George Henry Lewes

“ If by a successive elimination of differences we reduce all organisms to the cell, we must go on and reduce the cell itself to the chemical elements out of which it is constructed; and inasmuch as these elements are all common to the inorganic world, the only difference being one of synthesis, we reach a result which is the stultification of all classification, namely, the assertion of a kinship which is universal. We must bear in mind that all things may be reduced to a common root by simply disregarding their differences. All things are alike when we set aside their unlikeness. ”

“ The human mind, impatient of ultimates, is always striving to pierce beyond the fundamental mysteries; and this impatience leads to the attempts so often made to explain Sensibility by reducing it to terms of Matter and Motion. But inasmuch as a clear analysis of Matter and Motion displays that our knowledge of these is simply a knowledge of modes of Feeling, the reduction of Sentience or Sensibility to Matter and Motion is simply the reduction of Sensibility to some of its modes. This point gained, a clear conception of the advantages of introducing the ideas of Matter and Motion will result. ”

“ So long as physiologists satisfied themselves that the brain was the sole organ of sensation, it was easy to declare all the actions of the brainless animal to be merely reflex. But now we must ask whether the greater part of these actions are not due to the power of adaptation in the central organs, and are therefore to be struck out of the class of simple reflexes? If I bind one leg of a brainless frog and observe that he not only sees an obstacle, but crawls aside from it, I must regard these movements as regulated by his central power of adaptation ”

“ To admit that all nerves have a common property, and that their functional relations depend on the organs which they innervate, demands small relinquishment of cherished opinions. But to admit that all nerve-centres have a common property, and that their functional relations depend on their anatomical connections, is to sweep away at once a mass of theoretic interpretations which from long familiarity have acquired an almost axiomatic force. That the brain, and the brain only, is the source and seat of Sensibility is the postulate of modern Physiology. ”

“ Of two men looking from the same window, on the same landscape, one will be moved to unutterable sadness, yearning for the peace of death; the other will feel his soul suffused with serenity and content: the one has a gloomy background, into which the sensations excited by the landscape are merged ”

“ To be conscious of a change, is to feel a change. If we desire to express it in physiological terms, we must define Consciousness—“a function of the organism”; and this definition we shall find eminently useful, because the organism being a vital mechanism, and the integrity of that mechanism being necessary for the integrity of the function, while every variation of the mechanism will bring a corresponding variation of the function, we shall have an objective guide and standard in our inquiries. ”

“ May we not rather assume that the earth at the dawn of Life was a vast germinal membrane, every slightly diversified point producing its own vital form; and these myriads upon myriads of forms—all alike and all unlike—urged by the indwelling tendencies of development, struggled with each other for existence, many failing, many victorious, the victors carrying their tents into the camping ground of the vanquished. The point raised is the immense improbability of organized substance having been evolved only in one microscopic spot ”

“ Just as an organism which has been modified and thereby gained a superiority over others, has by this modification been selected for survival—the selection being only another aspect of this modification—so one tissue, or one organ, which has surpassed another in the struggle of growth, will thereby have become selected. Natural Selection, or survival of the fittest, therefore, is simply the metaphorical expression of the fact that any balance of the forces which is best adapted for survival will survive. ”

“ After stating the views of Descartes, he says: “As actions of a certain degree of complexity are brought about by mere mechanism, why may not actions of still greater complexity be the result of a more refined mechanism? What proof is there that brutes are other than a superior race of marionnettes, which eat without pleasure, cry without pain, desire nothing, know nothing, and only simulate intelligence as a bee simulates a mathematician?” ”

“ If the Soul inhabits the organism, using it as an instrument, playing on its organs as a musician plays on his instrument, we are not called upon to explain the mode of operation of this mysterious agent; but if the Soul be the subjective side of the Life, the spiritual aspect of the material organism, then since it is a synthesis of all the organic forces, the consensus of all the sentient phenomena, no one part can usurp the prerogatives of all, but all are requisite for each. And this indeed is what few physiologists would nowadays dispute. ”

“ There is no real and essential distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions. They all spring from Sensibility. They are all determined by feeling. It is convenient, for common purposes, to designate some actions as voluntary; but this is merely a convenience; no psychological nor physiological insight is gained by it; an analysis of the process discloses no element in a voluntary action which is not to be found in an involuntary action—except in the origin or degree of stimulation. ”

“ In separating what is unquestionable from what is questionable, we separate the fundamental facts of consciousness from the theoretic interpretations of those facts: no theoretic interpretation can efface or alter the facts. Whatever Philosophy may discover, it cannot displace the fact that I know I am a Soul, in every sense in which that phrase represents Experience: I know the Soul in knowing its concretes (feelings) , and in knowing it as an abstraction which condenses those concretes in a symbol. ”

“ The nervous organism is affected as a whole by every affection of its constituent parts. Every excitation, instead of terminating with itself—as is the case in most physical processes—or with the motor impulse it excites, is propagated throughout the continuous tissue, and thus sends a thrill throughout the organism. The wave of excitation in passing onwards beats against variously grouped elements—temporary and permanent centres—disturbing their balance more or less, and liberating the energy of some, increasing the tension of others, necessarily affecting all. ”

“ It is not the novelty of the position which has increased our sensibility; that has only caused us to attend to our sensations. In like manner, the various streams of sensation which make up our general sense of existence, separately escape notice until one of them becomes obstructed, or increases in impetuosity. When we are seated at a window, and look out at the trees and sky, we are so occupied with the aspects and the voices of external Nature, that no attention whatever is given to the fact of our own existence ”

“ If Function is determined by Structure, and Evolution is the product of the two, it is clear that the different directions in the lines of development will have their origin in structural differences, and not in the action of external circumstances, unless these previously bring about a structural change. The action of the medium on the organism is assuredly a potent factor which Biology cannot ignore: but the organism itself is a factor, and according to its nature the influence of the medium is defined. ”

“ For, let it be granted that nerve-cells are the origins of the fibres and the sources of their nutrition—a point which is eminently disputable—this would in no sense help the physiological hypothesis of the cell as the fountain of Neurility. If the fibre is simply the cell-contents drawn out longitudinally, if its essential element is identical with the essential element of the cell, then we can no more ascribe to the cell the exclusive property of Neurility than we can draw a lump of lead out into a wire, and then ascribe different properties to the thin end and the thick end. ”

“ The observed facts of the egg passing through successive changes into a complex organism were so marvellous, so unlike any facts observable in the inorganic world, that they seemed to demand a cause drawn from higher sources. The mystery of life obtruded itself at every turn. It was named, and men fancied it explained. But in truth no mystery is got rid of by explanation, however valid; it is only shifted farther back. Explanation is the resolution of a complex phenomenon into its conditions of existence—the product is reduced to its factors ”

“ All physicists mean the same thing when they speak of weight, mass, momentum, electricity, heat, etc. All chemists mean the same thing when they speak of affinity, decomposition, oxygen, carbonic acid, etc. All physiologists mean the same thing when they speak of muscle, nerve, nutrition, secretion, etc. But scarcely any two psychologists mean precisely the same thing when they speak of sensation, feeling, thought, volition, consciousness, etc. ”

“ Indeed, although many philosophers have rejected the two-clock theory of Leibnitz, they have gained a very hesitating acceptance for their own hypothesis of identity. To most minds the difficulty of imagining how a physical process could also be a psychical process, a movement also be a feeling, seemed not less than that of imagining how two such distinct Agents as Matter and Mind could co-operate, and react on each other, or move simultaneously on parallel lines. ”

“ Here, both in the case of the man and the sheep, there is presupposed the very mental experience which is denied. The young child will not throw out its arm to protect itself; but after many experiences of falling and stumbling, there is an organized perception of the impending danger, and the means of averting it, and it is this which determines the throwing out of the arms. If this is not a mental fact—a process of judgment—then the logical conclusion by which a financier on hearing a war rumor orders his broker to sell stock, is not a mental fact. ”

“ But, however contrasted, they are both simply embodiments of Experience, that is to say, are Modes of Feeling. All Existence—as known to us—is the Felt. The laws of our organism compel us, indeed, to postulate an Existent which is extra mentem—a Real not Ourselves—but the same laws debar us from any knowledge whatever of what this is, or is like. We know Things absolutely in so far as they exist in relation to us; and that is the only knowledge which can have any possible significance for us. ”

“ Beside this community of Substance we must now place a community of History. All organisms grow and multiply by the same process; all pass through metamorphic stages ending in death; all, except the very simplest, differentiate parts of their substance for special uses, and these parts (cilia, membranes, tubes, glands, muscles, nerves) have similar characters in whatever organism they appear, and their development is always similar, so that the muscles or nerves of an intestinal worm, a lobster, or a man, are in structure and history fundamentally alike. ”

“ We cannot accept the statement of Descartes that Nature is a vast mechanism, and Science the universal application of mathematics. The equation of a sphere, however valuable from a geometrical point of view, is useless as an explanation of the nature and properties of the spherical body in other relations. And so a complete theory of the mechanical relations of the organism, however valuable in itself, would be worthless in the solution of a biological problem, unless supplemented by all that mechanical terms are incompetent to express. ”

“ Now since we observe this in ourselves, why should we be so much astonished if the light reflected from the body of a wolf into the eye of a sheep has the same force to excite in it the motion of flight? ”

“ This relation of Organism and Medium, the most fundamental of biological data, has had a peculiar fortune: never wholly unrecognized, for it obtrudes itself incessantly in the facts of daily experience, it was very late in gaining recognition as a principle of supreme importance; and is even now often so imperfectly apprehended that one school of philosophers indignantly rejects the idea of the Organism and Medium being the two factors of which Life is the product. ”

“ Thus while molecular movement is a fundamental condition of Vitality, and is incessant throughout organized substance, the massive movements of the organism, and the movements of particular parts, are the directed quantities of this molecular agitation. They are due to stimulation. We distinguish this from mechanical impulsion. It is a vital process involving molecular change; it is not simply the communication of motion from without, but the excitation of motion within. It is not like the blow which merely displaces an object, but like the blow which disturbs its molecular equilibrium. ”

“ A sound sends a thrill which excites emotion, causes the heart to beat faster, the muscles to quiver, the skin-glands to pour forth their secretion; yet this same sound heard by another man, or the same man under other conditions, physical or historical, merely sends a faint thrill, just vivid enough to detach itself as a sensation from the other simultaneous excitations ”

“ If it mean an independent Entity, an agency external to the organism, we refuse to acknowledge its existence. If it mean only an a posteriori abstraction expressing the totality of the conditions, then, indeed, we acknowledge that it determines the animal form; but this is only an abbreviated way of expressing the law of Evolution, by which each stage determines its successor. The Type does not dominate the conditions, it emerges from them; the animal organism is not cast in a mould, but the imaginary mould is the form which the polarities of the organic substance assume. ”

“ When he says that all the actions of animals which seem to be due to Consciousness are in fact produced on the same principles as those of a machine, he means that animals have not souls to direct their actions; but since, on being questioned, he is ready to admit that animals have sensation, perception, emotion, and memory, his denial of their souls practically comes to much the same as the ordinary position that animals have not Thought nor Consciousness of Self.220 The admission of sensation is, however, quite enough to mark the essential difference between an organism and a machine. ”

“ In what sense we can speak of the volition of a mollusc or an insect has already been considered (p. 408) . When a man in a fit of coughing seizes a glass of water to allay the tickling in his throat, we have no hesitation in declaring this to be volitional—and the remedy to be chosen. But when a brainless animal adopts some unusual means, after the failure of the usual means, to allay an irritation, we still hesitate to call the action volitional. I see, however, no objection to calling it the adaptation of a sensitive mechanism which is markedly unlike any inorganic mechanism. ”