Transcendentalism in New England: A HistoryFrothingham, Octavius Brooks
Philosophy
Transcendentalism in New England: A History
Frothingham, Octavius Brooks
Transcendentalism (New England)
"I am far from pretending that it may not be capable of proof, or
that it is not an important addition to our knowledge, if proved,
that certain motions in the particles of bodies are the
_conditions_ of the production of heat or light; that certain
assignable physical modifications of the nerves may be the
conditions, not only of our sensations and emotions, but even of
our thoughts; that certain mechanical and chemical conditions may,
in the order of nature, be sufficient to determine to action the
physiological laws of life. All I insist upon, in common with every
thinker who entertains any clear idea of the logic of science, is,
that it shall not be supposed that by proving these things, one
step would be made toward a real explanation of heat, light, or
sensation; or that the generic peculiarity of those phenomena can
be in the least degree evaded by any such discoveries, however well
established. Let it be shown, for instance, that the most complex
series of physical causes and effects succeed one another in the
eye and in the brain, to produce a sense of color; rays falling on
the eye, refracted, converging, crossing one another, making an
inverted image on the retina; and after this a motion--let it be a
vibration, or a rush of nervous fluid, or whatever else you are
pleased to suppose, along the optic nerve--a propagation of this
motion to the brain itself, and as many more different motions as
you choose; still, at the end of these motions there is something
which is not motion, there is a feeling or sensation of color. The
mode in which any one of the motions produces the next, may
possibly be susceptible of explanation by some general law of
motion; but the mode in which the last motion produces the
sensation of color cannot be explained by any motion; it is the law
of color, which is, and must always remain a peculiar thing. Where
our consciousness recognizes between two phenomena an inherent
distinction; where we are sensible of a difference, which is not
merely of degree; and feel that no adding one of the phenomena to
itself will produce the other; any theory which attempts to bring
either under the laws of the other must be false."
[5] Logic, p. 548. Amer. Edition.
To precisely the same effect, DuBois Reymond, in an address to the
Congress of German Naturalists given in Leipsic:
"It is absolutely and forever inconceivable that a number of
carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen atoms, should be otherwise
than indifferent to their own position and motion, past, present,
or future. It is utterly inconceivable how consciousness should
result from their joint action."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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