Mind and Motion and Monism — George John Romanes
You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : Mind and Motion and Monism Author : George John Romanes Release date : August 9, 2007 [eBook #22283] Language : English Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22283 Credits : Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net *** START OF A., LL.D., F.R.S. HONORARY FELLOW OF GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1895 Oxford HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY WORKS BY GEORGE JOHN ROMANES, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. DARWIN, AND AFTER DARWIN : an Exposition of the Darwinian Theory, and a Discussion on Post-Darwinian Questions. Part I. The Darwinian Theory. With Portrait of Darwin and 125 Illustrations. Crown 8vo , 10 s. 6 d. Part II. Post-Darwinian Questions: Heredity and Utility. Crown 8vo . AN EXAMINATION OF WEISMANNISM. Crown 8vo , 6 s. MIND AND MOTION AND MONISM. Crown 8vo . THOUGHTS ON RELIGION . Edited, with a Preface, by Charles Gore , M.A., Canon of Westminster. Crown 8vo , 4 s. 6 d. London LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. PREFACE Of the contents of this little volume the section on Mind and Motion which forms, in accordance with a suggestion of the author's, a general introduction, was delivered at Cambridge as the Rede Lecture in 1885, and was printed in the Contemporary Review for June in that year. The chapter on The World as an Eject was published, almost as it now stands, in the Contemporary Review for July, 1886. A paper on The Fallacy of Materialism , of which Mr. Romanes incorporated the more important parts in the Essay on Monism, was contributed to the Nineteenth Century for December, 1882. The rest was left in MS. and was probably written in 1889 or 1890. The subjects here discussed frequently occupied Mr. Romanes' keen and versatile mind. Had not the hand of death fallen upon him while so much of the ripening grain of his thought still remained to be finally garnered, some modifications and extensions of the views set forth in the Essay on Monism would probably have been introduced. Attention may be drawn, for example, to the sentence on p. 139 , italicized by the author himself, in which it is contended that the will as agent must be identified with the principle of Causality . I have reason to believe that the chapter on The World as an Eject would, in a final revision of the Essay as a whole, have been modified so as to lay stress on this identification of the human will with the principle of Causality in the world at large—a doctrine the relation of which to the teachings of Schopenhauer will be evident to students of philosophy. But the hand of death closed on the thinker ere his thought had received its full and ultimate expression. When in July, 1893, I received from Mr. Romanes instructions with regard to the publication of that which now goes forth to the world in his name, his end seemed very near; and he said with faltering voice, in tones the pathos of which lingers with me still, that this and much besides must, he feared, be left unfinished. He suggested that perhaps I might revise the parts in the light of the whole. But I have thought it best to leave what he had written as he wrote it, save for quite unimportant emendations, lest in revising I should cast over it the shadow of my own opinions. It only remains to add that the conclusions reached in this Essay should be studied in connection with the later Thoughts on Religion which Canon Gore has recently edited. C. Ll. M. Bristol , May, 1895. CONTENTS PAGE Mind and Motion 1 Monism 39 Introduction 41 Chapter I. Spiritualism 47 Chapter II. Materialism 55 Chapter III. Monism 79 Chapter IV. The World as an Eject 88 Chapter V. The Will in Relation To Materialism And Spiritualism 119 Chapter VI. The Will in Relation To Monism 129 MIND AND MOTION [REDE LECTURE, 1885.] The earliest writer who deserves to be called a psychologist is Hobbes; and if we consider the time when he wrote, we cannot fail to be surprised at what I may term his prevision of the most important results which have now been established by science. He was the first clearly to sound the note which has ever since constituted the bass, or fundamental tone, of scientific thought. Let us listen to it through the clear instrumentality of his own language:— 'All the qualities called sensible are, in the object which causeth them, but so many motions of the matter by which it presseth on our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they anything else but divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but motion.... The cause of sense is the external body or object, which presseth the organ proper to each sense, either immediately, as in taste and touch, or mediately, as in hearing, seeing, and smelling; which pressure, by the mediation of the nerves, and other strings and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the brain and heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour.... And because going , speaking , and the like voluntary motions, depend always upon a precedent thought of whither , which way , and what ; it is evident that the imagination [or idea] is the first internal beginning of all voluntary motion. And although unstudied men do not conceive any motion at all to be there, where the thing moved is invisible; or the space it is moved in is, for the shortness of it, insensible; yet that doth not hinder, but that such motions are. These small beginnings of motion, within the body of man, before they appear in walking, speaking, striking, and other visible actions, are commonly called ENDEAVOUR [1] .' These quotations are sufficient to show that the system of Hobbes was prophetic of a revelation a