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LECTURE XXXII
ON THE EXTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF MIND COMBINED WITH DESIRE, CONTINUED. – ON THE INTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF MIND. – CLASSIFICATION OF THEM

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I concluded my sketch of the different hypotheses of philosophers with respect to perception, with an account of that Pre-established Harmony, by which Leibnitz, excluding all reciprocal agency of mind and matter, endeavoured to account for the uniform coincidence of our mental feelings with our bodily movements, – an hypothesis which, though it does not seem to have gained many followers out of Germany, produced the most enthusiastic admiration in the country of its author. I may remark by the way, – as a very striking example of the strange mixture of seemingly opposite qualities, which we frequently find in the character of nations, – that, while the country, of which I speak, has met with ridicule, – most unjust in degree, as national ridicule always is, – for the heaviness of its laborious erudition, it must be allowed to surpass all other countries in the passionate enthusiasm of its philosophy, which, particularly in metaphysics, from the reign of Leibnitz to the more recent worship paid to the transcendentalism of Kant, seems scarcely to have admitted of any calm approbation, or to have known any other inquirers than violent partisans and violent foes.

After my remarks on this hypothesis, which closed my view of our external affections of mind, as they exist simply, I next proceeded to consider them, as they exist, combined with desire, in that state of the mind, which is termed attention, – a state which has been supposed to indicate a peculiar intellectual power, but which, I endeavoured to shew you, admits of being analyzed into other more general principles.

It is to our consciousness, of course, that we must refer for the truth of any such analysis; and the process which it reveals to us, in attention, seems, I think, to justify the analysis which I made, indicating a combination of simpler feelings, but not any new and distinct species of feeling, to be referred to a peculiar faculty.

We see many objects together, and we see them indistinctly. We wish to know them more accurately, – and we are aware, that this knowledge can be acquired only in detail. We select some one more prominent object, from the rest, – or rather, without any selection on our part, this object excites, in a higher degree, our desire of observing it particularly, merely by being more prominent, or, in some other respect, more interesting than the rest. To observe it particularly, we fix our body, and our eyes, – for it is a case of vision which I have taken for an example, – as steadily as possible, that the light from the same points of the object may continue to fall on the same points of the retina. Together with our wish, we have an expectation, the natural effect of uniform past experience, that the object will now be more distinctly perceived by us; and, in accordance with this expectation, when the process, which I have described, is completed, the object, as if it knew our very wish, and hastened to gratify it, does become more distinct; and, in proportion as it becomes thus more vivid, the other objects of the group become gradually fainter, till at length they are scarcely felt to be present. Such, without the intervention of any new and peculiar state of mind, is the mental process, as far as we are conscious of it; and, if this be the process, there is no reason to infer in it the operation of any power of the mind different from those which are exercised in other cases. The general capacities of perception, and desire, and expectation, and voluntary command of certain muscles, which, on every view of the phenomena of attention, we must allow the mind to possess, are, of themselves, sufficient to explain the phenomena, and preclude, therefore, any further reference.

The brightening of the objects to which we attend, that is to say, of the objects which have interested us, and which we feel a desire of knowing, and the consequent fading of the other coexisting objects, I explained, by the well known influence, not of desire merely, but of all our emotions, in rendering more vivid those objects of perception or fancy, with which they harmonize; and I illustrated this influence by various examples.

The phantasms of imagination, in the reveries of our waking hours, when our external senses are still open, and quick to feel, are, as mere conceptions, far less vivid than the primary perceptions, from which they originally flowed; and yet, under the influence of any strong emotion, they become so much more bright and prominent than external things, that, to the impassioned muser, on distant scenes and persons, the scenes and persons truly around him, are almost, as if they were not in existence. If a mere conception, then, faint as it must always be by its own nature, can thus be rendered more vivid than reality, by the union of any strong desire, it is surely less wonderful, that the same cause should communicate the same superior vividness to the brighter realities of perception. If what we remember with interest, and wish to see again, become so much more vivid in our fancy, merely by this very wish, that we scarcely perceive any one of the innumerable objects before our eyes, what we truly see, in its own lively colouring, and feel a strong desire of knowing more intimately, may well be supposed to render us less sensible to the other coexisting objects, which the very shadows of our imagination, when brightened by a similar desire, were able mutually to annihilate or eclipse.

In addition to this direct vivifying influence of the desire itself, some part, – and, perhaps a very considerable part – of the brightening of the object, during attention, may arise indirectly from the mere muscular adaptation of the organ. I do not speak merely of that internal adaptation, whatever it may be, which accommodates the organ to the object, and, therefore, varies with the distance of the object, but of that simpler contraction, which keeps the organ, as a whole, steadily fixed. It is proved by many facts, that a certain time is necessary, for vision, and, probably, in like manner, for all our perceptions. A cannon ball, for example, though it must have reflected light to us, during its passage, may yet pass before our eyes, so rapidly, as not to be perceived; and, if a part of the eye be affected, in a certain manner, by one colour, and a different colour fall upon it so rapidly after the first, that the former affection has not previously ceased, the result is not the visual affection, which the second colour alone would have produced, but that which would have arisen at once from a mixture of the two colours. In this way, in an experiment which has been often performed, for the demonstration of this simple and beautiful fact; if a cylinder be painted in longitudinal bars, with the prismatic colours, in certain proportions, and be revolved rapidly on its axis, its surface to the eye will not seem to present any one of the colours, which are really painted on it, but an uniform whiteness, which it has not, on a single point of its whole surface.

If rays of different colours, falling in rapid succession, on the same points of the retina, thus seem to mingle with each other, and produce one confused effect, it must evidently be of great importance, for distinct vision, that the eyes should be so fixed, that the rays from the objects which we wish to observe, may not fall, on some parts of the retina, previously affected by the light of other objects, but, as much as possible, on the same parts, during the whole time of our observation. This can be done, as I have said, only by the continued agency of certain muscles; and hence arises that feeling of muscular effort, of which we are conscious in the process. How difficult is it for us, to keep a muscle, for any length of time, in the same exact point of contraction, without the slightest deviation from this point, is well known to physiologists; and, it is not wonderful, therefore, that in attention, we should be conscious of a considerable effort, in endeavouring to fix steadily any of our organs. The power of thus fixing our muscles, is a power which improves by habitual exercise; and it is probably very much in this way, that the practised eye is able so rapidly to distinguish the minute parts of objects, which require from others a much longer effort of attention.

But, whatever the effect of the muscular adaptation may be, it is not the less certain, if we reflect on our feelings, that the mental part of the process of attention involves nothing more, in addition to the primary perception, which is its object, than desire with expectation. This is all of which we are truly conscious, previously to the brightening of the perception itself, to which we are said to attend; – a brightening, which, from the general laws of emotion, might very naturally be expected as the result of the union of desire, with any of our sensations. In such circumstances, then, it is not wonderful, that we should remember best the objects to which we pay most attention, since this is only to say, that we remember best the objects on which we have dwelt longest, and with greatest interest, and which we have, therefore, known most accurately.

Such are our sensations or perceptions, when united with desire, exhibiting appearances, which seem, at first, to indicate, though they do not truly indicate, a peculiar power or susceptibility of the mind. We shall find, in considering our intellectual states of mind, the order of mental phenomena, to which we next proceed, that the union of desire with these, has led, in like manner, to the belief of many distinct intellectual powers, which yet, like attention, admit of being analyzed into simpler elements. These intellectual phenomena themselves, in their simple state, must, however, be first examined by us.

Having now, then, offered all the observations for which our limited course allows me room, on the very important primary class of external affections of the mind, I proceed according to our general division, to consider the secondary class of its internal affections; those states of it, which are not the result of causes foreign to the mind itself, but immediate consequents of its own preceding feelings.

The Divine Contriver of our mental frame, who formed the soul to exist in certain states, on the presence of external things, formed it also to exist, in certain successive states, without the presence or direct influence of any thing external; the one state of the mind, being, as immediately the cause of the state of mind which follows it, as, in our external feelings, the change produced, in our corporeal organ of sense, is the cause of any one of the particular affections of that class. In the one class, that of our internal affections, the phenomena depend on the laws which regulate the successive changes of state of the mind itself. In the other class, that of our external affections, they depend on the laws of the mind, indeed, which is susceptible of these peculiar changes of state; but they depend, in an equal degree, on the laws which give to matter its peculiar qualities, and, consequently, its peculiar influence on this mental susceptibility. If light were to be annihilated, it is very evident, that, though our mind itself were to continue endowed with all its present susceptibilities, it never again could behold the sun, around whose cold and gloomy mass our earth might still revolve as now; nor, in such circumstances, is there any reason to suppose that it would exist in any one of those various states, which constitute the delightful sensations of vision. These sensations, then, depend on external things, as much as on the mind itself. But, though after we have once been enriched with the splendid acquisitions, which our perceptive organs afford us, every thing external were to vanish, not from our sight merely, but from all our senses, and our mind alone were to exist in the infinity of space, together with that Eternal Majesty which formed it, – still thought after thought, and feeling after feeling, would arise, as it were, spontaneously, in the disembodied spirit, – if no change in its nature were to take place; and the whole world of light, and fragrance, and harmony, would, in its remembrance, almost rise again, as if outliving annihilation itself. It is by this capacity of internal change of state, indeed, that the soul is truly immortal, which, if it were capable of no affections, but those which I have termed external, would itself be virtually as mortal as all the mortal things that are around it; since, but for them, as causes of its feelings, it could not, in these circumstances, of complete dependence, have any feelings whatever, and could, therefore, exist only in that state of original insensibility, which preceded the first sensation that gave it consciousness of existence. It is, in the true sense of immortality of life, immortal, only because it depends for its feelings, as well as for its mere existence, not on the state of perishable things, which are but the atmosphere that floats around it, but on its own independent laws; or, at least, – for the laws of mind, as well as the laws of matter, can mean nothing more, – depends, for the successions of its feelings, only on the provident arrangements, of that All-foreseeing Power whose will, as it existed at the very moment at which it called every thing from nothing, and gave to mind and matter their powers and susceptibilities, is thus, consequently, in the whole series of effects, from age to age, the eternal legislation of the universe.

Even while our soul is united to this bodily frame, and continually capable of being affected by the objects that are continually present with it, by far the greater number of our feelings are those which arise from our internal successions of thought. Innumerable as our perceptions are, they are but a small part of the varied consciousness of a day. We do not see, or feel, objects merely, for this alone would be of little value, – but we compare them with each other, – we form plans of action, and prosecute them with assiduous attention, – or we meditate on the means by which they may most effectually be prosecuted; and with all our perceptions of external things, and plans of serious thought, a continued fairy work of involuntary fancy, is incessantly mingling, in consequence of the laws of suggestion in the mind itself, like the transient shadows, on a stream, of the clouds that fled over it, which picture on it their momentary forms, as they pass in rapid variety, without affecting the course of the busy current, which glides along in its majestic track, as if they had never been. If we had the power of external sense only, life would be as passive as the most unconnected dream, or rather far more passive and irregular than the wildest of our dreams. Our remembrances, comparisons, our hopes, our fears, and all the variety of our thoughts and emotions, give a harmony and unity to our general consciousness, which make the consciousness of each day a little drama, or a connected part of that still greater drama, which is to end only with the death of its hero, or rather with the commencement of his glorious apotheosis.

How wide a field the internal affections of the mind present, without dependence on the system of material things, – with which we are connected, indeed, by many delightful ties, but by ties that have relation only to this mortal scene, – is proved in a very striking manner, by the increased energy of thought which we often seem to acquire in those hours of the quiet of the night, when every external influence is nearly excluded, – the hours of inward meditation, in which the mind has been poetically said, to retire into the sanctuary of its own immense abode, and to feel there and enjoy its spiritual infinity, as if admitted to the etherial dwellings and the feasts of the Gods.

 
“Nonne vides, quoties nox circumfunditur atra
Immensi terga Oceani terramque polumque,
Cum rerum obduxit species obnubilus Aer
Nec fragor impulsas aut vox allabitur aures,
Ut nullo intuitu mens jam defixa, recedit
In sese, et vires intra se colligit omnes?
Ut magno hospitio potitur, seque excipit ipsa
Totam intus; seu jussa Deum discumbere mensis.
Nam neque sic illam solido de marmore tecta
Nec cum porticibus capiunt laquiaria centum
Aurea, tot distincta locis, tot regibus apta,
Quæsitæque epulæ, Tyrioque instructus ab ostro;
Ut gaudet sibi juncta, sibique intenditur ipsa,
Ipsa sibi tota incumbens, totamque pererrans
Immensa immensam spatio longeque patentem.
Seu dulces inter latebras Heliconis amæni,
Et sacram Phœbi nemorum divertitur umbram,
Fœcundum pleno exercens sub pectore numen;
Seu causas rerum occultas, et semina volvit,
Et queis fœderibus conspirent maximus Æther
Neptunusque Pater, Tellusque, atque omnia gignant;
Sive altum virtutis iter subducit, et almus
Molitur leges, queis fortunata juventus
Pareat, ac pace imperium tutetur et armis.”¹³³
 

The internal states of mind, then, which form the class next to be considered by us, present to our inquiry no narrow or uninteresting field. We are to find in these again every thing, though in fainter colours, which delighted and interested us in the former class; while we are, at the same time, to discover, an abundant source of feelings still more delightful and sublime in themselves, and still more interesting to our analysis. We are no longer mere sensitive beings, that gaze upon the universe, and feel pain or pleasure as a few of its elementary particles touch our nerves. We are the discoverers of laws, which every element of the universe obeys, – the tracers of events of ages that are past, – the calculators and prophets of events, that are not to occur till generation after generation of the prophetic calculators that succeed us shall themselves have passed away; – and, while we are thus able to discover the innumerable relations of created things, we are, at the same time, by the medium of these internal states of our own mind, the discoverers also of that Infinite Being, who framed every thing which it is our glory to be capable merely of observing, and who, without acting directly on any of our organs of sense, is yet present to our intellect with as bright a reality of perception, as the suns and planets which he has formed are present to our corporeal vision.

The species of philosophical inquiry, which our internal affections of mind admit, is exactly the same as that which our external affections admit; that is to say, we are in our inquiry, to consider the circumstances in which they arise, and the circumstances which follow them, with the relations which they appear to us mutually to bear to our external feelings, and to each other, and nothing more. It is as little possible for us, independently of experience, to discover a priori, any reason that one state of mind should be followed directly by another state of mind, as, in the case of our external feelings, to discover any reason, that the presence of light should be followed by that particular mental state which constitutes the sensation of colour, not by that which constitutes the perception of the song of a nightingale, or the fragrance of a violet, – or that those external causes should be followed by their peculiar sensations, rather than by the perception of colour. It is equally vain for us to think of discovering any reason, in the nature of the mind itself, which could have enabled us to predict, without actual experience, or, at least, without analogy of other similar instances, any of the mere intellectual changes of state, – that the sight of an object, which we have seen before in other circumstances, should recal, by instant spontaneous suggestion, those other circumstances which exist no longer; – that in meeting, in the most distant country, a native of our own land, it should be in our own power, by a single word to annihilate, as it were, for the moment, all the seas and mountains between him and his home; – or, in the depth of the most gloomy dungeon, where its wretched tenant, who has been its tenant for half a life, sees, and scarcely sees, the few faint rays that serve but to speak of a sunshine, which he is not to enjoy, and which they deprive him of the comfort of forgetting, and to render visible to his very eyes that wretchedness which he feels at his heart, – that even this creature of misery, – whom no one in the world perhaps remembers but the single being, whose regular presence, at the hour at which he gives him, day by day, the means of adding to his life another year of wretchedness like the past, is scarcely felt as the presence of another living thing, – should yet, by the influence of a single thought, enter into the instant possession of a freedom beyond that which the mere destruction of his dungeon could give, – a freedom which restores him not merely to the liberty, but to the very years which he had lost, – to the woods, and the brook, and the fields of his boyish frolics, and to all the happy faces which were only as happy as his own. The innumerable examples of such successions of thought we know from experience, but from experience only. It is enough for us, however, to ascertain the simple fact, that the internal suggestions of thought after thought, without the recurrence of any external object does take place, as truly as sensation itself, when external objects recur, – to observe the general circumstances relating to the suggestion, – and to arrange the principle on which it seems to depend, as a principle of our intellectual constitution. While we attempt no more than this, we are certain at least that we are not attempting any thing which is beyond the sphere of human exertion. To attempt more, and to strive to discover, in any one of the series of our internal feelings, some reason which might have led us originally to predict its existence, or the existence of the other mental affections which succeed it, would be to hope to discover, what is not merely beyond our power even to divine, but what we should be incapable of knowing that we had divined, even though we should casually have succeeded in making the discovery.

In the classification of our internal feelings, as in every classification, and, indeed, in every thing, intellectual or moral, which can exercise us, it is evident, that we may err in two ways, by excess or deficiency. We may multiply divisions without necessity, or we may labour in vain to force into one division individual diversities, which cannot, by any labour, be made to correspond. The golden mean, of which moralists speak, is as important in science, as in our practical views of happiness; and the habit of this cautious speculative moderation, is, probably, of as difficult attainment in the one, as the habitual contentment which is necessary to the enjoyment of the other.

When we think of the infinite variety of the physical objects around us, and of the small number of classes in which they are at present arranged, it would seem to us, if we were ignorant of the history of philosophy, that the regular progress of classification must have been to simplify, more and more, the general circumstances of agreement, on which arrangement depends; that, in this progressive simplification, millions of diversities must have been originally reduced to thousands, – these, afterwards, to hundreds, – and these again, successively, to divisions still more minute. But, the truth is, that this simplicity of division is far from being so progressive in the arrangement even of external things. The first steps of classification must, indeed, uniformly be, to reduce the great multitude of obvious diversities to some less extensive tribes. But the mere guess-work of hypothesis soon comes in to supply the place of laborious observation or experiment, and of that slow and accurate reasoning on observations and experiments, which, to minds of very rapid imagination, is perhaps, a labour as wearisome, as, in the long observation itself, to watch for hours, with an eye fixed like the telescope through which it gazes, one constant point of the heavens, or to minister to the furnace, and hang over it in painful expectance of the transmutations which it tardily presents. By the unlimited power of an hypothesis, we in a moment range together, under one general name, myriads of diversities the most obstinately discordant; as if the mere giving of a name could of itself alter the qualities of things, making similar what was dissimilar before, like words of magic, that convert any thing into any thing. When the hypothesis is proved to be false, the temporary magic of the spell is of course dissolved; and all the original diversities appear again, to be ranged once more in a wider variety of classes. Even where, without any such guess-work of hypothetical resemblance, divisions and arrangements have been formed on the justest principles, according to the qualities of objects known at the time, some new observation, or new experiment, is continually shewing differences of composition or of general qualities, where none were conceived before; and the same philosophy is thus, at the same moment, employed in uniting and disuniting, – in reducing many objects to a few, and separating a few into many, – as the same electric power, at the moment in which it is attracting objects nearer to it, repels others which were almost in contiguity, and often brings the same object close to it, only to throw it off the next moment to a greater distance. While a nicer artificial analysis, or more accurate observation, is detecting unsuspected resemblances, and, still more frequently, unsuspected diversities, there is hence no fixed point nor regular advance, but a sort of ebb and flow of wider and narrower divisions and subdivisions; and the classes of an intervening age maybe fewer than the classes both of the age which preceded it, and of that which comes after it. For a very striking example of this alternation, I may refer to the history of that science, which is to matter what our intellectual analysis is to mind. The elements of bodies have been more and fewer successively, varying with the analyses of almost every distinguished chemist; far from having fewer principles of bodies, as chemistry advances, how many more elements have we now than in the days of Aristotle! There can be no question, that when man first looked around him with a philosophic eye, and saw, in the sublime rudeness of nature, something more than objects of savage rapacity, or still more savage indifference, he must have conceived the varieties of bodies to be innumerable; and could as little have thought of comprehending them all under a few simple names, as of comprehending the whole earth itself within his narrow grasp. In a short time, however, this narrow grasp, if I may venture so to express myself, did strive to comprehend the whole earth; and soon after man had made the first great advance in science, of wondering at the infinity of things in which he was lost, we had sages, such as Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, who were forming every thing of a single principle, – water, or air, or fire. The four elements, which afterwards reigned so long in the schools of physics, gave place to a single principle with the alchemists; or to three principles, —salt, sulphur, and mercury, – with chemists less bold in conjecture. These, again, were soon multiplied by observers of still nicer discrimination; and modern chemistry, while it has shewn some bodies, which we regarded as different, to be composed of the same elements, has, at the same time, shewn, that what we regarded as elements, are themselves compounds of elements which we knew not before.

To him who looks back on the history of our own science, the analytic science of mind, which, as I have already said, may almost be regarded, in its most important aspects, as a sort of intellectual chemistry, – there will appear the same alternate widening and narrowing of classification. The mental phenomena are, in one age or country, of many classes; in a succeeding age, or in a different country, they are of fewer; and again, after the lapse of another age, or the passage of a river or a mountain, they are of many more. In our own island, after the decay of scholastic metaphysics, from Hobbes to Hume, – if I may use these names, as dates of eras, in a science, on which, with all their unfortunate errors on many of the most important points of human belief, they both unquestionably threw a degree of light, which rendered their errors on these subjects the more to be lamented, – in this long and brilliant period, – which, of course, includes, with many other eminent names, the very eminent author of the Essay on the Human Understanding, – there was a tendency to simplify, as much as possible, the classification of the phenomena of mind; and more regard, perhaps, was paid to the similarities of phenomena, than to their differences. Subsequently to this period, however, the philosophy of Dr Reid, and, in general, of the metaphysicians of this part of the island, has had the opposite tendency, – to enlarge, as I conceive, far beyond what was necessary, the number of classes which they considered as too limited before; – and, in proportion, more regard has perhaps been paid to the differences, or supposed differences of phenomena, than to their resemblances. There can be no doubt, at least, that we are now accustomed to speak of more powers or operations of the mind, than even the schoolmen themselves, fond as they were of all the nicest subtleties of infinitesimal subdivision.

The difference in this respect, however, is not so striking, when we consider successions of ages, in which, of course, from our general notion of the effects of time, we are accustomed to expect variety, as when we look to neighbouring countries at the same period, especially if we consider the advantage of that noble art, which might have been supposed, by the wide diffusion which it gives to opinion, to have removed, as to human sentiment, all the boundaries of mere geographic distance. Slight, however, as the distance is which separates the two countries, the philosophy of France, in its views of the phenomena of mind, and the philosophy of Britain, particularly of this part of Britain, have for more than half a century differed as much, as in the philosophy of different ages; certainly in a degree far greater, than, but for experience, it would have been easy for us to suppose. In France, all the phenomena of mind have been, during that period, regarded as sensations, or transformed sensations, that is to say, as sensations variously simplified or combined. The works of Condillac, who professed to have founded his system on that of Locke, but who evidently did not understand fully what Locke intended, gave the principal tone to this philosophic belief; and it has been fostered since by that passion for the simple and the wonderful, which, when these two objects can be united, is perhaps the strongest of all our intellectual passions. In the system of the French metaphysicians, they are united in a very high degree. That this universal presence of sensation, whether true or false, is at least very simple, cannot be denied; and there is certainly abundant matter of wonder in the supposed discovery, that all the variety of our internal feelings are those very feelings of a different class, to which they have so little appearance of belonging. It is a sort of perpetual masquerade, in which we enjoy the pleasure of recognizing a familiar friend in a variety of grotesque dresses, and the pleasure also of enjoying the mistakes of those around us, who take him for a different person, merely because he has changed his robe and his mask. The fallacy of the doctrine is precisely of that kind, which, if once admitted, is most difficult to be shaken off. It relates to a system which is very simple, very wonderful, and obviously true in part. Indeed, when there are so many actual transformations of our feelings, so many emotions, of which the principal elements are so little recognizable, in the complex affection that results from them, – the supposition that all the varieties of our consciousness may be only modes of one simple class of primary feelings, false as it is, is far from being the most striking example which the history of our science presents of the extravagance of philosophic conjecture.