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

“Whose word leaps forth at once to its effect;Who calls for things that are not, and they come.”127

If, indeed, the complication of the process could remove any difficulty which truly exists, or even any difficulty which is supposed to exist, the system might be more readily adopted by that human weakness, to which the removal of a single difficulty is of so much value. But the very attempt to remove the difficulty, is merely by presenting it in another form. Omnipresent, as the Creator is, he is still, like that mind which he has formed after his own image, a spiritual Being; and though there can be no question as to the extent of his power over matter, the operation of this infinite power is as little conceivable by us, in any other way than as a mere antecedence of change, as the reciprocal limited action of mind and matter, in man, and the objects which he perceives and moves. It is itself indeed, a proof of action of this very kind; and to state it, with the view of obviating any difficulty that may be supposed to be involved in the mutual influence of mind and matter, seems as absurd, as it would be for a sophist, who should profess to believe, from an examination of the wings of birds, that their heavy pinions are incapable of bearing them through the air, to illustrate his paradox by the majestic soaring of the eagle, when he mounts still higher and higher through the sunshine that encircles him, before he stoops from his height above the clouds, to the cliffs which he deigns to make his lowly home.

The system of occasional causes, though it ceased to be known, or at least to be adopted, under that name, has not the less continued, by a mere change of denomination, to receive the assent of philosophers, who rejected it under its ancient name. It is, indeed, the spirit of this system alone, which gives any sense whatever to the distinction that is universally made of causes, as physical and efficient, – a distinction which implies, that, beside the antecedents and consequents, in a series of changes, which are supposed to have no mutual influence, and might, therefore, be antecedent and consequent in any other order, – there is some intervening agency, which is, in every event of the series, the true efficient. Matter, in short, does not act on mind, nor mind on matter. The physical cause, in this nomenclature, that exists for no purpose, as being absolutely insufficient; or, in other words, absolutely incapable of producing any change whatever, is the occasional cause of the other nomenclature, and nothing more; and all which was cumbrous and superfluous in the one, is equally cumbrous and superfluous in the other. On this subject, however, which I have discussed at large in my Work on Cause and Effect, I need not add any remarks to those which I offered in an early part of the course. It is sufficient, at present, to point out the absolute identity of the two doctrines in every thing but in name.

The next system to which I would direct your attention, is that of Malebranche, who is, indeed, to be ranked among the principal asserters of the doctrine of occasional causes, which we have now been considering, but who, in addition to this general doctrine, had peculiar views of the nature of perception.

His opinions, on this subject, are delivered, at great length, in the second volume of his Search of Truth – La Recherche de la Verité – a work which is distinguished by much eloquence, and by many very profound remarks on the sources of human error, but which is itself an example, in the great system which it supports, of error as striking as any of those which it eloquently and profoundly discusses. It is truly unfortunate for his reputation as a philosopher, that these discussions do not form a separate work, but are blended with his own erroneous system, the outline of which every one knows too well, to think of studying its details. All that is necessary, to give him his just reputation, is merely that he should have written less. He is at present known, chiefly as the author of a very absurd hypothesis. He would have been known, and studied, and honoured, as a very acute observer of our nature, if he had never composed those parts of his work, to which, probably, when he thought of other generations, he looked as to the basis of his philosophic fame.

His hypothesis, as many of you probably know, is, that we perceive not objects themselves, but the ideas of them which are in God.

He begins his supposed demonstration of this paradox with a sort of negative proof, by attempting to shew the inadequacy of every other mode of accounting for our perception of the ideas of things; for I need scarcely state to you, what is involved in the very enunciation of his metaphysical theorem, – that he regards ideas as distinct from perception itself, not the mind affected in a certain manner, but something separate and independent of the mind.

He then proceeds to his positive proof, asserting, in the first place, that it is “absolutely necessary that God should have in himself the ideas of all the beings which he has created, since otherwise he could not have produced them;”128 and, in the second place, that God is united to our soul by his presence, “so that he may be said to have that relation of place to the mind, which space has to body.”129 Wherever the human mind is, there God is, and consequently all the ideas which are in God. We have thus a fund of all the ideas necessary for perception, and a fund, which, in consequence of the ubiquity of the divine mind, is ever present, requiring, therefore, for our perception of them, only that divine will, without which no change can take place.

That perception takes place, by the presence of this one stock of ideas eternally present in the divine mind, with which every other mind is united, – rather than by the creation of an infinite number of ideas in each separate mind, – he conceives to be proved, by various reasons, – by the greater simplicity of this mode, – by its peculiar consistency with that state of dependence on the divine Being, as the source of all light, in which the mind of man is represented in many passages of Scripture, – by various notions, such as those of infinity, genera, species, &c. the universality of which he conceived to be inconsistent with the absolute unity and limitation of every idea, that does not derive a sort of infinity from the mind in which it exists, – and by some other reasons, very mystical and very feeble, in which, though it may not be difficult to discover what their author meant, it is certainly very difficult to conceive, how a mind so acute as his, could have been influenced by them.

It is, indeed, only this relation of the mind of Malebranche to his own very strange hypothesis, which there is any interest in tracing; for, though I have thought it my duty to give you a slight sketch of the hypothesis itself, as a part of the general history of our science, with which the reputation and genius of its author render it necessary for you to have some acquaintance, I am far from thinking, that it can throw any light on our speculations, in the present improved state of the Science of Mind. I shall not waste your time, therefore, with pointing out to you the innumerable objections to his hypothesis, which, after the view already given by me of the simple process of perception, are, I trust, so manifest, as not to require to be pointed out. It may be more interesting to consider, in the history of the Philosophy of Mind, what circumstances led to the formation of the hypothesis.

In the first place I may remark, that, notwithstanding his veneration for the greater number of the opinions of Des Cartes, Malebranche unfortunately had not adopted the very enlightened views of that eminent philosopher, with respect to the nature of ideas. He considered them as existing distinct from the sentient or percipient mind, – and, reasoning very justly from this error, inferred their presence in the mind of the Deity, – who formed the universe, not casually, but according to conceptions, that must have preceded creation, – the archetypes, or exemplars, of all that was to be created. This opinion, as to the eternal forms subsisting in the divine mind, agrees exactly with that of Plato, in one of the most celebrated of his doctrines, and certainly one of the most poetical, – which, though a term of praise that usually does not imply much excellence of philosophy, is the species of praise to which the philosophy of Plato has the justest claim. It has been delivered, in very powerful verse, by one of our own poets, who describes himself as, in science, a follower of the genius of ancient Greece, and who was worthy of the inspiring presence of that majestic guide:

“Ere the radiant sunSprang from the east, or 'mid the vault of nightThe moon suspended her serener lamp;Ere mountains, woods, or streams, adorn'd the globe,Or Wisdom taught the sons of men her lore, —Then lived the Almighty One, then, deep retiredIn his unfathom'd essence, view'd the forms,The forms eternal of created things;The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp,The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe,And Wisdom's mien celestial. From the firstOf days, on them, his love divine, he fix'dHis admiration, till, in time complete,What he admired and loved, his vital smileUnfolded into being. Hence, the breathOf life, informing each organic frame;Hence, the green earth, and wild resounding waves;Hence, light and shade alternate, warmth and cold,And clear autumnal skies, and vernal showers,And all the fair variety of things.”130

It is in the writings of St Augustine, however, – who had himself imbibed a considerable portion of the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, – that the true source of the hypothesis, which we are now reviewing, is to be found. This very eminent father of the church, – whose acuteness and eloquence would have entitled him to very high consideration, even though his works had related to subjects less interesting to man, than those noble subjects of which they treat, – seems to have met with peculiar honour from the French theologians, and to have given a very evident direction to their intellectual inquiries. It is indeed impossible to read the works of any of the theological metaphysicians of that country, without meeting with constant references to the opinions of St Austin, and an implied reference, even where it is not expressed, – particularly to the very opinions most analogous to those of Malebranche.

The opinion of Augustine, to which I particularly allude, is that which forms the principal doctrine of his metaphysical philosophy, – that there is a supreme eternal universal Truth, which is internally present to every mind, and in which all minds alike perceive the truths, which all alike are, as it were, necessitated to believe, – the truths of arithmetic and geometry, for example, and the primary essential truths of morality.

These truths we feel to be eternal, because we feel that they are not contingent on the existence of those who perceive them, but were, and are, and must forever be the same; and we feel also, that the truth is one, whatever be the number of individuals that perceive it, and is not converted into many truths, merely by the multitude of believers. “If,” says he, “in discoursing of any truth, I perceive that to be true which you say, and you perceive that to be true which I say, – where, I pray you, do we both see this at the very moment? I certainly see it not in you, nor you in me, – but both see it in that unchangeable truth, which is beyond and above our individual minds.” “Si ambo videmus verum esse quod dicis, et ambo videmus verum esse quod dico, ubi, quæso, id videmus? Nec ego utique in te, nec tu in me; sed ambo in ipsa quæ supra mentes nostras est, incommutabili veritate.”

You must not conceive that I am contending for the justness of the opinion which I am now stating to you – I state it merely as illustrative of the system of Malebranche. If we suppose, with Augustine, that there is one eternal Truth, which contains all truths, and is present to all minds that perceive in it the truths which it contains, it is but one step more, and scarcely one step more, to believe that our ideas of all things are contained and perceived in one omnipresent Mind, to which all other minds are united, and which is itself the eternal Truth, that is present to all. Indeed, some of the passages which are quoted in the Search of Truth, from St Austin, show how strongly the author conceived his own opinions to be sanctioned by that ancient authority.

For some of the happiest applications which have been made of this very ancient system of Christian metaphysics, I may refer you particularly to the works of Fenelon, – to his demonstration of the existence of God, for example, – in which many of the most abstract subtleties of the Metaphysics of Augustine become living and eloquent, in the reasonings of this amiable writer, who knew so well how to give, to every subject which he treated, the tenderness of his own heart, and the persuasion and devout confidence of his own undoubting belief.

In this Protestant country, in which the attention of theologians has been almost exclusively devoted to the Scriptures themselves, and little comparative attention paid to the writings of the Fathers, – unless, as strictly illustrative of the texts of Scripture, or of the mere History of the Church, – the influence of the metaphysical opinions of St Austin is less to be traced; and the argument drawn from the eternal omnipresent ideas of unity, and number and infinity, on which so much stress is laid by Catholic philosophers, in demonstrating the existence of God, is hence scarcely to be found at all, or, at least, occupies a very inconsiderable place, in the numerous works of our countrymen, on the same great subject. The system of Malebranche, might, indeed have arisen in this country; for we have had writers, who, without his genius, have adopted his errors; but there can be no doubt, that it was, by its very nature, much more likely to arise, in the country which actually produced it.

LECTURE XXXI

HISTORY OF OPINIONS REGARDING PERCEPTION, CONCLUDED – ON THE EXTERNAL AFFECTIONS COMBINED WITH DESIRE, OR ON ATTENTION

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I gave you a slight sketch of some theories, – or, to speak more accurately, of some hypothetical conjectures, which have been formed with respect to perception, – pointing out to you, at the same time, the two supposed difficulties which appear to me to have led to them, in false views of the real objects of perception, and of the nature of causation; the difficulty of accounting, with these false views, for the supposed perception of objects at a distance, and for the agency of matter on a substance, so little capable as mind, of being linked with it, by any common bond of connexion.

Of such hypotheses, we considered three, – the doctrine of the Peripatetics as to perception by species, or shadowy films, that flow from the object to the organ, – the Cartesian doctrine of the indirect subserviency of external objects, as the mere occasions on which the Deity himself, in every instance, produces in the mind the state which is termed perception, – and the particular doctrine of Malebranche, himself a zealous defender of that general doctrine of occasional causes, as to the perception of objects, or rather of the ideas of objects in the divine mind.

The only remaining hypothesis, which deserves to be noticed, is a very celebrated one, of Leibnitz, the doctrine of the pre-established harmony, which, I have no doubt, originated in the same false view of the necessity of some connecting link in causation; and was intended, therefore, like the others, to obviate the supposed difficulty of the action of matter on mind, and of mind on matter.

According to this doctrine, the body never acts on the mind, nor the mind on the body, but the motions of the one, and the feelings of the other, are absolutely independent, having as little influence on each other, as they have on any other mind and body. The mind feels pain, when the body is bruised, but, from the pre-established order of its own affections, it would have felt exactly the same pain, though the body, at that moment, had been resting upon roses. The arm, indeed, moves at the very moment, when the mind has willed its motion; but, it moves of itself, in consequence of its own pre-established order of movement, and would move, therefore, equally, at that very moment, though the mind had wished it to remain at rest. The exact correspondence of the motions and feelings, which we observe, arises merely from the exactness of the choice of the Deity, in uniting with a body, that was formed by Him, to have of itself, a certain order of independent motions, a mind, that was formed of itself to have a certain order of independent but corresponding feelings. In the unerring exactness of this choice, and mutual adaptation, consists the exquisiteness of the harmony. But, however exquisite, it is still a harmony only, without the slightest reciprocal action.

The mind, and its organic frame, are, in this system, – to borrow the illustration of it which is commonly used, – like two time-pieces, which have no connexion with each other, however accurately they may agree, – and each of which would indicate the hour, in the very same manner, though the other had been destroyed. In like manner, the soul of Leibnitz, – for the great theorist himself may surely be used to illustrate his own hypothesis, – would, though his body had been annihilated at birth, have felt and acted, as if with its bodily appendage, – studying the same works, inventing the same systems, and carrying on, with the same warfare of books and epistles, the same long course of indefatigable controversy; – and the body of this great philosopher, though his soul had been annihilated at birth, would not merely have gone through the same process of growth, eating, and digesting, and performing all its other ordinary animal functions, – but would have achieved for itself the same intellectual glory, without any consciousness of the works which it was writing and correcting, – would have argued, with equal strenuousness, for the principle of the sufficient reason, – claimed the honours of the differential calculus, – and laboured to prove this very system of the pre-established harmony, of which it would, certainly, in that case, have been one of the most illustrious examples.

To say of this hypothesis, which was the dream of a great mind, – but of a mind, I must confess, which was very fond of dreaming, and very apt to dream, – that it is a mere hypothesis, is to speak of it too favourably. Like the doctrine of occasional causes, it supposes a system of external things, of which, by the very principle of the hypothesis, there can be no evidence, and which is absolutely of no utility whatever, but as it enables a philosopher to talk, more justly, of pre-established harmonies, without the possibility, however, of knowing that he is talking more justly. If the mind would have exactly the same feelings as now, – the same pleasures, and pains, and perceptions of men and houses, and every thing external, though every thing external, comprehending of course the very organs of sense, had been annihilated ages of ages before itself existed, what reason can there be to suppose, that this useless system of bodily organs, and other external things, exist at present? The universal irresistible belief of mankind, to which philosophers of a different school might appeal, cannot be urged in this case, since the admission of it, as legitimate evidence, would at once, disprove the hypothesis. We do not more truly believe, that light exists, than we believe, that it affects us with vision, and that, if there had been no light, there would have been no sensation of colour. To assert the pre-established harmony, is, indeed, almost the same thing, as to affirm and deny the same proposition. It is to affirm, in the first place, positively, that matter exists, since the harmony, which it asserts, is of matter and mind; and then to affirm, as positively, that its existence is useless, that it cannot be perceived by us, and that we are, therefore, absolutely incapable of knowing whether it exists or not.

After stating to you so many hypotheses, which have been formed on this subject, I need scarcely remark, what a fund of perpetual conjecture, and, therefore, of perpetual controversy, there is in the varied wonders of the external and internal universe, when it is so very difficult for a few philosophers to agree, as to what it is which gives rise to the simplest sensation of warmth, or fragrance, or colour. It might be thought, that, in the intellectual opera, if I may revert to that ingenious and lively allegory, of which I availed myself in one of my early Lectures, in treating of general physical inquiry, – as the whole spectacle which we behold, is passing within our minds, we are, in this instance at least, fairly behind the scenes, and see the mechanism of Nature truly as it is. But though we are really behind the scenes, and even, in one sense of the word, may be said to be ourselves the movers of the machinery, by which the whole representation is carried on, still the minute parts and arrangements of the complicated mechanism are concealed from our view, almost as completely as from the observation of the distant spectators. The primary springs and weights, indeed, by the agency of which Phaeton seemed to be carried off by the winds, are left visible to us; and we know, that when we touch a certain spring, it will put in motion a concealed set of wheels, or that when we pull a cord, it will act upon a system of pullies, which will ultimately produce a particular effect desired by us; but what is the number of wheels or pullies, and how they are arranged and adapted to each other so as to produce the effect, – are left to our penetration to divine. On this subject we have seen, that as many grave absurdities have been formed into systems, and honoured with commentaries and confutations, as in the opera of external nature, at which, in the quotation formerly made to you, the Pythagorases and Platos were supposed to be present. “It is not a system of cords and pullies which we put in motion,” says Aristotle, “ – for to move such a heavy and distant mass would be beyond our power, – but only a number of little phantasms connected with them, which have the form, indeed, of cords and pullies, but not the substance, and which are light enough, therefore, to fly at our very touch.” – “We do not truly move any wheels,” says the great inventor of the System of Occasional Causes; “for, as we did not make the wheels, how can we know the principle on which their motion is to depend, or have such a command over them as to be capable of moving them? But when we touch a spring, it is the occasion on which the Mechanist himself, who is always present, though invisible, and who must know well how to move them, sets them instantly in motion.” – “We see the motion,” says Malebranche, “not by looking at the wheels or pullies, – for there is an impenetrable veil which hides them from us, but by looking at the Mechanist himself, who must see them, because He is the mover of them: and whose eye, in which they are imaged as he gazes on them, must be a living mirror of all which he moves.” – “It is not a spring that acts upon the wheels,” says Leibnitz; “though, when the spring is touched, the wheels begin to move immediately, and never begin to move at any other time. This coincidence, however, is not owing to any connexion of one with the other; for, though the spring were destroyed, the wheels would move exactly as at present, beginning and ceasing at the same precise moments. It is owing to a preestablished harmony of motion in the wheels and spring; by which arrangement the motion of the wheels, though completely independent of the other, always begins at the very moment when the spring is touched.” – “No,” exclaims Berkeley, “it is all illusion. The wheels, and cords, and weights, are not seen because they exist, but exist because they are seen; and, if the whole machinery is not absolutely annihilated when we shut our eyes, it is only because it finds shelter in the mind of some other Being whose eyes are never shut, – and are always open, therefore, at the time when ours are closing.”