but the succession of feelings he gets such individual objects as
Locke would have called objects of ‘actual present sensation.’ When
‘I survey the furniture of my chamber,’ according to him, I see
sundry ‘identical objects’--this chair, this table, this inkstand,
&c. [1] So far there is no fiction to be accounted for. It is only
when, having left my chamber for an interval and returned to it, I
suppose the objects which I see to be identical with those I saw
before, that the ‘propensity to feign’ comes into play, which has
to be explained as above. But in fact the original ‘survey’ during
which, seeing the objects, I suppose them to continue the same with
themselves, involves precisely the same fiction. In that case, says
Hume, I ‘suppose the change’ (which is necessary to constitute the
idea of identity) ‘to lie only in the time.’ But without ‘succession
of perceptions,’ different however resembling, there could according
to him be no change of time. The continuous survey of this table, or
this chair, then, involves the notion of its remaining the same with
itself throughout a succession of different perceptions--_i.e._ the
full-grown fiction of identity--just as much as does the supposition
that the table I see now is identical with the one I saw before. The
‘reality,’ confusion with which of ‘a smooth passage along resembling
ideas’ is supposed to constitute the ‘fiction,’ is already itself
the fiction--the fiction of an object which must be other than our
feelings, since it is permanent while they are successive, yet so
related to them that in virtue of reference to it, instead of being
merely different from each other, they become changes of a thing.
[1] P. 493. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
With Hume continued existence of perceptions a fiction different from
their identity. Can perceptions exist when not perceived?
306. Having thus in effect imported all three ‘fictions of
imagination’--identity, continued existence, and existence distinct
from perception--into the original ‘perception,’ Hume, we may think,
might have saved himself the trouble of treating them as separate and
successive formations. Unless he had so treated them, however, his
‘natural history’ of consciousness would have been far less imposing
than it is. The device, by which he represents the ‘vulgar’ belief in
the reality of the felt thing as a belief that the mere feeling is
the real object, enables him also to represent the identity, which
a smooth transition along closely resembling sensations leads us
to suppose, as still merely identity of a _perception_. ‘The very
image which is present to the senses is with us the real body; and
’tis to these interrupted images we ascribe a perfect identity’.
[1] The identity lying thus in the images or appearances, not in
anything to which they are referred, a further fiction seems to be
required by which we may overcome the contradiction between the
interruption of the appearances and their identity--the fiction
of ‘a continued being which may fill the intervals’ between the
appearances. [2] That a ‘propension’ towards such a fiction would
naturally arise from the uneasiness caused by such a contradiction,
we may readily admit. The question is how the propension can be
satisfied by a supposition which is merely another expression for
one of the contradictory beliefs. What difference is there between
the appearance of a perception and its existence, that interruption
of the perception, though incompatible with uninterruptedness in its
appearance, should not be so with uninterruptedness in its existence?
It may be answered that there is just the difference between relation
to a feeling subject and relation to a thinking one--between relation
to a consciousness which is in time, or successive, and relation to
a thinking subject which, not being itself in time, is the source of
that determination by permanent conditions, which is what is meant by
the real existence of a perceived thing. But to Hume, who expressly
excludes such a subject--with whom ‘it exists’ = ‘it is felt’--such
an answer is inadmissible. He can, in fact, only meet the difficulty
by supposing the existence of unfelt feelings, of unperceived
perceptions. The appearance of a perception is its presence to
‘what we call a mind,’ which ‘is nothing but a heap or collection
of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and
supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity
and identity’. [3] To consider a perception, then, as existing
though not appearing is merely to consider it as detached from
this ‘heap’ of other perceptions, which, on Hume’s principle that
whatever is distinguishable is separable, is no more impossible than
to distinguish one perception from all others. [4] In fact, however,
it is obvious that the supposed detachment is the very opposite of
such distinction. A perception distinguished from all others is
determined by that distinction in the fullest possible measure. A
perception _detached_ from all others, left out of the ‘heap which
we call a mind,’ being out of all relation, has no qualities--is
simply nothing. We can no more ‘consider’ it than we can see vacancy.
Yet it is by the consideration of such nonentity, by supposing a
world of unperceived perceptions, of ‘existences’ without relation
or quality, that the mind, according to Hume--itself only ‘a heap of
perceptions’--arrives at that fiction of a continued being which,
as involved in the supposition of identity, is the condition of our
believing in a world of real things at all.
[1] P. 493. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[2] Pp. 494, 495. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[3] P. 495. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[4] Ibid.
Existence of objects, distinct from perceptions, a further fiction
still.
307. It is implied, then, in the process by which, according to
Hume, the fiction of a continued being is arrived at, that this
being is supposed to be not only continued but ‘distinct from the
mind’ and ‘independent’ of it. With Hume, however, the supposition
of a distinct and ‘independent’ existence of the _perception_ is
quite different from that of a distinct and independent object
other than the perception. The former is the ‘vulgar hypothesis,’
and though a fiction, it is also a universal belief: the latter
is the ‘philosophical hypothesis,’ which, if it has a tendency to
obtain belief at all, at any rate derives that tendency, in other
words ‘acquires all its influence over the imagination,’ from the
vulgar one. [1] Just as the belief in the independent and continued
existence of perceptions results from an instinctive effort to escape
the uneasiness, caused by the contradiction between the interruption
of resembling perceptions and their imagined identity, so the
contradiction between this belief and the evident dependence of all
perceptions ‘on our organs and the disposition of our nerves and
animal spirits’ leads to the doctrine of representative ideas or ‘the
double existence of perceptions and objects.’ ‘This philosophical
system, therefore, is the monstrous offspring of two principles
which are contrary to each other, which are both at once embraced by
the mind and which are unable mutually to destroy each other. The
imagination tells us that our resembling perceptions have a continued
and uninterrupted existence, and are not annihilated by their
absence. Reflection tells us that even our resembling perceptions
are interrupted in their existence and different from each other.
The contradiction betwixt these opinions we elude by a new fiction
which is conformable to the hypotheses both of reflection and fancy,
by ascribing these contrary qualities to different existences; the
interruption to _perceptions_, and the continuance to _objects_’. [2]
[1] P. 500. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[2] P. 502. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
Are these several ‘fictions’ really different from each other?
308. Here, again, we find that the contradictory announcements,
which it is the object of this new fiction to elude, are virtually
the same as those implied in that judgment of identity which is
necessary to the ‘perception’ of this pen or this paper. That
‘interruption of our resembling perceptions,’ of which ‘reflection’
(in the immediate context ‘Reason’) is here said to ‘tell us,’ is
merely that difference in time, or succession, which Hume everywhere
else treats as a datum of sense, and which, as he points out, is as
necessary a factor in the idea of identity, as is the imagination
of an existence continued throughout the succession. Thus the
contradiction, which suggests this philosophical fiction of double
existence, has been already present and overcome in every perception
of a qualified object. Nor does the fiction itself, by which the
contradiction is eluded, differ except verbally from that suggested
by the contradiction between the interruption and the identity of
perceptions. What power is there in the word ‘object’ that the
supposition of an unperceived existence of perceptions, continued
while their appearance is broken, should be an unavoidable fiction of
the imagination, while that of ‘the double existence of perceptions
and objects’ is a gratuitous fiction of philosophers, of which
‘vulgar’ thinking is entirely innocent?
Are they not all involved in the simplest perception?
309. That it is gratuitous we may readily admit, but only because a
recognition of the function of the Ego in the primary constitution
of the qualified individual object--this pen or this paper--renders
it superfluous. To the philosophy, however, in which Hume was
bred, the perception of a qualified object was simply a feeling.
No intellectual synthesis of successive feelings was recognized as
involved in it. It was only so far as the dependence of the feeling
on our organs, in the absence of any clear distinction between
feeling and felt thing, seemed to imply a dependent and broken
existence of the thing, that any difficulty arose--a difficulty met
by the supposition that the felt thing, whose existence was thus
broken and dependent, represented an unfelt and permanent thing of
which it is a copy or effect. To the Berkeleian objections, already
fatal to this supposition, Hume has his own to add, viz. that we can
have no idea of relation in the way of cause and effect except as
between objects which we have observed, and therefore can have no
idea of it as existing between a perception and an object of which
we can only say that it is not a perception. Is all existence then
‘broken and dependent’? That is the ‘sceptical’ conclusion which
Hume professes to adopt--subject, however, to the condition of
accounting for the contrary supposition (without which, as he has to
admit, we could not think or speak, and which alone gives a meaning
to his own phraseology about impressions and ideas) as a fiction of
the imagination. He does this, as we have seen, by tracing a series
of contradictions, with corresponding hypotheses invented, either
instinctively or upon reflection, in order to escape the uneasiness
which they cause, all ultimately due to our mistaking similar
successive feelings for an identical object. Of such an object, then,
we must have an idea to begin with, and it is an object permanent
throughout a variation of time, which means a succession of feelings;
in other words, it is a felt thing, as distinct from feelings but to
which feelings are referred as its qualities. Thus the most primary
perception--that in default of which Hume would have no reality
to oppose to fiction, nor any point of departure for the supposed
construction of fictions--already implies that transformation of
feelings into changing relations of a thing which, preventing any
incompatibility between the perpetual brokenness of the feeling
and the permanence of the thing, ‘eludes’ by anticipation all the
contradictions which, according to Hume, we only ‘elude’ by speaking
as if we had ideas that we have not.
Yet they are not possible ideas, because copied from no impressions.
310. ‘Ideas that we _have not_;’ for no one of the fictions by
which we elude the contradictions, nor indeed any one of the
contradictory judgments themselves, can be taken to represent an
‘idea’ according to Hume’s account of ideas. He allows himself indeed
to speak of our having ideas of identical objects, such as _this
table while I see or touch it_--though in this case, as has been
shown, either the object is not identical or the idea of it cannot
be copied from an impression--and of our transferring this idea to
resembling but interrupted perceptions. But the supposition to which
the contradiction involved in this transference gives rise--the
supposition that the perception continues to exist when it is not
perceived--is shown by the very statement of it to be no possible
copy of an impression. Yet according to Hume it is a ‘belief,’ and
a belief is ‘a lively idea associated with a present impression.’
What then is the impression and what the associated idea? ‘As the
propensity to feign the continued existence of sensible objects
arises from some lively impressions of the memory, it bestows a
vivacity on that fiction; or, in other words, makes us believe the
continued existence of body’. [1] Well and good: but this only
answers the first part of our question. It tells us what are the
impressions in the supposed case of belief, but not what is the
associated idea to which their liveliness is communicated. To say
that it arises from a propensity to feign, strong in proportion to
the liveliness of the supposed impressions of memory, does not tell
us of what impression it is a copy. Such a propensity indeed would be
an ‘impression of reflection,’ but the fiction itself is neither the
propensity nor a copy of it. The only possible supposition left for
Hume would be that it is a ‘compound idea;’ but what combination of
‘perceptions’ can amount to the existence of perceptions when they
are not perceived?
[1] P. 496. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
Comparison of present experience with past, which yields relation of
cause and effect, pre-supposes judgment of identity;
311. From this long excursion into Hume’s doctrine of relation in the
way of identity--having found him admitting explicitly that it is
only by a ‘fiction of the imagination’ that we identify this table
as now seen with this table as seen an hour ago, and implicitly that
the same fiction is involved in the perception of this table as an
identical object even when hand or eye is kept upon it, while yet
he says not a word to vindicate the possibility of such a fiction
for a faculty which can merely reproduce and combine ‘perishing
impressions’--we return to consider its bearing upon his doctrine of
relation in the way of cause and effect. According to him, as we saw,
[1] that relation, ‘considered as a philosophical’ one, is founded
on a comparison of present experience with past, in the sense that
we regard an object, precedent and contiguous to another, as its
cause when all like objects have been found similarly related. The
question then arises whether the experiences compared--the present
and the past alike--do not involve the fiction of identity along with
the whole family of other fictions which Hume affiliates to it? Does
the relation of precedence and sequence, which, if constant, amounts
to that of cause and effect, merely mean precedence and sequence
of two feelings, indefinitely like an indefinite number of other
feelings that have thus the one preceded and the other followed;
or is it a relation between one qualified thing or definite fact
always the same with itself, and another such thing or fact always
the same with itself? The question carries its own answer. If in the
definition quoted Hume used the phrase ‘all like objects’ instead of
the ‘same object,’ in order to avoid the appearance of introducing
the ‘fiction’ of identity into the definition of cause, the device
does not avail him much. The effect of the ‘like’ is neutralized by
the ‘all.’ A _uniform_ relation is impossible except between objects
of which each has a definite identity.
[1] Above, pars. 298 and 299.
... without which there could be no recognition of an object as one
observed before.
312. When Hume has to describe the experience which gives the
idea of cause and effect, he virtually admits this. ‘The nature
of experience,’ he tells us, ‘is this. We remember to have had
frequent instances of the existence of one species of objects, and
also remember that the individuals of another species of objects
have always attended them, and have existed in a regular order of
contiguity and succession with regard to them. Thus we remember
to have seen that species of object we call _flame_, and to have
felt that species of sensation we call _heat_. We likewise call to
mind their constant conjunction in all past instances. Without any
farther ceremony we call the one cause, and the other effect, and
infer the existence of the one from the other’. [1] It appears, then,
that upon experiencing certain sensations of sight and touch, we
recognize each as ‘one of a species of objects’ which we remember to
have observed in certain constant relations before. In virtue of the
recognition the sensations become severally this _flame_ and this
_heat_; and in virtue of the remembrance the objects thus recognized
are held to be related in the way of cause and effect. Now it is
clear that though the recognition takes place upon occasion of a
feeling, the object recognized--this flame or this heat--is by no
means the feeling as a ‘perishing existence.’ Unless the feeling
were taken to represent a thing, conceived as permanently existing
under certain relations and attributes--in other words, unless it
were _identified_ by thought--it would be no definite object, not
this _flame_ or this _heat_, at all. The moment it is named, it
has ceased to be a feeling and become a felt thing, or, in Hume’s
language, an ‘individual of _a species of objects_.’ And just as
the present ‘perception’ is the recognition of such an individual,
so the remembrance which determines the recognition is one wholly
different from the return with lessened liveliness of a feeling more
strongly felt before. According to Hume’s own statement, it consists
in recalling ‘frequent instances of the existence of _a species of
objects_.’ It is remembrance of an experience in which every feeling,
that has been attended to, has been interpreted as a fresh appearance
of some qualified object that ‘exists’ throughout its appearances--an
experience which for that reason forms a connected whole. If it were
not so, there could be no such comparison of the relations in which
two objects are now presented with those in which they have always
been presented, as that which according to Hume determines us to
regard them as cause and effect. The condition of our so regarding
them is that we suppose the objects now presented to be _the same_
with those of which we have had previous experience. It is only on
supposition that a certain sensation of sight is not merely like a
multitude of others, but represents the same object as that which I
have previously known as flame, that I infer the sequence of heat
and, when it does follow, regard it as an effect. If I thought that
the sensation of sight, however like those previously referred to
flame, did not represent the same object, I should not infer heat
as effect; and conversely, if, having identified the sensation
of sight as representative of flame, I found that the inferred
heat was not actually felt, I should judge that I was mistaken in
the identification. It follows that it is only an experience of
identical, and by consequence related and qualified, objects, of
which the memory can so determine a sequence of feelings as to
constitute it an experience of cause and effect. Thus the perception
and remembrance upon which, according to Hume, we judge one object to
be the cause of another, alike rest on the ‘fictions of identity and
continued existence.’ Without these no present experience would, in
his language, be an instance of an individual of a certain species
existing in a certain relation, nor would there be a past experience
of individuals of the same species, by comparison with which the
constancy of the relation might be ascertained.
[1] P. 388. [Book I, part III., sec. VI.]
Hume makes conceptions of identity and cause each come before the
other. Their true correlativity.
313. Against this derivation of the conception of cause and effect,
as implying that of identity, may be urged the fact that when
we would ascertain the truth of any identification we do so by
reference to causes and effects. As Hume himself puts it at the
outset of his discussion of causation, an inference of identity
‘beyond the impressions of our senses can be founded only on the
connexion of cause and effect.’ ... ‘Whenever we discover a perfect
resemblance between a new object and one which was formerly present
to the senses, we consider whether it be common in that species of
objects; whether possibly or probably any cause could operate in
producing the change and resemblance; and according as we determine
concerning these causes and effects, we form our judgment concerning
the identity of the object’. [1] This admission, it may be said,
though it tells against Hume’s own subsequent explanation of identity
as a fiction of the imagination, is equally inconsistent with any
doctrine that would treat identity as the presupposition of inference
to cause or effect. Now undoubtedly if the identity of interrupted
perceptions is one fiction of the imagination and the relation of
cause and effect another, each resulting from ‘custom,’ to say with
Hume, that we must have the idea of cause in order to arrive at the
supposition of identity, is logically to exclude any derivation
of that idea from an experience which involves the supposition of
identity. The ‘custom’ which generates the idea of cause must have
done its work before that which generates the supposition of identity
can begin. Hume therefore, after the admission just quoted, was
not entitled to treat the inference to cause or effect as a habit
derived from experience of identical things. But it is otherwise
if the conceptions of causation and identity are correlative--not
results of experience of which one must be formed before the
other, but co-ordinate expressions of one and the same synthetic
principle, which renders experience possible. And this is the real
state of the case. It is true, as Hume points out, that when we
want to know whether a certain sensation, precisely resembling one
that we have previously experienced, represents the same object,
we do so by asking how otherwise it can be accounted for. If no
difference appears in its antecedents or sequents, we identify
it--refer it to the same thing--as that previously experienced; for
its relations (which, since it is an event in time, take the form
of antecedence and sequence) _are_ the thing. The conceptions of
identity and of relation in the way of cause and effect are thus as
strictly correlative and inseparable as those of the thing and of
its relations. Without the conception of identity experience would
want a centre, without that of cause and effect it would want a
circumference. Without the supposition of objects which ‘existing at
one time are the same with themselves as existing at other times’--a
supposition which at last, when through acquaintance with the
endlessness of orderly change we have learnt that there is but one
object for which such identity can be claimed without qualification,
becomes the conception of nature as a uniform whole--there could
be no such comparison of the relations in which an object is now
presented with those in which it has been before presented, as
determines us to reckon it the cause or effect of another; but it is
equally true that it is only by such comparison of relations that the
identity of any particular object can be ascertained.
[1] P. 376. [Book I, part III., sec. II.]
Hume quite right in saying that we do not go _more_ beyond sense in
reasoning than in perception.