Mind; each person delivers his thoughts, but annexes different ideas to
the word; and thus the debate is continued, without understanding each
other. In order, therefore, to enable us to give a just and precise idea
of the word Mind, and its different acceptations, it is necessary first
to consider the Mind in itself. We consider the Mind either as the
effect of the faculty of thinking, and in this sense the Mind is no
more than an assemblage of our thoughts, or, we consider it as the very
faculty of thinking. But in order to understand what is meant by
the Mind, in the latter acceptation, we ought previously to know the
productive causes of our ideas. Man has two faculties; or, if I may be
allowed the expression, two passive powers whose existence is generally
and distinctly acknowledged. The one is the faculty of receiving the
different impressions caused by external objects, and is called Physical
Sensibility. The other is the faculty of preserving the impressions
caused by those objects, called Memory; and Memory is nothing more than
a continued, but weakened sensation.--Those faculties which I consider
as the productive causes of our thoughts, and which we have in common
with beasts, would produce but a very small number of ideas, if they
were not assisted by certain external organizations. If Nature, instead
of hands and flexible fingers, had terminated our wrist with the foot
of a horse, mankind would doubtless have been totally destitute of art,
habitation, and defence against other animals. Wholly employed in the
care of procuring food, and avoiding the beasts of prey, they would have
still continued wandering in the forests, like fugitive flocks. It is
therefore evident that, according to this supposition, the police would
never have been carried in any society to that degree of perfection, to
which it is now arrived. There is not a nation now existing, but, with
regard to the action of the mind, must not have continued very inferior
to certain savage nations, who have not two hundred different ideas,
nor two hundred words to express those ideas; and whose language must
consequently be reduced, like that of animals, to five or six different
sounds or cries, if we take from it the words bow, arrow, nets, etc.,
which suppose the use of hands. From whence I conclude, that, without a
certain exterior organization, sensibility and memory in us would prove
two sterile faculties. We ought to examine if these two faculties, by
the assistance of this organization, have in reality produced all our
thoughts. But; before we examine this subject, I may possibly be asked
whether these two faculties are modifications of a spiritual or a
material substance? This question, which has formerly been so often
debated by philosophers, and by some persons revived in our time, does
not necessarily fall within the limits of my work.---What I have to
offer, with regard to the Mind, is equally conformable to either of
these hypothesis. I shall therefore only observe that, if the church
had not fixed our belief in respect to this particular, and we had
been obliged by the light of reason alone to acquire a knowledge of
the thinking, principle, we must have granted, that neither opinion is
capable of demonstration; and consequently that, by weighing the reasons
on both sides, balancing the difficulties, and determining in favor of
the greater number of probabilities, we should form only conditional
judgments. It would be the fate of this problem, as it hath been of many
others, to be resolvable only by the assistance of the calculation of
probabilities."
Helvetius, on the question "whether genius ought to be considered as a
natural gift, or as an effect of education," says:--
"I am going to examine in this discourse what the mind receives from
nature and education; for which purpose it is necessary first, to
determine what is here meant by the word Nature. This word may raise in
our minds a confused idea of a being or a force that has endued us with
all our senses: now the senses are the sources of all our ideas. Being
deprived of our senses, we are deprived of all the ideas relative to
them: a man born blind has for this reason no idea of colors; it is then
evident that, in this signification, genius ought to be considered as
a gift of nature. But, if the word be taken in a different acceptation,
and we suppose that among the men well formed and endued with all their
senses, without any perceivable defect of their organization, nature
has made such a remarkable difference, and formed such an unequal
distribution of the intellectual powers, that one shall be so organized
as to be stupid, and the other be a man of genius, the question will
become more delicate. I confess that, at first, we cannot consider the
great inequality in the minds of men, without admitting that there is
the same difference between them as between bodies, some of which are
weak and delicate, while others are strong and robust. What can
here occasion such variations from the uniform manner wherein nature
operates? This reasoning, it is true, is founded only on analogy. It is
like that of the astronomers who conclude that the moon is inhabited,
because it is composed of nearly the same matter as our earth.--How weak
soever this reasoning may be, it must yet appear demonstrative; for,
say they, to what cause can be attributed the great disproportion of
intellects observable between people who appear to have had the same
education! In order to reply to this objection, it is proper first
to inquire, whether several men can, strictly speaking, have the same
education; and for this purpose to fix the idea included in the word
Education. If by education we merely understand that received in the
same places, and under the same masters; in this sense the education is
the same with an infinite number of men. But, if we give to this word
a more true and extensive signification, and in general comprehend
everything that relates to our instruction; then I say, that nobody
receives the same education; because each individual has, for his
preceptors, if I may be allowed to say so, the form of government under
which he lives, his friends, his mistresses, the people about him,
whatever he reads, and in short chance; that is, an infinite number
or events, with respect to which our ignorance will not permit us to
perceive their causes, and the chain that connects them together. Now,
this chance has a greater share in our education than is imagined. It
is this places certain objects before us, and in consequence of
this, occasions more happy ideas, and sometimes leads to the greatest
discoveries. To give some examples: it was chance that conducted Galileo
into the gardens of Florence, when the gardeners were working the pumps:
it was that which inspired those gardeners, when, not being able to
raise the water above the height of 32 feet, to ask him the cause, and
by that question piqued the vanity of the philosopher, put in action by
so casual a question, that obliged him to make this natural effect the
subject of his thoughts, till, at last, by discovering the weight of
the air, he found the solution of the problem. In the moment when the
peaceful soul of Newton was employed by no business, and agitated by
no passion, it was also chance that, drawing him under an apple tree,
loosened some of the fruit from the branches, and gave that philosopher
the first idea of his system on gravitation: it was really this incident
that afterwards made him turn his thoughts to inquire whether the moon
does not gravitate towards the earth with the same force as that with
which bodies fall on its surface? It is then to chance that great
geniuses are frequently obliged for their most happy thoughts. How many
great minds are confounded among the people of moderate capacities for
want of a certain tranquillity of soul, the question of a gardener, or
the fall of an apple!"
Of the "exclusive qualities of the Mind and Soul," Helvetius observes:--
"My view in the preceding chapters was to affix clear ideas to the
several qualities of the mind, I propose in this to examine if there are
talents that must necessarily exclude each other? This question, it is
said, is determined by facts; no person is, at the same time, superior
to all others in many different kinds of knowledge. Newton is not
reckoned among the poets, nor Milton among the geometricians: the verses
of Leibnitz are bad. There is not a man who, in a single art, as poetry,
or painting, has succeeded in all the branches of it. Corneille and
Racine have done nothing in comedy comparable to Molière: Michael
Angelo has not drawn the pictures of Albani, nor Albani painted those
of Julius Romano. The genius of the greatest men appears then to be
confined within very narrow limits. This is, doubtless, true: but I ask,
what is the cause? Is it time, or is it wit, which men want to render
themselves illustrious in the different arts and sciences? The progress
of the human mind, it is said, ought to be the same in all the arts and
sciences: the operations of the mind are reduced to the knowledge of the
resemblances and differences that subsist between various objects. It is
then by observation that we obtain, in all the different kinds of study,
the new and general ideas on which our superiority depends. Every great
physician, every great chemist, may then become a great geometrician,
a great astronomer, a great politician, and the first, in short, in all
the sciences This fact being stated, it will doubtless be concluded,
that it is the short duration of human life that forces superior
minds to limit themselves to one kind of study. It must, however, be
confessed, that there are talents and qualities possessed only by the
exclusion of some others. Among mankind some are filled with the love
of glory, and are not susceptible of any other of the passions: some may
excel in natural philosophy, civil law, geometry, and, in short, in all
the sciences that consist in the comparison of ideas. A fondness for any
other study can only distract or precipitate them into errors. There
are other men susceptible not Only of the love of glory, but an infinite
number of other passions: these may become celebrated in different
kinds of study, where the success depends on being moved. Such is,
for instance, the dramatic kind of writing: but, in order to paint the
passions, we must, as I have already said, feel them very warmly: we are
ignorant both of the language of the passions and of the sensations they
excite in us, when we have not experienced them. Thus ignorance of this
kind always produces mediocrity. If Fontenelle had been obliged to paint
the characters of Rhadamistus, Brutus, or Cataline, that great man would
certainly have fallen much below mediocrity.... Let a man, for instance,
like M. de Fontenelle, contemplate, without severity, the wickedness
of mankind; let him consider it, let him rise up against crimes without
hating the criminals, and people will applaud his moderation; and yet,
at the same instant, they will accuse him of being too lukewarm in
friendship. They do not perceive, that the same absence of the passions,
to which he owes the moderation they commend, must necessarily render
him less sensible of the charms of friendship."
The "abuse of words" by different schools of philosophers is thus ably
pointed out:--
"Descartes had before Locke observed that the Peripatetics, intrenching
themselves behind the obscurity of words, were not unlike a blind man,
who, in order to be a match for his clear-sighted antagonist, should
draw him into a dark cavern. 'Now,' added he, 'if this man can introduce
light into the cavern, and compel the Peripatetics to fix clear ideas
to their words, the victory is his own. In imitation of Descartes and
Locke, I shall show that, both in metaphysics and morality, the abuse of
words, and the ignorance of their true import, is a labyrinth in which
the greatest geniuses have lost themselves; and, in order to set this
particular in a clear light, instance, in some of those words which
have given rise to the longest and sharpest disputes among philosophers:
such, in metaphysics, are Matter, Space, and Infinite. It has at all
times been alternately asserted that Matter felt, or did not feel, and
given rise to disputes equally loud and vague. It was very late before
it came into the disputants! heads to ask one another, what they were
disputing about, and to annex a precise idea to the word Matter. Had
they at first fixed the meaning of it, they would have perceived, if
I may use the expression, that men were the creators of Matter; that
Matter was not a being; that in nature there were only individuals to
which the name of Body had been given; and that this word Matter could
import no more than the collection of properties common to all bodies.
The meaning of this word being determined, all that remained was to
know, whether extent, solidity, and impenetrability, were the only
properties common to all bodies; and whether the discovery of a power,
such for instance as attraction, might not give rise to a conjecture
that bodies had some properties hitherto unknown, such as that of
sensation, which, though evident only in the organized members of
animals, might yet be common to all individuals! The question being
reduced to this, it would have appeared that if, strictly speaking, it
is impossible to demonstrate that all bodies are absolutely insensible,
no man, unless instructed by a particular revelation, can decide the
question otherwise than by calculating and comparing the verisimilitude
of this opinion with that of the contrary...."
Instructed by the errors of great men who have gone before us, we should
be sensible that our observations, however multiplied and concentrated,
are scarcely sufficient to form one of those partial systems
comprehended in the general system; add that it is from the depth of
imagination that the several systems of the universe have hitherto
been drawn; and, as our informations of remote countries are always
imperfect, so the informations philosophers have of the system of
the world are also defective. With a great genius and a multitude of
combinations, the products of their labors will be only fictions till
time and chance shall furnish then? with a general fact, to which all
others may be referred.
"What I have said of the word Matter, I say also of Space. Most of the
philosophers have made a being of it; and the ignorance of the true
sense of the word has occasioned long disputes. They would have been
greatly shortened by annexing a clear idea to this word; for then the
sages would have agreed that Space, considered in bodies, is what we
call extension; that we owe the idea of a void, which partly composes
the idea of Space, to the interval seen betwixt two lofty mountains; an
interval which, being filled only by air, that is, by a body which at a
certain distance makes no sensible impression on us, must have given us
an idea of a vacuum; being nothing more than a power of representing
to ourselves mountains separated from each other, and the intervening
distances not being filled by other bodies. With regard to the idea of
Infinite, comprehended also within the idea of Space, I say that we owe
this idea of Infinite only to the power which a man standing on a plain
has of continually extending its limits, the boundary of his imagination
not being determinable: the absence of limits is therefore the only idea
we can form of Infinite. Had philosophers, previously to their giving
any opinion on this subject, determined the signification of the word
Infinite, I am inclined to believe they would have adopted the above
definition, and not spent their time in frivolous disputes. To the false
philosophy of former ages, our gross ignorance of the true signification
of words is principally owing; as the art of abusing them made up the
greatest part of that philosophy. This art, in which the whole science
of the schools consisted, confounded all ideas; and the obscurity
it threw on the expressions, generally diffused itself over all the
sciences, especially morality."
The following remarks show Helvetia's notions of the "love of glory":--
"By the word Strong-Passion, I mean a passion the object of which is so
necessary to our happiness, that without the possession of it life would
be insupportable. This was Omar's idea of the passion, when he said,
'Whoever thou art, that lovest liberty, desirest to be wealthy without
riches, powerful without subjects, a subject without a master, dare to
condemn death: kings will then tremble before thee, whilst thou alone
shalt fear no person.'.... It was the passion of honor and philosophic
fanaticism alone that could induce Timicha, the Pythagorean, in the
midst of torture, to bite off her tongue, that she might not expose
herself to reveal the secrets of her sect. Cato, when a child, going
with his tutor to Sylla's palace, at seeing the bloody heads of the
proscribed, asked with impatience the name of the monster who had caused
so many Roman citizens to be murdered. He was answered, it was Sylla:
'How,' says he, 'does Sylla murder thus, and is Sylla still alive?'
'Yes,' it was replied, 'the very name of Sylla disarms our citizens.'
'Oh! Rome,' cried Cato, 'deplorable is thy fate, since within the vast
compass of thy walls not a man of virtue can be found, and the arm of a
feeble child is the only one that will oppose itself against tyranny!'
Then, turning towards his governor, 'Give me,' said he, 'your sword; I
will conceal it under my robe, approach Sylla, and kill him. Cato lives,
and Rome is again free.' If the generous pride, the passion of
patriotism and glory, determine citizens to such heroic actions, with
what resolution and intrepidity do not the passions inspire those who
aim at distinction in the arts and sciences, and whom Cicero calls the
peaceable heroes? It is from a desire of glory that the astronomer is
seen, on the icy summits of the Cordileras, placing his instruments in
the midst of snows and frost; which conducts the botanist to the brinks
of precipices in quest of plants; which anciently carried the juvenile
lovers of ihe sciences into Egypt, Ethiopia, and even into the Indies,
for visiting the most celebrated philosophers, and acquiring from their
conversation the principles of their doctrine. How strongly did this
passion exert itself in Demosthenes, who, for perfecting his
pronunciation, used every day to stand on the sea-shore, and with his
mouth full of pebbles harangue the agitated waves! It was from the same
desire of glory that the young Pythagoreans submitted to a silence of
three years, in order to habituate themselves to recollection and
meditation; it induced Democritus to shun the distractions of the world,
and retire among the tombs, to meditate on those valuable truths, the
discovery of which, as it is always very difficult, is also very little
esteemed; in fine, it was this that prompted Heraclitus to cede to his
younger brother the throne of Ephesus, to which he had the right of
primogeniture, that he might give himself up entirely to philosophy;
which made the Athletic improve his strength, by denying himself the
pleasures of love; it was also from a desire of popular applause that
certain ancient priests renounced the same pleasures, and often, as
Boindin pleasantly observes of them, without any other recompense for
their continence than the perpetual temptation it occasions,... 'The
cause,' says Cardinal Richelieu, 'why a timorous mind perceives an
impossibility in the most simple projects, when to an elevated mind the
most arduous seems easy, is, because, before the latter the mountains
sink, and before the former mole-hills are metamorphosed into
mountains.'"
The different motives that influence our conduct are thus stated:--