The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 07 (of 12)Hazlitt, William
General
The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 07 (of 12)
Hazlitt, William
English essays -- 19th century
‘_I have mentioned above, that voluntary motion and the five external
senses, common to man and animals, are innate._ Moreover, if man and
animals feel certain propensities and sentiments _with clear and
distinct consciousness_, we must consider these faculties as
innate.’—[The _clear and distinct consciousness_ has nothing to do with
the matter.]—‘Thus, if in animals we find examples of mutual inclination
between the sexes, of maternal care for the young, of attachment, of
mutual assistance, of sociableness, of union for life, of peaceableness,
of desire to fight, of propensity to destroy, of circumspection, of
slyness, of love of flattery, of obstinacy, &c. all these faculties must
be considered as innate.’—[A finer assumption of the question than this,
or a more complete jumble of instincts and acquired propensities
together, never was made. The author has here got hold of a figure
called _encroachment_, and advances accordingly!]—‘Let all these
faculties be ennobled in man: let animal instinct of propagation be
changed into moral love; the inclination of animals for their young into
the virtue of maternal care for children; animal attachment into
friendship; animal susceptibility of flattery into love of glory and
ambition; the nightingale’s melody into harmony; the bird’s nest and the
beaver’s hut into palaces and temples, &c.: these faculties are still of
the same nature, and all these phenomena are produced by faculties
common to man and animals. They are only ennobled in man by the
influence of superior qualities, which give another direction to the
inferior ones.’ Page 82.
This last passage appears to destroy his whole argument. For the Doctor
contends that every particular propensity or modification of the mind
must be innate, and have its separate organ; but if there are ‘faculties
common to man and animals,’ which are ennobled or debased by their
connexion with other faculties, then we must admit a general principle
of thought and action varying according to circumstances, and the
organic system becomes nearly an impertinence.
The following short section, entitled INNATENESS OF THE HUMAN FACULTIES,
will serve to place in a tolerably striking point of view the turn of
this writer to an unmeaning, _quackish_ sort of common-place reasoning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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