Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/504

display to the eye the configurations that represent its varied phases, but it may be proved, he thinks, that consciousness is a mode of motion; and, having done this, having co-ordinated it with light, heat, electricity and the other molecular forces, we are no more required to show what kind of a motion corresponds to love and what to hate, for example, than to describe the form of a wave of red light or construct a diagram exhibiting the secret of electrical repulsion. All this must be conceded if it can really be proved that consciousness is simply a mode of motion. The proofs of it, according to Hertzen, are both indirect and direct. The indirect proof is, that, as motion is for us a series of changing sensations, these sensations can be nothing else than motion. The direct proof is, that all our states of consciousness have a measurable duration and every psychic act has a time-relation. But every process that has duration can be nothing else than motion. Therefore every psychic activity must be a motion, and consciousness is the sum of these activities. We may well regard this facile resolution of consciousness into motion with serious reserve. This simple solution of the problem succeeds only by ignoring the central difficulty, — the translation of objects-of-consciousness into consciousness-of-objects. Motion is, indeed, known to us as a relation of change among our objects-of-consciousness, but this does not justify us in affirming that consciousness-of-objects is also motion. The duration of mental states, it is true, implies the existence of motion as the measure of that duration, that is, in the neurosis to which the psychosis corresponds. But Hertzen’s explanation identifies neurosis and psychosis, for he says that the consciousness-of-motion is simply that motion which he calls consciousness. This identifies subject and object as absolutely as Hegel did, and resolves all being into thought. It may be said, however, that Hertzen identifies consciousness with a particular kind of motion, but this is to exclude the knowledge of any other kind; for the consciousness-of-motion being simply the motion-of-consciousness, only the motion-of-consciousness is in the field. This turns out to be a very old-fashioned solution of the problem, for it is nothing else