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BOOK I.
CH. III.

$ 56. practical reasoning.

exponents of the reactive movements in his redinte-
grations. When, however, the character has been
formed, or rather in those matters in which it has been
formed, the ego or self is imagined as on the reten-
tive side, that is, as belonging to the same emotions
as before, but which have now become habitual traits
of his character.

11. The fundamental sameness of the two pro-
cesses, choosing and judging choice, is shown by the
fact that they succeed each other and pass into each
other by imperceptible changes. A judgment passed
often becomes an effort to realise itself in an actual
choice, which is perhaps resisted by an increased
vividness in the images of difficulties and pains at-
tached to it. And an almost equal conflict of choice
between emotions dies away into the redintegration
of the images attendant on one of them, without any
decision having been come to. In this fact of fun-
damental sameness lies the power which reflection
has in deciding choice. Reflection is the practical
reasoning which judges previous cases both of choice
and of judgment on choice. Now, since each of the
two conflicting emotions in choice sets on foot its
own series of images and emotions, it furnishes many
handles to reflection, that is, it leads to many images
which we have previously judged as good or bad,
pleasureable or painful, which judgments now come
up with these images into consciousness. They are

a new element in the decision of choice which we
have not yet noticed. The very reflection that we
are engaged in a conflict of choice leads to many
other reflections which bear upon the conflict, and
all together act as new elements or moments of it.
The reflection that the True Ego must be on one

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side or on the other is one among these reflections. What kind of judgments these will be, how numerous, how forcible, how ready to combine with the redintegration actually on foot, and on what side their weight will be thrown in any conflict of choice, depends upon the previous character and habitual tendencies of the individual person. The reflection, being an additional and superinduced motive in the decision of the conflict, in the numerous cases where it determines the decision, makes the determination of it appear as sole act and free will of the Self which is always the object of a reflection. What has really happened is, that the series of redintegration, starting from one or other of the emotions in conflict, has set on foot, by some previously established connection, a new representation or train of representations, which combine with and modify those already existing. But this is not possible without the energy or intensity in one or both of the originally conflicting emotions being either simultaneously or previously relaxed.

12. Finally a mode of immanent voluntary action must be noticed, different in degree of intensity both from reasoning and from actual choice, which consists in strong emotion or passion, the resistance to which is only just sufficient to make evident by a sense of effort the irresistible energy of the feeling. The passion is willed, but can hardly be said to be chosen, certainly not to be judged of. It is choice not militant but triumphant, at least for the moment. The movements supporting the emotional element are so energetic that all the imagery is coloured by them and seen only in their light. No emotion, no imagery, no reflections, contrary to the existing pas

Book I. CH. III.

§ 56. Analysis of practical reasoning.

BOOK I.
CH. III.

§ 56.

Analysis of reasoning.

practical

$ 57.

Dependence of

on nerve movement.

sion are entertained, no suspicion of its justifiability, no fear for its results. This state will be understood sufficiently from those which have already been analysed. Of voluntary processes this is one extreme, opposed to the other extreme, speculative reasoning, or rather speculative reasoning on abstract form, as for instance in mathematical calculation; the one exhibiting the framework of emotion, the other emotion itself, in their purest or most abstract shape possible, so that they be complete or empirical states of consciousness at all.

§ 57. 1. It is requisite here, after the analysis of consciousness the two kinds of redintegration, to apply this analysis in a more thorough examination of the doctrine stated at the outset of this Chapter, which has been the fundamental hypothesis throughout its course, the doctrine of the entire dependence of consciousness on nerve movements. Let us have no half-lights in Philosophy. That consciousness depends, both as a whole and in all its moments, upon states or movements of nerve, and that the states of consciousness do not in their turn react upon states or movements of nerve, are doctrines which require the most careful investigation, and to be accepted, if they are accepted, only after complete acquaintance with the entire series of conclusions which they involve. Some of these conclusions are so foreign to our usual ways of thought, and to the language which we all use in daily life, that it is difficult not only to bring them clearly before the mind, but to avoid thinking them unintelligible. Pain, for instance, must be held to be no warning to abstain from the thing which has caused pain; pleasure no motive to seek the thing which has caused pleasure; pain no check,

pleasure no spur, to action.

BOOK I.

CH. III.

$ 57.

consciousness

on nerve movement.

The conception that they are such causes of action must be steadily and consistently banished from our interpretation of the Dependence of phenomena of nerve action and of consciousness; which certainly will be no easy task, since even those who most succeed in banishing them must be always on the watch against the language they must employ, which everywhere supposes their truth. If however we decide to retain these conceptions, then there will be no consistent system possible, short of referring the phenomena of consciousness to a Soul or an Ego, as the cause of consciousness as a whole; whereby, to say nothing of the far greater difficulties of such theories, the attempt to effect a scientific unity of conception in philosophy must be given up.

2. There are two series of phenomena running parallel to each other, the series of nerve movements and that of states of consciousness. We have, or may have, knowledge of all the changes which take place in the latter series, and can discover general facts about their sequence and combination; we have on the other hand very small knowledge indeed of the changes which take place in the series of nerve movements, but, assuming that every change in the series of conscious states depends upon some change in the series of nerve movements, we characterise the latter by the former, and the whole series of states of consciousness becomes a series consisting of evidences of the changes in the series of nerve movements, on which each conscious state depends. The one series contains the causæ cognoscendi of the changes in the other; the other series contains the causæ existendi, or some of them, of the former. The first question then is, Does the series of states of

VOL. I.

EE

BOOK I.
CH. III.

$ 57.

consciousness

on nerve movement.

consciousness contain in its earlier states causæ existendi of its later states, so becoming sharer with Dependence of the series of nerve movements in the production and formation of later states of consciousness? The second question is, Does the series of states of consciousness contain causæ existendi of changes in the series of nerve movements, so as to react upon them, and through them upon subsequent states of consciousness? Or, on the contrary, does the series of states of consciousness remain entirely, from first to last, a series consisting solely of causæ cognoscendi of the nerve movements, and of objects generally? In "Time and Space," Chap. v. § 30, I gave an answer which I now think entirely erroneous. It was in effect a negative to the third of these questions, an affirmative to the two first of them; and that view ran through the analysis of spontaneous redintegration given in the same chapter. It is then the more incumbent upon me to justify the answer I am now led to give to these questions.

3. Common language leads us to assume that states of consciousness react upon nerve and brain; we say that pain is exhausting, and in preventing pain, as for instance in taking ether before undergoing a surgical operation, we think we prevent physical exhaustion. But pain itself is only prevented by acting upon the nerves or brain, as by inhaling ether, or by withdrawing attention from the operation, or by the excitement of action, as when wounds are received in battle without the pain being felt; and in all these cases a physical change is wrought in the nerves or brain, which supports the attention or the excitement; and this change in the states of nerve or brain may be the cause of the prevention

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