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

The great leading division of the mental phenomena which has met with most general adoption by philosophers, is into those which belong to the understanding, and those which belong to the will; – a division which is very ancient, but though sanctioned by the approbation of many ages, very illogical; since the will, which, in this division, is nominally opposed to the intellect, is so far from being opposed to it in reality, that, even by the asserters of its diversity, it is considered as exercising, in the intellectual department, an empire almost as wide, as in the department allotted to itself. We reason, and plan, and invent, at least as voluntarily, – as we esteem, or hate, or hope, or fear. How many emotions are there too, which cannot, without absolute torture, be forced into either division! To take only a few instances, out of many, – to what class are we to reduce grief, joy, admiration, astonishment, which perhaps are not phenomena of the mere understanding, and which, – though they may lead indirectly to desires or volitions, – have nothing, in themselves, that is voluntary, or that can be considered as in any peculiar degree connected with the will? The division of the mental phenomena into those which belong to the understanding, and those which belong to the will, seems, therefore, to be as faulty, as would be the division of animals, into those which have legs and those which have wings; since the same animals might have both legs and wings, and since whole tribes of animals have neither one nor the other.

Another division of the phenomena of mind, similar to the former, and of equal antiquity, since it corresponds with the very ancient division of philosophy into the contemplative and the active, is into those which belong to the intellectual powers, and those which belong to the active powers. “Philosophia et contemplativa est et activa; spectat simulque agit.” I must confess, however, that this division of the mental phenomena, as referable to the intellectual and the active powers of the mind, – though it has the sanction of very eminent names, appears to me to be faulty, exactly in the same manner as the former, which, indeed, it may be considered almost as representing, under a change of name. Its parts are not opposed to each other, and it does not include all the phenomena which it should include. Is mere grief, for example, or mere astonishment, to be referred to our intellectual or to our active powers? I do not speak of the faculties which they may or may not call into action; but of the feelings themselves, as present phenomena or states of the mind. And, in whatsoever manner we may define the term active, is the mind more active, when it merely desires good and fears evil, when it looks with esteem on virtue, and with indignation, or disgust, and contempt on vice, than when it pursues a continued train of reasoning, or fancy, or historical investigation? when, with Newton, it lays down the laws of planetary motion, and calculates, in what exact point of the heavens, any one of the orbs, which move within the immense range of our solar system, will be found to have its place at any particular moment, one thousand years hereafter; when, with Shakespeare, it wanders beyond the universe itself, calling races of beings into existence, which nature never knew, but which nature might almost own– or when, with Tacitus, it enrols slowly, year after year, that dreadful reality of crimes and sufferings, which even dramatic horror, in all its license of wild imagination, can scarcely reach – the long unvarying catalogue, of tyrants, – and executioners, – and victims, that return thanks to the gods and die, – and accusers rich with their blood, and more mighty, as more widely hated, amid the multitudes of prostrate slaves, still looking whether there may not yet have escaped some lingering virtue, which it may be a merit to destroy, and having scarcely leisure to feel even the agonies of remorse, in the continued sense of the precariousness of their own gloomy existence? When it thus records the warning lessons of the past, or expatiates in fields, which itself creates, of fairy beauty or sublimity, or comprehends whole moving worlds within its glance, and calculates and measures infinitude – the mind is surely active, or there are no moments in which it is so. So little, indeed, are the intellectual powers opposed to the active, that it is only when some intellectual energy co-exists with desire, that the mind is said to be active, even by those who are unaccustomed to analytical inquiries, or to metaphysical nomenclature. The love of power, or the love of glory, when there is no opportunity of intellectual exertion, may, in the common acceptation of the word, be as passive as tranquillity itself. The passion is active only when, with intellectual action, it compares means with ends, and different means with each other, and deliberates, and resolves, and executes. Chain some revolutionary usurper to the floor of a dungeon, his ambition may be active still, because he may still be intellectually busy in planning means of deliverance and vengeance; and, on his bed of straw, may conquer half the world. But, if we could fetter his reason and fancy, as we can fetter his limbs, what activity would remain, though he were still to feel that mere desire of power or glory, which, though usually followed by intellectual exertion, is itself as prior to these exertions, all that constitutes ambition, as a passion? There would, indeed, still be in his mind the awful elements of that force, which bursts upon the world with conflagration and destruction; but, though there would be the thunder, it would be the thunder sleeping in its cloud. To will, is to act with desire; and, unless in the production of mere muscular motion, it is only intellectually that we can act. To class the active powers, therefore, as distinct from the intellectual, is to class them, as opposed to that, without which, as active powers, they cannot even exist.

It may, certainly, be contended, that, though the mental phenomena, usually ranked under this head, are not immediately connected with action, they may yet deserve this generic distinction, as leading to action indirectly, – and if they led, in any peculiar sense, to action, however indirectly, the claim might be allowed. But, even with this limited meaning, it is impossible to admit the distinction asserted for them. In what sense, for example, can it be said, that grief and joy, which surely are not to be classed under the intellectual powers of the mind, lead to action even indirectly, more than any other feelings, or states, in which the mind is capable of existing? We may, indeed, act when we are joyful or sorrowful, as we may act when we perceive a present object, or remember the past; but we may also remain at rest, and remain equally at rest, in the one case, as in the other. Our intellectual energies, indeed, even in this sense, as indirectly leading to action, are, in most cases, far more active, than sorrow, even in its very excess of agony and despair; and, in those cases in which sorrow does truly lead to action, as when we strive to remedy the past, the mere regret which constitutes the sorrow, is not so closely connected with the conduct which we pursue, as the intellectual states of mind that intervened – the successive judgments, by which we have compared projects with projects, and chosen at last the plan, which, in relation to the object in view, has seemed to us, upon the whole, the most expedient.

If, then, as I cannot but think, the arrangement of the mental phenomena, as belonging to two classes of powers, the intellectual and the active, be at once incomplete, and not accurate, even to the extent to which it reaches, it may be worth while to try at least some other division, even though there should not be any very great hope of success. Though we should fail in our endeavour to obtain some more precise and comprehensive principle of arrangement, there is also some advantage gained, by viewing objects, according to new circumstances of agreement or analogy. We see, in this case, what had long-passed before us unobserved, while we were accustomed only to the order and nomenclature of a former method; for, when the mind has been habituated to certain classifications, it is apt, in considering objects, to give its attention only to those properties which are essential to the classification, and to overlook, or at least comparatively to neglect, other properties equally important and essential to the very nature of the separate substances that are classed, but not included in the system as characters of generic resemblance. The individual object, indeed, when its place in any system has been long fixed and familiar to us, is probably conceived by us less, as an individual, than as one of a class of individuals, that agree in certain respects, and the frequent consideration of it, as one of a class, must fix the peculiar relations of the class, more strongly in the mind, and weaken proportionally the impression of every other quality that is not so included. A new classification, therefore, which includes, in its generic character, those neglected qualities, will of course draw to them attention, which they could not otherwise have obtained; and, the more various the views are, which we take of the objects of any science, the juster consequently, because the more equal, will be the estimate which we form of them. So truly is this the case, that I am convinced, that no one has ever read over the mere terms of a new division, in a science, however familiar the science may have been to him, without learning more than this new division itself, without being struck with some property or relation, the importance of which he now perceives most clearly, and which he is quite astonished that he should have overlooked so long before.

I surely need not warn you, after the observations which I made in my Introductory Lectures, on the Laws and Objects of Physical Inquiry in General, that every classification has reference only to our mode of considering objects; and that, amid all the varieties of systems which our love of novelty, and our love of distinction, or our pure love of truth and order may introduce, the phenomena themselves, whether accurately, or inaccurately classed, continue unaltered. The mind is formed susceptible of certain affections. These states or affections we may generalize more or less; and, according to our generalization, may give them more or fewer names. But whatever may be the extent of our vocabulary, the mind itself, – as independent of these transient designations, as He who fixed its constitution, – still continues to exhibit the same unaltered susceptibilities, which it originally received; as the flowers, which the same divine Author formed, spring up, in the same manner, observing the same seasons, and spreading to the sun the same foliage and blossoms, whatever be the system and the corresponding nomenclature according to which botanists may have agreed to rank and name their tribes. The great Preserver of nature has not trusted us, with the dangerous power of altering a single physical law which He has established, though He has given us unlimited power over the language which is of our own creation. It is still with us, as it was with our common sire in the original birthplace of our race. The Almighty presents to us all the objects that surround us, wherever we turn our view; but He presents them to us, only that we may give them names. Their powers and susceptibilities they already possess, and we cannot alter these, even as they exist in a single atom.

It may, perhaps, seem absurd, even to suppose, that we should think ourselves able to change, by a few generic words, the properties of the substances which we have classed; and if the question were put to us, as to this effect of our language, in any particular case, there can be no doubt, that we should answer in the negative, and express astonishment that such a question should have been put. But the illusion is not the less certain, because we are not aware of its influence; and, indeed, it could no longer be an illusion, if we were completely aware of it. It requires, however, only a very little reflection on what has passed in our own minds, to discover, that, when we have given a name to any quality, that quality acquires immediately, in our imagination, a comparative importance, very different from what it had before; and though nature in itself be truly unchanged, it is ever after, relatively to our conception, different. A difference of words is, in this case, more than a mere verbal difference. Though it be not the expression of a difference of doctrine, it very speedily becomes so. Hence it is, that the same warfare, which the rivalries of individual ambition, or the opposite interests, or supposed opposite interests, of nations have produced, in the great theatre of civil history, have been produced, in the small but tumultuous field of science, by the supposed incompatibility of a few abstract terms; and, indeed, as has been truly said, the sects of philosophers have combated, with more persevering violence, to settle what they mean by the constitution of the world, than all the conquerors of the world have done to render themselves its masters.

Still less, I trust, is it necessary to repeat the warning, already so often repeated, that you are not to conceive, that any classification of the states or affections of the mind, as referable to certain powers or susceptibilities, makes these powers any thing different and separate from the mind itself, as originally and essentially susceptible of the various modifications of which these powers are only a shorter name. And yet what innumerable controversies in philosophy have arisen, and are still frequently arising, from this very mistake, strange and absurd as the mistake may seem. No sooner, for example, were certain affections of the mind classed together, as belonging to the will, and certain others, as belonging to the understanding, – that is to say, no sooner was the mind, existing in certain states, denominated the understanding, and in certain other states denominated the will, – than the understanding and the will ceased to be considered as the same individual substance, and became immediately, as it were, two opposite and contending powers, in the empire of mind, as distinct, as any two sovereigns, with their separate nations under their controul; and it became an object of as fierce contention to determine, whether certain affections of the mind belonged to the understanding, or to the will, as, in the management of political affairs, to determine, whether a disputed province belonged to one potentate, or to another. Every new diversity of the faculties of the mind, indeed, converted each faculty into a little independent mind, – as if the original mind were like that wonderful animal, of which naturalists tell us, that may be cut into an almost infinite number of parts, each of which becomes a polypus, as perfect as that from which it was separated. The only difference is, that those who make us acquainted with this wonderful property of the polypus, acknowledge the divisibility of the parent animal; while those, who assert the spiritual multiplicity, are at the same time assertors of the absolute indivisibility of that which they divide.

After these warnings, then, which, I trust, have been almost superfluous, let us now endeavour to form some classification of the mental phenomena without considering, whether our arrangement be similar or dissimilar to that of others. In short, let us forget, as much as possible, that any prior arrangements have been made, and think of the phenomena only. It would, indeed, require more than human vision, to comprehend all these phenomena of the mind, in our gaze at once, —

“To survey,Stretch'd out beneath us, all the mazy tractsOf passion and opinion, – like a wasteOf sands, and flowery lawns, and tangling woods,Where mortals roam bewilder'd.”

But there is a mode of bringing all this multitude of objects, within the sphere of our narrow sight, in the same manner, as the expanse of landscape, over which the eye would be long in wandering, – the plains, and hills, and woods, and waterfalls, – may be brought, by human art, within the compass of a mirror, far less than the smallest of the innumerable objects which it represents.

The process of gradual generalizing, by which this reduction is performed, I have already explained to you. Let us now proceed to avail ourselves of it.

All the feelings and thoughts of the mind, I have already frequently repeated, are only the mind itself existing in certain states. To these successive states our knowledge of the mind, and consequently our arrangements, which can comprehend only what we know, are necessarily limited. With this simple word state, I use the phrase affection of mind as synonymous, to express the momentary feeling, whatever it may be, – with this difference only, that the word affection seems to me better suited for expressing that momentary feeling, when considered as an effect, – the feeling itself as a state of the mind, and the relation which any particular state of mind, may bear to the preceding circumstances, whatever they may be that have induced it. Our states of mind, however, or our affections of mind, are the simplest terms, which I can use for expressing the whole series of phenomena of the mind in all their diversity, as existing phenomena, without any mixture of hypothesis, as to the particular mode in which the successive changes may be supposed to arise.

When we consider, then, the various states or affections of the mind, which form this series, one circumstance of difference must strike us, that some of them arise immediately, in consequence of the presence of external objects, – and some, as immediately, in consequence of certain preceding affections of the mind itself. The one set, therefore, are obviously the result of the laws both of matter and of mind, – implying, in external objects, a power of affecting the mind, as well as, in the mind, a susceptibility of being affected by them. The other set result from the susceptibilities of the mind itself, which has been formed by its divine Author to exist in certain states, and to exist in these in a certain relative order of succession. The affections of the one class arise, because some external object is present; – the affections of the other class arise, because some previous change in the states of the mind has taken place.

To illustrate this distinction by example, let us suppose ourselves, in walking across a lawn, to turn our eyes to a particular point, and to perceive there an oak. That is to say, the presence of the oak, or rather of the light reflected from it, occasions a certain new state of the mind, which we call a sensation of vision, an affection, which belongs to the mind alone, indeed, but of which we have every reason to suppose, that the mind, of itself, without the presence of light, would not have been the subject. The peculiar sensation, therefore, is the result of the presence of the light reflected from the oak; and we perceive it, because the mind is capable of being affected by external things. But this affection of the mind, which has an external object for its immediate cause, is not the only mental change which takes place. Other changes succeed it, without any other external impression. We compare the oak with some other tree which we have seen before, and we are struck with its superior magnificence and beauty; – we imagine how some scene more familiar to us would appear, if it were adorned with this tree, and how the scene before us would appear, if it were stripped of it; – we think of the number of years, which must have passed, since the oak was an acorn; – and we moralize, perhaps, on the changes, which have taken place, in the little history of ourselves and our friends, and, still more, on the revolutions of kingdoms, – and the birth and decay of a whole generation of mankind, – while it has been silently and regularly advancing to maturity, through the sunshine and the storm. Of all the variety of states of the mind, which these processes of thought involve, the only one, which can be ascribed to an external object as its direct cause, is the primary perception of the oak; the rest have been the result not immediately of any thing external, but of preceding states of the mind; – that particular mental state, which constituted the perception of the oak, being followed immediately by that different state, which constituted the remembrance of some tree observed before, and this by that different state which constituted the comparison of the two; and so successively, through all the different processes of thought enumerated. The mind, indeed, could not without the presence of the oak, – that is to say, without the presence of the light which the oak reflects, – have existed in the state which constituted the perception of the oak. But as little could any external object, without this primary mental affection, have produced immediately, any of those other states of the mind, which followed the perception. There is, thus, one obvious distinction of the mental phenomena; as in relation to their causes, external or internal; and, whatever other terms of subdivision it may be necessary to employ, we have, at least, one boundary, and know what it is we mean, when we speak of the external and internal affections of the mind.

The first stage of our generalization, then, has been the reduction of all the mental phenomena to two definite classes, according as the causes, or immediate antecedents, of our feelings are themselves mental or material. Our next stage must be the still further reduction of these, by some new generalizations of the phenomena of each class.

The former of these classes, – that of our external affections of the mind, – is, indeed, so very simple, as to require but little subdivision. The other class, however, that of the internal affections or states of the mind, – comprehends so large a proportion of the mental phenomena, and these so various, that, without many subdivisions, it would be itself of little aid to us in our arrangement.

The first great subdivision, then, which I would form, of the internal class, is into our intellectual states of mind, and our emotions. The latter of these classes comprehends all, or nearly all the mental states, which have been classed, by others, under the head of active powers. I prefer, however, the term emotions, partly, because I wish to avoid the phrase active powers, – which, I own, appears to me awkward and ambiguous, as opposed to other powers, which are not said to be passive; and partly, for reasons before mentioned, because our intellectual states or energies, – far from being opposed to our active powers, – are, as we have seen, essential elements of their activity, – so essential, that, without them, these never could have had the name of active; and because I wish to comprehend, under the term, various states of the mind, which cannot, with propriety, in any case, be termed active, – such as grief, joy, astonishment, – and others which have been commonly, though, I think, inaccurately, ascribed to the intellectual faculties, – such as the feelings of beauty and sublimity, – feelings, which are certainly much more analogous to our other emotions, – to our feelings of love or awe, – for example, – than to our mere remembrances or reasonings, or to any other states of mind, which can strictly be called intellectual. I speak at present, it must be remembered, of the mere feelings produced by the contemplation of beautiful or sublime objects, – not of the judgment, which we form, of objects, as more or less fit to excite these feelings; the judgment being truly intellectual, like all our other judgments; but being, at the same time, as distinct from the feelings which it measures, as any other judgment from the external or internal objects which it compares.

The exact meaning of the term emotion, it is difficult to state in any form of words, – for the same reason which makes it difficult, or rather impossible, to explain, what we mean by the term thought, or the terms sweetness or bitterness. What can be more opposite than pleasure and pain! the real distinction of which is evidently familiar, not to man only, but to every thing that lives; and yet if we were to attempt to show, in what their difference consists, or to give a verbal definition of either, we should find the task to be no easy one. Every person understands, what is meant by an emotion, at least as well, as he understands what is meant by any intellectual power; or, if he do not, it can be explained to him, only by stating the number of feelings to which we give the name, or the circumstances which induce them. All of them, indeed, agree in this respect, that they imply peculiar vividness of feeling, with this important circumstance, to distinguish them from the vivid pleasures and pains of sense, – that they do not arise immediately from the presence of external objects, but subsequently to the primary feelings, which we term sensations or perceptions. Perhaps if any definition of them be possible, they may be defined to be vivid feelings, arising immediately from the consideration of objects, perceived, or remembered, or imagined, or from other prior emotions. In some cases, – as in that of the emotion which beauty excites, – they may succeed so rapidly to the primary perception, as almost to form a part of it. Yet we find no great difficulty of analysis, in separating the pleasing effect of beauty, from the perception of the mere form and colour, and can very readily imagine the same accurate perception of these, without the feeling of beauty, as we can imagine the same feeling of beauty to accompany the perception of forms and colours very different.