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

Since it is only by their relation to our own feelings, then, that substances can be known to us, beyond these relations it would be vain for us to think of penetrating; as vain, at least, as would be the attempts of the deaf to discover, by a process of reasoning, the nature of the sensations of sound, or of the blind to determine, not the lines of direction merely, in which the various coloured rays of light pass after refraction, for these they may optically determine, but the various sensations, corresponding with all the varieties of tint into which the sun-beams are broken by the drops of a falling shower. The substance matter, the substance mind, are, in this respect, to the whole race of metaphysical inquirers, what the rainbow, as a series of colours, is to opticians, who have never seen.

The absurdity of such inquiries, into any thing more than the mere phenomena, if it be not sufficiently evident of itself, may, perhaps, be rendered more apparent, by a very easy supposition. Let us imagine the permanent unknown substance matter, and the permanent unknown substance mind, to be rendered, by the same divine power which made them, altogether different in their own absolute essence, as they exist independently, but to exhibit relatively, precisely the same phenomena as at present, – that spring, and summer, and autumn, and winter, in every appearance that can affect our organs of perception, succeed each other as now, pouring out the same profusion of foliage, and flowers, and fruits, and, after the last gladness of the vintage and the harvest, sweeping the few lingering blossoms, with those desolating blasts, which seem like the very destroyers of nature, while they are only leading in, with great freshness, under the same benevolent eye of Heaven, the same delightful circle of beauty and abundance, – that, in mind, the same sensations are excited by the same objects, and are followed by the same remembrances, and comparisons, and hopes, and fears; – in these circumstances, while all the phenomena which we observe, and all the phenomena of which we are conscious, continue exactly the same, can we believe, that we should be able to discover the essential change, which, according to this supposition, had taken place, in the permanent subjects of these unvaried phenomena! And, if, as long as the external and internal phenomena continued exactly the same, we should be incapable of discovering, or even suspecting, the slightest change, where, by supposition, there had been a change so great, how absurd is it to conceive that the changed or unchanged nature of the substance itself, as it exists independently of the phenomenon, ever can become known to us.

He, indeed, it may always safely be presumed, knows least of the mind, who thinks that he knows its substance best. “What is the soul?” was a question once put to Marivaux. “I know nothing of it,” he answered, “but that it is spiritual and immortal.” “Well,” said his friend, “let us ask Fontenelle, and he will tell us what it is.” “No,” cried Marivaux, “ask any body but Fontenelle, for he has too much good sense to know any more about it than we do.”

It is to the phenomena only, then, that our attention is to be given, not to any vain inquiries into the absolute nature of the substances which exhibit the phenomena. This alone is legitimate philosophy, – philosophy which must forever retain its claim to our assent, amid the rise and fall of all those spurious speculations, to which our vanity is so fond of giving the names of theory and system. Whatever that may be, in itself, which feels, and thinks, and wills, – if our feelings, and thoughts, and volitions be the same – all which we can know, and compare, and arrange, must be the same; and, while we confine our attention to these, the general laws of their succession which we infer, and the various relations which they seem to bear to each other, may be admitted equally by those whose opinions, as to the absolute nature of the feeling and thinking principle, differ fundamentally. It requires no peculiar supposition, or belief, as to the nature of the mind, to know, that its trains of thought are influenced, by former habits, or casual association; and every fact, which the immaterialist has accurately observed and arranged, with respect to the influence of habit or association, may thus, with equal reason, form a part of the intellectual and moral creed of the materialist also.

On these two systems it is not at present my intention to make any remarks; all which I wish, now, is to explain to you, how independent the real philosophy of the mind is, of any fanciful conjectures, which may be formed, with respect to its essence. It differs from these, as Mr. Stewart has well observed, in the same manner “as the inquiries of Galileo, concerning the laws of moving bodies, differ from the disputes of the ancient Sophists, concerning the existence and the nature of motion,” or as the conclusions of Newton, with respect to the law of gravitation, differ from his query concerning the mode in which he supposed that gravity might possibly be produced. The hypothesis, involved in the query, you may admit or reject; the conclusions, with respect to the law of gravitation itself, as far as relates to our planetary system, are, I may say, almost beyond your power of rejecting.

The philosophy of mind then, and the philosophy of matter, agree, in this respect, that our knowledge is, in both, confined to the mere phenomena. They agree also, in the two species of inquiry which they admit. The phenomena of mind, in the same manner as we have seen in the case of matter, may be considered as complex and susceptible of analysis, or they may be considered as successive in a certain order, and bearing, therefore, to each other the reciprocal relation of causes and effects.

That we can know the phenomena, only as far as we have attended to their sequences, and that, without experiment, therefore, it would have been impossible for us to predict any of their successions, is equally true, in mind as in matter. Many of the successions, indeed, are so familiar to us, that it may appear to you, at first, very difficult to conceive, that we should not have been able, at least with respect to them, to predict, originally, what antecedents would have been followed by what consequents. We may allow certainly, that we should not have been able to foresee the pleasure which we receive from the finer works of imitative art – from the successions, or co-existences, in music, of sounds, that, considered separately, would scarcely be counted among the sources of delight – from the charm of versification, that depends on circumstances, so very slight, as to be altogether destroyed, and even converted into pain, by the change of quantity of a single syllable. But, that the remembrance of pleasure should not be attended with desire of enjoying it again, seems to us almost inconsistent with the very nature of the pleasing emotion. In like manner, we may allow, that we could not have predicted the sympathy which we feel with the distresses of others, when they arise from causes that cannot affect us, and yet make, for the time, the agony, which we merely behold, a part of our own existence. But we can scarcely think, that we require any experience, to know, that the contemplation of pain, which we may ourselves have to endure, should be the cause of that painful feeling, to which we give the name of fear, or that the actual suffering should be accompanied with the desire of relief. The truth is, however, that, in all these cases, and in all of them equally, – it would have been impossible, but for experience, to predict the consequent of any of the antecedents. The pleasure, which we feel, in the contemplation of a work of art, the pain, which we feel, at the sight of the misery of others, are as much the natural effects of states of mind preceding them, as the fear of pain is the effect of the consideration of pain as hanging over us. Our various feelings, similar or dissimilar, kindred or discordant, are all mere states of the mind; and there is nothing, in any one state of the mind, considered in itself, which, necessarily, involves the succession of any other state of mind. That particular state, for example, which constitutes the mere feeling of pain, instead of being attended by that different state which constitutes the desire of being freed from pain, might have continued, as one uniform feeling, or might have ceased, and been succeeded by some other state, though in the original adaptation of our mental frames, by that Creator's wisdom which planned the sequences of its phenomena, the particular affection, which constitutes desire, had not been one of the innumerable varieties of affection, of which the mind was forever to be susceptible.

What susceptibilities the mind has exhibited in the ordinary circumstances in which it has been placed, we know, and they have been limited to a certain number, corresponding with the feelings which have arisen in these circumstances. But the Almighty Power, who fixed this particular number, might have increased or lessened the number at His pleasure, in the same manner, as He might, at His pleasure, have multiplied or diminished the whole number of his animated creatures; and, where there has been no limit, but the will of the Limiter, it is experience only which can give us any knowledge of the actual limitation. We are always too much inclined to believe, that we know what must have been, because we know what is, – and to suppose ourselves acquainted, not merely with the gracious ends which Supreme Goodness had in view, in creating us, but with the very object, which each separate modification of our intellectual and moral constitution was intended to answer. I would not, indeed, go so far as Pope, in that passage of the Essay on Man, in which he seems to imply, that our ignorance of the wise and harmonious intentions of Providence, in the constitution of our mind, is like the ignorance of the inferior animals, as to the motives which influence the follies and inconsistencies of their capricious master.

“When the proud steed shall know, why man restrainsHis fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains,When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,Is now a victim, and now Egypt's God, —Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehendHis action's, passion's, being's, use and end;Why doing, suffering, check'd, impell'd; and whyThis hour a slave, the next a deity.”37

Our Divine Author has not left us, even now, to darkness like this. We know, in a great measure, the use and end of our actions and passions, because we know who it is who has formed us to do and to bear, – and who, from His own moral excellence, cannot have given us any susceptibility, even that of suffering, which does not tend, upon the whole, to strengthen virtue, and to consecrate, as in some purifying sacrifice, the sufferer of a moment to affections more holy, and happiness more divine. Yet, though we know, in this general sense, our action's, passion's, being's, use and end, as subservient to the universal plan of Infinite Goodness, we are not so well acquainted with the particular uses of each state of the mind, as to have been able to predict it, merely as a part or consequence of the plan. The knowledge of every successive modification of our thought, is still as much the result of experience, as if the gracious plan, to which all these successive modifications are instrumental, were wholly unknown to us: – Yet, such is the influence of habit, in familiarizing us to phenomena, that we think, that experience is nothing, only in those cases, in which the power of experience has been most frequently and familiarly felt; and while in the rarer successions of feelings, we allow, that there are phenomena of the mind, which we could not have foreknown, we find it difficult to imagine, in the recurrences of the common mental phenomena, that, even originally, it could have required any peculiar foresight to predict, what we are now conscious of predicting with a readiness, that seems to us almost like the instant glance of intuition.

In the philosophy of external matter, the greater or less familiarity of events produces an illusion exactly similar. There are certain phenomena, which, we readily admit, could not, of themselves, and without experience, have indicated to us, either the changes which preceded them, or the changes which were to follow; while there are other phenomena, more familiar, which seem to us to require no experience, for informing us, both of their antecedents and consequents, – merely because they have been of such frequent occurrence, that we do not remember the time, when we were ignorant of them, or of the circumstances, by which they are usually preceded and followed. That a magnetic needle should tend to the north, rather than to any other point, – and that glass, or amber, rubbed in a certain manner, should exhibit the very striking phenomena of electricity, transmitting this power through certain substances, and not transmitting it through others, which have nothing peculiar in their sensible qualities, to mark them as less or better fitted for this communication, appear to us to be facts, which we could not have known, till we had actually witnessed them. But that a stone, rolled from the hand, should continue to move in the same direction, after quitting the hand, seems a fact, which it must have been easy for us to foresee. We are not aware, that it is only the more familiar occurrence of the one event, than of the others, which makes its sequence appear more obvious; and that, but for this greater familiarity, we might as readily have supposed, that a stone, after quitting the hand which flung it, should have remained in the air, or fallen to the ground, as that the needle, without any tendency to the north, would remain stationary, to whatever point of the compass we might turn it.

Such is the influence of early acquaintance with the more frequent and obvious events, whether in mind or in matter. We have become familiar with them, and with their causes and consequences, long before reflection; and it is not very wonderful, that we should conceive ourselves to have known always, what we do not remember to have ever learned.

That to know, in the series of mental phenomena, what are the antecedents, and what their consequents, is one great branch of the Philosophy of Mind, I surely need not attempt to demonstrate; and it would be equally superfluous to demonstrate its importance, especially after the remarks – if even these were necessary, – which I made in a former Lecture; since it is not merely, as a very interesting branch of speculative knowledge, that it is valuable, but, as I then showed, still more valuable, as the foundation of every intellectual art, especially of those noble and almost divine arts, which have, for their immediate object, the illumination and amendment of mankind – the art of training ignorance to wisdom, and even wisdom itself to knowledge still more sublime, – of fixing youthful innocence in the voluntary practice of virtue, that is as yet little more than an instinct of which it is scarcely conscious, – of breathing that moral inspiration, which strengthens feeble goodness, when it is about to fall, tames even the wildest excesses of the wildest passions, and leads back, as if by the invisible power of some guardian spirit, even Guilt itself, to the happiness which it had lost, and the holier wishes, which it rejoices to feel once more.

Since the phenomena of the mind, however, are obviously successive, like those of matter, the consideration of the sequences of the mental phenomena, and the arrangement of them in certain classes, may appear to you sufficiently analogous to the consideration and arrangement of the sequences of the phenomena of the material world. But that there should be any inquiries, in the philosophy of mind, corresponding with the inquiries into the composition of bodies, may appear to you improbable, or almost absurd; since the mind, and consequently its affections – which I use as a short general term for expressing all the variety of the modes in which it can be affected, and which, therefore, are only the mind itself as it exists in different states, – must be always simple and indivisible. Yet, wonderful, or even absurd, as it may seem, notwithstanding the absolute simplicity of the mind itself, and consequently of all its feelings or momentary states, – the Science of Mind is, in its most important respects, a source of analysis, or of a process which I have said to be virtually the same as analysis; and it is only, as it is in this virtual sense analytical, that any discovery, at least that any important discovery, can be expected to be made in it.

It is, indeed, scarcely possible to advance, even a step in intellectual physics, without the necessity of performing some sort of analysis, by which we reduce to simpler elements, some complex feeling that seems to us virtually to involve them. In the mind of man, all is in a state of constant and ever-varying complexity, and a single sentiment may be the slow result of innumerable feelings. There is not a single pleasure, or pain, or thought, or emotion, that may not, – by the influence of that associating principle, which is afterwards to come under our consideration, – be so connected with other pleasures, or pains, or thoughts, or emotions, as to form with them, forever after, an union the most intimate. The complex, or seemingly complex, phenomena of thought, which result from the constant operation of this principle of the mind, it is the labour of the intellectual inquirer to analyze, as it is the labour of the chemist to reduce the compound bodies, on which he operates, however close and intimate their combination may be, to their constituent elements. The process, and the instruments by which the analyses are carried on, are, indeed, as different as matter is from mind, – cumbrous as matter, in the one case, – in the other, simple and spiritual as mind itself. The aggregates of matter we analyze by the use of other matter, adding substance after substance, and varying manipulation after manipulation; – the complex mental phenomena we analyze virtually by mere reflection; the same individual mind being the subject of analysis, the instrument of analysis, and the analysing inquirer.

When I speak, however, of the union of separate thoughts and feelings in one complex sentiment or emotion, and of the analytic power of reflection or reason, it must not be conceived, that I use these words in a sense precisely the same as when they are applied to matter. A mass of matter, as we have seen, is, in truth, not one body merely, but a multitude of contiguous bodies; all of which, at the time, may be considered as having a separate existence, and as placed together more by accidental apposition, than by any essential union; – and analysis is nothing more than what its etymology denotes, a loosening of these from each other. In strictness of language, this composition and analysis cannot take place in mind. Even the most complex feeling is still only one feeling; for we cannot divide the states or affections of our mind into separate self-existing fractions, as we can divide a compound mass of matter into masses, which are separate and self-existing, – nor distinguish half a joy or sorrow from a whole joy or sorrow. The conception of gold, and the conception of a mountain, may separately arise, and may be followed by the conception of a golden mountain; which may be said to be a compound of the two, in the sense in which I use that word, to express merely, that what is thus termed compound or complex is the result of certain previous feelings, to which, as if existing together, it is felt to have the virtual relation of equality, or the relation which a whole bears to the parts that are comprehended in it. But the conception of a golden mountain is still as much one state or feeling of one simple mind, as either of the separate conceptions of gold and of a mountain which preceded it. In cases of this kind, indeed, it is the very nature of the resulting feeling to seem to us thus complex; and we are led, by the very constitution of our mind itself, to consider what we term a complex idea, as equivalent to the separate ideas from which it results, or as comprehensive of them, – as being truly to our conception – though to our conception only – and, therefore, only virtually or relatively to us the inquirers – the same, as if it were composed of the separate feelings co-existing, as the elements of a body co-exist in space.

It is this feeling of the relation of certain states of mind to certain other states of mind, which solves the whole mystery of mental analysis, that seemed at first so inexplicable, – the virtual decomposition, in our thought, of what is by its very nature, indivisible. The mind, indeed, it must be allowed, is absolutely simple in all its states; every separate state or affection of it must therefore, be absolutely simple; but in certain cases, in which a feeling is the result of other feelings preceding it, it is its very nature to appear to involve the union of those preceding feelings; and to distinguish the separate sensations, or thoughts, or emotions, of which, on reflection, it thus seems to be comprehensive, is to perform an intellectual process, which, though not a real analysis, is an analysis at least relatively to our conception. It may still, indeed, be said with truth, that the different feelings, – the states or affections of mind which we term complex, – are absolutely simple and indivisible, as much as the feelings or affections of mind which we term simple. Of this there can be no doubt. But the complexity with which alone we are concerned is not absolute but relative, – a seeming complexity, which is involved in the very feeling of relation of every sort. That we are thus impressed with certain feelings of relation of conceptions to conceptions, no one can doubt who knows, that all science has its origin in these very feelings; and equivalence, or equality, is one of those relations, which, from its very constitution, it would be as impossible for the mind in certain circumstances, not to feel, as it would be impossible for it, in certain other circumstances, not to have those simple feelings which it compares. With perfect organs of vision, and in the full light of day, it is not possible for us to look on a tree, or a rock, without perceiving it; but it is not more possible for us to form a conception of two trees, without regarding this state of mind, simple though it truly is, when absolutely considered as virtually involving, or as equal to, two of those separate feelings, which constituted the conception of a single tree.

On this mere feeling of virtual equivalence, is founded all the demonstration of those sciences, which claim the glory of being peculiarly demonstrative; our equations and proportions of abstract number and quantity involving continually this analytic valuation of notions, as reciprocally proportional. Our conception of an angle of forty-five degrees is one state or affection of mind, – one state of one simple indivisible substance; – such, too, is our conception of a right angle. Our notion of four or eight is as much one affection of mind, as our notion of a simple unit. But, in reflecting on the separate states of mind which constitute these notions, we are impressed with certain relations which they seem, to us, reciprocally to bear, and we consider the angle of forty-five degrees as equal to half the angle of ninety degrees, and our notion of eight as involving or equal to two of four. If one state of mind, which constitutes the notion of a certain abstract number or quantity, had not been considered in this sort of virtual comprehensiveness, as bearing the relation of equality, or proportion, to other states of mind, which constitute other abstract notions of the same species, mathematics would not merely have lost their certainty, but there could not, in truth, have been any such science as mathematics.

The intellectual analysis, which appears to me to constitute so important a part of the science of mind, is nothing more than the successive developement, in application to the various mental phenomena, of this feeling of equivalence, or comprehensiveness, which is not confined to the mathematical notions of number and quantity, (though, from the greater simplicity of these, their equality or proportion may be more accurately distinguished,) but extends to every thought and feeling which we regard as complex, that is to say, to almost every thought and feeling of which the mind is susceptible. We compare virtue with virtue, talent with talent, not, indeed, with the same precision, but certainly in the same manner, and with the same feeling of proportion, as we compare intellectually one angle with another; and we ask what ideas are involved in our complex notions of religion and government, with as strong a feeling that a number of ideas are virtually involved or comprehended in them, as when we ask, how often the square of two is repeated in the cube of six.