Brown Thomas
Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)
LECTURE XXV
ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SENSATION AND PERCEPTION, – AND BETWEEN THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY QUALITIES OF MATTER
My last Lecture, Gentlemen, was chiefly employed in considering the nature of that complex process which takes place in the mind, when we ascribe the various classes of our sensations to their various external objects, – to the analysis of which process we were led, by the importance which Dr Reid has attached to the distinction of sensation and perception; – a sensation, as understood by him, being the simple feeling that immediately follows the action of an external body on any of our organs of sense, considered merely as a feeling of the mind; the corresponding perception being a reference of this feeling to the external body as its cause.
The distinction I allowed to be a convenient one, if the nature of the complex process which it expresses be rightly understood. The only question that seemed, philosophically, of importance, with respect to it, was, whether the perception in this sense, – the reference of the sensation to its external corporeal cause, – imply, as Dr Reid contends, a peculiar mental power, coextensive with sensation, to be distinguished by a peculiar name in the catalogue of our faculties, or be not merely one of the results of a more general power, which is afterwards to be considered by us, – the power of association, – by which one feeling suggests, or induces, other feelings that have formerly coexisted with it.
It would be needless to recapitulate the argument minutely, in its relation to all the senses. That of smell, which Dr Reid has himself chosen as an example, will be sufficient for our retrospect.
Certain particles of odorous matter act on my nostrils, – a peculiar sensation of fragrance arises, – I refer this sensation to a rose. This reference, which is unquestionably something superadded to the original sensation itself, is what Dr Reid terms the perception of the fragrant body. But what is the reference itself, and to what source is it to be ascribed? That we should have supposed our sensations to have had a cause of some sort, as we suppose a cause of all our feelings internal as well as external, may indeed be admitted. But if I had had no other sense than that of smell, – if I had never seen a rose, – or, rather, since the knowledge which vision affords is chiefly of a secondary kind, if I had no mode of becoming acquainted with the compound of extension and resistance, which the mere sensations of smell, it is evident, are incapable of affording, – could I have made this reference of my sensation to a quality of a fragrant body? Could I, in short, have had more than the mere sensation itself, with that general belief of a cause of some sort, which is not confined to our sensations, but is common to them with all our other feelings?
By mere smell, as it appears to me, I could not have become acquainted with the existence of corporeal substances, – in the sense in which we now understand the term corporeal, – nor, consequently, with the qualities of corporeal substances; and, if so, how could I have had that perception of which Dr Reid speaks, – that reference to a fragrant body, of which, as a body, I was before in absolute ignorance? I should, indeed, have ascribed the sensation to some cause or antecedent, like every other feeling; but I could as little have ascribed it to a bodily cause, as any feeling of joy or sorrow. I refer it now to a rose; because, being endowed with other sensitive capacities, I have previously learned, from another source, the existence of causes without, extended and resisting, – because I have previously touched or seen a rose, when the sensation of fragrance coexisted with my visual or tactual sensation; and all which distinguishes the perception from the mere sensation, is this suggestion of former experience, which reminds me now of other feelings, with the continuance or cessation of which, in innumerable former instances, the fragrance itself also continued or ceased. The perception in short, in smell, taste, hearing, is a sensation suggesting, by association, the notion of some extended and resisting substance, fragrant, vapid, vibratory, – a notion which smell alone, taste alone, hearing alone, never could have afforded; but which, when once received from any other source, may be suggested by these as readily as any other associate feeling that has frequently coexisted with them. To the simple primary sensations of vision the same remark may be applied. A mere sensation of colour could not have made me acquainted with the existence of bodies, that would resist my effort to grasp them. It is only in one sense, therefore, – that which affords us the knowledge of resistance, – that any thing like original perception can be found; and even in this, the process of perception, as I formerly explained to you, implies no peculiar power, but only common sensations, with associations and inferences of precisely the same kind, as those which are continually taking place in all our reasonings and trains of thought.
Extension and resistance, I need scarcely repeat, are the complex elements of what we term matter; and nothing is matter to our conception, or a body, to use the simpler synonymous term, which does not involve these elements. If we had no other sense than that of smell, and, therefore, could not have referred the sensations to any fragrant body, what, in Dr Reid's meaning of this term, would the supposed power of perception, in these circumstances, have been? What would it have been, in like manner, if we had had only the sense of taste in sweetness and bitterness, – or of hearing in melody, – or of vision in colour, – without the capacity of knowing light as a material substance, or the bodies that vibrated, or the bodies of another kind that were sweet or bitter? It is only by the sense of touch, or, at least, by that class of perceptions which Dr Reid ascribes to touch, – and which, therefore, though traced by us, in part, to another source, I, for brevity's sake, comprehend under that term in our present discussion, – it is only by touch that we become acquainted with those elements which are essential to our very notion of a body; and to touch, therefore, in his own view of it, we must be indebted, directly or indirectly, as often as we refer the sensations of any other class to a corporeal cause. Even in the supposed perceptions of touch itself, however, as we have seen, the reference of our feelings to an external cause is not demonstrative of any peculiar power of the mind, to be classed separately from its other faculties. But when a body is first grasped, in infancy, by fingers that have been accustomed to contract without being impeded, we learn to consider the sensation as the result of a cause that is different from our own mind, because it breaks an accustomed series of feelings, in which all the antecedents, felt by us at the time, were such as were before uniformly followed by a different consequent, and were expected, therefore, to have again their usual consequent. The cause of the new sensation, which is thus believed to be something different from our sentient self, is regarded by us as something which has parts, and which resists our effort, that is to say, as an external body; – because the muscular feeling, excited by the object grasped is, in the first place, the very feeling of that which we term resistance; and, secondly, because, by uniformly supplying the place of a definite portion of a progressive series of feelings, it becomes ultimately representative of that particular length of series, or number of parts, of which it thus uniformly supplies the place. Perception, then, even in that class of feelings by which we learn to consider ourselves as surrounded by substances extended and resisting, is only another name, as I have said, for the result of certain associations and inferences that flow from other more general principles of the mind; and with respect to all our other sensations, it is only another name for the suggestion of these very perceptions of touch, or at least of the feelings, tactual and muscular, which are, by Dr Reid, ascribed to that single sense. If we had been unsusceptible of these tactual and muscular feelings, and, consequently, had never conceived the existence of any thing extended and resisting till the sensation of fragrance, colour, sweetness, or sound had arisen, we should, after any one or all of these sensations, have still known as little of bodies without, as if no sensation whatever had been excited.
The distinction, then, on which Dr Reid has founded so much, involves, in his view of it, and in the view that is generally taken of it, a false conception of the nature of the process which he describes. The two words sensation and perception, are, indeed, as I have already remarked, very convenient for expressing, in one case, the mere existence of an external feeling, – in the other case, the reference which the percipient mind has made of this feeling to an external cause. But this reference is all, which the perception superadds to the sensation; – and the source of the reference itself we are still left to seek, in the other principles of our intellectual nature. We have no need, however, to invent a peculiar power of the mind for producing it; since there are other principles of our nature, from which it may readily be supposed to flow, – the principle by which we are led to believe, that every new consequent, in a train of changes, must have had a new antecedent of some sort in the train, – and the principle of association, by which feelings, that have usually coexisted, suggest or become representative of each other. With these principles, it certainly is not wonderful, that when the fragrance of a rose has uniformly affected our sense of smell, as often as the flower itself was presented to us, we should ascribe the fragrance to the flower which we have seen and handled; – but though it would not be wonderful, that we should make it, it would indeed be wonderful, if, with these principles, we did not make that very reference, for which Dr Reid thinks it necessary to have recourse to a peculiar faculty of perception.
Such, then, is the view, which I would take of that distinction of sensation and perception, which Dr Reid, and the philosophers who have followed him, and many of philosophers, too, that preceded him, – for the distinction, as I have said, is far from being an original one, – have understood in a different sense; in consequence, as I cannot but think, of a defective analysis of the mental process, which constitutes the reference of our feelings of this class to causes that are without.
There is another distinction, which he has adopted from the philosophers that preceded him, and which forms an important part of his system of perception, – a distinction, that is just to a certain extent, – though not to the full extent, and in the precise manner, in which he and other writers have maintained; – and with respect to which, therefore, it will be necessary to point out to you, how far I conceive it to be safely admissible. I allude to the division, which has been formed of the primary and secondary qualities of matter.
“Every one knows that extension, divisibility, figure, motion, solidity, hardness, softness, and fluidity, were by Mr Locke called primary qualities of body; and that sound, colour, taste, smell, and heat or cold, were called secondary qualities. Is there a just foundation for this distinction? Is there any thing common to the primary, which belongs not to the secondary? And what is it?
“I answer, that there appears to me to be a real foundation for the distinction; and it is this: That our senses give us a direct and a distinct notion of the primary qualities, and inform us what they are in themselves; but of the secondary qualities, our senses give us only a relative and obscure notion. They inform us only, that they are qualities that affect us in a certain manner, that is, produce in us a certain sensation; but as to what they are in themselves, our senses leave us in the dark.
“The notion we have of primary qualities is direct, and not relative only. A relative notion of the thing, is, strictly speaking, no notion of the thing at all, but only of some relation which it bears to something else.
“Thus gravity sometimes signifies the tendency of bodies towards the earth; sometimes it signifies the cause of that tendency: When it means the first, I have a direct and distinct notion of gravity: I see it, and feel it, and know perfectly what it is; but this tendency must have a cause: We give the same name to the cause; and that cause has been an object of thought and of speculation. Now what notion have we of this cause, when we think and reason about it? It is evident, we think of it as an unknown cause, of a known effect. This is a relative notion, and it must be obscure; because it gives us no conception of what the thing is, but of what relation it bears to something else. Every relation which a thing unknown bears to something that is known, may give a relative notion of it; and there are many objects of thought, and of discourse, of which our faculties can give no better than a relative notion.
“Having premised these things to explain what is meant by a relative notion, it is evident, that our notion of primary qualities is not of this kind; we know what they are, and not barely what relation they bear to something else.
“It is otherwise with secondary qualities. If you ask me, what is that quality or modification in a rose which I call its smell, I am at a loss to answer directly. Upon reflection I find, that I have a distinct notion of the sensation which it produces in my mind. But there can be nothing like to this sensation in the rose, because it is insentient. The quality in the rose is something which occasions the sensations in me; but what that something is, I know not. My senses give me no information upon this point. The only notion, therefore, my senses give is this, That smell in the rose is an unknown quality or modification, which is the cause or occasion of a sensation which I know well. The relation which this unknown quality bears to the sensation with which nature hath connected it, is all I learn from the sense of smelling; but this is evidently a relative notion. The same reasoning will apply to every secondary quality.
“Thus I think it appears, that there is a real foundation for the distinction of primary from secondary qualities; and that they are distinguished by this, that of the primary we have by our senses a direct and distinct notion; but of the secondary only a relative notion, which must, because it is only relative, be obscure; they are conceived only as the unknown causes or occasions of certain sensations with which we are well acquainted.”92
Though, as I have explained to you fully, in my former Lectures, we should not, – at least in far the greater number of our sensations, – have considered them, originally, as proceeding from external causes, we yet, after the acquisitions of knowledge, with which the first years of our life enrich us, believe, that there is an external cause of all our sensations, – of smells and tastes, as much as of those feelings of the mind, which constitute our notions of extension and resistance. But the difference, in these cases, is, that though we learn, by experience of certain successions or co-existences of feelings, to refer to a corporeal cause our sensations of fragrance, and various other species of sensations, there is nothing in the sensation of fragrance itself, or in the other analogous sensations, of which I speak, that might not indicate as much a cause directly spiritual, as a cause like that to which we at present give the name of body, – while the very notion of extension and resistance combined, seems necessarily to indicate a material cause, or rather is truly that which constitutes our very notion of matter.
We believe, indeed, that our sensations of fragrance, sweetness, sound, have causes of some sort, as truly as we believe, that our feelings of extension and resistance have a cause, or causes of some sort; but if we have previously given the name of matter, with direct reference to the one set of effects, and not with direct reference to the other, it necessarily follows, that, in relation to matter, as often as we speak or think of it, the qualities which correspond with the one set of effects, that have led us to use that name, must be regarded by us as primary, and the others, which may, or may not coexist with these, only as secondary. An external body may, or may not be fragrant, because fragrance is not one of the qualities previously included by us in our definition of a body; but it must be extended, and present an obstacle to our compressing force, because these are the very qualities, which we have included in our definition, and without which, therefore, the definition must cease to be applicable to the thing defined.
If, originally, we had invented the word matter to denote the cause, whatever it might be, of our sensations of smell, it is very evident, that fragrance would then have been to us the primary quality of matter, as being that which was essential to our definition of matter, – and all other qualities, by which the cause of smell might, or might not at the same time affect our other senses, would then have been secondary qualities only, – as being qualities compatible with our definition of matter, but not essential to it.
What we now term matter, however, I have repeatedly observed, – is that which we consider as occupying space, and resisting our effort to compress it; and those qualities of matter may well be said to be primary, by which matter itself, as thus defined, becomes known to us, – or by the union of which, in our conception, we form the complex notion of matter, and give or withhold that name according as these qualities are present or absent. Extension and resistance are the distinguishing qualities that direct us in all our applications of the word which comprehends them. They are truly primary qualities, therefore; since, without our consideration of them, we never could have formed the complex notion of the substance itself, to which we afterwards, in our analysis of that complex notion, ascribe them separately as qualities; – and all the other qualities, which we may afterwards find occasion to refer to an extended resisting substance, must evidently be secondary, in reference to those qualities, without which as previously combined in our thought, we could not have had the primary notion of the substance to which we thus secondarily refer them. If, in the case which we have already frequently imagined, of the single sense of smell, we had been absolutely unsusceptible of every other external feeling, we might, indeed, have considered our sensation as the effect of some cause, – and even of a cause that was different from our mind itself; but it is very evident that we could not have considered it as the effect of the presence of matter, at least as that term is now understood by us. If, in these circumstances, – after frequent repetition of the fragrance, as the only quality of bodies with which we could be acquainted, – we were to acquire in an instant all the other senses which we now possess, – so as to become capable of forming that complex notion of things extended and resisting, which is our present notion of matter, we should then, indeed, have a fuller notion of the rose, of the mere fragrance of which we before were sensible, without knowing of what it was the fragrance, and might learn to refer the fragrance to the rose, by the same coexistences of sensations which have led us, in our present circumstances, to combine the fragrance with other qualities, in the complex conception of the flower. Even then, however, though the fragrance, which was our first sensation, had truly been known to us before the other qualities, and though the sensation, therefore, would deserve the name of primary, the reference of this earlier feeling to the external rose as its cause, would still truly be secondary to the earlier reference, or rather to the earlier combination of other qualities, in one complex whole, by which we had formed to ourselves the notion of the extended and resisting rose, as a body, that admitted the subsequent reference of the delightful sensation of fragrance to be made to it, as the equal cause of these different effects.
In this sense, then, the distinction of the primary and secondary qualities of matter is just, – that, whatever qualities we refer to a material cause must be, in reference, secondary to those qualities that are essential to our very notion of the body, to which the subsequent reference of the other qualities is made. We have formed our definition of matter; and, as in every other definition of every sort, the qualities included in the definition, must always, in comparison of other qualities, be primary and essential, relatively to the thing defined.
Nor is this all. – It will be admitted likewise, that the qualities termed primary, – which alone are included in our general definitions of matter, and which are all, as we have seen, modifications of mere extension and resistance, are, even after we have learned to consider the causes of all our sensations as substances external to the mind, still felt by us to be external, with more clearness and vividness, than the other qualities, which we term secondary. The difference is partly, and chiefly, in the nature of the sensations themselves, as already explained to you, but depends also, I conceive, in no inconsiderable degree, on the permanence and universality of the objects which possess the primary qualities, and the readiness with which we can renew our feeling of them at will, from the constant presence of our own bodily frame, itself extended and resisting, and of the other causes of these feelings of extension and resistance, that seem to be every where surrounding us. Tastes, smells, sounds, – even colours though more lasting than these – are not always before us; – but there is not a moment at which we cannot, by the mere stretching of our hand, produce at pleasure, the feeling of something extended and resisting. It is a very natural effect of this difference, that the one set of causes which are always before us, should seem to us, therefore, peculiarly permanent, and the other set, that are only occasionally present, should seem almost as fugitive as our sensations themselves.
In these most important respects, there is, then, a just ground for the distinction of the primary from the secondary qualities of bodies. They are primary in the order of our definition of matter; and they are felt by us as peculiarly permanent, independently of our feelings, which they seem at every moment ready to awake. The power of affecting us with smell, taste, sight, or hearing, may or may not be present; but the power of exciting the feelings of extension and resistance is constantly present, and is regarded by us as essential to our very notion of matter, – or, in other words, we give the name of matter, only where this complex perception is excited in us. We seem, therefore, to be constantly surrounded with a material world of substances extended and resisting, that is to say, a world of substances capable of exciting in us the feelings which are ascribed to the primary quality of matter; – but still the feeling of these primary qualities, which we regard as permanent, is not less than the feeling of the secondary qualities, a state or affection of the mind, and nothing more; – and in the one case, as much as in the other, in the perception of the qualities termed secondary, as much as of the qualities termed primary, the feeling, when it occurs, is the direct or immediate result of the presence of the external body with the quality of which it corresponds; – or, if there be any difference in this respect, I conceive that our feeling of fragrance, or sweetness, was, originally at least, a more immediate result of the presence of odorous or sapid particles, – than any feeling of extension, without the mind, was the effect of the first body which we touched.
To the extent which I have now stated, then, the difference of these classes of qualities may be admitted. But as to the other differences asserted, they seem to be founded on a false view of the nature of perception. I cannot discover any thing in the sensations themselves, corresponding with the primary and secondary qualities, which is direct, as Dr Reid says, in the one case, and only relative in the other. All are relative, in his sense of the term, and equally relative, – our perception of extension and resistance, as much as our perception of fragrance or bitterness. Our feeling of extension is not itself matter, but a feeling excited by matter. We ascribe, indeed, our sensations as effects to external objects that excite them; but it is only by the medium of our sensations that these, in any case, become known to us as objects. To say that our perception of extension is not relative, to a certain external cause of this perception, direct or indirect, as our perception of fragrance is relative to a certain external cause, would be to say that our perception of extension, induced by the presence of an external cause, is not a mental phenomenon, as much as the perception of fragrance, but is something more than a state of the mind; for, if the perception of extension be, as all our perceptions and other feelings must surely be, a mental phenomenon, a state of mind, not of matter, the reference made of this to an external cause, must be only to something which is conceived relatively as the cause of this feeling. What matter is independently of our perception, we know not, and cannot know, for it is only by our sensations that we can have any connexion with it; and even though we were supposed to have our connexion with it enlarged, by various senses additional to those which we possess at present, and our acquaintance with it, therefore, to be far more minute, this very knowledge, however widely augmented, must itself be a mental phenomenon, in like manner, the reference of which, to matter, as an external cause, would still be relative only like our present knowledge. That the connexion of the feeling of extension, with a corporeal substance really existing without, depends on the arbitrary arrangement made by the Deity; and that all of which we are conscious might, therefore, have existed, as at present, though no external cause had been, Dr Reid, who ascribes to an intuitive principle, our belief of an external universe, virtually allows; and this very admission surely implies, that the notion does not, directly and necessarily, involve the existence of any particular cause, whatever it may be in itself, by which the Deity has thought proper to produce the corresponding feeling of our mind. It is quite evident, that we cannot, in this case, appeal to experience, to inform us what sensations or perceptions are more or less direct; for experience, strictly understood, does not extend beyond the feelings of our own mind, unless in this very relative belief itself, that there are certain external causes of our feelings, – causes which it is impossible for us not to conceive as really existing, but of which we know nothing more than that our feelings, in all that wide variety of states of mind, which we express briefly by the terms sensation or perception, are made to depend on them. In the series of states in which the mind has existed, from the first moment of our life, to the present hour, the feelings of extension, resistance, joy, sorrow, fragrance, colour, hope, fear, heat, cold, admiration, resentment, have often had place; and some of these feelings, it has been impossible for us not to ascribe to a direct external cause; but there have not been in the mental series, which is all of which we can be conscious, both that feeling of the mind which we term the perception of extension, and also body itself, as the cause of this feeling; for body, as an actual substance, cannot be a part of the consciousness of the mind, which is a different substance. It is sufficient for us to believe, that there are external causes of this feeling of the mind, permanent and independent of it, which produce in regular series, all those phenomena that are found by us in the physical events of the universe, and with the continuance of which, therefore, our perceptions also will continue; we cannot truly suppose more, without conceiving our very notion of extension, a mental state, to be itself a body extended, which we have as little reason to suppose, as that our sensation of fragrance, another mental state, is itself a fragrant body. It is needless to prolong this discussion, by endeavouring to place the argument in new points of view. The simple answer to the question, “Is our notion of extension, or of the other primary qualities of matter, a phenomenon or affection of matter or of mind?” would be of itself sufficient; for if it be a state of the mind, as much as our feeling of heat or of fragrance, and a state produced by the presence of an external cause, as our sensations of heat or fragrance are produced, then there is no reason to suppose, that the knowledge is, in one case, more direct than in the other. In both, it is the effect of the presence of an external cause, and in both it must be relative only, – to adopt Dr Reid's phrase, – to that particular cause which produced it; the knowledge of which cause, in the case of extension, as much as in the case of fragrance, is nothing more than the knowledge, that there is without us, something which is not our mind itself, but which exists, as we cannot but believe, permanently and independently of our mind, and produces according to its own varieties, in relation to our corporeal frame at one time, that affection of the mind which we denominate the perception of extension; at another time, that different affection of the mind, which we denominate the perception of fragrance. What it is, as it exists in absolute independence of our perceptions, we who become acquainted with it, only by those very perceptions, know not, in either case; but we know it at least, – which is the only knowledge important for us, – as it exists relatively to us; that is to say, it is impossible for us, from the very constitution of our nature, not to regard the variety of our perceptions, as occasioned by a corresponding variety of causes, external to our mind; though, even in making this reference, we must still believe our perceptions themselves, to be altogether different and distinct from the external causes, whatever they may be, which have produced them; to be, in short, phenomena purely mental, and to be this equally, whether they relate to the primary or the secondary qualities of matter; our notion of extension, in whatever way the Deity may have connected it with the presence of external things, being as much a state of the mind itself, as our notion of sweetness or sound.