in its relation to its immediate and invariable consequences, without
the intervention of any mysterious tie,--since there surely can be
nothing in nature, but all the substances which exist in nature,--it
was necessary to illustrate, at great length, in consequence of the
very false notions, that are generally, or, I may say, universally
prevalent on the subject. The illustration, I am aware, must, to many
of you, have appeared very tedious, and a sufficient exemplification of
that license of exhausting occasionally your attention, and perhaps,
too, your patience, of which I claimed the right of exercise, whenever
it should appear to me necessary, to make any important, but abstract
truth familiar to your mind. I shall not regret, however, any temporary
feeling of weariness which I may have occasioned, by dwelling on this
great fundamental subject, if I have succeeded in making familiar to
your minds, the truths which I wished to impress on them, and have
freed you from those false notions of occult and unintelligible agency
in causes,--as something different from the mere causes or antecedents
themselves,--which appear to me to have retarded, in a very singular
degree, the progress of philosophy,--not merely, by habituating the
mind to acquiesce in the use of language, to which it truly affixes no
meaning, though even this evil is one of very serious injury in its
general effects,--but by misdirecting its inquiries, and leading it,
from the simplicity of nature,--in which every glance is truth, and
every step is progress,--to bewilder itself, with the verbal mysteries
of the schools, where there is no refreshment of truth to the eye, that
is wearied with wandering only from shadow to shadow,--and where there
is all the fatigue of continual progress, without the advance of a
single step.
Even those philosophers, who have had the wisdom to perceive, that
man can never discover any thing in the phenomena of nature, but a
succession of events, that follow each other in regular series,--and
who, accordingly, recommend the observation and arrangement of these
regular antecedents and consequents, as the only attainable objects
of philosophy, yet found this very advice, on the distinction of what
they have termed efficient causes, as different from the physical
causes, or simple antecedents, to which they advise us to devote
our whole attention. There are certain _secret causes_, they say,
continually operating in the production of every change which we
observe, and causes which alone deserve the name of efficient; but
they are, at the same time, careful to tell us, that, although these
causes are constantly operating before us, and are all which are
truly acting before us, we must not hope, that we shall ever be able
to detect one of them; and indeed, the prohibition of every attempt
to discover the efficient causes of phenomena,--repeated in endless
varieties of precept or reproof,--is the foundation of all their
rules of philosophizing; as if the very information,--that what we
are to consider exclusively, in the phenomena of nature, is far less
important, than what we are studiously to omit,--were not, of itself,
more powerful, in stimulating our curiosity to attempt the forbidden
search, than any prohibition could be in repressing it. “Felix qui
potuit rerum cognoscere causas.” This will forever be the feeling of
the inquirer, while he thinks that there are any causes, more than
those, which he has already investigated. Even Newton himself, that
sagest of observers and reasoners, who could say, with the simplicity
of pure philosophy, “_Hypotheses non fingo._” yet showed, as we have
seen, by one of the most hypothetical of his Queries, that he was not
exempt from the error which he wished to discourage--that inordinate
love of the unknown, which must always lead those, who believe that
there is something intermediate and undiscovered truly existing between
events, to feel the anxious dissatisfaction of incomplete inquiry, in
considering the mere antecedents and consequents which nature exhibits,
and to turn, therefore, as if for comfort, to any third circumstance,
which can be introduced, without obvious absurdity, as a sort of
connecting link, between the pairs of events. To suppose that the mind
should not have this disposition, would, indeed, be to suppose it void
of that principle of curiosity, without which there can be no inquiry
of any kind. He who could believe, that, between all the visible
phenomena, there are certain invisible agencies continually operating,
which have as real an existence as all that he perceives, and could
yet content himself with numbering the visible phenomena, and giving
them names, without any endeavour to discover the intervening powers,
by which he is constantly surrounded, or at least to form some slight
_guess_, as to that universal machinery, by which he conceived all the
wonders of nature to be wrought, must be a being as different from the
common intellectual beings of this earth, as the perfect sage of the
Stoics from the frail creatures, of mingled vice and virtue, that live
and err around us. That, in considering the phenomena of nature, we
should confine our attention to the mere antecedents and consequents,
which succeed each other in regular series, is unquestionably the
soundest advice that can be given. But it is sound advice, for this
reason more than any other, that the regular series is, in truth,
all that constitutes the phenomena, and that to search for any thing
more, is not to have an unattainable object in view, but to have no
conceivable object whatever. _Then only_ can the inquirer be expected
to content himself with observing and classing the sequences, which
nature presents to us spontaneously, or in obedience to our art,
when he is convinced, that all the substances which exist in the
universe--God and the things which he has created--are every thing
which truly exists in the universe, to which nothing can be added,
which is not itself a _new_ substance; that there can be nothing in the
events of nature, therefore, but the antecedents and consequents which
are present in them; and that these, accordingly, or nothing, are the
very causes and effects, which he is desirous of investigating.
After this examination of the notions connected with the uniform
successions of events, our attention was next turned to the nature and
origin of _hypothetical inquiry_, which we found reason to ascribe
to the imperfection of our senses, that renders it impossible for us
to know whether we have observed the whole train of sequences in any
phenomenon, from our inability to distinguish the various elements
that may be the subjects of minute changes unobserved.
We are hence eager to supply, by a little guess-work of fancy, the
parts unobserved, and suppose deficiencies in our observation where
there may truly have been none; till at length, by this habitual
process, every phenomenon becomes, to our imagination, the sign of
something _intermediate_ as its cause, the discovery of which is to
be an explanation of the phenomenon. The mere succession of one event
to another appears, to us, very difficult to be conceived, because it
wants that intervening something, which we have learned to consider
as a cause; but there seems to be no longer any _mystery_, if we can
only suppose something intervening between them, and can thus succeed
in doubling the difficulty, which we flatter ourselves with having
removed; since, by the insertion of another link, we must now have two
sequences of events instead of one simple sequence. This tendency of
the imagination to form and rest on hypotheses,--or, in other words, to
suppose substances present and operating, of the existence of which we
have no direct proof,--we found to be one great source of error in our
practice of philosophizing.
Another source of error, we found to be the _too great extension_ of
what are termed general laws; which though a less error in itself,
is yet, in one respect, more dangerous than the former; because it
is the error of better understandings,--of understandings that would
not readily fall into the extravagant follies of hypotheses, but
acknowledge the essential importance of induction, and think they
are proceeding on it without the slightest deviation, almost at the
very moment when they are abandoning it for conjecture. To observe
the regular series of antecedents and consequents, and to class these
as similar or dissimilar, are all which philosophers can do with
complete certainty. But there is a constant tendency in the mind, to
convert a _general_ law into an _universal_ law,--to suppose, after
a wide induction, that what is true of many substances that have
a very striking analogy, is as certainly true of _all_ that have
this striking analogy,--and that what is true of them in _certain_
circumstances, is true of them in _all_ circumstances,--or, at least,
in all circumstances which are not remarkably different. The widest
induction which we can make, however, is still limited in its nature;
and, though we may have observed substances in many situations, there
may be some new situations, in which the event may be different, or
even, perhaps, the very reverse of that which we should have predicted,
by reasoning from the mere analogy of other circumstances. It appeared
to me necessary, therefore, in consequence of the very ambiguous manner
in which writers on this higher branch of logic speak of reasoning
from general laws to particulars, to warn you, that the application to
particulars can be made with certainty, only to the very particulars
before observed and generalized,--and that, however analogous other
particulars may seem, the application of the general law to them
admits only of _probability_, which may, indeed, as the induction has
been wider, and the circumstances of observed analogy more numerous,
approach more or less to certainty, but must always be short of it,
even in its nearest approximation.
* * * * *
Such, then, is _physical inquiry_, both as to its objects, and its
mode of procedure, particularly as it regards the universe without;
and the laws which regulate our inquiry in the internal world of
thought are, in every respect, similar. The same great objects are
to be had in view, and no other,--the analysis of what is complex,
and the observation and arrangement of the sequences of phenomena, as
respectively antecedent and consequent.
In this respect, also, I may remark, the philosophy of matter and
the philosophy of mind completely agree--that, in both equally, our
knowledge is confined to the phenomena which they exhibit. We give
the name of _matter_ to the unknown cause of various feelings, which,
by the constitution of our nature, it is impossible for us not to
refer to something external as their cause. What it is, independent
of our perception, we know not; but as the subject of our perception,
we regard it as that which is extended, and consequently divisible,
impenetrable, mobile; and these qualities, or whatever other qualities
we may think necessary to include for expressing the particular
substances that affect our senses variously, constitute our whole
definition of matter, because, in truth, they constitute our whole
knowledge of it. To suppose us to know what it is in itself, in
absolute independence of our perception, would be manifestly absurd:
since it is only by our perception,--that is to say, by the feelings of
our mind,--that it can be known to us at all; and these mere feelings
of the mind must depend, at least, as much on the laws of the mind
affected, as on the laws of the substance that affects it. Whatever
knowledge we may acquire of it, therefore, is relative only, and must
be relative in all circumstances; though, instead of the few senses
which connect us with it at present, we were endowed with as many
senses as there are, perhaps, qualities of matter, the nature of which
we are at present incapable of distinguishing;--the only effect of such
increased number of senses being, to render more qualities of matter
known to us, not to make matter known to us in its very essence, as it
exists without relation to mind.
“Tell me,” says Micromegas, an inhabitant of one of the planets of the
Dog Star, to the secretary of the Academy of Sciences in the planet
Saturn, at which he had recently arrived in a journey through the
heavens,--“Tell me, how many senses have the men on your globe?”--I
quote, as perhaps the name has already informed you from an ingenious
philosophic romance of Voltaire, who, from various allusions in the
work, has evidently had Fontenelle, the illustrious secretary of the
French Academy of Sciences, in view, in the picture which he gives
of the Saturnian secretary.--“We have seventy-two senses,” answered
the academician, “and we are, every day, complaining of the smallness
of the number. Our imagination goes far beyond our wants. What are
seventy-two senses! and how pitiful a boundary, even for beings with
such limited perceptions, to be cooped up within our ring, and our five
moons! In spite of our curiosity, and in spite of as many passions
as can result from six dozen of senses, we find our hours hang very
heavily on our hands, and can always find time enough for yawning.”--“I
can very well believe it,” says Micromegas, “for, in our globe, we
have very near _one thousand_ senses; and yet, with all these, we
feel continually a sort of listless inquietude and vague desire,
which are forever telling us that we are nothing, and that there are
beings infinitely nearer perfection. I have travelled a good deal in
the universe. I have seen many classes of mortals far beneath us, and
many as much superior; but I have never had the good fortune to find
any, who had not always more desires than real necessities to occupy
their life.--And, pray, how long may you Saturnians live with your few
senses?” continued the Sirian.--“Ah! but a very short time, indeed!”
said the little man of Saturn, with a sigh.--“It is the same with us,”
said the traveller; “we are forever complaining of the shortness
of life. It must be an universal law of nature.”--“Alas!” said the
Saturnian, “we live only five hundred great revolutions of the sun
(which is pretty much about fifteen thousand years of our counting.)
You see well, that this is to die almost the moment one is born. Our
existence is a point--our duration an instant--our globe an atom.
Scarcely have we begun to pick up a little knowledge, when death rushes
in upon us, before we can have acquired any thing like experience. As
for me, I cannot venture even to think of any project. I feel myself
but like a drop of water in the ocean; and, especially now, when I look
to you and to myself, I really feel quite ashamed of the ridiculous
appearance which I make in the universe.”
“If I did not know that you were a philosopher,” replied Micromegas,
“I should be afraid of distressing you, when I tell you, that our life
is seven hundred times longer than yours.--But what is even that? and,
when we come to the last moment, to have lived a _single day_, and to
have lived a _whole eternity_, amount to the very same thing. I have
been in countries where they live a thousand times longer than with us;
and I have always found them murmuring, just as we do ourselves.--But
you have seventy-two senses, and they must have told you something
about your globe. How many properties has matter with you?”--“If you
mean _essential_ properties,” said the Saturnian, “without which
our globe could not subsist, we count three hundred, extensive,
impenetrable, mobile, gravitation, divisibility, and so forth.”--“That
small number,” replied the gigantic traveller, “may be sufficient for
the views which the Creator must have had with respect to your narrow
habitation. Your globe is little; its inhabitants are so too. You have
few senses; your matter has few qualities. In all this, Providence has
suited you most happily to each other.”
“The academician was more and more astonished with every thing which
the traveller told him. At length, after communicating to each other
a little of what they knew, and a great deal of what they knew _not_,
and reasoning, as well and as ill, as philosophers usually do, they
resolved to set out together, on a little tour of the universe.”[33]
That, with the one thousand senses of the Sirian, or even the
seventy-two senses of the inhabitant of Saturn, our notions of
matter would be very different from what they are at present, cannot
be doubted; since we should assign to it qualities, corresponding
with all the varieties of our six dozen or one thousand classes of
sensations. But, even with all these sensations, it is evident, that we
should still know as little of _matter_, independent of the phenomena
which it exhibits in relation to us, as we know, at this moment. Our
definition of it would comprehend more phenomena; but it would still
be a definition of its phenomena only. We might perhaps be able to
fill up the Saturnian catalogue of three hundred essential properties,
but these would be still only the relations of matter to our own
perception. A change in the mere susceptibility of our organs of sense,
or of our sentient mind, would be relatively to us, like a change in
the whole system of things, communicating, as it were, new properties
to every object around us. A single sense additional, in man, might
thus be to external nature, like the creation of the sun, when he
first burst upon it in splendour, “like the god of the new world,” and
pouring every where his own effulgency, seemed to shed on it the very
beauties which he only revealed.
If our knowledge of matter be relative only, our knowledge of mind
is equally so. We know it only as susceptible of feelings that have
already existed, and its susceptibilities of feelings which have not
arisen, but which may, in other circumstances, arise, we know as
little, as the blind can be supposed to know of colours, or as we,
with all our senses, know of the qualities which matter might exhibit
to us, if our own organization were different. Of the _essence_
of mind, then, we know nothing, but in relation to the states or
feelings that form, or have formed, our momentary consciousness. Our
knowledge is not absolute but relative; though, I must confess, that
the term _relative_ is applied, in an unusual manner, when, as in
the present instance, the relative and correlative are the same. It
is unquestionably the same individual mind, which, in intellectual
investigation, is at once the object and the observer. But the noble
endowment of memory, with which our Creator has blessed us, solves
all the mystery of this singular paradox. In consequence of this one
faculty, our mind, simple and indivisible as it truly is, is, as it
were multiplied and extended, expanding itself over that long series
of sensations and emotions, in which it seems to live again, and to
live with many lives. But for memory, there can be no question that
the relation of thought to thought could not have been perceived; and
that hence there could have been no philosophy whatever, intellectual
or moral, physical or metaphysical. To this wonderful endowment, then,
which gives us the past to compare with the present, we owe that
most wonderful of relations, of which the same being is at once the
_object_ and the _subject_, contemplating itself, in the same manner,
as it casts its view on objects that are distant from it, comparing
thought with thought, emotion with emotion, approving its own moral
actions, with the complacency with which it looks on the virtues of
those whom it admires and loves, in the most remote nation or age, or
passing sentence on itself, as if on a wretch whom it loathed, that was
trembling with conscious delinquency, under the inquisition of a severe
and all-knowing judge.
The past feelings of the mind, then, are, as it were, objects present
to the mind itself, and acquire, thus truly, a sort of relative
existence, which enables us to class the phenomena of our own spiritual
being as we class the phenomena of the world without. The mind is that
which we know to have been susceptible of all the variety of feelings
which we remember; and it is only as it is susceptible of all these
varieties of feeling, that we can have any knowledge of it. We define
it therefore, by stating its various susceptibilities, including more
or fewer of these, in our definition, as we may either have observed
or remembered more or less, or generalized more or less what we have
observed and remembered; precisely as in our definition of matter,
we include more or fewer qualities, according to the extent of our
previous observation and arrangement.
That we know _matter_, only as relative to our own susceptibility of
being affected by it, does not lessen the value of the knowledge of
it, which we are able to acquire; and, indeed, it is only as it is
capable of affecting us, that the knowledge of it can be of any direct
and immediate utility. It would, indeed, be the very absurdity of
contradiction, to suppose ourselves acquainted with qualities which
cannot affect us. But, even though this were possible, how profitless
would the knowledge be, compared with the knowledge of the qualities
which are capable of affecting us; like the knowledge of the seasons of
the planet Saturn, or of the planets that have the Dog Star for their
sun, compared with the more important knowledge of the seasons of our
own globe, by which we have the comfort of anticipating, in the labours
of spring, the abundance of autumn, and gather in autumn the fruits,
which, as products of vernal labour, are truly fruits of the spring.
To know _matter_, even _relatively_, as our limited senses allow us to
know it, is to have knowledge which can scarcely be called limited.
Nothing, indeed, can seem more narrow in extent, if we think only of
the small number of our senses, by which alone the communication can
be carried on. But what infinity of objects has nature presented to
each! In the mere forms and colours that strike our eyes, what splendid
variety! the proportion of all things that bloom or live, the earth,
the ocean, the universe, and almost God himself appearing to our very
senses, in the excellence and beauty of the works which He has made!