94 



mere addition of one, two, or a thousand other material 

 elements to form a more complex molecule, could in any way 

 tend to produce a self-conscious existence." 1 Wallace is 

 even led to conclude that matter does not exist, as popularly 

 understood: it is nothing but force, and that force is, in the 

 last analysis, 'will-force'. 2 



It may be argued, however, that this view of matter and 

 motion is not at all that adopted by the Associationists in 

 general, and Spencer in particular; since here these repre- 

 sentatives of physical science are talking of a matter declared 

 to be known, while Spencer is dealing with the unknown 

 substrata of consciousness. If a 'psychical phenomenon' 

 is defined as belonging to an order of existence distinct from 

 the 'physical world', the conclusion is that the one can never 

 be derived from the other, except by way of definition, which 

 adds nothing to the solution of the question. And this 

 fatal definition brings any one, as it brought Spencer, to the 

 inevitable but forever insuperable task of obtaining the con- 

 scious from the non-conscious. 



This whole question of the material world in relation to 

 psychical phenomena has been, by the Associationists, 

 closely connected with the problem of Causality. The 

 psychologist, it is often affirmed, can only be scientifically 

 consistent, when he is prepared to seek for the cause of sen- 

 sations; and Spencer, having assumed at the start that the 

 physiological and the psychological are distinct orders, and 

 yet being desirous of including all phenomena within the 

 scope of one formula of evolution, seeks for the cause of one 

 order of existence in the other. "A perception," he says, 

 "can have in a nerve centre no definite localization. No one 

 excited fibre or cell produces consciousness of an external 

 object: the consciousness of such external object implies 

 excitement of a plexus of fibres and cells. " Besides sensations 

 (which come from external objects) we have faint copies of 

 these, known as ideas. In describing the production of these 

 ideas, Spencer has recourse to the similarity of function which 

 he attempts to show to exist between the functions of the 

 medulla-oblongata, the cerebrum and cerebellum, and those of 

 a musical instrument mechanically operated, as, for example, 

 a pianola. "We see, in short," he concludes, "that the me- 

 dulla-oblongata (with its subordinate structures), while 

 played upon through the senses by external objects, is simul- 

 taneously played upon by the cerebrum and cerebellum; so 



O.C. p. 365. 

 'O.C. p. 62. 



