ideas of these, and their mutual connexion by means of association
taken together and operating on one another” (i. 80). And in harmony
with this (i. 101), he afterwards gives a formal derivation of ideal
vibratiuncles from sensory vibrations; and (103) talks of that “idea
or state of mind, _i.e._ set of compound vibratiuncles, which we term
the WILL;” and again (p. 212) he says, “the permanence of
sensations is of the nature of an idea.” Here the great {286}
mystery which puzzled the Greeks so much, the mysterious bond which
unites the ἕν and the πολλά--the one and the many--is solved
very decidedly, as it would appear, on the Epicurean side. It is not
the one which produces the many, but the many which produce the one;
the one--what I call Mind, Will--is only a modification of the many.
The radical objection to all this is that every man who is not a
professional metaphysician feels it to be nonsense; the popular
feeling protests; Shakespeare, who represents the thoughts and the
language of a high and a healthy humanity, never talks in this style;
and, more than that, the profoundest thinkers from Plato down to Hegel
find in the proposition that thought is manufactured out of sensations
a much greater mystery than that which this theory was invented to
explain. One feels conscious that sensations might go on for ever, and
not produce anything that had the slightest semblance to a thought;
just as rain and sunshine acting on thistle-down from summer to summer
produce only thistles and not roses. It appears, indeed, that our
inductive philosopher is here involving himself in the vulgar fallacy
of confounding the occasion or the condition of a thing with the
cause. An accidental occasion, or an indispensable condition, are
equally remote from the idea of a cause. The accidental occasion, for
instance, of a house being built on a certain site, is that a certain
gentleman, happening to take a walk in a certain district, and being
not averse to house-building, determines to have a house on that site;
the indispensable condition of the house being erected is that there
should be a site for it to stand on, and stone and lime for it to be
built with; but the only proper efficient {287} cause of the house
being a house is the mind of the architect, the plan which that mind
originates, and the instructions which he gives to the contractor, and
the contractor to the masons. The sensuous tendency which Hartley’s
medical studies had given to his thoughts comes out strongly in
another passage (i. 342), where he attempts to explain the evidence of
mathematical axioms:--“We infer that 2+2=4 only from prior instances
of having actually perceived this; and from the necessary coincidence
of all these instances with all other possible ones.” This recalls a
famous passage in J. Stuart Mill’s treatise against Sir W. Hamilton,
in which he stamps with his authority the ingenious demonstration of a
London barrister, to the effect that “in some possible world two and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account