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THE ANALYSIS OF MIND

 

by

 

BERTRAND RUSSELL

 

1921

 

MUIRHEAD LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY

 

An admirable statement of the aims of the Library of Philosophy

was provided by the first editor, the late Professor J. H.

Muirhead, in his description of the original programme printed in

Erdmann’s History of Philosophy under the date 1890. This was

slightly modified in subsequent volumes to take the form of the

following statement:

 

“The Muirhead Library of Philosophy was designed as a

contribution to the History of Modern Philosophy under the heads:

first of Different Schools of Thought—Sensationalist, Realist,

Idealist, Intuitivist; secondly of different

Subjects—Psychology, Ethics, Aesthetics, Political Philosophy,

Theology. While much had been done in England in tracing the

course of evolution in nature, history, economics, morals and

religion, little had been done in tracing the development of

thought on these subjects. Yet ‘the evolution of opinion is part

of the whole evolution’.

 

“By the co-operation of different writers in carrying out this

plan it was hoped that a thoroughness and completeness of

treatment, otherwise unattainable, might be secured. It was

believed also that from writers mainly British and American

fuller consideration of English Philosophy than it had hitherto

received might be looked for. In the earlier series of books

containing, among others, Bosanquet’s “History of Aesthetic,”

Pfleiderer’s “Rational Theology since Kant,” Albee’s “History of

English Utilitarianism,” Bonar’s “Philosophy and Political

Economy,” Brett’s “History of Psychology,” Ritchie’s “Natural

Rights,” these objects were to a large extent effected.

 

“In the meantime original work of a high order was being produced

both in England and America by such writers as Bradley, Stout,

Bertrand Russell, Baldwin, Urban, Montague, and others, and a new

interest in foreign works, German, French and Italian, which had

either become classical or were attracting public attention, had

developed. The scope of the Library thus became extended into

something more international, and it is entering on the fifth

decade of its existence in the hope that it may contribute to

that mutual understanding between countries which is so pressing

a need of the present time.”

 

The need which Professor Muirhead stressed is no less pressing

to-day, and few will deny that philosophy has much to do with

enabling us to meet it, although no one, least of all Muirhead

himself, would regard that as the sole, or even the main, object

of philosophy. As Professor Muirhead continues to lend the

distinction of his name to the Library of Philosophy it seemed

not inappropriate to allow him to recall us to these aims in his

own words. The emphasis on the history of thought also seemed to

me very timely; and the number of important works promised for

the Library in the very near future augur well for the continued

fulfilment, in this and other ways, of the expectations of the

original editor.

 

H. D. Lewis

PREFACE

This book has grown out of an attempt to harmonize two different

tendencies, one in psychology, the other in physics, with both of

which I find myself in sympathy, although at first sight they

might seem inconsistent. On the one hand, many psychologists,

especially those of the behaviourist school, tend to adopt what

is essentially a materialistic position, as a matter of method if

not of metaphysics. They make psychology increasingly dependent

on physiology and external observation, and tend to think of

matter as something much more solid and indubitable than mind.

Meanwhile the physicists, especially Einstein and other exponents

of the theory of relativity, have been making “matter” less and

less material. Their world consists of “events,” from which

“matter” is derived by a logical construction. Whoever reads, for

example, Professor Eddington’s “Space, Time and Gravitation”

(Cambridge University Press, 1920), will see that an

old-fashioned materialism can receive no support from modern

physics. I think that what has permanent value in the outlook of

the behaviourists is the feeling that physics is the most

fundamental science at present in existence. But this position

cannot be called materialistic, if, as seems to be the case,

physics does not assume the existence of matter.

 

The view that seems to me to reconcile the materialistic tendency

of psychology with the anti-materialistic tendency of physics is

the view of William James and the American new realists,

according to which the “stuff” of the world is neither mental nor

material, but a “neutral stuff,” out of which both are

constructed. I have endeavoured in this work to develop this view

in some detail as regards the phenomena with which psychology is

concerned.

 

My thanks are due to Professor John B. Watson and to Dr. T. P.

Nunn for reading my MSS. at an early stage and helping me with

many valuable suggestions; also to Mr. A. Wohlgemuth for much

very useful information as regards important literature. I have

also to acknowledge the help of the editor of this Library of

Philosophy, Professor Muirhead, for several suggestions by which

I have profited.

 

The work has been given in the form of lectures both in London

and Peking, and one lecture, that on Desire, has been published

in the Athenaeum.

 

There are a few allusions to China in this book, all of which

were written before I had been in China, and are not intended to

be taken by the reader as geographically accurate. I have used

“China” merely as a synonym for “a distant country,” when I

wanted illustrations of unfamiliar things.

 

Peking, January 1921.

 

CONTENTS

 

I. Recent Criticisms of “Consciousness” II. Instinct and Habit

III. Desire and Feeling IV. Influence of Past History on Present

Occurrences in Living Organisms V. Psychological and

Physical Causal Laws VI. Introspection VII. The Definition of

Perception VIII.Sensations and Images IX. Memory X. Words and

Meaning XI. General Ideas and Thought XII. Belief XIII.Truth and

Falsehood XIV. Emotions and Will XV. Characteristics of Mental

Phenomena

 

THE ANALYSIS OF MIND

 

LECTURE I. RECENT CRITICISMS OF “CONSCIOUSNESS”

 

There are certain occurrences which we are in the habit of

calling “mental.” Among these we may take as typical BELIEVING

and DESIRING. The exact definition of the word “mental” will, I

hope, emerge as the lectures proceed; for the present, I shall

mean by it whatever occurrences would commonly be called mental.

 

I wish in these lectures to analyse as fully as I can what it is

that really takes place when we, e.g. believe or desire. In this

first lecture I shall be concerned to refute a theory which is

widely held, and which I formerly held myself: the theory that

the essence of everything mental is a certain quite peculiar

something called “consciousness,” conceived either as a relation

to objects, or as a pervading quality of psychical phenomena.

 

The reasons which I shall give against this theory will be mainly

derived from previous authors. There are two sorts of reasons,

which will divide my lecture into two parts

 

(1) Direct reasons, derived from analysis and its difficulties;

 

(2) Indirect reasons, derived from observation of animals

(comparative psychology) and of the insane and hysterical

(psychoanalysis).

 

Few things are more firmly established in popular philosophy than

the distinction between mind and matter. Those who are not

professional metaphysicians are willing to confess that they do

not know what mind actually is, or how matter is constituted; but

they remain convinced that there is an impassable gulf between

the two, and that both belong to what actually exists in the

world. Philosophers, on the other hand, have maintained often

that matter is a mere fiction imagined by mind, and sometimes

that mind is a mere property of a certain kind of matter. Those

who maintain that mind is the reality and matter an evil dream

are called “idealists”—a word which has a different meaning in

philosophy from that which it bears in ordinary life. Those who

argue that matter is the reality and mind a mere property of

protoplasm are called “materialists.” They have been rare among

philosophers, but common, at certain periods, among men of

science. Idealists, materialists, and ordinary mortals have been

in agreement on one point: that they knew sufficiently what they

meant by the words “mind” and “matter” to be able to conduct

their debate intelligently. Yet it was just in this point, as to

which they were at one, that they seem to me to have been all

alike in error.

 

The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in

my belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive

than either. Both mind and matter seem to be composite, and the

stuff of which they are compounded lies in a sense between the

two, in a sense above them both, like a common ancestor. As

regards matter, I have set forth my reasons for this view on

former occasions,* and I shall not now repeat them. But the

question of mind is more difficult, and it is this question that

I propose to discuss in these lectures. A great deal of what I

shall have to say is not original; indeed, much recent work, in

various fields, has tended to show the necessity of such theories

as those which I shall be advocating. Accordingly in this first

lecture I shall try to give a brief description of the systems of

ideas within which our investigation is to be carried on.

 

* “Our Knowledge of the External World” (Allen & Unwin), Chapters

III and IV. Also “Mysticism and Logic,” Essays VII and VIII.

 

If there is one thing that may be said, in the popular

estimation, to characterize mind, that one thing is

“consciousness.” We say that we are “conscious” of what we see

and hear, of what we remember, and of our own thoughts and

feelings. Most of us believe that tables and chairs are not

“conscious.” We think that when we sit in a chair, we are aware

of sitting in it, but it is not aware of being sat in. It cannot

for a moment be doubted that we are right in believing that there

is SOME difference between us and the chair in this respect: so

much may be taken as fact, and as a datum for our inquiry. But as

soon as we try to say what exactly the difference is, we become

involved in perplexities. Is “consciousness” ultimate and simple,

something to be merely accepted and contemplated? Or is it

something complex, perhaps consisting in our way of behaving in

the presence of objects, or, alternatively, in the existence in

us of things called “ideas,” having a certain relation to

objects, though different from them, and only symbolically

representative of them? Such questions are not easy to answer;

but until they are answered we cannot profess to know what we

mean by saying that we are possessed of “consciousness.”

 

Before considering modern theories, let us look first at

consciousness from the standpoint of conventional psychology,

since this embodies views which naturally occur when we begin to

reflect upon the subject. For this purpose, let us as a

preliminary consider different ways of being conscious.

 

First, there is the way of PERCEPTION. We “perceive” tables and

chairs, horses and dogs, our friends, traffic passing in the

street—in short, anything which we recognize through the senses.

I leave on one side for the present the question whether pure

sensation is to be regarded as a form of consciousness: what I am

speaking of now is perception, where, according to