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LECTURE XI.

APPLICATION OF THE LAWS OF PHYSICAL INQUIRY, TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, CONCLUDED.—ON CONSCIOUSNESS, AND ON MENTAL INDENTITY.

IN my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I considered, very fully, the two species of inquiry which the philosophy of mind admits in exact analogy to the two species of inquiry in the philosophy of matter, the consideration of the mental phenomena, as successive, and therefore susceptible of arrangement in the order of their succession, as causes and effects,-and the consideration of them as complex, and therefore susceptible of analysis. I stated to you, that it was chiefly, if not wholly, in this latter view, as analytical, that I conceived the philosophy of mind to be a science of progressive discovery; though, as a science of analogy, it has not merely produced results, as astonishing, perhaps, in some cases, as any of those which the analysis of matter has exhibited, but presents still a field of inquiry, that may be considered as inexhaustible; since the mind cannot exist, without forming continually new combinations, that modify its subsequent affections, and vary, therefore, the products, which it is the labour of our intellectual analysis to reduce to their original elements.

What the chemist does, in matter, the intellectual analysis does in mind; the one distinguishing by a purely mental process of reflection, the elements of his complex feelings, as the other operates on his material compounds, by processes that are themselves material. Though the term analysis, however, may be used in reference to both processes, the mental, as well as the material, since the result of the process is virtually the same in both, it has been universally employed by philosophers, in the laws of the mind, without any accurate definition of the process; and I was

you

careful, therefore, to explain to you the peculiar meaning, in which it is strictly to be understood in our science; that might not extend to the mind and its affections, that essential divisibility, which is inconsistent with its very nature; and suppose that, when we speak of complex notions, and of thoughts and feelings that are united by association with other thoughts and feelings, we speak of a plurality of separable things. The complex mental phenomena, as I explained to you, are complex only in relation to our mode of conceiving them. They are, strictly and truly, as simple and indivisible states of a substance, which is necessarily in all its states simple and indivisible-the results, rather than the compounds, of former feelings,―to which, however, they seem to us, and from the very nature of the feelings themselves, cannot but seem to us, to bear the same species of relation, which a whole bears to the parts that compose it. The office of intellectual analysis, accordingly, in the mode in which I have explained it to you, has regard to this relation only. It is to trace the various affections or states of mind that have successively contributed, to form or to modify any peculiar sentiment or emotion, and to develope the elements, to which, after tracing this succession, the resulting sentiment or emotion is felt by us to bear virtually that relation of seeming comprehensiveness of which I spoke.

If, indeed, our perspicacity were so acute that we could distinguish immediately all the relations of our thoughts and passions, there could evidently be no discovery in the science of mind; but, in like manner, what discovery could there be, in the analysis of matter, if our senses were so quick and delicate, as to distinguish immediately all the elements of every compound? It is only slowly that we discover the composition of the masses without; and we have therefore a science of chemistry:It is only slowly that we discover the relations of complex thought to thought; and we have therefore a science of mental analysis.

It is to the imperfection of our faculties, then, as forcing us to guess and explore what is half concealed from us, that we owe our laborious experiments and reasonings, and consequently all the science which is the result of these; and the proudest discoveries which we make may thus, in one point of view, whatever dignity they may give to a few moments of our life, be considered

as proofs and memorials of our general weakness. If, in its rela-
tion to matter, philosophy be founded, in a very great degree, on
the mere badness of our eyes, which prevents us from distinguish-
ing accurately the minute changes that are constantly taking place
in the bodies around us; we have seen, in like manner, that, in
its relation to the mind, it is founded chiefly, or perhaps wholly,
on the imperfection of our power of discriminating the elementary
feelings, which compose our great complexities of thought and pas-
sion,; the various relations of which are felt by us only on atten-
tive reflection, and are, therefore, in progressive discovery, slow-
ly added to relations that have before been traced.
In both cas-
es, the analysis, necessary for this purpose, is an operation of un-
questionable difficulty. But it is surely not less so, in mind, than
in matter; nor, when nature exhibits all her wonders to us, in
one case, in objects that are separate from us, and foreign; and,
in the other, in the intimate phenomena of our own consciousness,
can we justly think, that it is of ourselves we know the most. Оп
the contrary, strange as it may seem, it is of her distant opera-
tions, that our knowledge is least imperfect; and we have far less
acquaintance with the sway which she exercises in our own mind,
than with that by which she guides the course of the most remote
planet, in spaces beyond us, which we rather calculate than con-
ceive. The only science, which, by its simplicity and comprehen-
siveness, seems to have attained a maturity that leaves little for
future inquiry, is not that which relates immediately to man him-
self, or to the properties of the bodies on his own planet, that are
ever acting on his perceptive organs, and essential to his life and
enjoyment; but that which relates to the immense system of the
universe, to which the very orb, that supports all the multitudes
of his race, is but an atom of dust, and to which himself, as an in-
dividual, is as nothing.

"Could he, whose rules the rapid comet bind,
Describe or fix one movement of his mind?

Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend,

Explain his own beginning or his end?

Go, wondrous creature! mount where Science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;

Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,

Correct old Time, and regulate the Sun;

Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule-
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool !"*

That man should know so much of the universe, and so very little of himself, is, indeed, one of the circumstances, which, in the language of the same poet, most strongly characterize him, as the "jest and riddle" of that world, of which he is also no less truly "the glory."

"That the intelligence of any being," to use the words of D'Alembert, "should not pass beyond certain limits—that, in one species of beings, it should be more or less circumscribed, than in another-all this is not surprising, more than that a blade of grass should be less tall than a shrub; or a shrub than an oak. But that the same being should be at once arrested by the narrow circle which nature has traced around him, and yet constantly reminded, that, beyond these limits, there are objects which he is never to attain that he should be able to reason, till he loses himself, on the existence and nature of these objects, though condemned to be eternally ignorant of them-that he should have too little sagacity to resolve an infinity of questions, which he has yet sagacity enough to make -that the principle within us, which thinks, should ask itself in vain, what it is which constitutes its thought, and that this thought, which sees so many things, so distant, should yet not be able to see itself, which is so near,—that self, which it is notwithstanding always striving to see and to know-these are contradictions, which, even in the very pride of our reasoning, cannot fail to surprise and confound us."

All that remains for us, in that impossibility which nature has imposed on us of attaining a more intimate knowledge of the essence and constitution either of mind or of matter, is to attend to the phenomena which they present, analysing whatever is complex, and tracing the order of every sequence. By attentive reflection on the phenomena themselves, and on all the circumstances which precede or follow them, we shall be able to discover the relations which they mutually bear, and to distinguish their casual coincidence, or succession, from those invariable relations which nature has established among them as causes and effects. • Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. ii. v. 35-39; 19-24; and 29, 30.

This, humble as it may seem, is, as I have said, the true philosophy of man; because it is all of which man is capable. To inquire, as may be thought, more deeply into the essences of things, or the nature of certain supposed bonds by which they are connected, is to show, not that we have advanced far in the progress of science, but that we have gone far astray; not that we know more than philosophers of humbler views and pretensions, but that we know less; since it proves that we are unacquainted with the limits within which nature has bounded our prospect, and have not attained that prime knowledge, which consists in knowing how little can be known.

If the philosophy, not of mind only, but of the universe, is to be found, as Hobbes has boldly said, within ourselves,—in the same manner as the perfect statue is to be found in the rude block of the quarry, when all the superfluous mass, that adheres to it, has been removed, in no respect can it more justly be said to be in our own minds than in this, that it is only by knowing the true extent, and consequently the limits, of our intellectual powers, that we can form any rational system of philosophic investigation. Then, indeed, Philosophy may be truly said, in his strong figurative language, to be Human Reason herself, hovering over all created things, and proclaiming their order, their causes, and effects. "Philosophiam noli credere eam esse, per quam fiunt lapides philosophici, neque illam quam ostentant codices metaphysici; sed Rationem Humanum naturalem per omnes res creatas sedulo volitantem, et de earum ordine, causis, et effectibus, ea quæ vera sunt renuntiantem. Mentis ergo tuæ, et totius mundi filia philosophia in te ipso est; nondum fortasse figurata, sed genitori mundo qualis erat in principio informi similes. Faciendum ergo tibi est quod faciunt statuarii, qui materiam exculpentes supervacraeum, imaginem non faciunt sed inveniunt.”*

After these remarks on physical inquiry in general, and its particular application to our own science, I trust that we shall now proceed to observe, and analyse, and arrange the mental phenomena, with clearer views, both of the materials on which we have to operate, and of the nature of the operations which we have to perform. We may consider the mind as now lying open

Ad Lectorem.-A Note prefixed to the Elementa Philosophiæ. 4to. Amstelod. 1668.