Problems of Metaphysics

Ontological Problem

On the Essence of the Soul: Its Metaphysical Structure and Its Seat in the Body

In realms untouched by materialism, the prevailing conception of the metaphysical essence of the soul is as follows: the soul is a simple, non-extended, immaterial substance; as such, it is absolutely constant and eternal; it serves as the bearer of the forces through which it engenders the phenomena of consciousness; finally, it has its seat in a specific point of the brain, from which it exchanges actions with the body. This view, which dominated general education during the Enlightenment through the philosophy of Wolff, as shown by Wundt, traces back to Descartes, whose philosophy in this regard, as well as in others, proved remarkably resilient despite the influences of Spinoza and Kant. Its advantage lies in its closeness to ordinary understanding, with its straightforward concepts.

Along with Fechner and Wundt, I adhere to the belief that this view is neither valid nor even merely possible. There is no soul substance existing independently, constant and immaterial. The existence of the soul is entirely encapsulated by its psychic life; cease the psychic phenomena, and nothing substantial remains. The psychic atom is merely a remnant of a bygone metaphysics.

The concept of substance in general will be addressed through epistemological considerations later. For now, I shall make the following observation. The immaterial and enduring substance of the soul is not an object of immediate perception—neither internal nor external. In self-consciousness, only changing states and phenomena are given; the enduring substance is mentally appended. What compels this? Its advocates assert that immediate logical necessity compels it; sensation, feeling, and thought cannot exist by themselves; like motion, they imply a bearer: this is substance. Yet, the phenomena of consciousness cannot be associated with corporeal substance; attempt to link any feeling or representation with any atom or group of atoms in internal contemplation, and you will sense the impossibility of this; the one cannot be connected with the extended and divisible. Therefore, as a bearer of psychic life, one must posit a non-extended or simple substance; only in this way does its internal unity become understandable and conceivable.

That one cannot imagine the connection of feeling or thought with an extended body is undoubtedly true. But perform the same experiment with non-extended substance; attempt to vividly reproduce in your mind an image, for instance, of the Tower of Babel or Darwinism and its relation to religion and morality, within or on some non-extended substance. I believe you will feel an equally profound impossibility. Perhaps one might say: such a relation is not visually clear, but only conceivable; non-extended substance itself is inaccessible to visual representation. In that case, I would very much like to know what constitutes the conceivable content of this substantiality. Is it found in its immateriality and simplicity? But these are merely bare negations, something that repels yet assigns nothing positively; one cannot create anything real from negations. Or does this content lie precisely in sensation or thought itself? However, sensation and thought would then have to be mere simple accidents, the transient activity of the soul’s substance; we wish to know what it is in itself. Or does the essence of substance lie in its accidents? In that case, we are merely repeating ourselves, affirming precisely that the essence of the soul resides in its life, in the very feelings and thoughts. Or is the substantial something unknown, eternally remaining behind the scenes, impervious to definition either through contemplation or thought—a kind of “thing-in-itself”? Then I would very much like to know what such an utterly unknown something could do to bring forth the reality of feelings and thoughts if they themselves cannot be real by themselves. Thus, we arrive at the understanding that we know: the soul is a multiplicity of psychic phenomena, bound in consciousness in a manner that resists further definition; of any substantiality beyond, behind, or beneath representations and feelings, we know nothing and can say nothing.

One cannot expect that such reasoning could convince sound human judgment and its metaphysicians of the superfluity of soul substance. They will continue to assert: yet, feeling cannot exist or be conceived without someone who feels it, just as representation presupposes a substantial subject that possesses and represents it. In this, they are partly right; they simply misunderstand their own requirement and seek an impossible and futile satisfaction in the substantial. The true meaning of this requirement lies in the fact that representation or feeling never occurs in isolation, but only in the collective connection of the entire psychic life; here it has its place in reality and belongs to it, as a necessary member of this connection. And there is no obstacle whatsoever to remaining within ordinary language, saying: the soul has representations and thoughts, feelings and impulses move within it. We imply by this what the whole world actually expresses by it: namely, that certain thoughts and feelings emerge in a specific connection of some individual psychic life and that their consciousness includes an awareness of this connection. Similarly, nothing prevents us from stating: the soul is, with respect to individual phenomena, a substance that produces and bears them; of course, without this entire psychic life, this individual sensation or representation would not exist in reality; the whole is, in relation to the individual, just as something enduring. If, however, one thinks that this whole also requires a bearer for its anchoring, in some immaterial and similar point of substance, so as not to fall into emptiness, I shall respond with a question: does this substantial not also require a bearer in turn? It seems very much so; how Herbart’s “real” could assert itself in reality has always remained the greatest mystery of its metaphysics to me. If one must find a “bearer” for psychic life, one must seek it not in some isolated inert lump of reality that is presumed to be absolute, but in that encompassing whole from which, on which, and in which it exists: God is substance, and apart from Him, there is no substance in the final and absolute sense—there is nothing that can exist and be understood by itself. Those who cannot part with the psychic substantial must ask themselves: how do they conceive of God? As a simple substance that also has its seat in some point of the world, just as the soul has it in one point of the body? Or is such an attachment to the “real” unnecessary for the divine being? In that case, it will not be necessary for human psychic life either. However, we shall have to return to this later.

Here I would like to note the following. The wooden mental atom of common opinion corresponds to an equally wooden conception of the latter regarding the structure of matter: it is as if matter consists of very small, absolutely solid, immovable, inert particles, devoid of any qualitative determination; a notion that renders the idea of universal animation quite absurd: must it truly be the case that in each of these diminutive extended atoms there resides another non-extended mental atom? Indeed, this matter is no more absurd than the search for a seat for the mental atom within the infinite chaos of constantly changing atoms that compose the body. Nevertheless, I believe that this very concept of the atom holds as much or as little value as the notion of a non-extended mental substance. Natural science has as little to do with it as psychology does with the mental atom. What it presupposes are the ultimate elements from which it can derive its explanations; whether these elements are absolutely final, indivisible, internally inert, and devoid of dimensions of extension is of no concern, just as arithmetic is hardly interested in whether the units being counted are final and indivisible unities. On the contrary, it would say that nothing prevents one from considering every unity as a multiplicity in some other respect; each unit contains ten tenths, and each tenth can again be divided into ten tenths, and so on indefinitely. Thus, atoms, which natural science computes as units, may in some other context appear as highly complex, dissected systems with internal movements. The theories of modern chemists estimate the number of molecules in one cubic centimeter at twenty trillion, with a diameter of less than one millionth of a millimeter, and the weight of a single water molecule at a quarter of one quadrillionth of a gram. As we can see, once we have strayed so far from all that can be visually imagined, there is no obstacle to decomposing these parts again in a similar manner; the matter is merely whether this is necessitated by some theoretical construction of facts. Here, there is no hindrance to further division and dissection, just as there is no impediment for the astronomer to progressively expand the universe. Analysis has as much to do with the infinite as does synthesis. The atom, as an absolutely solid, inert body, belongs not to scientific inquiry but to metaphysics, and to that same inert, lazy metaphysics to which the mental substance also belongs.

From this, we shall now attempt to address the ancient question concerning the seat of the soul. First, let us clarify the meaning of this question. It is clear that, given the conception of the essence of the soul just outlined, there can be no talk of a seat in the sense of space or a location in space where it exists. Bodies occupy space and movements occur within it, but not the phenomena of consciousness; it makes no sense to say that a thought or feeling is located here or there, extending through this or that part of space. Thoughts do not reside in the brain; one could equally assert that they are found in the stomach or on the moon. One assertion is no more absurd than the other. Physiological processes occur in the brain, and nothing more. If, then, the soul is nothing other than the unity of mental life, it certainly cannot be localized in space. Therefore, the sense of the question regarding the seat of the soul can only be: with which bodily phenomena are mental phenomena associated? Previously (in Section Four), we arrived at the view that there exists a relationship of parallelism between bodily and mental phenomena; this parallelism has absolutely nothing to do with local coincidence; it merely signifies that when a specific mental process occurs, a physical process simultaneously unfolds, which can be designated as a concomitant phenomenon or as the physical equivalent of the mental. Thus, the question of the soul's seat means: what are these processes, and where do they occur: throughout the entire body, or in a part of it—the brain—or, finally, in a specific element of the brain?

For the common opinion, the closest answer is: the whole body serves as the seat of the soul; it exists everywhere in the body since the latter possesses sensation everywhere. Perhaps there is more truth in this notion than our physiologists are inclined to acknowledge. Indeed, I believe that ultimately we must arrive at it. Initially, it may seem that the facts compel a different perspective. Everyday experience, which cannot escape even the most ordinary conception, shows that different parts of the body hold varying importance for both bodily and mental life; the loss of an arm or a leg does not equate to the loss of life and does not diminish mental existence; on the contrary, the destruction of the heart or brain results in the death of the body and the cessation of mental life. Evidently, this fact has long prompted the search for a special seat of the soul in the body, specifically in these distinguished organs. The division of the very essence of the soul into various faculties, aspects, or parts according to different functions subsequently leads to their allocation across various bodily organs; in Platonic psychology, we find a clever scheme for this: the thinking principle resides in the head, the highest spiritual will in the heart, manifesting in specifically human affections, while the sensory animal impulses are placed beneath the thoracic-abdominal barrier. In more recent times, anatomical and physiological studies have led us to the now common view that mental phenomena are closely related to the nervous system, particularly to the brain. A touch to the surface of the body, physical stimuli to the sensory organs do not produce sensation immediately and directly at that very spot, as ordinary self-awareness attests; sensation arises only when the stimulus travels through undamaged nerve fibers to the brain. If the conductor is interrupted, the nerve conducting the centripetal stimulus is severed, then peripheral stimulation no longer elicits any sensation. Similarly, if the nerve connection of any limb with the central organ is interrupted, spontaneous movement ceases. Hence, it is concluded that the seat of the soul resides in the brain.

Finally, those metaphysical considerations attributing to the soul the form of a simple substance interacting with the body lead to the inclination to assign it a seat in some narrowly defined area, most likely in a single point of the brain, where it receives the influences of the body and from where it exerts its influence upon it. Descartes was the progenitor of this conception, and the entire eighteenth century, following him, adhered to the same view. This perspective, along with the mental substance, temporarily yielding in the age of critical and speculative philosophy to views of a different direction, regained its previous significance with Herbart and his school, as well as with Lotze.

First of all, as for these recent efforts to locate the soul in a single point of the brain where it directly resides or acts, I believe they rest exclusively on metaphysical grounds rather than on facts of psychology or physiology. Their foundation is the metaphysical assumption that the soul is a simple, non-extended substance. If non-extension essentially signifies non-spatiality at all, then this view still strives to present it again as a point and demands that this last be localized in space. On the contrary, with the removal of the mental atom, the motivation for localizing it at a specific point simultaneously disappears. If the soul is nothing other than the mental life itself, there is absolutely no reason to allow for physical concomitant phenomena to occur at any single point or within a narrowly confined sphere, rather than in an arbitrarily expanded domain of bodily life. It is difficult to understand what compels Lotze in his inclination to localize the soul at a specific point of the brain, given that he has essentially abandoned the premise leading to that conclusion—the immobile mental atom of ancient spiritualism; for him, too, the soul is nothing other than “a living unity encompassing self-consciousness.”

If we exclude metaphysics in this manner, we are left with psychology and physiology as avenues for answering the posed question. For the former, the specific solution to this question is indifferent; the unity of consciousness and the non-spatial nature of mental life are not in any way connected to the simplicity and non-extension of a mathematical point. Self-consciousness knows nothing directly of the accompanying nervous phenomena; it is physiology that possesses knowledge of these. For the latter, it is undoubtedly closer to the representation that the accompanying phenomena of mental processes extend over larger regions. Research, fraught with labor and suffering, has gradually managed to establish, at least in some respects, the correct relationship between mental functions and specific areas of the brain. Limited regions of the cerebral cortex can be identified whose functions are conditions for the execution of various sensory perceptions, their recollections, speech, and comprehension of speech. For direct observation, these matters are, of course, inaccessible; however, experimentation on animals and pathological studies on humans indicate a correct correlation between the destruction of certain areas of brain substance and the impairment or cessation of specific mental functions. The most straightforward interpretation of these facts is that the physiological function of these parts serves as the physical equivalent of the corresponding mental phenomena. It remains, of course, possible to assert that within them we possess merely intermediate conditions for the excitation of some elusive point; but what cannot be asserted in this realm? However, from the physiological standpoint, nothing supports this. A physiologist is more inclined to attempt to construct even the simplest mental phenomena (the act of recognition accompanying perception, the volitional movement liberated by the latter) as a widespread nervous process, in which numerous elements participate uniformly; for him, there is no reason to link a particular mental phenomenon more closely with the function of any one among these elements than with the function of all the others. Furthermore, it is clear that the Herbartian notion of the mental real would also be a heavy stumbling block for physiologists from another perspective. How does it relate to metabolism? As far as a physiologist knows, mental life is everywhere associated not with a static composition of elements but with their constant exchange. Is the mental real excluded from this, such that it forms a constant composition all by itself, while the other real elements remain in a state of continual flux? And how does it relate to birth and death? Is it itself a comparable element to others that only acquires outstanding development due to its preferred position? And what happens to it when, with the death of the body, it is deprived of its surrounding environment? Finally, it is remarkable that all previous attempts to identify a point in the brain, the destruction of which would directly result in death, have proven unsuccessful. The vital node of Fluorans no longer exists; the destruction of any part of the brain is experienced as long as it does not reach an excessively large extent.

After all that has been said, it is quite clear that among physiologists there prevails a tendency to widely localize mental phenomena: for every mental phenomenon, there corresponds some nervous process in more or less extensive areas of the brain, primarily within the cortical substance.

Should we remain at this juncture? Or is it better to proceed further and, alongside Fechner and Wundt, return to the ancient notion that the seat of the soul is the entire living body, or that the entirety of bodily life serves as the physical equivalent of the entirety of mental life? I believe we should resolve to embrace the latter.

This conclusion is primarily led by the complete unity of bodily life: where lies the boundary of animation if we cannot place it in any single point? It is hardly possible to isolate any definitively limited area within the nervous system such that only with its excitation can we correlate mental accompanying phenomena, while denying such significance to similar phenomena beyond that boundary. Moreover, the nervous system, in its physiological life and nourishment, has so tightly intertwined with the overall life process that isolating it in relation to mental life must be arbitrary. Generally speaking, as soon as we begin to delineate parts of the body that are not in direct relation to mental life but serve only as external instruments for it, we are inevitably compelled to gradually return to the monadological perspective. Thus, this latter view would assert that you consider bones, ligaments, and muscles not as anything but external mechanisms employed by the soul, essentially in the same manner as a lever or a pulley; only the nervous system serves as the bearer of mental life. But not the peripheral nerves—these evidently serve merely as conduits, thus—external instruments. The central organs of the nervous system remain as the carriers of mental life. Yet even these are not entirely so; fibers here will also possess the same function, that is to say, they serve as conduits; they consequently belong to the external mechanism. Thus, ganglionic cells remain, particularly the large masses of the cerebral cortex. But what prevents us from continuing the argument and stating that ganglia again serve merely as means; for experiments and pathological observations indicate that there is no part of the brain that is necessary and irreplaceable for the presence of mental life. Under certain circumstances, the degeneration of an entire hemisphere can occur without significant detriment to mental life; hence, it too was merely an external, non-essential means. How should we conceive of the relationship between the two hemispheres and mental life? If they were immediate carriers of mental life, that is to say, if physical processes in them corresponded directly to phenomena of consciousness, then ought we not to expect a correct duality in mental phenomena? It thus seems more appropriate to perceive bodily life in general, including the nervous system, as nothing other than a system of external means, a mechanism through which the immaterial soul, in essence, engages in diverse relationships with its surrounding environment.

Consequently, the matter appears to distill down to the alternative: either to regard the entire body, together with the nervous system, as a system of external means for the soul, or to see in the entirety of bodily life a visible representation or equivalent of mental life. Dividing the body in such a way that only certain parts of it, such as the cortical substance of the brain, serve as carriers of mental phenomena, can hardly be considered a viable means of resolution. If we cannot, due to the previously outlined reasons, return to the first of these views, we must now resolutely state: the physical equivalent of mental life consists of the totality of physiological life processes; every physical moment corresponds to a mental one: the parallelism is complete. Certainly, I reiterate—not a local parallelism; wherever a physical phenomenon occurs, a mental one also transpires: this is a nonsensical formula; but rather an ideal parallelism; for some all-pervasive intellect, before which both the collective bodily process and the collective inner process lie equally open, it would be possible to indicate for each phenomenon in bodily life the corresponding phenomenon in mental life, whether conscious or unconscious. For such an all-pervasive intellect, mental life would not present itself as a slender chain of conscious representations but as an infinitely complex variety of simultaneous conscious, less conscious, or subconscious phenomena; the unified collective flow of bodily life processes, with its countless partial phenomena, would correspond to the collective flow of mental life of equal complexity and with a similar gradation of significance, which would manifest in degrees of consciousness.

This perspective is seemingly corroborated by biological and evolutionary-historical considerations. In the lower forms of animal life, we do not find a nervous system with which mental life could be associated. The body of protists does not reveal anything resembling a center, into which one might more readily place the seat of mental life than into any other point of the system. The entire body exists as a conglomeration of uniform and equally functioning organic substance. When it divides, each part remains viable and performs all the same functions as the whole, reacting to stimuli, consuming food, constructing coverings, etc. "In the body of a protist, there exists no single psychic center; rather, each minuscule piece of protoplasm serves as the seat of psychic phenomena." If organic matter is inherently animated at every point, it remains unclear how it could later entirely lose this quality; the centralization of the physical life process at higher stages of development would have been accompanied by a transformation in the life of parts, but not its annihilation. Should something similar not also occur in the realm of the psychic? After all, the physical life of any animal being constantly begins still in the form of a cell; ought not the psychic life to similarly rise again from its primordial form?

In response to the inevitable objection that, in reality, we know little about such a universal correspondence between the physical and the spiritual, and conversely, that thousands of phenomena of bodily life remain without accompanying conscious experiences, one might answer by pointing to an earlier consideration (p. 126 et seq.): not everything that exists as an element of the psychic life necessarily must be the object of self-perception in consciousness. Only a minuscule portion of the total psychic life resides in consciousness, which we must, however, assume in order to construct phenomena in consciousness. Bodily phenomena that lack corresponding occurrences in the psychic processes will find their counterparts in unconscious or subconscious phenomena. The vegetative processes and the internal phenomena of the ongoing metabolic exchange throughout all parts of the body, along with the corresponding excitations of the sympathetic nervous system, possess their psychic equivalents in some very faint excitations of feeling and desires; yet these last remain below the threshold of consciousness. Only the summation of all these reaches consciousness—taking the form, for instance, of a general feeling, an organic mood of vitality, or creating a barely perceptible backdrop to all conscious phenomena. Only under special circumstances do individual sensations from this group attain such strength that they reach consciousness; this typically occurs when some injuries escalate to a threatening degree and require assistance: as happens with pleasurable sensations when such needs are fulfilled. In this case, we might suppose, a corresponding physiological process occurs within the central nervous system, while metabolic processes unfold usually within a more confined scope, without involving the brain in their activities.

Conversely, the collisions of bodily life with the external environment typically lead to nervous excitations that propagate to the brain. Touches on the surface of the body invariably reach the endings of sensory nerves, which convey excitations to the central organ; particularly prominent points on the surface are the sensory organs; some significantly developed apparatus transmits even the faintest excitation to the brain, for instance, that caused by etheric waves or air vibrations. Not all of these excitations are accompanied by conscious psychic phenomena: thousands of sensations of touch and movement, constantly stimulated throughout the body's surface, generally remain below the threshold of consciousness. They continuously exist, as demonstrated by the management of body posture and movements: their absence results in uncertainty of movement; they can at any time be brought into consciousness, particularly when attention is directed towards them; yet they typically remain subconscious. Likewise, thousands of sensations delivered by the eye and ear each moment remain subconscious; we consciously see and hear only that which relates to our current tasks. If a given task bears no relation to the external world—if, for example, we are contemplating an abstract question or are occupied with memories of a distant past—then we see and hear nothing at all; this means that nervous excitations and brain processes exist at such times, just as their psychic equivalents do not vanish; we realize this if we are suddenly jolted from our daydreams; we clearly recall having heard certain sounds, such as the tolling of a bell; we can even count them afterward; but under the circumstances, these phenomena could not reach consciousness.

Evidently, for the economic viability of higher animals, this is a beneficial or, rather, a necessary arrangement: the activities of internal organs generally do not excite the system of the brain and spinal cord, nor do their psychic equivalents rise above the threshold of consciousness. In contrast, relations to the external world manifest as nervous excitations properly propagating to the central organ, and their psychic equivalents lie closer to the threshold of consciousness: naturally, the survival of an animal significantly depends on its ability to respond correctly to the external environment; adapting its movements to the phenomena of the external world constitutes a great existential task for the animal. Here, a situation akin to that of a national body occurs. Internal phenomena related to metabolic exchanges, the economic activities of individuals, and their family life all unfold within a tightly-knit circle, never reaching the collective consciousness, though, in their entirety, they exist as a foundation of shared awareness; all the minor sorrows and joys of individuals also collectively form something resembling a national mood. Conversely, a nation is usually sensitive to encounters with the external world; every incident at the borders passes through the press, and thousands of ears constantly listen to the state of international relations and diplomacy.

Thus, the system of the brain and spinal cord has the task of regulating the organism’s external relations; its peripheral endings are sensitive to the faintest touch of air and ether waves; the nerve fibers, acting as isolating conductors, transmit excitations unblended to the central organ; this organ ultimately comprises a system of structures that accept the continuing dispositions due to nervous excitations. These dispositions (which form, from a psychic perspective, memory) subsequently determine, during subsequent irritation, both the nervous process in the central organ (psychically: apperception) and the reaction (psychically: decision). The focus on these touch sensations and reactions presupposes isolation from the excitations of internal organs, or psychically: the emergence of a world of representations; the development of spiritual life implies a certain delineation of consciousness from organic senses. This development might be constructed in the following manner: at the lower level of animal life, sensitivity to irritations is evenly distributed throughout the body; a touch at any point evokes a local or general reaction of movement; every phenomenon is accompanied by some psychic equivalent that we interpret, by analogy with our own psychic life, as feeling and desire. Likewise, processes in the internal organs are accompanied by corresponding psychic processes. The disconnected and undifferentiated multiplicity of such instantaneous phenomena represents the form of lower psychic life. With the gradual evolution, relations to the external world become increasingly diverse and complicated; the task of preserving life demands more varied and meticulous adaptations to the conditions and phenomena of the external environment. As an organ for this purpose, the nervous system is formed; within it, sensitivity to excitations emanating from the external world increases and differentiates, while simultaneously it diminishes in other parts of the organic substance. Alongside the centralization of sensitivity, there occurs a corresponding centralization of reactive movements; the central organs of the nervous system serve as regulatory control mechanisms, initially limiting the organic substance's overall capacity for reaction. In parallel with this process of organic life development, there is a process of psychic life evolution; through the formation of sensations and memory, organic feelings increasingly become subdued, and the play of representations begins, bringing about consciousness in its true sense—unimaginable without the relationship of one psychic element to the whole.

I arrive at the conclusion of this entire discourse. If we equate psychic life with conscious thought, we will arrive at the same position as the Cartesian philosophers, who explained the soul as res cogitans: to deny the soul to animals and, generally, to beings beneath humanity. However, if, conversely, conscious representations and thinking do not constitute the whole in human life, if beneath the surface there exists an unconscious psychic life, then nothing prevents us from considering that there exists a psychic life in which matters do not reach consciousness in the manner of human self-consciousness. Self-consciousness presupposes a world consciousness with an extensive memory—even with a collective memory, i.e., a historical consciousness. Self-consciousness in its true sense has its "I" only as a historical entity. We would not ascribe anything similar to animals; even the most intelligent animal could not narrate the history of its life. Their psychic life would resemble that which we find within ourselves below the level of self-conscious thought and will. At lower levels, the aspect of representation gradually fades, memory shortens, perception becomes scantier, and along with this, the will increasingly loses the form of goal-oriented foresight, the form of conscious striving or desire, until finally, the content of psychic life remains nothing but the momentary feeling of compulsion arising upon contact with the environment. Internal processes of this nature could be constructed as accompanying phenomena of movement processes, also beyond the boundary of organic life.

Thus, in contrast to materialist ontology, an idealistic or spiritualist ontology would be substantiated. It rests mainly on the parallelistic theory of the relationship between the physical and the psychic, as well as on voluntaristic psychology. Its culmination finds expression in the monistic resolution of the cosmological problem, to which we now turn.