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

The opinion of Locke, with respect to personal identity, is, that it consists in consciousness alone; by which term, in its reference to the past, he can mean nothing more than perfect memory. As far back as we are conscious, or remember; so far and no farther, he says, are we the same persons. In short, what we do not remember, we, as persons, strictly speaking, never did. The identity of that which remembers, and which is surely independent of the remembrance itself, is thus made to consist in the remembrance, that is confessedly fugitive; and, as if that every possible inconsistency might be crowded together in this simple doctrine, the same philosopher, who holds, that our personal identity consists in consciousness, is one of the most strenuous opponents of the doctrine, that the soul always thinks, or is conscious; so that, in this interval of thought, from consciousness to consciousness, – since that which is essential to identity is, by supposition, suspended, the same identical soul, as far as individual personality is concerned, is not the same identical soul, but exists when it does not exist.

“There is another consequence of this doctrine,” says Dr Reid, “which follows no less necessarily, though Mr Locke probably did not see it. It is that a man be, and at the same time not be, the person that did a particular action.

“Suppose a brave Officer to have been flogged when a boy at school, for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a General in advanced life: Suppose also, which must be admitted to be possible, that when he took the standard, he was conscious of his having been flogged at school; and that when made a General, he was conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consciousness of his flogging.

“These things being supposed, it follows, from Mr Locke's doctrine, that he who was flogged at school is the same person who took the standard; and that he who took the standard is the same person who was made a General. Whence it follows, if there be any truth in logic, that the General is the same person with him who was flogged at school. But the General's consciousness does not reach so far back as his flogging, therefore, according to Mr Locke's doctrine, he is not the person who was flogged, Therefore the General is, and at the same time is not, the same person with him who was flogged at school.”51

But it is needless to deduce consequences, from this very strange paradox; since its author himself has done this, most freely and fully, and often with an air of pleasantry, that, but for the place in which we find it, as forming a part of a grave methodical essay on the understanding, would almost lead us to think, that he was himself smiling, in secret, at his own doctrine, and propounding it with the same mock solemnity with which the discoverer of Laputa has revealed to us all the secrets of the philosophy of that island of philosophers.

He allows it to follow, from his doctrine, that, if we remembered at night, and never but at night, one set of the events of our life; as, for instance, those which happened five years ago; and never but in the day time, that different set of events, which happened six years ago; this, “day and night man,” to use his own phrase, would be two as distinct persons, as Socrates and Plato; and, in short, that we are truly as many persons as we have, or can be supposed to have, at different times, separate and distinct remembrances of different series of events. In this case, indeed, he makes a distinction of the visible man, who is the same, and of the person who is different.

“But yet possibly it will still be objected,” he says, “suppose I wholly lose the memory of some parts of my life, beyond a possibility of retrieving them, so that perhaps I shall never be conscious of them again; yet am I not the same person that did those actions, had those thoughts that I once was conscious of, though I have now forgot them? To which I answer, that we must here take notice what the word I is applied to; which, in this case, is the man only. And the same man being presumed to be the same person, I is easily here supposed to stand also for the same person. But if it be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same man would at different times make different persons; which we see is the sense of mankind in the solemnest declaration of their opinions; human laws not punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor the sober man for what the mad man did, thereby making them two persons: which is somewhat explained by our way of speaking in English, when we say such an one is not himself, or is beside himself; in which phrases it is insinuated, as if those who now, or at least first used them, thought that self was changed, the self-same person was no longer in that man.”52

Such is the doctrine of a philosopher, whose intellectual excellence was unquestionably of the highest rank, and whose powers might be considered as entitling him to exemption, at least, from those gross errors which far weaker understandings are capable of discovering, if even this humble relative privilege had not been too great for man. He contends, that our remembrance of having done a certain action, is not merely to us, the rememberers, the evidence by which we believe that we were the persons who did it, but is the very circumstance that makes us personally to have done it, – a doctrine, which, if the word person were to be understood in the slightest degree in its common acceptation, would involve, as has been justly said, an absurdity as great as if it had been affirmed, that our belief of the creation of the world actually made it to have been created.

If we could suppose Mr Locke to have never thought on the subject of personal identity, till this strange doctrine, and its consequences, were stated to him by another, it may almost be taken for granted, that he would not have failed instantly to discover its absurdity, as a mere verbal paradox; and, yet, after much reflection on the subject, he does not perceive that very absurdity, which he would have discovered, but for reflection. Such is the strange nature of our intellectual constitution. The very functions, that, in their daily and hourly exercise, save us from innumerable errors, sometimes lead us into errors, which, but for them, we might have avoided. The philosopher is like a well armed and practised warrior, who, in his helmet and coat of mail, goes to the combat with surer means of victory, than the ill disciplined and defenceless mob around him, but who may yet sometimes fall where others would have stood, unable to rise and extricate himself, from the incumbrance of that very armour, to which he has owed the conquests of many other fields.

What, then, may we conceive to have been the nature of the illusion, which could lead a mind like that of Mr Locke, to admit, after reflection, an absurd paradox, and all its absurd consequences, which, before reflection, he would have rejected?

It is to be traced chiefly, I conceive, to a source which is certainly the most abundant source of error in the writings and silent reflections of philosophers, especially of those who are gifted with originality of thought, – the ambiguity of the language they use, when they retain a word with one meaning, which is generally understood in a different sense; the common meaning, in the course of their speculations, often mingling insensibly with their own, and thus producing a sort of confusion, which incapacitates them from perceiving the precise consequences of either. Mr Locke gives his own definition of the word person, as comprised in the very consciousness which he supposes to be all that is essential to personal identity; or at least he speaks of consciousness so vaguely and indefinitely, as to allow this meaning of his definition to be present to his own mind, as often as he thought of personality. “To find,” he says, “wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places, which it does only by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking.”53

Having once given this definition of a person, there can be no question, that personal identity, in his sense, is wherever consciousness is, and only where consciousness is. But this is true of a person, only as defined by him; and, if strictly analysed, means nothing more, than that consciousness is wherever consciousness is, – a doctrine, on which, certainly, he could not have thought it worth his while to give any very long commentary. It appears more important however, even to himself, and worthy of the long commentary which he has given it, because, in truth, he cannot refrain from still keeping, in his own mind, some obscure impression of the more common meaning of the term, and extending to a person, as thus commonly understood, what is true only of a person, as defined by him. It is as if some whimsical naturalist should give a definition of the word animal, exclusive of every winged creature, and should then think that he was propounding a very notable and subtile paradox, in affirming that no animal is capable of rising for a few minutes above the surface of the earth. It would be a paradox, only inasmuch as it might suggest to those who heard it, a meaning different from that of the definition; and, but for this misconception, which the author of it himself might share, would be so insignificant a truism, as not to deserve even the humblest of all praise, that of amusing absurdity.

When, in such cases as this, we discover that singular inconsistency, which is to be found even in the very excellence of every thing that is human, – the perspicacity which sees, at an immeasurable distance, in the field of inquiry, what no other eye has seen, and which yet, in the very objects which it has grasped, is unable to distinguish what is visible to common eyes, are we to lament the imperfection of our mental constitution, which leaves us liable to such error? Or, as in other instances, in which, from our incapacity of judging rightly, we are tempted at first to regret the present arrangement of things, are we not rather to rejoice that we are so constituted by nature? if man had not been formed to err, in the same manner as he is formed to reason, and to know, that perfect system of faculties, which excluded error, must have rendered his discernment too quick, not to seize instantly innumerable truths, the gradual discovery of which, by the exercise of his present more limited faculties, has been sufficient to give glory and happiness to whole ages of philosophical inquiry. If, indeed, the field had been absolutely boundless, he might still have continued to advance, as at present, though with more gigantic step, and more searching vision, and found no termination to his unlimited career. But the truths which relate to us physically, on this bounded scene of things in which we are placed, numerous as they are, are still in some measure finite, like that scene itself; and the too rapid discoveries, therefore, of a few generations, as to the most important properties of things, would have left little more for the generations which were to follow, than the dull and spiritless task of learning what others had previously learned, or of teaching what themselves had been taught.

Philosophy is not the mere passive possession of knowledge; it is, in a much more important respect, the active exercise of acquiring it. We may truly apply to it what Pascal says of the conduct of life in general. “We think,” says he, “that we are seeking repose, and all which we are seeking is agitation.” In like manner, we think that it is truth itself which we seek, when the happiness which we are to feel most strongly, is in the mere search; and all that would be necessary, in many cases, to make the object of it appear indifferent, would be to put it fairly within our grasp.

“Our hopes, like towering falcons, aimAt objects in an airy height;But all the pleasure of the game,Is afar off to view the flight.”

What little value do we set on discoveries that have been long familiar to us, though their own essential value must still continue the same. Even on the whole mass of knowledge, that has been gradually and slowly transmitted to us, we reflect with little interest, unless as it may lead to something yet unknown; and the result of a single new experiment, which bears no proportion to the mass to which it is added, will yet be sufficient to rouse and delight every philosopher in Europe. It is a very shrewd remark of a French writer, in reference to the torpor, which the most zealous inquirer feels, as to every thing which he knows, and his insatiable avidity for every thing which he does not know, that “if Truth were fairly to show herself as she is, all would be ruined; but it is plain, that she knows very well, of how great importance it is, that she should keep herself out of sight.”

If we were to acquire, by an unhappy foresight, the knowledge which is not yet ours, it is very evident, that we must soon regard it, in the same manner, as the knowledge which we have already acquired. The charm of novelty, the delights of gratified curiosity, would not be for us. The prey would be at our feet; and it would be vain, therefore, to expect that ardour of soul, which is kindled, amid the hopes and the fears, the tumult and the competition of the chase.

“If man were omnipotent, without being God,” says Rousseau, “he would be a miserable creature: he would be deprived of the pleasure of desiring; and what privation would be so difficult to be borne!” It may be said, at least with equal truth, that, if man were omniscient, without the other perfections of the Divinity, he would be far less happy than at present. To infinite benevolence, indeed, accompanied with infinite power, a corresponding infinity of knowledge must afford the highest of all imaginable gratifications, by its subservience to those gracious plans of good, which are manifested in the universe, and which, in making known to us the existence of the Supreme Being, have made him known to us, as the object of grateful love and admiration. But if, in other respects, we were to continue as at present, – with our erring passions, and moral weaknesses of every sort, – to be doomed to have nothing to learn, would be a punishment, not a blessing. In such circumstances, if they were to continue forever, the annihilation of our intellectual being would not be an evil so great, as the mere extinction of our curiosity, and of all the delights and consolations which it affords, not merely when we gratify it, but when we are merely seeking to gratify it.

“Else wherefore burns,In mortal bosoms, this unquenched hopeThat breathes from day to day sublimer things,And mocks possession! Wherefore darts the mind,With such resistless ardour, to embraceMajestic forms, impatient to be free,Proud of the strong contention of her toils,Proud to be daring?”54—“Why departs she wide55From the dull track and journey of her times,To grasp the good she knows not? In the fieldOf things which may be, in the spacious fieldOf science, potent arts, or dreadful arms,To raise up scenes, in which her own desiresContented may repose, – when things which arePall on her temper like a twice told tale.”56

It is sufficient, that we are endowed with powers of discovery. Our gratitude is due to Heaven for the gift; and the more due for that gracious wisdom, which has known how to limit the powers which it gave, so as to produce a greater result of good by the very limitation. Our prejudices, which sometimes forbid reasoning, and the errors, to which our imperfect reasoning often leads us, we should consider, when all their remote relations are taken into account, as indirect sources of happiness; and though we may wish, and justly wish, to analyse them, and to rise above their influence, – for, without this exertion, and consequent feeling of progress, on our part, they would be evil rather than good, – we must not forget, that it is to them we owe the luxury, which the immediate analysis affords, and the acquisition of the innumerable truths, which the prevalence of these errors, in past ages, has left to be discovered by the ages which succeed.

In this, and in every thing which relates to man, Nature has had in view, not the individual or the single generation only, but the permanent race. She has therefore, not exhausted her bounty on any one period of the long succession; but, by a provision, which makes our very weakness instrumental to her goodness, she has given to all, that distant and ever-brightening hope, which, till we arrive at our glorious destination,

“Leads from goal to goal,And opens still, and opens on the soul.”

With enough of mental vigour to advance still farther in the tracks, of science that are already formed, and to point out new tracks to those who are to follow, we have enough of weakness to prevent us from exploring and exhausting, what is to occupy, in the same happy search, the millions of millions that are to succeed us. Truth itself, indeed, will always be progressive; but there will still, at every stage of the progress, be something to discover, and abundance to confute. “In 24,000 years,” to borrow the prediction of a very skilful prophet, – “In 24,000 years, there will arise philosophers, who will boast, that they are destroying the errors which have been reigning in the world for 30,000 years past; and there will be people who will believe, that they are then only just beginning to open their eyes.”

In these remarks, on the nature of our varied consciousness, and on the unity and identity of the mind in all its varieties, – we have considered the mental phenomena in their general aspect. We have now to consider them as arranged in kindred classes, – or rather to attempt the difficult task of the classification itself.

To this I shall proceed in my next Lecture.

LECTURE XVI

ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF MIND

After considering the Phenomena of the Mind in general, we are now to proceed to consider them, in the separate classes in which they may be arranged. The phenomena themselves, indeed, are almost infinite, and it might seem, on first reflection a very hopeless task, to attempt to reduce, under a few heads, the innumerable feelings, which diversify almost every moment of our life. But to those, who are acquainted with the wonders, which classification has performed, in the other sciences, the task, difficult as it is, will still seem not absolutely hopeless; though in one respect, its difficulty will be more highly estimated by them, than by others; – since they only, who know the advantage of the fixed and definite nature of the objects of classification, in other sciences, can feel, how much greater the obstacles must be, to any accurate arrangement, in a science, of which the objects are indefinite, and complex, incapable of being fixed for a moment in the same state, and destroyed by the very effort to grasp them. But, in this, as in other instances, in which nature has given us difficulties with which to cope, she has not left us to be wholly overcome; or, if we must yield, she has at least armed us for so vigorous a struggle, that we gain additional intellectual strength, even in being vanquished. “Studiorum salutarium, etiam citra effectum, salutaris tractatio est.” If she has placed us in a labyrinth, she has at the same time furnished us with a clue, which may guide us, not indeed through all its dark and intricate windings, but through those broad paths, which conduct us into day. The single power, by which we discover resemblance or relation in general, is a sufficient aid to us, in the perplexity and confusion of our first attempts at arrangement. It begins, by converting thousands, and more than thousands, into one, and, reducing, in the same manner, the numbers thus formed, it arrives at last at the few distinctive characters of those great comprehensive tribes, on which it ceases to operate, because there is nothing left to oppress the memory, or the understanding. If there had been no such science as chemistry, who could have ventured to suppose, that the innumerable bodies, animate and inanimate, on the surface of our globe, and all, which we have been able to explore in the very depths of the earth itself, are reducible, and even in the imperfect state of the science, have been already reduced, to a few simple elements? The science of mind, as it is a science of analysis, I have more than once compared to chemistry, and pointed out to you, and illustrated, its various circumstances of resemblance. In this too, we may hope the analogy will hold, – that, as the innumerable aggregates, in the one science, have been reduced and simplified, the innumerable complex feelings in the other will admit of a corresponding reduction and simplification.

The classes which we form, in the mental as well as in the material universe, depend, as you cannot but know, on certain relations which we discover in the phenomena; and the relations according to which objects may be arranged, are of course various, as they are considered by different individuals in different points of view. Some of these relations present themselves immediately, as if to our very glance; others are discoverable only after attentive reflection; – and though the former, merely as presenting themselves more readily, may seem on that account, better suited for the general purpose of arrangement, it is not the less true that the classification, which approaches nearest to perfection, is far from being always that which is founded on relations, that seem at first sight the most obvious. The rudest wanderer in the fields may imagine, that the profusion of blossoms around him, – in the greater number of which he is able, himself, to discover many striking resemblances, – may be reduced into some order of arrangement. But he would be little aware, that the principle according to which they are now universally classed, has relation, not to the parts which appear to him to constitute the whole flower, but to some small part of the blossom, which he does not perceive, at the distance at which he passes it, and which scarcely attracts his eye, when he plucks it from the stem.

To our mental classifications the remark is equally applicable. In these too, the most obvious distinctions are not always those which answer best the purposes of systematic arrangement. The phenomena of the mind, are only the mind itself existing in certain states; and, as many of these states are in their nature agreeable, and others disagreeable, this difference, which is to the sentient being himself the most important of all differences, may be supposed, to afford the most obvious principle of classification. What is pleasant, what is painful, are perhaps the first classes, which the infant has formed long before he is capable of distinguishing them by a name; and the very imbecility of idiotism itself, to which nothing is true or false, or right or wrong, – and to which there is no future, beyond the succeeding moment, – is yet capable of making this primary distinction, and of regulating, according to it, its momentary desires.

“The love of pleasure is man's eldest-born,Born in his cradle, living to his tomb.Wisdom, – her younger sister, though more grave,Was meant to minister, not to dethrone57Imperial Pleasure, queen of human hearts.”58

The distribution, which we should be inclined to make, of our mental phenomena, according to this obvious principle, would be into those which are pleasing, those which are painful, and those which are neither painful nor pleasing. But, however obvious this first distinction may seem, as a principle of arrangement, the circumstances, on which the differences depend, are so very indefinite, that the distinction, – though it may be useful to have it in view, in its most striking and permanent cases, – cannot be adopted, as the basis of any regular system. To take the mere pleasures and pains of sense, for example, – to what intelligible division could we reduce these, which are not merely fugitive in themselves, but vary, from pain to pleasure, and from pleasure to pain, with a change of their external objects, so slight often, as to be scarcely appreciable, and, in many cases, even when the external objects have continued exactly the same? How small, and how variable a boundary separates the warmth which is pleasing from the heat which pains! A certain quantity of light is grateful to the eye. Increase it; – it becomes, not indifferent, – though that would be a less change, – but absolutely painful; and, if the eye be inflamed, even the small quantity of light, – which was agreeable before, and which seemed, therefore, to admit of being very safely classed among the sources of pleasure, – is now converted into a source of agony. Since it is impossible, therefore, to fix the limits of pain and pleasure, and every affection or state of mind, agreeable, disagreeable, or indifferent, may, by a very trifling change of circumstance, be converted into an opposite state, it is evident, that any division, founded on this vague and transient distinction, must perplex, and mislead us, in our attempts to systematize the almost infinite diversities of thought and feeling, rather than give us any aid in the arrangement.