Part 3

What is called 'decay of the mind' in old age is merely the loss of the plasmic images. Since intellect would not have been formed in the first instance if it had not been wanted, it is to be expected that it will fade out of the mind when it is no longer wanted. So far as the realistic intellect is concerned, we return to 'second childhood' and the uniform sensibility we had at birth.

No philosophy but the substantial explains memory. Idealists and metaphysicians, who recognise only consciousness, are utterly unable to account for the revival of a shadowy sort of objects in the absence of their original causes. Here is the melancholy confession of John Stuart Mill on the subject:--

'If we speak of the Mind as a series of feelings, we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future: and we are reduced to the alternative of believing that the Mind, or Ego, is something different from any series of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox that something which _ex hypothesi_ is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series.

'The truth is that we are here face to face with that final inexplicability at which, as Sir W. Hamilton observes, we inevitably arrive when we reach ultimate facts; and in general one mode of stating it only appears more incomprehensible than another, because the whole of human language is accommodated to the one, and is so incongruous with the other, that it cannot be expressed in any terms which do not deny its truth. The real stumbling-block is perhaps not in any theory of the fact, but in the fact itself. The true incomprehensibility perhaps is, that something which has ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still be, in a manner, present: that a series of feelings, the infinitely greater part of which is past or future, can be gathered up as it were into a single present conception, accompanied by a belief of reality. I think, by far the wisest thing we can do is to accept the inexplicable fact, without any theory of how it takes place; and when we are obliged to speak of it in terms which assume a theory, to use them with a reservation as to their meaning[8].'

Memory an ultimate fact! It is the first that stares us in the face on beginning to philosophise, and it haunts us through all our subsequent speculations. It is the 'dweller on the threshold' of philosophy, which unless we overcome will overcome us, and frustrate our magic.

The passage quoted does not show Mill's usual candour and consistency. His philosophy has broken down on an essential point, and he is reluctant to admit it. He tries to throw the blame on other things, and recommends that those who think with him should maintain a discreet silence on the subject of memory, or if obliged to speak of it do so in ambiguous language. That is hardly honest, and is bad philosophical practice. What we know or think we know we may leave alone--it will not run away; it is what we are conscious of not knowing that should receive our persistent attention.

Materialism presents at first sight the data out of which to construct a theory of memory, for it recognises the dependent character of consciousness and takes body to be its substance. Does the body show any marks or traces of thought that may serve to revive ideas in the absence of objects? None have yet been discovered. Nerves are used in objective observation, but they do not appear to be essential either to recollection in general or to any of the more elaborate forms of internal thought. The brain is used only when giving expression to thought.

Memory is noticed by everyone, even the least metaphysical. Persons who are incapable of understanding the difference between object and subject or general and particular, are yet perfectly well aware of the difference between remembering and forgetting. The phrases relating to this distinction are the commonest in every language. Memory is conspicuous--notorious--palpable. It is the pivot on which the whole mental system revolves. It cannot be gainsaid or ignored. There is no profit in boycotting it in the manner recommended by Mill--it must be faced and explained. 'How do you account for memory?' should be the first question addressed to one who pretends to have a science of mind. If he has no plausible answer to give, his system is not worth discussion. A philosophy without a theory of memory is like an astronomy without gravitation.

X--MEMORY OF SENTIMENTS

Sentiments are remembered and recollected like objects. For instance, a boy is punished for doing wrong and has _pain_; he does wrong again and is haunted with the _fear_ of being punished again, which is the recollected and anticipated pain. We have thus two species of sentiment corresponding exactly to object and idea. The word 'feeling' is appropriate to the first, 'emotion' to the second. 'Passion' is a strong degree of either.

Objects that are associated with feelings are better remembered than those that merely affect the intellect, for there is a double memory at work--one in the core and one on the surface of our mind.

Sentiments are not susceptible of the same degree of analysis as objects. The inner matrix is more fluid and does not keep details. Apart from the objects associated with feelings, there is not much opportunity or need for classifying them. We are happy, wretched, or indifferent--that sums up the sentimental experience.

No two moral philosophers give the same list of sentiments. Some are satisfied with two--pain and pleasure. Spinoza gives a list of forty-seven[9] sentiments, which includes luxury and drunkenness. It is evident that luxury is a general term which covers many different forms of feeling, and if the feeling of intoxication by alcohol is worth mentioning, so also must be the intoxications by opium and tobacco; and if these are included we must admit the feeling of nausea, which brings us to the sentiments associated with all diseased conditions of body or mind. Such distinctions are superfluous, for if the sentiment is purely personal and not associated with an external object, it is not of any general interest; if associated with an object and common to many persons it is best defined by reference to the object--as the pleasure of smelling a _rose_.

We have sometimes feelings of elation and depression for which we cannot find an internal reason nor yet an objective sign. Many of the so-called religious experiences are of this sort. So also are the sudden sympathies and aversions we feel towards certain people and places. Here there is an object, but we cannot find anything in the object that can be taken as specially significant of the feeling. We are said not to be able to 'analyse' our feeling, that is, assign it an object as cause.

These abnormal feelings may be explained by supposing that some external influences succeed in reaching our sentiment without exciting our intellect. Considering that intellect is artificial and may be very imperfect, and also that its efficiency depends to some extent on its being less sensitive than the original mental nature, it is reasonable to conclude that subtle emanations from our surroundings may occasionally affect us without exciting the intellectual consciousness. Panic, inspiration, mesmerism, and other 'occult' influences are probably due to this cause. If we further assume that sentiments so excited may then, by association, excite appropriate _ideas_ in the intellect of the recipient, we have a likely explanation of what is called 'thought-transference.' Since ideas excite emotions, it is reasonable to suppose that feelings may excite ideas, or even the illusion that objects are being perceived.

XI--COMPARISON

Most ideas, except the particular (which are copies of single objects), are associated with a consciousness of resemblance and difference which arises in the following manner.

When new experience simply revives the imprint of a former experience we call it the _same_ object or objects, though it is not numerically the same, being different at least in time. If a totally new imprint is made in the mind the experience is quite novel or _strange_, but we do not call it different.

Experience is usually neither quite the same as before nor quite strange, which means that the present noumenon has partially revived an old imprint and made a partially new one.

In this case we have a quadruple consciousness. There is first the present object; next the recollection of the object originally associated with the same imprint; thirdly, a consciousness of _resemblance_ between the new and the old (the present object and the recollected idea) in so far as the imprints coincide, and (fourthly) a sense of _difference_ in so far as they disagree. The limitation of resemblance gives rise to the sense of difference--a negative consciousness--and the shock of difference emphasises the resemblance. This is Comparison, the common basis of Generalisation and Imagination.

[Footnote 6: As if the image had the form of a stencil.]

[Footnote 7: Locke, _Essay on the Understanding_, ii. x. 5.]

[Footnote 8: _Exam. of Hamilton's Philosophy_, p. 212-3.]

[Footnote 9: I append Spinoza's list, and print in italics the sentiments that appear to me to be emotions as distinguished from feelings. Desire--Pleasure--Pain--Wonder--_Contempt_--_Love_--_Hate_-- _Inclination_--_Aversion_--_Devotion_--Derision--_Hope_--_Fear_-- _Confidence_--_Despair_--Joy--Grief--Pity--Approval--Indignation-- Overesteem--_Disparagement_--_Envy_--Mercy (or goodwill)--Self-contentment--Humility--_Repentance_--_Pride_-- Dejection--Honour--_Shame_--_Regret_--_Emulation_--Thankfulness-- Benevolence--Anger--_Revenge_--Cruelty--_Daring_--_Cowardice_-- _Consternation_--_Civility_ (or deference)--_Ambition_--Luxury--Drunkenness--Avarice--Lust. Pollock's _Spinoza_, ch. vii.]

GENERALISATION

XII--NATURE AND FUNCTION

General Ideas are formed by the coincident imprint of several objects in some respects different, but which have all a resemblance as objects, and are besides the signs of the same sentimental effect. If the effects are different the confusion of the objects occasions practical error, as when we mistake one man for another whom he closely resembles. Though the sentimental utilities should be the same, the object cannot be reduced to a common idea if they are quite dissimilar: for example, a sand-glass and a watch have similar uses, but they cannot be generalized. The value of generalisation to a thinker is that it economises memory and recollection by making one common or average idea do duty for many particular ideas. Let us follow the process in detail.

The first perception of an object leaves an imprint in the substance of the intellect. A second perception partially resembling the first revives the first to the extent at least of the resemblance. Supposing this is done by a hundred similar objects it is plain that the resembling properties will have been experienced a hundred times, whereas the distinguishing attributes may have been felt a few times only, in some cases only once. Unless we have special reasons for observing the differences and so deepening the impressions of them, they will fade from our memory at a rate corresponding to the paucity of experiences. The most general idea will last longest because _there_ the impression has been very deep. Our idea of Man or Animal will on this principle, as it is found to do in fact, outlast our memory of many concrete men and animals.

The objects that contribute to form a general idea or Class are commonly said to 'belong to,' or to 'inhere in,' or to be 'brought under' the idea or class. All these metaphors are wrong and occasion mistakes. Generalisation is nothing but condensed or epitomised recollection; it is practised by ourselves for our own convenience, and does not imply any essential or extra-personal relation between the objects. We are free to classify things in any order we find useful. A farmer's classification of some animals into cattle, game, fowls, birds, and vermin, is perfectly legitimate, for each species is based on a different utility for him.

We should distinguish general ideas which we ourselves have drawn from our primary experience, from the ideas suggested by verbal definitions of general ideas formed by other minds. Supposing the objects in question to be quite unknown to us, the definitional idea is more like a particular or imaginary idea than a general idea. It is a single thin rigid idea, utterly unlike the flexible suggestive thought evolved from a large mass of personal experience. Definitional general ideas are as unsatisfactory as described objects, but we are sometimes compelled to use both when personal experience is totally wanting.

It is a common error to suppose that general ideas cannot exist in the intellect without words by which to name them. Words and other modes of marking ideas are useful in all departments of thought, but not more necessary in general thought than in any other. An active intellect makes thousands of observations and scores of general ideas which it may have no means or wish to express in language.

Generalisation is very like the operation called composite photography. A number of persons are posed in the same attitude and partially photographed on the same plate. The result is an average or mean likeness of the whole group, but not an exact portrait of any individual. So general ideas are 'means' or 'averages' of many resembling but slightly differing objects.

There are other things in the photographic art remarkably similar to intellectual thinking. The gelatine film behaves very like the mental plasma: only one other physical object (so far as I am aware) is a better image of the plasm.

In theory the object or phenomenon has no importance. Even when it has the quality we call 'beauty,' that is not a property of the bare object, for it is not seen by every person or animal with good eyesight; it is a sentimental effect associated with the object. Hence we might, if it were possible, ignore all objects except those which have value to us as signs of sentimental effects.

But in practice we cannot do this. Objects are thrust upon our notice which we cannot avoid, and which have no sentimental interest for us. These objects are necessarily classified according to their phenomenal appearance only, and such ideas lack an essential characteristic of true general ideas. But we cannot prevent their formation in the mind, for generalisation is merely a kind of abbreviated memory, and, objects being once perceived, their recollection is to a great extent beyond our control.

Artificial and adventitious utilities produce the same kind of one-sided generalisation. If society pays a man in fame or money to observe and describe certain things, his classification of them will be purely phenomenal. He will classify dogs with wolves and nightshade with potato, and will lump together the whole population of a country in one class, although it consists of the most divers elements--fools and philosophers, rogues and righteous, saints and sinners, patricians and plebeians. These are differences much more important than sameness of nationality, colour, race, or language.

This practice, no doubt, gives symmetrical classifications. The greater classes are subdivided into subordinate classes, and these again into lower classes in a many-stepped series. Gradation occurs also in true generalisation, but not to the same extent.

If we confine our observation to things that are much like each other, the average idea will not be greatly different from a particular idea: this is called _lowness_ in generality. If we run together quadrupeds, bipeds and fishes, we shall have a much higher general idea: the average will be very unlike any concrete animal. The higher we generalise the smaller becomes the content of the idea, but the wider its extension, that is, the realm of objects from which it has been drawn, or which it is considered to represent. The usual practice is to generalise by fine gradations. Get the general idea of sheep, then of cow, then of horse; then average the averages. The result is much the same if we run all the objects together and average them in one operation, but the slower process gives the neater results. The gradations of generality are distinguished by names such as (beginning from below) variety, species, genus, class, family, kingdom.

'Conceptualism' is the metaphysical doctrine now prevalent with respect to general ideas. They are regarded not as objects nor as essences, but as forms of consciousness depending more or less on our own mental activity. This is true enough so far as it goes, but without a substantial plasm to hold the 'concept' its formation and endurance are quite inexplicable.

XIII--MATTER

Matter is the name given to the most general idea we can form of objects. It is supposed to cover all of them. In other words, the content or 'essence' of the idea is the attribute or attributes common to all objects without exception. It is the universal objective minimum--the least objective experience consistent with the experience being objective. Some have attempted to define this general idea more precisely by identifying it with some _abstract_ property such as extension, resistance, etc. An object may be material without offering any resistance to human energy, as a beam of light. A material object may also be without extension, as a sound or smell. The only quality left to matter is bare objectivity, namely, that it is a form of consciousness excited in a mind by some other mind, not occurring spontaneously. This seems to me the only true connotation of matter.

Matter is not the antithesis of mind; it is a mere affection of mind. The two are not in any proper sense co-ordinate or equipollent. They are to each other somewhat in the relation of a mirror to an image reflected from it. Mind is to each of us a concrete primary experience--the feeling of personal power and identity. Matter is a general idea arising from the comparison of objects in consciousness. No two things could well be more diverse.

Since general ideas are products of our own mental energy, and matter the most general of all, it is the farthest removed from the concrete objective condition, and so it is literally true that we never objectively perceive matter though we constantly perceive material objects. It is as impossible to see, touch, or taste matter as it is to ride the general idea _Equus_ or dine off the general idea _nourishment_. In denying the objectivity of matter we do not deny the objective reality of things: we merely decline to confound a general idea with the objects that have contributed to form it. We decline to be _mystics_, in the sense defined by J. S. Mill[10]. The belief in the external existence of matter is a form of mysticism; the Hindus call it _maya_, meaning illusion.

Some metaphysicians argue that since phenomena appear only in conjunction, we are compelled by the constitution of our nature to think of them conjoined in and by something, and this imaginary foundation and cement is another meaning of the word 'matter.'

For myself I feel no such compulsion. When things are complex I recollect the several properties as cohering together, and when I abstract one or some for special consideration, I sometimes think of the others as forming a 'substance' in which the abstracted properties inhere. But I cannot discover any inherence or coherence except the mutual, and the notion of an invisible material setting which holds all the parts of a thing together seems to me superfluous and unwarranted. If it existed it would not be, as logicians argue, something superior and antithetical to phenomena; it would be simply an inferred or latent phenomenon like the luminiferous ether of science. The material substance is evidently a groping of the mind after the noumenal (mental) substance which causes the appearance of objects.

XIV--NOMINALISM

Nominalists deny the existence of general ideas as distinct from particular ideas. Most of them affirm that we employ general or common words to signify the common properties of similar things, but that we are incapable of thinking of these common properties apart from the other properties that accompany them.

Why we should wish to use signs of things we cannot think about, or how a word can be a 'sign' when we are incapable of attaching a definite meaning to it, are points not satisfactorily cleared up by nominalists.

Considering how well Berkeley's principle, combined with the plasmic theory, accounts for generalisation, and how inevitable it is that there should be general ideas distinguishable from particular ideas by superior brilliancy and endurance, it is surprising to find in Berkeley one of the most convinced and eloquent of nominalists. His views on the subject have so much weight with philosophers that I must examine them at length.

'It is agreed on all hands,' he writes in the Introduction to his _Principles_, 'that the qualities or modes of things do never really exist each of them apart by itself, and separated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended together, several in the same object. But, we are told, the mind being able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself abstract ideas. For example, there is perceived by sight an object extended, coloured, and moved: this mixed or compound idea the mind resolving into its simple constituent parts, and viewing each by itself, exclusive of the rest, does frame the abstract ideas of extension, colour, and motion. Not that it is possible for colour or motion to exist without extension; but only that the mind can frame to itself by _abstraction_ the idea of colour exclusive of extension, and of motion exclusive of both colour and extension.'

Abstract ideas do not form a fourth class of ideas but are fractions of particular, general, or imaginary ideas, and may (as Berkeley, reporting the metaphysical doctrine, says) be single or partial properties mentally detached from the collective properties forming an object. In this case they are abstracted properties, not ideas. Since general ideas are less complete than the particular ideas from which they were drawn, they are abstract ideas in so far as they are partial ideas; but all abstract ideas are not general ideas. Berkeley's nominalism is based on the supposed impossibility of forming any sort of partial idea, and he now proceeds to reproduce the metaphysical account of the general abstract idea.