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

Analysis, then, in the Science of Mind, you will perceive, is founded wholly on the feeling of relation which one state of mind seems to us to bear to other states of mind, as comprehensive of them; but, while this seeming complexity is felt, it is the same thing to our analysis, as if the complexity, instead of being virtual and relative only, were absolute and real. It may be objected to the application of the term analysis to the Science of Mind, that it is a term which, its etymology shews, as I have already admitted, to be borrowed from matter, and to convey, as applied to the mind, a notion in some degree different from its etymological sense. But this is an objection which may be urged, with at least equal force, against every term, or almost every term, of our science. In our want of a peculiar metaphysical language, we are obliged in this, as in every other case, to borrow a metaphysical language from the material world; and we are very naturally led to speak of mental composition and analysis, since to the mind which feels the relation of equivalence or comprehensiveness, it is precisely the same thing as if our ideas and emotions, that result from former ideas and emotions, and are felt by us as if involving these in one complex whole, could be actually divided into the separate elements which appear to us thus virtually or relatively to be comprehended in them.

It is from having neglected this branch of the physical investigation of the mind, – by far the more important of the two, – and having fixed their attention solely on the successions of its phenomena, that some philosophers have been led to disparage the science as fruitless of discovery, and even to deride the pretensions or the hopes of those who do not consider it as absolutely exhausted; – I will not say now merely, in the present improved state of the science, but as not exhausted almost before philosophy began, in the rude consciousness of the rudest savage, who saw, and remembered, and compared, and hoped, and feared; and must, therefore, it is said, have known what it is to see, and remember, and compare, and hope, and fear.

If the phenomena of the mind were to be regarded merely as successive, – which is one only of the two lights in which they may be physically viewed, – it might, indeed, be said, with a little more appearance of truth, that this mere succession must be as familiar to the unreflecting mind as to the mind of the philosopher; though, even in this limited sense, the remark is far from being accurate. But the phenomena have other relations, as well as those of succession, – relations which are not involved in the mere consciousness of the moment, but are discoverable by reflection only, – and to the knowledge of which, therefore, addition after addition may be made by every new generation of reflecting inquirers. From the very instant of its first existence, the mind is constantly exhibiting phenomena more and more complex, – sensations, thoughts, emotions, all mingling together, and almost every feeling modifying, in some greater or less degree, the feelings that succeed it; – and as, in chemistry, it often happens, that the qualities of the separate ingredients of a compound body are not recognizable by us, in the apparently different qualities of the compound itself, – so, in this spontaneous chemistry of the mind, the compound sentiment, that results from the association of former feelings, has, in many cases, on first consideration, so little resemblance to these constituents of it, as formerly existing in their elementary state, that it requires the most attentive reflection to separate, and evolve distinctly to others, the assemblages which even a few years may have produced. Indeed, so complex are the mental phenomena, and so difficult of analysis, – even in those most common cases, which may be said to be familiar to all, – that it is truly wonderful that the difficulty of this analysis, and the field of inquiry which this very difficulty opens, should not have occurred to the disparagers of intellectual discovery, and made them feel, that what they were not able to explain could not be so well known to all mankind as to be absolutely incapable of additional illustration. The savage, they will tell us, is conscious of what he feels in loving his country, as well as the sage; but, does he know as well, or can even the sage himself inform us with precision, what the various elementary feelings have been, that have successively modified, or rather, that have constituted this local attachment? The peasant, indeed, may have the feeling of beauty, like the artist who produces it, or the speculative inquirer, who analyses this very complex emotion —

“Ask the swain,Who journeys homeward, from a summer day'sLong labour, why, forgetful of his toilsAnd due repose, he loiters to beholdThe sunshine gleaming, as through amber clouds,O'er all the western sky? Full soon, I ween,His rude expression, and untutor'd airs,Beyond the power of language, will unfoldThe form of Beauty smiling at his heart,How lovely, how commanding!”38

But the mere emotion which beauty produces, is not the knowledge of the simpler feelings that have composed or modified it; and though the pleasure and admiration were to continue exactly the same, the peasant would surely have learned something, if he could be made to understand, that beauty was more than the form and colour which his eye perceived. What is thus true of beauty as differently understood by the peasant and the philosopher, is true, in like manner, of all the other complex mental phenomena. It would, indeed, be as reasonable to affirm, that, because we all move our limbs, we are all equally acquainted with the physiology of muscular motion; or, to take a case still more exactly appropriate, that we know all the sublimest truths of arithmetic and geometry, because we know all the numbers and figures of the mere relations of which these are the science, – as that we are all acquainted with the physiology of the mind, and the number of elements which enter into our various feelings, because we all perceive, and remember, and love, and hate. It is, it will be allowed, chiefly, or perhaps, wholly, as it is analytical, that the science of mind admits of discovery; but, as a science of analysis, in which new relations are continually felt on reflection, it presents us with a field of discovery as rich, and, I may say, almost as inexhaustible in wonders, as that of the universe without.

“It is thus,” I have elsewhere remarked, “even in phenomena, which seem so simple as scarcely to have admitted combination, what wonders have been developed by scientific inquiry! Perception itself, that primary function of the mind, which was surely the same before Berkeley examined the laws of vision as at present, is now regarded by us very differently, in relation to the most important of its organs; and it would not be easy to find, amid all the brilliant discoveries of modern chemistry, and even in the whole range of the physics of matter, a proposition more completely revolting to popular belief, than that, which it is now the general faith of philosophers, that the sense of sight, which seems to bring the farthest hills of the most extended landscape, and the very boundlessness of space before our view, is, of itself, incapable of shewing us a single line of longitudinal distance.”39

If, as has been strongly affirmed, the science of mind be a science that is, by its very nature, insusceptible of improvement by discovery, it must have been so, before the time of Berkeley as now, and it might have been a sufficient answer to all the arguments which he adduced in support of his theory of vision, that the phenomena which he boasted to have analysed, were only the common and familiar phenomena of a sense that had been exercised by all mankind.

“The vulgar,” I have said, “would gaze with astonishment, were they to perceive an electrician inflame gunpowder with an icicle; but they would not be less confounded by those dazzling subtleties with which metaphysicians would persuade them, that the very actions which they feel to be benevolent and disinterested, had their source in the same principle of selfishness, which makes man a knave or a tyrant. That this particular doctrine is false, is of no consequence; the whole theory of our moral sentiment presents results which are nearly as wonderful; and, indeed, the falseness of any metaphysical doctrine, if rightly considered, is itself one of the strongest proofs that the science of mind is a science which admits of discovery; for, if all men had equal knowledge of all the relations of all the phenomena of their mind, no one could advance an opinion on the subject, with real belief of it, which another could discover to be erroneous. In the different stages of the growth of a passion, what a variety of appearances does it assume; and how difficult is it often to trace, in the confusion and complication of the paroxysm, those calm and simple emotions, in which, in many cases, it originated! – The love of domestic praise, and of the parental smile of approbation, which gave excellence to the first efforts of the child, may expand, with little variation, into the love of honest and honourable fame; or, in more unhappy circumstances, may shoot out from its natural direction, into all the guilt and madness of atrocious ambition; – and can it truly be maintained, or even supposed, for a moment, that all this fine shadowing of feelings into feelings, is known as much to the rudest and most ignorant of mankind, as it is to the profoundest intellectual inquirer? How different is the passion of the miser, as viewed by himself, by the vulgar, and by philosophers! He is conscious, however, only of the accuracy of his reasonings on the probabilities of future poverty, of a love of economy, and of temperance, and certain too of strict and rigid justice. To common observers, he is only a lover of money. They content themselves with the passion, in its mature state; and it would not be easy to convince them, that the most self-denying avarice involves as its essence, or at least originally involved, the love of those very pleasures and accommodations, which are now sacrificed to it without the least apparent reluctance.”40

“This light and darkness, in our chaos join'd,What shall divide? The God within the mind.”

There is, indeed, a chaos, in the mind. But there is a spirit of inquiry, which is forever moving over it, slowly separating all its mingled elements. It is only when these are separated, that the philosophy of mind can be complete, and incapable of further discovery. To say that it is now complete, because it has in it every thing which can be the subject of analysis, is as absurd, as it would be to suppose that the ancient chaos, when it contained merely the elements of things, before the spirit of God moved upon the waters of the abyss, was already that world of life, and order, and beauty, which it was after to become.

The difficulty which arises in the physical investigation of the mind, from the apparent simplification of those thoughts and feelings which, on more attentive reflection, are felt to be as if compounded of many other thoughts and feelings, that have previously existed together, or in immediate succession, is similar to the difficulty which we experience in the physics of matter, from the imperfection of our senses, that allows us to perceive masses only, not their elemental parts, and thus leads us to consider as simple bodies, what a single new experiment may prove to be composed of various elements.

In the intellectual world, the slow progress of discovery arises, in like manner, from the obstacles which our feeble power of discrimination presents to our mental analysis. But, in mind, as well as in matter, it must be remembered, that it is to this very feebleness of our discriminating powers, the whole analytic science owes its origin. If we could distinguish instantly and clearly in our complex phenomena of thought, their constituent elements – if, for example, in that single and apparently simple emotion, which we feel, on the sight of beauty, as it lives before us, or in the contemplation of that ideal beauty, which is reflected from works of art, we could discover, as it were, in a single glance, all the innumerable feelings, which, perhaps, from the first moment of life, have been conspiring together, and blending in the production of it – we should then feel as little interest in our theories of taste, as in a case formerly supposed, we should have done in our theories of combustion, if the most minute changes that take place in combustion had been at all times distinctly visible. The mysteries of our intellect, the “altæ penetralia mentis,” would then lie for ever open to us; and what was said poetically of Hobbes, in the beautiful verses addressed to him on his work De Natura Hominis, would be applicable to all mankind, not poetically, but in the strictness of philosophic truth.

“Quæ magna cœli mœnia, et tractus maris,Terræque fines, siquid aut ultra est, capit,Mens ipsa tandem capitur; Omnia hactenusQuæ nosse potuit, nota jam primum est sibi.“Consultor audax, et Promethei potensFacinoris animi! quis tibi dedit deusHæc intueri sæculis longe abdita,Oculosque luce tinxit ambrosia tuos?Tu mentis omnis, at tuæ nulla est capax.Hoc laude solus fruere: divinum est opusAnimam creare; proximum huic, ostendere.“Hic cerno levia affectuum vestigia,Gracilesque Sensus lineas; video quibusVehantur alis blanduli Cupidines,Quibusque stimulis urgeant Iræ graves,Hic et Dolores et Voluptates suosProdunt recessus; ipsi nec Timor latet.”

LECTURE XI

APPLICATION OF THE LAWS OF PHYSICAL INQUIRY, TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, CONCLUDED. – ON CONSCIOUSNESS, AND ON MENTAL IDENTITY

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I considered, very fully, the two species of inquiry which the philosophy of mind admits in exact analogy to the two species of inquiry in the philosophy of matter, – the consideration of the mental phenomena, as successive, and therefore susceptible of arrangement in the order of their succession, as causes and effects, – and the consideration of them as complex, and therefore susceptible of analysis. I stated to you, that it was chiefly, if not wholly, in this latter view, as analytical, that I conceived the philosophy of mind to be a science of progressive discovery; though, as a science of analogy, it has not merely produced results, as astonishing, perhaps, in some cases, as any of those which the analysis of matter has exhibited, but presents still a field of inquiry, that may be considered as inexhaustible; since the mind cannot exist, without forming continually new combinations, that modify its subsequent affections, and vary, therefore, the products, which it is the labour of our intellectual analysis to reduce to their original elements.

What the chemist does, in matter, the intellectual analysis does in mind; the one distinguishing by a purely mental process of reflection, the elements of his complex feelings, as the other operates on his material compounds, by processes that are themselves material. Though the term analysis, however, may be used in reference to both processes, the mental, as well as the material, since the result of the process is virtually the same in both, it has been universally employed by philosophers, in the laws of the mind, without any accurate definition of the process; and I was careful, therefore, to explain to you the peculiar meaning, in which it is strictly to be understood in our science; that you might not extend to the mind and its affections, that essential divisibility, which is inconsistent with its very nature; and suppose that, when we speak of complex notions, and of thoughts and feelings that are united by association with other thoughts and feelings, we speak of a plurality of separable things. The complex mental phenomena, as I explained to you, are complex only in relation to our mode of conceiving them. They are, strictly and truly, as simple and indivisible states of a substance, which is necessarily in all its states simple and indivisible – the results, rather than the compounds, of former feelings, – to which, however, they seem to us, and from the very nature of the feelings themselves, cannot but seem to us, to bear the same species of relation, which a whole bears to the parts that compose it. The office of intellectual analysis, accordingly, in the mode in which I have explained it to you, has regard to this relation only. It is to trace the various affections or states of mind that have successively contributed, to form or to modify any peculiar sentiment or emotion, and to develope the elements, to which, after tracing this succession, the resulting sentiment or emotion is felt by us to bear virtually that relation of seeming comprehensiveness of which I spoke.

If, indeed, our perspicacity were so acute that we could distinguish immediately all the relations of our thoughts and passions, there could evidently be no discovery in the science of mind; but, in like manner, what discovery could there be, in the analysis of matter, if our senses were so quick and delicate, as to distinguish immediately all the elements of every compound? It is only slowly that we discover the composition of the masses without; and we have therefore a science of chemistry: – It is only slowly that we discover the relations of complex thought to thought; and we have therefore a science of mental analysis.

It is to the imperfection of our faculties, then, as forcing us to guess and explore what is half concealed from us, that we owe our laborious experiments and reasonings, and consequently all the science which is the result of these; and the proudest discoveries which we make may thus, in one point of view, whatever dignity they may give to a few moments of our life, be considered as proofs and memorials of our general weakness. If, in its relation to matter, philosophy be founded, in a very great degree, on the mere badness of our eyes, which prevents us from distinguishing accurately the minute changes that are constantly taking place in the bodies around us; we have seen, in like manner, that, in its relation to the mind, it is founded chiefly, or perhaps wholly, on the imperfection of our power of discriminating the elementary feelings, which compose our great complexities of thought and passion; the various relations of which are felt by us only on attentive reflection, and are, therefore, in progressive discovery, slowly added to relations that have before been traced. In both cases, the analysis, necessary for this purpose, is an operation of unquestionable difficulty. But it is surely not less so, in mind, than in matter; nor, when nature exhibits all her wonders to us, in one case, in objects that are separate from us, and foreign; and, in the other, in the intimate phenomena of our own consciousness, can we justly think, that it is of ourselves we know the most. On the contrary, strange as it may seem, it is of her distant operations, that our knowledge is least imperfect; and we have far less acquaintance with the sway which she exercises in our own mind, than with that by which she guides the course of the most remote planet, in spaces beyond us, which we rather calculate than conceive. The only science, which, by its simplicity and comprehensiveness, seems to have attained a maturity that leaves little for future inquiry, is not that which relates immediately to man himself, or to the properties of the bodies on his own planet, that are ever acting on his perceptive organs, and essential to his life and enjoyment; but that which relates to the immense system of the universe, to which the very orb, that supports all the multitudes of his race, is but an atom of dust, and to which himself, as an individual, is as nothing.

“Could he, whose rules the rapid comet bind,Describe or fix one movement of his mind?Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend,Explain his own beginning or his end?Go, wondrous creature! mount where Science guides,Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,Correct old Time, and regulate the Sun;Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule —Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!”41

That man should know so much of the universe, and so very little of himself, is, indeed, one of the circumstances, which, in the language of the same poet, most strongly characterize him, as the “jest and riddle” of that world, of which he is also no less truly “the glory.”

“That the intelligence of any being,” to use the words of D'Alembert, “should not pass beyond certain limits – that, in one species of beings, it should be more or less circumscribed, than in another – all this is not surprising, more than that a blade of grass should be less tall than a shrub; or a shrub than an oak. But that the same being should be at once arrested by the narrow circle which nature has traced around him, and yet constantly reminded, that, beyond these limits, there are objects which he is never to attain – that he should be able to reason, till he loses himself, on the existence and nature of these objects, though condemned to be eternally ignorant of them – that he should have too little sagacity to resolve an infinity of questions, which he has yet sagacity enough to make– that the principle within us, which thinks, should ask itself in vain, what it is which constitutes its thought, and that this thought, which sees so many things, so distant, should yet not be able to see itself, which is so near, —that self, which it is notwithstanding always striving to see and to know – these are contradictions, which, even in the very pride of our reasoning, cannot fail to surprise and confound us.”

All that remains for us, in that impossibility which nature has imposed on us of attaining a more intimate knowledge of the essence and constitution either of mind or of matter, is to attend to the phenomena which they present, analysing whatever is complex, and tracing the order of every sequence. By attentive reflection on the phenomena themselves, and on all the circumstances which precede or follow them, we shall be able to discover the relations which they mutually bear, and to distinguish their casual coincidence, or succession, from those invariable relations which nature has established among them as causes and effects. This, humble as it may seem, is, as I have said, the true philosophy of man; because it is all of which man is capable. To inquire, as may be thought, more deeply into the essences of things, or the nature of certain supposed bonds by which they are connected, is to show, not that we have advanced far in the progress of science, but that we have gone far astray; not that we know more than philosophers of humbler views and pretensions, but that we know less; since it proves that we are unacquainted with the limits within which nature has bounded our prospect, and have not attained that prime knowledge, which consists in knowing how little can be known.

If the philosophy, not of mind only, but of the universe, is to be found, as Hobbes has boldly said, within ourselves, – in the same manner as the perfect statue is to be found in the rude block of the quarry, when all the superfluous mass, that adheres to it, has been removed, – in no respect can it more justly be said to be in our own minds than in this, that it is only by knowing the true extent, and consequently the limits, of our intellectual powers, that we can form any rational system of philosophic investigation. Then, indeed, Philosophy may be truly said, in his strong figurative language, to be Human Reason herself, hovering over all created things, and proclaiming their order, their causes, and effects. “Philosophiam noli credere eam esse, per quam fiunt lapides philosophici, neque illam quam ostentant codices metaphysici; sed Rationem Humanum naturalem per omnes res creatas sedulo volitantem, et de earum ordine, causis, et effectibus, ea quæ vera sunt renuntiantem. Mentis ergo tuæ, et totius mundi filia philosophia in te ipso est; nondum fortasse figurata, sed genitori mundo qualis erat in principio informi similes. Faciendum ergo tibi est quod faciunt statuarii, qui materiam exculpentes supervacraeum, imaginem non faciunt sed inveniunt.”42