[LECTURE XVI.]
ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF MIND.
After considering the Phenomena of the Mind in general, we are now to proceed to consider them, in the separate classes in which they may be arranged. The phenomena themselves, indeed, are almost infinite, and it might seem, on first reflection a very hopeless task, to attempt to reduce, under a few heads, the innumerable feelings, which diversify almost every moment of our life. But to those, who are acquainted with the wonders, which classification has performed, in the other sciences, the task, difficult as it is, will still seem not absolutely hopeless; though in one respect, its difficulty will be more highly estimated by them, than by others;—since they only, who know the advantage of the fixed and definite nature of the objects of classification, in other sciences, can feel, how much greater the obstacles must be, to any accurate arrangement, in a science, of which the objects are indefinite, and complex, incapable of being fixed for a moment in the same state, and destroyed by the very effort to grasp them. But, in this, as in other instances, in which nature has given us difficulties with which to cope, she has not left us to be wholly overcome; or, if we must yield, she has at least armed us for so vigorous a struggle, that we gain additional intellectual strength, even in being vanquished. “Studiorum salutarium, etiam citra effectum, salutaris tractatio est.” If she has placed us in a labyrinth, she has at the same time furnished us with a clue, which may guide us, not indeed through all its dark and intricate windings, but through those broad paths, which conduct us into day. The single power, by which we discover resemblance or relation in general, is a sufficient aid to us, in the perplexity and confusion of our first attempts at arrangement. It begins, by converting thousands, and more than thousands, into one, and, reducing, in the same manner, the numbers thus formed, it arrives at last at the few distinctive characters of those great comprehensive tribes, on which it ceases to operate, because there is nothing left to oppress the memory, or the understanding. If there had been no such science as chemistry, who could have ventured to suppose, that the innumerable bodies, animate and inanimate, on the surface of our globe, and all, which we have been able to explore in the very depths of the earth itself, are reducible, and even in the imperfect state of the science, have been already reduced, to a few simple elements? The science of mind, as it is a science of analysis, I have more than once compared to chemistry, and pointed out to you, and illustrated, its various circumstances of resemblance. In this too, we may hope the analogy will hold,—that, as the innumerable aggregates, in the one science, have been reduced and simplified, the innumerable complex feelings in the other will admit of a corresponding reduction and simplification.
The classes which we form, in the mental as well as in the material universe, depend, as you cannot but know, on certain relations which we discover in the phenomena; and the relations according to which objects may be arranged, are of course various, as they are considered by different individuals in different points of view. Some of these relations present themselves immediately, as if to our very glance; others are discoverable only after attentive reflection;—and though the former, merely as presenting themselves more readily, may seem on that account, better suited for the general purpose of arrangement, it is not the less true that the classification, which approaches nearest to perfection, is far from being always that which is founded on relations, that seem at first sight the most obvious. The rudest wanderer in the fields may imagine, that the profusion of blossoms around him,—in the greater number of which he is able, himself, to discover many striking resemblances,—may be reduced into some order of arrangement. But he would be little aware, that the principle according to which they are now universally classed, has relation, not to the parts which appear to him to constitute the whole flower, but to some small part of the blossom, which he does not perceive, at the distance at which he passes it, and which scarcely attracts his eye, when he plucks it from the stem.
To our mental classifications the remark is equally applicable. In these too, the most obvious distinctions are not always those which answer best the purposes of systematic arrangement. The phenomena of the mind, are only the mind itself existing in certain states; and, as many of these states are in their nature agreeable, and others disagreeable, this difference, which is to the sentient being himself the most important of all differences, may be supposed, to afford the most obvious principle of classification. What is pleasant, what is painful, are perhaps the first classes, which the infant has formed long before he is capable of distinguishing them by a name; and the very imbecility of idiotism itself, to which nothing is true or false, or right or wrong,—and to which there is no future, beyond the succeeding moment,—is yet capable of making this primary distinction, and of regulating, according to it, its momentary desires.
“The love of pleasure is man's eldest-born,
Born in his cradle, living to his tomb.
Wisdom,—her younger sister, though more grave,
Was meant to minister, not to dethrone[57]