Chapter XVI (part 6)

Now we may add to this, that for this very reason we can know only about the existence of psychic lives similar to our own , and we cannot know any other at all, whether they exist or not, unless we ourselves enter their plane . Should we ever realize our psychic life, not only as it is reflected from a brain, but in a condition more universal, simultaneously with this the possibility would open up of discovering beings with a psychic life independent of the brain analogical to ourselves, if such exist in nature. p. 185 But do such beings exist or not? How can we gain information on this point with our thought such as it is now ? Observing the world from our standpoint, we perceive in it actions proceeding from rational conscious causes, such as the work of a man seems to us; and other actions proceeding from the unconscious blind forces of nature, such as the movement of waves, the ebbing and flowing of the tide, the descent of great rivers, etc., etc. In such a division of observed actions into rational and mechanical there is something naive, even from the positivistic standpoint. For if we have learned anything from the study of nature, if the positivistic method has given us anything at all, then it is the assurance of the necessity for the uniformity of phenomena. We know, and with great certainty, that things basically similar cannot proceed from dissimilar causes. Our scientific philosophy knows this too. Therefore it also regards the foregoing division as naive, and conscious of the impossibility of such dualism—that one part of observed phenomena proceeds from rational and conscious causes and another part from unreasoned and unconscious ones—positivistic philosophy finds it possible to explain everything as proceeding from mechanical causes. Scientific observation holds that the seeming rationality of human actions is an illusion and a self-deception. Man is a toy in the hands of elemental forces. He is merely a transforming station of forces. All that which as it seems to him, he is doing , is in reality done instead by external forces which enter him through air, food, sunlight. Man does not perform a single action by himself. He is merely a prism in which a line of action is refracted in a certain manner. But just as the beam of light does not proceed from the prism, so action does not proceed from the reason of man. The "theoretical experiment" of certain German psycho-physiologists is usually advanced in confirmation of this. They affirmed that if it were possible, from the time of his birth, to deprive a man of ALL EXTERNAL IMPRESSIONS: light, sound, touch, heat, cold, etc., and at the same time preserve him alive, then such a man would not be able to perform EVEN THE MOST INSIGNIFICANT ACTION. From this it follows that man is an automaton, like that automaton projected by the American inventor Tesla, which, obeying electric currents and vibrations coming from a great distance without p. 186 wires, was calculated to execute a whole series of complicated movements. It follows from this that all the actions of a man depend upon outer impulses. For the smallest reflex, outer irritation is necessary. For more complex action a whole series of preceding complex irritations is necessary. Sometimes between the irritation and the action a considerable time elapses, and a man does not feel any connection between the two. Therefore he regards his actions as voluntary, though in reality there are no voluntary actions at all—man cannot do anything by himself, just as a stone cannot jump voluntarily: it is necessary that something should throw it up. Man needs something to give him an impulse, and then he will develop exactly as much force as such an impulse (and all pre-ceding impulses) put into him and no trifle more. Such is the teaching of positivism.