by its susceptibilities of affection, in the various feelings of
our momentary consciousness, and cannot hope to know it, but as the
permanent subject of all these separate consciousnesses; to know thus
relatively only, the affections even of one single substance, is to
have a field of the most boundless and inexhaustible wonders ever
present and open to our inquiry! It may be said to comprehend every
thing which we perceive, and remember, and imagine, and compare, and
admire, all those mysterious processes of thought, which, in the
happy efforts of the philosopher and the poet, are concerned in the
production of their noblest results, and which are not less deserving
of our regard, as they are every moment exercised by all, in the humble
intellectual functions of common life. In analyzing and arranging the
mental phenomena, then, we consider phenomena, that are diversified,
indeed, in individuals, but, as species, are still common to all; for
there is no power possessed by the most comprehensive intellect, which
it does not share, in some proportion, with the dullest and rudest of
mankind. All men perceive, remember, reason,--all, to a certain degree
at least, from their little theories, both physical and metaphysical,
of the conduct of their fellow men, and of the passing events of
nature; and all, occasionally, enliven their social intercourse, or
their solitary hours, with inventions of fancy, that last but for
a moment indeed, and are not worthy of lasting longer, but which
are products of the same species of intellectual energy, that gave
existence to those glorious works, to which ages have listened with
increasing reverence, and which, immortal as the spirits that produced
them, are yet to command the veneration of every future age. When we
see before us, in its finished magnificence, a temple, appropriated to
the worship of the Supreme Being, and almost worthy of being filled
with his presence, we scarcely think that it is erected according to
the same simple principles, and formed of the same stone and mortar,
as the plain dwellings around us, adapted to the hourly and humble
uses of domestic life; and by a similar illusion, when we consider the
splendid works of intellectual art, we can scarcely bring ourselves to
think, that genius is but a form of general tendencies of association,
of which all partake; and that its magnificent conceptions, therefore,
rise, according to the same simple laws which regulate the course of
thought of the vulgar. In this universality of diffusion as general
tendencies, that may be variously excited by varying circumstances,
our intellectual powers are similar to those other principles of
our nature,--our emotions, and whatever feelings more immediately
connected with moral action have been usually distinguished by the
name of our active powers. In the philosophy of both we consider,
not a few distinguished individuals, as possessed of principles
essentially distinct in kind, but the species _man_. They are to be
found, wherever there is a human being; and we do not infer with more
certainty, when we perceive the impression of a foot upon the sand,
that man has been there, than we expect to find in him, whatever may
be his state of barbarism or civilization, some form of the common
powers, and passions, which, though directed perhaps to different
objects, we have felt and witnessed in the society around us. “The
two-legged animal,” says Dr Reid, “that eats of nature's dainties what
his taste or appetite craves, and satisfies his thirst at the crystal
fountain; who propagates his kind as occasion and lust prompt; repels
injuries, and takes alternate labour and repose; is like a tree in the
forest, purely of nature's growth. But this same savage has within
him the seeds of the logician, the man of taste and breeding, the
orator, the statesman, the man of virtue, and the saint; which seeds,
though planted in his mind by nature, yet, through want of culture
and exercise, must lie forever buried, and be hardly perceivable, by
himself, or by others.”[34] Even of those passions of a prouder kind,
which attract our attention only when they are on a theatre that allows
their full display, some vestiges are to be traced universally; though
in different individuals, they may exist with very different degrees
of influence, and though their influence, according to the degree of
power possessed by the individual, may be attended with very different
consequences, to the few, or the many, comprehended within the wide or
narrow circle, to which his power extends.
----“Not kings alone,
Each villager has his ambition to;
No sultan prouder than his fetter'd slave.
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,
Echo the proud Assyrian in their hearts,
And cry, Behold the wonders of my might.”[35]
It is this universal diffusion of sympathies and emotions, indeed,
which gives its whole force to morality, as a universal obligation; and
renders _ethics_ truly a _science_.
Nature, in requiring the fruits of virtue from all, has not fixed the
seeds of it, only in a few breasts. “Nulli præclusa virtus est, omnibus
patet, omnes admittit, omnes invitat, ingenuos, libertinos, servos,
reges et exsules; non eligit domum, nec censum; nudo homine contenta
est.”[36] Virtue has no partial favours or exclusions. She is open to
all, she admits all, she invites all. She asks no wealth nor ancestry;
but she asks the man,--the master or the slave, the cottager and his
lord, the sovereign and the exile.
Though we know _mind_, then only _relatively_, in the series of
feelings, of which we are conscious, as we know matter relatively in
the series of phenomena, which it exhibits to our observation, we have,
in this relative knowledge, subjects worthy of the contemplation of
beings permitted, in these shadowings of a higher power, to trace some
faint image of the very majesty which formed them. Even of the humblest
mind, as we have seen, the various affections, sensitive, intellectual,
and moral, that arise in it as affections of our common nature, are
truly admirable; and what an increase of sublimity do they acquire,
in minds of higher powers! But still, it must be remembered, that even
in minds the most sublime, as much as in the most humble, all which
can be truly known is the successive phenomena which they exhibit, not
the essence of the spiritual substance itself; and that, even of these
successive phenomena, though we become gradually acquainted with more
and more, we probably never can arrive at any bound which is to limit
their number. The susceptibilities of the mind, by which, in different
circumstances, it may exist in different states, are certainly as truly
infinite as the space which surrounds us, or as that eternity which,
in its progress, measures the successions of our feelings, and all
the other changes in the universe. Every new thought, or combination
of thoughts, is in truth a new state or affection, or phenomenon of
the mind, and, therefore, a proof of the susceptibility of that new
affection, as an original quality of the mind; and every rise in
knowledge, from age to age, and from inquirer to inquirer, is thus
only the developement of susceptibilities, which the mind possessed
before, though the circumstances which at last called them forth, never
existed till the moment of the developement. What should we think of
the half-naked savage of some barbarous island, if, in the pride of his
ignorance, he were to conceive his own thoughts and feelings, to be the
noblest of which the human intellect is capable? and, perhaps, even the
mind of a Newton, is but the mind of such a savage, compared with what
man is hereafter to become.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] Voltaire Œuvres, tom. xiv. p. 99-101. 4_to_ _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.
LECTURE X.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.
Gentlemen, after laying down the general laws of physical inquiry, I
had begun, in the conclusion of my last Lecture, to consider them, more
particularly in their relation to the study of mind.
One very important circumstance of agreement in the physical
investigations of mind and matter, we found to be, that, of both
matter and mind, the successive phenomena are all which we truly
know, though by the very constitution of our nature, it is impossible
for us not to ascribe these to some _permanent subject_. _Matter_
is the permanent subject of certain qualities, extension, and its
consequent divisibility, attraction, repulsion; that is to say, it is
the permanent exhibiter to us of certain varying phenomena which we
observe. _Mind_ is the permanent subject of certain qualities or states
or affections of a different class--perception, memory, reason, joy,
grief, love, hate; that is to say, of certain varying phenomena of
which we are conscious. What _matter_ is independent of our perception;
what _mind_ is independent of its temporary variety of feeling, it
is impossible for us to discover; since whatever new knowledge of
matter we can suppose ourselves to acquire, must be acquired by our
perception, and must, therefore, be relative to it; and whatever new
knowledge we can suppose ourselves to acquire of mind, must be itself
a state or affection of the mind, and, therefore, only a new mental
phenomenon to be added to those with which we were before acquainted,
as one of the many states in which the permanent substance _mind_ is
capable of existing.
Since it is only by their relation to our own feelings, then, that
substances can be known to us, beyond these relations it would be vain
for us to think of penetrating; as vain, at least, as would be the
attempts of the deaf to discover, by a process of reasoning, the nature
of the sensations of sound, or of the blind to determine, not the
lines of direction merely, in which the various coloured rays of light
pass after refraction, for these they may optically determine, but the
various sensations, corresponding with all the varieties of tint into
which the sun-beams are broken by the drops of a falling shower. The
substance matter, the substance mind, are, in this respect, to the
whole race of metaphysical inquirers, what the rainbow, as a series of
colours, is to opticians, who have never seen.
The absurdity of such inquiries, into any thing more than the mere
phenomena, if it be not sufficiently evident of itself, may, perhaps,
be rendered more apparent, by a very easy supposition. Let us imagine
the permanent unknown substance _matter_, and the permanent unknown
substance _mind_, to be rendered, by the same divine power which made
them, altogether different in their own absolute essence, as they exist
independently, but to exhibit relatively, precisely the same phenomena
as at present,--that spring, and summer, and autumn, and winter, in
every appearance that can affect our organs of perception, succeed
each other as now, pouring out the same profusion of foliage, and
flowers, and fruits, and, after the last gladness of the vintage and
the harvest, sweeping the few lingering blossoms, with those desolating
blasts, which seem like the very destroyers of nature, while they are
only leading in, with great freshness, under the same benevolent eye
of Heaven, the same delightful circle of beauty and abundance,--that,
in mind, the same sensations are excited by the same objects, and
are followed by the same remembrances, and comparisons, and hopes,
and fears;--in these circumstances, while all the phenomena which we
observe, and all the phenomena of which we are conscious, continue
exactly the same, can we believe, that we should be able to discover
the essential change, which, according to this supposition, had taken
place, in the permanent subjects of these unvaried phenomena! And,
if, as long as the external and internal phenomena continued exactly
the same, we should be incapable of discovering, or even suspecting,
the slightest change, where, by supposition, there had been a change
so great, how absurd is it to conceive that the changed or unchanged
nature of the substance itself, as it exists independently of the
phenomenon, ever can become known to us.
He, indeed, it may always safely be presumed, knows least of the mind,
who thinks that he knows its substance best. “What is the soul?” was
a question once put to Marivaux. “I know nothing of it,” he answered,
“but that it is spiritual and immortal.” “Well,” said his friend, “let
us ask Fontenelle, and _he_ will tell us what it is.” “No,” cried
Marivaux, “ask any body but Fontenelle, for he has too much _good sense
to know any more about it than we do_.”
It is to the phenomena only, then, that our attention is to be
given, not to any vain inquiries into the absolute nature of the
substances which exhibit the phenomena. This alone is legitimate
philosophy,--philosophy which must forever retain its claim to our
assent, amid the rise and fall of all those spurious speculations,
to which our vanity is so fond of giving the names of _theory_ and
_system_. Whatever that may be, in itself, which feels, and thinks, and
wills,--if our feelings, and thoughts, and volitions be the same--all
which we can know, and compare, and arrange, must be the same; and,
while we confine our attention to these, the general laws of their
succession which we infer, and the various relations which they seem to
bear to each other, may be admitted equally by those whose opinions,
as to the absolute nature of the feeling and thinking principle,
differ fundamentally. It requires no peculiar supposition, or belief,
as to the nature of the mind, to know, that its trains of thought
are influenced, by former habits, or casual association; and every
fact, which the immaterialist has accurately observed and arranged,
with respect to the influence of habit or association, may thus, with
equal reason, form a part of the intellectual and moral creed of the
materialist also.
On these two systems it is not at present my intention to make any
remarks; all which I wish, now, is to explain to you, how independent
the real philosophy of the mind is, of any fanciful conjectures, which
may be formed, with respect to its essence. It differs from these, as
Mr. Stewart has well observed, in the same manner “as the inquiries of
Galileo, concerning the laws of moving bodies, differ from the disputes
of the ancient Sophists, concerning the existence and the nature of
motion,” or as the conclusions of Newton, with respect to the law of
gravitation, differ from his query concerning the mode in which he
supposed that gravity might possibly be produced. The hypothesis,
involved in the query, you may admit or reject; the conclusions, with
respect to the law of gravitation itself, as far as relates to our
planetary system, are, I may say, almost beyond your power of rejecting.
The philosophy of mind then, and the philosophy of matter, agree, in
this respect, that our knowledge is, in both, confined to the mere
phenomena. They agree also, in the two species of inquiry which they
admit. The phenomena of _mind_, in the same manner as we have seen in
the case of _matter_, may be considered as complex and susceptible of
analysis, or they may be considered as successive in a certain _order_,
and bearing, therefore, to each other the reciprocal relation of causes
and effects.
That we can know the phenomena, only as far as we have attended to
their sequences, and that, without experiment, therefore, it would have
been impossible for us to predict any of their successions, is equally
true, in mind as in matter. Many of the successions, indeed, are so
familiar to us, that it may appear to you, at first, very difficult
to conceive, that we should not have been able, at least with respect
to them, to predict, originally, _what_ antecedents would have been
followed by _what_ consequents. We may allow certainly, that we should
not have been able to foresee the pleasure which we receive from the
finer works of imitative art--from the successions, or co-existences,
in music, of sounds, that, considered separately, would scarcely be
counted among the sources of delight--from the charm of versification,
that depends on circumstances, so very slight, as to be altogether
destroyed, and even converted into pain, by the change of quantity
of a single syllable. But, that the remembrance of pleasure should
not be attended with desire of enjoying it again, seems to us almost
inconsistent with the very nature of the pleasing emotion. In like
manner, we may allow, that we could not have predicted the sympathy
which we feel with the distresses of others, when they arise from
causes that cannot affect us, and yet make, for the time, the agony,
which we merely behold, a part of our own existence. But we can
scarcely think, that we require _any_ experience, to know, that the
contemplation of pain, which we may ourselves have to endure, should be
the cause of that painful feeling, to which we give the name of _fear_,
or that the actual suffering should be accompanied with the desire of
relief. The truth is, however, that, in all these cases, and in all
of them equally,--it would have been impossible, but for experience,
to predict the consequent of any of the antecedents. The pleasure,
which we feel, in the contemplation of a work of art, the pain, which
we feel, at the sight of the misery of others, are as much the natural
effects of states of mind preceding them, as the fear of pain is the
effect of the consideration of pain as hanging over us. Our various
feelings, similar or dissimilar, kindred or discordant, are all mere
states of the mind; and there is nothing, in any one state of the mind,
considered in itself, which, necessarily, involves the succession of
any other state of mind. That particular state, for example, which
constitutes the mere feeling of pain, instead of being attended by that
different state which constitutes the desire of being freed from pain,
might have continued, as one uniform feeling, or might have ceased, and
been succeeded by some other state, though in the original adaptation
of our mental frames, by that Creator's wisdom which planned the
sequences of its phenomena, the particular affection, which constitutes
_desire_, had not been one of the innumerable varieties of affection,
of which the mind was forever to be susceptible.
What susceptibilities the mind has exhibited in the ordinary
circumstances in which it has been placed, we know, and they have been
limited to a certain number, corresponding with the feelings which
have arisen in these circumstances. But the Almighty Power, who fixed
this particular number, might have increased or lessened the number at
His pleasure, in the same manner, as He might, at His pleasure, have
multiplied or diminished the whole number of his animated creatures;
and, where there has been no limit, but the will of the _Limiter_,
it is experience only which can give us any knowledge of the actual
limitation. We are always too much inclined to believe, that we
know what must have been, because we know what is,--and to suppose
ourselves acquainted, not merely with the gracious ends which Supreme
Goodness had in view, in creating us, but with the very object, which
each separate modification of our intellectual and moral constitution
was intended to answer. I would not, indeed, go so far as Pope, in
that passage of the Essay on Man, in which he seems to imply, that
our ignorance of the wise and harmonious intentions of Providence,
in the constitution of our mind, is like the ignorance of the
inferior animals, as to the motives which influence the follies and
inconsistencies of their capricious master.
“When the proud steed shall know, why man restrains
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains,
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's God,--
Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend
His action's, passion's, being's, use and end;
Why doing, suffering, check'd, impell'd; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.”[37]
Our Divine Author has not left us, even now, to darkness like this.
We know, in a great measure, the use and end of our actions and
passions, because we know _who_ it is who has formed us to do and
to bear,--and who, from His own moral excellence, cannot have given
us any susceptibility, even that of suffering, which does not tend,
upon the whole, to strengthen virtue, and to consecrate, as in some
purifying sacrifice, the sufferer of a moment to affections more holy,
and happiness more divine. Yet, though we know, in this general sense,
our action's, passion's, being's, use and end, as subservient to the
universal plan of Infinite Goodness, we are not so well acquainted
with the particular uses of each state of the mind, as to have been
able to predict it, merely as a part or consequence of the plan. The
knowledge of every successive modification of our thought, is still as
much the result of experience, as if the gracious plan, to which all
these successive modifications are instrumental, were wholly unknown
to us:--Yet, such is the influence of habit, in familiarizing us to
phenomena, that we think, that experience is nothing, only in those
cases, in which the power of experience has been most frequently and
familiarly felt; and while in the rarer successions of feelings, we
allow, that there are phenomena of the mind, which we could not have
foreknown, we find it difficult to imagine, in the recurrences of the
common mental phenomena, that, even originally, it could have required
any peculiar foresight to predict, what we are now conscious of
predicting with a readiness, that seems to us almost like the instant
glance of intuition.
In the philosophy of external matter, the greater or less familiarity
of events produces an illusion exactly similar. There are certain
phenomena, which, we readily admit, could not, of themselves,
and without experience, have indicated to us, either the changes
which preceded them, or the changes which were to follow; while
there are other phenomena, more familiar, which seem to us to
require no experience, for informing us, both of their antecedents
and consequents,--merely because they have been of such frequent
occurrence, that we do not remember the time, when we were ignorant
of them, or of the circumstances, by which they are usually preceded
and followed. That a magnetic needle should tend to the north,
rather than to any other point,--and that glass, or amber, rubbed
in a certain manner, should exhibit the very striking phenomena of
electricity, transmitting this power through certain substances, and
not transmitting it through others, which have nothing peculiar in
their sensible qualities, to mark them as less or better fitted for
this communication, appear to us to be facts, which we could not have
known, till we had actually witnessed them. But that a stone, rolled
from the hand, should continue to move in the same direction, after
quitting the hand, seems a fact, which it must have been easy for us to
foresee. We are not aware, that it is only the more familiar occurrence
of the one event, than of the others, which makes its sequence appear
more obvious; and that, but for this greater familiarity, we might as
readily have supposed, that a stone, after quitting the hand which
flung it, should have remained in the air, or fallen to the ground,
as that the needle, without any tendency to the north, would remain
stationary, to whatever point of the compass we might turn it.
Such is the influence of early acquaintance with the more frequent
and obvious events, whether in mind or in matter. We have become
familiar with them, and with their causes and consequences, long before
reflection; and it is not very wonderful, that we should conceive
ourselves to have _known always_, what we do not remember to have ever
learned.
That to know, in the series of mental phenomena, _what_ are the
antecedents, and _what_ their consequents, is one great branch of the
Philosophy of Mind, I surely need not attempt to demonstrate; and it
would be equally superfluous to demonstrate its importance, especially
after the remarks--if even these were necessary,--which I made in a
former Lecture; since it is not merely, as a very interesting branch
of speculative knowledge, that it is valuable, but, as I then showed,
still more valuable, as the foundation of every intellectual art,
especially of those noble and almost divine arts, which have, for their
immediate object, the illumination and amendment of mankind--the art
of training ignorance to wisdom, and even wisdom itself to knowledge
still more sublime,--of fixing youthful innocence in the voluntary
practice of virtue, that is as yet little more than an _instinct_ of
which it is scarcely conscious,--of breathing that moral inspiration,
which strengthens feeble goodness, when it is about to fall, tames even
the wildest excesses of the wildest passions, and leads back, as if by
the invisible power of some guardian spirit, even Guilt itself, to the
happiness which it had lost, and the holier wishes, which it rejoices
to feel once more.
Since the phenomena of the mind, however, are obviously _successive_,
like those of matter, the consideration of the sequences of the mental
phenomena, and the arrangement of them in certain classes, may appear
to you sufficiently analogous to the consideration and arrangement of
the sequences of the phenomena of the material world. But that there
should be any inquiries, in the philosophy of mind, corresponding
with the inquiries into the composition of bodies, may appear to you
improbable, or almost absurd; since the mind, and consequently its
affections--which I use as a short general term for expressing all the
variety of the modes in which it can be affected, and which, therefore,
are only the mind itself as it exists in different states,--must be
always _simple_ and _indivisible_. Yet, wonderful, or even absurd,
as it may seem, notwithstanding the absolute simplicity of the mind
itself, and consequently of all its feelings or momentary states,--the
Science of Mind is, in its most important respects, a source of
analysis, or of a process which I have said to be virtually the same as
analysis; and it is only, as it is in this virtual sense analytical,
that any discovery, at least that any important discovery, can be
expected to be made in it.