History of Civilization in England, Vol. 3 of 3

by Henry Thomas Buckle

[748] Reid's Essays, vol. ii. p. 60.

[749] ‘I see no reason to think, that we shall ever be able to assign the physical cause, either of instinct, or of the power of habit. Both seem to be parts of our original constitution. Their end and use is evident; but we can assign no cause of them, but the will of Him who made us.’ Reid's Essays, vol. iii. p. 119.

[750] ‘I know of no ideas or notions that have a better claim to be accounted simple and original, than those of space and time.’ Reid's Essays, vol. i. p. 354.

[751] ‘I do not at all affirm that those I have mentioned are all the first principles from which we may reason concerning contingent truths. Such enumerations, even when made after much reflection, are seldom perfect.’ Reid's Essays, vol. ii. p. 270.

[752] ‘Why sensation should compel our belief of the present existence of the thing, memory a belief of its past existence, and imagination no belief at all, I believe no philosopher can give a shadow of reason, but that such is the nature of these operations. They are all simple and original, and therefore inexplicable acts of the mind.’ Reid's Inquiry, p. 40. ‘We can give no reason why the retina is, of all parts of the body, the only one on which pictures made by the rays of light cause vision; and therefore we must resolve this solely into a law of our constitution’ p. 258.

[753] In a recent work of distinguished merit, an instance is given of the loose manner in which he took for granted that certain phenomena were ultimate, in order that, instead of analyzing them, he might reason from them. ‘Dr. Reid has no hesitation in classing the voluntary command of our organs, that is, the sequence of feeling and action implied in all acts of will, among instincts. The power of lifting a morsel of food to the mouth, is, according to him, an instinctive or pre-established conjunction of the wish and the deed; that is to say, the emotional state of hunger, coupled with the sight of a piece of bread, is associated, through a primitive link of the mental constitution, with the several movements of the hand, arm, and mouth, concerned in the act of eating. This assertion of Dr. Reid's may be simply met by appealing to the facts. It is not true that human beings possess, at birth, any voluntary command of their limbs whatsoever. A babe of two months old cannot use its hands in obedience to its desires. The infant can grasp nothing, hold nothing, can scarcely fix its eyes on anything.’ … ‘If the more perfect command of our voluntary movements implied in every art be an acquisition, so is the less perfect command of these movements that grows upon a child during the first year of life.’ Bain on the Senses and the Intellect, London, 1855, pp. 292, 293.

[754] See Reid's Inquiry, pp. 436, 446, as well as other parts of his works: see also an extract from one of his letters to Dr. Gregory, in Stewart's Biographical Memoirs, p. 432.

[755] ‘The idea of prosecuting the study of the human mind on a plan analogous to that which had been so successfully adopted in physics by the followers of Lord Bacon, if not first conceived by Dr. Reid, was, at least, first carried successfully into execution in his writings.’ Stewart's Biographical Memoirs, p. 419. ‘The influence of the general views opened in the Novum Organon, may be traced in almost every page of his writings; and, indeed, the circumstance by which they are so strongly and characteristically distinguished, is that they exhibit the first systematical attempt to exemplify, in the study of human nature, the same plan of investigation which conducted Newton to the properties of light, and to the law of gravitation.’ p. 421. From this passage one might hazard a supposition that Dugald Stewart did not understand Bacon much better than he did Aristotle or Kant. Of the two last most profound thinkers, he certainly knew little or nothing, except what he gathered secondhand. Consequently, he underrates them.

[756] The theory of the indestructibility of force has been applied to the law of gravitation by Professor Faraday, in his Discourse on the Conservation of Force, 1857; an essay full of thought and power, and which should be carefully studied by every one who wishes to understand the direction which the highest speculations of physical science are now taking. I will quote only one passage from the opening, to give the reader an idea of its general scope, irrespective of the more special question of gravitation. ‘The progress of the strict science of modern times has tended more and more to produce the conviction that force can neither be created nor destroyed; and to render daily more manifest the value of the knowledge of that truth in experimental research.’ … ‘Agreeing with those who admit the conservation of force to be a principle in physics, as large and sure as that of the indestructibility of matter, or the invariability of gravity, I think that no particular idea of force has a right to unlimited or unqualified acceptance, that does not include assent to it.’

[757] As an illustration of this doctrine, I cannot do better than quote the following passage from one of the most suggestive and clearly reasoned books which has been written in this century by an English physicist: ‘Wave your hand; the motion which has apparently ceased, is taken up by the air, from the air by the walls of the room, &c., and so by direct and reacting waves, continually comminuted, but never destroyed. It is true that, at a certain point, we lose all means of detecting the motion, from its minute subdivision, which defies our most delicate means of appreciation, but we can indefinitely extend our power of detecting it accordingly as we confine its direction, or increase the delicacy of our examination. Thus, if the hand be moved in unconfined air, the motion of the air would not be sensible to a person at a few feet distant; but if a piston of the same extent of surface as the hand be moved with the same rapidity in a tube, the blast of air may be distinctly felt at several yards' distance. There is no greater absolute amount of motion in the air in the second than in the first case, but its direction is restrained, so as to make its means of detection more facile. By carrying on this restraint, as in the air-gun, we get a power of detecting the motion, and of moving other bodies at far greater distances. The puff of air which would in the air-gun project a bullet a quarter of a mile, if allowed to escape without its direction being restrained, as by the bursting of a bladder, would not be perceptible at a yard's distance, though the same absolute amount of motion be impressed on the surrounding air.’ Grove's Correlation of Physical Forces, London, 1855, pp. 24, 25. In a work now issuing from the press, and still unfinished, it is suggested, with considerable plausibility, that Persistence of Force would be a more accurate expression than Conservation of Force. See Mr. Herbert Spencer's First Principles, London, 1861, p. 251. The title of this book gives an inadequate notion of the importance of the subjects with which it deals, and of the reach and subtlety of thought which characterize it. Though some of the generalizations appear to me rather premature, no well-instructed and disciplined intellect can consider them without admiration of the remarkable powers displayed by their author.