Page:Some New Philosophical Views.djvu/18

14 "In reminiscence and imagination, we can have repetition of sensations without the events in the larger Executive-System with which they primarily occurred, and indeed they can exist along with very different events there happening. We can in dream see the sun in the sky at midnight; by means of waking fancies, we can at any time, with more or less of completeness, subjectively enjoy tastes, odours, contacts, sounds.… So little as this does the general cosmical situation necessarily avail."

"Strictly speaking, it is not the whole of the executive-operation in the volume, rate, &c., with which our consciousness arises, that connects causatively with the enlargement of efficacy giving it, but only the small differentiating quantity which heightens or abates the prior existing dynamics to just the specific volume, rate, &c., that is effective. But the intellect finds itself obliged to consider these differentiating dynamical quantities as interchangeable, since in the executive-operation itself they are simply equivalent, and subtractable and addable.… But each of them is found to be singly ineffective for conditioning consciousness."

Here, again, it is obvious that if this reasoning can be fully established, it makes a great breach in Materialism; rendering it necessary, in order to account for the human Ego and its experience, to bring in a potentiality for varying the quantity of phenomena in a way which limits physical conceptions to their own field, and adds another field beyond. The author's chapters entitled, "The Ego," and "Is there Evidence of Entity other than Matter?" contain much novel reasoning, in addition to the above. The general effect of it, though he does not utterly push home the conclusions,—always seeming to affect the reticence of an inquirer merely who only states the facts as he finds them,—is that our "egoistic-actualisation" is to be referred to a system of Mind which extends beyond the present limits of the Ego; for, as to the latter, he says the "irrationality" of some of the "happenings" of our pleasures and pains, and the persuasion we all have of possessing a physical power of interfering with material sequence, seem to intimate that a historic catastrophe has at some time befallen the egoistic consciousness of the race. I cannot follow up these matters; nor can I find space for explaining Mr. Cyples's modification of the old, commonly-adopted theory of Impression. I may add, that, as most readers who have accompanied me up to this point would very likely expect, he adopts, with respect to merely physical organization, the principle of Evolution,—remarking that, so far as concerns the development of all physiological difference, it is rational to suppose that the field of modification in the later species would be intra-uterine, not extra-uterine. His airiness in making the concession is, I suppose, explained by the fact, that it in no way affects his other main conclusions. It will give some idea of the range of the author's inquiries, if I quote the headings of a few of the chapters:—"The Emotions: their General Mode," "Conscience," "Is there a Rational Basis for Dogma?" "Hypothesis of the Soul," "The Problem of Evil," "The Organization of Experience." Incidentally, the questions of Utilitarianism, Comtism, &c., are discussed at length.

I may just note a significant side-hint which the writer throws out in inquiring into the genesis of modern scepticism. He asks, whether