85. To avoid an endless subtlety of distinction I have not here given any account of consciousness in general: but the same reasoning will apply to both.
86. Suppose a number of men employed to cast a mound into the sea. As far as it has gone, the workmen pass backwards and forwards on it, it stands firm in it’s place, and though it recedes farther and farther from the shore, it is still joined to it. A man’s personal identity and self-interest have just the same principle and extent, and can reach no farther than his actual existence. But if a man of a metaphysical turn, seeing that the pier was not yet finished, but was to be continued to a certain point and in a certain direction, should take it into his head to insist that what was already built and what was to be built were the same pier, that the one must afford as good footing as the other, and should accordingly walk over the pier-head on the solid foundation of his metaphysical hypothesis—he would argue a great deal more ridiculously, but not a whit more absurdly than those who found a principle of absolute self-interest on a man’s future identity with his present being. But say you, the comparison does not hold in this, that the man can extend his thoughts (and that very wisely too) beyond the present moment, whereas in the other case he cannot move a single step forwards. Grant it. This will only shew that the mind has wings as well as feet, which of itself is a sufficient answer to the selfish hypothesis.
87. See Preface to Wordsworth’s Poems.
88. I do not mean that Helvetius was the first who conceived the hypothesis here spoken of (for I do not think he had wit enough to invent even an ingenious absurdity) but it was through him I believe that this notion has attained it’s present popularity, and in France particularly it has had, I am certain, a very general influence on the national character. It was brought forward in the most forcible manner by the writers of the last century, and it is expressly stated, and clearly answered by Bishop Butler in the Preface to his Sermons at the Rolls’ Chapel. After Berkeley’s Essay on Vision, I do not know of any work better worth the attention of those who would learn to think than these same metaphysical Discourses preached at the Rolls’ Chapel.
89. No doubt the picture is always looked at with a very different feeling from what it would have been, if the idea of the person had never been distinctly associated with it.
90. Consciousness is here and all along (where any particular stress is laid upon it) used in it’s etymological sense, as literally the same with conscientia, the knowing or perceiving many things by a simple act.
91. Those of the touch admit of the greatest variety in this respect from the general diffusion of that sense over the whole body, and those which depend on hearing from the small part of the ear which is in general distinctly affected by sound at the same time. As to the taste and smell, the stimulants applied to these senses are such as for the most part to act on a large proportion of the organ at once, though only at intervals. The direction of smells is hardly distinguishable like that of sounds.
92. The method taken by Hartley in detailing the associations, which take place between the ideas of each of the senses one by one, saves him the trouble of explaining those which take place between the ideas of different senses at the same time.
93. I have always had the same feeling with respect to Hartley (still granting his power to the utmost) which is pleasantly expressed in an old author, Roger Bacon, quoted by Sir Kenelm Digby in his answer to Brown. ‘Those students,’ he says, ‘who busy themselves much with such notions as relate wholly to the fantasie, do hardly ever become idoneous for abstracted metaphysical speculations; the one having bulky foundation of matter or of the accidents of it to settle upon, (at the least with one foot:) the other flying continually, even to a lessening pitch, in the subtil air. And accordingly, it hath been generally noted, that the exactest mathematicians, who converse altogether with lines, figures, and other differences of quantity, have seldom proved eminent in metaphysicks or speculative divinity. Nor again, the professors of these sciences in the other arts. Much less can it be expected, that an excellent physician, whose fancy is always fraught with the material drugs that he prescribeth his apothecary to compound his medicines of, and whose hands are inured to the cutting up, and eyes to the inspection of anatomized bodies, should easily and with success, flie his thoughts at so towring a game, as a pure intellect, a separated and unbodied soul.’—I confess I feel in reading Hartley something in the way in which the Dryads must have done shut up in their old oak trees. I feel my sides pressed hard, and bored with points of knotty inferences piled up one upon another without being able ever to recollect myself, or catch a glimpse of the actual world without me. I am somehow wedged in between different rows of material objects, overpowering me by their throng, and from which I have no power to escape, but of which I neither know nor understand any thing. I constantly see objects multiplied upon me, not powers at work, I know no reason why one thing follows another but that something else is conjured up between them, which has as little apparent connection with either as they have with one another;—he always reasons from the concrete object, not from the abstract or essential properties of things, and in his whole book I do not believe that there is one good definition. It would be a bad way to describe a man’s character to say that he had a wise father or a foolish son, and yet this is the way in which Hartley defines ideas by stating what precedes them in the mind, and what comes after them. Thus he defines the will to be ‘that idea, or state of mind which precedes action,’ or ‘a desire, or aversion sufficiently strong to produce action,’ &c. He gives you the outward signs of things in the order in which he conceives them to follow one another, never the demonstration of certain consequences from the known nature of their causes, which alone is true reasoning. Nevertheless, it is not to be forgotten, that he was also a great man. See his Chapter on Memory, &c.
94. See Priestley’s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever.
95. See Essays by T. Cooper of Manchester. This very curious analysis was also delivered with great gravity by Mr. Mac-Intosh to the metaphysical students of Lincoln’s-Inn. I confess I like ingenuity, however misapplied, if it is but a man’s own: but the dull, affected, pompous repetition of nonsense is not to be endured with patience. In retailing what is not our own, the only merit must be in the choice, or judgment. A man, however, without originality may yet have common sense and common honesty. To be a hawker of worn-out paradoxes, and a pander to sophistry denotes indeed a desperate ambition.
96. This subject of consciousness, the most abstruse, the most important of all others, the most filled with seeming inexplicable contradictions, that which bids the completest defiance to the matter-of-fact philosophy and can only be developed by the patient soliciting of a man’s own spirit has been accordingly passed over by the herd of philosophers from Locke downwards. There is a short note about it in Hartley in which he flatly denies the possibility of any such thing. Lest what I have already said should therefore be insufficient to fix the attention of the reader on a subject which he may think quite exploded, I will add the account which Rousseau has given of the same subject, whose authority does not weigh the less with me because it is unsupported by the Logic of Condillac, or the book De l’Esprit.
‘Me voici déjà tout aussi sûr de l’existence de l’univers, que de la mienne. Ensuite je réfléchis sur les objets de mes sensations, et trouvant en moi la faculté de les comparer, je me sens doué d’une force active que je ne savois pas avoir auparavant.
‘Appercevoir, c’est sentir; comparer, c’est juger: juger et sentir ne sont pas la même chose. Par la sensation, les objets s’offrent à moi séparés, isolés, tels qu’ils sont dans la Nature; par la comparaison, je les remue, je les transporte, pour ainsi dire, je les pose l’un sur l’autre, pour prononcer sur leur différence ou sur leur similitude, et généralement sur tous leurs rapports. Selon moi, la faculté distinctive de l’être actif, ou intelligent est de pouvoir donner un sens à ce mot, est. Je cherche en vain dans l’être purement sensitif cette force intelligente, qui superpose, et puis qui prononce; je ne la saurois voir dans sa nature. Cet être passif sentira chaque objet séparément, ou même il sentira l’objet total formé des deux, mais n’ayant aucune force pour les replier l’un sur l’autre, il ne les comparera jamais, il ne les jugera point.
‘Voir deux objets à la fois, n’est pas voir leurs rapports, ni juger de leurs différences; appercevoir plusieurs objets les uns hors des autres, n’est pas les nombrer. Je puis avoir au même instant l’idée d’un grand bâton et d’un petit bâton sans les comparer, sans juger que l’un est plus petit que l’autre, comme je puis voir à la fois ma main entière sans faire le compte de mes doigts. Ces idées comparatives, plus grande, plus petite, de même que les idées numériques d’un, de deux, &c. ne sont certainement pas des sensations, quoique mon esprit ne les produise, qu’à l’occasion de mes sensations.
‘On nous dit que l’être sensitif distingue les sensations les unes des autres par les différences qu’ont entr’elles ces mêmes sensations: ceci demande explication. Quand les sensations sont différentes, l’être sensitif les distingue par leurs différences: quand elles sont semblables, il les distingue parce qu’il sent les unes hors des autres. Autrement, comment dans une sensation simultanée distingueroit-il deux objets égaux? Il faudroit nécessairement qu’il confondît ces deux objets, et les prît pour le même, sur-tout dans un systême où l’on prétend que les sensations représentatives de l’étendue ne sont point étendues.
‘Quand les deux sensations à comparer sont apperçues, leur impression est faite, chaque objet est senti, les deux sont sentis; mais leur rapport n’est pas senti pour cela. Si le jugement de ce rapport n’étoit qu’une sensation, & me venoit uniquement de l’objet, mes jugemens ne me tromperoient jamais, puisqu’il n’est jamais faux que je sente ce que je sens.
‘Pourquoi donc est-ce que je me trompe sur le rapport de ces deux bâtons, sur-tout s’ils ne sont pas parallèles? Pourquoi, dis-je, par exemple, que le petit bâton est le tiers du grand, tandis qu’il n’en est que le quart? Pourquoi l’image, qui est la sensation, n’est elle pas conforme à son modèle, qui est l’objet? C’est que je suis actif quand je juge, que l’opération qui compare est fautive, et que mon entendement, qui juge les rapports, mêle ses erreurs à la vérité des sensations qui ne montrent que les objets.
‘Ajoutez à cela une réflexion qui vous frappera, je m’assure, quand vous y aurez pensé; c’est que si nous étions purement passifs dans l’usage de nos sens, il n’y auroit entr’eux aucun communication; il nous seroit impossible de connoître que le corps que nous touchons, et l’objet que nous voyons sont le même. Ou nous ne sentirions jamais rien hors de nous, ou il y auroit pour nous cinq substances sensibles, donc nous n’aurions nul moyen d’appercevoir l’identité.
‘Qu’on donne tel ou tel nom à cette force de mon esprit qui rapproche et compare mes sensations; qu’on l’appelle attention, méditation, réflexion, ou comme on voudra; toujours est-il vrai qu’elle est en moi et non dans les choses, que c’est moi seul qui la produis, quoique je ne la produise qu’à l’occasion de l’impression que font sur moi les objets. Sans être maître de sentir ou de ne pas sentir, je le suis d’examiner plus ou moins ce que je sens.
‘Je ne suis donc pas simplement un être sensitif et passif, mais un être actif et intelligent, et quoi qu’en dise la philosophie, j’oserai prétendre à l’honneur de penser, &c.’—Emile, beginning of the third, or end of the second volume.
97. I here speak of association as distinct from imagination or the effects of novelty.
98. See preface to Butler’s Sermons.
99. As far as the love of good or happiness operates as a general principle of action, it is in this way. I have supposed this principle to be at the bottom of all our actions, because I did not desire to enter into the question. If I should ever finish the plan which I have begun, I shall endeavour to shew that the love of happiness even in the most general sense does not account for the passions of men. The love of truth, and the love of power are I think distinct principles of action, and mix with, and modify all our pursuits. See Butler as quoted above.