Kitabı oku: «Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)», sayfa 41
While I am far from conceiving, therefore, with Condillac and his followers, that all our states of mind are mere sensations modified or transformed, since this belief appears to me to be a mere assumption without even the slightest evidence in our consciousness, I am equally unwilling to admit the variety of powers, of which Dr Reid speaks. In one sense, indeed, the susceptibilities, or powers, which the mind possesses, may be said, with propriety, to be still more numerous, – as numerous as its feelings themselves, – for it must never be forgotten, that what we term classes, are only words of our own invention, – that the feelings which we arrange as belonging to one class, are truly different in themselves, precisely in the same manner as the feelings arranged in different classes are reciprocally different, – that each feeling is, and must be, indicative of a peculiar susceptibility of being affected in that particular manner, – and that the mind has, therefore, truly, as many susceptibilities, as, in various circumstances, it can have different feelings. But still, when we arrange these different phenomena in certain classes, it is an error in classification to give a new name to varieties that can be referred to other parts of the division already made; and it is on this account I object to the unnecessary amplification of our intellectual systems, in arranging the phenomena of mind under so many powers as those of which we are accustomed to speak.
Our various states or affections of the mind, I have already divided into two classes, according to the nature of the circumstances which precede them, – the External and the Internal, – and this latter class into two orders, – our Intellectual States of Mind, and our Emotions. It is with the intellectual phenomena that we are at present concerned; and this order I would arrange under two generic capacities, that appear to me to comprehend or exhaust the phenomena of the order. The whole order, as composed of feelings, which arise immediately, in consequence of certain former feelings of the mind, may be technically termed, in reference to these feelings which have induced them, Suggestions; but, in the suggested feelings themselves, there is one striking difference. If we analyse our trains of intellectual thought exclusively of the Emotions which may coexist or mingle with them, and of sensations that may be accidentally excited by external objects, we shall find them to be composed of two very distinct sets of feelings, – one set of which are mere conceptions or images of the past, that rise, image after image, in regular sequence, but simply in succession, without any feeling of relation necessarily involved, – while the perceptions of relation, in the various objects of our thought, form another set of feelings, of course as various as the relations perceived. Conceptions and relations, – it is with these, and with these alone, that we are intellectually conversant. There is thus an evident ground for the arrangement of the internal suggestions, that form our trains of thought, under two heads, according as the feeling excited directly by some former feeling, may be either a simple conception, in its turn, perhaps, giving place to some other conception as transient; or may be the feeling of a relation which two or more objects of our thought are considered by us as bearing to each other. There is, in short, in the mind, a capacity of association; or as, for reasons afterwards to be stated, I would rather term it, – the capacity of Simple Suggestion, – by which feelings, formerly existing, are revived, in consequence of the mere existence of other feelings, as there is also a capacity of feeling resemblance, difference, proportion, or relation in general, when two or more external objects, or two or more feelings of the mind itself, are considered by us, – which mental capacity in distinction from the former, I would term the capacity of Relative Suggestion; and of these simple and relative suggestions, our whole intellectual trains of thought are composed. As I am no lover of new phrases, when the old can be used without danger of mistake, I would very willingly, substitute for the phrase relative suggestion, the term comparison, which is more familiar, and expresses very nearly the same meaning. But comparison, though it involve the feeling of relation, seems to me also to imply a voluntary seeking for some relation, which is far from necessary to the mere internal suggestion or feeling of the relation itself. The resemblance of two objects strikes me, indeed, when I am studiously comparing them; but it strikes me also, with not less force, on many other occasions, when I had not previously been forming the slightest intentional comparison. I prefer, therefore, a term which is applicable alike to both cases, when a relation is sought, and when it occurs, without any search or desire of finding it.
The term judgment, in its strict philosophic sense, as the mere perception of relation, is more exactly synonymous with the phrase which I have employed, and might have been substituted with safety, if the vulgar use of the term, in many vague significations, had not given some degree of indistinctness even to the philosophical use of it. I may remark, too, that in our works of logic and intellectual physiology, judgment and reasoning are usually discussed separately, as if there were some essential difference of their nature; and, therefore, since I include them both, in the relative suggestions of which I shall afterwards have to treat, it seems advisable, not to employ for the whole, a name which is already appropriated, and very generally limited, to a part. As the rise in the mind of the feeling of relation, from the mere perception or conception of objects, is, however, what I mean to denote by the phrase Relative Suggestion; and as judgment, in its strictest sense, is nothing more than this feeling of relation, – of any two or more objects, considered by us together, – I shall make no scruple, to use the shorter and more familiar term, as synonymous, when there can be no danger of its being misunderstood.
The intellectual states of the mind, then, to give a brief illustration of my division, I consider as all referable to two generic susceptibilities, – those of Simple Suggestion and Relative Suggestion. Our perception or conception of one object excites, of itself, and without any known cause, external to the mind, the conception of some other object, as when the mere sound of our friend's name, suggests to us the conception of our friend himself, – in which case, the conception of our friend, which follows the perception of the sound, involves no feeling of any common property, with the sound which excites it, but is precisely the same state of mind, which might have been induced, by various other previous circumstances, by the sight of the chair on which he sat, – of the book which he read to us, – of the landscape which he painted. This is Simple Suggestion.
But, together with this capacity of Simple Suggestion, by which conception after conception arises in the mind, – precisely in the same manner, and in the same state, as each might have formed a part of other trains, and in which the particular state of mind that arises by suggestion does not necessarily involve any consideration of the state of mind which preceded it, – there is a suggestion of a very different sort, which, in every case, involves the consideration, not of one phenomenon of mind, but of two or more phenomena, and which constitutes the feeling of agreement, disagreement, or relation of some sort. I perceive, for example, a horse and a sheep at the same moment. The perception of the two is followed by that different state of mind which constitutes the feeling of their agreement in certain respects, or of their disagreement in certain other respects. I think of the square of the hypotenuse of a rightangled triangle, and of the squares of the two other sides; – I feel the relation of equality. I see a dramatic representation; I listen to the cold conceits which the author of the tragedy, in his omnipotent command over warriors and lovers of his own creation, gives to his hero, in his most impassioned situations; – I am instantly struck with their unsuitableness to the character and the circumstances. All the intellectual successions of feeling, in these cases, which constitute the perception of relation, differ from the results of simple suggestion in necessarily involving the consideration of two or more objects or affections of mind that immediately preceded them. I may think of my friend, in the case of simple suggestion, – that is to say, my mind may exist in the state which constitutes the conception of my friend, without that previous state which constitutes the perception of the sound of his name; for the conception of him may be suggested by various objects and remembrances. But I cannot, in the cases of relative suggestion, think of the resemblance of a horse and a sheep; of the proportion of the squares of the sides of a right-angled triangle; or of the want of the truth of nature in the expressions of a dramatic hero, without those previous states of mind, which constitute the conceptions of a horse and a sheep – of the sides of the triangle, – or of the language of the warrior or lover, and the circumstances of triumph, or hope, or despair, in which he is exhibited to us by the creative artist.
With these two capacities of suggested feelings, simple and relative, which are all that truly belong to the class of intellectual states of the mind, – various emotions may concur, particularly that most general of all emotions, the emotion of desire, in some one or other of its various forms. According as this desire does or does not concur with them, the intellectual states themselves appear to be different; and, by those who do not make the necessary analysis, are supposed, therefore, to be indicative of different powers. By simple suggestion, the images of things, persons, events, pass in strange and rapid succession; and a variety of names, expressive of different powers, – conception, association, memory, – have been given to this one simple law of our intellectual nature. But, when we wish to remember some object; that is to say, when we wish our mind to be affected in that particular manner, which constitutes the conception of a particular thing, or person, or event, – or when we wish to combine new images, in some picture of fancy, this coexistence of desire, with the simple course of suggestion, which continues still to follow its own laws, as much as when no desire existed with it, – seems to us to render the suggestion itself different; and recollection, and imagination or fancy, which are truly, as we shall afterwards find, nothing more than the union of the suggested conceptions, with certain specific permanent desires, are to us, as it were, distinct additional powers of our mind, and are so arranged in the systems of philosophers, who have not made the very simple analysis, which alone seems to me to be necessary for a more precise arrangement.
In like manner, those suggestions of another class, which constitute our notions of proportion, resemblance, difference, and all the variety of relations, may, as I have already remarked, arise, when we have had no previous desire of tracing the relations, or may arise after that previous desire. But, when the feelings of relation seem to us to arise spontaneously, they are not in themselves, different from the feelings of relation, that arise, in our intentional comparisons or judgments, in the longest series of ratiocination. Of such ratiocination, they are truly the most important elements. The permanent desire of discovering something unknown, or of establishing, or confuting, or illustrating, some point of belief or conjecture, may coexist, indeed, with the continued series of relations that are felt, but does not alter the nature of that law, by which these judgments, or relative suggestions, succeed each other.
There is no power to be found, but only the union of certain intellectual states of the mind, with certain desires, – a species of combination not more wonderful in itself, than any other complex mental state, as when we, at the same moment, see and smell a rose, – or listen to the voice of a friend, who has been long absent from us, and see, at the same moment, that face of affection, which is again giving confidence to our heart, and gladness to our very eyes.
Our intellectual states of mind, then, are either those resemblances of past affections of the mind, which arise by simple suggestion, or those feelings of relation, which arise by what I have termed relative suggestions, – the one set resulting, indeed, from some prior states of the mind, but not involving necessarily, any consideration of these previous states of mind, which suggested them, – the other set, necessarily, involving the consideration of two or more objects, or two or more affections of mind, as subjects of the relation which is felt.
How readily all the intellectual states of mind, which are commonly ascribed to a variety of powers, may be reduced to those two, will appear more clearly, after we have considered and illustrated the phenomena of each set.
I shall proceed, therefore, in the first place, to the phenomena of simple suggestion, which are usually referred to a principle of association in our ideas.
LECTURE XXXIV
CLASSIFICATION OF THE INTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF MIND, CONTINUED, – ON SIMPLE SUGGESTION, – ADVANTAGES RESULTING FROM THE PRINCIPLE OF SUGGESTION, – ON MR HUME'S CLASSIFICATION OF THE CAUSES OF ASSOCIATE FEELINGS
Gentlemen, my general arrangement of the various phenomena, or states of the mind, is, I trust, now sufficiently familiar to you. We know the mind only in the succession of these states, as they vary, from moment to moment; and you have learned to class them, as, in the first place, External or Internal Affections, according as the mental changes of state that are induced, have arisen immediately from the presence of external objects, or from some preceding state of the mind itself, – and the latter of these classes, you have learned also to subdivide into its two distinct orders of Intellectual States of the Mind and Emotions. Thus far we have proceeded, I trust, without much risk of misconception.
In my last Lecture, I proceeded to consider the former of these orders, and arranged all the variety of our Intellectual States of Mind under two generic capacities, – those of Simple and of Relative suggestion. Intellectually, we conceive or we judge; our past feelings, in Simple Suggestion, of image after image, arise again, in colours more or less faint, without any known cause exterior to the mind. By our capacity of the other species of Suggestion, we are impressed with feelings of a different order, that arise when two or more objects are contemplated together, – feelings of their agreement, proportion, or some one or other of the variety of their relations. Of these two orders of feelings, and of these alone, consists the whole varied tissue of our trains of thought. All the intellectual powers, of which writers on this branch of science speak, are, as we shall find, only modes of these two, as they exist simply, or as they exist in combination with some desire more or less permanent, – with the desire of prosecuting a continued inquiry, for example, or of evolving its results to others, – as in the long series of our ratiocination; or of framing some splendid succession of images and incidents, as in the magic pictures of poetry and romance. The simplification may, perhaps, at present appear to you excessive; but I flatter myself, that after the two generic capacities themselves shall have been fully considered by us, it will not appear to you more than is absolutely necessary for accuracy of analysis and arrangement.
SIMPLE SUGGESTION
The intellectual phenomena which we are, in the first place, to consider, then, are those of Simple Suggestion, which are usually classed under the general term of the Association of Ideas, – a term employed to denote that tendency of the mind, by which feelings, that were formerly excited by an external cause, arise afterwards, in regular successions to each other, as it were spontaneously, or at least without the immediate presence of any known external cause. The limitation of the term, however, to those states of mind, which are exclusively denominated ideas, has, I conceive, tended greatly to obscure the subject, or at least to deprive us of the aid which we might have received from it in the analysis of many of the most complex phenomena. The influence of the associating principle itself extends, not to ideas only, but to every species of affection of which the mind is susceptible. Our internal joys, sorrows, and all the variety of our emotions, are capable of being revived in a certain degree by the mere influence of this principle, and of blending with the ideas or other feelings which awakened them, in the same manner as our conceptions of external things. These last, however, it must be admitted, present the most striking and obvious examples of the influence of the principle, and are, therefore, the fittest for illustrating it. The faint and shadowy elements of past emotions, as mingling in any present feeling, it may not be easy to distinguish; but our remembrances of things without are clear and definite, and are easily recognized by us as images of the past. We have seen, in the history of our senses, by what admirable means Nature has provided for communicating to man those first rude elements of knowledge, which are afterwards to be the materials of his sublimest speculations, – and with what still more admirable goodness she has ministered to his pleasure in these primary elements of thought, and in the very provision which she has formed for the subsistence of his animal frame, – making the organs by which he becomes acquainted with the properties of external things, not the fountain of knowledge only, but an ever-mingling source of enjoyment and instruction.
It is through the medium of perception, as we have seen, – that is to say, through the medium of those sensitive capacities already so fully considered by us, – that we acquire our knowledge of the properties of external things. But if our knowledge of these properties were limited to the moment of perception, and were extinguished forever with the fading sensation from which it sprang, the acquisition of this fugitive knowledge would be of little value. We should still, indeed, be sensible of the momentary pleasure or pain; but all experience of the past, and all that confidence in the regular successions of future events, which flows from experience of the past, would of course, be excluded by universal and instant forgetfulness. In such circumstances, if the common wants of our animal nature remained, it is evident, that even life itself, in its worst and most miserable state, could not be supported; since, though oppressed with thirst and hunger, and within reach of the most delicious fruits and the most plentiful spring-water, we should still suffer without any knowledge of the means by which the suffering could be remedied. Even if, by some provision of Nature, our bodily constitution had been so framed, as to require no supply of subsistence, or if, instinctively and without reflection, we had been led on the first impulse of appetite, to repair our daily waste, and to shelter ourselves from the various causes of physical injury to which we are exposed, though our animal life might then have continued to be extended to as long a period as at present, still, if but a succession of momentary sensations, it would have been one of the lowest forms of mere animal life. It is only as capable of looking before and behind, – that is to say, as capable of those spontaneous suggestions of thought which constitute remembrance and foresight, – that we rise to the dignity of intellectual being, and that man can be said to be the image of that Purest of Intellects, who looks backward and forward, in a single glance, not on a few years only, but on all the ages of eternity. “Deum te scito esse,” says Cicero, in allusion to these powers, – “Deum te scito esse, siquidem Deus est, qui viget, qui sentit, – qui meminit, qui prævidet, qui tam regit et moderatur et movet id corpus, cui præpositus est, quam hunc mundum princeps ille Deus.”
Without any remembrance of pleasures formerly enjoyed, or of sorrows long past and long endured, – looking on the persons and scenes which had surrounded us from the first moment of our birth, as if they were objects altogether unknown to us, – incapable even of as much reasoning as still gleams through the dreadful stupor of the maniac, – or of conveying even that faint expression of thought with which the rudest savages, in the rudest language, are still able to hold some communication of their passions or designs; – such, but for that capacity which we are considering, would have been the deplorable picture of the whole human race. What is now revered by us as the most generous and heroic virtue, or the most profound and penetrating genius, would have been nothing more than this wretchedness and imbecility. It is the suggesting principle, the reviver of thoughts and feelings which have passed away, that gives value to all our other powers and susceptibilities, intellectual and moral – not indeed, by producing them, for, though unevolved, they would still, as latent capacities, be a part of the original constitution of our spiritual nature, – but by rousing them into action, and furnishing them with those accumulating and inexhaustible materials, which are to be the elements of future thought and the objects of future emotion. Every talent by which we excel, and every vivid feeling which animates us, derive their energy from the suggestions of this ever-active principle. We love and hate, – we desire and fear, – we use means for obtaining good, and avoiding evil, – because we remember the objects and occurrences which we have formerly observed, and because the future, in the similarity of the successions which it presents, appears to us only a prolongation of the past.
In conferring on us the capacity of these spontaneous suggestions, then, Heaven has much more than doubled our existence; for, without it, and consequently without those faculties and emotions which involve it, existence would scarcely have been desirable. The very importance of the benefits which we derive from it, however, renders us perhaps less sensible of its value; since it is so mingled, with all our knowledge, and all our plans of action, that we find it difficult to conceive a state of sentient being, of which it is not a part, and to estimate, consequently, at a just amount, the advantage which it affords. The future memory of perception seems to us almost implied in perception itself; and to speculate on that strange state of existence which would have been the condition of man, if he had been formed without the power of remembrance, and capable only of a series of sensations, has, at first, an appearance almost of absurdity and contradiction, as if we were imagining conditions which were in their nature incompatible. Yet, assuredly, if it were possible for us to consider such a subject a priori, the real cause of wonder would appear to be, not in the absence of the suggestions of memory, as in the case, imagined, but in that remembrance of which we have the happy experience. When a feeling, of the existence of which consciousness furnishes the only evidence, has passed away so completely, that not even the slightest consciousness of it remains, it would surely, – but for that experience, – be more natural to suppose that it had perished altogether, than that it should, at the distance of many years, without any renewal of it by the external cause which originally produced it, again start, as it were of itself, into being. To foresee that which has not yet begun to exist, is, in itself, scarcely more unaccountable, than to see as it were before us, what has wholly ceased to exist. The present moment is all of which we are conscious, and which can strictly be said to have a real existence, in relation to ourselves. That mode of time, which we call the past, and that other mode of time, which we call the future, are both equally unexisting. That the knowledge of either should be added to us, so as to form a part of our present consciousness, is a gift of Heaven, most beneficial to us indeed, but most mysterious, and equally, or nearly equally mysterious, whether the unexisting time, of which the knowledge is indulged to us, be the future or the past.
The advantage which we derive from the principle of suggestion, it must, however, be remarked, consists, not in its mere revival of thoughts and feelings, of which we had before been conscious, but in its revival of these in a certain order. If past objects and events had been suggested to us again, not in that series, in which they had formerly occurred, nor according to any of those relations, which human discernment has been able to discover among them, but in endless confusion and irregularity, the knowledge thus acquired, however gratifying as a source of mere variety of feeling, would avail us little, or rather would be wholly profitless, not merely in our speculative inquiries as philosophers, but in the simplest actions of common life. It is quite evident, that, in this case, we should be altogether unable to turn our experience to account, as a mode of avoiding future evil or obtaining future good; because, for this application of our knowledge, it would be requisite that events, before observed, should occur to us, at the time, when similar events might be expected. We refrain from tasting the poisonous berry, which we have known to be the occasion of death to him who tasted it; because the mere sight of it brings again before us the fatal event, which we have heard or witnessed. We satisfy our appetite with a salutary fruit, without the slightest apprehension; because its familiar appearance recals to us the refreshment, which we have repeatedly received. But, if these suggestions were reversed, – if the agreeable images of health and refreshment were all that were suggested by the poisonous plant, and pain, and convulsions, and death were the only images suggested by the sight of the grateful and nourishing fruit, there can be no doubt, to which of the two, our unfortunate preference would be given. To take the most familiar of all instances, – that of language, – which, either as written or spoken, is in such constant use, and which is so essential, not merely to our first advance, from absolute barbarism, but to the common domestic necessities, even of barbarous life, that, without it, we can scarcely conceive two individuals, however rude, to exist together, – this, it is evident, could not have been invented, – nor, if invented, could it serve any other purpose than to mislead, – if the words spoken were to have no greater chance of suggesting the meaning intended by the speaker, than any other meaning, which any other words of the language might be employed to denote. What social affection could continue for an hour, if the sight of a friend were to suggest, in intimate combination, not the kindnesses which he had conferred, and all the enjoyments of which he had been the source, but the malice, and envy, and revenge of some jealous and disappointed enemy?
He who has given us, in one simple principle, the power of reviving the past, has not made his gift so unavailing. The feelings, which this wonderful principle preserves and restores, arise, not loosely and confusedly – for what is there in the whole wide scene of nature, which does so occur? – but, according to general laws or tendencies of succession, contrived with the most admirable adaptation to our wants, so as to bring again before us the knowledge formerly acquired by us, at the very time when it is most profitable that it should return. A value is thus given to experience, which otherwise would not be worthy of the name; and we are enabled to extend it almost at pleasure, so as to profit, not merely by that experience which the events of nature, occurring in conformity with these general laws, must at any rate have afforded to us, – but to regulate this very experience itself, – to dispose objects and events, so that, by tendencies of suggestion, on the firmness of which we may put perfect reliance, they shall give us, perhaps at the distance of many years, such lessons as we may wish them to yield, – and thus to invent and create, in a great measure, the intellectual and moral history of our future life, as an epic or dramatic writer arranges at his will the continued scenes of his various and magnificent narrative. I need not add, that it is on this skilful management of the laws, which regulate our trains of thought, the whole theory and practice of education are founded; – that art, which I have already repeatedly represented to you as the noblest of all the arts of man – itself the animating spirit of every other art – which exerts its own immediate operation, not on lifeless things, but on the affections and faculties of the soul itself – and which has raised us from the dust, where we slept or trembled, in sluggish, yet ferocious ignorance, the victims of each other, and of every element around us, to be the sharers and diffusers of the blessings of social polity, the measurers of the earth and of the skies, and the rational worshippers of that eternal Being by whom they and we were created.
