CH. II. PART II. $14. The psycho examined. BOOK I. the represented objects which are expressed by logical propositions; for the properties of generality and permanence under examination are common prological theory perties of both. While, then, the sensible qualities of objects admit readily of being brought to the test of presentation, from which there is no appeal, it is on the other hand the common property of emotions and conclusions of reasoning about representations that they are liable to contain error, from being founded on an imperfect acquaintance with the phenomena which they belong to or are concerned with. Hence only some of them are true and permanent, and the progress of enquiry eliminates the untrue or partially true, establishes and discovers the true. In the case of emotions, the laws which determine their truth or their permanence are also laws of their connection with their representational framework, just as, in the case of conclusions of reasoning, these laws are the laws of the connection of the represented phenomena between themselves. The laws which govern the connection of emotions with their representational framework, which bind them up together, or rather determine how they are bound up, what emotion with what framework, these laws must be discovered, in the first instance, by analysis of the emotional states into emotion and framework; and this will give the first hypothesis or sketched theory, which must be afterwards tested by facts of experience. § 15. Spinoza's theory examined. § 15. 1. Before proceeding however to the analysis of the emotions it is requisite to examine briefly the work of one of the greatest intellects ever yet employed on these questions, so far at least as may be necessary to show why the analysis offered in that work is unacceptable to the student at the pre sent day. I mean the immortal Spinoza. I cannot allow either that his analysis is correct, so as to serve for the basis of present or future labours, or that its failure involves the failure of the metaphysical method; though one or other of these views would possibly be welcomed by many with eagerness. That Spinoza may have had as profound an insight into the characters of the several emotions and passions as we can easily imagine attainable by any one, no one will more readily admit than I; but he did not owe this to his deduction of them from the first principles of his system. It is in vain to attempt to change a science of observation into a science of deduction merely by exhibiting the results of observation as deductions, by a mathematical method, from certain definitions, postulates, and axioms; for these first principles will always be mere expressions for the general results of the observations, and will need interpreting by them. Let any one take the Definitions of the First Part of Spinoza's Ethic, and he will find them vague to so great an extent that he will say to himself, "What does he mean by this, and this? I must see what he makes of it before I can assent to it.' Now in Euclid the definitions need no such future interpretation; they are as clear as if they were the statements of single and particular facts, while they are also the most general truths; and this they owe to the object-matter with which they deal, namely, space relations, space being not only the general form of all extended things and of reasoning itself, but also of every individual extended thing; and both in its first intention, as perceived space. 2. Now it may seem an extraordinary assertion, BOOK I. CH. II. PART II. § 15. Spinoza's theory examined. Book I. CH. II. PART II. $ 15. Spinoza's theory examined. but the first objection which I have to bring against Spinoza is this, that he is not sufficiently metaphysical. He objects it is true to Descartes, that he separated Body and Mind; Ethic, Part v. Præfatio, "Quid quæso? per Mentis, et Corporis unionem intelligit? quem, inquam, clarum et distinctum conceptum habet cogitationis arctissimè unitæ cuidam quantitatis portiuncula? vellem sanè, ut hanc unionem per proximam suam causam explicuisset. Sed ille Mentem à Corpore adeò distinctam conceperat, ut nec hujus unionis, nec ipsius Mentis ullam singularem causam assignare potuerit; sed necesse ipsi fuerit, ad causam totius Universi, hoc est, ad Deum recurrere." But how does Spinoza himself conceive this union of mind and body? As consisting in the perception of body by mind, in the same way as one state of mind is united to another when it is remembered or represented; Propp. 11. 21. Part ii.; in itself a profound conception, and the germ of all future metaphysical truth; I mean that the mode of connection, perception, not the distinction of the things connected, is a profound conception. But to return. The states of the body form one connected series of cause and effect, and the states of mind, ideas as Spinoza calls them, form another connected series perceiving the former; and "the order and connexion of the ideas is the same as the order and connexion of the things," Prop. 7. Part ii. We have therefore two parallel series of states, states of mind and states of body, separate in themselves but united in the fact of perception of one by the other. Body and mind are still sundered first to be united afterwards, just as with Descartes. To use my phraseology, they are two complete or empirical things, side by side, not, as I conceive them, one complete empirical thing, with its single series, but with a double aspect objective and subjective. This is what I mean by saying that Spinoza is not sufficiently metaphysical. He is in fact an Ontologist, and only differs from the current ontology of psychological schools by conceiving his two existences, mind and body, as attributes of a single substance, the essence of which the attributes express in determinate modes. 3. Let us now trace this vein of thought back to its professed source in the definitions and axioms of the First Part of the Ethic; by doing which we shall see that there lies hid in them the assumption of a separation between empirical objects, which only comes to light in the conclusions professedly deduced from them; we shall only know what he means by "attributes" when we find that extension and consciousness (cogitatio) are what he has in his mind. Prop. 2. Part iii. runs thus: "The body can neither determine the mind to be conscious (ad cogitandum) nor the mind the body to motion or to rest, or to anything else, if anything else there be." This rests upon Prop. 6. Part ii., "The modes of any attribute have God as their cause so far only as he is considered under that attribute of which they are modes, and not under any other attribute." Taking body and mind as belonging each to its own attribute, this proposition gives the general law under which the former was a case. Now this proposition has two roots; the first is Prop. 10. Part i., "Every single attribute of one substance must be conceived by itself alone;" and the second, which brings the notion of cause into the matter, is Axiom 4. Part i., "The knowledge of an effect depends on the knowledge of Воок І. CH. II. PART II. $ 15. Spinoza's theory examined. BOOK I. CH. II. PART II. $15. Spinoza's theory examined. derstand that its cause and involves it." I will not at present dis- |