quantity of one of these substances introduced into the blood, will have a stimulating effect little if at all qualified by the anaesthetic effect. Obviously, too, the conflict between these opposite actions — the one tending to increase the genesis of nervous fluid and tue other tending to block up the channels for its discharge — will, other things equal, end in predominance of the one or the other according to the state of the circulation, general or local. If the blood is rapidly propelled, so as to bring to the nervous centres an abundant supply not only of the exciting agent but of the materials which further waste and repair, the increased amount of nervous fluid generated, may more than compensate for decrease in the facility of its transfer along the nerves; and this may especially be expected to happen where, in addition to an active general circula- tion, the circulation through the brain as a whole, or through some of its plexuses, is much exalted. On the other h<;nd, as the anaes- thetic, once diffused through the system, will invade the nerve-fibres in much the same way whether the blood moves slowly or quickly, there will, when it moves slowly, result an impediment to nervous discharge without any augmented pressure of nervous fluid, and hence the sedative influence will predominate. The contrasts be- tween different persons, and different states of the same person, as affected by these agents, thus become intelligible.
" But how are we to explain the unlike effects produced on the nervous system by unlike agents? Should not all anaesthetics and narcotics have the same effects? " I reply in the first place, that much as these various agents, swallowed or inhaled or injected, differ in their minor results, they do agree in their major results, as being excitants or sedatives according to circumstances, and as habitually producing exaltation of function before depression of function, when the dose is sufficient to produce depression. In the second place, I reply that while there are doubtless many more special causes of differences in their actions, there is one conspicu- ous general cause — their greater or less molecular mobility, and con- sequent greater or less diffusibility through the tissues. From this arises the generic contrast between the actions of anaesthetics and narcotics. As compared with the vegeto-alkalies, &c., the alcohols, ethers, &c., are substances of much lower molecular com- plexity, which show by their readiness to assume the gaseous form how much more diffusible they are. Bearing in mind the researches of Prof. Graham, we may fairly infer that molecules of nitrous oxide, or ether, or chloroform, pass through the walls of the bloodvessels and the protective coats of the nerve-fibres, much more rapidly tha^i do molecules of morphia, or of that component to which hashish owes its power. And if so, it must naturally happen that while the stimulant effects of the anesthetics will be rery quickly shown and soon followed by the paralyzing effects, the APPENDIX. 685 stimulant effects of the narcotics, less quickly shown, will be less quickly followed by the paralyzing effects. It may be suspected, too, that among the anaesthetics themselves and among the nar- cotics themselves, many such unlikenesses of action must result from unlikenesses of diffusibility. Indeed, suspicion rises almost to certainty on remembering how the most diffusible anaesthetics not only rapidly act but rapidly cease to act, in consequence of their speedy elimination from the system.
It is quite possible, then, that the various effects worked by these various agents: all result from specialities of co-operation among the many factors. Let me briefly enumerate these factors: — 1. The place at which the agent is absorbed, and the consequent ability of the agent to act on some parts of the nervous system sooner than on others. 2. The rapidity of absorption; which, if great, will make possible a marked local effect before a marked general effect. 3. The quantity absorbed, as sufficient to act on nerve-vesicle without appreciably affecting nerve-fibre, or as sufficient to appreciably affect both. 4. The relative molecular mobility of the agent. 5. Its chemical relations to the blood, (a) as affecting its power of carrying gases, (Z>) as affecting its various components in sack ways as to aid or hinder waste or nutrition. 6. Its chemical relations to the substances passed through (more especially to the medullary substance covering nerve-fibre) which will aid or hinder its paralyzing effect. 7. The general state of the circulation. 8. The state of the circulation in each nervous centre, as ordinary or as excited by function. 9. The characters of the nerve-fibres acted upon, as differing (a) in length, (&) In ability to convey discharges with facility, (c) in amount of protective covering, (d) in proximity to many or few capillaries. Here, then, are a dozen factors, the co-operation of which will not be the same in any two cases; and unlike primary combinations of them may cause end- lessly-varied secondary combinations — as when, for example, the vaso-motor nerves of one centre are acted on sooner than on those of another, thus complicating the effects by altering the relative supplies of blood to these centres. It Is not necessary, then, to assign elective affinities for special centres as the only possible causes of the special effects. This hypothesis should, I think, be resorted to only when other modes of Interpretation are proved. Inadequate.
CONSCIOUSNESS UNDER CHLOROFORM.
A UNIVERSITY graduate whose studies in Psychology and Philo- sophy have made him an observer able to see the meanings of his experiences, has furnished me with the following account of the feelings and ideas that arose in him daring loss of consciousness and during return to consciousness. My correspondent, describing himself as extremely susceptible to female beauty, explains that *bthe girl" named in the course of the description was an unknown young lady in the railway carriage which brought him up to town to the dentist's. He says his system resisted the influence of chloroform to such a degree, that it took twenty minutes to produce insensibility: the result being that for a much longer time than usual he underwent partial hyper^sthesia instead of anaesthesia. After specifying some dreadful sensations which soon arose he goes on to say: — * * * I began to be terrified to such a wonderful extent as I would never before have guessed possible. I made an involuntary effort to get out of the chair, and then — < suddenly became aware that I was looking at nothing: while taken up by the confusion in my mngs, the outward things in the room had gone, and I was " alone in the dark." I felt a force oc my arm (which did not strike me as the salon's "hand^" but merely as an external restraint) keeping me down, and this was the last straw which made me give in, the last definite thing (smell, sound, sight, or touch) I remembered outside my own body. Instantly I was seized and overwhelmed by the panic inside. I could feel every air-cell struggling spasmodically against an awful pressure. In their struggle they seemed to tear away from one another in all directions, and there was universal racking torture, while meantime the common foe, in the shape of this iron pressure, kept settling down with more and ^more irresistible might into every nook and crevice of the scene. My consciousness was now about this: I was not aware of anything but an isolated scene of torture, pervaded by a hitherto unknown sense of terror (and by what I have since learnt is called "the unity of consciousness:" this never deserted the scene, even down to the very last inaudible heart-beat). Yet I call it a " scene," Secause I recognized some different parts of my body, and felt that the pain in one part was not the same as that in another. Meanwhile, along with the increased intensity of convul- sion in mv lungs, an element of noise had sprung up. A chaotic roaring ran through my brain, innumerable drums began to beat far inside my ear, till the confusion presently came to a monstrous APPENDIX. 637 thudding, every thud of which wounded ine like a club falling repeatedly on the same spot. * * * From this stage my lungs ceased to occupy ine, and I forget how the straggle finished. There was a sense of comparative relief that, at any rate, one force was victorious, and the disci-action over; the strange large fright that had seized me so entirely when I felt myself ensnared into dark suffocation was now gone also, and there was only left the huge thudding at my ears, and the terribly impetuous stroke of my heart. The thudding gradually got less acutely painful, and less loud; 1 remember a recognition of satis- faction that one more fearful disturbance was gone. But, while the thunder in my ear was thus growing duller, all of a sudden my heart sprang out with a more vivid flash of sensation than any of those previous ones.- The force of an express engine was straining there, and like a burning ball it leapt from side to side, faster and faster, hitting me with such a superhuman earnestness that I felt each time as if the iron had entered my soul, and it was all over with me for ever. (Not that "I" was now any more than this burning- hot heart and the wailed space in which it was making its strokes: the rest of "me" had gone unobserved out of focus.) Every stroke produced exquisite pain on the flesh against which it beat glowing, and there was a radiation, as from a molten lump of metal between enclosures. Presently the unbearable heat got less, and there was nothing remaining except a pendulous movement, slackening speed, and not painful. Of nothing beyond was I conscious but this warm body vibrating: not a single other part of me was left, and there was not a single other movement of any sort to attract my attention. A fading sense of infinite leisure at last, ia a dreamy inaudible air; then all was hashed out of notice.
* * There was the breaking of a silence that might have been going on for ever in the utterly dark air. An undisturbed empty quiet was everywhere, except that a stupid presence lay like a heavy intrusion somewhere, — a blotch on the calm. This blotch became more inharmonious, more distinctly leaden; it was a heavier pressure, — it is actually intruding further, — and before almost there was time to wonder feebly how disagreeable was this interruption of untroubled quiet, it had loomed out as something unspeakably cruel and woeful. For a bit there was nothing more than this profoundly cruel presence, and my recognition* of it. It seemed unutterably monstrous in its nature, and I felt it life some super- human injustice; but so entire had been the still rest all round before its shadow troubled me, that I had no notion of making the faintest remonstrance. * * * It got worse. * * * Just as the cruelty and in justice became so unbearable that I hardly * If there were a noun belonging to the verb "To be aware of," Uk« " recognition ** to "recognize," it would be the one to use here.
638 APPENDIX.
could take it in, suddenly it came out a massive, pulsating pain, and I was all over one tender wound, with this dense pain probing ine to my deepest depths. I felt one sympathetic body of atoms, and at each probe of the pain every single atom was forced by a tremendous pressure into all the rest, while everyone of them was acutely tender, and shrank from the wound — only there was nowhere to shrink. A little before, I had merely felt the cruel element, iu helpless passivity; now, a still more crushing probe came; for an instant it forced all my atoms into one solid steel-mass of intense a^ony — then, when things couldn't go much further, and all must be over, a sense of reaction emerged; there was a loosening, and I was urged into relief by uttering from my very depths, what seemed not so much (at first) a piteous remonstrance as a piteous *' express- ion" (like an imitation) of the pain: in fact, the sense of woe had got also outside, and I heard it, a very low, infinitely genuine, moan. * * The next second there was a change: hitherto it had been p-:\in par tout — now there came a quick concentration, the pain ail ran together (like quicksilver), and 1 suddenly was aware that it was (localized) up on the right; while, simultaneously with this recognition of locality, a feeling of incipient resistance began to be in other parts (not that I felt them except just as other parts) of me from *7hieh the pain had receded. The pain itself was no less intense, rather more vivid, only I seemed to take it in a more lively manner: my uttering of a moan was no longer a mere faithful representation out into the air of what was inside me, but I had a slight sense of making an appeal for sympathy: to whom or to what I did not know, for there was no one or anything there. I was just going to utter a yet louder moan — as a fresh fearful imposition of force plunged into me — when, there in front of me, to the left of my pain, was that girl, with those lovely ankles, and the graceful Zingari brown stockings. * * I felt, as distinctly as ii some had told me aloud, that I would not make any cry, that it was not the thing.
Now came an agonizing cold wrench, and two or three more successively, in such a hideously rough fashion, that the girl went, and everything was tortured out of me but the darkness and the gigantic racking swaying torture which was excruciating my right side. An iron force like a million-horsepower had hold of me, and I was being pulled upwards and out of where I was, while I myself seemed anothe$ million-horsepower which would not be pulled: the pain was something to be remembered. But up I came, the dark- ness got denser (I went so fast); it was vibrating, the dense agony vibrated faster; I was quivering, struggling, kicking out; every- thing was #L convulsion of torture, my head seemed to come to the surface, a glimpse of light and air broke on the darkness, voices came through to me, and words; I re-cognized that a "tooth" wus APPENDIX. 639 being slowly twisted out of my jaw, then I groaned imploringly, in true earthly stjle, as if this was too much, and I ought to be let alone now I was getting my "head" out; then I swallowed in air, made an exertion with my "chest," found my "arms" were pressing something hard, grasped the " chair," and pushed myself up out in bewildered light, just as the dentist threw away the second right molar from the upper jaw.
Concerning this account it may be remarked, on the one hand, that the higher consciousness seems not to have been wholly abolished; since there.remained certain emotions arid certain most general ideas of relation to objective agents. On the other hand it is to be doubted whether the partial consciousness which the narrator had during anaesthesia, is not, in the description, ektd out in some measure by the ideas of his recovered consciousness carried back to them. Be this as it may, however, it is clear that certain components of consciousness disappeared and others became extremely vague, while a remainder continued tolerably distinct. And there is much significance in the relations among them: — 1. There ceased earliest the sensations derived from the special senses; then the impression of force acting on the body from without; and, simultaneously, there ceased the consciousness of external space-relations. 2. There remained a vague sense of rela- tive position within the body; which, gradually fading, left at last only a sense of those space-relations implied by consciousness of the heart's pulsations. 3. And this cluster of related sensations produced by the heart's action, finally constituted the only remain- ing distinct portion of the Ego. 4. In the returning consciousness we note first a sense of pressure somewJtere: there was no con- sciousness of space-relations within the body. 5. The consciousness of this was not a cognition proper. In an accompanying letter my correspondent says of it: — u 'Recognition' seems to imply install- ation in some previously-formed concept (talking in the Kantian way), and this is just what was not the case: " that Is, consciousness was reduced to a state in which there was not that classing of states which constitutes thought. 6. The pain into which the pressure was transformed was similarly universal instead of local. 7. When the pain became localized, its position in space was vague: it was " up on the right." 8. Concerning the apparition of "the girl/' which, as my correspondent remarks^ seems to have occurred somewhat out of the probable order, he says, in a letter: — u I did not recognize her ' under any concept * — what I saw seemed to be almost unassisted intuition in the Kantian sense." 9. The localization of the pain was at first the least possible — the consciousness was of that part versus all other parts uniocalized.
These experiences furnish remarkable veritications of certain 640 APPENDIX.
doctrines set forth in this work. This degradation of consciousness by chloroform, abolishing first the higher faculties and descending gradually to the lowest, may be considered as reversing that ascending genesis of consciousness which has taken place in the course of evolution; and the stages of descent may be taken as showing, in opposite order, the stages of ascent. It is significant, therefore, that impressions from the special senses ceasing early, leave behind as the last impression derived from without, the sense of outer force conceived as opposed by inner resistance; for this we saw to be the primordial element of consciousness. (§ 347.) Again, the fact that the consciousness of external space disappeared simul- taneously with the consciousness of external force, answers to the conclusion drawn that space-ideas are built out of experiences of resistant positions, the relations among which are measured by sensations of 'muscular effort. (| § 343, 348.) Further there is meaning in the fact that a vague sense of relative position within the body survived; since we concluded that by mutual exploration there is gained that knowledge of the relations among the parts of the body, which gives measures through which the developed knowledge of surrounding space is reached. (§§344,345.) Once more we get evidence that the Ego admits of being progressively shorn of its higher components, until, finally, the sensations pro- duced by the beating of the heart, remain alone to constitute the conscious self: showing in the first place, that the conscious self at any moment is really compounded of all the states of conscious- ness, preservative and representative, then existing (§219), and showing, in the second place, that it admits of being simplified so far as to lose most of the elements composing the consciousness of corporeal existence. Whence it is inferable that self-conscious- ness begins as a mere rudiment consisting of present sensations, without past or future.. Lastly, we have the striking testimony that there exists a form of consciousness lower than that which the lowest kind of thought shows us. The simplest intellectual act implies the knowing something as such or such — implies the consciousness of it as like something previously experienced, or, otherwise, as belonging to a certain class of experiences. But we here get evidence of a stage so low that a received impression remains in consciousness uhciassed: there is a passive reception of it, and an absence of the activity required to know it as such or sock f MS. HERBERT SPENCER'S WOZES.
(WITH AN APPENDIX DEALING WITH CBITICISIIS.)
In one vol. Svo, cloth, price 16s.5 FIRST PRINCIPLES, CONTENTS.
PART I. — THE UNKNOWABLE.
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2. Ultimate Religions Ideas.
3. Ultimate Scientific Ideas.
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PART II. — THE KNOWABLE.
1. Philosophy Denned.
2. The Data "of Philosophy.
3. Space, Time, Matter, Motion, and Force.
4. ThelndestructibilityofMatter.
5. The Continuity of Motion.
6. The Persistence of Force.
7. The Persistence of Relations among Forces.
8. The Transformation and Equivalence of Forces. ). The Direction of Motion.
10. The Rhythm of Motion.
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13. Simple and Compound Evolution.
14. The Law of Evolution.
15. The Law of Evolution, continued.
16. The Law of EvolutioD, continued.
17. The Law of Evolution, concluded.
IS. The Interpretation of Evolu- tion.
geneous.
20. The.Multiplication of Effects.
23. Dissolution.
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THE PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGY.
, CONTENTS OF VOL. L PART I, — THE DATA OF BIOLOGY.
1. Organic Matter.
2. The Actions of Forces on Or- • ganic Matter.
3. The Re-actions of Organic Matter on Force?.
4. Proximate JJefiniiion of Life.
5. The Qorrespondehce between Life aikf its Circumstances.
6. The Degree of Life varies ns the Degree of Correspond- ence.
7. The Scope of Biology.
HERXERT SPENCER'S IV PART II.— THE INDUCTIONS OF BIOLOGY. L Growth.
2. Development.
3. Function.
4. Waste and Eepaii, 5. Adaptation. 8. Individuality.
7. Genesis.
8. Heredity.
9. Variation.
10. Genesis, Heredity, and Variation.
11. Classification.
12. Distribution.
PAST III.— THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE.
1. Preliminary.
2. General Aspects of the Special- Cx cation-Hypothesis.
3. General Aspects of the Evolution-Hypothesis.
CONTENTS PART IV. — MORPHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT.
1. The Problems of Morphology.
tion of Plants.
3. The Morphological Composition of Plants, continued.
4. The Morphological Composition of Animals.
5. The Morphological Composition of Animals, continued.
6. Morphological Differentiation in Plants.
7. The General Shapes of Plants.
8. The Shapes of Branches.
9. The Shapes of Leaves.
10. The Shapes of Flowers.
1L The Shapes of Yegetal Cells.
12. Changes o/ Shape otherwise caused.
13. Morphological Differentiation in Animals.
14 The (General Shapes of Ani- mals.
15. The Shapes of Vertebrate Skeletons.
4. The Arguments from Classification.
5. The Arguments from Embryology.
6. The Arguments from ^lorphology.
7. The Arguments from Distribution.
8. How is Organic Evolution caused?
9. External Factors.
10. Internal Factors.
11. Direct Equilibration.
12. Indirect Equilibration.
13. The Co-operation of the Factors.
14. The Convergence of the Evidences.
APPENDIX.
OF VOL. II.
; 16. The Shapes of Animal Cells. ; 17. Summary of Morphological i Development.
j DEVELOPMENT.
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. 2. Differentiations between the i Outer and Inner Tissues of ; Plants.
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1 5. Physiological Integration in Plants.
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9. Physiological Integration in Animals.
10. Summary of Physiological Development.
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11. Interpretation and Qualification.
12. Multiplication of the Human Race.
13. Human Evolution in the Future.
APPENDIX.
A Criticism on Professor Owen's Theory of the Vertebrate Skele- ton.
On Circulation and the Formation of Wood in Plants.
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4. The Conditions essential to Nervous Action.
5. Nervous Stimulation and Nervous Discharge.
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2. The Composition of Mind.
3. The Eelativity of Feelings.
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5. The Eevivability of Feelings.
6. The Eevivability of Eelations between Feelings.
7. The Associability of Feelings.
8. The Associability of Eelations between Feelings.
9. Pleasures and Pains.
PART III. — GENERAL SYNTHESIS, 1. Life and Mind as Correspondence.
2. The Correspondence as Direct and Homogeneous.
3. The Correspondence as Direct but Heterogeneous.
4. The Correspondence as extending in Space.
tending in Time.
6. The Correspondence as increasing in Speciality.
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respondences.
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4. Reflex Action.
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PART V.- -PHYSICAL SYNTHESIS.
.1.'"" A Further Interpretation Needed.
;':. The Genesis of Nerves.
•1. The Genesis of Simple Ner- vous Systems.
CONTENTS l^RTjpL— SPECIAL ANALYSIS.
1. Limitation of the Subject.
2. Compound Quantitative Reasoning.
.3. Compound Quantitative Rea- soning, continued.
4. Imperfect and Simple Quan- titative Reasoning.
"5. Quantitative Reasoning in General.
(6. Perfect Qualitative Reason- ing.
7. Imperfect Qualitative Reason- ing.