of our appetites, recur, at intervals, in which there is some degree
of regularity, does not alter their nature, when they _do_ recur, so
as to render a peculiar arrangement necessary for including them. The
mental states, which constitute the uneasiness that is felt, recur
thus at intervals, not from any thing peculiar in the mind itself,
the phenomena of which alone we are considering, but because the
body is only at intervals in the state, which precedes or induces
those peculiar mental affections. If, instead of the _two_ or _three_
periods, at which the appetite of hunger recurs, the nervous system
were, one hundred times in the day, at intervals the most irregular,
in that state, which is immediately followed by the feeling of hunger,
the painful feeling,--and the consequent desire of food, which has
been found to relieve it,--would of course, be felt one hundred times
in the day. The regularity, therefore, of the recurrence of this state
of the nerves, is a phenomenon, which belongs to the consideration of
the physiologist of the _body_, not of the physiologist of the _mind_,
whose immediate office is finished, when he can trace any particular
feeling of the mind to some affection of our organic frame, as its
invariable antecedent; and who knowing, therefore, that the feeling
of pain in any of our appetites, is the effect or result of some
organic affection, is not surprised that it should not recur, when that
organic affection has not previously taken place,--any more than he
is surprised that we do not enjoy the fragrance of roses or violets,
when there are no particles of odour to be inhaled by us; or do not
listen to songs and choral harmonies, when there is no vibration to be
transmitted to the auditory nerve. It is at certain regular periods,
that the full light of day, and the twilight of morning and evening,
are perceived by us. But we do not think it necessary, on this account,
to give any peculiar name to these visual perceptions, to distinguish
them from others less regular, because we know, that the reason of the
_periodic_ recurrence of these perceptions, is that the various degrees
of sunshine, which produce them, exist only at such intervals. We are
_hungry_, when the nerves of the stomach are in a certain state; we
perceive the sun, when the organ of vision is in a certain state. It is
as little wonderful, that we should _not_ have the feeling of hunger,
except when the nerves of the stomach are in this state, as that we
should _not_ have the perception of the meridian sun, when the sun
itself is beneath our horizon.
Since the mere pains of appetite, however, most important as they truly
are, for the ends which they immediately answer, are yet of little
importance in relation to our general knowledge, it is unnecessary
to dwell on them at length. But I cannot quit the consideration of
them, without remarking that admirable provision which the gracious
Author of Nature has made by them, for the preservation not of our
_being_ merely, but of our _well-being_--of that health and vigour,
without which, a frail and feverish existence, at least in its
relation to this earthly scene, would be of little value. The daily
waste of the body requires daily supply to compensate it; and if this
supply be neglected, or be inadequate--or, on the other hand, if it
be inordinately great, _disease_ is the necessary consequence. To
preserve the _medium_, therefore, or at least to prevent any very great
deviation from it, _He_, who planned our feelings and faculties as well
as our bodily frame, has made it painful for us to omit what is so
important to life; and painful also to prolong the supply in any great
proportion, after the demands of nature have been adequately satisfied.
If food had afforded gratification only as relieving the pain of
hunger, these natural boundaries of appetite would have required no aid
from _moral_ or _physical_ lessons of temperance. But the indulgence
of nature, in conferring on us the sense of taste, and making food a
luxury as well as a relief, we abuse, as we abuse her other kindnesses.
The pleasures of this most intemperate of senses, may lead, in
some degree, beyond the due point of supply, the greater number of
mankind; and may drive, to excesses more injurious, all those herds of
unthinking sensualists who prefer the sickly enjoyment of an hour, to
the health and virtue, and intellectual as well as physical comfort, of
more frugal repasts. Yet even to them, nature points out in the feeling
of satiety, where intemperance begins, or where it has already begun;
and if they persist, notwithstanding this feeling, how much more would
they be in danger of over-loading the powers of life, if there had
been no such feeling of growing uneasiness, to suppress the avidity of
insatiable indulgence.
“Though a man knew,” says Dr Reid, “that his life must be supported
by _eating_, reason could not direct him when to eat, or what; how
much, or how often. In all these things, appetite is a much better
guide than reason. Were reason only to direct us in this matter, its
calm voice would often be drowned in the hurry of business, or the
charms of amusement. But the voice of appetite rises gradually, and,
at last, becomes loud enough to call off our attention from any other
employment.”[61]
If indeed, the necessary supply were long neglected, the morbid state
of the body which would ensue, though no pain of actual hunger were to
be felt, would convince, at last, the sufferer of his folly. But the
providence of our gracious Creator, has not trusted the existence of
man to the dangerous admonition of so rough a monitor, which might,
perhaps, bring his folly before him only when it was too late to be
wise. The pain of hunger--that short disease, if it may be so termed,
which it is in our power so speedily to cure, prevents diseases that
more truly deserve the name. Between _satiety_ on one side, and _want_
on the other, the stream of health flows tranquilly along, which, but
for these boundaries, would speedily waste itself and disappear; as the
most magnificent river, which, if dispersed over a boundless plain,
would flow almost into nothing, owes its abundance and majestic beauty
to the very _banks_ that seem to confine its waters within too narrow a
channel.
Besides those particular feelings of bodily uneasiness, which, as
attended with desire, constitute our appetites, there are other
affections of the same class, which, though not usually ranked
with our external sensations or perceptions, because we find it
difficult to ascribe them to any local organ, are unquestionably to
be arranged under the same head; since they are feelings which arise,
as immediately and directly from a certain state of a part of the
nervous system, as any of the feelings which we more commonly ascribe
to external sense. Of this kind is that muscular pleasure of _alacrity_
and action, which forms so great a part of the delight of the _young_
of every species of living beings, and which is felt, though in a less
degree, at every period of life, even the most advanced; or which,
when it ceases in age, only gives place to another species of muscular
pleasure--that which constitutes the pleasure of ease--the same species
of feeling, which doubles, to ever one, the delight of exercise, by
sweetening the repose to which it leads, and thus making it indirectly,
as well as directly, a source of enjoyment.
In treating of what have been termed the _acquired perceptions of
vision_, which are truly what give to vision its range of power, and
without which the mere perception of colour would be of little more
value than any other of the simplest of our sensations, I shall have
an opportunity of pointing out to you some most important purposes, to
which our muscular feelings are instrumental; and in the nicer analysis
which I am inclined to make of the perceptions commonly ascribed to
touch,--if my analysis be accurate--we shall find them operating at
least as powerfully. At present, however, I speak of them merely
as sources of animal pleasure or pain, of pleasure during moderate
exercise and repose, and of pain during morbid lassitude, or the
fatigue of oppression and unremitted labour.
The pleasure which attends good health, and which is certainly more
than mere freedom from pain, is a pleasure of the same kind. It is
a pleasure, however, which, like every other long continued bodily
pleasure, we may suppose, to be diminished by habitual enjoyment; and
it is therefore, chiefly, on recovery from sickness, when the habit has
been long broken by feelings of an opposite kind, that we recognize
what it must originally have been; if, indeed it be in our power to
separate, completely, the mere animal pleasure from those mingling
reflecting pleasures which arise from the consideration of past pain,
and the expectation of future delight. To those among you, who know
what it is to have risen from the long captivity of a bed of sickness,
I need not say, that every function is, in this case, more than mere
vigour; it is a happiness, but to breathe and to move; and not every
limb merely, but almost every fibre of every limb, has its separate
sense of enjoyment. “What a blessed thing it is to breathe the fresh
air!” said Count Struensee, on quitting his dungeon, though he was
quitting it only to be led to the place of execution, and cannot,
therefore, be supposed to have felt much more than the mere animal
delight.
“He does not scorn it, who, imprisoned long
In some unwholesome dungeon, and a prey
To sallow sickness, which the vapours, dank
And clammy of his dark abode have bred,
Escapes at last to liberty and light;
His cheek recovers soon its healthful hue;
His eye relumines its extinguish'd fires;
He walks, he leaps, he runs--is wing'd with joy,
And riots in the sweets of every breeze.”[62]
On these mere animal gratifications, however, I need not dwell any
longer. There is much more to interest our curiosity, in the sensations
and perceptions which more frequently go under those names; to the
consideration of which I shall proceed in my next Lecture.
FOOTNOTES:
[60] Gray de Principiis Cogitandi, Lib. I. v. 1-5.
[61] On the Active Powers, Essay III. c. 1.
[62] Cowper's Task, book i.
LECTURE XVIII.
ON THE MORE DEFINITE EXTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF MIND IN GENERAL.
In my Lecture yesterday, after some further elucidation of the _triple
division_ which we formed of the mental phenomena, as external
or sensitive affections of the mind, intellectual states of the
mind,--emotions,--I proceeded to consider the first of these divisions,
of which the characteristic distinction is, that the phenomena included
in it have their causes or immediate antecedents _external_ to the
mind itself. In this division, I comprehended, together with the
feelings which are universally ascribed to certain organs of sense,
many feelings, which, though unquestionably originating in states of
our bodily organs, as much as our other sensations, are yet commonly
ranked as a different order--such as our various appetites, or
rather that elementary uneasiness which is only a part, but still an
essential part of our appetites, and which is easily distinguishable
from the mere desire, which is the other element; since, however
rapid the succession of them may be, we are yet conscious of them as
successive. The particular uneasiness, it is evident, must have been
felt as a sensation before the desire of that which is to relieve the
uneasiness could have arisen. To the same class, too, I referred the
various organic feelings, which constitute the animal pleasure of good
health, when every corporeal function is exercised in just degree;
and in a particular manner, our _muscular_ feelings, whether of mere
general lassitude or alacrity; or those fainter differences of feelings
which arise in our various motions and attitudes, from the different
muscles that are exercised, or from the greater or less contraction
of the same muscles. These muscular feelings, though they may be
almost unnoticed by us, during the influence of stronger sensations,
are yet sufficiently powerful, when we attend to them, to render us,
independently of sight and touch, in a great measure sensible of
the position of our body in general, and of its various parts; and
comparatively indistinct as they are, they become,--in many cases, as
in the acquired perceptions of vision, for example, and equally too, as
I conceive, in various other instances, in which little attention has
been paid to them by philosophers,--_elements_ of some of the nicest
and most accurate judgments which we form.
It is, however, to that widest and most important order of our external
affections, which comprehends the feelings more commonly termed
_sensations_, and universally ascribed to particular organs of sense,
that we have now to proceed. In these, we find the rude elements of
all our knowledge, the materials on which the mind is ever operating,
and without which, it seems to us almost impossible to conceive that
it could ever have operated at all, or could, even in its absolute
inactivity, have been conscious of its own inert existence.
This order of our external feelings comprehends all those _states_
of mind, however various they may be, which immediately succeed
the changes of state, produced, in any of our organs of sense, by
the presence of certain external bodies. The mental affections are
themselves,--as I have said,--commonly termed _sensations_; but we
have no verb, in our language, which exactly denotes what is expressed
in the substantive noun. To _feel_ is, in its two senses, either much
more limited or much more general, being confined, in its restricted
meaning, to the sensations of one organ, that of touch,--and as a
more general word, being applicable to all the varieties of our
consciousness, as much as to those particular varieties, which are
immediately successive to the affections of our organs of sense. We
are said, in this wider use of the term, to feel indignation, love,
surprise, as readily as we are said to feel the warmth of a fire, or
the coldness of snow.
In defining our sensations, to be those mental affections, which are
immediately successive to certain organic affections, produced by
the action of external things, it is very evident, that I have made
two assumptions,--first of the existence of external things, that
affect our organs of sense; and, secondly of organs of sense, that
are affected by external things;--unless, indeed, the assumption of
the existence of organs of sense be considered,--as in philosophic
truth it unquestionably is--only another form of the assumption of the
existence of external things, since, in relation to the sentient mind,
the organs thus supposed to exist, are, in strictness of language,
_external_, as much as the objects supposed to act upon them. All of
which we are truly conscious, in sensation, is the mental affection,
the last link of the series, in the supposed process; what we term our
perceptions of organs of sense, or of other external things that act
upon these--our ideas, for example, of a brain or an eye, a house or a
mountain, being as truly states of our own percipient mind, and nothing
but states of our own mind, as our feeling of joy or sorrow, hope or
fear, love or hate,--to which we never think of giving an _existence_,
nor a direct and immediate _cause_ of existence, _out_ of ourselves.
By the very constitution of our nature, however, or by the influence
of associations as irresistible as intuition itself,--it is impossible
for us not to feel this essential reality in the causes of one set of
our mental affections, in the same manner as it is impossible for us to
ascribe it to another set. The brain, the eye, the house, the mountain,
we believe, and cannot but believe, to have external existence,
independent of our own; the joy and sorrow, hope and fear, love and
hate, we believe, and cannot but believe, to be merely states of our
own mind, occasioned by other former states of mind, and dependent,
therefore, for their continuance, on our own continued existence only.
Even in our wildest dreams,--in which we imagine all things that are
possible, and almost all things which are impossible; we never consider
our joy or sorrow, as directly indicative of any thing separate from
ourselves, and independent of us,
“While o'er our limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,
What tho' our soul fantastic measures trod,
O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless woods; or down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool;
Or scaled the cliff,--or danced on hollow winds,
With antic shapes, wild natives of the brain;”
it was still only the cliff, the wood, the pool, which we considered
as _external_: the _sorrow_ with which we mourned along our gloomy
track, the _pain_ with which we swam the turbid water, the _horror_
which we felt at the antic shapes, with which we mingled in the
ghostly dance, were felt to be wholly _in ourselves_, and constituted,
while they lasted, the very feeling of our own existence.--The belief
of an external world is, however, to come afterwards under our full
examination:--It is sufficient, for the present, to know, that in
the period after infancy, to which alone our memory extends, we are
led, irresistibly, to believe in it; and that the belief of it,
therefore, in whatever manner it may have originated in the imperfect
perceptions of our infancy, is now, when those perceptions are mature,
so completely beyond the power of argument to overcome, that it exists,
as strongly, in those who reason against it, as in those who reason
for it;--that the reference to a direct external cause, however,
does not accompany _every_ feeling of our mind, but is confined to a
certain number of that long succession of feelings, which forms the
varied consciousness of our life,--and that the feelings, with respect
to which this reference is made, are the class of sensations, which,
when combined with this reference, have commonly been distinguished
by the name of perceptions. That we have no perfect evidence of the
external existence thus ascribed by us,--independently of our own
irresistible belief of it, may be allowed to the sceptic; and the
reasoning of Doctor Reid on the subject, as far as he proceeds beyond
the assertion of this irresistible belief, and attempts, what has been
commonly regarded as a confutation of the scepticism on this point,--by
representing it as proceeding on a mistake, with respect to the nature
of our ideas,--is _itself_, as we shall afterwards find, nugatory and
fallacious. But still, notwithstanding the errors of philosophers with
respect to it, the belief itself is, in the circumstances in which we
now exist, so truly a part of our constitution, that to contend against
it in argument would be to admit its validity, since it would be to
suppose the existence of some one whom we are fairly undertaking to
instruct or to confute.
In what circumstance the intuitive belief,--if, as I have said, the
belief be in any case intuitive,--arises; or rather, in how large
a proportion of cases, in which the reference seems primary and
immediate, it is, more probably, the effect of secondary associations
transferred from sense to sense, will appear better after the minute
analysis on which we are to enter, of the different tribes of our
sensations.
In referring to the particular class of sensations, and consequently
to an _external cause_, a certain number only of the affections of our
mind, there can be no doubt, that we proceed _now_, in the mature state
of our knowledge, with more accuracy, than we could have attained, in
that early period of life, when our original feelings were more recent.
We have now a clearer and more definite belief of an external world,
and of objects of sensations separate from our sensations themselves;
without which general belief, previously obtained, we should as little
have ascribed to an external organic cause many of our feelings,
which we now ascribe to one--our sensations of sound and fragrance,
for example,--as we now ascribe to such an immediate external cause,
our emotions of joy or sorrow. A still more important acquisition, is
our knowledge of our own organic frame, by which we are enabled, in a
great measure, to verify our sensations,--to produce them, as it were
at pleasure, when their external objects are before us, and in this
way to correct the feelings, which have risen spontaneously, by those,
which we ourselves produce. Thus, when, _in reverie_, our conceptions
become peculiarly vivid, and the objects of our thought seem almost to
exist in our presence; if only we stretch out our hand, or fix our eyes
on the forms that are permanently before us, the illusion vanishes.
Our organ of touch or of sight, is not affected in the same manner,
as if the object that charms us in our musing dream, were really
present; and we class the feeling, therefore, as a conception,--not as
a sensation,--which, but for the opportunity of this correction, we
should unquestionably, in many instances, have done.