then, when no reference is made to former states of the mind, the
consciousness is obviously nothing more than the simple momentary
feeling itself as it begins and ceases; and when there is a reference
to former states of the mind, we discover on analysis only a
remembrance, like all our other remembrances, and a feeling of common
relation of the past and the present affection of the mind to one
permanent subject. It is the belief of our continued identity which
involves this particular feeling of relation of past and present
feelings; and consciousness, in this sense of the term, is only a word
expressive of that belief.
That the fragrance of a rose, the sound of a flute, and in general
all the other objects of sense, might have excited precisely the
same immediate sensations as at present, Doctor Reid admits, though
the belief of our personal identity had not been impressed upon us;
for he ascribes this belief to an instinctive principle only, and
acknowledges, that there is nothing in our sensations themselves, from
which any such inference could be drawn by reason. If, then, this
instinctive belief of identity had not been, as at present, a natural
law of human thought,--operating irresistibly on the remembrance of
our different feelings, we should have had no notion of _self_, of
_me_, the sentient and thinking being, who exists at the present
moment, and who existed before the present moment:--and what, then,
would have been the consciousness, accompanying, and different from,
our sensations, when they merely flashed along the mind and vanished?
The most zealous defender of consciousness, as a separate intellectual
power, must surely admit, that, in such circumstances, it would have
been nothing more than _sensation_ itself. It is the belief of our
_identity_ only, which gives us the notion of _self_, as the subject
of various feelings, and it is the notion of self, as the subject of
various former feelings, which leads us to regard the consciousness of
the moment, as different from the sensation of the moment; because it
suggests to us those former feelings, which truly were different from
it, or at least that _subject mind_, which unquestionably existed
before the present sensation.
If it be said, that the faculty of consciousness is nothing more
than this reference to the past, and consequent belief of identity,
we may, in that case, very safely admit its existence; though the
classification of it, as a peculiar intellectual power, would in that
case be a most singular anomaly in arrangement, and would involve
a very absurd, or at least a very awkward use of a term. To assert
this signification of it, however, would be to admit everything for
which I have contended. But it certainly is not the sense, which has
been attached to it by philosophers; and indeed, in _this_ sense,
_consciousness_, instead of having for its objects, as Doctor Reid
says, _all_ “our present pains, our pleasures, our hopes, our fears,
our desires, our doubts, our thoughts of every kind; in a word, all the
passions, and all the actions and operations of our own mind, while
they are present,” would be limited to the comparatively few, of which
the consideration of our personal identity forms a part. In far the
greater number of our feelings, as I have already said, the sensation
dies away, almost in the moment,--not indeed, without being enjoyed or
suffered, but without any reference to self, as the subject of various
feelings, or remembrance of any prior state of mind, as distinct
from the present. The belief of our identity, is surely not the only
belief that arises from an instinctive principle; and if its existence
entitle us, in our systematic arrangements, to the possession of a new
intellectual power, every other belief that arises instinctively from a
principle of our constitution, must give us a similar title to enlarge
the catalogue of our faculties. The never-failing and instant faith,
by which we expect, without the slightest doubt of the similarity
of the future, that events will continue to follow each other, in
the same order as at present,--that bodies will fall to the ground,
fire burn, food satisfy the craving of our appetite--that immediate
intuitive principle of belief, on which all our foresight depends,
and according to which we regulate our whole conduct in providing
for the future,--should certainly, in that case, be ascribed by us
to some peculiar intellectual power, for which it would be easy to
invent a name. It is not, by any inference of our reason, we believe,
that the sound of a flute which preceded the fragrance of a rose, and
the fragrance of a rose which followed the sound of a flute, excited
sensations that were states of the same identical mind; for there is
nothing, in either of the separate sensations, or in both together,
from which such an inference can be drawn; and yet, notwithstanding the
impossibility of inferring it, we believe this, at least as strongly,
as we believe any of the conclusions of our reasoning. In like manner,
it is not by any inference of reason we believe, that fire will warm
us to-morrow, as it has warmed us to-day; for there is nothing, in the
fire of to-day, or in the sensation of warmth, considered as a mere
sequence of it, from which the succession of a similar sensation to
the fire of to-morrow can be inferred; yet we also rely on this future
sequence, at least as strongly, as we believe any of the conclusions
of our reasoning. In both cases the parallel is complete; and in both,
the evidence of a particular intellectual faculty, must consequently be
alike,--or in neither is there sufficient evidence of such a power.
There is, indeed, one other sense, in which we often talk of our
consciousness of a feeling, and a sense, in which, it must be allowed,
that the consciousness is not precisely the same as the feeling
itself. This is, when we speak of a feeling, not actually existing at
present, but _past_--as when we say, that we are conscious of having
seen, or heard, or done something. Such a use of the term, however,
is pardonable only in the privileged looseness and inaccuracy of
familiar conversation: the consciousness, in this case, being precisely
synonymous with remembrance or memory, and not a power, different
from the remembrance. The _remembrance_ of the feeling, and the vivid
_feeling_ itself, indeed, are different. But the remembrance, and the
consciousness of the remembrance, are the same--as the consciousness of
a sensation, and the sensation, are the same; and to be conscious that
we have seen or spoken to any one, is only to remember that we have
seen or spoken to him.
Much of this very confusion with respect to memory, however, I have no
doubt, has been always involved in the assertion of consciousness as
a peculiar and distinct power of the mind. When we think of feelings
long past, it is impossible for us not to be aware that our mind is
then truly retrospective; and memory seems to us sufficient to account
for the whole. But when the retrospect is of very recent feelings--of
feelings, perhaps, that existed as distinct states of the mind, the
very moment before our retrospect began, the short interval is
forgotten, and we think that the primary feeling, and our consideration
of the feeling, are strictly simultaneous. We have a sensation;--we
look instantly back on that sensation,--such is consciousness, as
distinguished from the feeling that is said to be its object. When it
is any thing more than the sensation, thought, or emotion, of which
we are said to be conscious, it is a brief and rapid retrospect. Its
object is not a present feeling, but a past feeling, as truly as when
we look back, not on the moment immediately preceding, but on some
distant event or emotion of our boyhood.
After thus distinguishing all that is truly _present_ in consciousness,
from common remembrance, I surely need not undertake, at any length, to
distinguish it from that peculiar species of remembrance, which goes
under the name of _conscience_; though their similar etymology may have
a slight tendency to mislead. _Conscience_ is our _moral memory_;--it
is the _memory of the heart_, if I may apply to it a phrase, which, in
its original application, was much more happily employed, by one of the
deaf and dumb pupils of the Abbe Sicard, who, on being asked what he
understood by the word _gratitude_, wrote down immediately, “_Gratitude
is the memory of the heart_.”
The power of conscience does, indeed, what consciousness does not. It
truly doubles all our feelings, when they have been such as virtue
inspired; “Hoc est vivere _bis_, vita posse priore frui;” and it
multiplies them in a much more fearful proportion, when they have
been of an opposite kind--arresting, as it were every moment of
guilt, which, of itself, would have passed away, as fugitive as our
other moments, and suspending them forever before our eyes, in fixed
and terrifying reality. “Prima et maxima peccantium est pæna,” says
Seneca, “_peccasse_; nec ullum scelus, illud fortuna exornet muneribus
suis, licet tueatur ac vindicet, impunitum est quoniam sceleris in
scelere supplicium est.”[43] “The first and the greatest punishment
of guilt, is to have been guilty; nor can any crime, though fortune
should adorn it with all her most lavish bounty, as if protecting and
vindicating it, pass truly unpunished; because the punishment of the
base or atrocious deed, is in the very baseness or atrocity of the deed
itself.” But this species of memory, which we denominate _conscience_,
and, indeed, every species of memory, which must necessarily have for
its object the past, is essentially different from the consciousness
which we have been considering, that, in its very definition, is
limited to _present_ feelings, and of which, if we really had such an
intellectual power, our moral conscience would, in Dr Reid's sense of
the term, be an _object_ rather than a part.
Consciousness, then, I conclude, in its simplest acceptation, when
it is understood as regarding the present only, is no distinct power
of the mind, or name of a distinct class of feelings, but is only
a general term for all our feelings, of whatever species these may
be, sensations, thoughts, desires;--in short, all those states or
affections of mind, in which the phenomena of mind consist; and when
it expresses more than this, it is only the remembrance of some
former state of the mind, and a feeling of the relation of the past
and the present as states of one sentient substance. The term is very
conveniently used for the purpose of abbreviation, when we speak of the
whole variety of our feelings, in the same manner as any other general
term is used, to express briefly the multitude of individuals that
agree in possessing some common property of which we speak; when the
enumeration of these, by description and name, would be as wearisome to
the patience, as it would be oppressive to the memory. But still, when
we speak of the evidence of consciousness, we mean nothing more, than
the evidence implied in the mere existence of our sensations, thoughts,
desires,--which is utterly impossible for us to believe to be and not
to be; or, in other words, impossible for us to feel and not to feel at
the same moment. This precise limitation of the term, I trust, you will
keep constantly in mind in the course of our future speculations.
FOOTNOTES:
[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.
LECTURE XII.
ON CONSCIOUSNESS, CONTINUED,--ON MENTAL IDENTITY,--IDENTITY
IRRECONCILABLE WITH THE DOCTRINE OF MATERIALISM,--DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
PERSONAL IDENTITY AND MENTAL IDENTITY,--OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE OF
MENTAL IDENTITY STATED.
In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I brought to a conclusion my remarks
on the _nature_ and _objects_ of _Physical Inquiry_,--the clear
understanding of which seemed to me, essentially necessary before
we could enter with any prospect of success, on the physiological
investigation of the Mind.
We then opened our eyes, as it were on the great field of thought
and passion, and on all the infinite variety of feelings, which, in
assemblages more or less complex, and in colours more or less brilliant
or obscure, it is every moment presenting to our internal glance. The
very attempt to arrange these transient feelings as phenomena of the
mind, however, implies evidently some consideration of the nature of
that varied consciousness in which they consist, and of the identity
of the permanent substance, as _states_ of _which_ we arrange them. My
last Lecture, therefore, was devoted to this primary consideration of
_consciousness_,--which we found reason to regard, not as any separate
and peculiar faculty of the mind, of which our various feelings are,
to use Dr Reid's expression, _objects_, and which is, therefore,
to be added, in every instance, to the separate pleasures, pains,
perceptions, remembrances, passions, that constitute the momentary
states of the mind,--but merely as a short general term, expressive
of all these momentary states in reference to the permanent subject
_mind_. The sensation of fragrance, for example, is the consciousness
of one moment, as the remembrance of that sensation, or some
other sensation, is, perhaps, the consciousness of the succeeding
moment;--the mind, at every moment, existing in one precise state,
which, as one state can be accurately denoted only by one precise name,
or by names that are synonymous, not by names that are significant of
total diversity.
All which we know, or can be supposed to know, of the mind, indeed, is
a certain _series_ of these states or feelings that have succeeded each
other, more or less rapidly, since life began; the sensation, thought,
emotion, of the moment being one of those states, and the supposed
consciousness of the state being only the state itself, whatever it may
be, in which the mind exists at that particular moment; since it would
be manifestly absurd to suppose the same indivisible mind to exist at
the very same moment in two separate states, one of sensation, and one
of consciousness. It is not simply because we _feel_, but because we
remember some _prior_ feeling, and have formed a notion of the mind
as the permanent subject of different feeling, that we conceive the
proposition, “I am _conscious_ of a sensation,” to express more than
the simple existence of the sensation itself; since it expresses,
too, a reference of this to the same mind which had formerly been
recognised as the subject of other feelings. There is a remembrance
of some former feeling, and a reference of the present feeling to the
same subject; and this mere remembrance, and the intuitive belief of
identity which accompanies remembrance, are all that philosophers, by
defective analyses, and a little confusion of language and thought,
have asserted to be the result of a peculiar mental faculty, under the
name of consciousness;--though consciousness, in this sense, far from
embracing all the varieties of feeling,--that, in the greater number of
instances, begin and cease, without any accompanying thought of that
permanent substance to which the transient feeling is referable,--must
be limited to the comparatively few, in which such a reference to self
is made.
Consciousness, in short, whenever it is conceived to express more than
the present feeling, or present momentary state of the mind, whatever
that may be, which is said to be the _object_ of consciousness,--as if
it were at once something different at every moment from the present
state or feeling of the mind, and yet the very state in which the mind
is at every moment supposed to exist,--is a retrospect of some _past_
feeling, with that belief of a common relation of the past and present
feeling to one subject mind, which is involved in the very notion,
or rather constitutes the very notion, of personal identity,--and
all which distinguishes this rapid retrospect from any of the other
retrospects, which we class as remembrances, and ascribe to memory
as their source, is the mere briefness of the interval between the
feeling that is remembered, and the reflective glance which seems to
be immediately retrospective. A feeling of some kind has arisen, and
we look instantly back upon that feeling; but a remembrance is surely
still the same in nature, and arises from the same principle of the
mental constitution, whether the interval which precedes it be that of
a moment, or of many hours, or years.
I now then proceed, after these remarks on our consciousness as
momentary, to a most important inquiry, which arises necessarily from
the consideration of the successions of our momentary consciousness,
and must be considered as involved in all our attempts to arrange
them,--the inquiry into the _Identity_ of the Mind, as truly _one_ and
_permanent_, amid all the variety of its fugitive affections.
In our examination of this very wonderful coincidence of sameness and
diversity, I shall confine my remarks to the phenomena which are purely
mental, omitting the objections drawn from the daily waste and daily
aliment of our corporeal part, the whole force of which objection may
be admitted, without any scruple by those who contend for the identity
only of the thinking principle; since the individuality of _this_
would be as little destroyed, though every particle of the body were
completely changed, as the individuality of the body itself would be
destroyed, by a change of the mere garments that invest it. The manner
in which the mind is united to a system of particles, which are in a
perpetual state of flux, is, indeed, more than we can ever hope to
be able to explain; though it is really not more inexplicable, than
its union to such a system of particles would be, though they were to
continue forever unchanged.
I may remark, however, by the way, that though the constant state of
flux of the corporeal particles furnishes no argument against the
identity of the principle which feels and thinks, if feeling and
thought be states of a substance, that is essentially distinct from
these changing particles, the unity and identity of this principle,
amid all the corpuscular changes,--if it can truly be proved to be
identical,--furnish a very strong argument, in disproof of those
systems which consider thought and feeling as the result of material
organization. Indeed the attempts which have been seriously made by
materialists to obviate this difficulty, involve, in every respect,
as much absurdity, though certainly not so much pleasantry, at least
so much _intentional_ pleasantry, as the demonstrations, which the
Society of Freethinkers communicated to Martinus Scriblerus, in their
letter of greeting and invitation. The arguments, which they are
represented as urging in this admirable letter, ludicrous as they may
seem, are truly as strong, at least, as those of which they are a
parody; and indeed, in this case, where both are so like, a very little
occasional change of expression is all which is necessary, to convert
the grave ratiocination into the parody, and the parody into the grave
ratiocination.
“The parts (say they) of an animal body,” stating the objection which
they profess to answer, “are perpetually changed, and the fluids
which seem to be the subject of consciousness, are in a perpetual
circulation; so that the same individual particles do not remain in
the brain; from whence it will follow, that the idea of individual
consciousness must be constantly translated from one particle of matter
to another, whereby the particle A, for example must not only be
conscious, but conscious that it is the same being with the particle B
that went before.
“We answer, this is only a fallacy of the imagination, and is to be
understood in no other sense than that maxim of the English law,
that the _king never dies_. This power of thinking, self-moving, and
governing the whole machine, is communicated from every particle to its
immediate successor, who, as soon as he is gone, immediately takes upon
him the government, which still preserves the unity of the whole system.
“They make a great noise about this individuality, how a man is
conscious to himself that he is the same individual he was twenty years
ago, notwithstanding the flux state of the particles of matter that
compose his body. We think this is capable of a very plain answer, and
may be easily illustrated by a familiar example.
“Sir John Cutler had a pair of black worsted stockings, which his maid
darned so often with silk, that they became at last a pair of silk
stockings. Now supposing those stockings of Sir John's endued with some
degree of consciousness at every particular darning, they would have
been sensible, that they were the same individual pair of stockings
both before and after the darning; and this sensation would have
continued in them through all the succession of darnings; and yet after
the last of all, there was not perhaps one thread left of the first
pair of stockings; but they were grown to be silk stockings, as was
said before.
“And whereas it is affirmed, that every animal is conscious of some
individual self-moving, self-determining principle; it is answered,
that, as in a House of Commons all things are determined by a
_majority_, so it is in every animal system. As that which determines
the house is said to be the reason of the whole assembly; it is no
otherwise with thinking beings, who are determined by the greater force
of several particles, which, like so many unthinking members, compose
one thinking system.”[44]
The _identity_, which we are to consider, is, as I have already said,
the identity only of the principle which feels and thinks, without
regard to the changeable state of the particles of the brain, or of
the body in general. This unity and permanence of the principle,
which thinks, if we had still to invent a phrase, I would rather
call _mental_ identity, than _personal_ identity, though the latter
phrase may now be considered as almost fixed by the general use of
philosophers. On no system can there be this absolute identity, unless
as strictly mental; for, if we adopt the system of materialism, we
must reject the absolute lasting identity of the thinking principle
altogether; and if we do not adopt that system, it is in the _mind_
alone that we must conceive the identity to subsist. The _person_, in
the common and familiar meaning of the term, though involving the mind,
is yet more than the mere mind; and, by those, at least, who are not
conversant with the writings of philosophers on the subject, sameness
of person would be understood as not _mental_ only, but as combining
with the absolute identity of the mind, some sort of identity of the
body also; though, it must be confessed, that, in its application to
the body, the term _identity_ is not used with the same strictness,
as in its application to the mind; the bodily identity being not
absolute, but admitting of considerable, and ultimately, perhaps,
even of total, change, provided only the change be so gradual, as
not to be inconsistent with apparent continuity of existence. Still,
however, identity of _person_, at least in the popular notion of it, is
something more than identity of mind.
“All mankind,” says Dr Reid, “place their personality in something,
that cannot be divided or consist of parts. A part of a person is a
manifest absurdity.
“When a man loses his estate, his health, his strength, he is still the
same person, and has lost nothing of his personality. If he has a leg
or an arm cut off, he is the same person he was before. The amputated
member is no part of his person, otherwise it would have a right to
a part of his estate, and be liable for a part of his engagements;
it would be entitled to a share of his merit and demerit, which is
manifestly absurd. A person is something indivisible, and is what
Leibnitz calls a monad.”[45]