Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics Part 4

Let me not be misunderstood. Let me not be supposed to be courting collision with the Berkleian thesis of the non-existence of abstract ideas. I do not for one moment doubt that all our general or cla.s.s notions of sensible objects or events are merely concrete ideas of individual objects or events--that, for instance, whenever we talk of man or motion in general, we are really thinking of some particular man or motion, which, as possessing all properties common to all men or motions, serves as a representative of the entire _genus_. Neither am I prepared to deny, although scarcely either prepared to admit, that even of abstract qualities all our general or cla.s.s notions are equally ideas of particular specimens of those qualities; that, when we speak, for instance, of virtue or vice in general, we are thinking of some particular exhibition of some particular kind of virtue or vice. Nay, I am not even concerned to deny that our idea of idea in general may possibly be a copy of some particular one of our previous ideas which, for the nonce, serves to represent all our other previous ideas. I limit myself to saying that our idea of idea in general, whether it be or be not itself an abstraction, is, at all events, not a copy of sensation. I admit that it thereby differs essentially from most, if not all, other general ideas. Possibly it may be only through my having myself felt the promptings of some particular virtue or vice, that I am able to form an idea of that particular virtue or vice. If so, I admit that my idea of that particular virtue or vice is but, as Hume would say, a copy of my feeling. And since, undoubtedly, I can feel myself thinking, or perceiving, or performing any other mental operation, I am bound to admit, further, that my idea of any such operation may equally be described as a copy of a sensation which I have experienced. All I contend for is that if, after having formed my idea, either of a mental operation or of anything else whatever, I proceed to ask myself what sort of an ent.i.ty that idea is, the answer which I give myself, or, in other words, the idea which I form of my previous idea, being a copy of idea, cannot be a copy of sensation.

So much must surely be conceded to me, for that white, being white, cannot be also black is not nearly so certain as that idea and sensation, being two distinct things, idea of idea cannot be idea of sensation. The concession, indeed, is likely enough to be accompanied by an exclamation of wonder that so microscopic a flaw in an elaborate exposition should be thought worth pointing out; but Hume himself would certainly not have so retorted. Of the doctrine which I am impugning, viz., that every _idea_ is copied from some preceding _sensation_, he had spoken as follows:--'Those who would a.s.sert that this position is not universally true, nor without exception, have only one, and that an easy, method of refuting it, by producing the idea which, in their opinion, is not derived from this source. It will then be inc.u.mbent on us, if we would maintain our doctrine, to produce the impression or lively perception which corresponds to it.' He was much too candid not to have acknowledged that this challenge of his had been fairly and fully met. He was not a man to refuse to own himself refuted when, after distinctly intimating that the production of one single idea, having no perception correspondent to it amongst those which we experience 'when we see, or hear, or feel, or love, or hate, or will, or desire,' would suffice for his entire refutation, he found such an idea produced. He knew too well also to what enormous errors of thought minute errors of expression may lead, to disregard any speck of inaccuracy in any one of his definitions. The apparently slight oversight committed by him on this occasion will, indeed, be presently seen to have sensibly contributed to lead him subsequently into a mistake of no small practical moment.

We come next to the 'a.s.sociation of Ideas,' the influence of which almost all of Hume's successors, as well as himself, seem to me to have greatly over-rated. That there is a 'principle of connection between the different thoughts or ideas of the mind' is, as he says, sufficiently evident; and that this principle is, as he was apparently the first to remark, threefold, deriving its efficacy from resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause or effect, may also be admitted with little qualification. But I presume to think that he is quite incorrect in adding that, in virtue of the aforesaid principle, ideas 'introduce each other with a certain degree of method or regularity.' You are walking, let us suppose, through Hyde Park, thinking of nothing more particular than that the morning is a pleasant one, when you suddenly find yourself in imagination pacing the sh.o.r.e of the Dead Sea, and, pausing to ask yourself how you got there, you discover, perhaps, that it was by the following steps. Remarking some landscape effect in the distance, you were reminded of a similar one which you had remarked years before while taking a walk fifty miles off in Suss.e.x. Here resemblance operated. Then you recollected how during that walk you were thinking about Mr. Buckle, whose lucubrations you had been conning over before starting. Here entered contiguity both of time and s.p.a.ce. The name of Buckle reminded you how that promising writer ended his travels abroad by dying of a fever which he caught while sailing over the sites of the engulphed cities of the plain. Here cause and effect came into action; and, so far, everything accords with Hume's theory. But if you repeat the same walk to-morrow, the same landscape effect will almost certainly suggest a train of ideas quite different from that of to-day. Perhaps it may begin by reminding you of landscape effects in general; then of Mr.

Ruskin, who has discoursed so eloquently on that topic, and next of Mr.

Ruskin's 'Stones of Venice,' from whence it is equal chances whether your thoughts radiate, on one side of the compa.s.s, to stone china, or Stoney Stratford, or Stonewall Jackson, or, on the other, to the 'Venetian Bracelet,' L. E. L. and Fernando Po, or to that effective adaptation of the Venetian style of architecture, the Railway Station at St. Pancras, and thence to some town or other on the Midland Line.

These examples will be readily recognized as fair average specimens of those unpremeditated trains of thought with which we are all familiar.

Is there, then, in the arrangement of the consecutive thoughts of which the several trains are composed, any method or regularity common, I will not say to all, but to any two of them? According to Hume and to most of his successors in the same path of enquiry, there ought to be. Thus the ill.u.s.trious author of the 'a.n.a.lysis of the Human Mind' affirms, without rebuke or protest from any one of his not less ill.u.s.trious commentators, that 'our ideas spring up or exist in the order in which the sensations existed of which they are the copies: that of those sensations which occurred synchronically, the ideas also spring up synchronically, and that of the sensations which occurred successively, the ideas rise successively.' And he adds, 'this is the general law of the a.s.sociation of Ideas,' remarking, by way of ill.u.s.tration, that, as 'I have seen the sun, and the sky in which it is placed, synchronically, if I think of the one I think of the other at the same time'; and that, as when committing to memory a pa.s.sage of words, as, for instance, the Lord's Prayer, we p.r.o.nounce the words in successive order, and have consequently the sensation of the words in successive order, so when we proceed to repeat the pa.s.sage, 'the ideas of the words also rise in succession, _Our_ suggesting _Father, Father_ suggesting _which, which_ suggesting _art_, and so on to the end.'[29]

Oh Law! Law! most abused of scientific terms, what an infinity of dogmatic illegalities are committed in thy name! The one thing which scientific law implies is regularity of occurrence, but what regulation is it that is obeyed in common by a number of sequences commencing at the same point in Hyde Park, yet terminating, one in Africa, another in America, a third in Palestine, and a fourth in the centre of England?

Can it have been seriously said that it is impossible for us to think of the sky without thinking simultaneously of the sun which illuminates the sky? Is it impossible for us to think instead of the ether which const.i.tutes it, or peradventure even of the resemblance between its celestial azure and what Moore calls the 'most unholy blue' of some frolicsome Cynthia's eyes? And is it not notorious that when saying the Lord's Prayer--a prayer which, in spite of the injunction by which its original dictation was accompanied, to 'avoid vain repet.i.tions, as the heathen do,' many Anglican clergymen insist on repeating half-a-dozen times in a single service--is it not notorious that, so far from the idea of one word suggesting to us the idea of the next, no small effort of attention is requisite to enable us to have any idea at all of what we are saying?

It would seem that the author of the 'a.n.a.lysis' either could not help asking himself questions like these, or, without asking the questions, could not help seeing the commonplace truths involved in the inevitable replies to them. It would seem to have been semi-consciousness of the utter inability of the evidence first cited by him to justify belief in the necessarily simultaneous or successive occurrence of the ideas of simultaneously or successively experienced sensations, which made him have recourse for help to _complex_ ideas. 'If,' he says, 'from a stone I have had synchronically the sensation of colour, the sensation of hardness, the sensations of shape and size, the sensation of weight,--when the idea of one of these sensations occurs, the ideas of all of them occur.' Because, then, I may have ascertained by experience that a stone is white, hard, and round, two feet in diameter, and twenty pounds in weight, am I really incapable, if I happen to break my s.h.i.+n against it, of thinking how hard it is, without thinking also how heavy; or, when trying to lift it, of thinking how heavy it is without thinking likewise of its shape and colour? Elsewhere the same writer speaks of 'ideas which have been so often conjoined that whenever one exists in the mind, the others immediately exist along with it, seem to run into one another, to coalesce, as it were, and out of many to form one idea.' But which are the ideas whereof this can be said? The writer instances those simple ideas, colour, hardness, extension, weight, which, he says, make up our complex ideas of gold or iron. He instances, too, the ideas of resistance, muscular contractility, direction, extension, place, and motion, of which he says our apparently simple idea, weight, is compounded. Does he mean, then, that we cannot entertain the idea of yellowness without entertaining at the same time all the other ideas necessary for composing the idea of gold, and entertaining, too, that idea in addition to all the rest? Does he mean that a train of thought cannot commence with place without terminating with weight? Of course he means nothing of the kind, although so he distinctly says. Rather, he appears to mean the direct converse, viz., that we cannot have the idea of gold or of weight present to the mind, without having present also all the simple ideas of which those complex ideas are compounded--in other words, not that the occurrence of any one component necessarily calls up all the other components, and forms with them the compound, but that the appearance of the compound brings with it all its separate components.

But neither does this seem to be a strictly correct representation. I am not sure that I can think of gold without thinking of yellowness, but I am positive that I can without thinking of hardness. Nor is there any doubt that the youngest child knows perfectly well what it means when, trying to lift a stone, it calls the stone heavy, although it might not be more difficult to make the stone itself than the child understand what is meant by muscular contractility. I own that if it be here demanded of me how a compound can be present unless every one of its components be present also, I may under pressure be constrained to suggest that possibly, after all, the very term _compound_ or _complex idea_ may be somewhat of a misnomer, or at any rate that the const.i.tuents of such an idea are much fewer than is commonly supposed.

Be it admitted that the idea, so styled, could not have been formed without the instrumentality of other and previously-formed ideas, still it does not follow that the instruments of production should for ever after accompany the product. The rackful of dry toast which is brought to you for breakfast could scarcely have been so neatly sliced without the help of a knife, but the toast is not the less in bodily presence on the breakfast-table because the knife that cut it has been left behind in the kitchen. Neither, although you may probably be aware that salt, suet, sugar, and spice enter into the composition of a Christmas pudding, do you necessarily think of those separate ingredients when you think of the pudding, any more than you would see them separately if you saw the pudding. The only qualities which you apparently cannot help thinking of when you think of the pudding are its size, shape, and colour.

One word more about the a.s.sumed regularity in the succession of ideas.

That when you are repeating a familiar form of words or playing a familiar piece of music, every word uttered or note struck, by reason of connexion of some sort between itself and the word or note next in order, enables you without the smallest mental effort to utter that word or strike that note, is too notorious to be questioned. But I do very earnestly question whether the connexion that thus operates is an a.s.sociation of ideas. How can it be, when, as frequently happens, you have not the smallest idea of what it is you are saying or playing? Have you not often, after reverently saying grace, like the decent paterfamilias you probably are, occasioned a giggle round the table by saying it again a minute or two afterwards, in utter unconsciousness that you had said it just before? Or, if I may so far flatter myself as to fancy my reader a fair daughter of the house instead of the staid house father--has it never happened to you, Miss, while executing a brilliant performance on the piano, to have been so entirely engrossed by an animated flirtation carried on simultaneously, that, if at the conclusion of the piece you had been asked what you had been playing, you could not have replied whether it was _La ci darem la mano_ or _Non mi voglio maritar_? And is it not evident that non-existent ideas cannot have called real ideas into existence?

My own modest contribution towards explanation of these mysterious phenomena is as follows. Apart from a.s.sociation of _ideas_, there is a separate and independent a.s.sociation--to wit, a.s.sociation of _volitions_. While committing to memory a form of words, or trying a new piece of music, every separate movement of your tongue or of your fingers is consequent on some separate volition. Each series of movements is consequent on a series of volitions. By being repeatedly made to follow each other in the same order, the several volitions become connected with each other, so that whenever the mind desires to marshal them in the aforesaid order, each one, as it presents itself, brings with it the next in succession, until the whole series is completed; while, as each volition has consequent upon it a corresponding movement, a series of corresponding movements simultaneously takes place. The mind meanwhile is quite unconscious of the muscular movements that are going on. What it is conscious of are the volitions without which no voluntary movements of the muscles could have been made, and of which the mind must needs be conscious, because a volition of which the mind was not conscious would be an involuntary volition, a birth too monstrous for even metaphysics to be equal to. But although necessarily conscious of these volitions, the mind is only momentarily conscious. It pays them barely an instant's attention, and therefore instantaneously forgets them, retaining no more trace of them than if they had never been.

The doctrine of Hume's which next confronts us is his famous one concerning Cause and Effect. He commences it by explaining that all objects of human enquiry are divisible into two kinds--1. Relations of Ideas, like those of which geometry, algebra, and arithmetic treat, and which are either intuitively certain, or 'discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe,' as, for example, the truths demonstrated by Euclid, which would be equally incontestable even 'though there were never a circle or a triangle in nature:' 2. Matters of Fact, as, for example, the sun's rising and setting, or the emission of light and heat by fire, which are never discoverable by una.s.sisted reason, because of no one of them would the opposite imply a contradiction or be consequently inconceivable; and in our knowledge of any one of which we can never 'go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses,' except by means of reasons derived from experience of some fact or facts connected in some way or other with the particular matter of fact we are considering.

So far, all is comparatively plain sailing, but Hume now propounds a difficulty which he at first presents as seemingly insurmountable, but which I cannot help thinking to be mainly of his own creation, and which he himself, almost immediately afterwards, suggests a mode, though a very inadequate mode, of overcoming. His language here is not marked by his usual perspicuity, or rather--to speak without respect of persons--it contradicts itself in most astounding fas.h.i.+on; but his meaning is not the less certainly the following, for there is no other construction which his words will bear.

'What,' he asks, 'is the foundation of all conclusions from experience?'

Why is it that, having found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect, we infer that similar objects will always be attended with similar effects? The proposition that a certain antecedent has always been followed by a certain consequent, and the proposition that the same antecedent will be followed by the same consequent, are not identical. What, then, is the connexion between them which causes one to be inferred from the other? The connexion is unhesitatingly p.r.o.nounced by him to be neither intuitively perceived, nor yet to be 'founded on any process of the understanding.' If you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, he challenges you to produce that reasoning, and taking for granted that you have none to produce, he proceeds to indicate what principle it is which, in his opinion, does determine us to form the inference. That principle he declares to be custom or habit, by which alone, he a.s.serts, we are, after the constant conjunction of two objects, determined to expect the one from the appearance of the other; adding that all inferences from experience are effects of custom, not of reasoning.

What is the correct answer to this question of Hume's I shall be rash enough to endeavour to indicate a little further on; meanwhile there can be no temerity in saying that whatever be the right answer, Hume's is certainly a wrong one. Habit plainly cannot be its own parent. It enables us to repeat more easily what we have already repeatedly done, but it cannot be the cause of our doing or being able to do anything for the first time. An infant that has once burnt its fingers by touching the flame of a candle, expects that if it touch the flame again it will burn its fingers again, but it does not expect this because it has been in the habit of expecting it. Neither, if we be here bidden to understand that the habit referred to is not any mental habit of our own, but a habit which we have observed certain phenomena to have of following each other, shall we thereby be brought one whit nearer the truth. Our infant with the burnt finger has not observed that flame is in the habit of burning. It only knows that flame did burn on the one occasion on which it tried the experiment, which experiment it consequently declines to repeat. Besides, no one needs to be told that inferences, though thus capable of being drawn from single occurrences, are drawn with increased confidence from observation of habit. We all know already that, having always found that fire burns, we infer that it always will burn. What we want to know is, why we draw this inference.

This is the question which Hume puts, and respecting which he gives very positively the negative reply that the inference is not drawn either intuitively, nor yet by any process of the understanding. Yet that a body when not moving must needs be at rest, is not more certainly demonstrable than that inferences cannot possibly be drawn except in one or other of these two ways. Is not every inference a species of belief, and must not every belief be either innate within us, or have been acquired artificially; and, as in the latter case, it is a mental acquisition, must it not in that case have been acquired by an operation of the mind or understanding? Is it not clear, then, that inferences must always be either intuitive or ratiocinative; and is it not strange that Hume should deny that they ever are so? Yet stranger still is it, that even while denying them to be either one or the other, he, almost in the same breath, p.r.o.nounces them to be both. For, after having on one page denied that they are founded on reason, or any process of the understanding, he describes them on the next page as being not simply founded on, but as being themselves 'processes of the mind,' 'processes of thought,' and immediately afterwards 'arguments,' nay, '_reasonings_ from experience;' and, yet again, after as short a pause, these very same 'reasonings,' and 'arguments,' and 'processes of the mind and thought,' he concludes by styling 'natural instincts which no reason or process of the thought or understanding is able either to produce or to prevent'--'operations of the soul as unavoidable' when the mind is placed in certain circ.u.mstances, as it is 'to feel the pa.s.sion of love when we receive benefits, or hatred when we meet with injuries.'

What are we to say to a description of mental operations which are and are not 'arguments' and 'reasonings,' which are and are not 'processes of thought,' which are not 'intuitive,' and which yet are 'instincts?'

How are we to account for such amazing inconsistencies in an exposition of one of the greatest of philosophers? With all humility, I submit the following as a possible solution of the enigma.

The one solitary ground on which Hume denies the argumentative and ratiocinative character of what he nevertheless terms arguments and reasonings, is the impossibility of producing the _chains_ of argument or reasoning of which they are composed. But this impossibility can at most only prove that the reasonings are elementary, and have, consequently, no component parts into which they can be resolved. But reasoning is not the less reasoning for being elementary, or for being only a single link in a chain, instead of being itself a chain composed of many links. Still, being elementary, it may occur to, and pa.s.s through, the mind with extreme rapidity--with not less rapidity than an intuition or instinct, for which therefore it may easily be mistaken, as accordingly it has actually been by Hume. But that a reasoning from experience is not really an instinct is certain, firstly, because intuitive or instinctive reasoning, if not a phrase absolutely devoid of meaning, is a contradiction in terms; and, secondly, because, if it were instinctive, it would precede instead of following experience, and a baby, instead of finding out that flame burns by touching it, would know beforehand that flame burns, and would therefore not touch it.

From the species of Belief const.i.tuted by an inference from experience, Hume, by an easy transition, pa.s.ses on to Belief in general, which he defines to be 'nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain,' referring, by way of ill.u.s.tration, to an animal with the head of a man and the body of a horse, which anyone can imagine, but no one can believe in, and desiring us apparently to suppose that if our groom were to come and tell us that he had found a centaur feeding in the paddock beside our favourite saddle-horse, our sole reason for believing in the horse and for not believing in the centaur would be our greater ability to conceive the one than the other. That such a definition should for a moment have satisfied its author's curiosity, is itself a psychological curiosity which must not, however, be suffered to detain us. Whoever, not content with knowing perfectly well what belief is, desires to have his knowledge of it set down in writing, should read the admirable notes on the subject, with which Mr. John Mill and Mr.

Bain have enriched the last edition of Mr. James Mill's 'a.n.a.lysis of the Human Mind.' Most readers, however, will probably be disposed to avail themselves here of a rather favourite phrase of Hume himself, and to plead that, 'if we agree about the thing, it is needless to dispute about terms;' and it is not unlikely that such of them as may have formed their notion of metaphysical discussions in general from the specimens given above, may go so far as to hint a doubt whether any of the nice verbal distinctions which metaphysicians so much affect, are really worth the trouble required to understand them. Nor would anyone, perhaps, be much the worse for acting upon this suspicion, provided that, in accordance with it, he kept altogether aloof from the studies which it disparages. His ideas need not be the less clear because he neither knows nor cares of what they are copies, nor whether they are copies of anything; nor will the order of their occurrence be at all affected in consequence of his being similarly careless, whether that order is or is not governed by a _law_ of a.s.sociation; neither need his inferences from experience be the less sound in consequence of his never having enquired how or why they are deduced. But although the most absolute ignorance and corresponding indifference about these and kindred topics may not tend in the least to disqualify him for performance of the whole duty of man, it is not the less important that, if he do care to know aught about them, his knowledge should be exact, for there is no knowing beforehand how luxuriantly the minutest germ of theoretical error may ramify in practice, or into what substantive quagmire trust in deceitful shadows may lead. These respectable aphorisms may be beneficially borne in mind during perusal of what is about to be said.

If the fact were really, as Hume supposed, that we have _no_ reason for our inferences from experience, and draw them only because either we have been in the habit of drawing them, or because we are so const.i.tuted as to be unable to help drawing them, the reason of our drawing them plainly could not be that we perceive any necessary connection between antecedent and consequent events, or any force or power binding these together as cause and effect. Accordingly, Hume does not scruple to affirm that 'we have no idea of connection or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without meaning when employed either in philosophical reasoning or in common life.' Every idea, he argues, referring to a rule which he somewhat hastily supposes himself to have already proved to be without exception, must needs have been copied from some preceding sensible impression, but neither from within nor from without can we have received an impression from which this particular idea can have been copied. No keenest scrutiny of any portion of matter, no study of its external configuration or internal structure could, previously to experience, enable us to conjecture that it could produce any effect whatever, still less any particular effect: could enable us to guess, for instance, that flame would burn, or ice would chill, if touched. Nor even though on once touching flame we get our fingers burnt, are mature philosophers like us to conclude, as if we had no more intelligence than so many babies, that if we touch again we shall be burnt again. All we have as yet learnt from the experiment is that the sensation of touching fire has once been followed by the sensation of burning, but nothing has occurred to suggest that in the first sensation lurked any secret power of producing the second. And what a single experiment does not prove, no number of repet.i.tions of precisely the same experiment with precisely the same results can prove. Even though on a lengthened course of experience we have found that in every case of our touching flame our fingers have been burnt, we are still as far as ever from perceiving any bond of connection between the two events. We do indeed believe that as flame when touched has. .h.i.therto invariably burnt, so, whenever touched hereafter, it will hereafter invariably burn; but this, according to Hume, we believe simply because by long practice we have contracted such a habit of a.s.sociating the idea of touched flame with burnt fingers, that whenever we witness the one we cannot help expecting the other.

Neither, if, withdrawing our eyes from the outward world, we cast them inwardly upon the operations of our own minds, shall we, according to Hume, any the more discover what we are in search of. What though we know by experience that whatever, within certain limits, our will appoints, our bodily organs or mental faculties will ordinarily perform; that our limbs will move as we wish them, and our memory, reason, or imagination bring forward ideas which we desire to contemplate, what knowledge have we here beyond that of certain volitions and certain other acts taking place in succession? What smallest evidence have we of any connection between the volitions and the other acts? A volition is an operation of the mind, is it not? and body is matter, is it not? And do you pretend to know--can you form the smallest approach to a guess--how mind is united with body, and how it is possible therefore for the refined spiritual essence to actuate the gross material substance. If you 'were empowered by a secret wish to remove mountains or to control the planets in their orbit,' would such extensive authority be one whit more inexplicable than the supposed ability of your will to raise your hand to your head or to cause your foot to make one forward step?

If, nevertheless, you fancy you understand in what manner the will has some of the bodily organs under its government, how, pray, do you account for its not having all equally--the heart and liver as well as the tongue and fingers? Without trying, you never would have discovered that your bowels _will not_, any more than without trying you could have known that your limbs _will_, ordinarily move in conformity with your wishes. Neither, if one of your limbs were to be suddenly paralysed, would you, until you tried, become aware that it would no longer move as you wished. If there be, then, a power attached to the will, it is plainly experience alone which apprises you of its existence; whereas if you were independently conscious of it, you would know beforehand precisely what it can and what it cannot effect, and would, moreover, when you lost it, become instantly aware of your loss.

Again, and above all, does not anatomy teach us that when the mind wills the movement of any bodily member, it 'is not the member itself which is immediately moved, but certain intervening nerves, muscles, and animal spirits, or possibly something still more minute and more unknown,'

through which the motion is successively propagated until it reach the member? So that when the mind wills one event, a series of other events, quite different and quite unthought of, take place instead; and it is only by their means that the will's purpose is finally achieved. But how can the mind be conscious, how can it form the remotest conception, of a power which not only never does what the mind desires, but never does aught of which the mind is cognisant?

And as we are thus utterly unable to perceive any power that the mind has over the body, so are we equally unconscious of any power of the mind over itself. We know as little of its internal nature and const.i.tution as we do of its mode of connection with the body. We know by experience that at the bidding of the will ideas are continually brought forward; but by what means they are brought forward we are absolutely ignorant, as we are also of the reasons of the fluctuation of mental activity, and why mental operations are more vigorous in health than in sickness, before breakfast than after a heavy dinner or deep carouse.

Such, on the issue immediately before us, is Hume's reasoning, to which--though necessarily very greatly condensing it--I shall, I am sure, be acknowledged to have conscientiously striven to do full justice, by bringing all its points into the strongest light, and arranging them in the most effective order. Still, with its utmost strength thus displayed before us, we are fully warranted in a.s.serting _a priori_ that its whole utmost strength is weakness. If, by following a leader who has engaged to conduct us to a certain spot, we find ourselves at our journey's end in a quite different place, no appeal that the guide can make to maps or finger-posts will persuade us that he has not mistaken the way. Nor need our judgment be otherwise, even though our guide be Hume, if, having started with him in pursuit of truth, we are finally landed in a patent absurdity. With all due respect for logic, we protest with Tony Lumpkin against being argufied out of our senses, as we plainly should be if we allowed ourselves to be persuaded that whenever we use the words _power_ or _connection_ we have no idea thereto correspondent. Since, then, Hume tells us this, we may be quite sure that he has been deluded by some fallacy which may be detected by adequate search; and being, moreover, sensible that we really have the idea our possession of which is denied by him, we may be equally sure that the original of which the idea is a copy is similarly discoverable. In sooth, neither the one nor the other is far to seek.

The fallacy consists simply in confusion of the definite with the indefinite article. The original of our idea of power Hume himself indicates even while rejecting it. Although constrained by Hume's demonstration to confess that we cannot even conjecture of what kind is _the_ authority which the will exercises over the limbs, we are not the less sensible that it does exercise _an_ authority of some sort or other, which they are unable to disobey. We know that in ordinary circ.u.mstances our limbs will move when we wish them to move, and will remain quiet when we wish them not to move. Nor this only. We moreover know, or at any rate fancy we know, that they would not have moved unless we had wished them. In examples like these of volitions followed, as the case may be, by _premeditated_ motion or rest, we have something more than the simple sequence observable in the succession of external events. We do not perceive simply that, as when fire is lighted, heat is emitted, so when the mind wills the body moves. We perceive clearly that there must be a connection of some sort between antecedent and consequent, without which the first certainly _would not_ and, we fancy, _could not_ have followed the first. We perceive, in short, that the second followed _because_ the first preceded. If fire were an animated being, capable of forming and manifesting volitions; and if we observed that whenever it wished to emit heat, heat was emitted; and that whenever it wished to withhold heat, heat was withheld; and if we were thereupon to say that fire has the power of emitting or withholding heat at its pleasure, our words surely would not be dest.i.tute of signification; they would certainly possess some meaning, and that a very obvious one. And so they as certainly do when we say that the mind has power over those bodily movements which we observe to take place and to cease in constant conformity with its will. I am not saying that what they mean is necessarily truth--we will come to that presently--all I say as yet is, that they mean something, and that that something, whether it be a real or only an imaginary perception, is perfectly fitted to be the original of that idea of 'power' _connecting_ cause and effect, or of 'connection' _between_ cause and effect, which Hume maintains does not exist, because there is no original from which it can have been copied. It matters not that we are quite ignorant of what nature is the something from which our idea of power possessed by the mind over the body is derived, and which, for aught we know, may reside, not in the mind, but in the body, and may consist, not of any strength inherent in the former, but of loyalty and docility inherent in the latter. Just as the authority of a popular general over a well-disciplined army is not the less real because the soldiers, every one of whose lives is at the general's disposal, might, if so inclined, mutiny _en ma.s.se_, so it can make no difference in the mind's power over the body whether the mind be intrinsically able to enforce obedience, or the limbs be so const.i.tuted as to be unable to disobey. As little does it matter that we are also ignorant of the mode in which the mind's behests are communicated to the members. It is not the less certain that in some mode or other they are communicated. Neither does it signify more that the mind does not communicate directly with the part of the body which it desires to influence, and acts upon that part only by means of action propagated through a series of intervening parts; or that it is able to direct only some organs, and not others, or cannot direct even those, if by some accident they have become seriously deranged. A strong-armed blockhead is not the less obviously able to pump up water because the terms 'muscular contractility' and 'atmospheric pressure' are as heathen Greek to him; or because the pump-handle, which alone is directly moved by him, touches, not the water itself, but only the first link in a chain of mechanism connecting it with the water; or because, if the sucker of the pump got choked, or the well were to dry up, it would be vain for him to go on moving the pump-handle. Blockhead as he is, nothing of all this in the least diminishes his conviction that as long as the pump continues in order and there remains water in the well, he can oblige the water to rise by moving the pump-handle; nor can anything a.n.a.logous prevent the mind from feeling that whenever, in ordinary circ.u.mstances, it wills that the limbs be moved, the limbs not only will be moved, but cannot help being moved accordingly. But it is simply impossible that, from the exercise of volitions which it knows will be obeyed, the mind should not receive the sensation of exercising causal power; and having thus got the sensation, it has nothing to do but to copy the sensation in order to get the idea of causal power. _Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute_; the first step being taken the others cost nothing. The mind having, by introspection of its own operations, discovered what Hume, though professing to look in the same direction, unaccountably contrived to overlook--the idea, namely, of causal power--proceeds to apply that idea to the connection of external phenomena. Not only do we, whenever we see a horse or an ox walking of its own accord, infer that the animal walks _because_ it wishes to walk; but having observed that, when a stone is thrown into the air it invariably falls presently afterwards towards the ground; that a magnet invariably attracts any light piece of iron placed near it; that red-hot coals always burn; and that water always moistens, we infer that the second const.i.tuent of each brace of phenomena takes place _because_ of the first, meaning thereby that there is some strong bond _connecting_ the two and _compelling_ one to follow the other. If called upon to justify this inference, we may do so by reducing to absurdity its only possible alternative. If there be supposed to be no connection between two phenomena const.i.tuting one of those invariable sequences which we are accustomed to denominate cause and effect, the sequence which they const.i.tute must needs be an unconnected sequence, and the only reason for styling one of the phenomena a cause is, that it is an antecedent which the other invariably follows. But according to this, as has been pointed out over and over again, day would be the cause of night, and night the cause of day, and tidal flux and reflux likewise would be each other's causes; and Mr. J. S. Mill has therefore proposed to interpolate a word, and to define the cause of a phenomenon as 'the antecedent on which it (the phenomenon) is invariably and _unconditionally_ consequent.'[30] I must, however, confess myself unable to perceive how the definition is improved by this emendation.

There is not, and cannot possibly be, such a thing as _unconditionally_ invariable sequence, as, indeed, Mr. Mill himself virtually admits by expressly a.s.suming as an indispensable condition of all causation that 'the present const.i.tution of things endure.' But if, notwithstanding the presence of this indispensable condition, it be permissible to call any sequence unconditionally invariable, then the sequences of night upon day and of day upon night are such sequences, and day and night continue consequently ent.i.tled to be styled each other's causes as much under the amended as under the original definition. For as long as 'the present const.i.tution of things endures,' that is, as long as the earth continues to revolve on its axis, and the sun continues to s.h.i.+ne, and no opaque substance intervenes between earth and sun, day and night will continue to be as invariably and unconditionally each other's antecedents as sunlight will continue to be the antecedent or concomitant of day.

True, Mr. Mill denies that the earth's diurnal motion is part of the present const.i.tution of things, because, according to him, 'nothing can be so called which might possibly be terminated or altered by natural causes:' but, if so, then neither ought sunlight to be so called, for it too quite possibly may, nay, in the opinion of many philosophers, most certainly will, be extinguished eventually by natural causes. If day ought not to be called the unconditionally invariable consequent of night merely because it would cease to be so if the earth were to cease turning on its axis, then neither ought it to be called the unconditionally invariable consequent of the unshrouded proximity of the sun, inasmuch as it would cease to be thereupon consequent if the sun were to become burnt out. If night be not, and if sunlight be, the cause of day, the reason is not that sunlight always. .h.i.therto has been, and, on one indispensable condition, always will be followed by day, for so equally has. .h.i.therto been, and on the same condition will hereafter be, night. The real reason is, that sunlight not only always has been and will be, but also always _must_ be followed by day; that unless the const.i.tution of nature very materially change, wherever is sunlight day _must_ be; whereas not only might day be, although night had never preceded, but unless night had preceded, day must have been from the beginning. In short, to const.i.tute cause, invariability, however unconditional, will not suffice. Another quality must be added, and that quality I contend to be obligatoriness. A cause, I maintain, would not be a cause unless its effect not only do or will, but _must_ necessarily follow it. In common with the great unphilosophic ma.s.s of mankind, I hold that between cause and effect there is a binding power which constrains the one to follow the other. If asked whence we suppose that power can have been derived, such of us, as conscious that we are 'no very great wits,' don't mind confessing that we 'believe in a G.o.d,' will not mind either suggesting that the power, wherever not exerted by an animated creature, may possibly be directly from G.o.d. One thing certain is, that inanimate matter cannot possibly possess or exercise any force or power whatever, so that, unless matter, although apparently dead, be really alive, attraction, cohesion, gravitation, and all its other so called forces, being incompatible with dead inertness, must needs be manifestations of some living, and possibly divine, power. Far from there being any difficulty in conceiving Omnipresent Deity to be exhibiting its might in every speck of universal s.p.a.ce in every instant of never-ending time, it is, on the contrary, impossible to conceive otherwise. We cannot conceive one single minutest point in limitless extension to be for one moment exempt from the immediate control of a divine nature a.s.sumed to be

Diffused throughout infinity's expanse And co-existent with eternity.

Here, indeed, we hasten to acknowledge with Hume that 'our line is too short to fathom the immense abyss' which we have now reached. But we need not, therefore, follow Hume to the lengths to which his insidious mock-modesty would fain entice us. We may concede to him that 'we have no idea of a Supreme Being but what we learn from reflection on our own faculties,' but we need not imitate him by perversely shutting our eyes to the evidences of an energy inherent in our own faculties, and thereby ent.i.tle him to insist on our joining him in denying that there is any evidence of energy in the Supreme Being. We need not, because constrained to admit that we know no more of the essence of divine, than we do of human, power, pretend that we cannot even conceive such a thing as divine power. Hume's affectation of profound ignorance on the subject must have occasioned unusual amus.e.m.e.nt in a certain quarter. The Devil can seldom have had a more hearty grin at his darling sin than when witnessing this peculiar exhibition of the pride that apes humility.

That Hume's ignorance was nothing but affectation is proved by his veering completely round immediately afterwards, and in his very next chapter, and almost in his very next page, p.r.o.nouncing it to be 'universally allowed that matter in all its operations is actuated by a necessary force, and that every natural effect is so precisely determined by the energy of its cause that no other effect in such particular circ.u.mstances could possibly have resulted from it.'

Throughout the same chapter he argues in the same sense, and quite forgetting how obstinately he had just before contended that there are absolutely no such things as connection or power at all, he defies any one to 'define a cause without comprehending, as part of the definition, _necessary_ connection with its effect.' So highly, indeed, does he now rate that connecting power, whose very existence he had previously so vehemently denied, that he professes himself unable to set any limit to its efficacy. Even for those who should undertake to deduce from it the impossibility of any liberty of human will, and consequently of any human responsibility, pleading that, inasmuch as with a continued chain of necessary causes, reaching from the first great cause of all to every separate volition of every single human creature, it must needs be the Creator of the world who is the ultimate author of all volitions, and consequently solely accountable for every crime which man commits, he affects, with exceedingly ill-sitting sanctimoniousness, to have no better answer than that such belief, being impious, must be absurd and cannot be true. It did not suit his purpose to point out that the volitions of Omnipotence itself, equally with human volitions, are necessary effects of causes--the causes in their case being the other attributes with which Omnipotence is conjoined--and that as it is nevertheless impossible for the volitions of Omnipotence to be otherwise than absolutely free and uncontrolled, so there is no reason why human volitions likewise should not, in spite of the same objection, be as thoroughly free as our own feelings a.s.sure us they are.

Hume's sudden conversion, so amazing at first sight, from flattest denial to positivest a.s.sertion of causal power, becomes intelligible when he is seen immediately afterwards using his newly adopted creed as a fulcrum whereon to rest his argumentative lever in his a.s.sault upon Miracles. About that celebrated piece of reasoning, startling as the avowal may sound, there is, to my mind, nothing more remarkable than its celebrity, for, on close inspection, it will be found to be entirely made up of (1) the demonstration of a truism, and (2) the inculcation of a confessedly misleading rule. Not far from its commencement will be found a definition which, if correct, would leave nothing to dispute about. A miracle, we are told, is 'a violation of the laws of nature,'

of laws which a firm and unalterable experience has established. But if so, _cadit quaestio_. Of course, there can be no alteration of the unalterable. No need, of course, of further words to prove that a miracle thus defined is an impossibility.

Let us suppose, however, the word _unalterable_ to have been used here by a slip of the pen instead of _unaltered_, and that Hume really meant by a miracle any alteration of what had previously appeared to be the constant course of nature. Even so, we shall have him contending that no amount, however great, of testimony however unimpeachable, ought to be accepted as adequate proof of such an alteration. Of what he urges in support of this position much may be at once dismissed as altogether irrelevant. That the most honest witness may be the dupe of optical or auricular illusion, or of a distorting or magnifying imagination; that there is in many minds a natural predisposition to believe in the marvellous, and that the love of astonis.h.i.+ng often gives exaggerated expression to the exaggerations of the fancy; that self-interest and religious zeal often furnish additional motives for mendacity, and that testimony, even when sincere at first, is apt to become corrupted at every stage as it pa.s.ses from hand to hand, or is committed to paper--all this, together with any further enumeration of circ.u.mstances calculated to invalidate testimony, is quite beside the real question.

It merely proves what no one needs to have proved, the propriety, viz., of weighing evidence and balancing adverse probabilities; and even though it proved in addition that of all the so-styled miracles on record, there is not a single one the evidence for which is sufficient, it would still prove nothing to the purpose. For Hume is arguing against the credibility, not of any miracles in particular, but of all miracles in general, those included the witnesses for which are of indisputable intelligence and undisputed veracity. Be the quality of the testimony what it may, no quant.i.ty of it, according to him, can be sufficient.

This is the essence of his thesis, the only part of it in which there is any novelty, and in behalf of this part all that he has to say may be resolved into a sophism, followed by a repet.i.tion of the same begging of the question, as is involved in his afore-cited definition of a miracle.

In substance it runs as follows. All testimony is at best but a description of the results of sensible experience--of observations of the senses--but the most faithful description must needs be a less vivid presentation of truth than the reality described. A single original is better evidence than any number of copies. Your own personal experience is more trustworthy than any number of mere records of the experience of other people, and where the two conflict, the former always deserves preference. Now the personal experience of each one of us a.s.sures us that many sets of natural phenomena take place in perfectly invariable sequences, in sequences so invariable as to appear to be, and to be familiarly spoken of as, manifestations or operations of certain inflexible laws of nature. Within our experience there has never been a single deviation from any such law. Wherefore, though all the rest of mankind should unite in a.s.serting that they have observed such a deviation, we ought not to believe them. Even though, for example--the example, however, being not Hume's, but my own--we were, on leaving home some morning, to hear on all sides that, while we were yet in bed, the sun was seen to rise in the west instead of the east, and though we found the statement repeated in the 'Times' and 'Daily News,' and presently afterwards saw it posted up at the Exchange as having been flashed by electric wire from New York and Kurrachee, we are not for a moment to doubt that these reiterated and mutually corroborative statements are utterly false. For, numerous and consistent as they may be, they are but copies of the experience of other people, while, although we may have to oppose to them only our own single experience, still that single experience is original, and therefore of more worth.

The value, moreover, of any experience is, irrespective of originality, determined by the difference in number between the results of opposite kinds which it has discovered. The smaller number is deducted from the larger, and the balance represents the probability that the results which have most frequently occurred hitherto will continue to occur henceforward. The larger the deduction thus to be made, the smaller the probability, and _vice versa_; and when the deduction is _nil_, or when there has. .h.i.therto been complete uniformity, the probability becomes virtual certainty. When two original experiences are opposed to each other, their respective values, ascertained in the same manner, are compared, and trust is reposed in one or the other accordingly. Now, according to these principles, difficult as it might be in the case supposed for any one to conceive what motive all the rest of the world could have for lying, it would be still more difficult to believe them to be speaking truth. For why do we ever believe anything that anyone says? Why but because we have learnt by experience that, when people have no apparent motive for lying, they commonly do speak the truth? But the same experience which has taught us this has taught us likewise that people do now and then lie without apparent motive. At best, therefore, there is never more than a probability that people are speaking the truth, while in this instance, the supposition that they might be speaking the truth would imply that there may be a truth against which there is proof amounting to certainty. For what they affirm is that something has happened the very reverse of what has invariably happened before in the same circ.u.mstances. Is it not infinitely more likely that people should be lying as they have often done before, than that the invariable course of nature should have undergone a variation? With evidence on the one side that has never yet deceived, with no evidence on the other save what has often proved deceptive, how can we hesitate which to accept? Even though the unanimity of testimony be such as might otherwise be deemed complete proof, it is here met by absolutely complete proof in the shape of a law of nature. The greater probability overwhelms the lesser. The stronger proof annihilates the weaker, leaving none of it behind, so that whoever still persists in believing that a law of nature has been violated, must be content to do so without one particle of proof. No quant.i.ty of testimony can furnish the smallest proof of a miracle unless the falsehood of the testimony would be a greater departure from antecedent uniformity--in other words, would be a greater miracle--than the miracle which it attests. Unfortunately it is but too notorious that there is not, and never has been, such a thing as uniform truthfulness of testimony to depart from.

Such, unless most unintentionally injured by compression, is Hume's famous argument against miracles, of which the author was sufficiently proud to boast openly that in it he had discovered what 'will be useful, as long as the world endures,' as 'an everlasting check to all kinds of superst.i.tious delusion,' but which, as I nevertheless venture to repeat, is compounded in about equal moieties of transparent sophism and baseless a.s.sumption. For is it not the veriest juggle of words to insist on the necessary inferiority of copies to an original, without adverting to the indispensable proviso that the original with which the copies are compared should be the original from which the copies have been taken? May not a copy of Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' quite possibly be equal in force and vividness of expression to the original painting by Benjamin West bearing the same name? Might it not be wise to trust rather to an Airy, or a De la Rue, or a Lockyer's account of what he had observed during a solar eclipse than to your own immediate observations on the same occasion? Besides, this first branch of Hume's argument, if sound, would tell quite as much for, as against, miracles, rendering it equally inc.u.mbent on actual witnesses to believe, as on all but actual witnesses to disbelieve. If you are always to prefer your own original experience to mere descriptions given by other people of theirs, then should it happen to be yourself to whom the sun appeared in the west at an hour when, according to custom, he ought to have been in the east, you are not to allow the protestations of any number of persons who, happening at the time to have been looking the other way, saw the sun in his usual place, to persuade you that what you saw was a mock sun or an _ignis fatuus_. Rather than imagine that your own senses can have deceived you, you are to suppose that all about you are in a league to deceive you. For precisely the same reason for which you should reject even universal testimony in favour of a miracle which you have not witnessed, you are equally to reject universal testimony in opposition to a miracle the similitude of which you have witnessed.

Or is it possible for a question to be more distinctly begged than when, to the question whether a miracle has occurred, it is answered that a miracle is not a miracle unless there be uniform experience against it; that uniformly adverse experience is direct and full proof against anything; and that therefore there must always be full proof against miracles? What is here taken for granted to be full proof is the very thing requiring to be proved. If past uniformity really be a pledge for continued uniformity, of course there can be no departure from uniformity. If the whole question does not at once fall to the ground, it is because no question has ever really arisen. But what shadow of pretext is there for treating an hitherto unvaried course of events as necessarily invariable? From past experience we have deduced what we are pleased to call _laws_ of nature, but it is morally impossible that we can seriously think, whatever we are in the habit of saying, that these laws are self-denying ordinances whereby nature's G.o.d has voluntarily abdicated part of His inalienable prerogative. The utmost efficacy we are warranted in ascribing to them is that of lines marking certain of the courses within which G.o.d's providence is pleased to move. But how can we pretend to know for how long a season such may continue to be the divine pleasure? How do we know that the present season may not be the first of an alternating series, and that it may not at any moment terminate, and be succeeded by one of an opposite character? What though we have some shadow of historical evidence that most physical phenomena have been going on in much the same order for some six thousand years, is that a basis whereon to theorise with regard to the proceedings of Him in whose sight one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day? Might not as well some scientific member of an insect tribe of ephemera, whom ancestral tradition, confirmed by personal experience, had a.s.sured that an eight-day clock had already gone on for six days, p.r.o.nounce it to be a law of the clock's nature that it should go on for ever without being again wound up? Would the insect philosopher's dogmatism be one whit less absurd than that of those human ephemera who so positively lay down the law about the clockwork of the universe?

Those laws of nature to which unerring regularity and perpetuity of operation are so confidently attributed, may they not, perchance, be but single clauses of much farther reaching laws, according to whose other provisions the force of these isolated clauses may, in novel combinations of circ.u.mstances, be counteracted by some latent and hitherto unsuspected force? Or is it not, at all events, open to their divine promulgator to suspend their operation at his pleasure? May it not conceivably have been preordained that the globe of our earth, after revolving for a given number of ages, in one direction, shall then, like a meat-jack, or like an Ascidian's heart,[31] reverse its order of procedure, and commence a contrary series of revolutions? Or might not He who prescribed to the earth its rotatory movement, will that the rotation should for some hours cease, and that the sun should in consequence seem to stand still, as it is recorded to have done at the command of Joshua? Improbable as these suppositions may be, who that has not been taken into counsel by his Creator can presume to say that they may not be correct? The events which they involve are not inconceivable, and whatever is not utterly inconceivable may possibly occur, however numerous the chances against its occurrence. It is not then the fact that 'past experience,' however unvaried, affords full proof of the future existence of any event, or const.i.tutes certainty against the future existence of the reverse of that event. Completest uniformity of experience cannot create a certainty by which any opposite probability would be completely annihilated. It only creates a probability which, however great, is still only a probability, and which would become a smaller probability by deduction from it of any opposite probability.

But mere probability, however great, always includes some doubt as to its own correctness, some suspicion that its opposite may possibly be correct. How much soever, therefore, uniform experience may vouch for the inviolability of natural laws, it always remains possible for those laws to be violated, and, as miracles are nothing else but violations of natural laws, it always remains possible for miracles to happen. But since miracles are possible, testimony to their occurrence may, with equal possibility, be true, and no further refutation can, I submit, be needed for an argument which insists that all such testimony should be set aside without enquiry as self-evidently false.

Had Hume been content to insist that testimony in favour of miracles should never be received without extreme doubt and hesitation, his lesson might well have pa.s.sed without further objection than that of its being superfluous for any one with sense enough to profit by it. Nor might it have been easy to discover a flaw in his logic, although he had gone so far as to maintain that no one of the miracles as yet on record is either adequately attested, or would, even if it had undoubtedly occurred, afford sufficient evidence of any religious truth. The best and only adequate evidence for any religious creed is the satisfaction which it affords to the soul's cravings and promises to the soul's aspirations; and no rational Christian would be at all the more disposed to turn Mussulman, even though it should be demonstrated to his entire conviction that Christ did not raise Lazarus from the dead, and that Mahomet did turn the hill Safa into gold, instead of prudently confining himself to boasting that he could have effected the trans.m.u.tation if he had thought proper. But for the purpose which Hume had in view, it was necessary to establish, not merely the doubtfulness, but the absolute falsehood of the miracular testimony on which, in his opinion, 'our holy religion' rests, in order that the character of the superstructure being inferred from that