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

In examining, then, according to their organs, our classes of sensation; and considering what feelings the organic affections excite at present, and what we may suppose them to have excited originally, – I shall begin with those which are most simple, taking them in the order of smell, taste, hearing, – not so much, from any hope, that the information, which these afford will throw any great light on the more complex phenomena of sight and touch, as because the consideration of them is easier, and may prepare you gradually for this difficult analysis, which awaits us afterwards, in the examination of those more perplexing phenomena.

I begin, then, with the consideration of that very simple order of our sensations which we ascribe to our organ of

SMELL

The organ of smell, as you well know, is principally in the nostrils, – and partly also in some continuous cavities on which a portion of the olfactory nerves is diffused.

Naribus interea consedit odora hominum visDocta leves captare auras, Panchaia qualesVere novo exhalat, Floræve quod oscula fragrantRoscida, cum Zephyri furtim sub vesperis horaRespondet votis, mollemque aspirat amorem.74

When the particles of odour affect our nerves of smell, a certain state of mind is produced, varying with the nature of the odoriferous body. The mere existence of this state, is all the information which we could originally have received from it, if it had been excited previously to our sensations of a different class. But, with our present knowledge, it seems immediately to communicate to us much more important information. We are not merely sensible of the particular feeling, but we refer it, in the instant, – almost in the same manner, as if the reference itself were involved in the sensation, – to a rose, hemlock, honeysuckle, or any other substance, agreeable or disagreeable; the immediate presence, or vicinity of which we have formerly found to be attended with this particular sensation. The power of making the reference, however, is unquestionably derived from a source different from that, from which the mere sensation is immediately derived. We must previously have seen, or handled, the rose, the hemlock, the honeysuckle; or if, without making this particular reference, we merely consider our sensation of smell as caused by some unknown object external to our mind, we must at least have previously seen or handled some other bodies, which excited, at the same time, sensations analogous to the present. If we had been endowed with the sense of smell, and with no other sense whatever, the sensations of this class would have been simple feelings of pleasure or pain, which we should as little have ascribed to an external cause, as any of our spontaneous feelings of joy or sorrow, that are equally lasting or equally transient. Even at present, after the connexion of our sensations of a fragrance with the bodies which we term fragrant, has been, in a great measure, fixed in our mind, by innumerable reflections, we still, if we attend to the process of the reference itself, are conscious of a suggestion of remembrance, and can separate the sensation, as a mere feeling of the mind, from the knowledge of the object or external cause of the sensation, which seems to us a subsequent state of the mind, however close the succession may be. Indeed, what is there which we can discover, in the mere sensation of fragrance, that is itself significant of solidity, extension, or what ever we may regard as essential to the existence of things without? As a mere change in the form of our being, it may suggest to us the necessity of some cause or antecedent of the change. But it is far from implying the necessity of a corporeal cause; – any more than such a direct corporeal cause is implied in any other modification of our being, intellectual or moral, – in our belief, for example, of the most abstract truth, at which we may have arrived by a slow developement of proposition after proposition, in a process of internal reflective analysis, – or in the most refined and sublime of our emotions, when, without thinking of any one of the objects around, we have been meditating on the Divinity who formed them – himself the purest of spiritual existences. Our belief of a system of external things, then, does not, as far as we can judge from the nature of the feelings, arise from our sensations of smell, more than from any of our internal pleasures or pains; but we class our sensations of smell as sensations, because we have previously believed in a system of external things, and have found, by uniform experience, that the introduction of some new external body, either felt or seen by us, was the antecedent, of those states of mind which we denominate sensations of smell, and not of those internal pains or pleasures, which we therefore distinguish from them, as the spontaneous affections of our own independent mind.

ON TASTE

With the organ of taste you are all sufficiently acquainted. In considering the phenomena, which it presents, in the peculiar sensations that directly flow from it, it is necessary to make some little abstraction from the sensation of touch, which accompanies them, in consequence of the immediate application of the tangible sapid body to the organ; but the sensations, thus co-existing, are so very different in themselves, as to be easily distinguishable. When the organ of taste is in a sound state, the application of certain substances produces, immediately, that change or affection of the sensorial organs, which is attended with a corresponding change or affection of the sentient mind. In our present state of knowledge, we immediately refer this simple sensation, to something, which is bitter, or sweet, or acrid, or of some other denomination of sapid quality; and we have no hesitation, in classing the sensations as sensations, – effects of laws of action that belong jointly to matter and mind, – not as feelings that arise in the mind, from its own independent constitution. But, if we attend sufficiently to the feeling that arises in the case of taste, we shall find, however immediate the reference to a sapid body may seem to be, that it is truly successive to the simple sensation, and is the mere suggestion of former experience, when a body previously recognized by us as an external substance, was applied to our organ of taste; – in the same manner, as, when we see ashes and dying embers, we immediately infer some previous combustion, which we could not have inferred, if combustion itself had been a phenomenon altogether unknown to us. In the simple sensation which precedes the reference, – the mere pleasure of sweetness or the mere pain of bitterness – there is nothing which seems to mark more distinctly the presence of honey or wormwood, or any similar external substance, than in any of our joys or sorrows, to which we have not given a name; and there can be no doubt, that, if the particular feeling which we now term joy, and the particular feeling which we now term sorrow, had been excited, whenever we knew, from other sources, that certain bodies were applied to the tongue, we should have considered these internal feelings as sensations, in the strict sense of the word, precisely in the same manner, as we now regard, as sensations, the feeling which we term sweetness, and the feeling which we term bitterness, because, like these sensations, they could not have failed to suggest to us, by the common influence of association, the presence and direct coincidence of the object without. In the case of taste, therefore, as in the case of smell, we could not, from the simple sensations, – if these alone had been given to us, – have derived any knowledge of an external world, of substances extended and resisting; but we consider them as sensations, in the strict philosophic meaning of the term, because we have previously acquired our belief of an external world.

It may be remarked of these two classes of sensations, now considered, that they have a greater mutual resemblance, than our sensations of any other kind. It is only a blind man who thinks, that what is called scarlet is like the sound of a trumpet; but there are tastes which we consider as like smells, in the same manner as we consider them to be like other tastes; and, if we had not acquired a distinct knowledge of the seats of our different organs, and had yet known that smells and tastes arose from external causes acting upon some one or other of these, we should probably have been greatly puzzled, in many cases, in our attempt to refer the particular sensation to its particular organ.

In considering the advantages which we derive from our organs of smell and taste, the mere pleasures which they directly afford, as a part of the general happiness of life, are to be regarded, from their frequent occurrence, as of no considerable amount. The fragrance of the fields enters largely into that obscure but delightful group of images, which rise in our minds on the mere names of spring, summer, the country, and seems to represent the very form of ethereal purity, as if it were the breath of heaven itself.

If we imagine all the innumerable flowers which nature pours out, like a tribute of incense to the God who is adorning her, again to be stripped, in a single moment, of their odour, though they were to retain all their bright diversities of colouring, it would seem as if they were deprived of a spirit which animates them, – how cold and dead would they instantly become, – and how much should we lose of that vernal joy, which renders the season of blossoms almost a new life to ourselves.

“In vain the golden Morn aloftWaves her dew-bespangled wing;With vermeil cheek and whisper softShe woos the tardy Spring;Till April starts, and calls aroundThe sleeping fragrance from the ground,”75

It is by this delightful quality that the tribes of vegetable life seem to hold a sort of social and spiritual communion with us. It is, as it were, the voice with which they address us, and a voice which speaks only of happiness. To him who walks among the flowers which he has tended,

“Each odoriferous leaf,Each opening blossom, freely breathes abroadIts gratitude, and thanks him with its sweets.”

The pleasures of the sense of taste, in the moderate enjoyment of which there is nothing reprehensible, are, in a peculiar manner, associated with family happiness. To have met frequently at the same board, is no small part of many of the delightful remembrances of friendship; and to meet again at the same board, after years of absence, is a pleasure that almost makes atonement for the long and dreary interval between. In some half-civilized countries, in which the influence of simple feelings of this kind is at once more forcible in itself, and less obscured in the confusion of ever varying frivolities and passions, this hospitable bond forms, as you well know, one of the strongest ties of mutual obligation, sufficient often to check the impetuosity of vindictive passions which no other remembrance could, in the moment of fury, restrain. Had there been no pleasure attached to a repast, independent of the mere relief from the pain of hunger, the coarse and equal food would probably have been taken by each individual apart, and might even, like our other animal necessities, have been associated with feelings which would have rendered solitude a duty of external decorum. It would not be easy, even for those who have been accustomed to trace a simple cause through all its remotest operations, to say, how much of happiness, and how much even of the warm tenderness of virtue, would be destroyed, by the change of manners, which should simply put an end to the social meal; that meal which now calls all the members of a family to suspend their cares for a while, and to enjoy that cheerfulness, which is best reflected from others, and which can be permanent only when it is so reflected, from soul to soul, and from eye to eye.

One very important advantage, more directly obvious than this, and of a kind which every one may be disposed more readily to admit, is afforded by our senses of smell and taste, in guiding our selection of the substances which we take as alimentary. To the other animals, whose senses of this order are so much quicker, and whose instincts, in accommodation to their want of general language, and consequent difficulty of acquiring knowledge by mutual communication, are providentially allotted to them, in a degree, and of a kind, far surpassing the instincts of the slow but noble reflector man, these senses seem to furnish immediate instruction as, to the substances proper for nourishment, to the exclusion of those which would be noxious. To man, however, who is under the guardianship of affections more beneficial to him than any instinct of his own could be, there is no reason to believe, that they do this primarily, and of themselves, though, in the state in which he is brought up, instructed with respect to every thing noxious or salutary, by those who watch constantly over him in the early period of his life, and having, therefore, no necessity to appeal to the mere discrimination of his own independent organs, and, still more, as in the artificial state of things, in which he lives, his senses are at once perplexed and palled, by the variety and confusion of luxurious preparation, it is not easy to say, how far his primary instincts, – if it had not been the high and inevitable dignity of his nature to rise above these, – might, of themselves, have operated as directors. But, whatever their primary influence may be, the secondary influence of his organs of taste and smell is not the less important. When we have once completely learned what substances are noxious, and what are salutary, we then, however similar they may be in their other sensible qualities, discriminate these as often as they are again presented to us, by that taste or smell, which they affect with different sensations; and our acquired knowledge has thus ultimately, in guiding our choice, the force and the vivacity of an original instinct.

HEARING

In considering the phenomena of the sense of hearing, to which I now proceed, I may apply to them the same remark, which has been already applied to the phenomena of the senses before considered. They are classed by us, as sensations, merely in consequence of our previous belief in the existence of those external bodies, the motion of which we have known to be followed by similar feelings. Our mind begins suddenly to exist in a certain state; and we call this state joy or sorrow, without supposing that it depends on the immediate presence of any external object. It begins again to exist, in a different state, and we say, that we hear a flute, referring the feeling immediately to an external cause. But there can be no doubt, that, in making this reference, in the one case, and not in the other, we are influenced by experience, and by experience alone. If we suppose ourselves endowed with the single sense of hearing, and incapable therefore of having previously seen or felt the flute, which is breathed before us, or any other extended and resisting object whatever, we may imagine the mere sound to recur, innumerable times, without discovering any mode by which it can give us more knowledge, than we should receive from a similar recurrence of any internal joy or sorrow. That we should be able to refer it to a body, such as we now mean, when we speak of a flute, is manifestly impossible; since this implies knowledge of solidity, and form, and colour, which could not be acquired without touch and sight. But there seems even no reason to think, that we should refer it to any external cause whatever, unless, indeed, such a reference necessarily accompanied every feeling, which we know is far from being the case, since we have many internal pleasures, not more like to each other, than they are to the sound of a flute, which we do not refer to any thing, separate or separable, from the constitution of our own mind. In hearing, therefore, as in taste and smell, we do not derive from its sensations our knowledge of things external, but, in consequence of our knowledge of things external, we regard these feelings, as sensations, in the common philosophic meaning of that term.

Simple as our sense of hearing may seem, it affords a striking specimen of that almost infinite variety, which is not inconsistent with the closest resemblance; and the notion which we may form of the innumerable varieties of sound, is perhaps not more vast, when we attempt to wander over its boundless discrepancies, than when we limit ourselves to its greatest similarities, in a single word of a language, or, in that which we might be inclined at first to regard as simplicity itself, a single musical tone.

“A flute, a violin, a hautboy, and a French horn,” it has been truly remarked, “may all sound the same tone, and be easily distinguishable. Nay, if twenty human voices sound the same note, and with equal strength, there will still be some difference. The same voice, while it retains its proper distinctions, may be varied many ways, by sickness or health, youth or age, leanness or fatness, good or bad humour. The same words, spoken by foreigners and natives, nay, by different provinces of the same nation, may be very easily distinguished.”76

When we speak of the value of this sense as a part of our mental constitution, it is enough to say, that it is to it we are indirectly indebted for the use of verbal language, – that power so peculiarly distinctive of man, that, in the poetical phraseology of one celebrated country, it gave him his name as a divider of the voice, or, in other words, an utterer of articulate sounds. If we consider speech simply as a medium of the reciprocal expression of present feelings to the little society of citizens and friends of which we are a part, even in this limited view, of what inestimable value does it appear! To communicate to every one around us, in a single moment, the happiness which we feel ourselves, – to express the want, which we have full confidence, will be relieved as soon as it is known, – or to have the still greater privilege of being ourselves the ministers of comfort to wants, which otherwise could not have been relieved by us, because they could not have been discovered, – when the heart which we love is weighed down with imaginary grief, to have it in our power, by a few simple sounds, to convert anguish itself into rapture, – these are surely no slight advantages; and yet compared with the benefit which it affords to man as an intellectual being, even these are in considerable. To be without language, spoken or written, is almost to be without thought; and if, not an individual only, living among his fellows whose light may be reflected upon him, but our whole race had been so constituted, it is scarcely possible to conceive that beings, whose instincts are so much less various and powerful than those of the other animals, could have held over them that dominion, which they now so easily exercise. Wherever two human beings, therefore, are to be found, there language is. We must not think, in a speculative comparison of this sort, of mere savage life; for the rudest savages would be as much superior to a race of beings without speech, as the most civilized nations at this moment are, compared with the half-brutal wanderers of forests and deserts, whose ferocious ignorance seems to know little more than how to destroy and be destroyed. Even these are still associated in tribes, that concert together verbally their schemes of havoc and defence; and employ, in deliberating on the massacre of beings as little human as themselves, or the plunder of a few huts, that seem to contain nothing but misery and the miserable, the same glorious instrument with which Socrates brought wisdom down from heaven to earth, and Newton made the heavens themselves, and all the wonders which they contain, descend, as it were to be grasped and measured by the feeble arm of man.

Such are the benefits of language, even in its fugitive state; but the noblest of all the benefits which it confers, is in that permanent transmission of thought, which gives to each individual the powers and the wisdom of his species; or, rather, – for the united powers and wisdom of his species, as they exist in myriads, at the same moment with himself, upon the globe, would be comparatively a trifling endowment, – it gives him the rich inheritance of the accumulated acquisitions of all the multitudes, who, like himself, in every preceding age, have inquired, and meditated, and patiently discovered, or by the happy inspiration of genius, have found truths which they scarcely sought, and penetrated, with the rapidity of a single glance, those depths of nature, which the weak steps and dim torch-light of generations after generations had vainly laboured to explore. By that happy invention, which we owe indirectly to the ear, the boundaries of time seem to be at once removed. Nothing is past; for every thing lives, as it were, before us. The thoughts of beings who had trod the most distant soil, in the most distant period, arise again in our mind, with the same warmth and freshness as when they first awoke to life in the bosom of their author. That system of perpetual transmigration, which was but a fable, as believed by Pythagoras, – becomes reality when it is applied, not to the soul itself, but to its feelings. There is then a true metempsychosis, by which the poet and the sage, in spreading their conceptions and emotions from breast to breast, may be said to extend their existence through an ever-changing immortality. Who does not feel the justness of what Lucan says, when he speaks of the events of Pharsalia, and predicts the lively feelings with which they are afterwards to be regarded, not as past, and therefore indifferent, but as present, and almost future:

“Hæc et apud seras gentes, populosque nepotum,Sive sua tantum venient in secula fama, —Sive aliquid magnis nostri quoque cura laborisNominibus prodesse potest, – cum bella legentur,Spesque metusque simul, perituraque vota movebunt;Attonitique omnes, veluti venientia fataNon transmissa legent, et adhuc tibi magni favebunt.”77

“There is without all doubt,” as has been justly observed, “a chain of the thoughts of human kind, from the origin of the world down to the moment at which we exist, – a chain not less universal than that of the generation of every being that lives. Ages have exerted their influence on ages; nations on nations; truths on errors; errors on truths.” In conformity with this idea of the generation of thought, I may remark, that we are in possession of opinions, – which, perhaps, regulate our life in its most important moral concerns, or in all its intellectual pursuits, – with respect to which, we are as ignorant of the original authors, by whom they have been silently and imperceptibly transmitted to us from mind to mind, as we are ignorant of those ancestors, on whose existence in the thousands of years which preceded our entrance into the world, our life itself has depended, and without whom, therefore, we should not have been.

The unlimited transmission of thought, which the invention of language allows, brings the universe of mind into that point of view, in which an eloquent living French author has considered the physical universe, – as exhibiting, at once, all its splendid varieties of events, and uniting, as it were, in a single moment the wonders of eternity. “Combine,” says he, “by your imagination, all the fairest appearances of things. Suppose that you see, at once, all the hours of the day, and all the seasons of the year, – a morning of spring and of autumn, – a night brilliant with stars, and a night obscure with clouds, – meadows, enamelled with flowers, – fields, waving with harvest, – woods, heavy with the frosts of winter, – you will then have a just notion of the spectacle of the universe. Is it not wondrous, that while you are admiring the sun, who is plunging beneath the vault of the west, another observer is beholding him as he quits the regions of the east, – in the same instant reposing, weary, from the dust of the evening, and awaking, fresh and youthful, in the dews of morn! there is not a moment of the day, in which the same sun is not rising, shining in his zenith, and setting on the world! or, rather, our senses abuse us, and there is no rising, nor setting, nor zenith, nor east, nor west; but all is one fixed point, at which every species of light is beaming at once from the unalterable orb of day.”