Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)

“What is there,” says Malebranche, “which Aristotle cannot at once propose and resolve, by his fine words of genus, species, act, power, nature, form, faculties, qualities, causa per se, causa per accidens? His followers find it very difficult to comprehend that these words signify nothing; and that we are not more learned than we were before, when we have heard them tell us, in their best manner, that fire melts metals, because it has a solvent faculty; and that some unfortunate epicure, or glutton digests ill, because he has a weak digestion, or because the vis concoctrix does not perform well its functions.”29

We see only parts of the great sequences that are taking place in nature; and it is on this account we seek for the causes of what we know in the parts of the sequences that are unknown. If our senses had originally enabled us to discriminate every element of bodies, and consequently, all the minute changes which take place in these, as clearly as the more obvious changes at present perceived by us; in short, if, between two known events, we had never discovered any thing intermediate and unknown, forming a new antecedent of the consequent observed before, our notion of a cause would have been very different from that mysterious unintelligible something which we now conceive it to be; and we should then, perhaps, have found as little difficulty in admitting it to be what it simply and truly is, – only another name for the immediate invariable antecedent of any event, – as we now find in admitting the form of a body, to be only another name for the relative position of the parts that constitute it.

But, – I have said in my Essay, – though the powers of created things be nothing more than their relation to certain events that invariably attend them, is this definition consistent with the notion which we form of the power of the Creator? or, Is not his efficiency altogether different in nature, as well as in degree? The omnipotence of God, it must, indeed, be allowed, bears to every created power the same relation of awful superiority, which his infinite wisdom and goodness bear to the humble knowledge and virtue of his creatures. But as we know his wisdom and goodness, only by knowing what that human wisdom and goodness are, which, with all their imperfection, he has yet permitted to know and adore him, – so, it is only by knowing created power, weak and limited as it is, that we can rise to the contemplation of his omnipotence. In contemplating it, we consider only his will, as the direct antecedent of those glorious effects which the universe displays. The power of God is not any thing different from God; but is the Almighty himself, willing whatever seems to him good, and creating or altering all things by his very will to create or alter. It is enough for our devotion to trace every where the characters of the Divinity, – of provident arrangement prior to this system of things, – and to know, therefore, that, without that divine will as antecedent, nothing could have been. Wherever we turn our eyes, – to the earth – to the heavens – to the myriads of beings that live and move around us – or to those more than myriads of worlds, which seem themselves almost like animated inhabitants of the infinity through which they range, – above us, beneath us, on every side, we discover, with a certainty that admits not of doubt, intelligence and design, that must have preceded the existence of every thing which exists. Yet, when we analyse those great, but obscure, ideas which rise in our mind, while we attempt to think of the creation of things, we feel, that it is still only a sequence of events which we are considering, – though of events, the magnitude of which allows us no comparison, because it has nothing in common with those earthly changes which fall beneath our view. We do not see any third circumstance existing intermediately, and binding, as it were, the will of the Omnipotent Creator to the things which are to be; we conceive only the divine will itself, as if made visible to our imagination, and all nature at the very moment rising around. It is evident, that in the case of the divine agency, as well as in every other instance of causation, the introduction of any circumstance, as a bond of closer connexion, would only furnish a new phenomenon to be itself connected; but even though it were possible to conceive the closer connexion of such a third circumstance, as is supposed to constitute the inexplicable efficiency between the will of the Creator and the rise of the universe, it would diminish, indeed, but it certainly cannot be supposed to elevate, the majesty of the person, and of the scene. Our feeling of his omnipotence is not rendered stronger by the elevation of the complicated process; it is, on the contrary, the immediate succession of the object to the desire, which impresses the force of the omnipotence on our mind; and it is to the divine agency, therefore, that the representation of instant sequence seems peculiarly suited, as if it were more emphatically powerful. Such is the great charm of the celebrated passage of Genesis, descriptive of the creation of light. It is from stating nothing more than the antecedent and consequent, that the majestic simplicity of the description is derived. God speaks, and it is done. We imagine nothing intermediate. In our highest contemplation of His power, we believe only, that, when He willed creation, a world arose; and that, in all future time, His will to create cannot exist, without being followed by the instant rise into being of whatever He may have willed; that His will to destroy any thing, will be, in like manner, followed by its non-existence; and His will to vary the course of things, by miraculous appearances. The will is the only necessary previous change; and that Being has almighty power, whose every will is immediately and invariably followed by the existence of its object.

LECTURE VIII

ON HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY

The observations which I have already made on power, Gentlemen, have, I hope, shown you, both what it truly is, and the sources of that illusion, which leads us to regard it as something more mysterious.

The principal source of this illusion, we found to be our incapacity of distinguishing the minute elements of bodies, – that leads us, in a manner, which it is unnecessary now to recapitulate, to suspect constantly some intermediate and unobserved objects and events, between the parts of sequences, which we truly observe, and, by the influence of this habit, to transfer, at least, the notion of power, from the antecedent which we observe, to the supposed more direct antecedent, which we only imagine, and to consider the causes of events as some unknown circumstances, that exist between all the antecedents which we know, and the consequents which we know, and connect these together in mysterious union.

The same imperfection of our senses, which, from our incapacity of discovering all the minute elements, and consequently all the minute elementary changes, in bodies, leads us to form erroneous notions of power and causation, has tended, in like manner, to produce a fondness for hypotheses, which, without rendering the observed phenomena, in any respect, more intelligible, only render them more complicated, and increase the very difficulty, which they are supposed to diminish.

Of this tendency of the mind, which is a very injurious one to the progress of sound philosophy, I must request your attention to a little fuller elucidation. To know well, what hypotheses truly are in themselves, and what it is which they contribute to the explanation of phenomena, is, I am convinced, the surest of all preservatives against that too ready assent, which you might otherwise be disposed to give to them; and to guard you from the ready adoption of such loose conclusions, in the reasonings of others, and from the tendency to similar rashness of arrangement and inference, in your own speculative inquiries, is to perform for you the most important office that can be performed, for the regulation, both of your present studies, and of those maturer investigations, to which, I trust, your present studies are to lead.

I have also endeavoured to point out to you, in what manner we are led to believe, that we explain the sequence of two events, by stating some intermediate event. If asked, How it is that we hear a voice at a distance, or see a distant object? we immediately answer, Because the primary vibration of the organs of speech is propagated in successive vibrations through the intervening air, and because light is reflected or emitted from the distant object to the eye; and he who hears this answer, which is obviously nothing more than the statement of another effect, or series of effects, that takes place before that particular effect, concerning which the question is put, is perfectly satisfied, for the time, with the acquisition which he has made, and thinks, that he now knows, how it is, that we hear and see. To know why a succession of events takes place, is thus at length conceived by us, to be the same thing, as to know some other changes, or series of changes, which take place between them; and, with this opinion, as to the necessary presence of some intervening and connecting link, it is very natural, that, when we can no longer state or imagine any thing which intervenes, we should feel as if the sequence itself were less intelligible, though unquestionably, when we can state some intervening circumstance, we have merely found a new antecedent in the train of physical events, so as to have now two antecedents and consequents, instead of one simple antecedent and consequent, and have thus only doubled our supposed mystery, instead of removing it.

Since it does appear to us, however, to remove the very mystery which it doubles, it is the same thing, with respect to our general practice of philosophizing, as if it did remove it. If we suppose the intervention of some unknown cause, in every phenomenon which we perceive, we must be equally desirous of discovering that unknown cause, which we suppose to be intermediate, – and, when this is not easily discoverable, we must feel a strong tendency to divine what it is, and to acquiesce, more readily than we should otherwise have done, in the certainty of what we have only imagined, – always, of course, imagining the cause, which seems to have most analogy to the observed effect.

Such is the nature of that illusion, from which the love of hypotheses flows, – as seeming, by the intervention of a new antecedent, to render more intelligible the sequences of events that are obviously before us, – though all which is truly done, is to double the number of antecedents; and, therefore, to double, instead of removing the difficulty, that is supposed to be involved in the consideration of a simple sequence of events. A stone tends to the ground – that it should have this tendency, in consequence of the mere presence of the earth, appears to us most wonderful; and we think, that it would be much less wonderful, if we could discover the presence, though it were the mere presence, of something else. We therefore, in our mind, run over every circumstance analogous, to discover something which we may consider as present, that may represent to our imagination the cause which we seek. The effect of impulse, in producing motion, we know by constant experience; and, as the motion, which it produces, in a particular direction, seems analogous to the motion of the stone in its particular direction, we conceive, that the motion of a stone, in its fall to the earth, is rendered more intelligible, by the imagined intervention of some impelling body. The circumstances, which we observe, however, are manifestly inconsistent with the supposition of the impulse of any very gross matter. The analogies of gross matter are accordingly excluded from our thoughts, and we suppose the impulse to proceed from some very subtle fluid, to which we give the name of ether, or any other name, which we may choose to invent for it. The hypothesis is founded, you will observe, on the mere analogy of another species of motion, and which would account for gravitation by the impulse of some fine fluid. It is evident, that there may be, in this way, as many hypotheses to explain a single fact, as there have been circumstances analogous observed in all the various phenomena of nature. Accordingly, another set of philosophers, instead of explaining gravitation by the analogy of impulse, have had recourse to another analogy, still more intimately familiar to us – that of the phenomena of life: We are able to move our limbs by our mere volition. The mind, therefore, it is evident, can produce motion in matter; and it is hence some interposed spiritual agent, which produces all the phenomena of gravitation. Every orb, in its revolution on its axis, or in its great journey through the heavens, has, according to this system of philosophical mythology, some peculiar genius, or directing spirit, that regulates its course, in the same manner as, of old, the universe itself was considered as one enormous animal, performing its various movements by its own vital energies. It is the influence of this analogy of our own muscular motions, as obedient to our volition, – together with the mistaken belief of adding greater honour to the divine Omnipotent, – which has led a very large class of philosophers to ascribe every change in the universe, material or intellectual, not to the original foresight and arrangement merely, – the irresistible evidence of which even the impiety, that professes to question it, must secretly admit, – but to the direct operation of the Creator and Sovereign of the world, —

“The mighty Hand,That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres,Works in the secret deep; shoots streaming thenceThe fair profusion that o'erspreads the spring;Flings from the sun direct the flaming day;Feeds every creature; hurls the tempest forth;And, as on earth this grateful change revolves,With transport touches all the springs of life.”

So prone is the mind to complicate every phenomenon, by the insertion of imagined causes, in the simple sequences of physical events, that one hypothesis may often be said to involve in it many other hypotheses, invented for the explanation of that very phenomenon, which is adduced in explanation of another phenomenon, as simple as itself. The production of muscular motion by the will, which is the source of the hypothesis of direct spiritual agency, in every production of motion, or change, in the universe, has itself given occasion to innumerable speculations of this kind. Indeed, on no subject has the imagination been more fruitful of fancies, that have been strangely given to the world under the name of philosophy. Though you cannot be supposed to be acquainted with the minute nomenclature of anatomy, you yet all know, that there are parts termed muscles, and other parts termed nerves, and that it is by the contraction of our muscles that our limbs are moved. The nerves, distributing to the different muscles, are evidently instrumental to their contraction; since the destruction of the nerve puts an end to the voluntary contraction of the muscle, and consequently to the apparent motion of the limb. But what is the influence that is propagated along the nerve, and in what manner is it propagated? For explaining this most familiar of all phenomena, there is scarcely any class of phenomena in nature, to the analogy of which recourse has not been had, – the vibration of musical chords, – the coiling or uncoiling of springs, – the motion of elastic fluids, electricity, magnetism, galvanism; – and the result of so many hypotheses, – after all the labour of striving to adapt them to the phenomena, and the still greater labour of striving to prove them exactly adapted, when they were far from being so – has been the return to the simple fact, that muscular motion follows a certain state of the nerve; – in the same manner, as the result of all the similar labour, that has been employed to account, as it has been termed, for gravitation, has been a return to the simple fact, that, at all visible distances observed, the bodies in nature tend toward each other.

The mere sequence of one event after another event, is, however, too easily conceived, and has too little in it of that complication, which at once busies and delights us, to allow the mind to rest in it long. It must forever have something to disentangle, and, therefore, something which is perplexed; for, such is the strange nature of man, that the simplicity of truth, which might seem to be its essential charm, – and which renders it doubly valuable, in relation to the weakness of his faculties, – is the very circumstance that renders it least attractive to him; and though, in his analysis of every thing that is compound in matter, or involved in thought, he constantly flatters himself, that it is this very simplicity, which he loves and seeks, he yet, when he arrives at absolute simplicity, feels an equal tendency to turn away from it, and gladly prefers to it any thing that is more mysterious, merely because it is mysterious. “I am persuaded,” said one, who knew our nature well, “that, if the majority of mankind could be made to see the order of the universe, such as it is, as they would not remark in it any virtues attached to certain numbers, nor any properties inherent in certain planets, nor fatalities, in certain times and revolutions of these, they would not be able to restrain themselves, on the sight of this admirable regularity and beauty, from crying out with astonishment, What, is this all?”

For the fidelity of this picture, in which Fontenelle has so justly represented one of the common weaknesses of our intellectual nature, we unfortunately need not refer to the majority of mankind alone, to whom, it may be said, almost with equal truth, that every thing is wonderful, and that nothing is wonderful. The feeling which it describes exists even in the most philosophic mind, and had certainly no increased influence even on that mind which described it so truly, when it employed all its great powers, in still striving to support the cumbrous system of the Vortices, against the simple theory of attraction. Even Newton himself, whose transcendent intellect was so well fitted to perceive the sublimity, which simplification adds to every thing that is truly great in itself, yet, showed, by his query with respect to the agency of ether, that he was not absolutely exempt from that human infirmity of which I speak; and though philosophers may now be considered as almost unanimous with respect to gravitation, – in considering it as the mere tendency of bodies towards each other, we yet, in admiring this tendency which we perceive, feel some reluctance to admit a mere fact, that presents itself so simply to our conception, and would be better pleased, if any other mode could be pointed out, by which, with some decent appearance of reason on its side, the same effect could seem to be brought about, by a natural apparatus, better suited to gratify our passion for the complicated and the wonderful. Though the theory of Vortices can scarcely be said now to have any lingering defender left, there is a constant tendency, and a tendency which requires all our philosophy to repress it, – to relapse into the supposition of a great etherial fluid, by the immense ocean, or immense streams, of which the phenomenon now asserted to gravitate, may be explained, and we have no objection, to fill the whole boundless void of the universe, with an infinite profusion of this invisible matter, merely that we may think, with more comfort, that we know how a feather falls to the ground; – though the fall of the feather, after this magnificent cast of contrivance, would still be as truly inexplicable as at present; and though many other difficulties must, in that case, be admitted in addition. It is only in geometry, that we readily allow a straight line, to be the shortest that can be drawn between any two points. In the physics of mind, or of matter, we are far from allowing this. We prefer to it almost any curve that is presented to us by others, – and, without all doubt, any curve which we have described ourselves; and we boldly maintain, and, which is yet more fairly believe, that we have found out a shorter road, merely because, in our philosophical peregrination, we have chosen to journey many miles about, and in our delight of gazing on new objects, have never thought of measuring the ground which we have trod.

I am aware, indeed, that, in the consideration of the simple antecedents, and consequents which nature exhibits, it is not the mere complication of these, by the introduction of new intervening substances or events, which obtains from the mind so ready an adoption of hypotheses. On the contrary, there is a sort of false simplification in the introduction of hypotheses, which itself aids the illusion of the mystery. I term the simplification false, because it is not in the phenomena themselves, but in our mode of conceiving them. It is certainly far more simple, in nature, that bodies should have a tendency toward each other, than that there should be oceans of a subtle fluid, circulating around them, in vortices, – or streams of such a fluid, projected continually on them from some unknown source, merely to produce the same exact motions, which would be the result of the reciprocal tendency in the bodies themselves. But the interposition of all this immensity of matter, to account for the fall of a feather or rain-drop, cumbrous as the contrivance must be allowed to be, is yet in one respect, more simple to our conception, because, instead of two classes of phenomena, those of gravitation and of impulse, we have, in referring all to impulse, only one general class. Man loves what is simple much, but he loves what is mysterious more; and a mighty ocean of ether, operating invisibly in all the visible phenomena of the universe, has thus a sort of double charm, by uniting the false simplification, of which I have spoken, with abundance of real mystery. This mixture of the simple and the mysterious, is, in some measure, like the mixture of uniformity with diversity, that is so delightful in works of art. However pleasing objects may separately be, we are soon wearied with wandering over them, when, from their extreme irregularity, we cannot group them in any distinct assemblage, or discover some slight relation of parts to the whole; and we are still sooner, and more painfully fatigued, when every object which we see is in exact symmetry with some other object. In like manner, the mind would be perplexed and oppressed, if it were to conceive a great multitude of objects or circumstances, concurring in the production of one observed event. But it feels a sort of dissatisfaction also, when the sequences of events which it observes, are reduced to the mere antecedents and consequents of which they consist, and must have a little more complication to flatter it with the belief, that it has learned something which it is important to have learned. To know that a withered leaf falls to the ground, is to know, what the very vulgar know, as well as ourselves; but an ocean of ether, whirling it downward, is something of which the vulgar have no conception, and gives a kind of mysterious magnificence to a very simple event, which makes us think, that our knowledge is greater, because we have given, in our imagination, a sort of cumbrous magnitude to the phenomenon itself.

That hypotheses, in that wide sense of the word which implies every thing conjectural, are without use in philosophy, it would be absurd to affirm, since every inquiry may, in that wide sense, be said to pre-suppose them, and must always pre-suppose them if the inquiry have any object. They are of use, however, not as superseding investigation, but as directing investigation to certain objects, – not as telling us, what we are to believe, but as pointing out to us what we are to endeavour to ascertain. An hypothesis, in this view of it, is nothing more than a reason for making one experiment or observation rather than another; and it is evident, that, without some reason of this kind, as experiment and observations are almost infinite, inquiry would be altogether profitless. To make experiments, at random, is not to philosophize; it becomes philosophy, only when the experiments are made with a certain view; and to make them, with any particular view, is to suppose the presence of something, the operation of which they will tend either to prove or disprove. When Torricelli, for example, – proceeding on the observation previously made, by Galileo, with respect to the limited height to which water could be made to rise in a pump, – that memorable observation, which demonstrated, at last, after so many ages of errors, what ought not for a single moment to have required to be demonstrated; the absurdity of the horror of a void ascribed to nature – when, proceeding in this memorable observation, Torricelli made his equally memorable experiment with respect to the height of the column of mercury supported in an inverted tube, and found, on comparison of their specific gravities, the columns of mercury and water to be exactly equiponderant, it is evident that he was led to the experiment with the mercury by the supposition, that the rise of fluids in vacuo was occasioned by some counterpressure, exactly equal to the weight supported, and that the column of mercury, therefore should be less in height than the column of water, in the exact inverse ratio of their specific gravities, by which the counterpressure was to be sustained. To conceive the air, which was then universally regarded as essentially light, to be not light but heavy, so as to press on the fluid beneath, was, at that time, to make as bold a supposition as could be made. It was indeed, a temporary hypothesis, even when it led to that experimental demonstration of the fact, which proved it forever after not to be hypothetical.