Part 7 (1/2)

It is the conversion, by unknown causes, of these innate potentialities into actual existences The organ of thought, prior to experience, may be compared to an untouched piano, in which it may be properly said that music is innate, inasmuch as its mechanism contains, potentially, so many octaves of musical notes The unknown cause of sensation which Descartes calls the ”je ne sais quoi dans les objets” or ”choses telles qu'elles sont,” and Kant the ”Nou an sich,” is represented by thethe keys, converts the potentiality of the mechanism into actual sounds A note so produced is the equivalent of a single experience

All the melodies and harmonies that proceed from the piano depend upon the action of the musician upon the keys There is no internal ives rise to an accompaniment of which theto Descartes, however--and this is what is generally fixed upon as the essence of his doctrine of innate ideas--the mind possesses such an internal enerated, on the occasion of certain experiences Such thoughts are innate, just as sensations are innate; they are not copies of sensations, any more than sensations are copies of enerated in the mind, when certain experiences arise in it, just as sensations are invariably generated when certain bodily motions take place; they are universal, inasmuch as they arise under the saenesis under these conditions is invariable

These innate thoughts are what Descartes terms ”verites” or truths: that is beliefs--and his notions respecting thee of the _Principes_

”Thus far I have discussed that which we know as things: it remains that I should speak of that which we know as truths For exa out of nothing, we do not i which exists, or a property of so, but we take it for a certain eternal truth, which has its seat in the mind (_pensee_), and is called a common notion or an axiom Similarly, e affir should exist and not exist at the same time; that that which has been created should not have been created; that he who thinks must exist while he thinks; and a number of other like propositions; these are only truths, and not things which exist outside our thoughts And there is such a number of these that it would be wearisome to enumerate them: nor is it necessary to do so, because we cannot fail to know the about them presents itself, and we are not blinded by any prejudices”

It would appear that Locke was not s than Hues just cited, the arguainst innate ideas are totally irrelevant

It has been shown that Hume practically, if not in so many words, admits the justice of Descartes' assertion that, strictly speaking, sensations are innate; that is to say, that they are the product of the reaction of the organ of the mind on the stimulus of an ”unknown cause,”

which is Descartes' ”je ne sais quoi” Therefore, the difference between Descartes' opinion and that of Hume resolves itself into this: Given sensation-experiences, can all the contents of consciousness be derived from the collocation and metamorphosis of these experiences? Or, are new elements of consciousness, products of an innate potentiality distinct from sensibility, added to these? Hume affirms the former position, Descartes the latter If the analysis of the phenoes is correct, Hume is in error; while the father of h he overstated the case For want of sufficiently searching psychological investigations, Descartes was led to suppose that innumerable ideas, the evolution of which in the course of experience can be de faculty

As has been already pointed out, it is the great merit of Kant that he started afresh on the track indicated by Descartes, and steadily upheld the doctrine of the existence of elements of consciousness, which are neither sense-experiences nor any modifications of them We may demur to the expression that space and time are forreat fact that co-existence and succession are iven in the mere sense experience[23]

FOOTNOTES:

[22] Remarques de Rene Descartes sur un certain placard imprime aux Pays Bas vers la fin de l'annee, 1647--Descartes, _OEuvres_ Ed Cousin, x p 71

[23] ”Wir konnen uns keinen Gegenstand denken, ohne durch Kategorien; wir konnen keinen gedachten Gegenstand erkennen, ohne durch Anschauungen, die jenen Begriffen entsprechen Nun sind alle unsere Anschauungen sinnlich, und diese Erkenntniss, so fern der Gegenstand derselben gegeben ist, ist elich ist uns keine Erkenntniss _a priori_ ”

”Aber diese Erkenntniss, die bloss auf Gegenstande der Erfahrung eingeschrankt ist, ist daru entlehnt, sondern was sowohl die reinen Anschauungen, als die reinen Verstandesbegriffe betrifft, so sind sie Eleetroffen werden”--_Kritik der reinen Vernunft

Elelossary explanatory of Kant's terible in a translation; but it e is founded upon experiences of sensation, but it is not all derived from those experiences; inasen”; ”reine Verstandesbegriffe”) have a potential or _a priori_ existence in us, and by their addition to sense-experiences, constitute knowledge

CHAPTER IV

THE CLassIFICATION AND THE NOMENCLATURE OF MENTAL OPERATIONS

If, as has been set forth in the preceding chapter, all mental states are effects of physical causes, it follows that what are called , cerebral functions, allotted to definite, though not yet precisely assignable, parts of the brain

These functions appear to be reducible to three groups, naans of the functions of sensation and correlation are those portions of the cerebral substance, the ive rise to impressions of sensation and ies in the nervousabout the effects which we call its functions, follow upon so their maximum, as rapidly die away The effect of the irritation of a nerve-fibre on the cerebral substance hich it is connectedbell-wire The is and then becoiven So, in the brain, every sensation is the ring of a cerebral particle, the effect of aa nerve-fibre

If there were a coh and ready co asfive enous cerebral particle ht siain, it would seem that the only impressions of relation which could arise would be those of co-existence and of similarity For succession implies memory of an antecedent state[24]

But the special peculiarity of the cerebral apparatus is, that any given function which has once been perforain, by causes in

Of the es of impressions or ideas (in Hu at present, though the fact and its results are fa, and , hours, in fact, the function of ideation is in continual, if not continuous, activity

Trains of thought, as we call them, succeed one another without inter of new trains by fresh sense-impressions is as far as possible prevented The rapidity and the intensity of this ideational process are obviously dependent upon physiological conditions The widest differences in these respects are constitutional in men of different te conditions of hunger and repletion, fatigue and freshness, calmness and emotional excitement The influence of diet on dreams; of stimulants upon the fulness and the velocity of the streaenerated by disease, by hashi+sh, or by alcohol; will occur to every one as examples of the marvellous sensitiveness of the apparatus of ideation to purely physical influences

The succession of mental states in ideation is not fortuitous, but follows the law of association, which may be stated thus: that every idea tends to be followed by some other idea which is associated with the first, or its iuity, or of likeness

Thus the idea of the word horse just now presented itself to my mind, and was followed in quick succession by the ideas of four legs, hoofs, teeth, rider, saddle, racing, cheating; all of which ideas are connected in my experience with the impression, or the idea, of a horse and with one another, by the relations of contiguity and succession No great attention to what passes in the ht are neither to be arrested, nor even permanently controlled, by our desires or eely influenced by the desire, or eht course, but seems, as it were, to eddy round the idea of that which is the object of the emotion Every one who has ”eaten his bread in sorrow” kno strangely the current of ideas whirls about the conception of the object of regret or re away into the new tracks suggested by passing associations, but still returning to the central thought Few can have been so happy as to have escaped the social bore, whose pet notion is certain to crop up whatever topic is started; while the fixed idea of the monomaniac is but the extreme form of the same phenomenon