When a man is urged by contrary motives, those on one hand inciting him to do some action, those on the other to forbear it; he deliberates about it, and at last resolves to do it, or not to do it. The contrary motives are here compared to the weights in the opposite scales of a balance; and there is not perhaps any instance that can be named of a more striking analogy between body and mind. Hence the phrases of weighing motives, of deliberating upon actions, are common to all languages.

From this analogy, some philosophers draw very important conclusions. They say, that, as the balance cannot incline to one side more than the other, when the opposite weights are equal; so a man cannot possibly determine himself, if the motives on both hands are equal: and, as the balance must necessarily turn to that side which has most weight, so the man must necessarily be determined to that hand where the motive is strongest. And on this foundation, some of the schoolmen maintained, that, if a hungry ass were placed between two bundles of hay equally inviting, the beast must stand still and starve to death, being unable to turn to either, because there are equal motives to both. This is an instance of that analogical reasoning which I conceive ought never to be trusted: for, the analogy between a balance and a man deliberating, though one of the strongest that can be found between matter and mind, is too weak to support any argument: a piece of dead inactive matter, and an active intelligent being, are things very unlike; and because the one would remain at rest in a certain case, it does not follow that the other would be inactive in a case somewhat similar. The argument is no better than this, that, because a dead animal moves only as it is pushed, and, if pushed with equal force in contrary directions, must remain at rest; therefore the same thing must happen to a living animal; for surely the similitude between a dead animal and a living, is as great as that between a balance and a

man.

The conclusion I would draw from all that has been said on analogy, is, that, in our inquiries concerning the mind and its operations, we ought never to trust to reasonings drawn from some supposed similitude of body to mind; and that we ought to be very much upon our guard, that we be not imposed upon by those analogical terms and phrases, by which the operations of the mind are expressed in all languages.

CHAPTER V.

OF THE PROPER MEANS OF KNOWING THE OPERATIONS OF THE MIND.

SINCE we ought to pay no regard to hypotheses, and to be very suspicious of analogical reasoning, it may be asked, from what source must the knowledge of the mind, and its faculties, be drawn?

I answer, the chief and proper source of this branch of knowledge is accurate reflection upon the operations of our own minds. Of this source we shall speak more fully, after making some remarks upon two others that may be subservient to it. The first of them is, attention to the structure of language.

The language of mankind is expressive of their thoughts, and of the various operations of their minds. The various operations of the understanding, will, and passions, which are common to mankind, have various forms of speech corresponding to them in all languages, which are the signs of them, and by which they are expressed: and a due attention to the

signs may, in many cases, give considerable light to the thing signified by them.

There are in all languages modes of speech, by which men signify their judgment, or give their testimony; by which they accept or refuse; by which they ask information or advice; by which they command, or threaten, or supplicate; by which they plight their faith in promises or contracts. If such operations were not common to mankind, we should not find in all languages forms of speech by which they are expressed.

All languages, indeed, have their imperfections; they can never be adequate to all the varieties of human thought; and therefore things may be really distinct in their nature, and capable of being distinguished by the human mind, which are not distinguished in common language. We can only expect, in the structure of languages, those distinctions which all mankind in the common business of life have occasion to make.

There may be peculiarities in a particular language, of the causes of which we are ignorant, and from which, therefore, we can draw no conclusion. But whatever we find common to all languages, must have a common cause; must be owing to some common notion or sentiment of the human mind.

All

We gave some examples of this before, and shall here add another. languages have a plural number in many of their nouns from which we may infer, that all men have notions, not of individual things only, but of attributes, or things which are common to many individuals; for no individual can have a plural number.

Another source of information in this subject, is a due attention to the course of human actions and conduct. The actions of men are effects: Their sentiments, their passions, and their affections, are the causes of those effects; and we may in many cases form a judgment of the cause from the effect.

The behaviour of parents towards their children gives sufficient evidence, even to those who never had children, that the parental affection is common to mankind. It is easy to see, from the general conduct of men, what are the natural objects of their esteem, their admiration, their love, their approbation, their resentment, and of all their other original dispositions. It is obvious, from the conduct of men in all ages, that man is by his nature a social animal; that he delights to associate with his species; to converse, and to exchange good offices with them.

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Not only the actions, but even the opinions of men may sometimes give light into the frame of the human mind. The opinions of men may considered as the effects of their intellectual powers, as their actions are the effects of their active principles. Even the prejudices and errors of mankind, when they are general, must have some cause no less general; the discovery of which will throw some light upon the frame of the human understanding.

I conceive this to be the principal use of the history of philosophy. When we trace the history of the various philosophical opinions that have sprung up among thinking men, we are led into a labyrinth of fanciful opinions, contradictions, and absurdities, intermixed with some truths; yet we may sometimes find a clue to lead us through the several windings of this labyrinth: We may find that point of view which presented things to the author of the system, in the light in which they appeared to him. This will often give a consistency to things seemingly contradictory, and some degree of probability to those that appeared most fanciful.

The history of philosophy, considered as a map of the intellectual opera

tions of men of genius, must always be entertaining, and may sometimes give us views of the human understanding, which could not easily be had any other way.

I return to what I mentioned as the main source of information on this subject, attentive reflection upon the operations of our own minds.

All the notions we have of mind, and of its operations, are, by Mr. Locke, called ideas of reflection. A man may have as distinct notions of remembrance, of judgment, of will, of desire, as he has of any object whatever. Such notions, as Mr. Locke justly observes, are got by the power of reflection. But what is this power of reflection? It is, says the same author, "that power by which the mind turns its view inward, and observes its own actions and operations." He observes elsewhere, "That the understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and that it requires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object." Cicero hath expressed this sentiment most beautifully. Tusc. I. 28.

This power of the understanding to make its own operations its object, to attend to them, and examine them on all sides, is the power of reflection, by which alone we can have any distinct notion of the powers of our own, or of other minds.

This reflection ought to be distinguished from consciousness, with which is is too often confounded, even by Mr. Locke. All men are conscious of the operations of their own minds, at all times, while they are awake: but there are few who reflect upon them, or make them objects of thought. From infancy, till we come to the years of understanding, we are employed solely about external objects. And although the mind is conscious of its operations, it does not attend to them; its attention is turned solely to the external objects, about which those operations are employed. Thus, when a man is angry, he is conscious of his passion; but his attention is turned to the person who offended him, and the circumstances of the offence, while the passion of anger is not in the least the object of his attention.

I conceive this is sufficient to show the difference between consciousness of the operations of our minds, and reflection upon them; and to show that we may have the former without any degree of the latter. The difference between consciousness and reflection, is like to the difference between a superficial view of an object which presents itself to the eye, while we are engaged about something else, and that attentive examination which we give to an object when we are wholly employed in surveying it. Attention is a voluntary act; it requires an active exertion to begin and to continue it; and it may be continued as long as we will: but consciousness is involuntary and of no continuance, changing with every thought.

The power of reflection upon the operations of their own minds does not appear at all in children. Men must be come to some ripeness of understanding before they are capable of it. Of all the powers of the human mind, it seems to be the last that unfolds itself. Most men seem incapable of acquiring it in any considerable degree. Like all our other powers, it is greatly improved by exercise; and until a man has got the habit of attending to the operations of his own mind, he can never have clear and distinct notions of them, nor form any steady judgment concerning them. His opinions must be borrowed from others, his notions confused and indistinct, and he may easily be led to swallow very gross absurdities. To acquire this habit is a work of time and labour, even in those who begin early, and whose natural talents are tolerably fitted for it; but the

difficulty will be daily diminishing, and the advantage of it is great. They will thereby be enabled to think with precision and accuracy on every subject, especially on those subjects that are more abstract. They will be able to judge for themselves in many important points, wherein others must blindly follow a leader.

CHAPTER VI.

OF THE DIFFICULTY OF ATTENDING TO THE OPERATIONS OF OUR OWN MINDS.

THE difficulty of attending to our mental operations ought to be well understood, and justly estimated by those who would make any progress in this science; that they may neither, on the one hand, expect success without pains and application of thought; nor, on the other, be discouraged, by conceiving that the obstacles that lie in the way are insuperable, and that there is no certainty to be attained in it. I shall therefore endeavour to point out the causes of this difficulty, and the effects that have arisen from it, that we may be able to form a true judgment of both.

1. The number and quick succession of the operations of the mind make it difficult to give due attention to them. It is well known, that if a great number of objects be presented in quick succession, even to the eye, they are confounded in the memory and imagination. We retain a confused notion of the whole, and a more confused one of the several parts, especially if they are objects to which we have never before given particular attention. No succession can be more quick than that of thought. The mind is busy while we are awake, continually passing from one thought, and one operation to another. The scene is constantly shifting. Every man will be sensible of this, who tries but for one minute to keep the same thought in his imagination, without addition or variation. He will find it impossible to keep the scene of his imagination fixed. Other objects will intrude without being called, and all he can do is to reject these intruders as quickly as possible, and return to his principal object.

2. In this exercise, we go contrary to habits which have been early acquired, and confirmed by long unvaried practice. From infancy, we are accustomed to attend to objects of sense, and to them only; and, when sensible objects have got such strong hold of the attention by confirmed habit, it is not easy to dispossess them. When we grow up, a variety of external objects solicits our attention, excites our curiosity, engages our affections, or touches our passions; and the constant round of employment, about external objects, draws off the mind from attending to itself; so that nothing is more just than the observation of Mr. Locke before mentioned, "That the understanding, like the eye, while it surveys all the objects around it, commonly takes no notice of itself."

3. The operations of the mind, from their very nature, lead the mind to give its attention to some other object. Our sensations, as will be shown afterwards, are natural signs, and turn our attention to the things signified by them; so much, that most of them, and those the most frequent and familiar, have no name in any language. In perception, memory, judgment, imagination, and reasoning, there is an object distinct from the operation itself; and while we are led, by a strong impulse, to attend to the object,

the operation escapes our notice. Our passions, affections, and all our active powers, have, in like manner, their objects which engross our attention, and divert it from the passion itself.

4. To this we may add a just observation made by Mr. Hume, That, when the mind is agitated by any passion, as soon as we turn our attention from the object to the passion itself, the passion subsides or vanishes, and by that means escapes our inquiry. This, indeed, is common to almost every operation of the mind: when it is exerted, we are conscious of it; but then we do not attend to the operation, but to its object. When the mind is drawn off from the object to attend to its own operation, that operation ceases, and escapes our notice.

5. As it is not sufficient to the discovery of mathematical truths, that a man be able to attend to mathematical figures; as it is necessary that he should have the ability to distinguish accurately things that differ, and to discern clearly the various relations of the quantities he compares, an ability which, though much greater in those who have the force of genius than in others, yet even in them requires exercise and habit to bring it to maturity: so, in order to discover the truth in what relates to the operations of the mind, it is not enough that a man be able to give attention to them; he must have the ability to distinguish accurately their minute differences; to resolve and analyse complex operations into their simple ingredients; to unfold the ambiguity of words, which in this science is greater than in any other, and to give them the same accuracy and precision that mathematical terms have. For, indeed, the same precision in the use of words, the same cool attention to the minute differences of things, the same talent for abstraction and analysing, which fits a man for the study of mathematics, is no less necessary in this. But there is this great difference between the two sciences, that the objects of mathematics being things external to the mind, it is much more easy to attend to them, and fix them steadily in the imagination.

The difficulty attending our inquiries into the powers of the mind, serves to account for some events respecting this branch of philosophy, which deserve to be mentioned.

While most branches of science have, either in ancient or in modern times, been highly cultivated, and brought to a considerable degree of perfection, this remains, to this day, in a very low state, and, as it were, in its infancy.

Every science invented by men must have its beginning and its progress; and, from various causes, it may happen that one science shall be brought to a great degree of maturity, while another is yet in its infancy. The maturity of a science may be judged of by this: When it contains a system of principles, and conclusions drawn from them, which are so firmly established, that, among thinking and intelligent men, there remains no doubt or dispute about them: so that those who come after may raise the superstructure higher, but shall never be able to overturn what is already built, in order to begin on a new foundation.

Geometry seems to have been in its infancy about the time of Thales and Pythagoras; because many of the elementary propositions, on which the whole science is built, are ascribed to them as the inventors. Euclid's Elements, which were written some ages after Pythagoras, exhibit a system of geometry which deserves the name of a science; and though great additions have been made by Apollonius, Archimedes, Pappus, and others among the ancients, and still greater by the moderns; yet what was laid down in Euclid's Elements was never set aside. It remains as the firm tion of all future superstructures in that science.