Wayland Richardson Benedict

“ Judge Stallo, as I think, found the mind at its old trick in modern physical science, the trick of actualizing, and thrusting out yonder into space, its thoughts, its concepts, and of worshiping them as lords of all, explainers forever. Service is rendered here, not for orthodoxy as against heterodoxy, not for spiritualism as against materialism, but for all truth as against all error. ”

“ We need to keep in mind that the only thing which can be accomplished by science, or by philosophy, as the unification of the sciences, is a detection and expression of resemblance between phenomena and between the modes of their activity. This may give us a law of evolution extending over all manifestations, a law not perched up on matter compelling it to evolve, but a law expressive of our feeling of similarity where we had previously felt diversity. ”

“ Whether we accept correlation or personality, we accept what can no more be directly known than the mortality of men now living, or the return of the seasons. All reasoning is beyond the facts, and is in this a speculation; but reasoning need be no more an unsafe guide on such subjects as the one before us than on any of the complex affairs where we gladly trust its teachings. Our demand of Reason must be that, though she lead us beyond the facts, she shall never lead us contrary to the facts. ”

“ What belief, then, does reason require in our present state of knowledge as to the relation between nerve-matter and consciousness? We distinguish two series, two kinds of experiences; these stand to one another as outward and inward, physical and spiritual, compound and simple. We do not know the nature of either. The terms matter and soul are our highest generalizations from experience. The materialist errs when he pronounces upon the character of matter, affirming that in itself, as it lies beyond his vision, it is hard, round, inelastic, double-faced. ”

“ I wished also to show that no half-way recognition of consciousness would meet the demands of investigation. Perhaps the chiefest benefit to come from the physiological psychology of our day will be in this, that it will make unmistakably clear its own inadequacy for a treatment of consciousness as such. I trust I may not be misunderstood in this remark. I yield to no one in the belief that an inestimable advantage has been conferred on psychology by physiology. ”

“ If consciousness be at all the product of brain changes, it appears, and must appear, as a stranger to these changes, destitute of a single one of their features. Further, and with sincere deference, I would say that the reasoning in the passage before us seems to me peculiar. Consciousness is produced by brain-changes; nay more, these are the sole cause of consciousness, and yet there is no ground to believe that consciousness in its turn ever occasions brain changes or muscular movements. Volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but a token that such an act is taking place. ”

“ When we are told that consciousness is completely without the power of modifying the working of our body, we do, indeed, feel that consciousness might as well give up and cease to be; at the same time we know that consciousness, in the shape of volition, is adjusting, directing, and in manifold other ways modifying our organism from day to day. ”

“ We may say the relation of brain-matter and consciousness is one of correlation, conversion—or we may say it is one of instrument to personality. Personality is here, as everywhere, a term chosen to represent a series of manifestations so alike among themselves and so unlike all other manifestations as to necessitate a specific designation. By adopting the term personality, we should affirm our belief in the existence of some form of being, which, for us, is persistently unlike every other form of being with which we come into relation. ”

“ While there is no purpose to leave, even for an instant, the territory of experience, we enter a portion of that territory which, to many, will be new, and therefore, without effort against prejudice, untrue.
There are certain special facts in consciousness, i. e., certain distinctive features in each person's experience, which prevent, out and out, the acceptance of correlation as a proper account of the relations between brain and consciousness. Few would refuse to admit that sensation is a fact, yet there is danger of studying sensation with the sensation omitted. ”

“ It will not avail to say there are striking differences between heat, electricity, and light; there are striking resemblances—one positive, constant resemblance—they are all modes of motion. Between the characteristics of consciousness and the characteristics of nerve-matter, as we know them, there are no resemblances whatsoever. If the smaller physiological materialists (for the larger do it fully) would but think it worth their while, and a truly scientific procedure, to fasten their attention upon consciousness, they might be struck by its peculiarities. ”

“ The fact is, that in consciousness and in consciousness alone all things are known. No physicist ever fronted or ever will front a pure fact, a thing as it is, apart from consciousness. What the physicist knows are not substances in themselves, out of consciousness. Force and matter are, in the way in which he uses them and must use them, products of his consciousness. He, the conscious person, is affected so and so, that is, is made to have such and such states of consciousness ”

“ Motion set up at the periphery of the body produces a definite and measurable quantity of motion in the brain; this is well called a mechanical problem out and out. We find no measurable consciousness, yet consciousness is a reality; we find no break in physical processes elsewhere, yet, if correlation be true here, such a break there is. It will, I hope, be clearly seen that this difficulty is nowise related to the old and worthless difficulty thought to be suggested by those who ask the materialist how motion is transformed into consciousness. ”

“ All that we call our soul-life, from the sensations, the "building-stones" of this life, to the most abstract thought and holiest desire, stands dependent upon the activities of nerve-matter. Surely no one will be led to say, so are these things dependent on stomach, lungs, and heart. Such dependence is indirect, mediate, the other direct and immediate. Between consciousness and the brain, between nerve-matter and ourselves, there is a relation close, constant, immediate ”

“ Interest in these matters, an interest natural to all who share human nature, was blasted at the outset of its development. Other pursuits that could and did take on the semblance of reality fastened attention, and led to the years of toil that fitted for life-work. What more natural than that henceforth (must it be said forever?) each approach to the subject of consciousness is, for these minds, an approach to confusion worse confounded? The fact that I occupy a chair in Philosophy will very much weaken the force of what I am about to say ”

“ Formerly, man was supposed to possess an intellectual and moral nature distinct in kind; in him was thought to reside a force peculiar, above and beyond all other forces. Observation has had much to say, as many believe, in contravention of these conclusions; and it is now well known that the doctrine of evolution is brought to bear on all sides of human psychology in a way special and searching. I have not here in mind the work of Spencer or Bain, or their immediate disciples. ”

“ The sensation is no picture of the outer thing, the retinal image works, in all probability, chemically upon the retina, but that image does not and can not get itself transferred to the cerebral hemispheres. The sensation is an answer to the excitation in the brain-mass, arising from that image, an answer in such peculiar language that it must be called language of the soul—not as thereby explaining it in the sense of resolving its mystery, yet as thereby explaining it in the only way in which explanation is anywhere possible, viz., by resolving the combined activities into their elements. ”

“ Much may be accomplished toward a localization of functions in the hemispheres; the time may even come when people at large shall know that most of their stupidity, peevishness, and sin, results from unhealthful brain-activity. The relation between digestion, ventilation, sleep, and morals, may attain general acceptance, to the destruction of a huge load of the world's misery. All this and more may come, but physiology will never remove or investigate a state of consciousness; it will never front the inner side of a single sensation. ”

“ The time has come when the truth shall assert itself that philosophy is an attempt to unify all our experiences, an attempt to be able to say that whereas here and here and here my experiences seemed unlike, separate, they now seem alike and conjoined. ”

“ Observation is not an instrument possessed by the physicist alone. Observation is an intellectual operation, and may be as genuine, as honest, when directed to thoughts, emotions, volitions, as when brought to bear on stars, rocks, or brains. ”

“ By comparison, and by that alone, each sensation is known as distinct from every other. All that physiology offers or can offer is the integrity of each nerve-fiber. As has been justly said, this fiber is like every other in construction and action. What provision have we, apart from personality, for detecting difference in sensations?
Personality is the place at which both parties should expend their strength. Mr. Mill and Mr. Bain, understanding this, have sought to obliterate the distinction between feeling and self-consciousness. They have maintained the priority of an impersonal feeling. ”

“ The weakness of the theory, and it is a fatal one, lies in the failure to recognize the distinction between a matured idea of self which comes only with years, and a consciousness that the sensation is mine, however rudimentary this sensation may be. The most primitive distinctions in consciousness, those of pleasure and pain, can not be experienced without being known. When this is realized, the inadequacy of the attempt to dispense with personality, or to derive it from anything more elementary than itself, must appear ”

“ Under the influence of the a priori procedure, both metaphysical and theological, most of us flee with raised hands of horror at sound of the word will. Recollections of "you shall and you shan't, you can and you can't, you will and you won't," crowd round in ever-thickening confusion. Still, it must be said that, apart from all talk about freedom and bondage, volition is a decidedly large fact in human experience. ”

“ Memory, which, though lying in the so-called fog-land of consciousness, is yet a reality, has been brought forward as decisive against the application of evolution to the origin of knowledge. Memory is a prerequisite for all psychical development. ”

“ Is the relation between brain and consciousness one of correlation; may we, according to the evidence, believe it to be one of correlation? Physiological materialism is an extension of the doctrine of correlation to consciousness. It is needful to know what is meant by correlation. Correlation is a necessary, reciprocal production. "Any force capable of producing another may be produced by it. Each mode of force is capable of producing the others, and none of them can be produced but by some other as an anterior force. ”

“ In the first place, these small brains may be of superior quality, as small muscles often are; or, in the second place, the boasted greatness of mind may be anything and everything but greatness of mind. Learning of a very extensive kind may coexist with small mental caliber. A monkey is shrewd and quick, and cunning and smart a parrot is learned, up in a variety of languages, speaking, as many human parrots do, some French, some Italian, some Spanish: there is no great-mindedness here.
Proof from size of the brain is, on the whole, reliable. ”

“ So, in turn, the other party, seizing hold of the fact of personality, forthwith affirm that, by it, man's immateriality, immortality, and divinity, are forever made visible in the light of consciousness. All this is quite aside from that inferential process which, as reasoning beings, we should prescribe for ourselves. ”

“ The frog walks, hops, swims, quite as well without consciousness as with it, and if a frog, in his natural state, possesses anything corresponding with what we call volition, there is no reason to think that it is anything but a concomitant of molecular changes in the brain which form part of the series involved in the production of motion. ”

“ To know the most names of the most classifications is to be saved, to apply chemistry in the manufacture of salable beer is to make "calling and election" sure. The devotion of these little men to science is not only at the expense of all that is highest, but is, as was intimated, largely responsible for the realism over which so many weep. ”

“ It is often said and as often forgotten that all explanation of natural processes consists solely in the resolution of involved combinations of activities into their elements. We make a false demand of the evolutionist when we insist that he shall tell us how the biological is evolved from the a-biological, and he makes a false demand of the spiritualist when he requires to be told how mind acts on brain or brain on mind. ”

“ Whatever may or may not be accomplished in finding definite centers of the brain for special movements and sensations, one thing stands fast—the cerebral hemispheres are the sole organs of the higher intellectual manifestations. ”