Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)Brown, Thomas
Philosophy
Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (Vol. 1 of 3)
Brown, Thomas
Philosophy; Psychology
What the _chemist_ does, in matter, the _intellectual_ analysis does in
mind; the one distinguishing by a purely mental process of reflection,
the elements of his complex feelings, as the other operates on his
material compounds, by processes that are themselves material. Though
the term analysis, however, may be used in reference to both processes,
the mental, as well as the material, since the result of the process
is virtually the same in both, it has been universally employed by
philosophers, in the laws of the mind, without any accurate definition
of the process; and I was careful, therefore, to explain to you the
peculiar meaning, in which it is strictly to be understood in our
science; that you might not extend to the mind and its affections, that
essential divisibility, which is inconsistent with its very nature;
and suppose that, when we speak of complex notions, and of thoughts
and feelings that are united by association with other thoughts and
feelings, we speak of a plurality of separable things. The complex
mental phenomena, as I explained to you, are complex only in relation
to our mode of conceiving them. They are, strictly and truly, as
simple and indivisible states of a substance, which is necessarily in
all its states simple and indivisible--the _results_, rather than the
compounds, of former feelings,--to which, however, they seem to us,
and from the very nature of the feelings themselves, cannot but seem
to us, to bear the same species of relation, which a _whole_ bears
to the parts that compose it. The office of intellectual analysis,
accordingly, in the mode in which I have explained it to you, has
regard to this relation only. It is to trace the various affections
or states of mind that have successively contributed, to form or to
modify any peculiar sentiment or emotion, and to develope the elements,
to which, after tracing this succession, the resulting sentiment or
emotion is felt by us to bear virtually that relation of seeming
comprehensiveness of which I spoke.
If, indeed, our perspicacity were so acute that we could distinguish
immediately _all_ the relations of our thoughts and passions, there
could evidently be no _discovery_ in the science of mind; but, in like
manner, what discovery could there be, in the analysis of matter, if
our senses were so quick and delicate, as to distinguish immediately
all the elements of every compound? It is only slowly that we discover
the composition of the masses without; and we have therefore a science
of chemistry:--It is only slowly that we discover the relations of
complex thought to thought; and we have therefore a science of mental
analysis.
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