Biographia Literaria
another act, voluntary in part, we yield to it in order to alight on the
spot, which we had previously proposed to ourselves. Now let a man watch
his mind while he is composing; or, to take a still more common case,
while he is trying to recollect a name; and he will find the process
completely analogous. Most of my readers will have observed a small
water-insect on the surface of rivulets, which throws a cinque-spotted
shadow fringed with prismatic colours on the sunny bottom of the brook;
and will have noticed, how the little animal wins its way up against the
stream, by alternate pulses of active and passive motion, now resisting
the current, and now yielding to it in order to gather strength and a
momentary fulcrum for a further propulsion. This is no unapt emblem of
the mind’s self-experience in the act of thinking. There are evidently
two powers at work, which relatively to each other are active and
passive; and this is not possible without an intermediate faculty, which
is at once both active and passive. In philosophical language, we
must denominate this intermediate faculty in all its degrees and
determinations, the IMAGINATION. But, in common language, and especially
on the subject of poetry, we appropriate the name to a superior degree
of the faculty, joined to a superior voluntary control over it.
Contemporaneity, then, being the common condition of all the laws of
association, and a component element in the materia subjecta, the
parts of which are to be associated, must needs be co-present with all.
Nothing, therefore, can be more easy than to pass off on an incautious
mind this constant companion of each, for the essential substance of
all. But if we appeal to our own consciousness, we shall find that
even time itself, as the cause of a particular act of association, is
distinct from contemporaneity, as the condition of all association.
Seeing a mackerel, it may happen, that I immediately think of
gooseberries, because I at the same time ate mackerel with gooseberries
as the sauce. The first syllable of the latter word, being that which
had coexisted with the image of the bird so called, I may then think
of a goose. In the next moment the image of a swan may arise before
me, though I had never seen the two birds together. In the first two
instances, I am conscious that their co-existence in time was the
circumstance, that enabled me to recollect them; and equally conscious
am I that the latter was recalled to me by the joint operation of
likeness and contrast. So it is with cause and effect: so too with
order. So I am able to distinguish whether it was proximity in time, or
continuity in space, that occasioned me to recall B on the mention of A.
They cannot be indeed separated from contemporaneity; for that would
be to separate them from the mind itself. The act of consciousness is
indeed identical with time considered in its essence. I mean time per
se, as contra-distinguished from our notion of time; for this is always
blended with the idea of space, which, as the opposite of time, is
therefore its measure. Nevertheless the accident of seeing two objects
at the same moment, and the accident of seeing them in the same place
are two distinct or distinguishable causes: and the true practical
general law of association is this; that whatever makes certain parts of
a total impression more vivid or distinct than the rest, will determine
the mind to recall these in preference to others equally linked together
by the common condition of contemporaneity, or (what I deem a more
appropriate and philosophical term) of continuity. But the will itself
by confining and intensifying [25] the attention may arbitrarily give
vividness or distinctness to any object whatsoever; and from hence we
may deduce the uselessness, if not the absurdity, of certain recent
schemes which promise an artificial memory, but which in reality can
only produce a confusion and debasement of the fancy. Sound logic, as
the habitual subordination of the individual to the species, and of
the species to the genus; philosophical knowledge of facts under the
relation of cause and effect; a cheerful and communicative temper
disposing us to notice the similarities and contrasts of things, that
we may be able to illustrate the one by the other; a quiet conscience;
a condition free from anxieties; sound health, and above all (as far as
relates to passive remembrance) a healthy digestion; these are the best,
these are the only Arts of Memory.
CHAPTER VIII
The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes--Refined first by
Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into the doctrine of Harmonia
praestabilita--Hylozoism--Materialism--None of these systems, or any
possible theory of association, supplies or supersedes a theory of
perception, or explains the formation of the associable.
To the best of my knowledge Des Cartes was the first philosopher who
introduced the absolute and essential heterogenity of the soul as
intelligence, and the body as matter. The assumption, and the form of
speaking have remained, though the denial of all other properties
to matter but that of extension, on which denial the whole system of
Dualism is grounded, has been long exploded. For since impenetrability
is intelligible only as a mode of resistance; its admission places the
essence of matter in an act or power, which it possesses in common
with spirit; and body and spirit are therefore no longer absolutely
heterogeneous, but may without any absurdity be supposed to be different
modes, or degrees in perfection, of a common substratum. To this
possibility, however, it was not the fashion to advert. The soul was a
thinking substance, and body a space-filling substance. Yet the apparent
action of each on the other pressed heavy on the philosopher on the one
hand; and no less heavily on the other hand pressed the evident truth,
that the law of causality holds only between homogeneous things, that
is, things having some common property; and cannot extend from one world
into another, its contrary. A close analysis evinced it to be no less
absurd than the question whether a man’s affection for his wife lay
North-east, or South-west of the love he bore towards his child.
Leibnitz’s doctrine of a pre-established harmony; which he certainly
borrowed from Spinoza, who had himself taken the hint from Des Cartes’s
animal machines, was in its common interpretation too strange to survive
the inventor--too repugnant to our common sense; which is not indeed
entitled to a judicial voice in the courts of scientific philosophy;
but whose whispers still exert a strong secret influence. Even Wolf,
the admirer and illustrious systematizer of the Leibnitzian doctrine,
contents himself with defending the possibility of the idea, but does
not adopt it as a part of the edifice.
The hypothesis of Hylozoism, on the other side, is the death of all
rational physiology, and indeed of all physical science; for that
requires a limitation of terms, and cannot consist with the arbitrary
power of multiplying attributes by occult qualities. Besides, it answers
no purpose; unless, indeed, a difficulty can be solved by multiplying
it, or we can acquire a clearer notion of our soul by being told that we
have a million of souls, and that every atom of our bodies has a soul
of its own. Far more prudent is it to admit the difficulty once for all,
and then let it lie at rest. There is a sediment indeed at the bottom
of the vessel, but all the water above it is clear and transparent. The
Hylozoist only shakes it up, and renders the whole turbid.
But it is not either the nature of man, or the duty of the philosopher
to despair concerning any important problem until, as in the squaring of
the circle, the impossibility of a solution has been demonstrated. How
the esse assumed as originally distinct from the scire, can ever unite
itself with it; how being can transform itself into a knowing, becomes
conceivable on one only condition; namely, if it can be shown that the
vis representativa, or the Sentient, is itself a species of being;
that is, either as a property or attribute, or as an hypostasis or self
subsistence. The former--that thinking is a property of matter under
particular conditions,--is, indeed, the assumption of materialism; a
system which could not but be patronized by the philosopher, if only it
actually performed what it promises. But how any affection from without
can metamorphose itself into perception or will, the materialist has
hitherto left, not only as incomprehensible as he found it, but has
aggravated it into a comprehensible absurdity. For, grant that an object
from without could act upon the conscious self, as on a consubstantial
object; yet such an affection could only engender something homogeneous
with itself. Motion could only propagate motion. Matter has no Inward.
We remove one surface, but to meet with another. We can but divide
a particle into particles; and each atom comprehends in itself the
properties of the material universe. Let any reflecting mind make
the experiment of explaining to itself the evidence of our sensuous
intuitions, from the hypothesis that in any given perception there is
a something which has been communicated to it by an impact, or
an impression ab extra. In the first place, by the impact on the
percipient, or ens representans, not the object itself, but only its
action or effect, will pass into the same. Not the iron tongue, but
its vibrations, pass into the metal of the bell. Now in our immediate
perception, it is not the mere power or act of the object, but the
object itself, which is immediately present. We might indeed attempt to
explain this result by a chain of deductions and conclusions; but that,
first, the very faculty of deducing and concluding would equally
demand an explanation; and secondly, that there exists in fact no such
intermediation by logical notions, such as those of cause and effect. It
is the object itself, not the product of a syllogism, which is present
to our consciousness. Or would we explain this supervention of the
object to the sensation, by a productive faculty set in motion by
an impulse; still the transition, into the percipient, of the object
itself, from which the impulse proceeded, assumes a power that can
permeate and wholly possess the soul,
And like a God by spiritual art,
Be all in all, and all in every part.
And how came the percipient here? And what is become of the
wonder-promising Matter, that was to perform all these marvels by force
of mere figure, weight and motion? The most consistent proceeding of
the dogmatic materialist is to fall back into the common rank of
soul-and-bodyists; to affect the mysterious, and declare the whole
process a revelation given, and not to be understood, which it would be
profane to examine too closely. Datur non intelligitur. But a
revelation unconfirmed by miracles, and a faith not commanded by the
conscience, a philosopher may venture to pass by, without suspecting
himself of any irreligious tendency.
Thus, as materialism has been generally taught, it is utterly
unintelligible, and owes all its proselytes to the propensity so common
among men, to mistake distinct images for clear conceptions; and vice
versa, to reject as inconceivable whatever from its own nature is
unimaginable. But as soon as it becomes intelligible, it ceases to be
materialism. In order to explain thinking, as a material phaenomenon, it
is necessary to refine matter into a mere modification of intelligence,
with the two-fold function of appearing and perceiving. Even so did
Priestley in his controversy with Price. He stripped matter of all its
material properties; substituted spiritual powers; and when we expected