Chapter I: OF SENSE.—‘Concerning the thoughts of man, I will consider (3)

Dr. Priestley states in his ‘Illustrations’ and in his letter to Dr. Horsley, that the difference between physical and moral necessity is merely verbal. He says, speaking of the connexion between cause and effect in the mind, ‘Give me the thing and I will readily give up the name.’ It appears to me that Dr. Priestley was quite as much attached to the name as to the thing, and that the philosophical principle of necessity, without its unpopular title, would have afforded him but little satisfaction. Now the obnoxiousness of the name, and in my opinion, almost all the difficulty and repugnance which the generality of men find in admitting the doctrine arises from the ambiguity lurking under the term necessity, which includes both kinds of necessity, moral and physical, and with which Dr. Priestley delights to probe the prejudices of his adversaries, thinking the differences of moral and physical necessity a mere question of words, and that provided there are any laws or any causes operating upon the mind, it is of no sort of consequence what those laws or causes are. It is the same inability to distinguish between one cause and another which creates the vulgar prejudice against necessity, and which is exposed in a very satisfactory manner by the author of the ‘Inquiry into the Will.’ He says, in a letter written expressly to vindicate himself from having confounded moral with physical necessity, ‘On the contrary, I have largely declared that the connexion between antecedent things and consequent ones which takes place with regard to the acts of men’s wills, which is called moral necessity, is called by the name of _necessity_ improperly; and that all such terms as _must_, _cannot_, _impossible_, _unable_, _irresistible_, _unavoidable_, _invincible_, &c. when applied here, are not applied in their proper signification, and are either used nonsensically, and with perfect insignificance, or in a sense quite diverse from their original and proper meaning, and their use in common speech; and that such a necessity as attends the acts of men’s wills, is more properly called _certainty_ than _necessity_. I think it is evidently owing to a strong prejudice in persons’ minds, arising from an insensible habitual perversion and misapplication of such-like terms, that they are ready to think that to suppose a certain connexion of men’s volitions without any foregoing motives or inclinations, is truly and properly to suppose such a strong irrefragable chain of causes and effects as stands in the way of, and makes utterly vain, opposite desires and endeavours, like immovable and impenetrable mountains of brass; and impedes our liberty like walls of adamant, gates of brass, and bars of iron: whereas all such representations suggest ideas as far from the truth, as the East is from the West. I know it is in vain to endeavour to make some persons believe this, or at least fully and steadily to believe it: for if it be demonstrated to them, still the old prejudice remains, which has been long fixed by the use of the terms _necessary_, _must_, &c. the association with these terms of certain ideas, inconsistent with liberty, is not broken, and the judgment is powerfully warped by it; as a thing that has been long bent and grown stiff, if it be straightened, will return to its former curvity again and again.’

The reasoning in the ‘Inquiry’ to which the author here refers, in justification of himself, is as follows:

‘Men in their first use of such phrases as these, _must_, _cannot_, _unavoidable_, _irresistible_, &c. use them to signify a necessity of constraint or restraining a natural necessity or impossibility, or some necessity that the will has nothing to do in. A thing is said to be _necessary_, when we cannot help it, let us do what we will. So any thing is said to be _impossible_ to us, when we would do it, or would have it brought to pass and endeavour it, but all our desires and endeavours are in vain. And that is said to be _irresistible_, which overcomes all our opposition, resistance and endeavour to the contrary. And we are said to be _unable_ to do a thing, when our utmost supposable desires and endeavours to do it are insufficient. All men find, and begin to find in early childhood, that there are innumerable things which cannot be done which they desire to do; and innumerable things, which they are averse to, that must be; they cannot avoid them, whether they choose them or no. It is to express this necessity which men so soon and so often find, and which so greatly affects them in innumerable cases, that such terms and phrases are first formed; and it is to signify such a necessity that they are first used, and that they are most constantly used in the common affairs of life; and not to signify any such metaphysical, speculative and abstract notion as that connexion [between cause and effect] in the nature and course of things, to signify which they who employ themselves in philosophical inquiries into the first origin and metaphysical relations and dependencies of things, have borrowed those terms, for want of others. But we grow up from our cradles in a use of such phrases entirely different from this, or from the one in which they are used in the controversy about liberty and necessity. And it being a dictate of the universal sense of mankind, evident to us as soon as we begin to think, that the necessity signified by these terms in the sense in which we first learn them, does excuse persons, and free them from all fault or blame, hence our idea of excusableness or faultlessness is tied to these phrases by a strong habit, which grows up with us;—or if we use the words as terms of art in another sense, yet unless we are exceeding circumspect and wary, we shall insensibly slide into the vulgar use of them, and so apply the words in a very inconsistent manner: this habitual connexion of ideas will deceive and confound us in our reasonings and discourses whenever we pretend to use the terms in that manner.’—Pages 20, 21, 290, &c.

‘It follows that when the aforesaid terms are used in cases wherein no opposition, or insufficient will or endeavour is or can be supposed, but the very nature of the supposed case (as that of willing or choosing) excludes any such opposition, will, or endeavour, these terms are then not used in their proper signification, but quite beside their use in common speech.’—Pages 21, 22.

The author has, I think, in these passages, laid open the source of most of the confusion on the subject in question. For this double meaning lurking under the word necessity has been the chief reason why persons, who were guided more by their own feelings and the customary associations of language than by formal definitions, have altogether rejected the doctrine; while persons of a more logical turn, who could not deny the truth of the abstract principle, have yet in their explanations of it, and inferences from it, fallen into the same vulgar error as their opponents. The partisans for necessity have given up their common sense, as they supposed, to their reason, while the advocates for liberty rejected a demonstrable truth from a dread of its consequences; and both have been the dupes of a word. I have been the more ready to appeal to this writer’s authority, because he is allowed on all hands to be one of the most strict, severe, and logical of all necessarians. What he has said on the subject of free-will, as consisting in perfect contingence, independent of all motive, or as implying an absolute beginning of action without any precedent determining cause might, one would imagine, have been sufficient, even if Hobbes’s reasonings had not, to banish that opinion out of the world. He has followed it through all its windings, and detected it in all its varying shades, with equal patience and sagacity. He sums up the absurdities of this notion of liberty, or of mere absolute self-will, in these words:

‘The following things are all essential to it, viz. that an action should be necessary, and not necessary; that it should be from a cause and no cause; that it should be the fruit of choice and design, and not the fruit of choice and design; that it should be the beginning of motion and exertion, and yet be consequent on previous exertion; that it should be before it is; that it should spring immediately out of indifference and equilibrium, and yet be the effect of preponderation; that it should be self-originated, also have its original from something else; that it is what the mind causes itself, of its own will, and can produce or prevent, according to its choice, or pleasure, and yet what the mind has no power to prevent, precluding all previous choice in the affair. So that an act of the will [determining itself by its own free-will], according to their metaphysical account of it, is something of which there is no idea, it is nothing but a confusion of the mind, excited by words without any distinct meaning. If some learned philosopher, who had been abroad, in giving an account of the curious observations he had made in his travels, should say, “He had been in Tierra del Fuego, and there had seen an animal, which he calls by a certain name, that begat and brought forth itself, and yet had a sire and a dam distinct from itself; that it had an appetite and was hungry before it had a being; that his master, who led him, and governed him at his pleasure, was always governed by him, and driven by him where he pleased: that when he moved, he always took a step before the first step; that he went with his head first, and yet always went tail foremost; and this though he had neither head nor tail;” it would be no impudence at all to tell such a traveller, though a learned man, that he himself had no notion or idea of such an animal as he gave an account of, and never had, nor ever would have.’—Page 281, of the _Inquiry_.

The author seems to have hit upon the source of this erroneous account of free-will, with his usual truth of feeling. He says, almost immediately after:—‘The thing which has led men into this inconsistent notion of action, when applied to volition, as though it were essential to this internal action that the agent should be self-determined in it, and that the will should be the cause of it, was probably this: that according to the sense of mankind, and the common use of language, it is so with respect to men’s external actions; which are what originally, and according to the vulgar use and most proper sense of the word, are called _actions_. Men in these are self-directed, self-determined, and their wills are the cause of the motions of their bodies, and the external things that are done; so that unless men do them voluntarily, and of choice, and the action be determined by their antecedent volition, it is no action or doing of theirs. Hence some metaphysicians have been led unwarily, but exceeding absurdly, to suppose the same concerning volition itself, _that_ that also must be determined by the will; which is to be determined by antecedent volition, as the motion of the body is; not considering the contradiction it implies.’—_Ibid._, page 286.

I shall proceed to state as briefly as I can my own notions of liberty and necessity, as far as they any way differ from the foregoing account.

First, then, I conceive that if by necessity be understood and only understood the connexion of cause and effect, or the constant dependence of one thing on another, in the human mind as well as in matter, that according to this interpretation all things are equally certain and necessary. On the other hand, if by liberty be meant any thing opposite to this connexion of cause and effect: that is, a positive beginning of any action or motion out of nothing, or out of a state of indifference, or from itself, I believe that there is no such thing as liberty in the mind any more than in matter. All things have their preceding determining causes, and nothing is, but what must be in the precise given circumstances. This has been demonstrated over and over again, and the contrary supposition reduced to a manifest absurdity in every possible way by Hobbes, Hume, Hartley, Edwards, Priestley, and others.

But, secondly, I conceive that the question does not stop here, because certain ideas have been annexed to these terms of liberty and necessity, both by the learned and by common men, which have nothing at all to do with the affirmation or denial of the simple connexion between cause and effect. What I shall therefore attempt will be to point out a few instances of the misapplication of the term to prove a necessity not included in the certainty of the event, and to disprove liberty in a sense in which it does not interfere with that certainty, or with philosophical necessity: that is, I shall attempt to show in what sense, in conformity with the general law to which all things are by their nature subject, man is an agent, a free agent, a moral and accountable agent; that is, deserving of reward and punishment, praise and blame, &c. Now by an agent I mean any thing that acts or has a power to operate, that is, to produce effects; by a free agent I mean one that is not hindered from acting; by a moral and accountable agent I mean one that acts from will, and is influenced by motives; by reward and punishment I mean what every one does; by praise and blame I mean our approbation or disapprobation of any agent that is conscious of our sentiments towards him, or that is capable of reflecting on his own conduct, and of being affected by what others think of it. If by an agent be meant the beginner of action, or one that produces an effect of itself, there can be no such thing; but if by an agent be meant one that contributes to an effect, there is such a thing as an agent; and the more any thing contributes to an effect and determines it to be this or that, the more it is an agent. If by freedom be meant a freedom from causes, or necessity in the abstract, there can be no freedom in this sense, but there may be and is a freedom from certain causes and from certain kinds and degrees of necessity; that is, from physical causes, or compulsion, and from absolute, unconditional necessity. If all things are equally necessary, that do not spring out of nothing, then indeed the distinction between liberty and necessity must be in all cases absurd. Again, by free-will I do not mean the power or liberty to act without motives, but with motives. The mind cannot act without an occasion or ground for acting, but this does not shew that it is no agent at all, or that it is not a free agent; that is, that its action is restrained or hindered by the action of anything else. The intellectual and voluntary powers are free, just as the corporeal are, namely, when they are free to produce certain effects, which, if excited, they can produce, as the body is free when it can move in consequence of the mind’s direction; it is no longer free when though the same reason exists for its moving, it is hindered by something else from obeying the impulse. In short, liberty is this: the power in any agent in given circumstances to operate in a certain manner, if left to itself; or perhaps more unequivocally, opportunity given to any agent to exert certain powers to produce an effect, when nothing but those powers and the absence of impediments is wanting to produce it. To be free is to possess all the requisites for acting in one’s-self, and in the circumstances, and not to be counteracted. Again if moral good and evil are supposed to be something self-created, then they are merely fictions of the mind; but if we suppose an agent to be entitled to praise or blame, reward or punishment, not because he is a self-willed, but a voluntary agent, that is to say, a being possessing certain powers and habitually and with determination exerting them to certain purposes, then there will be a foundation for this distinction in nature. To the idea of moral responsibility, it is not necessary that the agent should be the sole or absolutely first cause of the evil, for example, but that he should be one real, determining cause of it, and while he remains what he is, the same effects will follow. An agent is the author of any evil, when without him, that is, without something peculiar and essential to his disposition and character, it would not exist.

1. Every thing is an agent that is any way necessary or conducing to an effect. The doctrine of second causes does not destroy agency. It no more proves that those causes do not act because something has acted before them, than that they do not exist, because something has existed before them. The theological writers on this side of the question affirm, I think improperly, that God or the first cause is the sole agent in the universe, to which all second causes are to be referred as instruments, having no real efficacy of their own. If so, all events are produced immediately by the divine agency, that is, all second causes are parts of the divine essence, and in all that we see or hear or feel, we must conceive of something far more deeply interfused, a spirit and a motion that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and breathes through all things. This doctrine is that of Spinoza: but upon this supposition second causes, as the immediate operation of the Deity are and must be real and efficient. On the other hand, if to exclude this system of pantheism, we consider the things and appearances about us as merely natural, still what are called second causes must be real and efficient causes, or they could not produce their effects. If nothing can operate but the first cause, then whatever produces effects is the Deity: but if this conclusion be thought objectionable, then we must allow other causes of events to be really and truly such in themselves: for from that which is no cause, which has no power, any more than nothing, nothing can follow. All second causes, that is, all things that exist are, therefore, either parts of the Deity or parts of nature, and in neither case can they be absolutely insignificant, worthless, null, and of no account. Dr. Priestley is for having men refer all the good in the universe to God as the author of it, and all the evil that takes place to man or to second causes. I cannot think that this is sound philosophy nor practical wisdom. The necessarians have evidently borrowed their notions of agency and second causes from the advocates for liberty: for taking up the same unfounded assumption of the libertarians, that action is the absolute beginning of motion, and that any thing short of this is no action at all, and finding that the will was not a cause in the absurd sense supposed by their adversaries, they have concluded that it was no cause at all; not considering whether a cause might not be more properly defined that which produces an effect in consistency with other things than that which produces it independently of them. Action then in any sense of the word is the same as co-operation. It may be asked, whether this account does not destroy the distinction between active and passive. I answer that it does, if by active be meant unconnected action, and by passive connected action; but not else. That is, if by action be understood the positive determinate tendency or the additional impulse to the production of any effect, and by passiveness an indifference in any agent to this or that motion, except as it is acted upon by, and transmits the efficacy of other causes, this distinction will remain as broad and palpable as ever. Any thing is so far active as it modifies and re-acts upon the original impulse; it is passive in as far as it neither adds to, nor takes from that original impulse, but merely has a power of receiving and continuing it. This I take to be the practical and philosophical meaning of the terms. This distinction therefore, applies equally to matter and mind. The explosion of gunpowder cannot be attributed entirely or principally to the spark which ignites it, because the effect is increased a thousand-fold by the inherent qualities of the gunpowder. The motion communicated by one body to another in void space is considered as the mere passive result of the former, because the effect in the second agent is simply the continuation of what it was in the first. So it is in the mind. Motives do not act upon it simply or absolutely; but according to the dictates of the understanding or the bias of the will. At one time we yield to any idle inclination that happens to prevail, and at others resist to the utmost the strongest motives. That is, the mind is itself an agent, one chief determining cause of our volitions. It is on the view taken by the mind of motives, on our disposition to attend to or neglect them, to compare and weigh them, that their effect depends. But the necessarians have always delighted to illustrate the operations of the mind in volition by referring to the impulse communicated by one billiard-ball to another, or to different weights in a pair of scales. Both which illustrations are as little applicable as possible, because in neither of them is there supposed to be the least activity of action; that is, the least capacity to resist or increase or alter the impressed force in the thing acted upon. That is, the mind in these similes is requisite as a merely passive agent, by which I mean a thing perfectly indifferent and nugatory, a mere cypher without any character of its own, that is neither good nor bad, neither deserving of praise nor blame; a cameleon, colourless kind of thing, the sport of external impulses and accidental circumstances, or of a necessity in which it has itself no share. Thus the responsibility of the mind has been taken from it, and transferred to outward circumstances, and all characters in themselves rendered alike indifferent. This is the necessary consequence of abstracting the influence of motives from the mind on which and by which they act. I prefer exceedingly to the modern instances of a couple of billiard-balls, or a pair of scales, the illustration of Chrysophus, the stoic in Cicero, who says, ‘Ille igitur qui protrusit cylindrum dedit ei principium motionis, volubilitatem autem non dedit: sic visum objectum imprimet quidem et quasi signabit in animo suam speciem, sed assensio erit in potestate nostrâ.’ That is, suppose I push against a heavy body; if it be square it will not move: if it be cylindrical it will. What the difference of form is to the stone, the difference of disposition is to the mind. In fact, the necessarians, to maintain this doctrine of the nullity of second causes, have been forced to consider every thing as a succession of simple impulses passing from hand to hand: so that there being no fixed point, no resting-place for the imagination, we are perpetually obliged to shift the cause from one object to another: every thing has to be accounted for, and referred back to something else, and in this ceaseless whirl of fleeting causes all ideas of power or agency seem to slide from under us. Lest the mind should prove refractory, to the laws ascribed to it, they thought it most prudent to deprive it of all activity and power of resistance. They were very absurdly afraid that without this their whole scheme might be overturned, as if though the mind were freed from being the servile drudge of external impulses, it would not still follow the bent of its own nature. The above distinction will, I conceive, set the mind free from one of the shackles imposed on it by the necessarians, namely, that imbecility, helplessness, and indifference, which they have superadded to the regular connexion of cause and effect, though it makes no essential part of it. The mind, according to the advocates for free-will, is a perfectly detached, unconnected, independent cause: according to the necessarians, it is no cause at all: neither branch of the antithesis is true.

2. According to the definition of liberty above given, freedom, that is free agency, is applicable to mind as well as to matter. Free-will does not, because will does not, belong to it. By a free agent, I understand, with Hobbes, one that is not hindered from acting according to his natural or determinate bias. The body is free when it can obey the impulse of the mind; so also a billiard-ball might be said to be free while it is not fixed to the table, or hindered from being impelled by the stroke of the mace. In the same sense, the water, as Mr. Hobbes observes, is said to descend freely along the channel of the river, while no obstacle intercepts its progress. But though necessarians allow liberty to the body, and to inanimate things, they deny that it is in any sense applicable to the mind or will.

ON LOCKE’S ESSAY ON THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

This work owes its present rank among philosophical productions, to its embodiment of the great principle first brought forward by Hobbes. All its author’s attempts to modify this principle or reconcile it to common notions have been gradually exploded, and have given place to the more severe and logical deductions of Hobbes from the same general principle. Mr. Locke took the faculties of the mind as he found them in himself and others, and endeavoured to account for them on _a new principle_. By this compromise with candour and common sense, he prepared the way for the introduction of the principle, which being once established, very soon overturned all the trite opinions and vulgar prejudices which were improperly associated with it. There was in fact no place for them in the new system.

The great defect with which the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ is chargeable is, that there is not really a word about the nature of the understanding in it, nor any attempt to show what it is or whether it is or is not any thing, distinct from the faculty of simple perception. The operations of thinking, comparing, discerning, reasoning, willing, and the like, which Mr. Locke ascribes to it, are the operations of nothing, or of I know not what. All the force of his mind seems to have been so bent on exploding innate ideas, and tracing our thoughts to their external source, that he either forgot or had not leisure to examine what the internal principle of all thought is. He took for his basis a bad simile—that the mind is like a blank sheet of paper, originally void of all characters whatever; for this, though true as far as relates to innate ideas, that is, to any impressions actually existing in it, is not true of the mind itself, which is not like a sheet of paper, the passive receiver and retainer of the impressions made upon it. The inference from this simile has however been that the understanding is nothing in itself, nor the cause of any thing; never acting, but always acted upon; that it is but a convenient repository for the straggling images of things, a sort of empty room into which ideas are conveyed from without through the doors of the senses, as you would carry goods into an unfurnished lodging; and hence it has been found necessary by succeeding writers to get rid of those different faculties and operations which Mr. Locke elsewhere allows to belong to the mind, but which are in truth only compatible with the active powers and independent nature of the understanding. I will first state Mr. Locke’s account of the origin of our ideas in his own words, and will then endeavour to show in what that account is defective; that is, what other act or faculty of the mind I conceive to be necessary to the formation of our ideas, besides sensation or simple perception. After employing eighty pages in a very laborious, and for the most part sensible refutation of the doctrine of innate ideas, which was popular at the time, but which Hobbes has not deigned to notice, their impossibility being implied in the general principle that all our ideas are derived from the senses, Mr. Locke proceeds in the second book to treat of Ideas, and their origin. He then says:

‘Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas, such are those expressed by the words, _whiteness_, _hardness_, _sweetness_, _thinking_, _motion_, _man_, _elephant_, _army_, _drunkenness_, and others: it is in the first place then to be inquired how he comes by them. I know it is a received doctrine that men have native ideas and original characters stamped upon their minds in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already: but I suppose what I have said will be much more easily admitted when I have shewn whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind, for which I shall appeal to every one’s own observation and experience. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, in an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE: in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself....

‘First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways, wherein those objects do affect them; and thus we come by those ideas we have of _yellow_, _white_, _heat_, _cold_, _soft_, _hard_, _bitter_, _sweet_, and all those which we call sensible qualities, which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call SENSATION.

‘Secondly, the other fountain from whence experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got: which operations when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without: and such are _perception_, _thinking_, _doubting_, _believing_, _reasoning_, _knowing_, _willing_, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other sensation, so I call this REFLECTION; the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself.... These two I say, _viz._ external, material things, as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term _operations_ here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.’

‘The understanding,’ proceeds Mr. Locke, ‘seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations. These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of ideas: and that we have nothing in our minds, which did not come in one of these two ways.’—_Essay_, vol. I. p. 84.

Again, page 150, he says:

‘I pretend not to teach but to inquire, and therefore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room. For methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet, wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.’

This account of the origin of every thing that exists in the mind differs from the simplicity of Hobbes’s system, and of the modern philosophy, in supposing that there is another distinct source of ideas, besides sensation, namely, reflection on the operations of our own minds. I confess this addition appears to me to be very awkwardly and inartificially made. For, in the first place, it is obvious to remark that in most at least, if not all the instances enumerated by the author, the operations themselves are the proper and immediate sources of our ideas, not this kind of reflection on them, which seems to be nothing but the repetition or recollection of the first conscious impression, the perception of a perception. For example, Mr. Locke includes among operations of our own minds ‘some sort of passions arising from our ideas,’ _i.e._ as he explains it, the sense of pleasure and pain. Now it is surely a little preposterous to make, not the original feeling itself, but the after consideration or reflection on that feeling, the source of our idea of pleasure or pain. In this sense, reflection must be the source of all our ideas, whether of external objects, or the operations of our own minds, for in the same sense it may be argued, that the first impression of a sensible object is not the source of the idea we have of it, till the soul comes to reflect on and consider that original impression. But it might be said with equal propriety, that we have one source of ideas, viz., sensation, and another source of ideas, viz. ideas. From the view which Mr. Locke has here taken of the subject, though the passions, or the satisfaction and uneasiness attending certain things are ranked among the operations of the mind, yet it is not quite clear whether we are supposed to have any consciousness of them or not; whether they are not as remote from any thing like perception, as the lifeless objects without us, till coming to be afterwards reflected on and taken notice of by the mind, they furnish the understanding with a new set of ideas. The same reasoning may be applied to the other operations of perception, thinking, &c. for it seems to me that the original act of perceiving or thinking is the source of my idea of those mental operations, just as the first impression of any sensible object is the source of my idea of that object. Not sensation and reflection, therefore, but sensation and the operations of our own minds are more properly the sources of our ideas, that is, these two furnish materials for our reflection. I should not have dwelt so long upon this distinction, which may be thought of little importance in itself, but that I believe it has led to most of the errors of the ‘Essay.’ For in consequence of separating the operations of the mind in a manner from the mind itself, and making them exist only as objects for its contemplation, Mr. Locke has been satisfied with considering those operations as acting upon the mind like external things, not as emanating from it. Thus, by a general formula, all our ideas of every kind are represented as communicated to the mind by something foreign to it, instead of growing out of, and being a part of its own nature and essence.

Secondly, another objection to this division of our ideas into those of sensation and reflection is, that it does not differ in any decisive manner from the more simple statement of Hobbes and others, who derive all our ideas from sensation. For by sensation these writers do not understand merely the external image, but the perception or feeling which accompanies it, and they contend that all our other ideas are continuations, modifications, or different arrangements of the original impressions, produced by objects on the senses. Now there is nothing in the extract above given to disprove this statement: and if so, the original hypothesis will remain in its full force. Indeed Mr. Locke himself does not seem to have made up his mind, whether it were so or not. For though he speaks of the mind as furnishing the understanding with ideas, and with the materials of reason and knowledge, and enumerates and explains the several operations of the mind in comparing, distinguishing, &c. yet he elsewhere speaks of ideas as existing in the understanding like pictures in a gallery, or as if the whole process of the intellect were resolvable into the power of receiving, retaining, carrying, and transposing the gross materials furnished by the senses. In this case, I think the simplest way at once is to make sensation the foundation of all our other ideas and faculties. For my own part, the reason why I cannot assent to this doctrine is, that I believe there is another act or faculty of the mind implied in all our ideas, for which neither sensation nor any of its modes can ever account, and which I shall here proceed to explain.

The principle which I shall attempt to prove is, that ideas are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. By a sensation is meant the perception produced by the impression of the several parts of an outward object, each by itself, on the correspondent parts of an organised sentient being: by an idea I mean the conception produced by a number of these together on the same conscious principle. Besides the succession or juxtaposition of different sensible impressions, I suppose that there is a common principle of thought, a superintending faculty, which alone perceives the relations of things, and enables us to comprehend their connexions, forms, and masses. This faculty is properly the understanding, and it is by means of this faculty that man indeed becomes a reasonable soul. What has led more than any thing else to the exclusion of the understanding as a distinct faculty of the mind, and to the principle of resolving the acts of judging, reasoning, &c., into mere association, or succession of ideas, has been the considering ideas themselves, or those particular objects which are marked by one name, or strike at once upon the senses, as _simple things_. Mr. Locke, it is true, has avoided this error as far as relates to our ideas of substances, but he reckons among simple ideas of the qualities of things several ideas, which are evidently complex, such as extension, figure, motion, and number. Hence, having laid in a certain stock of ideas without the necessity of the understanding, it was thought an easy matter to build up the whole structure of the human mind without it, as we build a house with stones. The method, therefore, which I shall take to establish the point I have in view, will be by showing that there is no one of these simple ideas, or ideas of particular things, which are made the foundation of all the rest, that is not itself an aggregate of many things, or that can subsist a moment but in the understanding. I can conceive of a being endued with the power of sensation, or simple perception, so as to receive the direct impressions of things, and also with memory, so as to retain them for any length of time, as they were severally and unconnectedly presented, yet without the smallest degree of understanding, or without ever having so much as a single thought. The state of such a being would be that of animal life, and something more with the addition of memory, but it would not amount to intellect; which implies, besides actual, living impressions, the power of perceiving their relations to one another, of comparing and contrasting them, and of regarding the different parts of any object as making one whole. Without this ‘discourse of reason,’ this surrounding and forming power, we could never have the idea of a single object, as of a table or a chair, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand. Every one of these includes a certain configuration, hardness, colour, &c., _i.e._ ideas of different things, received by different senses, which must be put together by the understanding before they can be referred to any particular thing, or considered as one idea. Without this faculty, all our ideas would be necessarily decomposed, and crumbled down into their original elements and fluxional parts. We could assuredly never carry on a chain of reasoning on any subject, for the very links of which this chain must consist would be ground to powder. There would be an infinite divisibility in the impressions of the mind, as well as in the objects of matter. There would be a total want of union, fellowship, and mutual intelligence between them, for each impression must remain absolutely simple and distinct, unknown to, and unconscious of the rest, shut up in the narrow cell of its own individuality. No two of these atomic impressions could ever club together to form even a sensible point, much less should we be able to arrive at any of the larger masses, or nominal descriptions of things. The most that sensation could possibly do for us, would be to furnish us with the ideas of what Mr. Locke calls the simple qualities of objects, as of colour or pressure, though not as a general notion or diffused feeling; for it is certain that no one idea could ever contain more than the tinge of a single ray of light, or the puncture of a single particle of matter. Let us, however, for a moment suppose that the several parts of objects are to be considered as individual things, or ideal units; and then see whether, without the cementing power of the understanding, we shall be able to conceive of them as forming a complete whole, or any one entire object. Thus we may have a notion of the legs and arms of a chair as so many distinct, positive things; but without the power of perceiving them together in their several proportions and situations, we could not have the idea of a chair as one thing, or as a piece of furniture, intended for a particular use. It is the mind (if I may be allowed such an expression) that makes up the idea of the chair, and fits it together: that is in this case the cabinet-maker, who unites the loose, disjointed parts, and makes them one firm and well-compacted object. I might instance to the same purpose a statue. Will any one say, that if the head and limbs and different parts of a fine statue were to be taken asunder, broken in pieces, and strewed about the floor, and first shown to him in that state, he would have the same idea of the beauty, proportions, posture, and effect of the whole, as if he had seen it in its original state? But the idea which such a person might have of the statue in this way would be completeness and harmony itself, compared with any idea which could result from the sensible impression of the several parts. For he might still in fancy piece together the broken, mutilated fragments, prop up the limbs, set the head upon the shoulders, and make out a crazy image of the whole; but without the understanding reacting on the senses, and informing the eye with judgment and knowledge, there would be no possibility whatever of comparing the different impressions received: no one part could have the slightest reference to any other part or to the whole; there would be no principle of cohesion left: we might have an infinite number of microscopic impressions and fractions of ideas, but there being nothing to unite them together, the most perfect grace and symmetry would be only one mass of unmeaning, unconscious confusion. All nature, all objects, all parts of all objects would be equally ‘without form and void.’ _The mind alone is formative_, to use the expression of a great German writer; or it is that alone which by its pervading and elastic energy unfolds and expands our ideas, that gives order and consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper place, and fixes it there, and that frames the idea of the whole. Or, in other words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but every object is made up of relation. In short, there is no object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be sensible. To make each part conscious of its relation to the rest is to suppose an infinite number of intellects instead of one; and to say that a knowledge or perception of each part separately, without a reference to the rest, can produce a conception of the whole; that is, that a knowledge where no two impressions are or ever can be compared, can include a comparison between them and many others, is a contradiction and an absurdity.

It may be said perhaps, that not the sensation excited by any of the parts of an object separately, but the sum of our sensations, excited by all the parts, produces our idea of the whole. But it is not possible that in a given number of impressions, where the mind never has perception of more than a single part, there should be contained notwithstanding a view of the whole at once. For as a single part cannot of itself represent the whole object, so neither can this part by being actually joined to others, which by the supposition are never perceived to be joined with it, produce that idea, any more than if those other parts had no existence. If the impression of the parts of an object, absolutely and individually considered, were the same thing as the idea of the object, any number of actual impressions, arranged in any manner whatever, would necessarily be the same object. But this is contrary to all fact. For then a curve line, consisting of the same number of points, would not be distinguishable from a straight one, nor a square from a triangle of the same dimensions, and so on. In a being endued only with a power of sensation, and supposed to be simple and undivided, there could be no room for more than an individual impression at once. Our sensations must always succeed each other. One thought must have completely passed away, before another could supply its place. Our ideas would leave no traces of themselves, like the bubbles that rise and disappear on the water, or the snow that melts as it falls. There would be nothing in their fugitive, momentary existence to bind them together. Ere we could stop to compare any one impression with any other, it would be lost for ever in the dark abyss of time. Nothing could be connected with any thing else, either coexisting with it, or going before or after it. If on the other hand, we suppose any merely sentient being to be extended and compounded, or to be capable of receiving more than one impression at once, we shall yet gain little by it. Such a sentient being will be nothing but a number of distinct sentient beings. For as in the former instance, no two impressions could co-exist together, so in the latter, though they existed together, there could be no sort of communication between them. They would be absolutely cut off from and exclusive of each other. The mind in attending to any one must be wholly absorbed by it, and insensible of the rest. Our sensations would to every rational purpose be placed as completely out of the sphere of each other’s consciousness, as if they were parcel of another intellect, or floated in the region of the moon. That any number of detached, unconnected, actual sensations, impressed on different sentient beings, would not of themselves imply a conception of any one entire object is what every one is ready to grant:—it would be equally clear, that this idea could not arise from the impression of the different parts of an object on the different parts of the same organized, extended, sentient substance, but that in this case we involuntarily transfer our own consciousness to a being incapable of it, and identify these distinct sensible impressions in the same common intellect.

It is strange that Mr. Locke should rank among simple ideas that of number, which he defines to be the idea of unity repeated. But how this idea of successive or distinct units can ever give the idea of repetition unless the former instances are borne in mind, I cannot conceive. There might be a transition from one unit to another, but no addition or aggregate formed. As well might we suppose that a body of an inch diameter by shifting from place to place might enlarge its dimensions to a foot or a mile, as that a succession of units, perceived separately, should produce the complex idea of number. The natural fool that Mr. Hobbes speaks of, may be supposed to observe every stroke of the clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one: but he could never know what hour it strikes, according to Mr. Hobbes, without the use of those names of order, one, two, three, &c. nor according to my notion, without the help of that orderly understanding which first invented those names, and comprehends their meaning. On the material hypothesis, the mind can have but one idea at a time, and the idea of number could never enter into it.