set forth. To the logician, the past, however recent, is divided by
a deep gulf from the present: the idea and the actuality can never
be interchanged. It is not so with the mind following its native
disposition. I have a present sensation of thirst; in that present
consciousness, I have the highest attainable assurance; my action
upon it is unhesitating and complete. Let that sensation, however,
pass away for one minute, and there remains only the idea which, as
a mere idea, by virtue of its recency, may be at its maximum
strength. The point now to be explained is, why I believe not merely
that I have the idea, which as a fact of present consciousness I am
entitled to believe to the utmost, but that the idea was lately a
full actuality as much as is my present state of satisfied
sensation. The explanation seems to be, that we really make no
radical difference between a present and a proximate past; {400} the
march of the mind is to and fro, into the past and the future, with
the same tendency to act out both, as to act out the present,
assuming always the absence of a positive check or break. Such is
the inveterate persistence of the natural activity, that the belief
in the thirst when present (shown by action in accordance therewith)
has a continuing efficacy second only to the belief in a still
present state. At the moment of actual thirst, I, in the absence of
corrective influences, (and to some degree in spite of these), would
be disposed to believe that I always was, and always would be
thirsty. The satisfaction that has followed reduces that belief to a
fraction of its former state; and my utmost licence of assumption
would be, (in the absence of contradictory beliefs) that all my past
has been one thirst. The fact is, that, in these moments, when I
give full licence to the sway of the idea, by voluntarily remitting
attention to my new experience, that idea may swell out into a pitch
of mental occupation hardly distinguishable from the real presence;
in which case, my past self and my present self are, as it were, one
and indivisible; they are freely interchanged; the actual
consciousness compounds and contains them both.
Going another step backward, let us consider the state prior to the
thirst; say a consciousness of heat and muscular fatigue. What proof
have I that these penultimate states were present in continuity of
time and in immediate precedence to the thirst, and are not vagaries
of imagination, nor drawn from a remote past, accidentally revived?
There seems no other evidence than that already given regarding the
proximate state. In surrendering our mind to the idea still
remaining, and so imparting a momentary quasi-reality to the state,
we have an experience possessing the characteristic features of
present reality.
Another consideration has to be mentioned. The state of transition
from reality to reality is a distinct and unmistakeable experience.
The transition from a present sensation of thirst to a present
sensation of satisfied thirst is a march of its own kind--unique and
explicit. There are in it attendant {401} circumstances, not to be
confounded with the transition from a present to a past across a
break. The recent and proximate state of thirst has a mode of
continuity, a setting in contact with the present, such as did not
belong to the thirst of yesterday, and still less belongs to the
idea of the narrated thirst of another person. No sensation ever
comes to us alone, or without a group of collaterals; and the
collaterals of the formerly actual, and of the ideal never an
actual, are wholly different. (This point has been well illustrated
in the text, Chap. X. on Memory). The peculiar link whereby a
present actual passes out of actuality into proximate actuality,
when it is barely deprived of existence in the real, is a fact that
remains and attaches to everything that has been actual; and the
unbroken sequence of these is our past life of actuality, clearly
marked out from every aggregate of ideas indiscriminately culled and
united in a whole of imagination. This last process has its own
distinctive collaterals; it is accompanied by numerous shocks of
agreement in difference, under the law of similarity; but we do not
confound these or other accompaniments with the gliding movement of
the mind over the chronological past. Thus to take the extreme
instance. We can assume another person's mental state (to a certain
degree); and yet we do not fuse that with our own identity. There is
a broad line of demarcation between each one's experience that they
term their actual, and the assumption of a second person's
experience, say of thirst, of fear, of curiosity. Our own past has
continuity and fusion, in itself, and a peculiar set of
circumstantial surroundings; in general, too, it is easy to
remember. The other person's experience is received through a
machinery of objective signs, laboriously interpreted, and not
realized with the collaterals of an experience of our own; it is
shorn of all the beams of our own personality, whether in the
present or in the recollected past.
The distinction now drawn, (substantially what is exemplified at
length in the chapter referred to,) is confirmed by what happens on
occasions when memory and imagination are confounded. When a fact is
long past, and all but forgotten, {402} the oblivion overtakes the
evidentiary collaterals, the marks of continuity that link together
what has been one actual state to what has been another actual
state. I remember having had the idea or purpose to say or to do
something on a certain occasion; but I do not remember whether
I actually did or said the thing. The memory of the occasion is
incomplete; the links are snapped that connect that idea with my
remembered acting at the time referred to; it is not in its place in
that authenticated series; and it is not associated with the
collateral circumstances that always attend an actual transaction.
On the other hand, as is well remarked in the chapter quoted,
imagination may simulate remembered reality, when there is wanting
the real memory that would people the occasion with authentic
circumstances, and when the imagination has been excited and
exercised so as to include in its compass the collaterals that go
with an experience in the actual.--_B._]
[Editor's footnote 108: The analysis of Belief presented in this
chapter, brings out the conclusion that all cases of Belief are
simply cases of indissoluble association: that there is no generic
distinction, but only a difference in the strength of the
association, between a case of belief and a case of mere
imagination: that to believe a succession or coexistence between two
facts is only to have the ideas of the two facts so strongly and
closely associated, that we cannot help having the one idea when we
have the other.
If this can be proved, it is the greatest of all the triumphs of the
Association Psychology. To first appearance, no two things can be
more distinct than thinking of two things together, and believing
that they are joined together in the outward world. Nevertheless,
that the latter state of mind is only an extreme case of the former,
is, as we see, the deliberate doctrine of the author of the
Analysis; and it has also in its favour the high psychological
authority of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Mr. Bain, in the preceding note,
as well as in his systematic work, looks at the phenomenon from
another side, and pronounces that what constitutes Belief is the
power which an {403} idea has obtained over the Will. It is well
known and understood that a mere idea may take such possession of
the mind as to exercise an irresistible control over the active
faculties, even independently of Volition, and sometimes in
opposition to it. This, which Mr. Bain calls the power of a Fixed
Idea, is exemplified in the cases of what is called fascination: the
impulse which a person looking from a precipice sometimes feels to
throw himself down it; and the cases of crimes said to have been
committed by persons who abhor them, because that very horror has
filled their minds with an intense and irrepressible idea of the
act. Since an idea is sometimes able to overpower volition, it is no
wonder that an idea should determine volition; as it does whenever
we, under the influence of the idea of a pleasure or of a pain, will
that which obtains for us the pleasure or averts the pain. In this
voluntary action, our conduct is grounded upon a relation between
means and an end; (that is, upon a constant conjunction of facts in
the way of causation, ultimately resolvable into a case of
resemblance and contiguity): in common and unanalytical language,
upon certain laws of nature on which we rely. Our reliance is the
consequence of an association formed in our minds between the
supposed cause and its effect, resulting either from personal
experience of their conjunction, from the teachings of other people,
or from accidental appearances. Now, according to Mr. Bain, when
this association between the means and the end, the end calling up
the idea of the means, arrives at the point of giving to the idea
thus called up a command over the Will, it constitutes Belief. We
believe a thing, when we are ready to act on the faith of it; to
face the practical consequences of taking it for granted: and
therein lies the distinction between believing two facts to be
conjoined, and merely thinking of them together. Thus far Mr. Bain:
and with this I fully agree. But something is still wanting to the
completeness of the analysis. The theory as stated, distinguishes
two antecedents, by a difference not between themselves, but between
their consequents. But when the consequents differ, the antecedents
cannot be the same. An association {404} of ideas is or is not a
Belief, according as it has or has not the power of leading us to
voluntary action: this is undeniable: but when there is a difference
in the effects there must be a difference in the cause: the
association which leads to action must be, in some respect or other,
different from that which stops at thought. The question, therefore,
raised, and, as they think, resolved, by the author of the Analysis
and by Mr. Spencer, still demands an answer. Does the difference
between the two cases consist in this, that in the one case the
association is dissoluble, in the other it is so much more closely
riveted, by repetition, or by the intensity of the associated
feelings, as to be no longer dissoluble? This is the question we are
compelled to face.
I.
In the first place, then, it may be said--If Belief consisted in an
indissoluble association, Belief itself would be indissoluble. An
opinion once formed could never afterwards be destroyed or changed.
This objection is good against the _word_ indissoluble. But those
who maintain the theory do not mean by an indissoluble association,
one which nothing that can be conceived to happen could possibly
dissolve. All our associations of ideas would probably be
dissoluble, if experience presented to us the associated facts
separate from one another. If we have any associations which are, in
practice, indissoluble, it can only be because the conditions of our
existence deny to us the experiences which would be capable of
dissolving them. What the author of the Analysis means by
indissoluble associations, are those which we cannot, by any mental
effort, at present overcome. If two ideas are, at the present time,
so closely associated in our minds, that neither any effort of our
own, nor anything else which can happen, can enable us now to have
the one without its instantly raising up the other, the association
is, in the author's sense of the term, indissoluble. There would be
less risk of misunderstanding if we were to discard the word
indissoluble, and confine ourselves to the expression which the
author employs as its equivalent, inseparable. This I will
henceforth do, and {405} we will now enquire whether Belief is
nothing but an inseparable association.
In favour of this supposition there is the striking fact, that an
inseparable association very often suffices to command belief. There
are innumerable cases of Belief for which no cause can be assigned,
except that something has created so strong an association between
two ideas that the person cannot separate them in thought. The
author has given a large assortment of such cases, and has made them
tell with great force in support of his theory. Locke, as the author
mentions, had already seen, that this is one of the commonest and
most fertile sources of erroneous thought; deserving to be placed
high in any enumeration of Fallacies. When two things have long been
habitually thought of together, and never apart, until the
association between the ideas has become so strong that we have
great difficulty, or cannot succeed at all, in separating them,
there is a strong tendency to believe that the facts are conjoined
in reality; and when the association is closer still, that their
conjunction is what is called Necessary. Most of the schools of
philosophy, both past and present, are so much under the influence
of this tendency, as not only to justify it in principle, but to
elect it into a Law of Things. The majority of metaphysicians have
maintained, and even now maintain, that there are things which, by
the laws of intelligence, cannot be separated in thought, and that
these things are not only always united in fact, but united by
necessity: and, again, other things, which cannot be united in
thought--which cannot be thought of together, and that these not
only never do, but it is impossible they ever should, coexist in
fact. These supposed necessities are the very foundation of the
Transcendental schools of metaphysics, of the Common Sense school,
and many others which have not received distinctive names. These are
facts in human nature and human history very favourable to the
supposition that Belief is but an inseparable association, or at all
events that an inseparable association suffices to create Belief.
On the contrary side of the question it may be urged, that {406} the
inseparable associations which are so often found to generate
Beliefs, do not generate them in everybody. Analytical and
philosophical minds often escape from them, and resist the tendency
to believe in an objective conjunction between facts merely because
they are unable to separate the ideas. The author's typical example
of an inseparable association, (and there can be none more suited to
the purpose,) is the association between sensations of colour and
the tangible magnitudes, figures, and distances, of which they are
signs, and which are so completely merged with them into one single
impression, that we believe we see distance, extension, and figure,
though all we really see is the optical effects which accompany
them, all the rest being a rapid interpretation of natural signs.
The generality of mankind, no doubt, and all men before they have
studied the subject, believe what the author says they do; but a
great majority of those who have studied the subject believe
otherwise: they believe that a large portion of the facts which we
seem to see, we do not really see, but instantaneously infer. Yet
the association remains inseparable in these scientific thinkers as
in others: the retinal picture suggests to them the real magnitude,
in the same irresistible manner as it does to other people. To take
another of the author's examples: when we look at a distant
terrestrial object through a telescope, it appears nearer; if we
reverse the telescope it appears further off. The signs by which we
judge of distance from us, here mislead, because those signs are
found in conjunction with real distances widely different from those
with which they coexist in our ordinary experience. The association,
however, persists, and is irresistible, in one person as much as in
another; for every one recognises that the object, thus looked at,
_seems_ nearer, or farther off, than we know it to be. But does this
ever make any of us, except perhaps an inexperienced child,
_believe_ that the object is at the distance at which we seem to see
it? The inseparable association, though so persistent and powerful
as to create in everybody an optical illusion, creates no
_de_lusion, but leaves our belief as conformable to the realities of
fact as if no such illusive appearance had presented {407} itself.
Cases similar to this are so frequent, that cautious and thoughtful
minds, enlightened by experience on the misleading character of
inseparable associations, learn to distrust them, and do not, even
by a first impulse, believe a connexion in fact because there is one
in thought, but wait for evidence.
Following up the same objection, it may be said that if belief is
only an inseparable association, belief is a matter of habit and
accident, and not of reason. Assuredly an association, however
close, between two ideas, is not a sufficient _ground_ of belief; is
not _evidence_ that the corresponding facts are united in external
nature. The theory seems to annihilate all distinction between the
belief of the wise, which is regulated by evidence, and conforms to
the real successions and coexistences of the facts of the universe,
and the belief of fools, which is mechanically produced by any
accidental association that suggests the idea of a succession or
coexistence to the mind: a belief aptly characterized by the popular
expression, believing a thing because they have taken it into their
heads.
Indeed, the author of the Analysis is compelled by his theory to
affirm that we actually believe in accordance with the misleading
associations which generate what are commonly called illusions of
sense. He not only says that we believe we see figure and
distance--which the great majority of psychologists since Berkeley
do not believe; but he says, that in the case of ventriloquy "we
cannot help believing" that the sound proceeds from the place, of
which the ventriloquist imitates the effect; that the sound of bells
opposed by the wind, not only appears farther off, but is believed
to come from farther off, although we may know the exact distance
from which it comes; that "in passing on board ship, another ship at
sea, we _believe_ that she has all the motion, we none:" nay even,
that when we have turned ourselves round with velocity several
times, "we believe that the world is turning round." Surely it is
more true to say, as people generally do say, "the world _seems_ to
us to turn round." To me these cases appear so many experimental
proofs, that the tendency of an inseparable association to generate
belief, even when that {408} tendency is fully effectual in creating
the irresistible appearance of a state of things that does not
really exist, may yet be impotent against reason, that is, against
preponderant evidence.
In defence of these paradoxes, let us now consider what the author
of the Analysis might say. One thing he would certainly say: that
the belief he affirms to exist in these cases of illusion, is but a
momentary one; with which the belief entertained at all other times
may be at variance. In the case, for instance, of those who, from an
early association formed between darkness and ghosts, feel terror in
the dark though they have a confirmed disbelief in ghosts, the
author's opinion is that there is a temporary belief, at the moment
when the terror is felt. This was also the opinion of Dugald
Stewart: and the agreement (by no means a solitary one) between two
thinkers of such opposite tendencies, reminds one of the saying
"Quand un Français et un Anglais sont d'accord, il faut bien qu'ils
aient raison." Yet the author seems to adopt this notion not from
observation of the case, but from an antecedent opinion that "dread
implies belief, and an uncontrollable belief," which, he says, "we
need not stay to prove." It is to be wished, in this case, that he
had stayed to prove it: for it is harder to prove than he thought.
The emotion of fear, the physical effect on the nervous system known
by that name, may be excited, and I believe often is excited, simply
by terrific imaginations. That these imaginations are, even for a
moment, mistaken for menacing realities, may be true, but ought not
to be assumed without proof. The circumstance most in its favour
(one not forgotten by the author) is that in dreams, to which may be
added hallucinations, frightful ideas are really mistaken for
terrible facts. But dreams are states in which all other sensible
ideas are mistaken for outward facts. Yet sensations and ideas are
intrinsically different, and it is not the normal state of the human
mind to confound the one with the other.
Besides, this supposition of a momentary belief in ghosts breaking
in upon and interrupting an habitual and permanent belief that there
are no ghosts, jars considerably with the {409} doctrine it is
brought to support, that belief is an inseparable association.
According to that doctrine, here are two inseparable associations,
which yet are so far from exclusively possessing the mind, that they
alternate with one another, each Inseparable implying the separation
of the other Inseparable. The association of darkness with the
absence of ghosts must be anything but inseparable, if there only
needs the presence of darkness to revive the contrary association.
Yet an association so very much short of inseparable, is
accompanied, at least in the absence of darkness, by a full belief.
Darkness is in this case associated with two incompatible ideas, the
idea of ghosts and that of their absence, but with neither of them
inseparably, and in consequence the two associations alternately
prevail, as the surrounding circumstances favour the one or the
other; agreeably to the laws of Compound Association laid down with
great perspicuity and reach of thought by Mr. Bain in his systematic
treatise.
To the argument, that the inseparable associations which create
optical and other illusions, do not, when opposed by reason,
generate the false belief, the author's answer would probably be
some such as the following. When the rational thinker succeeds in
resisting the belief, he does so by more or less completely
overcoming the inseparableness of the association. Associations may
be conquered by the formation of counter-associations. Mankind had
formerly an inseparable association between sunset and the motion of
the sun, and this in separable association compelled them to believe
that in the phenomenon of sunset the sun moves and the earth is at
rest. But Copernicus, Galileo, and after them, all astronomers,
found evidence, that the earth moves and the sun is at rest: in
other words, certain experiences, and certain reasonings from those
experiences, took place in their minds, the tendency of which was to
associate sunset with the ideas of the earth in motion and the sun
at rest. This was a counter-association, which could not coexist, at
least at the same instant, with the previous association connecting
sunset with the sun in motion and the earth at rest. But for a long
time the new {410} associating influences could not be powerful
enough to get the better of the old association, and change the
belief which it implied. A belief which has become habitual, is
seldom overcome but by a slow process. However, the experiences and
mental processes that tended to form the new association still went
on; there was a conflict between the old association and the causes
which tended to produce a new one; until, by the long continuance
and frequent repetition of those causes, the old association,
gradually undermined, ceased to be inseparable, and it became
possible to associate the idea of sunset with that of the earth
moving and the sun at rest; whereby the previous idea of the sun
moving and the earth at rest was excluded for the time, and as the
new association grew in strength, was at last thrown out altogether.
The argument should go on to say that after a still further
prolongation of the new experiences and reasonings, the old
association became impossible and the new one inseparable; for,
until it became inseparable, there could, according to the theory,
be no belief. And this, in truth, does sometimes happen. There are
instances in the history of science, even down to the present day,
in which something which was once believed to be impossible, and its
opposite to be necessary, was first seen to be possible, next to be
true, and finally came to be considered as necessarily true, and its
opposite (once deemed necessary) as impossible, and even
inconceivable; insomuch that it is thought by some that what was
reputed an impossibility, might have been known to be a necessity.
In such cases, the quality of inseparableness has passed, in those
minds at least, from the old association to the new one. But in much
the greatest number of cases the change does not proceed so far, and
both associations remain equally possible. The case which furnished
our last instance is an example. Astronomers, and all educated
persons, now associate sunset with motion confined to the earth, and
firmly believe this to be what really takes place; but they have not
formed this association with such exclusiveness and intensity as to
have become unable to associate sunset with motion of the sun. On
the contrary, the visible appearance still suggests {411} motion of
the sun, and many people, though aware of the truth, find that they
cannot by any effort make themselves see sunset any otherwise than
as the sinking of the sun below the earth. My own experience is
different: I find that I can represent the phenomenon to myself in
either light; I can, according to the manner in which I direct my
thoughts, see sunset either as the earth tilting above the sun, or
as the sun dipping below the earth: in the same manner as when a
railway train in motion passes another at rest, we are able, if we
prevent our eyes from resting on any third object, to imagine the
motion as being either in the one train or in the other. How, then,
can it be said that there is an inseparable association of sunset
with the one mode of representation, and a consequent inability to
associate it with the other? It is associated with both, and the one
of the two associations which is nearest to being inseparable is
that which belief does not accompany. The difference between
different people in the ability to represent to themselves the
phenomenon under either aspect, depends rather on the degree of
exercise which they have given to their imagination in trying to
frame mental pictures conformable to the two hypotheses, than upon
those considerations of reason and evidence which yet may determine
their belief.
The question still remains, what is there which exists in the
hypothesis believed, and does not exist in the hypothesis rejected,
when we have associations which enable our imagination to represent
the facts agreeably to either hypothesis? In other words, what is
Belief?
I think it must be admitted, that when we can represent to ourselves
in imagination either of two conflicting suppositions, one of which
we believe, and disbelieve the other, neither of the associations
can be inseparable; and there must therefore be in the fact of
Belief, which exists in only one of the two cases, something for
which inseparable association does not account. We seem to have
again come up, on a different side, to the difficulty which we felt
in the discussion of Memory, in accounting for the distinction
between a fact remembered, and the same fact imagined. There is a
close parallelism between {412} the two problems. In both, we have
the difference between a fact and a representation in imagination;
between a sensation, or combination of sensations, and an idea, or
combination of ideas. This difference we all accept as an ultimate
fact. But the difficulty is this. Let me first state it as it
presents itself in the case of Memory. Having in our mind a certain
combination of ideas, in a group or a train, accompanying or
succeeding one another; what is it which, in one case, makes us
recognize this group or train as representing a group or train of
the corresponding sensations, remembered as having been actually
felt by us, while in another case we are aware that the sensations
have never occurred to us in a group or train corresponding to that
in which we are now having the ideas? This is the problem of Memory.
Let me now state the problem of Belief, when the belief is not a
case of memory. Here also we have ideas connected in a certain order
in our own mind, which makes us think of a corresponding order among
the sensations, and we believe that this similar combination of the
sensations is a real fact: _i.e._, whether we ever felt it or not,
we confidently expect that we should feel it under certain given
conditions. In Memory, we believe that the realities in Nature, the
sensations and combinations of sensations presented to us from
without, _have_ occurred to us in an order which agrees with that in
which we are representing them to ourselves in thought: in those
cases of Belief which are not cases of Memory, we believe, not that
they have occurred, but that they would have occurred, or would
occur, in that order.
What is it that takes place in us, when we recognize that there is
this agreement between the order of our ideas and the order in which
we either had or might have had the sensations which correspond to
them--that the order of the ideas represents a similar order either
in our actual sensations, or in those which, under some given
circumstances, we should have reason to expect? What, in short, is
the difference _to our minds_ between thinking of a reality, and
representing to ourselves an imaginary picture? I confess that I can
perceive no escape from the opinion that the distinction is ultimate
and primordial. {413} There is no more difficulty in holding it to
be so, than in holding the difference between a sensation and an
idea to be primordial. It seems almost another aspect of the same
difference. The author himself says, in the chapter on Memory, that,
a sensation and an idea being different, it is to be expected that
the remembrance of having had a sensation should be different from
the remembrance of having had an idea, and that this is a sufficient
explanation of our distinguishing them. If this, then, is an
original distinction, why should not the distinction be original
between the remembrance of having had a sensation, and the actually
having an idea (which is the difference between Memory and
Imagination); and between the expectation of having a sensation, and
the actually having an idea (which is the difference between
Belief and Imagination)? Grant these differences, and there is
nothing further to explain in the phenomenon of Belief. For every
belief is either the memory of having had a sensation (or other
feeling), or the expectation that we should have the sensation or
feeling in some given state of circumstances, if that state of
circumstances could come to be realized.
II.
That all belief is either Memory or Expectation, will be clearly
seen if we run over all the different objects of Belief. The author
has already done so, in order to establish his theory; and it is now
necessary that we should do the same.
The objects of Belief are enumerated by the author in the following
terms:--1. Events, real existences. 2. Testimony. 3. The truth of
propositions. He intended this merely as a rough grouping,
sufficient for the purpose if it includes everything: for it is
evident that the divisions overlap one another, and it will be seen
presently that the last two are but cases of the first.
Belief in events he further divides into belief in present events,
in past events, and in future events. Belief in present events he
subdivides into belief in immediate existences present to my senses,
and belief in immediate existences not present {414} to my senses.
We see by this that he recognises no difference, in a metaphysical
sense, between existences and events, because he regards, with
reason, objects as merely the supposed antecedents of events. The
distinction, however, requires to be kept up, being no other than
the fundamental difference between simultaneousness, and succession
or change.
Belief in immediate existences present to my senses, is either
belief in my sensations, or belief in external objects. Believing
that I feel what I am at this moment feeling, is, as the author
says, only another name for having the feeling; with the idea,
however, of Myself, associated with it; of which hereafter.
The author goes on to analyse Belief in external objects present to
our senses; and he resolves it into a present sensation, united by
an irresistible association with the numerous other sensations which
we are accustomed to receive in conjunction with it. The Object is
thus to be understood as a complex idea, compounded of the ideas of
various sensations which we have, and of a far greater number of
sensations which we should expect to have if certain contingencies
were realized. In other words, our idea of an object is an idea of a
group of possibilities of sensation, some of which we believe we can
realize at pleasure, while the remainder would be realized if
certain conditions took place, on which, by the laws of nature, they
are dependent. As thus explained, belief in the existence of a
physical object, is belief in the occurrence of certain sensations,
contingently on certain previous conditions. This is a state of mind
closely allied to Expectation of sensations. For--though we use the
name Expectation only with reference to the future, and even to the
probable future--our state of mind in respect to what _may_ be
future, and even to what _might have been_ future, is of the same
general nature, and depends on the same principles, as Expectation.
I believe that a certain event will positively happen, because the
known conditions which always accompany it in experience have
already taken place. I believe that another event will certainly
happen _if_ the known conditions which always accompany it take
place, and those conditions I can produce when I please. I believe
{415} that a third event will happen if its conditions take place,
but I must wait for those conditions; I cannot realize them at
pleasure, and may never realize them at all. The first of these
three cases is positive expectation, the other two are conditional
expectation. A fourth case is my belief that the event would have
happened at any former time if the conditions had taken place at
that time. It is not consonant to usage to call this Expectation,
but, considered as a case of belief, there is no essential
difference between it and the third case. My belief that I should
have heard Cicero had I been present in the Forum, and my belief
that I shall hear Mr. Gladstone if I am present in the House of
Commons, can nowise be regarded as essentially different phenomena.
The one we call Expectation, the other not, but the mental principle
operative in both these cases of belief is the same.
The author goes on to say, that the belief that we should have the
sensations if certain conditions were realized, that is, if we had
certain other sensations, is merely an inseparable association of
the two sets of sensations with one another, and their inseparable
union with the idea of ourselves as having them. But I confess it
seems to me that all this may exist in a case of simple imagination.
The author would himself admit that the complex idea of the object,
in all its fulness, may be in the mind without belief. What remains
is its association with the idea of ourselves as percipients. But
this also, I cannot but think, we may have in the case of an
imaginary scene, when we by no means believe that any corresponding
reality exists. Does the idea of our own personality never enter
into the pictures in our imagination? Are we not ourselves present
in the scenes which we conjure up in our minds? I apprehend we are
as constantly present in them, and as conscious of our presence, as
we are in contemplating a real prospect. In either case the vivacity
of the other impressions eclipses, for the most part, the thought of
ourselves as spectators, but not more so in the imaginary, than in
the real, spectacle.
It appears to me, then, that to account for belief in external {416}
objects, we must postulate Expectation; and since all our
expectations, whether positive or contingent, are a consequence of
our Memory of the past (as distinguished from a representation in
fancy), we must also postulate Memory. The distinction between a
mere combination of ideas in thought, and one which recals to us a
combination of sensations as actually experienced, always returns on
our hands as an ultimate postulate.
The author proceeds to shew how this idea of a mere group of
sensations, actual or contingent, becomes knit up with an idea of a
permanent Something, lying, as it were, under these sensations, and
causing them; this further enlargement of the complex idea taking
place through the intimate, or, as he calls it, inseparable
association, generated by experience, which makes us unable to
imagine any phenomenon as beginning to exist without something
anterior to it which causes it. This explanation, seems to me quite
correct as far as it goes; but, while it accounts for the difficulty
we have in not ascribing our sensations to some cause or other, it
does not explain why we accept, as in fact we do, the group itself
as the cause. I have endeavoured to clear up this difficulty
elsewhere (Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy), and in
preference to going over the ground a second time, I subjoin, at the
end of the volume, the chapter containing the explanation. That
chapter supplies all that appears to me to be further necessary on
the subject of belief in outward objects; which is thus shewn to be
a case of Conditional Expectation.
It is unnecessary to follow the author into the minute consideration
of Belief in the existence of objects not present since the
explanation already given equally applies to them. My belief in the
present existence of St. Paul's is correctly set forth by the author
as consisting of the following elements: I believe that I have seen
St. Paul's: I believe that I shall see St. Paul's, when I am again
in St. Paul's Churchyard: I believe that I should see St. Paul's, if
I were in St. Paul's Churchyard at this instant. All this, as he
justly remarks, is Memory or Expectation. And this, or some part of
this, is {417} the whole of what is in any case meant by belief in
the real existence of an external object. The author adds, I also
believe that if any creature whose senses are analogous to my own,
is now in St. Paul's Churchyard, it has the present sensation of
that edifice. But this belief is not necessary to my belief in the
continued existence of St. Paul's. For that, it suffices that
I believe I should myself see it. My belief that other creatures
would do so, is part of my belief in the real existence of other
creatures like myself; which is no more mysterious, than our belief
in the real existence of any other objects some of whose properties
rest not on direct sensation, but on inference.
Belief in past existences, when those existences have been perceived
by ourselves, is Memory. When the past existences are inferred from
evidence, the belief of them is not Memory, but a fact of the same
nature as Expectation; being a belief that we _should have had_ the
sensations if we had been cotemporary with the objects, and had
been in the local position necessary for receiving sensible
impressions from them.
We now come to the case of Belief in testimony. But testimony is not
itself an object of belief. The object of belief is what the
testimony asserts. And so in the last of the author's three cases,
that of assent to a proposition. The object of belief, in both these
cases, is an assertion. But an assertion is something asserted, and
what is asserted must be a fact, similar to some of those of which
we have already treated. According to the author, belief in an
assertion is belief that two names are both of them names of the
same thing: but this we have felt ourselves obliged to discard, as
an inadequate explanation of the import of any assertions, except
those which are classed as merely verbal. Every assertion concerning
Things, whether in concrete or in abstract language, is an assertion
that some fact, or group of facts, has been, is, or may be expected
to be, found, wherever a certain other fact, or group of facts, is
found. Belief in this, is therefore either remembrance that we did
have, or expectation that we shall have, or a belief of the same
nature with expectation that in {418} some given circumstances we
should have, or should have had, direct perception of a particular
fact. Belief, therefore, is always a case either of Memory or of
Expectation; including under the latter name conditional as well as
positive expectation, and the state of mind similar to expectation
which affects us in regard to what _would_ have been a subject of
expectation, if the conditions of its realization had still been
possible.
It may be objected, that we may believe in the real existence of
things which are not objects of sense at all. We may. But we cannot
believe in the real existence of anything which we do not conceive
as capable of acting in some way upon our own or some other being's
consciousness; though the state of consciousness it produces may not
be called a sensation. The existence of a thing means, to us, merely
its capacity of producing an impression of some sort upon some mind,
that is, of producing some state of consciousness. The belief,
therefore, in its existence, is still a conditional expectation of
something which we should, under some supposed circumstances, be
capable of feeling.
To resume: Belief, as I conceive, is more than an inseparable
association, for inseparable associations do not always generate
belief, nor does belief always require, as one of its conditions, an
inseparable association: we can believe that to be true which we are
capable of conceiving or representing to ourselves as false, and
false what we are capable of representing to ourselves as true. The
difference between belief and mere imagination, is the difference
between recognising something as a reality in nature, and regarding
it as a mere thought of our own. This is the difference which
presents itself when Memory has to be distinguished from
Imagination; and again when Expectation, whether positive or
contingent (i.e. whether it be expectation that we shall, or only
persuasion that in certain definable circumstances we should, have a
certain experience) has to be distinguished from the mere mental
conception of that experience.
III.
Let us examine, once more, whether the speculations in the text
afford us any means of further analysing this difference.
{419} The difference presents itself in its most elementary form in
the distinction between a sensation and an idea. The author admits
this distinction to be ultimate and primordial. "A sensation is
different from an idea, only because it is felt to be different."
But, after having admitted that these two states or consciousness
are distinguishable from each other in and by themselves, he adds,
that they are also distinguishable by their accompaniments. "The
accompaniments of a sensation are always generically different from
those of an idea. . . . . The accompaniments of a sensation, are all
the simultaneous _objects of sensation_, together with all those
which, to a certain extent, both preceded and followed it. The
accompaniments of an idea are not the simultaneous objects of
sensation, but _other ideas_; namely, the neighbouring facts,
antecedent and consequent, of the mental train." There can be no
doubt that in those individual cases in which ideas and sensations
might be confounded, namely, when an idea reaches or approaches the
vivacity of a sensation, the indication here pointed out helps to
assure us that what we are conscious of is, nevertheless, only an
idea. When, for instance, we awake from a dream, and open our eyes
to the outward world, what makes us so promptly recognise that this
and not the other is the real world, is that we find its phenomena
connected in the accustomed order of our objects of sensation. But
though this circumstance enables us, in particular instances, to
refer our impression more instantaneously to one or the other class,
it cannot be by this that we distinguish ideas at first from
sensations; for the criterion supposes the distinction to be already
made. If we judge a sensation to be a sensation because its
accompaniments are other sensations, and an idea to be an idea
because its accompaniments are other ideas, we must already be able
to distinguish those other sensations from those other ideas.
A similar remark is applicable to a criterion between sensations and
ideas, incidentally laid down by Mr. Bain in the First Part of his
systematic treatise. "A mere picture or _idea_ remains the same
whatever be our bodily position or {420} bodily exertions; the
sensation that we call the actual is entirely at the mercy of our
movements, shifting in every possible way according to the varieties
of action that we go through." (_The Senses and the Intellect_, 2nd
ed. p. 381.) This test, like the author's, may serve in cases of
momentary doubt; but sensations in general must have been already
distinguished from ideas, before we could have hit upon this
criterion between them. If we had not already known the difference
between a sensation and an idea, we never could have discovered that
one of them is "at the mercy of our movements," and that the other
is not.
It being granted that a sensation and an idea are _ipso facto_
distinguishable, the author thinks it no more than natural that "the
copy of the sensation should be distinguishable from the revival of
the idea, when they are both brought up by association." But he
adds, that there is another distinction between the memory of a
sensation, and the memory of an idea, and it is this. In all Memory
the idea of self forms part of the complex idea; but in the memory
of sensation, the self which enters into the remembrance is "the
sentient self, that is, seeing and hearing:" in the memory of an
idea, it is "not the sentient self, but the conceptive self, self
having an idea. But" (he adds) "myself percipient, and myself
imagining, or conceiving, are two very different states of
consciousness: of course the ideas of these states of consciousness,
or these states revived by association, are very different ideas."
Concerning the fact there is no dispute. Myself percipient, and
myself imagining or conceiving, are different states, because
perceiving is a different thing from imagining; and being different
states, the remembrance of them is, as might be expected, different.
But the question is, in what does the difference between the
remembrances consist? The author calls one of them the _idea_ of
myself perceiving, and the other the _idea_ of myself imagining, and
thinks there is no other difference. But how do the idea of myself
having a sensation, and the idea of myself having an idea of that
sensation, differ from one another? since in either case an idea of
the sensation is all {421} that I am having now. The thought of
myself perceiving a thing at a former time, and the thought of
myself imagining the thing at that former time, are both at the
present moment facts of imagination--are now merely ideas. In each
case I have an ideal representation of myself, as conscious in a
manner very similar in the two cases; though not exactly the same,
since in the one case I remember to have been conscious of a
sensation, in the other, to have been conscious only of an idea of
that sensation: but, in either case, that past consciousness enters
only as an idea, into the consciousness I now have by recollection.
In what, then, as far as mere ideas are concerned, do my present
mental representations of the two cases differ? Will it be said,
that the idea of the sensation is one thing, the idea of the idea of
the sensation another thing? Or are they both the same idea, namely,
the idea of the sensation; and is the element that is present in the
one case, but absent in the other, not an idea but something else? A
difference there is admitted to be between the remembrance of having
had a sensation, and the remembrance of having merely thought of the
sensation, i.e. had the idea of it: is this difference a difference
in the ideas I have in the two cases, or is the idea the same, but
accompanied in the one case by something not an idea, which does not
exist in the other? for if so, this something is a Belief.
I have touched upon this question in a former note, and expressed my
inability to recognise, in the idea of an idea, anything but the
idea itself; in the thought of a thought, anything but a repetition
of the thought. My thought of Falstaff, as far as I can perceive, is
not a copy but a repetition of the thought I had of him when I first
read Shakespeare: not indeed an exact repetition, because all
complex ideas undergo modification by time, some elements fading
away, and new ones being added by reverting to the original sources
or by subsequent associations; but my first mental image of
Falstaff, and my present one, do not differ as the thought of a rose
differs from the sight of one; as an idea of sensation differs from
the sensation. On this point the author was perhaps of {422} the
same opinion, since we find him contrasting the "copy" of the
sensation with the "revival" of the idea, as if the latter was a
case of simple repetition, the former not. It would have been well
if he had made this point a subject of express discussion; for if
his opinion upon it was what, from this passage, we may suppose it
to have been, it involves a serious difficulty. If (he says) a
sensation and an idea "are distinguishable in the having, it is
likely that the copy of the sensation should be distinguishable from
the revival of the idea." But the copy of the sensation is the idea;
so that, on this shewing, the idea is distinguishable from its own
revival, that is, from the same idea when it occurs again. The
author's theory would thus require him to maintain that an idea
revived is a specifically different idea, and not the same idea
repeated: since otherwise the two states of mind, so far as regards
the ideas contained in them, are undistinguishable, and it is
necessary to admit the presence in Memory of some other element.
Let us put another case. Instead of Falstaff, suppose a real person
whom I have seen: for example General Lafayette. My idea of
Lafayette is almost wholly, what my idea of Falstaff is entirely, a
creation of thought: only a very small portion of it is derived from
my brief experience of seeing and conversing with him. But I have a
remembrance of having seen Lafayette, and no remembrance of having
seen Falstaff, but only of having thought of him. Is it a sufficient
explanation of this difference to say, that I have an idea of myself
seeing and hearing Lafayette, and only an idea of myself thinking of
Falstaff? But I can form a vivid idea of myself seeing and hearing
Falstaff. I can without difficulty imagine myself in the field of
Shrewsbury, listening to his characteristic soliloquy over the body
of Hotspur; or in the tavern in the midst of his associates, hearing
his story of his encounter with the men in buckram. When I recal the
scene, I can as little detach it from the idea of myself as present,
as I can in the case of most things of which I was really an
eye-witness. The spontaneous presence of the idea of Myself in the
{423} conception, is always that of myself as percipient. The idea
of myself as in a state of mere imagination, only substitutes itself
for the other when something reminds me that the scene is merely
imaginary.
I cannot help thinking, therefore, that there is in the remembrance
of a real fact, as distinguished from that of a thought, an element
which does not consist, as the author supposes, in a difference
between the mere ideas which are present to the mind in the two
cases. This element, howsoever we define it, constitutes Belief, and
is the difference between Memory and Imagination. From whatever
direction we approach, this difference seems to close our path. When
we arrive at it, we seem to have reached, as it were, the central
point of our intellectual nature, presupposed and built upon in
every attempt we make to explain the more recondite phenomena of our
mental being.--_Ed._]
{424} CHAPTER XII.
RATIOCINATION.
"It would afford great light and clearness to the art of Logic, to
determine the precise nature and composition of the ideas affixed to
those words which have complex ideas; _i.e._, which excite any
combinations of simple ideas, united intimately by
association."--_Hartley_. _Prop._ 12, _Corol._ 3.
RATIOCINATION is one of the most complicated of all the mental
phenomena. And it is worthy of notice, that more was accomplished
towards the analysis of it, at an early period in the history of
intellectual improvement, than of any other of the complex cases of
human consciousness.
It was fully explained by Aristotle, that the simplest case of
Ratiocination consists of three propositions, which he called a
syllogism. A piece of ratiocination may consist of one, or more
syllogisms, to any extent; but every single step is a syllogism.
A ratiocination, then, or syllogism, is first resolved into three
propositions. The following may be taken as one of the simplest of
all examples. "All men are animals: kings are men: therefore kings
are animals."
Next, the Proposition is resolved into its proximate elements. These
are three; two Terms, one called the Subject, the other the
Predicate, and the _Copula_. {425} What is the particular nature of
each of these elements we have already seen, and here, therefore,
need not stay to inquire.
The ancient writers on Logic proceeded in their analysis, no farther
than Terms. After this, they only endeavoured to enumerate and
classify terms; to enumerate and classify propositions; to enumerate
and classify syllogisms; and to give the rules for making correct
syllogisms, and detecting incorrect ones. And this, as taught by
them, constituted the whole science and art of Logic.
What, under this head, we propose to explain, is--the process of
association involved in the syllogism, and in the belief which is
part of it.
That part of the process which is involved in the two antecedent
propositions, called the premises, has been already explained. It is
only, therefore, the third proposition, called the conclusion, which
further requires exposition.
We have seen, that in the proposition, "All men are animals," Belief
is merely the recognition that the meaning of the term, "all men,"
is included in that of the term "animals," and that the recognition
is a case of association. In the proposition also, "kings are men,"
the belief is merely the recognition, that the individuals named
"kings," are part of the many, of whom "men," is the common name.
This has already been more than once explained. And now, therefore,
remains only to be shewn what further is involved in the third
proposition, or conclusion, "kings are animals."
In each of the two preceding propositions, two terms or names are
compared. In the last {426} proposition, a third name is compared
with both the other two; immediately with the one, and, through
that, with the other; the whole, obviously, a complicated case of
association.
In the first proposition, "all men are animals," the term, "all
men," is compared with the term animals; in other words, a certain
association, already expounded, takes place. In the second
proposition, "kings are men," the term "kings," is compared with the
term "all men;" comparison here, again, being only a name for a
particular case of association. In the third proposition, "kings are
animals," the name "kings," is compared with the name "animals," but
mediately through the name, "all men." Thus, "kings," is associated
with "all men," "all men," with "animals;" "kings," therefore, with
"animals," by a complicated, and, at the same time, a rapid, and
almost imperceptible process. It would be easy to mark the steps of
the association. But this would be tedious, and after so much
practice, the reader will be at no loss to set them down for
himself.[109]
[Editor's footnote 109: This chapter, which is of a very summary
character, is a prolongation of the portion of the chapter on
Belief, which examines the case of belief in the truth of a
proposition; and must stand or fall with it. The question considered
is, how, from belief in the truth of the two premises of a
syllogism, we pass into belief in the conclusion. The exposition
proceeds on the untenable theory of the import of propositions, on
which I have so often had occasion to comment. That theory, however,
was not necessary to the author for shewing how two ideas may become
inseparably associated through the inseparable association of each
of them with a third idea: and inasmuch as an inseparable
association between the subject and {427} predicate, in the author's
opinion, constitutes belief, an explanation of ratiocination
conformable to that given of belief follows as a matter of course.
Although I am unable to admit that there is nothing in belief but an
inseparable association, and although I maintain that there may be
belief without an inseparable association, I can still accept this
explanation of the formation of an association between the subject
and predicate of the conclusion, which, when close and intense, has,
as we have seen, a strong tendency to generate belief. But to shew
what it is that gives the belief its validity, we must fall back on
logical laws, the laws of evidence. And independently of the
question of validity, we shall find in the reliance on those laws,
so far as they are understood, the source and origin of all beliefs,
whether well or ill-founded, which are not the almost mechanical or
automatic products of a strong association--of the lively suggestion
of an idea. We may therefore pass at once to the nature of Evidence,
which is the subject of the next chapter.
I venture to refer, in passing, to those chapters in my System of
Logic, in which I have maintained, contrary to what is laid down in
this chapter, that Ratiocination does not _consist_ of Syllogisms;
that the Syllogism is not the analysis of what the mind does in
reasoning, but merely a useful formula into which it can translate
its reasonings, gaining thereby a great increase in the security for
their correctness.--_Ed._]
{428} CHAPTER XIII.
EVIDENCE.
"In consequence of some very wonderful laws, which regulate the
successions of our mental phenomena, the science of mind is, in all
its most important respects, a science of analysis." _Brown's
Lect._, i., 108.
BEFORE leaving the subject of Belief, it will be proper to shew, in
a few words, what is included, under the name Evidence. Evidence, is
either the same thing with Belief, or it is the antecedent, of which
Belief is the consequent.
Belief we have seen to be of two sorts: Belief of events; Belief of
propositions.
Of events, believed on our own experience, the evidence of the
present is sense; of the past, memory; and in these cases, the
evidence and the belief are not two things, but one and the same
thing. The lamp, which at this moment lights me, I say that I see
burning, and that I believe it burning. These are two names of one
and the same state of consciousness.--"I remember it was burning at
the same hour last night," and "I believe it was burning at the same
hour last night," are also two expressions for the same thing.--In
the simple anticipation of the future, from the past, also, the
evidence, and the belief, are {429} not two things, but one and the
same thing. There is a close and inseparable association of the idea
of a like antecedent, with the idea of a like consequent. This has
not a single name, like memory; but, like memory, it is both
evidence and belief.
The case of testimony is different. The Testimony is one thing, the
Belief is another. The name Evidence is given to the testimony. The
association of the testimony, with the event testified, is the
belief.
Beside the belief of events which are the immediate objects of
sense, of memory, and of anticipation (the consequence of sense and
memory), and of those which are the immediate objects of testimony;
there is a belief of events which are not the immediate objects of
any of those operations. The sailor, who is shipwrecked on an
unknown coast, sees the prints of a man's foot on the sand. The
print of the foot is here called the evidence; the association of
the print, as consequent, with a man, as antecedent, is called the
belief. In this case, the sensation of one event, the print of a
foot on the sand, induces the belief of another event, the existence
of a man. The sailor who has seen the mark, reports it to his
companions who have not quitted the wreck. Instantly they have the
same belief; but it is a remove farther off, and there is an
additional link of evidence. The first event to them, is the
affirmation of their companion; the second, the existence of the
print; the third, that of the man. There is here evidence of
evidence; the testimony, evidence of the print; the print, evidence
of the man.
The companions of the sailor, having themselves gone on shore,
perceive, indeed, no man, but see a {430} large monkey, which leaves
prints on the sand very much resembling those which had first been
perceived by their companion. What is now the state of their minds?
Doubt. But doubt is a name; what do we call by that name? A
phenomenon of some complexity, but of which the elements are not
very difficult to trace. There is, here, a double association with
the print of the foot. There is the association of a man, and there
is the association of a monkey. First, the print raises the idea of
a man, but the instant it does so, it raises also the idea of a
monkey. The idea of the monkey, displacing that of the man, hinders
the first association from the fixity which makes it belief; and the
idea of man, displacing that of monkey, hinders the second
association from that fixity which constitutes belief.
When evidence is complex; that is, consists of more than one event;
the events may be all on the same side, or not all on the same side;
that is, they may all tend to prove the same event; or some of them
may tend to prove it, some may have an opposite tendency.
Thus, if after discovering the print on the sand, the sailors had
seen near it a stick, which had any appearance of having been
fashioned into a club, or a spear, this would have been another
event, tending, as well as the print on the sand, to the belief of
the presence of men. The evidence would have been complex, but all
on one side. The process is easy to trace. There is now a double
association with the existence of men. The print of the foot excites
that idea, the existence of the club excites that idea. This double
excitement gives greater permanence to the {431} idea. By
repetition, the two exciting causes coalesce, and, by their united
strength, call up the associated idea with greater force.
In the case of the appearance of the monkey, in which one of the
events tended to one belief, the other to another, we have just seen
that the effect is precisely contrary; to lessen the strength of the
association with the existence of a man, and to hinder its becoming
belief.
These expositions may be applied with ease to the other cases of
complex evidence, which can only consist of a greater or less number
of events, either all tending to the belief of the same event, or
some tending that way, some another; but all operating in the manner
which has just been pointed out. Thus we may complicate the present
case still further, by the supposition of additional events. After
the appearance of the monkey, the sailors may discover, in the
neighbourhood, the vestiges of a recent fire, and of the victuals
which had been cooked by it. The association of human beings with
these appearances is so strong, that, combined with the association
between the print and the same idea, it quite obscures the
association between the print and the monkey; and the belief that
the place has inhabitants becomes complete. But suppose, further;
that after a little observation, they discover an English knife, and
fork, and a piece of English earthenware near the same place. The
idea of an English ship having touched at the place, is immediately
excited, and all the evidence of local inhabitants, derived from the
marks of fire and cookery, is immediately destroyed. In other words,
a new association, that with an English ship, {432} is created,
which completely supersedes the idea, formerly associated, that of
inhabitants existing on the spot.
The whole of the events, which go in this manner to form a case of
belief, or of doubt, or of disbelief, are called Evidence. And the
association, which binds them together into a sort of whole, as
antecedent, and connects with them the event to which they apply as
consequent, and which constitutes the belief, doubt, or disbelief,
very often goes by the names of "judgment," "judging of the
evidence," "weighing the evidence," and so on.
In these cases of the belief of Events upon complicated evidence,
there is an antecedent and a consequent; the antecedent consisting
of all the events which are called evidence, the consequent of the
event, or events evidenced; and lastly, there is that close
association of the antecedent and the consequent, which we have seen
already, in so many instances, constitutes belief.
We have now to consider, what we call evidence in the case of the
Belief of Propositions.
There are two cases of the Belief of propositions. There is belief
in the case of the single proposition; and there is belief of the
conclusion of a syllogism, which is the result of a combination of
Propositions.
We have seen what the process of belief in Propositions is. The
subject and predicate, two names for the same thing, of which the
predicate is either of the same extent with the subject, or of a
greater extent, suggests, each of them, its meaning; that is, call
up, by association, each of them, its peculiar cluster of ideas. Two
clusters of ideas are called up in {433} connexion, and that a
peculiar connexion, marked by the copula. To have two clusters of
ideas, to know that they are two, and to believe that they are two,
this is nothing more than three expressions for the same thing. To
know that two clusters are two clusters, and to know that they are
either the same, or different, is the same with having them. In this
case, then, as in that of the belief of events, in sense and memory,
the belief and the evidence are the same thing.
Belief of the conclusion of a syllogism, is preceded by two other
beliefs. There is belief of the major proposition; belief of the
minor proposition; by the process immediately above explained, in
which the evidence and the belief are the same thing. These are the
antecedent. There is, thirdly, belief of the conclusion, this is the
consequent. The process of this belief has been so recently
explained, that I do not think we need to repeat it. In this case,
it is sometimes said, that the two premises are the evidence;
sometimes it is said, that the ratiocination is the evidence; in the
former of these applications of the word evidence, the belief of the
concluding proposition of the syllogism is not included; in the
last, it is. The ratiocination is the belief of all the three
propositions; and, in this acceptation of the word, the evidence and
the belief are not considered as two things, but one and the same
thing. This, however, is only a difference of naming. About the
particulars named, there is no room for dispute.[110]
[Editor's footnote 110: This chapter on Evidence is supplementary to
the chapter on Belief, and is intended to analyse the process of
weighing and balancing opposing grounds for believing.
{434} Evidence is either of individual facts (not actually perceived
by oneself), or of general truths. The former is the only case to
which much attention is paid in the present chapter; which very
happily illustrates it, by the case of navigators having to decide
on the existence or non-existence of inhabitants in a newly
discovered island. The process of balancing the evidence for and
against, is depicted in a very lively manner. Let us see whether the
mental facts set down in the exposition, are precisely those which
take place.
When the sailors have seen prints of a foot, resembling those of a
man, the idea is raised of a man making the print. When they
afterwards see a monkey, whose feet leave traces almost similar, the
idea is also raised of a monkey making the print, and the state of
their minds, the author says, is doubt. Of this state he gives the
following analysis: "There is here a double association with the
print of the foot. There is the association of a man, and there is
the association of a monkey. First, the print raises the idea of a
man, but the instant it does so, it raises also the idea of a
monkey. The idea of the monkey, displacing that of the man, hinders
the first association from the fixity which makes it belief; and the
idea of man, displacing that of monkey, hinders the second
association from that fixity which constitutes belief."
This passage deserves to be studied; for without having carefully
weighed it, we cannot be certain that we are in complete possession
of the author's theory of Belief.
There are two conflicting associations with the print of the foot.
The picture of a man making it, cannot co-exist with that of a
monkey making it. But the two may alternate with one another. Had
the association with a man been the only association, it would, or
might (for on this point the author is not explicit) have amounted
to belief. But the idea of the monkey and that of the man
alternately displacing one another, hinder either association from
having the fixity which would make it belief.
This alternation, however, between the two ideas, of a monkey making
the footprint and of a man making it, may {435} very well take place
without hindering one of the two from being accompanied by belief.
Suppose the sailors to obtain conclusive evidence, testimonial or
circumstantial, that the prints were made by a monkey. It may
happen, nevertheless, that the remarkable resemblance of the foot
prints to those of a man, does not cease to force itself upon their
notice: in other words, they continue to associate the idea of a man
with the footsteps; they are reminded of a man, and of a man making
the footsteps, every time they see or think of them. The double
association, therefore, may subsist, and the one which does not
correspond with the fact may even be the most obtrusive of the two,
while yet the other conception may be the one with which the men
believe the real facts to have corresponded.
All the rest of the exposition is open to the same criticism. The
author accounts very accurately for the presence of all the ideas
which the successive appearance of the various articles of evidence
arouses in the mind. But he does not shew that the belief, which is
ultimately arrived at, is constituted by the expulsion from the mind
of one set of these ideas, and the exclusive possession of it by the
other set. It is quite possible that neither of the associations may
acquire the "fixity" which, according to the apparent meaning of the
author, would defeat the other association altogether, and drive
away the conception which it suggests; and yet, one of the
suppositions may be believed and the other disbelieved, according to
the balance of evidence, as estimated by the investigator. Belief,
then, which has been already shewn not to require an inseparable
association, appears not to require even "fixity"--such fixity as to
exclude the idea of the conflicting supposition, as it does exclude
the belief.
The problem of Evidence divides itself into two distinguishable
enquiries: what effect evidence ought to produce, and what
determines the effect that it does produce: how our belief ought to
be regulated, and how, in point of fact, it is regulated. The first
enquiry--that into the nature and probative force of evidence: the
discussion of what proves what, and {436} of the precautions needed
in admitting one thing as proof of another--are the province of
Logic, understood in its widest sense: and for its treatment we must
refer to treatises on Logic, either inductive or ratiocinative. All
that would be in place here, reduces itself to a single principle:
In all cases, except the case of what we are directly conscious of
(in which case, as the author justly observes, the evidence and the
belief are one and the same thing)--in all cases, therefore, in
which belief is really grounded on evidence, it is grounded, in the
ultimate result, on the constancy of the course of nature. Whether
the belief be of facts or of laws, and whether of past facts or of
those which are present or future, this is the basis on which it
rests. Whatever it is that we believe, the justification of the
belief must be, that unless it were true, the uniformity of the
course of nature would not be maintained. A cause would have
occurred, not followed by its invariable effect; an effect would
have occurred, not preceded by any of its invariable causes;
witnesses would have lied, who have always been known to speak the
truth; signs would have proved deceptive, which in human experience
have always given true indication. This is obvious, whatever case of
belief on evidence we examine. Belief in testimony is grounded on
previous experience that testimony is usually conformable to fact:
testimony in general (for even this may with truth be affirmed); or
the testimony of the particular witness, or the testimony of persons
similar to him. Belief that the sun will rise and set to-morrow, or
that a stone thrown up into the air will fall back, rests on
experience that this has been invariably the case, and reliance that
what has hitherto occurred will continue to occur hereafter. Belief
in a fact vouched for by circumstantial evidence, rests on
experience that such circumstances as are ascertained to exist in
the case, never exist unaccompanied by the given fact. What we call
evidence, whether complete or incomplete, always consists of facts
or events tending to convince us that some ascertained general
truths or laws of nature must have proved false, if the conclusion
which the evidence points to is not true.
{437} Belief on evidence is therefore always a case of the
generalizing process; of the assumption that what we have not
directly experienced resembles, or will resemble, our experience.
And, properly understood, this assumption is true; for the whole
course of nature consists of a concurrence of causes, producing
their effects in a uniform manner; but the uniformity which exists
is often not that which our first impressions lead us to expect. Mr.
Bain has well pointed out, that the generalizing propensity, in a
mind not disciplined by thought, nor as yet warned by its own
failures, far outruns the evidence, or rather, precedes any
conscious consideration of evidence; and that what the consideration
of evidence has to do when it comes, is not so much to make us
generalize, as to limit our spontaneous impulse of generalization,
and restrain within just bounds our readiness to believe that the
unknown will resemble the known. When Mr. Bain occasionally speaks
of this propensity as if it were instinctive, I understand him to
mean, that by an original law of our nature, the mere suggestion of
an idea, so long as the idea keeps possession of the mind, suffices
to give it a command over our active energies. It is to this
primitive mental state that the author's theory of Belief most
nearly applies. In a mind which is as yet untutored, either by the
teachings of others or by its own mistakes, an idea so strongly
excited as for the time to keep out all ideas by which it would
itself be excluded, possesses that power over the voluntary
activities which is Mr. Bain's criterion of Belief; and any
association that compels the person to have the idea of a certain
consequence as following his act, generates, or becomes, a real
expectation of that consequence. But these expectations often
turning out to have been ill grounded, the unduly prompt suggestion
comes to be associated, by repetition, with the shock of
disappointed expectation; and the idea of the desired consequent is
now raised together with the idea not of its realization, but of its
frustration: thus neutralizing the effect of the first association
on the belief and on the active impulses. It is in this stage that
the mind learns the habit of looking out for, and weighing,
evidence. It presently discovers {438} that the expectations which
are least often disappointed are those which correspond to the
greatest and most varied amount of antecedent experience. It
gradually comes to associate the feeling of disappointed expectation
with all those promptings to expect, which, being the result of
accidental associations, have no, or but little, previous experience
conformable to them: and by degrees the expectation only arises when
memory represents a considerable amount of such previous experience;
and is strong in proportion to the quantity of the experience. At a
still later period, as disappointment nevertheless not unfrequently
happens notwithstanding a considerable amount of past experience on
the side of the expectation, the mind is put upon making
distinctions in the kind of past experiences, and finding out what
qualities, besides mere frequency, experience must have, in order
not to be followed by disappointment. In other words, it considers
the conditions of right inference from experience; and by degrees
arrives at principles or rules, more or less accurate, for inductive
reasoning. This is substantially the doctrine of the author of the
Analysis. It must be conceded to him, that an association,
sufficiently strong to exclude all ideas that would exclude itself,
produces a kind of mechanical belief; and that the processes by
which this belief is corrected, or reduced to rational bounds, all
consist in the growth of a counter-association, tending to raise the
idea of a disappointment of the first expectation: and as the one or
the other prevails in the particular case, the belief, or
expectation, exists or does not exist, exactly as if the belief were
the same thing with the association. It must also be admitted that
the process by which the belief is overcome, takes effect by
weakening the association; which can only be effected by raising up
another association that conflicts with it. There are two ways in
which this counter-association may be generated. One is, by
counter-evidence; by contrary experience in the specific case,
which, by associating the circumstances of the case with a contrary
belief, destroys their association with the original belief. But
there is also another mode of weakening, or altogether {439}
destroying, the belief, without adducing contrary experience:
namely, by merely recognising the insufficiency of the existing
experience; by reflecting on other instances in which the same
amount and kind of experience have existed, but were not followed by
the expected result. In the one mode as in the other, the process of
dissolving a belief is identical with that of dissolving an
association; and to this extent--and it is a very large extent--the
author's theory of Belief must be received as true.
I cannot, however, go beyond this, and maintain with the author that
Belief is identical with a strong association; on account of the
reason already stated, viz. that in many cases--indeed in almost all
cases in which the evidence has been such as required to be
investigated and weighed--a final belief is arrived at without any
such clinging together of ideas as the author supposes to constitute
it; and we remain able to represent to ourselves in imagination,
often with perfect facility, both the conflicting suppositions, of
which we nevertheless believe one and reject the other.--_Ed._]
{440} APPENDIX.
(_From "An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy."_)
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY OF THE BELIEF IN AN EXTERNAL WORLD.
WE have seen Sir. W. Hamilton at work on the question of the reality
of Matter, by the introspective method, and, as it seems, with
little result. Let us now approach the same subject by the
psychological. I proceed, therefore, to state the case of those who
hold that the belief in an external world is not intuitive, but an
acquired product.
This theory postulates the following psychological truths, all of
which are proved by experience, and are not contested, though their
force is seldom adequately felt, by Sir W. Hamilton and the other
thinkers of the introspective school.
It postulates, first, that the human mind is capable of Expectation.
In other words, that after having had actual sensations, we are
capable of forming the conception of Possible sensations; sensations
which we are not feeling at the present moment, but which we might
feel, and should feel if certain conditions were present, the nature
of which conditions we have, in many cases, learnt by experience.
It postulates, secondly, the laws of the Association of Ideas. So
far as we are here concerned, these laws are the following: 1st.
Similar phænomena tend to be thought of together. 2nd. Phænomena
which have either been experienced or conceived {441} in close
contiguity to one another, tend to be thought of together. The
contiguity is of two kinds; simultaneity, and immediate succession.
Facts which have been experienced or thought of simultaneously,
recall the thought of one another. Of facts which have been
experienced or thought of in immediate succession, the antecedent,
or the thought of it, recalls the thought of the consequent, but not
conversely. 3rd. Associations produced by contiguity become more
certain and rapid by repetition. When two phænomena have been very
often experienced in conjunction, and have not, in any single
instance, occurred separately either in experience or in thought,
there is produced between them what has been called Inseparable, or
less correctly, Indissoluble Association: by which is not meant that
the association must inevitably last to the end of life--that no
subsequent experience or process of thought can possibly avail to
dissolve it; but only that as long as no such experience or process
of thought has taken place, the association is irresistible; it is
impossible for us to think the one thing disjoined from the other.
4th. When an association has acquired this character of
inseparability--when the bond between the two ideas has been thus
firmly riveted, not only does the idea called up by association
become, in our consciousness, inseparable from the idea which
suggested it, but the facts or phænomena answering to those ideas
come at last to seem inseparable in existence: things which we are
unable to conceive apart, appear incapable of existing apart; and
the belief we have in their coexistence, though really a product of
experience, seems intuitive. Innumerable examples might be given of
this law. One of the most familiar, as well as the most striking, is
that of our acquired perceptions of sight. Even those who, with Mr.
Bailey, consider the perception of distance by the eye as not
acquired, but intuitive, admit that there are many perceptions of
sight which, though instantaneous and unhesitating, are not
intuitive. What we see is a very minute fragment of what we think we
see. We see artificially that one thing is hard, another soft. We
see artificially that one thing is hot, another cold. We see
artificially that {442} what we see is a book, or a stone, each of
these being not merely an inference, but a heap of inferences, from
the signs which we see, to things not visible. We see, and cannot
help seeing, what we have learnt to infer, even when we know that
the inference is erroneous, and that the apparent perception is
deceptive. We cannot help seeing the moon larger when near the
horizon, though we know that she is of precisely her usual size. We
cannot help seeing a mountain as nearer to us and of less height,
when we see it through a more than ordinarily transparent
atmosphere.
Setting out from these premises, the Psychological Theory maintains,
that there are associations naturally and even necessarily generated
by the order of our sensations and of our reminiscences of
sensation, which, supposing no intuition of an external world to
have existed in consciousness, would inevitably generate the belief,
and would cause it to be regarded as an intuition.
What is it we mean, or what is it which leads us to say, that the
objects we perceive are external to us, and not a part of our own
thoughts? We mean, that there is concerned in our perceptions
something which exists when we are not thinking of it; which existed
before we had ever thought of it, and would exist if we were
annihilated; and further, that there exist things which we never
saw, touched, or otherwise perceived, and things which never have
been perceived by man. This idea of something which is distinguished
from our fleeting impressions by what, in Kantian language, is
called Perdurability; something which is fixed and the same, while
our impressions vary; something which exists whether we are aware of
it or not, and which is always square (or of some other given
figure) whether it appears to us square or round--constitutes
altogether our idea of external substance. Whoever can assign an
origin to this complex conception, has accounted for what we mean by
the belief in matter. Now all this, according to the Psychological
Theory, is but the form impressed by the known laws of association,
upon the conception or notion, obtained by experience, of Contingent
Sensations; {443} by which are meant, sensations that are not in our
present consciousness, and individually never were in our
consciousness at all, but which in virtue of the laws to which we
have learnt by experience that our sensations are subject, we know
that we should have felt under given supposable circumstances, and
under these same circumstances, might still feel.
I see a piece of white paper on a table. I go into another room. If
the phænomenon always followed me, or if, when it did not follow me,
I believed it to disappear _è rerum naturâ_, I should not believe it
to be an external object. I should consider it as a phantom--a mere
affection of my senses: I should not believe that there had been any
Body there. But, though I have ceased to see it, I am persuaded that
the paper is still there. I no longer have the sensations which it
gave me; but I believe that when I again place myself in the
circumstances in which I had those sensations, that is, when I go
again into the room, I shall again have them; and further, that
there has been no intervening moment at which this would not have
been the case. Owing to this property of my mind, my conception of
the world at any given instant consists, in only a small proportion,
of present sensations. Of these I may at the time have none at all,
and they are in any case a most insignificant portion of the whole
which I apprehend. The conception I form of the world existing at
any moment, comprises, along with the sensations I am feeling, a
countless variety of possibilities of sensation: namely, the whole
of those which past observation tells me that I could, under any
supposable circumstances, experience at this moment, together with
an indefinite and illimitable multitude of others which though I do
not know that I could, yet it is possible that I might, experience
in circumstances not known to me. These various possibilities are
the important thing to me in the world. My present sensations are
generally of little importance, and are moreover fugitive: the
possibilities, on the contrary, are permanent, which is the
character that mainly distinguishes our idea of Substance or Matter
from our notion of sensation. These possibilities, which are
conditional {444} certainties, need a special name to distinguish
them from mere vague possibilities, which experience gives no
warrant for reckoning upon. Now, as soon as a distinguishing name is
given, though it be only to the same thing regarded in a different
aspect, one of the most familiar experiences of our mental nature
teaches us, that the different name comes to be considered as the
name of a different thing.
There is another important peculiarity of these certified or
guaranteed possibilities of sensation; namely, that they have
reference, not to single sensations, but to sensations joined
together in groups. When we think of anything as a material
substance, or body, we either have had, or we think that on some
given supposition we should have, not some one sensation, but a
great and even an indefinite number and variety of sensations,
generally belonging to different senses, but so linked together,
that the presence of one announces the possible presence at the very
same instant of any or all of the rest. In our mind, therefore, not
only is this particular Possibility of sensation invested with the
quality of permanence when we are not actually feeling any of the
sensations at all; but when we are feeling some of them, the
remaining sensations of the group are conceived by us in the form of
Present Possibilities, which might be realized at the very moment.
And as this happens in turn to all of them, the group as a whole
presents itself to the mind as permanent, in contrast not solely
with the temporariness of my bodily presence, but also with the
temporary character of each of the sensations composing the group;
in other words, as a kind of permanent substratum, under a set of
passing experiences or manifestations: which is another leading
character of our idea of substance or matter, as distinguished from
sensation.
Let us now take into consideration another of the general characters
of our experience, namely, that in addition to fixed groups, we also
recognise a fixed Order in our sensations; an Order of succession,
which, when ascertained by observation, gives rise to the ideas of
Cause and Effect, according to what I hold to be the true theory of
that relation, and is on any {445} theory the source of all our
knowledge what causes produce what effects. Now, of what nature is
this fixed order among our sensations? It is a constancy of
antecedence and sequence. But the constant antecedence and sequence
do not generally exist between one actual sensation and another.
Very few such sequences are presented to us by experience. In almost
all the constant sequences which occur in Nature, the antecedence
and consequence do not obtain between sensations, but between the
groups we have been speaking about, of which a very small portion is
actual sensation, the greater part being permanent possibilities of
sensation, evidenced to us by a small and variable number of
sensations actually present. Hence, our ideas of causation, power,
activity, do not become connected in thought with our sensations as
actual at all, save in the few physiological cases where these
figure by themselves as the antecedents in some uniform sequence.
Those ideas become connected, not with sensations, but with groups
of possibilities of sensation. The sensations conceived do not, to
our habitual thoughts, present themselves as sensations actually
experienced, inasmuch as not only any one or any number of them may
be supposed absent, but none of them need be present. We find that
the modifications which are taking place more or less regularly in
our possibilities of sensation, are mostly quite independent of our
consciousness, and of our presence or absence. Whether we are asleep
or awake the fire goes out, and puts an end to one particular
possibility of warmth and light. Whether we are present or absent
the corn ripens, and brings a new possibility of food. Hence we
speedily learn to think of Nature as made up solely of these groups
of possibilities, and the active force in Nature as manifested in
the modification of some of these by others. The sensations, though
the original foundation of the whole, come to be looked upon as a
sort of accident depending on us, and the possibilities as much more
real than the actual sensations, nay, as the very realities of which
these are only the representations, appearances, or effects. When
this state of mind has been arrived at, then, and from that time
forward, we are never {446} conscious of a present sensation without
instantaneously referring it to some one of the groups of
possibilities into which a sensation of that particular description
enters; and if we do not yet know to what group to refer it, we at
least feel an irresistible conviction that it must belong to some
group or other; _i.e._ that its presence proves the existence, here
and now, of a great number and variety of possibilities of
sensation, without which it would not have been. The whole set of
sensations as possible, form a permanent background to any one or
more of them that are, at a given moment, actual; and the
possibilities are conceived as standing to the actual sensations in
the relation of a cause to its effects, or of canvas to the figures
painted on it, or of a root to the trunk, leaves, and flowers, or of
a substratum to that which is spread over it, or, in transcendental
language, of Matter to Form.
When this point has been reached, the Permanent Possibilities in
question have assumed such unlikeness of aspect, and such difference
of apparent relation to us, from any sensations, that it would be
contrary to all we know of the constitution of human nature that
they should not be conceived as, and believed to be, at least as
different from sensations as sensations are from one another. Their
groundwork in sensation is forgotten, and they are supposed to be
something intrinsically distinct from it. We can withdraw ourselves
from any of our (external) sensations, or we can be withdrawn from
them by some other agency. But though the sensations cease, the
possibilities remain in existence; they are independent of our will,
our presence, and everything which belongs to us. We find, too, that
they belong as much to other human or sentient beings as to
ourselves. We find other people grounding their expectations and
conduct upon the same permanent possibilities on which we ground
ours. But we do not find them experiencing the same actual
sensations. Other people do not have our sensations exactly when and
as we have them: but they have our possibilities of sensation;
whatever indicates a present possibility of sensations to ourselves,
indicates a present possibility of similar sensations to them,
except so far as {447} their organs of sensation may vary from the
type of ours. This puts the final seal to our conception of the
groups of possibilities as the fundamental reality in Nature. The
permanent possibilities are common to us and to our
fellow-creatures; the actual sensations are not. That which other
people become aware of when, and on the same grounds, as I do, seems
more real to me than that which they do not know of unless I tell
them. The world of Possible Sensations succeeding one another
according to laws, is as much in other beings as it is in me; it has
therefore an existence outside me; it is an External World.
If this explanation of the origin and growth of the idea of Matter,
or External Nature, contains nothing at variance with natural laws,
it is at least an admissible supposition, that the element of
Non-ego which Sir W. Hamilton regards as an original datum of
consciousness, and which we certainly do find in our present
consciousness, may not be one of its primitive elements--may not
have existed at all in its first manifestations. But if this
supposition be admissible, it ought, on Sir W. Hamilton's
principles, to be received as true. The first of the laws laid down
by him for the interpretation of Consciousness, the law (as he terms
it) of Parcimony, forbids to suppose an original principle of our
nature in order to account for phænomena which admit of possible
explanation from known causes. If the supposed ingredient of
consciousness be one which might grow up (though we cannot prove
that it did grow up) through later experience; and if, when it had
so grown up, it would, by known laws of our nature, appear as
completely intuitive as our sensations themselves; we are bound,
according to Sir W. Hamilton's and all sound philosophy, to assign
to it that origin. Where there is a known cause adequate to account
for a phænomenon, there is no justification for ascribing it to an
unknown one. And what evidence does Consciousness furnish of the
intuitiveness of an impression, except instantaneousness, apparent
simplicity, and *unconsciousness on our part of how the impression
came into our minds? These features can only prove the impression to
be {448} intuitive, on the hypothesis that there are no means of
accounting for them otherwise. If they not only might, but naturally
would, exist, even on the supposition that it is not intuitive, we
must accept the conclusion to which we are led by the Psychological
Method, and which the Introspective Method furnishes absolutely
nothing to contradict.
Matter, then, may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation.
If I am asked, whether I believe in matter, I ask whether the
questioner accepts this definition of it. If he does, I believe in
matter: and so do all Berkeleians. In any other sense than this, I
do not. But I affirm with confidence, that this conception of Matter
includes the whole meaning attached to it by the common world, apart
from philosophical, and sometimes from theological, theories. The
reliance of mankind on the real existence of visible and tangible
objects, means reliance on the reality and permanence of
Possibilities of visual and tactual sensations, when no such
sensations are actually experienced. We are warranted in believing
that this is the meaning of Matter in the minds of many of its most
esteemed metaphysical champions, though they themselves would not
admit as much: for example, of Reid, Stewart, and Brown. For these
three philosophers alleged that all mankind, including Berkeley and
Hume, really believed in Matter, inasmuch as unless they did, they
would not have turned aside to save themselves from running against
a post. Now all which this manoeuvre really proved is, that they
believed in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation. We have therefore
the unintentional sanction of these three eminent defenders of the
existence of matter, for affirming, that to believe in Permanent
Possibilities of Sensation is believing in Matter. It is hardly
necessary, after such authorities, to mention Dr. Johnson, or any
one else who resorts to the _argumentum baculinum_ of knocking a
stick against the ground. Sir W. Hamilton, a far subtler thinker
than any of these, never reasons in this manner. He never supposes
that a disbeliever in what he means by Matter, ought in consistency
to act in any different mode from those who believe in it. He knew
{449} that the belief on which all the practical consequences
depend, is the belief in Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, and
that if nobody believed in a material universe in any other sense,
life would go on exactly as it now does. He, however, did believe in
more than this, but, I think, only because it had never occurred to
him that mere Possibilities of Sensation could, to our
artificialized consciousness, present the character of objectivity
which, as we have now shown, they not only can, but unless the known
laws of the human mind were suspended, must necessarily, present.
Perhaps it may be objected, that the very possibility of framing
such a notion of Matter as Sir W. Hamilton's--the capacity in the
human mind of imagining an external world which is anything more
than what the Psychological Theory makes it--amounts to a disproof
of the theory. If (it may be said) we had no revelation in
consciousness, of a world which is not in some way or other
identified with sensation, we should be unable to have the notion of
such a world. If the only ideas we had of external objects were
ideas of our sensations, supplemented by an acquired notion of
permanent possibilities of sensation, we must (it is thought) be
incapable of conceiving, and therefore still more incapable of
fancying that we perceive, things which are not sensations at all.
It being evident however that some philosophers believe this, and it
being maintainable that the mass of mankind do so, the existence of
a perdurable basis of sensations, distinct from sensations
themselves, is proved, it might be said, by the possibility of
believing it.
Let me first restate what I apprehend the belief to be. We believe
that we perceive a something closely related to all our sensations,
but different from those which we are feeling at any particular
minute; and distinguished from sensations altogether, by being
permanent and always the same, while these are fugitive, variable,
and alternately displace one another. But these attributes of the
object of perception are properties belonging to all the
possibilities of sensation which experience guarantees. The belief
in such permanent possibilities seems {450} to me to include all
that is essential or characteristic in the belief in substance. I
believe that Calcutta exists, though I do not perceive it, and that
it would still exist if every percipient inhabitant were suddenly to
leave the place, or be struck dead. But when I analyse the belief,
all I find in it is, that were these events to take place, the
Permanent Possibility of Sensation which I call Calcutta would still
remain; that if I were suddenly transported to the banks of the
Hoogly, I should still have the sensations which, if now present,
would lead me to affirm that Calcutta exists here and now. We may
infer, therefore, that both philosophers and the world at large,
when they think of matter, conceive it really as a Permanent
Possibility of Sensation. But the majority of philosophers fancy
that it is something more; and the world at large, though they have
really, as I conceive, nothing in their minds but a Permanent
Possibility of Sensation, would, if asked the question, undoubtedly
agree with the philosophers: and though this is sufficiently
explained by the tendency of the human mind to infer difference of
things from difference of names, I acknowledge the obligation of
showing how it can be possible to believe in an existence
transcending all possibilities of sensation, unless on the
hypothesis that such an existence actually is, and that we actually
perceive it.
The explanation, however, is not difficult. It is an admitted fact,
that we are capable of all conceptions which can be formed by
generalizing from the observed laws of our sensations. Whatever
relation we find to exist between any one of our sensations and
something different from _it_, that same relation we have no
difficulty in conceiving to exist between the sum of all our
sensations and something different from _them_. The differences
which our consciousness recognises between one sensation and
another, give us the general notion of difference, and inseparably
associate with every sensation we have, the feeling of its being
different from other things: and when once this association has been
formed, we can no longer conceive anything, without being able, and
even being compelled, to form also the conception of something
different from it. {451} This familiarity with the idea of something
different from each thing we know, makes it natural and easy to form
the notion of something different from all things that we know,
collectively as well as individually. It is true we can form no
conception of what such a thing can be; our notion of it is merely
negative; but the idea of a substance, apart from its relation to
the impressions which we conceive it as making on our senses, is a
merely negative one. There is thus no psychological obstacle to our
forming the notion of a something which is neither a sensation nor a
possibility of sensation, even if our consciousness does not testify
to it; and nothing is more likely than that the Permanent
Possibilities of sensation, to which our consciousness does testify,
should be confounded in our minds with this imaginary conception.
All experience attests the strength of the tendency to mistake
mental abstractions, even negative ones, for substantive realities;
and the Permanent Possibilities of sensation which experience
guarantees, are so extremely unlike in many of their properties to
actual sensations, that since we are capable of imagining something
which transcends sensations, there is a great natural probability
that we should suppose these to be it.
But this natural probability is converted into certainty, when we
take into consideration that universal law of our experience which
is termed the law of Causation, and which makes us mentally connect
with the beginning of everything, some antecedent condition, or
Cause. The case of Causation is one of the most marked of all the
cases in which we extend to the sum total of our consciousness, a
notion derived from its parts. It is a striking example of our power
to conceive, and our tendency to believe, that a relation which
subsists between every individual item of our experience and some
other item, subsists also between our experience as a whole, and
something not within the sphere of experience. By this extension to
the sum of all our experiences, of the internal relations obtaining
between its several parts, we are led to consider sensation itself
the aggregate whole of our sensations as deriving its origin from
antecedent existences {452} transcending sensation. That we should
do this, is a consequence of the particular character of the uniform
sequences, which experience discloses to us among our sensations. As
already remarked, the constant antecedent of a sensation is seldom
another sensation, or set of sensations, actually felt. It is much
oftener the existence of a group of possibilities, not necessarily
including any actual sensations, except such as are required to show
that the possibilities are really present. Nor are actual sensations
indispensable even for this purpose; for the presence of the object
(which is nothing more than the immediate presence of the
possibilities) may be made known to us by the very sensation which
we refer to as its effect. Thus, the real antecedent of an
effect--the only antecedent which, being invariable and
unconditional, we consider to be the cause--may be, not any
sensation really felt, but solely the presence, at that or the
immediately preceding moment, of a group of possibilities of
sensation. Hence it is not with sensations as actually experienced,
but with their Permanent Possibilities, that the idea of Cause comes
to be identified: and we, by one and the same process, acquire the
habit of regarding Sensation in general, like all our individual
sensations, as an Effect, and also that of conceiving as the causes
of most of our individual sensations, not other sensations, but
general possibilities of sensation. If all these considerations put
together do not completely explain and account for our conceiving
these Possibilities as a class of independent and substantive
entities, I know not what psychological analysis can be conclusive.
It may perhaps be said, that the preceding theory gives, indeed,
some account of the idea of Permanent Existence which forms part of
our conception of matter, but gives no explanation of our believing
these permanent objects to be external, or out of ourselves. I
apprehend, on the contrary, that the very idea of anything out of
ourselves is derived solely from the knowledge experience gives us
of the Permanent Possibilities. Our sensations we carry with us
wherever we go, and they never exist where we are not; but when we
change {453} our place we do not carry away with us the Permanent
Possibilities of Sensation: they remain until we return, or arise
and cease under conditions with which our presence has in general
nothing to do. And more than all--they are, and will be after we
have ceased to feel, Permanent Possibilities of sensation to other
beings than ourselves. Thus our actual sensations, and the Permanent
Possibilities of sensation, stand out in obtrusive contrast to one
another: and when the idea of Cause has been acquired, and extended
by generalization from the parts of our experience to its aggregate
whole, nothing can be more natural than that the Permanent
Possibilities should be classed by us as existences generically
distinct from our sensations, but of which our sensations are the
effect.
The same theory which accounts for our ascribing to an aggregate of
possibilities of sensation, a permanent existence which our
sensations themselves do not possess, and consequently a greater
reality than belongs to our sensations, also explains our
attributing greater objectivity to the Primary Qualities of bodies
than to the Secondary. For the sensations which correspond to what
are called the Primary Qualities (as soon at least as we come to
apprehend them by two senses, the eye as well as the touch) are
always present when any part of the group is so. But colours,
tastes, smells, and the like, being, in comparison, fugacious, are
not, in the same degree, conceived as being always there, even when
nobody is present to perceive them. The sensations answering to the
Secondary Qualities are only occasional, those to the Primary,
constant. The Secondary, moreover, vary with different persons, and
with the temporary sensibility of our organs; the Primary, when
perceived at all, are, as far as we know, the same to all persons
and at all times.
END OF VOL. I.
LONDON:
SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
ANALYSIS
OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE
HUMAN MIND.
ANALYSIS
OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE
HUMAN MIND
BY JAMES MILL
WITH NOTES ILLUSTRATIVE AND CRITICAL BY
ALEXANDER BAIN
ANDREW FINDLATER
AND
GEORGE GROTE
EDITED WITH ADDITIONAL NOTES BY
JOHN STUART MILL
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
SECOND EDITION
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER.
1878
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XIV. PAGE
Some Names which require a particular Explanation 1
SECTION 1. Names of Names 3
2. Relative Terms 6
Abstract Relative Terms 72
3. Numbers 89
4. Privative Terms 99
5. Time 116
6. Motion 142
7. Identity 164
CHAPTER XV.
Reflection 176
CHAPTER XVI.
The Distinction between the Intellectual and Active Powers of
the Human Mind 181
CHAPTER XVII.
Pleasurable and Painful Sensations 184
CHAPTER XVIII.
Causes of the Pleasurable and Painful Sensations 187
CHAPTER XIX.
Ideas of the Pleasurable and Painful Sensations, and of the
Causes of them 189
CHAPTER XX.
The Pleasurable and Painful Sensations, contemplated as passed,
or future 196
{vi} CHAPTER XXI.
The Causes of Pleasurable and Painful Sensations, contemplated
as passed, or future 201
SECTION 1. The immediate Causes of Pleasurable and Painful
Sensations, contemplated as passed, or as future 201
2. The Remote Causes of Pleasurable and Painful
Sensations contemplated as passed, or future 206
SUB-SECT. 1. Wealth, Power, and Dignity, and their
Contraries, contemplated as Causes of our
Pleasures and Pains 207
2. Our Fellow-Creatures contemplated as Causes of
our Pleasures and Pains 214
1.--Friendship 216
2.--Kindness 216
3.--Family 218
4.--Country 226
5.--Party; Class 227
6.--Mankind 229
3. The Objects called Sublime and Beautiful, and
their Contraries, contemplated as Causes of our
Pleasures and Pains 230
CHAPTER XXII.
Motives 256
SECTION 1. Pleasurable or Painful States, contemplated as the
Consequents of our own Acts 256
2. Causes of our Pleasurable and Painful States,
contemplated as the Consequents of our own Acts 265
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Acts of our Fellow-creatures, which are Causes of our Pains
and Pleasures, contemplated as Consequents of our own Acts 280
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Will 327
CHAPTER XXV.
Intention *396
ANALYSIS,
ETC.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XIV.
SOME NAMES WHICH REQUIRE A PARTICULAR EXPLANATION.
"Quam difficile sit inveteratas, eloquentissimorumque scriptorum
authoritate confirmatas, opiniones, mentibus hominum excutere, non
ignoro. Præsertim cum philosophia vera (id est accurata) orationis
non modo fucum, sed etiam omnia fere ornamenta ex professo rejiciat:
cumque scientiæ omnis fundamenta prima non modo speciosa non sint,
sed etiam humilia, arida, et pene deformia videantur."--_Hobbes
Comput. sive Logica_, cap. i. s. I.
WE have now seen that, in what we call the mental world,
Consciousness, there are three grand classes of phenomena, the most
familiar of all the facts with which we are acquainted,--SENSATIONS,
IDEAS, and the TRAIN OF IDEAS. We have examined a number of the more
complicated cases of Consciousness; and have found that they all
resolve themselves into the three simple elements, thus enumerated.
We also found it necessary to shew, for what ends, and in what
manner, marks were contrived of sensations and ideas, and by what
combinations they were made to represent, {2} expeditiously, trains
of those states of consciousness. Some marks or names, however,
could not be explained, till some of the more complicated states of
consciousness were unfolded; these also are names so important, and
so peculiar in their mode of signification, that a very complete
understanding of them is required. It is to the consideration of
these remarkable cases of Naming that we now proceed.[1]