PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS.

PART FIRST.

ESSAY FIRST.

ON LOCKE'S ACCOUNT OF THE SOURCES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, AND ITS INFLUENCE on the doctrines of SOME OF HIS SUCCESSORS.

CHAPTER FIRST.

INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.

IN speculating concerning any of the intellectual phenomena, it is of essential importance for us constantly to recollect, that, as our knowledge of the material world iş derived entirely from our external senses, so all our knowledge of the human mind is derived from consciousness. As to the blind or the deaf, no words can convey the notions of particular colors, or of particular sounds; so to a being who had never been conscious of sensation, memory, imagination, pleasure, pain, hope, fear, love, hatred, no intelligible description could be given of the import of these terms. They all express simple ideas or notions, which are perfectly familiar to every person who is able to turn his thoughts inwards, and which we never fail to involve in obscurity when we attempt to define them.*

The habits of inattention which all men contract, in their early years, to the operations of their own minds, have been pointed out, by various writers, as the most powerful of all obstacles to the progress of our inquiries concerning the theory of human nature. These

• See Note (A.)

habits, it has also been remarked, are to be conquered only by the most persevering industry in accustoming the thoughts to turn themselves at pleasure to the phenomena of this internal world; an effort by no means easy to any individual, and, to a large proportion of mankind, almost impracticable. "Magni est ingenii," says Cicero, "revocare mentem a sensibus, et cogitationem a consuetudine abducere." The observation, as thus expressed, is perhaps somewhat exceptionable; inasmuch as the power which Cicero describes has but little connexion with Genius in the ordinary acceptation of that word; but it cannot be denied, that it implies a capacity of patient and abstracted meditation, which does not fall to the lot of many.

To this power of directing the attention steadily and accurately to the phenomena of thought, Mr. Locke and his followers have very properly given the name of Reflection. It bears precisely the same relation to Consciousness which Observation does to Perception; the former supplying us with the facts which form the only solid basis of the science of mind, as we are indebted to the latter for the ground-work of the whole fabric of natural philosophy.*

With respect to the exercise of reflection, the following precept of an old-fashioned writer is so judicious, and the caution it suggests of so great moment to us in the inquiries on which we are about to enter that I shall make no apology for introducing it here, although not more immediately connected with the subject of the present essay, than with those of all the others contained in this volume.

"When I speak," says Crousaz, in his Art of Think

The French language affords no single word to express consciousness, but conscience; a word which is also frequently employed as synonymous with the moral sense. Thus it is equally agreeable to the usage of the most correct writers to say, l'homme a la conscience de sa liberté; and to speak of un homme de conscience, in the English acceptation of that phrase. Hence an occasional indistinctness in the reasonings of some of the best French metaphysicians. It has probably been with a view to its correction, that so much use has been made lately of the circumlocutions, le sens intime, le sentiment intérieur; phrases which appear to me to be still more exceptionable than the word for which they have been substituted.

In general, the English language has a decided superiority over the French in the precision of its metaphysical phraseology.-A few exceptions to this remark might perhaps be mentioned, but I do not recollect any of much importance.

ing, "of desire, contentment, trouble, apprehension, doubt, certainty; of affirming, denying, approving, blaming ;-I pronounce words, the meaning of which I distinctly understand; and yet I do not represent the things spoken of under any image or corporeal form. While the intellect, however, is thus busy about its own phenomena, the imagination is also at work in presenting its analogical theories; but so far from aiding us, it only misleads our steps, and retards our progress. Would you know what thought is?—It is precisely that which passes within you when you think: Stop but here, and you are sufficiently informed. But the imagination, eager to proceed farther, would gratify our curiosity by comparing it to fire, to vapor, or to other active and subtile principles in the material world. And to what can all this tend, but to divert our attention from what thought is, and to fix it upon what it is not?"

The belief which accompanies consciousness, as to the present existence of its appropriate phenomena, has been commonly considered as much less obnoxious to cavil, than any of the other principles which philosophers are accustomed to assume as self-evident, in the formation of their metaphysical systems. No doubts on this head have yet been suggested by any philosopher, how sceptical soever; even by those who have called in question the existence both of mind and of matter:And yet the fact is, that it rests on no foundation more solid than our belief of the existence of external objects; or our belief, that other men possess intellectual powers and faculties similar to those of which we are conscious in ourselves. In all these cases, the only account that can be given of our belief is, that it forms a necessary part of our constitution; against which metaphysicians may easily argue so as to perplex the judgment, but of which it is impossible for us to divest ourselves for a moment when we are called on to employ our reason, either in the business of life, or in the pursuits of science. While we are under the influence of our appetites, passions, or affections, or even of a strong speculative curiosity, all those difficulties which bewildered us in the solitude of the closet vanish before the essential principles of the human frame.

According to the common doctrine of our best philosophers, it is by the evidence of consciousness we are assured that we ourselves exist. The proposition, however, when thus stated, is not accurately true; for our own existence is not a direct or immediate object of consciousness, in the strict and logical meaning of that term. We are conscious of sensation, thought, desire, volition; but we are not conscious of the existence of mind itself; nor would it be possible for us to arrive at the knowledge of it (supposing us to be created in the full possession of all the intellectual capacities that belong to human nature) if no impression were ever to be made on our external senses. The moment that, in consequence of such an impression, a sensation is excited, we learn two facts at once;-the existence of the sensation, and our own existence as sentient beings:-in other words, the very first exercise of my consciousness necessarily implies a belief, not only of the present existence of what is felt, but of the present existence of that which feels and thinks; or (to employ plainer language) the present existence of that being which I denote by the words I and myself. Of these facts, however, it is the former alone of which we can properly be said to be conscious, agreeably to the rigorous interpretation of the expression. The latter is made known to us by a suggestion of the understanding consequent on the sensation, but so intimately connected with it, that it is not suprising that our belief of both should be generally referred to the same origin.

If this distinction be just, the celebrated enthymeme of Descartes, Cogito ergo sum, does not deserve all the ridicule bestowed on it by those writers who have represented the author as attempting to demonstrate his own existence by a process of reasoning. To me it seems more probable, that he meant chiefly to direct the attention of his readers to a circumstance which must be allowed to be not unworthy of notice in the history of the human mind;-the impossibility of our ever having learned the fact of our own existence, without some sensation being excited in the mind, to awaken the faculty of thinking.*

* After looking again into the Meditations of Descartes, I am doubtful if I have