Theaetetus
to interpret another? Is the introspecting thought the same with the
thought which is introspected? Has the mind the power of surveying its
whole domain at one and the same time?--No more than the eye can take in
the whole human body at a glance. Yet there may be a glimpse round the
corner, or a thought transferred in a moment from one point of view to
another, which enables us to see nearly the whole, if not at once,
at any rate in succession. Such glimpses will hardly enable us to
contemplate from within the mind in its true proportions. Hence the
firmer ground of Psychology is not the consciousness of inward feelings
but the observation of external actions, being the actions not only of
ourselves, but of the innumerable persons whom we come across in life.
b. The error of supposing partial or occasional explanation of
mental phenomena to be the only or complete ones. For example, we are
disinclined to admit of the spontaneity or discontinuity of the mind--it
seems to us like an effect without a cause, and therefore we suppose the
train of our thoughts to be always called up by association. Yet it is
probable, or indeed certain, that of many mental phenomena there are no
mental antecedents, but only bodily ones.
c. The false influence of language. We are apt to suppose that when
there are two or more words describing faculties or processes of the
mind, there are real differences corresponding to them. But this is not
the case. Nor can we determine how far they do or do not exist, or
by what degree or kind of difference they are distinguished. The same
remark may be made about figures of speech. They fill up the vacancy of
knowledge; they are to the mind what too much colour is to the eye; but
the truth is rather concealed than revealed by them.
d. The uncertain meaning of terms, such as Consciousness, Conscience,
Will, Law, Knowledge, Internal and External Sense; these, in the
language of Plato, 'we shamelessly use, without ever having taken the
pains to analyze them.'
e. A science such as Psychology is not merely an hypothesis, but
an hypothesis which, unlike the hypotheses of Physics, can never be
verified. It rests only on the general impressions of mankind, and there
is little or no hope of adding in any considerable degree to our stock
of mental facts.
f. The parallelism of the Physical Sciences, which leads us to analyze
the mind on the analogy of the body, and so to reduce mental operations
to the level of bodily ones, or to confound one with the other.
g. That the progress of Physiology may throw a new light on Psychology
is a dream in which scientific men are always tempted to indulge. But
however certain we may be of the connexion between mind and body, the
explanation of the one by the other is a hidden place of nature which
has hitherto been investigated with little or no success.
h. The impossibility of distinguishing between mind and body. Neither
in thought nor in experience can we separate them. They seem to act
together; yet we feel that we are sometimes under the dominion of the
one, sometimes of the other, and sometimes, both in the common use of
language and in fact, they transform themselves, the one into the good
principle, the other into the evil principle; and then again the 'I'
comes in and mediates between them. It is also difficult to distinguish
outward facts from the ideas of them in the mind, or to separate the
external stimulus to a sensation from the activity of the organ, or this
from the invisible agencies by which it reaches the mind, or any process
of sense from its mental antecedent, or any mental energy from its
nervous expression.
i. The fact that mental divisions tend to run into one another, and that
in speaking of the mind we cannot always distinguish differences of kind
from differences of degree; nor have we any measure of the strength and
intensity of our ideas or feelings.
j. Although heredity has been always known to the ancients as well as
ourselves to exercise a considerable influence on human character, yet
we are unable to calculate what proportion this birth-influence bears to
nurture and education. But this is the real question. We cannot pursue
the mind into embryology: we can only trace how, after birth, it begins
to grow. But how much is due to the soil, how much to the original
latent seed, it is impossible to distinguish. And because we are certain
that heredity exercises a considerable, but undefined influence, we must
not increase the wonder by exaggerating it.
k. The love of system is always tending to prevail over the historical
investigation of the mind, which is our chief means of knowing it. It
equally tends to hinder the other great source of our knowledge of the
mind, the observation of its workings and processes which we can make
for ourselves.
l. The mind, when studied through the individual, is apt to be
isolated--this is due to the very form of the enquiry; whereas, in
truth, it is indistinguishable from circumstances, the very language
which it uses being the result of the instincts of long-forgotten
generations, and every word which a man utters being the answer to some
other word spoken or suggested by somebody else.
III. The tendency of the preceding remarks has been to show that
Psychology is necessarily a fragment, and is not and cannot be a
connected system. We cannot define or limit the mind, but we can
describe it. We can collect information about it; we can enumerate the
principal subjects which are included in the study of it. Thus we are
able to rehabilitate Psychology to some extent, not as a branch of
science, but as a collection of facts bearing on human life, as a
part of the history of philosophy, as an aspect of Metaphysic. It is a
fragment of a science only, which in all probability can never make any
great progress or attain to much clearness or exactness. It is however
a kind of knowledge which has a great interest for us and is always
present to us, and of which we carry about the materials in our own
bosoms. We can observe our minds and we can experiment upon them, and
the knowledge thus acquired is not easily forgotten, and is a help to us
in study as well as in conduct.
The principal subjects of Psychology may be summed up as follows:--
a. The relation of man to the world around him,--in what sense and
within what limits can he withdraw from its laws or assert himself
against them (Freedom and Necessity), and what is that which we suppose
to be thus independent and which we call ourselves? How does the inward
differ from the outward and what is the relation between them, and where
do we draw the line by which we separate mind from matter, the soul
from the body? Is the mind active or passive, or partly both? Are its
movements identical with those of the body, or only preconcerted and
coincident with them, or is one simply an aspect of the other?
b. What are we to think of time and space? Time seems to have a nearer
connexion with the mind, space with the body; yet time, as well as
space, is necessary to our idea of either. We see also that they have
an analogy with one another, and that in Mathematics they often
interpenetrate. Space or place has been said by Kant to be the form of
the outward, time of the inward sense. He regards them as parts or
forms of the mind. But this is an unfortunate and inexpressive way of
describing their relation to us. For of all the phenomena present to the
human mind they seem to have most the character of objective existence.
There is no use in asking what is beyond or behind them; we cannot get
rid of them. And to throw the laws of external nature which to us are
the type of the immutable into the subjective side of the antithesis
seems to be equally inappropriate.
c. When in imagination we enter into the closet of the mind and withdraw
ourselves from the external world, we seem to find there more or less
distinct processes which may be described by the words, 'I perceive,' 'I
feel,' 'I think,' 'I want,' 'I wish,' 'I like,' 'I dislike,' 'I fear,'
'I know,' 'I remember,' 'I imagine,' 'I dream,' 'I act,' 'I endeavour,'
'I hope.' These processes would seem to have the same notions attached
to them in the minds of all educated persons. They are distinguished
from one another in thought, but they intermingle. It is possible to
reflect upon them or to become conscious of them in a greater or less
degree, or with a greater or less continuity or attention, and thus
arise the intermittent phenomena of consciousness or self-consciousness.
The use of all of them is possible to us at all times; and therefore
in any operation of the mind the whole are latent. But we are able to
characterise them sufficiently by that part of the complex action which
is the most prominent. We have no difficulty in distinguishing an act
of sight or an act of will from an act of thought, although thought is
present in both of them. Hence the conception of different faculties or
different virtues is precarious, because each of them is passing into
the other, and they are all one in the mind itself; they appear and
reappear, and may all be regarded as the ever-varying phases or aspects
or differences of the same mind or person.
d. Nearest the sense in the scale of the intellectual faculties
is memory, which is a mode rather than a faculty of the mind, and
accompanies all mental operations. There are two principal kinds of it,
recollection and recognition,--recollection in which forgotten things
are recalled or return to the mind, recognition in which the mind finds
itself again among things once familiar. The simplest way in which we
can represent the former to ourselves is by shutting our eyes and trying
to recall in what we term the mind's eye the picture of the
surrounding scene, or by laying down the book which we are reading and
recapitulating what we can remember of it. But many times more powerful
than recollection is recognition, perhaps because it is more assisted by
association. We have known and forgotten, and after a long interval the
thing which we have seen once is seen again by us, but with a different
feeling, and comes back to us, not as new knowledge, but as a thing to
which we ourselves impart a notion already present to us; in Plato's
words, we set the stamp upon the wax. Every one is aware of the
difference between the first and second sight of a place, between a
scene clothed with associations or bare and divested of them. We say to
ourselves on revisiting a spot after a long interval: How many things
have happened since I last saw this! There is probably no impression
ever received by us of which we can venture to say that the vestiges are
altogether lost, or that we might not, under some circumstances, recover
it. A long-forgotten knowledge may be easily renewed and therefore is
very different from ignorance. Of the language learnt in childhood not
a word may be remembered, and yet, when a new beginning is made, the
old habit soon returns, the neglected organs come back into use, and the
river of speech finds out the dried-up channel.
e. 'Consciousness' is the most treacherous word which is employed in
the study of the mind, for it is used in many senses, and has rarely,
if ever, been minutely analyzed. Like memory, it accompanies all mental
operations, but not always continuously, and it exists in various
degrees. It may be imperceptible or hardly perceptible: it may be the
living sense that our thoughts, actions, sufferings, are our own. It
is a kind of attention which we pay to ourselves, and is intermittent
rather than continuous. Its sphere has been exaggerated. It is sometimes
said to assure us of our freedom; but this is an illusion: as there
may be a real freedom without consciousness of it, so there may be a