Chapter XXI: Part 21

These arguments, however, though they seem to me to invalidate completely the only arguments which I can imagine to be urged in support of our original perception of figure by the eye, are negative only. But there is also a _positive_ argument, which seems to me truly decisive, against the supposed necessary perception of visible figure,--that it implies the blending of things which cannot be blended. If the mere visual sensation of colour imply, in itself, no figure, I can conceive it to be blended with any figure; but not so, if it imply, in itself, a fixed definite figure, so essential to the very sensation of the colour, that without it the colour could not for a single moment be perceived. During the whole time, then, in which I am gazing on a wide landscape, there is, according to the opinion of those who contend for the necessary perception of visible figure, not colour merely, but a certain small coloured expanse, of definite outline, constantly perceived--since, without this, colour itself could not be perceived; and, during all this time, there is also a notion of a figure of a very different kind, of three dimensions, and of magnitude almost infinitely greater, combined, not with colour merely, but with the same coloured expanse. There must, therefore, be some possible combination of these forms and magnitudes; since it is the colour which we perceive that is blended with the tangible magnitudes suggested. Now, though there are certain feelings which may coexist and unite, it appears to me, that there are others which cannot be so blended. I may combine, for example, my notion of a plane or convex surface, with my notion of whiteness or blueness, hardness or softness, roughness or smoothness; but I cannot blend my notions of these two surfaces, the plane and the convex, as one surface, both plane and convex, more than I can think of a whole which is less than a fraction of itself, or a square, of which the sides are not equal, and the angles equal only to three right angles. The same blue or white surface cannot appear to me, then, at once plane and convex, as it must do if there be a visible figure of one exact outline coexisting with the tactual figure which is of a different outline; nor, even though the surface were in both cases _plane_, can it appear to me, at the same moment, half an inch square, and many feet square. All this must be done, however, as often as we open our eyes, if there be truly any perception of visible figure coexisting with the mere suggestions of touch. The visible figure of the sphere, on which I fix my gaze, is said to be a plane of two dimensions inseparable from colour, and this inseparable colour must yet be combined with the sphere, which I perceive distinctly to be convex. According to the common theory, therefore, it is at once, to my perception, _convex_ and _plane_; and, if the sphere be a large one, it is perceived, at the same moment, to be a sphere of many feet in diameter, and a plane circular surface of the diameter of a quarter of an inch. The assertion of so strange a combination of incongruities would, indeed, require some powerful arguments to justify it; yet is has been asserted, not merely without positive evidence, as if not standing in need of any proof, but in absolute opposition to our consciousness; and the only arguments which we can ever imagine to be urged for it, are, as we have seen, of no weight,--or would tend as much to prove the original visual perception of tangible figures, as of the figure that is termed visible.

Is it not at least more probable, therefore, that though, like the particles of odour when they act upon our nostrils, the rays of light affect a portion of the retina, so as to produce on it an _image_, which, if the eye were separated from its orbit, and its coats dissected, might be a distinct visible figure to the eye of another observer; this figure of the portion of the retina affected, enters as little into the simple original sensation of sight, as the figure of the portion of the olfactory nervous expanse, when it is affected, enters into the sensations of smell?--and that, when the simple affection of sight is blended with the ideas of suggestion, in what are termed the acquired perceptions of vision,--as, for example, in the perception of a sphere,--it is colour only which is blended with the large convexity, and not a small coloured plane?--which small coloured plane being necessarily limited in extent and form, so as never to be larger than the retina itself, cannot blend with various forms and magnitudes, and which, if it could even be supposed to constitute a _part_ of the convexity of a sphere perceived by us, still could not diffuse its own limited and inseparable colour over the whole magnitude of the sphere.

I have stated to you my own opinion with respect to visible figure,--an opinion, which to myself, I confess, appears almost certain, or, at least, far more probable than the opinion generally entertained, that has no evidence in our consciousness at any one moment of vision to support it. But on subjects of this kind, which are in themselves so very subtile, and, therefore, so liable to error, I must beg you, at all times, and especially when the opposite sentiment has the authority of general belief, to consider any opinion, which I may submit to you, as offered more to your _reflection_, than for your passive adoption of it. If I wish you,--reverently, indeed, but still freely,--to weigh the evidence of doctrines of philosophy, which are sanctioned even by the greatest names of every age, I must wish you still more, because it will be still more your duty, to weigh well the evidence of opinions that come to you, with no other authority than that of _one_ very fallible individual.

In looking back on the senses which we have been considering, what a boundless field do we seem already to have been endeavouring to traverse? and how admirable would the mind have been, even though it had been capable of no other office than that of representing, in the union of all its sensations, as in a living mirror of the universe, the splendid conceptions of the great Being who formed it; or, rather of creating a-new in itself, that very universe which it represents and admires?

Such is the power of the senses;--of

----“senses, that inherit earth and heavens,
Enjoy the various riches Nature yields;--
Far nobler, _give_ the riches they enjoy;
Give taste to fruits, and harmony to groves,
Their radiant beams to gold, and gold's bright fire;
Take in at once the landscape of the world,
At a small inlet, which a grain might close,
And half create the wonderous world they see.
But for the magic organ's powerful charm,
Earth were a rude, uncoloured chaos still;--
Like Milton's Eve, when gazing on the lake,
Man makes the matchless image, man admires.”[125]

FOOTNOTES:

[122] Judicium Paridis, v. 146--158. Ap. Mus. Anglican, vol. II. p. 274. EDIT. 1741.

[123] Inquiry into the Human Mind, &c. c. 6. sect. 1.

[124] Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, &c. c. 6. sect. 2.

[125] Young's Night Thoughts, VI. v. 420-427, 429-430, and 435-436.

LECTURE XXX.

HISTORY OF OPINIONS REGARDING PERCEPTION.

Gentlemen, in my last Lecture, I brought to a conclusion my remarks on Vision, with an inquiry into the justness of the universal belief, that, in the perception of objects by this sense, there are two modifications of extension, a visible as well as a tangible _figure_; the one originally and immediately perceived by the eye, the other suggested by former experience. I stated, at considerable length, some arguments which induce me to believe, in opposition to the universal doctrine,--that, in what are termed the acquired perceptions of sight, there is not this union of two separate figures of different dimensions, which cannot be combined with each other, more than the mathematical conceptions of a square and a circle can be combined in the conception of one simple figure; that the original sensations of colour, though, like the sensations of smell or taste, and every other species of sensation, arising from affections of definite portions of nervous substance, do not involve the perception of this definite outline, more than mere fragrance or sweetness, but that the colour is perceived by us as _figured_, only in consequence of being blended by intimate associations with the feelings commonly ascribed to touch. Philosophers, indeed, have admitted, or, at least, must admit, that we have no consciousness of that which they yet suppose to be constantly taking place, and that the _only figure_ which does truly seem to us, in vision, to be combined with colour, is that which they term tangible,--that, for example, we cannot look at a coloured sphere, of four feet diameter, without perceiving a coloured figure, which is that of a sphere four feet in diameter, and not a plain circular surface of the diameter of half an inch; yet, though we have no consciousness of perceiving any such small coloured circle, and have no reason to believe that such a perception takes place, they still contend, without any evidence whatever, that we see at every moment what we do not remember to have ever seen.

After our very full discussion of the general phenomena of perception,--as common to all our senses, and as peculiarly modified in the different tribes of our sensations,--I might now quit a subject, to which its primary interest as the origin of our knowledge, has led me to pay, perhaps, a disproportionate attention. But besides the theories, to the consideration of which our general inquiry has incidentally led us, there are some hypothetical opinions on the subject, of which it is necessary that you should know at least the outline,--not because they throw any real light on the phenomena of perception, but because, extravagantly hypothetical as they are, they are yet the opinions of philosophers, whose eminence, in other respects, renders indispensable some slight knowledge even of their very errors.

In reviewing these hypotheses, it will be necessary to call your attention to that doctrine of causation, which I before illustrated at great length, and which I trust, therefore, I may safely take for granted that you have not forgotten.

In sensation, I consider the feeling of the mind to be the simple effect of the presence of the object; or, at least, of some change, which the presence of the object produces in the sensorial organ. The _object_ has the power of affecting the mind; the _mind_ is susceptible of being affected by the object,--that is to say, when the organ, in consequence of the presence of the external object, exists in a certain state, the affection of the mind immediately follows. If the object were absent, in any particular case, the mind would not exist in the state which constitutes the sensation produced by it; and, if the susceptibility of the mind had been different, the object might have existed, as now, without any subsequent sensation. In all this series of mere changes, or affections, in consequence of certain other preceding changes, or affections, though a part of the series be material, and another part mental, there is truly, as I have repeatedly remarked to you, no more mystery than in any other series of changes, in which the series is not in matter and mind successively, but exclusively in one or the other. There is a change of state of one substance, in consequence of a change of some sort in another substance; and this mere sequence of change after change is all which we know in either case. The same Almighty Being, who formed the various substances to which we give the name of _matter_, formed also the substance to which we give the name of _mind_; and the qualities with which he endowed them, for those gracious ends which he intended them to answer, are mere susceptibilities of change, by which, in certain circumstances, they begin immediately to exist in different states. The weight of a body is its tendency to other bodies, varying according to the masses and distances;--in this instance, the quality may be said to be strictly material. The greenness or redness ascribed to certain rays of light, are words expressive merely of changes that arise in the _mind_ when these rays are present on the retina; in this case, the quality, though ascribed to the material rays as antecedent, involves the consideration of a certain change of state in the mind which they affect. But the greenness or redness, though involving the consideration both of mind affected, and matter affecting, is not less conceivable by us as a quality of matter than the weight, which also involves the consideration of two substances, affecting and affected, though both go under the name of matter alone. _All_ the sequences of phenomena are mysterious, or _none_ are so.

It is wonderful, that the presence of a loadstone should cause a piece of iron to approach it; and that the presence of the moon, in different parts of the heavens, should be continually altering the relative tendencies of all the particles of our earth. In like manner, it is, indeed, wonderful, that a state of our bodily organs should be followed by a change of state of the mind, or a state of our mind by a change of state of our bodily organs; but it is not more wonderful, than that matter should act on distant matter, or that one affection of the mind, should be followed by another affection of the mind, since all which we know in either case, when matter acts upon matter, or when it acts upon mind, is, that a certain change of one substance has followed a certain change of another substance,--a change which, in all circumstances exactly similar, it is expected by us to follow again. We have experience of this sequence of changes alike in both cases; and, but for experience, we could not, in either case, have predicted it.

This view of causation, however,--as not more unintelligible in the reciprocal sequences of events in matter and mind than in their separate sequences,--could not occur to philosophers while they retained their mysterious belief of secret links, connecting every observed antecedent with its observed consequent; since mind and matter seemed, by their very nature, unsusceptible of any such common bondage. A peculiar difficulty, therefore, as you may well suppose, was felt, in the endeavour to account for their mutual successions of phenomena, which vanishes, when the necessity of any connecting links in causation is shewn to be falsely assumed.

In their views of perception, therefore, as a mental effect produced by a material cause, philosophers appear to have been embarrassed by two great difficulties:--the production of this effect by remote objects,--as when we look at the sun and stars, in their almost inconceivable distances above our heads; and the production of this effect by a substance, which has no common property that renders it capable of being linked with the mind in the manner supposed to be necessary for causation. These two _supposed_ difficulties appear, to me, to have led to all the wild hypotheses that have been advanced with respect to perception.

The former of these difficulties,--in the remoteness of the object perceived,--even though the principle had not been false which supposes, that a change cannot take place in any substance, in consequence of the change of position of a distant object,--a principle, which the gravitation of every atom disproves,--arose, it is evident, from false views of the real objects of perception. It is on this account, that I was at some pains, when we entered on our inquiry into the nature of perception, to shew the futility of the distinction which is made of objects that act immediately on the senses, and those which act on them through a medium,--the medium, in this case, as light in vision, and the vibrating air in sound, being the real object of the particular sense,--and the reference to a more remote object being the result, not of the simple original sensation, but of knowledge previously acquired.

The mistake as to the real object of perception, and the supposed difficulty of action at a distance, must have had very considerable influence in producing the Peripatetic doctrine of perception by species, of which the cumbrous machinery seems to have been little more than a contrivance for destroying, as it were, the distance between the senses and the objects that were supposed to act on them. According to this doctrine, every object is continually throwing off certain shadowy films or resemblances of itself, which may be directly present to our organs of sense, at whatever distance the objects may be, from which they flowed. These species or phantasms,--the belief of the separate existence of which must have been greatly favoured by another tenet of the same school, with respect to _form_ as essentially distinct from the _matter_ with which it is united, were supposed to be transmitted, in a manner, which there was no great anxiety to explain, to the brain and to the mind itself. I need not detail to you the process by which these sensible species, through the intervention of what were termed the active and passive intellect, were said to become, at last, intelligible species, so as to be objects of our understanding. It is with the mere _sensitive_ part of the process, that we have at present any concern; and in this, of itself, there is sufficient absurdity, without tracing all the further modifications, of which the absurdity is capable, if I may speak so lightly of follies that have a name, which, for more than a thousand years, was the most venerable of human names, to pass them current as wisdom,--and which were read and honoured as wisdom by the wise of so many generations.

I cannot pay you so very poor a compliment, as to suppose it necessary to employ a single moment of your time in confuting what is not only a mere hypothesis, (and an hypothesis which leaves all the real difficulties of perception precisely as before,) but which, even as an hypothesis, is absolutely inconceivable. If vision had been our _only sense_, we might, perhaps, have understood, at least, what was meant by the species, that directly produce our visual images. But what is the phantasm of a sound or an odour? or what species is it, which, at one moment, produces only the feeling of cold, or hardness, or figure, when a knife is pressed against us, and the next moment, when it penetrates the skin, the pain of a cut? The knife itself is exactly the same unaltered knife, when it is merely pressed against the hand, and when it produces the incision; and the difference, therefore, in the two cases, must arise, not from any _species_ which it is constantly throwing off, since these would be the same, at every moment, but from some state of difference in the mere _nerves affected_.

I fear, however, that I have already fallen into the folly which I professed to avoid,--the folly of attempting to confute, what, considered in itself, is not worthy of being seriously confuted, and scarcely worthy even of being proved to be ridiculous. It must be remembered, however, in justice to its author, that the doctrine of perception, by intermediate phantasms, is not a single opinion alone, but a part of a system of opinions, and that there are many errors, which, if considered singly, appear too extravagant for the assent of any rational mind, that lose much of this extravagance, by combination with other errors, as extravagant. Whatever difficulties the hypothesis of species involved, it at least seemed to remove the supposed difficulty of perception at a distance, and by the half spiritual tenuity of the sensible images, seemed also to afford a sort of intermediate link, for the connexion of matter with mind; thus appearing to obviate, or at least to lessen, the two great difficulties, which I suppose to have given occasion to the principal hypothesis on this subject.

When the doctrine of _species_, as modified, in the dark and barren age of Dialectics, by all the additional absurdities, which the industrious sagacity of the schoolmen could give to it, had, at length, lost that empire, which it never should have possessed, the original difficulty of accounting for perception, remained as before. If the cause was to be linked, in some manner or other, with its effect, how was matter, so different in all its properties, to be connected with mind?

The shortest possible mode of obviating this difficulty, was, by denying that any direct causation whatever took place between our mind and our bodily organs? and hence arose the system of _occasional causes_, as maintained by the most distinguished of the followers of Des Cartes,--a system, which supposed, that there is no direct agency of our mind on matter, or of matter on our mind,--that we are as little capable of moving our own limbs by our volition, as of moving, by our volition, the limbs of any other person,--as little capable of perceiving the rays of light, that have entered our own eyes, as the rays which have fallen on any other eyes,--that our perception or voluntary movement is, therefore, to be referred, in every case, to the immediate agency of the Deity, the presence of rays of light, within our eye, being the mere occasion on which the Deity himself affects our mind with vision, as our desire of moving our limbs is the mere occasion, on which the Deity himself puts our limbs in motion.

It is of so much importance to have a full conviction of the dependence of all events on the _great Source of Being_, that it is necessary to strip the doctrine, as much as possible, of every thing truly objectionable, lest, in abandoning what is objectionable, we should be tempted to abandon also the important truth associated with it. The _power of God_ is so magnificent in itself, that it is only when we attempt to add to it in our conception, that we run some risk of _degrading_ what it must always be impossible for us to _elevate_.

That the changes which take place, whether in mind or in matter, are all, ultimately, resolvable into the will of the Deity, who formed alike the spiritual and material system of the universe, making the earth a habitation worthy of its noble inhabitant,--and _man_ an inhabitant almost worthy of that scene of divine magnificence, in which he is placed, is a truth, as convincing to our reason, as it is delightful to our devotion. What confidence do we feel, _in our joy_, at the thought of the Eternal Being, from whom it flows, as if the very thought gave at once _security_ and _sanctity_ to our delight; and how consolotary, in our little hour of suffering, to think of _Him_ who _wills_ our happiness, and who knows how to produce it, even from sorrow itself, by that power which called light from the original darkness, and still seems to call, out of a similar gloom, the sunshine of every morning. Every joy thus becomes gratitude,--every sorrow resignation. The eye which looks to Heaven seems, when it turns again to the scenes of earth, to bring down with it a purer radiance, like the very beaming of the presence of the Divinity, which it sheds on every object on which it gazes,--a light

“That gilds all forms
Terrestrial, in the vast, and the minute;
The unambiguous footsteps of the God,
Who gives its lustre to an insect's wing,
And wheels His throne upon the rolling worlds.”[126]

That the Deity, in this sense, as _the Creator_ of the world, and _willer_ of all those great ends, which the laws of the universe accomplish,--is the author of the physical changes which take place in it, is then most true,--as it is most true also, that the same Power, who gave the universe its laws, can, for the particular purposes of his providence, vary these at pleasure. But there is no reason to suppose, that the objects which he has made surely for some ends, have, as made by him, no efficacy, no power of being instrumental, to his own great purpose, merely because whatever power they can be supposed to have, must have been derived from the Fountain of all power. It is, indeed, only as possessing this power, that we know them to exist; and their powers, which the doctrine of occasional causes would destroy altogether, are, relatively to us, their whole existence. It is by affecting us that they are known to us. Such is the nature of the mind, and of light, for example, that light cannot be present, or, at least, the sensorial organ cannot exist in a certain state, in consequence of its presence, without that instant affection of mind, which constitutes vision. If light have not this power of affecting us with sensation, it is, with respect to us, nothing,--for we know it only as the cause of the visual affection. That which excites in us the feelings of extension, resistance, and all the qualities of matter, is matter; and, to suppose that there is nothing, without us, which excites these feelings, is to suppose, that there is no matter without, as far as we are capable of forming any conception of matter. The system of occasional causes seems, therefore, to be only a more awkward and complicated modification of the system of Berkeley; for, as the Deity is, in this system, himself the author of every change, the only conceivable use of matter, which cannot affect us, more than if it were not in existence, must be as a _remembrance_, to Him who is _Omniscience itself_, at what particular moment he is to excite a feeling in the mind of some one of his sensitive creatures, and of what particular kind that feeling is to be; as if the _Omniscient_ could stand in need of any memorial, to excite in our mind any feeling, which it is His wish to excite, and which is to be traced wholly to his own immediate agency. Matter then, according to this system, has no relations to us; and all its relations are to the Deity alone. The assertors of the doctrine, indeed, seem to consider it, as representing, in a more sublime light, the divine Omnipresence, by exhibiting it to our conception, as the only power in nature; but they might, in like manner, affirm, that the creation of the infinity of worlds, with all the life and happiness that are diffused over them, rendered less instead of more sublime, the existence of Him, who, till then, was the sole existence; for power, that is derived, derogates as little from the primary power, as derived existence derogates from the Being from whom it flows. Yet the assertors of this doctrine, who conceive, that light has no effect in vision, are perfectly willing to admit that light exists, or rather, are strenuous affirmers of its existence, and are anxious only to prove, in their zeal, for the glory of Him, who made it, and who makes nothing in vain, that this, and all His works, exist for no purpose. Light, they contend, has no influence whatever. It is as little capable of exciting sensations of colour, as of exciting a sensation of melody or fragrance; but still it exists. The production of so very simple a state as that of vision, or any other of the modes of perception, with an apparatus, which is not merely complicated, but, in all its complication, absolutely without efficacy of any sort, is so far from adding any sublimity to the divine nature, in our conception, that it can scarcely be conceived by the mind, without lessening, in some degree, the sublimity of the Author of the universe, by lessening, or rather destroying, all the sublimity of the universe which he has made. What is that idle mass of matter, which cannot affect us, or be known to us, or to any other created being, more than if it _were not_? If the Deity produces, in every case, by his own immediate operation, all those feelings which we term sensations or perceptions, he does not first create a multitude of inert and cumbrous worlds, invisible to every eye but his own, and incapable of affecting any thing whatever, that _he_ may know when to operate, as he would have operated before. This is not the awful simplicity of that Omnipresence,

“Whose word leaps forth at once to its effect;
Who calls for things that are not, and they come.”[127]

If, indeed, the complication of the process could remove any difficulty which truly exists, or even any difficulty which is supposed to exist, the system might be more readily adopted by that human weakness, to which the removal of a single difficulty is of so much value. But the very attempt to remove the difficulty, is merely by presenting it in another form. Omnipresent, as the Creator is, he is still, like that mind which he has formed after his own image, a _spiritual Being_; and though there can be no question as to the extent of his power over matter, the operation of this infinite power is as little conceivable by us, in any other way than as a mere antecedence of change, as the reciprocal limited action of mind and matter, in man, and the objects which he perceives and moves. It is itself indeed, a proof of action of this very kind; and to state it, with the view of obviating any difficulty that may be supposed to be involved in the mutual influence of mind and matter, seems as absurd, as it would be for a sophist, who should profess to believe, from an examination of the wings of birds, that their heavy pinions are incapable of bearing them through the air, to illustrate his paradox by the majestic soaring _of the eagle_, when he mounts still higher and higher through the sunshine that encircles him, before he stoops from his height above the clouds, to the cliffs which he deigns to make his _lowly home_.

The system of _occasional causes_, though it ceased to be known, or at least to be adopted, under that name, has not the less continued, by a mere change of denomination, to receive the assent of philosophers, who rejected it under its ancient name. It is, indeed, the spirit of this system alone, which gives any sense whatever to the distinction that is universally made of causes, as _physical_ and _efficient_,--a distinction which implies, that, beside the antecedents and consequents, in a series of changes, which are supposed to have no mutual influence, and might, therefore, be antecedent and consequent in any other order,--there is some intervening agency, which is, in every event of the series, the true efficient. Matter, in short, does _not act_ on mind, nor mind on matter. The _physical cause_, in this nomenclature, that exists for no purpose, as being absolutely insufficient; or, in other words, absolutely incapable of producing any change whatever, is the _occasional cause_ of the other nomenclature, and nothing more; and all which was cumbrous and superfluous in the one, is equally cumbrous and superfluous in the other. On this subject, however, which I have discussed at large in my Work on Cause and Effect, I need not add any remarks to those which I offered in an early part of the course. It is sufficient, at present, to point out the absolute identity of the two doctrines in every thing but in name.

The next system to which I would direct your attention, is that of _Malebranche_, who is, indeed, to be ranked among the principal asserters of the doctrine of _occasional causes_, which we have now been considering, but who, in addition to this general doctrine, had peculiar views of the nature of perception.

His opinions, on this subject, are delivered, at great length, in the second volume of his Search of Truth--La Recherche de la Verité--a work which is distinguished by much eloquence, and by many very profound remarks on the sources of human error, but which is itself an example, in the great system which it supports, of error as striking as any of those which it eloquently and profoundly discusses. It is truly unfortunate for his reputation as a philosopher, that these discussions do not form a separate work, but are blended with his own erroneous system, the outline of which every one knows too well, to think of studying its details. All that is necessary, to give him his just reputation, is merely that he _should have written less_. He is at present known, chiefly as the author of a very absurd hypothesis. He would have been known, and studied, and honoured, as a very acute observer of our nature, if he had never composed those parts of his work, to which, probably, when he thought of other generations, he looked as to the basis of his philosophic fame.

His hypothesis, as many of you probably know, is, that we perceive not _objects themselves_, but the _ideas_ of them which are in God.

He begins his supposed demonstration of this paradox with a sort of _negative_ proof, by attempting to shew the inadequacy of every other mode of accounting for our perception of the ideas of things; for I need scarcely state to you, what is involved in the very enunciation of his metaphysical theorem,--that he regards _ideas_ as distinct from perception itself, not the mind affected in a certain manner, but something separate and independent of the mind.

He then proceeds to his _positive_ proof, asserting, in the first place, that it is “absolutely necessary that God should have in himself the ideas of all the beings which he has created, since otherwise he could not have produced them;”[128] and, in the second place, that God is united to our soul by his presence, “so that he may be said to have that relation of place to the mind, which space has to body.”[129] Wherever the human mind is, there God is, and consequently all the ideas which are in God. We have thus a fund of all the ideas necessary for perception, and a fund, which, in consequence of the _ubiquity_ of the divine mind, is ever present, requiring, therefore, for our perception of them, only that divine will, without which no change can take place.

That perception takes place, by the presence of this one stock of ideas eternally present in the divine mind, with which every other mind is united,--rather than by the creation of an infinite number of ideas in each separate mind,--he conceives to be proved, by various reasons,--by the greater simplicity of this mode,--by its peculiar consistency with that state of dependence on the divine Being, as the source of all light, in which the mind of man is represented in many passages of Scripture,--by various notions, such as those of _infinity_, _genera_, _species_, &c. the universality of which he conceived to be inconsistent with the absolute unity and limitation of every idea, that does not derive a sort of infinity from the mind in which it exists,--and by some other reasons, very mystical and very feeble, in which, though it may not be difficult to discover what their author meant, it is certainly very difficult to conceive, how a mind so acute as his, could have been influenced by them.

It is, indeed, only this relation of the mind of Malebranche to his own very strange hypothesis, which there is any interest in tracing; for, though I have thought it my duty to give you a slight sketch of the hypothesis itself, as a part of the general history of our science, with which the reputation and genius of its author render it necessary for you to have some acquaintance, I am far from thinking, that it can throw any light on our speculations, in the present improved state of the Science of Mind. I shall not waste your time, therefore, with pointing out to you the innumerable objections to his hypothesis, which, after the view already given by me of the simple process of perception, are, I trust, so manifest, as not to require to be pointed out. It may be more interesting to consider, in the history of the Philosophy of Mind, what circumstances led to the formation of the hypothesis.

In the first place I may remark, that, notwithstanding his veneration for the greater number of the opinions of Des Cartes, Malebranche unfortunately had not adopted the very enlightened views of that eminent philosopher, with respect to the nature of _ideas_. He considered them as existing distinct from the sentient or percipient mind,--and, reasoning very justly from this error, inferred their presence in the mind of the Deity,--who formed the universe, not casually, but according to conceptions, that must have preceded creation,--the archetypes, or exemplars, of all that was to be created. This opinion, as to the eternal forms subsisting in the divine mind, agrees exactly with that of Plato, in one of the most celebrated of his doctrines, and certainly one of the most poetical,--which, though a term of praise that usually does not imply much excellence of philosophy, is the species of praise to which the philosophy of Plato has the justest claim. It has been delivered, in very powerful verse, by one of our own poets, who describes himself as, in science, a follower of the genius of ancient Greece, and who was worthy of the inspiring presence of that majestic guide:

“Ere the radiant sun
Sprang from the east, or 'mid the vault of night
The moon suspended her serener lamp;
Ere mountains, woods, or streams, adorn'd the globe,
Or Wisdom taught the sons of men her lore,--
Then lived the Almighty One, then, deep retired
In his unfathom'd essence, view'd the forms,
The forms eternal of created things;
The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp,
The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe,
And Wisdom's mien celestial. From the first
Of days, on them, his love divine, he fix'd
His admiration, till, in time complete,
What he admired and loved, his vital smile
Unfolded into being. Hence, the breath
Of life, informing each organic frame;
Hence, the green earth, and wild resounding waves;
Hence, light and shade alternate, warmth and cold,
And clear autumnal skies, and vernal showers,
And all the fair variety of things.”[130]

It is in the writings of St Augustine, however,--who had himself imbibed a considerable portion of the spirit of the Platonic philosophy,--that the true source of the hypothesis, which we are now reviewing, is to be found. This very eminent father of the church,--whose acuteness and eloquence would have entitled him to very high consideration, even though his works had related to subjects less interesting to man, than those noble subjects of which they treat,--seems to have met with peculiar honour from the French theologians, and to have given a very evident direction to their intellectual inquiries. It is indeed impossible to read the works of any of the theological metaphysicians of that country, without meeting with constant references to the opinions of St Austin, and an implied reference, even where it is not expressed,--particularly to the very opinions most analogous to those of Malebranche.

The opinion of Augustine, to which I particularly allude, is that which forms the principal doctrine of his metaphysical philosophy,--that there is a supreme eternal universal _Truth_, which is internally present to every mind, and in which all minds alike perceive the truths, which all alike are, as it were, necessitated to believe,--the truths of arithmetic and geometry, for example, and the primary essential truths of morality.

These truths we feel to be _eternal_, because we feel that they are not contingent on the existence of those who perceive them, but were, and are, and must forever be the same; and we feel also, that the _truth_ is _one_, whatever be the number of individuals that perceive it, and is not converted into many truths, merely by the multitude of believers. “If,” says he, “in discoursing of any truth, I perceive that to be true which _you_ say, and you perceive that to be true which _I_ say,--where, I pray you, do we both see this at the very moment? I certainly see it not in you, nor you in me,--but both see it in that unchangeable truth, which is beyond and above our individual minds.” “Si ambo videmus verum esse quod dicis, et ambo videmus verum esse quod dico, ubi, quæso, id videmus? Nec ego utique in te, nec tu in me; sed ambo in ipsa quæ supra mentes nostras est, incommutabili veritate.”

You must not conceive that I am contending for the justness of the opinion which I am now stating to you--I state it merely as illustrative of the system of Malebranche. If we suppose, with Augustine, that there is _one eternal Truth_, which contains all truths, and is present to all minds that perceive in it the truths which it contains, it is but one step more, and scarcely one step more, to believe that our ideas of all things are contained and perceived in one omnipresent Mind, to which all other minds are united, and which is itself the eternal Truth, that is present to all. Indeed, some of the passages which are quoted in the Search of Truth, from St Austin, show how strongly the author conceived his own opinions to be sanctioned by that ancient authority.

For some of the happiest applications which have been made of this very ancient system of Christian metaphysics, I may refer you particularly to the works of Fenelon,--to his demonstration of the existence of God, for example,--in which many of the most abstract subtleties of the Metaphysics of Augustine become _living_ and _eloquent_, in the reasonings of this amiable writer, who knew so well how to give, to every subject which he treated, the tenderness of his own heart, and the persuasion and devout confidence of his own undoubting belief.

In this Protestant country, in which the attention of theologians has been almost exclusively devoted to the Scriptures themselves, and little comparative attention paid to the writings of the Fathers,--unless, as strictly illustrative of the texts of Scripture, or of the mere History of the Church,--the influence of the metaphysical opinions of St Austin is less to be traced; and the argument drawn from the eternal omnipresent ideas of unity, and number and infinity, on which so much stress is laid by Catholic philosophers, in demonstrating the existence of God, is hence scarcely to be found at all, or, at least, occupies a very inconsiderable place, in the numerous works of our countrymen, on the same great subject. The system of Malebranche, might, indeed have arisen in this country; for we have had writers, who, without his genius, have adopted his errors; but there can be no doubt, that it was, by its very nature, much more likely to arise, in the country which actually produced it.

FOOTNOTES:

[126] Cowper's Task, Book V. v. 810-814.

[127] Cowpers Task, Book V. v. 686-7.

[128] Recherche de la Verité, Liv. III. c. vi.

[129] Recherche de la Verité, Liv. III. c. vi.

[130] Pleasures of Imagination, Book I. v. 59-78.

LECTURE XXXI.

HISTORY OF OPINIONS REGARDING PERCEPTION, CONCLUDED--ON THE EXTERNAL AFFECTIONS COMBINED WITH DESIRE, OR ON ATTENTION.

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I gave you a slight sketch of some theories,--or, to speak more accurately, of some hypothetical conjectures, which have been formed with respect to perception,--pointing out to you, at the same time, the two supposed difficulties which appear to me to have led to them, in false views of the real objects of perception, and of the nature of causation; the difficulty of accounting, with these false views, for the supposed perception of objects at a distance, and for the agency of matter on a substance, so little capable as mind, of being linked with it, by any common bond of connexion.

Of such hypotheses, we considered three,--the doctrine of the Peripatetics as to perception by _species_, or shadowy films, that flow from the object to the organ,--the Cartesian doctrine of the indirect subserviency of external objects, as the mere occasions on which the Deity himself, in every instance, produces in the mind the state which is termed perception,--and the particular doctrine of Malebranche, himself a zealous defender of that general doctrine of _occasional causes_, as to the perception of objects, or rather of the ideas of objects in the divine mind.

The only remaining hypothesis, which deserves to be noticed, is a very celebrated one, of Leibnitz, the doctrine of the _pre-established harmony_, which, I have no doubt, originated in the same false view of the necessity of some connecting link in causation; and was intended, therefore, like the others, to obviate the supposed difficulty of the action of matter on mind, and of mind on matter.

According to this doctrine, the body never acts on the mind, nor the mind on the body, but the motions of the one, and the feelings of the other, are absolutely independent, having as little influence on each other, as they have on any other mind and body. The mind feels pain, when the body is bruised, but, from the pre-established order of its own affections, it would have felt exactly the same pain, though the body, at that moment, had been resting upon roses. The arm, indeed, moves at the very moment, when the mind has _willed_ its motion; but, it moves of _itself_, in consequence of its own pre-established order of movement, and would move, therefore, equally, at that very moment, though the mind had wished it to remain at rest. The exact correspondence of the motions and feelings, which we observe, arises merely from the exactness of the choice of the Deity, in uniting with a body, that was formed by Him, to have of itself, a certain order of independent motions, a mind, that was formed of itself to have a certain order of independent but corresponding feelings. In the unerring exactness of this choice, and mutual adaptation, consists the exquisiteness of the harmony. But, however exquisite, it is still a _harmony_ only, without the slightest reciprocal action.

The mind, and its organic frame, are, in this system,--to borrow the illustration of it which is commonly used,--like two _time-pieces_, which have no connexion with each other, however accurately they may agree,--and each of which would indicate the hour, in the very same manner, though the other had been destroyed. In like manner, the soul of Leibnitz,--for the great theorist himself may surely be used to illustrate his own hypothesis,--would, though his body had been annihilated at birth, have felt and acted, as if with its bodily appendage,--studying the same works, inventing the same systems, and carrying on, with the same warfare of books and epistles, the same long course of indefatigable controversy;--and the _body_ of this great philosopher, though his soul had been annihilated at birth, would not merely have gone through the same process of growth, eating, and digesting, and performing all its other ordinary animal functions,--but would have achieved for itself the same intellectual glory, without any consciousness of the works which it was writing and correcting,--would have argued, with equal strenuousness, for the principle of the sufficient reason,--claimed the honours of the differential calculus,--and laboured to prove this very system of the _pre-established harmony_, of which it would, certainly, in that case, have been one of the most illustrious examples.

To say of this hypothesis, which was the dream of a great mind,--but of a mind, I must confess, which was very fond of dreaming, and very apt to dream,--that it is a _mere hypothesis_, is to speak of it too favourably. Like the doctrine of occasional causes, it supposes a system of external things, of which, by the very principle of the hypothesis, there can be no evidence, and which is absolutely of no utility whatever, but as it enables a philosopher to talk, more justly, of pre-established harmonies, without the possibility, however, of knowing that he is talking more justly. If the mind would have exactly the same feelings as now,--the same pleasures, and pains, and perceptions of men and houses, and every thing external, though every thing external, comprehending of course the very organs of sense, had been annihilated ages of ages before itself existed, what reason can there be to suppose, that this useless system of bodily organs, and other external things, exist at present? The universal irresistible belief of mankind, to which philosophers of a different school might appeal, cannot be urged in this case, since the admission of it, as legitimate evidence, would at once, disprove the hypothesis. We do not more truly believe, that light exists, than we believe, that it affects us with vision, and that, if there had been no light, there would have been no sensation of colour. To assert the pre-established harmony, is, indeed, almost the same thing, as to affirm and deny the same proposition. It is to affirm, in the first place, positively, that _matter exists_, since the harmony, which it asserts, is of matter and mind; and then to affirm, as positively, that its _existence is useless_, that it cannot be perceived by us, and that we are, therefore, absolutely incapable of knowing whether it exists or not.