Personality (Routledge Revivals)

F. B. Jevons

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317600206
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Mente e corpo in filosofia

First published in 1913, Jevons' Personality marries the disciplines of philosophy and psychology in order to question the existence of personality and the arguments surrounding it. Intriguingly, Jevons suggests that if a person can question their own personality and existence, by extension they can also question the personality and existence of God. The book is arranged into four chapters based on a series of lectures delivered in Oxford in 1912: these discuss such areas as the relationship between science, psychology, and personality; the argument that "there are changes, but no things which change", and consequently there are changes, but no persons who change; and, the concepts of individualism and unity.

PERSONALITY CHAPTER I PERSONALITY AND IMPERSONALITY

DOI: 10.4324/9781315747064-1

Personality a hypothesis not required either by Physical Science or by Psychology or by Pre-Animism—Impersonality, however, denies, and therefore presupposes, Personality.

IT is possible to be quite certain about a thing, and quite wrong: to err is human; and the whole human race may make the same mistake for centuries before discovering the error. For countless centuries mankind was certain that the earth was motionless: the Lord “hath made the round world so sure, that it cannot be moved.” And yet it moves. When the earth thus gives way beneath our feet—and, at every step we take, we thrust the earth away—where shall we find any ground of certainty? A common mode of expressing absolute certainty about a thing is to say, “I am as certain of it as I am of my own existence.” And it is indisputable that most people are certain of their own existence. But it is also indisputable that all people for long were certain that the earth “cannot be moved.” If, then, for all their certainty they were wrong about the earth, it is apparently, at any rate, possible that on the other point also—their own existence—they may be quite certain and yet quite wrong. We can understand now how natural and how easy it was for man to draw the wrong inference from the apparent motion of the sun. Then may not his certainty about his own existence be an inference which it is easy to draw, which is first drawn precisely because it is easiest drawn, and for that very reason is least likely to be the correct inference? If it took mankind ages to draw the correct inference in the one case, little wonder that it has not yet been commonly drawn in the other case.

If the movement of thought in the one case was from error to truth, may it not in the other case be also in the same direction?

“In the notion of self,” a recently published philosophical work (English Thought for English Thinkers, p. 193) says, “we have the sole presented type of substance, a something that continues unchanged under a change of accidents.” But the notion of the self as something that continues unchanged is very like the notion of the earth as something that “cannot be moved.” We have had to give up the notion that the earth is the centre round which the solar system revolves. We are slowly parting with the notion that man is the centre round which and for which the universe exists. The geocentric notion has gone and is carrying with it the anthropocentric notion also. There is no fixed, unmoved, unchanging centre such as the earth was once supposed to be. The notion is illusory. To recognize that the notion of personality, the notion of the self as something which exists or continues unchanged, may be an illusory notion, is doubtless as difficult as to realize that the earth is rotating on its axis and revolving round the sun. Yet the difficulty does not alter the fact. The truth, indeed, is that some facts can be explained just as satisfactorily on the assumption that the sun moves as they can be on the assumption that the earth moves. And those facts were precisely the facts which were most obvious and which therefore monopolized the attention of man for countless centuries. The facts which were less obvious failed, for that very reason, to arrest his attention. But, when his attention was arrested, it became evident eventually that when all the facts—and not merely the most obvious—were taken into account, however great the difficulty of realizing the motion of the earth, the difficulties in the way of supposing it motionless were infinitely greater. These difficulties however did not present themselves at first. At first, and for long afterwards, the supposition that the earth was fixed and motionless, and that the sun it was that moved, sufficed as an explanation of the facts that were observed. In the same way, the supposition that, though the things around one change, one does not change oneself—that one’s Self, or Personality, is “something that continues unchanged under a change of accidents”—is a supposition which is easily made, which is made indeed without thinking, but which now in these later days may seem incapable of sustaining any longer the weight and burden of the facts which science has accumulated upon it.

In the lowest stage of development in which we can directly observe human society, we find not only that man believes—or rather we should say acts on the belief—in his own personality, but also that everywhere around him he finds a personality not his own. He does things himself—or thinks he does—and his explanation of the things that happen to him, if he feels that they require explanation, is that they also are the doing of some personal being or other. His notion is that he is a personal power, surrounded by personal powers. He believes in agents, in personal agents; and he has, as yet, no conception of impersonal causes. He is in the stage of development known as animism. The successive journeys of the sun do not seem to him to be successions merely. He must account for them; and the only account he can render is that they are the doing or the behaviour of a personal power, which is like himself in that it is personal, though as power it transcends any power of his own.

In this supposition of personal power he finds a satisfactory explanation of the unexpected and the unforeseen. And, with his very limited knowledge of natural laws, much is to him unforeseeable that modern science predicts with a sense of certainty. Eclipses and comets which confirm our knowledge of the laws of nature are ascribed by him to the arbitrary will of the personal agents whom he supposes to produce them. On the other hand, the events in the ordinary, trivial round of human life, which happen in the usual way, which are expected and which come off as expected, seem to require no explanation. They are regarded as quite natural. And the progress of knowledge, or at any rate the advance of scientific knowledge, consists precisely in wresting territory from the domain of the unexpected and the unforeseen. It consists in ascertaining the conditions under which an event, once unforeseeable and startling in its occurrence, may be expected with assurance, or even be produced by man. When the conditions which determine that the thunder shall follow the lightning are known, there is nothing more mysterious or unexpected in the sequence than there is in the fact that the electric bell rings when you press the push. Primitive man’s supposition that personal power was required to account for the thunder—the Psalmist’s conviction that “the voice of thy thunder was in the heaven”—becomes superfluous: given the conditions enumerated by science, the thunder or the bell is heard. No further explanation is necessary. There is no room for any other conditions than those which science enumerates—and neither personal power nor arbitrary will is amongst those conditions. Science seeks to ascertain the conditions under which events do as a matter of fact take place; and it formulates those conditions in the shape of laws of co-existence and succession. So far has science now advanced in dealing in this way with the occurrences which take place around us, that the existence of laws of nature is beyond the possibility of doubt. That our knowledge of them is as yet defective and erroneous is also beyond the possibility of doubt. If our knowledge of the laws of nature were not defective and erroneous, it would be impossible for science to advance. It is because there are defects and errors that there is room and need for science to progress. But the reason why science has progressed thus far is that it has set aside the attempt to find amongst the objects of nature either personality or personal power. It no longer seeks for either. Its aim is to ascertain the laws of the co-existence and succession of the events that take place around us.

But the events that take place around us are not the only events which interest us. What goes on within us interests us profoundly. And what goes on within us may be studied, as well as what takes place around us. It may be studied and it is studied by Psychology. The object of Psychology, as a science, must obviously be the same as that of all other sciences. Their object is to ascertain the laws of nature. Its object therefore is to ascertain the laws of human nature. The other sciences study the co-existence and succession of the events that take place around us. The science of Psychology studies the co-existence and succession of the events that take place within us. Psychology, John Stuart Mill tells us, is “the science which is concerned with the uniformities of succession—the laws, whether ultimate or derivative—according to which mental states succeed one another.” Psychology, therefore, as thus defined, deals with uniformities; like all the other sciences, it sets aside arbitrary will. By the very meaning of the words, what is “arbitrary” is not “uniform.” If mental states succeed one another in arbitrary fashion, they do not succeed one another uniformly. And if there are no uniformities of succession, there can be no science of mental states—that is, there can be no psychology. But it is undeniable that in similar circumstances we have much the same feelings; and when we have the same feelings we act in much the same way as before. Obviously, therefore, there are uniformities of succession within us, just as there are uniformities of succession in the events that take place around us. And if the latter can be studied and formulated with some degree of correctness, then the former can also. Human nature as well as physical nature can be studied scientifically. Science can deal with the one as well as with the other—on the same terms and conditions, viz., that arbitrary will is excluded, and uniformity of succession is admitted. When however we have once come to see that uniformity of succession must be admitted, and the freedom of the will be excluded, in order that psychology may take its proper place amongst the sciences, we shall have little hesitation in taking one further step. Indeed, if psychology is to assume its full rank as a science we must take the one further step. Physical science, or the natural sciences, have, as we have seen, no use for the notion, entertained by primitive man and by the Psalmist, that personal power is required to account for thunder and lightning. “The thunderer,” a Jupiter tonans, is from the point of view of science wholly superfluous: there is no such person. If then psychology is to be really scientific—if it is to be concerned solely with “the uniformities of succession, according to which mental states succeed one another”—then just as a thunderer is superfluous, so from the point of view of science a thinker is superfluous: there is no such person. Mental states, or states of consciousness, of course, there must be, if there is to be any psychology at all. And those states of consciousness must not only succeed one another, but must exhibit uniformities of succession, if psychology is to be a science. But beyond or behind “the uniformities of succession, according to which mental states succeed one another” it is as unnecessary for psychology to go, as it is for physical science to go beyond or behind the uniformities of succession which are to be observed in the occurrence of the events that take place around us. Indeed, just as the hypothesis of “a thunderer,” a Jupiter tonans, is, for the purposes of science, either otiose or positively misleading, so for the science of psychology the hypothesis of “a thinker” is either otiose or positively misleading If it implies and is conceded to imply nothing more than the fact, admitted on all hands, that consciousness exists and that states of consciousness exhibit uniformities of succession, then the hypothesis of “a thinker” is otiose and superfluous. No one denies the existence of consciousness. But the consciousness which is thus admitted to exist is, as Huxley termed it, “epiphenomenal.” It accompanies successive states of the brain, as the shadow of a train may accompany the train as it travels. But the shadow does not make the train move; nor does this “epiphenomenal” consciousness cause the successive states of the brain: it simply accompanies them.

If, on the other hand, the hypothesis of “a thinker” is found on consideration to imply something more than that there are thoughts or states of consciousness, exhibiting uniformities of succession, that over and above, or behind, the changing thoughts or successive states of consciousness, there is “something that continues unchanged,” a permanent Self or person, then we relapse into a position exactly parallel to the supposition discarded by physical science, that over and above, or behind, the thunder, there is “a thunderer,” who thunders, when he chooses to do so, arbitrarily. At the present day however we have given up the belief in a Jupiter tonans; and, if we have given up the notion of “a thunderer,” we are, it may be argued, called upon, in consistency, to give up the notion of “a thinker.”

Thus the events within us and the events around us, when studied from the same point of view—the scientific point of view—and by the same method—the scientific method—point in the same direction and to the same conclusion. All knowledge, if it is really knowledge, and not a misapprehension of facts, must be harmonious and consistent: it must form a unity. The unification of knowledge consists precisely in discarding assumptions prematurely made. Such premature assumptions, accounting for some facts only, must be discarded in favour of those which come later and which account for a much wider range of facts. Personality, from this point of view, is an assumption which was early made, to account for all the events—external and internal—which arrested the attention of man and called for explanation. It is an assumption which science has steadily set aside. The succession of events without us can be explained by science without resorting to that hypothesis. The succession of events within us can be explained by science without resorting to it. It is not an aid, but an embarrassment to science. It does not tend to the unification of knowledge, but, by introducing an unfathomable gap between the personal and the impersonal, seems to make unification impossible.

Perhaps it may be felt to be strange that all mankind, at all stages of human development, should have resorted to this notion of personality as the sole explanation of all events that take place around us and within us, and that yet this notion of personality should be a false explanation of the facts. But, in the first place, even if we assume this to have been the case, it is by no means unique or singular. As we have already seen, the notion that the earth cannot be moved was for thousands of years accepted as a fact, whereas it was really a false explanation of the actual facts. There is no a priori reason why a false inference should not, for a time, and for a long time, be universally drawn. But, if it be felt strange that man should from the beginning have gone so far astray from the simple facts of observation as to attribute every event that interested him to personal agency, then it will also be felt necessary to inquire whether in the beginning he really did attribute everything that occurred to personal agency, whether, that is to say, it was from animism that man started in his attempt to explain the events that happen in the world, or from something earlier. And in point of fact within the last few years, inquiry into this question has been started; and the theory of a pre-animistic period in the intellectual evolution of man has been put forward. “The root idea of this pre-Animism,” Mr. Clodd says in The Transactions of the Third Congress of the History of Religions, 1908, “is that of power everywhere, power vaguely apprehended, but immanent, and as yet unclothed with personal or supernatural attributes.” In a paper on “Pre-Animistic Religion,” which appeared in Folk Lore in June 1900, Mr. Marett had earlier argued that “Religious Awe is towards Powers, and these are not necessarily spirits or ghosts, though they tend to become so.” And in the Census of India, 1901, Sir Herbert Risley tells us that in Chota Nagpur he has come across instances which “linger on as survivals of the impersonal stages of early religion.” Sir Herbert’s impression is that what the jungle people there really do believe in is “not a person at all in any sense of the word,” but “some sort of power.” Mr. Clodd cites as indicative of this pre-animistic period, “the Melanesian and Maori belief in a power or influence called mana, to which no personal qualities are attributed,” and says that “with this, in broad and indefinite conception, may be compared the kutchi of the Australian Dieri, the agud of the Torres Islanders, the manitou of the Algonkins, the wakonda of the Dakotans, and the oki or orenda of the Iroquois.” “The Bantu mulungu and the Kaffir unkulunkulu have no connection with the idea of personality,” and he quotes Mr. Hollis’s suggestion that in the engai of the Masai “we may have primitive and developed religious sentiment, where the personality of the deity is hardly separated from striking natural phenomena.”

Let us now consider this pre-animistic theory in its relation to the question of Personality. The notion of Personality is a notion which science, as we have seen, finds useless or worse than useless for its purposes. The uniformities of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Contents
• CHAPTER I PERSONALITY AND IMPERSONALITY
• CHAPTER II SYCHOLOGY AND PERSONALITY
• CHAPTER III PERSONALITY AND CHANGE
• CHAPTER IV PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY
• INDEX