Mind and Motion and Monism | Page 8

in concluding, if we did not happen to know so much about the matter as we do, that the University sermon is produced by the vibration of bells in the tower of St. Mary's Church, so we may be similarly wrong if we were definitely to conclude that the sermon is produced by the vibration of a number of little nerve-cells in the brain of the preacher.
Now, if time permitted, and if I supposed that you would all care to go with me into matters of some abstruseness, I could certainly prove that whatever the connexion between body and mind may be, we have the best possible reasons for concluding that it is not a causal connexion. These reasons are, of course, extra-physiological; but they are not on this account less conclusive. Within the limits of a lecture, however, I can only undertake to give an outline sketch of what I take to be the overwhelming argument against materialism.
We have first the general fact that all our knowledge of motion, and so of matter, is merely a knowledge of the modifications of mind. That is to say, all our knowledge of the external world--including the knowledge of our own brains--is merely a knowledge of our own mental states. Let it be observed that we do not even require to go so far as the irrefutable position of Berkeley, that the existence of an external world without the medium of mind, or of being without knowing, is inconceivable. It is enough to take our stand on a lower level of abstraction, and to say that whether or not an external world can exist apart from mind in any absolute or inconceivable sense, at any rate it cannot do so for us. We cannot think any of the facts of external nature without presupposing the existence of a mind which thinks them; and therefore, so far at least as we are concerned, mind is necessarily prior to everything else. It is for us the only mode of existence which is real in its own right; and to it, as to a standard, all other modes of existence which may be inferred must be referred. Therefore, if we say that mind is a function of motion, we are only saying, in somewhat confused terminology, that mind is a function of itself.
Such, then, I take to be a general refutation of materialism. To use but a mild epithet, we must conclude that the theory is unphilosophical, seeing that it assumes one thing to be produced by another thing, in spite of an obvious demonstration that the alleged effect is necessarily prior to its cause. Such, I say, is a general refutation of materialism. But this is far from being all. 'Motion,' says Hobbes, 'produceth nothing but motion;' and yet he immediately proceeds to assume that in the case of the brain it produces, not only motion, but mind. He was perfectly right in saying that with respect to its movements the animal body resembles an engine or a watch; and if he had been acquainted with the products of higher evolution in watch-making, he might with full propriety have argued, for instance, that in the compensating balance, whereby a watch adjusts its own movements in adaptation to external changes of temperature, a watch is exhibiting the mechanical aspect of volition. And, similarly, it is perhaps possible to conceive that the principles of mechanism might be more and more extended in their effects, until, in so marvellously perfected a structure as the human brain, all the voluntary movements of the body might be originated in the same mechanical manner as are the compensating movements of a watch; for this, indeed, as we have seen, is no more than happens in the case of all the nerve-centres other than the cerebral hemispheres. If this were so, motion would be producing nothing but motion, and upon the subject of brain-action there would be nothing further to say. Without consciousness I should be delivering this lecture; without consciousness you would be hearing it; and all the busy brains in this University would be conducting their researches, or preparing for their examinations, mindlessly. Strange as such a state of things might be, still motion would be producing nothing but motion; and, therefore, if there were any mind to contemplate the facts, it would encounter no philosophical paradox: it would merely have to conclude that such were the astonishing possibilities of mechanism. But, as the facts actually stand, we find that this is not the case. We find, indeed, that up to a certain level of complexity mechanism alone is able to perform all the compensations or adjustments which are performed by the animal body; but we also find that beyond this level such compensations or adjustments are never performed