Theaetetus

Another attempt is made to explain false opinion by assigning to error a sort of positive existence. But error or ignorance is essentially negative – a not-knowing; if we knew an error, we should be no longer in error. We may veil our difficulty under figures of speech, but these, although telling arguments with the multitude, can never be the real foundation of a system of psychology. Only they lead us to dwell upon mental phenomena which if expressed in an abstract form would not be realized by us at all. The figure of the mind receiving impressions is one of those images which have rooted themselves for ever in language. It may or may not be a 'gracious aid' to thought; but it cannot be got rid of. The other figure of the enclosure is also remarkable as affording the first hint of universal all-pervading ideas, – a notion further carried out in the Sophist. This is implied in the birds, some in flocks, some solitary, which fly about anywhere and everywhere. Plato discards both figures, as not really solving the question which to us appears so simple: 'How do we make mistakes?' The failure of the enquiry seems to show that we should return to knowledge, and begin with that; and we may afterwards proceed, with a better hope of success, to the examination of opinion.

But is true opinion really distinct from knowledge? The difference between these he seeks to establish by an argument, which to us appears singular and unsatisfactory. The existence of true opinion is proved by the rhetoric of the law courts, which cannot give knowledge, but may give true opinion. The rhetorician cannot put the judge or juror in possession of all the facts which prove an act of violence, but he may truly persuade them of the commission of such an act. Here the idea of true opinion seems to be a right conclusion from imperfect knowledge. But the correctness of such an opinion will be purely accidental; and is really the effect of one man, who has the means of knowing, persuading another who has not. Plato would have done better if he had said that true opinion was a contradiction in terms.

Assuming the distinction between knowledge and opinion, Theaetetus, in answer to Socrates, proceeds to define knowledge as true opinion, with definite or rational explanation. This Socrates identifies with another and different theory, of those who assert that knowledge first begins with a proposition.

The elements may be perceived by sense, but they are names, and cannot be defined. When we assign to them some predicate, they first begin to have a meaning (onomaton sumploke logou ousia). This seems equivalent to saying, that the individuals of sense become the subject of knowledge when they are regarded as they are in nature in relation to other individuals.

Yet we feel a difficulty in following this new hypothesis. For must not opinion be equally expressed in a proposition? The difference between true and false opinion is not the difference between the particular and the universal, but between the true universal and the false. Thought may be as much at fault as sight. When we place individuals under a class, or assign to them attributes, this is not knowledge, but a very rudimentary process of thought; the first generalization of all, without which language would be impossible. And has Plato kept altogether clear of a confusion, which the analogous word logos tends to create, of a proposition and a definition? And is not the confusion increased by the use of the analogous term 'elements,' or 'letters'? For there is no real resemblance between the relation of letters to a syllable, and of the terms to a proposition.

Plato, in the spirit of the Megarian philosophy, soon discovers a flaw in the explanation. For how can we know a compound of which the simple elements are unknown to us? Can two unknowns make a known? Can a whole be something different from the parts? The answer of experience is that they can; for we may know a compound, which we are unable to analyze into its elements; and all the parts, when united, may be more than all the parts separated: e.g. the number four, or any other number, is more than the units which are contained in it; any chemical compound is more than and different from the simple elements. But ancient philosophy in this, as in many other instances, proceeding by the path of mental analysis, was perplexed by doubts which warred against the plainest facts.

Three attempts to explain the new definition of knowledge still remain to be considered. They all of them turn on the explanation of logos. The first account of the meaning of the word is the reflection of thought in speech – a sort of nominalism 'La science est une langue bien faite.' But anybody who is not dumb can say what he thinks; therefore mere speech cannot be knowledge. And yet we may observe, that there is in this explanation an element of truth which is not recognized by Plato; viz. that truth and thought are inseparable from language, although mere expression in words is not truth. The second explanation of logos is the enumeration of the elementary parts of the complex whole. But this is only definition accompanied with right opinion, and does not yet attain to the certainty of knowledge. Plato does not mention the greater objection, which is, that the enumeration of particulars is endless; such a definition would be based on no principle, and would not help us at all in gaining a common idea. The third is the best explanation, – the possession of a characteristic mark, which seems to answer to the logical definition by genus and difference. But this, again, is equally necessary for right opinion; and we have already determined, although not on very satisfactory grounds, that knowledge must be distinguished from opinion. A better distinction is drawn between them in the Timaeus. They might be opposed as philosophy and rhetoric, and as conversant respectively with necessary and contingent matter. But no true idea of the nature of either of them, or of their relation to one another, could be framed until science obtained a content. The ancient philosophers in the age of Plato thought of science only as pure abstraction, and to this opinion stood in no relation.

Like Theaetetus, we have attained to no definite result. But an interesting phase of ancient philosophy has passed before us. And the negative result is not to be despised. For on certain subjects, and in certain states of knowledge, the work of negation or clearing the ground must go on, perhaps for a generation, before the new structure can begin to rise. Plato saw the necessity of combating the illogical logic of the Megarians and Eristics. For the completion of the edifice, he makes preparation in the Theaetetus, and crowns the work in the Sophist.

Many (1) fine expressions, and (2) remarks full of wisdom, (3) also germs of a metaphysic of the future, are scattered up and down in the dialogue. Such, for example, as (1) the comparison of Theaetetus' progress in learning to the 'noiseless flow of a river of oil'; the satirical touch, 'flavouring a sauce or fawning speech'; or the remarkable expression, 'full of impure dialectic'; or the lively images under which the argument is described, – 'the flood of arguments pouring in,' the fresh discussions 'bursting in like a band of revellers.' (2) As illustrations of the second head, may be cited the remark of Socrates, that 'distinctions of words, although sometimes pedantic, are also necessary'; or the fine touch in the character of the lawyer, that 'dangers came upon him when the tenderness of youth was unequal to them'; or the description of the manner in which the spirit is broken in a wicked man who listens to reproof until he becomes like a child; or the punishment of the wicked, which is not physical suffering, but the perpetual companionship of evil (compare Gorgias); or the saying, often repeated by Aristotle and others, that 'philosophy begins in wonder, for Iris is the child of Thaumas'; or the superb contempt with which the philosopher takes down the pride of wealthy landed proprietors by comparison of the whole earth. (3) Important metaphysical ideas are: a. the conception of thought, as the mind talking to herself; b. the notion of a common sense, developed further by Aristotle, and the explicit declaration, that the mind gains her conceptions of Being, sameness, number, and the like, from reflection on herself; c. the excellent distinction of Theaetetus (which Socrates, speaking with emphasis, 'leaves to grow') between seeing the forms or hearing the sounds of words in a foreign language, and understanding the meaning of them; and d. the distinction of Socrates himself between 'having' and 'possessing' knowledge, in which the answer to the whole discussion appears to be contained.

…

There is a difference between ancient and modern psychology, and we have a difficulty in explaining one in the terms of the other. To us the inward and outward sense and the inward and outward worlds of which they are the organs are parted by a wall, and appear as if they could never be confounded. The mind is endued with faculties, habits, instincts, and a personality or consciousness in which they are bound together. Over against these are placed forms, colours, external bodies coming into contact with our own body. We speak of a subject which is ourselves, of an object which is all the rest. These are separable in thought, but united in any act of sensation, reflection, or volition. As there are various degrees in which the mind may enter into or be abstracted from the operations of sense, so there are various points at which this separation or union may be supposed to occur. And within the sphere of mind the analogy of sense reappears; and we distinguish not only external objects, but objects of will and of knowledge which we contrast with them. These again are comprehended in a higher object, which reunites with the subject. A multitude of abstractions are created by the efforts of successive thinkers which become logical determinations; and they have to be arranged in order, before the scheme of thought is complete. The framework of the human intellect is not the peculium of an individual, but the joint work of many who are of all ages and countries. What we are in mind is due, not merely to our physical, but to our mental antecedents which we trace in history, and more especially in the history of philosophy. Nor can mental phenomena be truly explained either by physiology or by the observation of consciousness apart from their history. They have a growth of their own, like the growth of a flower, a tree, a human being. They may be conceived as of themselves constituting a common mind, and having a sort of personal identity in which they coexist.

So comprehensive is modern psychology, seeming to aim at constructing anew the entire world of thought. And prior to or simultaneously with this construction a negative process has to be carried on, a clearing away of useless abstractions which we have inherited from the past. Many erroneous conceptions of the mind derived from former philosophies have found their way into language, and we with difficulty disengage ourselves from them. Mere figures of speech have unconsciously influenced the minds of great thinkers. Also there are some distinctions, as, for example, that of the will and of the reason, and of the moral and intellectual faculties, which are carried further than is justified by experience. Any separation of things which we cannot see or exactly define, though it may be necessary, is a fertile source of error. The division of the mind into faculties or powers or virtues is too deeply rooted in language to be got rid of, but it gives a false impression. For if we reflect on ourselves we see that all our faculties easily pass into one another, and are bound together in a single mind or consciousness; but this mental unity is apt to be concealed from us by the distinctions of language.

A profusion of words and ideas has obscured rather than enlightened mental science. It is hard to say how many fallacies have arisen from the representation of the mind as a box, as a 'tabula rasa,' a book, a mirror, and the like. It is remarkable how Plato in the Theaetetus, after having indulged in the figure of the waxen tablet and the decoy, afterwards discards them. The mind is also represented by another class of images, as the spring of a watch, a motive power, a breath, a stream, a succession of points or moments. As Plato remarks in the Cratylus, words expressive of motion as well as of rest are employed to describe the faculties and operations of the mind; and in these there is contained another store of fallacies. Some shadow or reflection of the body seems always to adhere to our thoughts about ourselves, and mental processes are hardly distinguished in language from bodily ones. To see or perceive are used indifferently of both; the words intuition, moral sense, common sense, the mind's eye, are figures of speech transferred from one to the other. And many other words used in early poetry or in sacred writings to express the works of mind have a materialistic sound; for old mythology was allied to sense, and the distinction of matter and mind had not as yet arisen. Thus materialism receives an illusive aid from language; and both in philosophy and religion the imaginary figure or association easily takes the place of real knowledge.

Again, there is the illusion of looking into our own minds as if our thoughts or feelings were written down in a book. This is another figure of speech, which might be appropriately termed 'the fallacy of the looking-glass.' We cannot look at the mind unless we have the eye which sees, and we can only look, not into, but out of the mind at the thoughts, words, actions of ourselves and others. What we dimly recognize within us is not experience, but rather the suggestion of an experience, which we may gather, if we will, from the observation of the world. The memory has but a feeble recollection of what we were saying or doing a few weeks or a few months ago, and still less of what we were thinking or feeling. This is one among many reasons why there is so little self-knowledge among mankind; they do not carry with them the thought of what they are or have been. The so-called 'facts of consciousness' are equally evanescent; they are facts which nobody ever saw, and which can neither be defined nor described. Of the three laws of thought the first (All A = A) is an identical proposition – that is to say, a mere word or symbol claiming to be a proposition: the two others (Nothing can be A and not A, and Everything is either A or not A) are untrue, because they exclude degrees and also the mixed modes and double aspects under which truth is so often presented to us. To assert that man is man is unmeaning; to say that he is free or necessary and cannot be both is a half truth only. These are a few of the entanglements which impede the natural course of human thought. Lastly, there is the fallacy which lies still deeper, of regarding the individual mind apart from the universal, or either, as a self-existent entity apart from the ideas which are contained in them.

In ancient philosophies the analysis of the mind is still rudimentary and imperfect. It naturally began with an effort to disengage the universal from sense – this was the first lifting up of the mist. It wavered between object and subject, passing imperceptibly from one or Being to mind and thought. Appearance in the outward object was for a time indistinguishable from opinion in the subject. At length mankind spoke of knowing as well as of opining or perceiving. But when the word 'knowledge' was found how was it to be explained or defined? It was not an error, it was a step in the right direction, when Protagoras said that 'Man is the measure of all things,' and that 'All knowledge is perception.' This was the subjective which corresponded to the objective 'All is flux.' But the thoughts of men deepened, and soon they began to be aware that knowledge was neither sense, nor yet opinion – with or without explanation; nor the expression of thought, nor the enumeration of parts, nor the addition of characteristic marks. Motion and rest were equally ill adapted to express its nature, although both must in some sense be attributed to it; it might be described more truly as the mind conversing with herself; the discourse of reason; the hymn of dialectic, the science of relations, of ideas, of the so-called arts and sciences, of the one, of the good, of the all: – this is the way along which Plato is leading us in his later dialogues. In its higher signification it was the knowledge, not of men, but of gods, perfect and all sufficing: – like other ideals always passing out of sight, and nevertheless present to the mind of Aristotle as well as Plato, and the reality to which they were both tending. For Aristotle as well as Plato would in modern phraseology have been termed a mystic; and like him would have defined the higher philosophy to be 'Knowledge of being or essence,' – words to which in our own day we have a difficulty in attaching a meaning.

Yet, in spite of Plato and his followers, mankind have again and again returned to a sensational philosophy. As to some of the early thinkers, amid the fleetings of sensible objects, ideas alone seemed to be fixed, so to a later generation amid the fluctuation of philosophical opinions the only fixed points appeared to be outward objects. Any pretence of knowledge which went beyond them implied logical processes, of the correctness of which they had no assurance and which at best were only probable. The mind, tired of wandering, sought to rest on firm ground; when the idols of philosophy and language were stripped off, the perception of outward objects alone remained. The ancient Epicureans never asked whether the comparison of these with one another did not involve principles of another kind which were above and beyond them. In like manner the modern inductive philosophy forgot to enquire into the meaning of experience, and did not attempt to form a conception of outward objects apart from the mind, or of the mind apart from them. Soon objects of sense were merged in sensations and feelings, but feelings and sensations were still unanalyzed. At last we return to the doctrine attributed by Plato to Protagoras, that the mind is only a succession of momentary perceptions. At this point the modern philosophy of experience forms an alliance with ancient scepticism.

The higher truths of philosophy and religion are very far removed from sense. Admitting that, like all other knowledge, they are derived from experience, and that experience is ultimately resolvable into facts which come to us through the eye and ear, still their origin is a mere accident which has nothing to do with their true nature. They are universal and unseen; they belong to all times – past, present, and future. Any worthy notion of mind or reason includes them. The proof of them is, 1st, their comprehensiveness and consistency with one another; 2ndly, their agreement with history and experience. But sensation is of the present only, is isolated, is and is not in successive moments. It takes the passing hour as it comes, following the lead of the eye or ear instead of the command of reason. It is a faculty which man has in common with the animals, and in which he is inferior to many of them. The importance of the senses in us is that they are the apertures of the mind, doors and windows through which we take in and make our own the materials of knowledge. Regarded in any other point of view sensation is of all mental acts the most trivial and superficial. Hence the term 'sensational' is rightly used to express what is shallow in thought and feeling.

We propose in what follows, first of all, like Plato in the Theaetetus, to analyse sensation, and secondly to trace the connexion between theories of sensation and a sensational or Epicurean philosophy.

Paragraph I. We, as well as the ancients, speak of the five senses, and of a sense, or common sense, which is the abstraction of them. The term 'sense' is also used metaphorically, both in ancient and modern philosophy, to express the operations of the mind which are immediate or intuitive. Of the five senses, two – the sight and the hearing – are of a more subtle and complex nature, while two others – the smell and the taste – seem to be only more refined varieties of touch. All of them are passive, and by this are distinguished from the active faculty of speech: they receive impressions, but do not produce them, except in so far as they are objects of sense themselves.

Physiology speaks to us of the wonderful apparatus of nerves, muscles, tissues, by which the senses are enabled to fulfil their functions. It traces the connexion, though imperfectly, of the bodily organs with the operations of the mind. Of these latter, it seems rather to know the conditions than the causes. It can prove to us that without the brain we cannot think, and that without the eye we cannot see: and yet there is far more in thinking and seeing than is given by the brain and the eye. It observes the 'concomitant variations' of body and mind. Psychology, on the other hand, treats of the same subject regarded from another point of view. It speaks of the relation of the senses to one another; it shows how they meet the mind; it analyzes the transition from sense to thought. The one describes their nature as apparent to the outward eye; by the other they are regarded only as the instruments of the mind. It is in this latter point of view that we propose to consider them.

The simplest sensation involves an unconscious or nascent operation of the mind; it implies objects of sense, and objects of sense have differences of form, number, colour. But the conception of an object without us, or the power of discriminating numbers, forms, colours, is not given by the sense, but by the mind. A mere sensation does not attain to distinctness: it is a confused impression, sugkechumenon ti, as Plato says (Republic), until number introduces light and order into the confusion. At what point confusion becomes distinctness is a question of degree which cannot be precisely determined. The distant object, the undefined notion, come out into relief as we approach them or attend to them. Or we may assist the analysis by attempting to imagine the world first dawning upon the eye of the infant or of a person newly restored to sight. Yet even with them the mind as well as the eye opens or enlarges. For all three are inseparably bound together – the object would be nowhere and nothing, if not perceived by the sense, and the sense would have no power of distinguishing without the mind.

But prior to objects of sense there is a third nature in which they are contained – that is to say, space, which may be explained in various ways. It is the element which surrounds them; it is the vacuum or void which they leave or occupy when passing from one portion of space to another. It might be described in the language of ancient philosophy, as 'the Not-being' of objects. It is a negative idea which in the course of ages has become positive. It is originally derived from the contemplation of the world without us – the boundless earth or sea, the vacant heaven, and is therefore acquired chiefly through the sense of sight: to the blind the conception of space is feeble and inadequate, derived for the most part from touch or from the descriptions of others. At first it appears to be continuous; afterwards we perceive it to be capable of division by lines or points, real or imaginary. By the help of mathematics we form another idea of space, which is altogether independent of experience. Geometry teaches us that the innumerable lines and figures by which space is or may be intersected are absolutely true in all their combinations and consequences. New and unchangeable properties of space are thus developed, which are proved to us in a thousand ways by mathematical reasoning as well as by common experience. Through quantity and measure we are conducted to our simplest and purest notion of matter, which is to the cube or solid what space is to the square or surface. And all our applications of mathematics are applications of our ideas of space to matter. No wonder then that they seem to have a necessary existence to us. Being the simplest of our ideas, space is also the one of which we have the most difficulty in ridding ourselves. Neither can we set a limit to it, for wherever we fix a limit, space is springing up beyond. Neither can we conceive a smallest or indivisible portion of it; for within the smallest there is a smaller still; and even these inconceivable qualities of space, whether the infinite or the infinitesimal, may be made the subject of reasoning and have a certain truth to us.

Whether space exists in the mind or out of it, is a question which has no meaning. We should rather say that without it the mind is incapable of conceiving the body, and therefore of conceiving itself. The mind may be indeed imagined to contain the body, in the same way that Aristotle (partly following Plato) supposes God to be the outer heaven or circle of the universe. But how can the individual mind carry about the universe of space packed up within, or how can separate minds have either a universe of their own or a common universe? In such conceptions there seems to be a confusion of the individual and the universal. To say that we can only have a true idea of ourselves when we deny the reality of that by which we have any idea of ourselves is an absurdity. The earth which is our habitation and 'the starry heaven above' and we ourselves are equally an illusion, if space is only a quality or condition of our minds.

Again, we may compare the truths of space with other truths derived from experience, which seem to have a necessity to us in proportion to the frequency of their recurrence or the truth of the consequences which may be inferred from them. We are thus led to remark that the necessity in our ideas of space on which much stress has been laid, differs in a slight degree only from the necessity which appears to belong to other of our ideas, e.g. weight, motion, and the like. And there is another way in which this necessity may be explained. We have been taught it, and the truth which we were taught or which we inherited has never been contradicted in all our experience and is therefore confirmed by it. Who can resist an idea which is presented to him in a general form in every moment of his life and of which he finds no instance to the contrary? The greater part of what is sometimes regarded as the a priori intuition of space is really the conception of the various geometrical figures of which the properties have been revealed by mathematical analysis. And the certainty of these properties is immeasurably increased to us by our finding that they hold good not only in every instance, but in all the consequences which are supposed to flow from them.

Neither must we forget that our idea of space, like our other ideas, has a history. The Homeric poems contain no word for it; even the later Greek philosophy has not the Kantian notion of space, but only the definite 'place' or 'the infinite.' To Plato, in the Timaeus, it is known only as the 'nurse of generation.' When therefore we speak of the necessity of our ideas of space we must remember that this is a necessity which has grown up with the growth of the human mind, and has been made by ourselves. We can free ourselves from the perplexities which are involved in it by ascending to a time in which they did not as yet exist. And when space or time are described as 'a priori forms or intuitions added to the matter given in sensation,' we should consider that such expressions belong really to the 'pre-historic study' of philosophy, i.e. to the eighteenth century, when men sought to explain the human mind without regard to history or language or the social nature of man.

In every act of sense there is a latent perception of space, of which we only become conscious when objects are withdrawn from it. There are various ways in which we may trace the connexion between them. We may think of space as unresisting matter, and of matter as divided into objects; or of objects again as formed by abstraction into a collective notion of matter, and of matter as rarefied into space. And motion may be conceived as the union of there and not there in space, and force as the materializing or solidification of motion. Space again is the individual and universal in one; or, in other words, a perception and also a conception. So easily do what are sometimes called our simple ideas pass into one another, and differences of kind resolve themselves into differences of degree.

Within or behind space there is another abstraction in many respects similar to it – time, the form of the inward, as space is the form of the outward. As we cannot think of outward objects of sense or of outward sensations without space, so neither can we think of a succession of sensations without time. It is the vacancy of thoughts or sensations, as space is the void of outward objects, and we can no more imagine the mind without the one than the world without the other. It is to arithmetic what space is to geometry; or, more strictly, arithmetic may be said to be equally applicable to both. It is defined in our minds, partly by the analogy of space and partly by the recollection of events which have happened to us, or the consciousness of feelings which we are experiencing. Like space, it is without limit, for whatever beginning or end of time we fix, there is a beginning and end before them, and so on without end. We speak of a past, present, and future, and again the analogy of space assists us in conceiving of them as coexistent. When the limit of time is removed there arises in our minds the idea of eternity, which at first, like time itself, is only negative, but gradually, when connected with the world and the divine nature, like the other negative infinity of space, becomes positive. Whether time is prior to the mind and to experience, or coeval with them, is (like the parallel question about space) unmeaning. Like space it has been realized gradually: in the Homeric poems, or even in the Hesiodic cosmogony, there is no more notion of time than of space. The conception of being is more general than either, and might therefore with greater plausibility be affirmed to be a condition or quality of the mind. The a priori intuitions of Kant would have been as unintelligible to Plato as his a priori synthetical propositions to Aristotle. The philosopher of Konigsberg supposed himself to be analyzing a necessary mode of thought: he was not aware that he was dealing with a mere abstraction. But now that we are able to trace the gradual developement of ideas through religion, through language, through abstractions, why should we interpose the fiction of time between ourselves and realities? Why should we single out one of these abstractions to be the a priori condition of all the others? It comes last and not first in the order of our thoughts, and is not the condition precedent of them, but the last generalization of them. Nor can any principle be imagined more suicidal to philosophy than to assume that all the truth which we are capable of attaining is seen only through an unreal medium. If all that exists in time is illusion, we may well ask with Plato, 'What becomes of the mind?'

Leaving the a priori conditions of sensation we may proceed to consider acts of sense. These admit of various degrees of duration or intensity; they admit also of a greater or less extension from one object, which is perceived directly, to many which are perceived indirectly or in a less degree, and to the various associations of the object which are latent in the mind. In general the greater the intension the less the extension of them. The simplest sensation implies some relation of objects to one another, some position in space, some relation to a previous or subsequent sensation. The acts of seeing and hearing may be almost unconscious and may pass away unnoted; they may also leave an impression behind them or power of recalling them. If, after seeing an object we shut our eyes, the object remains dimly seen in the same or about the same place, but with form and lineaments half filled up. This is the simplest act of memory. And as we cannot see one thing without at the same time seeing another, different objects hang together in recollection, and when we call for one the other quickly follows. To think of the place in which we have last seen a thing is often the best way of recalling it to the mind. Hence memory is dependent on association. The act of recollection may be compared to the sight of an object at a great distance which we have previously seen near and seek to bring near to us in thought. Memory is to sense as dreaming is to waking; and like dreaming has a wayward and uncertain power of recalling impressions from the past.

Thus begins the passage from the outward to the inward sense. But as yet there is no conception of a universal – the mind only remembers the individual object or objects, and is always attaching to them some colour or association of sense. The power of recollection seems to depend on the intensity or largeness of the perception, or on the strength of some emotion with which it is inseparably connected. This is the natural memory which is allied to sense, such as children appear to have and barbarians and animals. It is necessarily limited in range, and its limitation is its strength. In later life, when the mind has become crowded with names, acts, feelings, images innumerable, we acquire by education another memory of system and arrangement which is both stronger and weaker than the first – weaker in the recollection of sensible impressions as they are represented to us by eye or ear – stronger by the natural connexion of ideas with objects or with one another. And many of the notions which form a part of the train of our thoughts are hardly realized by us at the time, but, like numbers or algebraical symbols, are used as signs only, thus lightening the labour of recollection.

And now we may suppose that numerous images present themselves to the mind, which begins to act upon them and to arrange them in various ways. Besides the impression of external objects present with us or just absent from us, we have a dimmer conception of other objects which have disappeared from our immediate recollection and yet continue to exist in us. The mind is full of fancies which are passing to and fro before it. Some feeling or association calls them up, and they are uttered by the lips. This is the first rudimentary imagination, which may be truly described in the language of Hobbes, as 'decaying sense,' an expression which may be applied with equal truth to memory as well. For memory and imagination, though we sometimes oppose them, are nearly allied; the difference between them seems chiefly to lie in the activity of the one compared with the passivity of the other. The sense decaying in memory receives a flash of light or life from imagination. Dreaming is a link of connexion between them; for in dreaming we feebly recollect and also feebly imagine at one and the same time. When reason is asleep the lower part of the mind wanders at will amid the images which have been received from without, the intelligent element retires, and the sensual or sensuous takes its place. And so in the first efforts of imagination reason is latent or set aside; and images, in part disorderly, but also having a unity (however imperfect) of their own, pour like a flood over the mind. And if we could penetrate into the heads of animals we should probably find that their intelligence, or the state of what in them is analogous to our intelligence, is of this nature.

Thus far we have been speaking of men, rather in the points in which they resemble animals than in the points in which they differ from them. The animal too has memory in various degrees, and the elements of imagination, if, as appears to be the case, he dreams. How far their powers or instincts are educated by the circumstances of their lives or by intercourse with one another or with mankind, we cannot precisely tell. They, like ourselves, have the physical inheritance of form, scent, hearing, sight, and other qualities or instincts. But they have not the mental inheritance of thoughts and ideas handed down by tradition, 'the slow additions that build up the mind' of the human race. And language, which is the great educator of mankind, is wanting in them; whereas in us language is ever present – even in the infant the latent power of naming is almost immediately observable. And therefore the description which has been already given of the nascent power of the faculties is in reality an anticipation. For simultaneous with their growth in man a growth of language must be supposed. The child of two years old sees the fire once and again, and the feeble observation of the same recurring object is associated with the feeble utterance of the name by which he is taught to call it. Soon he learns to utter the name when the object is no longer there, but the desire or imagination of it is present to him. At first in every use of the word there is a colour of sense, an indistinct picture of the object which accompanies it. But in later years he sees in the name only the universal or class word, and the more abstract the notion becomes, the more vacant is the image which is presented to him. Henceforward all the operations of his mind, including the perceptions of sense, are a synthesis of sensations, words, conceptions. In seeing or hearing or looking or listening the sensible impression prevails over the conception and the word. In reflection the process is reversed – the outward object fades away into nothingness, the name or the conception or both together are everything. Language, like number, is intermediate between the two, partaking of the definiteness of the outer and of the universality of the inner world. For logic teaches us that every word is really a universal, and only condescends by the help of position or circumlocution to become the expression of individuals or particulars. And sometimes by using words as symbols we are able to give a 'local habitation and a name' to the infinite and inconceivable.

Thus we see that no line can be drawn between the powers of sense and of reflection – they pass imperceptibly into one another. We may indeed distinguish between the seeing and the closed eye – between the sensation and the recollection of it. But this distinction carries us a very little way, for recollection is present in sight as well as sight in recollection. There is no impression of sense which does not simultaneously recall differences of form, number, colour, and the like. Neither is such a distinction applicable at all to our internal bodily sensations, which give no sign of themselves when unaccompanied with pain, and even when we are most conscious of them, have often no assignable place in the human frame. Who can divide the nerves or great nervous centres from the mind which uses them? Who can separate the pains and pleasures of the mind from the pains and pleasures of the body? The words 'inward and outward,' 'active and passive,' 'mind and body,' are best conceived by us as differences of degree passing into differences of kind, and at one time and under one aspect acting in harmony and then again opposed. They introduce a system and order into the knowledge of our being; and yet, like many other general terms, are often in advance of our actual analysis or observation.

According to some writers the inward sense is only the fading away or imperfect realization of the outward. But this leaves out of sight one half of the phenomenon. For the mind is not only withdrawn from the world of sense but introduced to a higher world of thought and reflection, in which, like the outward sense, she is trained and educated. By use the outward sense becomes keener and more intense, especially when confined within narrow limits. The savage with little or no thought has a quicker discernment of the track than the civilised man; in like manner the dog, having the help of scent as well as of sight, is superior to the savage. By use again the inward thought becomes more defined and distinct; what was at first an effort is made easy by the natural instrumentality of language, and the mind learns to grasp universals with no more exertion than is required for the sight of an outward object. There is a natural connexion and arrangement of them, like the association of objects in a landscape. Just as a note or two of music suffices to recall a whole piece to the musician's or composer's mind, so a great principle or leading thought suggests and arranges a world of particulars. The power of reflection is not feebler than the faculty of sense, but of a higher and more comprehensive nature. It not only receives the universals of sense, but gives them a new content by comparing and combining them with one another. It withdraws from the seen that it may dwell in the unseen. The sense only presents us with a flat and impenetrable surface: the mind takes the world to pieces and puts it together on a new pattern. The universals which are detached from sense are reconstructed in science. They and not the mere impressions of sense are the truth of the world in which we live; and (as an argument to those who will only believe 'what they can hold in their hands') we may further observe that they are the source of our power over it. To say that the outward sense is stronger than the inward is like saying that the arm of the workman is stronger than the constructing or directing mind.

Returning to the senses we may briefly consider two questions – first their relation to the mind, secondly, their relation to outward objects: —

1. The senses are not merely 'holes set in a wooden horse' (Theaet.), but instruments of the mind with which they are organically connected. There is no use of them without some use of words – some natural or latent logic – some previous experience or observation. Sensation, like all other mental processes, is complex and relative, though apparently simple. The senses mutually confirm and support one another; it is hard to say how much our impressions of hearing may be affected by those of sight, or how far our impressions of sight may be corrected by the touch, especially in infancy. The confirmation of them by one another cannot of course be given by any one of them. Many intuitions which are inseparable from the act of sense are really the result of complicated reasonings. The most cursory glance at objects enables the experienced eye to judge approximately of their relations and distance, although nothing is impressed upon the retina except colour, including gradations of light and shade. From these delicate and almost imperceptible differences we seem chiefly to derive our ideas of distance and position. By comparison of what is near with what is distant we learn that the tree, house, river, etc. which are a long way off are objects of a like nature with those which are seen by us in our immediate neighbourhood, although the actual impression made on the eye is very different in one case and in the other. This is a language of 'large and small letters' (Republic), slightly differing in form and exquisitely graduated by distance, which we are learning all our life long, and which we attain in various degrees according to our powers of sight or observation. There is nor the consideration. The greater or less strain upon the nerves of the eye or ear is communicated to the mind and silently informs the judgment. We have also the use not of one eye only, but of two, which give us a wider range, and help us to discern, by the greater or less acuteness of the angle which the rays of sight form, the distance of an object and its relation to other objects. But we are already passing beyond the limits of our actual knowledge on a subject which has given rise to many conjectures. More important than the addition of another conjecture is the observation, whether in the case of sight or of any other sense, of the great complexity of the causes and the great simplicity of the effect.

The sympathy of the mind and the ear is no less striking than the sympathy of the mind and the eye. Do we not seem to perceive instinctively and as an act of sense the differences of articulate speech and of musical notes? Yet how small a part of speech or of music is produced by the impression of the ear compared with that which is furnished by the mind!

Again: the more refined faculty of sense, as in animals so also in man, seems often to be transmitted by inheritance. Neither must we forget that in the use of the senses, as in his whole nature, man is a social being, who is always being educated by language, habit, and the teaching of other men as well as by his own observation. He knows distance because he is taught it by a more experienced judgment than his own; he distinguishes sounds because he is told to remark them by a person of a more discerning ear. And as we inherit from our parents or other ancestors peculiar powers of sense or feeling, so we improve and strengthen them, not only by regular teaching, but also by sympathy and communion with other persons.

2. The second question, namely, that concerning the relation of the mind to external objects, is really a trifling one, though it has been made the subject of a famous philosophy. We may if we like, with Berkeley, resolve objects of sense into sensations; but the change is one of name only, and nothing is gained and something is lost by such a resolution or confusion of them. For we have not really made a single step towards idealism, and any arbitrary inversion of our ordinary modes of speech is disturbing to the mind. The youthful metaphysician is delighted at his marvellous discovery that nothing is, and that what we see or feel is our sensation only: for a day or two the world has a new interest to him; he alone knows the secret which has been communicated to him by the philosopher, that mind is all – when in fact he is going out of his mind in the first intoxication of a great thought. But he soon finds that all things remain as they were – the laws of motion, the properties of matter, the qualities of substances. After having inflicted his theories on any one who is willing to receive them 'first on his father and mother, secondly on some other patient listener, thirdly on his dog,' he finds that he only differs from the rest of mankind in the use of a word. He had once hoped that by getting rid of the solidity of matter he might open a passage to worlds beyond. He liked to think of the world as the representation of the divine nature, and delighted to imagine angels and spirits wandering through space, present in the room in which he is sitting without coming through the door, nowhere and everywhere at the same instant. At length he finds that he has been the victim of his own fancies; he has neither more nor less evidence of the supernatural than he had before. He himself has become unsettled, but the laws of the world remain fixed as at the beginning. He has discovered that his appeal to the fallibility of sense was really an illusion. For whatever uncertainty there may be in the appearances of nature, arises only out of the imperfection or variation of the human senses, or possibly from the deficiency of certain branches of knowledge; when science is able to apply her tests, the uncertainty is at an end. We are apt sometimes to think that moral and metaphysical philosophy are lowered by the influence which is exercised over them by physical science. But any interpretation of nature by physical science is far in advance of such idealism. The philosophy of Berkeley, while giving unbounded license to the imagination, is still grovelling on the level of sense.

We may, if we please, carry this scepticism a step further, and deny, not only objects of sense, but the continuity of our sensations themselves. We may say with Protagoras and Hume that what is appears, and that what appears appears only to individuals, and to the same individual only at one instant. But then, as Plato asks, – and we must repeat the question, – What becomes of the mind? Experience tells us by a thousand proofs that our sensations of colour, taste, and the like, are the same as they were an instant ago – that the act which we are performing one minute is continued by us in the next – and also supplies abundant proof that the perceptions of other men are, speaking generally, the same or nearly the same with our own. After having slowly and laboriously in the course of ages gained a conception of a whole and parts, of the constitution of the mind, of the relation of man to God and nature, imperfect indeed, but the best we can, we are asked to return again to the 'beggarly elements' of ancient scepticism, and acknowledge only atoms and sensations devoid of life or unity. Why should we not go a step further still and doubt the existence of the senses of all things? We are but 'such stuff as dreams are made of;' for we have left ourselves no instruments of thought by which we can distinguish man from the animals, or conceive of the existence even of a mollusc. And observe, this extreme scepticism has been allowed to spring up among us, not, like the ancient scepticism, in an age when nature and language really seemed to be full of illusions, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when men walk in the daylight of inductive science.

The attractiveness of such speculations arises out of their true nature not being perceived. They are veiled in graceful language; they are not pushed to extremes; they stop where the human mind is disposed also to stop – short of a manifest absurdity. Their inconsistency is not observed by their authors or by mankind in general, who are equally inconsistent themselves. They leave on the mind a pleasing sense of wonder and novelty: in youth they seem to have a natural affinity to one class of persons as poetry has to another; but in later life either we drift back into common sense, or we make them the starting-points of a higher philosophy.

We are often told that we should enquire into all things before we accept them; – with what limitations is this true? For we cannot use our senses without admitting that we have them, or think without presupposing that there is in us a power of thought, or affirm that all knowledge is derived from experience without implying that this first principle of knowledge is prior to experience. The truth seems to be that we begin with the natural use of the mind as of the body, and we seek to describe this as well as we can. We eat before we know the nature of digestion; we think before we know the nature of reflection. As our knowledge increases, our perception of the mind enlarges also. We cannot indeed get beyond facts, but neither can we draw any line which separates facts from ideas. And the mind is not something separate from them but included in them, and they in the mind, both having a distinctness and individuality of their own. To reduce our conception of mind to a succession of feelings and sensations is like the attempt to view a wide prospect by inches through a microscope, or to calculate a period of chronology by minutes. The mind ceases to exist when it loses its continuity, which though far from being its highest determination, is yet necessary to any conception of it. Even an inanimate nature cannot be adequately represented as an endless succession of states or conditions.

Paragraph II. Another division of the subject has yet to be considered: Why should the doctrine that knowledge is sensation, in ancient times, or of sensationalism or materialism in modern times, be allied to the lower rather than to the higher view of ethical philosophy? At first sight the nature and origin of knowledge appear to be wholly disconnected from ethics and religion, nor can we deny that the ancient Stoics were materialists, or that the materialist doctrines prevalent in modern times have been associated with great virtues, or that both religious and philosophical idealism have not unfrequently parted company with practice. Still upon the whole it must be admitted that the higher standard of duty has gone hand in hand with the higher conception of knowledge. It is Protagoras who is seeking to adapt himself to the opinions of the world; it is Plato who rises above them: the one maintaining that all knowledge is sensation; the other basing the virtues on the idea of good. The reason of this phenomenon has now to be examined.

By those who rest knowledge immediately upon sense, that explanation of human action is deemed to be the truest which is nearest to sense. As knowledge is reduced to sensation, so virtue is reduced to feeling, happiness or good to pleasure. The different virtues – the various characters which exist in the world – are the disguises of self-interest. Human nature is dried up; there is no place left for imagination, or in any higher sense for religion. Ideals of a whole, or of a state, or of a law of duty, or of a divine perfection, are out of place in an Epicurean philosophy. The very terms in which they are expressed are suspected of having no meaning. Man is to bring himself back as far as he is able to the condition of a rational beast. He is to limit himself to the pursuit of pleasure, but of this he is to make a far-sighted calculation; – he is to be rationalized, secularized, animalized: or he is to be an amiable sceptic, better than his own philosophy, and not falling below the opinions of the world.

Imagination has been called that 'busy faculty' which is always intruding upon us in the search after truth. But imagination is also that higher power by which we rise above ourselves and the commonplaces of thought and life. The philosophical imagination is another name for reason finding an expression of herself in the outward world. To deprive life of ideals is to deprive it of all higher and comprehensive aims and of the power of imparting and communicating them to others. For men are taught, not by those who are on a level with them, but by those who rise above them, who see the distant hills, who soar into the empyrean. Like a bird in a cage, the mind confined to sense is always being brought back from the higher to the lower, from the wider to the narrower view of human knowledge. It seeks to fly but cannot: instead of aspiring towards perfection, 'it hovers about this lower world and the earthly nature.' It loses the religious sense which more than any other seems to take a man out of himself. Weary of asking 'What is truth?' it accepts the 'blind witness of eyes and ears;' it draws around itself the curtain of the physical world and is satisfied. The strength of a sensational philosophy lies in the ready accommodation of it to the minds of men; many who have been metaphysicians in their youth, as they advance in years are prone to acquiesce in things as they are, or rather appear to be. They are spectators, not thinkers, and the best philosophy is that which requires of them the least amount of mental effort.

As a lower philosophy is easier to apprehend than a higher, so a lower way of life is easier to follow; and therefore such a philosophy seems to derive a support from the general practice of mankind. It appeals to principles which they all know and recognize: it gives back to them in a generalized form the results of their own experience. To the man of the world they are the quintessence of his own reflections upon life. To follow custom, to have no new ideas or opinions, not to be straining after impossibilities, to enjoy to-day with just so much forethought as is necessary to provide for the morrow, this is regarded by the greater part of the world as the natural way of passing through existence. And many who have lived thus have attained to a lower kind of happiness or equanimity. They have possessed their souls in peace without ever allowing them to wander into the region of religious or political controversy, and without any care for the higher interests of man. But nearly all the good (as well as some of the evil) which has ever been done in this world has been the work of another spirit, the work of enthusiasts and idealists, of apostles and martyrs. The leaders of mankind have not been of the gentle Epicurean type; they have personified ideas; they have sometimes also been the victims of them. But they have always been seeking after a truth or ideal of which they fell short; and have died in a manner disappointed of their hopes that they might lift the human race out of the slough in which they found them. They have done little compared with their own visions and aspirations; but they have done that little, only because they sought to do, and once perhaps thought that they were doing, a great deal more.

The philosophies of Epicurus or Hume give no adequate or dignified conception of the mind. There is no organic unity in a succession of feeling or sensations; no comprehensiveness in an infinity of separate actions. The individual never reflects upon himself as a whole; he can hardly regard one act or part of his life as the cause or effect of any other act or part. Whether in practice or speculation, he is to himself only in successive instants. To such thinkers, whether in ancient or in modern times, the mind is only the poor recipient of impressions – not the heir of all the ages, or connected with all other minds. It begins again with its own modicum of experience having only such vague conceptions of the wisdom of the past as are inseparable from language and popular opinion. It seeks to explain from the experience of the individual what can only be learned from the history of the world. It has no conception of obligation, duty, conscience – these are to the Epicurean or Utilitarian philosopher only names which interfere with our natural perceptions of pleasure and pain.

There seem then to be several answers to the question, Why the theory that all knowledge is sensation is allied to the lower rather than to the higher view of ethical philosophy: – 1st, Because it is easier to understand and practise; 2ndly, Because it is fatal to the pursuit of ideals, moral, political, or religious; 3rdly, Because it deprives us of the means and instruments of higher thought, of any adequate conception of the mind, of knowledge, of conscience, of moral obligation.

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ON THE NATURE AND LIMITS Of PSYCHOLOGY

O gar arche men o me oide, teleute de kai ta metaxu ex ou me