Fashionable Philosophy | Page 5

than humanity has already got in it,
unless you are to look to some other source for it.
Coldwaite. Why, mayn't it evolve from itself?
Germsell. How can it evolve without a propulsive force behind it? The
thing is too palpable an absurdity to need argument. You can no more
fix limits to the origin of force than you can destroy its persistency.
Lord Fondleton [_aside_]. That seems to me one of those sort of things
no fellow can understand.
Germsell. All you can say of it is that it is a conditioned effect of an
unconditioned cause. That no idea or feeling arises, save as a result of
some physical force expended in producing it, is fast becoming a
commonplace of science; and whoever duly weighs the evidence will
see that nothing but an overwhelming bias in favour of a preconceived
theory can explain its non-acceptance. I think my friend Mr Herbert
Spencer has demonstrated this conclusively.
Coldwaite. Pardon me; do I understand you to say that the mental
process which enabled Mr Spencer to elaborate his system of
philosophy, or that the profound emotion which finds its expression in
a love for humanity, are the result of physical force alone?
Germsell. He says so himself, and he ought to know. His whole system
of philosophy is nothing more nor less than the result of the liberation
of certain forces produced by chemical action in the brain.

Drygull. Then, if I understand you rightly, if the chemical changes
which have been taking place for some years past in his brain had
liberated a different set of forces, we should have had altogether a
different philosophy.
Germsell. The chemical changes would in that case have been different.
Drygull. But the changes must be produced by forces acting on them.
Germsell. Exactly: a force which has its source in the Unknowable
produces a certain chemical action in the brain by which it becomes
converted into thought or emotion, into love or philosophy, into art or
religion, as the case may be: what the nature of that love or philosophy,
or art or religion, may be, must depend entirely on the nature of the
chemical change.
Lord Fondleton [aside to Mrs Gloring]. I feel the most delightful
chemical changes taking place now in my brain, dear Mrs Gloring. May
I explain to you the exquisite nature of the forces that are being
liberated, and which produce emotions of the most tender character.
Lady Fritterly [_sharply_]. What are you saying, Lord Fondleton?
Lord Fondleton. Ahem--I was saying--ahem--I was saying that we shall
be having some Yankee inventing steam thinking-mills and galvanic
loving- batteries soon. What a lot of wear and tear it would save! I
should go about covered with a number of electric love-wires for the
force to play upon.
Fussle. I think this matter wants clearing up, Mr Germsell. Why don't
you write a book on mental and emotional physics?
Mr Rollestone. I would venture with great diffidence to remark that the
confusion seems to me to arise from the limit we attach to the meaning
of the word employed. It may be quite true that no idea or emotion can
exist except as the result of physical force; but it is also true that its
effect must be conditioned on the quality of the force. There is as wide
a difference between the physical forces operant in the brain, and which

give rise to ideas, and those which move a steam-engine, as there is
between mind and matter as popularly defined. Both, as Mr Germsell
will admit, are conditioned manifestations of force; but the one
contains a vital element in its dynamism which the other does not. You
may apply as much physical force by means of a galvanic battery to a
dead brain as you please, but you can't strike an idea out of it; and this
vital force, while it is "conditioned force," like light and heat, differs in
its mode of manifestation from every other manifestation of force, even
more than they do from each other, in that it possesses a potency
inherent to it, which they have not, and this potency it is which creates
emotion and generates ideas. The fallacy which underlies the whole of
this system of philosophy is contained in the assumption that there is
only one description of physical force in nature.
Germsell. No more there is. Why, Mr Spencer says that the law of
metamorphosis which holds among the physical forces, holds equally
between them and the mental forces; but mark you, what is the grand
conclusion at which he arrives? I happen to remember the passage:
"How this metamorphosis takes place; how a force existing, as motion,
heat, or light, can become a mode of consciousness; how it is possible
for aerial