 6. It follows also from what has been said, that, BOOK I. CH. III. $49. of physiology with meta physic. when we are enquiring statically, or into the nature and analysis of any object, we are interrogating consciousness, analysing one or more of the states of Combination consciousness which form the series of evidences, or causæ cognoscendi; as for instance in all cases of actual inspection, such as observations with the microscope; for the objective and subjective aspects are obviously coincident in presentations, and in these the appeal to facts is always an appeal to the senses. And it follows on the other hand, that, when we enquire into the causes, the history, the origin, of anything, we are approaching it from the objective side, and are employed in examining it as a member of the series of causes, not of evidences. The series of evidences we are ourselves prolonging in the process of reasoning; the objects which fill our minds in that process are the objective aspects of the states of consciousness which compose it. To examine these on the subjective side would be to make them objects of reflection, to turn our thoughts away from the things we set out to examine, and fix them upon the course of thought we have just gone through about them. There is, then, this difference between the two cases, that we can never get rid of the subjective aspect in reasoning, though we may logically abstract from it, while in trying to fix upon the objective aspect only, for purposes of investigation into causes, we are in danger of substituting for it the subjective aspect (which is an objective aspect only in reflection) and thus reasoning about evidences when we intended to reason about causes. It has been already said that atoms, molecules, and masses, in motion are what is meant by causes; and that the changes in those atoms, molecules, and masses, which make up the nervous organism, are the causes of changes in consciousness. It is, then, these changes in the nervous organism which we must keep in view, abstracting from their subjective aspect, in which they are portions of space and time filled by feelings of sight and touch; and these changes it is which we must imagine as producing the changes or movements in those states of consciousness which have been analysed and classified in the preceding chapter. It is obvious, then, that the enquiry has two distinct branches, which must be pursued separately and then brought to bear upon each other; that only in their combination, after each has been separately pursued, is the result, the knowledge of the mode in which one causes the other, attainable; we must endeavour to ascertain and analyse each series separately, in order to determine what phenomena, what states, what movements, in the one series are the causing moments, the supporters of corresponding phenomena, in the other. Metaphysical analysis of states of consciousness, and processes of consciousness from state to state, must therefore not be disregarded, but go hand in hand with physiological analysis, the one supplying hints or hypotheses to the other, according as either happens to have made the greater progress. In the first place, then, I will turn to the nervous organism, and endeavour to exhibit as well as I can what I have been able to gather from the writings of physiologists as seemingly conducive to the purpose in view. § 50. 1. The nervous organism contains two chief members, nerve cells and nerve tubes. A single cell in connection with a single tube, or a tube connecting two cells, would be the lowest form of the organ |