Elements of psychology

Front matter

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Preface

order and connection. The volume is occupied with special discussions connected with a critical review of Locke’s Essay, and its form and method were deter¬ mined by its relation to the work under examination. Nevertheless, as these discussions, in connection with the additional selections, embrace the funda¬ mental principles and most important topics which would be treated in a systematic work, and are the elements from which a system may be.formed, the general title which I have given to the volume seems to me sufficiently applicable and proper.

2. In regard to the manner of using this work in instruction.—It is not designed as a substitute for more complete and systematic treatises, but to be used in connection with them. The course which I have found it best to pursue, and which seems to me best suited to the age of undergraduate students in our colleges generally, and to the proportion of time allotted for philosophical studies, is this: to put Locke’s Essay and this volume together into the hands of students as text books for study and exami¬ nation on the part of the scholar, and for explanation and thorough familiar teaching on the part of the pro¬ fessor ; and then to take up the systematic treatises of Reid, Stewart, or Upham.

I prefer this order of study because modern phi¬ losophy, particularly in England and France, may in a certain sense be said to date from Locke, and the works of Reid, Stewart, and others, stand in such close relation to Locke’s Essay that it is desirable his work should be studied first. And I recommend the study of Cousin’s criticism in connection with Locke’s

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V

Essay because, although the fundamental principles of Locke’s system are sufficiently refuted in the writings of Reid, Stewart, or Upham, yet in Cousin’s work they are put forth so much more prominently/ and are subjected to an analysis so much more clear, com¬ plete and thorough, that the study of it in connec¬ tion with Locke is a good preparation for the study of the other writers just named, besides being admir¬ ably adapted to cultivate generally the pow r er of phi¬ losophical analysis. In this opinion I am inclined to believe most persons devoted to this department of public instruction, who may combine this course of reading on the part of students with thorough teach¬ ing on their own part, will be disposed to coincide —whatever as to the rest may be the side they adopt between the two conflicting systems brought into comparison.

I do not mean to say that this is absolutely the best course, but that I know of no better with refer¬ ence to our present text books. In the undergraduate course pursued in the colleges of this country, expe¬ rience has decided in favour of text books and fami¬ liar teaching in opposition to formal lectures; and it seems to me that we have no single work compre¬ hensive, full and thorough, and at the same time adapted to the age of our students generally, to the degree of the development of their reflecting powers, and to the time allowed for this branch of instruc¬ tion ; and it is scarcely possible to form a course of reading perfectly answering all these conditions by uniting several distinct works or portions of works, a 3

VI

PREFACE.

Yet with the works I have named in the hands of the students, a competent teacher, by thorough familiar ex¬ position and combination, may frame a course of in¬ struction that will in a good degree realize all desirable conditions. Rauch's Psychology, recently published, may be added to the list, as containing, especially in the anthropological part, many interesting and im¬ portant views, though at the same time it has many defects in point of style and exposition which render it less suited to the age and cultivation of our young students in general.

It is much to be desired that we had some com¬ prehensive didactic work, embracing a clear and ac¬ curate exposition of the fundamental facts and prin¬ ciples of psychology and metaphysics, the great problems of philosophy, with the different possible and actual solutions of them, and the different sys¬ tems resulting from those solutions respectively, together with such historical and critical indications as would enable the student to comprehend clearly at one view the relative connection of the principal systems that have existed in the world ; the several parts of the work developed in due proportion, and the whole properly proportioned to the time allotted to this department of a general education.

It may perhaps be expected that I should say some¬ thing respecting an article which appeared in a certain religious journal shortly after the publication of the second edition of this work.* I have never taken any

PREFACE.

• vii

public notice of it, because for those who thoroughly understand the subjects of which it treats, the article itself is its own best refutation; while to candid and sensible persons less familiar with philosophical stu¬ dies, though its numerous untruths and calculated appeals to the prejudices of the ignorant may not be equally apparent, yet its flippancies, personalities and bad temper (at variance alike with the true philo¬ sophical and with the Christian spirit) are sufficiently obvious to produce the reverse of the intended effect (and I may add that from both these classes of per¬ sons and from various quarters I have received nu¬ merous testimonies to this effect); and, as to the re¬ maining portion of the public coming within the limited sphere of the journal in question—persons, namely, with whom ignorance of the subject and re¬ ligious associations would make that journal an au¬ thority —I certainly felt no call to argue philosophical questions before such a tribunal.

A few words will suffice for all that is necessary to say to the reader of this volume.

The article represents Cousin as a pantheist, deny¬ ing the Personality of God; as denying also the Essential Difference of Right and Wrong; and as maintaining a scheme of Fatalism. I should do wrong to content myself with simply saying that these representations are totally false. Not only are they entirely destitute of just foundation, and contra¬ dictory also to the system of Cousin ; but, on each and every one of those points, Cousin strenuously

MAINTAINS DOCTRINES PRECISELY THE REVERSE OF

Vlll

PREFACE.

those imputed to him ! The statements of the article are as laughably untrue as it would be to call Athanasius an Arian, Bishop Berkeley a Materialist, or Jonathan Edwards a believer in the Self-determin¬ ing power of the Will! It seems to me therefore incredible that any person of ordinary good sense, assuming to pass a public judgment upon such sub¬ jects, should fall into an honest misconception of Cousin's doctrines on these points. I confess I can scarcely in my own mind acquit the writer of the article of deliberately imposing upon his readers re¬ presentations which he knew to be not only unjusti¬ fiable as towards Cousin personally, because contra¬ dictory to his express and repeated official declara¬ tions, but also unjust in themselves, because not in¬ volved in his fundamental principles, but contrary to his principles, to his system, and to the whole strain of his systematic teaching. This impression is ren¬ dered the more difficult to resist by the mode in which the writer has endeavoured to support his repre¬ sentations—his logic being of that pleasant and effectual sort sometimes called the method of proving aliquid ex aliquo. The only supposition upon which the writer can be freed from the imputation of deli¬ berate bad faith is, that his predetermination to make out a case destroyed for the time his capacity to per¬ ceive anything that made against his purpose. Why he should have wished to make out a case is not hard to be conceived in this community, and is apparent enough upon the face of the article.

For proof of the utter falsehood of the charge of

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IX

Fatalism brought against Cousin, the reader need only turn to the tenth chapter of the present volume, and to the notes connected with the fifth chapter. Elsewhere, also, in various parts of his other writings, and particularly in his lectures on the foundation of the absolute idea of moral good (occupying a consi¬ derable portion of a volume which I presume the writer of the article had not seen), the freedom of man, the absolute free will and sovereign Providence of God, are established with great force against every form of the opposite doctrine. The writer of the article is forced indeed to admit that “ Cousin does not teach what is commonly meant by fatalism; that he is a strenuous advocate for the freedom of the will, and talks much about our free personality.” Now Cousin not only does not teach what is commonly meant by fatalism, but he teaches nothing to which the term can be applied in any sense. He not only talks much about the freedom of the will, but he makes it a funda¬ mental principle of his system, absolutely essential to any possible conception of moral obligation, of accountability, and of the supreme free moral govern¬ ment of God, which latter truth he likewise teaches as expressly and in as good faith as any writer that ever wrote. This is his systematic teaching: and he has advanced nothing in other connections which is subversive of it, nothing that is not compatible with it. The passages adduced by his critic in proof that CoushFs “ freedom is itself but one of the pro¬ ducts of a deeper fatalism which pervades the uni¬ verse,” are merely some rapid and general expressions, in an animated rhetorical style, respecting the de¬ velopment of humanity under the laws of Divine

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PREFACE.

Providence—a development which is spoken of as necessary not in relation to God, nor in relation to the human will, but only in relation to an order of moral causes established by God, which we generalize in our conceptions as laws, and which we apply to ex¬ plain the events of human history; expressions the like of which are continually occurring in animated public discourses upon such subjects without excit¬ ing a thought of fatalism ; expressions which can be represented as fatalism only when stupidly miscon¬ ceived or wilfully perverted.

The same course of remarks applies to the charge of confounding moral distinctions. Any person in the least degree conversant with such studies will instantly perceive that if ever there was a doctrine clearly and undeniably taught in the world, Cousin teaches the absolute and essential difference of right and wrong, the eternal and immutable nature of moral distinctions; and if ever there was a doctrine expressly and earnestly opposed, Cousin opposes every form of the doctrine which confounds moral distinctions. The absolute idea of right and wrong is made the indispensable basis of any idea of obliga¬ tion or duty, of merit and demerit, and of reward and punishment; no motive of virtuous action is allowed except the simple idea of absolute obligation grounded upon and springing necessarily and im¬ mediately from the absolute conception of right and wrong; and every form of the selfish system, from the grossest to the most refined, is repudiated ; every motive of self-love (from that which makes the grati¬ fication of the senses the rule of action, up to that

PREFACE.

XI which obeys in form the will of God for the sake of the consequent advantage) is excluded from the essence of virtue. Do right for the sake of right, without regard to consequences, is made the funda¬ mental maxim of ethics. All this may he seen in the present volume, and the same views are expounded systematically and thoroughly in the extended dis¬ cussion of this subject already referred to—the lectures on the absolute idea of moral good. Cousin is one of the most decided advocates of the principles of essential and immutable morality that ever wrote; Cudworth, Butler and Price have written nothing stronger, nothing clearer. It w r ould not be a grosser falsehood nor a more laughable blunder, to assert that the systems of Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham recognize disinterested virtue and the essential differ¬ ence of right and wrong, than has been committed by this person in asserting that Cousin denies them. Yet carefully withholding from his readers all these abundant, unambiguous, systematic statements of Cousin, and presuming (one would suppose) that they had never read and would never read the writings which he was perverting ; violating also every rule of interpretation which renders it possible ever to ascertain from language a writer’s opinions or system; in his predetermination to make out a case, he has culled a few scattered expressions occurring in the course of some rapid reflections upon historical and political topics, on the ground of which he repre¬ sents Cousin as confounding moral distinctions by exalting fact into right: expressions which no more justify the charge than would the familiar political

Xll

PREFACE.

maxim that a probability of success is indispensable to justify an attempt to revolutionize a government. For myself, I do not acquiesce in the political and historical speculations of Cousin to which those ex¬ pressions relate; but it is simply because I deem them fanciful and incorrect, not because they confound moral distinctions, or are incompatible with his syste¬ matic principle of the essential difference of right and wrong.

So likewise with respect to the charge of Pantheism. Apparently the writer of the article in question had no precise conception of the meaning of the term. Certain it is that Cousin is no pantheist in any of the senses in which the word is ever used by persons entitled to speak upon the subject.

Pantheism, in the strict sense of the term, is the confounding of God with the universe—denying his distinct substantial existence, and making him merely the collective all of things. It may be of two sorts : material , when the substantial existence of spiritual being is denied, and matter is made the only substance of which the collective all of the uni¬ verse is composed; or ideal, when the substantial existence of matter is denied, and spiritual being made the only substance.

Pantheism, in the less proper meaning of the word, is the confounding of the universe with God— making God the sole substantial existence, and the universe of mind and matter merely phenomena; thereby destroying human personality, freedom, &c.

Now Cousin not only]does not teach pantheism in either of these forms, but on the contrary clearly and

PREFACE.

xiii

abundantly exposes and confutes them all. He maintains the substantial existence of God and the substantial existence of the universe of mind and matter; of God as distinct from the universe; of God as the cause and the universe the effect; of God as superior to the universe by all the superiority of an infinite uncreated substance and cause over all finite and created substances and causes. Yet all that Cousin says expressly and directly on this sub¬ ject is kept out of view by the writer of the article, and some speculations respecting the relation of the creation to God, and some expressions concerning the all-pervading presence and energy of God, are paraded as proof of pantheism. As to the speculations about the creation considered as the necessary product of the divine activity, I should suppose it would be readily admitted by any thinker, that if God had never created anything, he would never have exerted his power out of himself, never have manifested him¬ self. I should suppose it would be equally admitted to be natural to the human mind to conceive that God, as an infinite personal cause, a free potential activity, would put forth or actualize his power in some determinate, and therefore finite, production, that is to say, would create. I do not understand Cousin as asserting that creation is necessary in any other sense than this, relative, namely, to our concep¬ tion of an infinite cause, personal and free. If he intended the assertion as absolute, I should not adopt it; but certainly I should never dream of con¬ sidering it pantheism : it has no more to do with pantheism than with polytheism; and as to the rest b

XIV

PREFACE.

is perfectly harmless.*—Finally, as to the expressions relating to the all-pervading presence and energy of God in the universe: they are the same sort of expres¬ sions as those in which all elevated meditation on the Divine Being naturally utters itself; and the charge

* In saying that I should not adopt it, I do not mean that it may not be so, or that there is not some ground for it in the idea on which it rests. For our conception of the human will as an active power, a power of volition, involves naturally the conception that it is a power which, when the conditions of its activity are supplied, must pass into action in the production of volitions—yet without destroy¬ ing the free personality of man. Even the necessarians who make these conditions to be causes ab extra, do, many of them, maintain the free personality of man.

With respect to the human will, we all admit that there must he conditions of its activity ; that these conditions are external to the will, and primarily external even to the mind. But prior to the first creative act of the Divine will, there existed nothing but God ; and consequently the conditions of the passing into activity of the Divine will (if such there were) must have been entirely within the nature itself of the Divine Being.

Now with respect to Cousin’s speculation about creation : it certainly is true that the Divine will has passed into activity and created the universe ; and it may be true that there was in the very nature of the Divine will a necessity of its passing into activity, an activity which must also be creative—a necessity equally eternal, groundless, and unfathomable to our comprehension as the neces¬ sity of the Divine existence itself. I certainly would not venture either to assert or deny that it is absolutely so ; for I am reverently averse to all speculations which go back of the attributes of God and seek to penetrate his nature, or which proceed upon ideas with respect to his nature not given or warranted by revelation. ** Who by searching can find out the almighty to perfection ?”—But I should like to know what there is in such a speculation that has the remotest connection with pantheism.

At the same time I consider the necessity of creation spoken of by Cousin to be a purely hypothetical necessity, not absolute but relative to our limited conceptions ; necessary, that is, unless we would conceive God to remain eternally solitary and inactive.

XV of pantheism would lie equally against nine-tenths of the most accredited devotional poetry, and against the Holy Scriptures themselves, which speak of God as “ all in all,” and of creatures as " living, moving and having their being in him,” &c. &c.

I repeat then, summarily, that the person who wrote the article in question has imputed to Cousin doctrines directly the opposite of those which he explicitly and positively teaches—doctrines which he distinctly and strenuously opposes : and the mode in which he endeavours to justify his imputations in¬ volves a perversion of thought and language scarcely less incredible. A parallel argument equally valid might be constructed to prove Cudworth an atheist, Bishop Butler an infidel, and Mr. Thomas Paine a Christian believer.

The article also attempts to confound Cousin with certain German philosophers. As to this, I have only to say that the system of Cousin is distinguished from each and all those German systems by fundamental differences of principle. A professed exposition of modern German philosophy is also given in this article, putting it in as odious a light as possible, for the sake of casting accumulated odium upon Cousin and (perhaps chiefly) upon myself. Not adopting any of those German systems, nor sympathizing with their theological spirit and tendency, I do not here feel concerned to correct the mistakes of this exposition. Besides, no person tolerably well informed on the subject needs be told what a superficial and insuffi¬ cient account it is. It has every appearance of being an assemblage of scraps gathered at second and third b 2

XVI

PREFACE.

hand from encyclopaedias, reviews, and incidental notices. A moment's glance is sufficient to satisfy any competent judge that it was never formed by a discriminating philosophical mind from a careful examination of the original sources.

These are the leading and only material points in the article. Almost every page of it, however, abounds with particular instances of bad spirit and deficient capacity. Its arrogance and flippant per¬ sonalities, its numerous perversions and blunders both in logic and fact, taken in connection with the falsehood of its leading positions, form a combina¬ tion equally pitiable and ludicrous. But I have said enough, and perhaps more than enough, respecting an article so little entitled, either for its matter or its spirit, to the respect of any true philosopher; and whose only value to the genuine Christian, who is at the same time thoroughly acquainted with its subject, is in the example it furnishes how far from truth and propriety one may be led who attempts, under the banner of religion, to excite the odium theologicum against another by presuming on the ignorance and appealing to the prejudices of those whom he addresses.

As to myself, I may be permitted to observe that my own philosophical and religious opinions, and the character of my instructions, are well known, by my friends, colleagues and pupils, to be diametrically opposite to any of the false and dangerous principles with which my humble name is attempted to be con¬ nected : and I might add that they may be gathered distinctly enough by the public even from the few

PREFACE.

XVI1 things which I have printed on these subjects.* I am not apprehensive that the attempt to represent me as introducing knowingly or ignorantly into public instruction a work calculated to subvert the proper belief in God, in the essential difference of right and wrong, and in the moral accountability of man, will have its intended effect with competent judges. Attempts like that of my assailant, as they never in the long run do harm to the party assailed, so neither do they do the assailant any good, and

* In an article published in the Literary and Theological Review in 1834, which was devoted to showing the impossibility of any ab¬ solute system of philosophy, of any speculative solution of the great problems of the human mind, and the necessity of leaping by faith alone, the chasm which separates the infinite from the finite —and expressly condemning the great modern German systems. Also, in an article in the same journal for 1835, defending the es¬ sential and immutable difference of right and wrong, on the grounds of Cudworth and Butler, against the principles of the selfish system. Just before the appearance of the article in the Princeton Review, I had also printed, in connection with Whewell’s Sermons on the Foundations of Morals (a work written in the spirit of Butler), several pieces containing views respecting the Divine existence and the nature of moral distinctions, directly in contradiction with those which I am represented as promoting by the publication of Cousin’s Examination of Locke. I take leave to say that in my opinion I have done no such wicked or foolish thing as wilfully or ignorantly to promote the subversion of my own fundamental principles on points of such vital importance; and I cannot but add, that so far as a mere opinion on such subjects is worth anything, fifteen years devoted to philosophical studies and for a considerable portion of the time in the way of profes¬ sional duty, may perhaps entitle my opinion to as much provisional force as that of the individual who has seen fit to become my assail¬ ant. It is not pleasant thus to speak of one’s own opinions and writings; and I should not presume to refer to my slight produc¬ tions, but for the attempt made in the article to connect my name with opinions so diametrically opposite to those I hold.

PREFACE.

(which is of much greater importance) they will never in the long run promote the sacred cause of truth

and of God.

I have no new system to introduce into the country. I have neither the ability nor the wish to found a school. I have no complete speculative system, but only some fundamental principles. I do not believe in the possibility of any philosophy of the universe, any system that shall speculatively comprehend at once the finite and the infinite, giving us the posi¬ tive cognition of the infinite. In the words of one of Cousin’s English critics—whose consummate ability and profound philosophical learning, and whose genial admiration and respect for Cousin, even while confuting him on this the fundamental peculiarity of his system, are equally in contrast with the shal¬ low and contemptuous spirit of his American assail¬ ant—I believe in that philosophy by which “ we are taught the salutary lesson that the capacity of thought is not to be constituted into the measure of existence ; and are warned from recognizing the domain of our knowledge as necessarily co-extensive with the hori¬ zon of our faith.”*

I published this examination of Locke because, in¬ dependently of any systematic peculiarities of the author, and independently of my own personal opinion of his system, I believed it calculated to establish the very foundations of morality and religion against the

* Sir William Hamilton, professor of philosophy in the Univer¬ sity of Edinburgh. Edinb. Review, Oct. 1829.

PREFACE.

XIX subversive principles of Locke and Paley. In regard to these great truths, as against the principles and systematic results of the Sensual philosophy, this work is in perfect harmony with Cudworth, Price, Butler, Reid and Stewart.

With this view, therefore, and regarding the study of this examination of Locke as also a profitable ex¬ ercise of critical analysis, the work is again com¬ mended to the use of those who, like myself, not adopting the whole of the author's system, can yet appreciate the nature, direction and value of this portion of his labours.

C. S. HENRY.

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Contents

Page.

Introduction, by the Translator, . . . . i

EXAMINATION OF LOCKE’S ESSAY ON THE UNDERSTANDING.

Chapter I

General spirit of the Essay on the Human Understanding. —Its Method. Study of the Human Understanding itself, as the necessary introduction to all true philosophy.—Study of the Human Understanding in its action, in its phenomena, or ideas. —Division of the inquiries relating to ideas, and determina¬ tion of the order in which those investigations should be iftade. To postpone the logical and ontological question concerning the truth or falsity of ideas, and the legitimacy or illegitimacy of their application to their respective objects ; and to concen¬ trate our investigations upon the study of ideas in them¬ selves,—and in that, to begin by describing ideas as they actually are, and then to proceed to the investigation of their origin.—Examination of the method of Locke. Its merit: he postpones and places last the question of the truth or falsity of ideas. Its fault: he entirely neglects the question concern¬ ing the actual character of ideas, and begins with that of their origin. First mistake of method ; chances of error which it involves.—General tendency of the School of Locke. Re¬ capitulation .27

Chapter II

First Book of the Essay on the Human Understanding. Of Innate ideas.—Second Book. Experience, the source of all ideas. Sensation and reflection.—Locke places the develop¬ ment of the sensibility before that of the operations of the mind. Operations of the mind. According to Locke, they are exercised only upon sensible data. Basis of Sensualism. —Examination of the doctrine of Locke concerning the idea of space.—That the idea of space, in the system of Locke, should and does resolve itself into the idea of Body.—This

XXII

CONTENTS.

confusion contradicted by facts, and by Locke himself. Distinction of the actual characters of the ideas of Body and of Space : 1. the one contingent, the other necessary ; 2. the one limited, the other illimitable; 3. the one a sensible repre¬ sentation, the other a rational conception. This distinction ruins the system of Locke. Examination of the origin of the idea of Space. Distinction between the logical order and the chronological order of ideas.—Logical order. The idea, of space is the logical condition of the idea of body, its foundation, its reason, its origin, taken logically.—The idea of body is the chronological condition of the idea of space, its origin taken chronologically.—Of the Reason and Experience, considered as in turn the reciprocal condition of their mutual develop¬ ment.—Merit of the system of Locke.—Its vices ; 1. con¬ founds the measure of space, with space; 2. the condition of the idea of space, with the idea itself . . .51

Chapter III. *

Recapitulation of the preceding chapter.—Continuation of the examination of the Second Book of the Essay on the Human Understanding. Of the idea of Time.—Of the idea of the In¬ finite.—Of the idea of Personal Identity.—Of the idea of Substance.77

Chapter IV

General remarks on the foregoing results.—Continuation of the examination of the Second Book of the Essay on the Human Understanding. Of the idea of Cause.—Origin in sensation. Refutation.—Origin in reflection and the sentiment of the will. Distinction between the idea of Cause, and the Prin¬ ciple of Causality.—That the principle of causality is inex¬ plicable by the sentiment of will.—Of the true formation of the principle of Causality.105