Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, Volume II

I need scarcely say that I have taken the trouble of making my comments on your letter, and of writing this further exposition, with a view to their ulterior use.

I am, &c.,HERBERT SPENCER.

APPENDIX C

SUMMARY OF RESULTS

Those who deny a general doctrine enunciated by Mayer as the basis of his reasonings, habitually assumed by Faraday as a guiding principle in drawing his conclusions, distinctly held by Helmholtz, and tacitly implied by Sir John Herschel – those, I say, who deny this general doctrine and even deride it, should be prepared with clear and strong reasons for doing this. Having been attacked, not in the most temperate manner, for enunciating this doctrine and its necessary implications in a specific form, I have demanded such reasons. Observe the responses to the demand.

1. The British Quarterly Reviewer quoted for my instruction the dictum of Professor Tait, that “Natural Philosophy is an experimental, and not an intuitive science. No à priori reasoning can conduct us demonstratively to a single physical truth.” Thereupon I inquired what Professor Tait meant “by speaking of ‘physical axioms ,’ and by saying that the cultured are enabled ‘to see at once their necessary truth?’”..

No reply.

2. Instead of an answer to the question, how this intuition of necessity can be alleged by Professor Tait consistently with his other doctrine, the Reviewer quotes, as though it disposed of my question, Professor Tait’s statement that “as the properties of matter might have been such as to render a totally different set of laws axiomatic, these laws [of motion] must be considered as restingon convictions drawn from observationand experiment, and not on intuitiveperception. ” Whereupon I inquired how Professor Tait knows that “the properties of matter might have been ” other than they are. I asked how it happened that his intuition concerning things as they are not , is so certain that, by inference from it, he discredits our intuitions concerning things as theyare.

No reply: Professor Tait told, à propos of my question, a story of which no one could discover the application; but, otherwise, declined to answer. Nor was any answer given by his disciple.

3. Further, I asked how it happened that Professor Tait accepted as bases for Physics, Newton’s Laws of Motion; which were illustrated but not proved by Newton, and of which no proofs are supplied by Professor Tait, in the Treatise on Natural Philosophy. I went on to examine what conceivable a posteriori warrant there can be if there is no warrant a priori; and I pointed out that neither from terrestrial nor from celestial phenomena can the First Law of Motion be deduced without a petitio principii.

No reply: the Reviewer characterized my reasoning as “utterly erroneous” (therein differing entirely from two eminent authorities who read it in proof); but beyond so characterizing it he said nothing.

4. To my assertion that Newton gave no proof of the Laws of Motion, the Reviewer rejoined that “the whole of the Principia was the proof.” On which my comment was that Newton called them “axioms,” and that axioms are not commonly supposed to be proved by deductions from them..

The Reviewer quotes from one of Newton’s letters a passage showing that though he called the Laws of Motion “axioms,” he regarded them as principles “made general by induction;” and that therefore he could not have regarded them as a priori.

5. In rejoinder, I pointed out that whatever conception Newton may have had of these “axioms,” he explicitly and distinctly excluded them from the class of “hypotheses.” Hence I inferred that he did not regard the whole of the Principia as the proof, which the Reviewer says it is; since an assumption made at the outset, to be afterwards justified by the results of assuming it, is an “hypothesis”..

No reply.

6. Authority aside, I examined on its merits the assertion that the Laws of Motion are, or can be, proved true by the ascertained truth of astronomical predictions; and showed that the process of verification itself assumed those Laws.

No reply.

7. To make still clearer the fact that ultimate physical truths are, and must be, accepted as a priori , I pointed out that in every experiment the physicist tacitly assumes a relation between cause and effect, such that, if one unit of cause produces its unit of effect, two units of the cause will produce two units of the effect; and I argued that this general assumption included the special assumption asserted in the Second Law of Motion…

No reply: that is to say, no endeavour to show the untruth of this statement, but a quibble based on my omission of the word “proportionality” in places where it was implied, though not stated.

8. Attention was drawn to a passage from Sir John Herschel’s Discourse on theStudy of Natural Philosophy , in which the “proportionality of the effect to its cause in all cases of direct unimpeded action” is included by him among “the characters of that relation which we intend by cause and effect;” and in which this assumption of proportionality is set down as one preceding physical exploration, and not as one to be established by it..

No reply.

9. Lastly, a challenge to prove this proportionality. “It is required to establish the truth that there is proportionality between causes and effects, by a process which nowhere assumes that if one unit of force produces a certain unit of effect, two units of such force will produce two units of such effect.”..

No reply.

Thus on all these essential points my three mathematical opponents allow judgment to go against them by default. The attention of readers has been drawn off from the main issues by the discussion of side issues. Fundamental questions have been evaded, and new questions of subordinate kinds raised.

What is the implication? One who is able to reach and to carry the central position of his antagonist, does not spend his strength on small outposts. If he declines to assault the stronghold, it must be because he sees it to be impregnable.

The trouble I have thus taken to meet criticisms and dissipate misapprehensions, I have taken because the attack made on the special doctrine defended, is part of an attack on the ultimate doctrine underlying the deductive part of First Principles – the doctrine that the quantity of existence is unchangeable. I agree with Sir W. Hamilton that our consciousness of the necessity of causation, results from the impossibility of conceiving the totality of Being to increase or decrease. The proportionality of cause and effect is an implication: denial of it involves the assertion that some quantity of cause has disappeared without effect, or some quantity of effect has arisen without cause. I have asserted the a priori character of the Second Law of Motion, under the abstract form in which it is expressed , simply because this, too, is an implication, somewhat more remote, of the same ultimate truth. And my sole reason for insisting on the validity of these intuitions, is that, on the hypothesis of Evolution, absolute uniformities in things have produced absolute uniformities in thoughts; and that necessary thoughts represent infinitely-larger accumulations of experiences than are formed by the observations, experiments, and reasonings of any single life.

PROF. GREEN’S EXPLANATIONS

[ From the Contemporary Review for Feb. 1881. It would not have occurred to me to reproduce this essay, had it not been that there has lately been a reproduction of the essay to which it replies. But as Mr. Nettleship, in his editorial capacity, has given a permanent shape to Professor Green’s unscrupulous criticism, I am obliged to give a permanent shape to the pages which show its unscrupulousness.]

Dreary at best, metaphysical controversy becomes especially dreary when it runs into rejoinders and re-rejoinders; and hence I feel some hesitation in inflicting, even upon those readers of the Contemporary who are interested in metaphysical questions, anything further concerning Prof. Green’s criticism, Mr. Hodgson’s reply to it, and Prof. Green’s explanations. Still, it appears to me that I can now hardly let the matter pass without saying something in justification of the views attacked by Prof. Green; or, rather, in disproof of the allegations he makes against them.

I did not, when Prof. Green’s two articles appeared, think it needful to notice them: my wish to avoid hindrance to my work, being supported partly by the thought that very few would read a discussion so difficult to follow, and partly by the thought that, of the few who did read it, most would be those whose knowledge of The Principles of Psychology enabled them to see how unlike the argument I have used is the representation of it given by Prof. Green, and how inapplicable his animadversions therefore are. This last belief was, I find, quite erroneous; and I ought to have known better than to form it. Experience might have shown me that readers habitually assume a critic’s version of an author’s statement to be the true version, and that they rarely take the trouble to see whether the meaning ascribed to a detached passage is the meaning which it bears when taken with the context. Moreover, I should have remembered that in the absence of disproofs it is habitually assumed that criticisms are valid; and that inability rather than pre-occupation prevents the author from replying. I ought not, therefore, to have been surprised to learn, as I did from the first paragraph of Mr. Hodgson’s article, that Prof. Green’s criticisms had met with considerable acceptance.

I am much indebted to Mr. Hodgson for undertaking the defence of my views; and after reading Prof. Green’s rejoinder, it seems to me that Mr. Hodgson’s chief allegations remain outstanding. I cannot here, of course, follow the controversy point by point. I propose to deal simply with the main issues.

At the close of his answer, Prof. Green refers to “two other misapprehensions of a more general nature, which he [Mr. Hodgson] alleges against me at the outset of his article.” Not admitting these, Prof. Green postpones replies for the present; though by what replies he can show his apprehensions to be true ones, I do not see. Further misapprehensions of a general nature, which stand as preliminaries to his criticisms, may here be instanced, as serving, I think, to show that those criticisms are misdirected.

From The Principles of Psychology Prof. Green quotes the following sentences: —

“The relation between these, as antithetically opposed divisions of the entire assemblage of manifestations of the Unknowable, was our datum. The fabric of conclusions built upon it must be unstable if this datum can be proved either untrue or doubtful. Should the idealist be right, the doctrine of evolution is a dream.”

And on these sentences he comments thus: —

“To those who have humbly accepted the doctrine of evolution as a valuable formulation of our knowledge of animal life, but at the same time think of themselves as ‘idealists,’ this statement may at first cause some uneasiness. On examination, however, they will find in the first place that when Mr. Spencer in such a connection speaks of the doctrine of evolution, he is thinking chiefly of its application to the explanation of knowledge – an application at least not necessarily admitted in the acceptance of it as a theory of animal life.” 40

From which it appears that Prof. Green’s conception of Evolution is that popular conception in which it is identified with that set forth in The Origin of Species. That my conception of Evolution, referred to in the passage he quotes, is a widely different one, would have been perceived by him had he referred to the exposition of it contained in First Principles. My meaning in the passage he quotes is, that since Evolution, as I conceive it, is, under certain conditions, the result of that universal redistribution of matter and motion which is, and ever has been, going on; and since, during those phases of it which are distinguishable as astronomic and geologic, the implication is that no life, still less consciousness (under any such form as is known to us), existed; there is necessarily implied by the theory of Evolution, a mode of Being independent of, and antecedent to, the mode of Being we now call consciousness. And I implied that, consequently, this theory must be a dream, if either ideas are the only existences, or if, as Prof. Green appears to think, the object exists only by correlation with the subject. How necessary is this more general view as a basis for my psychological view, and how erroneous is a criticism which ignores it, will be seen on observing that by ignoring it, I am made to appear profoundly inconsistent where otherwise there is no inconsistency. Prof. Green says that my doctrine —

“ascribes to the object, which in truth is nothing without the subject, an independent reality, and then supposes it gradually to produce certain qualities in the subject, of which the existence is in truth necessary to the possibility of those qualities in the object which are supposed to produce them.” 41

On which my comment is that, ascribing, as I do, “an independent reality” to the object, and denying that the object is “nothing without the subject,” my doctrine, though wholly inconsistent with that of Professor Green, is wholly consistent with itself. Had he rightly conceived the doctrine of Transfigured Realism ( Prin. of Psy. § 473), Prof. Green would have seen that while I hold that the qualities of object and subject, as present to consciousness, being resultants of the co-operation of object and subject, exist only through their co-operation, and, in common with all resultants, must be unlike their factors; yet that there pre-exist those factors, and that without them no resultants can exist.

Equally fundamental is another preliminary misconception which Prof. Green exhibits. He says —

“We should be sorry to believe that Mr. Spencer and Mr. Lewes regard the relation between consciousness and the world as corresponding to that between two bodies, of which one is inside the other; but apart from some such crude imagination it does not appear, &c.”

Now since I deliberately accept, and have expounded at great length, this view which Professor Green does not ascribe to me, because he would be “sorry to believe” I entertain such a “crude imagination” – since this view is everywhere posited by the doctrine of Psychological Evolution as I have set it forth; I am astonished at finding it supposed that I hold some other view. Considering that Parts II. III. and IV. of the Principles of Psychology are occupied with tracing out mental Evolution as a result of converse between organism and environment; and considering that throughout Part V. the interpretations, analytical instead of synthetical, pre-suppose from moment to moment a surrounding world and an included organism; I cannot imagine a stranger assumption than that I do not believe the relationship between consciousness and the world to be that of inclusion of the one by the other. I am aware that Prof. Green does not regard me as a coherent thinker; but I scarcely expected he would ascribe to me an incoherence so extreme that in Part VI. I abandon the fundamental assumption on which all the preceding parts stand, and adopt some other. And I should the less have expected so extreme an incoherence to be ascribed to me, considering that throughout Part VI. this same belief is tacitly implied as part of that realistic belief which it is the aim of its argument to explain and justify. Here, however, the fact of chief significance is, that as Professor Green would be “sorry to believe” I hold the view named, and refrains from ascribing to me so “crude an imagination,” it is to be concluded that his arguments are directed against some other view which he supposes me to hold. If so, one of two conclusions is inevitable. Either his criticisms are valid against this other view which he tacitly ascribes to me, or they are not. If he admits them to be invalid on the assumption that I hold this other view, the matter ends. If he holds them to be valid on the assumption that I hold this other view, then they must be invalid against the absolutely-different view which I actually hold; and again the matter ends.

Even were I to leave off here, I might, I think, say that the inapplicability of Prof. Green’s arguments is sufficiently shown; but it may be desirable to point out that beyond these general misapprehensions, by which they are vitiated, there are special misapprehensions. Much to my surprise, considering the careful preliminary explanation I have given, he has failed to understand the mental attitude assumed by me when describing the synthesis of experiences against which he more especially urges his objections. In chapters entitled “Partial Differentiation of Subject and Object,” “Completed Differentiation of Subject and Object,” and “Developed Conception of the Object,” I have endeavoured, as these titles imply, to trace up the gradual establishment of this fundamental antithesis in a developing intelligence. It appeared to me, and still appears, that for coherent thinking there must be excluded at the outset, not only whatever implies acquired knowledge of objective existence, but also whatever implies acquired knowledge of subjective existence. At the close of the chapter preceding those just named, as well as in First Principles , where this process of differentiation was more briefly indicated, I recognized, and emphatically enlarged upon, the difficulty of carrying out such an inquiry: pointing out that in any attempts we make to observe the way in which subject and object become distinguished, we inevitably use those faculties and conceptions which have grown up while the differentiation of the two has been going on. In trying to discern the initial stages of the process, we carry with us all the products which belong to the final stage, and cannot free ourselves from them. In First Principles (§ 43) I have pointed out that the words impressions and ideas , the term sensation , the phrase state of consciousness, severally involve large systems of beliefs; and that if we allow ourselves to recognize their connotations we inevitably reason circularly. And in the closing sentence of the chapter preceding those above named, I have said —

“Though in every illustration taken we shall have tacitly to posit an external existence, and in every reference to states of consciousness we shall have to posit an internal existence which has these states; yet, as before, we must ignore these implications.”

I should have thought that, with all these cautions before him, Prof. Green would not have fallen into the error of supposing that in the argument thereupon commenced, the phrase “states of consciousness” is used with all its ordinary implications. I should have thought that, as in a note appended to the outset of the argument I have referred to the parallel argument in First Principles , where I have used the phrase “manifestations of existence” instead of “states of consciousness,” as the least objectionable; and as the argument in the Psychology is definitely described in this note as a re-statement in a different form of the argument in First Principles; he would have seen that in the phrase “states of consciousness,” as used throughout this chapter, was to be included no more meaning than was included in the phrase “manifestations of existence.” 42 I should have thought he would have seen that the purpose of the chapter was passively to watch, with no greater intelligence than is implied in watching, how the manifestations or states, vivid and faint, comport themselves: excluding all thought of their meanings – all interpretations of them. Nevertheless, Prof. Green charges me with having, at the outset of the examination, invalidated my argument by implying, in the terms I use, certain products of developed consciousness. 43 He contends that my division of the “states of consciousness,” or, as I elsewhere term them, “manifestations of existence,” into vivid and faint, is vitiated from the first by including along with the vivid ones those faint ones needful to constitute them perceptions, in the ordinary sense of the word. Because, describing all I passively watch, I speak of a distant head-land, of waves, of boats, &c., he actually supposes me to be speaking of those developed cognitions under which these are classed as such and such objects. What would he have me do? It is impossible to give any such account of the process as I have attempted, without using names for things and actions. The various manifestations, vivid and faint, which in the case described impose themselves on my receptivity, must be indicated in some way; and the words indicating them inevitably carry with them their respective connotations. What more can I do than warn the reader that all these connotations must be ignored, and that attention must be paid exclusively to the manifestations themselves, and the modes in which they comport themselves. At the stage described in this “partial differentiation,” while I suppose myself as yet unconscious of my own individuality and of a world as separate from it, the obvious implication is, that what I name “states of consciousness,” because this is the current term for them, are to have no interpretations whatever put upon them; but that their characters and modes of behaviour are to be observed, as they might be while yet there had been none of that organization of experiences which makes things known in the ordinary sense. It is true that, thus misinterpreting me in December, Prof. Green, writing again in March, puts into the mouth of an imagined advocate the true statement of my view; 44 though he (Prof. Green) then proceeds to deny that I can mean what this imagined advocate rightly says I mean: taking occasion to allege that I use the phrase “states of consciousness” “to give a philosophical character” to what would else seem “written too much after the fashion of a newspaper correspondent.” 45 Even, however, had he admitted that intended meaning which he sees, but denies, the rectification would have been somewhat unsatisfactory, coming three months after various absurdities, based on his misinterpretation, had been ascribed to me.

But the most serious allegation made by Mr. Hodgson against Prof. Green, and which I here repeat, is that he habitually says I regard the object as constituted by “the aggregate of vivid states of consciousness,” in face of the conspicuous fact that I identify the object with the nexus of this aggregate. In his defence Prof. Green says —

“If I had made any attempt to show that Mr. Spencer believes the object to be no more than an aggregate of vivid states of consciousness, Mr. Hodgson’s complaint, that I ignore certain passages in which a contrary persuasion is stated, would have been to the purpose.”

Let us look at the facts. Treating of the relation between my view and the idealistic and sceptical views, he imagines addresses made to me by Berkeley and Hume. “‘You agree with me,’ Berkeley might say, ‘that when we speak of the external world we are speaking of certain lively ideas connected in a certain manner;’” 46 and this identification of the world with ideas, I am tacitly represented as accepting. Again, Hume is supposed to say to me – “You agree with me that what we call the world is a series of impressions;” 47 and here, as before, I am supposed silently to acquiesce in this as a true statement of my view. Similarly throughout his argument, Prof. Green continually states or implies that the object is, in my belief, constituted by the vivid aggregate of states of consciousness. At the outset of his second article, 48 he says of me: – “He there” [in the Principles of Psychology] “identifies the object with a certain aggregate of vivid states of consciousness, which he makes out to be independent of another aggregate, consisting of faint states, and identified with the subject.” And admitting that he thus describes my view, he nevertheless alleges that he does not misrepresent me, because, as he says, 49 “there is scarcely a page of my article in which Mr. Spencer’s conviction of the externality and independence of the object, in the various forms in which it is stated by him, is not referred to.” But what if it is referred to in the process of showing that the externality and independence of the object is utterly inconsistent with the conception of it as an aggregate of vivid states of consciousness? What if I am continually made to seem thus absolutely inconsistent, by omitting the fact that not the aggregate of vivid states itself is conceived by me as the object, but the nexus binding it together?