2. The Understanding in 2. The Reason in all its decisions
all its judgments refers to appeals to itself, as the ground
some other Faculty as its and _substance_ of their truth.
ultimate Authority. (Hebrews vi. 13.)
3. Understanding is the 3. Reason of Contemplation.
Faculty of _Reflection_. Reason indeed is much nearer to
SENSE than to Understanding:
for Reason (says our great
HOOKER) is a direct aspect
of Truth, an inward Beholding,
having a similar relation to
the Intelligible or Spiritual,
as SENSE has to the Material
or Phenomenal.
The Result is: that neither falls under the definition of the other.
They differ _in kind_: and had my object been confined to the
establishment of this fact, the preceding columns would have
superseded all further disquisition. But I have ever in view the
especial interest of my youthful readers, whose reflective _power_ is
to be cultivated, as well as their particular reflections to be called
forth and guided. Now the main chance of their _reflecting_ on
religious subjects _aright_, and of their attaining to the
_contemplation_ of spiritual truths _at all_, rests on their insight
into the _nature_ of this disparity still more than on their
conviction of its existence. I now, therefore, proceed to a brief
analysis of the Understanding, in elucidation of the definitions
already given.
The Understanding then (considered exclusively as an organ of human
intelligence,) is the faculty by which we reflect and generalize.
Take, for instance, any objects consisting of many parts, a house, or
a group of houses: and if it be contemplated, as a Whole, that is, as
many constituting a one, it forms what in the technical language of
Psychology, is called a _total impression_. Among the various
component parts of this, we direct our attention especially to such as
we recollect to have noticed in other total impressions. Then, by a
voluntary act, we withhold our attention from all the rest to reflect
exclusively on these; and these we henceforward use as _common
characters_, by virtue of which the several objects are referred to
one and the same sort.[95] Thus, the whole process may be reduced to
three acts, all depending on and supposing a previous impression on
the senses: first, the appropriation of our Attention; second, (and in
order to the continuance of the first) Abstraction, or the voluntary
withholding of the Attention; and third, Generalization. And these are
the proper Functions of the Understanding: and the power of so doing,
is what we mean, when we say we possess Understanding, or are created
with the faculty of Understanding.
[It is obvious, that the third function includes the act of comparing
one object with another. In a note (for, not to interrupt the
argument, I avail myself of this most useful contrivance,) I have
shown, that the act of comparing supposes in the comparing faculty,
certain inherent forms, that is, modes of reflecting not referable to
the objects reflected on, but pre-determined by the constitution and
(as it were) mechanism of the Understanding itself. And under some one
or other of these forms,[96] the resemblances and differences must be
subsumed in order to be conceivable, and _a fortiori_ therefore in
order to be comparable. The senses do not compare, but merely furnish
the materials for comparison. But this the reader will find explained
in the note; and will now cast his eye back to the sentence
immediately preceding this parenthesis.]
Now when a person speaking to us of any particular Object or
Appearance refers it by means of some common character to a known
class (which he does in giving it a Name), we say, that we understand
him; that is, we understand his words. The Name of a thing, in the
original sense of the word Name, (_nomen_, νουμενον, το
_intelligible_, _id quod intelligitur_) expresses that which is
_understood_ in an appearance, that which we place (or make to
_stand_) _under_ it, as the condition of its real existence, and in
proof that it is not an accident of the senses, or affection of the
individual, not a phantom or _apparition_, that is, an appearance that
is _only_ an appearance. (See Gen. ii. 19, 20, and in Psalm xx. 1, and
in many other places of the Bible, the identity of _nomen_ with
_numen_, that is, invisible power and presence, the _nomen
substantivum_ of all real objects, and the ground of their reality,
independently of the affections of sense in the percipient). In like
manner, in a connected succession of names, as the speaker passes from
the one to the other, we say that we can understand his _discourse_
(_discursio intellectûs, discursus_, his passing rapidly from one
thing to another). Thus, in all instances, it is words, names, or, if
images, yet images used as words or names, that are the only and
exclusive subjects of Understanding. In no instance do we understand a
thing in itself; but only the name to which it is referred. Sometimes
indeed, when several classes are recalled conjointly, we identify the
words with the object--though by courtesy of idiom rather than in
strict propriety of language. Thus we may say that we _understand_ a
rainbow, when recalling successively the several Names for the several
sorts of colours, we know that they are to be applied to one and the
same _phenomenon_, at once distinctly and simultaneously; but even in
common speech we should not say this of a single colour. No one would
say he understands red or blue. He _sees_ the colour, and had seen it
before in a vast number and variety of objects; and he understands the
_word_ red, as referring his fancy or memory to this his collective
experience.
If this be so, and so it most assuredly is--if the proper functions of
the Understanding be that of generalizing the notices received from
the senses in order to the construction of _names_: of referring
particular notices (that is, impressions or sensations) to their
proper names; and, _vice versâ_, names to their correspondent class or
kind of notices--then it follows of necessity, that the Understanding
is truly and accurately defined in the words of Leighton and Kant, a
"faculty judging according to sense."
Now whether in defining the speculative Reason (that is, the Reason
considered abstractedly as an _intellective_ power) we call it "the
source of necessary and universal principles, according to which the
notices of the senses are either affirmed or denied;" or describe it
as "the power by which we are enabled to draw from particular and
contingent appearances universal and necessary conclusions:"[97] it is
equally evident that the two definitions differ in their essential
characters, and consequently the subjects differ in _kind_.
The dependence of the Understanding on the representations of the
senses, and its consequent posteriority thereto, as contrasted with
the independence and antecedency of Reason, are strikingly
exemplified in the Ptolemaic System (that truly wonderful product and
highest boast of the faculty, judging according to the senses!)
compared with the Newtonian, as the offspring of a yet higher power,
arranging, correcting, and annulling the representations of the senses
according to its own inherent laws and constitutive ideas.
[94] See Wisd. of Sol. vii. 22, 23, 27.--H. N. C.
[95] Accordingly as we attend more or less to the differences, the
_sort_ becomes, of course, more or less comprehensive. Hence there
arises for the systematic naturalist, the necessity of subdividing the
sorts into orders, classes, families, &c.: all which, however, resolve
themselves for the mere logician into the conception of _genus_ and
_species_, _i.e._ the comprehending and the comprehended.
[96] Were it not so, how could the first comparison have been
possible?--It would involve the absurdity of measuring a thing by
itself. But if we think on some one thing, the length of our own foot,
or of our hand and arm from the elbow joint, it is evident that in
_order_ to do this, we must have the conception of measure. Now these
antecedent and most general conceptions are what is meant by the
constituent _forms_ of the Understanding: we call them _constituent_
because they are not _acquired_ by the Understanding, but are implied
in its constitution. As rationally might a circle be said to acquire a
centre and circumference, as the Understanding to acquire these, its
inherent _forms_, or ways of conceiving. This is what Leibnitz meant,
when to the old adage of the Peripatetics, _Nihil in intellectu quod
non prius in sensu_ (There is nothing in the Understanding not derived
from the Senses, or--There is nothing _con_ceived that was not
previously _per_ceived;) he replied--_præter intellectum ipsum_
(except the Understanding itself).
And here let me remark for once and all: whoever would _reflect_ to
any purpose--whoever is in earnest in his pursuit of Self-knowledge,
and of one of the principal means to this, an insight into the meaning
of the words he uses, and the different meanings properly or
improperly conveyed by one and the same word, accordingly as it is
used in the schools or the market, accordingly as the _kind_ or a high
_degree_ is intended (for example, heat, weight, and the like, as
employed scientifically, compared with the same word used
popularly)--whoever, I say, seriously proposes this as his object,
must so far overcome his dislike of pedantry, and his dread of being
sneered at as a pedant, as not to quarrel with an uncouth word or
phrase, till he is quite sure that some other and more familiar one
would not only have expressed the _precise_ meaning with equal
clearness, but have been as likely to draw attention to _this_ meaning
exclusively. The ordinary language of a Philosopher in conversation or
popular writings, compared with the language he uses in strict
reasoning, is as his watch compared with the chronometer in his
observatory. He sets the former by the Town-clock, or even, perhaps,
by the Dutch clock in his kitchen, not because he believes it right,
but because his neighbours and his cook _go_ by it. To afford the
reader an opportunity for exercising the forbearance here recommended,
I turn back to the phrase, "most general conceptions," and observe,
that in strict and severe propriety of language I should have said
_generalific_ or _generific_ rather than general, and concipiences or
conceptive acts rather than conceptions.
It is an old complaint, that a man of genius no sooner appears, but
the host of dunces are up in arms to repel the invading alien. This
observation would have made more converts to its truth, I suspect, had
it been worded more dispassionately, and with a less contemptuous
antithesis. For "dunces," let us substitute "the many," or the "ουτος
κοσμος" (_this world_) of the Apostle, and we shall perhaps find no
great difficulty in accounting for the fact. To arrive at the _root_,
indeed, and last ground of the problem, it would be necessary to
investigate the nature and effects of the sense of difference on the
human mind where it is not holden in check by reason and reflection.
We need not go to the savage tribes of North America, or the yet ruder
natives of the Indian Isles, to learn, how slight a degree of
difference will, in uncultivated minds, call up a sense of diversity,
and inward perplexity and contradiction, as if the strangers were, and
yet were not, of the same _kind_ with themselves. Who has not had
occasion to observe the effect which the gesticulations and nasal
tones of a Frenchman produce on our own vulgar? Here we may see the
origin and primary import of our _unkindness_. It is a sense of
_un_kind, and not the mere negation but the positive Opposite of the
sense of _kind_. Alienation, aggravated now by fear, now by contempt,
and not seldom by a mixture of both, aversion, hatred, enmity, are so
many successive shapes of its growth and metamorphosis.--In
application to the present case, it is sufficient to say, that
Pindar's remark on sweet music holds equally true of genius: as many
as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The
beholder either recognizes it as a projected form of his own Being,
that moves before him with a Glory round its head, or recoils from it
as from a Spectre. But this speculation would lead me too far; I must
be content with having referred to it as the ultimate ground of the
fact, and pass to the more obvious and proximate causes. And as the
first, I would rank the person's _not_ understanding what yet he
expects to understand, and as if he had a right to do so. An original
mathematical work, or any other that requires peculiar and (so to say)
technical marks and symbols, will excite no uneasy feelings--not in
the mind of a competent reader, for he understands it; and not with
others, because they neither expect nor are expected to understand it.
The second place we may assign to the _mis_understanding, which is
almost sure to follow in cases where the incompetent person, finding
no outward marks (diagrams, arbitrary signs, and the like) to inform
him at first sight, that the subject is one which he does not pretend
to understand, and to be ignorant of which does not detract from his
estimation as a man of abilities generally, _will_ attach some meaning
to what he hears or reads; and as he is out of humour with the author,
it will most often be such a meaning as he can quarrel with and
exhibit in a ridiculous or offensive point of view.
But above all, the whole world almost of minds, as far as we regard
intellectual efforts, may be divided into two classes of the
Busy-indolent and Lazy-indolent. To both alike all Thinking is
painful, and all attempts to rouse them to think, whether in the
re-examination of their existing convictions, or for the reception of
new light, are irritating. "It _may_ all be very deep and clever; but
really one ought to be quite sure of it before one wrenches one's
brain to find out what it is. I take up a Book as a Companion, with
whom I can have an easy cheerful chit-chat on what we both know
beforehand, or else matters of fact. In our leisure hours we have a
right to relaxation and amusement."
Well! but in their _studious_ hours, when their bow is to be bent,
when they are _apud Musas_, or amidst the Muses? Alas! it is just the
same! The same craving for _amusement_, that is, to be away from the
Muses! for relaxation, that is, the unbending of a bow which in fact
had never been strung! There are two ways of obtaining their applause.
The first is: Enable them to reconcile in one and the same occupation
the love of Sloth and the hatred of Vacancy! Gratify indolence, and
yet save them from _ennui_--in plain English, from themselves! For,
spite of their antipathy to _dry_ reading, the keeping company with
themselves is, after all, the insufferable annoyance: and the true
secret of their dislike to a work of thought and inquiry lies in its
tendency to make them acquainted with their own permanent Being. The
other road to their favour is, to introduce to them their own thoughts
and predilections, tricked out in the _fine_ language, in which it
would gratify their vanity to express them in their own conversation,
and with which they can imagine themselves _showing off:_ and this (as
has been elsewhere remarked) is the characteristic difference between
the second-rate writers of the last two or three generations, and the
same class under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. In the latter we find the
most far-fetched and singular thoughts in the simplest and most native
language; in the former, the most obvious and common-place thoughts in
the most far-fetched and motley language. But lastly, and as the _sine
quâ non_ of their patronage, a sufficient arc must be left for the
Reader's mind to _oscillate_ in--freedom of choice,
To make the shifting cloud be what you please,
save only where the attraction of curiosity determines the line of
motion. The attention must not be fastened down: and this every work
of genius, not simply narrative, must do before it can be justly
appreciated.
In former times a _popular_ work meant one that adapted the _results_
of studious meditation or scientific research to the capacity of the
people, presenting in the concrete, by instances and examples, what
had been ascertained in the abstract and by discovery of the Law.
_Now_, on the other hand, that is a popular work which gives back to
the people their own errors and prejudices, and flatters the many by
creating them, under the title of THE PUBLIC, into a supreme and
inappellable Tribunal of intellectual Excellence. P.S. In a continuous
work, the frequent insertion and length of Notes would need an
Apology: in a book like this of Aphorisms and detached Comments none
is necessary, it being understood beforehand, that the sauce and the
garnish are to occupy the greater part of the dish.
[97] Take a familiar illustration. My sight and touch convey to me a
certain impression, to which my Understanding applies its
pre-conceptions (_conceptus antecedentes et generalissimi_) of
quantity and relation, and thus refers it to the class and name of
three-cornered bodies--we will suppose it the iron of a turf-spade. It
compares the sides, and finds that any two measured as one are greater
than the third; and according to a law of the imagination, there
arises a presumption that in all other bodies of the same figure (that
is, three-cornered and equilateral) the same proportion exists. After
this, the senses have been directed successively to a number of
three-cornered bodies of _unequal_ sides--and in these too the same
proportion has been found without exception, till at length it becomes
a fact of _experience_, that in _all_ triangles hitherto seen, the two
sides together are greater than the third: and there will exist no
ground or analogy for anticipating an exception to a rule, generalized
from so vast a number of particular instances. So far and no farther
could the Understanding carry us: and as far as this "the faculty,
judging according to sense," conducts many of the _inferior_ animals,
if not in the same, yet in instances analogous and fully equivalent.
The Reason supersedes the whole process, and on the first conception
presented by the Understanding in consequence of the first sight of a
tri-angular figure, of whatever sort it might chance to be, it affirms
with an assurance incapable of future increase, with a perfect
_certainty_, that in all possible triangles any two of the inclosing
lines _will_ and _must_ be greater than the third. In short,
Understanding in its highest form of experience remains commensurate
with the experimental notices of the senses from which it is
generalized. Reason, on the other hand, either predetermines
Experience, or avails itself of a past Experience to supersede its
necessity in all future time; and affirms truths which no sense could
perceive, nor experiment verify, nor experience confirm.
Yea, this is the test and character of a truth so affirmed, that in
its own proper form it is _inconceivable_. For _to conceive_ is a
function of the Understanding, which can be exercised only on subjects
subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the Understanding all
truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection,
and to be rendered _expressible_. And here we have a second test and
sign of a truth so affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds
of the Understanding only in the disguise of two contradictory
conceptions, each of which is partially true, and the conjunction of
both conceptions becomes the representative or _expression_ (the
_exponent_) of a truth _beyond_ conception and inexpressible.
Examples: Before Abraham _was_, I _am_.--God is a Circle, the centre
of which is everywhere, and circumference nowhere. The soul is all in
every part.
If this appear extravagant, it is an extravagance which no man can
indeed learn from another, but which, (were this possible,) I might
have learnt from Plato, Kepler, and Bacon; from Luther, Hooker,
Pascal, Leibnitz, and Fénélon. But in this last paragraph I have, I
see, unwittingly overstepped my purpose, according to which we were to
take Reason as a simply intellectual power. Yet even as such, and with
all the disadvantage of a technical and arbitrary Abstraction, it has
been made evident--1. that there is an _Intuition_ or _im_mediate
Beholding, accompanied by a conviction of the necessity and
universality of the truth so beholden not derived from the senses,
which intuition, when it is _construed_ by _pure_ sense, gives birth
to the Science of Mathematics, and when applied to objects
supersensuous or spiritual is the organ of Theology and
Philosophy:--and 2. that there is likewise a reflective and discursive
faculty, or _mediate_ Apprehension which, taken by itself and
uninfluenced by the former, depends on the senses for the materials,
on which it is exercised, and is contained within the sphere of the
senses. And this faculty it is, which in generalizing the notices of
the senses constitutes Sensible Experience, and gives rise to Maxims
or Rules which may become more and more _general_, but can never be
raised into universal Verities, or beget a consciousness of absolute
Certainty; though they may be sufficient to extinguish all doubt.
(Putting Revelation out of view, take our first progenitor in the 50th
or 100th year of his existence. His experience would probably have
freed him from all doubt, as the sun sank in the horizon that it would
re-appear the next morning. But compare this state of assurance with
that which the same man would have had of the 37th Proposition of
Euclid, supposing him, like Pythagoras, to have discovered the
_Demonstration_.) Now is it expedient, I ask, or conformable to the
laws and purposes of language, to call two so altogether disparate
subjects by one and the same name? Or, having two names in our
language, should we call each of the two diverse subjects by
both--that is, by either name, as caprice might dictate? If not, then,
as we have the two words, Reason and Understanding (as indeed what
language of cultivated man has not?) what should prevent us from
appropriating the former to the Power distinctive of humanity? We need
only place the derivatives from the two terms in opposition (for
example, "A and B are both rational beings; but there is no comparison
between them in point of _intelligence_;" or "She always concludes
_rationally_, though not a woman of much _understanding_") to see that
we cannot reverse the order--_i.e._ call the higher gift
Understanding, and the lower Reason. What _should_ prevent us? I
asked. Alas! that which _has_ prevented us--the _cause_ of this
confusion in the terms--is only too obvious; namely, inattention to
the momentous distinction in the _things_, and (generally) to the duty
and habit recommended in the fifth Introductory Aphorism of this
volume, (_see_ p. 2). But the cause of this, and of all its lamentable
effects and subcauses, _false doctrine_, _blindness of heart and
contempt of the word_, is best declared by the philosophic Apostle:
_they did not_ like _to retain God in their knowledge_, (Rom. i.28,)
and though they could not _extinguish the light that lighteth every
man_, and which _shone in the darkness_; yet because the darkness
could not _comprehend_ the light, they refused to bear witness of the
light, and worshipped, instead, the shaping mist, which the light had
drawn upward from _the ground_ (that is, from the mere animal nature
and instinct), and which that light alone had made visible, that is,
by superinducing on the animal instinct the principle of
Self-consciousness.