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
‘The intellectual faculties have been placed in the brain; but it was
impossible to point out any organ, because organs have been sought for
faculties which have no organ, namely, for common and general
faculties.... General or common phenomena never have any particular
organ. Secretion, for instance, is a common name, and secretion in
general has no particular organ; but the particular secretions, as of
saliva, bile, tears, &c. are attached to particular organs. Sensation is
an expression which indicates the common function of the five external
senses; therefore this common faculty has no particular organ, but every
determinate sensation—as of sight, hearing, smelling, taste, or
feeling—is attached to some particular organ.’ Page 273.
In the first place, then, Dr. Spurzheim himself assigns particular
organs for common and general faculties; such as self-love, veneration,
hope, covetousness, language, comparison, causality, wit, imitation, &c.
He also talks of the organs of abstraction, individuality, invention,
&c. It would be hard to deny that these mean more than one thing, and
refer to more than to one class of sensations. In fact, the author all
through his volume regularly confounds general principles with
particular acts and mechanic exercises of the mind. Secondly, he either
does not or will not apprehend the precise meaning of the terms _common_
or _general faculties_, as applied to the mind. _Sensation_ is a common
function of the five external senses, that is, it belongs severally to
the exercise of the five external senses: but _understanding_ is a
common faculty of the mind—not because it belongs to any number of ideas
in succession, but because it takes cognizance of a number of them
together. UNDERSTANDING is perceiving the relations between objects and
impressions, which the senses and particular or individual organs can
never do. It is this superintending or _conscious_ faculty or principle
which is aware both of the colour, form, and sound of an object; which
connects its present appearance with its past history; which arranges
and combines the multifarious impressions of nature into one whole;
which balances the various motives of action, and renders man what he
is—a rational and moral agent: but for this faculty we find no regular
place or station assigned amongst that heap of organic _tumuli_, which
could produce nothing but mistakes and confusion. The seat of this
faculty is one, or its impressions are communicated to the same
intelligent mind, which contemplates and reacts upon them all with more
or less wisdom and comprehensive power. Thus the poet is not a being
made up of a string of organs—an eye, an ear, a heart, a tongue—but is
one and the same intellectual essence, looking out from its own nature
on all the different impressions it receives, and to a certain degree
moulding them into itself. It is _I_ who remember certain objects, who
judge of them, who invent from them, who connect certain sounds that I
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