Particularly during the last hundred years of our modern age sagacious and sober-minded men have made heroic efforts to throw real light upon the enigmatic connections between spirit and matter, between the inward and the outward, between mental activity and bodily functions. A more naturalistic line of philosophical approach towards the problems of the Psyche was destined to be made by modern psychology. By way of example, and in order to clarify the general trend, as well as the general findings, we wish to follow some pertinent reasonings by William James and discuss their import relative to our present topic.
While James was Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, he was called upon to deliver one of the recently instituted Ingersoll Lectures on Human Immortality. Soon afterwards his lecture was published, and in 1899 there even appeared a second edition. Copies of that edition are extremely rare, but particularly interesting owing to a special preface the author has inserted. We have had the good luck of finding a copy of it in the Oslo University Library, and we want to discuss its contents at some length from our particular viewpoint.
James starts by expressing his regrets that the task of giving this lecture has been assigned to him, among all men. It was a sort of purely ex officio assignment, he thinks. For he must confess that his own feelings about immortality have never been of the keenest order, whereas there are men and women for whom the hereafter is a pungent craving.
As we may remember, James" first connection with Harvard University was in the capacity of a physiological expert. And certainly nothing could be more natural than his starting out with some psycho-physiological remarks in a lecture of this kind. He speaks about the absolute dependence of our spiritual life, as we know it here, upon the brain. He mentions the current idea that our inner life is nothing but a function of that famous "grey matter" of our cerebral convolutions. And "how can that function possibly persist after its organ has undergone decay?" The great psycho-physiological formula seems to be absolutely watertight: Thought is a function of the brain.
But here James adds something. He suddenly asks if there is only one kind of functional dependence? The psychologist commonly thinks of just one kind. And that one seems to cut off, inexorably, every hope of human immortality. He invariably thinks in terms of a productive function. When he says: "Thought is a function of the brain", then this is to him almost as if he said: "Steam is a function of the tea-kettle", or "Power is a function of the moving waterfall". In other words, the material objects in question have the function of inwardly creating or engendering their effects. Hence the author's term: a productive function.
In clear opposition to this category, William James introduces that of a transmissive function. He chooses the illustrative example of organ music. The keys of the organ successively open the various pipes and let the wind of the air-chest escape in various ways. The air is not engendered in the organ. The organ proper is only an apparatus for letting portions of the air from the air-chest loose upon the world in those peculiarly limited shapes.
So James" thesis is this: in our case--the case of "thoughts being the function of the brain"--we should be perfectly entitled to consider a similar permissive or transmissive function.
Before we go on exposing James" transmission theory in more detail, we want to insert a very important fact. The author has, throughout, placed himself at the ordinary dualistic point of view of natural science. According to this, mental facts are assumed to be made up of one kind of "stuff" or substance; physical facts are made up of another kind; and the two are entirely separate and heterogeneous. It is, indeed, very interesting to note that William James, with his exceptionally open mind, admits the possibility of solving some of the problems that seem insoluble when propounded in dualistic terms. He knows, for instance, the heterodox ideas of an absolute phenomenism, which does not suppose such a dualism to be ultimate. So far, however, he remains at the conventional dualistic assumption. And, in harmony with that, he can see only two really different sorts of dependence of our mind on our brain:
1) The brain "brings into being" ("produces") the very stuff of consciousness of which our mind consists.
2) Consciousness pre-exists as an entity, and the various brains give to it its various special forms.
In fact, it is just to the latter of these two possibilities that he gives full attention in his Ingersoll Lecture. And certainly he does a good job at making it appear--if not superior to the old "production" theory, considered from the point of view of scientific reasonability--so at least perfectly on a par with it. He knows full well that the only advantage the production theory really has, is the fact that it happens to be more popular. It is "not a jot more simple or credible, in itself, than any other conceivable theory" (William James, Human Immortality, 1899, two supposed objections to the doctrine, p. 22.) He agrees that the production of such a thing as consciousness in the brain is nothing less than a paradox, a stumbling-block to nature--"the absolute world-enigma" (p. 21).
Into the mode of production of steam in a tea-kettle we have conjectural insight, for the terms that change are physically homogeneous one with another, and we can easily imagine the case to consist of nothing but alterations of molecular motion. But in the production of consciousness by the brain, the terms are heterogeneous natures altogether; and as far as our understanding goes, it is as great a miracle as if we said, Thought is "spontaneously generated", or "created out of nothing". (pp. 21-22)
We shall not go into more detail in the author's exposition than we think indispensable for our subsequent discussion. But that discussion will be of great importance to our special presentation of the essential trends in spiritualist anthropology during this last century of our Occidental culture.
According to James" theory of a permissive function, the brain is not a generator of consciousness. Brains are rather comparable to domes of transparent material, variously coloured and of varying opacity. Toward such a dome the full super-solar blaze of a sort of pre-existing consciousness of the universe may be imagined to flow. Though opaque enough as a general rule, the glass of that dome could at certain times and places grow sufficiently transparent to permit certain beams to pierce through into this sublunary world:
Glows of feeling, glimpses of insight, and streams of knowledge and perception float into our finite world. ...As the white radiance comes through the dome, with all sorts of staining and distortion imprinted on it by the glass, ... even so the genuine matter of reality, the life of souls, as it is in its fullness, will break through our several brains into this world in all sorts of restricted forms, and with all the imperfections and queernesses that characterize our individualities here below. (pp. 16-17)
The barrier of obstructiveness he speaks about has something in common with the psycho-physical threshold Fechner had already introduced by that time. It may be imagined to rise and fall alternatingly. When the brain is in full activity, it sinks so low that a comparative flood of spiritual energy pours over. At other times only dream-like waves of thought are permitted to get by. And then finally there comes a day, as we all well know, when the brains stops its functions altogether. Then that "special stream of consciousness" will vanish entirely "from this natural world".
But the sphere of being that supplied the consciousness would still be intact; and in that more real world with which, even whilst here, it was continuous, the consciousness might, in ways unknown to us, continue still.
We pointed out above that James" speculations are entirely based upon the ground of conventional dualist views which have moulded both philosophy and science in our culture. Small wonder, then, that even his philosophical theory of a transmissive brain function immediately leads our thoughts back to Platonic idealism. To be sure, platonism considers the whole world of natural experience as nothing but a "time-mask, shattering or refracting the one infinite Thought, which is the sole reality, into those millions of finite streams of consciousness known to us as our private selves" (pp. 15-16).
And what about the "pre-existence" of a continuous wave of consciousness flowing out from a sort of "mother-sea" of a transcendental world? To be sure, William James had no reason to be astonished when his critical audience came to him complaining that this seemed more like the pantheistic idea of human souls surviving in the "soul of the world" than the Christian idea of immortality, which inevitably implies a totally individual survival, such as quite ordinary men and women are able to appreciate.
In that preface to his second edition, it is true, the author meets these objections by retorting that one may, of course, feel free to conceive the "mental world behind the veil" in as individualistic a form as one pleases, without any detriment to the general scheme by which the brain is represented as a transmissive organ" (Ibid., Preface, p. VII).
So an emphatic effort is made to reassume readers who may happen to be of a more individualistic mould: that "larger" and "truer" personality of ours, already having its full reality behind the scene, and destined to procure continuity to us when the vicissitudes of this mundane life are happily brought to an end, has little to fear in reality. That precious identity which we feel we cannot do without, still has a genuine possibility of being safeguarded.
In other words, for that grey and comfortless ocean of a world-mind, William James has been generous enough to substitute another transcendental consciousness far more in keeping with the temperaments of common people--we are almost tempted to say a transcendental consciousness specially devised and custom-tailored, as it were, to suit the capricious tastes of incurable individualists.
But does he really satisfy those who were complaining that they did not find "the Christian idea of immortality"?
Now this is not yet the part of our work in which we examine, from our totality viewpoint, the trends of Christian anthropology, as compared to Christianity's great rival in the Western World: pagan idealism. In this present volume we rather limit ourselves to a general portrayal of the character of dualism in our civilization, its rise into secular power and its changing forms in the history of Western thought. This is, in a way, just a preparation for finally presenting the main clashes in the battle between the giants at actual grips with each other.
But already the time is suitable for calling the reader's attention to a significant general fact: the original and genuinely Christian idea of a survival distinguishes itself most strikingly from the one currently prevailing in religious as well as philosophical circles of Western Christendom.
James obviously alludes to some general trends of popular belief in this Hellenized world culture when he claims that even "common sense believes in realities behind the veil". 78
If a man like Feuerbach had been able to overhear his remark, he "would have turned in his grave", as the saying goes, wondering greatly what kind of "common sense" William James could be talking about here. In fact, Feuerbach had devoted considerable study to the anthropological views of "common folks". He particularly refers to the ideas about death current among primitive peoples. And he certainly does not think them devoid of "common sense". He preferably goes all the way back to those who have not yet been contaminated in their natural way of thinking by the vitiating influence of dualistic thought patterns. These most unsophisticated population groups do know a life. And they do know a reality. But certainly not "behind the veil". If their imagination is sound, it does not visualize any automatic survival of a bodiless soul. These sober-minded realists believed one thing about death: when a man dies he dies, body and soul! (cfr. Feuerbach, Die Unsterblichkeitsfrage vom Standpunkt der Anthropologie, 1938)
But both Feuerbach and James are victims of a serious mistake when they try to deal with the Christian beliefs regarding death and immortality. Their confusion is not a rare one, by the way: they stand in front of Christendom, and think they have to do with Christianity. The error is understandable and excusable. But its effects are no less deplorable for that matter.
Let us concentrate our attention again on James" awkward case. He thinks he has suggested a solution which may be perfectly well adapted to the peculiar needs of the Christian spirit as well. He sincerely imagines that his speculative theory of a survival of the "transmissive function" type may be brought beautifully in accordance with a genuinely Christian pattern of thought and sentiment. How does this come to pass?
The reason is simple: he does not look to the Bible for patterns of the Christian religion. He bases his knowledge on Christendom, i. e. what he has observed in our modern civilization. And then he draws conclusions of analogy which he believes to remain valid for people of a civilization fundamentally different from ours. We try to show in our Christian anthropology to what extent the children of Hebraic civilization--who were also the founders of the first Christian congregation--happened to be entirely incapable of thinking and feeling in harmony with any schema of thought and feeling such as that to which a forthcoming Occidental anthropology was destined to adhere.
We should not forget one thing: those natural children of a Hebrew culture were instrumental in handing down to us almost every written page of the Old Testament. More than that: genuine Jews, men of a thorough Jewish heritage, were the writers of almost every chapter of the New Testament as well. Indeed there is no sign that these men, laying the scriptural foundation for our Christian creed, had in any way been exposed to anthropological views inherent in the weird speculations of pagan philosophy.
So when we stop to look at the basic conceptions of man in death, handed down as an anthropological legacy to the Christian Church, we have no reason to be astonished at their realistic acceptance of the simple testimony of their common senses: when a man dies, he dies. Death is a serious matter, a realistic matter, which should not be explained away through spiritualistic tricks of subterfuge. The child of realism has established his invincible fact: men do die.
So what about the gospel message of hope, the promise of eternal life, according to full scriptural evidence? Could that bear any sentimental subterfuges of the spiritualistic type? Could it dare to break the customary trend of full realism found in fundamental childlikeness? No. Even the doctrine of salvation had to follow the pattern of popular plainness and straightforwardness. The hope of salvation and eventual survival was bound to be proclaimed in terms of the plainest monism: an unbroken human reality. There was no choice but to adopt the expression of a literal resurrection; that is the resurrection of man in his common sense totality. And common sense has never known any man whose body was ever separated from his soul.
So let us be realistic as well: the immortality William James has shown to be theoretically possible within the framework of the current dualist conceptions, favoured by traditional Western philosophy, and even by Western science in many ways, may be anything you like but it is not Christian.
By the way, James openly admits that himself in the Preface to which we have called our reader's attention. His whole trend of ideas in the Ingersoll Lecture rather seems to have affinities with pre-existence and with possible re-incarnation, and those trends, we know, have no birth-right whatsoever in the true realms of Christianity. We have also tried to demonstrate that it is extremely difficult to reconcile them with ideas of true individuality within any system of thought.
But of course William James is not the one to be blamed. He has done everything he promised to do in his lecture. He did not promise to show the possibility of a Christian form of immortality within the framework of traditional dualist thinking, fortunately for him and his fine reputation for logical consistency! For that immortality does not exist there at all.
On the other hand, he has rendered a valuable enough service. He has given new confirming evidence to an important fact: within that same dualistic framework of conventional science and philosophy there are invariably two possibilities presenting themselves, and one is as good (or as bad) as the other.
First there is a "solution" suggested by radical materialism. And if we persist in imagining that it is a particularly plausible, simple and reasonable one, then this certainly is not the fault of William James.
Secondly there is its diametrical opposite, viz. a radical idealism. In logical content, the one matches the other.
Our point here is merely that there exist two highly diverging trends, of which both base themselves on a foundation of dualism. The unsympathizing monist viewing the historical spectacle of that dualism would probably say there is a constant falling from one ditch into the other. So dualism does not even manage to maintain a minimum of peace and wholeness within its own borders.
To sum up, we might perhaps say only this so far: dualistic thinking in our culture has made innumerable attempts to seize the reality of human life or the human soul. But as far as this thinking strove valiantly to remain logically consistent within its own premises and its proper postulates, it invariably seemed bound to end up in some kind of function theory. To the materialist dualist, human consciousness, in its last analysis, tended to present itself as some sort of productive function. To the idealistic dualist, the point of arrival was generally something quite, reminiscent of the transmissive function which William James has suggested as a logical theoretical alternative.
By way of conclusion, we cannot avoid briefly considering how those two mutually diverging aspects of the function theory compare to a third alternative. For there is a third alternative. That is as sure as the fact that there is always an alternative to dualism. We have called this special anthropology the perfectly naive, or the perfectly childlike. But does the typical child have an anthropology of his own, then? If so, what are his "anthropological views" like, after all?
Suppose that child has made the sad discovery one day that his mother is dead. (We all use that straightforward term without any euphemistic circumlocutions in everyday life, don't we?) Let us even take the case that he has personally observed her being torn to pieces and thrown into a hole in the earth where there is no opportunity to doubt that her remains are gradually, but totally, decomposing. Well, will that child--of his own accord--hit upon the curious idea that his mother is only apparently dead? Hardly. Will he, in his imagination, divide her being into two different parts, of which he capriciously disengages one saying: "That part of my mother, at least, is not dead." Never.
Or let us take his experience with a living person. He sees some man acting in a reasonable way. Will his own conclusion, as an observer, immediately be: "The brain of Mr. So-and-So certainly produces reason." By no means. At least not if that strange habit of abstraction has not been insistently suggested to him by a surrounding culture penetrated by dualism. On the contrary, he will think: Mr. So-and-So is reasonable.
But how can even an adult, say a stern psycho-physiologist with views of true totality, be imagined as giving himself up to the dissecting processes of modern analytical psycho-physiology? Would he not simply have too much confidence in the world of his immediate observations? And what would he immediately observe? Just inward and outward phenomena accompanying each other, internal experiences and external manifestations wandering harmoniously hand in hand--nothing else. This was obviously, to a large extent, exactly the deepest conviction of William James:
In strict science we can only write down the bare fact of concomitance, and all talk about either production or transmission, as the mode of taking place, is pure superadded hypothesis, and metaphysical hypothesis at that, for we can frame no more notion of the details on the one alternative than on the other. Ask for any information of the exact process either of transmission or of production, and science confesses that her imagination is bankrupt. She has so far not the least glimmer of a conjecture or a suggestion--not even a bad verbal metaphor or pun to offer.
And have things here changed very much since the days of William James? Do we have a lot of factual knowledge today about the fine connections between body and mind? Do we really know the mysterious paths of human consciousness any better than our forebears did?
There is much reason to fear that an equally sincere answer today would be very much the same: ignoramus et ignorabim.