Conscious Matter; or, The Physical and the Psychical Universally in Causal Connection

Abstract

AS the title of this little work sufficiently indicates, the aim of its writer is to furnish a scientific basis for the theory of materialism in the region of mind. It is doubtful whether at this time of day anything very original can be said upon this topic, but Mr. Duncan has succeeded in placing some of the facts in a stronger light than previous writers. The facts to which we allude are those which he calls the “analogies” between forces and feelings. Up to a certain point it is by every one recognised that there is some quantitative relation between neurosis and psychosis; mental processes are universally known to entail wear and tear of cerebral substance. Mr. Stewart Duncan traces this quantitative relation as much into detail as he can, by setting forth in a series of twelve “analogies” the resemblances between forces and feelings. These “analogies” are far from being unopen to criticism severally; but here we shall merely mention what they are, as there is more important criticism to apply to them collectively. The analogies are that feeling and force are each without extension, both related to matter, have “plurality predicable of them as respects their locality,” are diverse, have time-extension or duration, also the quality of degree and capability of being compounded or combined, are respectively transmutable inter se, &c. Doubtless, as Mr. Duncan observes, such analogies, or, as we should prefer to call them, parallelisms, might be largely multiplied; but what would any number of such parallelisms prove? Not, surely, what Mr. Duncan desires them to prove, viz. that forces stand to feelings in the relation of causes to effects. So far as the tracing of such mere parallelisms is concerned, we might almost as reasonably conclude the recent earthquake at Chio to have been the cause of this review, in that they each possess extension, have diverse parts, and so on. In order to establish a relation of causality we should require to show that the observed parallelism is due to that relation; we cannot argue from the observed parallelism as itself sufficient proof of such relation. Were this not so, there would be no need for Mr. Duncan or any one else to write a book on “The Physical and Psychical Universally in Causal Connection”; for as the fact of a constant parallelism between neural processes and mental processes is now no longer an open question, were mere parallelism sufficient to establish proof of causality, materialism would now be a demonstrated theory.

Conscious Matter; or, The Physical and the Psychical Universally in Causal Connection.

By Stewart Duncan. (London: David Bogue, 1881.)