Brown Thomas
Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)
LECTURE XXIII
ANALYSIS OF THE FEELINGS USUALLY ASCRIBED TO THE SENSE OF TOUCH, CONTINUED
My last Lecture, Gentlemen, was employed in considering the information which we receive from the sense of touch, or rather the information which we are commonly supposed to receive from that sense, – but which, in a great part at least, I am inclined to ascribe to another source.
The qualities of bodies, supposed to be made known to us by touch, I reduced to two, of which all – whatever be the variety of names that express them, – are mere varieties, RESISTANCE and EXTENSION: – solidity, liquidity, viscidity, hardness, softness, roughness, smoothness, being modes of RESISTANCE, and nothing more; – figure, magnitude, divisibility, as evidently nothing more than modes of EXTENSION: and I stated reasons, which induce me to believe, that neither our feeling of resistance nor that of extension, has its direct origin in the sense of touch; though the original simple feeling, which this organ affords, is now, from constant association, almost indiscriminately combined with both, in some one or other of their varieties.
The first of these classes, – that which includes the various modifications of resistance, – I examined at great length, and showed, I trust, that it is not to our organ of touch we are indebted for these, but that they are feelings of another sense, of which our muscular frame is the organ, – the feelings, in short, of which every one must have been conscious, who has attempted to grasp any body, or to press against it, when the full contraction of the muscles must, of course, have been impeded. According as the body is hard or soft, rough or smooth, – that is to say, according as it resists, in various degrees, the progress of our effort of contraction, – the muscular feeling, which arises from the variously impeded effort, will vary in proportion; and we call hard, soft, rough, smooth, that which produces one or other of the varieties of these muscular feelings of resistance, – as we term sweet or bitter, blue or yellow, that which produces either of these sensations of taste or vision. With the feeling of resistance, there is, indeed, in every case, combined, a certain tactual feeling, because we must touch whatever we attempt to grasp; but it is not of this mere tactual feeling we think, when we term bodies hard or soft, – it is of the greater or less resistance which they afford to our muscular contraction.
I next proceeded to consider the other class of supposed tangible qualities, which includes the various modifications of extension, and urged many arguments to show, in like manner, that, – however indissolubly these may seem at present to be connected with the simple feelings of our organ of touch, – it is not to our simple original feelings of this sense, that we owe our knowledge of them, as qualities of things without.
Though the notion of extension, however, may arise in the manner which I have supposed, this, it may be said, is not the notion of external existence. To what, then, are we to ascribe the belief of external reality, which now accompanies our sensations of touch? It appears to me to depend on the feeling of resistance, – the organ of which, as a muscular feeling, I before explained to you, which breaking in, without any known cause of difference, on an accustomed series, and combining with the notion of extension, and consequently of divisibility, previously acquired, furnishes the elements of that compound notion, which we term the notion of matter. Extension, resistance; – to combine these simple notions in something which is not ourselves, and to have the notion of matter, are precisely the same thing; as it is the same thing to have combined the head and neck of a man with the body and legs of a horse, and to have the notion of that fabulous being, which the ancients denominated a centaur. It certainly, at least, would not be easy for any one to define matter more simply, than as that which has parts, and that which resists our effort to grasp it; and, in our analysis of the feelings of infancy, we have been able to discover how both these notions may have arisen in the mind, and arisen too, in circumstances, which must lead to the combination of them in one complex notion.
The infant stretches out his arm for the first time, by that volition without a known object, which is either a mere instinct, or very near akin to one, – this motion is accompanied with a certain feeling, – he repeats the volition which moves his arm fifty or one thousand times, and the same progress of feeling takes place during the muscular action. In this repeated progress, he feels the truth of that intuitive proposition, which, in the whole course of the life that awaits him, is to be the source of all his expectations, and the guide of all his actions, – the simple proposition, that what has been as an antecedent, will be followed by what has been as a consequent. At length he stretches out his arm again, and instead of the accustomed progression, there arises, in the resistance of some object opposed to him, a feeling of a very different kind which, if he persevere in his voluntary effort, increases gradually to severe pain, before he has half completed the usual progress. There is a difference, therefore, which we may, without any absurdity, suppose to astonish the little reasoner; for the expectation of similar consequents, from similar antecedents, is observable even in his earliest actions, and is probably the result of an original law of mind, as universal, as that which renders certain sensations of sight and sound the immediate result of certain affections of our eye or ear. To any being, who is thus impressed with belief of similarities of sequence, a different consequent necessarily implies a difference of the antecedent. In the case at present supposed, however, the infant, who as yet knows nothing but himself, is conscious of no previous difference; and the feeling of resistance seems to him, therefore, something unknown, which has its cause in something that is not himself.
I am aware, that the application to an infant, of a process of reasoning expressed in terms of such grave and formal philosophic nomenclature, has some chance of appearing ridiculous. But the reasoning itself is very different from the terms employed to express it, and is truly as simple and natural, as the terms, which our language obliges us to employ in expressing it, are abstract and artificial. The infant, however, in his feeling of similarity of antecedents and consequents, and of the necessity, therefore, of a new antecedent, where the consequent is difficult, has the reasoning, but not the terms. He does not form the proposition as universal, and applicable to cases that have not yet existed; but he feels it in every particular case, as it occurs. That he does truly reason, with at least as much subtility, as is involved in the process now supposed, cannot be doubted by those who attend to the manifest results of his little inductions, in those acquisitions of knowledge, which show themselves in the actions, and, I may say, almost in the very looks of the little reasoner, – at a period long before that to which his own remembrance is afterwards to extend, when, in the maturer progress of his intellectual powers, the darkness of eternity will meet his eye alike, whether he attempt to gaze on the past, or on the future; and the wish to know the events, with which he is afterwards to be occupied and interested, will not be more unavailing, than the wish to retrace events, that were the occupation and interest of the most important years of his existence.
Then,
“So – when the mother, bending o'er his charms,
Clasps her fair nurseling in delighted arms; —
With sparkling eye the blameless plunderer owns
Her soft embraces and endearing tones,
Seeks the salubrious fount with opening lips,
Spreads his inquiring hands, and smiles and sips.”87
Even then, many a process of ratiocination is going on, which might have served as an example of strict logic to Aristotle himself, and which affords results, far more valuable to the individual reasoner, than all the contents of all the folios of the crowd of that great logician's scholastic commentators.
That the notions of extension and external resistance, which are thus supposed to be acquired from the progressive contraction of muscles, and the difficulty opposed to their accustomed contraction, which introduces suddenly a new feeling, when all the antecedent feelings had been the same, should be directly combined, only with the sensations of touch, cannot appear wonderful, when we reflect, that it is only in the case of touch, there is that frequent coexistence or immediate succession, which is necessary to the subsequent union. In the case of the acquired perceptions of vision, it might, in like manner, be asked, why is it that we do not smell the exact distance of a rose, as we see its exact distance, as soon as we have turned our eye on the bush on which the rose is growing? And the only answer which can be given, is that there has not been in smell that exact and frequent coexistence of feelings which has occurred in vision. It surely is not more wonderful, therefore, that the same argument should hold in the acquired perceptions of touch, in which the coexistence is still more frequent and exact. When we listen to a flute, our muscles may be contracted as before, or quiescent as before; when the odour of a rose is wafted to us, not a single muscle may be more or less affected. But, without the action of muscles, we cannot grasp a ball, nor press against a resisting body, nor move our hand along its surface. Whatever feelings, therefore, are involved in muscular contraction, may be, or rather I may say, if the common laws of association operate, must be associated with the simple feelings thus constantly coexisting, whatever they may be, which the organ of touch originally affords. To suppose, that, in a case of such frequent coexistence or succession, no association takes place, and that our feelings of touch, are, at this moment, as simple as they were originally, would surely be to suppose the universal influence of the associating principle to be suspended in this particular case.
I have already explained the manner, in which, I suppose, the infant, to obtain the notion of something external and separate from himself, by the interruption of the usual train of antecedents and consequents, when the painful feeling of resistance has arisen, without any change of circumstances, of which the mind is conscious in itself; and the process by which he acquires this notion, is only another form of the very process, which, during the whole course of his life, is involved in all his reasonings, and regulates, therefore, all his conclusions, with respect to every physical truth. In the view which I take of the subject, accordingly, I do not conceive that it is by any peculiar intuition, we are led to believe in the existence of things without. I consider this belief as the effect of that more general intuition, by which we consider a new consequent, in any series of accustomed events, as the sign of a new antecedent, and of that equally general principle of association, by which feelings that have frequently coexisted, flow together, and constitute afterwards one complex whole. There is something which is not ourself, something which is representative of length – something which excites the feeling of resistance to our effort; and these elements combined, are matter. But, whether the notion arise in the manner I have supposed, or differently, there can be no doubt that it has arisen, long before the period to which our memory reaches; and the belief of an external world, therefore, whether founded directly on an intuitive principle of belief, or, as I rather think, on associations as powerful as intuition in the period which alone we know, may be said to be an essential part of our mental constitution, at least as far back as that constitution can be made the subject of philosophic inquiry. Whatever it may have been originally, it is now as impossible for us to disbelieve the reality of some external cause of our sensations, as it is impossible for us to disbelieve the existence of the sensations themselves. On this subject, scepticism may be ingenious in vain; and equally vain, I may say, would be the attempted confutation of scepticism; since it cannot affect the serious internal belief of the sceptic, which is the same before as after argument; unshaken by the ingenuity of his own reasonings, or rather, as I have before remarked, tacitly assumed and affirmed in that very combat of argument, which professes to deny it.
It is in vain, that Berkeley asserts his system, with a zeal and acuteness, which might, perhaps, have succeeded in convincing others, if they could only have previously succeeded in convincing himself, not as a speculative philosopher merely, but as a human being, conversant with his kind, acting, and suffering, and remembering, and hoping, and fearing. This, however, was more than mere ingenuity of argument could perform. Even in publishing his work with the sincere desire of instructing and converting others, the great and primary convert was yet to be made, in the converter himself.
In the Life of Berkeley, prefixed to the edition of his collected works, an account is given of a visit which he paid, at Paris, to Malebranche, the celebrated author of a system, in many respects similar to his own. He found him in a weak state of health, but abundantly eager to enter into disputation, on a science which he loved, and especially on his own doctrines, which he loved still more; but the discussion was at last carried on with more vehemence than the feeble bodily frame of Malebranche could bear; and his death was said to be occasioned, or at least hastened, by this unfortunate intellectual combat. When we consider this interview of two illustrious men, each of whom, in accordance with his own system, must have been incapable of any direct knowledge of the existence of the other, the violent reciprocal action of these mutual nonentities, might seem ludicrous, if there were not, in the death of any one, and especially of a philosopher so estimable in every respect as the author of The Search of Truth, something too serious to be consistent with any feeling of levity. It is more suitable, both to the occasion itself, and to our own intellectual weakness, to regard this accidental interview of two philosophers, contending so strenuously against each other, for the truth of doctrines, which rendered the real existence of each, at best, very problematical, as only a striking instance of the readiness with which all the pride of human reason yields itself, as it were, spontaneously and humbly, to the sway of those more powerful principles, which He, who has arranged our mutual constitution, has so graciously accommodated to the circumstances in which He has placed us. The gift of reason itself, that most inestimable of our intellectual gifts, would have been truly, if nothing more had been added to it, a perilous acquisition, to beings not absolutely incapable of error; since these are points on which a single mistake, if there had been no opportunity of repairing it, might have been fatal, not to our happiness merely, but to our very existence. On these points, however, Nature has not left us to a power so fallible, and to indolence, which might forget to exercise even this feeble power. She has given us principles which do not err, and which operate without the necessity of any effort on our part. In the wildest speculative errors, into which we may be led, there is a voice within, which speaks, indeed, only in a whisper, but in a whisper of omnipotence, at which the loud voice that led us astray, is still, – thus operating on our mind, as the secret irresistible influence of gravitation operates on our body, preserving it, amid all the disorder and irregularity of its spontaneous motions, still attached to that earthly home which has been prepared with every bountiful provision for our temporary residence.
If there were, indeed, any sceptic as to the existence of an external world, who could seriously profess that his practical conduct was in accordance with his speculative disbelief, we might very justly exercise, with respect to his own profession, that philosophic doubt or disbelief, which he recommends. Pyrrho, the great founder of this philosophy, is, indeed, said to have acted so truly on his principles, that if a cart ran against him, or a dog attacked him, or if he came upon a precipice he would not stir a foot to avoid the danger. “But his attendants,” says Dr Reid, “who happily for him, were not so great sceptics, took care to keep him out of harm's way, so that he lived till he was ninety years of age.”88 In all these cases, we may safely take for granted, that this venerable sceptic, when he exhibited himself with his domestics knew, at least as well as the spectator, the nature of the comedy which he was acting, for their entertainment, and his own imagined glory; – that he could discriminate, with perfect accuracy, the times when it would be safe, and the times when it would be unsafe, for him to be consistent; – and that he would never feel, in so strong and lively a manner, the force of his own principles, as when he was either absolutely alone, or with attendants within a very few inches of the ground on which he was philosophizing. We are told, accordingly, that when his passions were too strongly roused, to allow him to remember the part which he was acting, he entered with sufficient readiness into his native character of a mere human being. Of this, one ludicrous instance is recorded, in which his anger against his cook so completely got the better, both of his moral and physical philosophy, that, with the spit in his hand, and the meat on it, which had been roasting, he pursued him to the very market-place. Many stories of this sort, however, we may well suppose, would be invented against philosophers, of a class, that at once challenged the opposition of the whole mob of mankind, and afforded subjects of that obvious and easy ridicule, which the mob of mankind, even without the provocation of such a challenge, are always sufficiently ready to seize.
Into a detail of the sceptical system of Berkeley, it is unnecessary to enter at any length; since, notwithstanding the general acuteness which its truly illustrious author has displayed in this, and in all his works, I cannot but consider his ideal system, as presenting a very imperfect and inaccurate view, not merely of the real phenomena of the mind, but even of the sceptical argument against the existence of matter. It was not as a sceptic, however, that this most devout and amiable of philosophers, to whom Pope scarcely paid a higher compliment than was strictly due, in ascribing to him “every virtue under heaven,”89– it was not as a sceptic that he was desirous of being ranked. On the contrary, I have no doubt that his system seemed to him valuable, chiefly for being, as he conceived, an antidote to scepticism, and that he was far less anxious to display acuteness, than to expose the sophistry of materialism, and to present as he thought, an additional argument for the existence of a divine omnipresent mind, which unquestionably it would have afforded, and an argument too, it must be owned, completely irresistible, if our mere ideas were what he conceived them to be. These, he evidently considered, not as states of the individual mind, but as separate things existing in it, and capable of existing in other minds, but in them alone; and it is in consequence of these assumptions, that his system, if it were to be considered as a system of scepticism, is chiefly defective. But having, as he supposed, these ideas, and conceiving that they did not perish, when they ceased to exist in his mind, since the same ideas recurred at intervals, he deduced from the necessity which there seemed for some omnipresent mind, in which they might exist during the intervals of recurrence, the necessary existence of the Deity; and if, indeed, as he supposed, ideas be something different from the mind itself, recurring only at intervals to created minds, and incapable of existing but in mind, the demonstration of some infinite omnipresent mind, in which they exist during these intervals of recurrence to finite minds, must be allowed to be perfect. The precise nature of the argument, and its demonstrative force, if the hypothetical circumstances which Berkeley himself was far from considering as hypothetical, be admitted, have not been sufficiently regarded by philosophers, when they express their astonishment, that a system, which, if not scepticism, is at least so much akin to it, or so favourable, at least, to the general sceptical spirit, should yet have been brought forward, as its truly pious author informs us, for the express purpose of combating scepticism. He is not, indeed, always a very perspicuous unfolder of his own opinions, but in a passage of his third Dialogue, the series of propositions which I have now stated as constituting his demonstration, are delivered by himself, with great distinctness and brevity. “When I deny,” says Philonous to Hylas, “when I deny sensible things, an existence out of the mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds. Now, it is plain, they have an existence exterior to my mind, since I find them, by experience, to be independent of it. There is, therefore, some other mind wherein they exist during the intervals between the times of my perceiving them, as likewise they did before my birth, and would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is true with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily follows, there is an Omnipresent Eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view, in such a manner, and according to such rules, as he himself hath ordained, and are by us all termed the laws of Nature.”90
The existence of ideas as separate from the mind, and the permanent existence of these, when they have ceased to exist in the individual mind, are evidently assumptions as gratuitous as the assumption of the external existence of matter itself could have been; or rather, the permanent and independent ideas, are truly matter, under another name; and to believe that these foreign independent substances, which pass from mind to mind, exist in the mind, is not to intellectualize matter, but to materialize intellect. A mind containing, or capable of containing something foreign within itself, and not merely one foreign substance, but a multitude of foreign substances, at the same moment, is no longer that simple indivisible existence, which we termed spirit. Any of the elementary atoms of matter is, indeed, more truly spiritual; the very notion of recipiency of any kind, being as little consistent with our notion of mind, as the notion of hardness or squareness.
The whole force of the pious demonstration, therefore, which Berkeley flattered himself with having urged irresistibly, is completely obviated, by the simple denial, that ideas are any thing more than the mind itself affected in a certain manner; since, in this case, our ideas exist no longer than our mind is affected, in that particular manner, which constitutes each particular idea; and, to say that our ideas exist in the divine mind, would thus be to say, only, that our mind itself exists in the divine mind. There is not the sensation of colour, in addition to the mind, nor the sensation of fragrance in addition to the mind; but, according to that juster view of the mental phenomena, which I have repeatedly endeavoured to impress on you, the sensation of colour is the mind existing in a certain state, and the sensation of fragrance, is the mind existing in a different state.
The most philosophic scepticism, as to the existence of external things, is unquestionably that, which is founded on this very view of the phenomena of the mind. All the terms, which we use to express our knowledge, sensations, perceptions, ideas, notions, propositions, judgments, intuitions, conclusions, – or whatever other terms we may employ to express particular varieties of thought, are significant, it may be said, and truly said, of states or affections of the mind, and of nothing more. What I term my perception of the colour, or softness, or shape, or fragrance, or taste of a peach, is a certain state of my own mind, for my mind surely can be conscious only of its own feelings; or rather, as the consciousness of present feelings is a redundancy of language, my mind, affected in a certain manner, whether it be with what is termed sensation or knowledge, or belief, can still be nothing more than my mind itself affected in a certain manner, – my mind, itself existing in a certain state. Against this argument, I confess that I know no mere argument which can be adduced in opposition, – any more, than I know any mere argument which can be adduced, against the strange conclusions that are most legitimately drawn from the doctrine of the infinite divisibility of matter, and various other physical and mathematical applications of the notion of infinity. In no one of these cases, however, do we feel our belief shaken; – because it is founded either on associations so early, and strong, and indissoluble, as those which we have been endeavouring to trace, or is not in those, or in principles of direct intuition, in that species of internal revolution which gives to reason itself, in the primary truths on which every argument proceeds, its divine authority; and we only smile at conclusions, in which it is impossible for us to find a single logical error, but which from the constitution of our nature, it is physically impossible for us to admit, or to admit at least, without an instant dissent, which renders our momentary logical admission as nugatory, as if the direct existence of an external world had been established by the clearest logical demonstration.
In one of the Anniversary Orations of Sir William Jones, of which the subject is the philosophy of the Asiatics, he informs us that a system of idolism, very similar to that of Berkeley, is to be found in the metaphysics of Hindostan. The fundamental tenet of one great school of the philosophers of that ancient land of philosophy, is the disbelief of the existence of matter – the phenomena of the seeming material universe, being conceived by them to be only an illusive representation which the Deity presents to the mind, (and which they distinguish by the name of Maja:) – while the opposite species of scepticism is to be found in another sect of the philosophers, who disbelieve the existence of mind, and reduce all the phenomena of thought to material organization. The same subtilty and refinement of scepticism, which have led to the systems of materialism and idolism in our Western World, are to be found, we are told, in the corresponding systems of the East.91
Why is it that we are struck with no common emotion on finding, in the metaphysics of that distant country, systems of opinions so similar to our own? Is it that the notion of the immense space, which separates us, unites with our conception, and impresses us, as it were, with the omnipresence of our own intellectual nature, – when we recognize on scenes so remote and in circumstances of society so different, the same thoughts, and doubts, and errors, which have perplexed, and occupied, and delighted ourselves? This recognition, in whatever circumstances it may occur, gives to us a feeling of more than kindred, – a sort of identity with the universal nature of man, in all its times and places. The belief which others share with us seems to be our own belief which has passed from each to each, or is present to all, like those permanent ideas of which Berkeley speaks, that quit one intellect to exist in another. We cannot separate the thought which we remember from the notion of the mind which we remember to have conceived it; – and it seems to us, therefore, not as if similar doubts and errors, but almost as if the very doubts and errors of our own mind, and its ardour of inquiry, and frequent disappointments, and occasional, but rare felicities of discovery, had spread and renewed themselves in a remote existence. It is this recognition of our common nature, which gives the chief interest to scenes that have been occupied with the passions of beings like ourselves. The mountains, which the Titans were fabled to have heaped up in their war against Jupiter, must have excited even in the most devout believers of Grecian mythology, emotions far less ardent and immediate, than the sight of the humbler cliffs, at which the small Spartan host, and their gallant leader, devoted themselves in the defensive war against the Persian invader. The races of men may perish, but the remembrance of them still lives imperishable, and seems to claim kindred with us, as often as we tread the same soil, or merely think of those who have trod it.
“Turn thy sight eastward, o'er the time-hush'd plains,
Now graves of vanish'd empire, once gleam'd o'er
From flames on hallow'd altars, hail'd by hymns
Of seers, awakeners of the worshipp'd Sun!
Ask silent Tigris – Bid Euphrates tell
Where is the grove-crown'd Baal, to whose stern frown
Bow'd haughty Babylon? – Chaldea, famed
For star-taught sages, – hard Phenicia's sons.
Fierce fear-surmounting curbers of the deep,
Who stretch'd a floating sceptre o'er the seas,
And made mankind one empire? – Where is now
Egypt's wide-homag'd Isis? – where the Thors,
That shook the shakers of the Roman world?”
The very gods of all these countries have perished, but the mortals who bent the knee before them still survive in the immortality of our common nature, – in that universal interest which gives to us a sort of intellectual existence in scenes and times the most remote, and makes the thoughts and emotions of others as it were a part of our own being, – uniting the past, the present, and the future, and blending man with man wherever he is to be found.