68 Although is a compound pronominal adverb resembling Lat. tamen, and means “(the case being) quite thus (yet).”—F.
The same connection is marked by other conjunctions. “The ship was well manned, nevertheless it was lost.” Nevertheless, means not less for that.69 “Notwithstanding the ship was well manned, it was lost.” Notwithstanding, is, not being able to prevent, maugre, in spite of. The resolution of the above sentences is obvious. “The ship was well manned, yet it was lost.” Yet is the verb get, and has here the force of although, grant. “The ship was well manned, yet (or got, that being got, had, granted) it was lost.”70 “The ship was well manned, still, it was lost.” Still is part of an obsolete verb, to put, to fix, to establish. “The ship was well manned, still (that put, that supposed) it was lost.”71
69 Nevertheless means literally, “not less by (or for) that.” In this compound the is not the article, but an adverb, in Ang. Sax. thy, “by that much,” and corresponds to Lat. eo in the expression eo minus.—F.
70 Yet is of pronominal origin like Gr. ἴτι, Ger. jetzt, and has no connection with the verb get.—F.
71 Still seems to be the adjective still, quiet, used adverbially, and having the force of “undisturbed, uninterrupted by that.”—F.
A few more cases will exemplify all that is material in the marking power of the conjunctions.
“We study, that, we may be learned.” The connexion here, again, is that of cause and effect. “We study:” “We may be learned,” are the two predications, between which the connexion in question is to be marked. The demonstrative pronoun performs the service. “We may be learned, that we study:” we study; what? to be learned.
“John is more learned than James is eloquent.” The conjunction here is a relative term, and consists of the two words, more than. The two predications are, “John is learned,” “James is eloquent.” The connexion between them is, that they are the two parts of a comparison turning upon the point of greatness in degree. The two words more than, suffice to mark that connexion. Than is but a mode of spelling and pronouncing that, which use has appropriated to this particular case. “John is learned, more that (that being the more, the other of course is the less), James is eloquent.”72
72 Than is only another form of then, and marks that the one comes after the other, and is therefore inferior.—F.
As, obsolete as a pronoun, only exists as a conjunction. It is a word of the same import with that. The following will suffice in exemplification of the marking property which it retains. “Virgil was as great a poet as Cicero an orator.” The two predications are, “Virgil was a great poet,” “Cicero was a great orator.” They also are connected as the two parts of a comparison, turning upon the point of equality in degree. As, or that, suffices to mark that connexion. “Virgil was a great poet,” that (namely great) Cicero was an orator. We shall see afterwards, in the composition of RELATIVE TERMS, that every such term consists of two words, or the same word taken twice. The conjunction here is a relative term, and consists of two words, namely, as, or that, taken twice. “Virgil was a poet great, that that, an orator was Cicero;” the first that marking great as poet; the second that, marking great as orator.73
73 As is an oblique case of the demonstrative root sa, and is equivalent to “in this (degree);” and the nature of the connection is this: Virgil was a poet great in this degree; Cicero was an orator great in this degree; that is, the degree of greatness was the same in both.—F.
CHAPTER V.
CONSCIOUSNESS.
“It is not easy for the mind to put off those confused notions and prejudices it has imbibed from custom, inadvertency, and common conversation. It requires pains and assiduity to examine its ideas, till it resolves them into those clear and distinct simple ones out of which they are compounded; and to see which, amongst its simple ones, have or have not a necessary connexion and dependence one upon another. Till a man doth this in the primary and original notions of things, he builds upon floating and uncertain principles, and will often find himself at a loss.”—Locke, Hum. Und. b. ii. c. 13. s. 28.
IT will now be instructive to retrace our steps, to look back upon the space we have passed, and contemplate the progress we have made toward our journey’s end.
We have become acquainted with the elementary feelings of our nature; first, those derived immediately from our bodies, whether by impressions made on the surface of them, or unseen causes operating on them within; secondly, the feelings which, after the above mentioned feelings have ceased, are capable of existing as copies or representatives of them.
We have also observed the manner in which those secondary Feelings, to which we have given the name of IDEAS, flow, either into groups, or into trains. And we have explored the system of contrivances, to which mankind have had recourse, for MARKING those feelings, and the trains of them; so as either to fix the knowledge of them for one’s own use, or to make communication of them to others.
In what has been thus already presented, it will be seen that several expositions of considerable importance are included.
Sensations, and Ideas, are both feelings. When we have a sensation we feel, or have a feeling; when we have an idea we feel, or have a feeling.
Having a SENSATION, and having a feeling, are not two things. The thing is one, the names only are two. I am pricked by a pin. The sensation is one; but I may call it sensation, or a feeling, or a pain, as I please. Now, when, having the sensation, I say I feel the sensation, I only use a tautological expression: the sensation is not one thing, the feeling another; the sensation is the feeling. When, instead of the word feeling, I use the word conscious, I do exactly the same thing, I merely use a tautological expression. To say I feel a sensation, is merely to say I feel a feeling; which is an impropriety of speech. And to say I am conscious of a feeling, is merely to say that I feel it. To have a feeling is to be conscious; and to be conscious is to have a feeling. To be conscious of the prick of the pin, is merely to have the sensation. And though I have these various modes of naming my sensation, by saying, I feel the prick of a pin, I feel the pain of a prick, I have the sensation of a prick, I have the feeling of a prick, I am conscious of the feeling; the thing named in all these various ways is one and the same.
The same explanation will easily be seen to apply to IDEAS. Though, at present, I have not the sensation, called the prick of a pin, I have a distinct idea of it. The having an idea, and the not having it, are distinguished by the existence or non-existence of a certain feeling. To have an idea, and the feeling of that idea, are not two things; they are one and the same thing. To feel an idea, and to be conscious of that feeling, are not two things; the feeling and the consciousness are but two names for the same thing. In the very word feeling all that is implied in the word Consciousness is involved.
Those philosophers, therefore, who have spoken of Consciousness as a feeling, distinct from all other feelings, committed a mistake, and one, the evil consequences of which have been most important; for, by combining a chimerical ingredient with the elements of thought, they involved their inquiries in confusion and mystery, from the very commencement.
It is easy to see what is the nature of the terms CONSCIOUS, and CONSCIOUSNESS, and what is the marking function which they are destined to perform. It was of great importance, for the purpose of naming, that we should not only have names to distinguish the different classes of our feelings, but also a name applicable equally to all those classes. This purpose is answered by the concrete term Conscious; and the abstract of it, Consciousness. Thus, if we are in any way sentient; that is, have any of the feelings whatsoever of a living creature; the word Conscious is applicable to the feeler, and Consciousness to the feeling: that is to say, the words are GENERICAL marks, under which all the names of the subordinate classes of the feelings of a sentient creature are included. When I smell a rose, I am conscious; when I have the idea of a fire, I am conscious; when I remember, I am conscious; when I reason, and when I believe, I am conscious; but believing, and being conscious of belief, are not two things, they are the same thing; though this same thing I can name, at one time without the aid of the generical mark, while at another time it suits me to employ the generical mark.74 75
74 The mistake of Reid in raising Consciousness to a separate faculty has been commented on by Brown, Hamilton, and others. It must be allowed that to feel and to be conscious are not two things but the same thing: that is to say, the use of the term consciousness, whether in common life or in philosophical discussion, does not point to knowing, and exclude feeling.
Consciousness is the widest word in our vocabulary. By common consent it embraces everything that “mind” embraces; while one mode of extricating the great problem of Perception from self-contradictions, makes it mean more than mind strictly means. We speak of the object-consciousness as our attitude in being cognisant of the extended universe; while our attitude under feeling, and thought, we call subject-consciousness, or mind.
The object-consciousness follows one set of laws, the laws of matter and space, as propounded in Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and so on. The subject-consciousness follows a different set of laws, such as the laws of pleasure and pain, and the association of ideas, treated of in Psychology. We are conscious objectively, in counting the stars, we are conscious subjectively, in feeling oppressed by their number.
The subject-consciousness comprises all our feelings and thoughts; it enters into volition; and it makes a part of sensation, in which both attitudes are conjoined. This consciousness may be faint and limited, or it may be intense and variegated. We may be in a state of pleasure with little or nothing of thought accompanying; we are still properly said to be conscious or under consciousness. But we may add to the mere fact of pleasure, the cognition of the state, as a state of pleasure, and as a state belonging to us at the time. This is not the same thing as before: it is something new superposed upon the previous consciousness. When we take note of the fact that we are pleased, we proceed beyond the bare experience of the present pleasure, to an intellectual act of comparison, assimilation, or classification with past pleasures; we probably introduce the machinery of language to express ourselves as pleased; all this is so much extra consciousness. These knowing operations are not involved in mere feeling; we may feel without them. Indeed, if the cognitive powers are brought into very active exercise upon our feelings, as in the self-dissection of the Psychologist, the feelings themselves are apt to subside.
It is thus correct to draw a line between feeling, and knowing that we feel; although there is great delicacy in the operation. It may be said, in one sense, that we cannot feel without knowing that we feel, but the assertion is verging on error; for feeling may be accompanied with a minimum of cognitive energy, or as good as none at all; or it may be accompanied with an express application of our knowing powers, which is purely optional on our part, and even hostile to the full development of the feeling as feeling, as pleasure or pain.
Reid wanted a name to express the act of scrutinizing or examining the mind, and to correspond with such names as Perception, Observation, for the study of the extended or object universe. He used Consciousness for this purpose; a word that had been probably more applied to our cognitive energies than to our experience of mere feeling in its simplest manifestation. It is not often that “consciousness” is employed as the popular designation of states of feeling as such, states of marked enjoyment or suffering. On the other hand, the word is frequently made use of to designate the act of cognizing or thinking of our states of feeling; for which, however, self-consciousness is undoubtedly the more proper appellative.
Hamilton terms “consciousness” a “condition” of our feelings and mental operations; more correctly it is the operations themselves; the consciousness is not the condition of the feeling, but the feeling itself. More material is the opinion, held by Hamilton in common with most of the German philosophers, that the foundation of all consciousness is knowing; that we feel, only as we know that we feel. He says, “It is evident that every mental phenomenon is either an act of knowledge, or only possible through an act of knowledge: for consciousness is a knowledge—a phenomenon of cognition.” (“Metaphysics,” Lect xi.) Now although we may not be able to rebut this singular assertion by pointing to a state of feeling such as to entirely exclude knowledge, we may ask, do the two properties, said to be thus implicated, rise and fall in steady concomitance; the more the knowledge, the greater the feeling? The answer must be negative. A favourite doctrine of Hamilton, containing a certain amount of truth, affirms an inverse ratio between knowing and feeling; which it is difficult to reconcile with the present doctrine. A new distinction must be laid down between the kind of knowing that constitutes “feeling,” and the kind of knowing that constitutes “knowing” in the strict sense of knowledge. We may concede to Hamilton that feeling must always be within reach of a cognitive exertion, but it cannot be conceded that an actual cognitive exertion is essential to the manifestation of the feeling. Such exertion unless kept within narrow limits of intensity cools down instead of promoting the emotional state.
The facts of the case appear to be best represented, by allowing the state of Feeling to stand on its own independent foundation as a mode of the subject-consciousness, or of mind. There may, and almost always does, go along with it a certain degree of cognitive effort. We can scarcely be under feeling, without performing some function of an intellectual kind; the divisions of the mental energies do not imply that they can exist in absolute separation. The act of discriminating the degree of feeling,—of pronouncing a pleasure to be greater than, or equal to, some other pleasure,—is properly an intellectual, or cognitive exercise; but this discrimination does not make the feeling. So a feeling cannot exist without impressing the memory in some degree, which is an intellectual function; one may truly affirm that we do not feel unless, immediately afterwards, we remember that we felt. It is an incident or concomitant of feeling to leave an impression behind, but this does not characterize or define the state of feeling. Being an accompaniment or concomitant of an emotional excitement, we may point to memory as a proof of its existence and a criterion of its degree, but we should confuse all the boundaries of mental phenomena, if we treated memory or retentiveness otherwise than as an intellectual property, a property whose sphere is intellect and not feeling.—B.
75 Those psychologists who think that being conscious of a feeling is something different from merely having the feeling, generally give the name Consciousness to the mental act by which we refer the feeling to ourself; or, in other words, regard it in its relation to the series of many feelings, which constitutes our sentient life. Many philosophers have thought that this reference is necessarily involved in the fact of sensation: we cannot, they think, have a feeling, without having the knowledge awakened in us at the same moment, of a Self who feels it. But of this as a primordial fact of our nature, it is impossible to have direct evidence; and a supposition may be made which renders its truth at least questionable. Suppose a being, gifted with sensation but devoid of memory; whose sensations follow one after another, but leave no trace of their existence when they cease. Could this being have any knowledge or notion of a Self? Would he ever say to himself, I feel; this sensation is mine? I think not. The notion of a Self is, I apprehend, a consequence of Memory. There is no meaning in the word Ego or I, unless the I of to-day is also the I of yesterday; a permanent element which abides through a succession of feelings, and connects the feeling of each moment with the remembrance of previous feelings. We have, no doubt, a considerable difficulty in believing that a sentient being can exist without the consciousness of Itself. But this difficulty arises from the irresistible association which we, who possess Memory, form in our early infancy between every one of our feelings and our remembrance of the entire series of feelings of which it forms a part, and consequently between every one of our feelings and our Self. A slight correction, therefore, seems requisite to the doctrine of the author laid down in the present chapter. There is a mental process, over and above the mere having a feeling, to which the word Consciousness is sometimes, and it can hardly be said improperly, applied, viz. the reference of the feeling to our Self. But this process, though separable in thought from the actual feeling, and in all probability not accompanying it in the beginning, is, from a very early period of our existence, inseparably attendant on it, though, like many other mental processes, it often takes place too rapidly to be remembered at the next instant.
Other thinkers, or perhaps the same thinkers on other occasions, employ the word Consciousness as almost a synonyme of Attention. We all know that we have a power, partly voluntary, though often acting independently of our will, of attending (as it is called) to a particular sensation or thought. The essence of Attention is that the sensation or thought is, as it were, magnified, or strengthened: it becomes more intense as a whole, and at the same time more distinct and definite in its various parts, like a visible object when a stronger light is thrown upon it: while all other sensations or thoughts which do or which might present themselves at the same moment are blunted and dimmed, or altogether excluded. This heightening of the feeling we may call, if we please, heightening the consciousness of the feeling; and it may be said that we are made more conscious of the feeling than we were before: but the expression is scarcely correct, for we are not more conscious of the feeling, but are conscious of more feeling.
In some cases we are even said to be, by an act of attention, made conscious of a feeling of which we should otherwise have been unconscious: and there is much difference of opinion as to what it is which really occurs in this case. The point has received some consideration in a former Note, but there may be advantage in again recalling it to remembrance. It frequently happens (examples of it are abundant in the Analysis) that certain of our sensations, or certain parts of the series of our thoughts, not being sufficiently pleasurable or painful to compel attention, and there being no motive for attending to them voluntarily, pass off without having been attended to; and, not having received that artificial intensification, they are too slight and too fugitive to be remembered. We often have evidence that these sensations or ideas have been in the mind; because, during their short passage, they have called up other ideas by association. A good example is the case of reading from a book, when we must have perceived and recognized the visible letters and syllables, yet we retain a remembrance only of the sense which they conveyed. In such cases many psychologists think that the impressions have passed through the mind without our being conscious of them. But to have feelings unconsciously, to have had them without being aware, is something like a contradiction. All we really know is that we do not remember having had them; whence we reasonably conclude that if we had them, we did not attend to them; and this inattention to our feelings is what seems to be here meant by being unconscious of them. Either we had the sensations or other feelings without attending to them, and therefore immediately forgot them, or we never, in reality, had them. This last has been the opinion of some of the profoundest psychologists. Even in cases in which it is certain that we once had these feelings, and had them with a lively consciousness (as of the letters and syllables when we were only learning to read) yet when through numberless repetitions the process has become so rapid that we no longer remember having those visual sensations, these philosophers think that they are elided,—that we cease to have them at all. The usual impressions are made on our organs by the written characters, and are transmitted to the brain, but these organic states, they think, pass away without having had time to excite the sensations corresponding to them, the chain of association being kept up by the organic states without need of the sensations. This was apparently the opinion of Hartley; and is distinctly that of Mr. Herbert Spencer. The conflicting suppositions are both consistent with the known facts of our mental nature. Which of them is the true, our present knowledge does not, I think, enable us to decide.
The author of the Analysis often insists on the important doctrine that we have many feelings, both of the physical and of the mental class, which, either because they are permanent and unchangeable, or for the contrary reason, that they are extremely fugitive and evanescent, and are at the same time uninteresting to us except for the mental processes they originate, we form the habit of not attending to; and this habit, after a time, grows into an incapacity; we become unable to attend to them, even if we wish. In such cases we are usually not aware that we have had the feelings; yet the author seems to be of opinion that we really have them. He says, for example, in the section on Muscular Sensations (ch. i. sect. vii.) “We know that the air is continually pressing upon our bodies. But the sensation being continual, without any call to attend to it, we lose from habit, the power of doing so. The sensation is as if it did not exist.” Is it not the most reasonable supposition that the sensation does not exist; that the necessary condition of sensation is change; that an unchanging sensation, instead of becoming latent, dwindles in intensity, until it dies away, and ceases to be a sensation? Mr. Bain expresses this mental law by saying, that a necessary condition of Consciousness is change; that we are conscious only of changes of state. I apprehend that change is necessary to consciousness of feeling, only because it is necessary to feeling: when there is no change, there is, not a permanent feeling of which we are unconscious, but no feeling at all.
In the concluding chapter of Mr. Bain’s great work, there is an enumeration of the various senses in which the word Consciousness is used. He finds them no fewer than thirteen.—Ed.
CHAPTER VI.
CONCEPTION.
“The generalizations of language are already made for us, before we have ourselves begun to generalize; and our mind receives the abstract phrases without any definite analysis, almost as readily as it receives and adopts the simple names of persons and things. The separate co-existing phenomena, and the separate sequences of a long succession of words, which it has been found convenient to comprehend in a single word, are hence, from the constant use of that single word, regarded by the mind almost in the same manner, as if they were only one phenomenon, or one event.”—Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect. By Thomas Brown, M.D. Note M, p. 567.
THE philosophers, who erected CONSCIOUSNESS into what they called a Power of the mind, have bestowed the same rank upon CONCEPTION.
When we have a Sensation, we are not said, in the ordinary use of the word, to Conceive. If burned with the candle, I do not say, “I conceive the pain;” I do not say, if I smelt putrescence, that “I conceive the stench.” It even seems to be not without a sort of impropriety, if the term is ever applied to mark a simple Idea. We should not, in ordinary language, say, “I conceive red,” “I conceive green.” We say, however, “I conceive a horse,” “I conceive a tree,”; I conceive a ship;” we say also, “I conceive an argument,” “I conceive a plan.” In these examples, which may be taken as a sufficient specimen of the manner in which the term Conception is used, we see that it is applied exclusively to cases of the secondary feelings; to the Idea, not the Sensation; and to the case of compound, not of single ideas. With this use, the etymology of the word very accurately corresponds: I conceive, that is, I take together, a horse; that is, the several ideas, combined under the name horse, and constituting a compound idea. The term conception, we have seen, applies not only to those combinations of ideas, which we call the ideas of external objects, but to those combinations which the mind makes for its own purposes.
It thus appears, that the word CONCEPTION is a generical name, like CONSCIOUSNESS; but less comprehensive. We call ourselves conscious, when we have any sensation, or any idea. We say that we conceive, only when we have some complex idea. It remains to be inquired, whether by saying we conceive, or have a conception, we mean any thing whatsoever beside having an idea.
If I say, I have the idea of a horse, I can explain distinctly what I mean. I have the ideas of the sensations of sight, of touch, of hearing, of smelling, with which the body and actions of a horse have impressed me; these ideas, all combined, and so closely, that their existence appears simultaneous, and one. This is my IDEA of a horse. If I say, I have a CONCEPTION of a horse, and am asked to explain what I mean, I give the same account exactly, and I can give no other. My CONCEPTION of the horse, is merely my taking together, in one, the simple ideas of the sensations which constitute my knowledge of the horse; and my IDEA of the horse is the same thing.
We may notice here, however, one of those curious illusions, which the intimate associations of ideas with words, so often, and sometimes so inconveniently, occasion. The term “I conceive,” has the form of an active verb; and with the form of an active verb THE IDEA OF ACTION is so frequently conjoined, that we are rarely able to separate them. By this means, the idea of activeness is often mixed up with other ideas, when it is wholly misplaced and illusive. I use the same form of expression when I say, I dream; as when I say, I study, I argue, I imagine. In these cases the idea of what I call activity is properly included: in the expression I dream, it is not properly included; though the active form of the verb so invariably calls up a certain idea of activity, and so strongly tends to mix it with the other ideas, that in using the term, “I dream,” we seem to consider ourselves as, somehow, agents. Even in using the term, “I die,” we cannot escape the illusion; though the ideas are so highly incongruous. It would be obviously absurd to affirm that we are less active when we say we have an idea, than when we say we have a conception, yet there is constantly a feeling, when we use the phrase “I conceive,” as if we were in some manner active; and no such feeling, when we use the phrase “I have an idea.” The terms, therefore, the concrete “conceive,” and its abstract “conception,” are somewhat inconvenient, and misguiding, as they infuse into the complex ideas to which they are applied, an ingredient which does not belong to them.
The relation which the words, CONSCIOUSNESS, and CONCEPTION, bear to one another, is now, therefore, apparent. Consciousness is the more generical of the two names. Conception is the name of a class included under the name Consciousness. Consciousness applies to sensations, and to ideas, whether simple or complex; to all the feelings, whatsoever they may be, of our sentient nature. Conception applies only to ideas; and to ideas, only in a state of combination. It is a generical name including the several classes of complex ideas.76
76 The doctrine of this chapter is as just as it is admirably stated. A conception is nothing whatever but a complex idea, and to conceive is to have a complex idea. But as there must always have been some cause why a second name is used when there is already a first, there is generally some difference in the occasions of their employment: and a recognition of this difference is necessary to the completeness of the exposition. It seems to me that conception and to conceive are phrases appropriated to the case in which the thing conceived is supposed to be something external to my own mind. I am not said to conceive my own thoughts; unless it be in the ease of an invention, or mental creation; and even then, to conceive it, means to imagine it realized, so that it may be presented to myself or others as an external object. To conceive something is to understand what it is; to adapt my complex idea to something presented to me objectively. I am asked to conceive an iceberg: it is not enough that I form to myself some complex idea; it must be a complex idea which shall really resemble an iceberg, i.e., what is called an iceberg by other people. My complex idea must be made up of the elements in my mind which correspond to the elements making up the idea of an iceberg in theirs.
This is connected with one of the most powerful and misleading of the illusions of general language. The purposes of general names would not be answered, unless the complex idea connected with a general name in one person’s mind were composed of essentially the same elements as the idea connected with it in the mind of another. There hence arises a natural illusion, making us feel as if, instead of ideas as numerous as minds, and merely resembling one another, there were one idea, independent of individual minds, and to which it is the business of each to learn to make his private idea correspond. This is the Platonic doctrine of Ideas in all its purity: and as half the speculative world are Platonists without knowing it, hence it also is that in the writings of so many psychologists we read of the conception or the concept of so and so; as if there was a concept of a thing or of a class of things, other than the ideas in individual minds—a concept belonging to everybody, the common inheritance of the human race, but independent of any of the particular minds which conceive it. In reality, however, this common concept is but the sum of the elements which it is requisite for the purposes of discourse that people should agree with one another in including in the complex idea which they associate with a class name. As we shall presently see, these are only a part, and often but a small part, of each person’s complex idea, but they are the part which it is necessary should be the same in all.—Ed.
CHAPTER VII.
IMAGINATION.
THE IMAGINATION is another term, the explanation of which will be found to be included in the expositions which have previously been given.
The phenomena classed under this title are explained, by modern Philosophers, on the principles of Association. Their accounts of the mental process, to which the name Imagination is applied, include their explanation of the laws of Association, or the manner in which ideas succeed one another in a train, with little else, except remarks on the causes to which diversity in the several kinds of Imagination may be traced.
It is not to be overlooked that the term IMAGINATION is here used in the sense which is given to it by philosophers when they rank it as a particular power of the mind; for it is no doubt true, that it is often used, in vulgar speech, as synonymous with Conception, and with Supposition, and with Conjecture; as the verb, to imagine, is, with the verbs, to discover, to suppose, conjecture, believe, and perhaps others.
We have seen that Consciousness, and Conception, are names of feelings, taken one by one: Consciousness of any of our feelings so taken; Conception of a particular class of them, namely, complex ideas. IMAGINATION is not a name of any one idea. I am not said to imagine, unless I combine ideas successively in a less or greater number. An imagination, therefore, is the name of a train. I am said to have an imagination when I have a train of ideas; and when I am said to imagine, I have the same thing; nor is there any train of ideas, to which the term imagination may not be applied.
In this comprehensive meaning of the word Imagination, there is no man who has not Imagination, and no man who has it not in an equal degree with any other. Every man imagines, nay, is constantly, and unavoidably, imagining. He cannot help imagining. He can no more stop the current of his ideas, than he can stop the current of his blood.
In the phrase we have just employed, “there is no man who has not imagination,” it is meant, that there is no man who now has not, who has not always had, and who will not always have a train of ideas. Imagination, therefore, is a word connoting indefinite time; it is, to use the language of the Greek grammarians, aoristical. When it connotes, which by the strain of the passage it may be made to do, a particular time, it marks a particular train. When it connotes time indefinitely, it marks trains indefinitely, any train at any time.
The having or doing a thing at any time, means the potentiality of having or doing it. Imagination, then, has two meanings. It means either some one train, or the potentiality of a train. These are two meanings which it is very necessary not to confound.
There is great diversity of trains. Not only has the same individual an endless variety of trains; but a different character belongs to the whole series of trains which pass through the minds of different individuals or classes of individuals. The different pursuits in which the several classes of men are engaged, render particular trains of ideas more common to them than other trains. One man is a merchant; and trains respecting the goods in which he deals, the markets in which he buys, and those in which he sells, are habitual in his mind. Another man is a lawyer, and ideas of clients, and fees, and judges, and witnesses, and legal instruments, and points of contestation, and the practice of his court, are habitually passing in his mind. Ideas of another kind occupy the mind of the physician; of another kind still, the mind of the warrior. The statesman is occupied with a train different from that of any of the classes that have been mentioned; and one statesman with a very different train from another, according as his mind is running upon expedients which may serve the purpose of the day, or arrangements which may secure the happiness of the population from generation to generation. A peculiar character belongs to the train which habitually occupies the mind of the mathematician. The mind of the metaphysician is also occupied by a train distinguished from that of other classes. And there is one man, yet to be mentioned, the poet, the peculiarity of whose trains has been a subject of particular observation. To such a degree, indeed, have the trains of the poet been singled out for distinction, that the word Imagination, in a more restricted sense, is appropriated to them. We do not call the trains of the lawyer, or the trains of the merchant, imagination. We do not speak of them as imagining, when they are revolving, each, the ideas which belong to his peculiar occupation; it is only to the poet, that the epithet of imagining is applied. His trains, or trains analogous to his, are those which receive the name of Imagination.
It is then a question, to which we should find an answer, whether, in that by which the trains of the poet differ from the trains of other men, there be any thing which, being wholly absent from that by which the trains of other classes are distinguished, lays a foundation for this peculiarity of naming.
The trains of one class differ from those of another, the trains of the merchant, for example, from those of the lawyer, not in this, that the ideas follow one an other by any other law, in the mind of the one, and the mind of the other; they follow by the same laws exactly; and are equally composed of ideas, mixed indeed with sensations, in the minds of both. The difference consists in this, that the ideas which flow in their minds, and compose their trains, are ideas of different things. The ideas of the lawyer are ideas of the legal provisions, forms, and distinctions, and of the actions, bodily, and mental, about which he is conversant. The ideas of the merchant are equally ideas of the objects and operations, about which he is concerned, and the ends toward which his actions are directed; but the objects and operations themselves, are remarkably different. The trains of poets, also, do not differ from the trains of other men, but perfectly agree with them, in this, that they are composed of ideas, and that those ideas succeed one another, according to the same laws, in their, and in other minds. They are ideas, however, of very different things. The ideas of the poet are ideas of all that is most lovely and striking in the visible appearances of nature, and of all that is most interesting in the actions and affections of human beings. It thus, however, appears most manifestly, that the trains of poets differ from those of other men in no other way, than those of other men differ from one another; that they differ from them by this only, that the ideas of which they are composed, are ideas of different things. There is also nothing surprising in this, that, being trains of pleasurable ideas, they should have attracted a peculiar degree of attention; and in an early age, when poetry was the only literature, should have been thought worthy of a more particular naming, than the trains of any other class. These reasons seem to account for a sort of appropriation of the name Imagination, to the trains of the poet. An additional reason may be seen in another circumstance, which also affords an interesting illustration of a law of association already propounded; namely, the obscuration of the antecedent part of a train, which leads to a subsequent, more interesting than itself. In the case of the lawyer, the train leads to a decision favourable to the side which he advocates. The train has nothing pleasurable in itself. The pleasure is all derived from the end. The same is the case with the merchant. His trains are directed to a particular end. And it is the end alone, which gives a value to the train. The end of the metaphysical, and the end of the mathematical inquirer, is the discovery of truth: their trains are directed to that object; and are, or are not, a source of pleasure, as that end is or is not attained. But the case is perfectly different with the poet. His train is its own end. It is all delightful, or the purpose is frustrate. From the established laws of association, this consequence unavoidably followed; that, in the case of the trains of those other classes, the interest of which was concentrated in the end, attention was withdrawn from the train by being fixed upon the end; that in the case of the poet, on the other hand, the train itself being the only object, and that pleasurable, the attention was wholly fixed upon the train; that hence the train of the poet was provided with a name; that in the cases of the trains of other men, where the end only was interesting, it was thought enough that the end itself should be named, the train was neglected.
In conformity with this observation, we find, that wherever there is a train which leads to nothing beyond itself, and has any pretension to the character of pleasurable (the various kinds of reverie, for example), it is allowed the name of Imagination. Thus we say that Rousseau indulged his imagination, when, as he himself describes it, lying on his back, in his boat, on the little lake of Bienne, he delivered himself up for hours to trains, of which, he says, the pleasure surpassed every other enjoyment.
Professor Dugald Stewart has given to the word Imagination, a technical meaning; without, as it appears to me, any corresponding advantage. He confines it to the cases in which the mind forms new combinations; or, as he calls them, creations; that is, to cases in which the ideas which compose the train do not come together in the same combinations in which sensations had ever been received. But this is no specific difference. This happens, in every train of any considerable length, whether directed to any end, or not so directed. It is implied in every wish of the child to fly, or to jump over the house; in a large proportion of all his playful expressions, as puss in boots, a hog in armour, a monkey preaching, and so on. It is manifested in perfection in every dream. It is well known that, for the discovery of truths in philosophy, there is a demand for new trains of thought, multitudes of which pass in review before the mind, are contemplated, and rejected, before the happy combination is attained, in which the discovery is involved. If imagination consists in bringing trains before the mind involving a number of new combinations, imagination is probably more the occupation of the philosopher than of the poet.
Mr. Stewart appears not to have understood the real distinction between the use of the words Conception, and Imagination; that the one is the name of a single idea, the other that of a train. He also involves, without seeming to be wholly aware of it, the idea of a train destined to a particular end in the meaning which he bestows on the word Imagination. Imagination is with him, not the name of a train having merely new combinations, but of a train having new combinations, and those destined to some end. But this is not more the character of the trains which belong to the painter and the poet, as his language appears to imply, than it is of the lawyer, or the metaphysician; or, indeed, the professors of many of the vulgar arts; the tailor, for example, and the mantua-maker.77
77 The foregoing analysis of the Imagination brings to view some of the important points of distinction between it and the other faculties; for example, the circumstance that the trains and constructions of the Imagination are their own ends, and not a means to farther ends, as in the constructions of science and of the industrial arts. All creative originality is not imagination; the steam-engine was not a product of this faculty.
The main features that distinguish the Imagination seem to be these three:—
1. It is a faculty of the CONCRETE, like Perception and Memory, and not of the Abstract, as the scientific faculties. When we imagine a thing, we picture it to the mind, as far as we are able, in its full concrete reality. Our imagination of a scene in the tropics is of the character of an actual perception; it embraces, or should embrace, whatever would strike the view of any one surveying the reality.
2. Imagination rises above Perception and Memory, in being a CONSTRUCTIVE faculty. It alters, re-arranges, puts together the materials of perception and memory to satisfy certain demands of the mind. In this respect, it is more than Conception, which as viewed by the author, is also a faculty of the concrete, but introduces no novelty of combination. Conception may involve a great constructive effort, as when we try to picture to ourselves a poet’s creation by the help of his language; nevertheless, the term imagination loses its characteristic force, and leaves an important meaning without a name, if applied to this conceiving or realizing effort. The imaginative stretch belongs to the poet or artist; the power of conceiving is what the reader of a poem brings into exercise.
3. Imagination is swayed by some PRESENT EMOTION. This is another way of expressing the author’s view that it is an end in itself. If we were to use the general word “feeling,” we should encounter the difficulty of separating imagination from common industry, which is all intended to gain pleasures or ward off pains.
The brief designation “present emotion” approximates to, but does not fully bring out, the precise operation of the feelings in the constructions of Imagination. When, actuated by the love of the marvellous, any one invents a fabulous story, or highly exaggerates a real occurrence, the process is a typical instance of the imaginative workings.
The Fine Arts are the domain of Imagination; the one goes far to specify the other. If the coincidence were exact, Imagination would be defined by a definition of the Æsthetic emotions. Now, although any original construction, selected and put together to gratify an Æsthetic emotion, is a work of Imagination, yet imagination is not exhausted by fine art. The picture that an angry man draws of his enemy would be called an effort of imagination, but not a work of fine art. All our emotions,—Wonder, Fear, Love, Anger, Vanity—determine the constructions of the intellect, when called into active exercise; and for these constructions we have no other name but imagination, whether they may, or may not give pleasure as works of art.
Perhaps this exceptional region may be marked out by a statement of the perverting influence, or bias, of the feelings in matters of truth and falsehood, or in works of utility. When the true and the useful, instead of being determined by their own ends, or their proper criteria, are swayed by extraneous emotions—giving birth to mythical or fictitious creations—we have the corrupting substitution of Imagination for Reason in men’s judgments and opinions.
Thus, Fear is a potent spur to Imagination; its creations may not be æsthetically agreeable, and therefore may not come under the definition of Fine Art; yet they are fairly to be described as perverting the judgment of true and false.—B.
CHAPTER VIII.
CLASSIFICATION.
“Dans l’ordre historique, la philosophie transcendante a devancé la philosophie élémentaire. Il ne faut point s’en étonner; les grands problèmes de la métaphysique et de la morale se présentent à l’homme, dans l’enfance même de son intelligence, avec une grandeur et une obscurité qui le séduisent et qui l’attirent. L’homme, qui se sent fait pour connoître, court d’abord à la vérité avec plus d’ardeur que de sagesse; il cherche à deviner ce qu’il ne peut comprendre, et se perd dans des conjectures absurdes ou téméraires. Les théogonies et les cosmogonies sont antérieures à la saine physique, et l’esprit humain a passé à travers toutes les agitations et les délires de la métaphysique transcendante avant d’arriver à la psychologie.”—Cousin, Frag. Philos. p. 75.
THE process by which we connect what we call the objects of our senses, and also our ideas, into certain aggregates called classes, is of too much importance not to have attracted the attention of those who have engaged in the study of mind. Yet it is doubtful, whether metaphysicians have regarded CLASSIFICATION as an original power of the mind, or have allowed that what is included under that name might be resolved into simpler elements. The term Abstraction, I think, they have generally taken as the name of a distinct, and original, power, not susceptible of further analysis. But, in doing so, it seems (for the language of writers is too loose on this subject, to allow us the use of more affirmative terms), they have restricted the name to the power of forming such ideas as are represented by the terms, hardness, softness, length, breadth, space, and so on. And this operation they rather consider as subservient to classification, than as that operation itself. The process, however, of grouping individuals into classes, has been regarded as sufficiently mysterious. The nature of it has been the object of deep curiosity; and the erroneous opinions which were entertained of it bewildered, for many ages, the most eminent philosophers; and enfeebled the human mind.
What (it was inquired) is that which is really done by the mind, when it forms individuals into classes; separates such and such things from others, and regards them, under a certain idea of unity, as some thing by themselves? Why is the segregation thought of? And for what end is it made? These questions all received answers; but it was many ages before they received an answer approaching the truth; and it is only necessary to read with care the writings of Plato and of Aristotle, and of all philosophers, with very few exceptions, from theirs to the present time, to see, that a misunderstanding of the nature of General Terms is that which chiefly perplexed them in their inquiries, and involved them in a confusion, which was inextricable, so long as those terms were unexplained.
The process in forming those classes was said to be this. The Mind leaves out of its view this, and that, and the other thing, in which individuals differ from one another; and retaining only those in which they all agree, it forms them into a class. But what is this forming of a class? What does it mean? When I form a material aggregate; when I collect a library; when I build a house; when I even raise a heap of stones; I move the things, whatever they may be, and place them, either regularly or irregularly, in a mass together. But when I form a class, I perform no operation of this sort. I touch not, nor do I in any way whatsoever act upon the individuals which I class. The proceeding is all mental. Forming a class of individuals, is a mode of regarding them. But what is meant by a mode of regarding things? This is mysterious; and is as mysteriously explained, when it is said to be the taking into view the particulars in which individuals agree. For what is there, which it is possible for the mind to take into view, in that in which individuals agree? Every colour is an individual colour, every size is an individual size, every shape is an individual shape. But things have no individual colour in common, no individual shape in common, no individual size in common; that is to say, they have neither shape, colour, nor size in common. What, then, is it which they have in common, which the mind can take into view? Those who affirmed that it was something, could by no means tell. They substituted words for things; using vague and mystical phrases, which, when examined, meant nothing. Plato called it ἰδέα, Aristotle, εἶδος, both, words taken from the verb to see; intimating, something as it were seen, or viewed, as we call it. At bottom, Aristotle’s εἶδος, is the same with Plato’s ἰδέα, though Aristotle makes a great affair of some very trifling differences, which he creates and sets up between them. The Latins, translated both ἰδέα, and εἶδος, by the same words, and were very much at a loss for one to answer the purpose; they used species, derived in like manner from a verb to see, but which, having other meanings, was ill adapted for a scientific word; they brought, therefore, another word in aid, forma, the same with ὅραμα, derived equally from a verb signifying to see, which suited the purpose just as imperfectly as species; and as writers used both terms, according as the one or the other appeared best to correspond with their meaning, they thickened by this means the confusion.
After a time, unfortunately a long time, it began to be perceived, that what was thus represented as the object of the mind in the formation of classes, was chimerical and absurd; when a set of inquirers appeared, who denied the existence of all such objects, affirmed that ideas were all individual, and that nothing was general but names. The question rose to the dignity of a controversy; and to the hateful violence of a religious controversy. They who affirmed the existence of general ideas were called Realists, they who denied their existence Nominalists. There can be no doubt, that of the two the Nominalists approached, by far, the nearest to the truth; and their speculations tended strongly to remove from mental science the confusion in which the total misapprehension of abstract terms had involved it. But the clergy brought religion into the quarrel, and as usual on the wrong side. Realism was preached as the doctrine which alone was consistent with orthodoxy; the Nominalists were hunted down; and persecution, well knowing her object, clung to the books as well as the men; so that the books of the Nominalists, though the art of printing tended strongly to preserve them, were suppressed and destroyed, to such a degree, that it is now exceedingly difficult to collect them; and not easy to obtain copies even of the most remarkable.
The opinion, that the particulars in which the individuals of a class agree were distinct Objects of the Mind, soon made them distinct EXISTENCES; they were the Essence of things; the Eternal Exemplars, according to which individual things were made; they were called UNIVERSALS, and regarded as alone the Objects of the Intellect. They were invariable, always the same; individuals, not the objects of intellect but only the low objects of sense, were in perpetual flux, and never, for any considerable period, the same. Universals alone have Unity; they alone were the subject of science; Individuals were innumerable, every one different from another; and cognoscible only by the lower, the sensitive part of our nature.
Endless were the subtleties into which ingenious men were misled, in the contemplation of those Fictions; and wonderful were the attributes which they bestowed upon them. “It is, then, on these permanent Phantasms,” says Mr. Harris, copying the ancient Philosophers, “that the human mind first works, and by an energy as spontaneous and familiar to its nature, as the seeing of colour is familiar to the eye, it discerns at once what in MANY is ONE; what in things DISSIMILAR and DIFFERENT is SIMILAR and the SAME. By this it comes to behold a kind of superior Objects; a new Race of Perceptions, more comprehensive than those of sense; a Race of Perceptions, each one of which, may be found entire and whole in the separate individuals of an infinite and fleeting multitude, without departing from the unity and permanence of its own nature.”8* Here we have something sufficiently mystical; a thing which is, at once, ONE, and MANY; which is ONE, it seems, by its very nature, and yet may exist, entire and whole, in the separate individuals of an infinite MULTITUDE. This is a specimen of their Doctrine; a specimen of what they call THE SUBLIME in Intellection.
8* Hermes, b. iii. ch. 4.
But this is not all. For as, when we form a minor class, as man, there is a certain ONE, the object of intellect, complete in every individual; MANY, therefore, and at the same time, ONE; so when we form a larger class, animal, there is a certain ONE, the object of intellect, complete in every one of those individuals. And when we go still higher, as to the grand class, BODY, there is always a ONE, the object of intellect, complete in every one of those more numerous individuals. When we mount up to the very summit, and embrace all things in one class, BEING, there is in like manner a ONE, the object of intellect, complete in every individual that exists. This is the grand ONE; the ONE pre-eminently. This is the ONE; τό ἕν; ONENESS; ONE in the abstract. This was a conception deemed truly SUBLIME. The loftiest epithets were bestowed upon τό ἕν, the ONE. It was DIVINE; it was more than that; for being not concrete, but abstract, it was DIVINITY. All things were contained in the ONE; and the ONE was in all things. The ONE was the source and principle of Being. It was immutable, eternal.
These ONES they also called by the names of Internal Forms, and Intelligible Forms. Thus Harris: “Let us suppose any man to look for the first time upon some Work of Art; as, for example, upon a Clock; and, having sufficiently viewed it, at length to depart. Would he not retain, when absent, an Idea of what he had seen? And what is it, to retain such Idea? It is to have A FORM INTERNAL correspondent to THE EXTERNAL; only with this difference, that the Internal Form is devoid of the Matter; the External is united with it, being seen in the metal, the wood, and the like. Now, if we suppose this Spectator to view many such Machines, and not simply to view, but to consider every part of them, so as to comprehend how those parts all operate to one End, he might be then said to possess a kind of INTELLIGIBLE FORM, by which he would not only understand and know the clocks, which he had seen already, but every Work, also, of like Sort, which he might see hereafter.”
We might here remark upon the mystical jargon, which is thus employed to obscure the simple fact, that after a man has seen an individual of a particular kind he has the idea of that individual; and after he has seen various individuals of the same kind, he has ideas of the various individuals, and has them combined by association. But we must hear Mr. Harris a little further.
After telling us that there are two orders of these immutable INTELLIGIBLE FORMS; one belonging to the Contemplator of objects, and subsequent to their existence; another belonging to the Maker of them, being the archetype, according to which they were formed; he thus proceeds: “The WHOLE VISIBLE WORLD, exhibits nothing more than so many passing pictures of these IMMUTABLE ARCHETYPES. Nay, through these it attains even a Semblance of Immortality, and continues throughout ages to be SPECIFICALLY ONE, amid those infinite particular changes, that befall it every moment. May we be allowed then to credit those speculative men, who tell us, it is in these permanent and comprehensive FORMS that the DEITY views at once, without looking abroad, all possible productions both present, past, and future; that this great and stupendous view is but a view of himself, where all things lie enveloped in their Principles and Exemplars, as being essential to the fulness of this universal Intellection?”
I shall exhibit but one other specimen of the mode of speculating about these imaginary Beings, from another great master of the ancient philosophy, Cudworth. Both Aristotle and Plato, he says, “acknowledged two sorts of Entities, the one mutable, or subject to flux and motion, such as are especially individual corporeal things; the other immutable, that always rest or stand still, which are the proper objects of certain, constant, and immutable knowledge, that therefore cannot be mere nothings, non-entities.
“Which latter kind of being, that is, the immutable essence, as a distinct thing from individual sensibles, Aristotle plainly asserts against Heraclitus, and those other flowing philosophers in these words: ‘We would have these philosophers to know, that besides sensible things that are always mutable, there is another kind of being or entity of such things as are neither subject to motion, corruption, nor generation.’ And elsewhere he tells us, that this immovable essence is the object of theoretical knowledge, of the first philosophy, and of the pure mathematics.
“Now these immutable entities are the universal rationes, or intelligible natures and essences of all things, which some compare to unities, but Aristotle to numbers; which formally considered, are indivisible: saith he, ‘The essences of things are like to numbers;’ because if but the least thing be added to any number, or subtracted from it, the number is destroyed.