CHAPTER IV - THE BEGINNINGS OF THOUGHT

FEW outside the circle of students of psychology have troubled themselves much with the question: How does thought originate? When we now come into the world, we find ourselves possessed of a large amount of thought ready made, a large store of what are called "innate ideas". These are conceptions which we bring with us into the world, the condensed or summarised results of our experiences in lives previous to the present one. With this mental stock-in-hand we begin our transactions in this life, and the psychologist is never able to study by direct observation the beginnings of thought.

He can, however, learn something from the observation of an infant, for just as the new physical body runs over in pre-natal life the long physical evolution of the past, so does the new mental body swiftly traverse the stages of its long development. It is true that " mental body " is not by any means identical with "thought", and hence that even in studying the new mental body itself, we are not really studying the " beginnings of thought" at all; to a still greater degree is this true, when we consider that few people can study even the mental body directly, but are confined to the observation of the effects of the workings of that body on its denser fellow, the physical brain and nervous system. " Thought " is as distinct from the mental body as from the physical; it belongs to consciousness, to the life side, whereas mental and physical bodies belong alike to the form, to the matter side, and are mere transitory vehicles or instruments. As already said, the student must ever keep before him " the distinction between him who knows and the mind which is his instrument for obtaining knowledge", and the definition of the word " mind", already given, as " the mental body and manas "—a compound.

We can, however, by studying the effects of thought on these bodies, when the bodies are new, infer by correspondence something of the beginnings of thought, when a Self, in any given universe, comes first into contact with the Not-Self. The observations may help us, according to the axiom, " As above, so below". Everything here is but a reflection, and by studying the reflections, we may learn something of the objects that cause them.

If an infant be closely observed, it will be seen that sensations—response to stimuli by feelings of pleasure or pain, and primarily by those of pain— precede any sign of intelligence. That is that vague sensations precede definite cognitions. Before birth, the infant was sustained by the life-forces flowing through the mother's body. On its being launched on an independent existence, these arc cut off. Life flows away from the body and is not now renewed; as the life-forces lessen, want is felt, and this want is pain. The supply of the want gives ease, pleasure, and the infant sinks back into unconsciousness. Presently sights and sounds arouse sensation, but still no intellectual sign is given. The first sign of intelligence is when the sight or voice of the mother or nurse is connected with the satisfaction of the ever recurring want, with the giving of pleasure by food; the linking together in, or by, memory of a group of recurring sensations with one external object, which object is regarded as separate from, and as the cause of, those sensations. Thought is the cognition of a relation between many sensations and a one, a unity, linking them together. This is the first expression of intelligence, the first thought—technically a " perception". The essence of this is the establishing of such a relation as is above described between a unit of consciousness'—a Jiva—and an object, and wherever such a relation is established there thought is present.

This simple and ever-verifiable fact may serve as a general example of the beginning of thought in a separated Self—that is, in a triple Self encased in an envelope of matter, however fine, a Self as distinguished from the Self; in such a separated Self sensations precede thoughts; the attention of the Self is aroused by an impression made on him and responded to by a sensation. The massive feeling of want, due to the diminution of life-energy, does not by itself arouse thought; but that want is satisfied by the contact of the milk, causing a definite local impression, an impression followed by a feeling of pleasure. After this has been often repeated, the Self reaches outwards, vaguely, gropingly; outwards, because of the direction of the impression, which has come from outside. The life-energy thus flows into the mental body and vivifies it, so that it reflects—faintly at first—the object which, coming into contact with the body, has caused the sensation. This modification in the mental body, being repeated time after time, stimulates the Self in his aspect of knowledge, and he vibrates correspondingly. He has felt want, contact, pleasure, and with the contact an image presents itself, the eye being affected as well as the lips, two sense-impressions blending. His own inherent nature links these three, the want, the contact-image, the pleasure, together, and this link is thought. Not till he thus answers is there any thought; it is the Self that perceives, not any other or lower.

This perception specialises the desire, which ceases to be a vague craving for something, and becomes a definite craving for a special thing—milk. But the perception needs revision, for the Knower has associated three things together, and one of them has to be disjoined—the want. It is significant that at an early stage the sight of the milk-giver arouses the want, the Knower calling up the want when the image associated with it appears; the child who is not hungry will cry for the breast on seeing the mother; later this mistaken link is broken, and the milk-

giver is associated with the pleasure as cause, and seen as the object of pleasure. Desire for the mother is thus established, and then becomes a further stimulus to thought.

THE RELATION OF SENSATION AND THOUGHT

It is very clearly stated in many books on psychology, Eastern and Western, that all thought is rooted in sensation, that until a large number of sensations have been accumulated there can be no thinking. " Mind, as we know it", says H. P. Blavatsky, " is resolvable into states of consciousness, of varying duration, intensity, complexity, etc., all, in the ultimate, resting on sensation."Some writers have gone farther than this, declaring that not only are sensations the materials out of which thoughts are constructed, but that thoughts are produced by sensations, thus ignoring any Thinker any Knower. Others, at the opposite extreme, look on thought as the result of the activity of the Thinker, initiated from within instead of receiving its first impulse from without, sensations being materials on which he employs his own inherent specific capacity, but not a necessary condition of his activity.

Each of the two views, that thought is the pure product of sensations and that thought is the pure product of the Knower, contains truth, but the full truth lies between the two. While it is necessary for the awakening of the Knower that sensations should play upon him from without, and while the first thought will be produced in consequence of impulses from sensation, and sensations will serve as its necessary antecedent; yet unless there were an inherent capacity for linking things together, unless the self were knowledge in his own nature, sensations might be presented to him continually and never a thought would be produced. It is only half the truth that thoughts have their beginning in sensations; there must work on the sensations the power of organising them, and of establishing connecting links, relations between them, and also between them and the external world. The Thinker is the father, Sensation the mother, Thought the child.

If thoughts have their beginnings in sensations, and those sensations are caused by impacts from without, then it is most important that when the sensation arises, the nature and extent of that sensation shall be accurately observed. The first work of the knower is to observe; if there were nothing to observe he would always remain asleep; but when an object is presented to him, when as the Self he is conscious or an impact, then as Knower he observes. On the accuracy of that observation depends the thought which he is to shape out of many of these observations put together. If he observes inaccurately, if he establishes a mistaken relation between the object that made the impact and himself who is observing the impact, then out of that error in his own work will grow a number of consequent errors that nothing can put right save going back to the very beginning.

Let us see now how sensation and perception work in a special case. Suppose I feel a touch on my hand, the touch causes, is answered by, a sensation; the recognition of the object which caused the sensation is a thought. When I feel a touch, I feel, and nothing more need be added as far as that pure sensation is concerned; but when from the feeling I pass to the object that caused the feeling, I perceive that object and the perception is a thought. This perception means that as Knower I recognise a relation between myself and that object, as having caused a certain sensation in my Self. This, however, is not all that happens. For I also experience other sensations, from colour, form, softness, warmth, texture; these are again passed on to me as Knower, and, aided by the memory of similar impressions formerly received, i.e., comparing past images with the image of the object touch-.ing the hand, I decide on the kind of object that has touched it.

In this perception of things that makes us feel, lies the beginning of thought; putting this into the ordinary metaphysical terms—the perception of a Not-Self as the cause of certain sensations in the Self is the beginning of cognition. Feeling alone, if such were possible, could not give consciousness of the Not-Self; there would be only the feeling of pleasure or pain in the Self, an inner consciousness of expansion or contraction. No higher evolution would be possible if a man could do nothing more than feel; only when he recognises objects as causes of pleasure or pain does his human education begin. In the establishing of a conscious relation between the Self and the Not-Self, the whole future evolution depends, and that evolution will largely consist in these relations becoming more and more numerous, more and more complicated, more and more accurate on the side of the Knower. The Knower begins his outer unfolding when the awakened consciousness, feeling pleasure or pain, turns its gaze on the external world and says: "That object gave me pleasure; that object gave me pain."

There must have been experienced a large number of sensations before the Self answers externally at all. Then came a dull, confused groping after the pleasure, due to a desire in the willing Self to experience a repetition of the pleasure. And this is a good example of the fact mentioned before, that there is no such thing as pure feeling or pure thought; for " desire for the repetition of a pleasure", implies that the picture of the pleasure remains, however faintly, in the consciousness, and this is memory, and belongs to thought. For a long time the half-awakened Self drifts from one thing to another, striking against the Not-Self in haphazard fashion, without any

direction being given to these movements by consciousness, experiencing pleasure and pain without any perception of the cause of either. Only when this has gone on for a long time is the perception above-mentioned possible, and the relation between the Knower and the Known begun.