relation that is specially characteristic of Hume, Let us, then,
consider how the notion of relation altogether is affected by his
reduction of the world of consciousness to impressions and ideas.
What is an impression? To this, as we have seen, the only direct
answer given by him is that it is a feeling which must be more lively
before it becomes less so. [1] For a further account of what is to
be understood by it we must look to the passages where the governing
terms of ‘school-metaphysics’ are, one after the other, shown to be
unmeaning, because not taken from impressions. Thus, when the idea
of substance is to be reduced to an ‘unintelligible chimaera,’ it is
asked whether it ‘be derived from the impressions of sensation or
reflection? If it be conveyed to us by our senses, I ask, which of
them, and after what manner? If it be perceived by the eyes, it must
be a colour; if by the ears, a sound; if by the palate, a taste; and
so of the other senses. But I believe none will assert that substance
is either a colour, or a sound, or a taste. The idea of substance
must therefore be derived from an impression of reflection, if it
really exist. But the impressions of reflection resolve themselves
into our passions and emotions’. [2] From the polemic against
abstract ideas we learn further that ‘the appearance of an object to
the senses’ is the same thing as an ‘impression becoming present to
the mind’. [3] That is to say, when we talk of an impression of an
object, it is not to be understood that the feeling is determined by
reference to anything other than itself: it is itself the object.
To the same purpose, in the criticism of the notion of an external
world, we are told that ‘the senses are incapable of giving rise
to the notion of the continued existence of their objects, after
they no longer appear to the senses; for that is a contradiction
in terms’ (since the appearance _is_ the object); and that ‘they
offer not their impressions as the images of something distinct, or
independent, or external, because they convey to us nothing but a
single perception, and never give us the least intimation of anything
beyond’. [4] The distinction between impression of sensation and
impression of reflection, then, cannot, any more than that between
impression and idea, be regarded as either really or apparently a
distinction between outer and inner. ‘All impressions are internal
and perishing existences’; [5] and, ‘everything that enters the mind
being in reality as the impression, ’tis impossible anything should
to feeling appear different’. [6]
[1] See above, paragraphs 195 and 197.
[2] p. 324 [Book I, part I., sec. VI.]
[3] p. 327 [Book I, part I., sec. VII.]
[4] p. 479 [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[5] p. 483 [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[6] p. 480 [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
209. This amounts to a full acceptance of Berkeley’s doctrine
of sense; and the question necessarily arises--such being the
impression, and all ideas being impressions grown weaker, can there
be an idea of relation at all? Is it not open to the same challenge
which Hume offers to those who talk of an idea of substance or of
spirit? ‘It is from some one impression that every real idea is
derived.’ What, then, is the one impression from which the idea of
relation is derived? ‘If it be perceived by the eyes, it must be a
colour; if by the ears, a sound; if by the palate, a taste; and so of
the other senses.’ There remain ‘our passions and emotions;’ but what
passion or emotion is a resemblance, or a proportion, or a relation
of cause and effect?
Only in regard to identity and causation that he sees any difficulty.
These he treats as fictions resulting from ‘natural relations’ of
ideas: _i.e._ from resemblance and contiguity.
210. Respect for Hume’s thoroughness as a philosopher must be
qualified by the observation that he does not attempt to meet this
difficulty in its generality, but only as it affects the relations
of identity and causation. The truth seems to be that he wrote with
Berkeley steadily before his mind; and it was Berkeley’s treatment of
these two relations in particular as not sensible but intelligible,
and his assertion of a philosophic Theism on the strength of their
mere intelligibility, that determined Hume, since it would have been
an anachronism any longer to treat them as sensible, to dispose of
them altogether. The condition of his doing so with success was
that, however unwarrantably, he should treat the other relations
as sensible. The language, which seems to express ideas of the two
questionable relations, he has to account for as the result of
certain impressions of reflection, called ‘propensities to feign,’
which in their turn have to be accounted for as resulting from the
_natural_ relations of ideas according to the definition of these
quoted above, [1] as ‘the qualities by which one idea habitually
introduces another.’ Among these, as we saw, he included not
only resemblance and contiguity in time or place, but ‘cause and
effect.’ ‘There is no relation,’ he says, ‘which produces a stronger
connection in the fancy than this.’ But in this, as in much of the
language which gives the first two Parts their plausibility, he is
taking advantage of received notions on the part of the reader, which
it is the work of the rest of the book to set aside. In any sense,
according to him, in which it differs from usual contiguity, the
relation of cause and effect is itself reducible to a ‘propensity
to feign’ arising from the other natural relations; but when the
reader is told of its producing ‘a strong connection in the fancy,’
he is not apt to think of it as itself nothing more than the product
of such a connection. For the present, however, we have only to
point out that Hume, when he co-ordinates it with the other natural
relations, must be understood to do so provisionally. According to
him it is derived, while they are primary. Upon them, then, rested
the possibility of filling the gap between the occurrence of single
impressions, none ‘determined by reference to anything other than
itself,’ and what we are pleased to call our knowledge, with its
fictions of mind and thing, of real and apparent, of necessary as
distinct from usual connection.
[1] See above, paragraph 206.
211. We will begin with Resemblance. As to this, it will be said, it
is an affectation of subtlety to question whether there can be an
impression of it or no. The difficulty only arises from our regarding
the perception of resemblance as different from, and subsequent to,
the resembling sensations; whereas, in fact, the occurrence of two
impressions of sense, such as (let us say) yellow and red, is itself
the impression of their likeness and unlikeness. Hume himself, it may
be further urged, at any rate in regard to resemblance, anticipates
this solution of an imaginary difficulty by his important division
of philosophical relations into two classes [1]--‘such as depend
entirely on the ideas which we compare together, and such as may be
changed without any change in the ideas’--and by his inclusion of
resemblance in the former class.
[1] p. 372 [Book I, part III., sec. I.]
Is resemblance then an impression?
212. Now we gladly admit the mistake of supposing that sensations
undetermined by relation first occur, and that afterwards we become
conscious of their relation in the way of likeness or unlikeness.
Apart from such relation, it is true, the sensations would be
nothing. But this admission involves an important qualification
of the doctrine that impressions are single, and that the mind
(according to Hume’s awkward figure) is a ‘bundle or collection of
these,’ succeeding each other ‘in a perpetual flux or movement.’ It
implies that the single impression in its singleness is what it is
through relation to another, which must therefore be present along
with it; and that thus, though they may occur in a perpetual flux
of succession--every turn of the eyes in their sockets, as Hume
truly says, giving a new one--yet, just so far as they are qualified
by likeness or unlikeness to each other, they must be taken out
of that succession by something which is not itself in it, but is
indivisibly present to every moment of it. This we may call soul, or
mind, or what we will; but we must not identify it with the brain
[1] either directly or by implication (as we do when we ‘refer to
the anatomist’ for an account of it), since by the brain is meant
something material, _i.e._ divisible, which the unifying subject
spoken of, as feeling no less than as thinking, cannot be. In short,
any such modification of Hume’s doctrine of the singleness and
successiveness of impressions as will entitle us to speak of their
carrying with them, though single and successive, the consciousness
of their resemblance to each other, will also entitle us to speak of
their carrying with them a reference to that which is not itself any
single impression, but is permanent throughout the impressions; and
the whole ground of Hume’s polemic against the idea of self or spirit
is removed. [2]
[1] It is, of course, quite a different thing to say that the brain
(or, more properly, the whole body) is organic to it.
[2] See above, paragraph 205.
Distinction between resembling feelings and idea of resemblance.
213. The above admission, however, does not dispose of the question
about ideas of resemblance. A feeling qualified by relation of
resemblance to other feelings is a different thing from an idea
of that relation--different with all the difference which Hume
ignores between feeling and thought, between consciousness and
self-consciousness. The qualification of successive feelings by
mutual relation implies, indeed, the presence to them of a subject
permanent and immaterial (_i.e._ not in time or space); but it does
not imply that this subject presents them to itself as related
objects, permanent with its own permanence, which abide and may
be considered apart from ‘the circumstances in time’ of their
occurrence. Yet such presentation is supposed by all language other
than interjectional. It is it alone which can give us names of
things, as distinct from noises prompted by the feelings as they
occur. Of course it is open to any one to say that by an idea of
resemblance he does not mean any thought involving the self-conscious
presentation spoken of, but merely a feeling qualified by
resemblance, and not at its liveliest stage. Thus Hume tells us that
by ‘idea’ he merely means a feeling less lively than it has been, and
that by idea _of anything_ he implies no reference to anything other
than the idea, [1] but means just a related idea, _i.e._ a feeling
qualified by ‘natural relation’ to other feelings. It is by this
thoughtful abnegation of thought, as we shall find, that he arrives
at his sceptical result. But language (for the reason mentioned)
would not allow him to be faithful to the abnegation. He could not
make such a profession without being false to it. This appears
already in his account of ‘complex’ and ‘abstract’ ideas.
[1] See above, paragraph 208.
Substances = collections of ideas.
214, His account of the idea of a substance [1] is simply Locke’s, as
Locke’s would become upon elimination of the notion that there is a
real ‘something’ in which the collection of ideas subsist, and from
which they result. It thus avoids all difficulties about the relation
between nominal and real essence. Just as Locke says that in the case
of a ‘mixed mode’ the nominal essence _is_ the real, so Hume would
say of a substance. The only difference is that while the collection
of ideas, called a mixed mode, does not admit of addition without
a change of its name, that called a substance does. Upon discovery
of the solubility of gold in aqua regia we add that idea to the
collection, to which the name ‘gold’ has previously been assigned,
without disturbance in the use of the name, because the name already
covers not only the ideas of certain qualities, but also the idea of
a ‘principle of union’ between them, which will extend to any ideas
presented along with them. As this principle of union, however, is
not itself any ‘real essence,’ but ‘part of the complex idea,’ the
question, so troublesome to Locke, whether a proposition about gold
asserts real co-existence or only the inclusion of an idea in a
nominal essence, will be superfluous. How the ‘principle of union’ is
to be explained, will appear below. [2]
[1] p. 324 [Book I, part I., sec. VI.]
[2] Paragraph 303, and the following.
How can ideas ‘in flux’ be collected?
215. There are names, then, which represent ‘collections of ideas.’
How can we explain such collection if ideas are merely related
feelings grown’ fainter? Do we, when we use one of these names
significantly, recall, though in a fainter form, a series of feelings
that we have experienced in the process of collection? Does the
chemist, when he says that gold is soluble in aqua regia, recall the
visual and tactual feeling which he experienced when he found it
soluble? If so, as that feeling took its character from relation to
a multitude of other ‘complex ideas,’ he must on the same principle
recall in endless series the sensible occurrences from which each
constituent of each constituent of these was derived; and a like
process must be gone through when gold is pronounced ductile,
malleable, &c. But this would be, according to the figure which
Hume himself adopts, to recall a ‘perpetual flux.’ The very term
‘collection of ideas,’ indeed, if this be the meaning of ideas, is
an absurdity, for how can a perpetual flux be collected? If we turn
for a solution of the difficulty to the chapter where Hume expressly
discusses the significance of general names, we shall find that it
is not the question we have here put, and which flows directly from
his account of ideas, that he is there treating, but an entirely
different one, and one that could not be raised till for related
feeling had been substituted the thought of an object under relations.
Are there general ideas? Berkeley said, ‘yes and no’.
216. The chapter mentioned concerns the question which arises out of
Locke’s pregnant statement that words and ideas are ‘particular in
their existence’ even when ‘general in their signification.’ From
this statement we saw [1] that Berkeley derived his explanation of
the apparent generality of ideas--the explanation, namely, which
reduces it to a relation, yet not such a one as would affect the
nature of the idea itself, which is and remains ‘particular,’ but
a symbolical relation between it and other particular ideas for
which it is taken to stand. An idea, however, that carries with it a
consciousness of symbolical relation to other ideas, cannot but be
qualified by this relation. The generality must become part of its
‘nature,’ and, accordingly, the distinction between idea and thing
being obliterated, of the nature of things. Thus Berkeley virtually
arrives at a result which renders unmeaning his preliminary exclusion
of universality from ‘the absolute, positive nature or conception of
anything.’ Hume seeks to avoid it by putting ‘custom’ in the place
of the consciousness of symbolical relation. True to his vocation of
explaining away all functions of thought that will not sort with the
treatment of it as ‘decaying sense,’ he would resolve that idea of a
relation between certain ideas, in virtue of which one is taken to
stand for the rest, into the _de facto_ sequence upon one of them of
the rest. Here, as everywhere else, he would make related feelings do
instead of relations of ideas; but whether the related feelings, as
he is obliged to describe them, do not already presuppose relations
of ideas in distinction from feelings, remains to be seen.
[1] Above, paragraphs 182 and 183.
Hume ‘no’ simply. How he accounts for the appearance of there being
such.
217. The question about ‘generality of signification,’ as he puts it,
comes to this. In every proposition, though its subject be a common
noun, we necessarily present to ourselves some one individual object
‘with all its particular circumstances and proportions.’ How then can
the proposition be general in denotation and connotation? How can it
be made with reference to a multitude of individual objects other
than that presented to the mind, and how can it concern only such of
the qualities of the latter as are common to the multitude? The first
part of the question is answered as follows:-‘When we have found a
resemblance among several objects that often occur to us, we apply
the same name to all of them ... 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 all 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 that 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 and revives that custom which we have acquired by
surveying them. They are not really and in fact present to the mind,
but only in power. ... 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. ... Thus, should we mention the
word triangle and form the idea of a particular equilateral one to
correspond to it, and should we afterwards assert _that the three
angles of a triangle are equal to each other_, the other individuals
of a scalenum and isosceles, which we overlooked at first,
immediately crowd in upon us and make us perceive the falsehood of
this proposition, though it be true with relation to that idea which
we had formed’. [1]
[1] p. 328 [Book I, part I., sec. VII.]
218. Next, as to the question concerning connotation:--‘The mind
would never have dreamed of distinguishing a figure from the body
figured, as being in reality neither distinguishable nor different
nor separable, did it not observe that even in this simplicity there
might be contained many different resemblances and relations. Thus,
when a globe of white marble is presented, we receive only the
impression of a white colour disposed in a certain form, nor are
we able to distinguish and separate the colour from the form. But
observing afterwards a globe of black marble and a cube of white,
and comparing them with our former object, we find two separate
resemblances in what formerly seemed, and really is, perfectly
inseparable. After a little more practice of this kind, we begin
to distinguish the figure from the colour by a _distinction of
reason_;--_i.e._ we consider the figure and colour together, since
they are, in effect, the same and indistinguishable; but still view
them in different aspects according to the resemblances of which they
are susceptible. ... A person who desires us to consider the figure
of a globe of white marble without thinking on its colour, desires an
impossibility; but his meaning is, that we should consider the colour
and figure together, but still keep in our eye the resemblance to the
globe of black marble or that to any other globe whatever’. [1]
[1] p. 333 [Book I, part I., sec. VII.]
His account implies that ‘ideas’ are conceptions, not feelings.
219. It is clear that the process described in these passages
supposes ‘ab initio’ the conversion of a feeling into a conception;
in other words, the substitution of the definite individuality of
a thing, thought of under attributes, for the mere singleness in
time of a feeling that occurs after another and before a third. The
‘finding of resemblances and differences among objects that often
occur to us’ implies that each object is distinguished as one and
abiding from manifold occurrences, in the way of related feelings, in
which it is presented to us, and that these accordingly are regarded
as representing permanent relations or qualities of the object. Thus
from being related feelings, whether more or less ‘vivacious,’ they
have become, in the proper sense, ideas of relation. The difficulty
about the use of general names, as Hume puts it, really arises just
from the extent to which this process of determination by ideas of
relation, and with it the removal of the object of thought from
simple feeling, is supposed to have gone. It is because the idea is
so complex in its individuality, and because this qualification is
not understood to be the work of thought, by comparison and contrast
accumulating attributes on an object which it itself constitutes,
but is regarded as given ready-made in an impression (_i.e._ a
feeling), that the question arises whether a general proposition is
really possible or no. To all intents and purposes Hume decides that
it is not. The mind is so tied down to the particular collection of
qualities which is given to it or which it ‘finds,’ that it cannot
present one of them to itself without presenting all. Having never
found a triangle that is not equilateral or isosceles or scalene, we
cannot imagine one, for ideas can only be copies of impressions, and
the imagination, though it has a certain freedom in combining what
it finds, can invent nothing that it does not find. Thus the idea,
represented by a general name and of which an assertion, general
in form, is made, must always have a multitude of other qualities
besides those common to it with the other individuals to which the
name is applicable. If any of these, however, were included in the
predicate of the proposition, the sleeping custom, which determines
the mind to pass from the idea present to it to the others to which
the name has been applied, would be awakened, and it would be seen at
once that the predicate is not true of them. When I make a general
statement about ‘the horse,’ there must be present to my mind some
particular horse of my acquaintance, but if on the strength of this
I asserted that ‘the horse is a grey-haired animal,’ the custom of
applying the name without reference to colour would return upon me
and correct me--as it would not if the predicate were ‘four-footed.’
He virtually yields the point in regard to the _predicate_ of
propositions.
220. It would seem then that the predicate may, though the subject
cannot, represent either a single quality, or a set of qualities
which falls far short even of those common to the class, much more of
those which characterise any individual. If I can think these apart,
or have an idea of them, as the predicate of a proposition, why
not (it may be asked) as the subject? It may be said, indeed, with
truth, that it is a mistake to think of the subject as representing
one idea and the predicate another; that the proposition as a whole
represents one idea, in the sense of a conception of relation between
attributes, and that at bottom this account of it is consistent
with Locke’s definition of knowledge as a perception of relation
between ‘ideas,’ since with him ‘ideas’ and ‘qualities’ are used
interchangeably. [1] It is no less true, however, that the relation
between attributes, which the proposition states, is a relation
between them in an individual subject. It is the nature of the
individuality of this subject, then, that is really in question.
Must it, as Hume supposed, be ‘considered’ under other qualities
than those to which the predicate relates? When the proposition
only concerns the relation between certain qualities of a spherical
figure, must the figure still be considered as of a certain colour
and material?
[1] See above, paragraph 17.
As to the subject, he equivocates between singleness of feeling and
individuality of conception.