Page:Some New Philosophical Views.djvu/17

Rh cerebral fibres must "repeat the activity they underwent in the original act of experience." He quotes, in support of this, the curious facts witnessed in persons suffering from aphasia. It is here that he puts forward the technical term which has so staggered some of his critics,—"The Neurotic Diagram;" for he not only assumes that the cerebral fibres have, from moment to moment of our consciousness, to be acting in a specific grouping or configuration, but he intimates that, in reminiscent consciousness, as distinguished from consciousness which is being sustained by peripheral impression, a "duplicated set of fibres" and an arrangement of "central molecules" are brought into play. If Mr. Cyples has been inside his own brain, or anybody else's, when it was in full activity, and has seen all this going forward, well and good. But, in reading this chapter, and also other portions of the work, I was again and again reminded of Mr. Lewes's remark, that there is a strong tendency in some modern thinkers to assume a much more detailed knowledge of cerebral operations than it is possible for them or for anybody, really to possess in the present state of physiological science. It is true that Mr. Cyples may say that in a case where experiment is so greatly barred as it is in the case of the brain, hypothesis is the only tool left for an inquirer to work with. But the fact of your grounds being perforce conjectural, is scarcely a justification for hurrying to positive conclusions.

A great part of the author's big volume yet remains unnoticed. So far, not much more than its psychology has been dealt with. It would require another paper to give a detailed account of its philosophical doctrine. The author is a Realist in so far that he recognizes a physical system which exists independently of our consciousness, and gives, indeed, the occasions for the consciousness; but he says that this physical world is only "intellectually inferred" by us, not sensorially cognized. In his peculiar terminology, all that we know of it is that it is an "Executive System," extending beyond ourselves, in connection with some of whose events, and only with some of them, sensations, &c., happen to us. But all our consciousness, he resolutely argues, is, whenever it arises, so much addition to the sum-total of Being otherwise existing; neither the beginnings nor the ceasings of consciousness having any effect quantitatively upon the operations of the Executive System of Nature. A little space must be made for extracts, just to hint the author's arguments:—

"In all the brain-activities accompanying our experience, the physical and chemical changes go on in the same modes, observe the same order, and give the same quantitative results as if no sensation, thinking, and feeling had arisen."

"Motion-in-general does not condition consciousness; the movements along with which our experience occurs have to be specific ones. They must be of certain rates, volumes, &c."

"Either the added event of our consciousness is given by an increase of efficacy which developes in or along with Matter's activity within our bodily frame, or else it is assignable to such an increase occurring along with Matter's activity in certain larger, extra-bodily situations of the Cosmical Executive-System, operating at the same time on, in, and through the body."