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

I must remark, however, that though it would be in the highest degree unjust to the well-known liberality and frankness of Mr Hume's character, to suppose him to have been aware of any enumeration of the general circumstances on which suggestion appears to depend, prior to that which he has himself given us, his attempt was far from being so original as he supposed. I do not allude merely to the passage of Aristotle, already quoted, nor to a corresponding passage, which I might have quoted, from one of the most celebrated of his commentators, Dr Thomas Aquinas, but to various passages which I have found in the works of writers of much more recent date, in which the influence of resemblance and contiguity, the two generic circumstances to which, on his own principles, his own triple division should have been reduced, is particularly pointed out. Thus, to take an example from an elementary work of a very eminent author, Ernesti, published in the year 1734, – his Initia Doctrinæ Solidioris, – with what precision has he laid down those very laws of association of which Mr Hume speaks. After stating the general fact of suggestion, or association, under the Latin term phantasia, he proceeds to state the principles which guide it. All the variety of these internal successions of our ideas, he says, may be reduced to the following law. When one image is present in the mind, it may suggest the image of some absent object – either of one that is similar in some respect to that already present – or of one of which the present is a part – or of one which has been present together with it on some former occasion. “Hujus autem phantasiæ lex hæc est; Præsentibus animo rerum imaginibus quibuscunque, recurrere et redire ad animum possunt rerum absentium olimque perceptarum imagines, præsentibus similes, vel quarum, quæ sunt præsentes, partes sunt, – vel denique, quas cum præsentibus simul hausimus.”143

Even the arrangement, as stated by Mr Hume, is not expressed in more formal terms. But as it is to his arrangement the philosophers of our own country are accustomed to refer, in treating of association, the importance thus attached to it gives it a preferable claim to our fuller discussion. It is stated by him briefly in two paragraphs of his Essay on the Association of Ideas.

“Though it be too obvious to escape observation,” he says, “that different ideas are connected together, I do not find that any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association; a subject, however, that seems worthy of curiosity. To me there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, viz. resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause or effect.

“That these principles serve to connect ideas, will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original. The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an inquiry or discourse concerning the others. And if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it. But that the enumeration is complete, and that there are no other principles of association except these, may be difficult to prove to the satisfaction of the reader or even to a man's own satisfaction. All we can do, in such cases, is to run over several instances, and examine carefully the principle which binds the different thoughts to each other, – never stopping, till we render the principle as general as possible. The more instances we examine, and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire, that the enumeration which we form from the whole is complete and entire.”144

On these paragraphs of Mr Hume, a few obvious criticisms present themselves. In the first place, however, I must observe, – to qualify in some degree the severity of the remarks which may be made on his classification, – that it is evident, from the very language now quoted to you, that he is far from bringing forward his classification as complete. He states, indeed, that it appears to him, that there are no other principles of connexion among our ideas than the three which he has mentioned; but he adds, that though the reality of their influence as connecting principles will not, he believes, be much doubted, it may still be difficult to prove, to the satisfaction of his reader, or even of himself, that the enumeration is complete; and he recommends, in consequence, a careful examination of every instance of suggestion, in the successive trains of our ideas, that other principles, if any such there be, may be detected.

But to proceed to the actual classification, as presented to us by Mr Hume. A note, which he has added to the paragraph that contains his system, affords perhaps as striking an instance as is to be found in the history of science of that illusion, which the excessive love of simplicity tends to produce, even in the most acute and subtile philosopher, so as to blind, to the most manifest inconsistencies, in his own arrangement, those powers of critical discernment which would have flashed instant detection on inconsistencies far less glaringly apparent in the speculations of another. After stating, that there appear to him to be only the three principles of connexion already mentioned, Mr Hume adds, in a note, – as an instance of other connexions apparently different from these three, which may, notwithstanding, be reduced to them, —

“Contrast or contrariety, also, is a species of connexion among ideas. But it may perhaps be considered as a mixture of causation and resemblance. Where two objects are contrary, the one destroys the other, i. e. is the cause of its annihilation, and the idea of the annihilation of an object implies the idea of its former existence.”

When we hear or read for the first time this little theory of the suggestions of contrast, there is, perhaps no one who does not feel some difficulty in believing it to be a genuine speculation of that powerful mind which produced it. Contrast, says Mr Hume, is a mixture of causation and resemblance. An object, when contrasted with another, destroys it. In destruction there is causation; and we cannot conceive destruction, without having the idea of former existence. Thus, to take an instance, – Mr Hume does not deny, that the idea of a dwarf may suggest, by contrast, the idea of a giant; but he says that the idea of a dwarf suggests the idea of a giant, because the idea of a dwarf destroys the idea of a giant, and thus, by the connecting principle of causation involved in all destruction, may suggest the idea destroyed; and he adds, as an additional reason for the suggestion, that the idea of the annihilation of a giant implies the idea of the former existence of a giant. And all this strange and complicated analysis, – this explanation, not of the obscurum per obscurius, which is a much more intelligible paralogism, but of the lucidum per obscurum, is seriously brought forward by its very acute author, as illustrating the simple and familiar fact of the suggestion of opposites, in contrast, by opposites.

In the first place, I may remark, that in Mr Hume's view of contrast, it is not easy to discover what the resemblance is of which he speaks, in a case in which the objects in themselves are said by him to be so contrary, that the one absolutely destroys the other by this contrariety alone; and, indeed, if there be truly this mixed resemblance in contrast, what need is there of having recourse to annihilation or causation at all, to account for the suggestion, since the resemblance alone in this, as in every other case, might be sufficient to explain the suggestion, without the necessity of any separate division; – as the likeness of a single feature in the countenance of a stranger, is sufficient to bring before us in conception the friend whom he resembles, though the resemblance be in the single feature only.

In the second place, there is no truth, if, indeed, there be any meaning whatever, in the assertion that in contrast one of the objects destroys the other; for, so far is the idea of the dwarf from destroying the idea of the giant, that, in the actual case supposed, it is the very reason of the existence of the second idea; nay, the very supposition of a perceived contrast implies that there is no such annihilation; for both ideas must be present to the mind together, or they could not appear either similar or dissimilar, that is to say, could not be known by us as contrasted, or contrary, in any respect. It is, indeed, not very easy to conceive, how a mind so acute as that of Mr Hume should not have discovered that grossest of all logical and physical errors, involved in his explanation, that it accounts for the existence of a feeling, by supposing it previously to exist as the cause of itself. If as he says, the idea of the annihilation of an object implies the idea of its former existence – an assertion which is by no means so favourable as he thinks to his own theory – it must surely be admitted, that no annihilation can take place before the existence of that which is to be annihilated. Whether, therefore, we suppose, that the idea of the dwarf, which suggests the idea of the giant, annihilates that idea, or is itself annihilated by it, the two ideas of the dwarf and the giant must have existed, before the annihilation of either. The suggestion, in short, which is the difficulty, and the only difficulty to be explained, must have completely taken place, before the principle can even be imagined to operate, on which the suggestion itself is said to depend.

Such minute criticism, however, is perhaps more, than it is necessary to give to a doctrine so obviously false, even sanctioned as it is by so very eminent a name.

END OF VOL. FIRST

1

Argutias serere. Lect. var.

2

Seneca, Ep. 102.

3

Ibid, 49.

4

Seneca Nat. Quæst. Lib. 1. Præf.

5

Thomson's Poem on the Death of Sir Isaac Newton.

6

Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, Book I. v. 512–526.

7

Essay on the Human Understanding. – Introd. sect. 6, 7.

8

Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. iv. v. 73–76.

9

Seneca, de Ira, lib. ii. cap. 9.

10

Pope's Universal Prayer, v. 25–32.

11

Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding, sec. I.

12

Tacitus, edit. Lipsii, p. 484, 5.

13

Essay on Criticism, v. 15, 16.

14

Seneca, Ep. 108.

15

Dissertat. ab Arrian, collect, lib. i. c. 6. – p. 35. Edit. Upton.

16

Seneca de otio Sapent. c. 32.

17

Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. ii. v. 237–240, and 245–248.

18

Lect. III.

19

Can't injure. Orig.

20

Young's Night Thoughts, VI. v. 535–539.

21

Nov. Org. Aph. 1.

22

Preface aux Eloges – Œuvres, tom. v. p. 8.

23

Fontenelle, Pluralité des Mondes, Conversat. 3.

24

Fontenelle, Pluralité des Mondes, Conversat. 1.

25

Essay concerning Human Understanding, book iv. c. 3. sec. 25, 26.

26

Epist. 65.

27

Mart. Scrib. c. 7. – Pope's Works, Ed. 1757, v. vii. p. 58, 59.

28

Cicero de Officiis, lib. i. c. 4.

29

Recherche de la veritè, liv iv. c. ii. – Vol. II. p. 322.

30

On the Powers of the Human Mind, Essay vi. Chap. viii. Vol. II. p. 334. 8vo. edit.

31

Traite des Systemes, chap. xii. Vol. II. p. 372.

32

Travels, Part iv, chap. 8. Swift's Works, edit. Nichols, Vol. ix. p. 300.

33

Voltaire Œuvres, tom. xiv. p. 99–101. 4to Edit. of 1771.

34

Inquiry into the Human Mind, Introd. p. 7. 8vo. Edit.

35

Young's Night Thoughts, vii. v. 392–397.

36

Seneca de Beneficiis, lib. iii. c. 18.

37

Ep. i. v. 61–68. Works, vol. III. p. 5, 6.

38

Pleasures of Imagination, Book III. v. 526–535.

39

Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, 2d edition, p. 32, 33.

40

Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, 2d edition, p. 26–30. with some alterations and exclusions.

41

Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. ii. v. 35–39; 19–24; and 29, 30.

42

Ad Lectorem. – A Note prefixed to the Elementa Philosophiæ. 4to. Amstelod. 1668.

43

Epist. 97.

44

Mart. Scrib. chap. vii. – Pope's Works, edit. 1757, v. vii. p. 82–84.

45

Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Essay III. chap. iv. – v. 1. p. 341. Edit. Ed. 1808.

46

Monsieur Des Cartes. Shaftesb.

47

Shaftesbury's Characteristics, vol. iii. p. 172–174. Edit. 1745.

48

Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. II. v. 275–282.

49

Fontenelle, Pluralité des Mondes, Conversat. 6me.

50

Gulliver's Travels, part ii. chap. 3.

51

Reid's Essays on the Intellectual Powers, Essay III. Chap. vi.

52

Essay concerning Human Understanding, B. ii. c. xxvii. sect. 20.

53

Essay concerning Human Understanding, B. ii. c. xxvii. sect. 9.

54

Pleasures of Imagination, (first form of the poem,) B. i. v. 166–171. 173–5.

55

– Why departs the soul

Wide from the track. – Orig.

56

Pleasures of Imagination, (second form of the Poem,) B. i. v. 213–220.

57

Instead of “not to dethrone,” the original has “and not to mar.”

58

Night Thoughts, viii. 595–599.

59

Pleasures of Imagination, Book III. v. 464–478.

60

Gray de Principiis Cogitandi, Lib. I. v. 1–5.

61

On the Active Powers, Essay III. c. 1.

62

Cowper's Task, book i.

63

Œuvres, tom. ii. p. 12.

64

P. 131.

65

Pleasures of Imagination, Book III. v. 493 – 514. The fixed soul, v. 505. Exploits, v. 508; and Spells, v. 509. Orig.

66

On the Intellectual powers, Essay II. c. 16.

67

Lib. I. v. 18–25. and 28–31.

68

Gray de Princip, Cogit. lib. i. v. 48–50.

69

Gray de Princip. Cogit. lib. i. v. 54–63.

70

On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. chap. ii.

71

On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. chap. ii.

72

“Then the charm,” &c. to “enchantment,” from the second form of the Poem. The corresponding clause, in the first form, from which all the rest of the quotation is taken, is this,

“Then the inexpressive strain

Diffuses its enchantment.”

73

Pleasures of Imagination, Book I. v. 109 – 131.

74

Gray de Principiis Cogitandi, Lib. I. v. 130–134.

75

Gray on the Pleasure arising from Vicissitude, Stanza I. – In v. i. the original has, instead of “in vain,” “now.”

76

Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, c. iv. sect. 1.

77

Pharsalia, lib. vii. v. 207 – 213.

78

Darwin's Botanic Garden, Canto IV. v. 371 – 380.

79

Pope's Essay on Criticism, v. 374 – 381.

80

Quintus Curtius, lib. v. cap. 7.

81

Mart. Scrib. Book I. c. 7. with some exclusions.

82

Page 98, 99.

83

Gray de Princip. Cogit. lib. i. v. 64–80.

84

Deserted Village, v. 120.

85

Principles of Moral and Political Science, Part I. c. i. sect. i.

86

Cowper's Task, Book IV.

87

Darwin's Botanic Garden, Canto III. v. 353–4, and 357–360.

88

Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, chap. i. sect. 5.

89

Epilogue to the Satires, Dial. II. v. 73.

90

Three Dialogues, &c. p. 109–110.

91

The substance of this reference occurs in the Eleventh Anniversary Discourse, —Works, v. i. p. 165–6. 4to. Edit.

92

On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. c. 17.

93

On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. chap. xii.

94

Essay concerning Human Understanding, B. ii. chap. i. sect. 9.

95

Sect. 3.

96

Sect. 12.

97

Essay concerning Human Understanding, B. ii. chap. x. sect, 2.

98

On Hobbes and his Writings, v. 37–40. – Works, p. 180. 4to Edit.

99

Elementa Philosophiæ, Pars IV. c. xxv. sect. 3.

100

On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. c. 8.

101

Ibid.

102

Ibid.

103

Principia Philosophiæ, Pars IV. Sect. 196. – p. 190, 191. Amst. 1664.

104

On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. c. 8.

105

Clerici Pneumatologia, Sect. i. cap. v. subsect. 10.

106

Tentamen Novum Metaphysicum, Sect. xxxvii. —Groningæ, 1725.

107

Account of the Life, &c. p. xci. prefixed to Reid's Works. Edin. 1803.

108

Gray, de Princip. Cogit. Lib. I. v. 143 – 153.

109

On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. c. 16.

110

See before p. 416.

111

On the Intellectual Powers, Essay II. c. 8.

112

Ibid.

113

Essays – Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, Sect. xii. Part 2.

114

Inquiry into the Human Mind, &c. Chap. v. Sect. 7.

115

Darwin's Botanic Garden, Canto II. v. 203–6.

116

Gray, de Princip. Cogit. lib. i. v. 85–96.

117

Paradise Lost, Book III. v. 1–12.

118

Ib. v. 38, 39.

119

Ib. v. 40–41.

120

Samson Agonistes, v. 93–97.

121

Young's Paraphrase on a part of the Book of Job, v. 235–240.

122

Judicium Paridis, v. 146 – 158. Ap. Mus. Anglican, vol. II. p. 274. EDIT. 1741.

123

Inquiry into the Human Mind, &c. c. 6. sect. 1.

124

Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, &c. c. 6. sect. 2.

125

Young's Night Thoughts, VI. v. 420–427, 429–430, and 435–436.

126

Cowper's Task, Book V. v. 810–814.

127

Cowpers Task, Book V. v. 686–7.

128

Recherche de la Verité, Liv. III. c. vi.

129

Recherche de la Verité, Liv. III. c. vi.

130

Pleasures of Imagination, Book I. v. 59–78.

131

Thomson's Seasons – Spring, v. 1006–1021.

132

Pleasures of Imagination, Book II. v. 137–140.

133

D. Heinsius. De Contemptu Mortis, Lib. i.

134

Chap. I. Sect. ii. p. 15, 16. 4to. Edit.

135

Traite des Sensations, Part I. Chap. vii. Sect. 2.

136

Ovid. Metamorph. Lib. XV. v. 234–6, and 252–8.

137

Mart. Scrib. c. xii.

138

“Like the tall cliff beneath the impassive frost.” – Orig.

139

Cawthorn. – Regulation of the Passions, &c. v. 15–20.

140

Painted – Orig.

141

Pleasures of Imagination, Book III. v. 312–352.

142

Aristot. de Memor. and Reminisc. c. ii.–v. II. p. 86. Edit. Du Val.

143

De Mente Humana, C. I. Sect. xvi. p. 138, 139.

144

Hume's Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, Sect. III.