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This institution reserves the right Jo refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR: HAMILTON, WILLIAM TITLE: METAPHYSICS PLA CE: CAMBRIDGE DA TE: [1861] COLUMBIA UNIVEI^ITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative U BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record ^•^■••^'•^•■■"^■■•w* 110 1 1 Ca^lllr. \^lc)\. • I 138962 Restrictions on Use: FILM SlZE:_35j]A/yL^ •^ TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: IMAGE PLACEMENT: I A ilA-' IB II B DATE FILMED: 3>_iijil^3_ INITIALS l3j±£_ FILMED BY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRIDGE. CT c Association for Information and image Hflanagement 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100. 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FL8 10 Tg3tr WAR 6 1335 h * > ip [ T ">r ^ \v THE METAPHYSICS OF 1 SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, I h f 1 1 COLLECTED,, ARRANGED, AND ABRIDGED, FOR THE USE OF COLLEGES AND PRIVATE STUDENTS,, BY FRANCIS BOWEN, AtFORl) PEOraSSOE OF MORAL PHUOBOPHY Di HAEVAED COLLBGK.^ B CAMBRIDGE: SEVER AND FRANCIS 186 1. \ i 110 Entered according to Act of CongrcM in the year 1861, by SEVER AND FRANCIS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Maasachusettfi. ill CAMBRIDGE : Allen and Famham, Stereotypers and Printer*. PREFACE. It is unfortunate that Sir William Hamilton did not undertake fully to digest his metaphysical opi^iions into system, and to publish them as one orderly and connected whole. He had a system, for he was eminently a method- ical and self-consistent thinker ; but it was built up piece- meal, and so given to the world, at various times, in succes- sive articles in the Edinburgh Review ; in copious notes, appendices, and other additions to these articles when they were republished as a volume of " Discussions," and again, when these " Discussions " passed to a second edition ; in the Notes, and, still more at length, in the Supplementary Dissertations, to his ponderous edition of Reid ; and finally, in the memoranda prepared at different times and for vari- ous purposes, which his English editors gathered up and annexed to the posthumous publication of his " Lectures on Metaphysics." While neither of these works furnishes an outline of his system as a whole, each one of them con- tains a statement, more or less complete, of his principal doctrines and arguments, so that, taken together, they abound in repetitions. Even the " Lectures," which afford the nearest approach to a full and systematic exposition of his opinions, besides laboring under the necessary disad- vantage of a posthumous publication, never finally revised by the author for the press, and probably not even intended by him to be printed, were first written by him in great haste at the time (1836) of his original appointment to a Professorship in the University of Edinburgh, and seem to have received but few subsequent alterations or additions, though his opinions certainly underwent afterwards con- siderable development and modification. As any course of instruction in the Philosophy of Mind I iii \ 7SQ20 ly PREFACE. at the present day must be very imperfect which does not comprise a tolerably full view of Hamilton's Meta- physics, I have endeavored, in the present volume, to pre- pare a text-book which should contain, in his own language, the substance of all that he has written upon the subject. For this purpose, the " Lectures on Metaphysics " have been taken as the basis of the work ; and I have freely abridged them by striking out the repetitions and redundancies in which they abound, and omitting also, in great part, the load of citations and references that they contain, as these are of inferior interest except to a student of the history of philosophy, or as marks of the stupendous erudition of the author. The space acquired by these abridgments has enabled me to interweave into the book, in their appro- priate place and connection, all those portions of the " Dis- cussions," and of the Notes and Dissertations supplemen- tary to Reid, which seemed necessary either to elucidate and confirm the text, or to supplement it with the later and more fully expressed opinions of the author. These insertions, always distinguished by angular brackets [ ], and referred to the source whence they were drawn, are very numerous and considerable in amount; sometimes they are several pages long, others do not exceed in length a single paragraph, or even a single sentence. The au- thor's language has invariably been preserved, and where- ever a word or two had to be altered or supplied, to pre- serve the connection, the inserted words have been enclosed in brackets. The divisions between the Lectures, necessa- rily arbitrary, as the limits of a discourse of fixed length could not coincide with the natural division of the subject, have not been preserved in this edition. A chapter here often begins in the middle of a Lecture, and sometimes comprises two or more Lectures. A very few notes, criti- cal or explanatory in character, are properly distinguished as supplied by the American Editor. It has been a laborious, but not a disagreeable task, to examine and collate three bulky octavos, with a view thus to condense their substance into a single volume of moder- ate dimensions. I cannot promise tliat the work has been thoroughly, but only that it has been carefully, done. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Utility of the Study op Philosophy . CHAPTER II. The Nature and Comprehension of Philosophy Vagi 1 27 CHAPTER III. The Causes of Philosophy, and the Dispositions with which it ought to be studied .... 40 CHAPTER IV. The Method of Philosophy CO CHAPTER V. The Divisions of Philosophy . 71 ( CHAPTER VI. Definition of Psychology: Relativity of Human Knowledge: Explication of Terms .... 84 CHAPTER VII Explication of Terms continued . 99 (V) ▼1 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. Distribution of Mental Phenomena: Special Con- ditions OF Consciousness 120 CHAPTER IX. Consciousness not a Special Faculty 135 CHAPTER X. Consciousness not a Special Faculty continued: its relation to Perception, Attention, and Reflec- 148 tion 175 CHAPTER XI. Consciousness, — ITS Evidence and Authority . CHAPTER XII. Violations of the Authority of Consciousness in Various Theories of Perception . . . .193 CHAPTER XIII. General Pilenomena of Consciousness: Are we al- ways consciously active? 215 CHAPTER XIV. General Phenomena of Consciousness : Is the Mind ever unconsciously modified? CHAPTER XV. General Ph.enomena of Consciousness : Difficulties AND Facilities of Psychological Study: Classifi- cation OF the' Cognitive Faculties .... 235 \ \ t CONTENTS. Vll I CHAPTER XVI. The Present ative Faculty: Reid's Historical View OF the Theories of Perception 276 CHAPTER XVII. The Presentative Faculty : Perception : Was Reid a Natural Realist? 295 CHAPTER XVIII. The Presentative Faculty : The Distinction of Per- ception proper from Sensation proper: Primary AND Secondary Qualities 313 CHAPTER XIX. The Presentative Faculty : Objections to the Doc- trine of Natural Realism considered: the Rep- resentative Hypothesis refuted .... 342 CHAPTER XX. The Presentative Faculty: General Questions re- lating to the Senses: Perceptions by Sight and Touch 3^3 CHAPTER XXI. The Presentative Faculty : Recapitulation : H. Self- Consciousness ; 389 CHAPTER XXII. The Conservative Faculty: Memory Proper . . 409 254 VIU CONTENTS. \ CHAPTER XXIII. The Reproductive Faculty: Laws of Association: Suggestion and Reminiscence ^21 CHAPTER XXIV. The Representative Faculu: Imagination . 443 > HAMILTON'S METAPHYSICS. CHAPTER XXV. The Elaborative Faculty : Classification : Abstrac- tion and Ge-ieralization: Nominalism and Con- CEPTUALISM 456 CHAPTER XXVI. The Elaborative Faculty: The Pit. mum Cognitum : Judgment and Reasoning CHAPTER XXVII. The Regulative Faculty : The Philosophy of the 480 Conditioned 499 CHAPTER XXVIII. The Regulative Faculty : Lajvt of the Conditioned IN ITS application TO THE DOCTRINE OF CAUSALITY 531 h CHAPTER I. UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. Some things are valuable, finally, or for themselves, — these are ends ; other things are valuable, not on their own account, but as conducive to^vards certain ulterior ends, — these are means. The value of ends is a]»>olute, — the value of means is relative. Absolute value is properly called 2i good, — rela- tive value is properly called a utility. Of goods, or absolute ends, there are for man but two, — perfection and happiness. By perfection is meant the full and harmonious development of all our faculties, corporeal and mental, intellectual and moral ; by happiness, the complement of all the pleasures of which we are susceptible. Now, I may state, though I cannot at present attempt to prove, that human perfection and human happiness coincide, and tlius constitute, in reality, but a smgle end. For a.s, on the one hand, the perfection or full development of a power is in proportion to its capacity of free, vigorous, and continued action, so on the other, all pleasure is the concomitant of activ- ity ; its degree being in proportion as that activity is sponta- neously intense, its prolongation in proportion as that activity is spontaneously continued; whereas, pain arises either from a faculty being restrained in its spontaneous tendency to action, or from being urged to a degree, or to a continuance, of energy 1 (1) 2 UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. beyond the limit to which it of itself freely tends. To pro- mote our perfection is thus to promote our happiness ; for to cultivate fully and harmoniously our various faculties, is simply to enable them, by exercise, to energize longer and stronger without painful effort ; that is, to afford us a larger amount of a higher quahty of enjoyment. In considering the utility of a branch of knowledge, it be- hooves us, in the first place, to estimate its value as viewed srniply in itself; and, in the second, its value as viewed m rela- tion to other branches. Considered in itself, a science is valua- ble in proportion as its cultivation is immediately conducive to the mental improvement of the cultivator. This may be called its Absolute utility. In relation to others, a science is valuable m proportion as its study is necessary for the prosecution of other branches of knowledge. This may be called its Relative utility. Absolute uiility of two kinds — Suhjectwe and Objective.^ In the former point of view, that is, considered absolutely, or m itseli; the philosophy of mind comprises two several utilities, axicording as it, 1°, Cuhivates the mind or knowing subject, by caUing its faculties into exercise ; and, 2°, Furnishes the mmd with a certain complement of truths or objects of knowledge. The former of these constitutes its Subjective, the latter its Objective utility. These utilities are not the same, nor do they even stand to each other in any necessary proportion. As an individual may possess an ample magazine of knowledge,, and still be little better than an intellectual barbarian, so the utility of one science may be chiefly seen in aflbrding a greater num- ber of higher and more indisputable truths, — the utility of another in determining the faculties to a higher energy, and consequentlv to a liigher education. There are few, I believe, disposed to question the speculative dignity of mental science ; but its practical utility is not unfre- quently denied. To what, it is asked, is the science of mmd conducive ? What iire its uses ? What is Practical Utilifyf — l am not one of those who think that the importance of a study is sufficiently estabUshed when its dignity is admitted ; for, holding that knowledge is UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 3 M •/; / I for the sake of man, and not man for the sake of knowledge, it is necessary, in order to vindicate its value, that every science should be able to show what are the advantages which it prom- ises to confer upon its student. I, therefore, profess myself a utilitarian ; and it is only on the special ground of its utility that I would claim for the philosophy of mind, what I regard as its peculiar and preeminent importance. But what is a utihtarian ? Simply one who prefers the Useful to the Useless — and who does not ? But what is the useful ? That which is prized, not on its own account, but as conducive to the acquisition of some- thing else, —the useful is, in short, only another word for a mean towards an end ; for every mean is useful, and whatever is useful is a mean. Now the value of a mean is always in proportion to the value of its end ; and the useful being a mean, it follows, that, of two utilities, the one which conduces to the more valuable end will be itself the more valuable utility. So far there is no difference of opinion. All agree that the useful is a mean towards an end; and that, ccsterts paribus, a. mean towards a higher end constitutes a higher utility than a mean towards a lower. The only dispute that has arisen, or can possibly arise, in regard to the utiUty of means (supposing always their relative efficiency), is founded on the various views that may be entertained in regard to the existence and compar- ative importance of ends. Two errors in the popular estimate of the comparative utility of human sciences. — Now the various opinions which prevail concernmg the comparative utiHty of human sciences and stud- ies, have all arisen from two errors. The first of tliese consists in viewing man, not as an end unto himself but merely as a mean organized for the sake of something out of himself; and, under this partial view of human destination, those branches of knowledge obtain exclu- sively the name of useful, which tend to qualify a human being to act the lowly part of a dexterous instrument. It has been the tendency of different ages, of different countries, of different ranks and conditions of society, to measure the utility of studies rather by one of these Standards, than by both. Thus it was I / UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. ( the bias of antiquity, when the moral and intellectual cultivation of the citizen was viewed as the great end of all political insti- tutions, to appreciate all knowledge principally by the higher standard ; on the contrary, it is unfortunately the bias of oui modem civilization, since the accumulation (and not too the distribution) of riches in a country, has become the grand prob^ lem of the statesman, to appreciate it rather by the lower. The second, and the more dangerous, of these errors consists in regarding the cultivation of our faculties as subordinate tt the acquisition of knowledge, instead of regarding the posses sion of knowledge as subordinate to the cultivation of our fac- ulties ; and, in consequence of this error, those sciences which afford a greater number of more certain fixcts, have been deemed superior in utility to those which bestow a higher cultivation on the higher faculties of the mind. Man an end unto himself. — As to the first of these errors, the fallacy is so palpable, that we may well wonder at its prev- alence. It is manifest, mdeed, that man, in so far as he is a mean for the glory of God, must be an end unto himself; for it is only in the accomplishment of his own pei-fection, that, as a creature, he can manil'est the glory of his Creator. Though therefore man, by relation to Goil, be but a mean, for that very reason, in relation to all else is he an end. Wherefore, now speaking of him exclusively in his natural capacity and tempo- ral relations, I say it is manifest that man is by nature necessa- rily an end to himself, — that his perfection and happiness constitute the goal of his activity, to which he tends, and ought to tend, when not diverted from this, his general and native destination, by peculiar and accidental circumstances. But it is equally evident, that, under the condition of society, individual men are, for the most part, to a greater or less degree, actually so diverted. To live, the individual must have the means of living; and these means (unless he already possess them) he must procure, — he must purchase. But purchase whh what ? With his services, i. e. — he must reduce himself to an instru- ment, — an instrument of utihty to others; and the services of this instrument he must barter for those means of subsistence (I /; /' UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 5 of which he is in want. In other words, he must exercise some trade, calling, or profession. Thus, in the actualities of social life, each man, instead of being solely an end to himself, — instead of being able to make every thing subordinate to that full and harmonious develop- ment of his individual faculties, m which his fuU perfection and his true happiness consist, — is, in general, compelled to degrade himself into the mean or instrument towards the accompHsh- ment of some end external to himself, and for the benefit of others. Liberal and Professional Education. — Now the perfection of man as an end, and the perfection of man as a mean or in- strument, are not only not the same ; they are, in reality, gen- erally opposed. And as these two perfections ai-e different, so the training requisite for their acquisition is not identical' and has, accordingly, been distinguished by different names. The one is styled Liberal, the other Professional education, — the branches of knowledge cultivated for these purposes be- ing called respectively liberal and professional, or Hberal and lucrative, sciences. By the Gei-mans, the latter are usually distinguished as the Brodwissenschaften, which we may trans- late. The Bread and Butter Sciences. A few of the professions, indeed, as requiring a higher development of the higher faculties, and involving, therefore, a greater or less amount of liberal education, have obtained the name of liberal professions. We must, however, recollect that this is only an accidental and a very partial exception. But though the full and harmonious development of our faculties be the high and natural destination of aU, while the cultivation of any professional dexterity is only a contingency, though a contingency incumbent upon most, it has, however, happened that the paramount and universal end of man, — of man absolutely, — has been often ignorantly lost sight of, and the term useful appropriated exclusively to those acquirements which have a value only to man considered in his relative, lower, and accidental character of an instrument. But, because some have thus been led to appropriate the name of useful to those studies and objects of knowledge, which are 1* UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. conducive to the inferior end, it assuredly does not foUow that those conducive to the higher have not a tar preferable title to the name thus curiously denied to them. Even admitting, therefore, that the study of mind is of no immediate advantage in preparing the student for many of the subordinate parts in the mechanism of society, its utility cannot, on that account, be called in question, unless it be asserted that man " liveth by bread alone," and has no higher destination than that of the caUing by which he earns his subsistence. Knoivledge and intellectual cultivation, — T\\q second error to which I have adverted, reverses the relative subordination of knowledge and of intellectual cultivation. Li refutation of this, I shall attempt briefly to show, firstly, that knowledge and intellectual cultivation are not identical ; secondly, that knowl- edt^e is itself principally valuable as a mean of intellectual cul- tivation ; and, lastly, that intellectual cultivation is more directly and effectually accomplished by the study of mind than by any other of our rational pursuits. But to prevent misapprehension, I may premise what I mean by knowledge, and what by intellectual cultivation. By knowl- edge is understood the mere possession of truths ; by intellectual cultivation, or intellectual development, the power, acquired through exercise by the higher faculties, of a more varied, vig- orous and protracted activity. In the first place, then, it will be requisite, I conceive, to say but little to show that knowledge and intellectual development are not only not the same, but stand in no necessary proportion to each other. This is manifest, if we consider the very dif- ferent conditions under which these two qualities are acquired. The one condition under which all powers, and consequently the intellectual faculties, are developed, is exercise. The more intense and continuous the exercise, the more vigorously de- veloped will be the power. But a certain quantity of knowledge, — in other words, a certain amount of possessed truths, — does not suppose, as its condition, a corresponding sum of intellectual exercise. One truth requires much, another truth requires little, effort in I acquisition ; and, while the original discovery of a truth evolves perhaps a maximum of the highest quahty of energy, the sub- sequent learning of that truth elicits probably but a minimum of the very lowest. Is truth or mental exercise the superior end? — But, as it is evident that the possession of truths, and the development of the mind in which they are deposited, are not identical, I pro- ceed, in the second place, to show that, considered as ends, and in relation to each other, the knowledge of truths is not su- preme, but subordinate to the cultivation of the knowing mind. The question — Is Truth, or is the Mental Exercise in the pur- suit of truth, the superior end ? — this is perhaps the most curious theoretical, and certainly the most important practical, problem in the whole compass of philosophy. For, according to the solution at which we arrive, must we accord the higher or the lower rank to certain great departments of study ; and, what is of more importance, the character of its solution, as it determines the aim, regulates from first to last the method, which an enlightened science of education must adopt. But, however curious and important, this question has never, in so far as I am aware, been regularly discussed. Nay, what is still more remarkable, the erroneous alternative has been very generally assumed as true. The consequence of this has been, that sciences of far inferior, have been elevated above sciences of far superior, utility ; while education has been sys- tematically distorted, — though truth and nature have occa- sionally burst the shackles which a perverse theory had im- posed. The reason of this is sufficiently obvious. At first sight, it seems even absurd to doubt that truth is more valuable than its pursuit ; for is this not to say that the end is less im- portant than the mean? — and on this superficial view is the prevalent misapprehension founded. A slight consideration will, however, expose the fallacy. Practical and speculative Knowledge; their ends. — Knowl- edge is either practical or speculative. In practical knowledge it is evident that truth is not the ultimate end ; for, in that case, knowledge is, ex hypothesi, for the sake of application. The ^ 8 UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. knowledf^e of a moral, of a political, of a religious truth, is of value only as it affords the preliminary or condition of its exer- cise. In speculative knowledge, on the other hand, there may indeed, at first sight, seem greater difhculty ; but further re- flection will prove that speculative truth is only pursued, and is only held of value, for the sake of intellectual activity : " Sor- det cognita Veritas " is a shrewd aphorism of Seneca. A truth, once known, falls into comparative insignificance. It is now prized less on its own account, than as opening up new ways to new activity, new suspense, new hopes, new discoveries, new self-gratulation. Every votary of science is wilfully ignorant of a thousand estabhshed facts, — of a thousand which he might make his own more easily than he could attempt the discovery of even one. But it is not knowledge, — it is not truth, — that he principally seeks ; he seeks the exercise of his faculties and feehngs ; and, as in following after the one, he exerts a greater amount of pleasurable energy than in taking formal possession of the thousand, he disdains the certainty of the many, and pre- fers the chances of the one. Accordingly, the sciences always studied with keenest interest are those in a state of progress and uncertainty; absolute certainty and absolute completion would be the paralysis of any study ; and the last worst calam- ity that could befall man, as he is at present constituted, would be that full and final possession of speculative truth, which he now vainly anticipates as the consummation of his intellectual happiness. " Qiiaesivit ccelo lucem, ingemuitque reperta." But what is true of science, is true, indeed, of all human axj- tivity. " In life," as the great Pascal observes, " we always believe that we are seeking repose, while, in reality, all that we ever seek is ajritation." It is ever the contest that pleases us, and not the victory. Thus it is in play ; thus it is in hunting ; thus it is in the search of truth ; thus it is in life. The past does not interest, the present does not satisfy, the future alone is the object wliich engages us. J A \ »l UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 9 " (Nullo votorum fine beati) Victuros agiraus semper, nee vivimus unquam." The question, I said, has never been regularly discussed, probably because it lay in too narrow a compass ; but no philos- opher appears to have ever seriously proposed it to himself, who did not resolve it in contradiction to the ordinary opinion. A contradiction of this opinion is even involved in the very term Philosophy ; and the man who first declared that he was not a (Toqpo?, or possessor, but a (pdoaoqjog, or seeker of truth, at once enounced the true end of human speculation, and embodied it in a significant name. Under the same conviction, Plato defines man " the hunter of truth," for science is a chase, and in a chase, the pursuit is always of greater value than the game. " The intellect," says Aristotle, in one passage, " is perfected, not by knowledge, but by activity ; " and in another, " The arts and sciences are powers, but every power exists only for the sake of action ; the end of philosophy, therefore, is not knowl- edge, but the energy conversant about knowledge." The pro- foundest thinkers of modern times have emphatically testified to the same great principle. " If," says Malebranche, " I held truth cai)tive in my hand, I should open my hand and let it fly, in order that I might again pursue and capture it." " Did the Almiglity," says Lessing, " holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left Search after Truth, deign to tender me the one I might prefer, — in all Immility, but without hesitation, I should request Search after Truths [We exist only as we energize ; pleasure is the reflex of unimpeded energy; energy is the means by which our faculties are developed; and a higher energy the end which their development proposes. In action is thus contained the existence, happiness, improvement, and per- fection of our being ; and knowledge is only precious, as it may afford a stimulus to the exercise of our powers, and the condi- tion of their more complete activity. Speculative truth is, therefore, subordinate to speculation itself; and its value is directly measured by the quantity of energy wliich it occa- sions, — immediately m its discovery, — mediately through its consequences. Life to Endymion was not preferable to death : 10 UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. aloof from practice, a waking error is better than a sleeping truth. — Neither, in point of fact, is there found any proportion between the possession of truths, and the development of the mind in which they are deposited. Every learner in science is now famihar with more truths than Aristotle or Plato ever dreamt of knowing ; yet, compared with the Stagirite or the Athenian, how few, even of our masters of modern science, rank higher than intellectual barbarians ! Ancient Greece and modern Europe prove, indeed, that " the march of intellect " is no inseparable concomitant of " the march of science ; " — that the cultivation of the individual is not to be rashly confounded with the progress of the species.] — Discussions. Philosophy best entitled to he called usefid. — But if specula- tive truth itself be only valuable as a mean of intellectual activity, those studies which determine the faculties to a more vigorous exertion, will, in every liberal sense, be better entitled, absolutely, to the name of useful, than those which, with a greater complement of more certain facts, awaken them to a less intense, and consequently to a less improving exercise. On this ground I would rest one of the preeminent utilities of mental pliilosophy. That it comprehends all the sublimest objects of our theoretical and moral interest ; — that every (natural) conclusion concerning God, the soul, the present worth and the future destiny of man, is exclusively deduced from the philosophy of mind, will be at once admitted. But I do not at present found the importance on the paramount dig- nity of the pursuit. It is as the best gj-mnastic of the mind, — as a mean, principally, and almost exclusively, conducive to the highest education of our noblest powers, that I would vindicate to these speculations the necessity which has too frequently been denied them. By no other intellectual appHcation is the mind thus reflected on itself, and its faculties aroused to such independent, vigorous, unwonted, and continued energy ; — by none, therefore, are its best capacities so variously and intensely evolved. " By turning," says Burke, " the soul inward on itself", its forces are concentred, and are fitted for greater and stronger flights of science ; and in tliis pursuit, whether we UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 11 take or whether -we lose our game, the chase is certainly of service." These principles being established, it follows, that I must regard the main duty of a Professor to consist not simply in communicating information, but in doing this in such a manner, and with such an accoijjpaniment of subsidiary means, that the information he conveys may be the occasion of awakening his pupils to a vigorous and varied exertion of their faculties. Self-a<;tivity is the indispensable condition of unprovement; and education is only education, — that is, accomplishes its pur- pose, only by affording objects and supplying incitements to this spontaneous exertion. Strictly speaking, every one must edu- cate himself [All profitable study is a silent disputation — an intellectual gymnastic ; and the most improving books are pre- cisely those which most excite the reader, — to understand the author, to supply what he has omitted, and to canvass his facts and reasonings. To read passively, to learn, — is, in reahty, not to learn at all. In study, imphcit faith, behef upon au- thority, is worse even than, for a time, erroneous speculation. To read profitably, we should read the authors, not most m unison with, but most adverse to, our opinions ; for whatever may be the case in the cure of bodies, enantiopathy, and not homoeopathy, is the true medicine of minds. Accordingly, such sciences and such authors as present only unquestionable truths, determining a minimum of self-activity in the student, are, in a rational education, subjectively naught. Those sciences and authors, on the contrary, who constrain the student to inde- pendent thought, are, whatever may be their objective cer- tainty, subjectively, educationally, best.] — Discussions, But though the common duty of all academical instructors be the cultivation of the student, through the awakened exercise of his faculties, this is more especially incumbent on those to whom is intrusted the department of hberal education ; for, in this department, the pupil is trained, not to any mere profes- sional knowledge, but to the command and employment of his faculties in general. But, moreover, the same obligation is specially imposed upon a professor of intellectual philosophy, 12 UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. by the peculiar nature of his subject, and the conditions under which alone it can be taught. The phoenomena of the external world are so palpable and so easily described, that the expe- rience of one observer suffices .to render the facts he has wit- nessed inteUigible and probable to all. The phgenomena of the internal world, on the contrary, are not^capable of being thus described: all that the prior observer can do, is to enable others to repeat his experience. In the science of mind, we can neither understand nor be convinced of any thing at second hand. Here testhnony can impose no beUef ; and instruction is only instruction as it enables us to teach ourselves. A fact of consciousness, however accurately observed, however clearly described, and however great may be our confidence in the observer, is for us as zero, until we have observed and recog- nized it ourselves. Till that be done, we cannot reahze its pos- sibility, far less admit its truth. Thus it is that, in the philoso- phy of mind, instruction can do Httle more than point out the position in which the pupil ought to place himseU", in order to verify, by his own experience, the facts which his instructor proposes to him as true. The instructor, therefore, proclaims, ov qjiXoaoqia, d)la cptlooocpeh ; he does not profess to teach ;;A/- losophy, hut to philosophize. It is this condition imposed upon the student of doing every thing himself, that renders the study of the mental sciences the most improving exercise of intel- lect. Philosophy: its Objective utility, — I [have] endeavored to show that all knowledge is only for the sake of energy, and that even merely speculative truth is valuable only as it determines a greater quantity of higher power into activity. I [have] also endeavored to show that, on the standard of Subjective utility, philosophy is of all our studies the most useful ; ma^much as more than any other it exercises, and consequently develops to a higher degree, and in a more varied manner, our noblest fac- ulties. I shall [now] confine myself to certain views of the importance of philosophy estimated by the standai-d of its Ob- jective utility. The human mind the noblest object of speculation, — Consid- UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 13 ered in itself, a knowledge of the human mind, whether we regard its speculative or its practical importance, is confessedly of all studies the highest and the most interesting. " On earth," says an ancient i^hilosopher, " there is nothing great but man : in man, there is nothing great but mind." No other study fills and satisfies the soul like the study of itself. No other science presents an object to be compared in dignity, in absolute or in relative value, to that which human consciousness furnishes to its own contemplation. What is of all things the best, asked Chilon of the Oracle. " To know thyself," was the response. This is, in fact, the only science in which all are always inter- ested ; for, while each individual may have his favorite occupa- tion, it still remains true of the species, that " the proper study of mankind is man." "For the world," says Sir Thomas Browne, " I count it not an inn, but an hospital ; and a place not to live, but to die in. The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on ; for the other, I use it but hke my globe, and turn it round some- tunes, for my recreation The earth is a point, not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestial part within us. That mass of flesh that circumscribes me, limits not my mind. That surface that tells the heavens it hath an end, cannot persuade me I have any Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm, or little world, I find my- self something more than the great. There is surely a piece of divinity in us ; something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me, I am the image of God, as well as Scripture. He that understands not thus much hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man." Relation of Psychology to Theology. — J^ni, though mind, considered in itself, be the noblest object of speculation which the created universe presents to the curiosity of man, it is under a certain relation that I would now attempt to illustrate its utility ; for mind rises to its highest dignity when viewed as the object through which, and through which alone, our unassisted reason can ascend to the knowledge of a God. The Deity is 2 14 UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. not an object of immediate contemplation ; as existing and in liimselt; he is beyond our reach ; we can know him only medi- ately through his works, and are only warranted in assuming his existence as a certain kind of cause necessary to account for a certain state of things, of whose reality our faculties are supposed to inform us. The affirmation of a God being thus a regressive inference, from the existence of a special class of eifects to the existence of a special character of cause, it is evi- dent, that the whole argument hinges on the tact, — Does a state of things really exist such as is only i)ossible through the agency of a Divine Cause ? For if it can be shown that such a state of things does not really exist, then our inference to the kind of cause requisite to account for it is necessarily null. Argument founded exclusively on the phcEuomena of mind. — Tliis being understood, I now "proceed to show that the class of phienomena which requires that kind of cause we denominate a Deity, is exclusively given in the pha^iomena of mind, — that the phjEnomena of matter, taken by themselves (you will observe the qualification, ' taken by themselves'), so far from warranting any inference to the existence of a God, would, on the contrary, ground even an argument to his negation, — that the study of the external world taken with, and in subordination to, that of the internal, not only loses its atheistic tendency, but, under such subservience, may be rendered conducive to the great con- clusion, from which, if left to itself, it would dissuade us. We must, first of all, then, consider what kind of cause it is which constitutes a Deity, and what kind of effects they are which allow us to infer that a Deity must be. The notion of a God — what. — The notion of a God is not contained in the notion of a mere First Cause ; for in the admission of a first cause. Atheist and Theist are at one. Neither is this notion completed by adding to a first cause the attribute of Omnipotence ; for the atheist who holds matter or necessity to be the original i)rinciple of all that is, does not convert his blind force into a God, by merely affirming it to be all-powerful. It is not until the two great attributes of Intelli- gence and Virtue (and be it observed that virtue involves Lib- UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 15 erty) — I say, it is not until the two attributes of intelligence and virtue or holiness are brought in, that the belief in a pri- mary and omnipotent cause becomes the belief in a veritable Divinity. But these latter attributes are not more essential to the divine nature than are the former. For as original and infinite power does not of itself constitute a God, neither is a God constituted by intelligence and virtue, unless intelligence and goodness be themselves conjoined with this original and infinite power. For even a Creator, intelligent, and good, and powerful, would be no God, were he dependent for his intelli- gence and goodness and power on any higher principle. On this supposition, the perfections of the Creator are viewed as limited and derived. He is himself, therefore, only a depen- dency, — only a creature ; and if a God there be, he must be sought for in that higher principle, from which this subordinate principle derives its attributes. Now is this highest principle {ex hypothesi all-powerful) also intelligent and moral, then it is itself alone the veritable Deity ; on the other hand is it, though the author of intelligence and goodness in another, itself unin- telligent, — then is a blind Fate constituted the first and uni- versal cause, and atheism is asserted. Conditions of the proof of the existence of a God. — The peculiar attributes which distinguish a Deity from the original omnipotence or blind fate of the atheist, being thus those of intelligence and holiness of will, — and the assertion of theism being only the assertion that the universe is created by intelli- gence, and governed not only by physical but by moral laws, we have next to consider how we are warranted in these two affirmations; 1°, That intelligence stands first in the absolute order of existence, — in other words, that final preceded efficient causes ; and, 2°, That the universe is governed by moral laws. The proof of these two propositions is the jiroof of a God ; and it establishes its foundation exclusively on the phienomena of mind. I shall endeavor to show you this, in regard to both these propositions ; but, before considering how far the phae- nomena of mind and of matter do and do not allow us to infer 16 UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. the one position or the other, I must solicit your attention to the characteristic contrasts which these two classes of phae- nomena in themselves exhibit. Contrasts of the phcenornena of matter and mind. — In the compass of our experience, we distinguish two series of facts, — the facts of tlie external or material world, and the facts of the internal world or world of intelligence. These concomitant series of pha»nomena are not like streams which merely nm parallel to each other ; they do not, like the Alpheus antl Are- thusa, flow on side by side without a commingling of their waters. They cross, they combine, they are interlaced ; but notwithstanding their intimate connection, their mutual action and reaction, we are able to discriminate them without diffi- culty, because they are marked out by characteristic dif- ferences. The phienomena of the material world are subjected to im- mutable laws, are produced and reprotluced in the same inva- riable succession, and manifest only the blind force of a mechanical necessity. The phaenomena of man are, in part, subjected to the laws of the external universe. As dependent upon a bodily organi- zation, as actuated by sensual propensities and animal wants, he belongs to matter, and, in this respect, he is the slave of neces- sity. But what man holds of matter does not make up his personality. They are his, not he ; man is not an organism, — he is an intelligence served by organs. For in man there are tendencies, — there is a law, — which continually urge him to prove that he is more powerful than the nature by wliich he is suiTOunded and ])enetrated. lie is conscious to himself of fac- ulties not comprised in the chain of physical necessity ; his intel- ligence reveals prescriptive principles of action, absolute and universal, in the Law of Duty, and a liberty capable of carrying that law into effect, in opposition to the solicitations, the im- pulsions, of his material nature. From the coexistence of these opposing forces in man, there results a ceaseless struggle between physical necessity and moral liberty, — in the language of Revelation, between the Flesh and the Spirit ; and this UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 17 Struggle constitutes at once the distinctive character of human- ity, and the essential condition of human development and virtue. In the facts of intelligence, we thus become aware of an order of existence diametrically in contrast to that displayed to us in the facts of the material universe. There is made known to us an order of things, in which intelligence, by recognizijig the unconditional law of duty and an absolute obligation to fiJitil it, recognizes its own possession of a liberty incompatible with a dependence upon fate, and of a power capa]3le of resisting and conquering the counteraction of our animal nature. Consciousness of freedom, and of a law of duty, the condi- tions of Theology. — Now, it is only as man is a free intelli- gence, a moral power, that he is created after the image of God, and it is only as a spark of divinity glows as the, life of our life in us, that we can rationally believe in an Intelligent Creator and Moral Governor of the universe. For, let us sup- pose, that in man intelligence is the product of organization, that our consciousness of moral liberty is itself only an illu- sion ; m short, that acts of volition are results of the same iron necessity which determines the phenomena of matter ; on this supposition, I say, the foundations of all religion, natural and revealed, are subverted. The truth of this will be best seen by appl;^ang the supposi- tion of the two positions of theism previously stated — namely, that the notion of God necessarily supposes, 1°, That in the absolute order of existence, intelligence should be first, that is, not itself the product of an unintelligent antecedent ; and, 2°, That the universe should be governed not only by physical, but by moral laws. Analogy between our experience and the absolute order of existence. — Now, in regard to the former, how can we attempt to prove that the universe is the creation of a free origmal intelligence, against the counter-position of the atheist, that lib- erty is an illusion, and intelligence, or the adaptation of means to ends, only the product of a bhnd fate ? As we know noth- ing of the absolute order of existence in itself, we can only 2* la UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF THILOSOPHY. attempt to infer its character from that of the particular order within the sphere of our experience ; and as we can affii-m naught of intelligence and its conditions, except what we may- discover from the obser\'ation of our own minds, it is evident that we can only analogically carry out into the order of the universe the relation in v/hich we find intelligence to stand in the order of the human constitution. If in man intelligence be a free power, — in so far as its liberty extends, intelligence must be independent of necessity and matter ; and a power independent of matter necessarily implies the existence of an immaterial subject, — that is, a spirit. If, then, the original independence of intelligence on matter in the human constitu- tion, in other words, if the spirituaUty of mind in man, be sup- posed a datum of observation, in this datum is also given both the condition and the proof of a God. For we have only to infer, what analogy entitles us to do, that intelligence holds the same relative supremacy in the universe which it holds in us, and tlie first positive condition of a Deity is established, in the establishment of the absolute priority of a free creative intelH- gence. On the other hand, let us suppose the result of our study of man to be, that intelligence is only a product of mat- ter, only a reflex of organization, such a doctrine would not only afford no basis on which to rest any argument for a God, but, on the contrary, would positively warrant the atheist in denying his existence. For if, as the materialist maintains, the only intelligence of which we have any experience be a conse- quent of matter, — on this hypothesis, he not only cannot assume this order to be reversed in the relations of an intelli- gence beyond his observation, but, if he argue logically, he must positively conclude, that, as in mtm, so in the universe, the pha^nomena of intelligence or design are only in their last analysis the products of a brute necessity. Psychological ma- terialism, if carried out fully and fairly to its conclusions, thus inevitably results in theological atheism ; as it has been well expressed by Dr. Henry More, nuUus in microcosmo spin'tus, nullus in macrocosmo Dens. I do not, of course, mean to assert that all materialists deny, or actually disbelieve, a God. For, UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. 19 in very many cases, this would be at once an unmerited compli- ment to their reasoning, and an unmerited reproach to their faith. Second condition of the proof of a Deity. — Such is the man- ifest dependence of our theology on our psychology in refer- ence to the first condition of a Deity, — the absolute priority of a free intelligence. But this is perhaps even more con- spicuous in relation to the second, that the universe is gov- erned not merely by physical but by moral laws ; for God is only God inasnuich as he is the Moral Governor of a Moral World. Our interest, also, in its establishment is incomparably greater ; for while a proof that the universe is the work of an omnipotent intelligence, gratifies only our speculative curiosity, — a proof that there is a holy legislator, by whom goodness and felicity will be ultimately brought into accordance, is necessary to satisfy both our intellect and our heart. A God is, indeed, to us, only of practical interest, inasmuch as he is the condition of our iramortaUty. Now, it is self-evident, in the first place, that, if there be no moral world, there can be no moral governor of such a world ; and, in the second, that we have, and can have, no ground on which to believe in the reality of a moral world, except in so far as we ourselves are moral agents. This being undeniable, it is further evident, that, should we ever be convinced that we are not moral agents, we should likewise be convinced that there exists no moral order in the universe, and no supreme intelli- gence by which that moral order is established, sustained, and regulated. Theology is thus again wholly dependent on Psychology; for, with the proof of the moral nature of man, stands or falls the proof of the existence of a Deity.* * [It is chiefly, if not solely, to explain the one phenomenon of morality, — of freewill, that we are warranted in assuming a second and hyperphysi- cal substance, in an immaterial principle of thought ; for it is only on the supposition of a moral liberty in man, that we can attempt to vindicate, as truths, a moral order, and, consequently, a moral governor in the universe ; 20 UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. Wherehi the moral ageiicy of man consists. — But in what does the character of man as a moral agent consist ? Man is a moral agent only as he is accountable for his actions, — in other words, as he is the object of praise or blame ; and this he is, only inasnuK'h as he has prescribed to him a rule of duty, and as he is able to act, or not to act, in conformity with its precepts. The possibility of morality thus depends on the possibility of liberty ; for, if man be not a free agent, he is not the author of his actions, and has, therefore, no responsibility, — no moral personahty at all. How philosophy establishes human liberty, — Now the study of Philosophy, or mental science, operates in three ways to establish that assurance of human liberty, which is necessary for a rational belief in our own moral nature, in a moral world, and in a moral ruler of that world. In the first place, an atten- tive consideration of the phienomena of mind is requisite in order to a luminous and distinct apprehension of hberty as a fact or datum of intelligence. For though, without philosophy, a natu- ral conviction of free a^encv lives and works in the recesses of every human mind, it requires a process of philosophical thought to brinsT this conviction to clear consciousness and scientific cer- tainty. In the second place, a profound philosophy is necessary and it is only on the hypothesis of a soul within us, that we can assert the reality of a God above us. In the hands of the materialist, or physical necessitarian, every argument for the existence of a Deity is eitlicr annulled or reversed into a demonsti-a- tiou of atheism. In his hands, with the moral worth of man, the inference to a moral ruler of a moral universe is gone. In his hands, the argument from the adaptations of end and mean, everywhere apparent in existence, to the primar)^ causality of intelligence and liberty, if applied, establishes, in fact, the primary causality of necessity and matter. For, as this argument is only an extension to the universe of the analojry obser\'ed in man ; if in man, desi^^n, intelligence, be only a i)henomenon of matter, only a retlex of orjranization ; this consecution of lirst and second in us, extended to the universal order of things, reverses the absolute priority of intelligence to matter; that is, subverts the fundamental condition of a Deity. Thus it is, that our theology is necessarily founded on our psychology ; that we must recognize a God in our own minds, before we can detect a God in the universe of nature.] — Discussions. UTILITY' OF THE STUDY' OF PHILOSOPHY. 21 to obviate the difficulties which meet us when we attempt to explain the possibility of this fact, and to prove that the datum of liberty is not a mere iUusion. For though an unconquerable feehng compels us to recognize ourselves as a<;countable, and therefore free, agents, still, when we attempt to realize in thought how the fact of our liberty can be, we soon find that this altogether transcends our understanding, and that every effort to bring the fact of liberty within the compass of our con- ceptions, only results in the substitution in its place of some more or less disguised form of necessity. For, — if I may be allowed to use expressions which many of you cannot be sup- posed at present to understand, — we are only able to conceive a thmg, inasmuch as we conceive it under conditions; while the possibility of a free act supposes it to be an act which is not conditioned or determined. The tendency of a superficial phi- losophy IS, tlierefore, to deny the fact of liberty, on the principle that what cannot be conceived is impossible. A deeper and more compreliensive study of the facts of mind overturns this conclusion, and disprove^ its foundation. It shows tha^— so far from the principle being true, that what is inconceivable is nnpossible, — on the contrary, all that is conceivable is a mean between two contradictory extremes, both of which are incon- ceivable, but of which, as mutually repugnant, one or the other must be true. Thus philosophy, in demonstrating that the hmits of thought are not to be assumed as the limits of possibil- ity, while it admits the weakness of our discursive intellect reestablishes the authority of consciousness, and vindicates the' veracity of our primitive convictions. It proves to us, from the very laws of mind, that while we can never understand how any onginal datum of intelligence is possible, we have no reason from this inability to doubt that it is true. A learned ignorance IS thus the end of philosophy, as it is the beginning of tlieology. In the third i)lace, the study of mind is necessary to counter- balance and correct the influence of the study of matter ; and this utility of metaphysics rises in proportion to the progress of the natural sciences, and to the greater attention which °they engross. 22 UTILITY OF THE STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY. Twofold evil of exclusive physical study. — An exclusive de- votion to physical pursuits exerts an evil influence in two ways. In the first place, it diverts from all notice of the pha?nomena of moral liberty, which are revealed to us in the recesses of the human mind alone ; and it disqualifies from appreciating the import of these pha^nomena, even if presented, by leaving un- cultivated the finer power of psychological reflection, in the exclusive exercise of the faculties employed in the easier and more arauBinjx observation of the external world. In the second place, by exhibiting merely the pha^nomena of matter and exten- sion, it habituates us only to the contemplation of an order in which every thing is determined by the laws of a blind or me- chanical necessity. Now, what is the inevitable tendency of this one-sided and exclusive study ? That the student becomes a materialist, if he speculate at all. For, in the first place, he is familiar with the obtrusive facts of necessity, and is unaccus- tomed to develop into consciousness the more recondite facts of liberty ; he is, therefore, disposed to disbelieve in the existence of ph|^nomena whose reality he may deny, and whose possibility he cannot understand. At the same time, the love of unity, and the pliilosophical presumption against the multiplication of es- sences, deteraiine him to reject the assumption of a second, and that an hypothetical, substance, — ignorant as he is of the rea- sons by wliich that assumption is legitimated. In the infancy of science, this tendency of physical study was not experienced. "V^Tien men first turned their attention on the phienomena of nature, every event was viewed as a miracle, for every effect was considered as the operation of an intelligence. Golied to skill in handicraft, yet properly denoted speculative, not practical, wisdom or |)rudcnce. Pythagoras, w^e men all make our entrance into this life on our departure from another. Some are here occupied in the pur- suit of honors, others in the search of riches ; a few there are who, indifferent to all else, devote themselves to an inquiry into the nature of things. These, then, are they whom I call stu- dents of wisdom, for such is meant by philosopher. The anecdote rests on very slender authority. It is proba- ble, I think, that Socrates was the first who adopted, or, at least, the first who familiarized, the expression. It was natural that he should be anxious to contradistinguish himself from the Sophists {ol ooqioi, ol aocpioral), literally, the wise men ; and no term could more appropriately ridicule the arrogance of these pretenders, or afford a happier contrast to their haughty desig- nation, than that of philosopher (i. e. the lover of wisdom) ; and, at the same time, it is certain that the substantives (^iXooocfia and q}i}.66oqog first appear in the writings of the Socratic school. It is true, indeed, that the verb qiiXoGoqjeiv is found in Herodotus, in the address by Croesus to Solon ; and that, too, in a participial form, to designate the latter as a man who had travelled abroad for the purpose of acquiring knowledge. It is, therefore, not impossible that, before the time of Socrates, those w^ho devoted themselves to the pursuit of the higher branches of knowledge, were occasionally designated philoso- phers : but it is far more probable that Socrates and his school first appropriated the term as a distinctive appellation ; and that the w^ord philosophy, in consequence of this appropriation, came to be employed for the complement of all higher knowl- edge, and, more especially, to denote the science conversant about the principles or causes of existence. The term philosophy, I may notice, which was originally assumed in modesty, soon lost its Socratic and etymological signification, and returned to the meaning of crogi/a, or wisdom. Quintilian calls it nomen inso- lentissimum ; Seneca, nomen invidiosum ; Epictetus counsels his scholars not to call themselves " Philosophers ; " and proud is one of the most ordinary epithets with which philosophy is now associated. Philosophy — the thing — its definitions. — So much for the m 30 NATURE AND COMPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHY. name signifying ; we proceed now to the thing signified. Were I to detail the various definitions of philosophy wliich philoso- phers have promulgated — far more, were I to explain the grounds pn which the author of each maintains the exclusive adequacy of his peculiar definition — I should, in the present stage of your progress, only perplex and confuse you. All such definitions are (if not positively erroneous), either so vague that they afford no precise knowledge of their object ; or they are so partial, that they exclude what they ought to com- prehend ; or they are of such a nature that tliey supply no pre- liminary information, and are only to be understood (if ever), after a knowledge has been acquired of that which they profess to explain. It is, indeed, perhaps impossible adequately to define philosophy. For what is to be defined comprises what cannot be included in a single definition. For philosophy is not regarded from a siiigJe point of view ; — it is sometimes consid- ered as theoretical, — that is, in relation to man as a thinking and cognitive intelligence ; sometimes as practical, — that is, in relation to man as a moral agent ; — and sometimes, as compre- hending both theory and practice. Again, philosophy may either be regarded objectively, that is, as a complement of truths known ; or subjectively, — that is, as a habit or quality of the mind knowing. In these circumstances, I shall not attempt a definition of i)hilosophy, but shall endeavor to accomplish the end which every definition proposes, — make you understand, as precisely as the unprecise nature of the object-matter per- mits, what is meant by philosophy, and what are the sciences it properly comprehends within its sphere. Definitions in Greek antiquity. — As a matter of history, I may here, however, parentlietically mention, that in Greek antiquity, there were, in all, six definitions of philosophy which obtained celebrity. The first and second define philosophy from its object matter, — that wliich it is about ; the third and fourth, from its end, — that for the sake of which it is ; the fifth, from its relative preeminence ; and the sixth, from its ety- mology. The first of these definitions of philosophy is, — " the knowl- NATURE AND COMPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHY. 31 edge of tilings existent as existent." The second is, — "the knowledge of tilings divine and human." These are both from the object-matter ; and both were referred to Pythagoras. The third and fourth, the two definitions of philosoj^hy from its end, are, again, both taken from Plato. Of these, the third is, — " philosophy is a meditation of death ; " the fourth, — " philosophy is a resembling of the Deity in so far as that is competent to man." The fifth, that from its preeminence, was borrowed from Aristotle, and defined philosophy " the art of arts, and science of sciences." Finally, the sixth, that from the etymology, was, like the first and second, carried up to Pythagoras ; — it defined philosophy " the love of wisdom." To these a seventh and even an eighth were sometimes added; — but the seventh was that by the physicians, who defined medicine the philosophy of bodies, and philosophy the medicine of souls. This was derided by the philosophers ; as, to speak with Homer, being an exchange of brass for gold, and of gold for brass, and as defining the more known by the less known. Tiie eighth is from an expression of Plato, who, in the Theaitetus, calls pliilosophy " the greatest music," meaning thereby the harmony of the rational, irascible, and appetent part5 of the soul. What Philosophy is. — But to return : All philosophy is knowledge, but all knowledge is not philosophy. Philosophy is, therefore, a kind of knowledge. Philosophical and empirical hioidedge. — What, then, is philosoi)liical knowledge, and how is it discriminated from knowled^ in general ? We are endowed by our Creator with certain faculties of observation, which enable us to become aware of certain appearances or phnenomena. These faculties may be stated as two, — Sense, or External Perception, and Self-Consciousness, or Internal Perception ; and these faculties severally affortl us the knowledge of a different series of phte- nomena. Througli our senses, we apprehend what exists, or what occurs, in the external or material world ; by our self- 32 NATURE AND CO^IPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHY. NATURE AND COMPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHY. 33 consciousness?, we apprehend what is, or what occurs, in the internal world, or world of thought. What is the extent, and what the certainty, of the knowledge acquired through sense and self-consciousness, we do not at present consider. It is now sufficient that the simple fact be admitted, that we do actually thus know ; and that fact is so manifest, that it re- quires, I presume, at my hands, neither proof nor illustration. The information v/hich we thus receive, — that certain plue- nomena are, or have been, is called Historical or Empirical knowledge. It is called historical, because, in this knowledge, we know only the fact, only that the phajnomenon is ; for his- tory is properly only the nan-ation of a consecutive series of pha^nomena in time, or the description of a coexistent series of pha^nomena in space. Civil history is an example of the one ; natural history, of the other. It is called empirical or experien- tial, if we might use that term, because it is given us by expe- rience or observation, and not obtained as the result of infer- ence or reasonmt;. By-meaning of the term empirical. — I may notice, by paren- thesis, that you must discharge from your minds the by-meaning accidentally associated with the word empiric^ or empirical, in common English. This term is, with us, more familiarly used in reference to medicine, and from its fortuitous employment in that science, in a certain sense, the word empirical has unfortu- nately acquired, in our language, a one-sided and an unfavora- ble meaning. Of the origin of this meaning many of you may not be aware. You are aware, however, that t^iTteiQta is the Greek term for experience, and tuTTFiQi-xo^ an epithet applied to one who uses experience. Now, among the Greek physicians, there arose a sect who, professing to employ experience alone, to the exclusion of generalization, analogy, and reasoning, de- nominated themselves distinctively ot tfiTieiQC/.oi — the Empirics. The opposite extreme was adopted by another sect, who, reject- ing observation, founded their doctrine exclusively on reasoning and theory; — and these called themselves o'l ^i8\}odr^oi — or Methodists. A third school, of whom Galen was the head, opposed equally to the two extreme sects of the Empirics and of the Methodists, and, availing themselves both of experience and reasoning, were styled ol ^oyiiaimoi — the Dogmatists, or rational physicians. A keen controversy arose ; the Empirics were defeated ; they gradually died out ; and their doctrine, of which nothing is known to us, except through the writings of their adversaries, has probably been painted in blacker colors than it deserved. Be this, however, as it may, the word was first naturalized in Enghsh, at a time when the Galenic works were of paramount authority in medicine, as a term of medical import — of medical rei)roach; and the collateral meaning, which it had accidentally obtained in that science, was asso- ciated with an unfavorable signification, so that an Empiric, in common English, has been long a synonyme for a charlatan or quack-doctor, and, by a very natural extension, in general, for any ignorant pretender in science. In philosophical language, the tenn empirical means simply what belongs to, or is the pro duct of, exj^erience or observation, and, in contrast to another term afterwards to be explained, is now technically in general use through every other country of Europe. Were there any other word to be found of a corresponding signification in Eng- lish, it would perhaps, in consequence of the by-meaning attached to empirical, be expedient not to employ this latter. But there is not. Experiential fs not in common use, and experimental only designates a certam kind of experience — namely, that in which the fact observed has been brought about by a certain intentional preaiTangement of its coefficients. But this by the way. Empirical knowledge. — Returning, then, from our digi-ession : Historical or empirical knowledge is simply the knowledge that something is. Were we to use the expression, the knowledge that, it would sound awkward and unusual in our modern lan- guages. In Greek, the most philosophical of all tongues, its parallel, however, was familiarly employed, more especially in the Aristotelic philosophy, in contrast to another knowledge of which we are about to speak. It was called the to on, rj yvaGig on loriv. I should notice, that with us, the knowledge that, is commoidy called the knowledge of the fact. As examples of m 34 NATURE AND COMPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHY. empirical knowledge, take the facts, whether known on our own experience or on the tegtified experience of others, — that a stone falls, — that smoke ascends, — that the leaves bud in spring and fall in autumn, — that such a book contains such a passage, — that such a passage contains such an opinion, — that Cffisar, that Charlemagne, that Napoleon, existed. [Empirical is also used in contrast with Necessary knowledge ; the former signifying the knowledge simply of what is, the latter of what must be.] Philosophical hioidedge — what. — But things do not exist, events do not occur, isolated, — apart — by themselves; they exist, they occur, and are by us conceived, only in connection. Our observation affords us no example of a pha^nomenon which is not an effect ; nay, our thought cannot even realize to itself the possibility of a pha?nomenon without a cause. We do not at present inquire into the nature of the connection of effect and cause, — either in reality, or in thought. It is sufficient for our present purpose to observe that, while, by the constitution of our nature, we are unable to conceive any thing to begin to be, without referring it to some cause, — still the knowledge of its particular cause is not involved in the knowledge of any particular effect. By this necessity which we are under, of thinking some cause for every phienomenon ; and by our origi- nal ignorance of what particular causes belong to what i)articular effects, — it is rendered impossible for us to acquiesce in the mere knowledge of the fact of a pluTnomenon : on the contrary, we are determined, — we are necessitated, to regard each i)hfE- nomenon as only partially known, until we discover the causes on which it depends for its existence. For example, we are struck with the appearance in the heavens called a rainbow. Think we cannot that this phtenomenon has no cause, though we may be wholly ignorant of what that cause is. Now, our knowledge of the phienomenon as a mere fact, — as a mere isolated event, — does not content us ; we therefore set about an inquiry into the cause, — which the constitution of our mind compels us to suppose, — and at length, discover that the rain- bow is the effect of the refraction of the solar rays by the watery NATURE AND COMPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHY. 35 particles of a cloud. Having ascertained the cause, but not till then, we are satisfied that we fully know the effect. Now, this knowledge of the cause of a phgenomenon is differ- ent from, is something more than, the knowledge of that phae- nomenon simply as a fact ; and these two cognitions or knowl- edges have, accordingly, received different names. The latter, we have seen, is called historical or empirical knowledge ; the former is called philosophical, or scientijic, or rational knowl- edge. Historical, is the knowledge that a thing is — philo- sophical, is the knowledge why or how it is. And as the Greek language, with peculiar felicity, expresses historical knowledge by the on — the yvaoig on tan : so, it well expresses philo- sophical knowledge by the dion — the yvaatg dion ean, though here its relative superiority is not the same. To recapitulate what has now been stated : — There are two kinds or degrees of knowledge. The first is a knowledge that a thing is — on XQiinid tan, retn esse ; — and it is called the knowledge of the fact, historical or empirical knowledge. The second is a knowl- edge Avhy or how a thing is, dion XQW^ ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ **^^* — ^^^ is termed the knowledge of the cause, philosophical, scientific, rational knowledge. Philosophy implies a search after first causes. — Philosophical knowledge, in the widest acceptation of the term, and as synony- mous with science, is thus the knowledge of effects as dependent on their causes. Now, what does this imply? In the first place, as every cause to which we can ascend is itself also an effect, — it follows that it is the scope, that is, the aim of phi- losophy, to trace up the series of effects and causes, until we arrive at causes which are not also themselves effects. These first causes do not indeed lie within the reach of philosophy, nor even within the sphere of our comprehension ; nor, consequently, on the actual reaching them does the existence of philosophy depend. But as philosophy is the knowledge of effects in their causes, the tendency of philosophy is ever upwards ; and phi- losophy can, in thought, in theory, only be viewed as accom- plished, — which in reality it never can be, — when the ultimate causes, — the causes on which all other causes depend, — have been attained and understood. 36 NATURE AND COMPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHY. NATURE AND COMPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHY. 37 But, in the second place, as every effect is only produced by the concurrence of at least two causes (and by cause, be it ob- served, I mean ei'ery thing without which the effect could not he realized)^ and as these concurring or coefiicient causes, in fact, constitute the effect, it follows, that the lower we descend in the series of causes, the more complex will be the product ; and that the higher we ascend, it will be the more sim])le. Let us take, for example, a neutral salt. This, as you probably know, is the product, the combination, of an alkali and an acid. Now, considering the salt as an effect, what are the concurrent causes, — the co-efficients, — which constitute it w hat it is ? These arejjfrst, the acid, with its affinity to the alkali ; secondly, the alkali, with its affinity to the acid ; and thirdly, the trans- lating force (perhaps the human hand) which made their affin- ities available, by bringing the two bodies within the sphere of mutual attraction. Each of these three concurrents must be considered as a })artial cause ; for, abstract any one, and the effect is not produced. Now, these three partial causes are each of them again effects ; but effects evidently less complex than the effect which they, by their concurrence, constituted. But each of these three constituents is an effect ; and therefore to be analyzed into its causes ; and these causes again into others, until the procedure is checked by our inal)ility to resolve the last constituent into simpler elements. But, though thus unable to carr^' our analysis beyond a limited extent, we neither conceive, nor are we able to conceive, the constituent in which our analysis is arrested, as itself any thing but an effect. We therefore carry on the analysis in imagination ; and as each step in the })rocedure carries us from the more complex to the more simple, and. rnn ^;equently, nearer to unity, we at last arrive at that unitv i. • i. — at that ultimate cause which, as ultimate, cannot again be conceived as an effect.* * I may notice that an ultimate cause, and a first cause, are the same, but viewed in different relations. What is called the ultimate cause in as- cending from effects to causes, — that is, in the regressive order, is called the first cause in descending from causes to effects, — that is, in the pro- gressive order. Philosophy thus, as the knowledge of effects in their causes, necessarily tends, not towards a plurality of ultimate or first causes, but towards one alone. This first cause, — the Creator, it can mdeed never reach, as an object of immediate knowl- edge ; but, as the convergence towards unity in the ascending series is manifest, in so far as that series is within our view, and as it is even impossible for the mind to suppose the convergence not continuous and complete, it follows, — unless all analogy be rejected, — unless our intelligence be declared a lie, — that we must, philosophically, believe in that ultimate or primary unity which, in our present existence, we are not destined in itself to apprehend. Such is philosophical knowledge in its most extensive signifi- cation ; and, in this signification, all the sciences, occupied in the research of causes, may be viewed as so many branches of philosophy. There is, however, one section of these sciences which is denominated philosophical by preeminence ; — sci- ences which the tenn philosophy exclusively denotes, when employed in propriety and rigor. What these sciences are, and why the term philosophy has been specially limited to them, I shall now endeavor to make you understand. Man's knowledge relative. — " Mmi," says Protagoras, " is the measure of the universe ; " and, in so far as the universe is an object of human knowledge, the paradox is a truth. Whatever we know, or endeavor to know, God or the world, — mind or matter, — the distant or the near, — we know, and can know, only in so far as we possess a faculty of knowing in general ; and we can only exercise that faculty under the laws which control and limit its operations. However great, and infinite, and various, therefore, may be the universe and its contents, — these are known to us, not as they exist, but as our mind is capable of knowhig them. Hence the brocard — " Quiequid recipitur, recii)itur ad modum recipientis." In the first place, therefore, as philosophy is a knowledge, and as all knowledge is only possible under the conditions to which our faculties are subjected, — the grand, the primary, problem of philosophy must be to investigate and determine 4 \ 38 NATURE A.ND COMPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHY. these conditions, as the necessary conditions of its own possi- bility. The study of mind the Jirst ohject of philosophy. — In the second place, as philosophy is not merely a knowledge, but a knowledge of causes, and as the mind itself is the universal and principal concurrent cause in every act of knowledge ; phi- losophy is, consequently, bound to make the mind its first and paramount object of consideration. The study of mind is thus the philosophical study by preeminence. There is no branch of philosophy which does not suppose this as its preliminary, which does not borrow from this its light. A considerable number, indeed, are only the science of mind viewed in particu- lar aspects^ or considered in certain special applications. Logic, for example, or the science of the laws of thought, is only a fragment of the general science of mind, and presupposes a certain knowledge of the operations which are regulated by these laws. Ethics is the science of the laws which govern our actions as moral agents ; and a knowledge of these laws is only possible through a knowledge of the moral agent himself. Political science, in like manner, supposes a knowledge of man in his natural constitution, in order to appreciate the modifica- tions which he receives, and of which he is susceptible, in social and civil life. The Fine Arts have all their foundation in the theory of the beautiful ; and this theory is afforded by that part of the philosophy of mind, which is conversant with the phae- nomena of feeling. Religion, Theology, in fine, is not inde- pendent of the same philosophy. For as God only exists for us as we have faculties capable of apprehending his existence, and of fulfilling his behests, nay, as the phcenomena from which we are warranted to infer his being are wholly mental, the exam- ination of these faculties and of these pha^nomena is, conse- quently, the primary condition of every sound theology. In short, the science of mind, whether considered in itself, or in relation to the other branches of our knowledge, constitutes the principal and most important object of j)hilosophy, — consti- tutes in propriety, with its suit of dependent sciences, philoso- phy itself. NATURE AND COMPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHY. 39 Misapplication of the term Philosophy in England. — The Umitation of the term Philosophy to the sciences of mmd, when not expressly extended to the other branches of science, has been always that generally prevalent ; — yet it must be confessed that, in this country, the word is applied to subjects with which, on the continent of Europe, it is rarely, if ever, associated. With us, the word philosophy, taken by itself, does not call up the precise and limited notion which it does to a German, a Hollander, a Dane, an Italian, or a Frenclmian ; and we are obliged to say the philosophy of mind, if we do not wi^ it to be vaguely extended to the sciences conversant with the pha^nomena of matter. We not only call Physics by the name of Natural Philosophy, but every mechanical process has with us its philosophy. We have books on the pliilosophy of Manufactures, the philosophy of Agriculture, the philosophy of Cookery, etc. In all this we are the ridicule of other nations. Socrates,' it is said, brought down philosophy from the clouds,— the EngUsh have degraded her to the kitchen ; and this, our prostitution of the term, is, by foreigners, alleged as a sig- nificant indication of the low state of the mental sciences m Britain. From what has been said, you will, without a definition, be able to form at least a general notion of what is meant by plii- losophy. In its more extensive signification, it is equivalent to a Inoioledge of things hy their causes, — and this is, in fact, Ai-istotle's definition ; while, in its stricter meaning, it is con- fined to the sciences which constitute, or hold immediately of, the science of mind. CHAPTER III. THE CAUSES OF PHILOSOPHY, AND THE DISPOSITIONS ^TITH WHICH IT OUGHT TO BE STUDIED. The causes of philosophy. — Having thus endeavored to make you vaguely apprehend what cannot be precisely under- stood, — the Nature and Comprehension of Philosophy, — I now proceed to another question, — AVliat are the Causes of Philosophy ? The causes of philosophy lie in the original ele- ments of our constitution. AVe are created with the faculty of knowledge, and, consequently, created with the tendency to exert it. Man philosophizes as he lives. He may philosophize well or ill, but philosophize he must. Philosoi)hy can, indeed, only be assailed through philosophy itself. " If," says Ai-istotle, in a passage preserved to us by Olymplodorus, *' we must phi- losophize, we must philosophize ; if we must not philosophize, we must philosophize ; — in any case, therefore, we must phi- losophize." " Were philosophy," says Clement of Alexandria, " an evil, still philosophy is to be studied, in order that it may be scientifically contemned." And Averroes, — " Philosophi solum est spemere philosoi)hiam." Of the causes of philoso- phy some are, therefore, contahied in man's very capacity for knowledge ; these are essential a?id necessary. But there are others, again, which lie in certain fcehngs with which he is endowed ; these are complementary and assistant. Essential Causes of Philosophy. — Of tlie former class, that is, of the essential causes, — there are in all two: the one is, the necessity we feel to connect Causes tvith Effects; the other, to carry up our knowledye into Unity. These tendencies, however, if not identical in their origin, coincide in their result ; for, as I have previously explained to you, in ascending from (40) THE CAUSES OF PHILOSOPHY. 41 cause to cause, we necessai-ily (could we carry our analysis to its issue), arrive at absolute unity. Indeed, were it not a dis- cussion for which you are not as yet prepared, it might be shown, that both principles origmate in the same condition ; — that both emanate, not from any original power, but from the same original powerlessness of mind. 1. The principle of Cause and Effect. — O^ the former,— namely, the tendency, or rather the necessity, whiar- ticular tacts to general laws, from general laws to universal principles, is never satisfied in its ascent till it comprehend • causes to contain all that is contained in the effect ; the effect to contain nothing but what is contained in tlic causes. Each is the sum of tlie other. " Omuia mutantur, nihil intent."] — Discussions. (what, however, it can never do) all laws in a single formula, and consummate all conditional knowledge in the unity of un- conditional existence. Nor is it only in science that the mind desiderates the one. We seek it equally in works of art. A work of art is only deserving of the name, inasmuch as an idea of the work has preceded its execution, and inasmuch as it is itself a realization of the ideal model in sensible forms. All languages express the mental operations by words which denote a reduction of the many to the one. ^vv^aig, TteQihjXVig, Gvvai- c&riaig, (rvvemyvaat^, etc. in Greek ; — in Latin, cogere, (co-agere), cogitare, {co-agitare), concipere, cognoscere, comprehendere, con- scire, with their derivatives, may serve for examples. Testimonies to the love of Unity. — The histoiy of philoso- phy is only the history of this tendency ; and philosophers have amply testified to its reality. " The mind," says Anaxagoras, " only knows when it subdues its objects, when it reduces the manv to the one." " All knowledge," say the Platonists, " is the gathering up into one, and the indivisible apprehension of this unity by the knowing mind." Leibnitz and Kant have, i'l like manner, defined knowledge by the representation of ^ .alti- tude in unity. " The end of philosophy," says Plato, " is the intuition of unity ; " and Plotinus, among many others, observes that our knowledge is perfect as it is one. The love of unity is by Ai-istotle applied to solve a multitude of psychological phoenomena. St. Augustin even analyzes pain into a feeUng of the frustration of unity. " Quid est enim aliud dolor, nisi quidam sensus divisionis vel corruptionis impatiens ? Unde luce clarius ai)paret, quam sit ilia anima in sui corporis universitate avida unitatis et tenax." Love of unity a guiding principle in philosophy. — This love of unity, this tendency of mmd to generalize its knowledge, leads us to anticipate in nature a corresponding uniformity; and as this anticipation is found in harmony with experience, it not only affords the efficient cause of philosophy, but the guiding principle to its discoveries. " Thus, for instance, when it is observed that solid bodies are compressible, we are inclined to expect that liquids will be found to be so likewise ; we sub- 44 THE CAUSES OF PHILOSOPHY. THE CAUSES OF PHILOSOPHY. 45 ject tliem, consequently, to a series of experiments ; nor do we rest satisfied until it be proved that this quality is common to both classes of substances. Compressibility is then proclaimed a physical law, — a law of nature in general ; and we experi- ence a vivid gratification in this recognition of unconditioned universality." Another example ; Kant, reflecting on the dif- ferences among the planets, or rather among the stars revolving round the sun, and having discovered that these differences be- trayed a unifonn progress and proportion, — a proportion which was no longer to be found between Saturn and the first of the comets, — the law of unity and the analogy of nature, led him to conjecture that, in the intervening space, there existed a star, the discovery of which would vindicate the universality of the law.* This anticipation was verified. Uranus was discovered by Herschel, and our dissatisfaction at the anomaly appeased. Frankhn, in like manner, surmised that lightnmg and the electric spark were identical ; and when he succeeded in verifying this conjecture, our love of unity was gratified. From the moment an isolated fact is discovered, we endeavor to refer it to other facts which it resembles. Until this be accomplished, we do not view it as understood. This is the ease, for example, with sulphur, which, in a certain degree of temperature melts like other bodies, but at a higher degree of heat, instead of evapo- rating, again consolidates. When a fact is generalized, our discontent is quieted, and we consider the generality itself as tan- tamount to an explanation. Why does this apple fall to the ground? Because all bodies gravitate towards each other. Ai-rived at this general fact^ve inquire no more, although igno- rant now as previously of the cause of gravitation ; for gravi- tation is nothing more than a name for a general fact, the why of which we know not. A mystery, if recognized as universal, would no longer appear mysterious. * Kant's conjecture was founded on a supposed progressive increase in the eccentricities of the planetary orbits. This progression, however, is only true of Venus, the Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn. The eccentricity di- minishes aji:ain in Uranus, and still more in Neptune. Subsequent discov- eries have tiius rather weakened than confiraied the ihaoi-y. — Eiujlish Editors. 'f The love of unity also a source of error. — " But this thirst of unity," as Gamier remarks, " this tendency of mhid to gen- eralize its knowledge, and our concomitant belief in the uni- formity of natural phaenomena, is not only an effective mean of discovery, but likewise an abundant source of error. Hardly is there a similarity detected between two or three facts, than men hasten to extend it to all others ; and if, perchance, the similarity has been detected by ourselves, self-love closes our eyes to the contradictions which our theory may encounter from experience." " I have heard," says Condillac, " of a phi- losopher who had the happiness of thinking that he had dis- covered a principle which was to explain all the wonderful pha?nomena of chemistry, and who, in the ardor of his self- gratulation, hastened to communicate his discovery to a skilful chemist. The chemist had the kindness to listen to him, and then calmly told him that there was but one unfortunate circum- stance for his discovery, — that the chemical facts were precisely the converse of what he had supposed them to be. 'Well, then,' said the philosopher, ' have the goodness to tell me Avhat they are, that I may explain them on my system.' " We are naturally disposed to refer every thing we do not know to prin- ciples with which we are familiar. As Aristotle observes, the early Pythagoreans, who first studied arithmetic, were induced, by their scientific predilections, to explain the problem of the universe by the properties of number ; and he notices also that a certain musical philosopher was, in Uke manner, led to suppose that the soul was but a kind of harmony. The musician sug- gests to my recollection a passage of Dr. Reid. " Mr. Locke," says he, " mentions an eminent musician who believed that God created the world in six days, and rested the seventh, because there are but seven notes in music. I myself," he continues, "knew one of that profession who thought there could be only three parts in harmony — to wit, bass, tenor, and treble ; be- cause there are but three persons in the Trinity." The alche- mists would see in nature only a single metal, clothed with the different appearances which we denominate gold, silver, copper, iron, mercury, etc., and they confidently explained the mysteries. 46 THE CAUSES OF PHILOSOPHY. THE CAUSES OF PHILOSOPHY. 47 not only of nature, but of religion, by salt, sulphur, and mer- cury. Some of our modern zoologists recoil from the possibility of nature working on two different plans, and rather than renounce the unity which delights them, they insist on recogniz- ing the wings of insects in the gills of fishes, and the sternum of quadrupeds in the antennie of buttei*flies ; — and all this that they may prove that man is only the evolution of a molluscum ! Descartes saw in the physical world only matter and motion ; and, more recently, it has been maintained that thought itself is only a movement of matter. Of all the faculties of the mind, CondiUac recognized only one, which transfoimed itself like the Protean metal of the alchemists ; and he maintains that our belief in the rising of to-morrow's sun is a sensation. It is this tendency, indeed, which has principally determined philosophers, as w^e shall hereafter see, to neglect or violate the original duality of consciousness ; in which, as an ultimate fact, — a self and not-self, — mind knowing and matter known, — are given in counterpoise and mutual opposition; and hence the three Unitarian schemes of Materiahsm, Ideahsm, and Absolute Identity. In fine. Pantheism, or the doctrine which identifies mind and matter, — the Creator and the creature, God and the universe, — how are we to explain the prevalence of this modi- fication of atheism in the most ancient and in the most recent times ? Simply because it carries our love of unity to its high- est fruition. Influence of preconceived opinion reducible to love of unity. — To this love of unity — to this desire of reducing the objects of our knowledge to harmony and system — a source of truth and discovery if subservient to observation, but of error and delusion if allowed to dictate to observation what phaenomena are to be perceived ; to this principle, I say, we may refer the influence which preconceived opinions exercise upon our perceptions and our judgments, by inducing us to see and require only what is in uni.-on with them. What we wish, says Demosthenes, that we beheve ; what we expect, says Ai'istotle, that we find ; — truths which have been reechoed by a thousand confessors, and confirmed by ten thousand examples. Opinions once adopted become part of the intellectual system of their holders. If op- posed to prevalent doctrines, self-love defends them as a point of honor, exaggerates whatever may confirm, overlooks or ex- tenuates whatever may contradict. Again, if accepted as a general doctrine, they are too often recognized, in consequence of their prevalence, as indisputable truths, and all counter ap- pearances peremptorily overruled as manifest illusions. Thus it is that men will not see in the phopnomena what alone is to be seen ; in theii* observations they interi)olate and they expunge ; and this mutilated and adulterated product they call a fact. And why ? Because the real phnenomcna, if admitted, would spoil the pleasant music of their thoughts, and convert its facti- tious harmony into discord. " Quai volunt sapiunt, et nolunt sapere qme vera sunt." In consequence of this, many a system, professing to be reared exclusively on observation and fact, rests in reality mainly upon hypothesis and fiction. A pretended ex- perience is, indeed, the screen behind which every illusive doc- trine regularly retires. "There are more I'alse facts," says Cullen, " current in the world, than false theories ; " — and the hvery of Lord Bacon has been most ostentatiously paraded by many who were no members of his household. Fact, — obser- vation, — induction, have always been the watchwords of those who have dealt most extensively in fancy. It is now above tln-ee centuries since Agrippa, in his Vanity of the Sciences, ob- served of Astrology, Physiognomy, and Metoposcopy (the Phrenology of those days), that experience was professedly their only foundation and tlieir only defence : " Solent omnes illa3 divinationum prodigiosos artes non, nisi experientiae titulo, se defendere et se objectionum vinculis extricare." It was on tliis ground, too, that, at a later period, the great Kepler vindi- cated the first of these arts. Astrology. " For," said he, " how could the principle of a science be fiilse, where experience showed that its predictions were uniformly fulfilled." Now, truth was with Kepler even as a passion ; and his, too, was one of the most powerful intellects that ever cultivated and promoted a Bcience. To him, astronomy, indeed, owes perhaps even more than to Newton. And yet, even his great mind, preoccupied 48 THE CAUSES OF rHILOSOPHY. with a certain prevalent belief, could observe and judge only in conformity with that belief. This tendency to look at realities only through the spectacles of an hypothesis, is perhaps seen most conspicuously in the fortunes of medicine. The history of that science is, in truth, littk^ else than an incredible narrative of the substitution of fictions for facts ; the converts to an hy- pothesis (and every, the most contradictory, doctrine has had its day), regularly seeing and reporting only in conformity with its dictates. The same is also true of the philosophy of mind ; and the variations and alternations in this science, which are perhaps only surpassed by those in medicine, are to be traced to a refusal of the real phienomenon revealed in consciousness, and to the substitution of another, more in unison with preconceived opinions of what it ought to be. Nor, in this commutation of fact with fiction, should we suspect that there is any mala fides. Prejudice, imagination, and passion sufficiently explain the illu- sion. " Fiiigunt simul creduntque." " IVhen," says Kant, " we have once heard a bad report of this or that individual, we m- continently think that we read the rogue in his countenance ; fancy here mingles with observation, wliich is still further vitiated when affection or passion interferes." Auxiliary cause of philosophy — Wonder. — Such are the two intellectual necessities which affiard the two principal sources of pliilosophy : — the intellectual necessity of refunding effects into their causes ; — and the intellectual necessity of carrying up our knowledge into unity or system. But, besides these intellectual necessities, which are involved in the very existence of our faculties of knowledge, there is another powerful subsidi- ary to the same effect, — in a certain affection of our capacities of feeling. This feeling, according to circumstances, is denomi- nated surprise, astonishment, admiration, wonder, and, when blended v»ith the intellectual tendencies we have considered, it obtains the name of curiosity. This feehng, tliough it cannot, as some have held, be allowed to be the princi])al, far less the only, cause of philosophy, is, however, a powerful auxilijiry to speculation ; and, though inadequate to account for the existence of philosophy absolutely, it adequately explains the preference THE CAUSES OF PHILOSOPHY. 49 with which certain parts of philosophy have been cultivated, and the order in which philosophy in general has been devel- oped. We may err both in exaggerating, and in extenuating, its influence. Wonder has been contemptuously called the daughter of ignorance ; true ! but wonder, we should add, is the mother of knowledge. Among others, Plato, Aristotle, Plu- tarch, and Bacon have all concurred in testifying to the influ- ence of this principle. " Admiration," says the Platonic Socrates in the Thecetetus, — " admiration is a highly philosophical affec- tion ; indeed, there is no other principle of philosophy but this." — ^-That philosophy," says Aristotle, "was not originally studied for any practical end, is manifest from those who first began to philosophize. It was, in fact, wonder, which then, as now, determined men to philosophical researches. Among the phienomena presented to them, their admiration was first di- rected to those more proximate and more on a level with their powers, and then, rising by degrees, they came at length to de- mand an explanation of the higher phjienomena, — as the dif- ferent states of the moon, sun, and stars, — and the origin of the universe. Now, to doubt and to be astonished is to recognize our ignorance. Hence it is, that the lover of wisdom is, in a certain sort, a lover of mythi, {^il6nv&6g Ttag) ; for the subject of mythi is the astonishing and marvellous. K, then, men phi- losophize to escape ignorance, it is clear that they pursue knowl- edge on its own account, and not for the sake of any foreign utility. Tills is proved by the fact ; for it was only after all that pertained to the wants, welfare, and conveniences of life had been discovered, that men commenced their philosophical researches. It is, therefore, manifest that we do not study philosophy for the sake of any thing ulterior; and, as we call him a free man who belongs to himself and not to another, so philosophy is, of all sciences, the only free or liberal study, for it alone is unto itself an end." — " It is the business of philosophy," says Plutarch, " to investigate,, to admire, and to doubt." Wonder explains the order in which objects are studied. — We have already remarked, that the principle of wonder 6 50 THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. affords an explanation of the order in which the different objects of philosophy engaged the attention of mankind. The aim of all philosophy is the discovery of principles, that is, of higher causes ; but, in the procedure to this end, men first endeavored to explain those phaenomena which attracted their attention by arousing their wonder. The child is wholly ab- sorbed in the observation of the world without ; the world within first engages the contemplation of the man. As it is with the mdividual, so was it with the species. Philosophy, before attempting the problem of inteUigence, endeavored to resolve the problem of nature. The spectacle of the external universe was too imposing not. first to soUcit curiosity, and to direct upon itself the prelusive efforts of philosophy. Thales and Pythagoras, in whom philosophy finds its earliest represent- atives, endeavored to explain the organization of the universe, and to substitute a scientific for a religious cosmogony. For a season, their successors toiled in the same course ; and it was only after philosophy had tried, and tired, its forces on external nature, that the human mind recoiled upon itself, and sought in the study of its own nature the object and end of philosophy. The mind now became to itself its point of departure, and its principal object ; and its progress, if less ambitious, was more secure. Socrates was he who first decided this new destination of philosophy. From his epoch, man sought in himself the so- lution of the great problem of existence ; and the history of philosophy was henceforward only a development, more or less successful, more or less complete, of the inscription on the Del- phic temple — FvcoOi aeavjov — Know thyself. Havmg informed you, — 1*^, AYhat Pliilosophy is, and 2°, "VYhat are its Causes, I would now say a few words on the Dis- positions with which Philosophy ought to be studied ; for, with- out certain practical conditions, a speculative knowledge of the most perfe(.'t Method of procedure (our next following ques- tion), remains barren and unapplied. *' To attain to a knowledge of ourselves," says Socrates, " we must banish prejudice, passion, and sloth ; " and no one who neglects this precept, can hope to make any progress in the phi- THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. 51 losophy of the human mind, which is only another term for the knowledge of ourselves. First conditio7i, — renunciation of prejudice. — In the first place, then, all prejudices, — that is, all opinions formed on irrational grounds, — ought to be removed. A preliminary doubt is thus the fundamental condition of philosophy ; and the necessity of such a doubt is no less apparent than is its difift- culty. We do not approach the study of philosophy ignorant, but perverted. " There is no one," says Gatien-Arnouh, " who ha^ not grown up under a load of beliefs — beliefs which he owes to the accidents of country and family, to the books he has read, to the society he has frequented, to the education he has received, and, in general, to the circumstances which have con- curred in the formation of his intellectual and moral habits. These beliefs may be true, or they may be false, or, what is more probable, they may be a medley of truths and errors. It is, however, under their mfluence that he studies, and through them, as through a prism, that he views and judges the objects of knowledge. Every thing is therefore seen by him in false colors, and in distorted relations. And this is the reason why philosophy, as the science of truth, requires a renunciation of prejudices {prce-judicia, o'piniones prcE-judicatcs), — that is, conclusions formed without a previous exammation of theii* grounds." In this, Christianity and Philosophy are at one. — In this, if I may without irreverence compare things human with things divine, Christianity and Philosophy coincide, — for truth is equally the end of both. What is the primary condition which our Saviour requires of his disciples ? That they throw off their old prejudices, and come with hearts willing to receive knowledge, and understandings open to conviction. " Unless," He says,°" ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." Such is true religion ; such also is true phibsophy. Philosophy requires an emancipation from the yoke of foreign authority, a renunciation of all blind adhesion to the opinions of our age and country, and a purification of the intellect from all assumptive beliefs. Unless we can cast off 52 THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. the prejudices of the man, and become as children, docile and unperverted, we need never hope to enter the temple of philos- ophy. It is the neglect of this primary condition, which has mainly occasioned men to wander from the unity of truth, and caused the endless variety of religious and philosophical sects. Men would not submit to approach the word of God in order to receive from that alone their doctrine and their faith ; but they came, in general, with preconceived opinions, and, accordingly, each found in revelation only what he was predetermined to find. So, in like manner, is it in philosophy. Consciousness is to the philosopher what the Bible is to the theologian. Both are revelations of the truth ; and both afford the truth to those who are content to receive it, as it ought to be received, with reverence and submission. But as it has, too frequently, fared with the one revelation, so has it with the other. Men tunied, indeed, to consciousness, and professed to regard its authority as paramount ; but they were not content humbly to accept the facts which consciousness revealed, and to establish these with- out retrenchment or distortion, as the only principles of their philosophy ; on the contrary, they came with opinions already formed, with systems ah-eady constructed ; and while they eagerly appealed to consciousness when its data supported theu* conclusions, they made no scruple to overlook, or to misinter- pret, its facts, when these were not in harmony with their spec- ulations. Thus, religion and philosophy, as they both terminate in the same end, so they both depart from the same fundamen- tal condition. But the influence of early prejudice is the more dangerous, inasmuch as this influence is unobtrusive. Few of us are, per- haps, fully aware of how little we owe to ourselves, — how much to the influence of others. Source of the poicer of custom. — ^lan is by nature a social animal. " He is more political," says Aristotle, '^ than any bee or ant." But the existence of society, from a family to a state, supposes a certain harmony of sentiment among its members ; and nature has, accordingly, wisely implanted in us a tendency to assimilate, in opinions and habits of thought, to those with THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. 53 whom we live and act. There is thus, in every society, great or small, a certain gravitation of opinions towards a common centre. As in our natural body, every part has a necessary sjTnpathy with every other, and all together form, by their har- monious conspiration, a healthy whole ; so, in the social body, there is always a strong predisposition, in each of its members, to act and think in unison with the rest. This universal sym- pathy, or fellow-feeling, of our social nature, is the principle of the different spirit dominant in different ages, countries, ranks, sexes, and periods of life. It is the cause why fashions, why political and rehgious enthusiasm, why moral example, either for good or evil, spread so rapidly, and exert so powerful an influence. As men are naturally prone to imitate others, they consequently regard, as important or insignificant, as honorable or disgraceful, as true or false, as good or bad, what those around them consider in the same light. They love and hate what they see others desire and eschew. This is not to be re- gretted ; it is natural, and, consequently, it is right. Indeed, were it otherwise, society could not subsist, for nothing can be more apparent than that mankind in general, destined as they are to occupations incompatible with intellectual cultivation, are wholly incapable of forming opinions for themselves on many of the most important objects of human consideration. If such, however, be the intentions of nature with respect to the unen- lightened classes, it is manifest that a heavier obligation is thereby laid on those who enjoy the advantages of intellectual cultivation, to examine with dihgence and impartiality the foun- dations of those opinions which have any connection with the welfare of mankind. If the multitude must be led, it is of con- sequence that it be led by enlightened conductors. That the great multitude of mankind are, by natural disposition, only what others are, is a fact at all times so obtrusive, that it could not escape observation from the moment a reflective eye was first turned upon man. " The whole conduct of Cambyses," says Herodotus, the father of history, " towards the Egyptian gods, sanctuaries, and priests, convinces me that this king was in the highest degree insane ; for otherwise, he would not have 5* 54 THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. insulted the worship and lioly things of the Egyptians. If any one should accord to all men the permission to make free choice of the best among all customs, undoubtedly each would choose his own. That this would certainly happen, can be shown by many examples, and, among others, by the following. The King Darius once asked the Greeks who were resident in his court, at what price they could be induced to devour their dead parents. Tlie Greeks answered, that to this no price could bribe them. Thereupon the king asked some Indians, who were in the habit of eating their dead parents, what they would take, not to eat, but to burn them ; and the Indians answered even as the Greeks had done." Herodotus concludes this narrative with the observation, that '' Pindar had justly entitled Cus- tom — the Queen of the World." Sceptical inference from the influence of custom. — The ancient sceptics, from the conformity of men, in every country, in their habits of thinking, feeUng, and acting, and from the diversity of different nations in these habits, inferred tliat noth- ing was by nature beautiful or deformed, true or false, good or bad, but that these distinctions originated solely in custom. The modern scepticism of Montaigne tenninates in the same asser- tion ; and the sublime misanthropy of Pascal has almost carried him to a sunilar exaggeration. " In the just and the unjust," says he, " we find hardly any thing which does not change its character in changing its climate. Tlu*ee degrees of an eleva- tion of the pole reverses the whole of jurisprudence. A meridian is decisive of truth, and a few years of possession. Fundamental laws change. Right has its epochs. A pleasant justice, which a river or a mountain limits ! Truth, on this side the Pyrenees, error on the other ! " This doctrine is exag- gerated, but it has a foundation in truth ; and the most zealous champions of tlie inuiuitability of moral distinctions are unani- mous in acknowledging tlie [)owerful influence which the opin- ions, tastes, manners, affections, and actions of the society in which we live, exert upon all and each of its members. Influence of custom and example in revolutionary times. — Nor is this influence of man on man less unambioruous in times THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. 55 of soi'al tranquillity, than in crises of social convulsion. In season., of political and religious revolution, there arises a struggle between the resisting force of ancient habits and the contagious sympathy of new modes of feeling and thought. In one portion of society, the inveterate influence of custom prevails over the contagion of example ; in others, the conta- gion of example prevails over the conservative force of an- tiquity and habit. In either case, however, we think and act always in sympathy with others. " We remain," says an illus- trious philosopher, " submissive so long as the world continues to set the example. As we follow the herd in forming our con- ceptions of what is respectable, so we are ready to follow the multitude also, when such conceptions come to be questioned or rejected ; and are no less vehement reformers, when the cur- rent of opinion has turned against former establishments, than we were zealous abettors, while that current continued to set in a different direction." Relation of the individual to social crises. — Thus it is, that no revolution in public opinion is the work of an individual, of a single cause, or of a day. When the crisis has arrived, the catastrophe must ensue ; but the agents through whom it is ap- parently accomplished, though they may accelerate, cannot originate its occurrence. Who believes, that, but for Luther or Zwingli, the Reformation would not have been ? Their indi- vidual, their personal energy and zeal, perhaps, hastened by a year or two the event ; but had the public mind not been already ripe for their revolt, the fate of Luther and Zwingli, in the sixteenth century, would have been that of Huss and Je- rome of Prague, in the fifteenth. Woe to the revolutionist who is not himself a creature of the revolution ! If he anticipate, he is lost ; for it requires, what no individual can supply, a long and powerful counter-sympathy in a nation to untwine the ties of custom which bind a people to the established and the old. Testimonies to the power of received opinion. — I should have no end, were I to quote to you all that philosophers have said of the prevalence and evil influence of prejudice and opin- 54 THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. insulted the worship aiid lioly things of the Egyptians. If any one should accord to all men the permission to make free choice of the best among all customs, undoubtedly each would choose his own. That this would certainly happen, can be shown by many examples, and, among others, by the following. The King Darius once asked the Greeks who were resident in his court, at what price they could be induced to devour their dead parents. The Greeks answered, that to this no price could bribe them. Thereupon the king asked some Indians, who were in the habit of eating their dead parents, what they would take, not to eat, but to burn them ; and the Indians answered even as the Greeks had done." Herodotus concludes this narrative with the observation, that '' Pindar had justly entitled Cus- tom — the Queen of the World." Sceptical inference from the influence of custom. — The ancient sceptics, from the conformity of men, in every country, in their habits of thinking, feehng, and acting, and from the diversity of different nations in these habits, inferred that noth- ing was by nature beautiful or deformed, true or false, good or bad, but that these distinctions originated solely in custom. The modern scepticism of Montaigne terminates in the same asser- tion ; and the sublime misanthropy of Pascal has almost carried him to a similar exaggeration. " In the just and the unjust," says he, " we find hardly any thing which does not change its character in changing its climate. Three degrees of an eleva- tion of the pole reverses the whole of jurisprudence. A meridian is decisive of truth, and a few years of possession. Fundamental laws change. Right has its epochs. A pleasant justice, which a river or a mountain limits ! Truth, on this side the Pyrenees, error on the other ! " This doctrine is exag- gerated, but it lias a foundation in truth ; and the most zealous champions of the immutability of moral distinctions are unani- mous in acknowledging the poweiful influence which the opin- ions, tastes, manners, afi'ections, and actions of the society in which we live, exert upon all and each of its members. Influence of custom and example in revolutionary times. — Nor is this influence of man on man less unambiguous in times THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. 55 of social tranquillity, than in crises of social convulsion. In seasons of political and religious revolution, there arises a struggle between the resisting force of ancient habits and the contagious sympathy of new modes of feeling and thought. In one portion of society, the inveterate influence of custom prevails over the contagion of example ; in others, the conta- gion of example prevails over the conservative force of an- tiquity and habit. In either case, however, we think and act always in sympathy with others. " We remain," says an illus- trious philosopher, " submissive so long as the world continues to set the example. As we follow the herd in forming our con- ceptions of what is respectable, so we are ready to follow the multitude also, when such conceptions come to be questioned or rejected ; and are no less vehement reformers, when the cur- rent of opinion has turned against former establishments, than we were zealous abettors, while that current continued to set in a different direction." Relation of the individual to social crises. — Thus it is, that no revolution in public opinion is the work of an individual, of a single cause, or of a day. When the crisis has arrived, the catastrophe must ensue ; but the agents through whom it is ap- parently accomplished, though they may accelerate, cannot originate its occurrence. Who believes, that, but for Luther or Zwingli, the Reformation would not have been? Their indi- vidual, their personal energy and zeal, perhaps, hastened by a year or two the event ; but had the public mind not been already ripe for their revolt, the fate of Luther and Zwingli, in the sixteenth century, would have been that of Huss and Je- rome of Prague, in the fifteenth. Woe to the revolutionist who is not liimself a creature of the revolution ! If he anticipate, he is lost ; for it requires, what no individual can supply, a long and powerful counter-sympathy in a nation to untwine the ties of custom which bind a people to the established and the old. Testimonies to the power of received opinion. — I should have no end, were I to quote to you all that philosophers have said of the prevalence iind evil influence of prejudice and opin- 56 THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. ion. " Opinion," says the great Pascal, " disposes of all things. It constitutes beauty, justice, happiness ; and these are the all in all of the world." "Almost every opinion we have," says the pious Charon, " we have but by authority ; we believe, judge, act, live, and die on trust, as common custom teaches us ; and rightly ! for we are too weak to decide and choose of ourselves. But the wise do not act thus." "Every opinion," says Montaigne, "is strong enough to have had its martyrs ; " and Sir W. Raleigh — " It is opmion, not truth, that travelleth the world without pass- port." Doubt the first step to philosophy. — Such being the recog- nized universality and evil effect of prejudice, philosophers have, consequently, been unanimous in making doubt the first step towards philosophy. Aristotle has a fine chapter in his Metaphysics on the utiUty of doubt, and on the things which we ought first to doubt of; and he concludes by establishing that the success of philosophy depends on the art of doubting well. This is even enjoined on us by the Apostle. For in saying " Prove " (which may be more correctly translated test) " Test all things," he implicitly commands us to doubt all things. " He," says Bacon, " who would become a philosopher, must commence by repudiating belief ; " and he concludes one of the most remarkable passages of his writings with the obser- vation, that, " were there a single man to be found with a firm- ness suflicient to efiace from his mind the theories and notions vulgarly received, and to apply his intellect free and without . prevention, the best hopes might be entertained of his success." "To philosophize," says Descartes, "seriously, and to good effect, it is necessary for a man to renounce all prejudices ; in other words, to apply the greatest care to doubt of all his pre- vious opinions, so long as these have not been subjected to a new examination, and been recognized as true." But it is needless to multiply authorities in support of so obvious a truth. The ancient philosophers refused to admit slaves to their in- struction. Prejudice makes men slaves ; it disqualifies them for the pursuit of truth ; and their emancipation from prejudice THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. 57 is what philosophy first inculcates on, what it first requires of, its disciples. Philosophical doubt distinguished from scepticism. — Let us, however, beware that we act not the part of revolted slaves ; that, in asserting our liberty, we do not run into license. Phil- osophical doubt is not an end, but a mean. We doubt in order that we may believe; we begin, that we may not end with, doubt. We doubt once that we may believe always ; we re- nounce authority that we may follow reason; we surrender opinion that we may obtain knowledge. We must be protes- tants, not infidels, in philosophy. " There is a great difference," says Malebranche, " between doubting and doubting. — We may doubt through passion and brutality; through blindness and malice, and finally through fancy, and from the very wish to doubt ; but we doubt also from prudence and through distrust, from wisdom and through penetration of mind. The former doubt is a doubt of darkness, which never issues to the light, but leads us always further from it ; the latter is a doubt which is born of the light, and which aids in a certain sort, to produce light in its turn." Indeed, were the effect of philosophy the establishment of doubt, the remedy would be worse than the disease. Doubt, as a permanent state of mind, would be, in fiict little better than an intellectual death. The mind lives as it believes, — it lives in the afiirmation of itself, of nature, and of God ; a doubt upon any one of these would be a diminution of its life ; — a doubt upon the three, were it possible, would be tantamount to a mental annihilation. It is well observed, by Mr. Stewart, " that it is not merely in order to free the mind from the influence of error, that it is useful to examine the foundation of established opinions. It is such an examination alone, that, in an inquisitive age like the present, can secure a philosopher from the danger of unlimited scepticism. To this extreme, indeed, the complexion of the times is more likely to give him a tendency, than to implicit credulity. In the former ages of ignorance and superstition, the intimate association which had been formed in the prevail- ing systems of education, between truth and error had given to 58 THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. the latter an ascendant over the minds of men, which it could never have acquired if divested of such an alliance. The case has, of late years, been most remarkably reversed : the common sense of mankind, in consequence of the growth of a more lib- eral spirit of inquiry, has revolted against many of those ab- surdities which had so long held human reason in captivity ; and it was, perhaps, more than could have been reasonably expected, that, in the first moments of their emancipation, philosophers should have stopped short at the precise boundary which cooler reflection and more moderate views would have prescribed. The fact is, that they have passed far beyond it ; and that, in their zeal to destroy prejudices, they have attempted to tear up by the roots many of the best and happiest and most essential principles of our nature In the midst of these contrary impulses of fashionable and vulgar prejudices, he alone evinces the superiority and the strength of his mind, who is able to disentangle truth from error ; and to oppose the clear conclu- sions of his own unbiased faculties to the united clamors of superstition and of false philosophy. Such are the men whom nature marks out to be the hghts of the world ; to fix the wa- vering opinions of the multitude, and to impress their own char- acters on that of their age." In a word, philosophy is, as Aristotle has justly expressed, not the art of doubting, but the art of doubting well. Subjugation of the passions. — In the second place, in obedi- ence to the precept of Socrates, the passions, under which we shall include sloth, ought to be subjugated. These ruffle the tranquillity of the mind, and consequently deprive it of the power of carefully considering all tliat the solution of a question re- quires should be examined. A man under the agitation of any lively emotion, is hardly aware of aught but what has immediate relation to the passion which agitates and engrosses him. Among the affections which influence the will, and induce it to adhere to scepticism or error, there is none more dangerous than sloth. The greater proportion of mankind are inclined to spare them- selves the trouble of a long and laborious inquiry ; or they fancy that a superficial examination is enough ; and the slightest THE DISPOSITIONS PROPER TO PHILOSOPHY. 59 agreement between a few objects, in a few petty points, they at once assume as evmcing the correspondence of the whole throughout. Others apply themselves exclusively to the mat- ters which it is absolutely necessary for them to know, and take no account of any opinion but that which they have stumbled on, — for no other reason than that they have embraced it, and are unwilling to recommence the labor of learning. They re- ceive their opinion on the authority of those who have had suggested to them their own ; and they ai*e always facile schol- ars, for the slightest probability is, for them, all the evidence that they require. Pride is a powerful impediment to a progress in knowledge. Under the influence of this passion, men seek honor, but not truth. They do not cultivate what is most valuable in reality, but what is most valuable in opinion. They disdain, perhaps, what can be easily accomphshed, and apply themselves to the obscure and recondite ; but as the vulgar and easy is the foun- dation on which the rare and arduous is built, they fail even in attaining the object of their ambition, and remain with only a farrago of confused and ill-assorted notions. In all its phases, self-love is an enemy to philosophical progi*ess ; and the history of philosophy is filled with the illusions of which it has been the source. On the one side, it has led men to close their eyes against the most evident truths which were not in hannony with their adopted opinions. It is said that there was not a physician in Europe, above the age of forty, who would admit Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood. On the other hand, it is finely observed by Bacon, that " the eye of human intellect is not dry, but receives a suflTusion from the will and from the affections, so that it may almost be said to engender any science it pleases. For what a man wishes to be true, that he prefers beUeving." And, in another place, " if the human intellect hath once taken a liking to any doctrine, either because received and credited, or because otherwise pleasing, — it draws every thing else into hai*mony with that doctrine, and to its support ; and albeit there may be found a more powerful array of contra- dictory instances, these, however, it either does not observe, or it contemns, or by distinction extenuates and rejects." THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 61 CHAPTER lY. THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. There is only one possible method in philosophy ; and what have been called the different methods of different philosophers, vary from each other only as more or less perfect applications of this one Method to the objects of knowledge. What is Method? — All method is a rational progress, — a progress towards an end ; and the method of philosophy is the procedure conducive to the end which philosophy proposes. The ends, — the final causes of philosophy, — as we have seen, are two; first, the discovery of efficient causes; secondly, the generalization of our knowledge into unity ; — two ends, however, which fall together into one, inasmuch as the higher we proceed in the discovery of causes, we necessarily approxi- mate more and more to unity. The detection of the one in the many might, therefore, be laid down as the end to which philos- ophy, though it can never reach it, tends continually to approx- imate. But, considering pliilosophy in relation to both these ends, I shall endeavor to show you that it has only one possible method. But one method in relation to the first end of Philosophy. — Considering philosophy, in the first place, in relation to its first end, — the discovery of causes, — we have seen that causes (taking that term as synonymous for all without which the effect would not be) are only the coefficients of the effect ; an effect being nothing more than the sum or complement of all the l)artial causes, the concurrence of which constitute its existence. This being the case, — and as it is only by experience that we discover what particular causes must conspire in order to pro- (60) duce such or such an effect, — it follows, that nothing can be- come known to us as a cause except in and through its effect ; in other words, that we can only attain to the knowledge of a cause by extracting it out of its effect. To take the example, we formerly employed, of a neutral salt. This, as I observed, was made up by the conjunction of three proximate causes, — namely, an acid, — an alkali, — and the force which brought the alkali and the acid into the requisite approximation. This last, as a transitory condition, and not always the same, we shall throw out of account. Now, though we might know the acid and the alkali in themselves as distinct phoenomena, we could never know them as the concurrent causes of the salt, unless we had known the salt as their effect. And though, in this ex- ample, it happens that we are able to compose the effect by the union of its causes, and to decompose it by their separa- tion, — this is only an accidental circumstance ; for the far gi-eater number of the objects presented to our observation can only be decomposed, but not actually recomposed ; and in those which can be recomposed, this possibility is itself only the result of a knowledge of the causes previously obtained by an original decomposition of the effect. This method is hy Analysis and Synthesis. — Li so far, there- fore, as philosophy is the research of causes, the one necessary condition of its possibility is the decomposition of effects into their constituted causes. This is the fundamental procedure of philosophy, and is called by a Greek term Analysis. But though analysis be the fundamental procedure, it is still o?ily a mean towards an end. We analyze only that we may compre- hend ; and we comprehend only inasmuch as we are able to reconstruct, in thought, the complex effects which we have analyzed into their elements. This mental reconstruction is, therefore, the final, the consummative procedure of philosophy, and it is familiarly known by the Greek term Synthesis. Analy- sis and synthesis, though commonly treated as two different methods, are, if properly understood, only the two necessaiy parts of the same method. Each is the relative and the correl- ative of the other. Analysis, without a subsequent synthesis, is 6 62 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. incomplete ; it is a mean cut off from its end. Synthesis, with- out a previous analysis, is baseless ; for synthesis receives from analysis the elements which it recomposes. And, as synthesis supposes analysis as the prerequisite of its possibility, — so it is also dependent on analysis for Ihe quaUties of its existence. The value of every synthesis depends upon the value of the foregoing analysis. If the precedent analysis afford false ele- ments, the subsequent synthesis of these elements will necessa- rily afford a false result. If the elements furnished by analysis are assumed, and not really discovered, — in other words, if they be hypothetical, the synthesis of these hypothetical ele- ments will constitute only a conjectural theory. The legiti- macy of every synthesis is thus necessarily dependent on the legitimacy of the analysis which it presupposes, and on which it founds. These two relative procedures are thus equally necessary to each other. On the one hand, analysis without synthesis affords only a commenced, only an incomplete, knowledge. On the other, synthesis without analysis is a false knowledge, — that is, no knowledge at all. Both, therefore, are absolutely necessary to philosophy, and both are, in philosophy, as much parts of the same method as, in the animal body, inspiration and expiration are of the same vital function. But though these operations are each requisite to the other, yet were we to distinguish and compare what ought only to be considered as conjoined, it is to analysis that the preference must be accorded. An analysis is always valuable ; for though now without a syn- thesis, this synthesis may at any time be added; whereas a synthesis without a previous analysis is radically and ab initio nuU. So far, therefore, as regards the first end of philosophy, or the discovery of causes, it appears that there is only one possi- ble method, — that method of which analysis is the foundation, synthesis the completion. In the second place, considering phi- losophy in relation to its second end, the carrying up our knowledge into unity, — the same is equally apparent. Only one method in relation to the second end of Philoso- THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 63 pjiy, — Every thing presented to our observation, whether external or internal, whether through sense or self-conscious- ness, is presented in complexity. Through sense, the objects crowd upon the mind in multitudes, and each separate indi- vidual of these multitudes is itself a congeries of many various quaUties. The same is the case with the phgenomena of self- consciousness. Every modification of mind is a complex state ; and the different elements of each state manifest themselves only in and through each other. Thus, nothing but multiplicity is ever presented to our observation ; and yet our faculties are so hmited that they are able to comprehend at once only the very simplest conjunctions. There seems, therefore, a singular disproportion between our powers of knowledge and the objects to be known. How is the equiUbrium to be restored ? This is the great problem proposed by nature, and which analysis and synthesis, in combination, enable us to solve. For example, I perceive a tree, among other objects of an extensive landscape, and I wish to obtain a full and distinct conception of that tree. What ought I to do ? Divide et impera : I must attend to it by itself, that is, to the exclusion of the other constituents of the scene before me. I thus analyze that scene ; I separate a petty portion of it from the rest, in order to consider that portion apart. But this is not enough, the tree itself is not a unity, but, on the contrary, a complex assemblage of elements, far beyond what my powers can master at once. I must carry my analysis still further. Accordingly, I consider successively its height, its breadth, its shape ; I then proceed to its trunk, rise from that to its branches, and follow out its different ramifications ; I now fix my attention on the leaves, and severally examine their form, color, etc. It is only after having thus, by analysis, de- tached all these parts, in order to deal with them one by one, that I am able, by reversing the process, fully to comprehend them again in a series of synthetic acts. By synthesis, rising from the ultimate analysis, step by step, I view the parts in relation to each other, and, finally, to the whole of which they are the constituents ; I reconstruct them ; and it is only through these two counter-processes of analysis and synthesis, that I am 64 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. able to convert the confused perception of the tree, which I obtained at first sight, into a clear, and distinct, and comprehen- sive knowledge. How a multitude is reduced to unity. — But if analysis and synthesis be required to afford us a perfect knowledge even of one individual object of sense, still more are they required to enable the mind to reduce an indefinite multitude of objects, — the infin- itude, we may say, of nature, — to the limits of its own finite com- prehension. To accomplish tliis, it is requisite to extract the one out of the many, and thus to recall multitude to unity, — confu- sion to order. And how is this performed ? The one in the many being that in which a plurality of objects agree, — or that in which they may be considered as the same ; and the agreement of objects in any common quality being discoverable only by an observation and comparison of the objects themselves, it fol- lows that a knowledge of the one can only be evolved out of a foregoing knowledge of the many. But this evolution can only be accomplished by an analysis and a synthesis. By analysis, from the infinity of objects presented to our observation, we select some. These we consider apart, and, further, only in certain points of view, — and we compare these objects with others also considered in the same points of view. So far the procedure is analytic. Having discovered, however, by this observation and comparison, that certain objects agree in cer- tain respects, we generalize the qualities in which they coincide, — that is, from a certain number of individual instances we infer a general law ; we perform what is called an act of In- duction. What is Induction ? — This induction is erroneously viewed as analytic ; it is purely a synthetic process. For example, from our experience, — and all experience, be it that of the individual or of mankind, is only finite, — from our limited ex- perience, I say, that bodies, as observed by us^ attract each other, we infer by induction the unlimited conclusion that all bodies gravitate towards each other. Now, here the consequent contains much more than was contained in the antecedent. Experience, the antecedent, only says, and only can say, this, THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 65 that, and the other body gi'a\atate (that is, some bodies gravi- tate) ; the consequent educed from that antecedent, says, — all bodies gravitate. The antecedent is limited, — the consequent unlimited. Something, therefore, has been added to the antecedent in order to legitimate the inference, if we are not to hold the consequent itself as absurd ; for, as you will hereafter learn, no conclusion must contain more than was contained in the prem- ises from which it is drawn. What then is the something f If we consider the inductive process, this will be at once apparent. The affirmation, this, that, and the other body gravitate, is connected with the affirmation, all bodies gravitate, only by in- serting between the two a third affirmation, by which the two other affirmations are connected into reason and consequent, — that is, into a logical cause and effect. What that is I shall explain. All scientific induction is founded on the presumption that nature is uniform in her operations. Of the ground and origin of this presumption, I am not now to speak. I shall only say, that, as it is a principle which we suppose in all our induc- tions, it cannot be itself a product of induction. It is, therefore, interpolated in the inductive reasoning by the mind itself. In our example the reasoning will, accordingly, run as follows : — This, that, and the other body (some bodies) are observed to gravitate ; But (as nature is uniform in her operations) this, that, and the other body (some bodies) represent all bodies ; Therefore, all bodies gravitate. Now, in this and other examples of induction, it is the mind which binds up the separate substances observed and collected into a whole, and converts what is only the observation of many particulars into a universal law. This procedure is manifestly synthetic. Now, you will remark that analysis and synthesis are here absolutely dependent on each other. The previous observation and comparison, — the analytic foundation, — are only instituted for the sake of the subsequent induction, — the synthetic con- summation. What boots it to observe and to compare, if the uniformities we discover among objects are never generahzed 6* 66 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. into laws ? We have obtained an historical, but not a pliilo- sophical knowledge. Here, therefore, analysis without synthesis is incomplete. On the other hand, an induction which does not proceed upon a competent enumeration of particulars, is either doubtful, improbable, or null ; for all synthesis is dependent on a foregone analysis for whatever degree of certainty it may pretend to. Thus, considering philosophy in relation to its second end, unity or system, it is manifest that the method by which it accomplishes that end, is a method involving both an analytic and a synthetic process. Now, as philosophy has only one possible method, so the his- tory of philosophy only manifests the conditions of this one method, more or less accurately fulfilled. There are aberra- tions in the method, — no aberrations from it. Earliest problem of philosophy, — " Philosophy," says Grc- ruzez, " commenced with the first act of reflection on the objects of sense or self-consciousness, for the purpose of explaining them. And with that first act of reflection, the method of phi- losophy began, in its application of an analysis, and in its appU- cation of a synthesis, to its object. The first philosophers naturally endeavored to explain the enigma of external nature. The magnificent spectacle of the material universe, and the marvellous demonstrations of power and wisdom which it every- where exhibited, were the objects which called forth the earliest efforts of speculation. Philosophy was thus, at its commence- ment, physical, not psychological ; it was not the problem of the soul, but the problem of the world, which it first attempted to solve. " And what was the procedure of philosophy in its solution of this problem? Did it first decompose the whole into its parts, in order again to reconstruct them into a system ? This it could not accomplish ; but still it attempted this, and nothing else. A complete analysis was not to be expected from the first efforts of intelUgence ; its decompositions were necessarily partial aud im})erfect ; a partial and imperfect analysis afforded only hypothetical elements ; and the synthesis of these elements issued, consequently, only in a one-sided or erroneous theory. THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 67 Thales and the Ionic School. — " Thales, the founder of the Ionian philosophy, devoted an especial study to the phrenomena of the material universe ; and, struck with the appearances of power which water manifested in the formation of bodies, he analyzed all existences into this element, which he viewed as the universal principle, — the universal agent of creation. He proceeded by an incomplete analysis, and generalized, by hy- pothesis, the law which he drew by induction from the observa- tion of a small series of phaenomena. " The Ionic school continued in the same path. They limited themselves to the study of external nature, and sought m mat- ter the principle of existence. Anaximander of Miletus, the countryman and disciple of Thales, deemed that he had traced the primary cause of creation to an ethereal principle, which occupied space, and whose different combinations constituted the universe of matter. Anaximenes found the original element in au", from which, by rarefaction and condensation, he educed ex- istences. Anaxagoras carried his analysis further, and made a more discreet use of hypothesis ; he rose to the conception of an intelhgent first cause, distinct from the phaenomena of na- ture ; and his notion of the Deity was so far above the gross con- ceptions of his contemporaries, that he was accused of atheism. Pythagoras and the Italic School. — " Pythagoras, the founder of the Italic school, analyzed the properties of number ; and the relations which this analysis revealed, he elevated into principles of the mental and material universe. Mathematics were his only objects ; his analysis was partial, and his synthe- sis was consequently hypothetical. The Italic school developed the notions of Pythagoras, and, exclusively preoccupied with the relations and harmonies of existence, its disciples did not extend their speculation to the consideration either of substance or of cause. '' Thus, these earlier schools, taking external nature for their point of departure, proceeded by an imperfect analysis, and a presumptuous synthesis, to the construction of exclusive sys- tems, — in which Idealism or Materialism preponderated, ac- cording to the kind of data on which they founded. 68 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. 69 " The Eleatic school, which is distinguished into two branches, the one of Physical, the other of Metaphysical, speculation, ex- hibits the same character, the same point of departure, the same tendency, and the same errors. . " These errors led to the scepticism of the Sophists, which was assailed by Socrates, — the sage who determined a new epoch in philosophy by directing observation on man himself; and henceforward the study of mind becomes the prime and cen- tral science of philosophy. " The point of departure was changed, but not the method. The observation or analysis of the human mind, though often profound, remained always incomplete. Fortunately, the first disciples of Socrates, imitating the prudence of their master, and warned by the downftiU of the systems of the Ionic, Itahc, and Eleatic schools, made a sparing use of synthesis, and hardly a pretension to system. " Plato and Aristotle directed their observation on the phae- nomena of intelligence, and we cannot too highly admire the profundity of their analysis, and even the sobriety of their syn- thesis. Plato devoted himself more particularly to the higher faculties of intelligence ; and his disciples were led, by the love of generalization, to regard as the intellectual whole those por- tions of intelligence which their master had analyzed ; and this exclusive spirit gave birth to systems false, not in themselves, but as resting upon a too narrow basis. Aristotle, on the other hand, whose genius was of a more positive character, analyzed with admirable acuteness those operations of mind which stand in more immediate relation to the senses ; and this tendency, which among his followers became often exclusive and exag- gerated, naturally engendered systems which more or less tended to materialism." School of Alexandria.—- The school of Alexandria, in which the systems resulting from those opposite tendencies were com- bined, endeavored to reconcile and to fuse them into a still more comprehensive system. Eclecticism, — conciliation, — union, were, in all things, the grand aim of the Alexandrian school. Geographically situated between Greece and Asia, it endeavored to ally Greek with Asiatic genius, religion with phi- losophy. Hence the Neoplatonic system, of which the last great representative is Proclus. This system is the result of the long labor of the Socratic schools. It is an edifice reared by synthesis out of the materials which analysis had col- lected, proved, and accumulated, from Socrates down to Plo- tinus. But a synthesis is of no greater value than its relative analy- sis ; and as the analysis of the earlier Greek philosophy was not complete, the synthesis of the Alexandrian school was necessarily imperfect. In the Scholastic philosophy, analysis and observation were too often neglected in some departments of philosophy, and too often carried rashly to excess in others. Bacon and Descartes. — Miev the revival of letters, during the ^fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the labors of philosophy were principally occupied in restoring and illustrating the Greek systems ; and it was not until the seventeenth century, that a new epoch was determined by the genius of Bacon and Descartes. In Bacon and Descartes our modern philosophy may be said to originate, inasmuch as they were the first who made the doctrine of method a principal object of considera- tion. They both proclaimed, that, for the attainment of scien- tific knowledge, it is necessary to observe with care, — that is, to analyze ; to reject every element as hypothetical, which this analysis does not spontaneously afford ; to call in experiment in aid of observation; and to attempt no synthesis or generaliza- tion, until the relative analysis has been completely accom- plished. They showed that previous philosophers had erred, not by rejecting either analysis or synthesis, but by hurrying on to synthetic induction from a limited or specious analytic observa- tion. They propounded no new method of philosophy, they only expounded the conditions of the old. They showed that these conditions had rarely been fulfilled by philosophers in time past; and exhorted them to their fulfilment in time to come. Thus they explained the petty progress of the past philosophy ; — and justly anticipated a gigantic advancement for 70 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. the future. Such was their precept, but such unfortunately was not their example. There are no philosophers who merit so much in the one respect, none, perhaps, who deserve less in the other. Of philosophy since Bacon and Descartes, we at present say nothing. Of that we shall hereafter have frequent occasion to speak. But to sum up what this historical sketch was intended to illustrate. There is but one possible method of philoso- phy^ — a combination of analysis and synthesis ; and the purity arid equilibrium of these two elements constitute its perfection. The aberrations of philosophy have been all so many viola- tions of the laws of this one method. Philosophy has erred, because it built its systems upon incomplete or erroneous analy- sis, and it can only proceed in safety, if from accurate and unexclusive observation, it rise, by successive generalization, to a comprehensive system. CHAPTER V. THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. Expediency of a division of Philosophy. — As we cannot survey the universe at a glance, neither can we contemplate the whole of philosophy in one act of consciousness. We can only master it gradually and piecemeal ; and this is in fact the reason why philosophers have always distributed their science (constituting, though it does, one organic whole) into a plurality of sciences. The expediency, and even necessity, of a division of philosophy, in order that the mind may be enabled to em-^ brace in one general view its various parts, in their relation to each other, and to the whole which they constitute, is admitted by every philosopher. " Res utiUs," continues Seneca, " et ad sapientiam properanti utique necessaria, dividi philosophiam, et ingens corpus ejus in membra disponi. Facilius enim per partes in cognitionem totius adducimur." But, although philosophers agree in regard to the utility of such a distribution, they are almost as little at one in regard to the parts, as they are in respect to the definition, of their sci- ence ; and, indeed, their differences in reference to the former, mainly arise from their discrepancies m reference to the latter. For they who vary in their comprehension of the whole, cannot agree in their division of the parts. Division into Theoretical and Practical. — The most ancient and universally recognized distinction of philosophy, is into Theoretical and Practical. These are discriminated by the different nature of their ends. Theoretical, called likewise speculative and contemplative, philosophy has for its highest end mere truth or knowledge. Practical philosophy, on the other hand, has truth or knowledge only as its proximate end, (71) 72 THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. — this end being subordinate to the ulterior end of some prac- tical action. In theoretical philosophy, we know for the sake of knowing, scimus ut sciamus : in practical philosophy, we know for the sake of acting, scimus ut operemur. I may here notice the poverty of the English language, in the want of a word to express that practical activity which is contradistin- guished from mere intellectual or speculative energy, — what the Greeks express by TtQciaceiv, the Germans by handeln. The want of such a word occasions frequent ambiguity ; for, to ex- press the species which has no appropriate word, we are com- pelled to employ the generic term active. Thus our philosophers divide the powers of the mind into Intellectual and Active. They do not, however, thereby mean to insinuate that the powers called intellectual are a whit less energetic than those specially denominated active. But, from the want of a better word, they are compelled to employ a term which denotes at once much more and much less than they are desirous of ex- pressing. I ought to observe, that the term practical has also obtained with us certain collateral significations, which render it in some respects unfit to supply the want. But to return. This distinction of Theoretical and Practical philosophy was first explicitly enounced by Aristotle ; and the attempts of the later Platonists to carry it up to Phito, and even to Pythagoras, are not worthy of statement, far less of refutation. Once pro- mulgated, the division was, however, soon generally recognized. The Stoics borrowed it, as may be seen, from Seneca : — " Plii- losophia et contemplativa est et activa ; spectat, simulque agit." It was also adopted by the Epicureans ; and, in general, by those Greek and Roman philosophers who viewed their science as versant either in the contemplation of nature {(pvamj), or in the regulation of human action (jji^txij) ; foi- by nature^ they did not denote the material universe alone, but their Physics in- cluded Metfipliysics, and their Ethics embraced Politics and Economics. There was thus only a difference of nomenclature ; for Physical and Theoretical, — Ethical and Practical Philos- ophy, — were with them terms absolutely equivalent. This division unsound, — I regard the division of philosophy THE DIVISIONS OF rillLOSOPUY. 73 into Theoretical and Practical as unsound, and this for two reasons. The first is, that philosophy, as philoso])hy, is only cognitive, — only theoretical ; whatever lies beyond the sphere of specu- lation or knowledge, transcends the sphere of philosophy ; consequently, to divide philosophy by tmy quality ulterior to speculation, is to divide it by a difference which does not be- long to it. Now, the distinction of practical philosophy from theoretical commits this error. For, while it is admitted that all ])liilosophy, as cognitive, is theoretical, some philosophy is again taken out of this category, on the ground, that, beyond the mere theory, — the mere cognition, — it has an ulterior end in its application to practice. But, in the second place, this difference, even were it admis- sible, would not divide philosophy ; for, in point of fact, all philosophy must be regarded as practical, inasmuch as mere knowledge, — that is, the mere possession of truth, — is not the highest end of any philosophy ; but on the contrary, all truth or knowledge is valuable only inasmuch as it determines the mind to its contemplation, — that is, to practical energy. Speculation, therefore, inasmuch as it is not a negation of thought, but on the contrary, the highest energy of intellect, is, in point of fact, preeminently practical. The practice of one branch of philos- ophy is, indeed, different from that of another ; but all are still practical; for in none is mere knowledge the ultimate, the highest, end. It is manifest that, in our sense of the term practical, Logic, as an instrumental science, would be comprehended under the head of practical philosophy. I'he terms Art and Science. — I shall take this opportunity of explaining an anomaly which you will find explained in no work with which I am acquainted. Certain branches of pliilo- sophical knowledge are called Arts, — or Arts and Sciences indifferently ; others are exclusively denominated Sciences. Were this distinction coincident with the distinction of sciences speculative and sciences practical, — taking the term practical in its ordinary acceptation, — there would be no difficulty ; for, 7 74 THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. as every practical science necessarily involves a theory, nothing could be more natural than to call the same branch of knowl- edge an art, when viewed as relative to its practical application, and a science when viewed in relation to the theory which that application supposes. But this is not the case. The specula- tive sciences, indeed, are never denominated arts ; we may, therefore, throw them aside. The difficulty is exclusively con- fined to the practical. Of these, some never receive the name of arts ; others are called arts and sciences indifferently. Thus the sciences of Ethics, Economics, Politics, Theology, etc., though all practical, are never denominated arts ; whereas this appellation is very usually applied to the practical sciences of Lojnc, Rhetoric, Grammar, etc. That the term art is with us not coextensive with practical science, is thus manifest; and yet these are frequently con- founded. Thus, for example. Dr. Wliately, in liis definition of Logic, thinks that Logic is a science, in so far as it institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and an art, in so far as it affords practical rules to secure the mind from error in its deductions ; and he defines an art, the application of knowledge to practice. Now, if this view were correct, art and practical science would be convertible terms. But that they are not employed as synonymous expressions is, as we have seen, sho^vn by the incongruity we feel in talking of the art of Ethics, the art of Religion, etc., though these are eminently practical sciences. The question, therefore, still remains, Is this restriction of the term art to certain of the practical sciences the result of some accidental and forgotten usage, or is it founded on any rational principle which we are able to trace ? The former alternative seems to be the common belief; for no one, in so far as I know, has endeavored to account for the apparently vague and capri- cious manner in which the terms art and science are apphed. The latter alternative, however, is the true ; and I shall en- deavor to explain to you the reason of the appHcation of the term art to certain practical sciences, and not to others. Historical origin of this use of language. — You are aware THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. 75 that the Aristotelic pliilosophy was, for many centuries, not only the prevalent, but during the middle ages, the one exclusive philosophy in Europe. This philosophy of the middle ages, or, as it is commonly called, the Scholastic Philosophy, has exerted the most extensive influence on the languages of modern Eu- rope ; and from this common source has been principally derived that community of expression which these languages exhibit. Now, the peculiar application of the term art was introduced into the vulgar tongues from the scholastic philosophy ; and was borrowed by that philosophy from Aristotle. This is only one of a thousand instances, which might be alleged, of the unfelt influence of a single powerful mind, on the associations and habits of thought of generations to the end of time ; and of Aristotle is preeminently true, what has been so beautifully said of the ancients in general : — " The great of old ! The dead but sceptred sovrans who still rule Our spirits from their urns." Now, then, the application of the term art in the modern languages bemg mediately governed by certain distinctions which the capacities of the Greek tongue allowed Aristotle to establish, these distinctions must be explained. In the Aristotelic philosophy, the terms nQa^ig and nQd'AziAog, — that is, practice and practical, were employed both in a ge- neric or looser, and in a special or stricter signification. In its generic meaning, itQahg, practice, was opposed to theory or speculation, and it comprehended under it practice in its special meanino-, and another coordinate term to which practice, in tliis, its stricter signification, was opposed. This term was Ttoir^oig, which we may inadequately translate by production. The dis- tinction of TiQa-AzrAog and TTotijTi'Aog consisted in this : the former denoted that action which terminated in action, — the latter, that action which resulted in some permanent product. For example, dancing and music are practical, as leaving no work after their performance; whereas, painting and statuary are productive, as leaving some product over and above their en- ergy. 76 THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. Now Aristotle, in formally defining art, defines it a;? a habit productive, and not as a habit practical, E^tg TZoirjTixtj fina loyov ; — and, though he has not always himself' adhered strictly to this limitation, his definition was adopted by his followers, and the term in its application to the practical sciences (the term prac- tical being here used in its generic meaning), came to be exclu- sively confined to those whose end did not result in mere action or energy. Accordingly, as Ethics, Politics, etc., proposed hap- piness as their end, — and as happiness was an energy, or at least the concomitant of energ}^, these sciences terminated m action, and were consequently practical, not productive. On the other hand, Logic, Rhetoric, etc., did not terminate in a mere, — an evanescent action, but in a permanent, — an endur- ing product. For the end of Logic was the production of a reasoning, the end of Rhetoric the production of an oration, and so forth. This distinction is not perhaps beyond the reach of criticism, and I am not here to vindicate its correctness. My only aim is to make you aware of the grounds of the distinction, in order that you may comprehend the principle which origi- nally determined the application of the term art to some of the practical sciences and not to others, and without a knowledge of which principle, the various employment of the term must appear to you capricious and unintelligible. It is needless, per- haps, to notice that the rule applies only to the philosophical sciences, — to those which received their form and denomina- tions from the learned. The mechanical dexterities were be- neath their notice ; and these were accordingly left to receive their appellations from those who knew nothing of the Aristo- telic proprieties. Accordingly, the term art is in them applied, without distinction, to productive and unproductive operations. We speak of the art of rope-dancing, equally as of the art of rope-makiiig. But to return. Universality of this division of Philosophy. — The division of philosophy into Theoretical and Practical is the most impor- tant that has been made ; and it is that which has entered into nearly all the distributions attempted by mo^lern philosophers. Bacon was the first, after the 'revival of letters, who essayed a THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. 77 distribution of the sciences and of philosophy. He divided all human knowledge into History, Poetry, and Philosophy. Phi- losophy he distinguished into branches conversant about the Deity, about Nature, and about Man ; and each of these had their subordinate divisions, which, however, it is not necessary to particularize. Descartes distributed philosophy into theoretical and practi- cal, with various subdivisions; but his followers adopted the division of Logic, Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics. Gassendi recognized, like the ancients, three parts of philosophy, Logic, Physics, and Ethics, and this, along with many other of Gas- sendi's doctrines, was adopted by Locke. Kant distinguished philosophy mto theoretical and practical, with various subdivis- ions ; and the distribution into theoretical and practical was also established by Fichte. I have now concluded the general Introduction to Philoso- phy, in which, from the general nature of the subjects, I have been compelled to anticipate conclusions, and to depend on your being able to supply a good deal of what it was impossible for me articulately to explain. I now enter upon the considera- tion of the matters which are hereafter to occupy our attention, with comparatively little apprehension, — for, in these, we shall be able to dwell more upon details, while, at the same time, the subject will open upon us by degrees, so that, every step that we proceed, we shall find the progress easier. But I have to warn you, that you will probably find the very commencement the most arduous, and this not only because you will come less mured to difficulty, but because it will there be necessary to deal with principles, and these of a general and abstract na- ture ; whereas, having once mastered these, every subsequent step will be comparatively easy. Without entering upon details, I may now summarily state the order which I propose to follow. This requires a prelim- inary exposition of the different departments of Philosophy, in order that you may obtain a comprehensive view of the proper objects of our consideration, and of the relations in which they stand to others. 7* 78 THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. Distribution of the Sciences. — Science and philosophy are conversant either about Mind or about Matter. The former of these is Philosophy, properly so called. With the latter we have nothing to do, except in so far as it may enable us to throw light upon the former ; for Metaphysics, in whatever lati- tude the term be taken, is a science, or complement of sciences, exclusively occupied with mind. Now the Philosophy of Mind, — Psychology or Metaphysics, in the widest signification of the terms, — is threefold ; for the object it immediately pro- poses for consideration may be either, 1°, Ph.enomena in general ; or, 2°, Laws ; or, 3°, Inferences, — Results. This I will endeavor to explain. The three grand questions of Philosophy. — The whole of philosophy is the answer to these three questions : 1°, What are the Facts or Phaenomena to be observed ? 2°, What are the Laws which regulate these facts, or under which these phjE- nomena appear ? 3°, What are the real Results, not immedi- ately manifested, which these facts or phaenomena warrant us in drawinij ? Phenomenology. — If we consider the mind merely with the view of observing and generalizing the various phaenomena it reveals, — that is, of analyzing them into capacities or facul- ties, — we have one mental science, or one department of men- tal science ; and this we may call the Phenomenology of Mind. It is commonly called Psychology — Empirical Psychology, or the Inductive Philosophy of Mind ; we might call it Pilenomenal Psychology. It is evident that the divisions of this science will be determined by the classes into which the i)ha3nomena of mind are distributed. Nomology and its subdivisions. — If, again, we analyze the mental phienomena with the view of discovering- and consider- ing, not contingent appearances, but the necessary and universal facts, — i. e. the laws by which our fticulties are governed, to the end that we may obtain a criterion by which to judge or to explain their procedures and manifetstations, — we have a sci- ence whicR we may call the Nomology of Mind, — nomo- LOGICAL psychology. Now, there will be as many distinct THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. 79 classes of Nomological Psychology, as there are distinct classes of mental phaenomena under the Phaenomenological division. I shall, hereafter, show you that there are Three great classes of these phaenomena, — namely, 1°, The phaenomena of our Cognitive faculties, or faculties of Knowledge ; 2°, The phae- nomena of our Feelings, or the phaenomena of Pleasure and Pain ; and, 3°, The phaenomena of our Conative powers, — in other words, the phaenomena of Will and Desire. Each of these classes of phaenomena has, accordingly, a science which is conversant about its Laws. For, as each proposes a different end, and, in the accomplishment of that end, is regulated by peculiar laws, each must, consequently, have a different science conversant about these layrs, — that is, a different Nomology. There is no one, no Nomological, science of the Cognitive faculties, in general ; though we have some older treatises which, though partial in their subject, afford a name not unsuitable for a nomology of the cognitions, — namely, Gnoseologia or Gnos- tologia. There is no independent science of the laws of Per- ception ; if there were, it might be called Esthetic, which, however, as we shall see, would be ambiguous. Mnemonic, or the science of the laws of Memory, has been elaborated at least in numerous treatises ; but the name Anamnestic, the art of Recollection or Reminiscence, might be equally well applied to it. The laws of the Representative faculty, — that is, the laws of Association, have not yet been elevated into a separate nomological science. Neither have the conditions of the Regu- lative or Legislative faculty, the faculty itself of Laws, been fully analyzed, far less reduced to system ; though we have several deservedly forgotten treatises, of an older date, under the inviting name of Noologies. The only one of the cognitive faculties, whose laws constitute the object-matter of a separate science, is the Elaborative, — the Understanding Special, the faculty of relations, the faculty of Thought Proper. This nomology has obtained the name of Logic among other appel- lations, but not from Ai'istotle. The best name would have been Dianoetic. Logic is the science of the laws of thought, in relation to the end which our cognitive faculties propose, — 80 THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. 81 t. e. the True. To this head might be referred Grammar, Universal Grammar, — Philosophical Grammar, or the sci- ence conversant with the laws of Language, as the instrument of thought. The Nomology of our Feelings, or the science of the laws which govern our capacities of enjoyment, in relation to the end which they propose, — i. e. the Pleasurable, — has ob- tained no precise name in our language. It has been called the Philosophy of Taste, and, on the Continent especially, it has been denominated Esthetic. Neither name is unobjectionable. The first is vague, metaphorical, and even delusive. In regard to the second, you are aware that caa^oig in Greek means feeling in general, as well as sense iQ particular ; as our term feeling means either the sense of touch in particular, or senti- ment, — and the capacity of the pleasurable and painful in general. Both terms are, therefore, to a certain extent, ambig- uous ; but this objection can rarely be avoided, and Esthetic, if not the best expression to be found, has abeady been long and generally employed. It is now nearly a century since Baumgarten, a celebrated philosopher of the Leibnitzio-Wolfian school, first applied the term iEsthetic to the doctrine which we vaguely and periphrastically denominate the Pliilosophy of Taste, the theory of the Fine Arts, the science of the Beauti- ful and Sublime, etc., — and this term is now in general accep- tance, not only in Germany, but throughout the other countries of Europe. The term Apolaustic would have been a more appropriate designation. Finally, the Nomology of our Conative powers is Practical Philosophy, properly so called ; for practical philosophy is sim- ply the science of the laws regulative of our Will and Desires, in relation to the end w hich our conative powers propose, t. e. the Good. This, as it considers these laws in relation to man as an individual, or in relation to man as a member of society, will be divided into two branches, — Ethics and Poli- tics ; and these again admit of various subdivisions. So much for those parts of the Philosophy of Mind, which are conversant about Phaenomena, and about Laws. The Third great branch of this philosophy is that which is engaged in the deduction of Inferences or Results. Ontology, or Metaphysics Proper. — In the First branch, — the Phaenomenology of mind, — philosophy is properly limited to the facts afl^brded in consciousness, considered exclusively in themselves. But these facts may be such as not only to be ob- jects of knowledge in themselves, but likewise to furnish us with grounds of inference to something out of themselves. As effects, and effects of a certain character, they may enable us to infer the analogous character of their unknown causes ; as phainomena, and phaenomena of peculiar qualities, they may warrant us in drawing many conclusions regarding the distinc- tive character of that unknown princij^le, of that unknown substance, of which they are the manifestations. Although, therefore, existence be only revealed to us in phasnomena, and though w^e can, therefore, have only a relative knowledge either of mind or of matter ; still, by inference and analogy, we may legitimately attempt to rise above the mere appearances which experience and observation afford. Thus, for example, the ex- istence of God and the Immortality of the Soul ai-e not given us as phenomena, as objects of immediate knowledge ; yet, if the phaenomena actually given do necessarily require, for their rational explanation, the hypotheses of immortality and of God, we are assuredly entitled, from the existence of the former, to infer the reality of the latter. Now, the science conversant about all such inferences of unknown being from its known manifestations, is called Ontology, or Metaphysics Proper. We might call it Inferential Psychology. The following is a tabular view of the distribution of Philos- ophy as here proposed : B tc 9 _o O CO si u o a Facts, — Phaenomenology, Empirical Psychology. - Laws, — Nomology, Rational Psy- chology. Results, — Ontology, Inferential Psy- j Being of God chology. Cognitions. Feelings. Conative Powers (Will and Desire). Cognitions, — Logic Feelings, — .aesthetic. Conative Powers. { l^^^^ Philosophy. 'olitical Philosophy. Immortality of the Soul, etc. 82 THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. THE DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY. 83 Li this distribution of the philosophical sciences, you will observe that I take little account of the celebrated division of philo.^ophy into Speculative and Practical, wliich I have already explained to you, for I call only one minor division of philosophy practical, — namely, the Nomology of the Conative powers, not because that science is not equally theoretical with any other, but simply because these powers are properly called practical, as tending to practice or overt action. J>istr%bution of Philosophy in the Universities.-^ The subjects assigned to the various chairs of the Philosophical Faculty, in the different Universities of Europe, were not calculated upon any comprehensive view of the parts of philosophy, and of their natural connection. The universities were founded when the Aristotelic philosophy was the dominant, or rather the exclu- sive, system, and the parts distributed to the different classes, in the faculty of Arts or Philosophy, were regulated by the contents of certain of the Aristotelic books, and by the order in which they were studied. Of these, there were always Four great divisions. There was first. Logic, in relation to the Organon of Ai'istotle; secondly, Metaphysics, relative to his books under that title ; thirdly. Moral Philosophy, relative to his Ethics, Politics, and Economics; and, fourthly, Physics, relative to his Physics, and the collection of treatises styled in the schools the Parva Naturalia. But every university had not a full complement of classes, that is, did not devote a separate year to each of the four subjects of study ; and, accordingly, in those seats of learning where three years formed the curricu- lum of philosophy, two of these branches were combined. In the university of Edinburgh, Logic and Metaphysics were taught in the same year; in others. Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy were conjoined; and, whgn the old practice was abandoned of the several Regents or Professors carrying on their students through every department, the two branches which had been taught in the same year were assigned to the same chair. What is most curious in the matter is this, Aristotle's treatise On the Soul being (along with his lesser treatises on Memory and Reminiscence, on Sense and its Objects, etc.) included in the Parva Naturalia, and, he having declared that the consideration of the soul was part of the philosophy of nature, the science of Mind was always treated along with Physics. The professors of Natural Philosophy have, however, long abandoned the philosophy of mind, and this branch has been, as more appropriate to their departments, taught both by the Professors of Moral Philosophy and by the Professors of Logic and Metaphysics ; — for you are not to suppose that meta- physics and psychology are, though vulgarly used as synony- mous expressions, by any means the same. In this work, we have nothing to do with Practical Philoso- phy, — that is. Ethics, Politics, Economics. But with this exception, there is no other branch of philosophy which does not fall naturally within our sphere. CHAPTER VI. DEFINITION OF PSYCHOLOGY; RELATIVITY OF HOIAN KNOWLEDGE ; EXPLICATION OF TERMS. Psychology, or the Philosophy of the Human Mind, strictly so denominated, is the science conversant about the ph(Bnomena, or modifications, or states of the Mind, or Con- scious- Subject, or Soul, or Spirit, or Self, or Ego. In this definition, you will observe that I have purposely accumulated a variety of expressions, in order that I might have the earliest opportunity of making you accurately ac- quainted with their meaning ; for they are terms of vital im- portance and frequent use in pliilosophy. — Before, therefore, proceeding further, I shall pause a moment in explanation of the terms in whicli this definition is expressed. Without re- stricting myself to the following order, I shall consider the word Psychology ; the correlative terms subject and substance, ph(2nomenon, mpdifcation, state, etc., and, at the same time, take occasion to explain another correlative, the expression ob/ect ; and, finally, the words mind, soul, spirit, self, and ego. Indeed, after considering these terms, it may not be im- proper to take up, in one series, the pliilosophical expressions of principal importance and most ordinary occurrence, in order to render less frequent the necessity of interrupting the course of our procedure, to afford the requisite verbal explanations. The use of the term Psychology vindicated. — The term Psy- chology, is a Greek compound, its elements ypv^ri, signifying sold or mind, and loyog, signifying discourse or doctrine. Psy- chology, therefore, is the discourse or doctrine treating of the human mind. But, though composed of Greek elements, it is, like the greater number of the compounds of loyog, of modem (84) DEFINITION OF PSYCHOLOGY. 85 combination. I may be asked, — why use an exotic, a techni- cal name ? Why not be contented with the more popular terms, Philosophy of Mind, or Mental Philosophy, — Science of Mind, or Mental Science ? — expressions by which this department of knowledge has been usually designated by those who, in Scotland, have cultivated it with the most distinguished success. To this there are several answers. In the^rs^ place, philosophy itself, and all, or almost all, its branches, have, in our language, received Greek technical denominations ; — why not also the most impor- tant of all, the science of mmd ? In the second place, the temi psychology is now, and has long been, the ordinary expression for the doctrine of mind in the philosophical language of every other European nation. Nay, in point of fact, it is now natu- rahzed in English, psychology and psychological having of late years come into common use ; and their employment is war- ranted by the authority of the best English writers. But these are reasons in themselves of comparatively little moment : they tend merely to show that, if otherwise expedient, the nomen- clature is permissible ; and that it is expedient, the following reasons will prove. For, in the third place, it is always of con- sequence, for the sake of precision, to be able to use one word instead of a plurality of words, — especially where the frequent occurrence of a descriptive appellation might occasion tedium, distraction, and disgust ; and this must necessarily occur in the treatment of any science, if the science be able to possess no single name vicarious of its definition. In this respect, there- fore. Psychology is preferable to Philosophy of Mind. But, in i\iQ fourth place, even if the employment of the description for the name could, in this instance, be tolerated when used sub- stantively, wliat are we to do when we require (which we do unceasingly) to use the denomination of the science adjectively ? For example, I have occasion to say a psychological fact, o. psy- chological law, a psychological curiosity, etc. How can we ex- press these by the descriptive appellation? A psychological fact may indeed be styled " a fact considered relatively to the philosophy of the human mind," — a psychological law may be called " a law by which the mental phasnomena are governed," — 8 86 DEFINITION OF PSYCHOLOGY. DEFINITION OF PSYCHOLOGY. 87 a psychological curiosity may be rendered — by what, I really do not know. But how miserably weak, awkward, tedious, and affected, is the commutation when it can be made ; not only do the vivacity and precision of the original evaporate, the mean- ing itself is not even adequately conveyed. But this defect is still more manifestly shown, when we wish to place in contrast the matters proper to this science, with the matters proper to others. Thus, for example, to say, — this is a psychological, not a physiological doctrine — this is a psychological observation, not a logical inference. How is the contradistinction to be ex- pressed by a periphrasis ? It is impossible ; — for the intensity of the contrast consists, fii'st, in the two opposite terms being single words, and second, in their being both even technical and precise Greek. This necessity has, accordingly, compelled the adoption of the terms psychology and psychological into the philosophical nomenclature of every nation, even where the same necessity did not vindicate the employment of a non-ver- nacular expression. Thus in Germany, though the native lan- guage affords a facility of composition only inferior to the Greek, and though it possesses a word (Seeletilehre) exactly correspond- ent to ypv'ioloyia^ yet because this substantive did not easily allow of an adjective flexion, the Greek terms, substantive and adjective, were both adopted, and have been long in as famihar use in the Empire, as the terms geography and geograpliical, — physiology and physiological, are with us. Other terms inappropriate. — What I have nov/ said may sufiice to show that, to supply necessity, we must introduce these words into our philosoi)hical vocabulary. But the pro- priety of this is still further shown by the inauspicious attempts that have been recently made on the name of the science. Dr. Brown, in the very title of the abridgment of his lectures on mental philosophy, has styled this philosophy, " The Physiology of the Human Mind ; " and I have also seen two English publi- cations of modern date, — one entitled the " Physics of the Soiiir the other " Intellectual Physics^ Now the term nature ((fvGi^'j naiura), though in common language of a more exten- sive meaning, has, in general, by philosophers, been applied appropriately to denote the laws which govern the appearances of the material universe. And the words Physiology and Physics have been specially limited to denote sciences conver- sant about these laws as regulating the phaenomena of .organic and inorganic bodies. The empire of nature is the empire of a mechanical necessity ; the necessity of nature, in philosophy, stands opposed to the liberty of inteUigence. Those, accord- ingly, who do not allow that mind is matter, — who hold that there is in man a principle of action superior to the determina- tions of a physical necessity, a brute or blind fate, — must regard the application of the terms Physiology and Physics to the doctrine of the mind as either singularly inappropriate, or as significant of a false hypothesis in regard to the character of the thinking principle. Use and derivation of Spirit, Soul. — - Mr. Stewart objects to the term Spirit, as seeming to imply an hypothesis concerning the nature and essence of the sentient or thinking principle, altogether unconnected with our conclusions in regard to its phajnomena, and their general laws ; and, for the same reason, he is disposed to object to the words Pneumatology and Psy- chology, the former of which was introduced by the school- men.'' In regard to Spirit and Pneumatology, ^Iv. Stewart's criticism is perfectly just. They are unnecessary ; and, besides the etymological metaphor, they are associated with a certain theological limitation, which spoils them as expressions of philo- sophical generality.* But this is not the case with Psychology. For though, in its etymology, it is, like ahnost all metaphysical terms, orFginally of physical application, still this had been long forgotten even by the Greeks ; and, if we were to reject philo- sophical expressions on this account, we should be left without any terms for the mental phaenomena at all. The term soul * The terms Ps^jchohijy and Pneumatology, or Pneumatic, are not equiva- lents. Tlic latter word was used for the doctrine of spirit in general, wluch was subdivided into three branches, as it treated of the three orders of spir- itual substances, - God, -Angels and Devils,- and Man. Thus - ) 1. Theologia (Naturalis). Pneumatologia or Pneumatica, [■ 2. Angelographia, Damonologia. ) 3. Psychologia. 88 RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 89 (and what I say of the term soul is true of the term spirit) though in this country less employed than the term mind, may be regarded as another synonym for the unknown basis of the mental pha^nomena. Like nearly all the words significant of the mternal world, there is here a metaphor borrowed from the external ; and this is the case not merely in one, but, as far as we can trace the analogy, in all languages. You ai-e aware that xbvxr„ the Greek term for soul, comes from Vwx<<), I breathe or blow. — as nvtina in Greek, and spiritiis in Latin, from verbs of the same signification. In like manner, anima and animus are words which, though in Latin they have lost their primary signification, and are only known in their secondary or metaphorical, yet in their original physical meaning, are pre- served m the Greek avefioi, wind or air. The En> Testimonies to the relativity of human knowledge. — This is, indeed, a truth, in the admission of which philosophers, in gen- eral, have been singularly hannonious ; and the praise that has been lavished on Dr. Reid for this observation, is wholly unmer- ited. In fact, I am hardly aware of the philosopher who has not proceeded on the supposition, and there are few who have not explicitly enounced the observation. It is only since Reid's death tliat certain speculators have arisen, who have obtained celebrity by their attempt to found philosophy on an immediate knowledge of the absolute or unconditioned. I shall quote to you a few examples of this general recognition, as they happen to occur to my recollection ; and, in order to manifest the better its universality, I purposely overlook the testimonies of a more modern })hi]o.>oj)hy. Aristotle, among many similar observations, remarks in re- gard to matter, that it is incognizable in itself ; while in regard to mind he says, " that the intellect does not know itself directly, but only indirectly, in knowiflg other things ; " and he defines the soul from its phenomena, " the principle by which we live, and move, and perceive, and understand." St. Augustin, the most philosophical of the Christian fathers, admirably says of IjoJy^ — "Materiam cognoscendo ignorari, et ignorando cog- nosci ; " [" By assuming that we know matter, we betray our ignorance of it ; and it is only by admitting this ignorance, that we can be said to know it ; "] and of mind, — " Mens se cognos- cit cognoscendo se vivere, se meminisse, se inteUigere, se velle, cogitare, scire, judicare." ["The mind knows itself only by knowing that it lives, remembers, understands, wills, thinks, knows, and judges."] "Non incurrunt," says Melanchthon, " ipsae substantiae in oculos, sed vestitae et ornatae accidentibus ; hoc est, non possumus, in hac vita, acie oculorum perspicere ipsas substantias : sed utcunque, ex accidentibus quae in sensus exteriores incurrunt, ratiocinamur, quomodo inter se differant substantiae." ["The substances themselves are not exposed to sight, but only so far they are covered and adorned with their attributes ; that is, we are not able, in this life, to behold the substances themselves ; but from the phenomena which are manifest to our external senses, we somehow infer the distin- guishing peculiarities of the substances to which the phenomena belong."] All relative existence is not relative to us. — Thus, our knowl- edge is of partial and relative existence only, seeing that exist- ence in itself, or absolute existence,* is no object of knowledge. But it does not follow that all relative existence is relative to us ; that all that can be known, even by a limited intelligence, is actually cognizable by us. We must, therefore, more pre- cisely limit our sphere of knowledge, by adding, that all we know is known only under the special conditions of our facul- ties. This is a truth likewise generally acknowledged. " Man," says Protagoras, " is the measure of the universe," — a truth * Absolute in two senses: 1°, As opposed to partial; 2°, As opposed to relative. 92 RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 93 which Bacon has well expressed : [" All perceptions, as well of the senses as of the mind, are conformed to the nature of the percipient individual, and not tS the true nature of the uni- verse ; and the human understanding is like a false mirror, which distorts and discolors the nature of things, by mingling its own nature with it/'] " In perception," says Kant, " every thing is known according to the constitution of our faculty of sense." This principle has two branches, — Now this principle, in which philosophers of the most opposite opinions equally con- cur, divides itself into two branches. In the first place, it would be unphilosophical to conclude that the properties of existence necessarily are, in number, only as the number of our faculties of apprehending them ; or, in the second, that the properties known, are known in their native purity, and ^\^thout addition or modification from our organs of sense, or our capaci- ties of intelligence. I shall illustrate these in their order. In regard to the first assertion, it is evident that nothing exists for us, except in so far as it is known to us, and that nothing is known to us, except certain properties or modes of existence, which are relative or analogous to our faculties. Beyond these modes we know, and can assert, the reality of no existence. But if, on the one hand, we are not entitled to assert, as actually existent, except what we know ; neither, on the other, are we warranted in denying, as possibly existent, what we do not know. The universe may be conceived as a polygon of a thousand, or a hundred thousand, sides or facets, — and each of these, sides or facets may be conceived as repre- senting one special mode of existence. Now, of these thousand sides or modes, all may be equally essential, but thi-ee or four only may be turned towards us, or be analogous to our organs. One side or facet of the universe, as holding a relation to the organ of sight, is the mode of luminous or visible existence ; another, as proi)ortional to the organ of hearing, is the mode of sonorous or audible existence ; and so on. But if every eye to see, if every ear to hear, were annihilated, the mode of ex- istence to which these organs now stand in relation, — that which could be seen, that which could be heard, would still remain ; and if the intelligences, reduced to the three senses of touch, smell, and taste, were then to assert the impossibility of any modes of being except those to which these three senses were analogous, the procedure would not be more unwarranted, than if we now ventured to deny the possible reality of other modes of material existence than those to the perception of which our five senses are accommodated. I will illustrate this by an hypothetical parallel. Let us suppose a block of marble, on which there are four different inscriptions, — in Greek, in Latin, in Persic, and in Hebrew; and that four travellers approach, each able to read only the inscription in his native tongue. The Greek is delighted with the information the mar- ble affords him of the siege of Troy. The Roman finds inter- esting matter regarding the expulsion of the kings. The Per- sian deciphers an oracle of Zoroaster. And the Jew is sur- prised by a commemoration of the Exodus. Here, as each inscription exists or is significant only to him who possesses the corresponding language ; so the several modes of existence are manifested only to those intelligences who possess the corre- sponding organs. And as each of the four readers would be rash, if he maintained that the marble could be significant only as sio-nificant to him, so should we be rash, were we to hold that the universe had no other phases of being than the few that are turned towards our faculties, and wliich our five senses enable us to perceive. Before leaving this subject, it is perhaps proper to observe, that had we faculties equal in number to all the possible modes of existence, whether of mind or matter, still would our knowl- edge of mind or matter be only relative. If material existence could exhibit ten thousand phaenomena, and if we possessed ten thousand senses to apprehend these ten thousand phaenomena of material existence, — of existence absolutely and in itself, we should be then as ignorant as we are at present. TJie properties of existence not known in their native purity. — But the consideration that our actual faculties of knowledge are probably wholly inadequate in number to the possible modes of 94 RELATIVITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. EXPLICATION OF TERMS. 95 being, is of comparatively less importance than the other con- sideration to which we now proceed, — that whatever we know is not known as it is, but only as it seems to 2is to be ; for it is of less importance that our knowledge should be limited, than that our knowledge should be pure. It is, therefore, of the high- est moment that we should be aware, that what we know is not a simple relation apprehended between the object known and the subject knowing, — but that every knowledge is a sum made up of several elements, and that the great business of philosophy is to analyze and discriminate these elements, and to determine from whence these contributions have been derived. I shall explain what I mean by an example. In the perception of an external object, the mind does not know it in immediate relation to itself, but mediately, in relation to the material organs of sense. K, therefore, we were to throw these organs out of consideration, and did not take into account what they contribute to, and how they modify our knowledge of that object, it is evident that our con- clusion in regard to the nature of external perception would be erroneous. Again, an object of perception may not even stand in immediate relation to the organ of sense, but may make its impression on that organ thi-ough an intervening medium. Now, if this medium be thrown out of account, and if it be not considered that the real external object is the sum of all that externally contributes to affect the sense, we shall, in like man- ner, run into error. For example, I see a book, — I see that book through an external medium (what that medium is, we do not now inquire), — and I see it through my organ of sight, the eye. Now, -as the full object presented to the mind (observe that I say the mind), in perception, is an object compounded of (1.) the external object emitting or reflecting light, i, e. modify- ing the external medium, of (2.) this external medium, and of (3.) the living organ of sense, in their mutual relation, — let us suppose, in the example I have taken, that the full or ade- quate object perceived is equal to twelve, and that this amount is made up of three several parts, — of four contributed by the book, — of four contributed by all that intervenes between tho book and the organ, and of four contributed by the living organ itself. I use this illustration to show, that the pha3nomenon of the external object is not presented immediately to the mind, but is known by it only as modified through certain intermediate ao-encies ; and to show that sense itself may be a source of error, if we do not analyze and distinguish what elements, in an act of perception, belong to the outward reality, what to the outward medium, and what to the action of sense itself. But this source of error is not limited to our perceptions ; and we are liable to be deceived, not merely by not distinguishing in an act of knowledge what is contributed by sense, but by not dis- tinguishing what is contributed by the mind itself. This is the most difficult and important function of philosophy ; and the greater number of its higher problems arise in the attempt to determine the shares to which the knowing subject, and the object known, may pretend in the total act of cognition. For according as we attribute a larger or a smaller proportion to each, we either run into the extremes of Idealism and Materi- alism, or maintain an equilibrium between the two. In what sense human knowledge is relative. — From what has been said, you will be able, I hope, to understand what is meant by the proposition, that all our knowledge is only relative. It is relative, 1°, Because existence is not cognizable, absolutely and in itself, but only in special modes; 2°, Because these modes can be known only if they stand in a certain relation to our faculties ; and 3°, Because the modes thus relative to our faculties are presented to, and knowTi by, the mind only under modifications determined by these faculties themselves. Two series of expressions applied to human knowledge. — This general doctrine being premised, it will be proper now to take some special notice of the several terms significant of the relative nature of our knowledge. And here there are two opposite series of expressions, — 1°, Those which denote the relative and the known ; 2°, Those which denote the absolute and the unknown. Of the former class, are the words phcenom- enon, mode, modification, state, — words which are employed in the definition of Psychology ; and to these may be added the analogous terms, — quality, property, attribute, accident. Of 96 EXPLICATION OF TERMS. EXPLICATION OF TERMS. 97 the latter class, — that is, the absolute and the unknown, — is the word subject, which we have to explain as an element of the definition, and its analogous expressions, substance and sub- stratum. These opposite classes cannot be explained apart ; for, as each is correlative of the other, each can be cpmpre- hended only in and through its correlative. The term subject (subjectum, v7i6aza-e. These relative modes, whether belonging to the world with- out, or to the world within, are, under different points of view, and different limitations, known under various names, as quali- ties, properties, essence, accidents, phcenomena, manifestations, appearances, and so forth ; — whereas the unknown sometliing of which they are the modes, — the unknown ground, which affords them support, is usually termed their substance or sub- ject. Substance {substantia), I noticed, is considered either in conirast to its accidents, as res per se subsistens, or in connection with them, as id quod substat accidentibus. It, therefore, com- prehends both the Greek terms ovaia and v7toxei\usvov, — ovoia being equivalent to substantia in the meaning of ens per se sub- (99) 100 EXPLICATION OF TERMS- EXPLICATION OF TEIiMS. 101 sistens ; — vnoyiEijizvov to it, as id quod suhstat accidentibus. The term subject is used only for substance in its second mean- ing, and thus corresponds to vTtoxstjtevov ; its literal signification is, as its etymology expresses, that which lies, or is iJaced, under the phienomena. Three different errors regarding Substance. — I at present avoid entering into the metaphysics of substance and phe- nomenon. I shall only observe, in general, that philosophers have frc(|uently fallen into one or other of three different errors. Some have denied the reality of any unknown ground of the known phienomena ; and have maintained tliat mind and matter have no substantial existence, but are merely the two comple- ments of two series of associated qualities. This doctrine is, however, altogether futile. It belies the veracity of our pri- mary beliefs ; it leaves unsatisfied the strongest necessities of our intellectual nature ; it admits as a fact that the jdiicnomena are connected, but allows no cause explanatory of the fact of their connection. Others, again, have fallen into an opposite error. They have endeavored to speculate concerning the nature of the unknown grounds of the phaenomena of mind and matter, apart from the phoenomena, and have, accordingly, transcended the legitimate sphere of philosophy. A third party have taken some one, or more, of the pha?nomena themselves as the basis or substratum of the others. Thus Descartes, at least as understood and followed by Malebranche and others of his disciples, made thought or consciousness convertible with the substance of mind ; and Bishops Brown and Law, with Dr. Watts, constituted solidity and extension into the substance of body. This theory is, however, liable to all the objections which may be alleged against the first. I defined Psychology, the science conversant about the phce- nomena of the mind, or conscious-subject, or self, or ego. The former parts of the definition have been exidained ; the tenns mind, conscious-subject, self, and ego, come now to be considered. These are all only expressions for the unknown basis of the mental plitenomena, viewed, however, in different relations. What we mean by mind. — Of these the word mind is the first. In regard to the etymology of this term, it is obscure and doubtful ; perhaps, indeed, none of the attempts to trace it to its origin are successful. It seems to hold an analogy with the Latin 77iens, and both are probably derived from the same common root. This root, which is lost in the European lan- guages of Scytho-Indian origin, is probably preserved in the Sanscrit mena, to know or understand. The Greek vovg, intel- ligence, is, in like manner, derived from a verb of precisely the same meaning (yam). The word mind is of more limited sig- nification than the term soul. In the Greek philosophy, the term ^pviij, sotd, comprehends, besides the sensitive and rational principle in man, the principle of organic life, both in the ani- mal and vegetable kingdoms ; and, in Christian theology, it is hkewise used, in contrast to nvsv^a or spirit, in a vaguer and more extensive signification. Since Descartes limited Psychology to the domain of con- sciousness, the term, mind has been rigidly employed for the self-knowing principle alone. Mind, therefore, is to be under- stood as the subject of the various internal pha?nomena of which we are conscious, or that subject of wliich consciousness is the general phoenomenon. Consciousness is, in fact, to the mind what extension is to matter or body. Though both are phoe- nomena, yet both are essential qualities ; for we can neither conceive mind without consciousness, nor body without exten- sion. Mind can be defined only a posteriori, — that is, only from its manifestations. What it is in itself, that is, apart from its manifestations, — we, philosophically, know nothing, and, accordingly, what we mean by mind is simply that which per- ceives, thinks, feels, wills, desires, etc. Mind, with us, is thus nearly coextensive with the Rational and Animal souls of Aris- totle ; for the faculty of voluntary motion, which is a function of the animal soul in the Peripatetic doctrine, ought not, as is generally done, to be excluded from the phjenomena of con- sciousness and mind. Consciousness and Conscious-sulject. — The next term to be considered is conscious-sulject. And first, what is it to be con- scious ? Without anticipating the discussion relative to con- 9* 102 EXPLICATION OF TERMS. sciousness, as the fundamental function of intelligence, I may, at present, simply indicate to you what an act of consciousness' denotes. This act is of the most elementary character ; it is the condition of all knowledge ; I cannot, therefore, define it to you ; but, as you are all familiar with the thing, it is easy to enable you to connect the thing with the word. I know, — I desire, — I feel. What is it that is common to all these ? Knowing and desiring and feeling are not the same, and may be distinguished. But they all agree in one fundamental condi- tion. Can I know, without knowing that I know? Can I desire, without knowing that I desire? Can I feel, without blowing that I feel ? This is impossible. Now this knowing that I know or desire or feel, — this common condition of self^ knowledge, is precisely what is denominated Consciousness. [Consciousness is a knowledge solely of what is now and here present to the mind. . . . Again, Consciousness is a knowledge of all that is now and here present to the mind ; every imme- diate object of cognition is thus an object of consciousness, and every intuitive cognition itself is simply a special form of con- sciousness. Consciousness comprehends every cognitive act; in other words, whatever we are not conscious of, that we do not know. . . . The actual modifications — the present acts and affections of the Ego, are objects of immediate cognition, as themselves objects of Consciousness.] — Diss, siipp, to Eeid, So much at present for the adjective of conscious ; now for the substantive, subject, — conscious-subject. Though conscious- ness be the condition of all internal phienomena, still it is itself only a plui^nomenon ; and, therefore, supposes a subject in which it inheres ; — that is, supposes something that is conscious, — something that manifests itself as conscious. And, since con- sciousness comprises within its sphere the whole pha?nomena of mind, the expression conscious-subject is a brief, but comprehen- sive, definition of mind itself. I have already informed you of the general meaning of the word subject in its philosophical application, — namely, the unknown basis of pha}nomenal or manifested existence. It is EXPLICATION OF TERMS. 103 thus, in its application, common equally to the external and to the internal worlds. But the philosophers of mind have, in a mimner, usurped and appropriated this expression to themselves. Accordingly, in their hands, the phrases conscious or thinking subject, and subject simply, mean precisely the same thing ; and custom has prevailed so far, that, in psychological discussions, the subject is a term now currently employed, throughout Eu- rope, for the mind or thinking principle. Use of the term Subject vindicated. — The question here occurs, what is the reason of this employment ? If miiid and subject are only convertible terms, why multiply synonyms ? Why exchange a precise and proximate expression for a vague and abstract generality ? The question is pertinent, and merits a reply ; for unless it can be shown tliat the word is necessary, its introduction cannot possibly be vindicated. Now, the utility of this expression is founded on two circumstances. The first, that it affords an adjective ; the second, that the terms subject and subjective have opposing relatives in the terms object and objective, so that the two pairs of words together enable us to designate the primary and most important analysis and antithe- sis of philoj^ophy, in a more precise and emphatic manner than can be done by any other technical expressions. This will require some illustration. Terms Subjective and Objective. — Subject, we have seen, is a term for that in which the pha?nomena revealed to our obser- vation inhere ; — what the schoolmen have designated the materia in qua. Limited to the mental phoenomena, subject, therefore, denotes the mind itself; and subjective, that which belongs to, or proceeds from, the thinking subject. Object, on the other hand, is a term for that about which the knowinor sub- ject is conversant, what the schoolmen have styled the materia circa qitam ; while objective means that which belongs to, or proceeds from, the object known, and not from the subject knowing ; and thus denotes what is real in opposition to what is ideal, — what exists in nature, in contrast to what exists merely in the thought of the individual. All knowledge is a relation — a relation between that which knows (in scholastic 104 EXPLICATION OF TERMS. language, the subject in which knowledge inheres), and that which is known (in ^^cliolastic language, the object about which knowledge is conversant) ; and the contents of every act of knowledge are made up of elements, and regulated by law,>, proceeding partly from its object and partly from its subject. Now philosophy proper is principally and primarily the science of knowledge ; its first and most important problem being to de- termine — What can we hiow^ that is, what are the conditions of our knowing, whether these lie in the nature of the object, or in the nature of the subject, of knowledge ? [But Philosophy being the Science of knowledge ; and the science of knowledge supposing, in its most fundamental and thorough-going analysis, the distinction of the subject and object of knowledge ; it is evident, that, to philosophy, the sulject of knowledge would be, by preeminence, The Subject, and the olject of knowledge, by preeminence, The Object. It was, therefore, natural that the object and the objective, the subject and the sub- jective, should be employed by pliilosophers as simple terms, compendiously to denote the grand discrimination about which philosopliy was constantly employed, and which no others could be found so precisely and promptly to express. In fact, had it not been for the special meaning given to objective in the Schools, their employment in this, their natural relation, would probably have been of a much earlier date ; not, however, that they are void of ambiguity, and have not been often abusively employed. This arises from the following circumstance: — The subject of knowledge is, exclusively, the Ego or conscious mind. Subject and subjective, considered in themselves, are therefore little liable to equivocation. But, on the other hand, the object of knowledge is not necessarily a pha^nomenon of the Non-ego ; for the pha^nomena of the Ego itself constitute as veritable, though not so various and prominent, objects of cog- nition, as the pluenomena of the Non-ego. Subjective and objective do not, therefore, thoroughly and ade- quately discriminate that which belongs to mind, and that which belongs to matter; they do not even competently distinguish what is deperidenU from what is independent, on the coriditions EXPLICATION OF TERMS. 105 of the mental self But in these significations they are and must be frequently employed. Without, therefore, discarding this nomenclature, which, so far as it goes, expresses, in general, a distinction of the highest importance, in the most apposite terms; these terms may, by qualification, easily be rendered adequate to those subordinate discriminations, which it is often requisite to signalize, but which they cannot simply and of them- selves denote. Subject and subjective, without any qualifying attribute, I would therefore employ, as has hitherto been done, to mark out what inheres in, pertains to, or depends on, the knowing mind, whether of man in general, or of this or that individual man in particular ; and this in contrast to object and objective, as ex- pressing what does not so inhere, pertain, and depend. Thus, for example, an art or science is said to be objective, when considered simply as a system of speculative truths or practical rules, but without respect of any actual possessor ; subjective, when considered as a habit of knowledge or dexterity, inherent in the mind, either vaguely of any, or precisely of this or that, possessor. But, as has been stated, an object of knowledge may be a mode of mind, or it may be something different from mind ; and it is frequently of importance to indicate precisely under which of these classes that object comes. In this case, by an internal development of the nomenclature itself, we might employ, on the former alternative, the term subject-object ; on the latter, the term object-object. But the subject-object may be either a mode of mind, of which we are conscious as absolute and for itself alone, — as, for example, a pain or pleasure ; or a mode of mind, of which wc are conscious, as relative to, and representative of something else, — as, for instance, the imagination of something past or possible. Of these we might distinguish, when necessary, the one, as the absolute or the real subject-object, the other, as the relative, or the ideal, or the representative, subject-object. Finally, it may be required to mark whether the object-olject and the subject-object be immediately known as present, or only 106 EXPLICATION OF TERMS. EXPLICATION OF TERMS. 107 as represented. In this case we must resort, on the former alternative, to the epithet presentative or intuitive ; on the lat- ter, to those of represented, mediate, remote, primary, princi- pal, etc.'] — Diss, supp. to Reid. Now, the great problem of philosophy is, to analyze the con- tents of our acts of knowledge or cognitions, — to distinguish what elements are contributed by the knowing subject, wha^ ele- ments by the object known. There must, therefore, be terms adequate to designate these correlative opposites, and to dis- criminate the share which each has in the total act of co-nition But, if we reject the terms subject and subjective, ohfect and obfective, there are no others competent to the purpose. At this stage of your progress, it is not easy to make you aware of the paramount necessity of such a distinction, and of such terms, — or to show you how, from the want of words ex- pressive of this primary antithesis, the mental philosophy of [Great Britain] has been checked in its development, and involved m the utmost perplexity and misconception. It is suffi- cient to remark at present, that to this defect in tlie lan-uao-e of his psychological analysis, is, in a great measure, to be attributed the confusion, not to say the errors, of Reid, in tlie very cardi- nal point of his philosophy, — a confusion so great that the whole tendency of his doctrine was misconceived by Brown, who, m adopting a modification of the hypothesis of a repre- sentative perception, seems not even to have suspected, that he and Reid, and modern philosophers in general, were not in this at one. The terms subjective and objective denote the primary distinction in consciousness of self and not-self, and this dis- tinction involves the whole science of mind; for this science is nothing more than a determination of the subjective and objec- tive, m themselves and in their mutual relations. The distinc- tion IS of paramount importance, and of infinite application, not only m Philosophy proper, but in Grammar, Rhetoric, Criti- cism, Ethics, Politics, Jurisi)rudence, Theology. I wiU give you an example,- a philological example. Suppose a lexi- cographer had to distinguish the two meanings of the word cer- tamty. Certainty expresses either the firm conviction which we have of the truth of a thing ; or the character of the proof on which its reality rests. The former is the subjective mean- ing ; the latter the objective. By what other terms can they be distinguished and described ? History of the terms Subject and Object, — The distinction of subject and object, as marking out the fundamental and most thorough-going antithesis in philosophy, we owe, among many other important benefits, to the, schoohnen, and from the school- men the terms passed, both in their substantive and adjective forms, into the scientific language of modern philosophers. Deprived of these terms, the Critical Philosophy, indeed the whole philosophy of Germany and France, would be a blank. In [Great Britain], though familiarly employed in scientific lan- guage, even subsequently to the time of Locke, the adjective forms seem at length to have dropt out of the English tongue. That these words waxed obsolete, was, perhaps, caused by the ambiguity which had gradually crept into the signification of the substantives. Object, besides its proper signification, came to be abusively applied to denote 77iotive, etid, final cause (a mean- ing, by the way, not recognized by Johnson). This innovation was probably borrowed from the French, in whose language the word had been similarly corrui)ted, after the commencement of the last century. Subject in English, as sujet in French, had not been rightly distinguished from object, taken in its proper meaning, and had thus returned to the original ambiguity of the corresponding term (vtzoxei^evov) in Greek. It is probable that the logical application of the word (subject of predication) facilitated or occasioned this confusion. In usin^ the terms, therefore, we think that an explanation, but no apology, is re- quired. The distinction is expressed by no other terms ; and if these did not already enjoy a prescriptive right as denizens of the language, it cannot be denied, that, as strictly analogical, they are well entitled to sue out their naturalization. We shall have frequent occasion to recur to this distinction, — and it is eminently worthy of your attention. Self, Ego — illustrated from Plato, — The last parallel ex- pressions are the terms self and ego. These we shall take 108 EXPLICATION OF TERMS. EXPLICATION OF TERMS. 109 together, as they are absolutely convertible. As the best prepar- ative for the proper understanding of these terms, I shall trans- late to you a passage from the First Alcihiades of Plato. The interlocutors are Socrates and Alcibiades. " Socr. Hold, now, with whom do you at present converse ? Is it not with me ? — Alcib. Yes. Socr. And I also with you ? — Alcib. Yes. Socr. It is Socrates then who speaks ? — Alcib. Assuredly. Socr. And Alcibiades who listens ? — Alcib. Yes. Socr. Is it not with language that Socrates speaks ? — Alcib. What now ? of course. Socr. To converse, and to use language, are not these then the same ? — Alcib. The very same. Socr. But he who uses a thing, and the thing used, — arc these not different ? — Alcib. What do you mean ? Socr. A currier, — does he not use a cutting knife, and other instruments ? — Alcib. Yes. Socr. And the man who uses the cutting knife, is he differ- ent from the instrument he uses ? — Alcib. Most certainly. Socr. In like manner, the lyrist, is he not different from the lyre he plays on ? — Alcib. Undoubtedly. Socr. This, then, was what I asked you just now, — does not he who uses a thing seem to you always different from the thing used? — Alcib. Very different. Socr. But the currier, does he cut with his instruments alone, or also with his hands ? — Alcib. Also with his hands. Socr. He then uses his hands ? — Alcib. Yes. Socr. And in his work he uses also his eyes ? — Alcib. Yes. Socr. We are agreed, then, that he who uses a thing, and the thing used, are different ? — Alcib. We are. Socr. The currier and lyrist are, therefore, different from the hands and eyes, with which they work ? — Alcib. So it seems. Socr. Now, then, does not a man use his Avhole body ? — Alcib. Unquestionably. Socr. But we are agreed that he who uses, and that which is used, are different ? — Alcib. Yes. Socr. A man is, therefore, different from his body ? — Alcib. So I think. Socr. What then is the man ? — Alcib. I cannot say. Socr. You can at least say that the man is that which uses the body ? — Alcib. True. Socr. Now, does any thing use the body but the mind ? — Alcib. Nothing. Socr. The mind is, therefore, the man ? — Alcib. The mind alone." To the same effect, Aristotle asserts that the mind contains the man, not the man the mind. " Thou art the soul," says Hierocles, " but the body is thine." The Self or Ego in relation to bodily organs, and thoughts. — But let us come to a closer determination of the point ; let us appeal to our experience. " I turn my attention on my being " [says Gatien-Arnoult], " and find that I have organs, and that I have thoughts. My body is the complement of my organs ; am I then my body, or any part of my body ? This I cannot be. The matter of my body, in all its points, is in a perpetual flux, in a perpetual process of renewal. I, — /do not pass away, I am not renewed. None probably of the molecules which constituted my organs some years ago, form any part of the material system which I now call mine. It has been made up anew ; but I am still what I was of old. These organs may be mutilated; one, two, or any number of them may be re- moved ; but not the less do I continue to be what I was, one and entire. It is even not impossible to conceive me existing, I deprived of every organ ; I, therefore, who have these organs, or this body, /am neither an organ nor a body. " Neither am I identical with my thoughts, for they are man- ifold and various. I, on the contrary, am one and the same. Each moment they change and succeed each other ; this change and succession takes place in me, but I neither change nor suc- ceed myself in myself. Each moment I am aware or am conscious of the existence and change of my thoughts : this change is sometimes determined by me, sometimes by some- thing different from me ; but I always can distinguish myself from them : I am a pennanent being, an enduring subject, of whose existence these thoughts are only so many modes, ap- 10 110 EXPLICATION OF TERMS. EXPLICATION OF TERMS. in I pearances, or phaenomena ; — I who possess organs and thoughts am, therefore, neither these organs nor these thoughts. "I can conceive mysell' to exist apart from every organ. But if I try to conceive myself existent without a thought, — without some form of consciousness, — I am unable. This or that thought may not be perhaps necessary ; but of some thought it is necessary that I should be conscious, otherwise I can no longer conceive myself to be. A suspension of thought is thus a suspension of my intellectual existence ; I am, therefore, essentially a thinking, — a conscious being; and my true character is that of an intelligence, — an intelligence served by organs." But this thought, this consciousness, is possible only in, and Ihrough, the consciousness of Self. The Self, the I, is recog- iized in every act of intelligence, as the subject to which that act belongs. It is I that perceive, I that imagine, I that re- member, I that attend, I that compare, I that feel, I that desire, I that will, I that am conscious. The I, indeed, is only man- ifested in one or other of these special modes ; but it is mani- fested in them all ; they are all only the phaenomena of the I, and, therefore, the science conversant about the phaenomena of tlie mind is, most simply and unambiguously, said to be conver- sant about the phaenomena of the /or £go. This expression, as that which, in many relations, best marks and discriminates the conscious mind, has now become familiar in every country, with the exception of our own. Why it lia^ not been naturalized with us is not unapparent. The French have two words for the Ego or I — Je and 3Ioi. The former of these is less appropriate as an abstract term, being in sound ambiguous ; but le moi admirably expresses whr^t the Germans denote, but less feHcitously, by their Das Ich. In English, the /could not be tolerated ; because in sound it could not be dis- tinguished from the word significant of the organ of sight. We must, therefore, renounce the term, or resort to the Latin JSgo ; and this is perhaps no disadvantage, for, as the word is only employed in a strictly philosophical relation, it is better that this should be distinctly marked, by its being used in that relation alone. The term Self is more allowable ; yet still the expres- sions Ego and Non-Ego are felt to be less awkward than those of Self and Not-Self. So much in explanation of the terms involved in the defini- tion which I gave of Psychology. I now proceed, as I pro- posed, to the consideration, of a few other words of frequent occurrence in philosophy, and which it is expedient to explain at once, before entering upon discussions in which they will continually recur. I take them up without order, except in so far as they may be grouped together by their meaning; and the first I shall consider, are the terms hypothesis and theory. Hypothesis. — When a phaenomenon is presented to us which can be explained by no cause within the sphere of our experi- ence, we feel dissatisfied and uneasy. A desire arises to escape from this unpleasing state ; and the consequence of this desire is an effort of the mind to recall the outstanding phaenomenon to unity, by assigning it, ad interim, to some cause, or class, to which we imagine that it may possibly belong, until we shall be able to refer it, permanently, to that cause, or class, to which we shall have proved it actually to appertain. The judgment by which the phaenomenon is thus provisorily referred, is called an hypothesis, — a supposition. Hypotheses have thus no other end than to satisfy the desire of the mind to reduce the objects of its knowledge to unity and system ; and they do this in recalling them, ad interim, to some principle, through which the mind is enabled to comprehend them. From this view of their nature it is manifest how far they are permissible, and how far they are even useful and expedient, — throwing altogether out of account the possibility that what is at first assumed as hypothetical, may subsequently be proved true. Conditions of a legitimate hypothesis. — An hypothesis is allowable only under certain conditions. Of these i\iQ first is, — that the phi«nomenon to be explained should be ascertained actually to exist. It would, for example, be absurd to propose an hypothesis to account for the possibihty of apparitions, until 112 EXPLICATION OF TERMS. it be proved that ghosts do actually appear. This precept, to establish your fact before you attempt to conjecture its cause, may, perhaps, seem to you too elementary to be worth the statement. But a longer experience will convince you of the contrary. That the enunciation of the rule is not only not superfluous, but even highly requisite as an admonition, is shown by great and numerous examples of its violation in the history of science ; and, as Cullen has truly observed, there are more false facts current in the world than false hypotheses to explain them. There is, in truth, nothing which men seem to admit so lightly as an asserted fact. It would be easy to ad- duce extensive hypotheses, very generally accredited, even at the present hour, which are, however, nothing better than assumptions founded on, or explanatory of, phoenomena wliich do not really exist in nature. The second condition of a permissible hypothesis is, — that the phfenomenon cannot be explained otherwise than by an hypothesis. It would, for example, have been absurd, even before the discoveries of Franklin, to account for the phoenom- enon of lightning by the hypothesis of supernatural agency. These two conditions, of the reality of the phirnomenon, and the necessity of an hypothesis for its explanation, being fulfilled, an hypothesis is allowable. Criteria of the excellence of an hypothesis. — But the neces- sity of some hypothesis being conceded, how are we to dis- criminate between a good and a bad, — a probable and an improbable, hypothesis? The comparative excellence of an hypothesis requires, in the first place, that it involve nothing contradictory, either internally or externally. — that is, either between the parts of which it is composed, or between these and any established truths. Thus, the Ptolemaic hypothesis of the heavenly revolutions became worthless, from the moment that it was contradicted by the ascertained pha^nomena of the planets Venus and Mercury. Thus the Wernerian hypothesis in geology is improbable, inasmuch as it is obliged to maintain that water was originally able to hold in solution substances which it is now incapable of dissolving. The Huttonian EXPLICATION OF TERMS. 113 hypothesis, on the contrary, is so far preferable, that it assumes no effect to have been produced by any agent, which that agent is not known to be capable of producing. In the second place, an hypothesis is probable in proportion as the phaenomenon in question can be by it more completely explained. Thus the Copernican hypothesis is more probable than the Tychonic and semi-Tychonic, inasmuch as it enables us to explain a greater number of pha^nomena. In the third place, an hypothesis is probable in proportion as it is independent of aU subsidiary hypotheses. In tins respect, again, the Copernican hypothesis is more probable than the Tychonic. For, though both save all the phsenomena, the Copernican does this by one principal assumption ; whereas the Tychonic is obliged to call in the aid of several subordinate suppositions, to render the principal assumption available. So much for hypothesis. Theory ; Practice. — I shall be more concise in treating of the cognate expression, — theory. This word is employed by English writers in a very loose and improper sense. It is with them usually convertible with hypothesis, and hypothesis is commonly used as another term for conjecture. Dr. Reid, indeed, expressly does this ; he identifies the two words, and explains them as philosophical conjectures, as you may see in his First Essay on the Intellectual Powers. This is, however, wrong ; ^vrong, in relation to the original employment of the terms by the ancient philosophers ; and wrong, in relation to their employment by the philosophers of the modern nations. The terms theory and theoretical are properly used in opposi- tion to the terms practice and practical; in this sense they were exclusively employed by the ancients ; and in this sense they are almost exclusively employed by the continental philos- ophers. Practice is the exercise of an art, or the application of a science, in life, which application is itself an art, for it is not every one who is able to apply all he knows ; there being re- quired, over and above knowledge, a certain dexterity and skill. Theory, on the contrary, is mere knowledge or science. There is a distinction, but no opposition, between theory and practice ; each to a certain extent supposes the other. On the one hand, 10* 114 EXPLICATION OF TERMS. theory is dependent on practice ; practice must have preceded theory ; for theory being only a generahzation of the principles on which practice proceeds, these must originally have been taken out of, or abstracted from, practice. On the other hand, this is true only to a certain extent ; for there is no practice without a theory. The man of practice must have always known something, however little, of what he did, of what he intended to do, and of the means by wliich liis intention was to be carried into effect. He was, therefore, not wholly ignorant of the principles of his procedure ; he was a limited, he was, in some degree, an unconscious, theorist. As he proceeded, however, in his practice, and reflected on his performance, his theory acquired greater clearness and extension, so that he became at last distinctly conscious of what he did, and could give, to himself and others, an account of his procedure. "Per varios usus artcm cxpcrientia fecit, Exemplo monstrante viam." In this view, theory is, therefore, simply a knowledge of the principles by which practice accomplishes its end. The opposition of Theoretical and Practical philosophy is somewhat different ; for these do not stand simply related to each other as theory and practice. Practical philosophy in- volves likewise a theory, — a theory, however, subordinated to the practical application of its principles ; while theoretical phi- losophy has nothing to do with practice, but terminates in mere speculative or contemplative knowledge. The next group of associated words to which I would call your attention is compo-ed of the terms, — potver, faculty, ca- pacity, disposition, habit, act, operation, energy, function, etc. Power. Iteid's criticism of Locke. — Of these the first is power, and the explanation of this, in a manner, involves that of all tlie others. I have, in the first place, to correct an error of Dr. Reid, in relation to this term, in his criticism of Locke's statement of its import. — You will observe that I do not, at present, enter on the question, How do we acquire the notion of power ? and I EXPUCATION OF TERMS. 115 defend the following passage of Locke, only in regard to the meaning and comprehension of the term. « The mind," says Locke, " being every day informed, by the senses, of the altera- tion of those simple ideas it observes in things without, and takin- notice how one comes to an end, and ceases to be, and another begins to exist which was not before ; reflecting, also, on what parses within itself, and observing a constant change of its ideas, sometimes by the impression of outward objects on the senses, and sometimes by the determination of its own choice ; and concluding from what it has so constantly observed to have been, that the like changes will, for the future, be made in the same things, by like agents, and by the Hke ways ; considers, in one thing, the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed,''and, in another, the possibiUty of making that change ; and s°o comes by that idea which we call power. Thus we say, fii-e has a power to melt gold, — that is, to destroy the consis- tency of its insensible parts, and, consequently, its hardness, and make it fluid, and gold has a power to be melted : that the sun has a power to blanch wax, and wax a power to be blanched by the sun, whereby the yellowness is destroyed, and whiteness made to exist in its room. In which, and the like cases, the power, we consider, is in reference to the change of perceivable ideas ; for we cannot observe any alteration to be made in, or operation upon, any tiling, but by the observable change of its sensible ideas ; nor conceive any alteration to be made, but by conceiving a change of some of its ideas. Power, thus considered, is twofold — namely, as able to make, or able to receive, any change : the one may be called active, and the other passive power." Active and Passive Power. — 1 have here only to call your attention to the distinction of power into two kinds, active and passive — the former meaning, id quod potest facere, that which can effect or can do, — the latter, id quod potest feri, that which can be effected or can be done. In both cases, the general notion of power is expressed by the verb potest or can. Now, on this, Dr. Reid makes the following strictures : " Whereas Locke distinguishes power into active and passive, I conceive j 116 EXPLICATION OF TERMS. passive power is no power at all. He means by it, the possi- bility of being clumged. To call thi.-*, poiver, seems to be a misapplication of the word. I do not remember to have met with the phrase passive power in any other good author. Mr. Locke seems to have been unlucky in inventing it ; and it de- serves not to be retained in our language. Perhaps he was unwarily led into it, as an opposite to active power. But I con- ceive we call certain powers active, to distinguish them from other powers that are called speculative. As all mankind dis- tinguish action from speculation, it is very proper to distinguish the powers by which those different operations are performed into active and speculative. ^Ir. Locke, indeed, acknowledges that active power is more properly called power : but I see no propriety at all in passive power ; it is a powerless power, and a contradiction in terms." These observations of Dr. Reid are, I am sorry to say, erro- neous from first to last. The latter part, in which he attempts to find a reason for Locke being unwarily betrayed into making this distinction, is, supposing the distinction untenable, and Locke its author, wholly inadequate to account for his hallu- cination : for, surely, the powers by which we speculate are, in their operations, not more passive than those that have some- times been styled active, but which are properly denominated practical. But in the censure itself on Locke, Reid is alto- gether mistaken. In the first place, so far was Locke from being unlucky in inventing the distinction, it was invented some two thousand years before. In the second place, to call the possibility of being changed a power, is no misapplication of the word. In the third place, so far is the phrase joamye power from not being employed by any good author, — there is hardly a metaphysician, previous to Locke, by whom it was not famil- iarly used. In fact, this was one of the most celebrated dis- tiiictions in i)liiloso])hy. It was first formally enounced by Aristotle, and from him was universally adopted. Active and passive power are in Greek styled Svvafu^ nonjfiixij, and Sirafui naOr,Ttxi] ; in Latin, potentia activa. and potentia pauiva. Power, therefore, is a word which we may use both in an EXPLICATION OF TEEMS. 117 active, and in a passive, signification ; and in psychology, we may apply it both to the active faculties, and to the passive '^^Fa^Uv 1 This leads to the meaning of the terms /acuto and capacities. Faculty (facvltas) is derived from the obsolete Latin facd, the more ancient form oi facUis, from which agam faoiUtas is formed. It is properly limited to active power, and therefore, is abusively appUed to the mere passive afi'ections of '^'''capacity (capacitas), on the other hand, is more properly Umited to these. Its primary signification, which is literally room for, as well as its employment, favors this ; although it cannot be denied, that there are examples of its usage m an active sense. Leibnitz, as far as I know, was the fi«t who limited its psychological application to the passivities of mmd. In his famous Nouvcaiix Esmis sur TEntendement Humam, a. work written in refutation of Locke's &say on the same sub- iect he observes : " We may say that power, in general, is the po-ibility of change. Now the change, or the act of this possi- bility, being action in one subject and passion in another, there will be two powers, the one passive, the other active. The active may be called faculty, and perhaps the passive might be called capacity, or receptivity. It is true that the active power is sometimes taken in a higher sense, when, over and above the simple faculty, there is also a tendency, a nisus ; and it is thus that I have used it in my dynamical considerations. We might give it in this meaning the special name oi force." I may notice that Keid seems to have attributed no other meamng to the term power than tliat of force. Power, then, is active and passive ; faculty is active power, — capacity is passive power. Disposition, Habit. — The two terms next in order, are dis- position, in Greek, fi,a(>tctual. In like manner, my sense of sight potentially exists, though my eyeUds are closed ; but when I open them, it exists actually. Now, power, faculty, capacity, disposition, habit, are all differ- ent expressions for potential or possible existence ; act, opera- EXPLICATION OF TERMS. 119 tion, energy, for actual or present existence. Thus the power of imagination expresses the unexerted capability of imagining ; the act of imagination denotes that power elicited into imme- diate — into present existence. The different synon3nns for potential existence, are existence tv dvvdfiei, in potentia, in posse, in power ; for actual existence, existence Iv ivsQyeia, or tv tvre- Xtxila, in actu, in esse, in act, in operation, in energy. The term energy is precisely the Greek term for act of operation ; but it has vulgarly obtained the meaning of forcible activity. The word functio, in Latin, simply expresses performance or operation ; functio muneris is the exertion of an energy of some determinate kind. But with us, the word function has come to be employed in the sense of munus alone, and means not the exercise, but the specific character, of a power. Thus the function of a clergyman does not mean with us the per- formance of his duties, but the peculiarity of those duties themselves. The function of nutrition does not mean the operation of that animal power, but its discriminate character. CHAPTER VIII. DISTRIBUTipN OF MENTAL PHiENOMENA :- SPECIAL CONDI- TIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Consciousness comprehends all the mental ph(Enomena, — In taking a comprehensive survey of the mental phaenomena, these are all seen to comprise one essential element, or to be possible only under one necessary condition. Tliis element or condition is Consciousness, or the knowledge that I, — that the Ego exists, in some determinate state. In this knowledge they appear, or are realized as phsenomena, and with this knowledge they likewise disappear, or have no longer a phaenomenal exist- ence ; so that consciousness may be compared to an internal light, by means of which, and which alone, what passes in the idud is rendered visible. Consciousness is simple, — is not .. composed of parts, either similar or dissimilar. It always resembles itself, differing only in the degrees of its intensity ; thus, there are not various kinds of consciousness, although there are various kinds of mental modes, or states, of which we are conscious. Whatever division, therefore, of the mental phsenomena may be adopted, all its members must be within consciousness itself, which must be viewed as comprehensive of the whole pha^nomena to be divided ; far less should we reduce it, as a special pha^nomenon, to a particular class. Let con- sciousness, therefore, remain one and indivisible, comprehend- in^ all the modifications, — all the pha^nomena, of the thinking subject. Three classes of rnental phtsnomena. — But taking, again, a survey of the mental modifications, or pha^nomena, of which we are conscious, — these are seen to divide themselves into THREE great classes. In the first place, there are the pha3- (120) DISTRIBUTION OF MENTAL PHENOMENA. 121 nomena of Knowledge ; in tlie second place, there are the phas- nomena of Feeling, or the phenomena of Pleasure and Pain ; and, in the tliird place, there are the phoenomena of Will and Desire, Let me illustrate this by an example. I see a picture. Now, first of all, — I am conscious of perceiving a certain complement of colors and figures, — I recognize what the object is. This is the pha3nomenon of Cognition or Knowl- edge. But this is not the only phenomenon of which I may be liere conscions. I may experience certain affections in the contemplation of this object. K the picture be a masterpiece, the gratification will be unalloyed ; but if it be an unequal pro- duction, I shall be conscious, perhaps, of enjoyment, but of enjoyment alloyed with dissatisfiiction. This is the pha3nome- non of Feeling, — or of Pleasure and Pain. But these two phaenomena do not yet exhaust all of which I may be conscious on the occasion. I may desire to see the picture long, — to see it often, — to make it my own, and, perhaps, I may will, resolve, or determine so to do. This is the complex pha^nomenon of Will and Desire. Their nomenclature. — The English language, unfortunately, does not afford us terms competent to express and discriminate, with even tolerable clearness and precision, these classes of phenomena. In regard to the first, indeed, we have com- paratively little reason to complain; the synonymous terms, knowledge and cognition, suffice to distinguish the phaenomena of this class from those of the other two. In the second class, the defect of the language becomes more apparent. The word feeling is the only term under which we can possibly collect the phaenomena of pleasure and pain, and yet this word is ambiguous. For it is not only employed to denote what we are conscious of as agreeable or disagreeable in our mental states, but it is likewise used as a synonym for the sense of touch. It is, however, principally in relation to the third class that the deficiency is manifested. In English, unfortunately, we have no term capable of adequately expressing what is common both to will and desire ; that is, the nisus or conatus, — U /5 122 DISTRIBUTION OF MENTAL PHENOMENA. DISTRIBUTION OF MENTAL PHENOMENA. 123 the tendency towards the realization of their end. By will is meant a free and deliberate, by desire a blind and fatal, ten- dency to act. Now, to express, I say, the tendency to overt action, — the qiiahty in which desire and will are equally con- tained, we possess no English term to which an exception of Qiore or less cogency may not be taken. Were we to say the ^hjenomena of tendency, the phrase would be vague ; and the «?ame is true of the phaenomena of doing. Again, the term phienomena of appetency is objectionable, because (to say noth- ing of the unfamiliarity of the expression) appetency, though perhaps etymologically unexceptionable, has, both in Latin and English, a meaning almost synonymous with desire. Like the Latin appeteniia, the Greek OQS^ig is equally ill-balanced ; for, though used by philosophers to comprehend both will and desiiT, it more familiarly suggests the latter, and we need not, therefore, be solicitous, with Mr. Harris and Lord Monboddo, to naturalize in English the term orecttc. Again, the phrase phienomena of activity would be even worse ; every possible objection can be made to the term active powers, by which the philosophers of this country have designated the oreciic facul- ties of the Aristotelians. For you will observe, that all facul- ties are equally active ; and it is not the overt performance, but the tendency towards it, for which we are in quest of an expression. The German is the only language I am acquainted with which is able to supply the term of which philosophy is in want. The expression Bestrehungs Vermdgen, which is most nearly, though awkwardly and inadequately, translated by striv- ing faculties;— faculties of effort or endeavor, — is now gen- erally employed, in the philosophy of Germany, as the genus comprehending desire and will. Perhaps the phrase, phenom- ena of exertion, is, upon the whole, the best expression to denote the manifestations, and exertive fiiculties, the best expression to denote the faculties, of will and desire. Exero, in Latin, means literally to put forth ; — and, with us, exertion and ex- ertive are the only endurable words that I can find which approximate, though distantly, to the strength and precision of the German expression. I shall, however, occasionally employ likewise the term appetency, in the rigorous signification I have mentioned, — as a genus comprehending under it both desires and volitions.* This division of mind into the three great classes of the Cog- nitive faculties, — the FeeUngs, or capacities of Pleasure and Pain,— and the Exeiiive or Conative Powers, — I do not pro- pose as original. It was first promulgated by Kant ; and the felicity of the distribution was so apparent, that it has now been long all but universally adopted in Germany by the phi- losophers" of every school. To English psychologists it is apparently wholly unknown. They still adhere to the old scholastic division into powers of the Understanding and pow- ers of the Will ; or, as it is otherwise expressed, into Intel- lectual and Active powers. Objection to the classification obviated, — An objection to the arrangement may, perhaps, be taken on the ground that the * three dasses are not coordinate. It is evident that every men- tal phienomenon is either an act of knowledge, or only possible through an act of knowledge, for consciousness is a knowl- edge, — a phgenomenon of cognition ; and, on this principle, many philosophers have been led to regard the knowing, or representative faculty, as they called it, — the facuhy of cogni- tion, as the fundamental power of mind, from which all others are derivative. To this the answer is easy. These philoso- phers did not observe that, although pleasure and pain, — although desire and volition, are only as they are known to be ; yet, in these modifications, a quality, a phaenomenon of mind, absolutely new, has been superadded, which was never involved in, and could, therefore, never have been evolved out of, the mere faculty of knowledge. The faculty of knowledge is cer- tainly the first in order, inasmuch as it is the conditio sine qua non of the others ; and we are able to conceive a being pos- sessed of the power of recognizing existence, and yet wholly * The term Conative (from Conari) is employed by Cudworth in his Treatise on Free Will. The terms Conation and Conative are those finally adopted by the Author, as tlie most appropriate expressions for the class of phenomena in question. — English Ed. 124 DISTRIBUTION OF MENTAL PHENOMENA. CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 125 f void of all feeling of pain and pleasure, and of all powers of desire and volition. On the other hand, we are wholly unable to conceive a being possessed of feeling and desire, and, at the same time, without a knowledge of any object upon which his affections may be employed, and without a consciousness of these affections themselves. We can further conceive a being possessed of knowledge and feeling alone — a being endowed with a power of recognizing objects, of enjoying the exercise, and of grieving at the restraint, of his activity, — and yet devoid of that faculty of voluntary agency — of that conation, which is possessed by man. To such a being would belong feelings of pain and pleasure, but neither desire nor will properly so called. On the other hand, however, we cannot possibly conceive the exist- ence of a voluntary activity independently of all feeling ; for voluntary conation is a faculty which can only be determined to energy through a pain or pleasure, — through an estimate of the relative worth of objects. In distinguishuig the cognitions, feelings, and conations, it is not, therefore, to be supposed that these phenomena are possi- ble independently of each other. In our philosophical sys- tems, they may stand separated from each other in books and chapters ; — in nature, they are ever interwoven. In every, the simplest, modification of mind, knowledge, feeling, and desire or will go to constitute the mental state ; and it is only by a scientific abstraction that we are able to analyze the state into elements, which are never really existent but in mutual combination. These elements are found, indeed, in very vari- ous proportions in different states, — sometimes one prepon- derates, sometimes another ; but there is no state in which they are not all coexistent. Let the mental phaenomena, therefore, be distributed under the three heads of phienomena of Cognition, or the faculties of Knowledge ; phainomena of Feeling, or the capacities of Pleas- ure and Pain ; and pha^nomena of Desiring or "Willing, of the powers of Conation. The order of these is determined by their relative consecution. Feeling and appetency suppose knowl- edge. The cognitive faculties, therefore, stand first. But as will, and desire, and aversion suppose a knowledge of the pleasurable and painful, the feelings will stand second as inter- mediate between the other two. Consciousness cannot he defined, — Such is the highest or most general classification of the mental phajnomena, or of the pha^nomena of which we are conscious. But as these primary classes are, as we have shown, all included under one universal phaenomenon, — the phsenomenon of Consciousness, — it follows that Consciousness must form the first object of our considera- tion. Nothing has contributed more to spread obscurity over a very transparent matter, than the attempts of philosophers to define consciousness. Consciousness cannot be defined ; we may be ourselves fully aware what consciousness is, but we cannot, without confusion, convey to others a definition of what we ourselves clearly apprehend. The reason is plain. Conscious- ness lies at the root of all knowledge. Consciousness is itself the one highest source of all comprehensibility and illustration ; — how, then, can we find aught else by which consciousness may be illustrated or comprehended ? To accomphsh this, it would be necessary to have a second consciousness, through which we might be conscious of the mode in which the first consciousness was possible. Many pliilosophers, — and among others Dr. Brown, — have defined consciousness a feeling. But how do they define a feeling? They define, and must define it, as sometliing of which we are conscious ; for a feelinf^ of which we are not conscious, is no feeling at all. Here, therefore, they are guilty of a logical see-saw or circle. They define consciousness by feeling, and feeling by consciousness, — that is, they explain the same by the same, and thus leave us in the end no wiser than we were in the beginning. Other philosophers say that consciousness is a knowledge, — and others again, that it is a belief or conviction of a knowledge. Here, again, we have the same violation of logical law. Is there any knowledge of which we are not conscious ? Is there any belief of which we are not conscious ? There is not, — there cannot 11* 126 CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 127 be; therefore, consciousness is not contained under either knowledge or belief, but on the contrar>% knowledge and be- lief are both contained under consciousness. In short, the notion of consciousness is so elementar)', that it cannot possibly be resolved into others more simple. It cannot, therefore, be brought under any genus, — any more general conception; and, consequently, it cannot be defined. But though consciousness cannot be logically defined, it may, however, be philosophically analyzed. This analysis is effected by observing and holding fast the pha^nomena or facts of con- sciousness, comparing these, and, from this comparison, evolving the universal conditions under which alone an act of conscious- ness is possible. What the word consciousness denotes, and tchat it involves. — But before proceeding to show in detail what the act of con- sciousness comprises, it may be proper, in the first place, to recall in general what kind of act the word is employed to denote. I know, I feel, I desire, etc. Wliat is it that is neces- sarily involved in all these ? It requires only to be stated to be admitted, that when I know, I must know that I know, — when I feel, I must knoic that I feel, — when I desire, I must Icnow that I desire. The knowledge, the feeling, the desire, are pos- sible only under the condition of being known, and being known by me. For if I did not know that I knew, I would not know, if I did not know that I felt, I would not feel, — if I did not know that I desired, I would not desire. Now, this knowl- edge, which I, the subject, have of these modifications of my being, and through which knowledge alone these modifications are possible, is what we call consciousness. The expressions, I know that 1 knoic, — / know that I feel — / know that I de- sire, — are thus translated by, lam conscious that I know, — I am conscious that I feel, — lam conscious that I desire. Con- sciousness is thus, on the one hand, the recognition by the mind or ego of its acts and affections ; — in other w^ords, the self- affirmation, that certain modifications are known by me, and that these modifications are mine. But on the other hand, consciousness is not to be viewed as any thing different from these modifications themselves, but is, in fact, the general con- dition of their existence, or of their existence within the sphere of intelligence. Though the simplest act of mind, conscious- ness thus expresses a relation subsisting between two terms. Tliese terms are, on the one hand, an I or Self, as the subject of a certain modification, — and, on the other, some modifica^ tion, state, quality, affection, or operation belonging to the sub- ject. Consciousness, thus, in its simpHcity, necessarily involves three things, — 1°, A recognizing or knowing subject ; 2°, A recognized or known modification ; and, 3°, A recognition or knowledge by the subject of the modification. Consciousness and knowledge involve each other. — From this it is apparent, that consciousness and knowledge each involve the other. An act of knowledge may be expressed by the formula, I know ; an act of consciousness by the formula, 1 know that I knoto : but as it is impossible for us to know without at the same time knowing that we know, so it is impossible to know that w^e know without our actually knowing. The one merely explicitly expresses what the other implicitly contains. Con- sciousness and knowledge are thus not opposed as really differ- ent. AVhy, then, it may be asked, employ two terms to exj^ress notions, which, as they severally infer each other, are really identical ? To this the answer is easy. Realities may be in themselves inseparable, while, as objects of our knowledge, it may be necessary to consider them apart. Notions, likewise, may severally imply each other, and be inseparable, even in thought ; yet, for the purposes of science, it may be requisite to distinguish them by different tei-ms, and to consider them in their relations or correlations to each otlier. Take a geometri- cal example, — a triangle. This is a whole composed of cer- tain parts. Here the whole cannot be conceived as separate from its parts, and the parts cannot be conceived as separate from their w^hole. Yet it is scientifically necessary to have different names for each, and it is necessary now to consider the wliole in relation to the parts, and now the parts in correla- tion to the whole. Again, the constituent parts of a triangle are sides and angles. Here the sides suppose the angles, — I 128 CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. the angles suppose the sides ; — and, in fact, the sides and angles are, in themselves, in reality, one and indivisible. But they are not the same to us, — to our knowledge. For though we cannot abstract in thought the sides from the angle, the angle from the sides, we may make one or other the principal object of attention. We may either consider the angles in relation to each other, and to the sides ; or the sides in relation to each other, and to the angles. And to express all this, it is neces- sary to distinguish, in thought and expression, what, in nature, is one and indivisible. As it is in geometry, so it is in the philosoi)hy of mind. We require different words, not only to express objects and relations different in themselves, but to express the same objects and re- lations under the different points of view in which they are placed by the mind, when scientifically considering them. Thus, in the present instance, consciousness and knowledge are not distinguished by different words as different things, but only as the same thing considered in different aspects. The verbal dis- tinction is taken for the sake of brevity and precision, and its convenience wai-rants its establishment. Knowledge is a rela- tion, and every relation supposes two terms. Thus, in the rela- tion in question, there is, on the one hand, a subject of hiowl- edge, — that is, the knowing mind, — and on the other, there is an object of knowledge, — that is, the thing known; and the knowledge itself is the relation between these two terms. Now, though each term of a relation necessarily supposes the other, nevertheless one of these terms may be to us the more inter- esting, and we may consider that term as the principal, and view the other only as subordinate and correlative. Now, this is the case in the present instance. In an act of knowledge, my atten- tion may be principally attracted either to the object known, or to myself as the subject knowing ; and, in the latter case, although no new element be added to the act, the condition involved in it, — / know that I know, — becomes the primary and prominent matter of consideration. And when, as in the philosophy of mind, the act of knowledge comes to be specially considered in relation to the knowing subject, it CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 129 is at last, in the progress of the science, found convenient, if not absolutely necessary, to possess a scientific word in which this point of view should be permanently and distinctively em- bodied. History of the term consciousness. — But, as the want of a teclmical and appropriate expression could be experienced only after psychological abstraction had acquired a certain stability and importance, it is evident that the appropriation of such an expression could not, in any language, be of very early date. And this is shown by the history of the synonymous terms for consciousness in the different languages, — a history which, though curious, you will find noticed in no publication what- ever. The employment of th.e word conscientia, of which our term consciousness is a translation, is, in its psychological signi- fication, not older than the philosophy of Descartes. Pre- viously to him, this word was used almost exclusively in the ethical sense, expressed by our term conscience; and in the striking and apparently appropriate dictum of St. Augustin, — "certissima scientia et clamante conscientia," — which you may find so frequently paraded by the Continental philosophers, when illustrating the certainty of consciousness, in that quo- tation, the term is, by its author, apphed only in its moral or religious signification. Besides the moral application, the words conscire and conscientia were frequently employed to denote participation in a common knowledge. Thus the mem- bers of a conspiracy were said conscire ; and conscius is even used for conspirator ; and, metaphorically, this community of knowledge is attributed to inanimate objects, — as waiUng to the rocks, a lover says of himself, — " Et conscia saxa fatigo." I would not, however, be supposed to deny that these words were sometimes used, in ancient Latinity, in the modern sense of consciousness, or being conscious. Until Descartes, therefore, the Latin terms conscire and con- scientia were very rarely usurped in their present psychological meaning, — a meaning which, it is needless to add, was not y 130 CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 131 expressed by any term in the vulgar languages ; for, besides Tertullian, I am aware of only one or two obscure instances in which, as translations of the Greek terms avvaioO^avoftai and Gvvaiax^r^aig, of which we are about to speak, the terms conscio and conscientia were, as the nearest equivalents, contorted from their established signification to the sense in which they were afterwards employed by Descartes. Thus, in the phi- losophy of the West, we may safely affirm that, prior to Des- cartes, there was no psychological term in recognized use for what, since liis time, is expressed in philosophical Latinity by conscientia^ in French by conscience, in English by conscious- ness, in Italian by conscienza, and in German by Bewusstseyn. It will be observed that in Latin, French, and Italian (and I might add the Spanish and other Romanic languages), the terms are analogous, the moral and psychological meaning being denoted by the same word. No term for consciousness in Greek tintil the decline of phi- losophy. — In Greek, there was no term for consciousness until the decline of philosophy, and in the later ages of the lan- guage. Plato and Aristotle, to say nothing of other philoso- phers, had no special term to express the knowledge which the mind affords of the operations of its faculties, though this, of course, was necessarily a frequent matter of their considera- tion. Intellect was supposed by them to be cognizant of its own operations ; it was only doubted whether by a direct or by a reflex act. In regard to sense, the matter was more per- plexed ; and, on this point, both j)hilosophers seem to vacillate in their opinions. In his Thecetetus, Plato accords to sense the power of perceiving that it perceives ; whereas, in his Chor- mides, this power he denies to sense, and attributes to intelli- gence (vov^). In like manner, an apparently different doctrine may be found in different works of Aristotle. But what con- cerns us at present, in all these discussions by the two philoso- phers, there is no single term employed to denote that special aspect of the phoenomenou of knowledge, which is thus by them made a matter of consideration. It is only under the later Platonists and Ai-istotelians, that peculiar terms, tanta- mount to our consciousness, were adopted into the langua^ of philosophy. The special conditions of consciousness. — But to return from our historical digression. We may lay it down as the most general characteristic of consciousness, that it is the recognition by the thinking subject of its own acts or affections. So far there is no difference and no dispute. In this all philosophers are Sicrreed. The more arduous task remains of determining the special conditions of consciousness. Of these, likemse, some are almost too palpable to admit of controversy. Before pro- ceeding to those in regard to which there is any doubt or diffi- culty, it will be proper, in the first place, to state and dispose of such determinations as are too palpable to be called in ques- tion. Of these admitted limitations, tlic first is, that conscious- ness is an actual, and not a potential, knowledge. Thus, a man is said to know, — i. e. is able to know, that 7 + 9 are = 16, though that equation be not, at the moment, the object of his thought ; but we cannot say that he is conscious of this truth unless while actually present to his mind. The second limitation is, that consciousness is an immediate, not a mediate, knowledge. We are said, for example, to know a past occurrence when we represent it to the mind in an act of memory. We know the mental representation, and this we do immediately and in itself, and are also said to know the past occurrence, as mediately knowing it through the mental modifi- cation which represents it. Now, we are conscious of the representation as immediately known, but we cannot be said to be conscious of the thing represented, which, if known, is only known through its representation. If, therefore, mediate knowl- edge be in propriety a knowledge, consciousness is not coexten- sive with knowledge. This is, however, a problem we are hereafter specially to consider. I may here also observe, ik't, while all philosophers agree in making consciousness an immediate knowledge, some, as Reid and Stewart, do not admit that all immediate knowledge is consciousness. They hold that we have an immediate knowledge of external ob- jects, but they hold that these objects are beyond the sphere V 132 CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 133 of consciousness. This is an opinion we are, likewise, soon to canvass. The third condition of consciousness, which may be held as universally admitted, is, that it supposes a contrast, — a discrim- ination ; for we can be conscious only inasmuch as we are conscious of something ; and we are conscious of something only inasmuch as we are conscious of what that something is, — that is, distinguish it from what it is not. This discrimination is of different kinds and degrees. This discrimination of various kinds and degrees. — In the Jirst place, there is the contrast between the two grand opposites, self and not-self — ego and non-ego, — mind and matter (the contrast of subject and object is more general). We are con- scious of self only in and by its contradistinction from not-self; and are conscious of not-self only in and by its contradistinc- tion from self. In the second place, there is the discrimination of the states or modifications of the internal subject or self from each other. We are conscious of one mental state only as we contradistinguish it from another; where two, three, or more such states are confounded, we are conscious of them as one ; and were we to note no difference in our mental modifications, we might be said to be absolutely unconscious. Hobbes has truly said, "' Idem semper sentire, et non sentire, ad idem reci- dunt ; " [To have always the same sensation, and not to have any sensation at all, amount to the same thmg.] In the third place, there* is the distinction between the parts and qualities of the outer world. We are conscious of an external object only as we are conscious of it as distinct from others ; — where sev- eral distinguishable objects are confounded, we are conscious of them as one ; where no object is discriminated, we are not con- scious of any. Before leaving this condition, I may parenthet- ically state, that, while all philosophers admit that consciousness involves a discrimination, many do not allow it any cognizance of aught beyond the sphere of self. The great majority of philosophers do this because they absolutely deny the possibility of an immediate knowledge of external things, and, conse- quently, hold that consciousness in distinguishing the non-ego r- from the ego, only distinguishes self from self; ibr they main- tain, that what we are conscious of as something different from the perceiving mind is only, in reality, a modification of that mind, which we are condemned to mistake for the material reality. Some philosophers, however, (as Reid and Stewart,) who hold, with mankind at large, that we do possess an imme- diate knowledge of something different from the knowing self, still limit consciousness to a cognizance of self; and, conse- quently, not only deprive it of the power of distinguishing external objects from each other, but even of the power of discriminating the ego and non-ego. These opinions we are afterwards to consider. With this qualification, all philosophers may be viewed as admitting that discrimination is an essential condition of consciousness. T\\Q fourth condition of consciousness, wliich may be assumed as very generally acknowledged, is, that it involves judgment. A judgment is the mental act by which one thing is affirmed or denied of another. This fourth condition is, in truth, only a necessary consequence of the third ; — for it is impossible to discriminate without judging, — discrimination, or contradistinc- tion, being in fact only the denying one tiling of another. It may to some seem strange that consciousness, the simple and primaiy act of intelligence, should be a judgment, — which philosophers, in general, have viewed as a compound and deriv- ative operation. This is, however, altogether a mistake. A judgment is, as I shall hereafter show you, a simple act of mind, for every act of mind implies a judgment. Do we per- ceive or imagine, without affirming, in the act, the external or internal existence of the object? Now these fundamental affirmations are the affirmations, — in other words, the judg- ments, of consciousness. The fifth undeniable condition of consciousness is memory. This condition, also, is a corollary of the third. For without memory, our mental states could not be held fast, compared, distinguished from each other, and referred to self. Without memory, each indivisible, each infinitesimal, moment in the mental succession would stand isolated from every other, ^— 12 134 CONDITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS would constitute, in fact, a separate existence. The notion of the ego or self arises from the recognized permanence and identity of the thinking subject, in contrast to the recognized succession and variety of its modifications. But this recogni- tion is possible only through memory. The notion of self is, therefore, the result of memory. But the notion of self is in- volved in consciousness ; so, consequently, is memory. CHAPTER IX. CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. So far as we have proceeded, our determination of the con- tents of consciousness may be viewed as that universally admitted. Let us, therefore, sum up the points we have estab- lished. We have shown, in general, that consciousness is the self-recognition that we know, or feel, or desire, etc. We have shown, in particular, 1°, That consciousness is an actual or living, and not a potential or dormant, knowledge ; — 2°, That it is an immediate, and not a mediate, knowledge ; — 3°, That it supposes a discrimination ; — 4°, That it involves a judgment ; — and, 5°, That it is possible only through memory. We are now about to enter on a more disputed territory ; and the first thesis I shall attempt to establish, involves several subordinate questions. Our consciousness coextensive with our Knowledge. — I state, then, as the first contested position which I am to maintain, that our consciousness is coextensive with our knowledge. But this assertion, that we have no knowledge of which we are not conscious, is tantamount to the other, that consciousness is coex' tensive with our cognitive faculties, — and this, again, is con- vertible with the assertion, that consciousness is not a special faculty, but that our special faculties of knowledge are only modifications of consciousness. The question, therefore, may be thus stated, — Is consciousness the genus under which our several faculties of knowledge are contained as species, — or, is consciousness itself a special faculty coordinate with, and not comprehending, these ? By Hutcheson, Reid, and Stewart, — to say nothing of infe- rior names, — consciousness has been considered as nothing (135^ 136 CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. 137 higher than a special faculty. As I regard this opinion to be erroneous, and as the error is one affecting the very cardinal point of philosophy, — as it stands opposed to the peculiar and most important principles of the philosoi)hy of Reid and Stew- art themselves, and has even contributed to throw around their doctrine of perception an obscurity that has caused Dr. Brown absolutely to mistake it for its converse, and as I have never met with any competent refutation of the grounds on which it rests, — I shall endeavor to show you that, notwithstanding the high authority of its supporters, this oi)inion is altogether un- tenable. Reid and Stewart on consciousness. — As I previously stated, neither Dr. Reid nor Mr. Stewart has given us any regular account of consciousness ; their doctrine on this subject is to bft found scattered in difterents parts of their works. The two fol- lowing brief passages of Reid contain the principal positions of that doctrine. The first is : '' Consciousness is a word used by philosophers to signify that immediate knowledge which we have of our present thoughts and purposes, and, in general, of all the present operations of our minds. Whence we may ob- serve, that consciousness is only of things present. To apply consciousness to things past, which sometimes is done in i)opu- lar discourse, is to confound consciousness with memory ; and all such confusion of words ought to be avoided in philosophical discourse. It is likewise to be obsei*ved, that consciousness is only of things in the mind, and not of external things. It is improper to say, I am conscious of the table which is before me. 1 perceive it, I see it ; but do not say I am conscious of it. As that consciousness, by which we have a knowledge of the operations of our own minds, is a different power from that by which we perceive external objects, and as these different powers have different names in our language, and, I believe, in all languages, a phtlosopher ought carefully to preserve this distinction, and never to confound things so different in their nature." The second is : " Consciousness is an operation of the understanding of its own kind, and cannot be logically defined. The objects of it are our present pains, our pleasures, our hopes, our fears, our desires, our doubts, our thoughts of every kind ; in a word, all the passions and all the actions and opera- tions of our own minds, while they are present. We may remember them when they are past ; but we are conscious of them only while they are present." Besides what is thus said in general of consciousness, in his treatment of the different special faculties, Reid contrasts consciousness with each. Thus, in his essays on Perception, on Conception or Imagination, and on Memory, he specially contradistinguishes consciousness from each of these operations ; and it is also incidentally by Reid, but more articulately by Stewart, discriminated from Attention and Reflection. According to the doctrine of these philosophers, conscious- ness is thus a special faculty, coordinate with the other intel- lectual powers, having like them a particular operation and a peculiar object. And what is the peculiar object which is pro- posed to consciousness ? The peculiar objects of consciousness, says Dr. Reid, are all the present passions and operations of our minds. Consciousness thus has for its objects, among the other modifications of the mind, the acts of our cognitive faculties. Now here a doubt arises. If consciousness has for its object the cognitive operations, it must know these operations, and, as it blows these operations, it must know their objects: conse- quently, consciousness is either not a special faculty, but a fac- ulty comprehending every cognitive act ; * or it must be held * [We know ; and We know that we know .- — these propositions, logically distinct, are really identical; each implies the other. The attempt to analyze the cognition / A-«oit', and the cognition / ^/jom? that I know, into the separate energies of distinct faculties, is therefore vain. But this is the analysis of Reid. Consciousness, which the formula / know that I know adequately expresses, he views as a power specifically distinct from the various cognitive faculties comprehended under the formula / know, pre- cisely as these faculties are severally contradistinguished from each other. But here the parallel does not hold. I can feel without perceiving, I can perceive without imagining, I can imagine without remembering, I can remember without judging (in the emphatic signification), I can judge with- out willing. One of these acts docs not immediately suppose the other. Though modes merely of the same indivisible subject, they are modes in 12* 138 CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. 139 HI that there is a double knowledge of every object, — fi^&lf the knowledge of that object by its partictdar facidty, and second, a knowledge of it by consciousness, as taking cognizance of every mental operation. But the former of these alternatives is a surrender of consciousness as a coordinate and special faculty, and the latter is a supposition not only unphilosophical but absurd. Now, you will attend to the mode in which Reid escapes, or endeavors to escape, from this dilemma. This he does by assigning to consciousness, as its object, the various intellectual operations to the exclusion of their several objects. " I am conscious," he says, " of perception, but not of the object I perceive ; I am conscious of memory, but not of the object I remember." By this limitation, if tenable, he cer- tainly escapes the dilemma, for he would thus disprove the truth of the principle on which it proceeds — namely, that to be conscious of the operation of a faculty is, in fact, to be con- scious of the object of that operation. The whole question, therefore, turns upon the proof or disproof of this principle ; — for if it can be shown that the knowledge of an operation neces- sarily involves the knowledge of its object, it follows that it is impossible to make consciousness conversant about the intel- lectual operations to the exclusion of their objects. And that this principle must be admitted, is what, I hope, it will require but little argument to demonstrate. relation to each other, really distinct, and admit, therefore, of psychological discrimination. But can I feel without being conscious that I feel? — can I remember, without being conscious that I remember ? or, can I be con- scious, without being conscious that I perceive, or imagine, or reason, — that I energize, in sliort, in some determinate mode, which Reid would view as the act of a faculty specifically diiierent from consciousness ? That tills is impossible, Reid himself admits. But if, on the one hand, consciousness be only realized under specific modes, and cannot therefore exist apart from the several faculties iti cinnulo ; and if, on the other, these faculties can all and each only be exerted under the condition of consciousness ; conscious- ness, consequently, is not one of the special modes into which our mental activity may be resolved, but the fundamental form, — the generic condi- tion of them all. Every intelligent act is thus a modified consciousness ; and consciousness a comprehensive term for the complement of our cogni- tive energies.] — rHscussloiis. No consciousness of a cognitive act without a consciousness of its object. — Some things can be conceived by the mind each separate and alone ; others, only in connection with something else. The former are said to be things absolute ; the latter, to be things relative. Socrates and Xanthippe may be given as examples of the former; husband and wife, of the latter. Socrates and Xantliippe can each be represented to the mind without the other ; and, if they are associated in thought, it is only by an accidental connection. Husband and wife, on the contrary, cannot be conceived apart. As relative and correla- tive, the conception of husband involves the conception of wife, and the conception of wife involves the conception of husband. Each is thought only in and through the other, and it is unpos- sible to think of Socrates as the husband of Xanthippe, without thinking of Xanthippe as the wife of Socrates. We cannot, therefore, know what a husband is without also knowing what is a wife, as, on the other hand, we cannot know what a wife is without also knowing what is a husband. You will, therefore, understand from this example, the meaning of the logical axiom, that the knowledge of relatives is one, — or that the knowledge of relatives is the same. This being premised, it is evident that, if our intellectual operations exist only in relation, it must be impossible that con- sciousness can take cognizance of one term of this relation, with- out also takinjr cooriizance of the other. Knoivledge, in general, is a relation between a subject knowing and an object known, and each operation of our cognitive faculties only exists by rela- tion to a particular object, — this object at once calling it into existence, and specifying the quality of its existence. It is, therefore, palpably impossible that w^e can be conscious of an act without being conscious of the object to which that act is relative.* This, however, is what Dr. Reid and Mr. Stewart * [The assertion, that we can be conscious of an act of knowledge, with- out being conscious of its object, is virtually suicidal. A mental operation is what it is, only by relation to its object ; the object at once determining its existence, and specifying the character of its existence. But if a relation cannot be comprehended in one of its terms, so we cannot be conscious of 140 CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. maintain. They maintain that I can know that I know, with- out knowing what I know, -or that I can know the knowledge without knowing what the knowledge is about ; for exampfe, that I am conscious of perceiving a book without bein-^ con- scious of the book perceived,- that I am conscious of remem- bering Its contents, witliout being conscious of these contents remembered, — and so forth. The unsoundness of this opinion must, however, be articulately shown by taking the different faculties in detail, which they have contradistinguished from consciousness, and by showing, in regard to each, that it is alto- gether impossible to propose the operation of that faculty to the consideration of consciousness, and to withhold from conscious- ness its object. Imagination 1 shall commence with the faculty of ImaW- nation, to which Dr. Reid and Mr. Stewart have chosen, und'er various limitations, to give [erroneously] the name of Concep- tion. This faculty is peculiarly suited to evince the error of holding that consciousness is cognizant of acts, but not of the objects of these acts. " Conceiving, Imagining, and Apprehending," says Dr. Reid, are commonly used as synonymous in our language, and si- mfy the same thing which the logicians call Simple Apprehen- an operation, withoat being conscious of the object to whici, it exists only aa con-elative. For e.xample, _ We are conscious of a perception, says Reid but are not consc.ous of its object. Yet how can we be c^.seious of a ^. ceptto«. that IS, how can we know that a perception exists, - that it is a per- cepfon and not another mental state, -and that it is the perception of a ro»e, and of notlung but a rose ; unless this consciousness involve a knowl- edge (or consciousness) of the object, which at,jpce determines the exist- ence of the act, -specifies its kind, -and distinguishes its individuality? Ann.lulate the object, you annihilate the operation ; annihilate the con- soonsness ot the object, you annihilate the consciousness of the operation the ^l.,r'"7i ""'",''T '"'•"'' "^ ""' ™^'""'™ '""S-'C^' '"« two lerms of the rehmou of knowledge exist only as identical ; the object admitting only The H <"■*;■":■"■"«!»» from the subject. I imagine a Hippo^rvph. H n„ T- !""■" •■"' "" •""^'^^'^ •■ ""^"-^ "'" ">e consciousness of the H.ppogryph, you deny me the consciousness of the imagination ; I am conscious of zero ; I am not conscious at all.] — Discussions. i (I CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. 141 sion. This is an operation of the mind different from all those we have mentioned [Perception, Memory, etc.]. Whatever we perceive, whatever we remember, whatever we are conscious of, we have a full persuasion or conviction of its existence. What never had an existence cannot be remembered; what has no existence at present cannot be the object of perception or of consciousness ; but what never had, nor has any exist- ence, may be conceived. Every man knows that it is as easy to conceive a winged horse or a centaur, as it is to conceive a horse or a man. Let it be observed, therefore, that to con- ceive, to imagine, to apprehend, when taken in the proper sense, signify an act of the mind which implies no belief or judgment at all. It is an act of the mind by which nothing is affirmed or denied, and which, therefore, can neither be true nor false." And again : " Consciousness is employed solely about objects that do exist, or have existed. But conception is often em- ployed about objects that neither do, nor did, nor will, exist. This is the very nature of this faculty, that its object, though distinctly conceived, may have no existence. Such an object Ave call a creature of imagination, but this creature never was created. " That we may not impose upon ourselves in this matter, we must distinguish between that act or operation of the mind, which we call conceiving an object, and the object which we conceive. Wlien we conceive any thing, there is a real act or operation of the mind ; of tliis we are conscious, and can have no doubt of its existence. But every such act must have an object ; for he that conceives must conceive something. Sup- pose he conceives a centaur, he may have a distinct conception of this object, though no centaur ever existed." And again : " I conceive a centaur. This conception is an operation of the mind of which I am conscious, and to which I can attend. The sole object of it is a centaur, an animal which, I believe, never existed." Now, here it is admitted by Reid, that imagination has an object, and, in the example adduced, that this object has no existence out of the mind. The object of imagination is, there- .V 142 CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. 143 fore, in the mind, — is a modification of the mind. Now, can it be maintained that there can be a modification of mind, — a modification of which we are aware, but of which we are not conscious? But let us regard the matter in another aspect. We are conscious, says Dr. Reid, of the imagination of a cen- taur^ but not of the centaur imagined. Now, nothing can be more evident than that the object and the act of imagination are identical. Thus, in the example alleged, the centaur imagined, and the act of imagining it, are one and indivisible. What is the act of imagining a centaur but the centaur imaged, or the image of the centaur ; what is the image of the centaur but the act of imagining it? The centaur is both the object and the act of ima;]rination : it is the same thing viewed in different relations. It is called the object of imagination, when considered as representing a possible existence ; — for every- thing that can be construed to the mind, every thing that does not violate the laws of thought, in other words, every thing that does not involve a contradiction, may be conceived by the mind as possible.* I say, therefore, that the centaur ia * [Reid says, "The sole object of conception (imagination) is an animal ■which I believe never existed." It ' never existed ; * that is, never really, never in nature, never externally, existed. But it is * an object of imagina- tion.' It is not, therefore, a mere non-existence ; for if it had no kind of existence, it could not possibly be the positive object of any kind of thought. For were it an absolute nothing, it could have no qualities {non- entis nulla sunt attributa) ; but the object we are conscious of, as a Centaur, has qualities, — qualities which constitute it a determinate something, and distinguish it from every other entity whatsoever. We must, therefore, per force, allow it some sort of imaginary, ideal, representative, or (in the older meaning of the term) objective, existence in the mind. Now this exist- ence can only be one or other of two sorts ; for such object in the mind either is, or is not, a mode of mind. Of these alternatives the latter cannot be supposed ; for this would be an affirmation of the crudest kind of non- egoistical representation — the very hypothesis against which Reid so strenuously contends. The former alternative remains — that it is a mode of the imagining mind, — that it is, in fact, the plastic act of imagination, considered as representing to itself a certain possil)le form — a Centaur. But then Reid's assertion — that there is always an object distinct from the operation of the mmd conversant about it, the act being one thing, the object of the act another — must be surrendered. For the object and the >.l called the object of imagination, when considered as repre- senting a possible existence ; whereas the centaur is called the act of imagination, when considered as the creation, work, or operation, of the mind itself The centaur imagined and the imagination of the centaur are thus as much the same indi- visible modification of mind, as a square is the same figure, whether we consider it as composed of four sides, or as composed of four angles, — or as paternity is the same relation whether we look from the son to the father, or from the father to the son. We cannot, therefore, be conscious of imagining an object, without being conscious of the object imagined ; and as regards imagination, Reid's limitation of consciousness is, there- fore, futile. Memory. — I proceed next to Memory : — " It is by Memory," says Dr. Reid, "that we have an immediate knowledge of things past. The senses give us information of things only as they exist m the present moment ; and this information, if it were not preserved by memory, would vanish instantly, and leave us as ignorant as if it had never been. Memoiy must have an object. Every man who remembers must remember something, and that which he remembers is called the object of his remembrance. In this, memory agrees with perception, but differs from sensation, which has no object but the feeHng itself. Every man can distinguish the thing remembered from the remembrance of it. We may remember any thing which we have seen, or heard, or known, or done, or suffered ; but the remembrance of it is a particular act of the mind which now exists, and of wliich we are conscious. To confound these two is an absurdity which a thinking man could not be led into, but by some false hypothesis which hinders him from reflecting upon the thing which he would explain by it." " The object of memory, or thing remembered, must be something that is past; as the object of perception and of consciousness must, be act are here only one and the same thing in two several relations. Reid's error consists in mistaking a logical for a metaphysical difference — a dis- tinction of relation for a distinction of entity. Or is the error only from the vagueness and ambiguity of expression ?] — Diss. supp. to Reid. I 144 CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. something which is present. What now is, cannot be an object of memory ; neither can that which is past and gone be an object of perception, or of consciousness." " Sometimes, in popular discourse, a man says he is conscious that he did such a thing, meaning that he distinctly remembers that he did it. It is unnecessary, in common discourse, to fix accurately the limits between consciousness and memory. This was foi-merly shown to be the case with regard to sense and memory. And, therefore, distinct remembrance is sometimes called sense, sometimes consciousness, without any inconvenience. But this ought to be avoided in philosophy, otherwise we confound the different powers of the mind, and ascribe to one what really belongs to another. If a man be conscious of what he did twenty yeara or twenty minutes ago, there is no use for "mem- ory, nor ought we to allow that there is any such faculty. The faculties of consciousness and memory are chiefly distinguished by this, that the first is an immediate knowledge of the present, the second an immediate knowledge of the past." From these quotations it appears, that Reid distinguishes memory from consciousness in this, — that memory is an im- mediate knowledge of the past, consciousness an immediate knowledge of the present. We may, therefore, be conscious of the act of memory as present, but of the object of memory as past, consciousness is impossible. Now if memory and con- sciousness be, as Reid asserts, the one an immediate knowledge of the past, the other an immediate knowledge of the present, it is evident that memory is a facuhy whose object lies beyond the sphere of consciousness ; and, consequently, that conscious- ness cannot be regarded as the general condition of every intel- lectual act. We have only, therefore, to examine whether this attribution of repugnant qualities to consciousness and memory be correct, — whether there be not assigned to one or other a function which does not really belong to it. Now, in regard to what Dr. Reid says of consciousness, I admit that no exception can be taken. Consciousness is an immediate knowledge of the present. We have, indeed, already shown that consciousness is an immediate knowledge, and, there- CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. 145 fore, only of the actual or now-existent. This being admitted, and professing, as we do, to prove that consciousness is the one generic faculty of knowledge, we consequently must maintain that all knowledge is immediate, and only of the actual or present, — in other words, that what is called mediate knowl- edge, knowledge of the past, knowledge of the absent, knowl- edge of the non-actual or possible, is either no knowledge at all, or only a knowledge contained in, and evolved out of, an immediate knowledge of what is now existent and actually present to the mind. Tliis, at first sight, may appear like para- dox ; I trust you will soon admit that the counter doctrine is self-repugnant. Conditions of immediate knowledge. — Let us first determine what immediate knowledge is, and then see whether the knowl- edge we have of the past, through memory, can come under the conditions of immediate knowledg-e. Now nothingr can be more evident than the following positions : 1°, An object to be known immediately must be known in itself, — that is, in those modifi- cations, qualities, or phaenomena, through which it manifests its existence, and not in those of something different from itself; for, if we suppose it known not in itself, but in some other thing, then this other thing is what is immediately known, and the object known through it is only an object mediately known. But 2°, If a thing can be immediately kno^vn only if known in itself, it is manifest that it can only be known in itself, if it be itself actually in existence, and actually in immediate rela- tion to our faculties of knowledge. Memory not an immediate knowledge of the past. — Such are the necessary conditions of immediate knowledge ; and they disprove at once Dr. Reid's assertion, that memory is an imme- diate knowledge of the past. An immediate knowledge is only conceivable of the now existent, as the now existent alone can be known in itself. But the past is only past, inasmuch as it is not now existent ; and as it is not now existent, it cannot be known in itself. The immediate knowledge of the past is, therefore, impossible. 13 146 CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. We liave, hitherto, been considerinj^ the conditions of imme- diate knowledge in relation to the object ; let us now consider them in relation to the cognitive act. Every act, and conse- quently, every act of knowledge, exists only as it now exists ; and as it exists only in the iiow, it can be eo^rnizant onlv of a now-existent object. Memory is an act, — an act of knowledge ; it can, therefore, be cognizant only of a now-existent object. But the object known in memory is, ex hypothesis past ; conse- quently, we are reduced to the dilemma, either of refusing a past object to be known in memory at all, or of admitting it to be only mediately known, in and through a present object. That the latter alternative is the true, it will require a very few explanatory words to convince you. What are the con- tents of an act of memory ? An act of memory is merely a present state of mind, which we are conscious of, not as abso- lute, but as relative to, and representing, another state of mind, and accompanied with the belief that the state of mind, as now represented, has actually been. I remember an event I saw, — the landing of George lY. at Leith. This remembrance is only a consciousness of certain imaginations, involving the conviction that these imaginations now represent ideally what I formerly really experienced. All that is immediately known in the act of memory, is the present mental modification ; that is, the representation and concomitant belief. Beyond this mental modification, we know nothing ; and this mental modifi- cation is not only known to consciousness, but only exists in and by consciousness. Of any past object, real or ideal, the mind knows and can know nothing, for ex hypothesi, no such object now exists ; or if it be said to know such an object, it can only be said to know it mediately, as represented in the present mejital modification. Properly speaking, however, we know only the actual and present, and all real knowledge is an immediate knowledge. Wliat is said to be mediately known, is, in truth, not known to be, but only believed to l)e ; for its existence is only an inference resting on the belief, that the mental modification truly repre- sents what is in itself beyond the sphere of knowledge. What CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. 147 is immediately known must be ; for what is immediately known is supposed to be known as existing. The denial of the exi.st- ence, and of the existence within the sphere of consciousness, involves, therefore, a denial of the immediate knowledge of an object. We may, accordingly, doubt the reality of any object of mediate knowledge, without denying the reality of the im- mediate knowledge on which the mediate knowledge rests. In memory, for instance, w^e cannot deny the existence of the present representation and belief, for their existence is the con- sciousness of their existence itself. To doubt their existence, therefore, is for us to doubt the existence of our conscious- ness. But as this doubt itself exists only through consciousness, it would, consequently, annihilate itself. But, though in mem- ory we must admit the reality of the representation and belief, as facts of consciousness, we may doubt, we may deny, that the representation and belief are true. We may assert that they represent what never was, and that all beyond their present mental existence is a delusion. This, however, could not be the case if our knowledge of the past were immediate. So far, therefore, is memory from being an immediate knowledge of the past, that it is at best only a mediate knowledge of the past ; while, in philosophical propriety, it is not a knowledge of the past at all, but a knowledge of the present and a belief of the past. But in whatever terms we may choose to designate the contents of memory, it is manifest that these contents are all within the sphere of consciousness.'*' * [This criticism on Reid's doctrine of memory is hardly fair, for it seems to be founded on a misapprehension of his use of language. The word "immediate " has two meanings : — first, as present, instant, or now existing. In this -^ense, we say, " There is a call for immediate action," meaning thereby instant action. Secondly, it may mean direct, proximate, or ivithout tJie intervention of any ot/ier thing ; thus, " The immediate agency of God," signifies his direct action, without the intervention of any second cause. In treating of memory, Reid uses the word *' immediate " in the former accep- tation, Hamilton in the latter. Hence there is no contradiction between them. Either might have accepted the other's doctrine as supplementary to his own, — certainly as not contradicting it.] — Am. Ed, EELATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO PERCEPTION. 149 I CHAPTER X. CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY CONTINUED ; ITS EELATION TO PERCEPTION, ATTENTION, AND REFLEC- TION. Reid contradistinguishes consciousness from perception. — We now proceed to consider the third facuhy which Dr. Reid specially contradistinguishes from Consciousness, — I mean Perception, or that faculty through which we obtain a knowl- edge of the external world. Now, you will observe that Reid maintains, against the immense majority of all, and the entire multitude of modern, philosophers, that we have a direct and immediate hiowledge of the external world. He thus vindicates to j^iind not only an immediate knowledge of its own modifica- tions, but also an immediate knowledge of what is essentially different from mind or self, — the modifications of matter. He did not, however, allow that these were known by any common faculty, but held that the qualities of mind were exclusively made known to us by Consciousness, the qualities of matter exclusively made known to us by Perception. Consciousness was, thus, the faculty of innnediate knowledge purely suhjective ; perception, the faculty of immediate knowledge purely objective. The Ego was known by one faculty, the Non-Ego by another. " Consciousness," says Dr. Reid, " is only of tilings in the mind, and not of external things. It is improper to say, I am con- scious of the table which is before me. I perceive it, I see it, but do not say I am conscious of it. As that consciousness by which we have a knowledge of the operations of our own minds, is a difierent power from that by which we perceive external objects, and as these different powers have different names in our language, and, I believe, in all languages, a philos- (148) opher ought carefully to preserve this distinction, and never to confound things so different in their nature." And in another place he observes : — " Consciousness always goes along with perception ; but they are different operations of the mind, and they have their different objects. Consciousness is not percep- tion, nor is the object of consciousness the object of perception." Dr. Reid has many merits as a speculator, but the only merit which he arrogates to liimself, — the principal merit accorded to him by others, — is, that he- was the first philosopher, in more recent tunes, who dared, in his doctrine of immediate perception, to vindicate, against the unanimous authority of philosophers, the universal conviction of mankind. But this doctrine he has at best imperfectly developed, and, at the same time, has unfortunately obscured it by errors of so singular a character, that some acute philosophers have never even suspected what his doctrine of perception actually is. One of these errors is the contradistinction of perception from con- sciousness. Doctrine of representative perception in tioo forms. — I may here notice, by anticipation, that philosophers, at least modern philosophers, before Reid, allowed to the mind no immediate knowledge of the external reality. They conceded to it only a representative or mediate knowledge of external things. Of these some, however, held that the representative object — the object immediately known — was different from the mind know- ing, as it was also different from the reality it represented; while others, on a simpler hypothesis, maintained that there was 710 immediate entity, no tertium quid, between the reality and the mind, but that the immediate or representative object tvas itself a mental modification. The latter thus granting to mind no immediate knowledge of aught beyond its own modification, could, consequently, only recognize a consciousness of self. The former, on the contrary, could, as they actually did, accord to consciousness a cognizance of not-self. Now Reid, after asserting against the philosophers the immediacy of our knowl- edge of external things, would almost appear to have been startled by liis own boldness, and, instead of carrying his prm- 13* \ 150 RELATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO PERCEPTION. ciple fairly to its issue, by according to consciousness on his doctrine that knowledge* of the external world as existing, which, in the doctrine of the philosophers, it obtained of the external world as represented, he inconsistently stopped short, split immediate knowledge into two parts, and bestowed the knowledge of material qualities on perception alone, allowing that of mental modifications to remain exclusively with con- sciousness. Be this, however, as it may, the exemption of the objects of perception from the sphere of consciousness can be easily shown to be self-contradictory. Held maintains that we are not conscious of matter. — "VYliat ! say the partisans of Dr. Reid, are we not to distinguish, as the product of different faculties, the knowledge we obtain of objects in themselves the most opposite ? Mind and matter are mutu- ally separated by the whole diameter of being. INIind and matter are, in fact, nothing but words to express two series of . phaenomena known less in themselves than in contradistinction from each other. The difference of the phaenomena to be known, surely legitimates a difference of faculty to know them. In answer to this, we admit at once, that — were the question merely whether we should not distinguish, under consciousness, two special faculties, — whether we should not study apai't, and bestow distinctive appellations on consciousness considered as more particuhirly cognizant of the external world, and on con- sciousness considered as more particularly cognizant of the internal — this would be highly proper and expedient. But this is not the question. Dr. Reid distinguishes consciousness as a special faculty from perception as a special faculty, and he allows to the former the cognizance of the latter in its operation, to the exclusion of its object. He maintains that we are con- scious of our perception of a rose, but not of the rose perceived ; that we know the ego by one act of knowledge, the non-ego by another. This doctrine I hold to be erroneous, and it is this doctrine I now proceed to refute. Heid IS wrong ^ because 1°, the knowledge of opposites is one, — In the first place, it is not only a logical axiom, but a self- evident truth, that the knowledge of opposites is one. Thus, RELATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO PERCEPTION. 151 we cannot know what is tall without knowing what is short, — we know what is virtue only as we know what is vice, — the science of health is but another name for the science of disease. Nor do we know the opposites, the I and Thou, the Ego and the Non-ego, the subject and object, mind and matter, by a dif- ferent law. The act which aflirms that this particular phae- nomenon is a modification of Me, virtually affirms that the phainom nion is not a modification of any thing different from Me, and, consequently implies a common cognizance of self and not-self; the act which affirms that this other phaenomenon is a modification of something different from Me, virtually af- firms that the phaenomenon is not a modification of Me, and, consequently, implies a common cognizance of not-self and self. But unless we are prepared to maintain that the faculty cognizant of self and not-self is different from the faculty cog- nizant of not-self and self, we must allow that the ego and non- ego are known and discriminated in the same indivisible act of knowledge. What, then, is the faculty of which this act of knowledge is the energy? It cannot be Reid's consciousness, for that is cognizant only of the ego or mind ; — it cannot be Reid's perception, for that is cognizant only of the non-ego or matter. But as the act cannot be denied, so the faculty must be admitted. It is not, however, to be found in Reid's cata- logue. But though not recognized by Reid in his system, its necessity may, even on his hypothesis, be proved. For if, with him, we allow only a special faculty immediately cognizant of the ego, and a special faculty immediately cognizant of the non- ego, we are at once met by the question. By what faculty are the ego and non-ego discriminated? We cannot say by con- sciousness, for that knows nothing but mind ; — we cannot say by perception, for that knows nothing but matter. But as mind and matter are never known apart and by themselves, but always in mutual correlation and contrast, this knowledge of them in connection must be the function of some faculty, not like Reid's consciousness and perception, severally limited to mind and to matter as exclusive objects, but cognizant of them as the ego and non-ego, — as the two terms of a relation. It Z' 152 RELATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO PERCEPTION. RELATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO PERCEPTION. 153 is thus shown that an act and a ftieulty must, peiforce, on Reid's own hypothesis, be admitted, in which these two terms shall be comprehended together in the unity of knowledge, — in short, a higher consciousness, embracing Reid's consciousness and perception, and in which the two acts, severally cognitive of mind and of matter, shall be comprehended and reduced to unity and correlation. But what is this but to admit at hist, in an unphilosophical complexity, the common consciousness of subject and object, of mind and matter, which we set out with denying in its philosophical simplicity ? [The immediate knowledge which Reid allows of things dif- ferent from the mind, and the immediate knowledge of mind itself, cannot therefore be split into two distinct acts. In per- ception, as in the other faculties, the same indivisible conscious- ness is conversant about both terms of the relation of knowledge. Distinguish the cognition of the subject from the cognition of the object of perception, and you either annihilate the relation of knowledge itself, which exists only in its terms being com- prehended together in the unity of consciousness ; or you must postulate a higher faculty, which shall again reduce to one the two cognitions you have distinguished ; — that is, you are at last compelled to admit, in an unphilosophical complexity, that com- mon consciousness of subject and object, which you set out with denying in its philosophical simplicity. Consciousness and im- mediate knowledge are thus terms universally convertible ; and if there be an immediate knowledge of things external, there is consequently the consciousness of an outer ivorld, (To obviate misapprehension, we may here parenthetically observe, that all we do intuitively know of self, — all that we may intuitively know of not-self, is only relative. Existence, ahsolutely and in itself ^ is to us as zero ; and while nothing is, so nothing is known to us, except those phases of being which stand in analogy to our faculties of knowledge. These we call qualities, phenomena, properties, etc. When we say, therefore, that a tiling is known in itself, we mean only that it stands face to face, in direct and immediate relation to the conscious mind ; in other words, that, as existing, its phenomena form part of the I circle of our knowledge, — exist since they are known, and are known because they exist.) — Discussions. Because, 2°, he thus contradicts his own doctrine of an imme- diate knowledge of the external world. — But in the second place, the attempt of Reid to make consciousness conversant about the various cognitive faculties to the exclusion of their objects, is equally impossible in regard to Perception, as we have shown it to be in relation to Imagination and Memory ; nay, the attempt, in the case of perception, would, if allowed, be even suicidal of his great doctrine of our immediate knowl- edge of the external world. Reid*s assertion, that we are conscious of the act of percep- tion, but not of the object perceived, involves, first of all, a general absurdity. For it virtually asserts that we can know what we are not conscious of knowing. An act of perception is an act of knowledge ; what we perceive, that we know. Now, if in perception there be an external reality known, but of which external reality we are, on Reid's hypothesis, not con- scious, then is there an object know^n, of which we are not con- scious. But as we know only inasmuch as we know that we know, — in other words, inasmuch as we are conscious that we know, — we cannot know an object without being conscious of that object as known ; consequently, we cannot perceive an object without being conscious of that object as perceived. But, again, how is it possible that we can be conscious of an operation of perception, unless consciousness be coextensive with that act ; and how can it be coextensive with the act, and not also conversant with its object? An act of knowledge is only possible in relation to an object, — and it is an act of one kind or another only by special relation to a particular object. Thus the object at once determines the existence, and specifies the character of the existence, of the intellectual energy. An act of knowledge existing, and being wiiat it is, only by relation to its object, it is manifest that the act can be known only through the object to which it is correlative ; and Reid's suppo- sition, that an operation can be known in consciousness to the exclusion of its object, is impossible. For example, I see the 154 RELATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO TERCEPTION. RELATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS TO PERCEPTION. 155 fl !' inkstand. How can I be conscious that my present modifica- tion exists, — that it is a perception, and not another mental state, — that it is a perception of sight to the exclusion of every other sense, — and, finally, that it is a perception of the ink- stand and of the inkstand only, — unless my consciousness com- prehend within its sphere the object, which at once determines the existence of the act, qualifies its kind, and distinguishes its individuality ? Annihilate the inkstand, you annihilate the per- ception ; annihilate the consciousness of the object, you anni- hilate the consciousness of the operation. The apparent incongruity of the expression explained. — It undoubtedly sounds strange to say, I am conscious of the ink- stand, instead of saying, I am conscious of the perception of the inkstand. This I admit ; but the admission can avail noth- ing to Dr. Reid, ^ov the apparent incongruity of the expression arises only from the prevalence of that doctrine of perception in the schools of philosophy, which it is his principal merit to have so vigorously assailed. So long as it was universally assumed l)y the learned, that the mind is cognizant of nothing beyond, either, on one theoiy, its own representative modifica- tions, or, on another, the species, ideas, or representative enti- ties, different from itself, which it contains, and that all it knows of a material world is only an internal representation which, by the necessity of its nature, it mistakes for an external reality, — the supposition of an immediate knowledge of material phaj- nomena was regarded only as a vulgar, an unphilosophical illu- sion ; and the term consciousness, which was exclusively a learned or technical expression for all immediate knowledge, was, consequently, never employed to express an immediate knowledge of aught beyond the mind itself; and thus, when at length, by Reid's own refutation of the prevailing doctrine, it becomes necessary to extend the term to the immediate knowl- edge of external objects, this extension, so discordant with philosophic usage, is, by the force of association and custom, felt at first as strange and even contradictory. A sliglit con- sideration, however, is sufficient to reconcile us to the expres- sion, in showing, if we hold the doctrine of immediate per- ception, the necessity of not limiting consciousness to our subjective states. In fact, if we look beneath the surface, consciousness was not, in general, restricted, even in philosophi- cal usage, to the modifications of the conscious self That gi*eat majority of philosophers who held that, in perception, we know nothing of the external reality as existing, but that we are immediately cognizant only of a representative something, dif- ferent both from the object represented and from the percipient mind, — these philosophers, one and all, admitted that we are conscious of this tertium quid present to, but not a modification of, mind ; — for, except Reid and his school, I am aware of no philosophers who denied that consciousness was coextensive or identical with immediate knowledge. Hoiv some of the self-contradictions of Reid's doctrine may be avoided. — But, in the tlyrd place, we have previously reserved a supposition on which we may possibly avoid some of the self- contradictions which emerge from Reid's proposing as the object of consciousness the act, but excluding from its cogni- zance the object, of perception ; that is, the object of its own object. The supposition is, that Dr. Reid committed the same error in regard to perception, which he did in regard to mem- ory and imagination ; and that, in maintaining our immediate knowledge in perception, he meant nothing more tlian to main- tain, that the mind is not, in that act, cognizant of any repre- sentative object different from its own modification, of any ter- tium quid ministering between itself and the external reality ; but that, in perception, the mind is determined itself to repre- sent the unknown external reality, and that, on this self-repre- sentation, he abusively bestowed the name of immediate knowl- edge, in contrast to that more complex theory of perception, which holds that there mtervenes between the percipient mmd and the external existence an intermediate something, different from both, by which the former knows, and by which the latter i- represented. On the supposition of this mistake, we may believe him guiltless of the others ; and we can certainly, on this ground, more easily conceive how he could accord to con- sciousness a knowledge only of the percipient act, — meaning 156 ATTENTION AND REFLECTION. ATTENTION AND REFLECTION. 157 ill r !::l u by that act the representation of the external reality ; and how he could deny to consciousness a knowledge of the object of perception, — meaning by that object the unknown reality itself. This is the only opinion which Dr. Brown and others ever sus- pect him of maintaining ; and a strong case might certainly be made out to prove that this view of his doctrine is correct. But if such were, in truth, Reid's opinion, then has he accom- plished nothing, — his whole philosophy is one mighty blunder For, as I shall hereaftei* show, idealism finds in this simpler hypothesis of representation even a more secure foundation than on the other ; and, in point of fact, on this hypothesis, the most philosophical scheme of idealism that exists, — the Egois- tic or Fichtean, — is established. Taking, however, the general analogy of Reid*s system, and a great number of unambiguous passages into account, I am satisfied that this view of his doctrine is erroneous ; and I shall endeavor, when we come to treat of mediate and immediate knowledge, to explain how, from his never having formed to himself an adequate conception of these under all their possi- ble forms, and from his historical ignorance of them as actually held by philosophers, — he often appears to speak in contradic- tion of the vital doctrine which, in equity, he must be held to have steadily maintained. Reid and Stewart on Attention and Reflection, — Besides the operations we have already considered, — Imagination or Conception, Memory, and Perception, which Dr. Reid and Mr. Stewart have endeavored to discriminate from Consciousness, — there are further to be considered Attention and Reflection, which, in like manner, they have maintained to be an act or acts, not subordinate to, or contained in, Consciousness. But before proceeding to show that their doctrine on this point is almost etpially untenable as on the preceding, it is necessary to clear up some confusion, and to notice certain collateral errors. Reid either employs these terms as synonymous expressions, or he distinguishes them only by making Attention relative to the consciouness and perception of the present ; Reflection to the memory of the past. He says, " In order, however, to our having a distinct notion of any of the operations of our own minds, it is not enough that we be conscious of them, for all men have this consciousness : it is further necessary that we attend to them while they are exerted, and reflect upon them with care while they are recent and fresh in our memory. It is necessary that, by employing ourselves frequently in this way, we get the habit of this attention and reflection," etc. And " Mr. Locke," he says, " has restricted the word reflection to that which is employed about the operations of our minds, without any authority, as I think, from custom, the arbiter of language : for surely I may reflect upon what I have seen or heard, as well as upon what I have thought. The word, in its proper and common meaning, is equally applicable to objects of sense, and to objects of consciousness. He has likewise con- founded reflection with consciousness, and seems not to have been aware that they are different powers, and appear at very different periods of life." In the first of these quotations, Reid might use attention in relation to the consciousness of the present, reflection^ to the memory of the past; but in the second, in saying that reflection "is equally applicable to objects of sense and to objects of conscioiftness," he distinctly indicates that the two terms are used by him as convertible. Reid (I may notice by the way) is wholly wrong in his stric- tures on Locke for his restricted usage of the term refl^ection ; for it was not until after his time, that the term came, by Wolf, to be philosophically employed in a more extended signification than that in wliich Locke correctly apphes it. Reid is likewise wrong, if we literally understand his words, in saying that reflection is employed in common language in relation to objects of sense. It is never employed except upon the mind and its contents. We cannot be said to reflect upon any external object, except in so far as that object has been previously per- ceived, and its image become part and parcel of our intellectual furniture. We may be said to reflect upon it in memory, but not in perception. But to return. Reid, therefore, you will observe, identifies Attention and 14 158 ATTENTION AND REFLECTION. Reflection. Now Mr. Stewart says, " Some important observa- tions on the subject of attention occur in different parts of Dr. Reid's writings. To this ingenious author we are indebted for the remark, that attention to things external is properly called observation ; and attention to the subjects of our consciousness, reflection. There is, likewise, another oversight of Mr. Stewart which I may notice. "JVJthough," he says, "the connection between attention and memory has been frequently remarked in general terms, I do not recollect that the power of attention has been mentioned by any of the writers on pneumatology in their enu- meration of faculties of the mind ; nor has it been considered by any one, so far as I know, as of sufficient importance to deserve a particular examination." So far is this from being the case, that there are many previous authors who have con- sidered attention as a separate fticuhy, and treated of it even at greater length than Mr. Stewart himself. This is true not only of the celebrated Wolf, but of the whole Wolfian school ; and to these I may add Condilhic, Malebranche, and many others. But this by the way. Is Attention a faculty distinct from consciousness! — Taking, however. Attention Imd Reflection for acts of the same faculty, and supposing, with Mr. Stewart, that reflection is properly attention directed to the phsenomena of mind; observation, attention directed to the phitnomena of matter ; the main ques- tion comes to be considered. Is Attention a faculty diflferent from Consciousness, as Reid and Stewart maintain? As the latter of these philosophers has not argued the point himself, but merely refers to the arguments of the former in conflrma- tion of their common doctrine, it will be sufficient to adduce the following passage from Reid, in which his doctrine on this head is contained. " I return," he says, " to what I mentioned as the mam source of information on this subject, — attentive re- flection upon the operations of our own minds. " All the notions we have of mind and its operations, are, by Mr. Locke, called ideas of reflection. A man may have as dis- tinct notions of remembrance, of judgment, of will, of desire, NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. 159 as he has of any object whatever. Such notions, as Mr. Locke justly observes, are got by the power of reflection. But what is this power of reflection ? ' It is,' says the same author, ' that power by which the mind turns its view inward, and observes its own actions and operations.' He observes elsewhere, ' That the understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and per- ceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and that it requires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object.' "This power of the understanding to make its own opera- tions its object, to attend to them, and examine them on all sides, is the power of reflection, by which alone we can have any distinct notions of the powers of our own or of other minds. " This reflection ought to he distinguished from consciousness, with which it is too often confounded, even by Mr. Locke. All men are conscious of the operations of their own minds, at all times while they are awake ; but there are few who reflect upon them, or make them objects of thought." What Attention is. — Dr. Reid has rightly said that Attention is a voluntary act. This remark might have led him to the observation, that Attention is not a separate facidty, or a faculty of intelligence at all, hut merely an act of will or desire, subor- dinate to a certain law of intelligence. This law is, that the greater number of objects to which our consciousness is simul- taneously extended, the smaller is the intensity with which it is able to consider each, and consequently, the less vivid and dis- tinct will be the information it obtains of the several subjects. Tliis law is expressed in the old adage, " Plaribus intentus minor est ad singula sensus." Such being the law, it follows that, when our interest in any particular object is excited, and when we wish to obtain all the knowledge concerning it in our power, it behooves us to limit our consideration to that object, to the exclusion of others. This is done by an act of volition or desire, which is called attention. But to view attention as a special act of intelligence, 158 ATTENTION AND REFLECTION. Eeflection. Now Mr. Stewart says, " Some important observa- tions on the subject of attention occur in diiFerent parts of Dr. Reid's writings. To this ingenious author we are indebted for the remark, that attention to things external is properly called observation ; and attention to the subjects of our consciousness, reflection. There is, likewise, another oversight of Mr. Stewart which I may notice. "Although," he says, "the connection between attention and memory has been frequently remarked in general terms, I do not recollect that the power of attention has been mentioned by any of the writers on pneumatology in their enu- meration of faculties of the mind ; nor has it been considered by any one, so far as I know, as of sufficient importance to deserve a particular examination." So far is this from being the case, that there are many previous authors who have con- sidered attention as a separate faculty, and treated of it even at greater length than Mr. Stewart himself. This is true not only of the celebrated Wolf, but of the whole Wolfian school ; and to these I may add Condillac, Malebranche, and many others. But this by the way. 75 Attention a faculty distinct from consciousness! — Taking, however. Attention lind Reflection for acts of the same faculty, and supposing, with Mr. Stewart, that reflection is properly attention directed to the phsenomena of mind; observation, attention directed to the phenomena of matter ; the main ques- tion comes to be considered, Is Attention a faculty different from Consciousness, as Reid and Stewart maintain? As the latter of these philosophers has not argued the point himself, but merely refers to the arguments of the former in continua- tion of their common doctrine, it will be sufficient to adduce the following passage from Reid, in which his doctrine on this head is contained. " I return," he says, " to what I mentioned as the mam source of information on this subject, — attentive re- flection upon the operations of our own minds. " All the notions we have of mind and its operations, are, by Mr. Locke, called ideas of reflection. A man may have as dis- tinct notions of remembnmce, of judgment, of will, of desire, NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. 159 as he has of any object whatever. Such notions, as Mr. Locke justly observes, are got by the power of reflection. But what is this power of reflection ? ' It is,' says the same author, ' that power by which the mind turns its view inward, and observes its own actions and operations.' He observes elsewhere, ' That the understanding, hke the eye, whilst it makes us see and per- ceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and that it requires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object.* "This power of the understanding to make its own opera- tions its object, to attend to them, and examine them on all sides, is the power of reflection, by which alone we can have any distinct notions of the powers of our own or of other minds. " This reflection ought to he distinguished from consciousness, with wliich it is too often confounded, even by Mr. Locke. All men are conscious of the operations of their own minds, at all times while they are awake ; but there are few who reflect upon them, or make them objects of thought." What Attention is. — Dr. Reid has rightly said that Attention is a voluntary act. This remark might have led him to the observation, that Attention is not a separate faeidty, or a faculty of intelligence at all, but merely an act of will or desire, subor- dinate to a certain law of intelligence. This law is, that the greater number of objects to which our consciousness is simul- taneously extended, the smaller is the intensity with which it is able to consider each, and consequently, the less vivid and dis- tinct will be the information it obtains of the several subjects. This law is expressed in the old adage, "Pluribiis intentus minor est ad singula sensus." Such being the law, it follows that, when our interest in any particular object is excited, and when we wish to obtain all the knowledge concerning it in our power, it behooves us to limit our considei-ation to that object, to the exclusion of others. This is done by an act of volition or desire, which is called attention. But to view attention as a special act of intelligence, 160 NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. 161 and to distinguish it from consciousness, is utterly inept. Con- sciousness may be compared to a telescope, attention to the pullmg out or in of the tubes in accommodating the focus to the object ; and we might, with equal justice, distinguish in the eye the adjustment of the pupil from the general organ of vision, as, in the mind, distinguish attention from consciousness, as separate faculties. Not, however, that they are to be ac- counted the same. Attention is consciousness, and somethint^ more. It is consciousness voluntarily applied, under its law of limitations, to some determinate object ; it is consciousness concentrated. In this respect, attention is an interesting subject of consideration ; and having now finished what I proposed in proof of the position, that consciousness is not a special faculty of knowledge, but coextensive with all our cognitions, I shall proceed to consider it in its various aspects and relations ; and having just stated the law of limitation, I shall go on to what I have to say in regard to attention as a general phjenomenon of consciousness. Can we attend to more than one object at once ? — And, here, I have first to consider a question in which I am again sorry to find myself opposed to many distinguished philosophers, and in particular, to one whose opinion on this, as on every other point of psychological observation, is justly entitled to the highest consideration. The philosopher I allude to is Mr. Stewart. The question is. Can we attend to more than a single object at once? For if attention be nothing but the concentration of consciousness on a smaller number of objects than constitute its widest compass of simultaneous knowledge, it is evident that, unless this widest compass of consciousness be limited to only two objects, we do attend when we converge consciousness on any smaller number than that total comple- ment of objects which it can embrace at once. For example, if we suppose that the number of objects which consciousness can simultaneously apprehend be six, the limitation of con- sciousness to five, or four, or three, or two, or one, will all be acts of attention, different in degree, but absolutely identical in kind. Stewart's doctrine of attention. — Mr. Stewart's doctrine is as follows : — " Before," he says, "we leave the subject of Attention, it is proper to take notice of a question which has been stated with resjp)ect to it ; whether we have the power of attending to more than one thing at one and the same instant ; or, in other words, whether we can attend, at one and the same instant, to objects which we can attend to separately ? This question has, if I am not mistaken, been already decided by several philosophers in the negative ; and I acknowledge, for my own part, that although their opinion has not only been called in question by others, but even treated with some degree of contempt as altogether hypothetical, it appears to me to be the most reasonable and philosophical that we can form on the subject. " There is, indeed, a great variety of cases in which the mind apparently exerts different acts of attention at once ; but from the instances which have abeady been mentioned, of the astonishing rapidity of thought, it is obvious that all this may be explained without supposing those acts to be coexistent ; and I may even venture to add, it may all be explained in the most satisfactory manner, without ascribing to our intellectual opera- tions a greater degree of rapidity than that with which we know, from the fact, that they are sometimes carried on. The efiect of practice in increasing this capacity of apparently at- tending to different things at once, renders this explanation of the pha^nomenon in question more probable than any other. " The case of the equilibrist and rope-dancer is particularly favorable to this explanation, as it affords direct evidence of the possibility of the mind's exerting different successive acts in an interval of time so short, as to produce the same sensible eftect as if they had been exerted at one and the same moment. In this case, indeed, the rapidity of thought is so remarkable, that if the different acts of the mind were not all necessarily accom- panied with different movements of the eye, there can be no reason for doubting that the philosophers whose doctrine I am now controverting, would have asserted that they are all mathe- matically coexistent. 162 NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. 163 " Upon a question, however, of this sort, which does not ad- mit of a perfectly direct appeal to the fact, I would by no means be understood to decide with confidence ; and, therefore, I should wish the conclusions I am now lo state, to be received as only conditionally established. They are necessary and obvious consequences of the general principle, * that the mind can only attend to one thing at once ; ' but must stand or fall with the truth of that supposition. " It is commonly understood, I believe, that in a concert of music, a good ear can attend to the diflferent parts of the music separately, or can attend to them all at once, and feel the full effect of the harmony. If the doctrine, however, which I have endeavored to establish be admitted, it will follow that, in the latter case, the mind is constantly varying its attention from the one part of the music to the other, and that its operations are 80 rapid as to give us no perception of an interval of time. " The same doctrine leads to some curious conclusions with respect to vision. Suppose the eye to be fixed in a particular position, and the picture of an object to be painted on the retina. Does the mind perceive the complete figure of the ob- ject at once, or is this perception the result of the various per- ceptions we have of the different points in the outline ? With respect to this question, the principles already stated lead me to conclude, that the mind does, at one and the same time, per- ceive every point in the outline of the object (provided the whole of it be painted on the retina at the same instant) ; for perception, Uke consciousness, is an involuntary operation. As no two points, however, of the outline are in the same direction, every point by itself constitutes just as distinct an object of attention to the mind, as if it were separated by an interval of empty space from all the rest. If the doctrine, therefore, formerly stated be just, it is impossible for the mind to attend to more than one of these points at once ; and as the perception of the figure of the object implies a knowledge of the relative situation of the different points with respect to each other, we must conclude, that the perception of figure by the eye is the result of a number of different acts of attention. These acts of attention, however, are performed with such rapidity, that the effect, with respect to us, is the same as if the perception were instantaneous. "In further confirmation of this reasoning, it may be re- marked, that if the perception of visible figure were an imme- diate consequence of the picture on the retina, we should have, at the first glance, as distinct an idea of a figure of a thousand sides as of a triangle or a square. The truth is, that when the figure is very simple, the process of the mind is so rapid that the perception seems to be instantaneous ; but when the sides are multipled beyond a certain number, the interval of time necessary for these different acts of attention becomes percep- tible. " It may, perhaps, be asked what I mean by a point in the outline of a figure, and what it is that constitutes this point one object of attention. The answer, I apprehend, is that this point is the minimum visihile. If the point be less, we cannot perceive it ; if it be greater, it is not all seen in one direction. " If these observations be admitted, it will follow that, with- out the facuhy of memory, we could have had no perception of visible figure." On this point. Dr. Brown not only coincides with Mr. Stewart in regard to the special fact of attention, but asserts in general that the mind cannot exist at the same moment in two different states, that is, in two states in either of wliich it can exist sep- arately. " If the mind of man," he says, " and all the changes which take place in it, from the first feeling with which life commenced to the last with which it closes, could be made visible to any other thinking being, a certain series of feelings alone, — that is to say, a certain number of successive states of mind, would be distinguishable in it, forming indeed a variety of sensations, and thoughts, and passions, as momentary states of the mind, but all of them existing mdividually, and succes- sively to each other. To suppose the mind to exist in two different states, in the same moment, is a manifest absurdity." Criticism of StewarCs doctrine, — ! shall consider these statements in detail. Mr. Stewart's first illustration of his doc- 164 NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. 165 trine is drawn from a concert of music, in which, he says, " a good ear can attend to the different parts of the music sepa- rately, or can attend to them all at once, and feel the full effect of the harmony." This example, how^ever, appears to me to amount to a reduction of his opinion to the impossible. What are the facts in this example ? In a musical concert, we have a multitude of different instruments and voices emitting: at once an infinity of different sounds. These all reach the ear at the same indivisible moment in which they perish, and, consequently, if heard at all, much more if their mutual relation or harmony be perceived, they must be all heard simultaneously. Tliis is evident. For if the mind can attend to each minimum of sound only successively, it, consequently, requires a minimum of time in which it is exclusively occupied with each minimum of sound. Now, in this minimum of time, there coexist with it, and with it perish, many minima of sound which, ex hypothesis are not perceived, are not heard, as not attended to. In a con- cert, therefore, on this doctrine, a small number of sounds only could be perceived, and above this petty maximum, all sounds would be to the ear as zero. But what is the fact ? No con- cert, however numerous its instruments, has yet been found to have reached, far less to have surpassed, the capacity of mind and its organ. But it is even more impossible, on this hypothesis, to under- stand how we can perceive the relation of different sounds, that is, have any feeling of the harmony of a concert. In this respect, it is, indeed, /e?/© de se. It is maintained that we can- not attend at once to two sounds, we cannot perceive them as coexistent, — consequently, the feeling of harmony of which Ave are conscious, must proceed from the feeling of the relation of these sounds as successively perceived in different points of time. AYe must, therefore, compare the past sound, as retained in memory, with the present, as actually perceived. But this is impossible on the hypothesis itself. For we must, in this case, attend to the past sound in memory, and to the present sound in sense at once, or they will not be perceived in mutual relation as harmonic. But one sound in memory and another sound in sense, are as much two different objects as two dif- ferent sounds in sense. Therefore, one of two conclusions is inevitable, — either we can attend to two different objects at once, and the hypothesis is disproved, or we cannot, and all knowledge of relation and harmony is impossible, which is absurd. His^llustration from the phcenomena of vision, — The conse- quences of this doctrine are equally startling, as taken from Mr. Stewart's second illustration from the phaenomena of vision. He holds that the perception of figure by the eye is the result of a number of separate acts of attention, and that each act of attention has for its object a point the least that can be seen, the minimum visiUle. On this hypothesis, we must suppose that, at every instantaneous opening of the eyelids, the moment sufficient for us to take in the figure of the objects compre- hended in the sphere of \4sion, is subdivided into ahnost infin- itesimal parts, in each of which a separate act of attention is performed. This is, of itself, sufficiently inconceivable. But this being admitted, no difficulty is removed. The separate acts must be laid up in memory, in imagination. But how are they there to form a single whole, unless we can, in imagina- tion, attend to all the minima visibilia together, which, in per- ception, we could only attend to severally ? On this subject I shall, however, have a more appropriate occasion of speaking, when I consider Mr. Stewart's doctrine of the relation of color to extension. Attention possible without an act of free-will. — I think Reid and Stewart incorrect in asserting that attention is only a vol- untary act, meaning, by the expression voluntary, an act of free- will. I am far from maintaining, as Brown and others do, that all will is desire ; but still I am persuaded that we are fre- quently determined to an act of attention, as to many other acts, independently of our free and deliberate volition. Nor is it, I conceive, possible to hold that, though immediately deter- mined to an act of attention by desire, it is only by the permis- sion of our will that this is done ; consequently, that every act of attention is still under the control of our voUtion. This I 166 NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. 167 cannot maintain. Let us take an example : — When occupied with other matters, a person may speak to us, or the clock may strike, without our having any consciousness of the sound ; but it is wholly impossible for us to remain in this state of un- consciousness intentionally and with will. We cannot deter- minately refuse to hear by voluntarily withholding our atten- tion ; and we can no more open our e}'es, and, by an act of will, avert our minds from all perception of sight, than we can, by an act of will, cease to live. We may close our ears or shut our eyes, as we may commit suicide ; but we cannot, with our organs unobstructed, wholly refuse our attention at will. Attention of -three degrees or kinds. — It, therefore, appears to me the more correct doctrine to hold that there is no con- sciousness without attention, — without concentration, — but that attention is of three degrees or kinds. The first, a mere vital and irresistible act ; the second, an act determined by desire, which, though involuntary, may be resisted by our will ; the third, an act determined by a deliberate volition. An act of attention, — that is, an act of concentration, — seems thus necessary to every exertion of consciousness, as a certain con- traction of the pupil is requisite to every exercise of vision. We have formerly noticed, that discrimination is a condition of consciousness ; and a discrimination is only possible by a con- centrative act, or act of attention. Tliis, however, which cor- responds to the lowest degree, — to the mere vital or automatic act of attention, has been refused the name ; and attention, in contradistinction to this mere automatic contraction, given to the two other degrees, of which, however, Eeid only recognizes the third. Attention, then, is to consciousness, what the contraction of the pupil is to sight ; or to the eye of the mind, what the microscope or telescope is to the bodily eye. The faculty of attention is not, therefore, a special faculty, but merely con- sciousness acting under the law of limitation to which it is sub- jected. But whatever be its relations to the special foculties, attention doubles all their efficiency, and affords them a power of which they would otherwise be destitute. It is, in fact, as we are at present constituted, the primary condition of their I activity. Brown's doctrine that the mind cannot exist in two different \siates at once. — I have now only to say a word in answer to Dr. Brown's assertion that the mind cannot exist, at the same moment, in two different states, — that is, in two states in either of which it can exist separately ; he affirms that the contrary supposition is a manifest absurdity. I find the same doctrine maintained by Locke; he says: "Different sentiments are dif- ferent modifications of the mind. The mind or the soul that perceives, is one immaterial, indivisible substance. Now, I see the white and black on this paper, I hear one singing in the next room, I feel the warmth of the fire I sit by, and I taste an apple I am eatmg, and all this at the same time. Now, I ask, take modification for what you please, can the same unextended, indivisible substance have different, nay, inconsistent and oppo- site (as these of white and black must be), modifications at the same time ? Or must we suppose distinct parts in an indivisi- ble substance, one for black, another for white, and another for red ideas, and so of the rest of those infinite sensations which wc have in sorts and degrees ; all which we can distinctly per- ceive, and so are distinct ideas, some whereof are opposite as heat and cold, which yet a man may feel at the same time ? " Opposed by Leibnitz and Aristotle. — In reference to this passage, Leibnitz says : " Mr. Locke asks, ' Can the same unex- tended, indivisible substance have different, nay, inconsistent and opposite, modifications at the same time ? ' I reply, it can. What is inconsistent in the same object, is not mconsistent in the representation of different objects wliich we conceive at the same moment. For this, there is no necessity that there should be different parts in the soul, as it is not necessary that there should be different parts in the point on wliich, however, differ- ent angles rest." The same thing had, however, been even better Taid by Aristotle, whose doctrine I prefer translating to you, as more perspicuous, in the following passage from Joan- nes Grammaticus (better known by the surname Philoponus), — a Greek philosopher, who flourished towards the middle of 168 NATURE AND LmiTS OF ATTENTION. NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. 169 the sixth centurj. It is taken from the Prologue to his valu- able commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle ; and, what is curious, the very supposition which, on Locke's doctrine, would infer the corporeal nature of mind, is alleged, by the Aristo- telians and Condillac, in proof of its immateriality. " Nothing bodily," says Aristotle, " can, at the same time, in the same part, receive contraries. The finger cannot at once be wholly par- ticipant of white and of black, nor can it, at once and in the same place, be both hot and cold. But the sense at the same moment apprehends contraries. Wherefore, it knows that this IS first, and that second, and that it discriminates the black from the white. In what manner, therefore, does sight sunultane- ously perceive contraries ? Does it do so by the same ? or does it by one part apprehend black, by another, white .? If it does so by the same, it must apprehend these without parts, and It IS mcorporeal. But if by one part it apprehends this quality, and by another, that, ~ this, he says, is the same as if I per- ceived this, and you that. But it is necessary that that which judges should be one and the same, and that it should even apprehend by the same the objects which are judged. Body cannot, at the same moment and by the same part, apply itself to contraries or things absolutely different. But sense at once apphes itself to black and to white ; it, therefore, appHes itself mdivisibly. It is thus shown to be incorporeal. For if by one part it apprehended white, by another part apprehended black, It could not discern the one color from the other ; for no one can distinguish that which is perceived by himself as different from that which is perceived by another." Criticism of Brown's doctrine, — jyr. Brown caUs the sensa- tion of sweet one mental state, the sensation of cold another; aiid as ih^ one of these states may exist without the other, they are consequently different states. But wiU it be main- tamed that we cannot, at one and the same moment, feel the sensations of sweet and cold, or that sensations forming apart different states, do, when coexistent in the same subject, form only a single state ? On this view, compaHson is impossible. — The doctrine that the mind can attend to, or be conscious of, only a single object at a time, would, in fact, involve the conclusion that all com- parison and discrimination are impossible ; but comparison and discrimination being possible, this possibility disproves the truth of the counter proposition. An act of comparison or discrim- ination supposes that we are able to comprehend, in one indi- visible consciousness, the different objects to be compared or discriminated. Were I only conscious of one object at one time, I could never possibly bring them into relation ; each could be apprehended only separately, and for itself. For in the moment in which I am conscious of the object A, I am, ex hypothesi, unconscious of the object B ; and in the moment I am conscious of the object B, I am unconscious of the object A. So far, in fact, from consciousness not being competent to the cognizance of two things at once, it is only possible under that cognizance as its condition. For without discrimination there could be no consciousness ; and discrimination necessarily supposes two terms to be discriminated. No judgment could be possible were not the subject and predicate of a proposition thought together by the mind, al- though expressed in language one after the other. Nay, as Aristotle has observed, a syllogism forms, in thought, one simul- taneous act ; and it is only the necessity of retailing it piece- meal and by succession, in order to accommodate thought to the imperfection of its vehicle, language, that affords the appearance of a consecutive existence. Some languages, as the Sanscrit, the Latin, and the Greek, express the syntactical relations by flexion, and not by mere juxtaposition. Their sentences are thus bound up in one organic whole, the preced- ing parts remaining suspended in the mind, till the meaning, like an electric spark, is flashed from the conclusion to the com- mencement. This is tlie reason of the greater rhetorical effect of terminating the Latin period by the verb. And to take a more elementary example, — "How could the mind compre- hend these words of Horace, * Bacchum in remotis carmina rupibus Vidi docentem/ 16 170 NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. 171 unless it could seize at once those images in which the adjec- tives are separated from their substantives ? " How many objects can the mind embrace at once ? — Suppos- ing that the mind is not limited to the simultaneous considera- tion of a single object, a question arises, How many objects can it embrace at once ? You will recollect that I formerly stated, that the greater the number of objects among which the atten- tion of the mind is distributed, the feebler and less distinct will be its cognizance of each. Consciousness will thus be at its maximum of intensity when attention is concentrated on a single object ; and the question comes to be, how many several objects can the mind simultane- ously survey, not with vivacity, but without absolute confusion ? I find this problem stated and differently answered, by different philosophers, and apparently without a knowledge of each other. By Charles Bonnet, the mind is allowed to have a dis- tinct notion of six objects at once ; by Abraham Tucker, the number is limited to four ; while Destutt-Tracy again amphfies it to six. The opinion of the first and last of these philoso- phers jjppears to me correct. You can easily make the experi- ment for yourselves, but you must beware of gi'ouping the objects into classes. If you throw a handful of marbles on the floor, you will find it difRcult to view at once more than six, or seven at most, without confusion ; but if you group them into twos, or threes, or fives, you can comprehend as many groups as you can units ; because the mind considers these groups only as units ; — it views them as wholes, and throws their parts out of consideration. You may perform the experiment also by an act of imajiination. Value of attention considered as an act of will. — Before leaving this subject, I shall make some observations on the value of attention, considered in its highest degree as an act of will, and on the importance of forming betimes the habit of deliberate concentration. The greater capacity of continuous thinking that a man pos- sesses, the longer and more steadily can he follow out the same train of thought, — the stronger is his power of attention ; and in proportion to his power of attention will be the success with which his labor is rewarded. All commencement is difficult ; and this is more especially true of intellectual effort. When we turn for the first time our view on any given object, a hun- dred other things still retam possession of our thoughts. Even when we are able, by an arduous exertion, to break loose from the matters which have previously engrossed us, or which every moment force themselves on our consideration, — even when a resolute determination, or the attraction of the new object, has smoothed the way on which we are to travel ; still the mind is continually perplexed by the glimmer of intrusive and distract- ing thoughts, which prevent it from placing that which should exclusively occupy its view, in the full clearness of an undi- vided fight. How great soever may be the interest which we take in the new object, it will, however, only be fully estabUshed as a favorite, when it has been fused into an integral part of the system of our previous knowledge, and of our estabfished asso- ciations of thoughts, feelings, and desires. But this can only be accomplished by time and custom. Our imagination and our memory, to which we must resort for materials with which to illustrate and enliven our new study, accord us their aid un- wiUingly, — indeed, only by compulsion. But if we are vigor- ous enough to pursue our course in spite of obstacles, every step, as we advance, will be found easier ; the mind becomes more animated and energetic ; the distractions gradually dimin- ish; the attention is more exclusively concentrated upon its object ; the kindred ideas flo^ with greater freedom and abun- dance, and afford an easier selection of what is suitable for illus- tration. At length, our system of thought harmonizes with our pursuit. The whole man, becomes, as it may be, philosopher, or historian, or poet; he fives only in the trains of thought relating to this character. He now energizes freely, and, con- sequently, with pleasure ; for pleasure is the reflex of unforced and unimpeded energy. AU that is produced in this state of mind, bears the stamp of excellence and perfection. Helvetius justly observes, that the very feeblest intellect is capable of comprehending the inference of one mathematical 172 NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. 173 position from another, and even of making such an inference itself. Now, the most difficult and complicate demonstrations in the works of a Newton or a Laplace, are all made up of such immediate inferences. They are like houses composed of single bricks. No greater exertion of intellect is required to make a thousand such inferences than is requisite to make one ; as the effort of laying a single brick is the maximum of any individual effort in the construction of such a house. Thus, the difference between an ordinary mind and the mind of a Newton consists principally in this, that the one is capable of the application of a more continuous attention than the other, — that a Newton is able without fatigue to connect inference with inference in one long series towards a determinate ^nd ; while the man of inferior capacity is soon obliged to break or let fall the thread which he had begun to spin. This is, in fact, what Sir Isaac, with equal modesty and shrcAvdness, himself admit- ted. To one who complimented him on his genius, he replied that if he had made any discoveries, it was owing more to patient attention than to any other talent. There is but little analogy between mathematics and play-acting ; but I heard the great Mrs. Siddons, in nearly the same language, attribute the wliole superiority of her unrivalled talent to the more intense study which she bestowed upon her parts. If what Alcibiades, in the Symposium of Plato, narrates of Socrates were true, the father of Greek philosophy must have possessed this faculty of meditation or continuous attention in the highest degree. The story, indeed, has some appearance of exaggeration ; but it shows what Alcibiades, or rather Plato through him, deemed the requisite of a great thinker. Accord- ing to this report, in a military expedition which Socrates made along with Alcibiades, the philosopher was seen by the Athe- nian army to stand for a whole day and a night, until the break- ing of the second morning, motionless, with a fixed gaze, — thus showing that he was uninterruptedly engrossed with the consideration of a single subject : " And thus," says Alcibiades, " Socrates is ever wont to do, when his mind is occupied with inquiries in which there are difficulties to be overcome. He then never interrupts his meditation, and forgets to eat, and drink, and sleep, — everything, in short, until his inquiry has reached its termination, or, at least, until he has seen some liorht in it." In this history, there may be, as I have said, ex- at'geration ; but still the truth of the principle is undeniable. Like Newton, Descartes arrogated nothing to the force of his intellect. What he had accomplished more than other men, that he attributed to the superiority of his method ; and Bacon, in like manner, eulogizes his method, — in that it places all men with equal attention upon a level, and leaves little or noth- ing to the prerogatives of genius. Nay, genius itself has been analyzed by the shrewdest observers into a higher capacity of attention. " Genius," says Helvetius, whom we have already quoted, " is nothing but a continued attention " (une attention suivie). These examples and authorities concur in establishing the important truth, that he who would, with success, attempt dis- covery, either by inquiry into the works of nature, or by meditation on the phsenomena of mind, must acquire the facility of abstracting himself, for a season, from the invasion of sur- rounding objects ; must be able even, in a certain degree, to emancipate himself from the dominion of the body, and live, as\ it were, a pure intelligence, within the circle of his thoughts. | Tliis faculty has been manifested, more or less, by all whose names are associated with the progress of the intellectual sci- ences. In some, indeed, the power of abstraction almost degenerated into a habit akin to disease, and the examples which now occur to me would ialmost induce me to retract what I have said about the exaggeration of Plato's history of Socrates. Archimedes, it is well known, was so absorbed in a geometrical meditation, that he was first aware of the storming of Syracuse by his own death-wound, and his exclamation on A j the entrance of Roman soldiers was, — Noli turhare circulosj /\ meos. In like manner, Joseph Scaliger, the most learned of// I men, when a Protestant student in Paris, was so engrossed in/ / the study of Homer, that he became aware of the massacre off / 15* V 174 NATURE AND LIMITS OF ATTENTION. / St. Bartholomew, and of his own escape, only on the day sub- sequent to the catastrophe. I have dwelt at greater length upon the practical bearings of Attention, not only because this principle constitutes the better half of all intellectual power, but because it is of consequence that you should be fully aware of the incalculable importance of acquiring, by early and continued exercise, the habit of attention. There are, however, many points of great moment on which I have not touched, and the dependence of Memory upon Attention might alone form an interesting matter of dis- cussion. CHAPTER XI. CONSCIOUSNESS, — ITS EVIDENCE AND AUTHORITY. Having now concluded the discussion in regard to what Consciousness is, and shown you that it constitutes the funda- mental form of every act of knowledge ; — I now proceed to consider it as the source from whence we must derive every fact in the Philosophy of Mind. And, in prosecution of this purpose, I shall, in the first place, endeavor to show that it really is the principal, if not the only source, from which all knowledge of the mental pha3nomena must be obtained ; in the second place, I shall consider the character of its evidence, and what, under different relations, are the different degrees of its authority ; and, in the last place, I shall state what, and of what nature, are the more general phaenomena which it reveals. Having terminated these, I shall then descend to the considera- tion of the special faculties of knowledge, that is, to the par- ticular modifications of which consciousness is susceptible. Philosophy implies the veracity of consciousness. — We pro- ceed to consider, in the first place, the authority, — the cer- tainty, of this instrument. Now, it is at once evident, that philosophy, as it affirms its own possibihty, must affirm the veracity of consciousness ; for, as philosophy is only a scientific development of the facts which consciousness reveals, it follows, that philosophy, in denymg or doubting the testimony of con- sciousness, would deny or doubt its own existence. If, there- fore, philosophy be not felo de se, it must not invalidate the integrity of that which is, as it were, the heart, the punctwn saliens, of its being ; and as it would actively maintain its own credit, it must be able positively to vindicate the truth of con- (175) 176 THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 177 Bciousness. Leibnitz truly says, — " If our immediate internal experience could possibly deceive uS, there could no longer be for us any truth of fact, nay, nor any truth of reason." So far there is, and can be, no dispute ; if philosophy is pos- sible, the evidence of consciousness is authentic. No philoso- pher denies its authority, and even the Sceptic can only attempt to show, on the hypothesis of the Dogmatist, that consciousness, as at variance with itself, is, therefore, on that hypothesis, men- dacious. But if the testimony of consciousness be in itself confessedly above all suspicion, it follows, that we inquire into the condi- tions or laws which regulate the legitimacy of its applications. The conscious mind being at once the source from which we must derive our knowledge of its phaenomena, and the mean through which that knowledge is obtained. Psychology is only an evolution, by consciousness, of the facts which consciousness itself reveals. As every system of Mental Philosophy is thus only an exposition of these facts, every such system, conse- quently, is true and complete, as it fairly and fully exhibits what, and what only, consciousness exhibits. Consciousness naturally clear and unerring. — But it may be objected, — if consciousness be the only revelation we possess of our intellectual nature, and if consciousness be also the sole criterion by which we can interpret the meaning of what this revelation contains, this revelation must be very obscure, — this criterion must be very uncertain, seeing that the various systems of philosophy all equally appeal to this revelation and to this criterion, in support of the most contradictory opinions. As to the fact of the variety and contradiction of philosophical systems, — this cannot be denied ; and it is also true that all these systems either openly profess allegiance to consciousness, or silently confess its authority. But admitting all tliis, I am still bold enough to maintain, that consciousness affords not merely the only revelation, and only criterion of philosophy, but that this revelation is naturally clear, — this criterion, in itself, unerring. The history of philosophy, like the history of theology, is only, it is too true, the history of variations ; and we must admit of the book of consciousness what a great Cal- vinist divine bitterly confessed of the book of Scripture, — " Hie liber est in quo quaerit sua dogmata quisquo ; Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua." Cause of variation in philosophy. — In regard, however, to either revelation, it can be shown that the source of this diver- sity is not in the book, but in the reader. K men will go to the Bible, not to ask of it what they shall believe, but to find in it wliat they believe already, the standard of unity and truth be- comes in human hands only a Lesbian rule.* And if philoso- phers, in place of evolving their doctrines out of consciousness, resort to consciousness only when they are able to quote its* authority in confirmation of their preconceived opinions, phi- losophical systems, like the sandals of Theramenes,t may fit any feet, but can never pretend to represent the immutabihty of nature. And that pliilosophers have been, for the most part, guilty of this, it is not extremely difficult to show. They have, seldom or never taken the facts of consciousness, the whole facts of consciousness, and nothing but the facts of conscious- ness. They have either overlooked, or rejected, or interpo- lated. Before we are entitled to accuse consciousness of beinj? a false, or vacillating, or ill-informed witness, — we are bound, first of all, to see whether there be any rules by which, in em- ploying the testimony of consciousness, we must be governed ; and whether pliilosophers have evolved their systems out of consciousness in obedience to these rules. For if there be * [A Lesbian (carpenter's) rule or level, being made of lead, did not measure correctly the inequalities of the surface to which it was applied, but bent under its own weight so as to adapt itself to those inequalities, instead of gauging their amount. See Aristotle, Eth. Nic. v. 10, 7.] — Am. Ed. t [As Theramenes readily attached himself to any party that happened to be uppermost, he was nicknamed b Kodopvog, the name for a sort of san- dal, which, unlike those made as rights and lefts, would fit equally well cithcrfoot.] — ylw. ^c/. 178 THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 179 rules under which alone the evidence of consciousness can be fairly and fully given, and, consequently, under which alone consciousness can serve as an infallible standard of certainty and truth, and if philosophers have despised or neglected these, — then must we remove the reproach from the instrument, and affix it to those blundering workmen who have not known how to handle and apply it. In attempting to vindicate the veracity and perspicuity of this, the natural, revelation of our mental being, I shall, therefore, first, endeavor to enumerate and ex- plain the general rules by which we must be governed in apply- ing consciousness as a mean of internal observation, and there- after show how the variations and contradictions of philosophy have all arisen from the violation of one or more of these laws. Three rules for applying the testimony of consciousness. — There are, in all, if I generalize correctly, three laws wliich afford the exclusive conditions of psychological legitimacy. These laws, or regulative conditions, are self-evident, and yet they seem never to have been clearly proposed to themselves by philosophers; — in philosophical speculation, they have cer- tainly never been adequately obeyed. The First of these rules is, — That no fact be assumed as a fact of consciousness but what is ulthnate and simple. This I would call the law of Parcimony. The Second, — that which I would style the law of Integrity, is — That the whole facts of consciousness be taken without reserve or hesitation, whether given as constituent, or as regu- lative data. The Third is, — That nothing but the facts of consciousness be taken, or, if inferences of reasoning be admitted, that these at least be recognized as legitimate only as deduced from, and in subordination to, the immediate data of consciousness, and every position rejected as illegitimate, which is contradictory of these. This I would call the law of Harmony. I shall consider these in their order. I. The first law, that of Parcimony, is, — That no fact be assumed as a fact of consciousness but what is ultimate and simple. What is a fact of consciousness ? This question, of all others, requires a precise and articulate answer ; but I have not found it adequately answered in any psychological author. Every fact of consciousness — 1. Primary and universal. — In the first place, — every mental phsenomenon may be called a fact of consciousness. But as we distinguish consciousness from the special faculties, though these are all only modifica- tions of consciousness, — only branches of which consciousness is the trunk, so we distinguish the special and derivative phas- nomena of mind from those that are primary and universal, and give to the latter the name of facts of consciousness, as more eminently worthy of that appellation. In an act of Per- ception, for example, I distinguish the pen I hold in my hand, and my hand itself, from my mind perceiving them. This dis- tinction is a particular fact, — the fact of a particular faculty. Perception. But there is a general fact, a general distinction, of which this is only a special case. This general fact is the distinction of the Ego and non-Ego, and it belongs to conscious- ness as the general faculty. Whenever, therefore, in our anal- ysis of the intellectual phtenomena, we arrive at an element which we cannot reduce to a generalization from experience, but which lies at the root of all experience, and which we can- not, therefore, resolve into any higher principle, — this we properly call a fact of consciousness. Looking to such a fact of consciousness as the last result of an analysis, we call it an ultimate principle ; looking from it as the first constituent of all intellectual combination, we call it a primary principle. A fact of consciousness is, thus, a simple, and, as we regard it, either an ultimate or a primary, datum of intelligence. It obtains also various denominations ; sometimes it is called an a priori principle, sometimes a fundamental law of mind, sometimes a transcendental condition of thought, etc. 2. Necessary. — But, in the second place, this, its character of ultimate priority supposes its character of necessity. It must be impossible not to think it. In fact, by its necessity alone can we recognize it as an original datum of inteUigence, and distinguish it from any mere result of generalization and custom. 180 THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 181 3. Incomprehensihle. — In the third place, this fact, as ulti- mate, is also given to us with a mere belief of its reality ; in other words, consciousness reveals that it is, but not why or how it is. This is evident. Were this fact given us, not only with a belief, but with a knowledge of how or why it is, in that case it would be a derivative, and not a primary, datum. For that whereby we were thus enabled to comprehend its hoiv and why, — in other words, the reason of its existence, — this w^ould be relatively prior, and to it or to its antecedent must we ascend, until we arrive at that primary fact, in which we must at last believe, — which we must take upon trust, but which we could not comprehend, that is, think under a higher notion.* * Elsewhere, in the " Dissertations Supplementary to Reid," the author gives a somewhat difterent, and more clearly explicated, enumeration of [" the essential notes and characters by which we are enabled to distinguish our original from our derivative convictions. These characters, I think, may be reduced to four; — 1°, their IncomprehensihiUty — 2°, their Simplic- ity — 3°, their Necessity and absolute Universality — 4°, their comparative Evidence and Cei-tainty. "1. In reference to the first ; — A conviction is incomprehensible when there is merely given us in consciousness — That its object is {on eari) ; and when wc are unable to comprehend through. a higher notion or belief. Why or How it is {dton kaiL). When we are able to comprehend why or how a thing is, the belief of the existence of that thing is not a primaiy datura of consciousness, but a subsumption under the cognition or belief which affords its reason. "2. As to the second; — It is manifest that if a cognition or belief be made up of, and can be explicated into, a plurality of cognitions or beliefs, that, as compound, it cannot be original. "3. Touching the third; — Necessity and Universality may be regarded as coincident. For when a belief is necessary, it is, eo ipso, universal ; and that a belief is universal, is a certain index that it must be necessary. To prove the necessity, tlie universality must, however, be absolute ; for a rel- ative universality indicates no more than custom and education, howbeit the subjects themselves may deem that they follow only the dii^tates of nature. As St. Jerome has it — ' Unaquiequc gens hoc legem naturaj pu- tat, quod didicit.' " 4. The fourth and last character of our original beliefs is their compara- tive Evidence and Certainty. This, along with the third, is well stated by Aristotle. — ' What appears to all, that we affirm to be ; and he who rejects this belief will assuredly advance nothimj better dcserviny of credence.' And A fact of consciousness is thus, — that whose existence is given and guaranteed by an original and necessary belief. But there is an important distinction to be here made, which has not only been overlooked by all philosophers, but has led some of the most distinguished into no inconsiderable errors. The facts of consciousness considered in two points of view. — The facts of consciousness are to be considered in two points of view ; either as evidencing their own ideal or phasnomenal existence, or as evidencing the objective existence of something else beyond them. A beHef in the former is not identical with a behef in the latter. The one cannot, the other may possibly, be refused. In the case of a common witness, we cannot doubt the fact of his personal reality, nor the fact of his testimony as emitted ; — but we can always doubt the truth of that which his testimony avers. So it is with consciousness. We cannot pos- sibly refuse the fact of its evidence as given, but we may hesi- tate to admit that beyond itself of wliich it assures us. I shall explain by taking an example. In the act of External Per- ception, consciousness gives, as a conjunct fact, the existence of Me or Self as perceiving, and the existence of somethuig different from Me or Self as perceived. Now the reality of again : — * K Ave know and believe through certain original principles, we must know and believe these with paramount certainty, for the very reason that we know and believe all else through them.' And such are the truths in regard to which the Aphrodisian says, — ' though some men may ver- bally dissent, all men are in their hearts agreed.' This constitutes the first of Buffier's essential qualities of primary truths, which is, as he expresses it, — * to be so clear, that if we attempt to prove or to disprove them, this Ciiu be done only by propositions which are manifestly neither more evident nor more certain,' "A good illustration of this character is afforded by the assurance — to which we have already so frequently referred — that in perception, mind is immediately cognizant of matter. How self can be conscious of not-self, how mind can be cognizant of matter, we do not know ; but we know as little k)w mind can be percipient of itself. In both cases, we only know the fact, on the authority of consciousness ; and when the conditions of the problem are rightly understood — when it is established that it is only the primary qualities of body which are apprehended in themselves, and this only in so far as they are in immediate relation to the organ of sense, the difficulty in the one case is not more than in the other."] 16 182 THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. this, as a subjective datum, — as an ideal phoenomenon, it is impossible to doubt without doubting the existence of conscious- ness, for consciousness is itself this fact; and to doubt the existence of consciousness is absolutely impossible ; for as such a doubt could not exist, except in and through consciousness, it would, consequently, annihilate itself. We should doubt that we doubted. As contained, — as given, in an act of conscious- ness, the contrast of mmd knowing and matter known cannot be denied. But the whole phienomenon as given in consciousness may be admitted, and yet its inference disputed. It may be said, consciousness gives the mental subject as perceiving an exter- nal object, contradistinguished from it as perceived ; all this we do not, and cannot, deny. But consciousness is only a phae- nomenon ; the contrast between the subject and object may be only apparent, not real ; the object given as an external reality miiy only be a mental representation, which the mind is, by an unknown law, determined unconsciously to produce, and to mis- take for something different from itself. All this may be said and believed, without self-contradiction ; — nay, all this has, by the immense majority of modern philosophers, been actually said and believed.* * This distinction is, perhaps, more distinctly stated and illustrated by the author in the " notes to Reid." [" There is no scepticism possible touching the facts of consciousness in themselves. We cannot doubt that the phae- nomena of consciousness are real, in so far as we are conscious of them. I cannot doubt, for example, that I am actually conscious of a certain feeling of fragrance, and of certain perceptions of color, figure, etc., when I see and smell a rose. Of the reality of these, as experienced, I cannot doubt, be- cause they are facts of consciousness ; and of consciousness I cannot doubt, because such doubt being itself an act of consciousness, would con- tradict, and, consequently, annihilate itself. But of all beyond the mere pluenomena of which we are conscious, we may — without fear of self-con- tradiction, at least — doubt, I may, for instance, doubt whether the rose I see and smell has any existence beyond a phenomenal existence in my consciousness. I cannot doubt that I am conscious of it as something dif- ferent from self; but whether it have indeed any reality beyond my mind — wliether the not-self be not in truth only self — that I may philosophi- cally question. In like manner, I am conscious of the memory of a cer- THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 183 77ie case of Memory. — In like manner, in an act of Mem- ory, consciousness connects a present existence with a past. I cannot deny the actual phaenomenon, because my denial would be suicidal, but I can, without self-contradiction, assert that consciousness may be a false witness in regard to any former existence ; and I may maintain, if I please, that the memory of the past, in consciousness, is nothing but a phjienomenon, which has no reality beyond the present. There are many other facts of consciousness which we cannot but admit as ideal phsenom- ena, but may discredit as guaranteeing aught beyond their phai- nomenal existence itself. The legality of this doubt I do not at present consider, but only its possibility ; all that I have now in view being to show, that we must not confound, as has been done, the double import of the facts, and the two degrees of evidence for their reality. This mistake has, among others, been made by ]Mi\ Stewart. "The beUef," he says, "which accompanies consciousness, as to the present existence of its appropriate phenomena, has been commonly considered as much less obnoxious to cavil, than any of the principles wliich philosophers are accustomed to assume as self-evident, in the formation of their metaphysical systems. No doubts on this head have yet been suggested by any philosopher, how scepti- cal soever; even by those who have called in question the existence both of mind and of matter. And yet the fact is, that it rests on no foundation more solid than our belief of the existence of external objects ; or our belief, that other men possess intellectual powers and faculties similar to those of which we are conscious in ourselves. In all these cases, the only account that can be given of our belief is, that it forms a necessary part of our constitution ; against which metaphysi- cians may easily argue, so as to perplex the judgment, but of which it is impossible for us to divest ourselves for a moment, when we are called on to employ our reason either in the busi- tam past event. Of the contents of this mcmor}-, as a phaenomenon given in consciousness, scepticism is impossible. But I may by possibility demur to the reality of all beyond these contents and the sphere of present con- sciousness.*'! 184 THE AUTHORITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS. ness of life, or in the pursuits of science. While we are under the influence of our appetites, passions, or affections, or even of a strong speculative curiosity, all those difficulties, which be- wildered us in the solitude of the closet, vanish before the essential principles of the human frame." Criticism of Stewart's view. — With all the respect to which the opinion of so distinguished a philosopher as Mr. Stewart is justly entitled, I must be permitted to say, that I cannot but reo