'I accept the question as M. Cousin states it; and I contend that no attempt to determine what are the direct revelations of Consciousness can be successful, or entitled to any regard, unless preceded by what M. Cousin says ought only to follow it—an inquiry into the origin of our acquired ideas. For we have it not in our power to ascertain, by any direct process, what Consciousness told us at the time when its revelations were in their pristine purity. It only offers itself to our inspection, as it exists now, when those original revelations are overlaid and buried under a mountainous heap of acquired notions and perceptions.
'It seems to M. Cousin, that if we examine with care and minuteness our present states of Consciousness, distinguishing and defining every ingredient which we find to enter into them—every element that we seem to recognize as real, and cannot "by merely concentrating our attention upon it analyze into anything simpler—we reach the ultimate and primary truths, which are the sources of all our knowledge, and which cannot be denied or doubted without denying or doubting the evidence of Consciousness itself—that is, the only evidence that there is for anything. I maintain this to be a misconception of the condition imposed on inquirers by the difficulties of psychological investigation. To begin the inquiry at the point where M. Cousin takes it up is, in fact, to beg the question. For he must be aware, if not of the fact, at least of the belief of his opponents, that the laws of the mind—the Laws of Association, according to one class of thinkers, the Categories of the Understanding, according to another—are capable of creating, out of those data of Consciousness which are uncontested, purely mental conceptions, which become so identified in thought with all our states of Consciousness, that we seem, and cannot but seem, to receive them by direct intuition. For example, the belief in matter in the opinion of these thinkers is, or at least may be, thus produced:—
'"The proof that any of the alleged Universal Beliefs, or Principles of Common Sense, are affirmations of Consciousness—supposes two things: that the beliefs exist, and that they cannot possibly have been acquired. The first is, in most cases, undisputed; but the second is a subject of inquiry which often taxes the utmost resources of psychologists. Locke was therefore right in believing that 'the origin of our ideas' is the main stress of the problem of mental science, and the subject which must be first considered in forming the theory of the Mind."'
This citation from Mr Mill's book is already almost too long, yet we could have wished to prolong it still more, from the importance of some of the succeeding paragraphs. It presents, in clear discrimination and contrast, two opposite points of view according to which the phenomena of mind are regarded by different philosophers, and the method of studying them determined: the introspective method, adopted by M. Cousin and others—the psychological or analytical method, pursued by Locke and by many other eminent men since Locke—'the known and approved method of physical science, adapted to the necessities of psychology'—(p. 148).
There are passages of Sir W. Hamilton's writings in which he appears to feel that the introspective method alone is insufficient for the interpretation of Consciousness, and that the analytical method must be employed to reinforce it. But on this as on other points he is not always consistent with himself. For in laying down the principle upon which the primary truths of Consciousness, the original data of intelligence, are to be ascertained and distinguished from generalizations out of experience and custom, he declares that the one single and certain mark is Necessity—they must be beliefs which we are under the necessity of believing—of which we cannot get rid by any mental effort. He decides this, of course, for himself, by the introspective method alone. He (with M. Cousin and other philosophers who take the same view) does not apply the analytical method to inquire whether his necessity of belief may not be a purely acquired necessity and nowise congenital. It is, indeed, remarkable that these philosophers do not even seek to apply the introspective method as far as that method will really go. They are satisfied with introspection of their own present minds; without collecting results of the like process as applied to other minds, in different times and places. They declare various beliefs to be necessary to the human mind universally, merely because such is the actual fact with their own minds and with those immediately around them; sometimes even in defiance of proof that there are (or have been) persons not sharing such beliefs, and occasionally even believing the contrary; therefore, when even the introspective method really disallows their affirmative instead of sustaining it. This is, in truth, an abuse of the introspective method; yet even if that method were employed in its fullest extent—if the same incapability of believing otherwise could be shown as common to all mankind—it might still be only the effect of a strong association. The analytical method must still be called in to ascertain whether we are forced to suppose such incapability to be an original fact of consciousness, or whether it may not have been generated in the mind by circumstances under the natural working of the laws of association. It is certain that these laws not only may, but must, give birth to artificial inconceivabilities in the mind—and that some of these may be equal in strength to such, if any, as are natural.
'The History of Science' (says Mr Mill, following out the same train of reasoning which we read in the third Book of his 'System of Logic') 'teems with inconceivabilities which have been conquered; and with supposed necessary truths, which have first ceased to be thought necessary, then to be thought true, and have finally come to be deemed impossible.'—p. 150.
After various observations, chiefly exhibiting the rashness of many censures bestowed by Sir W. Hamilton on Brown, Mr Mill gives us three valuable chapters (xi., xii., xiii.), wherein he analyzes the belief in an External World, the Belief in Mind as a separate substance or Noumenon, and the Primary Qualities of Matter. To each of these topics he applies what he calls the psychological method, as contrasted with the simply introspective method of Sir W. Hamilton (the Ego and Non-Ego affirmed to be given together in the primary deliverance of Consciousness) and so many other philosophers. He proves that these beliefs are no way intuitive, but acquired products; and that the known laws of Association are sufficient to explain how they are acquired; especially the Law of Inseparable Association, together with that of Obliviscence—a very useful, discriminating phrase, which we first find employed in this volume—(p. 259 et passim). He defines Matter to be a permanent possibility of Sensation; he maintains that this is really all which (apart from philosophical theories) mankind in general mean by it; he shows that mere possibilities of sensation not only may, but must, according to the known Laws of Association, come to present 'to our artificialized Consciousness' a character of objectivity—(pp. 198, 199). The correlative subject, though present in fact and indispensable, is eliminated out of conscious notice, according to the Law of Obliviscence.
These chapters will well repay the most careful perusal. We can only find room for one passage (pp. 214, 215):—
'Throughout the whole of our sensitive life, except its first beginnings, we unquestionably refer our sensations to a me and not-me. As soon as I have formed, on the one hand, the notion of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation, and on the other, of that continued series of feelings which I call my life—both these notions are, by an irresistible association, recalled by every sensation I have. They represent two things, with both of which the sensation of the moment, be it what it may, stands in relation; and I cannot be conscious of the sensation without being conscious of it as related to these two things. They have accordingly received relative names, expressive of the double relation in question. The thread of consciousness which I apprehend the relation as a part of, is called the Subject; the group of Permanent Possibilities of Sensation to which I refer it, and which is partially realized and actualized in it, is called the Object of the sensation. The sensation itself ought to have a correlative name, or rather ought to have two such names—one denoting the sensation as opposed to its Subject, the other denoting it as opposed to its Object; but it is a remarkable fact that this necessity has not been felt, and that the need of a correlative name to every relative one has been considered to be satisfied by the terms Object and Subject themselves. It is true that these two are related to one another, but only through the sensation. We have no conception of either Subject or Object, either Mind or Matter, except as something to which we refer our sensations, and whatever other feelings we are conscious of. The very existence of them both, so far as cognizable by us, consists only in the relation they respectively bear to our states of feeling. Their relation to each other is only the relation between those two relations. The immediate correlatives are, not the pair, Object, Subject, but the two pairs, Object, Sensation objectively considered—Subject, Sensation subjectively considered. The reason why this is overlooked might easily be shown, and would furnish a good illustration of that important part of the Laws of Association, which may be termed the Laws of Obliviscence.'
This chapter, on the Primary Qualities of Matter, controverts the opinion of Sir W. Hamilton, that extension, as consisting of co-existent partes extra partes, is immediately and necessarily apprehended by our consciousness. It cites, as well as confirms, the copious proof given by Professor Bain (in his work on the Senses and the Intellect) that our conception of extension is derived from our muscular sensibility: that our sensation of muscular motion impeded constitutes that of filled space: that our conception of extension, as an aggregate of co-existent parts, arises from the sense of sight, which comprehends a great number of parts in a succession so rapid as to be confounded with simultaneity—and which not only becomes the symbol of muscular and tactile succession, but even acquires such ascendancy as to supersede both of them in our consciousness. Confirmation is here given to this important doctrine, not merely by observations from Mr Mill himself, but also from the very curious narrative, discovered and produced by Sir W. Hamilton, out of a work of the German philosopher, Platner. Platner instituted a careful examination of a man born blind, and ascertained that this man did not conceive extension as an aggregate of simultaneous parts, but as a series of sensations experienced or to be experienced in succession—(pp. 232, 233). The case reported from Platner both corroborates the theory of Professor Bain, and receives its proper interpretation from that theory; while it is altogether adverse to the doctrine of Sir W. Hamilton—as is also another case, which he cites from Maine de Biran:—