Part 5 (1/2)

[14] In a letter to Hutcheson (September 17th, 1739) Hu the mind as well as the body One may consider it either as an anatomist or as a painter: either to discover its race and beauty of its actions;” and he proceeds to justify his ownat the moral sentiments from the anatomist's point of view

[15] The manner in which Hume constantly refers to the results of the observation of the contents and the processes of his own mind clearly shows that he has here inadvertently overstated the case

[16] Locke, _An Essay concerning Hu_, Book I, chap i, ---- 4, 5, 6

[17] _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_ Ed Hartenstein, p 256

CHAPTER II

THE CONTENTS OF THE MIND

In the language of common life, the ”mind” is spoken of as an entity, independent of the body, though resident in and closely connected with it, and endoith nu, memory, volition, which stand in the saans do to the body, and perfor, and willing Of these functions, some, such as sensation, are supposed to be merely passive--that is, they are called into existence by impressions, made upon the sensitive faculty by a material world of real objects, of which our sensations are supposed to give us pictures; others, such as thefaculty, are considered to be partly passive and partly active; while volition is held to be potentially, if not always actually, a spontaneous activity

The popular classification and tery of the phenomena of consciousness, however, are by no ested by coacy, and, in many respects, a sufficiently _damnosa haereditas_, of ancient philosophy, y; which has incorporated itself with the coht of later tie become those of the mob in the next Very little attention to what passes in the mind is sufficient to show, that these conceptions involve assumptions of an extremely hypothetical character And the first business of the student of psychology is to get rid of such prepossessions; to foriven us by observation, without any hypothetical adnised and held subject to confir to their clearly recognisable characters; and to adopt a no beyond the results of observation Thus chastened, observation of thebut certain events, facts, or phenomena (whichever name be preferred) which pass over the inward field of view in rapid and, as it may appear on careless inspection, in disorderly succession, like the shi+fting patterns of a kaleidoscope To all these mental phenoave the nahts,”[19] while Locke and Berkeley ter this as an improper use of the word ”idea,” for which he proposes another eeneral name of ”perceptions” to all states of consciousness Thus, whatever other signification we may see reason to attach to the word ”mind,” it is certain that it is a name which is employed to denote a series of perceptions; just as the word ”tune,”

whatever else it may mean, denotes, in the first place, a succession of oes further than others when he says that--

”What we call abut a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and supposed, though falsely, to be endoith a perfect simplicity and identity”--(I p 268)

With this ”nothing but,” however, he obviously falls into the pri; but the most he, or anybody else, can prove in favour of his conclusion is, that we know nothing more of the mind than that it is a series of perceptions Whether there is so in the mind that lies beyond the reach of observation; or whether perceptions the which can be observed and which is not mind; are questions which can in nowise be settled by direct observation Elsewhere, the objectionable hypothetical element of the definition of mind is less prominent:--

”The true idea of the human mind is to consider it as a system of different perceptions, or different existences, which are linked together by the relation of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence and modify each other In this respect I cannot co than a republic or commonwealth, in which the several overnive rise to other persons who propagate the saes of its parts”--(I p 331)

But, leaving the question of the proper definition of mind open for the present, it is further a eneral survey of all our perceptions or states of consciousness, they naturally fall into sundry groups or classes Of these classes, two are distinguished by Hume as of primary importance All ”perceptions,”

he says, are either ”_Impressions_” or ”_Ideas_”

Under ”impressions” he includes ”all our more lively perceptions, e hear, see, feel, love, or will;” in other words, ”all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul”

(I p 15)

”Ideas,” on the other hand, are the faint i, or of antecedent ideas

Both impressions and ideas may be either _simple_, when they are incapable of further analysis, or _complex_, when they may be resolved into simpler constituents All simple ideas are exact copies of iement of simple constituents may be different from that of the impressions of which those simple ideas are copies

Thus the colours red and blue and the odour of a rose, are simple impressions; while the ideas of blue, of red, and of rose-odour are siives us a complex impression, capable of resolution into the simple impressions of red colour, rose-scent, and numerous others; and we h faint, copy of this complex impression

Once in possession of the ideas of a red rose and of the colour blue, we ination, substitute blue for red; and thus obtain a complex idea of a blue rose, which is not an actual copy of any coh all its elements are such copies

Hu the distinction of ith or vivacity Yet it would be hard to point out any other character by which the things signified can be distinguished Any one who has paid attention to the curious subject of what are called ”subjective sensations” will be familiar with examples of the extreme difficulty which sometimes attends the discrimination of ideas of sensation from impressions of sensation, when the ideas are very vivid, or the impressions are faint Who has not ”fancied” he heard a noise; or has not explained inattention to a real sound by saying, ”I thought it was nothing but my fancy”? Even healthy persons are much more liable to both visual and auditory spectra--that is, ideas of vision and sound so vivid that they are taken for new impressions--than is commonly supposed; and, in some diseased states, ideas of sensible objects may assu but copies of ied, either in the same order as that of the impressions from which they are derived, or in a different order, it follows that the ultimate analysis of the contents of theto Hume, these are of two kinds: either they are impressions of sensation, or they are impressions of reflection The forether with pleasure and pain The latter are the passions or the emotions (which Hume employs as equivalent terms) Thus the elee, so to speak, are either sensations or emotions; and whatever we discover in the mind, beyond these elementary states of consciousness, results froo

It is not a little strange that a thinker of Hume's capacity should have been satisfied with the results of a psychological analysis which regards soether a most important class of elementary states

With respect to the former point, Spinoza's masterly examination of the Passions in the third part of the _Ethics_ should have been known to Hume[20] But, if he had been acquainted with that wonderful piece of psychological anatomy, he would have learned that the e from the close association of ideas of pleasure or pain with other ideas; and, indeed, without going to Spinoza, his own acute discussion of the passions leads to the same result,[21] and is wholly inconsistent with his classification of thosethe primary uncompounded materials of consciousness

If Hu the pri is left but the impressions afforded by the five senses, with pleasure and pain Putting aside the muscular sense, which had not come into view in Hume's time, the questions arise whether these are all the siht? or whether others exist of which Hunizance

Kant answered the latter question in the affirmative, in the _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, and thereby reatest advances ever effected in philosophy; though it must be confessed that the German philosopher's exposition of his views is so perplexed in style, so burdened with the weight of a cumbrous and uncouth scholasticism, that it is easy to confound the unessential parts of his systee train is bigger than his army, and the student who attacks him is too often led to suspect he has won a position when he has only captured a mob of useless cay_, Mr Herbert Spencer appears to ht out the essential truth which underlies Kant's doctrine in a far clearer manner than any one else; but, for the purpose of the present summary view of Hume's philosophy, itthe broad outlines, without entering into the details of a large and difficult discussion