Internal perceptions. 25. Internal perceptions denote the conformity of objects with those faculties existing in every man of sane mind, which, being developed by his natural instinct, are conversant with the internal relations of things, in a secondary and particular manner, and by means of natural instinct.[177] By this ill-worded definition he probably intends to distinguish the general power, or instinctive knowledge, from its exercise and application in any instance. But I have found it very difficult to follow Lord Herbert. It is by means, he says, of these internal senses that we discern the nature of things in their intrinsic relations, or hidden types of being.[178] And it is necessary well to distinguish the conforming faculty in the mind or internal perception, from the bodily sense. The cloudiness of his expression increases as we proceed, and in many pages I cannot venture to translate or abridge it. The injudicious use of a language in which he did not write with facility, and which is not very well adapted, at the best, to metaphysical disquisition, has doubtless increased the perplexity into which he has thrown his readers.
[177] Sensus interni sunt actus conformitatum objectorum cum facultatibus illis in omni homine sano et integro existentibus, quæ ab instinctu naturali expositæ, circa analogiam rerum internam, particulariter, secondario, et ratione instinctûs naturalis versantur. p. 66.
[178] Circa analogiam rerum internam, sive signaturas et characteras rerum penitiores versantur. p. 68.
Five natural notions of natural religion. 26. In the conclusion of this treatise, Herbert lays down the five common notions of natural religion, implanted, as he conceives, in the breasts of all mankind. 1. That there is a God; 2. That he ought to be worshipped; 3. That virtue and piety are the chief parts of worship; 4. That we are to repent and turn from our sins; 5. That they are rewards and punishments in another life.[179] Nothing can be admitted in religion which contradicts these primary notions; but if any one has a revelation from heaven in addition to these, which may happen to him sleeping or waking, he should keep it to himself, since nothing can be of importance to the human race, which is not established by the evidence of their common faculties. Nor can anything be known to be revealed, which is not revealed to ourselves; all else being tradition and historic testimony, which does not amount to knowledge. The specific difference of man from other animals he makes not reason, but the capacity of religion. It is a curious coincidence, that John Wesley has said something of the same kind.[180] It is also remarkable that we find in another work of Lord Herbert, De Religione Gentilium, which dwells again on his five articles of natural religion, essential, as he expressly lays it down, to salvation, the same illustration of the being of a Deity from the analogy of a watch or clock, which Paley has since employed. I believe that it occurs in an intermediate writer.[181]
[179] P. 222.
[180] I have somewhere read a profound remark of Wesley, that, considering the sagacity which many animals display, we cannot fix upon reason as the distinction between them and man; the true difference is, that we are formed to know God, and they are not.
[181] Et quidem si horologium per diem et noctem integram horas signanter indicans, viderit quispiam non mente captus, id consilio arteque summa factum judicaverit. Ecquis non planè demens, qui hanc mundi machinam non per viginti quatuor horas tantum, sed per tot sæcula circuitus suos obeuntem animadverterit, non id omne sapientissimo utique potentissimoque alicui autori tribuat? De Relig. Gentil., cap. xiii.
Remarks of Gassendi on Herbert. 27. Lord Herbert sent a copy of his treatise De Veritate several years after its publication to Gassendi. We have a letter to the noble author in the third volume of the works of that philosopher, showing, in the candid and sincere spirit natural to him, the objections that struck his mind in reading the book.[182] Gassendi observes that the distinctions of four kinds of truth are not new; the veritas rei of Lord Herbert being what is usually called substance, his veritas apparentiæ no more than accident, and the other two being only sense and reason. Gassendi seems not wholly to approve, but gives us the best, a definition of truth little differing from Herbert’s, the agreement of the cognizant intellect with the thing known: “Intellectûs cognoscentis cum re cognita congruentia.” The obscurity of the treatise De Veritate could ill suit an understanding like that of Gassendi, always tending to acquire clear conceptions; and though he writes with great civility, it is not without smartly opposing what he does not approve. The aim of Lord Herbert’s work, he says, is that the intellect may pierce into the nature of things, knowing them as they are in themselves without the fallacies of appearance and sense. But for himself he confesses that such knowledge he has always found above him, and that he is in darkness when he attempts to investigate the real nature of the least thing; making many of the observations on this which we read also in Locke. And he well says that we have enough for our use in the accidents or appearances of things without knowing their substances, in reply to Herbert, who had declared that we should be miserably deficient, if, while nature has given us senses to discern sounds and colours and such fleeting qualities of things, we had no sure road to eternal, and necessary truths.[183] The universality of those innate principles, especially moral and religious, on which his correspondent had built so much, is doubted by Gassendi on the usual grounds, that many have denied, or been ignorant of them. The letter is imperfect, some sheets of the autograph having been lost.
[182] Gassendi Opera, iii. 411.
[183] Misere nobiscum actum esset, si ad percipiendos colores, sonos et qualitates cæteras caducas atque momentaneas subessent media, nulla autem ad veritates illas internas, æternas, necessarias sine errore superesset via.