SIMPLE SUGGESTION.
The intellectual phenomena which we are, in the first place, to consider, then, are those of Simple Suggestion, which are usually classed under the general term of the Association of Ideas,—a term employed to denote that tendency of the mind, by which feelings, that were formerly excited by an external cause, arise afterwards, in regular successions to each other, as it were spontaneously, or at least without the immediate presence of any known external cause. The limitation of the term, however, to those states of mind, which are exclusively denominated ideas, has, I conceive, tended greatly to obscure the subject, or at least to deprive us of the aid which we might have received from it in the analysis of many of the most complex phenomena. The influence of the associating principle itself extends, not to ideas only, but to every species of affection of which the mind is susceptible. Our internal joys, sorrows, and all the variety of our emotions, are capable of being revived in a certain degree by the mere influence of this principle, and of blending with the ideas or other feelings which awakened them, in the same manner as our conceptions of external things. These last, however, it must be admitted, present the most striking and obvious examples of the influence of the principle, and are, therefore, the fittest for illustrating it. The faint and shadowy elements of past emotions, as mingling in any present feeling, it may not be easy to distinguish; but our remembrances of things without are clear and definite, and are easily recognized by us as images of the past. We have seen, in the history of our senses, by what admirable means Nature has provided for communicating to man those first rude elements of knowledge, which are afterwards to be the materials of his sublimest speculations,—and with what still more admirable goodness she has ministered to his pleasure in these primary elements of thought, and in the very provision which she has formed for the subsistence of his animal frame,—making the organs by which he becomes acquainted with the properties of external things, not the fountain of knowledge only, but an ever-mingling source of enjoyment and instruction.
It is through the medium of perception, as we have seen,—that is to say, through the medium of those sensitive capacities already so fully considered by us,—that we acquire our knowledge of the properties of external things. But if our knowledge of these properties were limited to the moment of perception, and were extinguished forever with the fading sensation from which it sprang, the acquisition of this fugitive knowledge would be of little value. We should still, indeed, be sensible of the momentary pleasure or pain; but all experience of the past, and all that confidence in the regular successions of future events, which flows from experience of the past, would of course, be excluded by universal and instant forgetfulness. In such circumstances, if the common wants of our animal nature remained, it is evident, that even life itself, in its worst and most miserable state, could not be supported; since, though oppressed with thirst and hunger, and within reach of the most delicious fruits and the most plentiful spring-water, we should still suffer without any knowledge of the means by which the suffering could be remedied. Even if, by some provision of Nature, our bodily constitution had been so framed, as to require no supply of subsistence, or if, instinctively and without reflection, we had been led on the first impulse of appetite, to repair our daily waste, and to shelter ourselves from the various causes of physical injury to which we are exposed, though our animal life might then have continued to be extended to as long a period as at present, still, if but a succession of momentary sensations, it would have been one of the lowest forms of mere animal life. It is only as capable of looking before and behind,—that is to say, as capable of those spontaneous suggestions of thought which constitute remembrance and foresight,—that we rise to the dignity of intellectual being, and that man can be said to be the image of that Purest of Intellects, who looks backward and forward, in a single glance, not on a few years only, but on all the ages of eternity. “Deum te scito esse,” says Cicero, in allusion to these powers,—“Deum te scito esse, siquidem Deus est, qui viget, qui sentit,—qui meminit, qui prævidet, qui tam regit et moderatur et movet id corpus, cui præpositus est, quam hunc mundum princeps ille Deus.”
“Were it not so, the Soul, all dead and lost,
As the fix'd stream beneath the impassive frost,[138]
Form'd for no end, and impotent to please,
Would lie inactive on the couch of ease;
And, heedless of proud fame's immortal lay,
Sleep all her dull divinity away.”[139]
Without any remembrance of pleasures formerly enjoyed, or of sorrows long past and long endured,—looking on the persons and scenes which had surrounded us from the first moment of our birth, as if they were objects altogether unknown to us,—incapable even of as much reasoning as still gleams through the dreadful stupor of the maniac,—or of conveying even that faint expression of thought with which the rudest savages, in the rudest language, are still able to hold some communication of their passions or designs;—such, but for that capacity which we are considering, would have been the deplorable picture of the whole human race. What is now revered by us as the most generous and heroic virtue, or the most profound and penetrating genius, would have been nothing more than this wretchedness and imbecility. It is the suggesting principle, the reviver of thoughts and feelings which have passed away, that gives value to all our other powers and susceptibilities, intellectual and moral—not indeed, by producing them, for, though unevolved, they would still, as latent capacities, be a part of the original constitution of our spiritual nature,—but by rousing them into action, and furnishing them with those accumulating and inexhaustible materials, which are to be the elements of future thought and the objects of future emotion. Every talent by which we excel, and every vivid feeling which animates us, derive their energy from the suggestions of this ever-active principle. We love and hate,—we desire and fear,—we use means for obtaining good, and avoiding evil,—because we remember the objects and occurrences which we have formerly observed, and because the future, in the similarity of the successions which it presents, appears to us only a prolongation of the past.
In conferring on us the capacity of these spontaneous suggestions, then, Heaven has much more than doubled our existence; for, without it, and consequently without those faculties and emotions which involve it, existence would scarcely have been desirable. The very importance of the benefits which we derive from it, however, renders us perhaps less sensible of its value; since it is so mingled, with all our knowledge, and all our plans of action, that we find it difficult to conceive a state of sentient being, of which it is not a part, and to estimate, consequently, at a just amount, the advantage which it affords. The future memory of perception seems to us almost implied in perception itself; and to speculate on that strange state of existence which would have been the condition of man, if he had been formed without the power of remembrance, and capable only of a series of sensations, has, at first, an appearance almost of absurdity and contradiction, as if we were imagining conditions which were in their nature incompatible. Yet, assuredly, if it were possible for us to consider such a subject a priori, the real cause of wonder would appear to be, not in the absence of the suggestions of memory, as in the case, imagined, but in that remembrance of which we have the happy experience. When a feeling, of the existence of which consciousness furnishes the only evidence, has passed away so completely, that not even the slightest consciousness of it remains, it would surely,—but for that experience,—be more natural to suppose that it had perished altogether, than that it should, at the distance of many years, without any renewal of it by the external cause which originally produced it, again start, as it were of itself, into being. To foresee that which has not yet begun to exist, is, in itself, scarcely more unaccountable, than to see as it were before us, what has wholly ceased to exist. The present moment is all of which we are conscious, and which can strictly be said to have a real existence, in relation to ourselves. That mode of time, which we call the past, and that other mode of time, which we call the future, are both equally unexisting. That the knowledge of either should be added to us, so as to form a part of our present consciousness, is a gift of Heaven, most beneficial to us indeed, but most mysterious, and equally, or nearly equally mysterious, whether the unexisting time, of which the knowledge is indulged to us, be the future or the past.
The advantage which we derive from the principle of suggestion, it must, however, be remarked, consists, not in its mere revival of thoughts and feelings, of which we had before been conscious, but in its revival of these in a certain order. If past objects and events had been suggested to us again, not in that series, in which they had formerly occurred, nor according to any of those relations, which human discernment has been able to discover among them, but in endless confusion and irregularity, the knowledge thus acquired, however gratifying as a source of mere variety of feeling, would avail us little, or rather would be wholly profitless, not merely in our speculative inquiries as philosophers, but in the simplest actions of common life. It is quite evident, that, in this case, we should be altogether unable to turn our experience to account, as a mode of avoiding future evil or obtaining future good; because, for this application of our knowledge, it would be requisite that events, before observed, should occur to us, at the time, when similar events might be expected. We refrain from tasting the poisonous berry, which we have known to be the occasion of death to him who tasted it; because the mere sight of it brings again before us the fatal event, which we have heard or witnessed. We satisfy our appetite with a salutary fruit, without the slightest apprehension; because its familiar appearance recals to us the refreshment, which we have repeatedly received. But, if these suggestions were reversed,—if the agreeable images of health and refreshment were all that were suggested by the poisonous plant, and pain, and convulsions, and death were the only images suggested by the sight of the grateful and nourishing fruit, there can be no doubt, to which of the two, our unfortunate preference would be given. To take the most familiar of all instances,—that of language,—which, either as written or spoken, is in such constant use, and which is so essential, not merely to our first advance, from absolute barbarism, but to the common domestic necessities, even of barbarous life, that, without it, we can scarcely conceive two individuals, however rude, to exist together,—this, it is evident, could not have been invented,—nor, if invented, could it serve any other purpose than to mislead,—if the words spoken were to have no greater chance of suggesting the meaning intended by the speaker, than any other meaning, which any other words of the language might be employed to denote. What social affection could continue for an hour, if the sight of a friend were to suggest, in intimate combination, not the kindnesses which he had conferred, and all the enjoyments of which he had been the source, but the malice, and envy, and revenge of some jealous and disappointed enemy?
He who has given us, in one simple principle, the power of reviving the past, has not made his gift so unavailing. The feelings, which this wonderful principle preserves and restores, arise, not loosely and confusedly—for what is there in the whole wide scene of nature, which does so occur?—but, according to general laws or tendencies of succession, contrived with the most admirable adaptation to our wants, so as to bring again before us the knowledge formerly acquired by us, at the very time when it is most profitable that it should return. A value is thus given to experience, which otherwise would not be worthy of the name; and we are enabled to extend it almost at pleasure, so as to profit, not merely by that experience which the events of nature, occurring in conformity with these general laws, must at any rate have afforded to us,—but to regulate this very experience itself,—to dispose objects and events, so that, by tendencies of suggestion, on the firmness of which we may put perfect reliance, they shall give us, perhaps at the distance of many years, such lessons as we may wish them to yield,—and thus to invent and create, in a great measure, the intellectual and moral history of our future life, as an epic or dramatic writer arranges at his will the continued scenes of his various and magnificent narrative. I need not add, that it is on this skilful management of the laws, which regulate our trains of thought, the whole theory and practice of education are founded;—that art, which I have already repeatedly represented to you as the noblest of all the arts of man—itself the animating spirit of every other art—which exerts its own immediate operation, not on lifeless things, but on the affections and faculties of the soul itself—and which has raised us from the dust, where we slept or trembled, in sluggish, yet ferocious ignorance, the victims of each other, and of every element around us, to be the sharers and diffusers of the blessings of social polity, the measurers of the earth and of the skies, and the rational worshippers of that eternal Being by whom they and we were created.
That there is a tendency of ideas to suggest each other, without any renewed perception of the external objects which originally excited them, and that the suggestion is not, altogether loose and indefinite, but that certain ideas have a peculiar tendency to suggest certain other relative ideas in associate trains of thought, is too familiar to you, as a general fact of our intellectual nature, to require to be illustrated by example.
It has been beautifully compared, by the most philosophic of our poets, to the mutual influence of two sympathetic needles, which Strada, in one of his Prolusions, availing himself of a supposed fact, which was then believed, or scarcely doubted by many philosophers, makes the subject of verses, supposed to be recited by Cardinal Bembo, in the character of Lucretius. The needles were fabled to have been magnetized together, and suspended over different circles, so as to be capable of moving along an alphabet. In these circumstances, by the remaining influence of their original kindred magnetism, they were supposed, at whatever distance, to follow each other's motions, and pause accordingly at the same point; so that, by watching them at concerted hours, the friends, who possessed this happy telegraph, were supposed to be able to communicate to each other their feelings, with the same accuracy and confidence as when they were together.
“For when the different images of things,
By chance combin'd have struck the attentive soul
With deeper impulse, or, connected long,
Have drawn his frequent eye; howe'er distinct
The external scenes, yet oft the ideas gain
From that conjunction an eternal tie
And sympathy unbroken. Let the Mind
Recal one partner of the various league,—
Immediate, lo! the firm confederates rise,
And each his former station straight resumes;
One movement governs the consenting throng,
And all at once with rosy pleasure shine,
Or all are sadden'd with the glooms of care.
'Twas thus, if ancient fame the truth unfold,
Two faithful needles, from the informing touch
Of the same parent-stone, together drew
Its mystic virtue, and at first conspir'd
With fatal impulse quivering to the pole,
Then, though disjoin'd by kingdoms,—though the main
Roll'd its broad surge betwixt,—and different stars
Beheld their wakeful motions,—yet preserv'd
The former friendship, and remember'd still
The alliance of their birth. Whate'er the line
Which one possessed, nor pause nor quiet knew
The sure associate, ere, with trembling speed,
He found its path, and fixed unerring there.
Such is the secret union, when we feel
A song, a flower, a name, at once restore
Those long connected scenes where first they mov'd
The attention. Backward through her many walks,
Guiding the wanton fancy to her scope,
To temples, courts, or fields,—with all the band
Of (living)[140] forms, of passions, and designs,
Attendant; whence, if pleasing in itself,
The prospect from that sweet accession gains
Redoubled influence o'er the listening Mind.
By these mysterious ties, the busy power
Of Memory her ideal train preserves
Entire; or, when they would elude her watch,
Reclaims their fleeting footsteps, from the waste
Of dark Oblivion.”[141]
What then are these mysterious ties?—or, to state the question more philosophically, what are the general circumstances which regulate the successions of our ideas?
That there is some regularity in these successions, must, as I have already remarked, have been felt by every one; and there are many references to such regularity in the works of philosophers of every age. The most striking ancient reference, however, to any general circumstances, or laws of suggestion,—though the innumeration of these is hinted, rather than developed at any length,—is that which you will find in a passage, quoted by Dr Beattie and Mr Stewart, from Aristotle. It is a passage explanatory of the process by which, in voluntary reminiscence, we endeavour to discover the idea of which we are in search. We are said to hunt for it—(Θηρεὺομεν is the word in the original)—among other ideas, either of objects existing at present, or at some former time; and from their resemblance, contrariety, and contiguity— ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν, ἢ ἂλλου τινὸς, καὶ ἀφ' ὁμοίου, ἢ ἐναντίου, ἢ τοῦ συνέγγυς. Διὰ τοῦτο γινεταὶ ἡ ἀνάμνησις.[142] This brief enumeration of the general circumstances which direct us in reminiscence is worthy of our attention on its own account; and is not less remarkable on account of the very close resemblance which it bears to the arrangement afterwards made by Mr Hume, though there is no reason to believe that the modern philosopher was at all acquainted with the classification which had, at so great a distance of time, anticipated his own.
I must remark, however, that though it would be in the highest degree unjust to the well-known liberality and frankness of Mr Hume's character, to suppose him to have been aware of any enumeration of the general circumstances on which suggestion appears to depend, prior to that which he has himself given us, his attempt was far from being so original as he supposed. I do not allude merely to the passage of Aristotle, already quoted, nor to a corresponding passage, which I might have quoted, from one of the most celebrated of his commentators, Dr Thomas Aquinas, but to various passages which I have found in the works of writers of much more recent date, in which the influence of resemblance and contiguity, the two generic circumstances to which, on his own principles, his own triple division should have been reduced, is particularly pointed out. Thus, to take an example from an elementary work of a very eminent author, Ernesti, published in the year 1734,—his Initia Doctrinæ Solidioris,—with what precision has he laid down those very laws of association of which Mr Hume speaks. After stating the general fact of suggestion, or association, under the Latin term phantasia, he proceeds to state the principles which guide it. All the variety of these internal successions of our ideas, he says, may be reduced to the following law. When one image is present in the mind, it may suggest the image of some absent object—either of one that is similar in some respect to that already present—or of one of which the present is a part—or of one which has been present together with it on some former occasion. “Hujus autem phantasiæ lex hæc est; Præsentibus animo rerum imaginibus quibuscunque, recurrere et redire ad animum possunt rerum absentium olimque perceptarum imagines, præsentibus similes, vel quarum, quæ sunt præsentes, partes sunt,—vel denique, quas cum præsentibus simul hausimus.”[143]
Even the arrangement, as stated by Mr Hume, is not expressed in more formal terms. But as it is to his arrangement the philosophers of our own country are accustomed to refer, in treating of association, the importance thus attached to it gives it a preferable claim to our fuller discussion. It is stated by him briefly in two paragraphs of his Essay on the Association of Ideas.
“Though it be too obvious to escape observation,” he says, “that different ideas are connected together, I do not find that any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association; a subject, however, that seems worthy of curiosity. To me there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, viz. resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause or effect.
“That these principles serve to connect ideas, will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original. The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an inquiry or discourse concerning the others. And if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it. But that the enumeration is complete, and that there are no other principles of association except these, may be difficult to prove to the satisfaction of the reader or even to a man's own satisfaction. All we can do, in such cases, is to run over several instances, and examine carefully the principle which binds the different thoughts to each other,—never stopping, till we render the principle as general as possible. The more instances we examine, and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire, that the enumeration which we form from the whole is complete and entire.”[144]
On these paragraphs of Mr Hume, a few obvious criticisms present themselves. In the first place, however, I must observe,—to qualify in some degree the severity of the remarks which may be made on his classification,—that it is evident, from the very language now quoted to you, that he is far from bringing forward his classification as complete. He states, indeed, that it appears to him, that there are no other principles of connexion among our ideas than the three which he has mentioned; but he adds, that though the reality of their influence as connecting principles will not, he believes, be much doubted, it may still be difficult to prove, to the satisfaction of his reader, or even of himself, that the enumeration is complete; and he recommends, in consequence, a careful examination of every instance of suggestion, in the successive trains of our ideas, that other principles, if any such there be, may be detected.
But to proceed to the actual classification, as presented to us by Mr Hume. A note, which he has added to the paragraph that contains his system, affords perhaps as striking an instance as is to be found in the history of science of that illusion, which the excessive love of simplicity tends to produce, even in the most acute and subtile philosopher, so as to blind, to the most manifest inconsistencies, in his own arrangement, those powers of critical discernment which would have flashed instant detection on inconsistencies far less glaringly apparent in the speculations of another. After stating, that there appear to him to be only the three principles of connexion already mentioned, Mr Hume adds, in a note,—as an instance of other connexions apparently different from these three, which may, notwithstanding, be reduced to them,—
“Contrast or contrariety, also, is a species of connexion among ideas. But it may perhaps be considered as a mixture of causation and resemblance. Where two objects are contrary, the one destroys the other, i. e. is the cause of its annihilation, and the idea of the annihilation of an object implies the idea of its former existence.”
When we hear or read for the first time this little theory of the suggestions of contrast, there is, perhaps no one who does not feel some difficulty in believing it to be a genuine speculation of that powerful mind which produced it. Contrast, says Mr Hume, is a mixture of causation and resemblance. An object, when contrasted with another, destroys it. In destruction there is causation; and we cannot conceive destruction, without having the idea of former existence. Thus, to take an instance,—Mr Hume does not deny, that the idea of a dwarf may suggest, by contrast, the idea of a giant; but he says that the idea of a dwarf suggests the idea of a giant, because the idea of a dwarf destroys the idea of a giant, and thus, by the connecting principle of causation involved in all destruction, may suggest the idea destroyed; and he adds, as an additional reason for the suggestion, that the idea of the annihilation of a giant implies the idea of the former existence of a giant. And all this strange and complicated analysis,—this explanation, not of the obscurum per obscurius, which is a much more intelligible paralogism, but of the lucidum per obscurum, is seriously brought forward by its very acute author, as illustrating the simple and familiar fact of the suggestion of opposites, in contrast, by opposites.
In the first place, I may remark, that in Mr Hume's view of contrast, it is not easy to discover what the resemblance is of which he speaks, in a case in which the objects in themselves are said by him to be so contrary, that the one absolutely destroys the other by this contrariety alone; and, indeed, if there be truly this mixed resemblance in contrast, what need is there of having recourse to annihilation or causation at all, to account for the suggestion, since the resemblance alone in this, as in every other case, might be sufficient to explain the suggestion, without the necessity of any separate division;—as the likeness of a single feature in the countenance of a stranger, is sufficient to bring before us in conception the friend whom he resembles, though the resemblance be in the single feature only.
In the second place, there is no truth, if, indeed, there be any meaning whatever, in the assertion that in contrast one of the objects destroys the other; for, so far is the idea of the dwarf from destroying the idea of the giant, that, in the actual case supposed, it is the very reason of the existence of the second idea; nay, the very supposition of a perceived contrast implies that there is no such annihilation; for both ideas must be present to the mind together, or they could not appear either similar or dissimilar, that is to say, could not be known by us as contrasted, or contrary, in any respect. It is, indeed, not very easy to conceive, how a mind so acute as that of Mr Hume should not have discovered that grossest of all logical and physical errors, involved in his explanation, that it accounts for the existence of a feeling, by supposing it previously to exist as the cause of itself. If as he says, the idea of the annihilation of an object implies the idea of its former existence—an assertion which is by no means so favourable as he thinks to his own theory—it must surely be admitted, that no annihilation can take place before the existence of that which is to be annihilated. Whether, therefore, we suppose, that the idea of the dwarf, which suggests the idea of the giant, annihilates that idea, or is itself annihilated by it, the two ideas of the dwarf and the giant must have existed, before the annihilation of either. The suggestion, in short, which is the difficulty, and the only difficulty to be explained, must have completely taken place, before the principle can even be imagined to operate, on which the suggestion itself is said to depend.
Such minute criticism, however, is perhaps more, than it is necessary to give to a doctrine so obviously false, even sanctioned as it is by so very eminent a name.