I. The saying of Theaetetus, that 'Knowledge is sensible perception,'

may be assumed to be a current philosophical opinion of the age. 'The

ancients,' as Aristotle (De Anim.) says, citing a verse of Empedocles,

'affirmed knowledge to be the same as perception.' We may now examine

these words, first, with reference to their place in the history of

philosophy, and secondly, in relation to modern speculations.

(a) In the age of Socrates the mind was passing from the object to the

subject. The same impulse which a century before had led men to form

conceptions of the world, now led them to frame general notions of the

human faculties and feelings, such as memory, opinion, and the like. The

simplest of these is sensation, or sensible perception, by which Plato

seems to mean the generalized notion of feelings and impressions of

sense, without determining whether they are conscious or not.

The theory that 'Knowledge is sensible perception' is the antithesis of

that which derives knowledge from the mind (Theaet.), or which assumes

the existence of ideas independent of the mind (Parm.). Yet from their

extreme abstraction these theories do not represent the opposite poles

of thought in the same way that the corresponding differences would

in modern philosophy. The most ideal and the most sensational have a

tendency to pass into one another; Heracleitus, like his great successor

Hegel, has both aspects. The Eleatic isolation of Being and the Megarian

or Cynic isolation of individuals are placed in the same class by Plato

(Soph.); and the same principle which is the symbol of motion to one

mind is the symbol of rest to another. The Atomists, who are sometimes

regarded as the Materialists of Plato, denied the reality of sensation.

And in the ancient as well as the modern world there were reactions from

theory to experience, from ideas to sense. This is a point of view from

which the philosophy of sensation presented great attraction to the

ancient thinker. Amid the conflict of ideas and the variety of opinions,

the impression of sense remained certain and uniform. Hardness,

softness, cold, heat, etc. are not absolutely the same to different

persons, but the art of measuring could at any rate reduce them all

to definite natures (Republic). Thus the doctrine that knowledge is

perception supplies or seems to supply a firm standing ground. Like the

other notions of the earlier Greek philosophy, it was held in a very

simple way, without much basis of reasoning, and without suggesting the

questions which naturally arise in our own minds on the same subject.

(b) The fixedness of impressions of sense furnishes a link of connexion

between ancient and modern philosophy. The modern thinker often repeats

the parallel axiom, 'All knowledge is experience.' He means to say that

the outward and not the inward is both the original source and the final

criterion of truth, because the outward can be observed and analyzed;

the inward is only known by external results, and is dimly perceived

by each man for himself. In what does this differ from the saying of

Theaetetus? Chiefly in this--that the modern term 'experience,' while

implying a point of departure in sense and a return to sense, also

includes all the processes of reasoning and imagination which have

intervened. The necessary connexion between them by no means affords a

measure of the relative degree of importance which is to be ascribed to

either element. For the inductive portion of any science may be small,

as in mathematics or ethics, compared with that which the mind has

attained by reasoning and reflection on a very few facts.

II. The saying that 'All knowledge is sensation' is identified by Plato

with the Protagorean thesis that 'Man is the measure of all things.'

The interpretation which Protagoras himself is supposed to give of these

latter words is: 'Things are to me as they appear to me, and to you as

they appear to you.' But there remains still an ambiguity both in the

text and in the explanation, which has to be cleared up. Did Protagoras

merely mean to assert the relativity of knowledge to the human mind? Or

did he mean to deny that there is an objective standard of truth?

These two questions have not been always clearly distinguished; the

relativity of knowledge has been sometimes confounded with uncertainty.

The untutored mind is apt to suppose that objects exist independently

of the human faculties, because they really exist independently of the

faculties of any individual. In the same way, knowledge appears to be

a body of truths stored up in books, which when once ascertained are

independent of the discoverer. Further consideration shows us that these

truths are not really independent of the mind; there is an adaptation of

one to the other, of the eye to the object of sense, of the mind to the

conception. There would be no world, if there neither were nor ever

had been any one to perceive the world. A slight effort of reflection

enables us to understand this; but no effort of reflection will enable

us to pass beyond the limits of our own faculties, or to imagine the

relation or adaptation of objects to the mind to be different from that

of which we have experience. There are certain laws of language and

logic to which we are compelled to conform, and to which our ideas

naturally adapt themselves; and we can no more get rid of them than we

can cease to be ourselves. The absolute and infinite, whether explained

as self-existence, or as the totality of human thought, or as the

Divine nature, if known to us at all, cannot escape from the category of

relation.

But because knowledge is subjective or relative to the mind, we are

not to suppose that we are therefore deprived of any of the tests or

criteria of truth. One man still remains wiser than another, a

more accurate observer and relater of facts, a truer measure of the

proportions of knowledge. The nature of testimony is not altered, nor

the verification of causes by prescribed methods less certain. Again,

the truth must often come to a man through others, according to the

measure of his capacity and education. But neither does this affect the

testimony, whether written or oral, which he knows by experience to

be trustworthy. He cannot escape from the laws of his own mind; and

he cannot escape from the further accident of being dependent for his

knowledge on others. But still this is no reason why he should always be

in doubt; of many personal, of many historical and scientific facts he

may be absolutely assured. And having such a mass of acknowledged truth

in the mathematical and physical, not to speak of the moral sciences,

the moderns have certainly no reason to acquiesce in the statement

that truth is appearance only, or that there is no difference between

appearance and truth.

The relativity of knowledge is a truism to us, but was a great

psychological discovery in the fifth century before Christ. Of this

discovery, the first distinct assertion is contained in the thesis of

Protagoras. Probably he had no intention either of denying or affirming

an objective standard of truth. He did not consider whether man in the

higher or man in the lower sense was a 'measure of all things.' Like

other great thinkers, he was absorbed with one idea, and that idea was

the absoluteness of perception. Like Socrates, he seemed to see that

philosophy must be brought back from 'nature' to 'truth,' from the world

to man. But he did not stop to analyze whether he meant 'man' in the

concrete or man in the abstract, any man or some men, 'quod semper quod

ubique' or individual private judgment. Such an analysis lay beyond

his sphere of thought; the age before Socrates had not arrived at these

distinctions. Like the Cynics, again, he discarded knowledge in any

higher sense than perception. For 'truer' or 'wiser' he substituted

the word 'better,' and is not unwilling to admit that both states and

individuals are capable of practical improvement. But this improvement

does not arise from intellectual enlightenment, nor yet from

the exertion of the will, but from a change of circumstances and

impressions; and he who can effect this change in himself or others may

be deemed a philosopher. In the mode of effecting it, while agreeing

with Socrates and the Cynics in the importance which he attaches to

practical life, he is at variance with both of them. To suppose that

practice can be divorced from speculation, or that we may do good

without caring about truth, is by no means singular, either in

philosophy or life. The singularity of this, as of some other

(so-called) sophistical doctrines, is the frankness with which they are

avowed, instead of being veiled, as in modern times, under ambiguous and

convenient phrases.

Plato appears to treat Protagoras much as he himself is treated by

Aristotle; that is to say, he does not attempt to understand him from

his own point of view. But he entangles him in the meshes of a more

advanced logic. To which Protagoras is supposed to reply by Megarian

quibbles, which destroy logic, 'Not only man, but each man, and each

man at each moment.' In the arguments about sight and memory there is a

palpable unfairness which is worthy of the great 'brainless brothers,'

Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, and may be compared with the egkekalummenos

('obvelatus') of Eubulides. For he who sees with one eye only cannot be

truly said both to see and not to see; nor is memory, which is liable

to forget, the immediate knowledge to which Protagoras applies the

term. Theodorus justly charges Socrates with going beyond the truth;

and Protagoras has equally right on his side when he protests against

Socrates arguing from the common use of words, which 'the vulgar pervert

in all manner of ways.'

III. The theory of Protagoras is connected by Aristotle as well as Plato

with the flux of Heracleitus. But Aristotle is only following Plato,

and Plato, as we have already seen, did not mean to imply that such a

connexion was admitted by Protagoras himself. His metaphysical genius

saw or seemed to see a common tendency in them, just as the modern

historian of ancient philosophy might perceive a parallelism between

two thinkers of which they were probably unconscious themselves. We must

remember throughout that Plato is not speaking of Heracleitus, but of

the Heracliteans, who succeeded him; nor of the great original ideas of

the master, but of the Eristic into which they had degenerated a hundred

years later. There is nothing in the fragments of Heracleitus which at

all justifies Plato's account of him. His philosophy may be resolved

into two elements--first, change, secondly, law or measure pervading

the change: these he saw everywhere, and often expressed in strange

mythological symbols. But he has no analysis of sensible perception such

as Plato attributes to him; nor is there any reason to suppose that

he pushed his philosophy into that absolute negation in which

Heracliteanism was sunk in the age of Plato. He never said that 'change

means every sort of change;' and he expressly distinguished between

'the general and particular understanding.' Like a poet, he surveyed

the elements of mythology, nature, thought, which lay before him, and

sometimes by the light of genius he saw or seemed to see a mysterious

principle working behind them. But as has been the case with other great

philosophers, and with Plato and Aristotle themselves, what was really

permanent and original could not be understood by the next generation,

while a perverted logic carried out his chance expressions with an

illogical consistency. His simple and noble thoughts, like those of the

great Eleatic, soon degenerated into a mere strife of words. And when

thus reduced to mere words, they seem to have exercised a far wider

influence in the cities of Ionia (where the people 'were mad about

them') than in the life-time of Heracleitus--a phenomenon which, though

at first sight singular, is not without a parallel in the history of

philosophy and theology.

It is this perverted form of the Heraclitean philosophy which is

supposed to effect the final overthrow of Protagorean sensationalism.

For if all things are changing at every moment, in all sorts of ways,

then there is nothing fixed or defined at all, and therefore no sensible

perception, nor any true word by which that or anything else can be

described. Of course Protagoras would not have admitted the justice

of this argument any more than Heracleitus would have acknowledged the

'uneducated fanatics' who appealed to his writings. He might have said,

'The excellent Socrates has first confused me with Heracleitus, and

Heracleitus with his Ephesian successors, and has then disproved the

existence both of knowledge and sensation. But I am not responsible

for what I never said, nor will I admit that my common-sense account of

knowledge can be overthrown by unintelligible Heraclitean paradoxes.'

IV. Still at the bottom of the arguments there remains a truth, that

knowledge is something more than sensible perception;--this alone would

not distinguish man from a tadpole. The absoluteness of sensations

at each moment destroys the very consciousness of sensations (compare

Phileb.), or the power of comparing them. The senses are not mere holes

in a 'Trojan horse,' but the organs of a presiding nature, in which they

meet. A great advance has been made in psychology when the senses

are recognized as organs of sense, and we are admitted to see or feel

'through them' and not 'by them,' a distinction of words which, as

Socrates observes, is by no means pedantic. A still further step has

been made when the most abstract notions, such as Being and Not-being,

sameness and difference, unity and plurality, are acknowledged to be the

creations of the mind herself, working upon the feelings or impressions

of sense. In this manner Plato describes the process of acquiring them,

in the words 'Knowledge consists not in the feelings or affections

(pathemasi), but in the process of reasoning about them (sullogismo).'

Here, is in the Parmenides, he means something not really different

from generalization. As in the Sophist, he is laying the foundation of a

rational psychology, which is to supersede the Platonic reminiscence of

Ideas as well as the Eleatic Being and the individualism of Megarians

and Cynics.

V. Having rejected the doctrine that 'Knowledge is perception,' we now

proceed to look for a definition of knowledge in the sphere of opinion.

But here we are met by a singular difficulty: How is false opinion

possible? For we must either know or not know that which is presented

to the mind or to sense. We of course should answer at once: 'No; the

alternative is not necessary, for there may be degrees of knowledge; and

we may know and have forgotten, or we may be learning, or we may have a

general but not a particular knowledge, or we may know but not be able

to explain;' and many other ways may be imagined in which we know and do

not know at the same time. But these answers belong to a later stage of

metaphysical discussion; whereas the difficulty in question naturally

arises owing to the childhood of the human mind, like the parallel

difficulty respecting Not-being. Men had only recently arrived at the

notion of opinion; they could not at once define the true and pass

beyond into the false. The very word doxa was full of ambiguity, being

sometimes, as in the Eleatic philosophy, applied to the sensible world,

and again used in the more ordinary sense of opinion. There is no

connexion between sensible appearance and probability, and yet both

of them met in the word doxa, and could hardly be disengaged from one

another in the mind of the Greek living in the fifth or fourth century

B.C. To this was often added, as at the end of the fifth book of the

Republic, the idea of relation, which is equally distinct from either of

them; also a fourth notion, the conclusion of the dialectical process,

the making up of the mind after she has been 'talking to herself'

(Theat.).

We are not then surprised that the sphere of opinion and of Not-being

should be a dusky, half-lighted place (Republic), belonging neither

to the old world of sense and imagination, nor to the new world of

reflection and reason. Plato attempts to clear up this darkness. In

his accustomed manner he passes from the lower to the higher, without

omitting the intermediate stages. This appears to be the reason why he

seeks for the definition of knowledge first in the sphere of opinion.

Hereafter we shall find that something more than opinion is required.

False opinion is explained by Plato at first as a confusion of mind and

sense, which arises when the impression on the mind does not correspond

to the impression made on the senses. It is obvious that this

explanation (supposing the distinction between impressions on the mind

and impressions on the senses to be admitted) does not account for all

forms of error; and Plato has excluded himself from the consideration of

the greater number, by designedly omitting the intermediate processes

of learning and forgetting; nor does he include fallacies in the use of

language or erroneous inferences. But he is struck by one possibility

of error, which is not covered by his theory, viz. errors in arithmetic.

For in numbers and calculation there is no combination of thought and

sense, and yet errors may often happen. Hence he is led to discard the

explanation which might nevertheless have been supposed to hold good

(for anything which he says to the contrary) as a rationale of error, in

the case of facts derived from sense.

Another attempt is made to explain false opinion by assigning to error

a sort of positive existence. But error or ignorance is essentially

negative--a not-knowing; if we knew an error, we should be no longer in

error. We may veil our difficulty under figures of speech, but these,

although telling arguments with the multitude, can never be the real

foundation of a system of psychology. Only they lead us to dwell upon

mental phenomena which if expressed in an abstract form would not be

realized by us at all. The figure of the mind receiving impressions is

one of those images which have rooted themselves for ever in language.

It may or may not be a 'gracious aid' to thought; but it cannot be

got rid of. The other figure of the enclosure is also remarkable as

affording the first hint of universal all-pervading ideas,--a notion

further carried out in the Sophist. This is implied in the birds, some

in flocks, some solitary, which fly about anywhere and everywhere. Plato

discards both figures, as not really solving the question which to us

appears so simple: 'How do we make mistakes?' The failure of the enquiry

seems to show that we should return to knowledge, and begin with that;

and we may afterwards proceed, with a better hope of success, to the

examination of opinion.

But is true opinion really distinct from knowledge? The difference

between these he seeks to establish by an argument, which to us appears

singular and unsatisfactory. The existence of true opinion is proved

by the rhetoric of the law courts, which cannot give knowledge, but

may give true opinion. The rhetorician cannot put the judge or juror in

possession of all the facts which prove an act of violence, but he may

truly persuade them of the commission of such an act. Here the idea of

true opinion seems to be a right conclusion from imperfect knowledge.

But the correctness of such an opinion will be purely accidental; and is

really the effect of one man, who has the means of knowing, persuading

another who has not. Plato would have done better if he had said that

true opinion was a contradiction in terms.

Assuming the distinction between knowledge and opinion, Theaetetus, in

answer to Socrates, proceeds to define knowledge as true opinion, with

definite or rational explanation. This Socrates identifies with another

and different theory, of those who assert that knowledge first begins

with a proposition.

The elements may be perceived by sense, but they are names, and cannot

be defined. When we assign to them some predicate, they first begin to

have a meaning (onomaton sumploke logou ousia). This seems equivalent

to saying, that the individuals of sense become the subject of knowledge

when they are regarded as they are in nature in relation to other

individuals.

Yet we feel a difficulty in following this new hypothesis. For must not

opinion be equally expressed in a proposition? The difference between

true and false opinion is not the difference between the particular and

the universal, but between the true universal and the false. Thought may

be as much at fault as sight. When we place individuals under a

class, or assign to them attributes, this is not knowledge, but a very

rudimentary process of thought; the first generalization of all, without

which language would be impossible. And has Plato kept altogether clear

of a confusion, which the analogous word logos tends to create, of a

proposition and a definition? And is not the confusion increased by the

use of the analogous term 'elements,' or 'letters'? For there is no real

resemblance between the relation of letters to a syllable, and of the

terms to a proposition.

Plato, in the spirit of the Megarian philosophy, soon discovers a flaw

in the explanation. For how can we know a compound of which the simple

elements are unknown to us? Can two unknowns make a known? Can a whole

be something different from the parts? The answer of experience is that

they can; for we may know a compound, which we are unable to analyze

into its elements; and all the parts, when united, may be more than all

the parts separated: e.g. the number four, or any other number, is more

than the units which are contained in it; any chemical compound is more

than and different from the simple elements. But ancient philosophy

in this, as in many other instances, proceeding by the path of mental

analysis, was perplexed by doubts which warred against the plainest

facts.

Three attempts to explain the new definition of knowledge still remain

to be considered. They all of them turn on the explanation of logos. The

first account of the meaning of the word is the reflection of thought in

speech--a sort of nominalism 'La science est une langue bien faite.' But

anybody who is not dumb can say what he thinks; therefore mere speech

cannot be knowledge. And yet we may observe, that there is in this

explanation an element of truth which is not recognized by Plato; viz.

that truth and thought are inseparable from language, although mere

expression in words is not truth. The second explanation of logos is the

enumeration of the elementary parts of the complex whole. But this is

only definition accompanied with right opinion, and does not yet attain

to the certainty of knowledge. Plato does not mention the greater

objection, which is, that the enumeration of particulars is endless;

such a definition would be based on no principle, and would not help us

at all in gaining a common idea. The third is the best explanation,--the

possession of a characteristic mark, which seems to answer to the

logical definition by genus and difference. But this, again, is equally

necessary for right opinion; and we have already determined, although

not on very satisfactory grounds, that knowledge must be distinguished

from opinion. A better distinction is drawn between them in the Timaeus.

They might be opposed as philosophy and rhetoric, and as conversant

respectively with necessary and contingent matter. But no true idea of

the nature of either of them, or of their relation to one another, could

be framed until science obtained a content. The ancient philosophers

in the age of Plato thought of science only as pure abstraction, and to

this opinion stood in no relation.

Like Theaetetus, we have attained to no definite result. But an

interesting phase of ancient philosophy has passed before us. And the

negative result is not to be despised. For on certain subjects, and in

certain states of knowledge, the work of negation or clearing the ground

must go on, perhaps for a generation, before the new structure can begin

to rise. Plato saw the necessity of combating the illogical logic of

the Megarians and Eristics. For the completion of the edifice, he makes

preparation in the Theaetetus, and crowns the work in the Sophist.

Many (1) fine expressions, and (2) remarks full of wisdom, (3) also

germs of a metaphysic of the future, are scattered up and down in

the dialogue. Such, for example, as (1) the comparison of Theaetetus'

progress in learning to the 'noiseless flow of a river of oil';

the satirical touch, 'flavouring a sauce or fawning speech'; or the

remarkable expression, 'full of impure dialectic'; or the lively images

under which the argument is described,--'the flood of arguments pouring

in,' the fresh discussions 'bursting in like a band of revellers.'

(2) As illustrations of the second head, may be cited the remark of

Socrates, that 'distinctions of words, although sometimes pedantic, are

also necessary'; or the fine touch in the character of the lawyer,

that 'dangers came upon him when the tenderness of youth was unequal to

them'; or the description of the manner in which the spirit is broken

in a wicked man who listens to reproof until he becomes like a child; or

the punishment of the wicked, which is not physical suffering, but the

perpetual companionship of evil (compare Gorgias); or the saying, often

repeated by Aristotle and others, that 'philosophy begins in wonder,

for Iris is the child of Thaumas'; or the superb contempt with which

the philosopher takes down the pride of wealthy landed proprietors by

comparison of the whole earth. (3) Important metaphysical ideas are: a.

the conception of thought, as the mind talking to herself; b. the notion

of a common sense, developed further by Aristotle, and the explicit

declaration, that the mind gains her conceptions of Being, sameness,

number, and the like, from reflection on herself; c. the excellent

distinction of Theaetetus (which Socrates, speaking with emphasis,

'leaves to grow') between seeing the forms or hearing the sounds of

words in a foreign language, and understanding the meaning of them; and

d. the distinction of Socrates himself between 'having' and 'possessing'

knowledge, in which the answer to the whole discussion appears to be

contained.

...

There is a difference between ancient and modern psychology, and we

have a difficulty in explaining one in the terms of the other. To us the

inward and outward sense and the inward and outward worlds of which they

are the organs are parted by a wall, and appear as if they could never

be confounded. The mind is endued with faculties, habits, instincts, and

a personality or consciousness in which they are bound together. Over

against these are placed forms, colours, external bodies coming into

contact with our own body. We speak of a subject which is ourselves,

of an object which is all the rest. These are separable in thought, but

united in any act of sensation, reflection, or volition. As there are

various degrees in which the mind may enter into or be abstracted from

the operations of sense, so there are various points at which this

separation or union may be supposed to occur. And within the sphere

of mind the analogy of sense reappears; and we distinguish not only

external objects, but objects of will and of knowledge which we contrast

with them. These again are comprehended in a higher object, which

reunites with the subject. A multitude of abstractions are created by

the efforts of successive thinkers which become logical determinations;

and they have to be arranged in order, before the scheme of thought is

complete. The framework of the human intellect is not the peculium of

an individual, but the joint work of many who are of all ages and

countries. What we are in mind is due, not merely to our physical, but

to our mental antecedents which we trace in history, and more especially

in the history of philosophy. Nor can mental phenomena be truly

explained either by physiology or by the observation of consciousness

apart from their history. They have a growth of their own, like the

growth of a flower, a tree, a human being. They may be conceived as of

themselves constituting a common mind, and having a sort of personal

identity in which they coexist.

So comprehensive is modern psychology, seeming to aim at constructing

anew the entire world of thought. And prior to or simultaneously with

this construction a negative process has to be carried on, a clearing

away of useless abstractions which we have inherited from the past. Many

erroneous conceptions of the mind derived from former philosophies

have found their way into language, and we with difficulty disengage

ourselves from them. Mere figures of speech have unconsciously

influenced the minds of great thinkers. Also there are some

distinctions, as, for example, that of the will and of the reason, and

of the moral and intellectual faculties, which are carried further than

is justified by experience. Any separation of things which we cannot see

or exactly define, though it may be necessary, is a fertile source of

error. The division of the mind into faculties or powers or virtues is

too deeply rooted in language to be got rid of, but it gives a false

impression. For if we reflect on ourselves we see that all our faculties

easily pass into one another, and are bound together in a single mind or

consciousness; but this mental unity is apt to be concealed from us by

the distinctions of language.

A profusion of words and ideas has obscured rather than enlightened

mental science. It is hard to say how many fallacies have arisen from

the representation of the mind as a box, as a 'tabula rasa,' a book,

a mirror, and the like. It is remarkable how Plato in the Theaetetus,

after having indulged in the figure of the waxen tablet and the decoy,

afterwards discards them. The mind is also represented by another class

of images, as the spring of a watch, a motive power, a breath, a stream,

a succession of points or moments. As Plato remarks in the Cratylus,

words expressive of motion as well as of rest are employed to describe

the faculties and operations of the mind; and in these there is

contained another store of fallacies. Some shadow or reflection of the

body seems always to adhere to our thoughts about ourselves, and mental

processes are hardly distinguished in language from bodily ones. To see

or perceive are used indifferently of both; the words intuition, moral

sense, common sense, the mind's eye, are figures of speech transferred

from one to the other. And many other words used in early poetry or in

sacred writings to express the works of mind have a materialistic sound;

for old mythology was allied to sense, and the distinction of matter and

mind had not as yet arisen. Thus materialism receives an illusive aid

from language; and both in philosophy and religion the imaginary figure

or association easily takes the place of real knowledge.

Again, there is the illusion of looking into our own minds as if our

thoughts or feelings were written down in a book. This is another figure

of speech, which might be appropriately termed 'the fallacy of the

looking-glass.' We cannot look at the mind unless we have the eye

which sees, and we can only look, not into, but out of the mind at

the thoughts, words, actions of ourselves and others. What we dimly

recognize within us is not experience, but rather the suggestion of an

experience, which we may gather, if we will, from the observation of the

world. The memory has but a feeble recollection of what we were saying

or doing a few weeks or a few months ago, and still less of what we

were thinking or feeling. This is one among many reasons why there is

so little self-knowledge among mankind; they do not carry with them

the thought of what they are or have been. The so-called 'facts of

consciousness' are equally evanescent; they are facts which nobody ever

saw, and which can neither be defined nor described. Of the three laws

of thought the first (All A = A) is an identical proposition--that is to

say, a mere word or symbol claiming to be a proposition: the two others

(Nothing can be A and not A, and Everything is either A or not A) are

untrue, because they exclude degrees and also the mixed modes and double

aspects under which truth is so often presented to us. To assert that

man is man is unmeaning; to say that he is free or necessary and cannot

be both is a half truth only. These are a few of the entanglements which

impede the natural course of human thought. Lastly, there is the fallacy

which lies still deeper, of regarding the individual mind apart from

the universal, or either, as a self-existent entity apart from the ideas

which are contained in them.

In ancient philosophies the analysis of the mind is still rudimentary

and imperfect. It naturally began with an effort to disengage the

universal from sense--this was the first lifting up of the mist. It

wavered between object and subject, passing imperceptibly from one or

Being to mind and thought. Appearance in the outward object was for a

time indistinguishable from opinion in the subject. At length mankind

spoke of knowing as well as of opining or perceiving. But when the word

'knowledge' was found how was it to be explained or defined? It was not

an error, it was a step in the right direction, when Protagoras said

that 'Man is the measure of all things,' and that 'All knowledge is

perception.' This was the subjective which corresponded to the objective

'All is flux.' But the thoughts of men deepened, and soon they began

to be aware that knowledge was neither sense, nor yet opinion--with or

without explanation; nor the expression of thought, nor the enumeration

of parts, nor the addition of characteristic marks. Motion and rest were

equally ill adapted to express its nature, although both must in some

sense be attributed to it; it might be described more truly as the mind

conversing with herself; the discourse of reason; the hymn of dialectic,

the science of relations, of ideas, of the so-called arts and sciences,

of the one, of the good, of the all:--this is the way along which Plato

is leading us in his later dialogues. In its higher signification it was

the knowledge, not of men, but of gods, perfect and all sufficing:--like

other ideals always passing out of sight, and nevertheless present to

the mind of Aristotle as well as Plato, and the reality to which they

were both tending. For Aristotle as well as Plato would in modern

phraseology have been termed a mystic; and like him would have defined

the higher philosophy to be 'Knowledge of being or essence,'--words to

which in our own day we have a difficulty in attaching a meaning.

Yet, in spite of Plato and his followers, mankind have again and again

returned to a sensational philosophy. As to some of the early thinkers,

amid the fleetings of sensible objects, ideas alone seemed to be fixed,

so to a later generation amid the fluctuation of philosophical opinions

the only fixed points appeared to be outward objects. Any pretence

of knowledge which went beyond them implied logical processes, of the

correctness of which they had no assurance and which at best were only

probable. The mind, tired of wandering, sought to rest on firm ground;

when the idols of philosophy and language were stripped off, the

perception of outward objects alone remained. The ancient Epicureans

never asked whether the comparison of these with one another did not

involve principles of another kind which were above and beyond them. In

like manner the modern inductive philosophy forgot to enquire into

the meaning of experience, and did not attempt to form a conception of

outward objects apart from the mind, or of the mind apart from them.

Soon objects of sense were merged in sensations and feelings, but

feelings and sensations were still unanalyzed. At last we return to

the doctrine attributed by Plato to Protagoras, that the mind is only a

succession of momentary perceptions. At this point the modern philosophy

of experience forms an alliance with ancient scepticism.

The higher truths of philosophy and religion are very far removed from

sense. Admitting that, like all other knowledge, they are derived from

experience, and that experience is ultimately resolvable into facts

which come to us through the eye and ear, still their origin is a

mere accident which has nothing to do with their true nature. They

are universal and unseen; they belong to all times--past, present, and

future. Any worthy notion of mind or reason includes them. The proof of

them is, 1st, their comprehensiveness and consistency with one another;

2ndly, their agreement with history and experience. But sensation is of

the present only, is isolated, is and is not in successive moments. It

takes the passing hour as it comes, following the lead of the eye or

ear instead of the command of reason. It is a faculty which man has in

common with the animals, and in which he is inferior to many of them.

The importance of the senses in us is that they are the apertures of the

mind, doors and windows through which we take in and make our own the

materials of knowledge. Regarded in any other point of view sensation

is of all mental acts the most trivial and superficial. Hence the term

'sensational' is rightly used to express what is shallow in thought and

feeling.

We propose in what follows, first of all, like Plato in the Theaetetus,

to analyse sensation, and secondly to trace the connexion between

theories of sensation and a sensational or Epicurean philosophy.

Paragraph I. We, as well as the ancients, speak of the five senses, and

of a sense, or common sense, which is the abstraction of them. The

term 'sense' is also used metaphorically, both in ancient and modern

philosophy, to express the operations of the mind which are immediate or

intuitive. Of the five senses, two--the sight and the hearing--are of

a more subtle and complex nature, while two others--the smell and the

taste--seem to be only more refined varieties of touch. All of them

are passive, and by this are distinguished from the active faculty of

speech: they receive impressions, but do not produce them, except in so

far as they are objects of sense themselves.

Physiology speaks to us of the wonderful apparatus of nerves, muscles,

tissues, by which the senses are enabled to fulfil their functions. It

traces the connexion, though imperfectly, of the bodily organs with the

operations of the mind. Of these latter, it seems rather to know the

conditions than the causes. It can prove to us that without the brain we

cannot think, and that without the eye we cannot see: and yet there is

far more in thinking and seeing than is given by the brain and the eye.

It observes the 'concomitant variations' of body and mind. Psychology,

on the other hand, treats of the same subject regarded from another

point of view. It speaks of the relation of the senses to one another;

it shows how they meet the mind; it analyzes the transition from sense

to thought. The one describes their nature as apparent to the outward

eye; by the other they are regarded only as the instruments of the mind.

It is in this latter point of view that we propose to consider them.

The simplest sensation involves an unconscious or nascent operation

of the mind; it implies objects of sense, and objects of sense have

differences of form, number, colour. But the conception of an object

without us, or the power of discriminating numbers, forms, colours,

is not given by the sense, but by the mind. A mere sensation does not

attain to distinctness: it is a confused impression, sugkechumenon ti,

as Plato says (Republic), until number introduces light and order

into the confusion. At what point confusion becomes distinctness is a

question of degree which cannot be precisely determined. The distant

object, the undefined notion, come out into relief as we approach

them or attend to them. Or we may assist the analysis by attempting

to imagine the world first dawning upon the eye of the infant or of a

person newly restored to sight. Yet even with them the mind as well

as the eye opens or enlarges. For all three are inseparably bound

together--the object would be nowhere and nothing, if not perceived by

the sense, and the sense would have no power of distinguishing without

the mind.

But prior to objects of sense there is a third nature in which they

are contained--that is to say, space, which may be explained in various

ways. It is the element which surrounds them; it is the vacuum or void

which they leave or occupy when passing from one portion of space to

another. It might be described in the language of ancient philosophy, as

'the Not-being' of objects. It is a negative idea which in the course

of ages has become positive. It is originally derived from the

contemplation of the world without us--the boundless earth or sea, the

vacant heaven, and is therefore acquired chiefly through the sense of

sight: to the blind the conception of space is feeble and inadequate,

derived for the most part from touch or from the descriptions of others.

At first it appears to be continuous; afterwards we perceive it to be

capable of division by lines or points, real or imaginary. By the

help of mathematics we form another idea of space, which is altogether

independent of experience. Geometry teaches us that the innumerable

lines and figures by which space is or may be intersected are absolutely

true in all their combinations and consequences. New and unchangeable

properties of space are thus developed, which are proved to us in a

thousand ways by mathematical reasoning as well as by common experience.

Through quantity and measure we are conducted to our simplest and purest

notion of matter, which is to the cube or solid what space is to

the square or surface. And all our applications of mathematics are

applications of our ideas of space to matter. No wonder then that they

seem to have a necessary existence to us. Being the simplest of our

ideas, space is also the one of which we have the most difficulty in

ridding ourselves. Neither can we set a limit to it, for wherever we

fix a limit, space is springing up beyond. Neither can we conceive a

smallest or indivisible portion of it; for within the smallest there

is a smaller still; and even these inconceivable qualities of space,

whether the infinite or the infinitesimal, may be made the subject of

reasoning and have a certain truth to us.

Whether space exists in the mind or out of it, is a question which has

no meaning. We should rather say that without it the mind is incapable

of conceiving the body, and therefore of conceiving itself. The mind may

be indeed imagined to contain the body, in the same way that Aristotle

(partly following Plato) supposes God to be the outer heaven or circle

of the universe. But how can the individual mind carry about the

universe of space packed up within, or how can separate minds have

either a universe of their own or a common universe? In such conceptions

there seems to be a confusion of the individual and the universal. To

say that we can only have a true idea of ourselves when we deny the

reality of that by which we have any idea of ourselves is an absurdity.

The earth which is our habitation and 'the starry heaven above' and

we ourselves are equally an illusion, if space is only a quality or

condition of our minds.

Again, we may compare the truths of space with other truths derived from

experience, which seem to have a necessity to us in proportion to the

frequency of their recurrence or the truth of the consequences which may

be inferred from them. We are thus led to remark that the necessity

in our ideas of space on which much stress has been laid, differs in a

slight degree only from the necessity which appears to belong to other

of our ideas, e.g. weight, motion, and the like. And there is another

way in which this necessity may be explained. We have been taught it,

and the truth which we were taught or which we inherited has never been

contradicted in all our experience and is therefore confirmed by it. Who

can resist an idea which is presented to him in a general form in every

moment of his life and of which he finds no instance to the contrary?

The greater part of what is sometimes regarded as the a priori intuition

of space is really the conception of the various geometrical figures of

which the properties have been revealed by mathematical analysis. And

the certainty of these properties is immeasurably increased to us by our

finding that they hold good not only in every instance, but in all the

consequences which are supposed to flow from them.

Neither must we forget that our idea of space, like our other ideas,

has a history. The Homeric poems contain no word for it; even the later

Greek philosophy has not the Kantian notion of space, but only the

definite 'place' or 'the infinite.' To Plato, in the Timaeus, it is

known only as the 'nurse of generation.' When therefore we speak of

the necessity of our ideas of space we must remember that this is a

necessity which has grown up with the growth of the human mind, and

has been made by ourselves. We can free ourselves from the perplexities

which are involved in it by ascending to a time in which they did not

as yet exist. And when space or time are described as 'a priori forms or

intuitions added to the matter given in sensation,' we should consider

that such expressions belong really to the 'pre-historic study' of

philosophy, i.e. to the eighteenth century, when men sought to explain

the human mind without regard to history or language or the social

nature of man.

In every act of sense there is a latent perception of space, of which

we only become conscious when objects are withdrawn from it. There are

various ways in which we may trace the connexion between them. We may

think of space as unresisting matter, and of matter as divided into

objects; or of objects again as formed by abstraction into a collective

notion of matter, and of matter as rarefied into space. And motion may

be conceived as the union of there and not there in space, and force

as the materializing or solidification of motion. Space again is the

individual and universal in one; or, in other words, a perception and

also a conception. So easily do what are sometimes called our simple

ideas pass into one another, and differences of kind resolve themselves

into differences of degree.

Within or behind space there is another abstraction in many respects

similar to it--time, the form of the inward, as space is the form of the

outward. As we cannot think of outward objects of sense or of outward

sensations without space, so neither can we think of a succession of

sensations without time. It is the vacancy of thoughts or sensations,

as space is the void of outward objects, and we can no more imagine

the mind without the one than the world without the other. It is to

arithmetic what space is to geometry; or, more strictly, arithmetic may

be said to be equally applicable to both. It is defined in our minds,

partly by the analogy of space and partly by the recollection of events

which have happened to us, or the consciousness of feelings which we are

experiencing. Like space, it is without limit, for whatever beginning or

end of time we fix, there is a beginning and end before them, and so

on without end. We speak of a past, present, and future, and again the

analogy of space assists us in conceiving of them as coexistent. When

the limit of time is removed there arises in our minds the idea of

eternity, which at first, like time itself, is only negative, but

gradually, when connected with the world and the divine nature, like

the other negative infinity of space, becomes positive. Whether time is

prior to the mind and to experience, or coeval with them, is (like

the parallel question about space) unmeaning. Like space it has been

realized gradually: in the Homeric poems, or even in the Hesiodic

cosmogony, there is no more notion of time than of space. The conception

of being is more general than either, and might therefore with greater

plausibility be affirmed to be a condition or quality of the mind. The a

priori intuitions of Kant would have been as unintelligible to Plato as

his a priori synthetical propositions to Aristotle. The philosopher of

Konigsberg supposed himself to be analyzing a necessary mode of thought:

he was not aware that he was dealing with a mere abstraction. But now

that we are able to trace the gradual developement of ideas through

religion, through language, through abstractions, why should we

interpose the fiction of time between ourselves and realities? Why

should we single out one of these abstractions to be the a priori

condition of all the others? It comes last and not first in the order of

our thoughts, and is not the condition precedent of them, but the last

generalization of them. Nor can any principle be imagined more suicidal

to philosophy than to assume that all the truth which we are capable of

attaining is seen only through an unreal medium. If all that exists

in time is illusion, we may well ask with Plato, 'What becomes of the

mind?'

Leaving the a priori conditions of sensation we may proceed to consider

acts of sense. These admit of various degrees of duration or intensity;

they admit also of a greater or less extension from one object, which is

perceived directly, to many which are perceived indirectly or in a less

degree, and to the various associations of the object which are latent

in the mind. In general the greater the intension the less the extension

of them. The simplest sensation implies some relation of objects to

one another, some position in space, some relation to a previous or

subsequent sensation. The acts of seeing and hearing may be almost

unconscious and may pass away unnoted; they may also leave an impression

behind them or power of recalling them. If, after seeing an object we

shut our eyes, the object remains dimly seen in the same or about the

same place, but with form and lineaments half filled up. This is the

simplest act of memory. And as we cannot see one thing without at

the same time seeing another, different objects hang together in

recollection, and when we call for one the other quickly follows. To

think of the place in which we have last seen a thing is often the

best way of recalling it to the mind. Hence memory is dependent on

association. The act of recollection may be compared to the sight of an

object at a great distance which we have previously seen near and seek

to bring near to us in thought. Memory is to sense as dreaming is to

waking; and like dreaming has a wayward and uncertain power of recalling

impressions from the past.

Thus begins the passage from the outward to the inward sense. But as

yet there is no conception of a universal--the mind only remembers

the individual object or objects, and is always attaching to them some

colour or association of sense. The power of recollection seems to

depend on the intensity or largeness of the perception, or on the

strength of some emotion with which it is inseparably connected. This is

the natural memory which is allied to sense, such as children appear to

have and barbarians and animals. It is necessarily limited in range, and

its limitation is its strength. In later life, when the mind has become

crowded with names, acts, feelings, images innumerable, we acquire

by education another memory of system and arrangement which is both

stronger and weaker than the first--weaker in the recollection

of sensible impressions as they are represented to us by eye or

ear--stronger by the natural connexion of ideas with objects or with one

another. And many of the notions which form a part of the train of our

thoughts are hardly realized by us at the time, but, like numbers or

algebraical symbols, are used as signs only, thus lightening the labour

of recollection.

And now we may suppose that numerous images present themselves to the

mind, which begins to act upon them and to arrange them in various

ways. Besides the impression of external objects present with us or just

absent from us, we have a dimmer conception of other objects which have

disappeared from our immediate recollection and yet continue to exist in

us. The mind is full of fancies which are passing to and fro before it.

Some feeling or association calls them up, and they are uttered by the

lips. This is the first rudimentary imagination, which may be truly

described in the language of Hobbes, as 'decaying sense,' an expression

which may be applied with equal truth to memory as well. For memory and

imagination, though we sometimes oppose them, are nearly allied; the

difference between them seems chiefly to lie in the activity of the one

compared with the passivity of the other. The sense decaying in memory

receives a flash of light or life from imagination. Dreaming is a link

of connexion between them; for in dreaming we feebly recollect and also

feebly imagine at one and the same time. When reason is asleep the

lower part of the mind wanders at will amid the images which have been

received from without, the intelligent element retires, and the sensual

or sensuous takes its place. And so in the first efforts of imagination

reason is latent or set aside; and images, in part disorderly, but also

having a unity (however imperfect) of their own, pour like a flood over

the mind. And if we could penetrate into the heads of animals we should

probably find that their intelligence, or the state of what in them is

analogous to our intelligence, is of this nature.

Thus far we have been speaking of men, rather in the points in which

they resemble animals than in the points in which they differ from

them. The animal too has memory in various degrees, and the elements

of imagination, if, as appears to be the case, he dreams. How far their

powers or instincts are educated by the circumstances of their lives

or by intercourse with one another or with mankind, we cannot precisely

tell. They, like ourselves, have the physical inheritance of form,

scent, hearing, sight, and other qualities or instincts. But they

have not the mental inheritance of thoughts and ideas handed down by

tradition, 'the slow additions that build up the mind' of the human

race. And language, which is the great educator of mankind, is wanting

in them; whereas in us language is ever present--even in the infant the

latent power of naming is almost immediately observable. And therefore

the description which has been already given of the nascent power of

the faculties is in reality an anticipation. For simultaneous with their

growth in man a growth of language must be supposed. The child of two

years old sees the fire once and again, and the feeble observation of

the same recurring object is associated with the feeble utterance of the

name by which he is taught to call it. Soon he learns to utter the name

when the object is no longer there, but the desire or imagination of it

is present to him. At first in every use of the word there is a colour

of sense, an indistinct picture of the object which accompanies it. But

in later years he sees in the name only the universal or class word, and

the more abstract the notion becomes, the more vacant is the image

which is presented to him. Henceforward all the operations of his mind,

including the perceptions of sense, are a synthesis of sensations,

words, conceptions. In seeing or hearing or looking or listening the

sensible impression prevails over the conception and the word. In

reflection the process is reversed--the outward object fades away into

nothingness, the name or the conception or both together are everything.

Language, like number, is intermediate between the two, partaking of the

definiteness of the outer and of the universality of the inner world.

For logic teaches us that every word is really a universal, and only

condescends by the help of position or circumlocution to become the

expression of individuals or particulars. And sometimes by using words

as symbols we are able to give a 'local habitation and a name' to the

infinite and inconceivable.

Thus we see that no line can be drawn between the powers of sense and

of reflection--they pass imperceptibly into one another. We may indeed

distinguish between the seeing and the closed eye--between the sensation

and the recollection of it. But this distinction carries us a very

little way, for recollection is present in sight as well as sight

in recollection. There is no impression of sense which does not

simultaneously recall differences of form, number, colour, and the like.

Neither is such a distinction applicable at all to our internal bodily

sensations, which give no sign of themselves when unaccompanied with

pain, and even when we are most conscious of them, have often no

assignable place in the human frame. Who can divide the nerves or great

nervous centres from the mind which uses them? Who can separate the

pains and pleasures of the mind from the pains and pleasures of the

body? The words 'inward and outward,' 'active and passive,' 'mind and

body,' are best conceived by us as differences of degree passing into

differences of kind, and at one time and under one aspect acting in

harmony and then again opposed. They introduce a system and order into

the knowledge of our being; and yet, like many other general terms, are

often in advance of our actual analysis or observation.

According to some writers the inward sense is only the fading away or

imperfect realization of the outward. But this leaves out of sight one

half of the phenomenon. For the mind is not only withdrawn from

the world of sense but introduced to a higher world of thought and

reflection, in which, like the outward sense, she is trained and

educated. By use the outward sense becomes keener and more intense,

especially when confined within narrow limits. The savage with little

or no thought has a quicker discernment of the track than the civilised

man; in like manner the dog, having the help of scent as well as of

sight, is superior to the savage. By use again the inward thought

becomes more defined and distinct; what was at first an effort is made

easy by the natural instrumentality of language, and the mind learns to

grasp universals with no more exertion than is required for the sight of

an outward object. There is a natural connexion and arrangement of them,

like the association of objects in a landscape. Just as a note or two of

music suffices to recall a whole piece to the musician's or composer's

mind, so a great principle or leading thought suggests and arranges a

world of particulars. The power of reflection is not feebler than the

faculty of sense, but of a higher and more comprehensive nature. It not

only receives the universals of sense, but gives them a new content by

comparing and combining them with one another. It withdraws from the

seen that it may dwell in the unseen. The sense only presents us with

a flat and impenetrable surface: the mind takes the world to pieces and

puts it together on a new pattern. The universals which are detached

from sense are reconstructed in science. They and not the mere

impressions of sense are the truth of the world in which we live; and

(as an argument to those who will only believe 'what they can hold in

their hands') we may further observe that they are the source of our

power over it. To say that the outward sense is stronger than the

inward is like saying that the arm of the workman is stronger than the

constructing or directing mind.

Returning to the senses we may briefly consider two questions--first

their relation to the mind, secondly, their relation to outward

objects:--

1. The senses are not merely 'holes set in a wooden horse' (Theaet.),

but instruments of the mind with which they are organically connected.

There is no use of them without some use of words--some natural or

latent logic--some previous experience or observation. Sensation, like

all other mental processes, is complex and relative, though apparently

simple. The senses mutually confirm and support one another; it is hard

to say how much our impressions of hearing may be affected by those

of sight, or how far our impressions of sight may be corrected by the

touch, especially in infancy. The confirmation of them by one another

cannot of course be given by any one of them. Many intuitions which are

inseparable from the act of sense are really the result of complicated

reasonings. The most cursory glance at objects enables the experienced

eye to judge approximately of their relations and distance, although

nothing is impressed upon the retina except colour, including gradations

of light and shade. From these delicate and almost imperceptible

differences we seem chiefly to derive our ideas of distance and

position. By comparison of what is near with what is distant we learn

that the tree, house, river, etc. which are a long way off are objects

of a like nature with those which are seen by us in our immediate

neighbourhood, although the actual impression made on the eye is very

different in one case and in the other. This is a language of 'large and

small letters' (Republic), slightly differing in form and exquisitely

graduated by distance, which we are learning all our life long, and

which we attain in various degrees according to our powers of sight or

observation. There is nor the consideration. The greater or less strain

upon the nerves of the eye or ear is communicated to the mind and

silently informs the judgment. We have also the use not of one eye only,

but of two, which give us a wider range, and help us to discern, by the

greater or less acuteness of the angle which the rays of sight form,

the distance of an object and its relation to other objects. But we are

already passing beyond the limits of our actual knowledge on a subject

which has given rise to many conjectures. More important than the

addition of another conjecture is the observation, whether in the case

of sight or of any other sense, of the great complexity of the causes

and the great simplicity of the effect.

The sympathy of the mind and the ear is no less striking than

the sympathy of the mind and the eye. Do we not seem to perceive

instinctively and as an act of sense the differences of articulate

speech and of musical notes? Yet how small a part of speech or of music

is produced by the impression of the ear compared with that which is

furnished by the mind!

Again: the more refined faculty of sense, as in animals so also in man,

seems often to be transmitted by inheritance. Neither must we forget

that in the use of the senses, as in his whole nature, man is a social

being, who is always being educated by language, habit, and the teaching

of other men as well as by his own observation. He knows distance

because he is taught it by a more experienced judgment than his own; he

distinguishes sounds because he is told to remark them by a person of

a more discerning ear. And as we inherit from our parents or other

ancestors peculiar powers of sense or feeling, so we improve and

strengthen them, not only by regular teaching, but also by sympathy and

communion with other persons.

2. The second question, namely, that concerning the relation of the mind

to external objects, is really a trifling one, though it has been made

the subject of a famous philosophy. We may if we like, with Berkeley,

resolve objects of sense into sensations; but the change is one of name

only, and nothing is gained and something is lost by such a resolution

or confusion of them. For we have not really made a single step towards

idealism, and any arbitrary inversion of our ordinary modes of speech is

disturbing to the mind. The youthful metaphysician is delighted at his

marvellous discovery that nothing is, and that what we see or feel is

our sensation only: for a day or two the world has a new interest to

him; he alone knows the secret which has been communicated to him by the

philosopher, that mind is all--when in fact he is going out of his mind

in the first intoxication of a great thought. But he soon finds that

all things remain as they were--the laws of motion, the properties of

matter, the qualities of substances. After having inflicted his theories

on any one who is willing to receive them 'first on his father and

mother, secondly on some other patient listener, thirdly on his dog,'

he finds that he only differs from the rest of mankind in the use of a

word. He had once hoped that by getting rid of the solidity of matter he

might open a passage to worlds beyond. He liked to think of the world as

the representation of the divine nature, and delighted to imagine angels

and spirits wandering through space, present in the room in which he is

sitting without coming through the door, nowhere and everywhere at the

same instant. At length he finds that he has been the victim of his own

fancies; he has neither more nor less evidence of the supernatural than

he had before. He himself has become unsettled, but the laws of the

world remain fixed as at the beginning. He has discovered that his

appeal to the fallibility of sense was really an illusion. For whatever

uncertainty there may be in the appearances of nature, arises only out

of the imperfection or variation of the human senses, or possibly from

the deficiency of certain branches of knowledge; when science is able to

apply her tests, the uncertainty is at an end. We are apt sometimes

to think that moral and metaphysical philosophy are lowered by the

influence which is exercised over them by physical science. But any

interpretation of nature by physical science is far in advance of such

idealism. The philosophy of Berkeley, while giving unbounded license to

the imagination, is still grovelling on the level of sense.

We may, if we please, carry this scepticism a step further, and

deny, not only objects of sense, but the continuity of our sensations

themselves. We may say with Protagoras and Hume that what is appears,

and that what appears appears only to individuals, and to the same

individual only at one instant. But then, as Plato asks,--and we must

repeat the question,--What becomes of the mind? Experience tells us by a

thousand proofs that our sensations of colour, taste, and the like,

are the same as they were an instant ago--that the act which we are

performing one minute is continued by us in the next--and also

supplies abundant proof that the perceptions of other men are, speaking

generally, the same or nearly the same with our own. After having slowly

and laboriously in the course of ages gained a conception of a whole and

parts, of the constitution of the mind, of the relation of man to God

and nature, imperfect indeed, but the best we can, we are asked to

return again to the 'beggarly elements' of ancient scepticism, and

acknowledge only atoms and sensations devoid of life or unity. Why

should we not go a step further still and doubt the existence of the

senses of all things? We are but 'such stuff as dreams are made of;'

for we have left ourselves no instruments of thought by which we can

distinguish man from the animals, or conceive of the existence even of a

mollusc. And observe, this extreme scepticism has been allowed to spring

up among us, not, like the ancient scepticism, in an age when nature and

language really seemed to be full of illusions, but in the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries, when men walk in the daylight of inductive

science.

The attractiveness of such speculations arises out of their true nature

not being perceived. They are veiled in graceful language; they are not

pushed to extremes; they stop where the human mind is disposed also to

stop--short of a manifest absurdity. Their inconsistency is not observed

by their authors or by mankind in general, who are equally inconsistent

themselves. They leave on the mind a pleasing sense of wonder and

novelty: in youth they seem to have a natural affinity to one class of

persons as poetry has to another; but in later life either we drift

back into common sense, or we make them the starting-points of a higher

philosophy.

We are often told that we should enquire into all things before we

accept them;--with what limitations is this true? For we cannot use

our senses without admitting that we have them, or think without

presupposing that there is in us a power of thought, or affirm that all

knowledge is derived from experience without implying that this first

principle of knowledge is prior to experience. The truth seems to be

that we begin with the natural use of the mind as of the body, and

we seek to describe this as well as we can. We eat before we know the

nature of digestion; we think before we know the nature of reflection.

As our knowledge increases, our perception of the mind enlarges also. We

cannot indeed get beyond facts, but neither can we draw any line which

separates facts from ideas. And the mind is not something separate

from them but included in them, and they in the mind, both having a

distinctness and individuality of their own. To reduce our conception of

mind to a succession of feelings and sensations is like the attempt to

view a wide prospect by inches through a microscope, or to calculate a

period of chronology by minutes. The mind ceases to exist when it loses

its continuity, which though far from being its highest determination,

is yet necessary to any conception of it. Even an inanimate nature

cannot be adequately represented as an endless succession of states or

conditions.

Paragraph II. Another division of the subject has yet to be considered:

Why should the doctrine that knowledge is sensation, in ancient times,

or of sensationalism or materialism in modern times, be allied to the

lower rather than to the higher view of ethical philosophy? At

first sight the nature and origin of knowledge appear to be wholly

disconnected from ethics and religion, nor can we deny that the ancient

Stoics were materialists, or that the materialist doctrines prevalent

in modern times have been associated with great virtues, or that both

religious and philosophical idealism have not unfrequently parted

company with practice. Still upon the whole it must be admitted that the

higher standard of duty has gone hand in hand with the higher conception

of knowledge. It is Protagoras who is seeking to adapt himself to

the opinions of the world; it is Plato who rises above them: the one

maintaining that all knowledge is sensation; the other basing the

virtues on the idea of good. The reason of this phenomenon has now to be

examined.

By those who rest knowledge immediately upon sense, that explanation of

human action is deemed to be the truest which is nearest to sense. As

knowledge is reduced to sensation, so virtue is reduced to feeling,

happiness or good to pleasure. The different virtues--the various

characters which exist in the world--are the disguises of self-interest.

Human nature is dried up; there is no place left for imagination, or in

any higher sense for religion. Ideals of a whole, or of a state, or of a

law of duty, or of a divine perfection, are out of place in an Epicurean

philosophy. The very terms in which they are expressed are suspected of

having no meaning. Man is to bring himself back as far as he is able to

the condition of a rational beast. He is to limit himself to the pursuit

of pleasure, but of this he is to make a far-sighted calculation;--he is

to be rationalized, secularized, animalized: or he is to be an amiable

sceptic, better than his own philosophy, and not falling below the

opinions of the world.

Imagination has been called that 'busy faculty' which is always

intruding upon us in the search after truth. But imagination is also

that higher power by which we rise above ourselves and the commonplaces

of thought and life. The philosophical imagination is another name for

reason finding an expression of herself in the outward world. To deprive

life of ideals is to deprive it of all higher and comprehensive aims and

of the power of imparting and communicating them to others. For men are

taught, not by those who are on a level with them, but by those who rise

above them, who see the distant hills, who soar into the empyrean. Like

a bird in a cage, the mind confined to sense is always being brought

back from the higher to the lower, from the wider to the narrower view

of human knowledge. It seeks to fly but cannot: instead of aspiring

towards perfection, 'it hovers about this lower world and the earthly

nature.' It loses the religious sense which more than any other seems to

take a man out of himself. Weary of asking 'What is truth?' it accepts

the 'blind witness of eyes and ears;' it draws around itself the curtain

of the physical world and is satisfied. The strength of a sensational

philosophy lies in the ready accommodation of it to the minds of men;

many who have been metaphysicians in their youth, as they advance in

years are prone to acquiesce in things as they are, or rather appear to

be. They are spectators, not thinkers, and the best philosophy is that

which requires of them the least amount of mental effort.

As a lower philosophy is easier to apprehend than a higher, so a lower

way of life is easier to follow; and therefore such a philosophy seems

to derive a support from the general practice of mankind. It appeals to

principles which they all know and recognize: it gives back to them in a

generalized form the results of their own experience. To the man of the

world they are the quintessence of his own reflections upon life. To

follow custom, to have no new ideas or opinions, not to be straining

after impossibilities, to enjoy to-day with just so much forethought as

is necessary to provide for the morrow, this is regarded by the greater

part of the world as the natural way of passing through existence. And

many who have lived thus have attained to a lower kind of happiness

or equanimity. They have possessed their souls in peace without ever

allowing them to wander into the region of religious or political

controversy, and without any care for the higher interests of man. But

nearly all the good (as well as some of the evil) which has ever been

done in this world has been the work of another spirit, the work of

enthusiasts and idealists, of apostles and martyrs. The leaders

of mankind have not been of the gentle Epicurean type; they have

personified ideas; they have sometimes also been the victims of them.

But they have always been seeking after a truth or ideal of which they

fell short; and have died in a manner disappointed of their hopes that

they might lift the human race out of the slough in which they found

them. They have done little compared with their own visions and

aspirations; but they have done that little, only because they sought to

do, and once perhaps thought that they were doing, a great deal more.

The philosophies of Epicurus or Hume give no adequate or dignified

conception of the mind. There is no organic unity in a succession of

feeling or sensations; no comprehensiveness in an infinity of separate

actions. The individual never reflects upon himself as a whole; he can

hardly regard one act or part of his life as the cause or effect of any

other act or part. Whether in practice or speculation, he is to himself

only in successive instants. To such thinkers, whether in ancient or in

modern times, the mind is only the poor recipient of impressions--not

the heir of all the ages, or connected with all other minds. It

begins again with its own modicum of experience having only such vague

conceptions of the wisdom of the past as are inseparable from language

and popular opinion. It seeks to explain from the experience of the

individual what can only be learned from the history of the world. It

has no conception of obligation, duty, conscience--these are to the

Epicurean or Utilitarian philosopher only names which interfere with our

natural perceptions of pleasure and pain.

There seem then to be several answers to the question, Why the theory

that all knowledge is sensation is allied to the lower rather than to

the higher view of ethical philosophy:--1st, Because it is easier to

understand and practise; 2ndly, Because it is fatal to the pursuit of

ideals, moral, political, or religious; 3rdly, Because it deprives us of

the means and instruments of higher thought, of any adequate conception

of the mind, of knowledge, of conscience, of moral obligation.

...

ON THE NATURE AND LIMITS Of PSYCHOLOGY.

O gar arche men o me oide, teleute de kai ta metaxu ex ou me

oide sumpeplektai, tis mechane ten toiauten omologian pote

epistemen genesthai; Plato Republic.

Monon gar auto legeiv, osper gumnon kai aperemomenon apo ton

onton apanton, adunaton. Soph.

Since the above essay first appeared, many books on Psychology have been

given to the world, partly based upon the views of Herbart and other

German philosophers, partly independent of them. The subject has gained

in bulk and extent; whether it has had any true growth is more doubtful.

It begins to assume the language and claim the authority of a science;

but it is only an hypothesis or outline, which may be filled up in many

ways according to the fancy of individual thinkers. The basis of it is

a precarious one,--consciousness of ourselves and a somewhat uncertain

observation of the rest of mankind. Its relations to other sciences

are not yet determined: they seem to be almost too complicated to be

ascertained. It may be compared to an irregular building, run up hastily

and not likely to last, because its foundations are weak, and in many

places rest only on the surface of the ground. It has sought rather to

put together scattered observations and to make them into a system than

to describe or prove them. It has never severely drawn the line between

facts and opinions. It has substituted a technical phraseology for the

common use of language, being neither able to win acceptance for the one

nor to get rid of the other.

The system which has thus arisen appears to be a kind of metaphysic

narrowed to the point of view of the individual mind, through which, as

through some new optical instrument limiting the sphere of vision, the

interior of thought and sensation is examined. But the individual mind

in the abstract, as distinct from the mind of a particular individual

and separated from the environment of circumstances, is a fiction only.

Yet facts which are partly true gather around this fiction and are

naturally described by the help of it. There is also a common type of

the mind which is derived from the comparison of many minds with one

another and with our own. The phenomena of which Psychology treats are

familiar to us, but they are for the most part indefinite; they relate

to a something inside the body, which seems also to overleap the limits

of space. The operations of this something, when isolated, cannot be

analyzed by us or subjected to observation and experiment. And there is

another point to be considered. The mind, when thinking, cannot

survey that part of itself which is used in thought. It can only

be contemplated in the past, that is to say, in the history of the

individual or of the world. This is the scientific method of studying

the mind. But Psychology has also some other supports, specious rather

than real. It is partly sustained by the false analogy of Physical

Science and has great expectations from its near relationship to

Physiology. We truly remark that there is an infinite complexity of

the body corresponding to the infinite subtlety of the mind; we are

conscious that they are very nearly connected. But in endeavouring to

trace the nature of the connexion we are baffled and disappointed. In

our knowledge of them the gulf remains the same: no microscope has ever

seen into thought; no reflection on ourselves has supplied the missing

link between mind and matter...These are the conditions of this very

inexact science, and we shall only know less of it by pretending to

know more, or by assigning to it a form or style to which it has not yet

attained and is not really entitled.

Experience shows that any system, however baseless and ineffectual, in

our own or in any other age, may be accepted and continue to be studied,

if it seeks to satisfy some unanswered question or is based upon some

ancient tradition, especially if it takes the form and uses the language

of inductive philosophy. The fact therefore that such a science exists

and is popular, affords no evidence of its truth or value. Many who have

pursued it far into detail have never examined the foundations on which

it rests. The have been many imaginary subjects of knowledge of which

enthusiastic persons have made a lifelong study, without ever asking

themselves what is the evidence for them, what is the use of them, how

long they will last? They may pass away, like the authors of them, and

'leave not a wrack behind;' or they may survive in fragments. Nor is it

only in the Middle Ages, or in the literary desert of China or of India,

that such systems have arisen; in our own enlightened age, growing up

by the side of Physics, Ethics, and other really progressive sciences,

there is a weary waste of knowledge, falsely so-called. There are sham

sciences which no logic has ever put to the test, in which the desire

for knowledge invents the materials of it.

And therefore it is expedient once more to review the bases of

Psychology, lest we should be imposed upon by its pretensions. The

study of it may have done good service by awakening us to the sense of

inveterate errors familiarized by language, yet it may have fallen into

still greater ones; under the pretence of new investigations it may be

wasting the lives of those who are engaged in it. It may also be found

that the discussion of it will throw light upon some points in the

Theaetetus of Plato,--the oldest work on Psychology which has come down

to us. The imaginary science may be called, in the language of ancient

philosophy, 'a shadow of a part of Dialectic or Metaphysic' (Gorg.).

In this postscript or appendix we propose to treat, first, of the true

bases of Psychology; secondly, of the errors into which the students of

it are most likely to fall; thirdly, of the principal subjects which

are usually comprehended under it; fourthly, of the form which facts

relating to the mind most naturally assume.