all the ordinary methods of reasoning, involves two assumptions of which the first, though possibly true, has never been proved; and the other is unquestionably false. These assumptions are, that there is an independent faculty called consciousness, and that the dictates of that faculty are infallible. But, in the first place, it is by no means certain that consciousness is a faculty; and some of the ablest thinkers have been of opinion that it is merely a state or eondition of the mind.12 Should this turn out to be the case, the argument falls to the ground; since, even if we admit that all the faculties of the mind, when completely exercised, are equally accurate, no one will make the same claim for every condition into which the mind itself may be casually thrown. However, waiving this objection, we may, in the second place, reply, that even if consciousness is a faculty, we have the testimony of all history to prove its extreme fallibility.13 All 12 Mr. James Mill (Analysis of the Mind, vol. i. pp. 171, 172) says that consciousness and belief are the same, and that great error has arisen from calling "consciousness a feeling distinct from all other feelings." According to Locke (Essay concerning Human Understanding, book ii. chap. i., Works, vol. i. p. 89), "consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man's own mind." Brown (Philosophy of the Mind, pp. 67, 68) denies that consciousness is a faculty: and Sir W. Hamilton complains of "Reid's degradation of consciousness into a special faculty." Notes to Reid's Works, pp. 223, 297, 373. M. Cousin (Hist. de la Philosophie, II. Série, vol. i. p. 131) pronounces consciousness to be "phénomène complexe;" and at p. 94, la condition nécessaire de l'intelligence c'est la conscience:" while a still later writer (Jobert's New System of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 25) declares that "we have the consciousness of our consciousness-this is certain." The statement in Alciphron, Dialogue vii. (Berkeley's Works, vol. i. pp. 505, 506) is equally unsatisfactory: and what still further perplexes the question is the existence of what is now recognised as "double consciousness." See on this extraordinary phenomenon Elliotson's Physiology, pp. 367-369, 1165; Mayo's Physiology, pp. 195, 196; Prichard's Treatise on Insanity, pp. 450, 451; Carpenter's Human Physiology, p. 379. 66 13 This requires explanation. Consciousness is infallible as to the fact of its testimony; but fallible as to the truth. That we are conscious of certain phenomena, is a proof that those phenomena exist in the mind, or are presented to it; but to say that this demonstrates the truth of the phenomena is to go a step further, and not only offer a testimony, but also pass a judgment. The moment we do this, we introduce the element of fallibility because consciousness and judgment put together cannot be always right, inasmuch as judgment is often wrong. : The late Blanco White, a thinker of considerable subtlety, says: "The important distinction between libertas a necessitate and libertas a coactione, is seldom attended to. Nothing whatever can force my will: every man is more or less conscious of that fact: but at the same time we are, or may be, the great stages through which, in the progress of civilization, the human race has successively passed, have been characterized by certain mental peculiarities or convictions, which have left their impress upon the religion, the philosophy, and the morals of the age. Each of these convictions has been to one period a matter of faith, to another a matter for derision;14 and each of them has, in its own epoch, been as intimately bound up with the minds of men, and become as much a part of their consciousness, as is that opinion which we now term freedom of the will. Yet it is impossible that all these products of consciousness can be true, because many of them contradict each other. Unless, therefore, in different ages there are different standards of truth, it is clear that the testimony of a man's consciousness is no proof of an opinion being true; for if it were so, then two propositions diametrically opposed to each other might both be equally accurate. Besides this, another view may be drawn from the common operations of ordinary life. Are we not in certain circumstances conscious of the existence of spectres and phantoms; and yet is it not generally admitted that such beings have no existence at all? Should it be attempted to refute this argument by saying that such consciousness is apparent and not real, then I ask, What is it that judges between the consciousness which is genuine and that which is spurious ?15 If this boasted equally conscious that we are never decided without a motive." Life of B. White, by Himself, 1845, vol. iii. p. 90. But how can a man be conscious that "nothing whatever can force his will"? This is not consciousness, but judgment: it is a judgment of what may be, not a consciousness of what is. If there is any meaning in the word 'consciousness,' it must refer solely to the present, and can never include future contingencies as to what may be or can be. 14 As Herder says, "Was diese Nation ihrem Gedankenkreise unentbehrlich hält, daran hat jene nie gedacht oder hält es gar für schädlich." Ideen zur Gesch. der Menschheit, vol. ii. p. 130. 15 Plato was struck by the extreme difficulty of finding a standard in the human mind whereby we may test the truth or falsehood of spectral phenomena and dreams. And the only conclusion to which this consummate thinker could arrive, was that whatever appears true to the individual mind is true for him: which, however, is an evasion of the problem, not a solution of it. See the Theætetus, where Plato, as usual, puts his own speculations into the mouth of Socrates. He opens the question at the beginning of sec. 39 (Platonis Opera, vol. iii. p. 426, edit. Bekker, Lond. 1826), M faculty deceives us in some things, what security have we that it will not deceive us in others? If there is no security, the faculty is not trustworthy. If there is a security, then, whatever it may be, its existence shows the necessity for some authority to which consciousness is subordinate, and thus does away with that doctrine of the supremacy of consciousness, on which the advocates of free will are compelled to construct the whole of their theory. Indeed, the uncertainty as to the existence of consciousness as an independent faculty, and the manner in which that faculty, if it exists, has contradicted its own suggestions, are two of the many reasons which have long since convinced me that metaphysics will never be raised to a science by the ordinary method of observing individual minds; but that its study can only be successfully prosecuted by the deductive application of laws which must be discovered historically, that is to say, which must be evolved by an examination of the whole of those vast phenomena which the long course of human affairs presents to our view. Fortunately, however, for the object of this work, the believer in the possibility of a science of history is not τοίνυν ἀπολίπωμεν ὅσον ἐλλεῖπον αὐτοῦ. λείπεται δὲ ἐνυπνίων τε πέρι καὶ νόσων, τῶν τε ἄλλων καὶ μανίας, &c. These are the supposed sources of error; but Socrates, after discussing them, and entangling Theatetus in a maze, sums up at the end of sec. 45, p. 434, ἀληθὴς ἄρα ἐμοὶ ἡ ἐμὴ αἴσθησις. See further, p. 515, on the formation of erroneous judgments; and respecting the assertions made by many of the Greeks that πᾶσα φαντασία ἀληθὴς and mâσa dóέa àìŋons, compare Cudworth, vol. iii. p. 379, vol. iv. p. 118. For physiological considerations concerning the preservation of consciousness in dreams and in insanity, see Broussais, Examen des Doctrines Médicales, vol. i. p. 406; his Cours de Phrenologie, p. 49; Esquirol, Maladies Mentales, vol. i. p. 97, vol. ii. p. 790; Simon's Pathology, p. 204; Holland's Medical Notes, p. 434; Henle, Anatomie Générale, vol. ii. p. 287; Burdach, Traité de Physiologie, vol. v. p. 223. See, too, the passages in Tennemann which connect this difficulty with the theory of representation (Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. i. p. 357, vol. ii. pp. 119, 159, vol. iii. p. 406, vol. iv. p. 418); and the attempt of Berkeley (Works, vol. i. pp. 93, 101, 176) to turn it into a defence of his own system, on the ground that our belief respecting the external world may be as false when we are awake as when we dream. The solution offered by the Stoics is merely a verbal and unproved distinction: διαφέρει δὲ φαντασία καὶ φάντασμα. φάντασμα μὲν γάρ ἐστι δόκησις διανοίας οἷα γίνεται κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους φαντασία δέ ἐστι τύπωσις ἐν ψυχῇ τουτέστιν ἀλλοίωσις, ὡς ὁ Χρύσιππος ἐν τῇ δυωδεκάτῃ περὶ ψυχῆς ὑφίσταται. Diog. Laert. de Vitis Philos. lib. vii. segm. 50, vol. i. p. 395. called upon to hold either the doctrine of predestined events, or that of freedom of the will;16 and the only positions which, in this stage of the inquiry, I shall expect him to concede are the following: That when we perform an action, we perform it in consequence of some motive or motives; that those motives are the results of some antecedents; and that, therefore, if we were acquainted with the whole of the antecedents, and with all the laws of their movements, we could with unerring certainty predict the whole of their immediate results. This, unless I am greatly mistaken, is the view which must be held by every man whose mind is unbiased by system, and who forms his opinions according to the evidence actually before him.17 If, for example, I am intimately acquainted with the character of any person, I can frequently tell how he will act under some given circumstances. Should I fail in this prediction, I must ascribe my error not to the arbitrary and capricious freedom of his will, nor to any supernatural pre-arrangement, for of neither of these things have we the slightest proof; but I must be content to suppose either that I had been misinformed as to some of the circumstances in which he was placed, or else that I had not sufficiently studied the ordinary operations of his mind. If, however, I were capable of correct reasoning, and if, at the same time, I had a complete knowledge both of his disposition and of 16 Meaning by free will, a cause of action residing in the mind, and exerting itself independently of motives. If any one says that we have this power of acting without motives, but that in the practical exercise of the power we are always guided by motives either conscious or unconscious,if any one says this, he asserts a barren proposition, which does not interfere with my views, and which may or may not be true, but which most assuredly no one has ever yet succeeded in proving. 17 That is, according to the phenomenal evidence presented to the understanding, and estimated by the ordinary logic with which the understanding is conversant. But Kant has made a most remarkable attempt to avoid the practical consequences of this, by asserting that freedom, being an idea produced by the reason, must be referred to transcendental laws of the reason; that is, to laws which are removed from the domain of experience, and cannot be verified by observation. In regard, however, to the scientific conceptions of the understanding (as distinguished from the Reason) he fully admits the existence of a Necessity destructive of Liberty. In Note A, at the end of this chapter, I shall put together the most important passages in which Kant unfolds this view. all the events by which he was surrounded, I should be able to foresee the line of conduct which, in consequence of those events, he would adopt.18 Rejecting, then, the metaphysical dogma of free will, and the theological dogma of predestined events,19 we are driven to the conclusion that the actions of men, being determined solely by their antecedents, must have a character of uniformity, that is to say, must, under precisely the same circumstances, always issue in precisely the same results. And as all antecedents are either in the mind or out of it, we clearly see that all the variations in the results, in other words, all the changes of which history is full, all the vicissitudes of the human race, their progress or their decay, their happiness or their misery, must be the fruit of a double action; an action of external phenomena upon the mind, and another action of the mind upon the phenomena. These are the materials out of which a philosophic history can alone be constructed. On the one hand, we 18 This is, of course, an hypothetical case, merely given as an illustration. We never can know the whole of any man's antecedents, or even the whole of our own; but it is certain that the nearer we approach to a complete knowledge of the antecedent, the more likely we shall be to predict the consequent. 19 The doctrine of providential interference is bound up with that of predestination, because the Deity, foreseeing all things, must have foreseen His own intention to interfere. To deny this foresight, is to limit the omniscience of God. Those, therefore, who hold that, in particular cases, a special providence interrupts the ordinary course of events, must also hold that in each case the interruption had been predestined; otherwise they impeach one of the Divine attributes. For, as Thomas Aquinas puts it (Neander's History of the Church, vol. viii. p. 176), "knowledge, as knowledge, does not imply, indeed, causality; but in so far as it is a knowledge belonging to the artist who forms, it stands in the relation of causality to that which is produced by his art." The same argument is stated by Alciphron, though not quite so conclusively; Dialogue vii. sec. 20 in Berkeley's Works, vol. i. p. 515: and as to the impossibility of Omniscience having new knowledge or an afterthought, see Hitchcock's Religion of Geology, 1851, pp. 267, 328; an ingenious work, but one which leaves all the real difficulties untouched. Compare Ritter's Hist. of Ancient Philos. vol. iv. pp. 326, 327, with Tennemann, Gesch. der Philos. vol. vi. pp. 151, 342-345, vol. ix. pp. 81-94, vol. xi. p. 178; and in particular, the question raised (vol. viii. p. 242), “Ob das Vorherwissen Gottes die Ursache der künftigen Dinge sey, oder nicht." It was to meet all this, that some asserted the eternity of matter, and others the existence of two original principles, one good and one evil. Beausobre, Histoire de Manichée, vol. ii. pp. 145, 146, 252, 336. |