Charles Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism - Christopher Smith

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Charles Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism Author(s): C. U. M. Smith Source: Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Autumn, 1978), pp. 245-267 Published by: Springer Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4330711 Accessed: 12-02-2020 06:42 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4330711?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the History of Biology This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Charles Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism C. U. M. SMITH Department of Biological Sciences, University of Aston in Birmingham, Birmingham, England "How does consciousness commence?"' The evolution theory stem- ming from the work of Charles Darwin has obvious implications for the problem of the mind's place in nature. This was recognized by Darwin himself, by his contemporaries, and by his immediate successors. What was Darwin's own position with respect to this problem? The mind2-body problem has troubled philosophers since philosophy began. Numerous solutions have been proposed. Probably the best known is the two-substance view, which holds that mind and body are two separate and separable entities.3 Other thinkers have rejected this dualism: they have held either that all things proceed from the mind (idealism) or that all things are material (materialism). The advent of evolutionary theories provided materialists with two alternative ex- planations for the phenomenon of mind. Either it could be argued that mind "emerges" from previously "mindless" matter when matter achieves a certain level of complexity or a special configuration, or, alternatively, it could be argued that subjectivity, albeit of an incon- ceivably primitive variety, is a feature of all matter - organic and inorganic. The former view is usually termed "emergentism," the latter "panpsychism." Emergentism is well expressed by Lewes when he writes "co-operation of things of unlike kind leads to an emergent unlike [any of] its components."4 Panpsychism, by contrast, conceives that higher orders of mentality develop concomitantly with higher orders of material complexity. There is no sudden emergence of a new 1. C. R. Darwin, "Old and Useless Notes," p. 35 (c. 1838), transcribed by P. H. Barrett and H. Gruber, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity (London: Wildwood House, 1974). 2. For the purposes of this paper I shall, following the definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary, take the terms "mind," "soul," "consciousness," and "awareness" to be largely synonymous: the essence of the concept is the fact of subjective experience - pain, hunger, redness, and so forth. 3. This view receives its best-known exposition in the work of Descartes, but its lineage extends far back into classical and preclassical times, e.g., Plato (Phaedo, 77), Aristotle (DeAnima, 413a5), Genesis, 2:7. 4. G. H. Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind (London: Trubner, 1875), II, 413. Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 11, no. 2 (Fall 1978), pp. 245 -267. Copyright C 1978 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M. SMITH property, but instead, as William James puts it, "there must be an in- finite number of degrees of consciousness following the degrees of complication and aggregation of the primordial mind dust."S The purpose of this paper is to trace the origins and development of Charles Darwin's thought in this area and to determine, so far as it is possible in so cautious a writer, his mature position. Looking back in 1873, Darwin believed that his scientific tastes had been formed by his youthful passionate addiction to field sports and by his Beagle circumnavigation.6 His father, exasperated, had told him, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."7 He writes in his Autobiography that as a youth he had been so obsessed with shooting that he had been accustomed to leave his boots already opened when he went to bed at Maer, his future father-in-law's home, so that he would lose no time in putting them on in the first light of the morrow's dawn.8 A second strong trait in Darwin's outlook was the firm family con- viction that man's inhumanity to man (and to animals) was insupport- able and ought to be reduced. Josiah Wedgwood, Darwin's maternal grandfather, had been prominent in the late eighteenth-century anti- slavery campaign.9 He had designed and struck, at his own expense, medallions showing pictures of chained Negroes inscribed "Am I not a man and a brother?" and "Am I not a woman and a sister?."10 His paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, a colleague of Josiah Wedgwood 5. W. James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover, 1950), pp. 149- 150. 6. This summing-up is contained in Darwin's answers to the questionnaire which Galton sent in 1873 to Darwin and a number of other eminent thinkers in an attempt to discover the origins and background of high achievement: Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Darwin Murray, (London: John Murray, 1887), III, 178. 7. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters, ed. F. Darwin Dover (New York: Dover, 1958). 8. Ibid., p. 16. The Autobiography contains many other striking instances of Darwin's early absorption in field sports. 9. Josiah Wedgwood, although an "accurate" and, indeed, autocratic master, displayed the paternalistic concern common among nonconformists with the well-being of his workers - indeed he worked among them himself at times. His evangelical conscience revolted in particular at the physical cruelties inflicted by slaveowners on their slaves. See D. B. Davies, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975), pp. 230, 465, etc. 10. Gruber and Barrett, Darwin on Man, p. 66. 246 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism in Birmingham's Lunar Society, was similarly active in the antislavery campaign. His strong feelings are expressed in a couplet which his grandson quotes in the biographical note which he affixed to the trans- lation of Krause's biography:'1 Hear him, ye Senates! hear this truth sublime He who allows oppression shares the crime.'2 In the Journal of Researches, where Charles reports the experiences of his Beagle voyage, this family feeling comes through strongly. Writ- ing, for instance, of the slavery he had observed in Brazil, he says: "It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty."''3 Darwin disembarked from the Beagle at Falmouth on October 2, 1836, and the following ten years were perhaps the most creative of his life. Fortunately, many of the diaries, notebooks, and manuscripts which he wrote during these ten years have survived and have in some cases been transcribed and published. 14 These, together with the 11. K. Krause, The Life of,Erasmus Darwin with a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin, trans. W. S. Dallas (London: John Murray, 1879). Charles also quotes with approbation the following passage from Erasmus's monograph on the education of girls (A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools, 1797): "Compassion, or sympathy with the affairs of others, ought also to extend to the brute creation . . . to destroy even insects wantonly shows an unreflecting mind, or a depraved heart." 12. E. Darwin, The Loves of Plants (London, 1789). Furthermore Josiah Wedgwood's antislavery medallion is described (and illustrated) in the second canto of this poenL 13. C. Darwin, Journal of Researches (London: Ward Lock, 1836), p. 471. If mental attitudes can be classifled as tough or tender, Darwin's seem to fall into the latter category. The well-known incident which (he says) contributed to turn- ing him away from medicine at Edinburgh (Autobiography, p. 12), his abhorrence of unnecessary vivisection (Life and Letters, III, pp. 199-210), and the incident in the crowd at Cambridge with Henslow (Autobiography, p. 23) all testify to his sensitivity to injustice and his appreciation of the suffering of others. It is interest- ing to observe this "tender-mindedness" also at work in the Darwinian "reduc- tion." His openness to animal life, his awareness of the personality of animals, predisposes him to believe that, as he says, "we are all netted together," we are all equal members of one creation. 14. J. C. Greene, "Reflections on the Progress of Darwin Studies," J. Hist. Biol., 8, (1975), 243-273, reviews the recent spate of Darwin scholarship and the recent transcriptions of his notebooks. I have, in particular made use of the M notebook (July-October 1838), the N notebook (October 1838-August 1839), 247 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M. SMITH Autobiography, especially the version edited by Nora Barlow, the three volumes of Life and Letters, the two volumes of More Letters, plus the many books and papers he published during his lifetime provide a re- markably rich data base from which to reconstruct his thought. I have already indicated that by his own account, and that of others, Darwin's early outlook was colored by a passionate involvement in field sports and by a hatred of cruelty and oppression." We can see these predilections at work in his early notebooks. In B, p. 232, for instance, he writes: "Animals our fellow brethren in pain, disease death and suffering and famine.... our companion in our amusements, they may partake, from our origin in one common ancestor we may all be netted together." Throughout these early notebooks, Darwin insists on the close relationship between man and at least the other members of the Anthropoidea. He makes, for instance, many inquiries and observations on whether or not monkeys and apes recognize women (D, p. 137; M, p. 156; H. p. 138; and so on). He remarks that if we visit an orangutan in captivity, "hear its expressive whine, see its intelligence when spoken to, see its affection for those it knows, see its passion and rage, sulkiness and every action of despair" (C, p. 79), we can hardly help making a favorable comparison with the naked, unintelligible Fuegians with whom he had been so struck during his Beagle voyage. 16 This might be compared with a passage from a contemporary investigation of the biology of the higher primates; after several years of close involvement in chimpanzee research, Hebb and Thompson write: "exposure to a group of adult chimpanzees gives one the overwhelming conviction that the notebook which he later dubbed "Old and Useless Notes," or OUN (1837- 1840), and extracts from the B. C. D and E transmutation notebooks (1837- 1839), all of which have been transcribed by Barrett and published in Darwin on Man (citations to these are henceforth given in the text); I have also been able to make use of the recent publication of Darwin's first draft of his "Big Species Book," a precis of which formed The Origin of Species in 1859: this with a very useful bibliography has been edited by R. C. Stauffer and published as Charles Darwin's Natural Selection (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). 15. It might, of course, seem to us, who can hardly be unaware of the anti- blood-sports movement in late twentieth-century society, that these two com- mitments were somewhat contradictory. In the very different circumstances of the early nineteenth century, this contradiction (if contradiction it is) was not obvious: hunting and shooting did not seem cruel or oppressive to Darwin; he felt only that he was pitting his wits against the wits of his game animals and hence became absorbed in animal life and in animal ways (see the Autobiography, p. 16). 16. Darwin, Journal of Researches, p. 206. 248 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism one is dealing with an essentially human set of attitudes and motiva- tions."'7 Social attitudes of many varieties can be detected: friendli- ness, anger, desire for attention, malice, and boredom. In much of this there seems to be an element of awareness which points toward the beginnings of conceptual thought. Darwin believes that it is largely arrogance which prevents us from accepting that "we are all netted together": "Animals whom we have made our slaves," he wntes (B, p. 231), "we do not like to consider our equals - (Do not slave-holders wish to make the black man other kind?) - animals with affections, imitation, fear of death, sorrow for the dead - respect"; and in C, pp. 196-197, he asserts: "Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy the interposition of a Deity. More humble and I believe truer to consider him created from animals." Similar sentiments are expressed in C, p. 158. Once again one can ob- serve this openness to the dignity of animal life forming one of the roots of the Darwinian reduction. The view that men and animals are all to be caught in one net is a first step, although certainly not the last, toward an acceptance sf the general position of panpsychism. Before going any further, however, it will be well to clarify the provenance of the concept and to indicate the extent of its influence in the early nineteenth century. The idea goes back tc classical antiquity, where it merges with a gen- eral feeling that the world is active rather than passive and inert. Thales, it will be recalled, conceived the world to be "animate and full of divinities."'8 Democritus, the cofounder of classical atomism, believed that a certain type of atom, spherical and thus highly mobile, formed the substance of the mind.19 Gassendi, also, in reintroducing the atomic theory to the modern world, supposed that the atoms possessed a "sensus naturalis," a native awareness.20 This view resurfaces, in a more sophisticated form, in the monads of Leibniz's philosophy,2' and was widespread in French biological theory during the eighteenth century.22 17. D. 0. Hebb, and W. R. Thompson, "The Social Significance of Animal Studies," in Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. G. Lindzey and E. Aronson, vol. II (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1968). 18. Aristotle, DeAnima, 411a7. 19. Ibid., 405al 1. 20. J. E. McGuire, "Atoms and the Analogy of Nature," Hist. Phil. Sci., 1 (1970), 3-58. 21. G. W. von Leibniz, Monadology and Other Philosophical Writings, trans. R. Latta (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965). 22. Maupertuis, La Mettrie, and Diderot were all familiar with the idea of or- ganic units and/or molecules having some lowly form of intelligence or sensibility. 249 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M. SMITH In England, at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a more mystical type of cosmic panpsychism or hylozoism was common. Erasmus Darwin, for instance, introduces the Zoonomia with the following adaptation of Virgil: Earth, on whose lap a thousand nations tread And Ocean, brooding his prolific bed Night's changeful orb, blue pole, and silvery zones, Where other worlds encircle other suns One mind inhabits, one diffusive Soul Wields the large limbs and mingles with the whole.23 A similar spirit breathes through the verses of his posthumously pub- lished Temple of Nature (1803). At about the same time in the late eighteenth century the young Wordsworth was filled with a similar conviction that the world was animated by a vital force. This reaction to nature is expressed in many places in his poetry24 and perhaps most famously in the lines composed above Tientern Abbey: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought And rolls through all things Coleridge, also, expresses the same perception in the Aeolian Harp: And what if all animated nature Be but organic harps diversely framed That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze At once the soul of each and God of all The imaginative debt which Coleridge owed Erasmus Darwin has been well documented.25 It is interesting to find that not only Erasmus See J. Roger, Les sciences de la vie dans la pensei fransaise du XVIIIe sikcle (Paris: Colin, 1963). 23. E. Darwin, Zoonomia (London, 1796). 24. See R. D. Havens, The Mind of a Poet (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1941), esp. pp. 74-75, 186-188. 25. See Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. K. Coburn (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), no. 73;pp. 2093, 2325, 2331, 4342, etc. J. L. Lowes's famous study The Road to Xanadu, also shows the extent of Coleridge's imaginative debt to Erasmus Darwin. 250 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism but also his famous grandson shared some of the perceptions of the Lake Poets. In the posthumously published autobiographical fragment where Charles remembers himself as a ten-year-old boy, he writes that "the memory now flashes across me of the pleasure I had in the evening of a blowy day walking along the beach by myself and seeing the gulls and the cormorants wending their way home in a wild and irregular course. Such poetic pleasures, felt so keenly in afteryears, I should not have expected so early in life"26 (my italics). One also reads in the Autobiography that "up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the work of Milton, Gray, Byron and Shelley gave me great pleasure."27 As is well known, Darwin lost this sensitivity to poetry (and, indeed, to music) later in his life and was very sorry for it. In Germany, also, the end of the eighteenth century and the begin- ning of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of a Romantic Nature philosophy. This proved deeply antipathetic to less metaphysical minds. Naturphilosophie reached a climax in the work of Schelling and Oken and produced a reaction to biological theorizing which lasted well into the 1 850's.28 Although it is clear that Charles Darwin was familiar with the writings of the Nature philosophers29 it is also clear that their form of Spinozoistic panpsychism held no appeal for him. He would have nothing to do with what most biologists of his time regarded as their "overspeculation," with the belief common in many of their writings that homologous forms were in some way the working out of a unifying theme in the mind of God: In spite of a family temperament which may have predisposed him to favor the Romantics, his approach to the phenomena of biology was far more down-to-earth than that of his grandfather. As he writes in the Origin: "On my theory unity of type is explained by unity of descent."30 Charles Darwin was much closer to the facts than were most of the 26. C. R. Darwin, More Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Darwin (London: John Murray, 1903), I, 5. 27. Autobiography (Barlow's edition), p. 138. Indeed, he boasts that he was so fond of Wordsworth that he read The Excursion through twice soon after he returned from his circumnavigation. 28. See the account in C. U. M. Smith, The Problem of Life (London: Macmillan, 1976), chap. 18. 29. C. R. Darwin, Natural Selection, ed. R. C. Stauffer (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1975), VII, fol. 40, fol. 79; VIII, foL 97; C. R. Darwin, Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication (London, John Murray, 1868), vols. I and II. 30. C. R. Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 233. 251 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M SMITH German philosophers of Nature; his understanding developed directly from his experience of field sports and as a field naturalist. Neverthe- less, he seems to have felt early on that even the views he derived from this source could not be expressed without caution. Early in his M note- book (p. 57) he writes: "To avoid stating how far I believe in Material- ism say only that emotions, degrees of talent, which are hereditary are so because the brain of the child resembles the parent stock." It may be, as Gruber suggests,3' that Darwin's early experience at a meeting of the Plinian Society had made him very careful about expressing his true views in this area. In his Autobiography we read that this was one of the few university societies he assiduously attended.32 Gruber shows that a paper presented by his friend and fellow student W. A. Browne, which argued that both life and mind were emergent properties of in- creasingly organized matter, caused such a furor that it was struck from the minute-book. This happened in 1827, when Charles Darwin was just eighteen years old. Browne's views on the origin of mind, seem, however, to have been very close to those which Charles Darwin, following once more in his grandfather's footsteps,33 himself accepted - at least at this period in his life and for some years after. For we find that he is deeply concerned with this topic throughout his early notebooks. He reports, for example, discussions with his future brother-in-law, Hensleigh Wedgwood, who insisted that to say that "the brain thinks is nonsense" (M, p. 61e).34 But Darwin goes on to note that "to see a puppy playing cannot doubt that they have free-will" (M, p. 72) and hence consciousness (OUN, p. 25a), and if "all animals, then an oyster has and a polype." And in M, p. lOle, he writes, "The facts of half-instincts when two varieties are 31. Gruber, Darwin on Man, pp. 3940. 32. Darwin, Autobiography, p. 14. 33. That Erasmus Darwin found no difficulty in believing that mind was an emergent property of complexifying matter is shown by 11. 269-280 of the first canto of the Temple of Nature: Next the long nerves unite their silver train And young SENSATION permeates the brain Last in thick swarms ASSOCIATIONS spring Thoughts join to thoughts, to motions motions cling Whence in long trains of catenation flow Imagined joy and voluntary woe. 34. Hensleigh Wedgwood's deep interest in psychology is attested by the publication in 1848 of a small monograph called On the Development of the Understanding. 252 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism crossed as in Shepherd dogs . . . is valuable it shows that new instincts originate - strong argument for brain bringing thought, and not merely instinct, a separate thing superadded - we can trace causation of thought - it is brought within the confines of examination - obeys the same laws as other parts of the structure." In the N notebook, which immediately follows the M notebook, we read (p. 5): "To study meta- physics, as they have always been studied appears to me like puzzling at astronomy without mechanics . . . the mind is function of the body - we must bring some stable foundation to argue from." Instances could be multiplied. All of these notes, the M, N, and OUN notebooks, and many of the early transmutation notebooks are full of queries and struggles about man, mind, and materialism. The material comes not only from the science journals and the intellectual and philosophical periodicals of the day, not only from Darwin's Beagle experiences, but also from his family and friends, his pets and domestic animals, his nephews and nieces, uncles, aunts, and especially his father. At this period in his life Charles Darwin was far more than a specialist in biology: his interest spread over the whole of human experience, though it was mostly seen through the prism of his family, in a truly philosophical manner. But as one reads through the notebooks, one also catches the occa- sional tone of exasperation. Referring to Kirby's 1835 Bridgewater Treatise,35 Darwin writes (OUN, p. 36): "Kirby extends instincts to plants" (Kirby conceived that the development of plant seed-dispersal mechanisms was an instance of instinct operating); "But," says Darwin, "surely instincts imply willing, therefore word misplaced. The meanings of words must be made out: Reason, Will, Consciousness." And he goes on (OUN, pp. 36-37): "no soul superadded, thought however unintelligible it may be seems as much a function of organ, as bile of liver. - is the attraction of carbon, hydrogen in certain definite proportions (different from what takes place outside bodies) really less wonderful than thoughts." Perhaps there is an allusion here to the debate about vital forces which enlivened the work of physiological chemists in the 1830's and 1840's. Although Darwin does not refer to Chaptal, Berzelius, or Liebig, it is worth remembering that while at school Charles and his elder brother Erasmus gained some notoriety for pursuing chemical experimentation in a shed at the bottom of the garden, and, looking back in later years, Charles remembered these 35. W. Kirby, On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as Manifested in the Creation of Animals and in their History, Habits and Instincts (London, 1835). 253 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M. SMITH experiences "as the best part of my education at school."36 Returning to the OUN, however, we find that Darwin ends this particular passage with an expression of agnosticism or despair: "What is matter? the whole thing a mystery." It is not surprising that Darwin's effort to unravel so many different strands of thought and fit them into the theory he was forming gave him violent headaches, so that he was forced to unwind by reading Dickens (M, p. 81) and by allowing his attention to skip aimlessly from one topic to another while on a trip to Woolwich (M, p. 90). But even while he relaxes, he observes himself and later notes his observations. And this leads into another important theme in Charles Darwin's psychophysiology. This is the concept of "double conscious- ness." This, he writes (M, p. 78), must be "considered profoundly." In some cases he appears to be concerned with instances of schizophrenia (often examples occurring in his father's practice); in others he is refer- ring to a group of five anonymous articles in Blackwood's Magazine entitled "Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness."37 In M, p. 155, he notes, "Read: paper on consciousness in Brutes and Animals in Blackwood's magazine, June 1838"; and immediately below this note he adds: "copied." These papers, written in fact by James Ferrier, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, put forward an interesting and penetrating theory. Ferrier points out that psychologists make a profound mistake when they attempt, as he puts it, to "objectise" the human mind. "Man him- self," he writes, "is not to le found in this calculating machine. He with all his true phenomena, has burst alive from under her [i.e., science's] petrific hand and leaves her grasping 'airy nothings.' ,38 Man, says Ferrier, is not a tripartite affair: body, mind, and observing self. That analysis is, he argues, absurd. "The mind," he writes, "cannot be an object. An object can be conceived only as that which may possibly become an object to something else. Now what can the mind become an object to? Not to me for I am it and not to something else. Not to something else without again being denuded of consciousness."39 "Man," Ferner concludes, "is an existent who knows that he exists. This is the human phenomenon."40 36. Darwin, Autobiography, p. 11. 37. J. Ferrier, "An Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness," Black- wood's Mag., 43, (1838), 187-201, 437-452, 784-797 ;44, 234-244, 539-552. 38. Ibid., 43, p. 193. 39. Ibid., 43, p. 194. 40. Ibid.,43, p. 201. 254 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism But what, to quote Charles Darwin, of the "Brutes and Animals"? Ferrier is quite prepared to accept that they show marvelous evidence of reason; but it is all "instinctive reason." Completely unwittingly do they construct their nests and hives, migrate and follow their reproduc- tive rituals: "none of these creatures," Ferrier writes, "know that they exist, no notion of themselves accompanies their existence and their various changes, neither do they take account to themselves of the reason which is operating within them. It is reserved for man to live this double life. To exist and be conscious of existence; to be rational and to know that he is so.",41 But how can we be so sure that animals do not possess, to use the existentialist term, this "reflective" consciousness? Because, writes Ferrier, they do not show the features which consciousness causes in man: conscience, morality, responsibility. Only humans, continues Ferrier, show these features, and hence consciousness "marks man off from all other things with a line of distinct and deep drawn demarca- tion."42 "It is in virtue of this fact," he concludes, "that we are free, moral, social and responsible beings." In parenthesis here, we might nowadays suspect, precisely because of Darwin's work, that cause and effect are the other way about: the evolution of social life is not the consequence of but the cause of self-consciousness. Ferrier's theory is clearly challenging to an evolutionist. And, from the evidence of the early notebooks as well as from some of the later published works, Darwin rose to the challenge. In M, p. 24, we read of how "Squib [a dog] at Maer [his uncle Wedgwood's estate] used to betray himself by looking ashamed before it was known that he had been on the table - guilty conscience. Not probable in Squib's case any direct fear." Is it possible for animals or humans to feel ashamed if they have not notion of self? In M, p. 144, Darwin writes, "What is the philosophy of shame and blushing?" This is, of course, a topic which forms an important chapter in the 1872 Expression of the Emotions. In M, p. 140, he writes: "Jenny [the orangutan] will often do a thing she has been told not to do - when she thinks keeper will not see her - but then she knows that she has done wrong and will hide herself - I do not know whether fear or shame - when she thinks she is going to be whipped, will cover with straw or a blanket." In M, p. 161, Darwin cites his future wife: "Emma W. says that when she is playing by memory she does not think at all, whether she can or cannot play the piece, she 41. Ibid., 43, p. 199. 42. Ibid.,43,p. 201. 255 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M. SMITH plays better than when she tries, is this not precisely the same, as double-conscious kept playing so well." And in M, p. 62, he quotes with strong approval Lord Brougham's 1839 opinion that "the differ- ence between man and animals only in kind."43 the whole drift of Darwin's argument is to eliminate any 'deep- drawn demarcation" between man and animals. An animal is not for Darwin, as it was for Ferrier, ",nothing but a machine, or thing agitated and usurped by a kind of tyrannous agency, just as a reed is shaken by the wind."44 Darwin is much closer to the judgment of Alison, whose article in Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Phlysiology45 he cites many times in Chapter X of his "Natural Selection" manuscript. Alison continued the line of thought publicized by Erasmus Darwin in the Zoonomia. which he quotes frequently, though not uncritically.46 Alison believed, contrary to Kirby who, like Ferrier, saw animals as merely puppets or automata actuated by the divine will,47 that "animals are as conscious of mental effort as we are ourselves."48 But if Charles Darwin saw animals as conscious beings very much like ourselves, in contrast to the mechanisms perceived by Ferrier, Kirby, and Descartes, the question naturally arises: How far through the living world does consciousness reach? Where and when does con- sciousness commence? Darwin's struggle with this problem is recorded in the pages of the notebooks. In OUN, p. 16, he writes: "A Planaria must be looked at as an animal, with consciousness, it choosing food - crawling from light - yet we can split Planaria into three animals and this consciousness 43. H. Brougham, Dissertations on Subjects of Science Connected with Natural Theology, Being the Concluding Volume of the New Edition of Paley s Work (London, 1839). 44. Ferrier, "Introduction," 43, p. 447. 45. R. B. Todd, The Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology (London, 1836), vol. III. 46. E. Darwin, Zoonomia, XVI, 17: "If we turn our eyes upon the fabric of our fellow animals, we find that they are supported with bones, covered with skins, moved by muscles; that they possess the same senses, acknowledge the same appetites and are nourished by the same aliment with ourselves; and we should hence conclude from the strongest analogy, that their internal faculties were also in some measure similar to our own." 47. Kirby, Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, II, 255-256: "The organisa- tion of the brain and nervous system may be so varied and formed by the Creator as to respond in the way he wills to pulses upon them from the physical powers of nature. 48. Alison, Todd's Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, III, 16. 256 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism becomes multiplied." In OUN, p. 35, writing of animal growth and development, Darwin notes: "Hence a sensorium which receives com- munication from without and gives a wondrous power of willing." But he footnotes immediately beneath: "can willing be used without consciousness, for it is not evident what animals have consciousness." He then continues (OUN, p. 35), "How does consciousness com- mence?" and answers his question in terms which Sherrington was later to make familiar: "where other senses come into play, when relation is kept up with a distant object, when many such objects are present." But Darwin is not sure. He writes immediately afterward: "all this can take place and man not conscious as in sleep, or in sleep is man momentarily conscious but memory gone?" "Where pain and pleasure is felt where must consciousness be?" "How near in structure is the ganglionic system of the lower animals and the sympathetic in man?" "Can insects live with no more consciousness than our intestines have?" It is after this series of striking questions that, as we have already noticed, he mentally throws up his hands and writes that "the meanings of words must be made out: Reason, Will, Consciousness" and con- cludes that "the whole is a mystery." And writing to G. J. Romanes at the end of his life (March 7, 1881) he says, referring to his work on earthworms (Fonmation of Vegetable Mould by the Action of Worms, 1881), "I tried to observe what happened in my own mind when I did the work of a worm. . . . If I come across a professed metaphysician I will ask him for a more technical definition, with a few words about the abstract, the concrete, the absolute and the infinite. .-. . When I think of how it has bothered me to know what I mean by 'intelligent' I am sorry for you in your great work on the minds of animals. "49 Forty years earlier, in C, p. 166, he had focused on the theme of arrogance, writing: "why is thought being a secretion of the brain more wonderful than gravity a property of matter? It is our arrogance, our admiration of ourselves." Here we see yet another example of that continuing atti- tude: Darwin's reductionism. The notebooks reveal the ferment of ideas from which Darwin's mature works grew. His interests in comparative psychology and psychophysiology are aspects of and adjuncts to his overall purpose: to provide an explanation of the origin of species. It is thus not altogether surprising to find that they never received the full working-up and publication that he accorded material more central to his theory. Never- theless the long manuscript "Natural Selection," on which he was 49. F. Darwin, ed., More Letters, ll, 213. 257 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M. SMITH working when he received Wallace's momentous communication, con- tains a Chapter X entitled "Mental Powers and Instincts of Animals." Parts of this chapter were to form Chapter VII of the Origin, entitled simply "Instinct." Most of the manuscript, however, remained unpub- lished during Darwin's lifetime. We find in folio 2 that he has (probably wisely) given up puzzling about the origins and nature of consciousness: "we are no more concerned with the first origin of the senses and the various faculties of the mind, than we are with the first origin of life."'50 And he reiterates this agnosticism in the 1871 Descent of Man, where we read: "In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the lowest organisms is as hopeless an enquiry as how life itself first originated. These are problems for the distant future, if ever they are to be solved by man."" l It is well known that Darwin handed over his notes, clippings, and manuscript on comparative psychology to his younger contemporary and friend G. J. Romanes.52 Romanes wove some of this material into his book Mental Evolution in Animals53 and published the major part of the manuscript of Chapter X of "Natural Selection" as an appendix. It is thus instructive to note what Romanes has to say on the subject, for it may point to Darwin's own unpublished and less explicit position. On p. 8 of Mental Evolution in Animals, we read: "if the doctrine of Organic Evolution is accepted, it carries with it, as a necessary corollary, the doctrine of Mental Evolution"; and on p. 16, we read: "starting from what I know subjectively about the operations of my own individ- ual mind, and of the activities which in my own organism these opera- tions seem to prompt, I proceed by analogy to infer from the observable activities displayed by other organisms, the fact that certain mental operations underlie or accompany these activities." Compare this with Darwin's comment on his earthworm research quoted above. Romanes goes on to ask what the behavioral signs of consciousness might be, and concludes (p. 17) that they are activities "indicative of choice." But this first definition will not, he says, do: for a host of purely reflex activities seem also to indicate intentional, choosing, behavior. For instance, we may read, as doubtless Romanes did, in Huxley's 1878 account of Hume's philosophy of a decerebrate frog "on the flank of 50. Charles Darwin's "Natural Selection," ed. R. C. Stauffer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 467. 51. The Descent of Man (London: John Murray, 1901), p. 100. 52. See Stauffer, ed., Charles Darwin's "Natural Selection," pp. 463-466. 53. G. J. Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals (London: John Murray, 1883). 258 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism which a little drop of acid has been placed, rubs it off with the foot of the same side; and, if that foot being held, performs the same operation, at the cost of much effort with the other foot . . . the whole operation is a reflex operation of the spinal cord." 54 Romanes is thus driven to conclude that mentality is indicated by behavior which involves choices which are not predictable by an outside observer. But this is clearly a very weak definition; what, for example, are we to make nowadays of chess-playing artifacts - are they conscious or not?55 However, leaving this conundrum on one side, and turning back to Mental Evolution in Animals, we find that immediately after this struggle to define the necessary and sufficient signs of consciousness Romanes refers to the writings of the Cambridge mathematician and thoroughgoing panpsychist W. K. Clifford.56 And if we tum to Ro- manes's more philosophical essay "The Fallacy of Materialism" (1882), we find that he quotes with acceptance and approval the following passage from Clifford's essay "Nature of Things in Themselves": "Mind- stuff is the reality which we perceive as matter.... A moving molecule of inorganic matter does not possess miind or consciousness, but it possess a small piece of mind-stuff. When molecules are so combined together as to form the film on the under side of a jelly fish, the ele- ments of mind-stuff which go along with them are so combined as to form the faint beginnings of sentience.. . . When matter takes the com- plex form of a living human brain, the corresponding mind-stuff takes the form of a human consciousness, having intelligence and volition." 57 Romanes thus draws far-reaching conclusions from the Darwinian theory. However, we should perhaps not pursue these conclusions too far at this point. Although Romanes was personally intimate with 54. T. H. Huxley, "Hume's Philosophy," in Hume: with Helps to the Study of Berkeley: Essays (London: Macmillan, 1898), pp. 130-131. Huxley makes exactly the same point in almost identical words in the 1874 "On the Hypothesis that Animals Are Automata and Its History," concluding that in this case, "we have the most complete assurance that . . . the frog is not acting from purpose, has no consciousness, and is a mere insensible machine" (in Method and Results [London: Macmillan, 1898], p. 233). 55. See, for instance, H. Putnam, "Minds and Machines," in Dimensions of Mind, ed. S. Hook (New York: New York University Press, 1960). 56. See, for instance, W. K. Clifford, Lectures and Essays (London: Kegan Paul and Trench, 1874), II, 61: "we are obliged in order to save continuity in our belief, that along with every motion of matter, whether organic or inorganic, there is some fact that corresponds to the mental fact in ourselves." 57. G. J. Romanes, "The Fallacy of Materialism," The Nineteenth Century, 12 (1882), 87 1-888. 259 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M. SMITH Darwin, his speculations are not necessarily those of his friend. Darwin, as his remarks on Herbert Spencer make clear,58 possessed a far more cautious temperament. However, there is one more pointer in Charles Darwin's published work which indicates his mature position concern- ing the mind's place in nature. This is the theory of pangenesis, which both he and Wallace regarded as one of the most important things he had done.59 The theory is set out in Chapter 27 of Volume II of Varia- tions in Plants and Aninuls. It represents Darwin's final solution to the problem of how the variation, which is central to his theory, is trans- mitted from one generation to the next. The proposed mechanism is, of course, a mechanism for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. It is interesting (and relevant) to observe how large a part the assumed inheritance of acquired behavior plays in the forrnulation of this theory. If we turn to the "Natural Selection" manuscript, written some fif- teen years before the publication of Variations, we find that in folio 2 of Chapter X Darwin writes: "I cannot doubt that an action performed many times during life and thus rendered habitual, tends to become hereditary." There are many places in the M and N notebooks and in the OUN notebook where the same idea is adumbrated. For instance, in M, p. 30, Darwin writes: "One is tempted to believe phrenologists are right about habitual exercise of the mind altering the form of the head and thus these qualities become hereditary." And in M, p. 128: "Plato/ Erasmus/ says in Phaedo that our 'imaginary ideas' arise from preexist- ence of the soul, are not derivable from experience. - read monkeys for preexistence." And in OUN, p. 48: "My theory of instincts, or heredi- tary habits fully explains the cementation of habits into instincts." And in Variations of Plants and Animals he writes: "A horse is trained for certain paces and the colt inherits similar consensual movements. The domesticated rabbit becomes tame from too close confinement, the dog, intelligent from associating with man; the retriever is taught to fetch and carry; and these mental endowments and bodily powers are all inherited."60 58. F. Darwin, ed., More Letters, 11, 235 (June 30, 1866): "I am almost finished the last number of Herbert Spencer and am astounded at its prodigality of original thought. But the reflection constantly recurred to me that each sugges- tion to be of real value to science, would require years of work." 59. F. Darwin, ed., Autobiography and Selected Letters, p. 282 (1892): Wallace writes that "It is a positive comfort to me to have any feasible explana- tion of a difficulty which has always been haunting me and which I shall never be able to give up till a better supplies its place, and that I hardly think possible." 60. Ibid. (1868), II, 367. 260 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism The theory of pangenesis reminds us once more of the intellectual lineage between Charles and his grandfather Erasmus Darwin. Although in his Autobiography Charles remarks that a second reading of his grandfather's work in his maturer years had left him markedly less impressed than when he had first studied him as a youth,61 one cannot help seeing Erasmus's influence in Charles's theory of the inheritance of acquired behavior. Erasmus, in a famous passage in the Zoonomia, writes: "The ingenious Dr Hartley in his works on men . . . has been of the opinion that our immortal part acquires during this life certain habits of action, or of sentiment, which become forever indissoluble, continuing after death in a future existence; and adds, that if these habits are of a malevolent kind, they render their possessor miserable even in heaven. I would apply this ingenious idea," Erasmus Darwin continues, "to the generation, or production, of the embryon or new animal, which partakes so much of the form and propensities of the parent.",62 Charles in the 1872 Expression of the Emotions writes: "That some physical change is produced in the nerve-cells or nerves which are habitually used can hardly be doubted. for otherwise it is impossible to understand how the tendency to certain acquired move- ments is inherited" (my italics).63 These passages give us ati inkling of the significance of consciousness in Charles Darwin's vision of the living world. Habits which are inherited and stabilized to form instincts all originally start in conscious inten- tional effort. Charles writes, for instance, that "it is scarcely credible that the movements of a headless frog, when it wipes a drop of acid or other object from its thigh, and which movements are so well co- ordinated for a special purpose, were not at first performed voluntarily, being afterwards rendered easy from long-continued habit so as at last to be performed unconsciously."64 Consciousness is not a mere epiphe- nomenon of no evolutionary significance. On the contrary, according to this analysis, it forms one of the basic motors of the evolutionary 61. Ibid. (1892), p. 13. 62. Ibid., XXXIX, 1. 63. Ibid., p. 29. 64. C. R. Darwin, On the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: John Murray, 1872), p. 40. This is not to say that Charles Darwin believed that all instincts originated from consciously developed habits. He also believed that many instincts originated in randomly arising "profitable" behaviors, which give an animal a selective advantage in "the great battle of life": see "Natural Selection," chap. X, fols. 2 and 3; and "Origin of Certain Instincts," in The Collected Papers of Charles Darwin, ed. P. H. Barrett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), II, 172-176. 261 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M. SMITH process. Because of his acceptance of the inheritance of acquired char- acteristics, Darwin's view of evolution contrasts starkly with the evolu- tion theory of the late twentieth century. Consciousness plays no such guiding role in present-day theory. It must be recalled, moreover, that consciousness ran for Darwin throughout the entire animal kingdom, from planarian to man, and for many Darwinists also existed in the plant kingdom.65 There is one final indicator of Darwin's position. This is provided by his reaction to the latent controversy between A. R. Wallace and T. H. Huxley about the mind's place in nature. In the Quarterly Review of April 1869 Wallace reviewed the tenth edition of Lyell's Principles of Geology.66 In this review he expressed the opinion that "in the development of the human race a higher intelligence has guided the same laws for nobler ends," much as mankind has selectively bred animals and plants. Darwin wrote a triply underlined NO against this passage in his copy of the Review.67 And in a letter dated April 14, 1869, he writes that "as you expected I differ grievously from you and am very sorry for it."68 Wallace also diverged from his friend on another matter. He writes in the Review, "Neither natural selection nor the more general theory of evolution can give any account what- ever of the origin of sensational or conscious life . . . these laws etc. cannot be conceived as endowing the newly-arranged atoms with con- sciousness."69 Wallace had become convinced that the evidence showed that the Cartesian gulf between mind and matter was in principle un- bridgeable. This conviction appears to have arisen partly as the result of witnessing what he refers to as "a series of remarkable phenom- ena" 70 and partly in response to Huxley's clear statement of the opposite view. In Huxley's 1868 essay "On the Physical Basis of Life" we read: "thoughts are the expression of molecular changes in the matter of life 65. Ernst Haeckel, who counted himself a thoroughgoing Darwinian, writes that "whoever ascribes consciousness to the lower animal forms cannot refuse it to vegetal forms"; The Riddle of the Universe (London: Watts, 1899), p. 144. 66. A. R. Wallace, "Review of the Principles of Geology by Sir Charles Lyell," Quart. Rev., 126 (1869), 359-394. 67. See M. J. Kottler, "Wallace, the Origin of Man, and Spiritualism," Isis, 65 (1974), 152. 68. F. Darwin, ed., Life and Letters, III, 116. 69. Ibid., p. 391. 70. J. Marchant, Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (London: Cassell, 1916), I, 244. 262 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism which is the source of our other phenomena" ;71 and in his 1874 address to the British Association "On the Hypothesis That Animals Are Automata and Its History," he says much the same thing: "nor can there be any reasonable doubt that the emotions of brutes and such ideas as they possess are similarly dependent upon molecular brain changes."72 The first Huxley passage is quoted in Wallace's Contribu- tions to Natural Selection and calls forth the following response. "If a material element, or a combination of a thousand material elements in a molecule, are alike unconscious, it is impossible for us to believe that the mere addition of one, two or a thousand other material ele- ments to form a more complex molecule could in any way tend to produce a self-conscious existence. . . . There is no escape from this dilemma, - either all matter is conscious or consciousness is, or pertains to, something distinct from matter and in the latter case its presence in material forms is a proof of conscious beings, outside and independent of, what we would term matter."'73 Indeed, Wallace seems to have wished to return to the eighteenth-century idea of a scale of nature in which there were just as many beings superior to man as there were inferior. 7 The "series of remarkable phenomena" which buttressed Wallace's rejection of Huxley's view were those he had observed and tested dur- ing spiritualist seances. Wallace, as we have already noticed, wrote to Darwin, saying, "My opinions on the subject have been modified solely by consideration of a series of remarkable phenomena, physical and mental." Darwin, however, would have nothing to do with spiritualism. In a letter to the Reverend Innes dated September 6, 1860, he writes: "I must say I am a complete sceptic about the powers at work - curious as your stories are. What stories one hears about the spirit-tapping nowadays - the old saying to believe nothing one hears and only half one sees is a golden rule."75 In January 1874, he writes of having at- tended a seance himself and comments: "The Lord have mercy on us all if we are to believe such rubbish."76 He had, in fact, retired upstairs halfway through the proceedings, exhausted with the experience, but 71. T. H. Huxley, "On the Physical Basis of Life," in Method and Results (London: Macmillan, 1898), p. 154. 72. Ibid., p. 239. 73. A. R. Wallace, Natural Selection and Tropical Nature (London: Macmillan, 1870; reprinted Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers, 1969), p. 209. 74. Ibid., p. 205. 75. R. M. Stecher, "The Darwin-Innes Letters," Ann. Sci., 17 (1961), 205. 76. F. Darwin, ed., Life and Letters, III, 187. 263 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M. SMITH he got his self-styled "bull-dog," T. H. Huxley, to attend later a smaller, more carefully organized meeting. Huxley reported what he regarded as the imposture to Darwin in a long letter"" and Darwin replied with great relief: "and now to my mind an enormous weight of evidence would be required to make one believe in anything beyond mere trickery." 78 A sufficient sample of Charles Darwin's thought, both overt and covert, has now been taken to allow us some insight into his stance vis-a-vis panpsychism and the origin of consciousness. As we have al- ready noticed, Darwin's forte was long-continued, detailed work.79 He was far too cautious a writer to risk the larger vision of his grandfather or the murky Weltanschauungen of the German Nature-philosophers. Nevertheless, the foregoing pages have shown that he accepted his grandfather's view (and Alison's) that animals are conscious in the same way that we are ourselves. Indeed, he is inclined to go further: in the summary and concluding remarks of the 1880 Movement of Plants, he writes the following passage about the root tip: "It is hardly an exag- geration to say that the root tip of the radical . . . acts as the brain of one of the lower animals ... receiving impressions from the sense organs and directing the several movements."80 Early in his career he believed that consciousness was the outcome of sufficient material organization: 'It looks as if consciousness is effects of sufficient perfection of organi- sation" (OUN, p. 16). This view is never retracted in his later work. To this extent, he sides with Huxley, to whom he refers in one of his last letters - "I wish to God there were more automata in the world like you!"8' - and against Wallace. Thus far he is a panpsychist, resembling the famous neurologist Wilder Penfield, who writes: "If one is to make a judgment on the basis of behavior, it is apparent that man is not alone in the possession of a mind. The ant (whose nervous system is a highly complicated structure) as well as mammals ... shows evidence of consciousness and individual purpose."82 It will be remembered that 77. T. H. Huxley, Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley, ed. L. Huxley (London: Macmillan, 1900), 1, 421. 78. F. Darwin, ed., Life and Letters, III, 187. 79. A. R. Wallace commented on this feature of Darwin's character in a letter to Professor A. Newton in 1887: "I have not the love of work, experiment and detail that was so pre-eminent in Darwin"; F. Darwin, ed., Autobiography and Selected Letters, p. 45. 80. C. R. Darwin, Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants (London: John Murray, 1880), p. 573. 81. F. Darwin, ed., Life and Letters, III, 538. 82. W. Penfield, "The Mind and the Brain," in The Neuroscience: Paths of 264 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism Darwin once referred to the brain of the ant as the most marvelous speck of matter in the world.83 I can find, however, no evidence that he is a panpsychist in the thoroughgoing sense of his younger contem- porary W. K. Clifford, or of more recent thinkers, such as the Australian zoologist W. E. Agar, who writes that the mental factor cannot "have made its appearance out of the blue at some date in the world's his- tory,"84 or of C. H. Waddington, who writes that "something must go on in the simplest inanimate things which can be described in the same language as would be used to describe our self-awareness," 85 or, finally, of the evolutionary biologist Bernard Rensch, who conceives that con- tinuity requires that all matter possess a protopsychical character.86 All of these thinkers believe that acceptance of evolutionary theory implies that mentality is in some way a property of matter, which, like gravita- tional force, makes itself apparent when matter assumes certain appro- priate configurations. There is no evidence that Darwin accepted this interpretation because, so far as I can find, he resolutely refused to speculate (in print at any rate) about the origin of life from inorganic matter. As he writes in the passage from The Descent of Man already quoted, the subject of biopoeisis is "a hopeless enquiry" and must be left to the "distant future" - to, in fact, ourselves. Nonetheless, panpsychism seems to be a persistent theme in man's attempt to understand his place in nature.87 The acceptance of nine- Discovery, ed. F. G. Worden, J. P. Seazey and G. Adelmann (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press 1975). 83. Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1901 ed., p. 81: "It is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter; thus the wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants are notorious, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the quarter of a small pin's head. Under this point of view, the brain of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of man." 84. W. E. Agar, The Theory of the Living Organism (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1943), p. 109. 85. C. H. Waddington, The Nature of Life (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), p. 121. 86. B. Rensch, Biophilosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), and "Polynomistic Determination," in Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, ed. F. J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky (London: Macmillan, 1974). 87. See, for instance, G. T. Fechner, Nanna: oder uber das Seeleben der Pflanzen (Leipzig, 1903); Zend-Avesta: oder uber die Dinge der Janseits (Ham- burg, 1906); an English-anguage selection was edited by W. Lowrie as Religion of a Scientist (New York, 1946). Another well-known exposition of the pan- psychist position was published by F. Paulsen, Einleitung in die Philosophie 265 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms C. U. M. SMITH teenth-century evolutionary theory and, especially, of Charles Darwin's work, has thrown it into prominence. This is emphasized, if emphasis is required, by the writings of the metaphysical-zoologist Ernst Haeckel, who asserts, for instance, that "I am at one with Romanes and Darwin in almost all their views and convictions" and goes on to maintain that "the future of scientific psychology . . . is not, as it once was, the exclu- sively subjective and introspective analysis of the highly-developed mind of a philosopher, but the objective, comparative study of the long gradation by which man has slowly arisen from a vast series of lower animal conditions. This great task of separating the different steps in the psychological ladder and proving their unbroken phylogenetic con- nection has only been attempted in the last ten years, especially in the splendid work of Romanes."88 Haeckel elsewhere in his fairly volumi- nous writings defines the substratum of psychic life as "psychoplasm," which, he says, differentiates to form the neuroplasm of nervous sys- tems; he writes of the cell-soul" or "cytopsyche"; he believes that atoms have "sensation and will."89 This was the effect of the Darwinian theory on one turgid and philo- sophically uncritical mind. Darwin himself, of course, strongly depre- cated such "overspeculation." He writes ironically in the Autobiography, referring to metaphysics, "I was not well fitted for such studies."90 However, one hundred years later, when many of the gaps in the Darwinian vision have been filled, when many philosophers of mind are coming to accept some form of central-state materialism or dual-aspect theory,91 when millions of dollars are being poured into exobiology on (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1909), trans. by F. Thilly, Introduction to Philosophy (New York, 1916). An interesting contemporary instance is provided by Globus, who writes: "The awareness of the flower is the faintest whisper of awareness, a primordial hum hardly distinguished from the background noise ... yet it is immeasurably more conscious than the rigidly ordered rock enduring nearby. . . Our science conditioned minds," he continues, "find this almost impossible to fathom." G. G. Globus, "Mind, Structure, and Contradiction," in Consciousness and the Brain, ed. G. G. Globus, G. Maxwell, and I. Savodnik (New York: Plenum Press, 1976). 88. Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe, pp. 87-88. 89. Ibid., p. 180. 90. Ibid., p. 33. 91. See, for instance, H. Feigl, The "Mental" and the "Physical" (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1967); J. J. C. Smart, "Sensations and Brain Pro- cesses," in The Philosophy of Mind (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962); D. H. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968); G. G. Globus, "Unexpected Symmetries in the 'World Knot,'" Science, 180 (1973), 1129-1136. 266 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Darwin, the Origin of Consciousness, and Panpsychism the assumption that living processes do originate spontaneously in appropriate planetary environments, the panpsychist's challenge be- comes more insistent: How far through nature does mentality reach? How does consciousness commence? 267 This content downloaded from 132.174.251.54 on Wed, 12 Feb 2020 06:42:15 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms