# Blackwood's Magazine/Volume 43/Issue 272/An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness (Part 3)

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AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.
part iii.
chapter i.
What is philosophy? Look at man struggling against the fatalistic logic of physics, and thou shalt best know what philosophy is. In the hands of physical science man lies bound hand and foot, and the iron of necessity is driven into the innermost recesses of his being; but philosophy proclaims him to be free, and rends away the fetters from his limbs like stubble-withs. Physical science, placing man entirely under the dominion of the law of causality, engulfs his moral being in the tomb; but philosophy bursts his scientific cerements, and brings him forth out of "the house of bondage" into the land of perfect liberty.
If we look into the realities of our own condition, and of nature as it operates around us, we shall be convinced of the justness of this view. We shall see that the essential character of philosophy is best to be caught in contrast with the character of physics; just as man is best read in the antagonism which prevails between him and nature as she exists both without him and within him—this strife conducing in the former case to his natural, and in the latter to his moral aggrandisement.
Without a figure, the whole universe may be said to be inspired. A power not its own drives its throbbing pulses. All things are dependent on one another—each of them is because something else has been. Nowhere is there to be found an original, but everywhere an inherited activity. Nature throughout all her vicissitudes is the true type of hereditary and inviolable succession. The oak dies in the forest-solitudes, having deposited the insignia of its strength in an acorn, from which springs a new oak that neither exceeds nor falls short of the stated measure of its birthright. The whole present world is but a vast tradition. All the effects composing the universe now before us were slumbering, ages ago, in their embryo causes. And now, amid the derivative movements of this unpausing machinery, what becomes of man? Is he too the mere creature of traditionary forces?
Yes—man in his earlier stages violates not the universal analogy: but lives and breathes in the general inspiration of nature. At his birth he is indeed wholly nature's child; for no living creature is born an alien from the jurisdiction of that mighty mother. Powerless and passive, he floats entranced amid her teeming floods. She shapes his passions and desires, and he, disputing not her guardianship, puts his neck beneath their yoke. All that he is, he is without his own co-operation: his reason and his appetites come to him from her hand, he accepts them unconsciously, and goes forth in quest of his gratifications in blind obedience to the force that drives him. All the germs that nature has planted in his breast owe their growth to her breath, and, unfolding themselves beneath it, they flourish in blessedness—for a time.
Hence this view of human life being the first to present itself to observation, the genius of physical science has ever been foremost to attempt to fix the position of man in the scale of the universe, and to read to him his doom. She tells thee, O man, that thou art but an animal of a higher and more intelligent class—a mere link, though perhaps a bright one, in the uninterrupted chain of creation. No clog art thou, she says, in the revolutions of the blind and mighty wheel. She lays her hand upon thee, and thou falling into her ranks, goest to swell the legions of dependent things—the leader, it may be, but not the antagonist of nature. She bends thee down under the law of causality, and, standing in her muster-roll, thou art forced to acknowledge that law as the sovereign of thy soul. The stars obey it in their whirling courses, why shouldst not thou? She either makes thee a mere tabula rasa, to be written upon by the pens of external things—an educt of their impressions—or else endowing thee with certain innate capacities, she teaches thee that all thy ​peculiar developments are merely evolved under a necessary law out of germs that were born within thee—are but the fruits of seeds thou broughtest into the world with thee already sown. But whatever she makes of thee, thou art no more thine own master, according to her report, than the woods that burst into bud beneath an influence they cannot control, or than the sea rolling in the wind.
Such is the award of physical science with respect to man; and, confined to his birth and the earliest periods of his life, her estimate of him is true. When contemplated during the first stages of his existence, Hamlet's pipe breathed upon by another's breath, and fingered by another's touch, and giving out sounds of discord or of harmony according to the will of the blower, is not merely a type, but is the actual reality of man.
But these are remote and visionary contemplations. Turning from man in his cradle, let us observe the actual condition of our living selves.
We are all born, as we have said, both in our external and our internal fittings up, within the domain and jurisdiction of nature; and nature, to our opening life, is a paradise of sweets.
"Heaven lies about us in our infancy."
But the nascent fierceness which adds but new graces to the sportive beauty of the tiger-cub, condemns the monster of maturer years to the savage solitudes of his forest-lair, and the graceful passions of childhood naturally grow up in the man into demons of misery and blood. As life advances, the garden of nature becomes more and more a howling wilderness, and nature's passions and indulgences blacken her own shining skies: and before our course is run, life, under her guidance, has become a spectacle of greater ghastliness than death itself.
Nature prompts a purely epicurean creed, and the logic of physical science binds it down upon the understandings of men; for suppose that we should turn and fight against the force that drives us. But how can we, says the logic of physics? We are in everything at the mercy of a foreign causality, and how can we resist its sway? We are drifting before the breath of nature, and can the wave turn against the gale that is impelling it, and refuse to flow? Drift on, then, thou epicurean, thou child of nature, passive in thy theory and thy practice, and sheathed in what appears to be an irrefragable logic, and see where thy creed will land thee!
But perhaps man has been armed by nature with weapons wherewith to fight against the natural powers that are seeking to enslave him. As if nature would give man arms to be employed against herself—as if she would lift with her own hands the yoke of bondage from his neck. And even supposing that nature were thus to assist him, would she not be merely removing him from the conduct of one blind and faithless guide, to place him under that of another equally blind, and probably equally faithless? Having been misled in so many instances in obeying nature, we may well be suspicious of all her dictates.
We have also been prated to about a moral sense born within us, and this, too, by physical science—by the science that founds its whole procedure upon the law of causality—as if this law did not obliterate the very life of duty, and render it an unmeaning word. This moral sense, it is said, impels us to virtue, if its sanctions be listened to, or lets us run to crime if they be disregarded. But what impels us to listen to the voice of this monitor, or to turn away from it with a deaf ear? Still, according to physical science, it can be nothing but the force of a natural and foreign causality. Nowhere, O man! throughout the whole range of thy moral and intellectual being can physical science allow thee a single point whereon to rest the lever of thy own free co-operation. The moral power which she allows thee is at the same time a natural endowment; and being so, must of course, like other natural growths, wax or wane under laws immutable and independent of thy control. Thou art still then a dependent thing, entirely at the mercy of foreign causes, and having no security against any power that may make thee its instrument.
What, then, is to be done? This: Let us spurn from us the creed of nature, together with the fatalistic logic by which it is upheld. If we admit the logic we must admit the creed, and if we admit the creed we must admit the logic; but let us tear both ​of them in pieces, and scatter their fragments to the winds. The creed of nature concludes simply for enjoyment; but the truer creed of human life, a creed which says little about happiness, was uttered soon after the foundations of the world were laid, and has been proved and perpetuated by the experience of six thousand years. "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou cultivate the earth;" and, it may be added, in a bitterer sweat shalt thou till, oh man, as long as life lasts, the harsher soil of thy own tumultuous and almost ungovernable heart.
This creed is none of nature's prompting, but is the issue of a veritable contest now set on foot between man and her. But how is this creed to be supported? How can we rationally make good the fact that we are fighting all life long more or less against the powers of nature? We have flung aside the logic of physics; where shall we look for props?
Here it is that philosophy comes in. "The flowers of thy happiness," says she, are withered. They could not last; they gilded but for a day the opening portals of life. But in their place I will give thee freedom's flowers. To act according to thy inclinations may be enjoyment; but know that to act against them is liberty, and thou only actest thus because thou art really free. For thy freedom does not merely consist in the power to follow a certain course, or to leave it unfollowed, but it properly consists in the single course of originating a new movement running counter to all the biases which nature gives thee, and in rising superior to the bondage thou wert born in. I will unwind from around thee, fold after fold, the coils of the inert logic of causality; and if thou wilt stand forth practically as nature's victorious foe, and speculatively as the assertor of the absolute liberty of man against the dogmas of physics—breaking the chain of causality—disclaiming the inspiration which is thy birthright, and working thyself out of the slough of sensualism—then shalt thou be one of my true disciples."
Chapter II.
But at what point shall Philosophy commence unwinding the coils of fatalism from around man? At the very outermost folds. To redeem man's moral being from slavery, and to circulate through it the air of liberty by which alone it lives, is the great end of philosophy; but it were vain to attempt the accomplishment of this end, unless the folds of necessity be first of all loosened at the very circumference or surface of his ordinary character as a simply percipient being. Make man, ab origine, like wax beneath the seal, the passive recipient of the impressions of external things, and a slave he must remain for ever in all the phenomena he may manifest throughout the whole course of his career. If there be bondage in his common consciousness, it must necessarily pass into his moral conscience. Unless our first and simplest consciousness be an act of freedom, our moral being is a bondsman all its life. True philosophy will accept of no half measures—no compromise between the passivity and the activity of man. We must commence, then, by liberating our ordinary consciousness from the control or domineering action of outward objects. Thus commencing at the very circumference of man, we shall clear out an enlarged atmosphere of freedom around that true and sacred centre of his personality—his character, namely, as a moral and accountable agent.
In returning, then, to the fact of consciousness, we may remark that hitherto we have been chiefly occupied in opening out a way for ourselves, and have hardly advanced beyond the mere threshold or out-works of psychology. Regarding this fact as the great, and, indeed, properly speaking, as the only fact of our science, we have done our best to separate it from any admixture of foreign elements, and, in particular, to free it from that huge encumbrance which, since the commencement of science, has kept it weighed down in obscure and vaporous abysses,—the human mind, with all its facts, which are elements of a fatalistic, and therefore of an unphilosophical character. Imperfectly, indeed, but to the best of our ability, we have raised it up out of the depths where it has lain so long, ​and blowing aside from it the mist of ages, we have endeavoured to realize it in all its purity and independence, and to make it stand forth as the most prominent, signal, and distinguishing phenomenon of humanity. But in doing this we have done little more than establish the fact that consciousness does come into operation. We still expect to be able to make its character and significance more and more plain as we advance, and now beg to call the attention of the reader to three other problems, which may be said to constitute the very vitals of the science of ourselves. These are, first,— When does consciousness come into operation? Second, How does consciousness come into operation? And third, What are the consequences of its coming into operation? The discussion of these three problems will, it is thought, sufficiently exhaust this Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness.
First, however, let us remark that it was not possible that these problems could ever have been distinctly propounded, much less resolved by the "philosophy of the human mind." This false science regards as its proper facts the states or phenomena of mind, or, in other words, the objects of the act of consciousness degrading this act itself, into the mere medium or instrument through which these objects are known. Thus researches concerning the nature and origin of the objects of consciousness (of sensation, for instance), and not concerning the genesis of the act itself of consciousness, constituted the problems of the science of mind. Our very familiarity with this latter fact has blunted our perception of its importance, and has turned us aside from the observation of it. Metaphysicians have been so much in the habit of considering all the mental phenomena as so evidently and indissolubly accompanied by consciousness, that the fact that they are thus accompanied being taken for granted, as a matter of course—as a necessity of nature—has been allowed to fall out of notice as unworthy of any further consideration. Yet we have all along seen that these phenomena might perfectly well have existed, and in animals and children of a certain age actually do exist, without consciousness; or, in other words, without being accompanied by the fact of personality—the notion and the reality expressed by the word "I." In short, we have seen that the presence of consciousness forms the exception, and that the absence of consciousness forms the great rule of creation: inspired, though that creation is, throughout, by intelligence, sensation, and desire. In devoting our attention, therefore (as the philosophers of mind have hitherto done), to such phenomena as intelligence, sensation, and desire, we should virtually be philosophizing concerning unconscious creatures; and not concerning man in his true and distinctive character; we should, moreover, as has been shown, be studying an order of phenomena, which not only do not assist the manifestation of consciousness, but which naturally tend to prevent it from coming into operation; and finally, we should, at any rate, be merely contemplating attributes which man possesses in common with the rest of creation. But the true science of every being proceeds upon the discovery and examination of facts, or a fact peculiar to the Being in question. But the phenomenon peculiar to man—the only fact which accurately and completely contradistinguishes him from all other creatures is no other than this very fact of consciousness—this very fact, that he does take cognizance of his intelligent and rational states, blending with them, or realizing in conjunction with them, his own personality—a realization which animals, endowed though they are like man with reason and with passion, never accomplish. And thus it is that the fact of consciousness, from having occupied the obscurest and most neglected position in all psychology, rises up into paramount importance, and instead of submitting to be treated with slight and cursory notice, and then passed from, as the mere medium through which the proper facts of psychology are known to us, becomes itself the leading, and, properly speaking, the only fact of the science; while, at the same time, questions as to its nature and origin, the time, manner, and consequences of its manifestation, come to form the highest problems that can challenge our attention when engaged in the study of ourselves. All the other facts connected with us are fatalistic; it is in this phenomenon alone, as we shall see, that the elements of our freedom are to be found. ​
Chapter III.
The first question with which we are to be engaged is this: When does consciousness come into operation? And we ask, first of all, is man born conscious, or is he conscious during several (be their number greater or less) of the earlier months, we may say years, of his existence? We answer, No: for if he were, then he would remember, or at least some individuals of the species would remember, the day of their birth and the first year or years of their infancy. People in general recollect that of which they were conscious. But perhaps it may be objected that a man, or that many men, may forget, and often do forget, events of which they were conscious. True; but it is absolutely impossible, and at variance with universal experience, that every body should forget that of which every body was conscious. If the whole human race were conscious at the day of their birth, and during their earliest childhood, it is altogether inconceivable but that some of them at least should remember those days and their events. But no one possesses any such remembrance; and therefore the inference is irresistible that man is not born conscious, and does not become conscious until some considerable period after his birth. Let this conclusion then be noted, for we may require to make some use of it hereafter.
If, then, man is not conscious at his birth, or until some time after it has elapsed, at what period of his life does consciousness manifest itself? To ascertain this period we must seek for some vital sign of the existence of consciousness. It is possible that, before the true and real consciousness of the human being displays itself, there are within him certain obscure prefigurations or anticipations of the dawning phenomenon; and therefore it may not be practicable to fix in the precisest and strictest manner its absolute point of commencement. Still, compared with the actual rise and development of consciousness, these dim and uncertain preludes of it are even more faint and indistinct than are the first feeble rays which the sun sends up before him, compared with the glory which fills heaven and earth when the great luminary himself bursts above the sea. This parallel is certainly not perfect, because the sun, though below the horizon, nevertheless exists; but an unapparent consciousness is zero, or no consciousness at all. Consciousness, no doubt, keeps ever gaining in distinctness, but there is certainly a period when it is an absolute blank, and then there is an epoch at which it exists and comes forth distinctly into the light—an epoch so remarkable that it may be assumed and fixed as the definite period when the true existence and vital manifestation of consciousness commences. Our business now is to point out and illustrate this epoch.
It is a well-known fact that children, for some time after they acquire the use of language, speak of themselves in the third person, calling themselves John, Tom, or whatever else their names may be. Some speak thus for a longer, others for a shorter period; but all of them invariably speak for a certain time after this fashion. What does this prove, and how is it to be accounted for?
In the first place, it proves that they have not yet acquired the notion of their own personality. Whatever their intellectual or rational state may in other respects be, they have not combined with it the conception of self. In other words, it proves that as yet they are unconscious. They as yet exist merely for others, not for themselves.
In the second place, how is the origin of the language, such as it is, which the child makes use of, to be explained? It is to be accounted for upon exactly the same principle, whatever this may be, as that which enables the parrot to be taught to speak. This principle may be called imitation, which may be viewed as a modification of the great law of association, which again is to be considered as an illustration of the still greater law of cause and effect; and under any or all of these views it is not to be conceived that intelligence is by any means absent from the process. The child and the parrot hear those around them applying various names to different objects, and, being imitative animals, acting under the law of causality, they ​apply these names in the same manner: and now mark most particularly the curious part of the process; how they follow the same rule when speaking of themselves. They hear people calling them by their own names in the third person, and not having any notion of themselves, not having realized their own personality, they have nothing else for it than to adhere, in this case too, to their old principle of imitation, and to do towards themselves just what others do towards them; that is to say, when speaking of themselves they are unavoidably forced to designate themselves by a word in the third person; or in other words, to speak of themselves as if they were not themselves.
So long, then, as this state of things continues, the human being is to be regarded as leading altogether mere animal life, as living completely under the dominion and within the domain of nature. The law of its whole being is the law of causality. Its sensations, feelings of every kind, and all its exercises of reason, are mere effects, which again in their turn are capable of becoming causes. It cannot be said to be without "mind," if by the attribution of "mind" to it we mean that it is subject to various sensations, passions, desires, &c., but it certainly is without consciousness, or that notion of self, that realization of its own personality, which in the subsequent stages of its existence accompanies these modifications of its being. It is still entirely the creature of instinct, which may be exactly and completely defined as unconscious reason.
It is true that the child at this stage of its existence often puts on the semblance of the intensest selfishness; but to call it selfish, in the proper sense of the word, would be to apply to it a complete misnomer. This would imply that it stood upon moral ground, whereas its being rests as yet upon no moral foundations at all. We indeed have a moral soil beneath our feet. And this is the origin of our mistake. In us, conduct similar to the child's would be really selfish, because we occupy a moral ground, and have realized our own personality; and hence, forgetting the different grounds upon which we and it stand, we transfer over upon it, through a mistaken analogy, or rather upon a false hypothesis, language which would serve to characterise its conduct, only provided it stood in the same situation with us, and like us possessed the notion and reality of itself. The child is driven to the gratification of its desires (prior to consciousness) at whatever cost, and whatever the consequences may be, just as an animal or a machine is impelled to accomplish the work for which it was designed; and the desire dies only when gratified, or when its natural force is spent, or when supplanted by some other desire equally blind and equally out of its control. How can we affix the epithet selfish, or any other term indicating either blame or praise, to a creature which as yet is not a self at all, either in thought, in word, or deed? For let it be particularly noted that the notion of self is a great deal more than a mere notion—that is to say, it possesses far more than a mere logical value and contents—it is absolutely genetic or creative. Thinking oneself "I" makes oneself "I;" and it is only by thinking himself "I" that a man can make himself "I; or, in other words, change an unconscious thing into that which is now a conscious self. Nothing else will or can do it. So long as a Being does not think itself "I," it does not and cannot become "I." No other being, no being except itself, can make it "I." More, however, of this hereafter.
But now mark the moment when the child pronounces the word "I," and knows what this expression means. Here is a new and most important step taken. Let no one regard this step as insignificant, or treat our mention of it lightly and superciliously; for, to say the least of it, it is a step the like of which in magnitude and wonder the human being never yet took, and never shall take again, throughout the whole course of his rational and immortal career. We have read in fable of Circæan charms, which changed men into brutes; but here in this little monosyllable is contained a truer and more potent charm—the spell of an inverted and unfabulous enchantment, which converts the feral into the human being. The origination of this little monosyllable lifts man out of the natural into the moral universe. It places him, indeed, upon a perilous pre-eminence, being the assertion of nothing less than his own absolute independence. ​He is now no longer a paradisiacal creature of blind and unconscious good. He has fallen from that estate by this very assertion of his independence; but, in compensation for this, he is now a conscious and a moral creature, knowing evil from good, and able to choose the latter even when he embraces the former; and this small word of one letter, and it alone, is the talisman which has effected these mighty changes; which has struck from his being the fetters of the law of causality, and given him to breathe the spacious atmosphere of absolute freedom; thus rendering him a moral and accountable agent, by making him the first cause or complete originator of all his actions.
If we reflect for a moment upon the origin and application of the word "I," as used by the child, we shall see what a remarkable contrast exists between this term and any other expression which he employs; and how strikingly different its origin is from that of all these expressions. We have already stated that the child's employment of language previous to his use of the word "I," may be accounted for upon the principle of imitation, or that at any rate it falls to be considered as a mere illustration of the general law of cause and effect. He hears other people applying certain sounds to designate certain objects; and when these objects or similar ones are presented, or in any way recalled, to him, the consequence is, that he utters the same sounds in connexion with their presence. All this takes place, very naturally, under the common law of association. But neither association, nor the principle of imitation, nor any conceivable modification of the law of cause and effect, will account for the child's use of the word "I." In originating and using this term, he reverses, or runs counter to all these laws, and more particularly performs a process diametrically opposed to any act of imitation. Take an illustration of this:—A child hears another person call a certain object "a table"—well—the power of imitation naturally leads him to call the same thing, and any similar thing, "a table." Suppose, next, that the child hears this person apply to himself the word "I": In this case too, the power of imitation would naturally (that is to say, letting it operate here in the same way as it did in the case of the table) lead the child to call that man "I."—But is this what the child does? No. As soon as he becomes conscious, he ceases, so far at least as the word "I" is concerned, to be an imitator. He still applies the word "table" to the objects to which other people apply that term; and in this he imitates them. But with regard to the word "I," he applies this expression to a thing totally different from that which he hears all other people applying it to. They apply it to themselves, but he does not apply it to them, but to himself; and in this he is not an imitator, but the absolute originator of a new notion, upon which he now, and henceforth, takes up his stand, and which leads him on in the career of a destiny most momentous, and altogether anomalous and new.
In opposition to this view is it objected that in the use of the word "I" the child may still be considered an imitative creature, inasmuch as he merely applies to himself a word which he hears other people applying to themselves, having borrowed this application of it from them? Oh! vain and short-sighted objection! As if this very fact did not necessarily imply and prove that he has first of all originated within himself the notion expressed by the word "I" (namely, the notion of his conscious self), and thereby, and thereby only, has become capable of comprehending what they mean by it. In the use and understanding of this word every man must be altogether original. No person can teach to another its true meaning and right application; for this reason, that no two human beings ever use it, or ever can use it, in the same sense or apply it to the same being; a true but astounding paradox, which may be thus forcibly expressed. Every one rightly calls himself by a name which no other person can call him by without being convicted of the most outrageous and almost inconceivable insanity. The word "I" in my mouth as applied to you would prove me to be a madman. The word "I" in your mouth as applied to me would prove you to be the same. Therefore, I cannot by any conceivability teach you what it means, nor can you teach me. We must both of us originate it first of all independently for ourselves, and then we can ​understand one another. This may be put to the actual test if any one is curious to prove it. Let any man teach a parrot to say "I" (it meaning thereby itself), and we pledge ourselves to unwrite all that we have written upon this topic.
We have now, then, brought this question to a conclusion; besides having opened up slightly and incidentally a few collateral views connected with other problems, we have returned a distinct answer to the question — When does consciousness come into operation? Sensation, passion, reason, &c., all exist as soon as the human being is born, but consciousness only comes into existence when he has originated within him the notion and the reality denoted by the word "I." Then only does he begin to exist for himself. In our next paper we shall proceed to the discussion of the most important, but at the same time most difficult, question in all psychology — How does consciousness come into operation?
WHIG PRACTICES AND WHIG PROFESSIONS.
It is usual for statesmen and philosophers, in considering the position and prospects of a country, to search in the history of bygone times for circumstances analogous to those in which they feel themselves placed; and thus, very frequently, with the page of experience opened before them, they are supplied with beacons, and landmarks, and warnings, to aid them in the task of regulating the national affairs. But now, all speculators and rulers may search in vain for any records of a time similar to the present. There may have been seasons of more urgent peril, and periods of deeper gloom; there may have been eras of more misfortune, and times of greater distress; but never in the whole history of man was there an age of such vast importance, and of such manifest transitions, in which the controllers of popular destinies were more insignificant in their talents, and more unworthy of their charge. We look around us and see elements at work of the most powerful nature, principles at work of the most cogent force, and passions aroused of the strongest description; but those who are doomed to " ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm" are partakers of little of the energy of the time, and are feeble instruments in feeble hands. It is indeed marvellous to behold, at a period when mighty interests are at stake and mighty minds are wanted to uphold them, the great intellectual lords of the creation, excluded by a faction from influence and authority, and excluded thus in order to keep in positions they are not qualified to fill the trembling puppets of a corrupt court. We -much doubt if there be now a man in Britain of acknowledged mental superiority — if there be a single man whose name will float down the rushing stream of time, who possesses any direct influence on the national councils, or any weight in the management of public affairs.