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

In the classification of our internal feelings, as in every classification, and, indeed, in every thing, intellectual or moral, which can exercise us, it is evident, that we may err in two ways, by excess or deficiency. We may multiply divisions without necessity, or we may labour in vain to force into one division individual diversities, which cannot, by any labour, be made to correspond. The golden mean, of which moralists speak, is as important in science, as in our practical views of happiness; and the habit of this cautious speculative moderation, is, probably, of as difficult attainment in the one, as the habitual contentment which is necessary to the enjoyment of the other.

When we think of the infinite variety of the physical objects around us, and of the small number of classes in which they are at present arranged, it would seem to us, if we were ignorant of the history of philosophy, that the regular progress of classification must have been to simplify, more and more, the general circumstances of agreement, on which arrangement depends; that, in this progressive simplification, millions of diversities must have been originally reduced to thousands, – these, afterwards, to hundreds, – and these again, successively, to divisions still more minute. But, the truth is, that this simplicity of division is far from being so progressive in the arrangement even of external things. The first steps of classification must, indeed, uniformly be, to reduce the great multitude of obvious diversities to some less extensive tribes. But the mere guess-work of hypothesis soon comes in to supply the place of laborious observation or experiment, and of that slow and accurate reasoning on observations and experiments, which, to minds of very rapid imagination, is perhaps, a labour as wearisome, as, in the long observation itself, to watch for hours, with an eye fixed like the telescope through which it gazes, one constant point of the heavens, or to minister to the furnace, and hang over it in painful expectance of the transmutations which it tardily presents. By the unlimited power of an hypothesis, we in a moment range together, under one general name, myriads of diversities the most obstinately discordant; as if the mere giving of a name could of itself alter the qualities of things, making similar what was dissimilar before, like words of magic, that convert any thing into any thing. When the hypothesis is proved to be false, the temporary magic of the spell is of course dissolved; and all the original diversities appear again, to be ranged once more in a wider variety of classes. Even where, without any such guess-work of hypothetical resemblance, divisions and arrangements have been formed on the justest principles, according to the qualities of objects known at the time, some new observation, or new experiment, is continually shewing differences of composition or of general qualities, where none were conceived before; and the same philosophy is thus, at the same moment, employed in uniting and disuniting, – in reducing many objects to a few, and separating a few into many, – as the same electric power, at the moment in which it is attracting objects nearer to it, repels others which were almost in contiguity, and often brings the same object close to it, only to throw it off the next moment to a greater distance. While a nicer artificial analysis, or more accurate observation, is detecting unsuspected resemblances, and, still more frequently, unsuspected diversities, there is hence no fixed point nor regular advance, but a sort of ebb and flow of wider and narrower divisions and subdivisions; and the classes of an intervening age maybe fewer than the classes both of the age which preceded it, and of that which comes after it. For a very striking example of this alternation, I may refer to the history of that science, which is to matter what our intellectual analysis is to mind. The elements of bodies have been more and fewer successively, varying with the analyses of almost every distinguished chemist; far from having fewer principles of bodies, as chemistry advances, how many more elements have we now than in the days of Aristotle! There can be no question, that when man first looked around him with a philosophic eye, and saw, in the sublime rudeness of nature, something more than objects of savage rapacity, or still more savage indifference, he must have conceived the varieties of bodies to be innumerable; and could as little have thought of comprehending them all under a few simple names, as of comprehending the whole earth itself within his narrow grasp. In a short time, however, this narrow grasp, if I may venture so to express myself, did strive to comprehend the whole earth; and soon after man had made the first great advance in science, of wondering at the infinity of things in which he was lost, we had sages, such as Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, who were forming every thing of a single principle, – water, or air, or fire. The four elements, which afterwards reigned so long in the schools of physics, gave place to a single principle with the alchemists; or to three principles, —salt, sulphur, and mercury, – with chemists less bold in conjecture. These, again, were soon multiplied by observers of still nicer discrimination; and modern chemistry, while it has shewn some bodies, which we regarded as different, to be composed of the same elements, has, at the same time, shewn, that what we regarded as elements, are themselves compounds of elements which we knew not before.

To him who looks back on the history of our own science, the analytic science of mind, which, as I have already said, may almost be regarded, in its most important aspects, as a sort of intellectual chemistry, – there will appear the same alternate widening and narrowing of classification. The mental phenomena are, in one age or country, of many classes; in a succeeding age, or in a different country, they are of fewer; and again, after the lapse of another age, or the passage of a river or a mountain, they are of many more. In our own island, after the decay of scholastic metaphysics, from Hobbes to Hume, – if I may use these names, as dates of eras, in a science, on which, with all their unfortunate errors on many of the most important points of human belief, they both unquestionably threw a degree of light, which rendered their errors on these subjects the more to be lamented, – in this long and brilliant period, – which, of course, includes, with many other eminent names, the very eminent author of the Essay on the Human Understanding, – there was a tendency to simplify, as much as possible, the classification of the phenomena of mind; and more regard, perhaps, was paid to the similarities of phenomena, than to their differences. Subsequently to this period, however, the philosophy of Dr Reid, and, in general, of the metaphysicians of this part of the island, has had the opposite tendency, – to enlarge, as I conceive, far beyond what was necessary, the number of classes which they considered as too limited before; – and, in proportion, more regard has perhaps been paid to the differences, or supposed differences of phenomena, than to their resemblances. There can be no doubt, at least, that we are now accustomed to speak of more powers or operations of the mind, than even the schoolmen themselves, fond as they were of all the nicest subtleties of infinitesimal subdivision.

The difference in this respect, however, is not so striking, when we consider successions of ages, in which, of course, from our general notion of the effects of time, we are accustomed to expect variety, as when we look to neighbouring countries at the same period, especially if we consider the advantage of that noble art, which might have been supposed, by the wide diffusion which it gives to opinion, to have removed, as to human sentiment, all the boundaries of mere geographic distance. Slight, however, as the distance is which separates the two countries, the philosophy of France, in its views of the phenomena of mind, and the philosophy of Britain, particularly of this part of Britain, have for more than half a century differed as much, as in the philosophy of different ages; certainly in a degree far greater, than, but for experience, it would have been easy for us to suppose. In France, all the phenomena of mind have been, during that period, regarded as sensations, or transformed sensations, that is to say, as sensations variously simplified or combined. The works of Condillac, who professed to have founded his system on that of Locke, but who evidently did not understand fully what Locke intended, gave the principal tone to this philosophic belief; and it has been fostered since by that passion for the simple and the wonderful, which, when these two objects can be united, is perhaps the strongest of all our intellectual passions. In the system of the French metaphysicians, they are united in a very high degree. That this universal presence of sensation, whether true or false, is at least very simple, cannot be denied; and there is certainly abundant matter of wonder in the supposed discovery, that all the variety of our internal feelings are those very feelings of a different class, to which they have so little appearance of belonging. It is a sort of perpetual masquerade, in which we enjoy the pleasure of recognizing a familiar friend in a variety of grotesque dresses, and the pleasure also of enjoying the mistakes of those around us, who take him for a different person, merely because he has changed his robe and his mask. The fallacy of the doctrine is precisely of that kind, which, if once admitted, is most difficult to be shaken off. It relates to a system which is very simple, very wonderful, and obviously true in part. Indeed, when there are so many actual transformations of our feelings, so many emotions, of which the principal elements are so little recognizable, in the complex affection that results from them, – the supposition that all the varieties of our consciousness may be only modes of one simple class of primary feelings, false as it is, is far from being the most striking example which the history of our science presents of the extravagance of philosophic conjecture.

The speculations of the French school of philosophers, to which I have now alluded, as to the supposed universal transmutations of feeling, bear, as you can scarcely fail to have remarked, a very obvious resemblance, in extreme simplicity, to the speculations of alchemists on transmutations of another kind. The resemblance is stated with great force by a living French author, himself a metaphysician of no humble rank. I allude to a passage which you will find quoted by Mr Stewart, in one of the valuable preliminary dissertations of his volume of Essays, from a work of De Gerando.

“It required nothing less,” – says this ingenious writer, – “than the united splendour of the discoveries brought to light by the new chemical school, to tear the minds of men from the pursuit of a simple and primary element; a pursuit renewed in every age, with an indefatigable perseverance, and always renewed in vain. With what feelings of contempt would the physiologists of former times have looked down on the chemists of the present age, whose timid and circumscribed system admits nearly forty different principles in the composition of bodies! What a subject of ridicule would the new nomenclature have afforded to an alchemist!

“The Philosophy of Mind has its alchemists also; men whose studies are directed to the pursuit of one single principle, into which the whole science may be resolved; and who flatter themselves with the hope of discovering the grand secret, by which the pure gold of truth may be produced at pleasure.”134

This secret of the intellectual opus magnum, Condillac conceived himself to have found; or, rather, as I have already said, he ascribed the grand discovery to our own illustrious countryman. In this reference the whole school of French metaphysicians have very strangely agreed; conferring on Mr Locke a praise which they truly meant to do him honour, but praise which the object of it would have hastened to disclaim. He certainly was not that alchemist in the science of mind which they conceived him to be; though he was a chemist in it, unquestionably, and a chemist of the highest rank.

LECTURE XXXIII

ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE MENTAL PHENOMENA, BY LOCKE – BY CONDILLAC – BY REID – A NEW CLASSIFICATION

Gentlemen, in the conclusion of my last Lecture, I alluded to the system of the French metaphysicians, as an instance of error from extreme simplification in the analysis of that class of our feelings which we are now considering.

Of this system, – which deserves some fuller notice, on account both of the great talents which have stated and defended it, and of its very wide diffusion, – I may remark, in the first place, that it is far from being, what its author and his followers consider it to be, a mere developement of the system of our illustrious countryman. On the contrary, they agree with Locke only in one point, and that a negative one, – as to which all philosophers may now be considered as unanimous, – the denial of what were termed innate ideas. In every thing which can be strictly said to be positive in his system, this great philosopher is nearly as completely opposed to Condillac and his followers, as to the unintelligible wranglers of the ancient schools. To convince you of this, a very slight statement of the two systems will be sufficient.

According to Locke, the mind, to whose existence thought or feeling is not essential, might, but for sensation, have remained forever without feeling of any kind. From sensation we acquire our first ideas, – to use a word, which, from its ambiguity I am not very fond of using, but which, from its constant occurrence, is a very important one in his system. These ideas we cannot merely remember as past, and compound or decompound them in various ways, but we can compare them in all their variety of relations; and according as their objects are agreeable or disagreeable, can love or hate those objects, and fear or hope their return. We remember not external things only, so as to have ideas of them, – ideas of sensation, – but we remember also our very remembrance itself, – our abstractions, comparisons, love, hate, hope, fear, and all the varieties of reflex thought, or feeling; and our remembrance of these internal feelings, or operations of our mind, furnishes another abundant source of ideas, which he terms ideas of reflection. The comparison, however, – and it is this point alone which can be of any consequence in reference to the French system, – the comparison, as a state of the mind, even when it is exercised on our sensations or perceptions, is not itself a sensation or perception, – nor is our hope, or fear, or any other of our reflex feelings; for then, instead of the two sources of our ideas, the distinction of which forms the very groundwork of the Essay on the Human Understanding, we should truly have but one source, and our ideas of reflection would themselves be the very ideas of sensation to which they are opposed. Our sensations, indeed, directly or indirectly give rise to our reflex feelings, but they do not involve them; they are only prior in order, – the occasions, on which certain powers or susceptibilities of feeling in the mind evolve themselves.

Such is the system of Locke, on those very points, on which the French philosophers most strangely profess to regard him as their great authority. But it is surely very different from the system, which they affect to found on it. According to them, sensation is not merely that primary affection of mind, which gives occasion to our other feelings, but is itself, as variously composed or decomposed, all the variety of our feelings. “If we consider,” says Condillac, in a paragraph, which may be said to contain a summary of his whole doctrine, with respect to the mind – “if we consider that to remember, to compare, to judge, to distinguish, to imagine, to be astonished, to have abstract ideas, to have ideas of number and duration, to know truths, whether general or particular, are but so many modes of being attentive; that to have passions, to love, to hate, to hope, to fear, to will, are but so many different modes of desire; and that attention, in the one case, and desire, in the other case, of which all these feelings are modes, are themselves, in their origin, nothing more than modes of sensation, we cannot but conclude, that sensation involves in itself —enveloppe– all the faculties of the soul.”135

Whatever we may think of this doctrine, as true or false, ingenious or absurd, it seems, at least, scarcely possible, that we should regard it as the doctrine of Locke – of him, who sets out, with a primary division of our ideas, into two distinct classes, one class of which alone belongs to sensation; and who considers even this class of our mere ideas, not as involving all the operations of the mind with respect to them, but only as the objects of the mind, in these various operations; – as being what we compare, not the very feeling of our comparison itself – the inducements to passion, not what constitutes any of our passions, as a state, or series of states, of the mind. To render the paragraph, which I have quoted from Condillac, at all accordant with the real doctrine of Locke, it would be necessary to reverse it, in almost every proposition which it involves.

The doctrine, then, as exhibited by Condillac and his followers, whatever merit it may have in itself, or however void it may be of merit of any kind, is not the doctrine of him from whom it is said to be derived. But its agreement or disagreement with the system of any other philosopher, is comparatively, of very little consequence. The great question is, whether it be just, – whether it truly have the merit of presenting a faithful picture of the mental phenomena, which it professes to develope to us more clearly.

Have we reason to believe, then, that all the various feelings of our mind, which form the classification of its internal affections, are merely, to use Condillac's phrase, transformed sensations?

Transformed sensations, it is evident, on his own principles, though the phrase might seem vague and ambiguous, in any other system, can mean nothing more than sensations more or less lively, or more or less complex. It cannot signify any thing that is absolutely different or superadded; for, if there be any thing, in any complex feeling of the mind, which did not originally form a sensation, or a part of a complex sensation, this addition, however slight, is itself a proof, that all the phenomena of the mind are not mere sensations, variously repeated – that sensation, in short, does not “involve” all the affections and faculties of the soul.

Is every feeling, then, in the whole series of our varied consciousness, referable, in all its parts, to sensation, as its original source? – not its source merely, in one very evident respect, as that which is, in order, truly primary to all our other feelings, but as that which essentially constitutes them all, in the same manner as the waters of the fountain are afterwards the very waters which flow along the mead?

To prove the affirmative of this, it is astonishing, with what readiness Condillac, – who is generally regarded as a nice and subtile reasoner, and who certainly, as his work on that subject shows, had studied with attention the great principles of logic, – passes from faculty to faculty, and from emotion to emotion, professing to find sensation everywhere, without exhibiting to us even the semblance of what he seeks, and yet repeating the constant affirmative, that he has found it, – as if the frequent repetition, were itself a proof of what is frequently repeated, – but proving only that the various feelings of the mind agree, as might be supposed, in being feelings of the mind – not that they agree in being sensations, as that word is used by himself, and as it is, in common philosophic use, distinguished from the other more general term. Except the mere frequency of the affirmation, and the unquestionable priority in order of time, of our sensations to our other feelings, – there is not the slightest evidence, in his system, of that universal transmutation which it affirms.

It may be necessary to mention, that, in these remarks on the system of the illustrious preceptor of the Prince of Parma, I allude, in particular, to his Treatise “of Sensations,” which contains his more mature opinions on the subject – not to his earlier work, on the origin of human knowledge, in which he has not ventured on so bold a simplification; or at least, has not expressed it in language so precise.

The great error of Condillac, as it appears to me, consists in supposing that, when he has shown the circumstance from which any effect results, he has shown this result to be essentially the same with the circumstance which produced it.

Certain sensations have ceased to exist, certain other feelings have immediately arisen; – these new feelings are therefore the others under another shape. Such is the secret, but very false, logic, which seems to pervade his whole doctrine on the subject.

If all that is meant were merely, that whatever may be the varying feelings of the mind, the mind itself, in all this variety, when it remembers or compares, hates or loves, is still the same substance, as that which saw, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, there could be nothing objectionable in the doctrine, but there would then certainly be nothing new in it; – and, instead of thinking either of Locke or of Condillac, we might think, at pleasure, in stating such a doctrine of any of the innumerable assertors of the spirituality of the thinking principle. Such, however, is not the meaning of the French metaphysician. He asserts this identity of substance, indeed, like the philosophers who preceded him, but he asserts still more. It is not the permanent substance of mind only which is the same. Its affections, or states, which seem, in many respects, absolutely different, are the same as those very affections, or states, from which they seem to differ – and are the same, merely because they have succeeded them; for, as I have already said, except the frequency of his affirmation, that they are the same, there is no other evidence but that of the mere succession in order of time, by which he attempts to substantiate their sameness.

The origin of this false reasoning I conceive to be the analogy of MATTER, to which his system, by reducing all the affections of mind to that class which is immediately connected with external things, must have led him to pay peculiar attention. Yet, in justice to him, I must remark, that, although a system which reduces every feeling to mere sensation, and consequently connects every feeling, in its origin, with the qualities of matter, must be favourable to materialism, and has unquestionably fostered this, in a very high degree, in the French school of metaphysics, there is no reason to consider Condillac himself as a materialist; on the contrary, his works contain many very just remarks on the errors of materialism. But still his system, as I have said, by leading him continually to our organs of sense, and to the objects which act upon them, must have rendered the phenomena of matter peculiarly apt to recur to his mind in all its speculations. Now, in matter, there can be no question as to the reality of that transmutation, which, as applied to mind, forms the chief principle of his intellectual analysis. In the chemistry of the material elements, the compounds are the very elements themselves. When any two substances, present together, vanish as it were from our view, and a third substance, whether like or unlike to either of the former, presents itself in their place, we believe this third substance, however dissimilar it may appear, to be only the coexistence of the two others; and indeed, since we have no reason to believe that any change takes place, in the number of the corpuscles of which our planet is composed, the whole series of its corpuscular changes can be only new combinations of particles that existed before.