Kitabı oku: «Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)», sayfa 16

But, if it be only on the consideration of some past feeling, that the belief of the permanent substance mind can arise, it is to the principle which recals to us past feelings, that the belief is ultimately to be traced. We remember; – and in that remembrance is involved the belief, the source of which we seek. It is not merely a past feeling that arises to us, in what is commonly termed memory, but a feeling that is recognized by us as ours, in that past time of which we think, – a feeling, therefore, of that mind which now remembers what it before saw, perhaps, or heard, or enjoyed, or suffered. We are told by writers on this subject, that it is from a comparison of our present with our past consciousness, that the belief of our identity in these states arises; and this use of the term comparison, which is commonly applied to a process of a different kind, may perhaps mislead you as to this simpler process. It is true, indeed, that the belief arises from a feeling of the past, that is remembered, together with the consciousness of our remembrance as a present feeling, – a contemplation, as it were, of two successive states of the mind. But the comparison is nothing more than this. – It is not to be supposed that we discover in the two feelings some common quality or proportion, as when, in arithmetic or geometry we compare two numbers, or two regular figures; for the two feelings may have nothing common, except that very belief of identity which is involved in the remembrance itself. We remember the past, – we feel the present, – we believe, and cannot but believe, that the rememberer of the past existed in that past which he remembers. The process itself is sufficiently simple, however truly wonderful one of the feelings may be which forms the most important part of the process; – for we are not to forget that the remembrance itself, the revealer of the past, is not a past, but a present feeling. It is the mind existing for the present moment in a particular state, as much as any primary and immediate sensation is the mind existing in a particular state. That this state of remembrance, itself a present feeling, should be representative to us of some former feeling, so as to impress us irresistibly with the belief of that former state of the mind, is indeed most wonderful; but that it does impress us with this belief, is as undeniable as the belief itself is irresistible.

Our faith in our identity, then, as being only another form of the faith which we put in memory, can be questioned only by those who deny all memory, and with memory all reasoning of every kind, – who believe only the existence of the present moment, and who with respect to every thing else, are as incapable of opposing or questioning as they are of believing. If our memory be unworthy of the faith which we intuitively give to it, all that is founded on memory, and therefore demonstration itself, must equally deceive us. We cannot admit the most rigid demonstration, or expect it to be admitted, without having already admitted, intuitively, that identity, which in words only we profess to question, and to question which, even in words, is to assert the reality of that which we deny.

The belief of the identity of self, then, as the one permanent subject of the transient feelings remembered by us, arises from a law of thought, which is essential to the very constitution of the mind. It has accordingly all the qualities, which I can imagine to be required by the most rigid scrutinizer of our principles of intuitive assent. It is universal, and immediate, and irresistible. I do not believe, with more confidence, that the half of thirty-two is equal to the square of four, than I believe, that I, who computed the square of four, am the same with that mind, which computes the half of thirty-two, and asserts the equality of the two numbers.

This consideration is of itself decisive of the question of identity; since, if it be manifest, that there is an universal, immediate, and irresistible impression of our identity, – an impression, which cannot be traced to any law of thought more simple, – its truth is established by a species of evidence, which must be allowed to be valid, before the very objections can be put, in which it is professedly denied; – every objection, however sceptical, involving, as we have seen, and necessarily involving, the assertion of some such intuitive proposition, from which alone its authority, if it have any authority, is derived. In endeavouring to move the whole world of truth with his lever, there must still be some little spot at least, on which the sceptic must be content to rest his foot as firmly as others. Δὸς ποῦ στῶ, he must still be condemned to say with Archimedes; and if we allow no resting-place to his foot, – or, even allowing him this, if we allow no fulcrum for the instrument which he uses, he may contract or lengthen his lever at pleasure; but all the efforts, which in such circumstances, he can make, will exhibit nothing so striking to those by whom the efforts are witnessed, as the laborious impotence of him who employs them. To deny any first principles of intuitive belief, that are not themselves to stand in need of a demonstration, – which, as a demonstration, or series of consecutive propositions, can be founded, in its primary evidence, only on some principle of the same kind, – is, indeed, for such a sceptical mechanic, to set his foot upon air, rather than on the ground, on which all around him are standing, and to throw away the single fulcrum on which his lever rests, and from which alone all its power is derived.

The belief of our mental identity, then, we may safely conclude, is founded on an essential principle of our constitution, – in consequence of which, it is impossible for us to consider our successive feelings, without regarding them as truly our successive feelings – states, or affections of one thinking substance. But though the belief of the identity of the substance which thinks, is thus established on the firmest of all grounds, the very ground, as we have seen, on which demonstration itself is founded, – even though no particular fallacy could be traced in the objections brought against it, which I detailed in my last Lecture, – it is still an interesting inquiry, in what the fallacy of the objections consists; and the inquiry is the more interesting, as it will lead us to some remarks and distinctions, which, I flatter myself, will throw some light on the philosophy of all the changes, material as well as mental, that are every moment taking place in the universe.

The objections brought against the identity of the mind, from a supposed incompatibility of its diversities of state with sameness of substance, appear to me to depend on the assumption of a test of identity, transferred, without sufficient reason, from the obvious appearances of matter to mind, and which, if matter be accurately considered, is equally false, too, as applied to it. The cause of the transference, however, from the obvious material appearances, is a very natural one, – the same, which has included so many analogies, from external things, in the language, which we employ to express the intellectual functions. It is with the changes of the material substances around us, that all our operations, which leave any fixed and permanent marks of our agency, are immediately concerned. It is indeed only through them, that our communication with other minds can be at all carried on; and it is not wonderful, therefore, that, in considering the nature of change, of every kind, our philosophy should be strongly tainted with prejudices, derived from the material world, the scene of all the immediate and lasting changes, which it is in our power to produce. How much the mere materialism of our language has itself operated, in darkening our conceptions of the nature of the mind, and of its various phenomena, is a question, which is obviously beyond our power to solve; since the solution of it would imply, that the mind of the solver was itself free from the influence which he traced and described. But of this, at least, we may be sure, that it is almost impossible for us to estimate the influence too highly; for we must not think, that its effect has been confined to the works of philosophers. It has acted, much more powerfully, in the familiar discourse, and silent reflections of multitudes, that have never had the vanity to rank themselves as philosophers, – thus incorporating itself, as it were, with the very essence of human thought. In that rude state of social life, in which languages had their origin, the inventor of a word probably thought of little more, than the temporary facility, which it might give to himself and his companions, in communicating their mutual wants, and concerting their mutual schemes of co-operation. He was not aware, that, with this faint and perishing sound, which a slight difference of breathing produced, he was creating that which was afterwards to constitute one of the most imperishable of things, and to form, in the minds of millions, during every future age, a part of the complex lesson of their intellectual existence, – giving rise to lasting systems of opinions, which, perhaps, but for the invention of this single word, never could have prevailed for a moment, and modifying sciences, the very elements of which had not then begun to exist. The inventor of the most barbarous term may thus have had an influence on mankind, more important, than all which the most illustrious conqueror could effect, by a long life of fatigue, and anxiety, and peril, and guilt. Of the generalship of Alexander, and the valour of his armies, – of all which he suffered, and planned, and executed, what permanent vestiges remain, but in the writings of historians! In a very few years, after the termination of his dazzling career, every thing on the earth was almost as if he had never been. A few phrases of Aristotle achieved a much more extensive and lasting conquest, and are, perhaps, even at this moment, exercising no small sway on the very minds which smile at them with scorn, and which, in tracing the extent of their melancholy influence on the progress of science, in centuries that are past, are unconscious that they are describing and lamenting prejudices, of which they are themselves still, in a great measure, the slaves. How many truths are there, of which we are ignorant, merely because one man lived!

To return, however, to the objections, which we are to consider.

Diversity of any kind, it is said, is inconsistent with absolute identity, in any case, and in the mind, which is by supposition indivisible, nothing can be added to it or taken away, and no internal change can take place, in the relative positions and affinities of parts which it has not. Joy and sorrow are different in themselves; that which is joyful, therefore, and that which is sorrowful, cannot be precisely the same, or diversity of any kind might be consistent with absolute identity. That the joyful and sorrowful mind are precisely the same, is not asserted, if the sameness be meant to imply sameness of state; for it is admitted, that the state of the mind is different in joy and sorrow! and the only question is, whether this difference, to which we give the name of difference of state, be incompatible with complete and absolute sameness of substance.

The true key to the sophistry is, as I have already said, that it assumes a false test of identity, borrowed, indeed, from the obvious appearances of the material world, but from these obvious appearances only. Because diversity of any kind seems, in these familiar cases, to be inconsistent with absolute identity, we draw hastily the universal conclusion, that it is inconsistent with absolute identity in any case. Paradoxical as the assertion may appear, however, we may yet safely assert, that, not in mind only, but, as we shall find, in matter also; some sort of diversity is so far from being inconsistent with absolute identity, that there is scarcely a single moment, if, indeed, there be a single moment, in which every atom in the universe is not constantly changing the tendencies that form its physical character, without the slightest alteration of its own absolute identity; so that the variety of states or tendencies of the same identical mind, in joy and sorrow, ignorance and knowledge, instead of being opposed, as you might think, by the general analogy of nature, is in exact harmony with that general analogy. It is from our view of matter, unquestionably, as implying, in all its visible changes of state, some loss of identity, some addition or subtraction of particles, or change of their form of combination, that the objection, with respect to the identity of the mind, during its momentary or lasting changes of state, is derived; and yet we shall find, that it is only when we consider even matter itself superficially and slightly, that we ascribe the changes which take place in it, to circumstances that affect its identity. To view it more profoundly and accurately, is to observe, even in matter, constant changes of state, where the identity has continued entire, and changes as opposite, as those of the mind itself, when, at different periods, it presents itself in different aspects, as sad and cheerful, ignorant and wise, cruel and benevolent.

The apparent mystery of the continued identity of one simple and indivisible mind, in all the variety of states, of which it is susceptible, is thus in a great measure, solved, when we find this union of variety and sameness to be the result of a law that is not limited to our spiritual being, but extends to the whole universe, or at least to every thing which we know in the universe. It can no longer appear to us peculiarly wonderful, that the mind should exist at different moments in opposite states, and yet be the same in its own absolute nature, when we shall find that this compatibility is true of every atom around us, as much as of the mind itself.

LECTURE XIV
CONTINUATION OF THE ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE DOCTRINE OF MENTAL IDENTITY

My Lecture yesterday was, in a great measure, employed in illustrating the primary evidence of those principles of intuitive assent, to which we traced our belief of the identity of the mind as one and permanent, in all the variety of its ever-changing affections. I explained to you, particularly with a view to that vague and not very luminous controversy, in which Dr Priestley was engaged with some philosophers of this part of the Island, in what manner the truth of these intuitive propositions must be assumed or admitted by all who reason, even by the wildest sceptic who professes to question them; pointing out to you, at the same time, the danger to which two of the strongest principles of our constitution, our indolence and our love of knowledge, alike expose us – the danger of believing too soon that we have arrived at truths which are susceptible of any minuter analysis. In conformity, therefore, with the caution which this danger renders necessary, we examined the belief of our continued identity; and we found it to possess the distinguishing marks, which I ventured to lay down as the three great characters of intuition, that it is universal, immediate, and irresistible; – so universal, that even the very maniac, who conceives that he was yesterday emperor of the Moon, believes that he is to-day the very person who had yesterday that empire – so immediate, that we cannot consider any two feelings, of our mind as successive, without instantly considering them as feelings of our mind, that is to say, as states of one permanent substance, and so irresistible that even to doubt of our identity, if it were possible for us truly to doubt of it, would be to believe, that our mind, which doubts, is that very mind which has reflected and reasoned on the subject.

Having thus stated the positive ground of belief, in our spiritual identity, I proceeded to consider the negative evidence which might arise from the confutation of the objections urged against it, – objections drawn from the supposed incompatibility of the changes of our mental affections, with that strict absolute identity of substance, to which nothing can have been added, and from which nothing can have been taken away. The test of identity, which this supposed incompatibility implies, I stated to be a very false one, transferred from matter to mind, and borrowed, not from a philosophical, but from a very superficial view even of matter itself. If it appear, on a closer inquiry, that matter itself, without the slightest loss of identity, exists at different moments, in states which are not merely different but opposite, and exists in almost infinite variety of such states, it cannot surely seem wonderful, that the mind also should, without the slightest loss of its identity, exist at different moments, in states that are different and opposite.

That a superficial view of matter, as it presents itself to our mere organs of sense, should lead us to form a different opinion, is, however, what might readily be supposed, because the analogies, which that superficial view presents, are of a kind that seem to mark a loss of identity whenever the state itself is altered.

In experimental philosophy, and in the obvious natural phenomena of the material world, whenever a body changes its state, some addition or separation has previously taken place. Thus, water becomes steam by the addition, and it becomes ice by the loss, of a portion of that matter of heat which is termed by chemists caloric; which loss and addition are, of course, inconsistent with the notion of absolute numerical identity of the corpuscles, in the three states of water as a solid, a liquid, and a gaseous vapour. Perception, by which the mind is metaphorically said to acquire knowledge, and forgetfulness, by which it is metaphorically said to lose knowledge, have, it must be confessed, a very striking analogy to these processes of corpuscular loss and gain; and, since absolute identity seems to be inconsistent with a change of state in the one set of phenomena, with which we are constantly familiar, we find difficulty in persuading ourselves, that it is not inconsistent with a change of state in the other set also. It is a difficulty of the same kind as that which every one must have felt, when he learned, for the first time, the simple physical law, that matter is indifferent as to the states of motion and rest, and that it requires, therefore, as much force to destroy completely the motion of a body, as to give it that motion when at rest. We have not been accustomed to take into account the effects of friction, and of atmospherical resistance, in gradually destroying, without the interference of any visible force, the motion of a ball, which we are conscious of effort in rolling from our hand; and we think, therefore, that rest is the natural state of a body, and that it is the very nature of motion to cease spontaneously. “Dediscet animus sero, quod dedicit diu.” It is a very just saying of a French writer, that “it is not easy to persuade men to put their reason in the place of their eyes; and that when, for example, after a thousand proofs, they are reasonable enough to do their best to believe, that the planets are so many opaque, solid, habitable orbs, like our earth, they do not believe it in the same manner as they would have done if they had never looked upon them in another light. There still comes back upon their belief something of the first notion which they had, that clings to them with an obstinacy, which it requires a continual effort to shake off.”⁴⁹

It is, then, because some substantial loss or gain does truly take place in the changing phenomena of the bodies immediately around us, to which we are accustomed to pay our principal attention, that we learn to regard a change of state in matter as significant of loss of identity, and to feel, therefore, some hesitation in admitting the mental changes of state to be consistent with absolute sameness of substance. Had our observation of the material phenomena been different, there would have been a corresponding difference in our view of the changes of the phenomena of the mind.

If, for example, instead of previously gaining or losing caloric, – as in the constitution of things of which we have our present experience, – the particles of the water had suddenly assumed the state of vapour on the sounding of a trumpet at a distance, and the state of ice immediately on the rising of the sun, – in short, if the different changes of state in bodies, by which their physical character for the time seems, in many cases, to be wholly altered, had occurred without any apparent loss or gain of substance, we should then no longer have found the same difficulty in admitting the changes of state in mind as consistent with its identity; and the sentient substance, which previously existed in a different state, might then, on the sounding of a trumpet, have been conceived by us to begin to exist, in the state which constitutes that particular sensation of hearing, or, on the rising of the sun, to exist in that different state which constitutes the sun's change of colour as readily as the material substance, previously existing in the form of water, to begin at the same moment, without any essential or numerical change, and consequently with perfect identity, to exist in the new state of steam, or in the state of a chrystalline mass, as solid as the rock from which it hangs as an icicle, or that glitters with its gemmy covering.

But it may be said, that the very supposition which we now make is an absurd one; that the mere presence of the sun in the firmament, at a distance from the water, cannot be supposed to convert it into ice, unless the water gain or lose something, and consequently cease to have absolute identity; and that the case, therefore, is of no value, as illustrating the compatibility of change of state in our various sensations, with unaltered identity of the sentient mind. To this I might answer, that although the presence of the sun certainly does not operate in the manner supposed, – as the sequences of events are now arranged in the great system of nature, – it is only by experience, and not by intuition or reasoning, we know, that the presence of the sun has not the very effect which the separation of caloric now produces, and that there is nothing absolutely more wonderful in the one case than in the other. If our experience had been the reverse of this, – if the change of place of a few particles of caloric had not, as now, converted the liquid water into that solid congeries of crystals which we call ice, – we should then have found as little difficulty in conceiving that it should not have this effect, as we now find in adapting our belief to the particular series of events which constitute our present experience.

It is not necessary, however, to have recourse to suppositions of this kind; since the system of nature, even according to our present experience of it, furnishes sufficient proof of changes as wonderful in the state of bodies produced obviously at a distance, and, therefore, without any loss or addition which can affect their identity. For sufficient evidence of this, I need appeal only to the agency of the celestial gravitation; that gigantic energy of nature which fills the universe, like the immediate presence of the Deity himself, – to which, in the immensity of its influence, the distances, not from planets to planets merely, but from suns to suns, are like those invisible spaces between the elements of the bodies around us, that seem actual contact to our eyes, – and in comparison with which, the powers, that play their feeble part in the physical changes on the surface of our earth, are as inconsiderable as the atoms, on which they exercise their little dominion, are to the massy orbs which it wields and directs at will, —

 
“Those bright millions of the heavens,
Of which the least full Godhead had proclaim'd,
And thrown the gazer on his knee.” – “Admire
The tumult untumultuous! All on wing,
in motion all; yet what profound repose!
What fervid action, yet no noise! – as aw'd
To silence by the presence of their Lord.”
 

The action of these great planetary bodies on each other, – it surely cannot be denied, – leaves them separate identities, precisely as before; and it is a species of agency, so essential to the magnificent harmony of the system, that we cannot conceive it to have been interrupted, for a single moment, since the universe itself was formed. An action, therefore, has been constantly taking place on all the bodies in the universe, – and consequently a difference of some sort produced, – which yet leaves their identities unaffected. But, though the identity of the substance of the separate orbs is not affected by their mutual attractions, the state, or temporary physical character, of these orbs, – considered individually as one great whole, —must be affected, – or it would be absurd to speak of their mutual agency at all; for action implies the sequence of a change of some sort, and there can be no action, therefore, where the substances continue precisely the same, and their state also precisely the same, as before the action. Accordingly, we find, on our own globe, that great changes of state, such as form the most striking of its regular visible phenomena, are produced by this distant operation. The waters of our ocean, for example, rise and fall, – and, therefore, must have altered states, or physical tendencies, in consequence of which they rise and fall, as there is no corresponding addition or subtraction of matter, – at regular intervals, – which it is in our power to predict with infallible accuracy, – not because we can divine any loss of identity in the fluid mass, – any internal change in its elementary composition, or the nature and varieties of the winds, which are to sweep along its surface, – but because we know well, at what hours, and in what relative situation, a certain great body, at the distance of some hundreds of thousands of miles, is to be passing along the heavens.

If, then, the mere position of a distant heavenly body can cause the particles of our ocean to arrange themselves in a different configuration, – from that in which they would otherwise have existed, and, therefore, must have produced in the particles that change of state, which forces them, as it were, into this altered form, – without addition to them of any thing, or subtraction of any thing, – in short, leaving in them the same absolute numerical or corpuscular identity as before, – there surely can be no greater difficulty, in supposing, as in the case before imagined, that a certain position of the sun might have immediately caused the particles of a distant liquid, to arrange themselves in the particular configuration, that constitutes the solid ice, – which, though perhaps a more striking change of state, would not have been more truly a change of state, than that, which it now unquestionably produces, in modifying the rise or fall of our tides. And, if a distant body can produce in matter a change of state, without affecting its identity, by any addition or subtraction, we may surely admit, that the presence of an external body, as in perception, may, in mind also, produce a change of state, without affecting its identity; unless indeed, (which is not impossible, because nothing is impossible to human folly,) we should be inclined to reverse our prejudices, and maintain, that matter may be easily conceived to change the affinities or tendencies that form its physical character, in the particular circumstances observed, without any addition or subtraction of substance, but that some positive addition or subtraction of substance is, notwithstanding, essential to the simple changes or affections of the mind.

If the moon were suddenly annihilated, our earth would still be the same identical planet, without the loss or gain of a single particle of substance. But the state of this planet, as a whole, and of every atom of this planet, would be instantly altered, in many most important respects, – so completely altered, indeed, that not an atom of the mass would tend to the other atoms of the mass, in the same manner as before. In like manner, if the light, – which now, operating on one of my organs of sense, causes my mind to exist in the state that constitutes the sensation of a particular colour, – were suddenly to vanish, the state of my mind would be instantly changed, though my mind itself, considered as a substance, would still continue unaltered. In both cases, – the spiritual, and the material, – and in both cases, alike, —absolute identity, in the strictest sense of the term, is consistent with innumerable diversities.

In the discussion of this supposed difficulty, I have chosen, for illustration, in the first place, to consider the planetary attractions, in preference to those which occur, in the minuter changes, that are simply terrestrial; because in the case of operations at a distance, it is impossible for us, not to perceive, that, even in matter, a change of state is not inconsistent with complete permanence of absolute corpuscular identity; while, in the compositions or decompositions, that occur spontaneously, or by artificial experiment, in the physical changes on the surface of our earth, the additions or subtractions of matter, that appear to us to constitute these phenomena, truly destroy the corpuscular identity of the substances, in which the change takes place; and the change of state is thus considered by us, as implying a positive substantial change. But when we examine even these phenomena a little more deeply, we shall find, that, like the great operations of gravitation on the masses of the universe, – the change, in these also, is not a positive change of substance, but is simply a change of state in a congeries of independent substances, which we term one substance, merely because the spaces, that are really between them, are imperceptible to our very imperfect organs; the addition or subtraction of matter being not that which constitutes the new states or tendencies of the particles which continue present, but merely that which gives occasion to those changes of state or tendency; – as the positions of the heavenly bodies do not constitute the phenomena of our tides, but merely give occasion to that difference of state in the particles of the ocean, in consequence of which they assume of themselves a different configuration. Man is placed, as it has been truly said, on a point, between two infinities, – the infinitely great, and the infinitely little. It may be an extravagant speculation, to which I have before alluded, – but it is not absolutely absurd, to suppose, that in the unbounded system of nature, there may be beings, to whose vision the whole planetary attendants of each separate sun, which to us appear to revolve at distances so immense, may yet seem but one small cohesive mass, in the same manner, as to those animalculæ, whose existence and successive generations had been altogether unknown to man, till the microscope created them, as it were to his feeble sight, – and which, perhaps, are mighty animals compared with races of beings still more minute, that are constantly living in our very presence, and yet destined never to be known to us, – those bodies, which to us seem one small cohesive mass, may appear separated by distances, relatively as great, as to us are those of the planets. That light, itself a body, should pass freely through a mass of solid crystal, is regarded by us as a sort of physical wonder; and yet it is far from impossible, that, between the atoms which compose this apparently solid mass, whole nations of living beings maybe dwelling, and exercising their mutual works of peace or hostility; while perhaps, if philosophy can be exercised, in brains of such infinitesimal dimensions, in the same manner as in our coarser organs, the nature of the atoms, or distant worlds around them, may be dividing with endless absurdities, the Ptolemies and Aristotles of the little republics. We have all so much of the nature of the inhabitants of Brobdignag, that a supposition of this kind, – which is perhaps truly in itself not a very probable one, – yet appears to us much more improbable, than it really is. We smile, as recognizing our own nature, when the sovereign of that country of giants is represented by the most unfortunate, or rather the most fortunate of all voyagers, as “turning to his first minister, who waited behind him with a white staff, near as tall as the mainmast of the Royal Sovereign, and observing how contemptible a thing was human grandeur, which could be mimicked by such diminutive insects.” “And yet,” said he, “I dare engage, those creatures have their titles and distinctions of honour; they contrive their nests and burrows, that they call houses and cities; they make a figure in dress and equipage; they love, they fight, they dispute, they cheat, they betray.” And we fully enter into the difficulty which the savans of the country, who had all agreed that the new-discovered animal could not have been produced according to the regular laws of nature, must have found, in giving him a name. “One of them seemed to think that I might be an embryo, or abortive birth. But this opinion was rejected by the other two, who observed my limbs to be perfect and finished; and that I had lived several years, as it was manifest from my beard, the stumps whereof they plainly discovered through a magnifying-glass. They would not allow me to be a dwarf, because my littleness was beyond all degrees of comparison; for the queen's favourite dwarf, the smallest ever known in that kingdom, was near thirty feet high. After much debate, they concluded unanimously, that I was only relplum scalcath, which is interpreted literally lusus naturæ; a determination exactly agreeable to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining the old evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavoured in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable advancement of human knowledge.”⁵⁰