THE
COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT
IN TWELVE VOLUMES
VOLUME ELEVEN
_All rights reserved_
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
WILLIAM HAZLITT
EDITED BY A. R. WALLER
AND ARNOLD GLOVER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
W. E. HENLEY
❦
Fugitive Writings
❦
1904
LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
This volume and volume XII. contain those of Hazlitt’s writings which
remained uncollected during his lifetime and have not been included in
earlier volumes of the present edition. Some of these writings were
published by the author’s son in the three works of which particulars
are given below; one of them, the essay ‘On Abstract Ideas,’ was
published in the second edition (1836) of _An Essay on the Principles of
Human Action_ (cf. Bibliographical Note, vol. VII. p. 384); a few, viz.
‘Common Places’ and ‘Trifles Light as Air,’ were included in Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt’s edition of _The Round Table_ (Bohn’s Standard Library, 1871);
but most of the papers are here reprinted for the first time. See the
Table of Contents, where the essays which have never been republished
before are marked by an asterisk. The evidence upon which the Editors
have relied in respect of this fresh material will be found in the
Notes. A great many of the Essays now printed have not hitherto been
identified as Hazlitt’s, but none have been included concerning which
the Editors feel any doubt.
The works published by the author’s son and referred to above are as
follows:—
1. ‘_Literary Remains of the late William Hazlitt._ With a Notice of his
Life, By his Son, and Thoughts on his Genius and Writings, By E. L.
Bulwer, Esq., M.P. and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, M.P. In Two Volumes.
London: Saunders and Otley, Conduit Street. 1836.’ Vol. I. contained (as
a frontispiece) Bewick’s crayon drawing of Hazlitt reproduced in vol.
VIII. of the present edition; a Sonnet ‘written on seeing Bewick’s
Chalk-Drawing of the Head of Hazlitt’ by Sheridan Knowles; a
‘Biographical Sketch’ of Hazlitt by his son; ‘Some Thoughts on the
Genius of William Hazlitt’ signed ‘The Author of “Eugene Aram”‘;
‘Thoughts upon the Intellectual Character of the late William Hazlitt,’
by Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, M.P.; ‘Character of Hazlitt,’ by Charles Lamb,
extracted from the well-known ‘Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esq.’
(1823); six ‘Sonnets to the Memory of Hazlitt’ by ‘A Lady’; and the
following essays by Hazlitt, viz.: (i) Project for a new Theory of Civil
and Criminal Legislation, (ii) Definition of Wit, (iii) On Means and
Ends, (iv) Belief, whether Voluntary? (v) Personal Politics, (vi) On the
Writings of Hobbes, (vii) On Liberty and Necessity, (viii) On Locke’s
Essay on the Human Understanding, and (ix) On Tooke’s Diversions of
Purley.—Vol. II. contained the following essays by Hazlitt, viz.: (i) On
Self-Love, (ii) On the Conduct of Life; or, Advice to a School-boy,
(iii) On the Fine Arts, (iv) The Fight, (v) On the Want of Money, (vi)
On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth, (vii) The Main-Chance, (viii)
The Opera, (ix) Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen, (x) My First
Acquaintance with Poets, (xi) The Shyness of Scholars, (xii) The
Vatican, and (xiii) On the Spirit of Monarchy. Of these, the essay ‘On
the Fine Arts’ and the essay on ‘The Vatican’ are included in vol. IX.
of the present edition; the rest are published in this volume or in vol.
XII.
2. ‘_Sketches and Essays._ By William Hazlitt. Now first collected by
his Son. London: John Templeman, 248, Regent Street. MDCCCXXXIX.’ An
Advertisement states that ‘The volume which the Editor has here the
gratification of presenting to the public, consists of Essays
contributed by their author to various periodicals. None of them have
hitherto been published in a collective form, and it is confidently
anticipated that they will be received as an acceptable Companion to the
“Table Talk” and “Plain Speaker.”’ The contents are as follows: (i) On
Reading New Books, (ii) On Cant and Hypocrisy, (iii) Merry England, (iv)
On a Sun-Dial, (v) On Prejudice, (vi) Self-Love and Benevolence (a
Dialogue), (vii) On Disagreeable People, (viii) On Knowledge of the
World, (ix) On Fashion, (x) On Nicknames, (xi) On Taste, (xii) Why the
Heroes of Romance are insipid, (xiii) On the Conversation of Lords,
(xiv) The Letter-Bell, (xv) Envy, (xvi) On the Spirit of Partisanship,
(xvii) Footmen, and (xviii) A Chapter on Editors. This volume was
reprinted in 1852 with ‘Sketches and Essays’ as a half-title and the
following title-page: ‘Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays. By William
Hazlitt. London: Published at the office of the Illustrated London
Library, 227 Strand. MDCCCII.’ In this edition the essay entitled
‘Self-Love and Benevolence (A Dialogue)’ is omitted. A third edition
(which has been reprinted from time to time) was published in 1872 in
Bohn’s Standard Library, edited by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt.
3. ‘_Winterslow: Essays and Characters written there._ By William
Hazlitt. Collected by his Son. London: David Bogue, Fleet Street.
MDCCCL.’ This small 8vo volume contained the following essays: (i) My
First Acquaintance with Poets, (ii) Of Persons One Would Wish to Have
Seen, (iii) Party Spirit, (iv) On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth,
(v) On Public Opinion, (vi) On Personal Identity, (vii) Mind and Motive,
(viii) On Means and Ends, (ix) Matter and Manner, (x) On Consistency of
Opinion, (xi) Project for a new Theory of Civil and Criminal
Legislation, (xii) On the Character of Burke, (xiii) On the Character of
Fox, (xiv) On the Character of Pitt, (xv) On the Character of Lord
Chatham, (xvi) Belief, whether Voluntary, and (xvii) A Farewell to
Essay-Writing. This volume was republished in 1872 along with _Sketches
and Essays_ in the volume of Bohn’s Standard Library referred to above.
Of the essays published in _Winterslow_ the Characters of Burke, Fox,
Pitt and Lord Chatham are included in vol. III. of the present edition
(_Political Essays_). The rest of the essays published in _Sketches and
Essays_ and _Winterslow_ are included in vols. XI. and XII. of the
present edition.
It will be seen that _Literary Remains_ and _Winterslow_ to some extent
overlap one another, and that _Winterslow_ contained several essays
which had already been published in _Political Essays_. Under these
circumstances it has been found necessary in the present edition to
adopt a fresh scheme of arrangement in place of republishing _Literary
Remains_, _Sketches and Essays_ and _Winterslow_ as they stand. Each
essay, whether contained in one of those posthumous collections or now
republished for the first time, is printed in chronological order under
the heading of the magazine or newspaper in which it originally
appeared; and the magazines themselves are arranged in a chronological
order based upon the respective dates at which Hazlitt began to
contribute to them. The only exception to this last scheme of
arrangement is that at the end of the present volume it was found
convenient to take the ‘Common Places’ from _The Literary Examiner_ a
little before their turn. They should strictly have followed the
contributions to _The Liberal_ in vol. XII., but it was thought better
not to divide between two volumes the important essays from _The New
Monthly Magazine_ which now begin vol. XII.
This plan of arrangement seemed on the whole the simplest and best, and
it is hoped that with the aid of the Tables of Contents and the Index
the reader will have no difficulty in finding any particular essay.
In the present edition all the essays, the magazine source of which is
known, have been printed _verbatim_ from the magazines themselves. In
preparing _Literary Remains_, _Sketches and Essays_ and _Winterslow_ for
the press the author’s son took considerable liberties with the text. In
one or two cases the alterations which he made may have been based on a
MS. or a copy of a magazine with corrections by Hazlitt, but far more
often the essays were reprinted with omissions and trifling alterations
made, as it would seem, by the editor himself on his own responsibility.
Some passages thus omitted and now restored for the first time are of
great interest. The more important of them are specially indicated in
the notes. In the few cases where the author’s son added passages from a
MS. or other authoritative source, the passages have been given either
in the text (with a note indicating where they occur), or in the Notes.
In addition to the essays printed in the text of this volume and to
those referred to in the notes it may be convenient to mention here a
few essays which may have been written by Hazlitt but have been omitted
from the present edition on the ground that his authorship is not
sufficiently certain. They are arranged in the following list under the
heading of the magazine in which they first appeared.
I. _The Examiner._
1. A review (Sept. 29 and Oct. 13, 1816) of George Ensor’s _On the
State of Europe in January, 1816_. This work of George Ensor’s
(1769–1843), ‘full,’ as the reviewer says, ‘of undeniable facts,
and undeniable inferences from them,’ was likely to appeal to
Hazlitt’s political sympathies. The review consists mainly of
extracts from the work itself, but what there is of comment is
certainly very much in Hazlitt’s vein.
2. ‘A Modern Tory Delineated’ (Oct. 6). This paper, which is dated
from Gloucester, Oct. 1, 1816, has certainly a very strong
flavour of Hazlitt.
3. Some political leaders and articles which appeared at the beginning
of 1817 and are not signed with Leigh Hunt’s mark. The most
important of these are: ‘Mr. Pitt—Finance, Sinking Fund’ (Jan.
19); ‘Defence of National Debt’ (Jan. 26); ‘Progress of Finance’
(Feb. 16); and ‘Friends of Revolution’ (Feb. 23).
4. Some theatrical notices published in 1828, viz.: June 29 (_The
Rivals_); Aug. 3 and 10 (_Cosi fan Tutte_); Oct. 19 (Kean’s
Shylock, _Figaro_, and Mathews in _The May Queen_); Oct. 26
(Madame Vestris in _The Marriage of Figaro_, and Rovere the
conjurer); Nov. 2 (Farren’s Dr. Cantwell in _The Hypocrite_, _The
Youthful Queen_, and Kean’s Overreach, Macbeth and Othello); Nov.
16 (_Guy Mannering_ and _The Stranger_).
II. _The Edinburgh Magazine_ (new Series).
Three papers on the criminal law, viz.: ‘Historical View of the
Progress of Opinion on the Criminal Law and the Punishment of
Death’ (March, 1819, vol. IV. p. 195); ‘Parliamentary Report on
the Criminal Laws’ (Dec., 1819, vol. V. p. 491); and a short
paper on the same subject (Jan. 1820, vol. VI. p. 26). Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt in his _Memoirs, etc._ (vol. I. p. xxvi.) attributes
these articles to Hazlitt, perhaps on the strength of some MS. or
proof in his possession at the date of the _Memoirs_ (1867).
Hazlitt’s authorship, however, though very probable, does not
seem to be certain, and as the papers consist largely of extracts
from a Parliamentary Report, they have been omitted from the
present edition. Hazlitt’s views on capital punishment will be
found in an extract which was first published in _Fraser’s
Magazine_ in 1831 and is reprinted in vol. XII.
III. _The London Magazine._
1. A review of ‘The Memoirs of Mr. Hardy Vaux’ (Jan. 1820, vol. I. p.
25).
2. ‘Letters of Foote, Garrick,’ etc. (Dec. 1820, vol. II. p. 647, and
Feb. 1821, vol. III. p. 202).
3. A review of Byron’s _Marino Faliero_ (May, 1821, vol. III. p. 550).
4. A review of Byron’s _Sardanapalus_ (Jan. 1822, vol. V. p. 66).
CONTENTS[1]
PAGE
On Abstract Ideas 1
_FRAGMENTS OF LECTURES ON PHILOSOPHY_ (1812)
On the Writings of Hobbes 25
On Liberty and Necessity 48
On Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding 74
On Tooke’s ‘Diversions of Purley’ 119
On Self-Love 132
_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE MORNING CHRONICLE
*Madame de Staël’s Account of German Philosophy and Literature 162
*The Same Subject continued 167
*The Same Subject continued 172
*The Same Subject continued (On Abstraction) 180
*Fine Arts. British Institution 187
*The Stage 191
*Fine Arts (The Louvre) 195
_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE CHAMPION
*Wilson’s Landscapes at the British Institution 198
*On Gainsborough’s Pictures 202
*Mr. Kemble’s Penruddock 205
*Introduction to an Account of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses 208
*On Genius and Originality 210
*On the Imitation of Nature 216
*On the Ideal 223
*L. Buonaparte’s Charlemagne: ou l’Église Délivrée 230
*The Same Subject continued 234
*L. Buonaparte’s Collection of Pictures 237
*British Institution 242
*The Same Subject continued 246
*The Same Subject continued 248
*On Mr. Wilkie’s Pictures 249
_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE EXAMINER
*On Rochefoucault’s Maxims 253
On the Predominant Principles and Excitements of the Human Mind[2] 258
The Love of Power or Action as Main a Principle in the Human Mind
as Sensibility to Pleasure or Pain[2] 263
Essay on Manners[3] 269
*Kean’s Bajazet, and ‘The Country Girl’ 274
*Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity 277
*Parallel Passages in various Poets 282
*Mr. Locke a great Plagiarist 284
[The Same Subject continued] 578
*Shakespear’s Female Characters 290
*Miss O’Neill’s Widow Cheerly 297
*Penelope and The Dansomanie. 299
*Oroonoko 301
*The Pannel and The Ravens 303
*John Gilpin 305
*Don Giovanni and Kean’s Eustace de St. Pierre 307
*Character of the Country People 309
*Mr. Macready’s Macbeth 315
*Guy Faux 317
*The Same Subject continued 323
*The Same Subject concluded 328
Character of Mr. Canning 334
*The Dandy School 343
*Actors and the Public 348
*French Plays 352
*French Plays (continued) 356
*The Theatres and Passion-Week 358
*Charles Kean 362
*Some of the Old Actors 366
*The Company at the Opera 369
*The Beggar’s Opera 373
*The Taming of the Shrew and L’Avare 377
*Mrs. Siddons 381
*The Three Quarters, etc. 384
*Mr. Kean 389
_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE TIMES
*Munden’s Sir Peter Teazle 392
*Young’s Hamlet 394
*Dowton in The Hypocrite 395
*Miss Brunton’s Rosalind 396
*Maywood’s Zanga 397
*Kean’s Richard III. 399
*The Wonder 401
*Venice Preserved 402
*She Stoops to Conquer 403
*Kean’s Macbeth 404
*Kean’s Othello 405
*Kean and Miss O’Neill 407
*The Honey Moon 409
*Mr. Kean 410
*King John 410
_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE YELLOW DWARF
*The Press—Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, and Bentham 411
*Mr. Coleridge’s Lectures 416
*Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 420
The Opera 426
_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE EDINBURGH (NEW SCOTS) MAGAZINE
*On the Question whether Pope was a Poet 430
*On Respectable People 433
On Fashion 437
On Nicknames 442
Thoughts on Taste 450
The Same Subject continued 454
The Same Subject continued[4] 459
_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE LONDON MAGAZINE
*On the Present State of Parliamentary Eloquence 464
*Haydon’s ‘Christ’s Agony in the Garden’ 481
*Pope, Lord Byron, and Mr. Bowles 486
On Consistency of Opinion 508
On the Spirit of Partisanship 521
*‘The Pirate’ 531
*‘Peveril of the Peak’ 537
_CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE LITERARY EXAMINER
Common Places 540
NOTES 563
_ESSAYS NOT CERTAINLY HAZLITT’S, AND FRAGMENTS_
Character of Mr. Wordsworth’s New Poem The Excursion 572
The Duke D’Enghien 577
Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ 580
Sketches of the History of the Good Old Times 582
Historical Illustrations of Shakespeare 601
Mr. Crabbe 603
[Illustration: FACSIMILE (REDUCED) OF HAZLITT’s HANDWRITING, FROM A MS.
IN THE POSSESSION OF MR. W. C. HAZLITT.]
FUGITIVE WRITINGS
ON ABSTRACT IDEAS
I shall in this essay state Mr. Locke’s account of generalization,
abstraction, and reasoning, as contrasted with the modern one, and then
endeavour to defend the existence of these faculties, or acts of the
mind from the objections urged against them by Hume, Berkeley,
Condillac, and others, which are in truth merely repetitions of what
Hobbes has said on the subject. I must premise, however, that I do not
think it possible ever to arrive at a demonstration of generals or
abstractions by beginning in Mr. Locke’s method with particular ones:
this faculty of abstraction is by most considered as a sort of
artificial refinement upon our other ideas, as an excrescence, no ways
contained in the common impressions of things, nor scarcely necessary to
the common purposes of life, and it is by Mr. Locke altogether denied to
be among the faculties of brutes. It is the ornament and top-addition of
the mind of man, which proceeding from simple sensations upwards, is
gradually sublimed into the abstract notions of things; ‘from the root
springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves more airy, last
the bright consummate flower.’ On the other hand, I conceive that all
our notions from first to last, are strictly speaking, general and
abstract, not absolute and particular; and that to have a perfectly
distinct idea of any one individual thing, or concrete existence, either
as to the parts of which it is composed, or the differences belonging to
it, or the circumstances connected with it, would imply an unlimited
power of comprehension in the human mind, which is impossible. All
particular things consist of, and lead to an infinite number of other
things. Abstraction is a consequence of the limitation of the
comprehensive faculty, and mixes itself more or less with every act of
the mind of whatever kind, and in every moment of its existence. There
is no idea of an individual object, which consists of a single
impression, but of a number of impressions massed together: there is no
idea of a particular quality of an object, which is perfectly simple, or
which is not the result of a number of impressions of the same sort
classed together by the mind without attending to their particular
differences. Every idea of an object is, therefore, in a strict sense an
imperfect and general notion of an aggregate: of a house, or tree, as
well as of a city, or forest: of a grain of sand as well as of the
universe. Every idea of a sensible quality, as of the whiteness of the
sheet of paper before me, or the hardness of the table on which I lean,
implies the same power of generalization, of connecting several
impressions into one sort, as the most refined and abstract idea of
virtue and justice, of motion, or extension, or space of time, or being
itself. This view of the subject is not, I confess, very obvious at
first sight, and it will be more easily understood after I have stated
the arguments of others on this difficult question. The concise account
of the nature of abstract ideas is that which Mr. Locke has given, as
follows. ‘All things that exist being particular, it may be perhaps
thought reasonable that words which ought to be conformed to things
should be so too, I mean in their signification: but yet we find quite
the contrary. The far greatest part of words that make all languages are
general terms, which has not been the effect of neglect or chance, but
of reason and necessity.’ ‘First, it is impossible that every particular
thing should have a distinct peculiar name. For the signification and
use of words depending on that connection which the mind makes between
its ideas and the sounds it uses as signs of them, it is necessary in
the applications of names to things, that the mind should have distinct
ideas of the things, and retain also the particular name that belongs to
every one, with its peculiar appropriation to that idea. But it is
beyond the power of human capacity to frame and retain distinct ideas of
all the particular things we meet with; every bird and beast we see,
every tree and plant that affect the senses, could not find a place in
the most capacious understanding. If it be looked on as an instance of a
prodigious memory, that some generals have been able to call every
soldier in their army by his proper name, we may easily find a reason
why men never attempted to give names to each sheep in their flock, or
crow that flies over their heads, much less to call every leaf of plants
or grain of sand that came in their way, by a peculiar name. Secondly,
if it were possible, it would not serve to the chief end of language.
Men would not in vain heap up names of particular things that would not
serve them to communicate their thoughts. Men learn names, and use them
in talk with others, only that they may be understood, which is then
only done, when by use or consent, the sound I make by the organs of
speech, excites in another man’s mind who hears it, the idea I apply to
it in mine when I speak it. This cannot be done by names applied to
particular things, whereof I alone have the ideas in my mind, the names
of them could not be significant, intelligible to another who was not
acquainted with all those very particular things which had fallen under
my notice. Thirdly, granting this feasible, which I think it is not, yet
a distinct name of every particular thing would not be of any great use
for the improvement of knowledge; which though founded in particular
things, enlarges itself by general views, to which things reduced into
sorts under general names are properly subservient. These with the names
belonging to them come within some compass, and do not multiply every
moment beyond what either the mind can contain, or use requires, and
therefore in these men have for the most part stopped. But yet not so,
as to hinder themselves from distinguishing particular things by
appropriated names, where convenience demands it. And therefore in their
own species, which they have to do with, and wherein they have often
occasion to mention particular persons, they make use of proper names;
and these distinct individuals have distinct denominations. Besides
persons, countries, cities, rivers, mountains, and other like
distinctions of place have usually found particular names, and that for
the same reason; and I doubt not but if we had reason to mention
particular horses, as often as we have to mention particular men, we
should have proper names for the one as familiarly as for the other, and
Bucephalus would be a word as much in use as Alexander. And therefore we
see amongst jockies, horses have their proper names to be known and
distinguished by, as commonly as their servants, because amongst them
there is often occasion to mention this or that particular horse, when
he is out of sight. The next thing to be considered is how general words
came to be made. For since all things that exist are only particulars,
how come we by general terms, or where find we those general natures
they are supposed to stand for? Words become general by being made the
signs of general ideas, and ideas become general by separating from them
the circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may
determine them to this or that particular existence. By this way of
abstraction they are made capable of representing more individuals than
one, each of which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea is
(as we call it) of that sort.
‘But to deduce this a little more distinctly, it will not, perhaps, be
amiss to trace our notions and names from their beginning, and observe
by what degrees we proceed, and by what steps we enlarge our ideas from
their first infancy. There is nothing more evident than that the ideas
of the persons children converse with, are like the persons themselves,
only particulars. The ideas of the nurse and the mother are well framed
in the mind and like pictures of them there, represent only those
individuals. The names they first give rise to are confined to these
individuals, and the names of _nurse_ and _mamma_ which the child uses,
determine themselves to those persons. Afterwards when time and a larger
acquaintance has made them observe that there are a great many other
things in the world, that in some common agreements of shape, and
several other properties resemble their father and mother, and those
persons they have been used to, they frame an idea which they find those
many particulars do partake in, and to that they give with others the
name _Man_, for example. And thus they come to have a general name, and
a general idea. Wherein they make nothing new, but only leave out of the
complex idea they had of Peter and James, Mary and Jane, that which is
peculiar to each, and retain what is common to them all. By the same way
that they come by the general name and idea of man, they easily advance
to more general names and notions. For observing that several things
that differ from their idea of man, and therefore cannot be comprehended
under that name, have yet certain qualities wherein they agree with man,
by retaining only those qualities and uniting them into one idea, they
have again another and more general idea; to which having given a name,
they make a term of a more comprehensive extension; which new idea is
made, not by any new addition, but only as before, by leaving out the
shape, and some other properties signified by the name man, and
retaining only a body with life, sense, and spontaneous motion,
comprehended under the name _animal_. That this is the way that men
first formed general ideas and general names to them, I think is so
evident that there needs no other proof of it, but the considering of a
man’s self or others, and the ordinary proceedings of their mind in
knowledge: and he that thinks general natures or notions are anything
else but _such abstracts and partial ideas of more complex ones taken at
first from particular existencies_, will I fear be at a loss where to
find them. For let any one reflect and then tell me, wherein does his
idea of _man_ differ from that of Paul and Peter, or his idea of horse
from that of Bucephalus, but in the leaving out something that is
peculiar to each individual; and retaining so much of those particular
complex ideas of several particular existencies, as they are found to
agree in? Of the complex ideas signified by the names _man_ and _horse_,
leaving out those particulars wherein they differ, and retaining only
those wherein they agree, and of those making a new distinct complex
idea and giving the name _animal_ to it, one has a more general term
that comprehends with man several other creatures.
‘Leave out of the idea of animal sense and spontaneous motion, and the
remaining complex idea, made up of the remaining simple ones of body,
life, and nourishment, becomes a more general one under the more
comprehensive word _vivens_. And not to dwell upon these particular, so
evident in itself, by the same way the mind proceeds to _body_,
_substance_, and at last to _being_, thing, and such universal terms,
which stand for any of our ideas whatsoever. To conclude: this whole
mystery of genera and species, which make such a noise in the schools,
and are with justice so little regarded out of them, is nothing else but
abstract ideas, more or less comprehensive, with names annexed to them.
In all which this is constant and invariable, that every more general
term stands for such an idea as is but a part of any of those contained
under it.’
The author adds, ‘It is plain by what has been said, that general and
universal belong not only to the real existence of things, but are the
inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it, for its own
use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas. Words are general,
when used for signs of general ideas, and so are applicable
indifferently to many particular things; and ideas are general when they
are set up as the representatives of many particular things, but
universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all of them
particular in their existence, even those words and ideas which in their
significations are general. When, therefore, we quit particulars, the
generals that rest are only creatures of our own making, their general
nature being nothing but the capacity they are put in to of signifying
many particulars. For the signification they have is nothing but a
relation, that by the mind of man is added to them.’ See p. 15, vol. 2.
Mr. Locke at first here evidently supposes that we have ideas answering
to general terms, i.e. certain ideas of such particulars as a number of
things are found to agree in, or that there are some common qualities by
retaining which and only leaving out what is peculiar and foreign,
without adding anything new, we get at the general notion. He afterwards
to all appearance reduces these general notions to mere signs or sounds
with which several particular ideas are associated, but which do not
correspond to any common properties or general nature really inhering in
these particular things. In the same manner he continues to take
different sides of the question, when he comes to treat of genera, and
species, when his antipathy to the word _essence_ constantly drives him
back into the notion that all our ideas of essences are mere terms, and
the want of solidity in that opinion again as constantly disposes him to
admit a real difference in the sorts of things, besides the difference
of the names we give to them. For immediately after affirming that the
abstract essences of things are the workmanship of the understanding, he
adds, ‘I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that
nature, in the production of things makes several of them alike: there
is nothing more obvious, especially in the races of animals, and all
things propagated by seed. But yet, I think we may say, the sorting of
them by names is the workmanship of the understanding taking occasion
from the similitude it observes amongst them to make abstract general
ideas, and set them up as patterns in forms (for in that sense the word
form has a very proper signification), to which as particular things
existing are found to agree, so they come to be of that species, have
that denomination, or are put into that class. For when we say this is a
_man_, that a _horse_, &c. what do we else but rank things under
different specific names, as agreeing to those abstract ideas, of which
we have made these names the signs? And what are the essences of those
species set out and marked by names, but those abstract ideas in the
mind, which are as it were the bonds between particular things that
exist,’ &c. For my own part I must confess that I agree with the Bishop
of Worcester on this occasion, who asks, ‘What is it that makes Peter,
James, and John real men? Is it the attributing the general name to
them? No, certainly, but that the true and real essence of a man is in
every one of them. They take their denomination of being men from that
common nature or essence which is in them.’ On the opposite system it is
not the nature of the thing which determines the imposition of the name,
but the imposition of the name which determines the nature of the thing;
or giving them the name makes Peter, James, and John men, as in the
opinion of some divines Baptism makes them Christians. That there is a
real difference in things and ideas, answering to their general names,
appears evident from this single observation, that if it were not so, we
could never know how to apply these general names, and we could no more
distinguish between a man and a horse than we could tell at first sight,
that one man’s proper name was John and another’s Thomas. The puzzle
about genera and species, in this view of the question, seems to arise
from a very obvious transposition of ideas. Because the abstracting or
separating these general ideas from particular circumstances is the
workmanship of the understanding: it has, therefore, been inferred, that
the ideas themselves are so too, and that they exist no where but in the
mind which perceives them.
But I would fain ask, in the account which Mr. Locke gives of the
abstract ideas of _animal_ for example, whether body, sense, and motion,
as they exist in different individuals, have not a general nature, or
something common in all those individuals. If _body_ in one case
expresses the same thing, or same idea as _body_ in another, their
generals belong to things and ideas, as well as to names; if body in one
case expresses quite a different thing in one to what it does in
another, then it is not easy to imagine what determines the mind to
apply the name to these different things, or on what foundation Mr.
Locke’s definition rests. Extreme opinions were not in general the side
on which Mr. Locke erred; and, on the present occasion, he has qualified
his opposition to the prevailing system in such a manner, that it is
difficult to say in what point he admitted or rejected it. He evidently,
in the general scope of this argument, admits the reality of abstract
ideas in the mind, though he denies the existence of real sorts, or
nature of things of the mind to correspond to them: for the expressions
which intimate any doubt of the former are occasional and parenthetical,
and his acknowledgment that there is something in nature which guides
and determines the mind in the sorting of things and giving names to
them is equally extorted from him. There is none of this doubt and
perplexity in the minds of his French commentators; none of this
suspicion of error and anxious desire to correct it; no lurking
objections arise to stagger their confidence in themselves; it is all
the same light airy self-complacency; not a speck is to be seen in the
clear sky of their metaphysics, not a cloud obscures the sparkling
current of their thoughts. In the logic of Condillac, the whole question
of abstract ideas, of genera and species, and of the nature of reasoning
as founded upon them, is settled and cleared from all difficulties,
past, present, and to come, with as little expence of thought, time, and
trouble, as possible. The Abbé demonstrates with ease. ‘General ideas,’
he says, ‘of which we have explained the formation, are a part of the
aggregate idea of each of the individuals to which they correspond, and
they are considered, for this reason, as so many partial or imperfect
ideas. The idea of man, for instance, makes part of the complex ideas of
Peter and Paul, since it is equally to be found in both. There is no
such thing as man in general. This partial idea has then no reality out
of the mind, but it has one in the mind, where it exists separately from
the aggregate or individual ideas of which it is a part. All our general
ideas are then so many abstract ideas, and you see that we form them
only in consequence of taking from each individual idea that which is
common to all.
‘But what, in truth, is the reality which a general and abstract idea
has in the mind. It is nothing but a name: or, if it is any thing more,
it necessarily ceases to be abstract, and general. When, for example, I
think of a _man_, I consider this word as a common denomination, in
which case, it is very evident, that my idea is in some sort
circumscribed within this name, that it does not extend to anything
beyond it, and that consequently it is nothing but the name itself. If,
on the contrary, thinking of man in general, I contemplate any thing in
this word, besides the mere denomination, it can only be by representing
myself to some one man; and a man can no more be man in general, or in
the abstract in my mind, than in nature. Abstract ideas are therefore
only denominations. If we will absolutely think that they are something
else, we shall only resemble a painter who should obstinately persist in
painting the figure of a man in general, and who would still paint only
individuals. This observation concerning abstract and general ideas,
demonstrates that their clearness depends entirely on the order in which
we have arranged the denominations of classes; and that, consequently,
to determine this sort of ideas, there is only one means, which is to
construct a language properly.
‘This confirms what we have already demonstrated, how necessary words
are to us: for if we had no general terms, we should have no abstract
ideas, we should have neither _genera_, or _species_, and without
_genera_ and _species_, we could reason upon nothing. But if we reason
only by means of words this is a new proof that we can only reason well
or ill, according as the language, in which we reason, is well or ill
made. The analysis of our thoughts can only enable us to reason in
proportion as by instructing us how to class our abstract ideas, it
enables us how to form our language correctly, and the whole art of
reasoning is thus reduced to the art of well speaking.’
What in this supremacy of words is to be the criterion of well speaking
the Abbé does not say.
‘To speak, to reason, to form general or abstract ideas, are then in
fact the same thing: and this truth, simple as it is, might pass for a
discovery. Certainly, men in general have not had any notion of it; this
is evident from the manner in which they speak and reason; it is evident
from the abuse which they make of abstract ideas; finally, it is evident
from the difficulties which those persons confessedly find in conceiving
of abstract ideas who have so little in speaking of them.
‘The art of reasoning resolves into the construction of languages, only
because the order of our ideas itself depends entirely on the
subordination that subsists between the names given to _genera_ and
_species_; and as we arrive at new ideas only by forming new classes, it
follows that we can only determine or define our ideas by determining
their classes. In this case we should reason well, because we should be
guided by analogy in our conclusions as well as in the acceptation of
words.
‘Convinced, therefore, that classes or sorts of things are pure
denominations, we shall never think of supposing that there exist in
nature _genera_ or _species_; and we shall understand by these words
nothing but a certain mode of classing things according to the relations
which they have to ourselves and to one another. We shall be sensible
that we can only discover those relations, and not what the things truly
are.’
Berkeley handled his subjects with little tenderness, and he has
perfectly anatomised this subject of abstract ideas. In choosing to
answer the objections to this doctrine as stated by him, I shall not be
accused of wishing to encounter a mean adversary. I can only trust to
the goodness of my cause. I hope I shall be excused for going at some
length into the argument, because it is one of the most difficult and
complicated in itself, and is of the most extensive application to other
questions relating to the human understanding. If we can come to any
satisfactory issue to it, it will be worth the pains of enquiry.
‘It is agreed on all hands,’ says this author, ‘that the quantities or
modes of things do never really exist in each of them, apart by itself,
and separated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended
together, several in the same object. But we are told the mind being
able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other
qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself
abstract ideas. For example, there is perceived by sight, an object,
extended, coloured, and moved. This mixed idea the mind resolving into
its simple constituent parts, and viewing each by itself exclusive of
the rest, does frame the abstract ideas of extension, colour, and
motion. Not that it is possible for colour or motion to exist without
extension, but only that the mind can frame to itself by abstraction the
idea of colour, exclusive of extension, and of motion exclusive both of
colour and extension. Again, the mind having observed that in the
particular extensions perceived by sense, there is something common and
alike in all, and some other things peculiar, as this or that figure, or
magnitude, which distinguish them one from another, it considers apart,
or singles out by itself that which is most common, making thereof a
most abstract idea of extension, line, surface, or solid, nor has any
figure or magnitude, but is an idea prescinded from all these. So
likewise the mind by leaving out of the particular colours perceived by
sense, that which distinguishes them one from another, and retaining
that which only is common to all, makes an idea of colour in abstract,
which is neither red, nor blue, not white, &c. And in like manner by
considering motion abstractedly, not only the body moved, but likewise
from the figure it describes, and all particular directions and
velocities, the abstract idea of motion is framed, which equally
corresponds to all particular motions whatsoever that may be perceived
by sense.
‘And as the mind frames to itself abstract ideas of qualities, or modes,
so does it by the precision or mental separation, attain abstract ideas
of the more compound beings, which include several co-existent
qualities:—for example, the mind having observed, that Peter, James,
John, &c., resemble each other in certain common agreements of shape,
and other qualities, leaves out of the complex or compounded idea it has
of Peter, James, &c., that which is peculiar to each, retaining only
what is common to all; and so makes an abstract idea wherein the
particulars equally partake, abstracting entirely, and cutting off all
those circumstances and differences which might determine it, to any
particular existence. And after this manner it is said, we come by the
abstract idea of man, or if you please humanity, or human nature; ’tis
true, there is included colour, because there is no man but has some
colour, but then it can be neither white nor black, nor any particular
colour, because there is no one particular colour, wherein all men
partake; so there is included stature, but then it is neither tall
stature, nor low stature, nor yet middle stature, but something
abstracted from all these; and so of the rest. Moreover, there being a
great variety of other creatures that partake in some parts, not all, of
the complex idea, man, the mind leaving out those parts which are
peculiar to men, and retaining those only which are common to all living
creatures, frames the idea of animals, which abstracts not only from all
particular men, but also, all birds, beasts, fishes, and insects. By
_Body_ is meant body without any particular shape, or figure, there
being no one shape or figure common to all animals, without covering of
hair, feathers, or scales, &c. nor yet naked; hair, feathers, scales,
and nakedness, being the distinguishing properties of particular
animals, and for that reason left out of the abstract idea; upon the
same account the spontaneous motion must be neither in walking, nor
flying, nor creeping, it is nevertheless a motion, but what that motion
is, it is not easy to conceive.’
‘Whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas,
they best can tell: for myself I dare be confident I have it not. I have
a faculty of imagining or representing to myself the ideas of those
particular things I have perceived, and of variously compounding and
dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads or the upper part of a
man joined to the body of a horse; I can consider the hand, the eye, the
nose, each by itself, abstracted or separated from the rest of the body.
But then, whatever hand or eye, I imagine, it must have some particular
shape, and colour. Likewise, the idea of man that I frame to myself must
be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny; a strait, or a crooked; a
tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought
conceive the abstract idea above-described: and it is equally impossible
for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body
moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor
rectilinear, and the like may be said of other abstract general ideas
whatsoever: to be plain, I own myself able to abstract in one sense, as
when I consider some particular parts or qualities separated from
others, with which, though they are united in some objects, yet it is
possible they may really exist without them. But I deny that I can
abstract from one another, or conceive separately those qualities, which
it is impossible should exist so separated:—or that I can frame a
general notion by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid,
which two last are the proper acceptation of abstraction; and there is
ground to think most men will acknowledge themselves to be in my case.
‘The generality of men, which are simple and illiterate, never pretend
to abstract notions. It is said they are difficult and not to be
attained without pains and study; we may therefore reasonably conclude
that, if such there be, they are confined only to the learned. I proceed
to examine what can be alleged in defence of the doctrine of
abstraction, and try if I can discover what it is that inclines the man
of speculation to embrace an opinion so remote from common sense as that
seems to be. There has been a late excellent and deservedly esteemed
philosopher, who no doubt has given it very much, by seeming to think
the having abstract general ideas is what puts the difference in point
of understanding betwixt man and beast.’
The author here quotes a passage from Mr. Locke on the subject, which it
is not necessary to give, and afterwards his opinion that words become
general by being made signs of general ideas. He then proceeds:—‘To this
I cannot assent, being of opinion that a word becomes general by being
made the sign, not of an abstract general idea, but of several
particular ideas, any one of which it indifferently suggests to the
mind.’
‘If we will annex a meaning to our words and speak only of what we can
only conceive, I believe we shall acknowledge that an idea, which
considered in itself is particular, becomes general, by being made to
represent or stand for all other particular ideas _of the same sort_. To
make this plain by example, suppose a geometrician is demonstrating the
method of cutting a line in two equal parts. He draws for instance a
black line of an inch in length: this which is in itself a particular
line, is nevertheless, with regard to its signification, general, since,
as it is there used, it represents all particular lines whatsoever, so
that what is demonstrated of it is demonstrated of all lines, or in
other words of a line in general; and, as that particular line becomes
general, by being made a sign, so the name _line_, which taken
absolutely, is particular, by being a sign, is made general. And as the
former owes its generality not to its being the sign of an abstract or
general line, but of all particular right lines that may possibly exist,
so the latter must be thought to derive its generality from the same
cause, namely, the various particular lines which it indifferently
denotes.’
‘To give the reader a clearer view of the nature of abstract ideas, and
the uses they are thought necessary to, I shall add one more passage out
of the Essay on Human Understanding, which is as follows:—“Abstract
ideas are not so obvious or easy to children, or the yet unexercised
mind as particular ones. If they seem so to grown men, it is only by
constant and familiar use they are made so. For when we nicely reflect
upon them, we shall find that general ideas are fictions and
contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so
easily offer themselves as we are apt to imagine. For example, does it
not require some skill and pains to form the general idea of a triangle
(which is yet none of the abstract, comprehensive, and difficult), for
it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral,
equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once. In effect
it is something imperfect that cannot exist, an idea wherein some parts
of different and inconsistent ideas are put together. ’Tis true the mind
in this imperfect state has need of such ideas, and makes all the haste
it can to them, for the convenience of communication and enlargement of
knowledge, to both of which it is naturally very much inclined. But yet
one has reason to suspect such ideas are marks of our imperfections, at
least this is enough to show that the most abstract and general ideas
are not those that the mind is first and most easily acquainted with,
nor such as its earliest knowledge is conversant about.”‘—After laughing
at this description of the general idea of a triangle, which is neither
oblique nor rectangle, equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all
and none of these at once, Berkeley adds, ‘much is here said of the
difficulty that abstract ideas carry with them, and the pains and skill
requisite to the forming of them. And it is on all hands agreed that
there is need of great toil and labour of mind, to emancipate our
thoughts from particular objects, and raise them to those sublime
speculations that are conversant about abstract ideas. From all which
the natural consequences should seem to be, that so difficult a thing as
forming abstract ideas was not necessary for communication, which is so
familiar to all sorts of men. But, we are told, if they seem obvious and
easy to grown men, it is only because by constant and familiar use they
are made so. Now I would fain know at what time it is, men are employed
in surmounting that difficulty and furnishing themselves with those
necessary helps for discourse. It cannot be when they are grown up, for
then it seems they are not conscious of any such pains-taking; it
therefore remains to be the business of their childhood. And surely the
great and multiplied labour of framing abstract notions will be found a
hard task for that tender age. Is it not a hard thing to imagine that a
couple of children cannot prate of their sugar plums, and rattles, and
the rest of their little trinkets, till they have first packed together
numberless inconsistencies, and so framed in their minds general
abstract ideas, and annexed them to every common name they make use of.
‘It is I know a point much insisted on that all knowledge and
demonstration are about universal notions, to which I fully assent. But
then it does not appear to me that those notions are formed by
abstraction, in the manner premised; universality, so far as I can
comprehend, not consisting in the absolute, positive nature and
conception of any thing, but in the relation it bears to the particulars
signified, or represented by it. But here it will be demanded, how we
can know any proposition to be true of all particular triangles, except
we have seen it first demonstrated of the abstract idea of a triangle
which equally agrees to all?
‘For because a property may be demonstrated to agree to some particular
triangle, it will not thence follow that it equally belongs to every
other with it. For example, having demonstrated that the three angles of
an isosceles, rectangular triangle, are equal to two right ones, I
cannot therefore conclude this affection argues to all other triangles,
which have neither a right angle, nor two equal sides. It seems,
therefore, that to be certain this proposition is universally true we
must either make a particular demonstration for every particular
triangle, which is impossible, or once for all demonstrate it of the
abstract idea of a triangle, in which all the particulars do
indifferently partake, and by which they are all equally represented.’
To which I answer, that though the idea I have in view, whilst I make
the demonstration, be, for instance, that of an isosceles, not a regular
triangle, whose sides are of a determinate length, I may nevertheless be
certain it extends to all other rectilinear triangles of what sort or
bigness soever. And that neither because the right angle, nor the
equality, nor determinate length of the sides are at all concerned in
the demonstration. It is true, the diagram I have in view includes all
these particulars, but then there is not the least mention made of them
in the proofs of the proposition. It is not said the three angles are
equal to two right ones, because one of these is a right angle, or
because the sides comprehending it are of the same length. Which
sufficiently shews that the right angle might have been oblique and the
sides unequal, and for all the others the demonstrations have held good.
And for this reason it is that I conclude that to be true of any oblique
angular, or scalenon, which I had demonstrated of a particular right
angled, equicrural, triangle, and not because I demonstrated the
proposition of the abstract idea of a triangle.’ The author then adds
some further remarks on the use of abstract terms, and concludes—‘May we
not, for example, be affected with the promise of a _good thing_, though
we have not an idea of what it is? or is not the being threatened with
danger sufficient to excite a dread, though we think not of a particular
evil likely to befal us, and yet frame to ourselves an idea of danger in
abstract?’ Introduction to Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 31.
Hume, who has taken up Berkeley’s arguments on this subject, and affirms
that the doctrine of abstract ideas applies the flattest of all
contradictions, that it is possible for the same thing to be and not to
be, has enlarged a good deal on this last topic of the manner in which
words may be supposed to excite general ideas. His words are these:
‘Where we have found a resemblance between any two objects that often
occur to us, we apply the same name to all of them, whatever differences
we may observe in the degrees of their quantity and quality, and
whatever differences may appear among them. After we have acquired a
custom of this kind, the hearing of that name revives the idea of one of
these objects, and makes the imagination conceive it with its particular
circumstances and proportions. But as the same word is supposed to have
been frequently applied to other individuals that are different in many
respects from the idea which is immediately present to the mind, the
word not being able to revive the idea of all these individuals, only
_touches_ the soul, if I may be allowed so to speak, and revives that
custom, which we have acquired by surveying them. They are not in
reality present to the mind, but only in power, nor do we draw them out
distinctly in the imagination, but keep ourselves in readiness to survey
any of them, as we may be prompted by a present design or necessity. The
word raises up an individual idea, along with a certain custom; and that
custom produces any other individual one, for which we may have
occasion.’ Treatise of Human Nature, p. 43, 4. The author afterwards
adds, with his usual candour, that this account does not perfectly
satisfy him, but he relies principally on the logical demonstration of
the impossibilities of abstract ideas just before given.
I confess it does not seem an easy matter to recover the argument in
this state of it; however, I will attempt it. What I shall endeavour
will not be so much to answer the foregoing reasoning as to prove that
in a strict sense all ideas whatever are mere abstractions and can be
nothing else; that some of the most clear, distinct, and positive ideas
of particular objects are made up of numberless inconsistencies; and
that as Hume expresses it, they do touch the soul, and are not drawn
distinctly in the imagination, &c. Though I shall not be able to point
out distinctly the fallacy of the foregoing reasonings, I hope to make
it appear that there must be something wrong in the premises, and that
the nature of thought and ideas is quite different from what is here
supposed. I may be allowed to set off one paradox against another, and
as these writers affirm that all abstract ideas are particular images,
so I shall try to prove that all particular images are abstract ideas.
If it can be made to appear that our ideas of particular things
themselves are not particular, it may be easily granted that those which
are in general allowed to be abstract are all so. The existence of
abstract and complex ideas in the mind has been disputed for the same
reason, that is, in falsely attributing individuality, or absolute unity
to the objects of sense. While each thing or object was said to be
absolutely one and simple, there was found to be no reach, compass, or
expansion of mind, to comprehend it; and, on the other hand, there was
no room on the same supposition for the doctrine of abstraction, for
there is no abstracting from absolute unity. That which is one positive,
indivisible thing, must remain entire as this, or cease to exist. There
is no alternative between individuality and nothing. As long as we are
determined to consider any one thing or idea, as the knot of a chain, or
the figure of a man, or any thing else, as one individual, it must, as
it were, go together: we can take nothing away without destroying it
altogether. I have already shewn that there is no one object which does
not consist of a number of parts and relations, or which does not
require a comprehensive facility in the mind in order to conceive of it.
Now abstraction is a necessary consequence of the limitation of this
power of the mind, and if it were a previous condition of our having the
ideas of things that we should comprehend distinctly all the particulars
of which they are composed, we could have no ideas at all. An
imperfectly comprehended is a general idea. But the mind perfectly
comprehends the whole of no one object. That is, it has not an absolute
and distinct knowledge of all its parts or differences, and consequently
all our ideas are abstractions, that is a general and confused result
from a number of undistinguished, and undistinguishable impressions, for
there is no possible medium between a perfectly distinct comprehension
of all the particulars, which is impossible, or that imperfect and
confused one, that properly constitutes a general notion in the one case
or the other. To explain this more particularly. In looking at any
object, as a house on the opposite side of the way, it is supposed that
the impression I have of it is a perfectly distinct, precise, or
definite idea, in which abstraction has no concern. And the general idea
of a house, it is said, is rather a mere word, or must reduce itself to
some such positive, individual image as that conveyed by the sight of a
particular house, it being impossible that it should be made up of the
confused, imperfect, and undistinguishable impressions of several
different objects of the same kind. Now it appears to me the easiest
thing in the world to shew that this sensible image of a particular
house, into which the general is to be resolved for greater clearness,
is itself but a confused and vague notion, or numberless inconsistencies
packed together; not one precise individual thing, or any number of
things, distinctly perceived. For I would ask of any one who thinks his
senses furnish him with these infallible and perfect conceptions of
things, free from all contradiction and perplexity, whether he has a
precise knowledge of all the circumstance of the object prescribed to
him. For instance, is the knowledge which he has that the house before
him is larger than another near it, in consequence of his intentively
considering all the bricks of which it is composed, or can he tell that
it contains a greater number of windows than another, without distinctly
counting them? Let us suppose, however, that he does. But this will not
be enough unless he has also a distinct perception of the numbers and
the size of the panes of glass in each window, or of any mark, stain, or
dirt in each separate brick? Otherwise his idea of each of these
particulars will still be general, and his most substantial knowledge
built on shadows; that is composed of a number of parts of the parts of
which he has no knowledge. If objects were what mankind in general
suppose them, single things, we could have no notion of them but what
was particular, for by leaving out any thing we should leave out the
whole object, which is but one thing. We may also be said to have a
particular knowledge of things in proportion to the number of parts we
distinguish in them. But the real foundation of all our knowledge, is
and must be general, that is, a mere confused impression or effect of
feeling produced by a number of things, for there is no object which
does not consist of an infinite number of parts, and we have not an
infinite number of distinct ideas answering to them. Yet it cannot be
denied that we have some knowledge of things, that they make some
impression on us, and this knowledge, this impression, must therefore be
an abstract one, the natural result of a limited understanding, which is
variously affected by a number of things at the same time, but which is
not susceptible of itself to an infinite number of modifications. If it
should be said that the sensible image of the house is still one, as
being one impression, or given result, I answer that the most abstract
ideas of a house, and the imperfect recollection of a number of houses
is in the same sense one, and a real idea, distinct from that of a tree,
though far from being a particular image. Again, it is said, that in
conceiving of the idea of man in general, we must conceive a man a
particular sign or figure. I would ask first is this to be understood
merely of his height, or of his form in general? If the latter, it would
imply that we have, wherever we pronounce the word _man_, no ideas at
all, or a distinct conception of a man with a head and limbs of a
certain extent and proportion, of every turn in each feature, of every
variety in the formation of each part, as well as of its distance from
every other part, a knowledge which no sculptor or painter ever had of
any one figure of which he was the most perfect master, for it would be
a knowledge of an infinite number of lines drawn in all directions from
every part of the body, with their precise length and terminations.
Those who have consigned this business of abstraction over to the senses
with a view to make the whole matter plain and easy, have not been aware
of what they have been doing. They supposed with the vulgar that it was
only necessary to open the eyes in order to see, and that the images
produced by outward objects are completely defined, and unalterable
things, in which there can be no dimness and confusion. These
speculators had no thought but they saw as much of a landscape as
Poussin, and knew as much about a face that was before them as Titian or
Vandyke would have done. This is a great mistake; the having particular
and absolute ideas of things is not only difficult, but impossible. The
ablest painters have never been able to give more than one part of
nature, in abstracted views of things. The most laborious artists never
finished to perfection any one part of an object, or had ever any more
than a confused, vague, uncertain notion of the shape of the mouth or
nose, or the colour of an eye. Ask a logician, or any common man, and he
will no doubt tell you that a face is a face, a nose is a nose, a tree
is a tree, and that he can see what it is as well as another. Ask a
painter and he will tell you otherwise. Secondly, when it is asserted
that we must necessarily have the idea of a particular sign, when we
think of any in general, all that is intended by it is, I believe, that
we must think of a particular height. This idea it is supposed must be
particular and determinate, just as we must draw a line with a piece of
chalk, or make a mark with the slides of a measuring rule, in one place
and not in the other. I think it may be shewn that this view of the
question is also utterly fallacious, and out of the order of our ideas.
The height of the individual is thus resolved with the ideas of the
lines terminating or defining it, and the intermediate space of which it
properly consists is entirely forgotten. For let us take any given
height of a man, whether tall, short, or middle-sized, and let that
height be as visible as you please, I would ask whether the actual
height to which it amounts, does not consist of a number of other
lengths: as if it be a tall man, the length will be six feet, and each
of these feet will consist of so many inches, and those inches will be
again made up of decimals, and those decimals of other subordinate
parts, which must be all distinctly placed, and added together before
the sum total, which they compose, can be pretended to be a distinct
particular, or individual idea; I can only understand by a particular
thing either one precise individual, or a precise number of individuals.
Instead of its being true that all general ideas of extension are
deducible to particular positive extension, the reverse proposition is I
think demonstrable: that all particular extensions, the most positive
and distinct, are never any thing else than a more or less vague notion
of extension in general. In any given visible object we have always the
general idea of something extended, and never of the precise length; for
the precise length as it is thought to be is necessarily composed of a
number of lengths too many, and too minute to be necessarily attended
to, or jointly conceived by the mind, and at last loses itself in the
infinite divisibility of matter. What sort of distinctness or individual
can therefore be found in any visible image, or object of sense, I
cannot well conceive: it seems to me like seeking for certainty in the
dancing of insects in the evening sun, or for fixedness or rest in the
motions of the sea. All particulars are thought nothing but generals,
more or less defined by circumstances, but never perfectly so; in this
all our knowledge both begins and ends, and if we think to exclude all
generality from our ideas of things, we must be content to remain in
utter ignorance. The proof that our ideas of particular things are not
themselves particular, is the uncertainty and difficulty we have only in
comparing them with one another. In looking at a line an inch long, I
have a certain general impression of it, so that I can tell it is
shorter than another, three or four times as long, drawn on the same
sheet of paper, but I cannot immediately tell that it is shorter than
one only a tenth or twentieth of an inch longer. The idea which I have
of it is therefore not an exact one. In looking at a window I cannot
precisely tell the number of panes of glass it contains, yet I can
easily say whether they are few or many, whether the window is large or
small. Now if all our ideas were made up of particulars, we never could
pronounce generally whether there were few or many of these panes of
glass, but we should know the precise number, or at least pitch on some
precise number in our minds, and this we could not help knowing. There
must be either 5, 10, 20, or 30; for it is in vain to urge that the idea
in my mind is a floating one, and shifts from one of them to another, so
that I cannot tell the moment after which it was; but what is this
imperfect recollection but a confused contradictory and abstract idea?
Here is a plain dilemma: it is a fact that we have some idea of a number
of objects presented to us. It is also a fact that we do not know the
precise number, nor can we assign any number confidently whether right
or wrong. Whether this idea is but an abstract and general one it seems
hard to say. Those who contend that we cannot have an idea of a man in
general, without conceiving of some particular man, seem to have little
reason, since the most particular idea we can form of a man, either in
imagination or from the actual impression, is but a general idea. Those
who say we cannot conceive of an army of men without conceiving of the
individuals composing it, ought to go a step further, and affirm that we
must represent to ourselves the features, form, complexion, size,
posture, and dress, with every other circumstance belonging to each
individual.
We must admit the notion of abstraction, first or last, unless any one
will contend for this infinite refinement in our ideas of things, or
assert that we have no idea at all. For the same process takes place in
it, and is absolutely necessary to our most particular notions of
things, as well as our most general, namely, that of abstracting from
particulars, or of passing over the minute differences of things, taking
them in the gross, and attending to the general effect of a number of
distinguished and distinguishable impressions. It is thus we arrive at
our first notion of things, and thus that all our after knowledge is
acquired. The knowledge upon which our ideas rest is general, and the
only difference between abstract and particular, is that of being more
or less general, of leaving out more or fewer circumstances, and more or
fewer objects, perceived either at once or in succession, and forming
either a particular whole, aggregate, or a class of things. It may be
asked farther whether our ideas of things, however abstract in general,
with respect to the objects they represent, are not in their own nature,
and absolute existence particular. To this hard question I shall return
the best answer I can.
1. It is sufficient to the present purpose that ideas are general in
their representation, however particular in themselves. Each idea is
something in itself, and not another idea. This is equally true of the
most abstract or particular ideas of things. The abstract idea of a man
is the abstract idea of a man, not the abstract idea of a horse, nor the
particular one of any given individual man. It is characterized by
general properties, and distinguished by general circumstances, and is
neither a mere word without any idea, nor a particular image of one
thing; so the idea of a particular man, though still only a general
result from a number of particulars is sufficiently positive for the
actual purposes of thought, and distinguishable from that other general
result or impression which institutes the idea of a particular horse,
for instance.
2. That our general notions are any otherwise particular than as they
are the same with themselves, and different from one another, is more
than I know. I must demur on this question, whatever others may do.
Whatever contradictions are involved in the one side of it, those on the
other seem as great. For it is not easy to imagine any thing more absurd
than the supposition that the idea of a line for instance is precisely,
and to a hair’s breadth or to the utmost possible exactness, of a
certain length, when neither the precise number nor the precise
proportion of the parts composing this line are at all known. It is like
saying that we cast up an account to the utmost degree of nicety, when
not one of the items is known, but as of an average conjecture or in
round numbers. We generally estimate our notion of a particular
extension by the point or matter at all terminating it, and it seems as
if this did not admit of an ambiguity, or variation. But in fact all
ideas are a calculation of particulars, and when the parts are only
known in gross, the sum total, or resulting idea can only be so too. The
smallest division of which our notions are susceptible is a general
idea. In the progress of the understanding, we never begin from absolute
unity but always from something that is more. How then is it possible
that these general conceptions should form a whole always commensurate
to a precise number of absolute unity I cannot conceive, any more than
how it is possible to express a fraction in whole numbers. The two
things are incompatible. As to any thing like conscious individuality,
i.e. that which assigneth limits to our ideas, we know they have it not.
3. I would observe that ideas, as far as they are distinct and
particular, seem to involve a greater contradiction than when they are
confused and general. For, in proportion to their distinctness, must be
the number of different acts of the mind excited at the same time; i.e.
in proportion to the individuality of the image or idea, if I may so
express myself, the thought ceases to be individual, inasmuch as the
simplicity of the attention is thus necessarily broken and divided into
a number of different actions, which yet are all united in the same
conscious feeling, or there could be no connection between them. How
then we should ever be able to conceive of things distinctly, clearly,
and particularly, seems the wonder: not how different impressions acting
at once on the mind should be confused, and as it were massed together,
in a general feeling, for want of sufficient activity in the
intellectual faculties to give form and a distinct place to all that
throng of objects which at all times solicit the attention. Let any one
make the experiment of counting a flock of sheep driven fast by him, and
he will soon find his imagination unable to keep pace with the rapid
succession of objects, and his idea of particular number slide into the
general idea of multitude; not that because there are more objects than
he possibly can count, he will think there are many, or that the word
flock will present to his mind a mere name, without any particulars
corresponding to it. Every act of the attention, every object we see or
think of, presents a proof of the same kind.
4. I conceive that the mind has not been fairly dealt with in this and
other similar questions of the same sort. Matter alone seems to have the
privilege of presenting difficulties, and contradictions at every turn;
but the moment any thing of this kind is observed in the understanding,
all the petulance of logicians is up in arms, and the mind is made the
mark on which they vent all the modes and figures of their impertinence.
Let us take an example from some of these self-evident matters of fact,
which contain at least as many, and as great contradictions, as any in
the most abstruse metaphysical doctrine, such as in extension, motion,
and the curve of lines. Now as to the first of these, extension: if we
suppose it to be made up of points, which are in themselves without
extension, but by their combination produce it, we must suppose two
unextended things, when joined together, to become extended, which is
like supposing, that by adding together several nothings, we can arrive
at something. On the other hand, if we suppose the ultimate parts of
which extension is composed, to be themselves extended, we then
attribute extension to that which is indivisible, or affirm a thing to
consist of parts, and to have none, at the same time. The old argument
against the possibility of motion is well known: it was said that the
body moving must either be in the place where it was, or in that into
which it was passing. Now, if it was in either of these, or in any one
place, it must be at rest; and as it could not be in both at once, it
followed that a body moving could exist no where, or that there was no
such thing as motion in nature. Again, a curve line is described
mathematically by a point moving, but always out of a strait line. Now,
a strait line is the nearest between any two points. But that a body
should move forward, and not move strait forward to the next point to
which it is going, seems to imply no less an absurdity than the
affirming that a thing never moves in the direction in which it is
going, but always out of it; for, if it moves in the same direction, the
smallest moment of time, this is not a curve, but a strait line; and if
it does not continue to move in the same direction at all, it seems
utterly inconceivable that it should make any progress, or move either
in a curve or a strait line. Yet any one who, on the strength of the
contradiction involved in the ideas of extension, motion, or curve
lines, should severally deny or disbelieve any one of them, would be
thought to want common sense. I think there are certain facts of the
mind which are equally evident and unaccountable. Those who contend that
the one are to be admitted, and the other not, because the one are the
objects of sense, and the other not, do not deserve any serious answer.
It is as much a fact, that I remember having seen the sun yesterday, as
that I see it to-day, and both of them are much more certain facts than
that there is any such body as the sun really existing out of the mind.
I will now return to Berkeley, and endeavour to answer his chief
objections to the doctrine of abstract ideas. First, then, I conceive
that he has himself virtually given up the question, when he allows that
the mind may be affected with the promise of a good thing, or terrified
by the apprehension of danger, without thinking of any particular good
or evil that is likely to befal us. What this idea of good or evil,
which is not particular, can be, other than abstract, I cannot conceive;
and to say that it is not an idea, but a mere feeling excited by custom,
is an answer very little to the purpose. For this feeling, this custom,
is itself a general impression, and could not, without a power of
abstraction in the mind, think, without a power of being acted upon by a
number of different impulses of pleasure and pain, concurring to produce
a general effect, abstracted from the particular feelings themselves, or
the objects first exciting them. All abstract ideas are several
impressions of the same kind, and are merely customary affections of the
mind, not distinct images of things. But if it be said that the word
idea properly signifies an image, and must be something distinct, then I
answer, first, that this would only restrict the use of the word _idea_
to particular things, and not affect the real question in dispute, and
secondly, that there is no such thing as a distinct and particular image
in the mind. The manner in which Berkeley explains the nature of
mathematical demonstrations, according to his system, shews its utter
inadequateness to any purposes of general reasoning, and is a plain
confession of the necessity of abstract ideas. For all the answer he
gives to the question, how can we know any proposition to be true in
general, from having found it so in a particular instance, comes to
this, that though the diagram we have in view includes a number of
particulars, yet we know the principle to be true generally, because
_there is not the least mention made of these particulars in the proof
of the proposition_. But I would ask also, whether there is not the
least thought of them in the mind? The truth is, that the mind upon
Berkeley’s principle must think of the particular right angled,
isosceles, triangle in question, or it can have no idea at all, for it
has no general idea of a triangle to which it can apply the name
generally. If we suppose that there is any such general form, or notion
to which the other particular circumstances are merely superadded, and
which may be left standing, though they are taken away, we then run
immediately to all the absurdities of abstraction, which he so much
wishes to avoid. If we then demonstrate the proposition of the
particular diagram before us, as of a determinate size, shape, &c., this
demonstration cannot hold good generally. If we are supposed to omit all
these particular circumstances in our minds, then we either demonstrate
the proposition of the general and abstract idea of a triangle, or of no
idea at all; for after the particulars are omitted, or not attended to
by the mind, the only idea remaining must be a general one. Farther,
that on which I am willing to rest the whole controversy, is the
following remark, _viz._, that without the general idea of a line or
triangle, there could be no particular one; that is, no idea of any one
line or triangle, as of the same form, or as any way related to any
other, so that there could be no common measure or line to connect any
of our thoughts or reasoning together into a general conclusion. For to
take the former instance as the most simple. When we speak of any
particular extension, it is evident that we understand something which
is not particular. Besides what is peculiar to it, it must have
something which is not peculiar to it, but general, to merit the common
appellation. Berkeley says, ‘An idea which in itself is particular,
becomes general, by being made to represent or stand for all other
particular ideas _of the same sort_.’ I do request that the import of
these last words may be attended to. Do they suggest any idea or none;
if they mean any thing, it must be something more than the particular
ideas which are said to be of the same sort, _i.e._ some general notion
of them. But this will involve all the absurdities of abstraction. If
there is any thing in the mind besides these particular ideas
themselves—any thing that compares or contrasts them, that refers to
this or that belief, this comparison or classifying can be nothing but a
perception of a general nature in which these things agree, or the
general resemblance which the mind perceives between the several
impressions. If there is no such comparison or perception of
resemblance, or idea of abstract qualities, then there can be no idea
answering to the words ‘of the same sort;’ but these particular ideas
will be left standing by themselves, absolutely unconnected. As far as
our ideas are merely particular, _i.e._ are negations of other ideas, so
far they must be perfectly distinct from each other: there can be
nothing between them to blend or associate them together. Each separate
idea would be surrounded with a _chevaux de frise_ of its own, in a
state of irreconcilable antipathy to every other idea, and the fair form
of nature would present nothing but a number of discordant atoms. A
particular line would no more represent another line, than it would
represent a point: one colour could no more resemble another colour, or
suggest its idea, than it could that of a sound, or a smell; there could
be no clue to make us class different shades of the same colour under
one general name, any more than the most opposite: one triangle would be
as distinct from another, as from a square or a cube, and so through the
whole system of art and nature. There must be a mutual leaning, a
greater proximity between some ideas than others: a common point to
which they tend, that is a common quality: a general nature, in which
they are identified: or there could not be in the mind more ideas of
same or like, or different, or judgment, or reasoning, or truth, or
falsehood, than in the stones in the fields, or the sands of the
sea-shore. The idea of classing things implies only the same sort of
general comparison, or abstract idea of likeness, that is necessary to
the idea of any simple sensible quality of an object. In both cases, we
only contemplate a number of things as alike or under the same general
notion, without attending to their actual differences. Take the idea,
for instance, of a slab of white marble. As long as only one such piece
of marble is considered, it is supposed to be a particular object, and
its whiteness is supposed to be perceived by the mind as a simple
sensible quality. If, on the contrary, several such slabs of marble are
presented to the mind, this is commonly considered as producing a
general idea of marble and of whiteness. But this idea of whiteness, not
as a quality of a particular thing, but as a common quality of different
things, is rejected by the moderns as implying the supposition, that
several different ideas can coalesce in the same general notion, which
amounts, they say, to the contradiction that a thing may be the same,
and different at the same time. Now I would affirm whatever there is
absurd or inconceivable in this latter case applies equally to the
former. For what possible idea can any man form of a slab of white
marble, in any other way than that of abstraction? Is the idea of its
whiteness as a sensible quality the idea of a point. Is it one single
impression? This Berkeley and others deny, for they say there can be no
idea of colour without extension, or of quality without quantity. If
there are in this object several impressions of colour, I would ask are
they all distinctly perceived? Are they all the same? Or if not, are all
their differences perceived by the mind, before it possibly can be
impressed with the general idea of a certain sensible quality, or that
the object before it is white? Is the mind aware of even the slightest
stain in this object, of every thing that may happen to vary it? Yet, if
the idea falls anything short of this minute and perfect knowledge, it
can only be an imperfect and general notion. That is, a number of
differences must be massed together in a common feeling of likeness, and
a number of separate parts make up the idea of a given object. Yet this
is all that is implied in forming the ideas of whiteness in general, as
belonging to several objects, or of colour, or extension, or any other
idea whatever, drawn from numberless objects, impressed at numberless
times. If particular objects or qualities were single things, there
would then be some precise limit between them and abstract or general
ideas, but as the most particular object, or qualities, as well as the
most general combinations and classes of things are necessarily confused
and mixed results, and nothing more than a number of impressions, never
distinctly analyzed by the mind, there can be no general reasoning to
disprove abstracted ideas in the common sense of the word.
ON THE WRITINGS OF HOBBES
In the following Essays I shall attempt to give some account of the rise
and progress of modern metaphysics, to state the opinions of the
principal writers who have treated on the subject, from the time of Lord
Bacon to the present day, and to examine the arguments by which they are
supported. In the first place, it will be my object to shew what the
real conclusions of the most celebrated authors were, and the steps by
which they arrived at them: to trace the connexion or point out the
difference between their several systems, as well as to inquire into the
peculiar bias and turn of their minds, and in what their true strength
or weakness lay. This will undoubtedly be best done by an immediate
reference to their works whenever the nature of the subject admits of
it, or whenever their mode of reasoning is not so loose and desultory as
to render the quotation of particular passages a useless as well as
endless labour. In the History of English Philosophy, of which I
published a prospectus some time ago, I intended to have gone regularly
through with all the writers of any considerable note who fell within
the limits of my plan, and to have given a detailed analysis of their
several subjects and arguments. But this would lead to much greater
length and minuteness of inquiry than seems consistent with my present
object, and would besides, I am afraid, prove (what Hobbes, speaking of
these subjects in general, calls) ‘but dry discourse.’ To avoid this as
much as possible, I shall pass over all those writers who have not been
distinguished either by the boldness of their opinions, or the logical
precision of their arguments. Indeed I shall confine my attention more
particularly to those who have made themselves conspicuous by deviating
from the beaten track, and who have struck out some original discovery
or brilliant paradox; whose metaphysical systems trench the closest on
morality, or whose speculations, by the interest as well as novelty
attached to them, have become topics of general conversation.
Secondly, besides stating the opinions of others, one principal object
which I shall have in view will be to act as judge or umpire between
them, to distinguish, as far as I am able, the boundaries of true and
false philosophy, and to try if I cannot lay the foundation of a system
more conformable to reason and experience, and, in its practical results
at least, approaching nearer to the common sense of mankind, than the
one which has been generally received by the most knowing persons who
have attended to such subjects within the last century; I mean the
material or _modern_ philosophy, as it has been called. According to
this philosophy, as I understand it, all thought is to be resolved into
sensation, all morality into the love of pleasure, and all action into
mechanical impulse. These three propositions, taken together, embrace
almost every question relating to the human mind, and in their different
ramifications and intersections form a net, not unlike that used by the
enchanters of old, which, whosoever has once thrown over him, will find
all his efforts to escape vain, and his attempts to reason freely on any
subject in which his own nature is concerned, baffled and confounded in
every direction.
This system, which first rose at the suggestion of Lord Bacon, on the
ruins of the school-philosophy, has been gradually growing up to its
present height ever since, from a wrong interpretation of the word
_experience_, confining it to a knowledge of things without us; whereas
it in fact includes all knowledge relating to objects either within or
out of the mind, of which we have any direct and positive evidence. We
only know that we ourselves exist, the most certain of all truths, from
the experience of what passes within ourselves. Strictly speaking, all
other facts of which we are not immediately conscious, are so in a
secondary and subordinate sense only. Physical experience is indeed the
foundation and the test of that part of philosophy which relates to
physical objects: further, physical analogy is the only rule by which we
can extend and apply our immediate knowledge, or infer the effects to be
produced by the different objects around us. But to say that physical
experiment is either the test or source or guide of that other part of
philosophy which relates to our internal perceptions, that we are to
look to external nature for the form, the substance, the colour, the
very life and being of whatever exists in our minds, or that we can only
infer the laws which regulate the phenomena of the mind from those which
regulate the phenomena of matter, is to confound two things entirely
distinct. Our knowledge of mental phenomena from consciousness,
reflection, or observation of their correspondent signs in others is the
true basis of metaphysical inquiry, as the knowledge of _facts_,
commonly so called, is the only solid basis of natural philosophy.
To say that the operations of the mind and the operations of matter are
in reality the same, so that we may always make the one exponents of the
other, is to assume the very point in dispute, not only without any
evidence, but in defiance of every appearance to the contrary. Lord
Bacon was undoubtedly a great man, indeed one of the greatest that have
adorned this or any other country. He was a man of a clear and active
spirit, of a most fertile genius, of vast designs, of general knowledge,
and of profound wisdom. He united the powers of imagination and
understanding in a greater degree than almost any other writer. He was
one of the strongest instances of those men, who by the rare privilege
of their nature are at once poets and philosophers, and see equally into
both worlds. The schoolmen and their followers attended to nothing but
essences and species, to laboured analyses and artificial deductions.
They seem to have alike disregarded both kinds of experience, that
relating to external objects, and that relating to the observation of
our own internal feelings. From the imperfect state of knowledge, they
had not a sufficient number of facts to guide them in their experimental
researches; and intoxicated with the novelty of their vain distinctions,
taught by rote, they would be tempted to despise the clearest and most
obvious suggestions of their own minds. Subtile, restless, and
self-sufficient, they thought that truth was only made to be disputed
about, and existed no where but in their demonstrations and syllogisms.
Hence arose their ‘logomachy’—their everlasting word-fights, their sharp
debates, their captious, bootless controversies.
As Lord Bacon expresses it, ‘they were made fierce with dark keeping,’
signifying that their angry and unintelligible contests with one another
were owing to their not having any distinct objects to engage their
attention. They built altogether on their own whims and fancies, and
buoyed up by their specific levity, they mounted in their airy
disputations in endless flights and circles, clamouring like birds of
prey, till they equally lost sight of truth and nature. This great man
therefore intended an essential service to philosophy, in wishing to
recall the attention to facts and ‘experience’ which had been almost
entirely neglected; and thus, by incorporating the abstract with the
concrete, and general reasoning with individual observation, to give to
our conclusions that solidity and firmness which they must otherwise
always want. He did nothing but insist on the necessity of ‘experience,’
more particularly in natural science; and from the wider field that is
open to it there, as well as the prodigious success it has met with,
this latter application of the word, in which it is tantamount to
physical experiment, has so far engrossed the whole of our attention,
that mind has for a good while past been in some danger of being
overlaid by matter. We run from one error into another; and as we were
wrong at first, so in altering our course, we have turned about to the
opposite extreme. We despised ‘experience’ altogether before; now we
would have nothing but ‘experience,’ and that of the grossest kind.
We have, it is true, gained much by not consulting the suggestions of
our own minds in questions where they inform us of nothing; namely, in
the particular laws and phenomena of the natural world; and we have
hastily concluded, reversing the rule, that the best way to arrive at
the knowledge of ourselves also, was to lay aside the dictates of our
own consciousness, thoughts, and feelings, as deceitful and insufficient
guides, though they are the only means by which we can obtain the least
light upon the subject. We seem to have resigned the natural use of our
understandings, and to have given up our own existence as a nonentity.
We look for our thoughts and the distinguishing properties of our minds
in some image of them in matter, as we look to see our faces in a glass.
We no longer decide physical problems by logical dilemmas, but we decide
questions of logic by the evidences of the senses. Instead of putting
our reason and invention to the rack indifferently on all questions,
whether we have any previous knowledge of them or not, we have adopted
the easier method of suspending the use of our faculties altogether, and
settling tedious controversies by means of ‘four champions fierce—hot,
cold, moist and dry,’ who with a few more of the retainers and
hangers-on of matter determine all questions relating to the nature of
man and the limits of the human understanding very learnedly. That which
we seek however, namely, the nature of the mind and the laws by which we
think, feel, and act, we must discover in the mind itself or not at all.
The mind has laws, powers, and principles of its own, and is not the
mere puppet of matter. This general bias in favour of mechanical
reasoning and physical experiment, which was the consequence of the
previous total neglect of them in matters where they were strictly
necessary, was strengthened by the powerful aid of Hobbes, who was
indeed the father of the modern philosophy. His strong mind and body
appear to have resisted all impressions but those which were derived
from the downright blows of matter: all his ideas seemed to lie like
substances in his brain: what was not a solid, tangible, distinct,
palpable object was to him nothing. The external image pressed so close
upon his mind that it destroyed the power of consciousness, and left no
room for attention to any thing but itself. He was by nature a
materialist. Locke assisted greatly in giving popularity to the same
scheme, as well by espousing many of Hobbes’s metaphysical principles as
by the doubtful resistance which he made to the rest. And it has been
perfected and has received its last polish and roundness in the hands of
some French philosophers, as Condillac and others. It has been generally
supposed that Mr. Locke was the first person who, in his ‘Essay on the
Human Understanding’ established the modern metaphysical system on a
solid and immoveable basis. This is a great mistake. The system, such as
it is, existed entire in all its general principles in Hobbes before
him; this was never unequivocally or explicitly avowed by the author of
the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding.’ Locke merely endeavoured to
accommodate Hobbes’s leading principle to the more popular opinions of
the time; and all that succeeding writers have done to improve upon his
system, and clear it of inconsistent and extraneous matter, has only
tended to reduce it back to the purity and simplicity in which it is to
be found in Hobbes. The immediate and professed object of both these
writers is indeed the same, namely, to account for our ideas and the
formation of the human understanding from sensible impressions. But in
the execution of this design, Mr. Locke has deviated widely and at
almost every step from his predecessor. This difference would almost
unavoidably arise from the natural character of their minds, which were
the most opposite conceivable. Hobbes had the utmost reliance on
himself, and was impatient of the least doubt or contradiction. He saw
from the beginning to the end of his system. He is always therefore on
firm ground, and never once swerves from his object. He is at no pains
to remove objections, or soften consequences. Granting his first
principle, all the rest follows of course. There is an air of grandeur
in the stern confidence with which he stands alone in the world of his
own opinions, regardless of his contemporaries, and conscious that he is
the founder of a new race of thinkers. Locke, on the other hand, was a
man, who without the same comprehensive grasp of thought had a greater
deference for the opinions of others, and was of a much more cautious
and circumspect turn of mind. He could not but meet with many things in
the peremptory assertions of Hobbes that must make him pause, that he
would be at a loss to reconcile to an attentive observation of what
passed in his own mind, and that would equally shock the prevailing
notions both of the learned and the ignorant. He was therefore led to
consider the different objections to the system which had been left
unanswered and unnoticed, to make a compromise between the received
doctrines, and the violent paradoxes contained in the ‘Leviathan’ and
the ‘Treatise of Human Nature,’ or to admit these last with so many
qualifications, with so much circumlocution and preparation, and after
such an appearance of the most mature and candid examination, and of
willingness to be convinced on the other side of the question, as to
obviate the offensive and harsh effect which accompanies the abrupt
dogmatism of the original author. It was perhaps necessary that the
opinions of Hobbes should undergo this sort of metamorphosis before they
could gain a hearing: as the direct rays of the sun must be blunted and
refracted by passing through some denser medium in order to be borne by
common eyes. So sheathed and softened, their sharp, unpleasant points
taken off, his doctrines almost immediately met with a favourable
reception, and became popular. The general principle being once
established without its particular consequences, and the public mind
assured, it was soon found an easy task to point out the inconsistency
of Mr. Locke’s reasoning in many respects, and to give a more decided
tone to his philosophical system. Berkeley was one of the first who
tried the experiment of pushing his principles into the verge of paradox
on the question of abstract ideas, which he has done with admirable
dexterity and clearness, but without going beyond the explicitness of
Hobbes on the same question. Subsequent writers added different chapters
to supply the deficiencies of the Essay, which, with scarcely a single
exception, may be found essentially comprized in that institute and
digest of modern philosophy, our author’s ‘Leviathan.’
In thus giving the praise of originality and force of mind to Hobbes,
and regarding Locke merely as his follower, I may be thought to venture
on dangerous ground, or to lay unhallowed hands on a reputation which is
dear to every lover of truth. But if something is due to fame, something
is also due to justice. I confess however, that having brought this
charge against the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding,’ I am bound to
make it good in the fullest manner; otherwise, I shall be inexcusable.
What I therefore propose in the remainder of the present Essay is to
show that Mr. Locke was not really the founder of the modern system of
philosophy as it respects the human mind; and I shall think that I have
sufficiently established this point, if I can make it appear, both that
the principle itself on which that system rests, and all the striking
consequences which have been deduced from it, are to be found in the
writings of Hobbes, more clearly, decidedly, and forcibly expressed than
they are in the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding.’ When I speak of the
principle of the modern metaphysical system, I mean the assumption that
the operations of the intellect are only a continuation of the impulses
existing in matter, or that all the thoughts and conceptions of the mind
are nothing more nor less than various modifications of the original
impressions of things on a being endued with sensation or simple
perception. This system considers ideas merely as they are caused by
external objects, acting on the organs of sense, and tries to account
for them on that hypothesis solely. It is upon this principle of
excluding the understanding as a distinct faculty or power from all
share in its own operations, that the whole of Hobbes’s reasoning
proceeds. Let us see what he makes of it.
The first part of the ‘Leviathan,’ entitled ‘Of Man,’ begins in this
manner:
CHAPTER I.—OF SENSE.—‘Concerning the thoughts of man, I will consider
them, first singly, and afterwards in train, or dependence upon one
another. Singly, they are every one a representation or appearance of
some quality or other accident of a body without us; which is commonly
called an _object_: Which object worketh on the eyes, ears, and other
parts of man’s body; and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of
appearances.
‘The Original of them all is that which we call SENSE: For there is no
conception in a man’s mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts,
been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that
original.
‘The cause of sense is the external body or object which presseth the
organ proper to each sense, either immediately as in the taste and
touch, or mediately as in seeing, hearing, and smelling: which pressure
by the mediation of nerves, and other strings and membranes of the body,
continued inwards to the Brain and Heart, causeth there a resistance or
counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart to deliver itself: which
endeavour, because _outward_, seemeth to be some matter without. And
this seeming or fancy is that which men call sense: and consisteth to
the eye, in a light or colour figured; to the ear, in a sound; to the
nostril, in an odour; to the tongue and palate, in a savour, and to the
rest of the body in heat, cold, hardness, softness, and such other
qualities, as we discern by feeling. All which qualities called
_sensible_ are in the object that causeth them but so many several
motions of the matter by which it presseth our organs diversely. Neither
in us that are pressed are they any thing else but divers motions; for
motion produceth nothing but motion. But their appearance to us is
fancy, the same waking as dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or
striking the eye maketh us fancy a light, and pressing the ear produceth
a din, so do the bodies also we see or hear produce the same by their
strong, though unobserved action. For if those colours and sounds were
in the bodies or objects that cause them, they could not be severed from
them, as by glasses and in echoes by reflection we see they are: where
we know the thing we see is in one place, the appearance in another, and
though at some certain distance, the real and very object seems invested
with the fancy it begets in us; yet still the object is one thing, the
image or fancy is another. So that sense in all cases is nothing else
but original fancy; caused, as I have said, by the pressure, that is, by
the motion of external things upon our eyes, ears, and other organs
thereunto ordained.
‘But the Philosophy-schools, through all the universities of
Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach another
doctrine; and say, For the cause of vision, that the thing seen sendeth
forth on every side a _visible species_, (in English) _a visible show_,
_apparition_, _aspect_, or _being seen_; the receiving whereof into the
eye, is _seeing_. And for the cause of _hearing_, that the thing heard
sendeth forth an _audible species_, that is, an _audible aspect_, or
_audible being seen_; which entering at the ear, maketh _hearing_. Nay,
for the cause of _understanding_ also, they say the thing understood
sendeth forth an _intelligible species_, that is an _intelligible being
seen_; which coming into the understanding, makes us understand. I say
not this as disapproving the use of universities: but because I am to
speak hereafter of their office in a commonwealth, I must let you see on
all occasions by the way, what things would be amended in them; amongst
which the frequency of insignificant speech is one.’—_Leviathan_, p. 4.
Thus far our author. It is evident that in this account he has laid the
foundation of Berkeley’s ideal system, though he does not seem any where
to have gone the whole length of that doctrine. He has entered more at
large into this point in the ‘Discourse of Human Nature,’ published in
1640, ten years before the ‘Leviathan’; and as the subject is curious,
and treated in a very decisive way, I will quote the concluding passage,
which is a recapitulation of the rest.
‘As colour is not inherent in the object, but an effect thereof upon us,
caused by such motion in the object as hath been described; so neither
is sound in the thing we hear, but in ourselves. One manifest sign
thereof is, that as a man may see, so also he may hear double or treble,
by multiplication of echoes, which echoes are sounds as well as the
original, and not being in one and the same place, cannot be inherent in
the body that maketh them. And to proceed to the rest of the senses, it
is apparent enough that the smell and taste of the same thing are not
the same to every man, and therefore are not in the thing smelt or
tasted, but in the men. So likewise the heat we feel from the fire is
manifestly in us, and is quite different from the heat which is in the
fire: for our heat is pleasure or pain, according as it is great or
moderate; but in the coal there is no such thing. By this the fourth and
last proposition is proved; viz. That as in vision, so also in
conceptions that arise from other senses, the subject of their inherence
is not in the object, but in the sentient. And from hence also it
followeth that whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us
think there be in the world, they be not there, but are seeming and
apparitions only: the things that really are in the world without us,
are those motions by which these seemings are caused. And this is the
great deception of sense, which also is to be by sense corrected: for as
sense telleth me, when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in
the object; so also sense telleth me when I see by reflection, that
colour is not in the object.’—_Human Nature_, chap. ii. p. 9.
The second chapter of the ‘Leviathan’ contains an account of the manner
in which our ideas are generated, and is as follows:
‘That when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie
still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing
is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay
it, though the reason be the same (namely, that nothing can change
itself) is not so easily assented to. For men measure not only other
men, but all other things by themselves; and because they find
themselves subject after motion to pain and lassitude, think every thing
else grows weary of motion, and seeks repose of its own accord; little
considering whether it be not some other motion wherein that desire of
rest they find in themselves consisteth. From hence it is, that the
Schools say, heavy bodies fall downward out of an appetite to rest, and
to conserve their nature in that place which is most proper for them:
ascribing appetite and knowledge of what is good for their conservation
(which is more than man has) to things inanimate, absurdly.
‘When a body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something else hinder
it) eternally: and whatsoever hindereth it, cannot in an instant, but in
time and by degrees quite extinguish it. And as we see in the water,
though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time
after; so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal
parts of a man then, when he sees, hears, &c. For after the object is
removed or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen,
though more obscure than when we see it. And this is it the Latins call
_imagination_, from the image made in seeing; and apply the same, though
improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks call it _fancy_;
which signifies appearance, and is as proper to one sense, as to
another. Imagination is therefore nothing but _decaying sense_; and is
found in man and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as
waking.
‘The decay of sense in men waking is an obscuring of it in such manner
as the light of the sun obscureth the light of the stars, which stars do
no less exercise their virtue by which they are visible in the day than
in the night. But because amongst many strokes, which our eyes, ears,
and other organs receive from external bodies, the predominant only is
sensible, therefore the light of the sun being predominant, we are not
affected with the action of the stars. And any object being removed from
our eyes, though the impression it made in us remain; yet other objects
more present succeeding, and working on us, the imagination of the past
is obscured, and made weak; as the voice of a man is in the noise of the
day. From whence it follows, that the longer the time is, after the
sight or sense of any objects the weaker is the imagination. For the
continual change of man’s body destroys in time the parts which in sense
were moved: so that distance of time and of place hath one and the same
effect in us. For as at a great distance of place, that which we look at
appears dim, and without distinction of the smaller parts, and as voices
grow weak and inarticulate, so also after great distance of time, our
imagination of the past is weak; and we lose (for example) of cities we
have seen many particular streets, and of actions, many particular
circumstances. This decaying sense, when we would express the thing
itself (I mean fancy itself) we call Imagination, as I said before: but
when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading,
old and past, it is called _Memory_. So that imagination and memory are
but one thing which for divers considerations hath divers names. Much
memory or memory of many things is called Experience.
‘Again, imagination being only of those things which have been formerly
perceived by sense, either all at once, or by parts at several times,
the former (which is the imagining the whole object as it was presented
to the sense) is _simple imagination_; as when one imagineth a man or
horse which he hath seen before. The other is _compounded_, as when from
the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we conceive
in our mind a centaur. So when a man compoundeth the image of his own
person with the image of the actions of another man; as when a man
conceives himself a Hercules or an Alexander (which happeneth often to
them which are much taken with the reading of Romaunts) it is a compound
imagination, and properly but a fiction of the mind.
‘There be also other imaginations that rise in man, (though waking) from
the great impression made in sense: as from gazing upon the sun, the
impression leaves an image of the sun before our eyes a long time after;
and from being long and vehemently attent upon geometrical figures, a
man shall in the dark (though awake) have the image of lines and angles
before his eyes: which kind of fancy hath no particular name; as being a
thing that doth not commonly fall into men’s discourse.
‘The imaginations of them that sleep are those we call dreams: and these
also (as all other imaginations) have been before, either totally or by
parcels in the sense, and because the brain and nerves, which are the
necessary organs of sense, are so benumbed in sleep, as not easily to be
moved by the action of external objects, there can happen in sleep no
imagination; and therefore no dream but what proceeds from the agitation
of the inward parts of man’s body; which inward parts, for the connexion
they have with the brain and other organs, when they be distempered, do
keep the same in motion; whereby the imaginations there formerly made,
appear as if a man were waking; saving that the organs of sense being
now benumbed, so as there is no new object, which can master and obscure
them with a more vigorous impression, a dream must needs be more clear
in this silence of sense, than are our waking thoughts. And hence it
cometh to pass, that it is a hard matter, and by many thought
impossible, to distinguish exactly between sense and dreaming. For my
part, when I consider that in dreams I do not often, nor constantly
think of the same persons, places, subjects, and actions that I do
waking; nor remember so long a train of coherent thoughts dreaming, as
at other times; and because waking I often observe the absurdity of
dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts,—I am
well satisfied, that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I
dream, I think myself awake.’—_Leviathan_, pp. 4, 5, 6.
The concluding paragraph of this Chapter is remarkable.
‘The imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature endued
with the faculty of imagining) by words or other voluntary signs, is
that we generally call _Understanding_: and is common to man and beast.
For a dog by custom will understand the call or rating of his master,
and so will many other beasts. That understanding which is peculiar to
man, is the understanding not only his will, but his conceptions and
thoughts, by the sequel and contexture of the names of things into
affirmations, negations, and other forms of speech; and of this kind of
understanding I shall speak hereafter.’—Page 8.
As in the first two chapters Mr. Hobbes endeavours to show that all our
thoughts, considered singly or in themselves, have their origin in
sensation, so in the next chapter, he resolves all their combinations or
connexions one with another into the principle of association, or the
coexistence of their sensible impressions.
‘By consequence or train of thoughts,’ he says, ‘I understand that
succession of one thought to another, which is called (to distinguish it
from discourse in words) _mental discourse_.’
‘When a man thinketh on any thing whatsoever, his next thought after it
is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to
every thought succeeds indifferently. But as we have no imagination,
whereof we have not formerly had sense in whole or in parts; so we have
no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we never had the
like before in our senses. The reason whereof is this. All fancies are
motions within us, reliques of those made in sense: and those motions
that succeeded one another in the sense, continue also together after
sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be
predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter moved, in
such manner, as water upon a plane table is drawn which way any one part
of it is guided by the finger. But because in sense to one and the same
thing perceived, sometimes one thing, sometimes another succeedeth, it
comes to pass in time, that in the imagining of any thing, there is no
certainty what we shall imagine next. Only this is certain, it shall be
something that succeeded the same before, at one time or another.’—Page
9.
The comprehension and precision with which the law of association is
here unfolded as the key to every movement of the mind, and as
regulating every wandering thought, cannot be too much admired; it is
enough to say that Hartley, who certainly understood more of the power
of association than any other man, has added nothing to this short
passage, as far as relates to the succession of ideas. He has indeed
extended its application in unravelling the fine web of our affections
and feelings, by showing how one idea transfers the feeling of pleasure
or pain to others associated with it, which is not here noticed. Whether
this principle really has all the extent and efficacy ascribed to it by
either of these writers will be made the subject of a future inquiry.
How well our author understood the question, and how much it had assumed
a consistent and systematic form in his mind will appear from the
instances he brings in illustration of this intricate and at the time
almost unthought-of subject.
‘The train of thoughts or mental discourse is of two sorts. The first is
unguided, without design and inconstant; wherein there is no passionate
thought to govern and direct those that follow to itself as the end and
scope of some desire or other passion; in which case the thoughts are
said to wander and seem impertinent one to another as in a dream. Such
are commonly the thoughts of men, that are not only without company, but
also without care of any thing: though even then their thoughts are as
busy as at other times, but without harmony, as the sound which a lute
out of tune would yield to any man, or in tune to one that could not
play. And yet in this wild ranging of the mind, a man may ofttimes
perceive the way of it, and the dependence of one thought upon another.
For in a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more
impertinent than to ask (as one did) what was the value of a Roman
penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thoughts of
the war introduced the thought of the delivering up the king to his
enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering up
of Christ; and that again the thought of the thirty pence, which was the
price of that treason: and thence easily followed that malicious
question; and all this in a moment of time; for thought is quick.
‘The second’ [that is the second sort of association] ‘is more constant,
as being regulated by some desire, and design. For the impression made
by such things as we desire or fear, is strong and permanent, or, if it
cease for a time, of quick return; so strong it is sometimes as to
hinder and break our sleep. From desire ariseth the thought of some
means we have seen produce the like of what we aim at: and from the
thought of that, the thought of means to that mean, and so continually
till we come to some beginning within our own power.’
He adds,—‘This train of regulated thoughts is of two kinds: one, when of
an effect imagined, we seek the causes or means that produce it; and
this is common to man and beast. The other is when imagining anything
whatsoever, we seek all the possible effects that can by it be produced:
that is to say, we imagine what we can do with it when we have it. Of
which I have not at any time seen any sign but in man only; for this is
a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any living creature that
has no other passion but sensual, such as are hunger, thirst, lust, and
anger. In sum, the discourse of the mind when it is governed by design,
is nothing but seeking or the faculty of invention, which the Latins
call _sagacitas_ and _solertia_, a finding out of the causes of some
effect, present or past; or of the effects of some present or past
cause. Sometimes a man desires to know the event of an action; and then
he thinketh of some like action past, and the events thereof one after
another; supposing like events will follow like actions. As he that
foresees what will become of a criminal, re-cons what he has seen follow
on the like crime before; having this order of thoughts, the crime, the
officer, the prison, the judge, and the gallows, which kind of thoughts
is called foresight, and prudence or providence; and sometimes wisdom;
though such conjecture, through the difficulty of observing all
circumstances, be very fallacious. But this is certain; by how much one
man has more experience of things past than another; by so much also he
is more prudent; and his expectations the seldomer fail him. The present
only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only,
but things to come have no being at all; the future being but a fiction
of the mind, applying the sequels of actions past to the actions that
are present; which with most certainty is done by him that has most
experience; but not with certainty enough, and though it be called
prudence when the event answereth our expectation, yet in its own nature
it is but presumption; for the foresight of things to come, which is
providence, belongs only to him by whose will they are to come: from him
only, and supernaturally, proceeds prophecy. The best prophet naturally
is the best guesser; and the best guesser, he that is most versed and
studied in the matters he guesses at; for he hath most signs to guess
by.’—Page 10.
After this account he immediately adds,—
‘There is no other act of man’s mind that I can remember, naturally
planted in him, so as to need no other thing to the exercise of it but
to be born a man, and live with the use of his five senses. Those other
faculties, of which I shall speak by and by, and which seem proper to
man only, are acquired, and increased by study and industry; and of most
men learned by instruction and discipline; and proceed all from the
invention of words and speech: for besides sense and thoughts, and the
train of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion, though by the
help of speech and method, the same faculties may be improved to such a
height, as to distinguish men from all other living creatures.’—Page 11.
The conclusion of this chapter in which the author treats of the limits
of the imagination is too important, and has laid the foundation of too
many speculations, to be passed over. ‘Whatsoever we imagine is finite.
Therefore there is no idea, or conception of any thing we call infinite.
No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude; nor conceive
infinite swiftness, infinite time, or infinite force, or infinite power.
When we say any thing is infinite, we signify only that we are not able
to conceive the ends and bounds of the thing named; having no conception
of the thing, but of our own inability: and therefore the name of God is
used, not to make us conceive him (for he is incomprehensible and his
greatness and power are inconceivable) but that we may honour him. And
because whatsoever we conceive has been perceived first by sense, either
all at once, or by parts, a man can have no thought, representing any
thing, not subject to sense. No man, therefore, can conceive any thing,
but he must conceive it in some place, and indued with some determinate
magnitude, and which may be divided into parts; not that any thing is
all in this place, and all in another place at the same time; nor that
two or more things can be in one and the same place at once: for none of
these things ever have, nor can be incident to sense; but are absurd
speeches, taken upon credit (without any signification at all), from
deceived philosophers, and deceived, or deceiving schoolmen.’—Page 11.
By the extracts which I shall next borrow from his account of language
and reasoning, it will appear that our author not only threw out the
first hints of the modern system, which reduces all reasoning and
understanding to the mechanism of language, but that by a very high kind
of abstraction, he carried it to perfection at once. The whole race of
plodding commentators, or dashing paradox-mongers since his time have
not advanced a step beyond him. I shall give this part somewhat at
large, both because the question is intricate in itself, and as it will
serve as a specimen of his general mode of writing, in which dry
sarcasm, keen observation, extensive thought, and the most rigid logic
conveyed in a concise and masterly style, are all brought to bear upon
the same object.
‘The invention of printing,’ he says, ‘though ingenious, compared with
the invention of letters is no great matter. But who was the first that
found the use of letters, is not known. He that first brought them into
Greece, men say, was Cadmus, the son of Agenor, King of Phœnicia. A
profitable invention for continuing the memory of time past, and the
conjunction of mankind, dispersed into so many and distant regions of
the earth; and withal difficult, as proceeding from a watchful
observation of the divers motions of the tongue, palate, lips, and other
organs of speech, whereby to make as many differences of characters to
remember them; but the most noble and profitable invention of all other,
was that of speech, consisting of names or appellations, and their
connections; whereby men register their thoughts, recall them when they
are past, and also declare them one to another for mutual utility and
conversation; without which there had been amongst men, neither
commonwealth, nor society, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongst
lions, bears, and wolves. The first author of speech was God himself,
that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his
sight; for the scripture goeth no farther in this matter. But this was
sufficient to direct him to add more names, as the experience and use of
the creatures should give him occasion; and to join them in such manner
by degrees, as to make himself understood, and so by succession of time,
so much language might be gotten, as he had found use for; though not so
copious as an orator or philosopher has need of: for I do not find any
thing in the scripture, out of which, directly or by consequence can be
gathered, that Adam was taught the names of all figures, numbers,
measures, colours, sounds, fancies, relations; much less the names of
words and speech, as, general, special, affirmative, negative,
interrogative, optative, infinitive, all which are useful; and least of
all, of entity, intentionality, quiddity, and other insignificant words
of the school.
‘The manner how speech serveth to the remembrance of the consequence of
causes and effects, consisteth in the imposing of names, and the
connexion of them. Of names, some are proper, and singular to one only
thing; as _Peter_, _John_, _this man_, _this tree_: and some are common
to many things; _man_, _horse_, _tree_; every of which though but one
name, is nevertheless the name of divers particular things; in respect
of all which together, it is called an universal; there being nothing in
the world universal but names; for the things named are every one of
them individual and singular. One universal name is imposed on many
things for their similitude in some quality, or other accident: and
whereas a proper name bringeth to mind one thing only, universals recall
any one of those many. By this imposition of names, some of larger, some
of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of
things imagined in the mind, into a reckoning of the consequences of
appellations. For example: a man that hath no use of speech at all, that
is born and remains perfectly deaf and dumb, if he set before his eyes a
triangle, and by it two right angles (such as are the corners of a
square figure,) he may by meditation compare and find, that the three
angles of that triangle are equal to those two right angles that stand
by it: but if another triangle be shown him different in shape from the
former, he cannot know without a new labour, whether the three angles of
that also be equal to the same. But he that hath the use of words, when
he observes that such equality was consequent, not to the length of the
sides, nor to any other particular thing in his triangle but only to
this, that the sides were straight, and the angles three and that that
was all for which he named it a triangle, will boldly conclude
universally that such equality of angles is in all triangles whatsoever,
and register his invention in these general terms: every triangle hath
its three angles equal to two right angles. And thus the consequence
found in one particular, comes to be registered and remembered as an
universal rule; discharges our mental reckoning of time and place;
delivers us from all labour of the mind, saving the first, and makes
that which was found true here, and now, to be true in all times and
places. But the use of words in registering our thoughts, is in nothing
so evident as in numbering. A natural fool that could never learn by
heart the order of numeral words, as _one_, _two_, and _three_, may
observe every stroke of the clock, and nod to it, or say _one_, _one_;
but can never know what hour it strikes. And it seems, there was a time
when those names of number were not in use, and men were fain to apply
their fingers of one or both hands to those things they desired to keep
account of; and that thence it proceeds, that now our numeral words are
but ten, in any nation, and in some but five, and then they begin again.
And he that can tell ten, if he recite them out of order, will lose
himself, and not know when he hath done: much less will he be able to
add, and subtract, and perform all other operations of arithmetic. So
that without words there is no possibility of reckoning of numbers; much
less of magnitudes, of swiftness, of force, and other things, the
reckoning whereof is necessary to the being, or well-being of
mankind.’—_Leviathan_, chap. iv., pp. 12, 14.
The same train of reasoning occurs in the ‘Discourse of Human Nature,’
with some variation in the expression.
‘By the advantage of names it is that we are capable of science, which
beasts for want of them are not; nor man, without the use of them; for
as a beast misseth not one or two out of her many young ones, for want
of those names of order, _one_, _two_, and _three_, and which we call
_number_; so neither would a man without repeating orally or mentally
those words of number, know how many pieces of money or other things lie
before him. Seeing there be many conceptions of one and the same thing,
and that for every conception we give it a several name, it followeth
that for one and the same thing, we have many names or attributes; as to
the same man we give the appellations of _just_, _valiant_, _strong_,
_comely_, &c. And again, because from divers things we receive like
conceptions, many things must needs have the same appellations: as to
all things we _see_ we give the name of _visible_. Those names we give
to many, are called universal to them all: as the name of _man_ to every
particular of mankind. Such appellations as we give to one only thing,
we call individual, or singular; as _Socrates_ and other proper names,
or by circumlocution, _He that writ the Iliads_, for _Homer_.
‘The universality of one name to many things hath been the cause that
men think the _things_ are themselves universal: and so seriously
contend that besides Peter and John, and all the rest of the men that
are, have been, or shall be in the world, there is yet something else
that we call man, viz. _Man in general_, deceiving themselves by taking
the universal or general appellation for the thing it signifieth. For if
one should desire the painter to make him the picture of a man, which is
as much as to say of a man in general, he meaneth no more but that the
painter should choose what man he pleaseth to draw, which must needs be
some of them that are or have been or may be, none of which are
universal. But when he would have him to draw the king or any particular
person, he limiteth the painter to that one person he chooseth. It is
plain therefore there is nothing universal but names, which are
therefore called indefinite, because we limit them not ourselves, but
leave them to be applied by the hearer: whereas a singular name is
limited and restrained to one of the many things it signifieth, as when
we say, _This man_, pointing to him, or giving him his proper name, or
in some such way.’—_Human Nature_, chap. v. pp. 25, 26.
We shall have occasion to see, in the course of this inquiry, how
exactly Berkeley’s account of the process of abstraction, in
contradiction to Locke’s opinion, corresponds in every particular with
this passage of our author. To return to his account of truth, reason,
&c.
‘When two names are joined together into a consequence or affirmation,
by the help of this little verb, _is_, as thus: _a man is a living
creature_; if the latter name, _living creature_, signify all that the
former name, _man_, signifieth, then the affirmation or consequence is
true; otherwise false. For True and False are attributes of speech, not
of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor
falsehood. Error there may be, as when we expect that which shall not
be, or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be
charged with untruth.
‘Seeing, then, that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in
our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember
what every name he uses stands for, and to place it accordingly: or else
he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twigs. And
therefore in Geometry (which is the only science that it has pleased God
hitherto to bestow on mankind) men begin at settling the significations
of their words, which settling of significations they call definitions,
and place them in the beginning of their reckoning. By this it appears
how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge to
examine the definitions of former authors, and either to correct them
when they are negligently set down, or to make them himself. For the
errors of definition multiply themselves according as the reckoning
proceeds; and lead men into absurdities which they at last see, but
cannot avoid without reckoning anew from the beginning. From whence it
happens that they which trust to books do as they that cast up many
little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little
sums were rightly cast up or not, and at last finding the error visible,
and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear
themselves, but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that
entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber,
flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to
consider which way they came in. So that in the right definition of
names, lies the first use of speech, which is the acquisition of
science, and in wrong or no definitions lies the first abuse, from which
proceed all false and senseless tenets; which make them that take their
instruction from the authority of books and not from their own
meditations, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as men
endued with true science are above it. For between true science and
erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle. Natural sense and
imagination are not subject to absurdity. Nature itself cannot err; and
as men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise or
more mad than ordinary. Nor is it possible without letters for any man
to become either excellently wise or (unless his memory be hurt by
disease or ill constitution of organs) excellently foolish. For words
are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the
money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a
Cicero, a Thomas Aquinas, or any other doctor whatsoever.
‘Subject to names is whatsoever can enter into, or be considered in an
account, and be added one thing to another to make a sum, or subtracted
one from another and leave a remainder. The Latins called accounts of
money _rationes_, and accounting, _ratiocinatio_, and that which we in
bills or books of accounts call _items_, they call _nomina_, or names;
and thence it seems to proceed that they extended the word _ratio_ to
the faculty of reckoning in all other things. The Greeks have but one
word, λογος for both speech and reason, not that they thought there was
no speech without reason, but no reason without speech: and the act of
reasoning they call syllogism, which signifieth summing up (or putting
together) the consequences of one saying to another. For reason is
nothing but reckoning (that is, adding and subtracting) of the
consequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying
of our thoughts; I say marking them, when we reckon by ourselves, and
signifying them, when we demonstrate or approve our reckonings to other
men.
‘And as in arithmetic, unpractised men must, and professors themselves
may, often err, and cast up false, so also in any other subject of
reasoning, the ablest, most attentive, and most practised men may
deceive themselves, and infer false conclusions: not but that reason
itself is always right reason, as well as arithmetic is a certain and
infallible art. But no one man’s reason, nor the reason of any number of
men makes the certainty: no more than an account is therefore well cast
up, because a great many men have unanimously approved it. And,
therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties
must by their own accord set up for right reason the reason of some
arbitrator or judge, so it is in all debates of what kind soever: and
when men that think themselves wiser than all others, clamour and demand
right reason for judge, yet seek no more but that things should be
determined by no other men’s reason but their own, it is as intolerable
in the society of men as it is in play, after trump is turned, to use
for trump on every occasion that suit whereof they have most in their
hand. For they do nothing else that will have every of their passions,
as it comes to bear sway in them, to be taken for right reason, and that
in their own controversies, betraying their want of right reason by the
claim they lay to it.
‘When a man reckons without the use of words, which may be done in
particular things (as when upon the sight of any one thing, we
conjecture what was likely to have preceded, or is likely to follow upon
it), if that which he thought likely to have preceded it, hath not
preceded it, this is called error, to which even the most prudent men
are subject. But when we reason in words of general signification, and
fall upon a general inference which is false, though it be commonly
called error, it is indeed an absurdity or senseless speech. For error
is but a deception in presuming that somewhat is past, or to come, of
which, though it were not past, or not to come, yet there was no
impossibility discoverable. But when we make a general assertion, unless
it be a true one, the possibility of it is inconceivable. And words
whereby we conceive nothing but the sound, are those we call absurd,
insignificant, and nonsense. And, therefore, if a man should talk to me
of _a round quadrangle_, or _accidents of bread in cheese_, or
_immaterial substances_, or _of a free subject_, a _free-will_, or any
_free_ but free from being hindered by opposition; I should not say he
were in an error, but that his words were without meaning, that is to
say, absurd.’—Chap. iv. v., pp. 15, 18, &c.
The account of the passions and affections which follows next in order,
is the same in almost every particular as that which is given in modern
treatises on this subject, except that Mr. Hobbes seems to make
curiosity or the desire of knowledge, an original passion of the mind,
peculiar to man. From this part I shall only quote two passages, and
then proceed to his treatise on the ‘Doctrine of Necessity,’ which will
conclude my account of this author.
The first passage is the one from which Locke has copied his famous
definition of the difference between wit and judgment. After observing
(Chap. viii.) that the difference of men’s talents does not depend on
natural capacity, which, he says, is nothing else but sense, wherein men
differ so little from one another, or from brutes, that it is not worth
the reckoning, he goes on:
‘This difference of quickness in imagining is caused by the difference
of men’s passions, that love and dislike, some one thing, some another,
and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way, some another, and are
held to and observe differently the things that pass through their
imagination. And whereas in this succession of thoughts there is nothing
to observe in the things they think on, but either in what they be like
one another or in what they be unlike—those that observe their
similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others,
are said to have a good wit, by which is meant on this occasion a good
fancy. But they that observe their differences and dissimilitudes, which
is called distinguishing and discerning and judging between thing and
thing, in case such discerning be not easy, are said to have a good
judgment; and particularly, in matter of conversation and business,
wherein times, places, and persons are to be discerned, this virtue is
called discretion. The former, that is, fancy, without the help of
judgment, is not commended for a virtue, but the latter which is
judgment or discretion, is commended for itself, without the help of
fancy.’ p. 32. This definition, which Locke took entire from our author
without acknowledgment, and which has been so often referred to, is
evidently false, for as Harris, the author of ‘Hermes,’ has very well
observed, the finding out the equality of the three angles of a triangle
to two right ones would upon the principle here stated, be a piece of
wit instead of an act of the understanding or judgment, and ‘Euclid’s
Elements’ a collection of epigrams.[5] The other passage which I
proposed to quote chiefly as an instance of our author’s power of
imagination, is as follows. In speaking of the degree of madness, as in
fanatics and others, he says:
‘Though the effect of folly in them that are possessed of an opinion of
being inspired be not always visible in one man, by any very extravagant
action that proceedeth from such passion, yet when many of them conspire
together, the rage of the whole multitude is visible enough. For what
greater argument of madness can there be than to clamour, strike, and
throw stones at our best friends? Yet this is somewhat less than such a
multitude will do. For they will clamour, fight against, and destroy
those, by whom, all their lifetime before, they have been protected and
secured from injury. And if this be madness in the multitude, it is the
same in every particular man. For as in the midst of the sea, though a
man perceive no sound of that part of the water next him, yet he is well
assured that part contributes as much to the roaring of the sea as any
other part of the same quantity, so also though we perceive no great
unquietness in one or two men, yet we may be well assured that their
singular passions are parts of the seditious roaring of a troubled
nation.’ Even Mr. Burke did not disdain to borrow one of Hobbes’s
images. The author of the ‘Leviathan’ compares those who attempt to
reform a decayed commonwealth to ‘the foolish daughters of Pelias who
desiring to renew the youth of their decrepit father did by the counsel
of Medea cut him in pieces and boil him, together with strange herbs,
but made not of him a new man.’
I think this is better expressed than the same allusion in Burke, which
is I dare say well known to my readers.
I shall not here enter into the doctrine of Liberty and Necessity, which
Hobbes has stated with great force and precision as a general question
of cause and effect, and without any particular reference to his
mechanical theory of the mind, as I shall fully investigate this subject
in my next Essay.
I have thus taken a review of the metaphysical writings of Hobbes, as
far as was necessary to establish what I at first proposed, namely, the
general conformity, and almost entire coincidence between his opinions,
and the principles of the modern system of philosophy. The praise of
originality at least, of boldness and vigour of mind, belongs to him.
The strength of reason which his application of a general principle to
explain almost all the phenomena of human nature implies, can hardly be
surpassed. The truth of the system is another question, which I shall
hereafter proceed to consider.
I will first, however, distinctly enumerate the leading principles of
his philosophy, as they are to be found in Hobbes, and in the latest
writers of the same School. They are, I conceive, as follows:
1. That all our ideas are derived from external objects, by means of the
senses alone.
2. That as nothing exists out of the mind but matter and motion, so it
is itself with all its operations nothing but matter and motion.
3. That thoughts are single, or that we can think of only one object at
a time. In other words, that there is no comprehensive power or faculty
of understanding in the mind.
4. That we have no general or abstract ideas.
5. That the only principle of connexion between one thought and another
is association, or their previous connexion in sense.
6. That reason and understanding depend entirely on the mechanism of
language.
7 and 8. That the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of
action, and self-interest the source of all our affections.
9. That the mind acts from a mechanical or physical necessity, over
which it has no controul, and consequently is not a moral or accountable
agent.—The manner of stating and reasoning upon this point is the only
circumstance of importance in which modern writers differ from Hobbes.
10. That there is no difference in the natural capacities of men, the
mind being originally passive to all impressions alike, and becoming
whatever it is from circumstances.
All of these positions it is my intention to oppose to the utmost of my
ability. Except the first, they are most or all of them either denied or
doubtfully admitted by Locke. And as it is his admission of the first
principle which has opened a door, directly or indirectly, to all the
rest, I shall devote the Essay next but one to an examination of the
account which he gives of the origin of our ideas from sensation.
It may perhaps be thought, that the neglect into which Hobbes’s
metaphysical opinions have fallen was originally owing to the obloquy
excited by the misanthropy and despotical tendency of his political
writings. But it seems to me that he has been almost as hardly dealt
with in the one case as in the other.
As to his principles of government, this may at least be said for them,
that they are in form and appearance very much the same with those
detailed long after in Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract,’ and evidently
suggested the plan of that work, which has never been considered as a
defence of tyranny. The author indeed requires an absolute submission in
the subject to the laws, but then it is to be in consequence of his own
consent to obey them. Every man is at least _supposed_ to be his own
lawgiver.
Secondly, as to the misanthropy with which he is charged, for having
made fear the actual foundation and cement of civil society, he has I
think made his own apology very satisfactorily in these words:
‘It may seem strange to some man that hath not well weighed these
things, that nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade
and destroy one another; and he may therefore, not trusting to the
inference made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same
confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider with himself—when
taking a journey he arms himself, and seeks to go well accompanied; when
going to sleep he locks his doors; when even in his house, he locks his
chests, and this when he knows there be laws and public officers, armed
to revenge all injuries that shall be done him;—what opinion I say, he
has of his fellow subjects when he rides armed, of his fellow citizens
when he locks his doors, and of his children and servants, when he locks
his chests. Does he not then accuse mankind as much by his actions as I
do by my words? Yet neither of us accuse man’s nature in
it.’—_Leviathan_, p. 62.
It is true the bond of civil government according to his account, is
very different from Burke’s ‘_soft collar of social esteem_,’ and takes
away the sentimental part of politics. But I confess I see nothing
liberal in this ‘order of thoughts,’ as Hobbes elsewhere expresses it,
‘the crime, the officer, the prison, the judge and the gallows,’ which
is nevertheless a good description of the nature and end of political
institutions.
The true reason of the fate which this author’s writings met with was
that his views of things were too original and comprehensive to be
immediately understood, without passing through the hands of several
successive generations of commentators and interpreters. Ignorance of
another’s meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear produces
hatred: hence arose the rancour and suspicion of his adversaries, who,
to quote some fine lines of Spenser,
——‘Stood all astonied like a sort of steers
’Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race
Unwares is chanced, far straying from his peers:
So did their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears.’
ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY
In this Essay I shall give the best account I can of the question
concerning liberty and necessity from the writings of others, and
afterwards add a few remarks of my own on the explanation of the terms
employed in this controversy. Of Mr. Hobbes’s discourse on this subject,
I should be nearly disposed to say with Gassendi, when another work of
his, ‘De Cive,’ was presented to him, ‘This treatise, though small in
bulk, is in my judgment the very marrow of philosophy.’ In order to give
a clear and satisfactory view of the question, I shall be obliged to
repeat some things I have before stated, for which the importance of the
subject as well as other circumstances will, I hope, be a sufficient
excuse.
The doctrine of necessity is stated by this author with great force and
precision as a general question of cause and effect, and with scarcely
any particular reference to his mechanical theory of the mind. From this
naked simple view of the matter, I cannot consistently with truth
withhold my full and entire assent. The ground-work, the pure basis of
the doctrine is in my opinion incontestable; it cannot be denied without
overturning all the rules of science, as well as the plainest dictates
of the understanding: whoever attacks it there in its stronghold, will
only injure the cause he espouses. It is that rock upon which whoever
falls will be dashed to pieces. But though I cannot pretend to undermine
the foundation, yet I may attempt to shake some parts of the
superstructure, and to clear away the crust of materialism which has
grown over it. In my opinion, the representations which have commonly
been given of the subject by the writers on both sides of the argument
are almost equally erroneous, and their opposite conclusions built on an
equal misconception of the true principle of necessity. By the principle
of moral or philosophical necessity is meant then that the mind is
invariably governed by certain laws which determine all its operations;
or in other words, that the regular succession of cause and effect is
not confined to mere matter, while the impulses of the will are left
quite unaccounted for, self-caused, perfectly contingent and
fantastical. We in general attribute those things to chance the causes
of which we do not understand, both in mind and matter. But as there is
a greater latitude and inconstancy in the one than in the other,
insomuch that we can hardly ever predict with certainty the effect of
particular motives on the mind, the opinion of chance, arbitrary
inclination, or self-determination had gained much deeper root with
respect to the operations of mind than to those of matter. The fallacy
of this opinion Hobbes has exposed in a masterly, and I think
unanswerable manner, and without running into those paradoxical
conclusions from the first position which later necessarians have
deduced from it. He affirms that necessity is perfectly consistent with
human liberty; that is, that the most strict and inviolable connexion of
cause and effect does not prevent the full, free, and unrestrained
development of certain powers in the agent, or take away the distinction
between the nature of virtue and vice, praise and blame, reward and
punishment, but is the foundation of all moral reasoning. Except Dr.
Jonathan Edwards, he is the only professed necessarian that I know of
who has not been led, by the customary use of language, to quit the
original definition of the term, and to slide from a philosophical into
a vulgar and practical necessity. But I will state his reasoning in his
own words, which are the best. They are as follows:
‘My opinion about Liberty and Necessity.
‘_First_, I conceive that when it cometh into a man’s mind to do or not
to do some certain action, if he have no time to deliberate, the doing
it or abstaining necessarily follows the present thought he hath of the
good or evil consequences thereof to himself; as, for example, in sudden
anger the action shall follow the thought of revenge; in sudden fear,
the thought of escape; also when a man hath time to deliberate, but
deliberateth not, because never any thing appeared that could him make
doubt of the consequence, the action follows his opinion of the goodness
or harm of it. These actions I call voluntary, because these actions
that _follow immediately_ the last appetite are voluntary, are here:
where is only one appetite that one is the last.
‘_Secondly_, I conceive when a man deliberates whether he shall do a
thing or not do it, that he does nothing else but consider whether it be
better for himself to do it or not to do it; and to consider an action,
is to imagine the consequences of it both good and evil; from whence is
to be inferred, that deliberation is nothing else but alternate
imagination of the good and evil sequels of an action, or (which is the
same thing) alternate hope and fear, or alternate appetite to do or quit
the action of which he deliberateth.
‘_Thirdly_, I conceive that in all deliberations, that is to say, in all
alternate succession of contrary appetites, the last is that which we
call the will, and is immediately next before the doing of the action,
or next before the doing of it become impossible. All other appetites to
do, and to quit, that come upon a man during his deliberations, are
called intentions, and inclinations, but not wills, there being but one
will, which also in this case may be called the last will, though the
intentions change often.
‘_Fourthly_, I conceive that those actions which a man is said to do
upon deliberation, are said to be voluntary, and done upon choice and
election, so that voluntary action, and action proceeding from election
is the same thing; and that of a voluntary agent, it is all one to say,
he is free, and to say, he hath not made an end of deliberating.
‘_Fifthly_, I conceive liberty to be rightly defined in this manner:
liberty is the absence of all the impediments to action that are not
contained in the nature and intrinsical quality of the agent, as for
example, the water is said to descend freely, or to have liberty to
descend by the channel of the river, because there is no impediment that
way, but not across, because the banks are impediments, and though the
water cannot ascend, yet men never say it wants the liberty to ascend,
but the faculty or power, because the impediment is in the nature of the
water, and intrinsical. So also we say, he that is tied wants the
liberty to go, because the impediment is not in him, but in his bands;
whereas we say not so of him that is sick or lame, because the
impediment is in himself.
‘_Sixthly_, I conceive that nothing taketh beginning from itself, but
from the action of some other immediate agent without itself. And that,
therefore, when first a man hath an appetite or will to something, to
which immediately before he had no appetite nor will, the cause of his
will, is not the will itself, but something else not in his own
disposing; so that whereas it is out of controversy, that of voluntary
actions the will is the necessary cause, and by this which is said, the
will is also caused by other things whereof it disposeth not, it
followeth, that voluntary actions have all of them necessary causes, and
therefore are necessitated.
‘_Seventhly_, I hold that to be a sufficient cause, to which nothing is
wanting that is needful to the producing of the effect. The same also is
a necessary cause. For if it be possible that a sufficient cause shall
not bring forth the effect, then there wanteth somewhat which was
needful to the producing of it, and so the cause was not sufficient; but
if it be impossible that a sufficient cause should not produce the
effect, then is a sufficient cause a necessary cause (for that is said
to produce an effect necessarily that cannot but produce it;) hence it
is manifest, that whatsoever is produced, is produced necessarily: for
whatsoever is produced hath had a sufficient cause to produce it, or
else it had not been; and therefore also voluntary actions are
necessitated.
‘_Lastly_, I hold that the ordinary definition of a free agent, namely,
that a free agent, is that, which, when all things are present which are
needful to produce the effect, can nevertheless not produce it, implies
a contradiction, and is nonsense; being as much as to say, the cause may
be sufficient, that is to say necessary, and yet the effect shall not
follow.
‘MY REASONS.—For the first five points, wherein it is explicated—1. what
spontaneity is; 2. what deliberation is; 3. what will, propension and
appetite are; 4. what a free agent is; 5. what liberty is; there can no
other proof be offered but every man’s own experience, by reflection on
himself, and remembering what he himself meaneth when he saith an action
is spontaneous: a man deliberates: such is his will: that agent or that
action is free. Now he that reflecteth so on himself, cannot but be
satisfied, that deliberation is the consideration of the good or evil
sequels of an action to come; that by spontaneity is meant inconsiderate
action (or else nothing is meant by it); that will is the last act of
our deliberation; that a free agent is he that can do if he will, and
forbear if he will; and that liberty is the absence of external
impediments. But, to those that out of custom speak not what they
conceive, but what they hear, and are not able, or will not take the
pains to consider what they think when they hear such words, no argument
can be sufficient; because experience and matter of fact is not verified
by other men’s arguments, but by every man’s own sense and memory. For
example, how can it be proved that to love a thing and to think it good
is all one, to a man that hath not marked his own meaning by those
words? or how can it be proved that eternity is not _nunc stans_ to a
man that says those words by custom, and never considers how he can
conceive the thing in his mind? Also the sixth point, that a man cannot
imagine any thing to begin without a cause, can no other way be made
known, but by trying how he can imagine it; but if he try, he shall find
as much reason (if there be no cause of the thing) to conceive it should
begin at one time as another, that he hath equal reason to think it
should begin at all times, which is impossible, and therefore he must
think there was some special cause why it began then, rather than sooner
or later, or else that it began never, but was eternal.
‘For the seventh point, which is, that all events have necessary causes,
it is there proved in that they have sufficient causes. Further, let us
in this place also suppose any event never so casual, as the throwing
(for example) “ames ace” upon a pair of dice, and see if it must not
have been necessary before it was thrown. For seeing it was thrown, it
had a beginning, and consequently a sufficient cause to produce it,
consisting partly in the dice, partly in outward things, as the posture
of the parts of the hand, the measure of force applied by the caster,
the posture of the parts of the table, and the like. In sum, there was
nothing wanting which was necessarily requisite to the producing of that
particular cast, and consequently the cast was necessarily thrown; for
if it had not been thrown, there had wanted somewhat requisite to the
throwing of it, and so the cause had not been sufficient. In the like
manner it may be proved that every other accident, how contingent soever
it seem, or how voluntary soever it be, is produced necessarily. The
same may be proved also in this manner. Let the case be put, for
example, of the weather: ’tis necessary that to-morrow it shall rain or
not rain. If, therefore, it be not necessary it shall rain, it is
necessary it shall not rain, otherwise there is no necessity that the
proposition, it shall rain or not rain, should be true. I know there be
some that say, it may necessarily be true that one of the two shall come
to pass, but not, singly that it shall rain, or that it shall not rain,
which is as much as to say, one of them is necessary, yet neither of
them is necessary; and therefore to seem to avoid that absurdity, they
make a distinction, that neither of them is true _determinate_, but
_indeterminate_, which distinction either signifies no more but this,
one of them is true, but we know not which, and so the necessity
remains, though we know it not; or if the meaning of the distinction be
not that, it hath no meaning, and they might as well have said, one of
them is true _titirice_, but neither of them, _tu patulice_.
‘The last thing in which also consisteth the whole controversy, namely,
that there is no such thing as an agent, which when all things requisite
to action are present, can nevertheless forbear to produce it; or (which
is all one) that there is no such thing as freedom from necessity, is
easily inferred from that which hath been before alleged. For if it be
an agent it can work, and if it work there is nothing wanting of what is
requisite to produce the action, and consequently the cause of the
action is sufficient, and if sufficient, then also necessary, as hath
been proved before. And thus you see how the inconveniences, which it is
objected must follow upon the holding of necessity, are avoided, and the
necessity itself demonstratively proved. To which I could add, if I
thought it good logic, the inconvenience of denying necessity, as that
it destroyeth both the decrees and the prescience of God Almighty; for
whatsoever God hath purposed to bring to pass by man, as an instrument,
or foreseeth shall come to pass; a man, if he have liberty as hath been
affirmed from necessitation, might frustrate, and make not to come to
pass, and God should either not foreknow it, and not decree it, or he
should foreknow such things shall be, as shall never be, and decree that
which shall never come to pass. This is all that hath come into my mind
touching this question since I last considered it.’
The letter from which the foregoing extract is taken is addressed to the
Marquis of Newcastle, and dated at Rouen in 1651, twenty years before
the publication of Spinoza’s most exact and beautiful demonstration of
the same principle. Some of Hobbes’s antagonists had charged him with
having borrowed his arguments from Marsennus, a French author; to which
in one of his controversial tracts Hobbes replies with some contempt,
that this Marsennus had heard him talk on the subject when he was in
Paris, and had borrowed them from him. Dr. Priestley has done justice to
Hobbes on this question of necessity, and I suspect more than justice in
denying that the Stoics were acquainted with the same principle. At any
rate, the modern commentators on the subject (and Dr. Priestley among
them) have added nothing to it but absurdities, from which our author’s
logic protected him; for he seldom reasoned wrong but when he reasoned
from wrong premises. As this question is one of the most interesting in
the history of philosophy, I shall perhaps be excused for adding one
more extract (of considerable length) to prove that Hobbes is not, in
this instance, chargeable with the practical inferences which have been
made from his doctrine. In answer to the objections of Bishop Bramhall,
with whom he had a controversy on the subject, he says:
‘Of the arguments from reason, the first is that which his Lordship
saith is drawn from Zeno’s beating of his man, which is therefore called
_Argumentum Baculinum_, that is to say, a wooden argument. The story is
this: Zeno held that all actions were necessary: his man therefore being
for some fault beaten, excused himself upon the necessity of it: to
avoid this excuse, his master pleaded likewise the necessity of beating
him. So that not he that maintained, but he that derided the necessity
was beaten, contrary to that his Lordship would infer.
‘The second argument is taken from certain inconveniences which his
Lordship thinks would follow such an opinion.
‘The first inconvenience, he says, is this, that the laws which prohibit
any action will be unjust.
‘2. That all consultations are vain.
‘3. That admonitions to men of understanding are of no more use than to
children, fools, and madmen.
‘4. That praise, dispraise, reward and punishment are in vain.
‘5 and 6. That counsels, arts, arms, books, instruments, study, tutors,
medicines are in vain.’
Hobbes’s answer to these conclusions is I think quite satisfactory. He
says—
‘To which arguments his Lordship, expecting I should answer by saying,
“the ignorance of the event were enough to make us use the means,” adds
(as it were a reply to my answer foreseen) these words, “_Alas! how
should our not knowing the event be a sufficient motive to make us use
the means?_” Wherein his Lordship says right: but my answer is not that
which he expecteth. I answer:
‘First, that the necessity of an action doth not make the laws that
prohibit it unjust. To let pass that not the necessity, but the will to
break the law maketh the action unjust, because the law regardeth the
will and no other antecedent cause of action, and to let pass that no
law can possibly be unjust, inasmuch as every man maketh (by his
consent) the law he is bound to keep, and which consequently must be
just, unless a man can be unjust to himself;—I say, what necessary cause
soever precede an action, yet if the action be forbidden, he that doth
it willingly may be justly punished. For instance, suppose the law on
pain of death prohibit stealing, and that there be a man who by the
strength of temptation is necessitated to steal, and is thereupon put to
death, does not this punishment deter others from stealing? Is it not a
cause that others steal not? Doth it not frame and make their wills to
justice? To make the law is therefore to make a cause of justice, and to
necessitate justice, and consequently ’tis no injustice to make such a
law. The intention of the law is not to grieve the delinquent for what
is past and not to be undone; but to make him and others just that else
would not be so; and respecteth not the evil act past, but the good to
come. Insomuch as without the good intention for the future, no past act
of a delinquent would justify his killing in the sight of God.
‘Secondly, I deny that it maketh consultations to be vain. ’Tis the
consultation that causeth a man and necessitateth him to choose to do
one thing rather than another: so that unless a man say that that cause
is in vain which necessitateth the effect, he cannot infer the
superfluousness of consultation out of the necessity of the election
proceeding from it. But it seemeth his Lordship reasons thus: “If I must
do this rather than that, I shall do it though I consult not at all;”
which is a false proposition and a false consequence, and no better than
this: “If I shall live till to-morrow, I shall live till to-morrow,
though I run myself through with a sword to-day.” If there be a
necessity that an action shall be done, or that any effect shall be
brought to pass, it does not therefore follow that there is nothing
necessarily requisite as a means to bring it to pass; and therefore when
it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before another, ’tis
determined also for what cause it shall be chosen, which cause for the
most part is deliberation or consultation; and therefore consultation is
not in vain, and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is
more necessitated, if _more_ and _less_ had any place in necessity.
‘The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconvenience,
namely, that admonitions are in vain: for admonitions are parts of
consultation, the admonitor being a counsellor for the time to him that
is admonished.
‘The fourth pretended inconvenience is, that praise, dispraise, reward
and punishment will be in vain. To which I answer, that for praise and
dispraise, they depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised
or dispraised. For what is it else to praise, but to say a thing is
good; good, I say, for me or for some body else, or for the state and
commonwealth? And what is it to say an action is good, but to say it is
as I would wish, or as another would have it, or according to the will
of the state, that is to say, according to the law. Does my Lord think
that no action can please me or him or the commonwealth, that should
proceed from necessity? Things may therefore be necessary, and yet
praiseworthy, as also necessary, and yet dispraised, and neither of them
both in vain, because praise and dispraise, and likewise reward and
punishment, do by example make and conform the will to good and evil. It
was a very great praise in my opinion that Velleius Paterculus gives
Cato, when he says that he was good by nature, _et quia aliter esse non
potuit_.
‘To the last objection, that counsels, arts, arms, instruments, books,
study, medicines, and the like would be superfluous, the same answer
serves as to the former, that is to say, that this consequence, _if the
effect shall come to pass, then it shall come to pass without its
causes_, is a false one, and those things named counsels, arts, arms,
&c. are the causes of those effects.’—Page 291.
‘His Lordship’s third argument consisteth in other inconveniences, which
he saith will follow, namely, impiety, and negligence of religious
duties, as repentance and zeal to God’s service, &c. To which I answer
as to the rest, that they follow not. I must confess, if we consider the
greatest part of mankind, not as they should be, but as they are, that
is, as men whom either the study of acquiring wealth or preferment, or
whom the appetite of sensual delights or the impatience of meditation,
or the rash embracing of wrong principles have made unapt to discuss the
truth of things; I must, I say, confess that the dispute of this
question will rather hurt than help their piety, and therefore if his
Lordship had not desired this answer, I should not have written it, nor
do I write it but in hopes your Lordship and his will keep it private.
Nevertheless in very truth, the necessity of events does not of itself
draw with it any impiety at all. For piety consisteth only in two
things: one that we honour God in our hearts, which is, that we think as
highly of his power as we can, (for to honour any thing is nothing else
but to think it to be of great power). The other is that we signify that
honour and esteem by our words and actions, which is called _cultus_, or
worship of God. He therefore that thinketh that all things proceed from
God’s eternal will, and consequently are necessary, does he not think
God omnipotent? Does he not esteem of his power as highly as is
possible, which is to honour God as much as may be in his heart? Again,
he that thinketh so, is he not more apt by external acts and words to
acknowledge it, than he that thinketh otherwise? Yet is this external
acknowledgment the same thing which we call worship; so that this
opinion fortifies piety in both kinds, external and internal, and
therefore is far from destroying it. And for repentance, which is
nothing else but a glad returning into the right way, after the grief of
being out of the way, though the cause that made him go astray were
necessary, yet there is no reason why he should not grieve; and, again,
though the cause why he returned into the way were necessary, there
remaineth still the cause of joy. So that the necessity of the acting
taketh away neither of those parts of repentance—grief for the error,
and joy for returning.’—_Tripos_, p. 292.
The author afterwards properly defines a moral agent to be one that acts
from deliberation, choice, or will, not from indifference; and, speaking
of the supposed inconsistency between choice and necessity, adds:
‘Commonly when we see and know the strength that moves us, we
acknowledge necessity; but when we see not or mark not the force that
moves us, we then think there is none, and that it is not causes but
liberty that produceth the action. Hence it is that they think he doth
not choose this that of necessity chooses it, but they might as well
say, fire doth not burn, because it burns of necessity.’
The general question is thus stated by Mr. Hobbes in the beginning of
his treatise: the point is not, he says, ‘whether a man can be a free
agent; that is to say, whether he can write or forbear, speak or be
silent, according to his will, but whether the will to write, and the
will to forbear, come upon him according to his will, or according to
any thing else in his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I can
do if I will; but to say—I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd
speech. In fine, that freedom which men commonly find in books, that
which the poets chaunt in the theatres, and the shepherds on the
mountains, that which the pastors teach in the pulpits, and the doctors
in the universities, and that which the common people in the markets,
and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto, is the same that I
assent unto, namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will, but
whether he hath freedom to will is a question neither the bishop nor
they ever thought on.’
All in which I differ from Hobbes is, that I think there is a real
freedom of choice and will, as well as of action, in the sense of the
author, that is, not a freedom from necessity or causes in either case,
but a liberty in any given agent to exert certain powers without being
controlled or impeded in their exercise by another agent.
Helvetius says, ‘It is true we can form a tolerably distinct idea of the
word _liberty_, understood in a common sense. A man is free who is
neither loaded with irons, nor confined in prison, nor intimidated like
the slave by the dread of chastisement: in this sense, the liberty of a
man consists in the free exercise of his power: I say of his power,
because it would be ridiculous to mistake for a want of liberty the
incapacity we are under to pierce the clouds like the eagle, to live
under the water like the whale, or to become king, emperor, or pope. We
have so far a sufficiently clear idea of the word. But this is no longer
the case when we come to apply liberty to the will. What must this
liberty then mean? We can only understand by it a free power of willing
or not willing a thing: but this power would imply that there may be a
will without motives, and consequently an effect without a cause. A
philosophical treatise on the liberty of the will would be a treatise of
effects without a cause.’—_Helvetius on the Mind_, p. 44.
Now I cannot perceive why there is any more difficulty in annexing a
meaning to the word liberty, as it relates to the faculties of the mind
than as it relates to those of the body, or why a treatise of the one
should be a treatise of effects without a cause any more than of the
other. If the distinction between liberty and necessity is lost in this
case, it is not because liberty but because necessity can have no place
in the will, or because we cannot easily put a padlock on the mind. If
the prisoner who has his chains struck off, walks or runs, dances or
leaps, is this an instance of an effect without a cause, because it is
an effect of liberty, or of what Helvetius calls the free exercise of
his power? Not that he can exert this power without means or motives,
that is, without ground to move on, or limbs to move with, or breath to
draw, or will to impel him, but ‘with all these means and appliances to
boot’ he has a power to do certain things which his chains deprived him
of the liberty of doing, but which the striking them off restores to him
again. Why then, if liberty does not in its common sense signify an
effect without a cause, but the free exercise of a power, did it not
signify the same thing or something similar as applied to the mind? Has
the mind no powers, or are they necessarily impeded and hindered from
operating? My notion of a free agent, I confess, is not that represented
by Mr. Hobbes, namely, one that when all things necessary to produce the
effect are present can nevertheless not produce it; but I believe a free
agent of whatever kind, is one which where all things necessary to
produce the effect are present, can produce it; its own operation not
being hindered by any thing else. The body is said to be free when it
has the power to obey the direction of the will: so the will may be said
to be free when it has the power to obey the dictates of the
understanding. The absurdity of the libertarians is in supposing that
liberty of action, and liberty of will have the same identical source,
viz. the will; or that as it is the will that moves the body, so it is
the will that moves itself in order to be free.
Mr. Locke’s chapter ‘On Power,’ in the first volume of the Essay,
contains his account of liberty and necessity, and has been more found
fault with than any other part of his work; I think without reason. He
seems evidently to have admitted the definition of necessity, though he
has avoided the name, which is not much to be wondered at, considering
the misconception to which it is liable, and which can scarcely be
separated from it in the closest reasoning, much less as a term of
general signification. In other words, he denies the power of the mind
to act without a cause or motive, or, in any manner in any
circumstances, from mere indifferency and absolute self motion; but he
at the same time rejects the inference which has been drawn from this
principle, that the mind is not an agent at all, but entirely subject to
external force or blind impulse. What he has said is little more than an
expansion of Hobbes’s general description of practical liberty, ‘that it
is a power to do, if we will.’ Thus, according to Mr. Locke, it would
not be so absurd to give a restive horse the spur or the whip to make
him go straight forward on a plain road, as it would be in order to make
him leap up a precipice a hundred feet high. The one the horse has a
power or liberty to do if he will, the other he has no power to do at
any rate. That is, here are two sorts of impediments, one that may be
overcome, and which it is right to take means to overcome, and another
which cannot be overcome, and which it is therefore absurd to meddle
with. To say that these two necessities are in effect the same, is an
abuse of language; yet for not lumping them together in the dashing
style of our modern wholesale dealers in paradox, Mr. Locke has been
made the subject of endless abuse and contumely. The difference between
them, as stated by this author with great force and earnestness of
feeling, in truth constitutes all that men in general mean when they
talk of freedom of will, and make it, as in this sense it is, the
ground-work of morality. There are certain powers which the mind has of
governing not only the actions of the body, but of regulating its own
thoughts and desires, and it is to make us exert these powers that all
the distinctions, rules and sanctions of morality have been established.
It must be ridiculous to attempt to make us do, what upon the face of
the thing it was known we could not do; yet it is on this literal and
unqualified interpretation of the term, as implying a flat impossibility
of the contrary, an utter incapacity and helplessness in the mind, a
concurrence of causes foreign to the will itself, and irresistible in
their effect, and with which it must therefore be in vain to contend,
that most of the consequences from the doctrine of necessity have been
built; such as that reward and punishment are absurd and improper, that
virtue and vice are words without a meaning, that the assassin is no
more a moral or accountable agent than the dagger which he uses, and
many others of the same stamp. The sword and the assassin would be
equally moral and accountable agents, if they were both equally
accessible to moral motives, that is, to reward and punishment, praise
and blame, &c.; but they are not. This seems to be a distinction of
great pith and moment. It is said to be a mere difference of words; at
least it makes all the difference whether such motives as reward and
punishment, praise and blame, should be applied or not, and this one
should think was a difference of practice. It is objected, indeed, that
still both are equally necessary agents. But this appears to me to be a
confusion of words. It is in vain to exhort flame not to burn, or to be
angry with poison for working: and it would be equally in vain to exhort
men to certain actions or to resent others, if exhortation and
resentment had no more effect upon them, that is, if they were really
governed by the same sort of blind, physical, unreasoning, unresisting
necessity. In fact, the latest necessarians have abandoned the true,
original, philosophical meaning of the term, in which it implies no more
than the connection between cause and effect, and have substituted for
it the prejudiced notion of their adversaries, who confound it with
mechanical necessity, ‘fixed fate, foreknowledge absolute,’ or the
unconditional _fiat_ of omnipotence.
The following extracts which I shall condense as much as I can
consistently with the nature of the argument, will shew the view which
Mr. Locke has taken of this subject. I would only observe, by the by,
that I so far agree with Hobbes and differ from Mr. Locke, in thinking
that liberty in the most extended and abstract sense is applicable to
material as well as voluntary agents; moral liberty, _i.e._ freedom of
will evidently is not, because such agents have no such faculty.
‘All the actions that we have any idea of,’ says my author, ‘reducing
themselves to these two, _viz._ thinking and moving, so far as a man has
a power to think or not to think, to move or not to move, according to
the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a man free.
Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a man’s
power, wherever doing or not doing will not equally follow upon the
preference of his mind, directing it, there he is not free, though
perhaps the action may be voluntary. Where any particular action is not
in the power of the agent, to be produced by him according to his
volition, there he is not at liberty; that agent is under necessity. So
that liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will;
but there may be thought, there may be volition, there may be will,
where there is no liberty. A little consideration of an obvious instance
or two may make this clear.
‘A tennis-ball, whether in motion by the stroke of a racket, or lying
still at rest, is not by any one taken to be a free agent. If we inquire
into the reason, we shall find it is because we conceive not a
tennis-ball to think; and consequently not to have any volition, or
preference of motion to rest or _vice versâ_; and therefore has not
liberty, is not a free agent, but both its motion and rest come under
our idea of necessity, and are so called. Likewise a man falling into
the water (a bridge breaking under him) has not herein liberty, is not a
free agent. For though he has volition, though he prefers his not
falling to falling, yet the forbearance of that motion not being in his
power, the stop or cessation of that motion follows not upon his
volition; and therefore therein he is not free. So a man striking
himself or his friend by a convulsive motion of his arm, no body thinks
he has in this liberty, every one pities him as acting by necessity and
constraint.’
Here I will just stop to observe that the stanch sticklers for
necessity, who make up by an excess of zeal for their want of knowledge,
would read this passage with a smile of self-complacent contempt, and
remark profoundly that whether the man struck his friend on purpose, or
from a convulsive motion, he was equally under necessity, and the object
of pity. Now whether he is an object of pity, I shall not dispute; but I
conceive he is also an object of anger in the one case which he is not
in the other, because anger will prevent a man’s striking you again, but
will not cure him of St. Vitus’s dance. It is to this sort of
indiscriminate, blind, senseless necessity which neutralizes all things
and actions, and under the pretence of establishing the operation of
causes, destroys the distinction between the different degrees and kinds
of necessity, to which I do not profess myself a convert.
To return.—‘As it is in the motions of the body,’ proceeds Mr. Locke,
‘so it is in the thoughts of our minds: where any one is such, that we
have power to take it up or lay it by, according to the preference of
the mind, there we are at liberty. Yet some ideas to the mind, like some
motions to the body, are such as in certain circumstances it cannot
avoid, nor obtain their absence by the utmost effort it can use. A man
on the rack is not at liberty to lay by the idea of pain, and divert
himself with other contemplations. And sometimes a boisterous passion
hurries our thoughts, as a hurricane does our bodies, without leaving us
the liberty of thinking on other things which we would rather choose.
But as soon as the mind regains the power to stop or continue, begin or
forbear any of these motions of the body without, or of the mind within,
according as it thinks fit to prefer either to the other, we then
consider the man as free again.’
‘But freedom,’ says my author, ‘unless it reaches farther than this,
will not serve the turn; and it passes for a good plea that a man is not
free at all, if he is not as free to will, as he is to act what he
wills. Concerning a man’s liberty, there yet therefore is raised this
farther question, whether a man be free to will? And as to that I
imagine that a man in respect of willing, when any action in his power
is once proposed to his thoughts as presently [that is, immediately] to
be done, cannot be free. The reason whereof is very manifest; for it
being unavoidable that the action depending on his will should exist or
not exist, and its existence or non-existence following perfectly the
determination of his will, he cannot avoid willing the existence or
non-existence of that action; it is absolutely necessary that he will
the one, or the other, _i.e._ prefer the one to the other, since one of
them must necessarily follow.’—Page 246.
This seems to be the weak part of Mr. Locke’s reasoning, and is the only
place, as I remember, where he has considered the certainty of the event
as inconsistent with the practical liberty for which he contends. At
this rate, it must be given up altogether: there can be no such thing as
liberty. For in all cases whatever, one determination must happen rather
than another. In all cases whatever, we must choose either one way or
another, or suspend our choice. Suspense and deliberation, as Helvetius
and others have justly remarked, are in this sense equally necessary
with precipitation of judgment. The actual or final event is in both
cases the necessary consequence of preceding causes, but that does not
destroy freedom of choice in either case, if the event depends upon the
exercise of choice, whether the time allowed for the mind to choose in,
be longer or shorter. If by liberty be meant the uncertainty of the
event, then liberty is a nonentity: but if it be supposed to relate to
the concurrence of certain powers of an agent in the production of that
event, then it is as true and as real a thing as the necessity to which
it is thus opposed, and which consists in the exclusion of certain
powers possessed by an agent from operating in the producing of any
event. At the same time it must be granted, that the power of
deliberation is the most valuable privilege of our rational nature, and
the great enlargement of the discursive faculty of the will. Mr. Locke
seems only to have erred in mistaking a difference of degree or extent
for one of kind. The practical truth of the distinction is undeniable.
His words are:—
‘The mind having in most cases, as is evident from experience, a power
to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires, and so
all, one after another, is at liberty to consider the objects of them,
examine them on all sides, and weigh them with others. In this lies the
liberty man has; and from the not using of it right comes all that
variety of mistakes, errors, and faults, which we run into in the
conduct of our lives, and our endeavours after happiness: whilst we
precipitate the determination of our wills, and engage too soon before
due examination. For during the suspension of any desire, before the
will be determined to action, we have an opportunity to examine, view,
and judge of the good or evil of what we are going to do; and when upon
due examination we have judged, we have done our duty, all that we can
or ought to do, in pursuit of our happiness; and it is not a fault, but
a perfection of our nature, to desire, will, and act, according to the
last result of a fair examination. This seems to me the source of all
liberty; in this seems to consist that which is (I think improperly)
called _free-will_.’—_Essay_, vol. i. p. 264.
Moral liberty, it should seem then, all the liberty which a man has or
which he wants, does not after all consist in a power of indifferency,
or in a power of choosing, without regard to motives, but in a power of
exciting his reason and of obeying it. There are two general positions
advanced by the author in the course of this inquiry, to neither of
which I can agree; namely, that action always proceeds from uneasiness,
and that we are perfect judges of present good and evil. With respect to
the first, it is true indeed that nothing can be an object of desire
till we suffer uneasiness from the want of it, but it is just as true,
that the want of any thing does not cause uneasiness in the mind, unless
it is first an object of desire, or unless the prospect of it gives us
pleasure. As to the second position, that we cannot be deceived in
judging of our actual sensations, it would be true, if the sensation and
the judgment formed upon it were the same, but they neither are nor can
be. Let any person smell to a rose, and look at a beautiful prospect or
hear a fine piece of music at the same instant, and try to determine
which of them gives him most pleasure. If he has the least doubt or
hesitation, the principle laid down by Mr. Locke cannot pass for an
axiom. From not accurately distinguishing between sensation and
judgment, some writers have been led to confound good and evil with
pleasure and pain. Good or evil is properly that which gives the mind
pleasure or pain on reflection, that is, which excites rational
approbation or disapprobation. To consider these two things as either
the same or in any regular proportion to each other, is I think to
betray a very superficial acquaintance with human nature. Yet in
defiance of the necessary distinction between the faculties by which we
feel and by which we judge, these moralists have laid it down as a
fundamental rule that all pleasures which are so in themselves are
equally good and commendable; yet as these ideas relate solely to the
reflex impression made by certain things on the understanding, to insist
that we shall judge of them by an appeal to the senses, is unwisely to
overturn the principle of the division of labour among our faculties,
and to force one to do the office of another. For this there seems no
more reason than for attempting to hear with our fingers, to see a
sound, or feel a colour.
‘Oh! who can paint a sun-beam to the blind;
Or make him feel a shadow with his mind.’
Yet the absurdity of the attempt arises only from the inaptitude of the
organ to the object.
Among simple ideas Mr. Locke reckons that of power. It were to be wished
that he had given it as simple a source as possible, viz. the feeling we
have of it in our own minds, which he sometimes seems half inclined to
do, instead of referring it to our observation of the successive changes
which take place in matter. It is by this means alone, that is, by
making it an original idea derived from within, like the sense of
pleasure or pain, and quite distinct from the visible composition and
decomposition of other objects, that we can avoid being driven into an
absolute scepticism with regard to cause and effect. For Hume has, I
think, demonstrated that in the mere mechanical series of sensible
appearances, there is nothing to suggest this idea, or point out the
indissoluble connection of one event with another, any more than in the
flies of a summer. We get this idea solely from the exertion of muscular
or voluntary power in ourselves: whoever has stretched forth his hand to
an object, must have the idea of power. Under the idea of power I
include all that relates to what we call force, energy, weakness,
effort, ease, difficulty, impossibility, &c. Accordingly, I should
conceive that no man of strong passions, or great muscular activity
would ever give up the idea of power. Hume, who seems to have discarded
it with the least compunction, was an easy, indolent, good-tempered man,
who did not care to stir out of his arm-chair; a languid, Epicurean
philosopher, of a reasonable corpulency, who was hurried away by no
violent passions, or intense desires, but looked on most things with the
same eye of listlessness and indifference. He was one of the subtlest
and most metaphysical of all metaphysicians. And perhaps he was so for
the reason here stated. The Scotch in general are not metaphysicians:
they have in fact always a purpose, they aim at a particular point, they
are determined upon something beforehand. This gives a hardness and
rigidity to their understandings, and takes away that tremulous
sensibility to every slight and wandering impression which is necessary
to complete the fine balance of the mind, and enable us to follow all
the infinite fluctuations of thought through their nicest distinctions.
To return to the doctrine of necessity. I shall refer to the authority
of but one more writer, who has indeed exhausted the subject, and
anticipated what few remarks I had to offer upon it: I mean Jonathan
Edwards, in his treatise on the Will. This work, setting aside its
Calvinistic tendency with which I have nothing to do, is one of the most
closely reasoned, elaborate, acute, serious, and sensible among modern
productions. No metaphysician can read it without feeling a wish to have
been the author of it. The gravity of the matter and the earnestness of
the manner are alike admirable. His reasoning is not of that kind, which
consists in having a smart answer for every trite objection, but in
attaining true and satisfactory solutions of things perceived in all
their difficulty and in all their force, and in every variety of
connexion. He evidently writes to satisfy his own mind and the minds of
those, who like himself are intent upon the pursuit of truth for its own
sake. There is not an evasion or ambiguity in his whole book, nor a wish
to produce any but thorough conviction. He does not therefore lead his
readers into a labyrinth of words, or entangle them among the forms of
logic, or mount the airy heights of abstraction, but descends into the
plain, and mingles with the business and feelings of mankind, and
grapples with common sense, and subdues it to the force of true reason.
All philosophy depends no less on deep and real feeling than on power of
thought. I happen to have Edwards’s ‘Inquiry concerning Freewill,’ and
Dr. Priestley’s ‘Illustrations of Philosophical Necessity,’ bound up in
the same volume: and I confess that the difference in the manner of
these two writers is rather striking. The plodding, persevering,
scrupulous accuracy of the one, and the easy, cavalier, verbal fluency
of the other, form a complete contrast. Dr. Priestley’s whole aim seems
to be to evade the difficulties of his subject, Edwards’s to answer
them. The one is employed according to Berkeley’s allegory, in flinging
dust in the eyes of his adversaries, while the other is taking true
pains in digging into the mine of knowledge. All Dr. Priestley’s
arguments on this subject are mere hackneyed common-places. He had in
reality no opinion of his own, and truth, I conceive, never takes very
deep root in those minds on which it is merely engrafted. He uniformly
adopted the vantage ground of every question, and borrowed those
arguments which he found most easy to be wielded, and of most service in
that kind of busy intellectual warfare to which he was habituated. He
was an able controversialist, not a philosophical reasoner.
Dr. Priestley states in his ‘Illustrations’ and in his letter to Dr.
Horsley, that the difference between physical and moral necessity is
merely verbal. He says, speaking of the connexion between cause and
effect in the mind, ‘Give me the thing and I will readily give up the
name.’ It appears to me that Dr. Priestley was quite as much attached to
the name as to the thing, and that the philosophical principle of
necessity, without its unpopular title, would have afforded him but
little satisfaction. Now the obnoxiousness of the name, and in my
opinion, almost all the difficulty and repugnance which the generality
of men find in admitting the doctrine arises from the ambiguity lurking
under the term necessity, which includes both kinds of necessity, moral
and physical, and with which Dr. Priestley delights to probe the
prejudices of his adversaries, thinking the differences of moral and
physical necessity a mere question of words, and that provided there are
any laws or any causes operating upon the mind, it is of no sort of
consequence what those laws or causes are. It is the same inability to
distinguish between one cause and another which creates the vulgar
prejudice against necessity, and which is exposed in a very satisfactory
manner by the author of the ‘Inquiry into the Will.’ He says, in a
letter written expressly to vindicate himself from having confounded
moral with physical necessity, ‘On the contrary, I have largely declared
that the connexion between antecedent things and consequent ones which
takes place with regard to the acts of men’s wills, which is called
moral necessity, is called by the name of _necessity_ improperly; and
that all such terms as _must_, _cannot_, _impossible_, _unable_,
_irresistible_, _unavoidable_, _invincible_, &c. when applied here, are
not applied in their proper signification, and are either used
nonsensically, and with perfect insignificance, or in a sense quite
diverse from their original and proper meaning, and their use in common
speech; and that such a necessity as attends the acts of men’s wills, is
more properly called _certainty_ than _necessity_. I think it is
evidently owing to a strong prejudice in persons’ minds, arising from an
insensible habitual perversion and misapplication of such-like terms,
that they are ready to think that to suppose a certain connexion of
men’s volitions without any foregoing motives or inclinations, is truly
and properly to suppose such a strong irrefragable chain of causes and
effects as stands in the way of, and makes utterly vain, opposite
desires and endeavours, like immovable and impenetrable mountains of
brass; and impedes our liberty like walls of adamant, gates of brass,
and bars of iron: whereas all such representations suggest ideas as far
from the truth, as the East is from the West. I know it is in vain to
endeavour to make some persons believe this, or at least fully and
steadily to believe it: for if it be demonstrated to them, still the old
prejudice remains, which has been long fixed by the use of the terms
_necessary_, _must_, &c. the association with these terms of certain
ideas, inconsistent with liberty, is not broken, and the judgment is
powerfully warped by it; as a thing that has been long bent and grown
stiff, if it be straightened, will return to its former curvity again
and again.’
The reasoning in the ‘Inquiry’ to which the author here refers, in
justification of himself, is as follows:
‘Men in their first use of such phrases as these, _must_, _cannot_,
_unavoidable_, _irresistible_, &c. use them to signify a necessity of
constraint or restraining a natural necessity or impossibility, or some
necessity that the will has nothing to do in. A thing is said to be
_necessary_, when we cannot help it, let us do what we will. So any
thing is said to be _impossible_ to us, when we would do it, or would
have it brought to pass and endeavour it, but all our desires and
endeavours are in vain. And that is said to be _irresistible_, which
overcomes all our opposition, resistance and endeavour to the contrary.
And we are said to be _unable_ to do a thing, when our utmost supposable
desires and endeavours to do it are insufficient. All men find, and
begin to find in early childhood, that there are innumerable things
which cannot be done which they desire to do; and innumerable things,
which they are averse to, that must be; they cannot avoid them, whether
they choose them or no. It is to express this necessity which men so
soon and so often find, and which so greatly affects them in innumerable
cases, that such terms and phrases are first formed; and it is to
signify such a necessity that they are first used, and that they are
most constantly used in the common affairs of life; and not to signify
any such metaphysical, speculative and abstract notion as that connexion
[between cause and effect] in the nature and course of things, to
signify which they who employ themselves in philosophical inquiries into
the first origin and metaphysical relations and dependencies of things,
have borrowed those terms, for want of others. But we grow up from our
cradles in a use of such phrases entirely different from this, or from
the one in which they are used in the controversy about liberty and
necessity. And it being a dictate of the universal sense of mankind,
evident to us as soon as we begin to think, that the necessity signified
by these terms in the sense in which we first learn them, does excuse
persons, and free them from all fault or blame, hence our idea of
excusableness or faultlessness is tied to these phrases by a strong
habit, which grows up with us;—or if we use the words as terms of art in
another sense, yet unless we are exceeding circumspect and wary, we
shall insensibly slide into the vulgar use of them, and so apply the
words in a very inconsistent manner: this habitual connexion of ideas
will deceive and confound us in our reasonings and discourses whenever
we pretend to use the terms in that manner.’—Pages 20, 21, 290, &c.
‘It follows that when the aforesaid terms are used in cases wherein no
opposition, or insufficient will or endeavour is or can be supposed, but
the very nature of the supposed case (as that of willing or choosing)
excludes any such opposition, will, or endeavour, these terms are then
not used in their proper signification, but quite beside their use in
common speech.’—Pages 21, 22.
The author has, I think, in these passages, laid open the source of most
of the confusion on the subject in question. For this double meaning
lurking under the word necessity has been the chief reason why persons,
who were guided more by their own feelings and the customary
associations of language than by formal definitions, have altogether
rejected the doctrine; while persons of a more logical turn, who could
not deny the truth of the abstract principle, have yet in their
explanations of it, and inferences from it, fallen into the same vulgar
error as their opponents. The partisans for necessity have given up
their common sense, as they supposed, to their reason, while the
advocates for liberty rejected a demonstrable truth from a dread of its
consequences; and both have been the dupes of a word. I have been the
more ready to appeal to this writer’s authority, because he is allowed
on all hands to be one of the most strict, severe, and logical of all
necessarians. What he has said on the subject of free-will, as
consisting in perfect contingence, independent of all motive, or as
implying an absolute beginning of action without any precedent
determining cause might, one would imagine, have been sufficient, even
if Hobbes’s reasonings had not, to banish that opinion out of the world.
He has followed it through all its windings, and detected it in all its
varying shades, with equal patience and sagacity. He sums up the
absurdities of this notion of liberty, or of mere absolute self-will, in
these words:
‘The following things are all essential to it, viz. that an action
should be necessary, and not necessary; that it should be from a cause
and no cause; that it should be the fruit of choice and design, and not
the fruit of choice and design; that it should be the beginning of
motion and exertion, and yet be consequent on previous exertion; that it
should be before it is; that it should spring immediately out of
indifference and equilibrium, and yet be the effect of preponderation;
that it should be self-originated, also have its original from something
else; that it is what the mind causes itself, of its own will, and can
produce or prevent, according to its choice, or pleasure, and yet what
the mind has no power to prevent, precluding all previous choice in the
affair. So that an act of the will [determining itself by its own
free-will], according to their metaphysical account of it, is something
of which there is no idea, it is nothing but a confusion of the mind,
excited by words without any distinct meaning. If some learned
philosopher, who had been abroad, in giving an account of the curious
observations he had made in his travels, should say, “He had been in
Tierra del Fuego, and there had seen an animal, which he calls by a
certain name, that begat and brought forth itself, and yet had a sire
and a dam distinct from itself; that it had an appetite and was hungry
before it had a being; that his master, who led him, and governed him at
his pleasure, was always governed by him, and driven by him where he
pleased: that when he moved, he always took a step before the first
step; that he went with his head first, and yet always went tail
foremost; and this though he had neither head nor tail;” it would be no
impudence at all to tell such a traveller, though a learned man, that he
himself had no notion or idea of such an animal as he gave an account
of, and never had, nor ever would have.’—Page 281, of the _Inquiry_.
The author seems to have hit upon the source of this erroneous account
of free-will, with his usual truth of feeling. He says, almost
immediately after:—‘The thing which has led men into this inconsistent
notion of action, when applied to volition, as though it were essential
to this internal action that the agent should be self-determined in it,
and that the will should be the cause of it, was probably this: that
according to the sense of mankind, and the common use of language, it is
so with respect to men’s external actions; which are what originally,
and according to the vulgar use and most proper sense of the word, are
called _actions_. Men in these are self-directed, self-determined, and
their wills are the cause of the motions of their bodies, and the
external things that are done; so that unless men do them voluntarily,
and of choice, and the action be determined by their antecedent
volition, it is no action or doing of theirs. Hence some metaphysicians
have been led unwarily, but exceeding absurdly, to suppose the same
concerning volition itself, _that_ that also must be determined by the
will; which is to be determined by antecedent volition, as the motion of
the body is; not considering the contradiction it implies.’—_Ibid._,
page 286.
I shall proceed to state as briefly as I can my own notions of liberty
and necessity, as far as they any way differ from the foregoing account.
First, then, I conceive that if by necessity be understood and only
understood the connexion of cause and effect, or the constant dependence
of one thing on another, in the human mind as well as in matter, that
according to this interpretation all things are equally certain and
necessary. On the other hand, if by liberty be meant any thing opposite
to this connexion of cause and effect: that is, a positive beginning of
any action or motion out of nothing, or out of a state of indifference,
or from itself, I believe that there is no such thing as liberty in the
mind any more than in matter. All things have their preceding
determining causes, and nothing is, but what must be in the precise
given circumstances. This has been demonstrated over and over again, and
the contrary supposition reduced to a manifest absurdity in every
possible way by Hobbes, Hume, Hartley, Edwards, Priestley, and others.
But, secondly, I conceive that the question does not stop here, because
certain ideas have been annexed to these terms of liberty and necessity,
both by the learned and by common men, which have nothing at all to do
with the affirmation or denial of the simple connexion between cause and
effect. What I shall therefore attempt will be to point out a few
instances of the misapplication of the term to prove a necessity not
included in the certainty of the event, and to disprove liberty in a
sense in which it does not interfere with that certainty, or with
philosophical necessity: that is, I shall attempt to show in what sense,
in conformity with the general law to which all things are by their
nature subject, man is an agent, a free agent, a moral and accountable
agent; that is, deserving of reward and punishment, praise and blame,
&c. Now by an agent I mean any thing that acts or has a power to
operate, that is, to produce effects; by a free agent I mean one that is
not hindered from acting; by a moral and accountable agent I mean one
that acts from will, and is influenced by motives; by reward and
punishment I mean what every one does; by praise and blame I mean our
approbation or disapprobation of any agent that is conscious of our
sentiments towards him, or that is capable of reflecting on his own
conduct, and of being affected by what others think of it. If by an
agent be meant the beginner of action, or one that produces an effect of
itself, there can be no such thing; but if by an agent be meant one that
contributes to an effect, there is such a thing as an agent; and the
more any thing contributes to an effect and determines it to be this or
that, the more it is an agent. If by freedom be meant a freedom from
causes, or necessity in the abstract, there can be no freedom in this
sense, but there may be and is a freedom from certain causes and from
certain kinds and degrees of necessity; that is, from physical causes,
or compulsion, and from absolute, unconditional necessity. If all things
are equally necessary, that do not spring out of nothing, then indeed
the distinction between liberty and necessity must be in all cases
absurd. Again, by free-will I do not mean the power or liberty to act
without motives, but with motives. The mind cannot act without an
occasion or ground for acting, but this does not shew that it is no
agent at all, or that it is not a free agent; that is, that its action
is restrained or hindered by the action of anything else. The
intellectual and voluntary powers are free, just as the corporeal are,
namely, when they are free to produce certain effects, which, if
excited, they can produce, as the body is free when it can move in
consequence of the mind’s direction; it is no longer free when though
the same reason exists for its moving, it is hindered by something else
from obeying the impulse. In short, liberty is this: the power in any
agent in given circumstances to operate in a certain manner, if left to
itself; or perhaps more unequivocally, opportunity given to any agent to
exert certain powers to produce an effect, when nothing but those powers
and the absence of impediments is wanting to produce it. To be free is
to possess all the requisites for acting in one’s-self, and in the
circumstances, and not to be counteracted. Again if moral good and evil
are supposed to be something self-created, then they are merely fictions
of the mind; but if we suppose an agent to be entitled to praise or
blame, reward or punishment, not because he is a self-willed, but a
voluntary agent, that is to say, a being possessing certain powers and
habitually and with determination exerting them to certain purposes,
then there will be a foundation for this distinction in nature. To the
idea of moral responsibility, it is not necessary that the agent should
be the sole or absolutely first cause of the evil, for example, but that
he should be one real, determining cause of it, and while he remains
what he is, the same effects will follow. An agent is the author of any
evil, when without him, that is, without something peculiar and
essential to his disposition and character, it would not exist.