may be said, and truly said, to be exactly the _past_; and, in the
whole series of phenomena of the material universe, from the moment of
its creation to this present moment, there has been nothing new, but
mere changes of relative position. This absolute sameness of result,
in all the apparent changes of matter, Condillac applies, by a most
unwarrantable extension, to the mere affections of the mind; and,
because two affections of mind are followed by a third, he considers
this _third_ to be the two former _co-existing_, or, as he terms it,
_transformed_. The feeling which follows another feeling, however
seemingly different, is thus, in his system, the same, because it
results from it; and it is very easy for him, in this way, to prove
_all_ our feelings to be _sensations_, by this simplest of arguments,
that sensation was the first state induced in mind, and that, hence,
since all our other feelings, of every species, must have followed
it, they must have originated in it, and therefore, been this very
sensation under a mere change of form. It is number one of the long
series; and, if number two be a transformed sensation, because it
results from number one, which was a sensation, number three must be
equally so, because it follows number two; and thus, successively,
the whole series. I perceive a hare; I perceive a sheep:--each of
these separate states of my mind is a sensation. I cannot attend to
them long, he says, without comparing them, and perceiving those
circumstances of agreement, which lead me to apply to both the word
quadruped. All this is most indubitably true. It is impossible, or,
at least, it is not very common for us to observe any two animals
long, together, without thinking of some of the circumstances in
which they agree or differ. The one state of mind is a consequence of
the other state of mind. But this is far from proving the comparison
itself, as a subsequent state or phenomenon of the mind, to be the
same mental state as the mere perception of the two animals which
simply preceded it. If the evidence of our consciousness is to be
trusted, it is very different; and in what other evidence can the
assertion of their sameness be founded? We do not feel the state of
mind, which constitutes the comparison, to be virtually equal to
the two states of mind which constituted the separate perception,
as we feel the relation of virtual equality between our notion of
the number eight, and our notions of six and two combined; the one
feeling does not _virtually_ comprehend the two others, and it surely
does not comprehend them in any grosser physical sense; for there
certainly is nothing in the absolute spiritual unity of our thinking
principle which can lead us to believe that the state or affection of
mind which constitutes the perception of a horse, and the state or
affection of mind which constitutes the perception of a sheep, unite,
in that different state or affection of mind, which constitutes the
comparison of the two, in the same manner as the solid chrystals of
any salt unite, in solution, with the liquid which dissolves them.
They do not involve or constitute, they merely give occasion to
this third state, and give occasion to it, merely in consequence of
the peculiar susceptibilities of the mind itself, as formed, by its
divine Author, to be affected in this particular manner, after being
affected in those different manners, which constitute the separate
perceptions, as sensation itself, the primary feeling, was made, to
depend on some previous organic affection produced by an external
object. It is not, therefore, as being susceptible of _mere sensation_,
but as being susceptible of _more_ than mere sensation, that the mind
is able to compare its sensations with each other. We may see, and
certainly do see, objects together, without forming uniformly the
same comparison; which could not be the case if the mere coexistence
of the two perceptions constituted or involved the comparison itself.
In the case of a _horse_ and _sheep_, for example, though these, in
the sensations which they excite, cannot, at different times, be
very different, we compare, at different times, their colour, their
forms, their magnitudes, their functions, and the uses to which we
put them, and we consider them as related in various other ways. The
perceptions being the same, the comparisons, or subsequent feelings
of relation, are different; and though the relation cannot be felt
but when both objects are considered together, it is truly no part of
the perception of each. According to the French system, the science,
which we now strangely regard as of difficult acquirement, would be
nothing more than the mere opening of our eyes. Were we to shew to a
peasant, absolutely unacquainted with the very elements of geometry,
_diagrams_ representing two right angles, and a plane triangle, he
might certainly, though he could not give them names, perceive these
figures as clearly as the most expert mathematician. Every thing which
mere sensation could produce, in this case, would be the same in both;
and nothing can be added to this primary sensation, since every thing
is said to be actually involved in the sensation itself. Yet, with all
his accurate perception of the figures, however clear, and vivid, and
lasting, the peasant would not find, in this immediate perception, the
_equality_ of the two right angles taken together to the three angles
of the triangle, or any other geometrical relation. The comparison,
then, and the belief of an universal truth of proportion, which
results from that comparison, are certainly something more than the
mere sensation itself. They are, in short, new states of mind, as
distinct from the mere perception of the figures in the diagram, as the
perception of a circle itself differs from the perception of a square.
To compare one animal with another, is, indeed, to have different
visual images; but the mere coexistence of visual images is only a
group, larger, or smaller, as the images are more or fewer, and all
which transformation can do is to add to this group or take away from
it. Innumerable objects may be, and are, continually present to us _at
once_, so as to produce one complex affection of mind,--fields, groves,
mountains, streams,--but the mere _coexistence_ of these, so as to form
in our thought one scene, involves no feeling of comparison; and if the
mind had not been susceptible of other affections than those of sense,
or of mere remembrance of the past objects of sense, either in whole or
in part, it might, when such a scene was present, have existed forever
in the state which forms the complex perception of the scene, without
the slightest notion of the RELATION of its parts to the whole, or to
each other.
When I thus attempt to prove, by so many wearying arguments, that the
feeling which constitutes our comparison of our sensations, or, in
other words, our belief of their agreement or disagreement, is itself
a state of mind, different from either of the separate sensations
which we compare, and different from both, as merely coexisting, I
cannot but feel, what many of you have probably felt already, as if I
were labouring to demonstrate a mere truism. Indeed, when I consider
the argument as any thing more, it is necessary for me to call to
mind the great name, and great talents, of the author whose system I
oppose,--the praise which the system has received, of extreme subtlety
of analysis, combined with extreme simplicity, and its wide diffusion,
as the universal, or nearly universal, metaphysical creed, of one of
the most enlightened nations of Europe.
But for these remembrances, I must confess, that the system which
supposes our comparison to be the ideas compared, and nothing more,
as if these had flowed together into one, would appear to me to
correspond almost exactly with an ironical theory of the same process,
and, indeed, of all the intellectual processes, proposed in our own
country,--not in the Essay on Human Understanding, but in a very
different work,--a theory which supposes comparison, or judgment, to be
only the _conflux_ of two ideas, in one _propositional canal_.
“Simple ideas are produced by the motion of the spirits in one simple
canal: when two of these canals disembogue themselves into one, they
make what we call a proposition: and when two of these propositional
channels empty themselves into a third, they form a syllogism, or a
ratiocination. Memory is performed in a distinct apartment of the
brain, made up of vessels similar, and like situated to the ideal,
propositional, and syllogistical vessels, in the primary parts of the
brain. After the same manner, it is easy to explain the other modes of
thinking; as also why some people think so wrong and perversely, which
proceeds from the bad configuration of those glands. Some, for example,
are born without the propositional or syllogistical canals; in others,
that reason ill, they are of unequal capacities; in dull fellows, of
too great a length, whereby the motion of the spirits is retarded; in
trifling geniuses, weak and small; in the over-refining spirits, too
much intorted and winding; and so of the rest.”[137]
In examining the system of Condillac, which must certainly be allowed
to bear a considerable resemblance to this system, I have instanced the
feeling of relation, in comparison, merely as being one of the simplest
examples which I could select. I might, with equal reason, have
instanced other states of mind; in particular, all the variety of our
emotions,--_astonishment_ or _desire_, for example, which are as little
sensations, in the philosophical meaning of the term, as they are fear
or sorrow. The feeling of pleasure, in all its degrees of vividness
or faintness, is a state of mind very different from that which
constitutes desire of the recurrence of its object; for, otherwise, the
desire would be itself the very gratification, which it supposes to be
absent. It is induced, indeed, by the remembrance of the pleasure; but
it is a consequence of the remembrance, not a part of it. It is like
that general activity of life, to which amid the mild breathings of
spring, the torpid animal awakes, that, in continual winter would have
slumbered forever in insensibility,--or, like the bud, which, without
warmth and moisture, never could have burst from the leafless stem; but
which is still, in itself, something very different from the sunshine
and the shower.
It seems to me not improbable, that the error of Condillac, and of the
other French metaphysicians, who have adopted his leading doctrine,
may have arisen in part, or, at least, may have escaped detection
more readily, from the ambiguous signification of the word _sentir_,
which is a verb originally, indeed, and strictly expressive of mere
sensation; but applied also, by a sort of metaphorical extension, to
our emotions and other affections of mind, that do not originate
directly like sensation, in an external cause. Though this mere
arbitrary word, however, may be applicable to a variety of feelings,
it does not, therefore, follow, that these are all modifications of
that small class of feelings, to which the word was, in its primary
sense, confined,--any more than from the still wider use, in our
language, of the term _feeling_, as applicable to all the states of
the mind, it would follow, that these are all modes of affection of
our sense of touch. Still, however, I cannot but think, that, if the
term _sentir_ had been of less vague application, a mind, so acute as
that of Condillac, could not have failed to discover, in the imaginary
proof which he offers of the intellectual transmutations of his simple
and universal principles, those unwarrantable assumptions, which, even
to humbler minds, seem so obvious, as scarcely to require for the
detection of them, many moments' thought.
These observations, I flatter myself, have shown sufficiently the error
of the system, which would convert all our feelings into _sensations_,
in some indescribable state of metamorphosis. The system, I confess,
appears to me a very striking example of an extreme, into which we are
more apt to fall, from the very false notion, that it is characteristic
of philosophic genius,--the extreme of excessive simplification,--which
is evil, not merely as being false in itself, but, I may remark also,
as being productive of the very confusion, to which simplicity is
supposed to be adverse. When we think of love, or hate, or fear, or
hope, as fundamentally and truly nothing more than affections of
external sense, we try to recognize the original sensations of smell,
taste, hearing, touch, and sight, which have been transformed into
them; but we try in vain to recognize what is essentially _different_,
and lose ourselves, therefore, in the attempt. We perceive every thing,
as it were, through a mist, which it is impossible for our vision
to penetrate, and we are at least as much perplexed by having only
one object to seek amid the multitude, as if we considered all the
phenomena of mind, without any classification whatever.
Before closing this slight review of the theory of transformed
sensations, I must remark, that, even though it were strictly true,
that all the feelings of the mind, if considered simply as feelings of
the mind, are mere sensations varied or transformed by some strange
internal process, undescribed and indescribable,--still, in conformity
with every just principle of philosophizing, it would be necessary to
form two classes of these mental phenomena, corresponding with the
primary classification which we have made of them. That the mind should
begin immediately to exist in a certain state, in consequence of the
presence of external objects, so that it would not, at that moment,
have existed in that state, but for the presence of the external
object, is a proof of one set of laws, which connect mind directly and
immediately with matter. That it should afterwards begin to exist in a
similar state, without the recurrence of any external cause whatever,
in consequence of its own susceptibilities only, is a proof of another
set of laws peculiar to the mind itself. The complete difference of
the cause, in the two instances, would justify, or rather require a
different arrangement of the effect; as, when the same motion of a
piece of iron is produced, at one time by impulse, at another by the
presence of a magnet, at another by its mere gravity, we consider the
motion, though itself the same in velocity and direction, as referable
to different physical powers. With the same states of mind variously
produced, we should still have to speak of external and internal mental
susceptibilities of affection, as, with the same motions of a piece of
iron variously produced, we speak of magnetism, impulse, gravitation.
The very celebrated system which I have now been combating,--a system,
which, by the universality of transmutation supposed in it, truly
deserves the name of _intellectual alchymy_,--may then be regarded
as exemplifying one species of error in arrangement,--the error of
a simplification beyond what the phenomena allow. This species of
error, in the philosophy of mind, has not prevailed very generally in
our country,--by far the more general tendency, especially on this
part of the island, being to _excessive amplification_. Instead of
wasting the labour of our analysis on elements that do not admit of
any further decomposition, we have given up this labour too soon, and
have classed, in many cases, as ultimate principles, what appear to me
to be susceptible of still nicer analysis. The phenomena of mind are,
accordingly, in the general technical language of the science, referred
by us to many powers, which I cannot but think, are not so different as
to furnish ground of ultimate distinction, but are truly only varieties
of a few more simple powers or susceptibilities.
While I am far from conceiving, therefore, with Condillac and his
followers, that all our states of mind are mere sensations modified or
transformed, since this belief appears to me to be a mere assumption
without even the slightest evidence in our consciousness, I am equally
unwilling to admit the variety of powers, of which Dr Reid speaks. In
one sense, indeed, the susceptibilities, or powers, which the mind
possesses, may be said, with propriety, to be still more numerous,--as
numerous as its feelings themselves,--for it must never be forgotten,
that what we term classes, are only words of our own invention,--that
the feelings which we arrange as belonging to one class, are truly
different in themselves, precisely in the same manner as the feelings
arranged in different classes are reciprocally different,--that each
feeling is, and must be, indicative of a peculiar susceptibility
of being affected in that particular manner,--and that the mind
has, therefore, truly, as many susceptibilities, as, in various
circumstances, it can have different feelings. But still, when we
arrange these different phenomena in certain classes, it is an error in
classification to give a new name to varieties that can be referred to
other parts of the division already made; and it is on this account I
object to the unnecessary amplification of our intellectual systems, in
arranging the phenomena of mind under so many powers as those of which
we are accustomed to speak.
Our various states or affections of the mind, I have already divided
into two classes, according to the nature of the circumstances which
precede them,--the _External_ and the _Internal_,--and this latter
class into two orders,--our _Intellectual States of Mind_, and our
_Emotions_. It is with the intellectual phenomena that we are at
present concerned; and this order I would arrange under two generic
capacities, that appear to me to comprehend or exhaust the phenomena
of the order. The whole order, as composed of feelings, which arise
immediately, in consequence of certain former feelings of the mind,
may be technically termed, in reference to these feelings which have
induced them, Suggestions; but, in the suggested feelings themselves,
there is one striking difference. If we analyse our trains of
intellectual thought exclusively of the _Emotions_ which may coexist or
mingle with them, and of sensations that may be accidentally excited
by external objects, we shall find them to be composed of two very
distinct sets of feelings,--one set of which are mere conceptions or
images of the past, that rise, image after image, in regular sequence,
but simply in succession, without any feeling of relation necessarily
involved,--while the perceptions of relation, in the various objects
of our thought, form another set of feelings, of course as various as
the relations perceived. Conceptions and relations,--it is with these,
and with these alone, that we are intellectually conversant. There is
thus an evident ground for the arrangement of the internal suggestions,
that form our trains of thought, under two heads, according as the
feeling excited directly by some former feeling, may be either a simple
conception, in its turn, perhaps, giving place to some other conception
as transient; or may be the feeling of a relation which two or more
objects of our thought are considered by us as bearing to each other.
There is, in short, in the mind, a capacity of _association_; or as,
for reasons afterwards to be stated, I would rather term it,--the
capacity of _Simple Suggestion_,--by which feelings, formerly existing,
are revived, in consequence of the mere existence of other feelings,
as there is also a capacity of feeling resemblance, difference,
proportion, or relation in general, when two or more external
objects, or two or more feelings of the mind itself, are considered
by us,--which mental capacity in distinction from the former, I would
term the capacity of _Relative Suggestion_; and of these simple and
relative suggestions, our whole intellectual trains of thought are
composed. As I am no lover of new phrases, when the old can be used
without danger of mistake, I would very willingly, substitute for
the phrase relative suggestion, the term _comparison_, which is more
familiar, and expresses very nearly the same meaning. But comparison,
though it involve the feeling of relation, seems to me also to imply
a voluntary seeking for some relation, which is far from necessary to
the mere internal suggestion or feeling of the relation itself. The
_resemblance_ of two objects strikes me, indeed, when I am studiously
comparing them; but it strikes me also, with not less force, on many
other occasions, when I had not previously been forming the slightest
intentional comparison. I prefer, therefore, a term which is applicable
alike to both cases, when a relation is sought, and when it occurs,
without any search or desire of finding it.
The term _judgment_, in its strict philosophic sense, as the mere
perception of relation, is more exactly synonymous with the phrase
which I have employed, and might have been substituted with safety,
if the vulgar use of the term, in many vague significations, had not
given some degree of indistinctness even to the philosophical use of
it. I may remark, too, that in our works of logic and intellectual
physiology, _judgment_ and _reasoning_ are usually discussed
separately, as if there were some essential difference of their nature;
and, therefore, since I include them both, in the relative suggestions
of which I shall afterwards have to treat, it seems advisable, not to
employ for the whole, a name which is already appropriated, and very
generally limited, to a part. As the rise in the mind of the feeling
of relation, from the mere perception or conception of objects, is,
however, what I mean to denote by the phrase _Relative Suggestion_;
and as _judgment_, in its strictest sense, is nothing more than this
feeling of relation,--of any two or more objects, considered by us
together,--I shall make no scruple, to use the shorter and more
familiar term, as _synonymous_, when there can be no danger of its
being misunderstood.
The intellectual states of the mind, then, to give a brief
illustration of my division, I consider as all referable to two
generic susceptibilities,--those of _Simple Suggestion_ and _Relative
Suggestion_. Our perception or conception of one object excites,
of itself, and without any known cause, external to the mind, the
conception of some other object, as when the mere sound of our friend's
name, suggests to us the conception of our friend himself,--in which
case, the conception of our friend, which follows the perception of the
sound, involves no feeling of any common property, with the sound which
excites it, but is precisely the same state of mind, which might have
been induced, by various other previous circumstances, by the sight of
the chair on which he sat,--of the book which he read to us,--of the
landscape which he painted. This is _Simple Suggestion_.
But, together with this capacity of Simple Suggestion, by which
conception after conception arises in the mind,--precisely in the same
manner, and in the same state, as each might have formed a part of
other trains, and in which the particular state of mind that arises by
suggestion does not necessarily involve any consideration of the state
of mind which preceded it,--there is a suggestion of a very different
sort, which, in every case, involves the consideration, not of one
phenomenon of mind, but of two or more phenomena, and which constitutes
the feeling of agreement, disagreement, or relation of some sort. I
perceive, for example, a horse and a sheep at the same moment. The
perception of the two is followed by that different state of mind which
constitutes the feeling of their agreement in certain respects, or of
their disagreement in certain other respects. I think of the square of
the hypotenuse of a rightangled triangle, and of the squares of the
two other sides;--I feel the relation of equality. I see a dramatic
representation; I listen to the cold conceits which the author of the
tragedy, in his omnipotent command over warriors and lovers of his own
creation, gives to his hero, in his most impassioned situations;--I am
instantly struck with their unsuitableness to the character and the
circumstances. All the intellectual successions of feeling, in these
cases, which constitute the perception of relation, differ from the
results of simple suggestion in necessarily involving the consideration
of two or more objects or affections of mind that immediately preceded
them. I may think of my friend, in the case of simple suggestion,--that
is to say, my mind may exist in the state which constitutes the
conception of my friend, without that previous state which constitutes
the perception of the sound of his name; for the conception of him
may be suggested by various objects and remembrances. But I cannot,
in the cases of relative suggestion, think of the resemblance of a
horse and a sheep; of the proportion of the squares of the sides of a
right-angled triangle; or of the want of the truth of nature in the
expressions of a dramatic hero, without those previous states of mind,
which constitute the conceptions of a horse and a sheep--of the sides
of the triangle,--or of the language of the warrior or lover, and the
circumstances of triumph, or hope, or despair, in which he is exhibited
to us by the creative artist.
With these two capacities of suggested feelings, simple and relative,
which are all that truly belong to the class of intellectual states
of the mind,--various emotions may concur, particularly that most
general of all emotions, the emotion of desire, in some one or other
of its various forms. According as this desire does or does not
concur with them, the intellectual states themselves appear to be
different; and, by those who do not make the necessary analysis, are
supposed, therefore, to be indicative of different powers. By simple
suggestion, the images of things, persons, events, pass in strange
and rapid succession; and a variety of names, expressive of different
powers,--conception, association, memory,--have been given to this one
simple law of our intellectual nature. But, when we _wish_ to remember
some object; that is to say, when we wish our mind to be affected
in that particular manner, which constitutes the conception of a
particular thing, or person, or event,--or when we wish to combine new
images, in some picture of fancy, this coexistence of desire, with the
simple course of suggestion, which continues still to follow its own
laws, as much as when no desire existed with it,--seems to us to render
the suggestion itself different; and recollection, and imagination or
fancy, which are truly, as we shall afterwards find, nothing more than
the union of the suggested conceptions, with certain specific permanent
desires, are to us, as it were, distinct additional powers of our mind,
and are so arranged in the systems of philosophers, who have not made
the very simple analysis, which alone seems to me to be necessary for a
more precise arrangement.
In like manner, those suggestions of another class, which constitute
our notions of proportion, resemblance, difference, and all the variety
of relations, may, as I have already remarked, arise, when we have had
no previous desire of tracing the relations, or may arise _after_ that
previous desire. But, when the feelings of relation seem to us to arise
spontaneously, they are not in themselves, different from the feelings
of relation, that arise, in our intentional comparisons or judgments,
in the longest series of ratiocination. Of such ratiocination, they are
truly the most important elements. The permanent desire of discovering
something unknown, or of establishing, or confuting, or illustrating,
some point of belief or conjecture, may coexist, indeed, with the
continued series of relations that are felt, but does not alter the
nature of that law, by which these judgments, or relative suggestions,
succeed each other.
There is no power to be found, but only the union of certain
intellectual states of the mind, with certain desires,--a species of
combination not more wonderful in itself, than any other complex mental
state, as when we, at the same moment, see and smell a rose,--or listen
to the voice of a friend, who has been long absent from us, and see,
at the same moment, that face of affection, which is again giving
confidence to our heart, and gladness to our very eyes.
Our intellectual states of mind, then, are either those resemblances
of past affections of the mind, which arise by _simple_ suggestion,
or those feelings of relation, which arise by what I have termed
_relative_ suggestions,--the one set resulting, indeed, from some prior
states of the mind, but not involving necessarily, any consideration of
these previous states of mind, which suggested them,--the other set,
necessarily, involving the consideration of two or more objects, or two
or more affections of mind, as subjects of the relation which is felt.
How readily all the intellectual states of mind, which are commonly
ascribed to a variety of powers, may be reduced to those two, will
appear more clearly, after we have considered and illustrated the
phenomena of each set.