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

“Sure the rising sun,O'er the cerulean convex of the sea,With equal brightness, and with equal warmth,Might roll his fiery orb; nor yet the soulThus feel her frame expanded, and her powersExulting in the splendour she beholds,Like a young conqueror moving through the pompOf some triumphal day. When join'd at eve,Soft murmuring streams, and gales of gentlest breath,Melodious Philomela's wakeful strainAttemper, could not man's discerning ear,Through all its tones, the sympathy pursue;Nor yet this breath divine of nameless joySteal through his veins, and fan the awaken'd heart,Mild as the breeze, yet rapturous as the song.”59

Our emotions, then, even in the cases in which they seem most directly to co-exist with perception, are still easily distinguishable from it; and, in like manner, when they arise from the intellectual states of memory, imagination, comparison, they are equally distinguishable from what we remember, or imagine, or compare. They form truly a separate order of the internal affections of the mind, – as distinct from the intellectual phenomena, as the class, to which they both belong, is distinguishable from the class of external affections, that arise immediately from the presence of objects without.

LECTURE XVII

CLASSIFICATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF MIND. – CLASS I. EXTERNAL STATES. – INTRODUCTORY

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I endeavoured to prepare the way, for arranging, in certain classes, that almost infinite variety of phenomena, which the mind exhibits, – pointing out to you the peculiar difficulty of such a classification, in the case of phenomena so indefinite and fugitive, as those of the mind, and the nature of that generalizing principle of analogy or resemblance, on which every classification, whether of the material or mental phenomena, must alike proceed. I then took a slight view of the primary, leading, divisions of the phenomena of the mind, which have met with most general adoption, – the very ancient division of them, as of two great departments, belonging to the understanding and the will, – and the similar division of them, as referable to two classes of powers, termed the intellectual and active powers of the mind. I explained to you the reasons, which led me to reject both these divisions, as at once incomplete, from not comprehending all the phenomena, and inaccurate, from confounding even those phenomena, which they may truly be considered as comprehending.

After rejecting these, it became necessary to attempt some new arrangement, especially as we found reason to believe that some advantage could scarcely fail to arise from the attempt itself, even though it should fail as to its great object; and we, therefore, proceeded to consider and arrange the phenomena, as nearly as possible, in the same manner as we should have done, if no arrangement of them had ever been made before.

In thus considering them, the first important distinction which occurred to us, related to their causes, or immediate antecedents, as foreign to the mind, or as belonging to the mind itself; a distinction too striking to be neglected as a ground of primary division. Whatever that may be, which feels and thinks, it has been formed to be susceptible of certain changes of state, in consequence of the mere presence of external objects, or at least of changes produced in our mere bodily organs, which, themselves, may be considered as external to the mind; and it is susceptible of certain other changes of state, without any cause external to itself, one state of mind being the immediate result of a former state of mind, in consequence of those laws of succession of thoughts and feelings, which He, who created the immortal soul of man, as a faint shadow of His own eternal spirit, has established in the constitution of our mental frame. In conformity with this distinction, we made our first division of the phenomena of the mind, into its external and internal affections; the word affection being used, by me, as the simplest term for expressing a mere change of state induced, in relation to the affecting cause, or the circumstances, whatever they may have been, by which the change was immediately preceded.

The class of internal affections, – by far the more copious and various of the two, – we divided into two great orders, our intellectual states of mind, and our emotions, words which are, perhaps, better understood, before any definition is attempted of them, than after it, but which are sufficiently intelligible without definition, and appear to exhaust completely the whole internal affections of the mind. We have sensations or perceptions of the objects that affect our bodily organs; these I term the sensitive or external affections of the mind; we remember objects – we imagine them in new situations – we compare their relations; these mere conceptions or notions of objects and their qualities, as elements of our general knowledge, are what I have termed the intellectual states of the mind; we are moved with certain lively feelings, on the consideration of what we thus perceive, or remember, or imagine, or compare, with feelings, for example, of beauty, or sublimity, or astonishment, or love, or hate, or hope, or fear; these, and various other vivid feelings, analogous to them, are our emotions.

There is no portion of our consciousness, which does not appear to me to be included in one or other of these three divisions. To know all our sensitive states or affections, – all our intellectual states, – and all our emotions, is to know all the states or phenomena of the mind;

“Unde animus scire incipiat, quibus inchoet orsaPrincipiis seriem rerum tenuemque catenamMnemosyne; Ratio unde, rudi sub pectore tardumAugeat imperium, et primum mortalibus ægrisIra, dolor, metus, et curæ nascantur inanes.”60

It must not be conceived, however, that, in dividing the class of internal affections of the mind, into the two distinct orders of intellectual states, and emotions; and, in speaking of our emotions as subsequent in their origin, I wish to be understood, that these never are combined, at the same moment, in that sense of combination, as applied to the mind, which I have already explained too frequently, to need again to define and illustrate it. On the contrary, they very frequently concur; but, in all cases in which they do concur, it is easy for us to distinguish them by reflective analysis. The emotion of pity, for example, may continue in the mind, while we are intellectually planning means of relief, for the sufferers who occasioned it; but, though the pity and the reasoning co-exist, we have little difficulty in separating them in our reflection. It is the same with all our vivid desires, which not merely lead to action, but accompany it. The sage, who in the silence of midnight, continues still those labours which the morning began, watching, with sleepless eye, the fate of some experiment, that almost promises to place within his hand the invisible thread, which leads into the labyrinths of nature, or exploring those secrets of the mind itself, by the aid of which he is afterwards to lay down rules of more accurate philosophizing, and to become the legislator of all who think, is not cheered, in his toils, merely by occasional anticipations of the truths that await his search. The pleasure of future discovery is, as it were, a constant light, that shines upon him and warms him; and, in the very moments in which he watches, and calculates, and arranges, there are other principles of his nature, in as lively exercise as his powers of observation and reasoning. The warrior, at the head of an army, which he has often led from victory to victory, and which he is leading again to new fields of conflict, does not think of glory only in the intervals of meditation or action. The passion which he obeys, is not a mere inspiring genius, that occasionally descends to rouse or invigorate. It is the soul of his continued existence, – it marches with him, from station to station, – it deliberates with him in his tent, – it conquers with him in the field, – it thinks of new successes, in the very moment of vanquishing; and, even at night, when his body has yielded at last to the influence of that fatigue, of which it was scarcely conscious, while there was room for any new exertion by which fatigue could be increased, and when all the anxieties of military command are slumbering with it, the passion that animates him, more active still, does not quit him as he rests, but is wakeful in his very sleep, bringing before him dreams, that almost renew the tumults and the toils of the day. Our emotions, then, may co-exist with various sensations, remembrances, reasonings, – in the same manner as these feelings, sensitive or intellectual, may variously co-exist with each other. But we do not think it less necessary to class our sensations of vision as different from our sensations of smell, and our comparison, as itself different from the separate sensations compared, because we may, at the same moment, both see and smell a rose, and may endeavour to appreciate the relative amount of pleasure which that beautiful flower thus doubly affords. In like manner, our intellectual states of mind, and our emotions, are not the less to be considered as distinct classes, because any vivid passion may continue to exist together with those intellectual processes of thought, which it originally prompted, and which, after prompting, it prolongs.

In all these cases, however, in which an emotion co-exists with the results of other external or internal influences, it is still easy to distinguish its subsequence to the feelings that preceded it. Pity, for example, as in the case to which I have before alluded, may co-exist with a long train of thoughts, that are busily occupied in endeavouring to relieve most effectually the misery which is pitied; but the misery must have been itself an object of our thought, before the state of mind which constitutes pity, could have been induced. The emotion which we feel, on the contemplation of beauty, may continue to co-exist with our mere perception of the forms and colours of bodies; but these forms and colours must have been perceived by us, before the delightful emotion could have been originally felt. In short, our emotions, though like the warmth and radiance, which seem to accompany the very presence of the sun, rather than to flow from it – they may seem in many cases to be a part of the very feelings which excite them, are yet, in every instance, as truly secondary to these feelings, as the light which beams on us, on the surface of our earth, is subsequent to the rising of the great orb of day.

As yet, we have advanced but a short way, in our generalization of the mental phenomena: though, as far as we have advanced, our division seems sufficiently distinct and comprehensive. The mind is susceptible of certain existing affections, of certain intellectual modifications which arise from these, and of certain emotions which arise from both; that is to say, it is capable of existing in certain states, the varieties of which correspond with these particular designations. We see, we remember, or compare, what we have seen, regard what we see, or remember, or compare, with desire or with aversion; and of these, or of states analogous to these, the whole of life, sensitive, intellectual, or moral, is composed. Every minute, therefore, of every hour, in all its variety of occupation, is but a portion of this complicated tissue. Let us suppose ourselves, for example, looking down from an eminence, on the prospect beneath. – On one side all is desolation, – and we see perhaps, at a little distance, some half-roofless hovel, as miserable, as the waste immediately around it, which has scarcely the appearance of a dwelling for any living thing, but seems rather, as if Nature herself had originally placed it there, as a part of the general sterility and ruggedness. On the other side, all is plenty and magnificence; – and we see, amid lawns and wooded banks, a mansion as different in aspect, as if the beings that inhabited it were of a different race, – which, as a part of the scene, where it is placed, accords so harmoniously with the whole, that, without it, the scene itself would appear incomplete, and almost incongruous, as if stripped of some essential charm. To view these separate dwellings, and all the objects around them – if no other feeling arose – would be to have a series of external or sensitive affections only. But it is scarcely possible for us to view them, without the instant rise of those intellectual states of mind which constitute comparison, and of those affections of another order, which constitute the emotions of admiration and desire in the one case, and in the other the emotions that are opposite to admiration and desire, together perhaps with some of those bitter emotions which the sight of misery makes in every breast that is not unworthy of so sacred an influence.

In this example, our intellectual states of mind, and our emotions, have for their objects things really existing without; but the external affections of our senses, though the most permanent, and usually the most vivid, and therefore the best remembered, of all the sources of our internal feelings are far from being necessary, in every instance, to the production of these. There is a constant, or almost constant succession of internal affections of mind, of thoughts, and emotions, following thoughts and emotions, which even though we were to be rendered incapable of a single new sensation, – if our animal life could in these circumstances be long protracted, – would still preserve to us also that intellectual and moral existence, which is the only life, that is worthy of the name. The knowledge which we acquire from without, lives in us within; and, in such a case as that which I have now imagined, our memory would be to us in some measure every sense, which we had lost, creating to us again that very world which had vanished before us. If we could compare and love or hate only things actually present, we should be far from the maturity and perfection of an infant's mind, and should scarcely be advanced to the rank of idiocy, which limited as it is in its range, still comprehends in its little sphere of foresight and memory, some few moments at least of the past, and even a moment or two of the future. It is with the future and with the past, that, intellectually and morally, we are chiefly conversant. To these high capacities of our being, the subjects, which can exercise our powers and feelings, however distant in time or place, are as it were everlastingly present, – like that mysterious eternal now, of which theologians speak, – in which past, present, and future are considered, as, in every moment of every age, alike visible to the omniscient glance of the Divinity. We love the virtues, of which we read, with the same sort of emotion, with which we love the virtues that are mingling with us in the present hour. The patriot of the most remote age, – of whom we know nothing, but the historical tale, of his voluntary perils or sufferings, in some generous cause, – is like the friend of our familiar intercourse; and the sacrifices, that wrought the happiness of millions of beings, who are now not merely unknown to us, but of whom not a single name is remembered on the earth, awake a sort of veneration, that is almost combined with gratitude, as if we were in the presence of a personal deliverer. It is the same with absolute unreality, nor merely with that which no longer exists, but with that which never had existence. We are struck with the beauty of what we only imagine, in the same manner, though perhaps not with the same liveliness of feeling, as we are struck with the beauty of external things. Our emotions then, however dependent they may have been originally, are now no longer dependent, on these external things. They may arise, from memory or imagination, as readily as from perception; but when they arise from memory or imagination, they are as truly distinguishable from what we remember and imagine, as they are distinguishable from our perceptions of mere forms and colours and other sensible qualities, when they arise from what we perceive.

To have arranged all the varieties of feelings of which the mind is susceptible, in the three great divisions to which our arrangement as yet has extended, – though it is unquestionably to have made some advance in our generalization, – is yet to have made only a small part of the necessary progress; since each of these three orders comprehends almost innumerable phenomena, which require the aid of more minute division. In the class of our external affections, indeed, this subdivision is very simple and easy; since our separate organs of sense furnish, of themselves, a very evident ground of distinction. But the two orders of our internal affections have no such obvious and tangible distinction, to serve as the basis of their subdivisions. They admit, however, – as I trust we shall find, – of distinctions, which, though not equally obvious, are almost equally definite, and require only a very little reflection, to be understood as clearly, as the organic relations, according to which we distinguish our sensations of sound, or smell, or sight. It is not my intention, however, to proceed, at present, to the consideration of these subdivisions; since the nature of the more minute arrangement will, I conceive, be better understood, when we come to treat of each separate order fully, than they could be now, by the mere enumeration of a few names, of the propriety of which, as mere names, and, still more of the propriety of the arrangement which they involve, you could not be expected to form any accurate judgment, without a fuller elucidation.

All which I must request you, then, at present, to keep in remembrance, is the primary division, which we have made, of the different states of the mind into two great classes, and the secondary division which we have made of one of these classes, into its two very comprehensive orders. – You will remember, then, that the various affections, of which the mind is susceptible, are either external, as they arise from causes without the mind, or internal, as they arise from previous states, of the mind itself; – that of these internal affections, some are mere conceptions or notions of former feelings, or of objects and of the qualities or relations of objects, as remembered or variously combined or compared, – results of different susceptibilities of our intellectual constitution, to which different names have been given, conception, memory, imagination, abstraction, reason, and other synonymous terms; – that these internal affections or states of the mind, which I have denominated its intellectual states, are distinctly separable, in our reflective analysis, from certain vivid feelings, that may arise instantly in the mind, on the consideration of these mere intellectual results, or on the perception of objects without, – feelings of admiration, love, desire, and various other analogous, or opposite states of the mind; – but that there is such an order of vivid feelings, which arise, in many cases, on the mere consideration of what we perceive or remember, or imagine, or compare, and that this order is what I wish to be distinguished by the name of emotions.

According to this division, therefore, of the mental phenomena, into those which are of external and those which are of internal origin, and the subdivision which we have made of this latter class, I shall proceed to consider, first, The external powers or susceptibilities of the mind; 2dly, The intellectual powers or susceptibilities of the mind; and, 3dly, Its susceptibilities of emotion, – beginning with that class, which we have every reason to suppose to be first, in the actual order of developement, – the powers or susceptibilities of the mind, in its immediate relation to its own bodily organs.

Certain states of our bodily organs are directly followed by certain states or affections of our mind; – certain states or affections of our mind are directly followed by certain states of our bodily organs. The nerve of sight, for example, is affected in a certain manner; vision, which is an affection or state of the mind, is its consequence. I will to move my hand; the hand obeys my will, so rapidly, that the motion, though truly subsequent, seems almost to accompany my volition, rather than to follow it. In conformity with the definitions before given of power and susceptibility, the one as implying a reference to something consequent, the other a reference to something antecedent, I should be inclined to consider the sensation which follows the presence of an external object as indicating a mental susceptibility of being so affected; – the production of muscular motion by the will, as indicating a mental power. But the terms are of less consequence, if you understand fully the distinction that is implied in them; and you may be allowed still, in compliance with the general language, to speak of the power or faculty of sensation or perception, if you mean nothing more, as often as you use these terms, than that the mind is affected in a certain manner, and, therefore, must have had a previous susceptibility of being thus affected whenever certain changes have previously taken place, in that nervous system, with which it is connected.

In considering the susceptibilities of the mind, I comprehend, under its external affections, all those phenomena or states of the mind, which are commonly termed sensations; together with all our internal organic feelings of pleasure or pain, that arise from states of the nervous system, as much as our other sensations. Many of these are commonly ranked under another head, that of appetites, – such as hunger, thirst, the desire of repose, or of change of muscular position, which arises from long-continued exertion; the oppressive anxiety, which arises from impeded respiration, and various other diseases, arising from bodily uneasiness. But these appetites evidently admit of being analysed into two distinct elements, – a pain of a peculiar species, and a subsequent desire of that which is to relieve the pain, – states of mind, of which one may immediately succeed the other; but which are, unquestionably, as different in themselves, as if no such succession took place, – as different as the pleasure of music is from the mere desire of enjoying it again, or as the pain of excessive heat, in burning, from the subsequent desire of coolness. The pain, which is one element of the appetite, is an external affection of the mind, to be classed with our other sensations, – the succeeding desire, which is another element of it, is an internal affection of the mind, to be classed with our other emotions of desire. We might have felt the same pain of hunger, though we had not been aware, that it arose from want of food, and consequently could not have felt any desire of food, but merely the general desire of relief which attends every disagreeable sensation. We might have felt the same uneasiness, which we term thirst, though we had not been aware, that it would be relieved by a draught of any beverage, – and the same pain of impeded respiration or fatigue, though nature had not led us instinctively, in the one case to perform the muscular actions necessary for expiration and inspiration; in the other, to change our posture, and thus give repose to the wearied limbs. Whatever be the organic states, which occasion these painful feelings, that are elementary in our appetites, there can be no doubt, that some organic affections precede them, as truly as some affection of an external organ precedes the pain of a burn, or the painful temporary blindness, when we are dazzled with excessive light. And though, in the case of the appetite, we may give the same name to the pain, and to the desire of that which is to relieve the pain; or rather, may give one name to the combination of the two feelings, – which is not to be wondered at, where the two feelings are so universally and so immediately successive, – this error, or rather this mere abbreviation of language, is no reason that we should consider the elementary pain itself, as different, in kind, from our other pains, that have not merely half a term to express them, but a whole undivided word of their own. The pain, of which the appetite desires the relief, is a sensation, as much as any other internal bodily pain which we feel, – a state or affection of the mind, arising, immediately and solely, from a state or affection of the body, – which is the only definition that can be given of a sensation.