Nec species sua cuique manet; rerumque novatrix
Ex aliis alias reparat natura figuras.
Nec perit in toto quicquam, mihi credite, mundo,
Sed variat faciemque novat; nascique vocatur
Incipere esse aliud quam quod fuit ante,—morique
Desinere illud idem. Cum sint hue forsitan illa,
Hæc translata illuc, summa tamen omnia constant.[136]
With respect to the mere elements of matter, therefore, the present may be said, and truly said, to be exactly the past; and, in the whole series of phenomena of the material universe, from the moment of its creation to this present moment, there has been nothing new, but mere changes of relative position. This absolute sameness of result, in all the apparent changes of matter, Condillac applies, by a most unwarrantable extension, to the mere affections of the mind; and, because two affections of mind are followed by a third, he considers this third to be the two former co-existing, or, as he terms it, transformed. The feeling which follows another feeling, however seemingly different, is thus, in his system, the same, because it results from it; and it is very easy for him, in this way, to prove all our feelings to be sensations, by this simplest of arguments, that sensation was the first state induced in mind, and that, hence, since all our other feelings, of every species, must have followed it, they must have originated in it, and therefore, been this very sensation under a mere change of form. It is number one of the long series; and, if number two be a transformed sensation, because it results from number one, which was a sensation, number three must be equally so, because it follows number two; and thus, successively, the whole series. I perceive a hare; I perceive a sheep:—each of these separate states of my mind is a sensation. I cannot attend to them long, he says, without comparing them, and perceiving those circumstances of agreement, which lead me to apply to both the word quadruped. All this is most indubitably true. It is impossible, or, at least, it is not very common for us to observe any two animals long, together, without thinking of some of the circumstances in which they agree or differ. The one state of mind is a consequence of the other state of mind. But this is far from proving the comparison itself, as a subsequent state or phenomenon of the mind, to be the same mental state as the mere perception of the two animals which simply preceded it. If the evidence of our consciousness is to be trusted, it is very different; and in what other evidence can the assertion of their sameness be founded? We do not feel the state of mind, which constitutes the comparison, to be virtually equal to the two states of mind which constituted the separate perception, as we feel the relation of virtual equality between our notion of the number eight, and our notions of six and two combined; the one feeling does not virtually comprehend the two others, and it surely does not comprehend them in any grosser physical sense; for there certainly is nothing in the absolute spiritual unity of our thinking principle which can lead us to believe that the state or affection of mind which constitutes the perception of a horse, and the state or affection of mind which constitutes the perception of a sheep, unite, in that different state or affection of mind, which constitutes the comparison of the two, in the same manner as the solid chrystals of any salt unite, in solution, with the liquid which dissolves them. They do not involve or constitute, they merely give occasion to this third state, and give occasion to it, merely in consequence of the peculiar susceptibilities of the mind itself, as formed, by its divine Author, to be affected in this particular manner, after being affected in those different manners, which constitute the separate perceptions, as sensation itself, the primary feeling, was made, to depend on some previous organic affection produced by an external object. It is not, therefore, as being susceptible of mere sensation, but as being susceptible of more than mere sensation, that the mind is able to compare its sensations with each other. We may see, and certainly do see, objects together, without forming uniformly the same comparison; which could not be the case if the mere coexistence of the two perceptions constituted or involved the comparison itself. In the case of a horse and sheep, for example, though these, in the sensations which they excite, cannot, at different times, be very different, we compare, at different times, their colour, their forms, their magnitudes, their functions, and the uses to which we put them, and we consider them as related in various other ways. The perceptions being the same, the comparisons, or subsequent feelings of relation, are different; and though the relation cannot be felt but when both objects are considered together, it is truly no part of the perception of each. According to the French system, the science, which we now strangely regard as of difficult acquirement, would be nothing more than the mere opening of our eyes. Were we to shew to a peasant, absolutely unacquainted with the very elements of geometry, diagrams representing two right angles, and a plane triangle, he might certainly, though he could not give them names, perceive these figures as clearly as the most expert mathematician. Every thing which mere sensation could produce, in this case, would be the same in both; and nothing can be added to this primary sensation, since every thing is said to be actually involved in the sensation itself. Yet, with all his accurate perception of the figures, however clear, and vivid, and lasting, the peasant would not find, in this immediate perception, the equality of the two right angles taken together to the three angles of the triangle, or any other geometrical relation. The comparison, then, and the belief of an universal truth of proportion, which results from that comparison, are certainly something more than the mere sensation itself. They are, in short, new states of mind, as distinct from the mere perception of the figures in the diagram, as the perception of a circle itself differs from the perception of a square. To compare one animal with another, is, indeed, to have different visual images; but the mere coexistence of visual images is only a group, larger, or smaller, as the images are more or fewer, and all which transformation can do is to add to this group or take away from it. Innumerable objects may be, and are, continually present to us at once, so as to produce one complex affection of mind,—fields, groves, mountains, streams,—but the mere coexistence of these, so as to form in our thought one scene, involves no feeling of comparison; and if the mind had not been susceptible of other affections than those of sense, or of mere remembrance of the past objects of sense, either in whole or in part, it might, when such a scene was present, have existed forever in the state which forms the complex perception of the scene, without the slightest notion of the RELATION of its parts to the whole, or to each other.
When I thus attempt to prove, by so many wearying arguments, that the feeling which constitutes our comparison of our sensations, or, in other words, our belief of their agreement or disagreement, is itself a state of mind, different from either of the separate sensations which we compare, and different from both, as merely coexisting, I cannot but feel, what many of you have probably felt already, as if I were labouring to demonstrate a mere truism. Indeed, when I consider the argument as any thing more, it is necessary for me to call to mind the great name, and great talents, of the author whose system I oppose,—the praise which the system has received, of extreme subtlety of analysis, combined with extreme simplicity, and its wide diffusion, as the universal, or nearly universal, metaphysical creed, of one of the most enlightened nations of Europe.
But for these remembrances, I must confess, that the system which supposes our comparison to be the ideas compared, and nothing more, as if these had flowed together into one, would appear to me to correspond almost exactly with an ironical theory of the same process, and, indeed, of all the intellectual processes, proposed in our own country,—not in the Essay on Human Understanding, but in a very different work,—a theory which supposes comparison, or judgment, to be only the conflux of two ideas, in one propositional canal.