Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics / With Some of Their Applications

by William Thomas Thornton

To begin very near indeed to the beginning, let us take, first, the section of the 'Enquiry' which treats of the 'Origin of Ideas.' All the perceptions of the mind may, according to Hume, be divided into two classes, whereof the one consists of all those 'more lively perceptions,' termed by him indifferently Impressions or Sensations, which we experience when we 'hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will:' the other, of those 'less lively perceptions of which we are conscious when we reflect on any of the sensations above-mentioned,' and which are commonly denominated thoughts or ideas. 'All our ideas or more feeble perceptions,' he continues, 'are copies of our impressions or more lively ones,' the 'entire creative power of the mind amounting to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded by the senses and experience.' So confident is he of the literal accuracy of this statement, as to proceed to intimate that whenever we find in conversation or argument 'a philosophical term employed seemingly without any idea or meaning,' we have only to enquire from what impression its idea, if it have one, is derived, when, if no impression can be adduced, we may be sure that no idea is present either. The only phenomenon opposed to this rule, which he professes himself able to think of, is that of a person who, of a colour—as, for instance, blue—with which he is familiar, is able to conceive a shade somewhat different from any of the shades which he has actually seen; but this instance he disregards as too singular to affect the general maxim, to which, as he might have added, it is not really an exception, any more than would be the power of a person who had never seen a mountain higher than Snowdon or Mont Blanc to conceive one as high as Chimborazo or Mount Everest, for, equally in both cases, the ideas are copies of sensible impressions, although of complex, not simple, ones—of colour and graduation in the first case, of size and increase in the second. Still, there is at least one genuine exception, which it is the more remarkable that Hume should have overlooked, as it may be said to have stared him in the face from the very subject-matter he was considering. Our idea of idea itself, from what sensible impression is that derived? We have just been told that the difference between an idea and a sensation is that the first is a copy of the second, a feeble copy of a lively original. The idea therefore is not itself a sensation; the copy is not itself an original. Neither consequently can the idea or notion which the mind proceeds to form of any of its previous ideas be derived from or be a copy of a sensation: it cannot have entered the mind 'in the only manner by which,' according to Hume, 'an idea can have access to the mind, to wit, by actual feeling and sensation.'

Let me not be misunderstood. Let me not be supposed to be courting collision with the Berkleian thesis of the non-existence of abstract ideas. I do not for one moment doubt that all our general or class notions of sensible objects or events are merely concrete ideas of individual objects or events—that, for instance, whenever we talk of man or motion in general, we are really thinking of some particular man or motion, which, as possessing all properties common to all men or motions, serves as a representative of the entire genus. Neither am I prepared to deny, although scarcely either prepared to admit, that even of abstract qualities all our general or class notions are equally ideas of particular specimens of those qualities; that, when we speak, for instance, of virtue or vice in general, we are thinking of some particular exhibition of some particular kind of virtue or vice. Nay, I am not even concerned to deny that our idea of idea in general may possibly be a copy of some particular one of our previous ideas which, for the nonce, serves to represent all our other previous ideas. I limit myself to saying that our idea of idea in general, whether it be or be not itself an abstraction, is, at all events, not a copy of sensation. I admit that it thereby differs essentially from most, if not all, other general ideas. Possibly it may be only through my having myself felt the promptings of some particular virtue or vice, that I am able to form an idea of that particular virtue or vice. If so, I admit that my idea of that particular virtue or vice is but, as Hume would say, a copy of my feeling. And since, undoubtedly, I can feel myself thinking, or perceiving, or performing any other mental operation, I am bound to admit, further, that my idea of any such operation may equally be described as a copy of a sensation which I have experienced. All I contend for is that if, after having formed my idea, either of a mental operation or of anything else whatever, I proceed to ask myself what sort of an entity that idea is, the answer which I give myself, or, in other words, the idea which I form of my previous idea, being a copy of idea, cannot be a copy of sensation.

So much must surely be conceded to me, for that white, being white, cannot be also black is not nearly so certain as that idea and sensation, being two distinct things, idea of idea cannot be idea of sensation. The concession, indeed, is likely enough to be accompanied by an exclamation of wonder that so microscopic a flaw in an elaborate exposition should be thought worth pointing out; but Hume himself would certainly not have so retorted. Of the doctrine which I am impugning, viz., that every idea is copied from some preceding sensation, he had spoken as follows:—'Those who would assert that this position is not universally true, nor without exception, have only one, and that an easy, method of refuting it, by producing the idea which, in their opinion, is not derived from this source. It will then be incumbent on us, if we would maintain our doctrine, to produce the impression or lively perception which corresponds to it.' He was much too candid not to have acknowledged that this challenge of his had been fairly and fully met. He was not a man to refuse to own himself refuted when, after distinctly intimating that the production of one single idea, having no perception correspondent to it amongst those which we experience 'when we see, or hear, or feel, or love, or hate, or will, or desire,' would suffice for his entire refutation, he found such an idea produced. He knew too well also to what enormous errors of thought minute errors of expression may lead, to disregard any speck of inaccuracy in any one of his definitions. The apparently slight oversight committed by him on this occasion will, indeed, be presently seen to have sensibly contributed to lead him subsequently into a mistake of no small practical moment.

We come next to the 'Association of Ideas,' the influence of which almost all of Hume's successors, as well as himself, seem to me to have greatly over-rated. That there is a 'principle of connection between the different thoughts or ideas of the mind' is, as he says, sufficiently evident; and that this principle is, as he was apparently the first to remark, threefold, deriving its efficacy from resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause or effect, may also be admitted with little qualification. But I presume to think that he is quite incorrect in adding that, in virtue of the aforesaid principle, ideas 'introduce each other with a certain degree of method or regularity.' You are walking, let us suppose, through Hyde Park, thinking of nothing more particular than that the morning is a pleasant one, when you suddenly find yourself in imagination pacing the shore of the Dead Sea, and, pausing to ask yourself how you got there, you discover, perhaps, that it was by the following steps. Remarking some landscape effect in the distance, you were reminded of a similar one which you had remarked years before while taking a walk fifty miles off in Sussex. Here resemblance operated. Then you recollected how during that walk you were thinking about Mr. Buckle, whose lucubrations you had been conning over before starting. Here entered contiguity both of time and space. The name of Buckle reminded you how that promising writer ended his travels abroad by dying of a fever which he caught while sailing over the sites of the engulphed cities of the plain. Here cause and effect came into action; and, so far, everything accords with Hume's theory. But if you repeat the same walk to-morrow, the same landscape effect will almost certainly suggest a train of ideas quite different from that of to-day. Perhaps it may begin by reminding you of landscape effects in general; then of Mr. Ruskin, who has discoursed so eloquently on that topic, and next of Mr. Ruskin's 'Stones of Venice,' from whence it is equal chances whether your thoughts radiate, on one side of the compass, to stone china, or Stoney Stratford, or Stonewall Jackson, or, on the other, to the 'Venetian Bracelet,' L. E. L. and Fernando Po, or to that effective adaptation of the Venetian style of architecture, the Railway Station at St. Pancras, and thence to some town or other on the Midland Line.

These examples will be readily recognized as fair average specimens of those unpremeditated trains of thought with which we are all familiar. Is there, then, in the arrangement of the consecutive thoughts of which the several trains are composed, any method or regularity common, I will not say to all, but to any two of them? According to Hume and to most of his successors in the same path of enquiry, there ought to be. Thus the illustrious author of the 'Analysis of the Human Mind' affirms, without rebuke or protest from any one of his not less illustrious commentators, that 'our ideas spring up or exist in the order in which the sensations existed of which they are the copies: that of those sensations which occurred synchronically, the ideas also spring up synchronically, and that of the sensations which occurred successively, the ideas rise successively.' And he adds, 'this is the general law of the Association of Ideas,' remarking, by way of illustration, that, as 'I have seen the sun, and the sky in which it is placed, synchronically, if I think of the one I think of the other at the same time'; and that, as when committing to memory a passage of words, as, for instance, the Lord's Prayer, we pronounce the words in successive order, and have consequently the sensation of the words in successive order, so when we proceed to repeat the passage, 'the ideas of the words also rise in succession, Our suggesting Father, Father suggesting which, which suggesting art, and so on to the end.'[29]

Oh Law! Law! most abused of scientific terms, what an infinity of dogmatic illegalities are committed in thy name! The one thing which scientific law implies is regularity of occurrence, but what regulation is it that is obeyed in common by a number of sequences commencing at the same point in Hyde Park, yet terminating, one in Africa, another in America, a third in Palestine, and a fourth in the centre of England? Can it have been seriously said that it is impossible for us to think of the sky without thinking simultaneously of the sun which illuminates the sky? Is it impossible for us to think instead of the ether which constitutes it, or peradventure even of the resemblance between its celestial azure and what Moore calls the 'most unholy blue' of some frolicsome Cynthia's eyes? And is it not notorious that when saying the Lord's Prayer—a prayer which, in spite of the injunction by which its original dictation was accompanied, to 'avoid vain repetitions, as the heathen do,' many Anglican clergymen insist on repeating half-a-dozen times in a single service—is it not notorious that, so far from the idea of one word suggesting to us the idea of the next, no small effort of attention is requisite to enable us to have any idea at all of what we are saying?

It would seem that the author of the 'Analysis' either could not help asking himself questions like these, or, without asking the questions, could not help seeing the commonplace truths involved in the inevitable replies to them. It would seem to have been semi-consciousness of the utter inability of the evidence first cited by him to justify belief in the necessarily simultaneous or successive occurrence of the ideas of simultaneously or successively experienced sensations, which made him have recourse for help to complex ideas. 'If,' he says, 'from a stone I have had synchronically the sensation of colour, the sensation of hardness, the sensations of shape and size, the sensation of weight,—when the idea of one of these sensations occurs, the ideas of all of them occur.' Because, then, I may have ascertained by experience that a stone is white, hard, and round, two feet in diameter, and twenty pounds in weight, am I really incapable, if I happen to break my shin against it, of thinking how hard it is, without thinking also how heavy; or, when trying to lift it, of thinking how heavy it is without thinking likewise of its shape and colour? Elsewhere the same writer speaks of 'ideas which have been so often conjoined that whenever one exists in the mind, the others immediately exist along with it, seem to run into one another, to coalesce, as it were, and out of many to form one idea.' But which are the ideas whereof this can be said? The writer instances those simple ideas, colour, hardness, extension, weight, which, he says, make up our complex ideas of gold or iron. He instances, too, the ideas of resistance, muscular contractility, direction, extension, place, and motion, of which he says our apparently simple idea, weight, is compounded. Does he mean, then, that we cannot entertain the idea of yellowness without entertaining at the same time all the other ideas necessary for composing the idea of gold, and entertaining, too, that idea in addition to all the rest? Does he mean that a train of thought cannot commence with place without terminating with weight? Of course he means nothing of the kind, although so he distinctly says. Rather, he appears to mean the direct converse, viz., that we cannot have the idea of gold or of weight present to the mind, without having present also all the simple ideas of which those complex ideas are compounded—in other words, not that the occurrence of any one component necessarily calls up all the other components, and forms with them the compound, but that the appearance of the compound brings with it all its separate components.

But neither does this seem to be a strictly correct representation. I am not sure that I can think of gold without thinking of yellowness, but I am positive that I can without thinking of hardness. Nor is there any doubt that the youngest child knows perfectly well what it means when, trying to lift a stone, it calls the stone heavy, although it might not be more difficult to make the stone itself than the child understand what is meant by muscular contractility. I own that if it be here demanded of me how a compound can be present unless every one of its components be present also, I may under pressure be constrained to suggest that possibly, after all, the very term compound or complex idea may be somewhat of a misnomer, or at any rate that the constituents of such an idea are much fewer than is commonly supposed. Be it admitted that the idea, so styled, could not have been formed without the instrumentality of other and previously-formed ideas, still it does not follow that the instruments of production should for ever after accompany the product. The rackful of dry toast which is brought to you for breakfast could scarcely have been so neatly sliced without the help of a knife, but the toast is not the less in bodily presence on the breakfast-table because the knife that cut it has been left behind in the kitchen. Neither, although you may probably be aware that salt, suet, sugar, and spice enter into the composition of a Christmas pudding, do you necessarily think of those separate ingredients when you think of the pudding, any more than you would see them separately if you saw the pudding. The only qualities which you apparently cannot help thinking of when you think of the pudding are its size, shape, and colour.

One word more about the assumed regularity in the succession of ideas. That when you are repeating a familiar form of words or playing a familiar piece of music, every word uttered or note struck, by reason of connexion of some sort between itself and the word or note next in order, enables you without the smallest mental effort to utter that word or strike that note, is too notorious to be questioned. But I do very earnestly question whether the connexion that thus operates is an association of ideas. How can it be, when, as frequently happens, you have not the smallest idea of what it is you are saying or playing? Have you not often, after reverently saying grace, like the decent paterfamilias you probably are, occasioned a giggle round the table by saying it again a minute or two afterwards, in utter unconsciousness that you had said it just before? Or, if I may so far flatter myself as to fancy my reader a fair daughter of the house instead of the staid house father—has it never happened to you, Miss, while executing a brilliant performance on the piano, to have been so entirely engrossed by an animated flirtation carried on simultaneously, that, if at the conclusion of the piece you had been asked what you had been playing, you could not have replied whether it was Là ci darem la mano or Non mi voglio maritar? And is it not evident that non-existent ideas cannot have called real ideas into existence?

My own modest contribution towards explanation of these mysterious phenomena is as follows. Apart from association of ideas, there is a separate and independent association—to wit, association of volitions. While committing to memory a form of words, or trying a new piece of music, every separate movement of your tongue or of your fingers is consequent on some separate volition. Each series of movements is consequent on a series of volitions. By being repeatedly made to follow each other in the same order, the several volitions become connected with each other, so that whenever the mind desires to marshal them in the aforesaid order, each one, as it presents itself, brings with it the next in succession, until the whole series is completed; while, as each volition has consequent upon it a corresponding movement, a series of corresponding movements simultaneously takes place. The mind meanwhile is quite unconscious of the muscular movements that are going on. What it is conscious of are the volitions without which no voluntary movements of the muscles could have been made, and of which the mind must needs be conscious, because a volition of which the mind was not conscious would be an involuntary volition, a birth too monstrous for even metaphysics to be equal to. But although necessarily conscious of these volitions, the mind is only momentarily conscious. It pays them barely an instant's attention, and therefore instantaneously forgets them, retaining no more trace of them than if they had never been.