The Mind and the Brain | Page 4

the other, that we shall follow; and we will
commence by the study of matter.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: L'Ame et la Corps.--Disagreeable as it is to alter an
author's title, the words "Soul and Body" had to be abandoned because
of their different connotation in English. The title "Mind and Body"
was also preoccupied by Bain's work of that name in this series. The
title chosen has M. Binet's approval.--ED.]
[Footnote 2: Étude experímentale de l'Intelligence. Paris: Schleicher.]
CHAPTER II
OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS IS ONLY
SENSATIONS
Of late years numerous studies have been published on the conception
of matter, especially by physicists, chemists, and mathematicians.
Among these recent contributions to science I will quote the articles of
Duhem on the Evolution of Mechanics published in 1903 in the Revue
générale des Sciences, and other articles by the same author, in 1904, in
the Revue de Philosophie. Duhem's views have attracted much attention,
and have dealt a serious blow at the whole theory of the mechanics of
matter. Let me also quote that excellent work of Dastre, La Vie et la
Mort, wherein the author makes so interesting an application to biology
of the new theories on energetics; the discussion between Ostwald and
Brillouin on matter, in which two rival conceptions find themselves
engaged in a veritable hand-to-hand struggle (Revue générale des
Sciences, Nov. and Dec. 1895); the curious work of Dantec on les Lois
Naturelles, in which the author ingeniously points out the different

sensorial districts into which science is divided, although, through a
defect in logic, he accepts mechanics as the final explanation of things.
And last, it is impossible to pass over, in silence, the rare works of Lord
Kelvin, so full, for French readers, of unexpected suggestions, for they
show us the entirely practical and empirical value which the English
attach to mechanical models.
My object is not to go through these great studies in detail. It is the part
of mathematical and physical philosophers to develop their ideas on the
inmost nature of matter, while seeking to establish theories capable of
giving a satisfactory explanation of physical phenomena. This is the
point of view they take up by preference, and no doubt they are right in
so doing. The proper rôle of the natural sciences is to look at
phenomena taken by themselves and apart from the observer.
My own intention, in setting forth these same theories on matter, is to
give prominence to a totally different point of view. Instead of
considering physical phenomena in themselves, we shall seek to know
what idea one ought to form of their nature when one takes into account
that they are observed phenomena. While the physicist withdraws from
consideration the part of the observer in the verification of physical
phenomena, our rôle is to renounce this abstraction, to re-establish
things in their original complexity, and to ascertain in what the
conception of matter consists when it is borne in mind that all material
phenomena are known only in their relation to ourselves, to our bodies,
our nerves, and our intelligence.
This at once leads us to follow, in the exposition of the facts, an order
which the physicist abandons. Since we seek to know what is the
physical phenomenon we perceive, we must first enunciate this
proposition, which will govern the whole of our discussion: to wit--
Of the outer world we know nothing except our sensations.
Before demonstrating this proposition, let us develop it by an example
which will at least give us some idea of its import. Let us take as
example one of those investigations in which, with the least possible
recourse to reasoning, the most perfected processes of observation are

employed, and in which one imagines that one is penetrating almost
into the very heart of nature. We are, let us suppose, dissecting an
animal. After killing it, we lay bare its viscera, examine their colour,
form, dimensions, and connections; then we dissect the organs in order
to ascertain their internal nature, their texture, structure, and function;
then, not content with ocular anatomy, we have recourse to the
perfected processes of histology: we take a fragment of the tissues
weighing a few milligrammes, we fix it, we mount it, we make it into
strips of no more than a thousandth of a millimetre thick, we colour it
and place it under the microscope, we examine it with the most
powerful lenses, we sketch it, and we explain it. All this work of
complicated and refined observation, sometimes lasting months and
years, results in a monograph containing minute descriptions of organs,
of cells, and of intra-cellular structures, the whole represented and
defined in words and pictures. Now, these descriptions and drawings
are the display of the various sensations which the zoologist has
experienced in the