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.

They

From this analogy, some philosophers draw very important conclusions. 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 [56] 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. [57]

This illustration is specially associated with Joannes Buridanus, a celebrated Nominalis of the 14th century, and one of the acutest reasoners on the great question of moral liberty. The supposition of the ass, c., is not, however, as I have ascertained, to be found in his writings. Perhaps it was orally advanced in disputation, or in lecturing, as an example in illustration of his De erminism; perhaps it was employed by his opponents as an instance to reduce that doctrine to absurdity. With this latter view, a similar refutation of the principles of our mo lern Fatalists was, as we have seen, ingeniously essayed by Reid's friend and kinsman, Dr James Gregory.-H.

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 reflec tion 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 things signified by them.

There are in all languages modes of speech, by which men signify their judg ment, 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 [58] 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.

We gave some examples of this before, and shall here add another. All 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.

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 be considered as the effects of their intellectual powers, [59] 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 operations 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 ideus 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 [60] 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 it 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 shew the difference between consciousness of the operations of our minds, and reflection upon them; and to shew 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 [61] is

• Locke is not (as Reid seems to think, and as Mi Stewart expressly says) the first who introduced Re gical principle. See Note I.-H.

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 absurd ities. To acquire this habit, is a work of time and labour, even in those who begin it 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.

tinually passing from one thought and one operation to another. The scene is constantly shifting. Every man will be sen. sible 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 pas sions; and the constant round of employ ment, 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, [63] as will be shewn afterwards, are natu ral signs, and turn our attention to the things

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 [62] 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, con

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

that there is no heat in the fire, nor colour in the rainbow ;* when we find the gravest philosophers, from Des Cartes down to Bishop Berkeley, mustering up arguments to prove the existence of a material world, and unable to find any that will bear examination; when we find Bishop Berkeley and Mr Hume, the acutest metaphysicians of the age, maintaining that there is no such thing as matter in the universe-that sun, moon, and stars, the earth which we inhabit, our own bodies, and those of our friends, are only ideas in our minds, and have no existence but in thought; when we find the last maintaining that there is neither body nor mind-nothing in nature but ideas and impressions, without any substance on which they are impressed-that there is no certainty, nor indeed probability, even in mathematical axioms: I say, when we consider such extravagancies of many of the most acute writers on this subject, we may be apt to think the whole to be only a dream of fanciful men, who have entangled themselves in cobwebs spun out of their own brain. But we ought to consider that the more closely and ingeniously men reason from false principles, the more absurdities they will be led into; and when such absurdities help to bring to light the false principles from which they are drawn, they may be the more easily forgiven. [67]

CHAPTER VII.

DIVISION OF THE POWERS OF THE MIND.

THE powers of the mind are so many, so various, and so connected and complicated in most of its operations, that there never has been any division of them proposed which is not liable to considerable objections. We shall, therefore, take that general division which is the most common, into the powers of understanding and those of will. Under the will we comprehend our active powers, and all that lead to action, or influence the mind to act-such as appetites, passions, affections. The understanding comprehends our contemplative powers; by which we perceive objects; by which we conceive or remember them; by which we analyse or compound them; and by which we judge and reason concerning them.

A merely verbal dispute. See before, p. 205, b, note.-H.

↑ It would be out of place to enter on the exten. sive field of history and discussion relative to the distribution of our mental powers. It is sufficient to say, that the vulgar division of the faculties, adopted by Reid, into those of the Understanding and those of the Will, is to be traced to the classifi. cation, taken in the Aristotelic school, of the powers into gnostic, or cognitive, and orectic, or appetent. On this the reader may consult the admirable introduction of Philoponus-or rather of Ammonius Her. mia-to the books of Aristotle upon the Soul.-H.

Although this general division may be of use in order to our proceeding more metho dically in our subject, we are not to understand it as if, in those operations which are ascribed to the understanding, there were no exertion of will or activity, or as if the understanding were not employed in the operations ascribed to the will; for I conceive there is no operation of the understanding wherein the mind is not active in some degree. We have some command over our thoughts, and can attend to this or to that, of many objects which present themselves to our senses, to our memory, or to our imagination. We can survey an object on this side or that, superficially or accurately, for a longer or a shorter time; so that our contemplative powers are under the guidance and direction of the active; and the former never pursue their object without being led and directed, urged or restrained by the latter and because the understanding is always more or less directed by the will, mankind have ascribed some degree of activity to [68] the mind in its intellectual operations, as well as in those which belong to the will, and have expressed them by active verbs, such as seeing, hearing, judging, reasoning, and the like.

And as the mind exerts some degree of activity even in the operations of understanding, so it is certain that there can be no act of will which is not accompanied with some act of understanding. The will must have an object, and that object must be apprehended or conceived in the understanding. It is, therefore, to be remembered, that, in most, if not all operations of the mind, both faculties concur; and we range the operation under that faculty which hath the largest share in it.

The intellectual powers are commonly divided into simple apprehension, judgment, and reasoning. As this division has in its favour the authority of antiquity, and of a very general reception, it would be improper to set it aside without giving any reason I shall, therefore, explain it briefly, and give the reasons why I choose to follow another.

It should be always remembered that the various mental energies are all only possible in and through each other; and that our psychological analyses do not suppose any real distinction of the operations which we discriminate by different names. Thought and volition can no more be exerted apart, than the sides and angles of a square can exist separately from each other.-H.

This is a singular misapprehension. The divi sion in question, I make bold to sav, never was proposed by any philosopher as a psychological distribution of the cognitive faculties in general: on the contrary, it is only a logical distribution of that section of the cognitive faculties which we, denomi nate discursive, as those alone which are proximately concerned in the process of reasoning-or thought, in its strictest signification.-H.