Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)

by Thomas Brown

That the Deity, in this sense, as the Creator of the world, and willer of all those great ends, which the laws of the universe accomplish,—is the author of the physical changes which take place in it, is then most true,—as it is most true also, that the same Power, who gave the universe its laws, can, for the particular purposes of his providence, vary these at pleasure. But there is no reason to suppose, that the objects which he has made surely for some ends, have, as made by him, no efficacy, no power of being instrumental, to his own great purpose, merely because whatever power they can be supposed to have, must have been derived from the Fountain of all power. It is, indeed, only as possessing this power, that we know them to exist; and their powers, which the doctrine of occasional causes would destroy altogether, are, relatively to us, their whole existence. It is by affecting us that they are known to us. Such is the nature of the mind, and of light, for example, that light cannot be present, or, at least, the sensorial organ cannot exist in a certain state, in consequence of its presence, without that instant affection of mind, which constitutes vision. If light have not this power of affecting us with sensation, it is, with respect to us, nothing,—for we know it only as the cause of the visual affection. That which excites in us the feelings of extension, resistance, and all the qualities of matter, is matter; and, to suppose that there is nothing, without us, which excites these feelings, is to suppose, that there is no matter without, as far as we are capable of forming any conception of matter. The system of occasional causes seems, therefore, to be only a more awkward and complicated modification of the system of Berkeley; for, as the Deity is, in this system, himself the author of every change, the only conceivable use of matter, which cannot affect us, more than if it were not in existence, must be as a remembrance, to Him who is Omniscience itself, at what particular moment he is to excite a feeling in the mind of some one of his sensitive creatures, and of what particular kind that feeling is to be; as if the Omniscient could stand in need of any memorial, to excite in our mind any feeling, which it is His wish to excite, and which is to be traced wholly to his own immediate agency. Matter then, according to this system, has no relations to us; and all its relations are to the Deity alone. The assertors of the doctrine, indeed, seem to consider it, as representing, in a more sublime light, the divine Omnipresence, by exhibiting it to our conception, as the only power in nature; but they might, in like manner, affirm, that the creation of the infinity of worlds, with all the life and happiness that are diffused over them, rendered less instead of more sublime, the existence of Him, who, till then, was the sole existence; for power, that is derived, derogates as little from the primary power, as derived existence derogates from the Being from whom it flows. Yet the assertors of this doctrine, who conceive, that light has no effect in vision, are perfectly willing to admit that light exists, or rather, are strenuous affirmers of its existence, and are anxious only to prove, in their zeal, for the glory of Him, who made it, and who makes nothing in vain, that this, and all His works, exist for no purpose. Light, they contend, has no influence whatever. It is as little capable of exciting sensations of colour, as of exciting a sensation of melody or fragrance; but still it exists. The production of so very simple a state as that of vision, or any other of the modes of perception, with an apparatus, which is not merely complicated, but, in all its complication, absolutely without efficacy of any sort, is so far from adding any sublimity to the divine nature, in our conception, that it can scarcely be conceived by the mind, without lessening, in some degree, the sublimity of the Author of the universe, by lessening, or rather destroying, all the sublimity of the universe which he has made. What is that idle mass of matter, which cannot affect us, or be known to us, or to any other created being, more than if it were not? If the Deity produces, in every case, by his own immediate operation, all those feelings which we term sensations or perceptions, he does not first create a multitude of inert and cumbrous worlds, invisible to every eye but his own, and incapable of affecting any thing whatever, that he may know when to operate, as he would have operated before. This is not the awful simplicity of that Omnipresence,

“Whose word leaps forth at once to its effect;

Who calls for things that are not, and they come.”[127]

If, indeed, the complication of the process could remove any difficulty which truly exists, or even any difficulty which is supposed to exist, the system might be more readily adopted by that human weakness, to which the removal of a single difficulty is of so much value. But the very attempt to remove the difficulty, is merely by presenting it in another form. Omnipresent, as the Creator is, he is still, like that mind which he has formed after his own image, a spiritual Being; and though there can be no question as to the extent of his power over matter, the operation of this infinite power is as little conceivable by us, in any other way than as a mere antecedence of change, as the reciprocal limited action of mind and matter, in man, and the objects which he perceives and moves. It is itself indeed, a proof of action of this very kind; and to state it, with the view of obviating any difficulty that may be supposed to be involved in the mutual influence of mind and matter, seems as absurd, as it would be for a sophist, who should profess to believe, from an examination of the wings of birds, that their heavy pinions are incapable of bearing them through the air, to illustrate his paradox by the majestic soaring of the eagle, when he mounts still higher and higher through the sunshine that encircles him, before he stoops from his height above the clouds, to the cliffs which he deigns to make his lowly home.

The system of occasional causes, though it ceased to be known, or at least to be adopted, under that name, has not the less continued, by a mere change of denomination, to receive the assent of philosophers, who rejected it under its ancient name. It is, indeed, the spirit of this system alone, which gives any sense whatever to the distinction that is universally made of causes, as physical and efficient,—a distinction which implies, that, beside the antecedents and consequents, in a series of changes, which are supposed to have no mutual influence, and might, therefore, be antecedent and consequent in any other order,—there is some intervening agency, which is, in every event of the series, the true efficient. Matter, in short, does not act on mind, nor mind on matter. The physical cause, in this nomenclature, that exists for no purpose, as being absolutely insufficient; or, in other words, absolutely incapable of producing any change whatever, is the occasional cause of the other nomenclature, and nothing more; and all which was cumbrous and superfluous in the one, is equally cumbrous and superfluous in the other. On this subject, however, which I have discussed at large in my Work on Cause and Effect, I need not add any remarks to those which I offered in an early part of the course. It is sufficient, at present, to point out the absolute identity of the two doctrines in every thing but in name.

The next system to which I would direct your attention, is that of Malebranche, who is, indeed, to be ranked among the principal asserters of the doctrine of occasional causes, which we have now been considering, but who, in addition to this general doctrine, had peculiar views of the nature of perception.

His opinions, on this subject, are delivered, at great length, in the second volume of his Search of Truth—La Recherche de la Verité—a work which is distinguished by much eloquence, and by many very profound remarks on the sources of human error, but which is itself an example, in the great system which it supports, of error as striking as any of those which it eloquently and profoundly discusses. It is truly unfortunate for his reputation as a philosopher, that these discussions do not form a separate work, but are blended with his own erroneous system, the outline of which every one knows too well, to think of studying its details. All that is necessary, to give him his just reputation, is merely that he should have written less. He is at present known, chiefly as the author of a very absurd hypothesis. He would have been known, and studied, and honoured, as a very acute observer of our nature, if he had never composed those parts of his work, to which, probably, when he thought of other generations, he looked as to the basis of his philosophic fame.

His hypothesis, as many of you probably know, is, that we perceive not objects themselves, but the ideas of them which are in God.

He begins his supposed demonstration of this paradox with a sort of negative proof, by attempting to shew the inadequacy of every other mode of accounting for our perception of the ideas of things; for I need scarcely state to you, what is involved in the very enunciation of his metaphysical theorem,—that he regards ideas as distinct from perception itself, not the mind affected in a certain manner, but something separate and independent of the mind.