The Physical Basis of Mind. George Henry Lewes
organized substance has become animal substance, and Vegetality has been developed into Animality by the addition of new factors—new complexities of the elementary forces. Many, if not most, philosophers postulate an entirely new Existence, and not simply a new Mode, to account for the manifestations of Mind; they refuse to acknowledge it to be a vital manifestation, they demand that to Life be added a separate substratum, the Soul. This is not a point to be discussed here. We may be content with the assertion that however great the phenomenal difference between Humanity and Animality (a difference we shall hereafter see to be the expression of a new factor, namely, the social factor), nevertheless the distinctive attribute of Sensibility, out of which rise Emotion and Cognition, marks the inseparable kinship of mental with vital phenomena.
Thus all the various Modes of Existence may, at least in their objective aspect, be ranged under the two divisions of Inorganic and Organic—Non-living and Living—and these are respectively the objects of the cosmological and the biological sciences.
6. The various sciences in their serial development develop the whole art of Method. Mathematics develops abstraction, deduction, and definition; Astronomy abstraction, deduction, and observation; Physics adds experiment; Chemistry adds nomenclature; Biology adds classification, and for the first time brings into prominence the important notion of conditions of existence, and the variation of phenomena under varying conditions: so that the relation of the organism to its medium is one never to be left out of sight. In Biology also clearly emerges for the first time what I regard as the true notion of causality, namely, the procession of causes—the combination of factors in the product, and not an ab extra determination of the product. In Vitality and Sensibility we are made aware that the causes are in and not outside the organism; that the organic effect is the organic cause in operation; that there is autonomy but no autocracy; the effect issues as a resultant of the co-operating conditions. In Sociology, finally, we see brought into prominence the historical conditions of existence. From the due appreciation of the conditions of existence, material and historical, we seize the true significance of the principle of Relativity.
7. Having thus indicated the series of the abstract sciences we have now to consider more closely the character of Biology. The term was proposed independently yet simultaneously in Germany and France, in the year 1802, by Treviranus and Lamarck, to express “the study of the forms and phenomena of Life, the conditions and laws by which these exist, and the causes which produce them.” Yet only of late years has it gained general acceptance in France and England. The term Cosmology, for what are usually called the Physical Sciences, has not yet come into general use, although its appropriateness must eventually secure its recognition.
Biology—the abstract science of Life—embracing the whole organic world, includes Vegetality, Animality, and Humanity; the biological sciences are Phytology, Zoölogy, and Anthropology. Each of the sciences has its cardinal divisions, statical and dynamical, namely, Morphology—the science of form—and Physiology—the science of function.
Morphology embraces—1°, Anatomy, i.e. the description of the parts then and there present in the organism; and these parts, or organs, are further described by the enumeration of their constituent tissues and elements; and of these again the proximate principles, so far as they can be isolated without chemical decomposition. 2°, Organogeny, i.e. the history of the evolution of organs and tissues.
Physiology embraces the properties and functions of the tissues and organs—the primary conditions of Growth and Development out of which rise the higher functions bringing the organism into active relation with the surrounding medium. The first group of properties and functions are called those of vegetal, or organic life; the second those of animal, or relative life.
ORGANISMS.
8. It will be needful to fix with precision the terms, Organism, Life, Property, and Function.
An organism, although usually signifying a more or less complex unity of organs, because the structures which first attracted scientific attention were all thus markedly distinguished from inorganic bodies, has by the gradual extensions of research been necessarily generalized, till it now stands for any organized substance capable of independent vitality: in other words, any substance having the specific combination of elements which manifests the serial phenomena of growth, development, and decay. There are organisms that have no differentiated organs. Thus a microscopic formless lump of semifluid jelly-like substance (Protoplasm) is called an organism, because it feeds itself, and reproduces itself. There are advantages and disadvantages in such extensions of terms. These are notable in the parallel extension of the term Life, which originally expressing only the complex activities of complex organisms, has come to express the simplest activities of protoplasm. Thus a Monad is an organism; a Cell is an organism; a Plant is an organism; a Man is an organism. And each of these organisms is said to have its Life, because
“Through all the mighty commonwealth of things
Up from the creeping worm to sovereign man”1
there is one fundamental group of conditions, one organized substance, one vitality.
Obviously this unity is an abstraction. In reality, the life manifested in the Man is not the life manifested in the Monad: he has Functions and Faculties which the Monad has no trace of; and if the two organisms have certain vital characteristics in common, this unity is only recognized in an ideal construction which lets drop all concrete differences. The Life is different when the organism is different. Hence any definition of Life would be manifestly insufficient which while it expressed the activities of the Monad left unexpressed the conspicuous and important activities of higher organisms. A sundial and a repeater will each record the successive positions of the sun in the heavens; but although both are instruments for marking time, the sundial will not do the work of the repeater; the complexity and delicacy of the watch mechanism are necessary for its more varied and delicate uses. A semifluid bit of protoplasm will feed itself; but it will not feed and sustain a complex animal; nor will it feel and think.
9. Neglect of this point has caused frequent confusion in the attempts to give satisfactory definitions. Biologists ought to have been warned by the fact that some of the most widely accepted definitions exclude the most conspicuous phenomena of Life, and are only applicable to the vegetable world, or to the vegetal processes in the animal world. A definition, however abstract, should not exclude essential characters. The general consent of mankind has made Life synonymous with Mode of Existence. By the life of an animal is meant the existence of that animal; when dead the animal no longer exists; the substances of which the organism was composed exist, but under another mode; their connexus is altered, and the organism vanishes in the alteration. It is a serious mistake to call the corpse an organism; for that special combination which constituted the organism is not present in the corpse. This misconception misleads some speculative minds into assigning life to the universe. The universe assuredly exists, but it does not live; its existence can only be identified with life, such as we observe in organisms, by a complete obliteration of the speciality which the term Life is meant to designate. Yet many have not only pleased themselves with such a conception, but have conceived the universe to be an organism fashioned, directed, and sustained by a soul like that of man—the anima mundi. This is to violate all scientific canons. The life of a plant-organism is not the same as the life of an animal-organism; the life of an animal-organism is not the same as the life of a human-organism; nor can the life of a human-organism be the same as the life of the world-organism. The unity of Existences does not obliterate the variety of Modes; yet it is the speciality of each Mode which Science investigates; to some of these Modes the term Life is consistently applied, to others not; and if we merge them all in a common term, we must then invent a new term to designate the Modes now included under Life.
10. In resisting this unwarrantable extension of the term I am not only pointing to a speculative error, but also to a serious biological error common in both spiritualist and materialist schools, namely that of assigning Life to other than organic agencies. Instead of recognizing