XIV. SOME NAMES WHICH REQUIRE A PARTICULAR EXPLANATION (part 2 of 2)
When they are very extensively of a pleasurable, or very extensively of a painful kind, they produce a general state, which often calls our attention; but for which, as it is a vague, indeterminate feeling, we have only vague, indeterminate names: we call it a {335} state of comfort or discomfort; of cheerfulness, or gloom; high spirits, or low spirits; and so on. The incessant motion of the blood, in so many sensitive tubes, in every part of the body, constitutes a system of sensations pervading the whole frame; as the contact of the air produces a system of sensations, pervading every part of the surface of our bodies, but to which our habit of inattention is so complete, that we are equally incapable of attending to them as we are of attending to the sensations produced in our arteries and veins, by the motion of the blood, and in the secreting and absorbing vessels when excited to action.[10*]
[Mill's footnote 10: "Is there not reason to suspect, that our unconsciousness, in health, of the Impressions made on our organs by the fluids which they contain, depends on our being accustomed to the sensations which they incessantly excite; so that there remains but a confused perception which in time disappears."--Elements of Physiology, by A. Richerand, translated by James Copeland, M.D., 4th ed., p. 21.--(Author's Note.)]
We are rather more attentive, perhaps, to the general states produced by the extensive diffusion of pleasurable or painful sensations in the alimentary canal, than in the channels of the blood, and perhaps we sometimes confound them. To some of the feelings in the upper part of the canal we attend sufficiently to distinguish them; the feeling called nausea, for example, in its numerous modifications. To those in the other parts, unless they amount to acute pain, we never attend, till they are so extensively diffused, as to constitute a state, to which we assign the terms, Comfort, Discomfort, or some other {336} of the vague names, by which a state made up of an indefinite number of painful or pleasurable sensations is usually denominated. Yet we know that actions of great importance are the result of those unnoticed sensations; the secretion of the gastric juice; the secretion of the bile; the separation of the nutritive from the innutritive part of the food; the operation of the lacteal and lymphatic vessels, and that extraordinary motion called the peristaltic, which aids in carrying on the contents of the bowels to the place of their discharge. It is probable, that the pleasurable states of the alimentary canal are commonly joined, or synchronous, with pleasurable states of the channels of the blood; and the painful states, the same. That the healthy, or unhealthy state of the one, accompanies that of the other, we know. And that certain diseased states of the circulating system, are accompanied with that general state of feeling, called discomfort, or wretchedness, which implies the wide diffusion of painful sensations throughout the system, is but too well known to all who have experienced any modification of the febrile state; nor can it be doubted, that the joyous state of perfect health, in which we feel delight in our being, and our whole frame seems to be a source of pleasure to us, is in a great degree produced by the innumerable unnoticed and unnoticeable sensations, produced by the motion and contact of the blood, in every part of our frame.
We seem authorized, therefore, by the fullest Evidence, to assume that Sensation, is the mental cause, whatever the physical links, of a great proportion of the muscular contractions of our frame; and that {337} among those so produced are found some of the most constant, the most remarkable, and the most important, of that grand class of corporeal phenomena.
2. To prove that Ideas, as well as Sensations, are the cause of muscular actions, it is necessary to make choice of cases, in which the Idea is in no danger of being confounded with that state of mind called the Will. And hardly any case will answer this condition, except some of those which are held to be involuntary, for the Idea itself never can be very clearly distinguished from the Will.
The Winking of the Eyelids, when a person moves his hand rapidly close to the eyes of another person, is a familiar case of an action of the muscles, which we cannot prevent. The idea is that of pain, from the contact of the hand with the eye. A sudden sensation of pain in the eye makes the eyelid close. This is the case, already examined, of contraction by sensation. When this has been performed, a number of times, the idea of pain in the eye, and the idea of the contraction of the muscles, that is, of the sensations contained in the contraction of the muscles, become associated together, so strongly, that the one can never exist without the other. The next step of the process is, that the contraction follows upon the Idea, in the same manner as it followed upon the sensation. This is not a matter of conjecture, it is matter of fact. It is an experienced event. We do not undertake to say, what physical links are between the Idea and the contraction, any more than between the sensation and the contraction. The Idea is the last part of the mental operation. And as the Idea and the sensation are feelings so nearly alike, there is {338} no difficulty in believing that like effects proceed from like causes.[60]
[Bain's footnote 60: The act of winking or wincing under the threat of a blow on the eyes is a good example of strong, and even indissoluble association. Any one making the experiment with an infant will find that there is no original tendency to perform the act. It is an association generated under the impressiveness of an acute pain, mingled with terror; a state of things under which an indelible mental connexion will be established in a very small number of repetitions. As a dog that has once suffered from a burnt cinder will dread for ever any commotion or stirring of the fire, so one smart in the eye will be associated with the cause in an indissoluble bond; and the mere sight of anything in motion towards the face will induce the preventive volition.--B.]
The origin of the sensation, and the origin of the Idea seem to be different. The sensation originates in the extremity of the nerves at some particular part of the body. Something, we know not what, happens at the extremity of those nerves; something, we know not what, is conveyed along the nerves to the brain; and then sensation exists. From the brain, in its state of sensation, something, we know not what, is conveyed along the nerves to the contracting muscle, and the contraction takes place. Also, from the Brain, in its state of Ideation, if I may here, for the sake of the analogy with sensation, use a word of my own coining, something is conveyed along the nerves to the contracting muscle, and the contraction takes place. The sensation does not originate in the Brain; the Idea does. But if the state of the Brain when it has a sensation, and when it has the idea of that sensation, be, as we may {339} naturally suppose, very nearly the same; and if the state of the Brain is a necessary link in the chain of antecedents and consequents which terminates in the contracted muscle, the effect is so far accounted for.
Yawning is a familiar case of contraction, produced by sensation. We yawn without intending it; we know that we yawn in consequence of an antecedent state of feeling, of which, from never attending to it particularly, we have no distinct Idea; but which we recognise sufficiently as the antecedent of the act. This act, however, we also know is frequently the effect of Ideas. If we see another person yawn, it rarely happens that we do not yawn along with him. The act of yawning is so strongly associated with the idea of the feelings which precede it, that the sight of the act by another person calls up in us strongly the idea of the precedent feelings. The Idea exists, and as the contraction was the effect of the sensation, so is it also of the Idea.
The same is the account to be rendered of the infectious power of convulsions. In assemblies of men and women, especially under such a state of excitement (religious enthusiasm, for instance) as implies the strong association of certain trains of Ideas, if one person is attacked with convulsions, it commonly happens that others are attacked, and frequently great numbers. That this is a case of Ideas is certain; because nothing is conveyed to the spectators from a person convulsed, but the sight of the person; and the sight can do nothing but excite associated Ideas. The associated Ideas exist: the convulsions follow.
Laughter is a curious phenomenon of human nature. The analysis of it is not here required. It {340} will be easily recognised as a remarkable instance of the production of muscular action by Ideas. We laugh, either when certain ideas are suggested to us by others, or when they proceed from our own associations. In either case, the Ideas exist; the Laughter follows.
Sobbing and weeping, in grief, afford a similar instance. What we call grief, is the existence of certain trains of Ideas. The Ideas exist: the weeping follows.
The swallowing of the saliva affords a good experiment. If a friend assures you that you cannot refrain, for the space of a minute, from this act, and you are tempted to try, you are almost sure to fail. By the attention fixed on the act, the ideas of the feelings, which precede the act, are so strongly called up by association, that the act follows of course.[61]
[Bain's footnote 61: This is a pure example of the "fixed idea," or of the tendency to work out into full actuality whatever is strongly presented in idea. The case also shows this power in conflict with the Will; we are supposed to be trying hard to prevent the act (which is volition), and yet there is, in the intense possession of an idea, a power greater than the will. The fact of being strongly excited to avoid swallowing the saliva, increases the force of the idea of swallowing it, and makes that idea almost omnipotent to work itself out. The same baffling of the will, the making it recoil upon itself, is shown in our attempt to forget or banish a painful idea. The more intensely we will to forget the idea, the more do we stamp it on the mind, through the excitement engendered by the volition.--B.]
There are many acts of familiar occurrence to shew, that those actions of our organs which are the most {341} habitually produced by sensations, are capable of being strongly modified by Ideas. The effect of Fear, for example, on the action of the heart, is known to be very remarkable. So it is on the action of the bowels, of the kidneys, and of the skin. One of its effects is perspiration; another, paleness: another, cold.[11*]
[Mill's footnote 11: The operation of Ideas on the internal parts of the body is so familiar, that we meet everywhere with pleasant stories of it. Zachary Gray, in one of his notes on Butler's Hudibras, alluding to the story of the countryman, who, receiving a prescription from the doctor, and being told by him to take that, swallowed the paper, asks, "And why might not this operate upon a strong imagination, as well as the ugly parson, the very sight of whom in a morning (Oldham's Remains) would work beyond Jalap or Rhubarb; and a Doctor prescribed him to one of his patients as a remedy against costiveness: Or what is mentioned by Dr. Daniel Turner (De Morbis Cutaneis), that the bare imagination of a purging potion has wrought such an alteration in sundry persons, as to bring on several stools like those they call physical; and he mentions a young gentleman, his patient, who having occasion to take many vomits, had such an antipathy to them, that ever after he would vomit as strongly by the force of imagination, by the bare sight of the emetic bolus, as most could do by medicine. The application of a clyster-pipe, without the clyster, has had the same effect upon others."--(Author's Note.)]
The cases which we have just adduced, of yawning, and contagious convulsions, may be regarded as belonging to an extensive class; which obtains the general name of Imitation. There is more or less of a propensity to Imitation in all men, that is, to perform the act which we see another man performing. In most children the propensity is very strong; and {342} to it they owe much of the celerity with which they make certain acquirements; to that of imitating sounds, for example, the celerity with which they learn to speak. The propensity to imitate musical sounds so adheres to persons of a musical ear, even in mature age, that they can scarcely forbear humming every tune which they hear. Children learn to stutter and to squint, from imitation of their companions. We know how universally it happens that young persons acquire the manner and the air of those with whom they habitually live. These are cases not only of action, but of habits of action, produced by the agency of Ideas. It requires only cases of strong association to produce analogous effects, at all periods of life. "When we see a stroke," says Mr. Smith, "aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another person, we naturally shrink and draw back our own leg, or our own arm. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist, and balance their own bodies as they see him do. Persons of delicate fibres and a weak constitution of body, complain, that in looking on the sores and ulcers which are exposed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the correspondent part of their own bodies. Men of the most robust make, observe, that in looking upon sore eyes, they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own." There are few persons who do not put on a cheerful countenance, upon the sight of the cheerful countenances of their friends; still fewer whose countenance is not made sorrowful by sight of the sorrowful countenances of their friends. It is well known, that Tears are contagious; and upon {343} this some well-known rules for the countenance both of the orator and the actor are prescribed. It is not necessary further to accumulate instances of this description; nor further to enter into the analysis of them, than to remark, that the action, the idea of which is conveyed to us by what we thus hear or see, calls up, by association, the idea of the feelings which precede the action. The Idea of the feelings exists, and the action follows.
There is a case of the action of the muscles which requires particular attention; that in which we learn to make use of them; in which we acquire what we call command over them only by degrees. There is more or less, probably, of this process in all the sorts of muscular action which are not performed originally by sensation; and the process seems to be longer or shorter according as the number of muscles, which must act together in order to the production of the effect, is greater or less. We know how slowly the child acquires the power of so balancing his body as to hold it erect. To this Effect the action of a great number of muscles is required. Yet, before the age at which reflection begins, the power is so completely acquired, that the mental process escapes our attention. To be erect, seems the posture into which our body puts itself of its own accord. There are circumstances, however, in which we become distinctly conscious of the powerful effort, which is required for that purpose, though, from its being habitual, we are in ordinary circumstances wholly insensible of it. If we allow sleep to come upon us, while we are in an erect posture, so far, that the ideas which maintain the muscular action begin to give way, we have {344} immediately the sensation of falling, and a strong perception of the effort required to keep the body erect.
We observe how slowly the child learns to perform, with the requisite precision, the contractions on which the operation of walking depends. And every man can remember the difficulty with which he has learned to perform any new combination of contractions. Whoever has learned to dance, knows how imperfectly, till after a multitude of repetitions, he performed the simplest steps. Whoever has been drilled, as they call it; that is, trained to perform with the firelock the acts required of the soldier, knows with what difficulty, each of them, however simple, was originally performed.
There is another very familiar instance, that of learning to write. Most men can remember, when they began this process, how imperfectly the hand obeyed them; and how awkwardly they made even the simple strokes. Every man can make the experiment with his left hand. After the habit of performing with the right hand is completely attained, he is almost unable to form a letter with the left. The cases of this incapacity of the left hand to perform the acts which we perform habitually with the right are innumerable; and afford decisive illustration of the great fact which is now the subject of our attention. To perform the contractions of a number of muscles, the contractions of all of which must be combined in the action, the idea whereon each of the contractions depends must previously exist, and in the requisite order. That is to say, a certain association of Ideas must be performed. But we know, that no new {345} association of Ideas is easily or steadily performed. This is the effect of Repetition. As soon as the association of the ideas is completely established by repetition, the process, both bodily and mental, goes on with ease; and where the habit is great, with so much ease, as even to escape attention. The process of learning to play on a musical instrument is slow and difficult. By habit the associations become so close, that an expert performer can execute the most difficult pieces, and carry on another and even an intricate process of thought at the same time.
How slowly, and with how much difficulty do children acquire command over the organs of speech? And how totally without effort on our part in after life does the sound appear immediately to cling to the Idea of the word? Yet, in learning the new sounds of a foreign language we become abundantly sensible of the difficulty, sometimes altogether insurmountable, of performing the precise combination of contractions which a particular sound requires.
It seems to be established, therefore, by an ample induction, that muscular actions follow ideas, as invariable antecedent and consequent, in other words, as cause and effect; that whenever we have obtained a command over the ideas, we have also obtained a command over the motions; and that we cannot perform associate contractions of several muscles, till we have established by repetition, the ready association of the Ideas.
I believe that nothing more need be said for the establishing of these truths. I shall adduce a few more instances, chiefly with the view to familiarize my readers with the mode of applying to this {346} interesting class of facts, the principles with which they are now fully acquainted.
There is no part of the body with the use of which we are so perfectly familiar as the hand. There are no actions, of the sort at least to which we are attentive, the repetition of which is so incessant. Of course, the associations of the ideas corresponding to the associate contractions of the muscles which produce the various movements or actions of the hand, are formed in the most perfect manner; and we never have the Ideas, as antecedent, without the movement as consequent. This inseparable connexion between the Ideas, and the contractions, which we call the Power of the Will, is gradually formed. At first the hand of the infant is moved by sensations. If the inside of the hand is touched, so at least as to make the sensation considerable, the fingers bend; and perform more or less of the act of grasping. Here is a train of events. First, the sensation of touch, from the application of the external object; next, an influence from the seat of the sensation in the brain, transmitted along the nerves of certain muscles; then the contraction of the muscles, with the various sensations which the action upon those organs, and the action excited in them, imply. When the sensation has been often repeated, in conjunction with its effect, the Idea of the sensation becomes familiar and distinct; and capable of producing many of the effects which the sensation itself produces. It is also closely associated with the idea of the motion, and all its accompanying sensations as the effect; and the chain of antecedents and consequents proceeds in uninterrupted order.
{347} As similar instances of motions, at first produced by sensations, afterwards by ides, we may adduce the remarkable cases of the sphincters of the bladder and anus. At first, children perform their evacuations, as they sneeze and cough, when the sensations excite them. Afterwards, they learn, but by slow degrees, to bring them under the command of ideas. There is no case, however, which affords more decisive evidence of the power of ideas over the actions of particular parts, than those which are called Amatory; because the effects, which are produced by the Ideas, cannot be produced by the will.
There is another set of cases, which deserve attention; those in which the ideas which are followed by the action of certain muscles, acquire associations with other sensations or Ideas which call them up, and thence give action to the muscles, upon very inconvenient occasions. A woman who has accustomed herself to scream out, upon every sudden idea of the slightest danger, cannot abstain from screaming. The awkward motions, for which some, even eminent, men have been remarkable, Dr. Johnson, for instance, are completely explained by this principle. The ideas, whence the motions proceed, have become associated, in ways which can seldom be traced, with sensations, or ideas of frequent recurrence. And hence are the motions frequently produced.
There are equally remarkable cases, in which the associations, necessary to produce the idea on which the muscular actions depend, are prevented by other associations more powerful. Men admitted to the presence of a great personage have found themselves wholly unable to articulate a word. The Ideas of {348} Power and Dignity, with all their associates of terror and of hope, were called up in such irresistible association by the presence of him who was clothed with them; that the ideas necessary to the articulation of words were excluded, and the power of speaking was lost.
We have now established, by an ample Induction, that the action of muscles follows, as an effect its cause; first, upon sensations; secondly, upon Ideas. The language which Professor Stewart has applied to a similar case, is perfectly applicable here. "It may, indeed, be said, that these observations only prove the possibility, that our muscular contractions may be all performed by sensations and Ideas. But, if this be admitted, nothing more can well be required; for, surely, if these phenomena are clearly explicable, from the known and acknowledged laws of the human mind, it would be unphilosophical to devise a new principle, on purpose to account for them."[12*]
[Mill's footnote 12: Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind. Chap. ii.]
I believe, indeed, that this conclusion is not at variance with the common belief upon the subject. It appears to me to be not inconsistent with the language of the advocates for what is called the Freedom of the Will, to admit, that the action of the muscle takes place in consequence of the Idea; and that our power of willing consists in the power of calling into existence the appropriate Idea; that the power of the will is not immediate over the muscle, but over the Idea.
The following observations of Dr. Reid, though not remarkable for their precision, seem fully to justify this Inference.
{349} "First, every act of will must have an object. He that wills, must will something; and that which he wills is called the object of his volition. As a man cannot think without thinking of something, nor remember without remembering something, so neither can he will without willing something. Every act of will, therefore, must have an object; and the person who wills must have some conception, more or less distinct of what he wills.
"A second observation is, that the immediate object of will must be some action of our own."
There are two assertions here which demand our attention; 1, that what is willed is an action of our own; 2, that to such will a conception, that is, an Idea, more or less distinct, of this action of ours, is indispensable.
He adduces some particulars, in illustration, which impart something more of precision to his meaning.
"A healthy child, some hours after its birth, feels the sensation of hunger, and, if applied to the breast, sucks and swallows its food very perfectly. We have no reason to think, that before it ever sucked, it has any conception of that complex operation, or how it is performed. It cannot, therefore, with propriety, be said that it wills to suck." It appears, from this example, that the muscular actions, which are performed by Sensation, Dr. Reid distinguishes from those, which he calls voluntary; that he denominates voluntary, those only which are performed by Ideas. It also appears fully, from the example, that the Idea of the action willed, which he considers the foundation of volition, must, in all cases, be subsequent to the performance of the act by Sensation; in other {350} words, that the idea cannot exist but in consequence of the sensation.
What has yet been advanced, however, is not a full explanation of the subject. For, after it is admitted that the motion of the muscles is, in all cases, the immediate effect of the appropriate Idea, there is still one class which all men agree to call involuntary; another which many contend are voluntary. It now remains that we inquire wherein the difference consists.
There is one point which is established by the mere statement, and which goes a certain way towards the solution of the question. Since the action of the muscles follows upon the existence of the Idea, whatever calls up the Idea produces the action. The Question, then, may be resolved into these two: In what manner is the Idea called up in cases called involuntary? In what manner is it called up in those called voluntary?
In the cases called not voluntary, I doubt not, it will be easily admitted, that the Idea is raised in the way of ordinary association, by a preceding Sensation, or Idea. In the yawning which proceeds from the sight of another person yawning, the idea is called up by a Sensation. In the laughter which is excited either by ideas suggested to us from without, or ideas which spring up in our associated trains, the idea which is proximate to the muscular action is, of course, called up by an Idea.
There appears no circumstance by which the cases called voluntary are distinguished from the involuntary, except that in the voluntary there exists a Desire. Shedding tears at the hearing of a tragic story, we do not desire to weep: laughing at the recital {351} of a comic story, we do not desire to laugh.[62] But when we elevate the arm to ward off a blow, we desire to lift the arm; when we turn the head to look at some attractive object, we desire to move the head. I believe that no case of voluntary action can be mentioned, in which it would not be an appropriate expression, to call the action desired.
[Bain's footnote 62: These are emotional and not volitional manifestations. They are the natural signs, expression, or embodiment of a feeling, as feeling, and apart from the power to move the will, which is a separate fact.--B.]
We have already examined the meaning of the word Desire. We have seen that it is applied to pleasurable sensations; to exemption from painful sensations; and to the causes of them. We have also seen, and to the present purpose this is a point of great importance, that when the word desire is applied, to the cause of a sensation, or of an exemption from a sensation, it is employed in a figurative, or metaphorical, not in a direct sense. Few of our actions can be called pleasurable sensations; or exemption from painful; in propriety of language perhaps none. Our actions are causes of those two classes of events; and on that account are called, but only in a metaphorical sense, objects of desire.
In a voluntary action, then, we recognise two Ideas; first, the idea of the sensation or exemption, which two, for shortness, we shall call by one name, Pleasure; secondly, the idea of an action of our own as the cause of the pleasure. It is also easy to see how the Idea of a pleasure should excite the Idea of the action which is the cause of it; and how, when the Idea exists, the action should follow.
{352} We have seen, that the idea of a pleasure, as effect, associated with the Idea of an act of our own, as its cause, is one of the cases of motive. In the preceding paragraph it seems also to be one of the cases of will. It may then be asked, if the will is, or is not, anything different from the motive?
The course pursued by the mind in devising and executing a train of means for the accomplishment of an end, has been often described. The End; that is, the advantage or pleasure desired; is the first thing in the contemplation of the mind; the step nearest to the end in the process of attainment, is the second; the step immediately preceding that is the third; and so on, to the step at which the process of execution must begin. Thus, suppose the pleasure of living in a handsome house is the end; the apartments, and furniture, and accommodations of such a mansion is the nearest step; the one immediately preceding that is the building and furnishing it; the one preceding that, the employing an architect and upholsterer; the one preceding that, the finding the money. Such is the order in which the mind proceeds from the primary conception of the End through the requisite series of means. The order of execution is directly the reverse. It begins where the other ends, and ends where the other begins. If the person we have supposed proceeds to the execution of his plan, his first step is, to find the money, his next to provide the architect, and so on from step to step, till he places himself in the pleasurable situation he originally contemplated.
There is this double operation in what we may call the formation and execution of motives. The first association starts from the pleasure. The idea of the {353} pleasure is associated with its immediate cause, that cause with its cause, and so on, till it reaches that act of ours which is the opposite end of the train. The process may stop here, and in that case the motive does not excite to action. If it excites to action, the process is exactly reversed. In the first process of association, the pleasure was the first link in the chain, the action the last; in the second process, the action is the first, the pleasure the last. When the first process only is performed, the association is called MOTIVE. When the second is performed it is called WILL.
A difficulty, however, presents itself. The first process terminates in an Idea of the action. The second process commences with an idea of the action. The Idea of the action is thus excited twice. But the first time it is not followed by the action; the second time it is. How is this to be reconciled with the supposed constancy of connexion between the muscular action and the Idea which produces it? The difficulty is solved by observing, that the phrase, "Idea of the action," has two meanings. There are two Ideas, very different from one another, to both of which we give the name, "Idea of the action." Of these Ideas, one is the outward appearance of the action, and is always a very obvious Idea. The other is the copy of those internal sensations which originally called the muscles into action, to which, from habit of not attending to them, we have lost the power of attending. This last is by no means an obvious Idea. And the mind passes from it so quickly, intent upon the action which is its result, that it is almost always swallowed up in the mass of association. It constitutes, in fact, one of the most remarkable {354} instances of that class of links in a chain, which, how important soever to the existence of the chain, are passed over so rapidly, that the existence of them is hardly ever recognised.
This last Idea alone, is that upon which the contraction of the muscle is consequent. In the process of association which we call the motive, as described above, the first of the two above-mentioned ideas of the action, that of its outward appearance, is the idea excited. If the association stops there, the motive is inoperative; if the association does not stop there, but the idea of the outward appearance of the action, calls up that other, the idea of the internal feelings of the action, the motive is then operative, and we are said TO WILL.
If we are asked, how an Idea, as that of the outward appearance of an act, should at one time excite an idea, as that of the internal feelings of the act, at another time not excite it, we can only refer to the laws of association, as far as they have been ascertained. We know there are certain cases of association, so strong, that the one Idea never exists without calling up the other. We know there are other cases in which an Idea sometimes does, and sometimes does not, call up such or such an Idea. Sometimes it is easy to trace the cause of this variety; sometimes difficult.[63]
[Editor's footnote 63: This analysis of the power of the Will over muscular action is substantially that of Hartley, though more clearly and forcibly stated, and more amply illustrated. In the field of mental philosophy this is the point at which Hartley approached nearest to the most advanced thoughts of his successors, and left least for them to do beyond the task of commentators and defenders.
The doctrine of Hartley on the Will may be summed up in the following propositions. 1. All our voluntary movements were originally automatic: meaning by automatic, involuntary, and excited directly by sensations. 2. When a sensation has the power of exciting a given muscular action, the idea of that sensation, if sufficiently vivid, will excite it likewise. 3. The idea of the sensation which excites an automatic action of the muscles, persists during the action, and becomes associated with it by contiguity, in such a manner as to be itself, in its turn, excited by any vividly recalled idea of the muscular act. 4. The following is what takes place in voluntary motion. The idea of the end we desire, excites by association the idea of the muscular act which would procure it for us. The idea of this muscular act excites, by association, the idea of the sensation which originally excited the same muscular action automatically. And lastly, the idea of this sensation excites the action, as the sensation itself would have done. 5. These associations being formed gradually, and progressively strengthened by repetition, this gives us the explanation of the gradual and slow process whereby we gain what is called command of our muscles; i.e. the process by which the actions, originally produced automatically by sensations, come to be produced, and at last, to be easily and rapidly produced, by the ideas of the different pleasurable ends to which those muscular actions are the means. 6. In this chain of association, as is so often the case in chains of association, the links which are no otherwise interesting to us than by introducing other links, gradually drop out of consciousness, being, after many repetitions, either forgotten as soon as felt, or altogether thrown out; the latter being the supposition which Hartley apparently favours. The link that consists in the idea of the internal sensations which excited the muscular action when it was still automatic, being the least interesting part of the whole series, is probably the first which we cease to be aware of. When the succession of the ideas has become, by frequent repetition, extremely prompt, rapid, and certain, another link tends to disappear, namely, the ideas of the muscular feelings that accompany the act. A practised player, for example, on a keyed instrument, becomes less and less conscious of the motions of his fingers, until there at last remains nothing in his consciousness to shew that the muscular acts do not arise without any intermediate links, from the purpose, i.e. the idea in his mind, which made him begin playing. At this stage the muscular motion, which, from automatic, had become voluntary, has become, from voluntary, what, in Hartley's phraseology, is called secondarily automatic; and it seems to be his opinion that the ideas which have disappeared from consciousness, or at all events from memory, have not been (as maintained by Stewart) called up, and immediately afterwards forgotten, but have ceased to be called up; being, as it were, leapt over by the rapidity with which the succeeding links rush into consciousness.
This theory, as we have seen, is adopted, and more fully worked out, by the author of the Analysis. He proves, by many examples, that sensations excite muscular actions; that ideas excite muscular actions; and that, when a sensation has power to excite a particular muscular action, the idea of the sensation tends to do the same. It is true that many, if not most, of what he presents as instances of muscular action excited by sensations, are cases in which both the sensation and the muscular action are probably joint effects of a physical cause, a stimulus acting on the nerves. This misapprehension by the author reaches its extreme point when he declares traumatic tetanus to be produced not by the wound but by the pain of the wound; and cramps to be produced by sensations, instead of merely producing them. But the error is quite immaterial to the theory of the Will; the two suppositions being equivalent, as a foundation for the power which the idea of the muscular sensation acquires over the muscular action. Whether the sensation is the cause of the automatic action, or its effect, or a joint effect of the cause which produces it--on all these hypotheses the sensation and the action are conjoined in such a manner, as to form so close an association by contiguity that the idea of the sensation becomes capable of exciting the action. This being conceded, it follows, by the ordinary laws of association, that whatever recals the idea of the sensation, tends, through the idea, to produce the action.
Now, there is nothing so closely associated with the idea of the muscular sensation, as the idea of the muscular act itself, such as it appears to outward observation. Whatever, therefore, calls up strongly the idea of the act, is likely to call up the idea of the accompanying muscular sensation, and so produce the act. But the idea of the act is called up strongly by anything which makes us desire to perform it; that is, by an association between it as a means, and any coveted pleasure as an end. The act is thus produced by our desire of the end; that is (according to the author's theory of desire) by our idea of the end, when pleasurable; which, if an end, it must be. The pleasurable association may be carried over from the ultimate end to the idea of the muscular act, through any number of intermediate links, consisting of the successive operations, probably in themselves indifferent, by which the end has to be compassed; but this transfer is strictly conformable to the laws of association. When the pleasurable association has reached the muscular act itself, and has caused it to be desired, the series of effects terminates in the production of the act. What has now been described is, in the opinion of the author, the whole of what takes place in any voluntary action of the muscles. At the close of the chapter we shall consider whether there is any part of the facts, for which this theory does not sufficiently account.--Ed.]
{355} II. But even when it is admitted that all muscular contraction is the effect of association, in the way we have described, there are other {356} phenomena to be accounted for. We may still be reasonably called upon to explain the power which the mind appears to possess over its associations. There is a {357} distinction in the trains of the mind which is observed by every body. Some trains, as those in dreams, in delirium, in frenzy, are supposed to proceed according {358} to the established laws of association without any direction from the mind. Other trains; a piece of reasoning, for example; any process of thought, directed to an end; are considered as wholly under the guidance of the mind. The guidance of the mind is but another name for the will. And thus it is inferred that the will is not association, but something which controuls association.
We now proceed to the solution of this difficulty. It can be supposed that the will controuls association, in only one of two ways; either, by calling up an Idea, independently of association; or, by making an Idea call up, not the Idea which would follow it spontaneously, but some other Idea.
The first supposition, that an Idea can be called up by the will, is relinquished by the common consent of philosophers.
We cannot will without willing something; and in willing we must have an Idea of the thing willed. If we will an Idea, therefore, we must have the Idea. The Idea does not remain to be called up. It is called up already. To say that we will to have an Idea, when we already have it, is a mere absurdity.[64]
[Bain's footnote 64: What we have in mind when we will to remember anything, is of course not the thing to be remembered, but some collateral, or something to determine our search for it. We will to remember an opinion found in a certain book. We have not in our mind the actual opinion sought; what we have in mind is the book, and portion of the book, and the subject that the opinion refers to; and we desiderate the filling up of the blank in our present ideas. We will to remember the Greek name of the god, called by the Romans, Bacchus. We have in mind the name Bacchus, and the knowledge that the Greeks had a different name for the god; we have not in our mind that name; and we put forth an effort of recollection to arrive at it.--B.]
{359} The second supposition is, that will can prevent an Idea from calling up one idea, make it call up another; prevent its calling up the Idea which would have followed it spontaneously, make it call up the Idea which the mind is in quest of.
The first question is, how the will, or the mind willing, can prevent an Idea from calling up another. We know that this is wholly impossible in all those cases in which the association is strong. We cannot think of colour without thinking of extension; we cannot think of the word bread without thinking of its meaning. It can be supposed that we have such power in those cases only in which an Idea has not an inseparable association with the idea in question, but only such an association with it as it has with many others. But how is it that we can hinder an idea which has those associations, from calling up any of the ideas with which it is associated? How can we foresee which of those ideas it will call up? And, if we do foresee that it will call up the idea which we desire to avoid, it follows that the Idea is already in our mind. There seems, therefore, the same incongruity in the supposition that the will can directly prevent, as that it can directly produce, an idea.
If the mind, then, possesses any power over its trains, it seems to be confined to its power of making {360} an idea call up other ideas than those which it would spontaneously excite. And if it possesses this power, it possesses that also of excluding ideas which would otherwise exist; since a new train of associations must take its origin from the state of consciousness thus produced. It is, therefore, in this, if in any thing, that the power of willing consists.
We are, however, immediately encountered by the question. If the mind cannot will an Idea, what power does it possess of introducing any idea into a train, but such as comes of its own accord? If it has the idea, it is in the train already. If it has it not, what can it do in order to obtain it? There is the existing train; but how can that be made any thing but what it is; or have any associations but those which are already established?
In cases where language is too imperfect to ensure the conveyance of definite ideas, there is an advantage in particular instances. There are two familiar processes, which are commonly adduced as examples of the power which the mind exercises over its trains. The one is, the endeavour to recollect something we do not remember. The other is, the process of attention.
When anything is remembered, the idea of the thing is always in the mind along with certain associations. In recollection, therefore, the object is attained by the excitement of this idea. Sometimes the effort which we make is successful; sometimes it is not. We are said to will to recollect; but this is obviously an improper expression. To recollect is to call up an Idea. But this, as we have seen already, is not within the province of will. When it is said {361} that we will to recollect, the meaning only is, that we desire to recollect.
But it is also to be inquired, what here is the meaning of the word Desire. We have seen that it is a term applied to Pleasure, or the Cause of Pleasure. The idea, in this instance, which the mind is in quest of, is desired. But why desired? As Pleasure; or the Cause of Pleasure? As Cause, we may reply, in all instances. The idea is wanted for some purpose or end. In that End the pleasure is involved.
The End is thus a pleasurable, that is, an interesting, Idea. But it is in the character of interesting ideas, to dwell in the mind. The meaning is, that they are easily called up by other ideas; and, thus, that there is a perpetual recurrence of them. A young man in love, is said to be engrossed with the idea of his mistress. No sooner has her idea suggested another idea, that is, given place to it, than her idea is again suggested by another, and so on, continually. The man, who is to be executed to-morrow, can think of nothing but the terrible event which is approaching. It can be banished, hardly for an instant. Every thing serves to recall it: and along with it a rush of ideas of the most painful description. There is no law of association more remarkable than that of the rapidity with which pleasurable and painful ideas call up trains of great complexity, and the facility with which they themselves are excited by almost every idea which enters the mind.
When we endeavour, therefore, to recollect any thing, the pleasurable idea, the purpose or end, predominates in the mind, and gives birth to those {362} associations, which are called the effort of recollection. The idea sought after, is sought as a means to this end. Till that idea is recalled, the Idea of the end, that is, an unsatisfied desire, exists, and calls up one circumstance after another, more or less connected with the Idea which is sought after. If these circumstances do not recall the idea; the feeling of unsatisfied desire still continues. The feeling of unsatisfied desire, accompanying successive cases of association, constitutes the feeling to which we give the name of effort of recollection. And the Idea of the End, perpetually calling up the idea of the absence of what is wanted, as the means to that end, and hence calling up in close association every circumstance connected with that unknown something, constitutes the feeling which we call casting about, for the unknown Idea. I believe that this is a full, though summary account of the mental process, or succession of ideas, which takes place when we endeavour to recall a forgotten idea.
The other process, through which the mind is supposed to influence its trains, is Attention. We seem to have the power of attending, or not attending to any object; by which is meant, that we can Will to attend to it, or not to attend. By attending to an object, we give it the opportunity of exciting all the ideas with which it is associated. By not attending to it we deprive it of more or less of that opportunity. And if the will has this power over every idea in a train, it has thence a power, which may be called unlimited, over the train.
What remains, therefore, to complete this inquiry, is, to point out the real process, on which the name {363} ATTENTION is in this manner bestowed. The exposition has been substantially given by preceding writers. But it is desirable, if it be in our power, to set forth the several steps of the process a little more distinctly than has hitherto been done.
At first sight, the objects of attention seem to be infinite. When traced to their sources, however, it is found, that they are of two species only. We attend to Sensations; we attend to Ideas; and there is no other object of our attention.
For the present purpose, it is peculiarly necessary to bear in mind the important distinction we have already noticed, between the class of indifferent sensations, and the class of pleasurable or painful, which we may call, by one name, interesting, sensations. Uninteresting sensations are never, for their own sakes, an object of attention. If ever they become objects of attention, it is when they are considered as causes, or signs, of interesting sensations.
A painful or a pleasurable sensation is a peculiar state of mind. A man knows it, only by having it; and it is impossible that by words he can convey his feeling to others. The effort, however, to convey the idea of it, has given occasion to various forms of expression, all of which are greatly imperfect. The state of mind under a pleasurable or painful sensation is such, that we say, the sensation engrosses the mind; but this really means no more than that it is a painful or pleasurable sensation; and that such a sensation is a state of mind very different from an indifferent sensation. The phrase, engrossing the mind, is sometimes exchanged for the word Attention. A pleasurable or painful sensation is said to fix the {364} Attention of the Mind. But if any man tries to satisfy himself what it is to have a painful sensation, and what it is to attend to it, he will find little means of distinguishing them. Having a pleasurable or painful sensation, and attending to it, seem not to be two things, but one and the same thing. The feeling a pain is attending to it; and attending to it is feeling it. The feeling is not one thing, the attention another; the feeling and the attention are the same thing.
An objector may appeal to certain cases, in which one sensation of the pleasurable or painful kind seems to be swallowed up, as it were, by another. Thus, in the agony of the gout, or toothache, the uneasiness of some local cutaneous inflammation is hardly perceived. The case here is that of two uneasy sensations, one slight; the other intense. According to the supposition, that attention is but a name given to the having of an interesting sensation, what ought to happen in this case is that precisely which does happen. The stronger sensation is, the stronger attention. And that the feebler sensation merges itself in the stronger, and is lost in it, is matter of common and obvious experience. Thus we are every instant, as long as we are awake, shutting and opening our eyelids. We are, therefore, alternately in light and darkness. But as the light is the stronger sensation of the two, we have the sensation of light without interruption. Thus, too, if a stick ignited at one end is rapidly turned round in a circle, though it is obvious that the ignited object is at only one part of the circle at a time, and all the other parts are in darkness, the circle, nevertheless, assumes the {365} appearance of being wholly ignited. There is not a more striking exemplification of this law than what is exhibited by the comparison of our sleeping and waking thoughts. In dreams, when our trains are composed of Ideas, unmixed with sensations, the Ideas have so much vividness as to be taken for sensations.[65] In our waking trains, sensations and ideas are mixed together; but as each sensation introduces many ideas, however numerous the sensations may be, the ideas are many times more numerous. Yet such is the effect of the more vivid to obscure the less vivid feeling, that our day does not appear a day of ideas, but a day of sensations.
[Bain's footnote 65: The author makes frequent reference to dreams, but it may be doubted whether he has seized the explanation of that obscure phenomenon. It is an approximately correct statement of one circumstance of dreams, that the Ideas are unmixed with sensations; in a sound slumber, we are inaccessible to the sensations of the five senses. We are not equally fortified against the organic sensations, as those of digestion and other functions. The sensations absent are a very important class, as regards objective or outward reality; and it is probably their absence, as competitors on this ground, that allows the ideas to swell out into an unnatural and illusory prominence, as if they alone were the full reality. This is a more probable account of the illusion, than the circumstance given in the text, "the greater vividness" of the monopolising Ideas, although that too is a fact, and may tend in the same direction.--B.]
There are cases in which the effect which is thus produced by a stronger sensation with respect to a weaker, or by sensations with respect to ideas, is also produced by one idea with respect to another. Innumerable cases can be adduced to prove, and, {366} indeed, it forms one of the great features of what we call the intellectual nature of man, that Ideas, by their accumulation, are capable of acquiring a power, superior to that of sensations, both as pleasure and as pain. The pleasures of Taste, the pleasures of Intellectual exertion, the pleasures of Virtue, acquire when duly cultivated, a power of controlling the solicitations of appetite, and are esteemed a more valuable constituent of happiness than all that sense can immediately bestow.
On the power of ideas, as the stronger feelings, to swallow up sensations, in the same manner as stronger sensations swallow up the weaker, some decisive experiments have been made. The wretches who, nearly a century ago, were made tools of in France, under the title of convulsionnaires, to carry on the purposes of Fanaticism, were so placed under the dominion of certain ideas, being persons of weak intellects and strong imagination, and operated upon by men skilled in the ways of perverting feeble understandings, that the ideas became feelings far more potent than the sensations; and when the bodies of the frenzied creatures were subjected to operations calculated to produce the most intense sufferings, they denied that they felt any thing, and by the whole of their demeanour confirmed, as far as it could confirm, the truth of their asseverations. That men in the ardour of battle receive wounds of a serious nature, without being aware of them, till after a considerable lapse of time, is testified upon unsuspicious evidence.
These instances, therefore, it is manifest, form no objection to our conclusion, that the attending to an {367} interesting sensation, and the having the sensation, are but two names for the same thing.
We have now to consider, what it is, to attend to an indifferent sensation. The force of the word indifferent implies, that an indifferent sensation is not an object of attention on its own account. If it were an object of attention on its own account, it would not be indifferent. If it is regarded, however, as the cause, or the sign, of an interesting sensation, we are already acquainted with the process which takes place. The idea of the interesting sensation is immediately associated with it; the state of consciousness then is not an indifferent sensation merely; it is a sensation and an idea, in union. The idea besides is an interesting idea, that of a pain or pleasure.
The union of an interesting idea, with an indifferent sensation, makes a compound state of consciousness which, as a whole, is interesting. As the having an interesting sensation, and the attending to it, are but two names for the same thing; the having a sensation rendered interesting by association, and the attending to it, cannot be regarded as two different things. In the first case, attention is merely a sensation of a particular kind; in the second, it is merely an association of a particular kind.
We have now to shew what takes place, when the attention, to use the common language, is not directed to Sensations but Ideas.
Ideas are, like sensations, of two kinds. They are either interesting, or not interesting. We need not repeat what has been so often said respecting the origin and composition of those two classes of Ideas, and the cause of their difference.
{368} An indifferent idea, like an indifferent sensation, is, in itself, not an object of attention. If it were an object of attention, it would not be indifferent; in other words, it would be interesting. In fact, it is in the very import of the word attention, that the object of it is interesting. And if an object is interesting it must be so, either in itself, or by association.
As we found that the having an interesting sensation, and the attending to that sensation, were not two distinguishable states of consciousness, but one and the same state of consciousness, let us now observe, as carefully as we can, whether the having an interesting idea is a state of consciousness, which can be distinguished from attending to it, or whether they are not merely two names for the same thing. When the young man, in love, has the idea of the woman, who is the object of his affections, is not attention merely another word for the peculiar nature of the Idea? In like manner in the mind of the man, who is to be executed to-morrow, the idea of the terrible event before him, is an idea in the very essence of which attention is involved. Attention is but another name for the interesting character of the idea.
If there are any cases to which an objector's appeal can be made, they will be found, upon examination, to resemble those which we considered in the case of sensation, and which we found to be nothing more than instances of the prevalence of a stronger feeling over a weaker; stronger, either by its nature, or the peculiar circumstances of the moment. We shall not, therefore, stay to propound and explain them.
{369} It only remains to expound the case in which an indifferent Idea becomes interesting by association. It cannot do so in any other way, than those in which it appeared that an indifferent sensation becomes interesting. It may be considered as the cause, or the sign, of some interesting state of consciousness. When that which is interesting becomes associated with that which is uninteresting, so as to form one compound state of consciousness, the whole is interesting. An idea, in itself indifferent, associated with interesting ideas, becomes part of a new compound which, as a whole, is interesting: and an interesting idea existing, and an interesting idea attended to, are only two names for the same thing.
In the case of Ideas, then, as in the case of sensations, attention to an interesting Idea, is merely having it; attention to an indifferent idea, is merely associating with it some idea that is interesting.
As far then, as ATTENTION gives us power over the trains of our ideas, it is not Will which gives it to us, but the occurrence of interesting sensations, or ideas.
There is not any of the phenomena, which are usually appealed to as the great manifestations of the power of the mind over its trains, which this mode of exposition does not satisfactorily account for. We may take as a sufficient exemplification of them all, the composition of a Discourse upon any important topic. The operation of the mind upon such an occasion seems to consist in a perpetual selection; that is, in the exercise of an uninterrupted power over {370} the trains of association. There is no doubt that it consists of that peculiar class of associations, to which we give the names, of selection, and power.
In composing a Discourse, a man has some end in view. It is for the attainment of this end, that the Discourse is undertaken. If every thing in the discourse tends to the accomplishment of the end, the Discourse is said to be coherent, appropriate, consistent. If there are many things in it which have no tendency, or but little tendency, to the accomplishment of the end, the discourse is said to be rambling, and incoherent.
This is a case, the exposition of which corresponds very much with that which we have already explained; the endeavour to recollect a forgotten Idea. In that case, the existence of an interesting idea calls up a variety of circumstances, that is, a variety of ideas; and it very often happens, that the idea which is sought for, is called up among them.
In this case, what the seeker has occasion for, is a single Idea; a single idea accomplishes the end he has in view. In the case of the composer of a discourse a great many ideas are wanted. His end cannot be attained by one or a few. But his proceeding is precisely of the same kind in regard to his many Ideas, as that of the man who desires to recollect in regard to his single Idea. He knows there are a number of ideas, connected with the end he has in view, which he can employ for his purpose, provided he can call them up. How they are called up, after the practice we have had in those solutions, requires but little explanation. The end in view is an interesting Idea. It is, at the time, the prevalent Idea. {371} It is that by which the man is stimulated to action. This idea calls up by association many ideas and trains of ideas. Of these a large proportion pass, and are not made use of. Others are detained and employed. This detaining and employing is all that needs to be explained. It is the same sort of result as the recognition of the forgotten Idea, in the case of recollection.
The forgotten Idea is an Idea associated, as cause, with the end to be obtained by it, as its effect. The same is the case with the ideas which the composer of a discourse selects out of the multitudes, which the continual suggestions of the interesting Idea by which he is actuated, that of his end, bring before him. The greater number are not associated with the idea of his end as cause and effect. Some among them are. These immediately suggest the use to be made of them; and thence, by the regular chains of association, the operations take place.
It is from these explanations, also, easy to see what constitutes the difference between the man who composes a coherent, and the man who composes a rambling discourse. In the man who composes the coherent discourse, the main Idea, that of the end in view, predominates, and controls the association, in every part of the process. It is not only the grand suggesting principle, which sets trains of the ideas connected with itself in motion; but it is the grand selecting principle. As ideas rise in the train, this interesting and predominating idea stands ready to be associated as effect with every idea in the train which can operate as cause; it so associates itself with no other; and therefore no wrong selection is made. {372} If, however, it does not thus predominate in the mind of the composer of the discourse, as his exclusive end; if it gives way at every turn to some other end; as the idea of applause from some lively jest, from some gaudy description, from some florid thought, the selection is made so far upon other principles, and the object of the discourse is forgotten.[66]
[Editor's footnote 66: The account here given of Attention, though full of instructive matter, I cannot consider to be at all adequate. When it is said that a sensation, by reason of its highly pleasurable or painful character, engrosses the mind, more is meant than merely that it is a highly pleasurable or painful sensation. The expression means, first, that when a sensation is highly pleasurable or painful, it tends, more or less strongly, to exclude from consciousness all other sensations less pleasurable or painful than itself, and to prevent the rising up of any ideas but those which itself recals by its associations. This portion of the facts of the case is noticed by the author, though not sufficiently prominent in his theory. But there is another portion, altogether untouched by him. Through this power which the sensation has, of excluding other sensations and ideas, it tends to prolong its own existence; to make us continue conscious of it, from the absence of other feelings which if they were present would either prevent us from feeling it, or would make us feel it less intensely; which is called diverting our attention from it. This is what we mean when we say that a pleasurable or painful idea tends to fix the attention. We mean, that it is not easy to have, simultaneously with it, any other sensation or idea; except the ideas called up by itself, and which in turn recal it by association, and so keep it present to the mind. Becoming thus a nearly exclusive object of consciousness, it is both felt with greater intensity, and acquires greater power of calling up, by association, other ideas. There is an increase both in the multitude, the intensity, and the distinctness of the ideas it suggests; as is always the case when the suggesting sensation or idea is increased in intensity. In this manner a sensation which gets possession of our consciousness because it is already intense, becomes, by the fact of having taken possession, still more intense, and obtains still greater control over the subsequent train of our thoughts. And these also are precisely the effects which take place when, the sensation not being so pleasurable or painful as to produce them of itself, or in other words to fix the attention, we fix it voluntarily. All this is as true of Ideas as of Sensations. If a thought is highly painful, or pleasurable, it tends to exclude all thoughts which have no connexion with it, and which if aroused would tend to expel it--to make us (as we say) forget the pain or the pleasure. By thus obtaining exclusive possession of the mind, the pleasurable or painful thought is made more intense, more painful or pleasurable; and, as is the nature of pains and pleasures, acquires, in consequence, a greater power of calling up whatever ideas are associated with it. All this is expressed by saying that it fixes the attention. And ideas which are not of themselves so painful or pleasurable as to fix the attention, may have it fixed on them by a voluntary act. In other words, the will has power over the attention.
But how is this act of will excited, and in what does it consist? On this point the author's analysis is conclusive, and admirable. The act, like other voluntary acts, is excited by a motive; by the desire of some end, that is, of something pleasurable; (including in the word pleasurable, as the author does, exemption from pain). What happens is, that, the idea on which we are said to fix our attention not being of itself sufficiently pleasurable to fix it spontaneously, we form an association between it and another pleasurable idea, and the result then is that the attention is fixed. This is the true account of all that we do when we fix our attention voluntarily; there is no other possible means of fixing it. It thus appears, that the fixing of attention by an act of will depends on the same law, as the fixing it by the natural pleasantness or painfulness of the idea. Of itself the idea is not pleasant or painful, or not sufficiently so to fix the attention; but if it were considerably more pleasant or painful than it is, it would do so. It becomes considerably more pleasurable by being associated with the motive--that is, by a fresh association of pleasure with it--and the attention is fixed. This explanation seems complete.
It may be said, however, by an objector, that this accounts only for the case in which the voluntary attention flows easy and unimpeded, almost as if it were spontaneous; when the mere perception that the idea is connected with our purpose--with the pleasurable end which suggested the train of thought, at once and without difficulty produces that exclusive occupation of the mind with it, which is called fixing the attention. But it often happens that the mere perception of its connexion with our purpose is not sufficient: the mind still wanders from the thought: and there is then required a supplementary force of will, in aid of association; an effort, which expends energy, and is often both painful and exhausting.
Let us examine, then, what takes place in this case. The association of the thought with the pleasurable end in view, is sufficient to influence the attention, but not sufficient to command it. The will, therefore, has to be called in, to heighten the effect. But in this case, as in every case, the will is called into action by a motive. The motive, like all other motives, is a desire. The desire must be either the same desire which was already felt, but made more effectual than before, or another desire superadded to the first. The former case presupposes the latter: for the desire which was not sufficient to fix the attention firmly on that which is the means to its fulfilment, cannot be sufficient to call forth the voluntary effort necessary for fixing it: some other desire must come to its assistance. What, then, is this other desire? The question is not difficult. The present is one of the complex cases, in which we desire a different state of our own desires. By supposition, we do not care enough for the immediate end, that is the idea of it is not sufficiently pleasurable, or the idea of its frustration sufficiently painful, to exert the force of association required. But we are dissatisfied with this infirmity of our desires: we wish that we cared more for the end; we think that it would be better for us if either this particular end, or our ends generally, had greater command over our thoughts and actions than they have. There is thus called up, by our sense of the insufficiency of our attention in the particular case, the idea of another desirable end--greater vigour and certainty in our mental operations. That idea superadds itself to the idea of the immediate end, and this reinforcement of the associating power at last suffices to fix the attention. Or (which is the same thing in effect) the painful idea is called up, of being unable to fix our attention, and being in consequence thwarted generally in our designs; and this pain operates, in the same manner as a pleasure, in fixing our attention upon the thought which, if duly attended to, will relieve us from the oppressive consciousness.
It will be asked, whence come the sense of laborious effort, and the subsequent feeling of fatigue, which are experienced when the attention does not fix itself spontaneously, but is fixed with more or less difficulty by a voluntary act? I conceive them to be consequences of the prolongation of the state designated by the author, in the text, as a state of unsatisfied desire. That state, whatever view the psychologist takes of it, is a condition of the brain and nerves, having physiological consequences of great importance, and drawing largely on that stock of what we call nervous energy, any unusual expenditure or deficiency of which produces the feeling of exhaustion. The waste of energy, and the subsequent exhaustion, are greatest when the desire seems continually on the point of obtaining its gratification, but the gratification constantly eludes it. And this is what actually happens in the case supposed. The attention continually fastens on the idea which we desire to attend to, but, from the insufficient strength of the pleasurable or painful association, again deserts it; and the incessant alternation of hope and disappointment produces, as in other cases, the nervous disturbance which we call the sense of effort, and which is physiologically followed by the sensations of nervous exhaustion. It is probable that whatever is not muscular in the feeling which we call a sense of effort, is the physical effect produced by a more than usual expenditure of nervous force: which, reduced to its elements, means a more than usually rapid disintegration and waste of nervous substance.
Let me here remark, that the recognition, by the author of the Analysis, of a peculiar state of consciousness called a state of unsatisfied desire, conflicts with his doctrine that desire is nothing but the idea of the desired pleasure as future. In what sense is it possible to speak of an unsatisfied idea? If even we insert the omitted element of Belief, and resolve desire not into the mere idea, but into the expectation of a pleasure; though we might rationally speak of an unsatisfied expectation, it would only mean an expectation not fulfilled, in other words, an expectation of pleasure not followed by the pleasure; an expectation followed by a mere negation. How a pleasant idea, followed, not by a pain, but by nothing at all, is converted into a pain, the pain of unsatisfied desire, remains to be explained: and the author has not pointed out any associations which account for it. If it be said that the expectation is perpetually renewed and perpetually disappointed, this is true, but does not account for more than a continual alternation between a pleasant idea and no idea at all. That an element of pain should enter into unsatisfied desire, is a fact not explained by the author's theory; and it stands as evidence that there is in a desire something inherently distinct from either an idea or an expectation.--Ed.]
{373} I cannot deem it necessary, after the training which we now have had, to give these expositions in more {374} minute detail. But it seems to be proper to notice, in a few words, the explanation which they afford of {375} the phenomena which are usually named the power or want of power over the train of the ideas--in a still {376} more important instance than the composition of a discourse, that of the conduct of life. Some men are distinguished for a steady direction of their actions, through the course of their lives, to some general end, or ends. One man attaches himself to the cultivation of his mind; another, to the accumulation of wealth; another, to the acquisition of fame. There are other men whose lives appear to be a perpetual fluctuation. They either shift from one great end to another perpetually; or, in their trains, the great ends appear to have no ascendancy over the little. There are men who seem to have a different end of their actions, every day they rise from their beds. The men, in whose minds the great purposes of life seem to have no greater ascendancy than the minor objects, are called frivolous men. It sometimes happens, that a {377} man who chooses a frivolous end is steady in the pursuit of it. The common case, however, is that no one frivolous end acquires a steady ascendancy; and the man is in a state of perpetual fluctuation.
The solution of these phenomena is obvious. When the idea of any of the great purposes of life exists habitually in controlling strength, it performs the same function in regard to the selection of actions, which the Idea of the end or purpose of the Discourse performs in regard to ideas, in the case of the man who is composing it. Out of the whole number of ideas, which present themselves to him, the idea of his End associates itself with those which can operate as causes of its attainment; and this association is followed by all the other associations which produce the employment of the Ideas. In like manner, when {378} the great purposes of life are established into predominating ideas, they associate themselves strongly with the ideas of those actions which contribute to their attainment; and those associations are followed by all the other associations, which produce their adoption.
The interpretation which belongs to the phrases, when we hear of men who have, and men who have not, their ideas and actions under command, is, that the one set of men have certain leading ideas, called purposes, so established, as to maintain a control over both their Ideas and their actions; the other set have not ideas so formed as to exercise this ascendancy. That man may be justly said to have the greatest command over his ideas, whose associations with the grand sources of felicity are the most numerous and strong. When the grand sources of felicity are formed into the leading and governing ideas, each in its due and relative strength. Education has then performed its most perfect work; and thus the individual becomes, to the greatest degree, the source of utility to others, and of happiness to himself.
In regard, then, to that state of mind which precedes action, we seem to have ascertained the following indisputable facts: That actions are, in some instances, preceded by mere sensations; that, in other instances, they are preceded by ideas; that, in all cases in which the action is said to be Willed, it is desired, as a means to an end; or, in more accurate language, is associated, as cause, with pleasure as effect: that the idea of the outward appearance of the action, thus excited by association, excites, in the same way, the idea of the internal feelings, which are {379} the immediate antecedent of the action, and then the action takes place; that whatever power we may possess over the actions of our muscles, must be derived from our power over our associations; and that this power over our associations, when fully analysed, means nothing more than the power of certain interesting Ideas, originating in interesting sensations, and formed into strength by association.[67] [68]
[Editor's footnote 67: The analysis contained in this chapter affords, as it appears to me, a sufficient theory of the manner in which all that we denominate voluntary, whether it be a bodily action or a modification of our mental state, comes to be produced by a motive, i.e. by the association of an idea of pleasure or of exemption from pain with the act or the mental modification. But there is still an unexplained residuum which has not yet been brought to account. There are some bodily movements the consequence of which is not pleasure, but pain. Painful states of consciousness, no less than pleasurable ones, tend to form strong associations with their causes or concomitants. The idea, therefore, of a pain, will, no less than that of a pleasure, become associated with the muscular action that would produce it, and with the muscular sensations that accompany the action; and, as a matter of fact, we know that it does so. Why, then, is the result not merely different, but contrary? Why is it that the muscular action excited by association with a pleasure, is action towards the pleasure, while that excited by association with a pain is away from the pain? As far as depends on the law of association, it might seem that the action, in both cases, would be towards the fact with which the action is associated. There are some remarkable phenomena in which this really happens. There are cases in which a vivid imagination of a painful fact, seems really to produce the action which realizes the fact. Persons looking over a precipice are said to be sometimes seized with a strong impulse to throw {380} themselves down. Persons who have extreme horror of a crime, if circumstances make the idea of committing it vividly present to their mind, have been known, from the mere intensity of their horror, to commit the crime without any assignable motive; and have been unable to give any account of why they committed it, except that the thought struck them, that the devil tempted them, and the like. This is the case of what is sometimes called a fixed idea; which has a sort of fascinating influence, and makes people seek what they fear or detest, instead of shunning it. Why is not this extremely exceptional case the common one? Why does the association of pain with an act, usually excite not to that act, but to the acts which tend to prevent the realization of the dreaded evil?
It seems, that as the author has had to admit as an ultimate fact, the distinction between those of our sensations which we call pleasures and those which we call pains, considered as states of our passive sensibility, so also he would be compelled to admit, as a fact unreached by his explanations, a difference between the two in their relation to our active faculty; an attraction in the one case, and a repulsion in the other. That is, he must admit that the association of a pleasurable or painful idea (at all events when accompanied by a feeling of expectation) with a muscular act, has a specific tendency to excite the act when the idea is that of a pleasure, but, when it is the idea of a pain, has a specific tendency to prevent that act, and to excite the acts that are associated with the negation of the pain. This is precisely what we mean when we say that pleasure is desired, that pain is an object of aversion, and the absence of pain an object of desire. These facts are of course admitted by the author: and he admits them even as ultimate: but, with his characteristic dislike to multiply the number of ultimate facts, he merges them in the admitted ultimate fact of the difference between pleasure and pain. It is chiefly in cases of this sort--in leading him to identify two ultimate facts with one another, that his love of simplification, in itself a feeling highly worthy of a philosopher, seems to {381} mislead him. Even if we consent to admit that the desire of a pleasure is one and the same thing with the idea of a pleasure, and aversion to a pain is the same thing with the idea of a pain--it remains true that the difference which we passively feel, between the consciousness of a pleasure; and that of a pain, is one fact, and our being stirred to seek the one and avoid the other is another fact; and it is just this second fact that distinguishes a mere idea of something as future, from a desire or aversion. It is this conscious or unconscious reference to action, which distinguishes the desire of a pleasure from the idea of it. Desire, in short, is the initiatory stage of volition. The author might indeed say, that this seeking of the sensation is involved in the very fact of conceiving it as pleasant; but this, when looked into, only means that the two things are inseparable; not that they are, or that they can ever be thought of, as identical; as one and the same thing.
It appears, then, that there is a law of voluntary action, the most important one of all, which the author's explanations do not attempt to reach. Yet there is no necessity for accepting that law as ultimate. A theory resolving it into laws still more fundamental, has been propounded by Mr. Bain in his writings, and a masterly statement of it will be found in the succeeding note. If, as I expect, this theory makes good its footing, Mr. Bain will be the first psychologist who has succeeded in effecting a complete and correct analysis of the Will.
In the same note will be found an analysis of the case of an idée fixe--the most striking case of which, is that of a terrific idea, exceptionally drawing the active power into the direction which leads towards the dreaded catastrophe, instead of, as usual, into the opposite direction. This peculiar case obliges us to acknowledge the coexistence of two different modes in which action may be excited. There is the normal agency of the ideas of a pleasure and a pain, the one determining an action towards the pleasure, the other an action away from the pain; and there is the general power of an extremely strong association of any kind, to make the action follow the idea. {382} The reason why the determination of action towards a pain by the idea of the pain is only exceptional, is, that in order to produce it, the general power of a strong association to excite action towards the fact which it recals, has to overcome the specific tendency of a painful association to repel action from that fact. But the intensity of the painful idea may be so great, and the association of the act with it so strong, as to overpower this repulsive force by a greater attractive force: and it is then that we find the painful idea operating on action in a mode contrary to the specific property which is characteristic of it, and which it usually obeys.
It has been suggested, that the intensity with which the mind sometimes fixes upon a frightful idea, may operate by paralysing for the time being the usual voluntary efforts to avoid pain, and so allowing the natural impulse to act on a predominant idea to come into play.--Ed.]
[Bain's footnote 68: This chapter is a remarkably searching discussion of the Will, not as a metaphysical puzzle, but as a leading function of the mind. It is greatly superior to any previous handling of the subject.
Of the facts brought forward in illustration of voluntary movement, some are more properly referable to other parts of the mental system.
First. Such actions as sneezing, coughing, contraction of the pupil of the eye, hiccup, parturition, lock-jaw, respiration, the movements of the heart, the peristaltic movements of the intestines,--all which are stated to be movements prompted by sensation,--are nearly, if not altogether, involuntary. They are more usually termed Reflex Actions. In a certain number, sensation is present, but is not essential; as in coughing, sneezing, parturition. In others, for example, the movements of the heart and the intestines, there is no sensation; the assumption made in the text, that the blood cannot flow into the heart without being accompanied with sensation, is incorrect.
These actions are interesting to study in connexion with the will, but rather in the way of contrast than of similarity. {383} There is probably a deep community in the foundations of the two classes of movements; but, in their more obvious aspect, and for all psychological purposes, they are opposed. It is common to apply to the Reflex class the name "involuntary."
Secondly. The movements in yawning, laughter, sobbing; the altered action of the heart, the bowels, the kidneys, the skin, in Fear,--are allied with sensations or feelings; but they are not correctly classed with the Will; in fact, some of them are performed through involuntary muscles. A different view must be taken of these effects. They are the inseparable physical accompaniments of feeling; the physical side or counterpart of the mental fact; in their absence the feeling itself would not exist. Fear would not be fear, if the emotional state were not attended with a series of physical effects, partly of movement, partly of altered secretions. These physical accompaniments supply the appearances known to all men as the expression of feeling; which although to a great degree made up of movements, is totally distinct from the voluntary promptings of the feelings. The smile that accompanies a pleasure tasted is one thing: the activity inspired to prolong the enjoyment is another thing. The two kinds of movement are frequently mingled; thus, in acute pains, the cries and contortions of feature are the embodiment of the feeling; the gestures and movements of the body, may be partly expression, but are also attempts to obtain relief. Expression in its purity is well seen in a shock of surprise; a state which being often entirely neutral as regards pleasure or pain, has no voluntary prompting whatsoever. Every feeling has a certain definite physical embodiment with much or with little outward display; this belongs to the feeling as such; it is a phenomenon of feeling or emotion, and not of volition.
Thirdly. The operation of Ideas, in such instances as involuntary imitation, contagious convulsions, the influence of the imagination,--is a genuine source of actions, but is yet to be distinguished from the Will. When the idea of a certain medicine produces the very same effect as the medicine actually applied, when a person yawning makes the beholder yawn, {384} or when, standing on the brink of a precipice, one is tempted to jump down,--there is no intervention of the will properly so called; on the contrary, there may be a conflict between the influence of the idea and the true volitional promptings. The characteristic feature of the voluntary activity is to follow pleasure and to retreat from pain; some of the tendencies growing out of an idea are in the direction of pain.
This, in many respects remarkable, phenomenon is better assigned to the Intellectual part of our nature, although it has consequences on our actions. When a sensation passes into an idea, it still retains, in a diminished form, many of its characteristic properties. The sensation of a savoury morsel in the mouth is accompanied with a gush of saliva; the corresponding idea in any way aroused, as when just commencing to eat, induces the very same flow, expressed by the phrase "the mouth watering." The mode of interpreting the phenomenon is the announcement of a pregnant law of the mind (two-sided like the mind itself), that the idea is embodied in the same tracks as the sensation, although commonly in a weaker form. There is a standing mental determination, whereby all ideas tend to work themselves out into full actuality; a power that the will and other influences are constantly employed in checking. The sight of a person yawning gives the idea of the act; and the idea, unless counteracted, brings forth the reality. The sight of a precipice gives very forcibly the idea of something falling headlong down, and that idea possesses the mind of the spectator so strongly that but for a restraining volition, he would act it out in his own person.
By far the most interesting application of the law is to explain the workings of Sympathy, in the form of purely beneficent disinterested impulses. Allusion has already been made to the law, in this peculiar aspect, in a former note (Chap. XXIII. p. 302).
These three great classes of phenomena being withdrawn from the region of the Will, the remaining facts mentioned in the text can be viewed in a clearer light.
1. It is justly stated that the Will is an extensive and {385} laborious acquisition, pursued, especially at the commencement, in the midst of considerable difficulties.
2. In the mature will, the immediate antecedent of a voluntary act is an idea of the thing to be done. This is true, but not the precise, nor the whole truth.
3. The author's mode of viewing the influence of Attention points to the really fundamental and typical fact of the Will. He says, Attention is merely another name for the engrossing effect of a pleasurable or a painful sensation. "Having a pleasurable or painful sensation, and attending to it, seem not to be two things, but one and the same thing." That is to say, there is a power in pleasure as such, and in pain as such, to stimulate action or movement with reference to the pleasure or the pain. This is the nearest approach that is made in the text to a statement of the law of voluntary action.
The law has been differently expressed. Locke said, the will moves to the greatest uneasiness, which is no doubt the fact. Still, by a wider induction, we obtain a more comprehensive, as well as more accurate, generalization.
If we observe one of the most familiar instances of voluntary action--the process of eating, for example, we find that what happens is as follows:--The contact of the food with the tongue and palate stimulates, by an immediate impulse, all the movements of mastication and swallowing (in its first stage), and the further movements for placing more food in the mouth. We find that the intensity of the stimulation is in proportion to the degree of the pleasurable excitement, being highest at the commencement, and sinking gradually in the approach to satiety. There is no fact that can be produced more exactly typifying the primary action of the will. A tasted pleasure, everywhere, at all times, from the beginning to the close of life, is an immediate inducement to activity. Coming out of a chilling atmosphere into a place of genial warmth, our energy is at once aroused to follow the cue. The striking up of a band attracts and detains all listeners susceptible to the charm. There is, in such instances, no intermediate process of reflection, deliberation, or resolution; a {386} simple, an indivisible, link unites a burst of pleasure and a burst of activity following up the pleasure.
Reverting to the first example, the act of eating, we may detect another phase of the voluntary sequences. Suppose a morsel, admitted in good faith, to disclose a very bad taste, say the taste of soot; what is the immediate, unreflecting, response? The first effect is a collapse and suspension of all the masticating movements. From the earliest infancy, this consequence would be shown. There commonly succeeds, and often with great rapidity, a second effect, which we shall consider under another head--the energetic discharge of the morsel from the mouth; but long before children are capable of the second act, they fall into the first--the suspension of the activity at the time.
On extending our survey to the analogous cases, we are enabled to announce this also, as a typical situation of the Will, namely:--That, as pleasure furthers activity in its own direction, pain arrests activity in its own direction. Turning a street corner, we encounter suddenly a bitter wintry blast; we feel at once an arrest upon our movements. An ill odour, a painful contact, a grating noise, a disagreeable spectacle, have all the same immediate efficacy. The proper, the direct consequent of an incursion of pain, is suspended activity. Not only is this second law conformable to observation, it is the implication, the obverse, of the previous law connecting pleasure with increased activity.
The apparent exceptions to the second law need to be adverted to. The most obvious is the exciting effect of a smarting sensation, as the stroke of a whip. A light, smarting, pungent, stimulus, amounting to pain, quickens the general activity of the system for the time; while a more severe blow operates according to the general principle, and suspends activity. To quicken an animal's pace, the light smart is often the best application; to arrest an access of action, there must be greater severity. The excitement of an acute smart is due not to the pain of it, but to the mere shock imparted to the nerves; if a similar intensity of nervous shock were also a {387} cause of pleasure, the stimulating effect would be far greater, and more prolonged; for the element of pain, in the case of the painful smart, destroys the activity in the second stage, when the nervous excitement has subsided. Any one walking at a certain pace, and suddenly jolted, is momentarily awakened to a higher pitch of nervous excitement; but goes on, after the shock, at a slackened pace. An acute smart has thus a twofold efficacy; it is both a temporary stimulant of activity, and a cause of reduced energy on the whole, according to the second law of the Will.
Another apparent exception is the vehemence manifested in escaping from pain; a mode of activity almost indistinguishably mixed up with the writhings and contortions of a creature under suffering, in other words, with the physical embodiments of the state of pain. The sudden excitement just adverted to also enters into the complex effect; being brought out at the first moment of the infliction, and at every new twinge in fitful modes of suffering. This energetic activity for escape is a distinct aspect of voluntary power. It is Locke's typical form of the Will, but is here regarded as secondary or circuitous, and not as the primitive situation.
Thirdly. We must now then consider expressly the influence of pain in stimulating action for alleviation or escape, as when we draw back from anything that pains or offends us. To call the pain the direct stimulant in this situation, would be to connect pain and pleasure equally with the exaltation of our energies; which would be a contradiction, or else would tend to show that there is no casual connexion between pleasure or pain and our active exertions. The real motive force of pain, however, is not the state of suffering, but the relief; and relief from pain is another form of pleasure. That pleasure stimulates, that pain depresses, that alleviation of pain stimulates, are all one and the same phenomenon--statements of the same law.
There are two stages in the operation of pain. The first is, when under a present pain, something happens to give us relief; in which case, we experience on the instant, a burst of {388} physical elation, exactly as from a sudden access of pleasure. In exposure to a cold wind, we have the depression accompanying a massive pain; in coming gradually under shelter, we feel buoyed and elated, our movements are quickened, and we follow the lead with growing energy. Every one has experienced the stimulus of success, and the damping effect of failure; although, practically viewed, the success should dispense with the newborn energy, and the failure should bring about an increase of exertion. It takes a mind of unusual strength, to resist these natural tendencies.
In the second stage, pain is found acting as a stimulant, without present alleviation, and therefore without the benefit of the law of pleasure. How is this? The answer is, that the idea of the relief is the operative circumstance. The pedestrian exposed to a freezing wind is urged to an accelerated pace, by the secondary or derived impulse, growing out of the idea or anticipation of relief through a certain amount of exertion. That this idea is the real source of the new strength, is attested by the known facts and circumstances of the situation. A sufferer, having no idea, prospect, or hope of alleviation, flags and succumbs, in accordance with the proper tendency of pain; the stimulation of the active powers does not follow the degree of the misery, but the openings of a better lot. What was noted above as the strength of mind that induces a successful man to refrain from pushing on still farther, and an unsuccessful man to struggle the more, means the firm possession of an idea, to oppose the power of the present,--under success, an idea of moderation, and, under misery, an idea of relief to supply the active spur that the situation restrains. We call a man strong-minded, if he resists the pressure of the actual in favour of an ideal. This is the highest manifestation of energy of will. It owes its merit, and even its meaning, to the fact that a present pleasure inflames and a present pain quenches the activities; and that, to counterwork these tendencies, there must be a strong conception of ideal pain in the one case, and of ideal pleasure in the other; which is the same law of the mind in another form. We {389} cannot remain quiescent under a vivid and growing pleasure, unless by the prospect of pain in the distance; nor do we rouse up under pain without some idea of relief, that is, pleasure in the distance.
No general law of the mind is more thoroughly confirmed by the experience of human actions than the principle now stated in its three several aspects. There is, as has been seen, something to be accounted for, in the lively stimulus under acute smarts; there is, also, an obverse of this fact, in certain forms of pleasure (as gentle warmth) which are lulling and soporific; but these are the consequence of another law of the mind, in some degree complicating the phenomena, without disproving the main law of the Will.
Possibly, this principle, wide as it is, may be subsumed under a still wider:--namely, a principle connecting pleasure with nutrition, or the supply of vital power and stimulus, and, by implication, pain with the abatement or loss of vital energy; from which the law of the will would be a consequence. The attempt to resolve it so is highly interesting; but, in the psychological explanation of the will, we may be satisfied, for the present, to start from the less imposing, but well-grounded generality now given. At the same time, it will be found that, having once caught a glimpse of the higher law, we cannot avoid occasionally falling into the language suggested by it; so suitable does it often appear to the expression of the facts.
With regard to one great aspect of voluntary action,--our being moved to pleasure and from pain, the law is the full and precise summary. The element of the will remaining unexplained, is the selection of the proper movements in each case; as when we start up and walk in the direction of a pleasing sound. The rendering an account of this selective adaptation is the theory of the growth or development of the will.
In the delicate and difficult enquiry as to the manner of first attaining the voluntary command of the movements, the law of the will, just expounded, must still be referred to. But taken by itself, that law does not explain the beginnings of the will. It accounts for the keeping up of a movement {390} bringing pleasure, and the dropping of a movement bringing pain, but it does not account for the ability to single out, and set a-going, movements calculated to enhance pleasure and subdue pain, actual or distant. There is not, within its compass, any specifying or selective faculty.
The complete explanation of the Will demands a reference to two other laws of the mind. The first is the Spontaneous beginning of Movements; the second, the Retentive or Associative process constituting the basis of all our acquisitions.
By the Spontaneity of Movement is meant the tendency of human beings, and of animals generally, to begin acting without the express stimulus of sensation from without, and by virtue of the fund of power residing in the active organs themselves. By means of nourishment, the animal is disposed to pass into movement, from the mere abundance of the motor energy in the nerve centres and in the muscles. A large proportion of the activity of the more active creatures,--as the human species (especially the young), quadrupeds, birds, fishes, and insects,--is due to the presence of an active machinery provided with superabundance of motive power. Apart from the stimulus of sensation, from the wants and the pleasures of the animal, there is a necessity for the active organs to put forth their activity. The energy is greatly heightened,--often doubled or tripled, by the stimulation of the senses, and, after a certain education, by the influence of ideas; but it is far from remaining in abeyance till operated upon by stimulants from without or from within.
Besides summing up a large amount of the activity familiar to us in the life of human beings, and of animals, this Spontaneity has a special importance as a starting-point for the will. We have seen that the difficulty unprovided for by the law of pleasure and pain, is the singling out, or commencing, of the suitable movements. The utmost that the law can ensure is to retain or continue them, when once commenced. Now, the tendency to spontaneous action applies to all the voluntary members--locomotive organs, trunk, head, jaw, {391} tongue, mouth, eyes, voice, &c. There is, at the outset, no rule or order for the spontaneous outburst, except the physical condition of each organ, including the nervous connexions. The animal, in its exuberant phase, after nourishment and rest, may become active at any point; it may run, gesticulate, chew, gaze, cry out; or having expended itself in any one direction, it may fall into other regions of activity where the force is still abundant.
One or two instances must here suffice to indicate the process of attaining the selective faculty of the will, through Spontaneity, joined with the law of pleasure and pain. In the maturity of the will, we have the power of following with the eyes a moving object, partly by revolving the eye-balls, and partly by turning the head. An infant has no such power. The manner of arriving at it is open to observation, and is typical of the less obvious cases. Suppose the child to have its gaze fixed upon a light, or some other appearance of a stimulating kind. The physical effect of the stimulus, always conjoined with the mental effect, is an increase of energy (by the primary law of the will), which would manifest itself in quickening and retaining the child's gaze; there is displayed a more energetic strain of the attention than had existed when the eyes found nothing to impart a special charm. Suppose next that the light is withdrawn, by being moved to one side. The loss of the stimulus instantly works as a depression; the heightened strain of attention collapses. Still, the child is not reduced to absolute quiescence; it has an internal fund of energy, independent of casual stimulations; the flowing out of this energy consists in a series of movements for the most part at random. It may happen, that one of these chance movements is a rotation of the eyes, or of the head, in the exact direction of the pleasing object, and therefore tending to recover the illumination. Instantly, there is a burst of heightened energy, according to the law of pleasure; and the movement accidentally commenced is persistently stimulated so long as the pleasure of the spectacle grows or continues. The concurrence is fortuitous; the prolongation of it is not fortuitous, {392} but follows the law of the will--the abiding by whatever movement is giving pleasure.
The completing step is due to the Retentive or plastic power of the mind. An association is begun between the optical effect of a light retreating from the full gaze to the right or to the left, and the muscular movements that enable the eye to follow it. After a certain number of similar chance coincidences, this bond of association is rendered firm enough to ensure the movement at once when the sensation is present; and one of the many thousand links constituting the mature will is thereby forged. The very same course of proceeding is followed in a host of other instances.
The beginnings of Imitation are also highly illustrative of the process. There is no trace of imitative power during the first months of infancy. The rise and progress of the power may be visibly discerned by any observer; and perhaps the best example for the purpose is Speech. In the beginnings of this extensive acquirement, the basis is most obviously the infant's spontaneous articulations; these must be waited for by the instructor, who can only foster and maintain them when they come. The law of the will provides for the fostering part of the process. The child is, in all probability, gratified by the sound of its voice, when it gives forth any new sound, and so is stimulated to keep up the vocal exertion. Next in efficacy is the catching up and repeating of the sound by others, which is an addition to the pleasing stimulus. Under the two-fold agency, there is opportunity for an association to grow up between the vocal impulse and the sensation of the sound heard; which association is ultimately the medium of bringing on the articulation whenever it is desired.
The other cases of Imitation describe the same routine. The movements are initiated by random spontaneity; and when they arise, they are accompanied by a sensible impression on the eye, or on the ear; the concurrences, being regular and uniform, are at length contiguously associated; the muscular exertion of lifting the hand is connected with the visible picture of a lifted hand. At a certain stage, the association {393} may be brought to operate in the inverted order,--the sensations first, the movement next,--which is the whole fact of Imitation.
A numerous class of voluntary links consists in obeying the word of command, or in following verbal directions. This, as will be admitted, can be nothing but association. It is an association that would not be attainable without the spontaneous commencement. A child, or an animal, must perform a certain action, proprio motu, in the first instance; the name is then uttered in company with it; this being done repeatedly, a connexion is made whereby the word can induce or single out the movement.
In the training of animals, a hastening process is resorted to, which well exemplifies the difficulties in the early education of the will. In breaking a horse, the whip and the curb form the earliest instrumentality. The animal must still commence moving of its own accord. The business is to guide the spontaneity into definite channels, in consistency with the law of the will, and to connect all the various desired movements with language and signs, by whose means they can always be brought into play. When the colt under discipline is moving in the desired pace, it is allowed to go on without molestation or hindrance; when it deviates in any way, it is made to feel the pain of the whip or other check; this, by the law of pain, abates the existing movements; and if the abatement is the thing sought, the end is gained. The application may, however, be such as to quicken the movements by the smarting stimulus; an effect both exceptional and uncertain, and of use as causing a diversion of pace, out of which may come the movement desired. The surest agency of control, however, in the early and crude stage of the will, is the abatement of an excessive or a wrong movement by a decidedly painful check, such as the operation of the curb, which by pressing severely on a sensitive surface, is a certain means of depression; whereas, the light, irritating smart of the whip operates by a spasmodic uncertain stimulation. It is by the tendency of pain to put an arrest upon the wrong movement. {394} and of the relief from pain to indicate the right movement, that the trainer secures the obedience of the animal; he, at the same time, familiarizing its ear with the sounds that are to signify the various paces and movements. The spontaneous commencement is essential under all circumstances; according as this spontaneity is, from the first, ready, vigorous, and various, is the facility in attaining and cementing the initial links of voluntary command.
It will now be apparent that the immediate antecedent of a voluntary act is not solely the idea of the action to be performed. The successive upbuilding of the voluntary associations developes a series of phases, under which the direct antecedent is transformed into various shapes. The sensation of hunger may be the sole antecedent in prompting an animal to the search for food; the painful sensation is coupled at a very early stage with the sight and the idea of food. When a child first attains the power of lifting a sweet morsel to its mouth, the antecedent of the voluntary act is the sight of the morsel coupled with the remembrance of the sweetness. A farther advance takes place by associating the ultimate object with intermediate actions, as when the child learns to entreat what it wants from other persons. The stage that first brings in an idea of the moving members themselves is Imitation; in imitating by sight, the antecedent is the view of the parts moved. Through this medium, we pass to what is popularly considered the type of voluntary control, the moving from a wish to move. I will to raise the arm, and the act follows; the antecedent is the idea of the raised arm (together with some feeling to be gratified by the act). In the highest developments of voluntary acquisition, there is another case, also of frequent occurrence; namely, where the intellectual antecedent is the idea of the work to be done; as, for example, in the act of washing the hands, where we do not think of the movements to be gone through, but of a certain appearance to be produced.
In Chapter X., on Memory, it is remarked:--'When we {395} are said to will, there must be in the mind what is willed.' But the idea of what is immediately willed, with reference to the same ultimate end, may assume all the variations above described. To gain a pleasure or free ourselves from a pain, we may employ different instrumentalities; and the explanation of the will should comprehend them all.--B.]
{396} CHAPTER XXV.
INTENTION.
THE word "intend," the concrete, seems to be employed on two occasions. 1. We are said to intend, or not to intend, certain actions of our own. 2. And we are said to intend, or not to intend, certain consequences of our own actions.
We have to examine what is the state of mind which the word designates on each of those occasions.
1. We are said to intend only a future action. When the action is immediate, we are not said to INTEND, but to WILL it; an action intended, is an action of ours contemplated as future, or certainly to be.
We have minutely analysed, on a former occasion, the state of mind which exists, when events, other than actions of our own, are contemplated as future. An association, from prior habit, exists, between antecedent and consequent, in a series of events; an association, such, that we cannot think of one of the events as existing, without thinking of the others as existing; that is, without anticipating their existence.
{397} That this process is involved in anticipating that peculiar event, called an action of our own, cannot be doubted. The only question is, what are the circumstances from which it derives its peculiar character.
Something peculiar is imparted to it, from the very circumstance of its being an action of our own. In anticipating an action of our own, we necessarily anticipate the mental processes, which are its antecedents. Among these we necessarily anticipate what is called the act of willing. In such anticipations, the association is of that intimate character, which constitutes belief. In anticipating an action of our own, therefore, we contemplate the act as certainly future: that is, we believe that we shall will it. But to look forward through a certain train of antecedents and consequents, the concluding part of which is a certain act, which we shall then will, and then do, is a process which apparently involves in it all that is meant by what, in this class of cases, we call Intention.
It may still, however, be objected, that the explanation thus presented, recognises, in the state of mind in question, only the ideas involved in the process called willing, with the idea of the action, and the belief that the action will take place; but that there seems to be something more than the present existence of ideas and belief, in that state of mind which we call intending, which seems to partake of the nature of willing at the moment of its existence.
There is something here of the customary illusions of language. The word "intend" is an active verb. And, wherever we use an active verb, we have {398} the association of activity and of willing, involved in it.
That there can be nothing of willing in the case, is abundantly certain; since the will relates only to immediate acts.
It may, however, be objected, that though there is nothing of willing in the case, there is nevertheless a determination or purpose to will. A man may say, I not only believe that I shall act so and so, but I am determined that I shall act so and so.
In this objection, the words "determine," and "determination," are still but substitutes for "intend," and "intention." At most, they only mark a degree of strength in the intention. There is another expression, however, which deserves notice. A man may not only resolve to do a thing, but he may promise to do it. And the promises of men form a very important class of their actions.
After all, a Promise is in its very essence merely the Declaration of an Intention. If it be asserted that it is not only the declaration of an intention, but the declaration that nothing shall occur to hinder that intention of its effect; what is this but the declaration of another intention; the intention not to frustrate an existing intention? But this second intention is included in the first. The very existence of an intention implies the absence of any counter intention.
Why is it that a man intends? For the same reason, of course, that he wills. In willing, a certain act is contemplated as a cause of pleasure; an immediate act, and an immediate pleasure. In intending, a certain future act is contemplated as cause of a future {399} pleasure. The idea of the pleasure and its cause, united by association, constitute the motive. In this act of anticipation, the sequence, consisting of motive as cause, action as effect, is indissoluble. In our supposed state of intention, the motive is presented to the mind as about to exist at the time in contemplation; the idea of the act as existing irresistibly follows. An act of our own anticipated by irresistible association, when the motive is immediate, is willed; when the motive is future, is intended. Intention is the strong anticipation of a future will. But every thing which strengthens the motive, that is, associates the idea of the act with that of a greater amount of good arising from it, increases the certainty of the act. A promise to perform the act strengthens the motive; in some cases exceedingly. As it is of great consequence to men in general, that promises should be performed, they take care to reward the performing of promises, to punish the non-performing of them, with their favour in the one case, their disfavour in the other. When the favour and disfavour of mankind are general, and strong, to a certain degree, they amount to the highest of all punishments, and all rewards. A promise, then, which is the declaration of an intention, greatly strengthens the certainty of the act, by greatly adding to the force of the motive.
2. The next case of the meaning of Intention is of easy explanation. When we will, or when we intend, an action, we either foresee, or do not foresee, certain of its consequences. In what associations the act of foreseeing or anticipating consists, we need not again explain. The question, whether a man did {400} or did not foresee certain consequents of his acts, is of great importance in certain cases of judicature, because upon this circumstance depends the propriety of a less or greater degree of punishment, perhaps the propriety or impropriety of punishing at all.
A person administers to another person a medicine. It turns out to be poison. The person whose act the administration was, believing the drug to be salubrious, not hurtful, anticipated good consequences; in other words, intended the benefit of the patient; intending, and anticipating, here, being only two names for the same thing. He did not foresee the evil consequences; and this we commonly express by saying he did not intend them. If the person who administered the drug, instead of believing it to be a proper medicine, and anticipating from it salutary effects, knew it to be poison, anticipating from it destructive effects, he would be said to intend those effects.
It thus appears, that when a man, having certain consequences of an act in view, proceeds to the performance of the act, the having in view, or anticipating, receives, in these circumstances, the name of intention. It is a case of anticipation, anticipation in peculiar circumstances, and is marked by a peculiar name.
The consequence of an act may be such, that the person had no reason to anticipate them, or could not possibly anticipate them; or they may be such, that, though actually not foreseen, they might, with more or less of care, have been foreseen. These are questions respecting the nature of one solitary act. {401} They are what in law are called questions of fact. The exact determination of them is essential to the right decision of the judge in the particular case; but any further consideration of them is not within the province of this inquiry.[69]
[Editor's footnote 69: This chapter is devoted to clearing up the confusion and disentangling the ambiguity connected with the word Intention. And it fully attains the purpose, save where the refusal to admit any difference between expectation and a strong association, throws a certain haze over an operation into which they both enter.
Intention, when the word is used in reference to our future conduct, is well characterized by the author as "the strong anticipation of a future will." It is an unfaltering present belief that we shall hereafter will a particular act, or a particular course of action. There may be, over and above this belief, an intention "that nothing shall occur to hinder that intention of its effect;" "the intention not to frustrate an existing intention." The author thinks that "this second intention is included in the first:" but it is not necessarily so. It is the first intention, fortified by some additional motive which creates a special desire that this particular desire and intention should continue. It is another case of what the author never recognizes, the desire of a desire.
Intention, when we are said to intend the consequences of our actions, means the foresight, or expectation of those consequences; which is a totally different thing from desiring them. The particular consequences in question, though foreseen may be disagreeable to us: the act may be done for the sake of other consequences. Intention, and motive, are two very different things. But it is the intention, that is, the foresight of consequences, which constitutes the moral rightness or wrongness of the act. Which among the many consequences of a crime, are those, foresight of which constitutes guilt, and non-foresight entitles to acquittal, depends on the particular nature of the case. We may say generally, that it is the hurtful consequences. When the question arises judicially, we must say it is the consequences which the law intended to prevent. Reverting to the author's illustration; a person who gives a drug to a patient, who dies in consequence, is not guilty (at least of intentional crime) if he expected good consequences, or no consequences at all, from its administration. He is guilty, if he expected that the consequence would be death; because that was the consequence which the legislator intended to prevent. He is guilty, even if he thought that the death of the patient would be a good to the world: because, though the law did not intend to prevent good to the world, it did intend to prevent persons from killing one another. Judged by a moral instead of a legal standard, the man may be innocent; or guilty of a different offence, that of not using his thinking faculty with sufficient calmness and impartiality, to perceive that in such a case as that of taking life, the general presumption of pernicious consequences ought to outweigh a particular person's opinion that preponderant good consequences would be produced in the particular instance.--Ed.]
{402} Thus, then, the Exposition of the Human Mind, as far as the imperfection of the execution may allow the accomplishment to be predicated of the attempt, may be regarded as brought to its close. The phenomena which characterize man as a thinking Being, have been brought forward, have been carefully resolved into their component elements, and traced to certain general and undisputed laws. I should call this the THEORY of the Human Mind, if I could hope that the word would be understood in its original and literal meaning, that is, VIEWING or OBSERVING, AND CORRECTLY RECORDING THE MATTERS OBSERVED. This is the task, the execution of which {403} has been endeavoured throughout the preceding pages. But, unhappily, the word Theory has been perverted to denote an operation very different from this, an operation by which VIEWING--OBSERVING--is superseded; an operation which essentially consists in SUPPOSING, AND SETTING DOWN MATTERS SUPPOSED AS MATTERS OBSERVED. Theory, in fact, has been confounded with Hypothesis; and it is probably vain to think of restoring it to its proper signification.
If, however, the Theoretical, or Expository part of the Doctrine of the Human Mind were perfected; another great branch, the Practical (which, to be rationally founded, must be founded on the Theoretical) would still remain. This subject, it appears, might be conveniently treated in three Books:
I. The Book of Logic; containing the Practical Rules for conducting the mind in its search after Truth:
II. The Book of Ethics; or the Book of Rules for regulating the actions of human beings, so as to deduce from them the greatest amount of good, both to the actor himself, and to his fellow-creatures at large:
III. The Book of Education; or the Book of Rules, for training the Individual to the greatest excellence of his nature; that is, to the highest possible state of efficiency (ability and will included), as cause of good to himself, and to his species.
THE END.
LONDON:
SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note
All editions of this text were published in two volumes. This file has combined them. The only consequential change to the original material is that the Contents pages for Volume 2 are repeated immediately after the Contents of Volume 1.
Footnotes James Mill's text had a few footnotes, indicated by single asterisks. His later commentators' work was printed as footnotes, numbered consecutively through each volume (though there is no note 36 in volume 1), and attributed by an initial (or "Editor's note") at the end. In this text each note is attributed to its author (James Mill being called Mill; John Stuart Mill, Editor). John Stuart Mill made one note in James' style, 7* in volume 1 (where the attribution has been marked by an asterisk). There are footnotes in Grote's main footnote, and in a couple of other footnotes, marked as in the original. All footnotes are now placed after the paragraph in which they occur.
Corrections Corrected text is indicated by a preceding *. The following corrections have been made (usually confirmed by reference to the earlier editions):
Location Original Correction Volume 1 p. 11 denonominate denominate p. 95 and of footnote 47 infinities infinitives footnote 54 existtence existence p. 195 their there footnote 59 gutteral guttural p. 204 {blank} 2 p. 217 predicacations predications p. 256 rationes rationes footnote g b 6 footnote j accute acute footnote 82 6 5 footnote 87 phrase phase p. 363 it its p. 447 unconciousness unconsciousness Volume 2 Contents 369 396 p. 45 : ; p. 72 former formed p. 89 succeeds succeed p. 122 measure measured p. 129 end quote mark missing at footnote 8* p. 136 Read Reid footnote 30 not nor p. 312 comprehend comprehended footnote 59 physicial physical
Two uncorrections might be noticed: in volume 1, pp. 61-62 the Mills read 'Brobdignagian,' following, it seems, an edition with that spelling instead of the usual 'Brobdingnag'; in volume 2, page 387 'casual' is given in both editions but 'causal' seems better sense.
Other matters Page numbers are preserved in-text within {}.
Italic or gesperrt text is enclosed by _ _.
Greek text is transliterated thus: breathings marked ( for hard, ) for soft, accents / for acute, \ for grave, = for circumflex, all after their vowel; iota subscript is marked |. In footnote 53 of Volume 1, [)i] is used to stand for i with a breve above it, in a rendering of Wotiak.