Hume had merely to exhibit the contradictions which Locke’s own
statement of it involves. [1] To have transferred this identity
definitely from ‘matter’ to consciousness was in itself a great
merit, but, so transferred, in the absence of any other theory of
consciousness than Locke’s, it only becomes more obviously a fiction.
If there is nothing real but the succession of feelings, identity of
body, it is true, disappears as inevitably as identity of mind; and
so we have already found it to do in Hume. [2] But whereas the notion
of a unity of body throughout the succession of perceptions only
becomes contradictory through the medium of a reduction of body to
a succession of perceptions, the identity of a mind, which has been
already defined as a succession of perceptions, is a contradiction
in terms. There can be ‘properly no simplicity in it at one time,
nor identity at different; it is a kind of theatre where several
perceptions successively make their appearance.’ But this comparison
must not mislead us. ‘They are the successive perceptions only, that
constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place
where these scenes are represented, or of the materials of which it
is composed.’ The problem for Hume then in regard to personal, as
it had been in regard to bodily, identity is to account for that
‘natural propension to imagine’ it which language implies.
[1] See above, §§ 134 and foll.
[2] See above, §§ 306 and foll.
Yet can only account for it as a ‘fiction’ by supposing ideas which
with him are impossible.
343. The method of explanation in each case is the same. He starts
with two suppositions, to neither of which he is logically entitled.
One is that we have a ‘distinct idea of identity or sameness,’ _i.e._
of an object that remains invariable and uninterrupted through a
supposed variation of time’--a supposition which, as we have seen,
upon his principles must mean that a feeling, which is one in a
succession of feelings, is yet all the successive feelings at once.
The other is that we have an idea ‘of several different objects
existing in succession, and connected together by a close’ (natural)
‘relation’--which in like manner implies that a feeling, which is one
among a succession of feelings, is at the same time a consciousness
of these feelings as successive and under that qualification by
mutual relation which implies their equal presence to it. These
two ideas, which in truth are ‘distinct and even contrary’ [1] we
yet come to confuse with each other, because ‘that action of the
imagination, by which we consider the uninterrupted and invisible
object, and that by which we reflect on the succession of related
objects, are almost the same to the feeling.’ Thus, though what we
call our mind is really a ‘succession of related objects,’ we have a
strong propensity to mistake it for an ‘invariable and uninterrupted
object.’ To this propensity we at last so far yield as to assert our
successive perceptions to be in effect the same, however interrupted
and variable; and then, by way of ‘justifying to ourselves this
absurdity, feign the continued existence of the perceptions of our
senses, to remove the interruption; and run into the notion of a
_soul_ and _self_, and _substance_, to disguise the variation’. [2]
[1] See note to § 341.
[2] Pp. 535-536. [Book I, part IV., sec. VI.].
In origin this ‘fiction’ the same as that of ‘Body’.
344. It will be seen that the theory, which we have just summarised,
would merely be a briefer version of that given in the section
on ‘Scepticism with regard to the Senses,’ if in the sentence,
which states its conclusion, for ‘the notion of a soul and self
and substance’ were written ‘the notion of a double existence of
perceptions and objects’. [1] To a reader who has not thoroughly
entered into the fusion of being and feeling, which belongs to the
‘new way of ideas,’ it may seem strange that one and the same process
of so-called confusion has to account for such apparently disparate
results, as the notion of a permanently identical self and that of
the distinct existence of body. If he bears in mind, however, that
with Hume the universe of our experience is the same when it is
called ‘the universe of objects or of body’ and when it is called
the ‘universe of thought or my impressions and ideas’, [2] he will
see that on the score of consistency Hume is to be blamed, not for
applying the same method to account for the fictions of material
and spiritual identity, but for allowing himself, in his preference
for physical, as against theological, pretension, to write as if
the supposition of spiritual were really distinct from that of
material identity, and might be more contemptuously disposed of. The
original ‘mistake,’ out of which according to him the two fictitious
suppositions arise, is one and the same; and though it is a ‘mistake’
without which, as we have found [3] from Hume’s own admissions, we
could not speak even in singular propositions of the most ordinary
‘objects of sense’--this pen, this table, this chair--it is yet one
that on his principles is logically impossible, since it consists
in a confusion between ideas that we cannot have. Of this original
‘mistake’ the fictions of body and of its ‘continued and distinct
existence’ are but altered expressions. They represent in truth the
same logical category of substance and relation. And of the Self
according to Locke’s notion of it [4] (which was the only one that
Hume had in view), as a ‘thinking thing’ within each man among a
multitude of other thinking things, the same would have to be said.
But in order to account for the ‘mistake,’ of which the suppositions
of thinking and material substance are the correlative expressions,
and which it is the net result of Hume’s speculation to exhibit at
once as necessary and as impossible, we have found another notion
of the self forced upon us--not as a double of body, but as the
source of that ‘familiar theory’ which body in truth is, and without
which there would be no universe of objects, whether ‘bodies’ or
‘impressions and ideas,’ at all.
[1] Above, §§ 306-310.
[2] Above, § 340.
[3] Above, §§ 303 & 304.
[4] Above, §§ 129-132.
Possibility of such fictitious ideas implies refutation of Hume’s
doctrine.
345. Thus the more strongly Hume insists that ‘the identity which
we ascribe to the mind of man is only a fictitious one’, [1] the
more completely does his doctrine refute itself. If he had really
succeeded in reducing those ‘invented’ relations, which Locke had
implicitly recognised as the framework of the universe, to what
he calls ‘natural’ ones--to mere sequences of feeling--the case
would have been different. With the disappearance of the conception
of the world as a system of related elements, the necessity of a
thinking subject, without whose presence to feelings they could
not become such elements, would have disappeared likewise. But he
cannot so reduce them. In all his attempts to do so we find that
the relation, which has to be explained away, is pre-supposed under
some other expression, and that it is ‘fictitious’ not in the sense
which Hume’s theory requires--the sense, namely, that there is no
such thing either really or in imagination, either as impression or
idea--but in the sense that it would not exist if we did not think
about our feelings. Thus, whereas identity ought for Hume’s purpose
to be either a ‘natural relation,’ or a propensity arising from
such relation, or nothing, we find that according to his account,
though neither natural relation nor propensity, it yet exists both as
idea and as reality. He saves appearances indeed by saying [2] that
natural relations of ideas ‘produce it,’ but they do so, according
to his detailed account of the matter, in the sense that, the idea
of an identical object being given, we mistake our successive and
resembling feelings for such an object. In other words, the existence
of numerically identical things is a ‘fiction,’ not as if there
were no such things, but because it implies a certain operation of
thought upon our feelings, a certain interpretation of impressions
under direction of an idea not derived from impressions. By a
like equivocal use of ‘fiction’ Hume covers the admission of real
identity in its more complex forms--the identity of a mass, whose
parts undergo perpetual change of distribution; of a body whose form
survives not merely the redistribution of its materials, but the
substitution of others; of animals and vegetables, in which nothing
but the ‘common end’ of the changing members remains the same. The
reality of such identity of mass, of form, of organism, he quietly
takes for granted. [3] He calls it ‘fictitious’ indeed, but only
either in the sense above given or in the sense that it is mistaken
for mere numerical identity.
[1] P. 540. [Book I, part IV., sec. VI.]
[2] P. 543 [Book I, part IV., sec. VI.]. ‘Identity depends on the
relations of ideas; and these relations produce identity by means
of that easy transition they occasion.’ Strictly it should be ‘that
easy transition in which they consist;’ since, according to Hume, the
‘easiness of transition’ is not an effect of natural relation, but
constitutes it. Cf. pp. 322 & 497 [Book I, part I., sec. V. and part
IV., sec. II.], and above, § 318.
[3] Pp. 536-538. [Book I, part IV., sec. VI.]
346. After he has thus admitted, as constituents of the ‘universe
of objects,’ a whole hierarchy of ideas of which the simplest must
vanish before the demand to ‘point out the impression from which
it is derived,’ we are the less surprised to find him pronouncing
in conclusion ‘that the true idea of the human mind is to consider
it as a system of different perceptions or different existences,
which are linked together by the relation of cause and effect, and
mutually produce, destroy, influence and modify each other’. [1] A
better definition than this, as a _definition of nature_, or one more
charged with ‘fictions of thought,’ could scarcely be desired. If
the idea of such a system is a true idea at all, which we are only
wrong in confusing with mere numerical identity, we need be the less
concerned that it should be adduced as the true idea not of nature
but of the ‘human mind.’ Having learnt, through the discipline which
Hume himself furnishes, that the recognition of a system of nature
logically carries with it that of a self-conscious subject, in
relation to which alone ‘different perceptions’ become a system of
nature, we know that we cannot naturalise the ‘human mind’ without
presupposing that which is neither nature nor natural, though apart
from it nature would not be--that of which the designation as ‘mind,’
as ‘human,’ as ‘personal,’ is of secondary importance, but which is
eternal, self-determined, and thinks.
[1] P. 541. [Book I, part IV., sec. VI.]
T.H. Green
GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO VOL. II.
Hume’s doctrine of morals parallel to his doctrine of nature.
1. In his speculation on morals, no less than on knowledge, Hume
follows the lines laid down by Locke. With each there is a precise
correspondence between the doctrine of nature and the doctrine of
the good. Each gives an account of reason consistent at least in
this that, as it allows reason no place in the constitution of real
objects, so it allows it none in the constitution of objects that
determine desire and, through it, the will. With each, consequently,
the ‘moral faculty,’ whether regarded as the source of the judgments
‘ought and ought not,’ or of acts to which these judgments are
appropriate, can only be a certain faculty of feeling, a particular
susceptibility of pleasure and pain. The originality of Hume lies in
his systematic effort to account for those objects, apparently other
than pleasure and pain, which determine desire, and which Locke had
taken for granted without troubling himself about their adjustment to
his theory, as resulting from the modification of primary feelings
by ‘associated ideas.’ ‘Natural relation,’ the close and uniform
sequence of certain impressions and ideas upon each other, is the
solvent by which in the moral world, as in the world of knowledge, he
disposes of those ostensibly necessary ideas that seem to regulate
impressions without being copied from them; and in regard to the one
application of it as much as to the other, the question is whether
the efficiency of the solvent does not depend on its secretly
including the very ideas of which it seems to get rid.
Its relation to Locke: Locke’s account of freedom, will, and desire.
2. The place held by the ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding,’ as
a sort of philosopher’s Bible in the last century, is strikingly
illustrated by the effect of doctrines that only appear in it
incidentally. It does not profess to be ethical treatise at all, yet
the moral psychology contained in the chapter ‘of Power’ (II. 21),
and the account of moral good and evil contained In the chapter ‘of
other Relations’ (II. 28) furnished the text for most of the ethical
speculation that prevailed in England, France, and Scotland for a
century later. If Locke’s theory was essentially a reproduction of
Hobbes’, it was yet in the form he gave it that it survived while
Hobbes was decried and forgotten. The chapter on Power is in effect
an account of determination by motives. More, perhaps, than any other
part of the essay it bears the marks of having been written ‘currente
calamo.’ In the second edition a summary was annexed which differs
somewhat in the use of terms, but not otherwise, from the original
draught. The main course of thought, however, is clear throughout.
Will and freedom are at first defined in all but identical terms
as each a ‘power to begin or forbear action barely by a preference
of the mind’ (§§ 5, 8, 71). Nor is this identification departed
from, except that the term ‘will’ is afterwards restricted to the
‘preference’ or ‘power of preference,’ while freedom is confined to
the power of acting upon preference; in which sense it is pointed
out that though there cannot be freedom without will, there may be
will without freedom, as when, through the breaking of a bridge, a
man cannot help falling into the water, though he prefers not to do
so. ‘Freedom’ and ‘will’ being thus alike powers, if not the same
power, it is as improper to ask whether the will is free as whether
one power has another power. The proper question is whether man is
free (§§ 14, 21), and the answer to this question, according to
Locke, is that within certain limits he is free to act, but that he
is not free to will. When in any case he has the option of acting
or forbearing to act, he cannot help preferring, _i.e._ willing,
one or other alternative. If it is further asked, What determines
the will or preference? the answer is that ‘nothing sets us upon
any new action but some uneasiness’ (§ 29), viz., the ‘most urgent
uneasiness we at any time feel’ (§ 40), which again is always ‘the
uneasiness of desire fixed on some absent good, either negative, as
indolence to one in pain, or positive, as enjoyment of pleasure.’ In
one sense, indeed, it may be said that the will often runs counter
to desire, but this merely means that we ‘being in this world beset
with sundry uneasinesses, distressed with different desires,’ the
determination of the will by the most pressing desire often implies
the counteraction of other desires which would, indeed, under other
circumstances, be the most pressing, but at the particular time of
the supposed action are not so.
Two questions: Does man always act from the strongest motive? and,
What constitutes his motive? The latter the important question:
Distinction between desires that are, and those that are not,
determined by the conception of self.
3. So far Locke’s doctrine amounts to no more than this, that action
is always determined by the strongest motive; and only those who
strangely hold that human freedom is to be vindicated by disputing
that truism will care to question it. To admit that the strongest
desire always moves action (there being, in fact, no test of its
strength but its effect on action) and that, since every desire
causes uneasiness till it is satisfied, the strongest desire is
also the most pressing uneasiness, [1] is compatible with the most
opposite views as to the constitution of the objects which determine
desire. To understand that it is this constitution of the desired
object, not any possible intervention of unmotived willing between
the presentation of a strongest motive and action, which forms the
central question of ethics, is the condition of all clear thinking
on the subject. It is a question, however, which Locke ignores, and
popular philosophy, to its great confusion, has not only continued
to do the same, but would probably resent as pedantic any attempt
at more accurate analysis. When we hear of the strongest ‘desire’
being the uniform motive to action, we have to ask, in the first
place, whether the term is confined to impulses determined by a prior
consciousness, or is taken to include those impulses, commonly called
‘mere appetites,’ which are not so determined, but depend directly
and solely on the ‘constitution of our bodily organs.’ The _appetite_
of hunger is obviously quite independent of any remembrance of the
pleasure of eating, yet nothing is commoner than to identify with
such simple appetite the desire determined by consciousness of some
sort, as when we say of a drunkard, who never drinks merely because
he is thirsty, that he is governed by his appetite. Upon this
distinction, however, since it is recognised by current psychology,
it is less important to insist than on that between the kinds of
prior consciousness which may determine desire proper. Does this
prior consciousness consist simply in the return of an image of
past pleasure with consequent hope of its renewal, or is it a
conception--the thought of an object under relations to self or of
self in relation to certain objects--in a word, self-consciousness as
distinct from simple feeling?
[1] Locke’s language in regard to ‘the most pressing uneasiness’
will not be found uniformly consistent. His usual doctrine is that
the strength of a desire, as evinced by the resulting action, and
the uneasiness which it causes are in exact proportion to each
other. According to this view, desire for future happiness can only
become a prevalent motive when the uneasiness which it causes has
come to outweigh every other (Cf. Chap, xxi., Secs. 43 and 45). On
the other hand, he sometimes seems to distinguish the desire for
future pleasure from present uneasiness, while at the same time
implying that it may be a strongest motive (Cf. sec. 65). But if so,
it follows that there may be a strongest desire which is not the
most pressing uneasiness. (See below, sec. 13.) Hume, distinguishing
strong from violent desires, and restricting ‘uneasiness’ to the
latter, is able to hold that it is not alone the present uneasiness
which determines action. (Book II., part 3, sec. 3, sub fin.)
Effect of this conception on the objects of human desire.
4. Of desire determined in the former way we have experience, if at
all, in those motives which actuate us, as we say, ‘unconsciously’;
which means, without our attending to them--feelings which we do
not fix even momentarily by reference to self or to a thing. As we
cannot set ourselves to recall such feelings without thinking them,
without determining them by that reference to self which we suppose
them to exclude, they cannot be described; but some of our actions
(such as the instinctive recurrence to a sweet smell), seem only to
be thus accounted for, and probably those actions of animals which
do not proceed from appetite proper are to be accounted for in the
same way. But whether such actions are facts in human experience or
no, those which make us what we are as men are not so determined.
The man whom we call the slave of his appetite, the enlightened
pleasure-hunter, the man who lives for his family, the artist, the
enthusiast for humanity, are alike in this, that the desire which
moves their action is itself determined not by the recurring image
of a past pleasure, but by the conception of self. The self may be
conceived of simply as a subject to be pleased, or may be a subject
of interests, which, indeed, when gratified, produce pleasure but
are not produced by it--interests in persons, in beautiful things,
in the order of nature and society--but self is still not less the
‘punctum stans’ whose presence to each passing pleasure renders it
a constituent of a happiness which is to be permanently pursued,
than it is the focus in which the influences of that world which
only self-conscious reason could constitute--the world of science,
of art, of human society--must be regathered in order to become the
personal interests which move the actions of individuals. It is in
this self-consciousness involved in our motives, in that conversion
into a conception by reference to self, which the image even of the
merest animal pleasure must undergo before it can become an element
in the formation of character, that the possibility of freedom lies.
Without it we should be as sinless and as unprogressive, as free from
remorse and aspiration, as incapable of selfishness and self-denial
as the animals. Each pleasure would be taken as it came. We should
have ‘the greatest happiness of which our nature is capable,’ without
possibility of asking ourselves whether we might not have had more.
It is only the conception of himself as a permanent subject to be
pleased that can set man upon the invention of new pleasures, and
then, making each pleasure a disappointment when it comes, produce
the ‘vicious’ temper; only this that can suggest the reflection
how much more pleasure he might have had than he has had, and thus
produce what the moralists know as ‘cool selfishness’; only this,
on the other hand, which, as ‘enlightened self-love,’ perpetually
balances the attraction of imagined pleasure by the calculation
whether it will be good for one as a whole. Nor less is it the
conception of self, with a ‘matter’ more adequate to its ‘form,’
taking its content not from imagined pleasure, but from the work of
reason in the world of nature and humanity, which determines that
personal devotion to a work or a cause, to a state, a church, or
mankind, which we call self-sacrifice.
Objects so constituted Locke should consistently exclude: But he
finds room for them by treating every desire for an object, of which
the attainment gives pleasure, as a desire for pleasure.
5. If, now, we ask ourselves whether Locke recognised this function
of reason, as self-consciousness, in the determination of the will,
the answer must be yes and no. His cardinal doctrine, as we have
sufficiently seen, forbade him to admit that reason or thought could
originate an object. The only possible objects with him are either
simple ideas or resoluble into these, and the simple idea, as that
which we receive in pure passivity, is virtually feeling. Now no
combination of feelings (supposing it possible [1]) can yield the
conception of self as a permanent subject even of pleasure, much
less as a subject of social claims. It cannot, therefore, yield the
objects, ranging from sensual happiness to the moral law, humanity,
and God, of which this conception is the correlative condition.
Thus, strictly taken, Locke’s doctrine excludes every motive to
action, but appetite proper and such desire as is determined by the
imagination of animal pleasure or pain, and in doing so renders vice
as well as virtue unaccountable--the excessive pursuit of pleasure as
well as that dissatisfaction with it which affords the possibility
of ordinary reform. On the other hand, the same happy intellectual
unscrupulousness, which we have traced in his theory of knowledge,
attends him also here. Just as he is ready on occasion to treat
any conceived object that determines sense as if it were itself a
sensation, so he is ready to treat any object that determines desire,
without reference to the work of thought in its construction, as if
it were itself the feeling of pleasure, or of uneasiness removed,
which arises upon satisfaction of the desire. In this way, without
professedly admitting any motive but remembered pleasure--a motive
which, if it were our only one, would leave ‘man’s life as cheap as
beasts’’--he can take for granted any objects of recognised interest
as accounting for the movement of human life, and as constituents of
an utmost possible pleasure which it is his own fault if every one
does not pursue.
[1] Cf. Introduction to Vol. I., §§ 215 and 247.
Confusion covered by calling ‘happiness’ the general object of desire.