Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

mind on occasion of perception, was probably owing in part to the habit of regarding the senses as distinct from the mind, and as in themselves unintelligent transmitters to the understanding of information from without, instead of considering the mind just as directly engaged in perceiving objects through the organs of sense as in recollecting, discerning, or reasoning, when the senses are not in activity. They are alike states or modifications of consciousness. Extended substances, figured objects, causes producing effects, bodies moving or resting, are all perceived through these organs; and when they have passed away, or are withdrawn, the mind has or may have ideas of them, but it can have no other ideas relating to material external existences than those which represent such things as have been perceived. Perceiving is the grand original mental operation on which, as far as the material world is concerned, conceiving is altogether dependent, and by which it is rigidly circumscribed. In different language, all our ideas are of a representative character, and cannot be otherwise.

In illustration of the truth that we have no ideas relating to external material things which have not originated in perception, or which are additional to the ideas representing what we have perceived, I venture to assert that there is nothing we can think of regarding external objects, no form into which we can throw our ideas, which we could not

X

perceive were the objects actually before us: or, in other words, we can have no ideas whatever of external objects, or relating to them, of which the counterparts could not be perceived through the organs of sense, were the objects in presence.

We can, it is true, form in our minds the conception of an object that we have never seen, as is exemplified in the common instance of a golden mountain; but if such an object were set before us, there would be no more difficulty in seeing it than there actually is in conceiving it. The elements out of which the conception was put together gold and a common mountain — were originally perceived through the eye; and in what way soever such elements are combined in imagination, to the eye they would be perceptible, could a corresponding combination of realities be brought before it.

LETTER XXV.

EXAMPLES OF IMPORTANT GENERAL AND ABSTRACT

TERMS.

THE importance of forming a just and clear conception of what passes in the mind when common names and abstract terms are employed, can scarcely be overrated.

It is not going too far to say, that a complete mastery of this part of mental philosophy furnishes a key for most of the difficulties besetting the subject, and throws a powerful light on all speculation whatever. It will be found an invaluable guide through the bewildering mazes of mystical metaphysics. In proof of these assertions, I shall select a few important phrases for examination.

I will draw your attention, in the first place, to the names of those mental phenomena which have occupied so much space in the present series of Letters.

The appellations under which we are accustomed to group the operations and affections of the mind, are nothing but general terms or common denominations. We call one kind of mental action

one mode of consciousness perception; another, recollection, and so on; but it must be kept in view that every act of perception is individual, and, however close in resemblance, is different in identity from every other act, just as one pebble on the seashore, or one wave that dashes over it, is different in identity from all other pebbles or all other

waves.

When, therefore, we make use of the words sensation, perception, and recollection, and speak of other operations and affections of the mind, our language indicates the agreement or resemblance between individual mental acts or individual phenomena of consciousness; and these terms are significant only by raising up in ourselves and others ideas representative of such particular phenomena.

In the whole range of language, perhaps, no word has produced greater perplexity, or at least greater diversity of view, than my next instance the word cause. After the preceding discussions a little consideration is sufficient to enable us to discern that this word is a common name the common name of a vast variety of objects and events. We give less general names to the objects and events around us, and include the whole in this great general

name.

Thus, the expressions the sun's rays have blanched the blue curtains, the falling of the chimney killed a man who was walking in the street, the dew has drenched the grass, "those

evening bells" filled me with melancholy emotions -may be converted into others in which the term cause, either as verb or noun, may be introduced to express the same meaning. For example,

"the sun's rays have caused the blue curtains to lose their colour," "the falling of the chimney was the cause of the man's death," and so on.

In a similar light, we must regard such expressions as- the wind shakes the trees, fire consumes wood, water drowns land animals, and a thousand others. Shaking, consuming, and drowning, denote so many ways of producing effects, so many modes in which causes operate, so many successions of events.

Or, if you wish for more scientific examples, which are in fact not a whit better than the homeliest and most familiar, take the cases of the electric spark uniting oxygen and hydrogen into water, the moon's attraction raising tides in the ocean, the voltaic battery decompounding soda and potass, the act of breathing producing animal heat. We live amidst the movements of matter, and every change preceding another, as in these cases, is generalised under the name of cause when experience has not shown the sequence to be

casual or inconstant.

What I particularly wish to impress on your mind is, that the word cause, like all other general terms, can do no more than bring before our minds some particular instance, such as fire burn

« AnteriorContinuar »