v- "b N 1 > o5 '^ fi v *%* x^ V -^ 1 8 . V <■" ++ V^" ; . o5 -^ ** ,* v d> *\^ -$-**• PREFACE. THIS text-book in Mental Science is designed to be a compact but comprehensive presentation of the facts of the human mind in scientific method and form. The science is treated as one of observation, not of speculation. Little space accordingly is given to metaphysical discussions. The design is rather to prepare the beginner in mental studies for an appreciative understanding of the history of philosophic thought in the past and of the speculations and discussions in this field of investigation at the present, as he may prosecute these studies in the lecture-room or in private reading. The science is carefully defined in its proper province and comprehension, and is mapped out into departments that are determined by lines of demarkation appearing in the nature of the mind, so that the treatment may be recognized as exact, orderly, and exhaustive. The outer boundaries of mental science, it is believed, are now determined beyond reasonable question ; and the leading divisions with their re- spective organic relationships are also as clearly iv PREFACE. ascertained. The progress of the science, hence- forth, will be in the line of the investigation of the more specific phenomena of mind in their respect- ive natures, and their relations to one another and to the universe of object with which the hu- man mind is in interaction. Two leading peculiarities in this present treat- ment of the subject may be specified here. They are, first, the separate formal presentations of the three comprehensive functional forms of mental activity — the functions of form, of knowledge, and of choice on the one hand, and of their sev- eral objects — the beautiful, the true, and the good on the other. The active subject and its object are exhibited each in its own proper char- acter and laws, so that light from each side is thrown upon the other. Secondly, the facts of the mind viewed as an organic whole, and accordingly as more than a mere aggregation of specific functions, are pre- sented under the two like complementary views of rational activity — subjective and objective. In addition to those peculiarities of method may be mentioned many peculiarities in special doctrines, as touching the place and office of the imagination and of memory in mental phenomena, the nature of knowledge, the genesis of our ideas of time and space and of so-called a priori truths, and others. Free use has been made of the author's pre- PREFACE. v vious works in this field of knowledge, his " Psy- chology," "^Esthetics," "Logic," "Ontology, or Philosophy of Thought and of Being. " MuLTUM MAGNORUM VIRORUM JUDICIO CREDO : ALIQUID ET MEO VINDICO. New Haven, 1886. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. § i. Province of Mental Science. § 2. Its dignity and importance. § 3. Place in the Sciences. § 4. Sources of information. § 5. Method. BOOK I. GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. Chapter I. § 6. The Essential Activity of Mind. Chapter II. The Tri -functional Unity of Mind. — § 7. The human mind one in a plurality. § 8. Not identi- cal with the object of its activity. § 9. Simple. § 10. Its three functions — sensibility, intelligence, will. Chapter III. The Continuousness of Mind. — § 11. The human mind continues in its activity. § 12. This continuousness the ground of personal identity. § 13. The ground of memory. § 14. The ground of habit. § 15. The condition of mental growth. Chapter IV. The Organic Nature of the Human Mind. — § 16. The human mind a part of a larger whole therefore finite and dependent. § 17. A sympathetic part in interacting ministry. § 18. Organic in its own interior nature. Chapter V. The Self-consciousness of Mind.— § 19. The mind conscious of its own acts and feelings. § 20. Exposition of consciousness as a knowing function viii CONTENTS. employed with the modifications of the mind itself. §21. Consciousness variously modified in degree and in range. Chapter VI. The Spontaneity and Self-deter- MINATENESS OF THE MlND. — § 22. The activity of the mind as spontaneous. § 23. As self-determined. § 24. As aiming or telic. Chapter VII. The Relativity of the Mind. — § 25. Diversity of relationship in the human mind. § 26. The real. § 27. Of the tri-functional relativity in subject to object. § 28. The true, the beautiful, and the good as respective objects to the three mental functions. § 29. Cor- respondence of these classifications with the fourfold division of causes. BOOK II. THE SENSIBILITY.— I. SUBJECTIVE VIEW. Chapter I. Its Nature and Modifications. — § 30. The sensibility defined. § 31. Form. § 32. Sympathy. § 33. The imagination. § 34. Feelings and forms respective states of the sensibility and the imagination. § 35. Classifi- cation of the feelings. § 36. Method. Chapter II. Pleasure and Pain.— § 37. Pleasure and pain defined. § $&. Their immediate source in mental acts and affections. § 39. Relation to external objects. § 40. Finalities. § 41. Simple and integral. § 42. Tests of action and condition. § 43. Modifications. Chapter III. The Sensations.— § 44. Sensations de- fined. § 45. Medium of sensation. § 46. The nervous organism in man. § 47. Its functional nature. § 48. 11) In the nervous organism itself. § 49. (2) In the body gen- erally. § 50. (3) In respect to the mind. § 51. Sensations classified. § 52. Simple bodily pleasure and pain. § 53. General vital sense. § 54. The general organic sense. § 55. Special senses— touch, taste, smell, hearing, sight. CONTENTS* ix Chapter IV. The Emotions. — § 56. Emotion de- fined. § 57. Three general classes of emotions. § 58. In- tellectual emotions. § 59. ^Esthetic emotions, — the Sub- lime, the Beautiful, the Comic. § 60. Moral emotions. Chapter V. The Affections. — § 61. Affections de- fined. § 62. Love and hate. §§ 63, 64. Varieties. § 65 Resentments. Chapter VI. The Desires. — § 66. Desires defined. §§ 6y, 68. Classified. § 69. Self-love and selfishness. § 70. Appetites. § 71. Rational desires. §§ 72, 73. Per- sonal desires. § 74. Social desires. § 75. Hopes and fears. Chapter VII. The Sentiments. — § 76. Sentiments defined. § jj. Classified in reference to their essential nature. § j8. Contemplative sentiments. § 79. Practical or moral sentiments. § 80. Rational sentiments. § 81. The sentiments classified in reference to their objects. Chapter VIII. The Passions.— § 82. The passions described. Chapter IX. The Imagination.— § 83. The imagi- nation defined. § 84. Different names. § 85. Its nature unfolded. §§ 86-88. Ideals. Chapter X. The Imagination : — Sense-Ideals. § 89. Sense-ideals defined. § 90. Modifications. §§ 91,92. Relations of mind and body. § 93. Phantoms. § 94. Ex- alted sensibility. § 95. Suspended sensibility. § 96. Dream- ing. § 97- Catalepsy. § 98. Somnambulism. Chapter XI. The Imagination :— Spiritual Ideals.— § 99. Spiritual ideals defined. § 100. Source. § 101. Embodiment. Chapter XII. Memory.— § 102. Memory defined. § 103. Its law. §§ 104-107. Conditions of a good memory. § 108. Special rules. Chapter XIII. Mental Reproduction. § 109. x CONTENTS. Mental reproduction defined. § no. Spontaneous or volun- tary — Reverie. §§ 111-117. Laws of mental association. §118. Reflex action. §§ 119 — 123. Recollection. Chapter XIV. Artistic, Philosophical, and Practical Imagination. — § 124. The three functions of the imagination. § 125. The artistic imagination. § 126. The philosophical imagination. § 127. The practical imagi- nation. THE SENSIBILITY.— II. OBJECTIVE VIEW. Chapter XV. Form in its Nature and Modifica- tions. — § 128. Form defined. § 129. Form addresses the emotions. § 130. Its three constituents. § 131. Kinds of beauty. Chapter XVI. Form Received. — § 132. Subjective conditions of the experience of beauty. § 133. Objective conditions. Chapter XVII. Form Produced. — § 134. Form pro- duced explained as idea expressed. § 135. Conditions or principles of form-production. BOOK III. THE INTELLIGENCE.— I. SUBJECTIVE VIEW. Chapter I. Nature and Modifications. — § 136. Intelligence defined. §§ 137-140. Its modifications. Chapter II. Perception. — § 141. Perception defined. § 142. Relations to sensation. § 143. Sphere of perception. §§ 144, 145. Kinds of knowledge given in perception. § 146. Perception gives immediate knowledge of external reality. Chapter III. Intuition. — § 147. Intuition defined. § 148. Its sphere. §§ 149, 150. Kinds of knowledge given by intuition. CONTENTS. xi Chapter IV. Thought. — §§ 151, 152. Thought de- fined. § 153. The three essential constituents. § 154. The comprehensive principle of thought. § 155. The funda- mental laws : — Disjunction, Exclusion, Identity, Contradic- tion. § 156. Ground of their validity. § 157. The forms of thought. § 158. The judgment. § 159. The concept. § 160. The reasoning. Chapter V. The Categories of Pure Thought. — §§ 161, 162. Category defined and explained. § 163. The category of identity and difference. § 164. The category of quantity. § 165. The category of modality. Chapter VI. Intellectual Apprehension and Representation. — § 166. Intelligence as capacity and as faculty. § 167. Intellectual apprehension. § 168. Intel- lectual representation. Chapter VII. Curiosity and Attention. — § 169. Intelligence instinctive or voluntary. § 170. Curiosity. § 171. Attention. THE INTELLIGENCE.— II. OBJECTIVE VIEW. Chapter VIII. The True, — its Nature and Modi- fications. — § 172. The true explained. § 173. Its funda- mental category. § 174. Attributes classified. § 175. In- trinsic attributes — Properties. § 176. Extrinsic attributes — Relations. §177. Category of Substance and Cause. §178. Category of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. § 179. Our knowledge a true knowledge. § 180. The true as re- ceived and the true as produced. Chapter IX. The True Received. — § 181. Faith. § 182. Faith and knowledge. § 183. The true divisible into (1) internal or supersensible and (2) external or sensible. § 184. Internal, supersensible, or intuitive truth. § 185. The mind and its phenomena inseparable except in thought. § 186. Reality of our intuitions. § 187. Reality distinguishable from simple judgment. § 188. No knowledge before pres- xii CONTENTS. entation of the truth. § 189. The category of reality and its subordinate categories. § 190. Theories of time and space. § 191. Time as real. § 192. Space. § 193. Syn- opsis of fundamental categories. § 194. Matter. § 195. The truthfulness of sensible impressions. Chapter X. The True Produced.— § 196. The true produced — how possible. § 197. How validated. § 198. By what particular processes. § 199. By reasonings. (1) Im- mediate. § 200. (2) Mediate. § 201. By concepts. § 202. (1) By amplification. § 203. (2) By reduction. § 204. Re- lations of subject-concepts and attribute-concepts. § 205. Conformity of nature to thought. § 206. (1) Intuitive thought. § 207. (2) Perceptive thought. BOOK IV. THE WILL.— I. SUBJECTIVE VIEW. Chapter I. Its Nature and Modifications. — § 208. The Will defined. § 209. Its modifications. Chapter II. Volition. — § 210. Exemplified. § 211. An act — selective and directive. § 212. Free. § 213. Per- sonal. § 214. Personality involving mental sovereignty. § 215. Originative. § 216. Moral. § 217. Responsible. Chapter III. Growth and Subordinations of Will. § 218. The will capable of growth. § 219. De- pendent. § 220. Governing and subordinate volitions. Chapter IV. Conscience. — §221. Its elements. — §222. Discernment of right and wrong. § 223. Sentiment of obli- gation. § 224. Sense of approval or disapproval. § 225. Subjection to will. Chapter V. Hope, Faith, and Love. — § 226. As virtues. §227. Hope defined. § 228. Faith defined. §229. Love defined. CONTENTS. xiii THE WILL.— II. OBJECTIVE VIEW. Chapter VI. The Good — Its Nature and Modifi- cations. — § 230. The good defined. § 231. Its field. (1) The self ; (2) the not-self. § 232. The good as object to the will, moral. § 233. Moral good direct object to the will in character, indirect object in condition. § 234. Right moral action beneficent. Chapter VII. The Good Presented — Motives. — § 235. Motive defined. § 236. In what sense motive determines the will. § 237. Motive as good. § 238. Motives classified — external and internal. Chapter VIII. The Good Produced — Duties. — § 239. Duty explained. § 240. Its fundamental con- ditions. § 241. Duties classified. BOOK V. THE REASON.— THE MIND AS ORGANIC WHOLE. Chapter I. The Nature and Modifications of the Reason. — § 242. The reason as the organic whole of mind. § 243. Method. Chapter II. The Reason. — I. Subjective View. — § 244. The reason not a special faculty ; its threefold activity. § 245. I. The activity of the reason upon itself. § 246. II. Upon the several functional activities. § 247. III. Upon exterior objects. Chapter III. The Reason. — II. Objective View. — § 248. The proper object of rational activity, the perfecting of character and condition. § 249. In respect to itself and its environment. INTRODUCTION. § i. Mental Science in the larger sense comprehends the four subordinate sciences of Psychology, ^Esthetics, Logic, and Ethics. It is the proper province of Psychology to set forth the facts generally of the human mind as learned from observation ; of Aesthetics to exhibit the laws and generic forms of the particular function of mental activity known as the Sensibility and the Imagination ; of Logic to present the laws and forms of the Intellect ; and of Ethics those of the Will. Mental Science will properly embrace these four subordinate sciences, but will view them from its own single point of observation and with a single method also peculiar to itself, while each of the others will have its own sepa- rate starting point and develop itself by its own method. It will thus be more comprehensive than psychology, as now generally understood, while it will avoid entering into the technical details and peculiar methods of the other three. Its aim will be to present in a general view the entire field of mental states and operations in 2 INTRODUCTION. their organic relations and interdependencies, preparing the student in this way to enter more intelligently into the investigation of the mani- fold questions that present themselves concern- ing the phenomena of the human soul and the nature and regulative principles of truth, of beauty, and of morality, as well as also the deeper and broader speculations of metaphysical philosophy. § 2. In dignity and importance no science can outrank the science of mind. The mind is " the self," the conscious, proper self; and sound wisdom indorses the familiar maxim that " the proper study of mankind is man." The most im- portant thing for one to know is himself — his own rational nature, its powers, its conditions, its final destiny as determined by a wise use of this self-knowledge. All other sciences found their claims to interest in this and from it derive their shaping and validating principles. " To know and understand itself," says Sir William Hamilton, speaking of the human mind, " and thus to establish its dominion over the uni- verse of existence — it is this alone which con- stitutes man's grand and distinctive pre-em- inence." No study affords a better means of discipline, as no science — at least no science of observation — can put forth a better claim to certitude and exactness of method, and none certainly is better fitted to train to those habits of reflective contemplation on the phenom- INTR OD UC TION. 3 • ena of human existence which characterize the man of truest and highest practical wisdom, and thus to effect the fullest and fastest growth of the essential excellencies of personal character. § 3. The science of mind and the science of matter — -Mental Science and Physical Science — constitute the two great branches of science di- vided in reference to its subject-matter. If, however, Space and Time be assumed to be true realities, since we observe that the logical attri- bute of quantity has in them its most funda- mental applications, Mathematical Science may not improperly be ranked as a third co-ordinate science with those of mind and matter. The three comprehensive divisions of human science would accordingly be : (1) Mental or Spiritual ; (2) Physical ; and (3) Mathematical. Mental Science is properly ranked among the so-called Inductive Sciences. It begins with observation of particular facts, not with general truths. From one or more of such observed facts it induces to others of a like nature, so that a single observation may suffice to give a trust- worthy knowledge of an indefinite number of facts of the same class. One observation, or at least a few observations, thus, will afford a knowl- edge of the essential nature of all exertions of thought, or of imagination, or of will. So the ob- servation of the character of one man's feelings, or thoughts, or purposes will acquaint us with the character of those of other men generally in like 4 IXTRODUCTION. relations. Still farther than this : as guided by induetive thought, Mental Science conducts us from observations of one department of mind to other co-ordinate and complementary depart- ments, just as the comparative zoologist is en- abled to determine from the bony structure of an animal what its cellular, its muscular, its nerv- ous systems, what its size, its food, its habits of life must have been, and even the character of other animal and vegetable life around it, as well as its general climatic environment. Mental. Science, thus, is built up chiefly and characteris- tically by the application of the methods of in- ductive thought. The co-ordinate movement of thought — the deductive — which proceeds from the whole class or the composite attribute to a subordinate grade, and so on to the individual or to the simple, as also the secondary logical proc- esses of classification and of analysis, are much and freely employed in aid and furtherance of induction, but rather in subordination than pre- dominance. §4. The facts of mind, which first through observation and then by means of induction, with its auxiliary processes of thought, are developed into the full form of a science, are discovered first and mainly by direct introspection. The mind is enabled to look inwardly upon itself, upon its exercises and affections, to distinguish one from another, to mark the respective qualities of each, to note their relations to one another INTRODUCTION. 5 and their interdependence, and thus to gather up into its comprehensive observation the facts which enter into and constitute the science. But in addition to this, the thoughts, the feel- ings, the determinations of other men are also revealed to our view in the various ways in which the mind of man is accustomed to reveal itself. Still a third important field in which are to be observed the facts of mental science, is that of language, in the formation and the use of which men unite, -dropping aside for the time what is peculiar and abnormal and expressing thought and feeling in so far as they are common to men as a class. Language is the grand social revelation of the facts of mind in which there is agreement and consent of many minds, and so is peculiarly trustworthy and authoritative. While in manifold other ways the mind of man reveals itself to our observation, as in the arts, in government, in social customs, and science will not overlook any of those revelations, still it remains that the great commanding sources of fact for mental science are these three • — 1. Introspection; 2. Observation of others; 3. Language. § 5. From a careful survey of these several fields in which the facts of mind are presented to our observation, and in these facts, we learn that there are certain appearances or phenomena which are traceable to one common source or ground, and which in one particular selection and 6 INTRODUCTION. grouping we call the peculiar characteristics of mind. These characteristics or attributes of mind, which are thus observed to be common to mind, constitute the subject of mental science. The science or knowledge of these attributes is the science or knowledge of mind, since the science or knowledge of an object is nothing but the science or knowledge of the attributes of that object considered in themselves and their rela- tions. The object itself, indeed, is none other than the complement or concrete whole of its at- tributes ; and it is known solely in and through its attributes. Attributes are divided into two great classes, the essential and the relative. The essential attributes are intrinsic to the object and make it to be what it is in itself ; the relative attributes are extrinsic to the object and make it to be what it is by reason of its relations to other ob- jects. The roundness, and the brightness, and the gravity of the sun are among its essential attributes ; its being the center of motion to the other bodies of the system is a relative attribute. It becomes thus the one object of mental science to gather up these attributes of mind, distin- guishing the essential from the relative, to arrange them in their due order of importance and dependence, and then unfold each in its proper fullness and bearing. We shall find that the mind possesses one essential attribute which so far outranks and INTRO D UC TION. 7 transcends all others that it has often not improp- erly been regarded in its divers modifications as constituting the one comprehensive fact of mind, and thus the one topic to be considered in mental science : it is the attribute of activity. This attribute, because of this pre-eminent, if we do not more truly say exclusive, importance, it will be convenient to exhibit, first, in its divers sub- ordinate forms and modifications, and, secondly, as one organic whole. Our method will accord- ingly be to consider, in the First Book, the General Attributes of Mind ; In the Second Book, the first subordinate de- partment of the essential attribute of mind, just named, its activity, viz. : — Its FUNCTION OF Form, otherwise known as the Function of the Sensibility and the Imagination ; In the Third Book, the second special depart- ment of mental activity, The INTELLIGENCE ; In the Fourth Book, the third special depart- ment, The Will ; and — In the Fifth, the attributes of mental activity as an organic whole, under the appellation of The Reason. BOOK I. GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. CHAPTER I. THE ESSENTIAL ACTIVITY OF MIND. § 6. The first glance turned inward on our mental nature discovers to us the prominent fact that it is an essentially active nature. We discern the mind, in truth, only in its operations. Even what we call the states of mind are active states. Our thoughts are active ; our imaginings are active ; our determinations are active. They all bear the character of change, of motion from one form or condition to another. Our feelings are the feelings of active natures ; they are not like impressions on stones, or inactive substances ; they are the affections of active beings. So strik- ing is this fact that by some philosophers the feelings have been denominated the active powers of the mind. Observation of other minds corroborates this testimony given by the inspection of our own inward being. They make themselves known to THE ESSENTIAL ACTIVITY OF MIND. 9 us indeed only as they act or move and as by such action or motion they impress our minds. The universal language of men confirms the f ac t : — the human mind is essentially active. This is its first, great, comprehensive attribute. There is no actual or possible revelation made of mind that does not reveal this as its ever present and its predominant attribute. It is by this characteristic that mind is distin- guished from all other real or supposed natures. It is primarily and sharply distinguished from matter by this. Matter is recognized as inert, inactive ; as motionless and formless, except as moved and shaped by something extrinsic to itself. Whatever hypothesis may be enter- tained in regard to the nature of matter, whether as a real, peculiar entity in itself, or whether as a mere " center of force," or, in the better form of this class of hypotheses, as a potentialized force, that is, as force changed from an active or living force to a mere potency — a mere capability of mov- ing when meet occasion shall come to it for moving — whatever hypothesis may be entertained in re- gard to the nature of matter, it is ever and always recognized as the direct opposite of mind in this respect — that it is inert, inactive, moving only as it is moved. In like manner, the prevalent theories of space and time, even when recognizing them as real entities, refrain from attributing to either of them any such attribute as that of activity, at io GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. least in the narrower and more generally accepted sense of that term. They may be recognized as active positively in determining our cognitions, and negatively in certain limitations of real objects and actions. It is after all only the niceness of metaphysical speculation that recog- nizes activity as a mark of space or of time. This grand attribute — activity — ,then, we recog- nize as entering into the essential constitution of mind. In exact statement, indeed, activity constitutes the very essence of mind. We are not to think of the mind as a something exist- ing back of this activity, and from itself putting forth the activity. The activity is its very self, in the sense that the whole constituting attribute of an object is the object itself. As will appear hereafter when the nature of thought or of knowledge is unfolded, there is no substj-atum to be supposed as a necessary support for the attri- bute, in which the attribute may be said to inhere while yet distinct from it. The substance, so far as an actual being, is the same as its constituting attribute ; the mind is the same as its attribute of activity ; — mind and active substance arc the same. This will more fully appear in the sequel. Activity being thus the very essence of the mind, the beginning studies of mind should be led to recognize it as having this character. Our more familiar view regards the mind as a sub- stance with certain attributes, a view which in itself shuts out the notion of mind as a cause; THE ESSENTIAL ACTIVITY OF MIND. n whereas, subject to the restrictions of the mean- ing of that term to be given hereafter, the mind should far more properly be viewed under this latter relation of thought — as a cause, and so as active. The exposition of the nature of mind suffers much from this inconsiderate treatment of it, as a mere inactive substance. A chief diffi- culty in the study of mind springs from the difficulty of conceiving it as essentially active. From the start, therefore, the study should aim to regard the mind as an essentially active nature ; and every conception of it in any of its particular modifications, should keep steadfastly in view this essential attribute of its nature: The mind is essentially active. CHAPTER II. THE UNITY OF MIND, WITH A THREEFOLD DIVERSITY OF FUNCTION. § 7. The human mind is, in the proper sense of the statement, a unit — it is single or individual, one by itself. The phrase — the human mind — may be used abstractly to denote the aggregate of the attributes of mind ; but when we speak concretely of the mind of a man, we speak of it as a unit, existing distinctly and separately from all other beings, as one among many. The decisive proof of this singleness or individ- uality of the human mind is derived from expe- rience and observation. So positively does every one know as from his own personal knowledge of himself that he is truly himself a distinct and separate being, that the statement of the truth seems a truism. He unintentionally and unavoid- ably makes this interpretation of his conscious experiences, that he is himself and not a part or a mode of the existence of any other being ; and that his mind, his soul, the being within him that thinks and feels, is as distinct from other minds as his body from other animal bodies. He feels himself, accordingly, to be responsible for THE UNITY OF MIND. 13 much at least of what he thinks and purposes. All the records of human experience present uni- form testimony in confirmation of this utterance of individual consciousness. There is a plurality of minds ; each human mind is one of this plu- rality. . § 8. Much less is the human mind to be re- garded as identical with its object. As an activ- ity it implies an object upon which or toward which it is exerted ; and to account for the interaction of mind with its object, to account, for example, for the mind's apprehension or thought of an object, it has been supposed by some that thought and object must be one and the same. But the common sense of men rejects this suppo- sition as in contradiction of all its strongest and deepest convictions — of convictions that could have only grown out of uniform experiences. That mind and its object are distinct is a truth of simple observation. This dualism in existence, implied in the fact of mental activity exerted upon some object distinct from itself, is thus a truth fundamental to all true philosophy, — to all philosophy that builds not on groundless assump- tion, but on solid fact as presented to human obser- vation. Mental action and object imply each other and are real correlatives in thought ; and the speculation would seem to be idle that should seek to reduce the one to the other, or indeed to sub- ordinate the one to the other. The remotest con- clusion which any such speculation could legiti- 14 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OE MIND. mately reach would be that mind ever acts upon mind as object — upon some other mind, or upon itself in some one of its own departments of being. § 9. The human mind is also simple. It is not made up of a number of constituents of diverse nature put together so as to form a mere aggregate or accumulation of elements. It has divers func- tions, performs divers acts, but it remains in all the same simple nature. The sun both warms and illuminates ; but it is the same sun that acts in both heat and light. So the human mind with its diversity of functions is one and simple, and cannot be decomposed into different things, one of which discharges the function of thinking, another that of feeling, and a third that of pur- posing. § 10. With this singleness and simplicity of essential nature, we yet can easily distinguish three different modes of mental activity; and ac- cordingly we say that the human mind has three different functions. If thus we take up an orange and bring it near the sense, we find that it makes certain impressions upon us; we feel, for instance, its softness through the sense of touch. The function of the mind thus is feeling ; and this function of feeling is technically called the sensibility. Then we perceive that some object impresses us and gives us a feeling of this one of its attributes — its softness ; and we know that this object is soft. Another function of the mind THE UNITY OF MIND. 15 thus is that of knowing ; and this function is called the intelligence. Still further, we may de- termine to hold fast the orange, to press it upon the hand, to move it before the eye, to smell or to taste it. We discover thus a third function of the mind, that of determining to do something; and this function of determining is called the will. All the discoverable modes of mental activity are reducible to one or the other of these three — feeling, knowing, willing. No other is conceiva- ble. They are organic functions belonging to- gether to the same being, each implying the other. We may notice more one or the other at different times ; one function may predominate and give a general character to the whole mental act or state. But the functions all go on together just as respiration and circulation of the blood and muscular contraction go on together. When we feel the softness of the orange which we hold in our hand, we may also perceive that it is soft, and determine to hold it or cast it away. The per- ceiving and the willing may not, in fact, come up into distinct consciousness, but we find that if we direct our attention upon either of those func- tional exertions, we may be conscious of its pres- ence as entering into every mental act, provided at least that the mental action be on a scale suf- ficiently large to be discerned by our intellectual vision. As stated in the Introduction our method will lead us to consider in separate books these three 16 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. several functions — the mind as feeling-, as know- ing, and as willing — and to devote a separate book to the consideration of the action of the mind as an organic whole. For reasons which will then appear, this last view of the mind will be repre- sented under the appellation of the REASON, a term equivalent to the rational nature as it is dis- tinguished from the animal or bodily nature of man. CHAPTER III. THE CONTINUOUSNESS OF MIND. § II. The very notion of action involves that of continuousness. In so far as active, conse- quently, the human mind must be recognized as more or less continuous. Every specific feeling - , every thought, every purpose, has a beginning and an end and a continuity from beginning to end that constitutes it a single identical action or affection. This bond of continuity extends through the experience of the same mind during the entire period of its existence. Mental life is thus more than a chain made up of separate links ; it is more than an ever-flowing river which bears along the particles of water from the original spring down to their union with the sea; it is the continuity of a living thing. The river may in its course part with every particle that left the primitive source, from the effect of evap- oration or other displacement, and yet maintain its continuity and thereby its unity and identity by receiving successive supplies from rainfalls or from tributary streams that may indeed more than replace what it has lost. The life of mind flows on, never parting with anything of its true 2 iS GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. essence; relaxing its vigor, it may be, from time to time, and changing its current, but maintaining the unity and identity of a living nature that is far closer and more persistent than belongs to any merely inorganic thing. Every specific act of mind, every change or modification which it suf- fers, is bound by the bonds of a life to that which precedes and to that which follows. Any con- ception or reasoning which treats the mind as discontinuous, as at best only an aggregation of unconnected events or phenomena, as a mere succession or successions of changes, having no in- terior vital bond of unity, is radically at fault. It is hazardous to truth, even, ever to keep out of view the grand fundamental fact in regard to mind that its activity is continuous, never broken during its entire existence. There is, of course, no proof of discontinuous- ness. It would be a strange thing for a man to set up the claim that his present inner being of to-day has taken the place of the other and en- tirely different inner being of yesterday. The presumption is irresistible at the outset that his being of to-day has not been utterly disrupted from that of yesterday. The undeniable fact of observation that each specific action or affection of the mind has a certain continuousness of its own leads as irresistibly to the belief that the ac- tivity prolonged through days, or years, or through life, has suffered no interruption, has leaped no chasm separating different lives. Universal con- THE CONTINUOUSNESS OF MIND. 19 sent, indeed, of itself establishes the truth so fully and surely that formal proof seems well nigh inept, certainly needless. But there are certain very important facts or truths of mind which are so closely connected with this attribute of con- tinuousness in mind, that they are both proofs of the attribute and, also conversely, are proved by it. They are of such a character as to justify particular consideration. § 12. Men generally believe in the personal identity of each individual mind. Each one be- lieves that he is the same man to-day that he was yesterday. The belief is warrant for the be- lief in mental continuousness ; for certainly there could be no personal identity without personal continuousness. If the flow of my life has been broken, my present self is not the same self as that of yesterday, even if we should allow the hardly allowable supposition that the same cur- rent of feelings and actions had been reproduced in the present self that the self of yesterday would have had if its continuousness had not been broken off. No conceivable power could make one, lives or selves once divided and separate. We need to take a still higher view. Not only is it to be believed that the mind as a whole con- tinues, but we are constrained to the belief that every act and every affection of the mind abides imperishably forever afterward, maintaining an abiding presence in it. The mental experience of a year ago, of a decade of years ago, is, in a 20 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. true sense, a part of the experience of to-day, shap- ing it, coloring it, characterizing it. It is certain that extraordinary experiences abide for years or even for life ; grand conceptions, strong feelings, momentous decisions and purposes, hold on for years, for life. But great things are made up of small, and cannot subsist without them ; the small, therefore, if the great and grand survive, must also survive with them. They may be un- noticed, they may be beyond the capabilities of our finite minds to notice them ; they may be there, nevertheless. Nothing forbids the suppo- sition that they have not been utterly annihilated. What, indeed, should cause them to perish ? A live thought — how can it utterly die ? A living na- ture that has put forth itself in this form or that form, can never be the same in all respects that it would have been but for that forthputting of its energy. Every act of thought was a part of its life and cannot be extirpated from it. Even such a supposed extirpation must leave the scar; and the scar shows something of what was once living there. My whole past lives in my present life. This continuousness of my past into my pres- ent is the ground and the only proper evidence of my personal identity. I am the same being that I was long years ago in my childhood, when I was startled by the lightning stroke that smote down my dwelling, because that scene is in my soul to-day. I felt it then, I feel it now. The same feeling in the soul proves the soul itself to THE CONTINUOUSNESS OF MIND. 21 be the same. In regard to the future, the ques- tion of personal identity, stripped of all the ob- scurities and ambiguities of language, seems of the most fatuous character : — if I myself con- tinue, it is myself — my identical person — that continues, whatever catastrophes befall me. § 13. The continuousness of mind is evidenced also in memory as it is in its turn the ground of this mental state. The full consideration of this phenomenon is reserved for another place. See Book II., c. xii. We recognize here the fact that we remember: it is a fact of universal recogni- tion that men remember. But what is memory ? Memory as retentive is mind holding on to acts or affections once experienced ; memory as repro- ductive is mind bringing forth into distinct con- sciousness and into further use such retained acts or affections. In either aspect there is in- volved in a state of memory something that is retained. And it is preposterous to suppose that one mind has felt the affection and dropped it for another mind to pick up and transmit to a third, and so on ; that there has been a succes- sion of heirs as in the case of an estate. But we need to take a higher view. Continuousness of mind is not merely the ground of memory , memory, as will be seen hereafter, is but mind it- self abiding, continuing on with the form which it has taken on in some previous experience. § 14. Further, the continuousness of mind is evidenced in what is universally experienced and 22 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. universall)' recognized as habit — the holding on of any specific form of mental activity. Memory, indeed, in its aspect as an active state, is but a form of habit. Some habits originating in child- hood abide through old age; others disappear to our limited vision, but hold on, invisibly affecting our mental action. Habit attaches to feeling, to thought, to will, to the whole mental life. It is indeed a recognized law of every living thing that it tends to continue any form of action till the energy that prompts it ceases or other opposing energies hinder. Men have habits of feeling, habits of thinking, habits of purposing and choosing. But clearly there can be no habits con- ceivable in what has no continuousness. Habit is a law of mental life ; it has its ground and seat in mind as continuous. Habit finds its expla- nation and governing laws in mental continu- ousness, presupposing it, therefore, and proving it. § 15. Once more, the continuousness of mind is evidenced in the fact of mental grozvtJi, as it is the necessary Condition of such growth and is presupposed in it. The human mind grows. The fact is universal and is universally recog- nized. It grows from puny childhood to sturdy manhood. It grows in range of acquisition and in vigor of capacity. It grows in every function. Feeling strengthens and expands in continued life and exercise. The passion of a child is quick as it is tender and susceptible ; but it is transitory as a controlling affection, and easily THE CONTINUOUSNESS OF MIND. 23 yields to new impulses, tracing only shallow marks of its existence on the abiding soul. The passion of adult manhood is comparatively strong and enduring, and shapes more observably men- tal character. So thought grows, develops vigor and augments its treasures of knowledge in the continuance of legitimate exertion. And purpose and endeavor in the same way grow in strength and also in breadth and compass. These abstract statements are verified in concrete life. Men are, as a general fact, growing into fuller and more determinate character. The portrait of the youth can hardly be identified with the picture of the man. The man is hardly himself, indeed, in the fullest sense, till he has growth ; and his charac- ter is fairly represented only in the picture of ad- vanced age, if, at least, the picture be taken be- fore physical decline has begun its defacing work. The philanthropist is a man of growth. He was a child as careless and as selfish as others were ; he has grown by his continuous life of sym- pathy and of kindness. The artist has grown by continuous study and production of beautiful or perfect form. The philosopher has grown by protracted thinking, observing and reflecting. The statesman, the general, all men who have large character are the subjects of growth ; and they are so by reason of this law of mental con- tinuousness. Only as what has been attained is still held, can there be any accumulation of strength or resources. It is the grand vice in 24 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. education that the growing mind disregards this fundamental principle of growth. Skipping from study to study, from school to school, from teacher to teacher, permanent acquisition of knowledge, of thought, or of skill is impossible except on the lowest scale. If bud after bud be nipped just as it has begun to germinate, the season of education passes with no possibility of growth ; and the characteristic volatility, shal- lowness, and imbecility of childhood mark the youth and the man. The principles of mental continuousness, which may be violated although not with impunity, allow an indefinite growth. Life begun tends of itself to grow ; once started, if guarded and nourished till it has attained the stage of self-maintenance, it keeps on, itself put- ting forth new buds and at the same time send- ing back aliment to the parent stock itself. The simple condition is continuousness — continuous- ness to the proper stage in like direction, and under like conditions of endeavor. As there is mental growth, in fact to a degree, and in possi- bility to an indefinite extent, so there must be the necessary condition of this growth — mental continuousness. The whole mind thus has a nature susceptible of indefinite growth. As the plant and every growing thing unfolds itself in its several organs, in continuously successive yet simultaneous de- velopment, from primitive life-germ to stalk and root, to trunk and branch, to twig and leaf, THE CONTINUOUSNESS OF MIND. 25 to flower and fruit, the whole mind grows. This growth may be stunted, or it may be fostered and quickened ; it may be misguided into de- formity or be wisely trained into strength and beauty. The great fact is : the mind, as a living active nature, is the subject of indefinite growth. The fact is evidence of the great truth or princi- ple of the continuousness of mind. There are certain facts to be recognized which seem at first view to be opposed to this represen- tation of mental continuousness. The mind is essentially active ; but this essential activity seems sometimes to be interrupted, as, for exam- ple, in sleep. It has been, indeed, a somewhat debated question whether the mind does sus- pend its activity in sleep. Sometimes, at least, no sign of activity appears. Nothing is re- membered on recovery of wakefulness. But the predominance of evidence in the case is alto- gether on the side of continued mental activity. That, on waking, we remember nothing of this action that is going on during sleep, has little weight ; we do not remember much of what we know to have been in our thought, particularly of uninterested and unintentional thought. It would puzzle one to recall the total current of his lighter incidental thinking during the hour just passed ; to recall even much of it. We remem- ber, perhaps, if we are careful to attend to it, the thought that we happen to have just at the moment of waking; but the dream that has 26 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. seemed to embrace numerous events of long con- tinuance, hours, days, years even, may have occu- pied only the waking moment. The oblivion attending disease is no disproof of a suspension of mental activity, as often recovered health brings back what had seemed to be forgotten. The presumption is all against the belief of such a cessation in sleep or in disease. The life of mind certainly continues, for memory can travel back to previous experiences, which would be impossible if any chasm intervened. And how- could this life of mind, which is in its very essence active, continue unless acting ? We have evidence of this continued action in the observed restless- ness of persons in sleep, showing a mental agita- tion of which, when they have awaked, they can perhaps remember nothing. So in the records of somnambulism it is shown that a long, well-connected series of actions, solv- ing intricate problems, composing letters, execut- ing works of art, as painting, and the like, may take place in sleep of which there is no recollec- tion on waking. The somnambulist sometimes seems to live two different lives. He remembers in his normal condition nothing of his somnam- bulistic experience, and conversely nothing of the latter when in his normal state. The great fact appears in these records, that there may be sim- ple suspension of power to recall into distinct consciousness mental acts and affections for days or weeks, without actual annihilation of them in the consciousness. CHAPTER IV. THE ORGANIC NATURE OF MIND. § 16. The human mind is to be recognized as having a proper organic nature. It is a part of a larger whole without itself, as it is also a kind of whole in relation to parts within itself. In each of these relationships, of part to a larger whole, and of whole to its own parts, it both ministers and is ministered to, existing and acting ever in sympathetic interaction, in respect both to outer realities and to its own inner diversified being. The human mind is a part of a larger whole — of a universe of being around it. Obvious and simple as is this truth, it is liable to be overlooked in philosophical speculation, and error easily slips in and vitiates our conclusions. As a part it is finite. The whole of which it is a part may con- ceivably be, or it may conceivably not be, bounded. There is a whole, embracing all smaller wholes or parts, which is not bounded. Indeed the idea of finiteness, of bounds or limita- tions, attaches properly only to the notion of a part. To think of a whole as bounded is at once to make it a part. The idea of a whole in itself excludes the notion of bound, which, when it 2S GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. comes in, at once makes the former whole a part. A part is essentially and necessarily finite ; a whole in itself, as whole simply, excludes finite- ness or bound. If bounded, an object must be bounded by something else, and so the two are parts of a larger whole. The human mind as part is finite. It is limited in the range of its activity and also in the intensity of its activity. It can compass but a part of the universe of objects around it. Age and growth enlarge this sphere of its objects , but the more it takes in, the more capacious it becomes, the more does the sphere of objects widen and enlarge. Its energy too is limited. It is ever encountering forces which it finds itself incompetent to over- come or resist. Its history is at times to faint, and quail, and yield. Its very conquests are con- fessions of hopeless desires for the more that remains to be won. The poet sings and the philosopher boasts: " On earth there is nothing great but man ; in man there is nothing great but mind ; " yet both conclude with equal truth that this greatness " is nought but weakness and de- pendence." For this very finiteness, this limited, bounded nature of the human mind is not absolute. As organic, it is dependent. Its very activity waits to be moved at the beginning of its being by some outward object that comes to awaken and call it forth. It cannot even choose its object ; for before its beginning action it does not know THE ORGANIC NA TURE OF MIND. 29 whether there be object for it, or if there be, where it may be, or what its character, or how it may be brought nigh to move the mind to its first exertion. So all along the course of its history, the human mind is dependent on things around it. The consciousness of this finiteness and de- pendence may be awakened in reflection on any occasion of the mind's action on its objects. That the human soul is but a part of the universe of being ; that there are, accordingly, other parts with which it exists in incessant interaction ; that there is a whole greater than itself, to which it can see no bounds, — infinitely greater, with which its own being is interlinked, — these are truths rooted in the very depths of its history. This sense of dependence, it has been in truth maintained, has as a necessary correlate the truth that there is an object — an infinite whole — and other objects — other parts of indef- inite extent — on which it more or less depends ; but it is erroneous to suppose that the sense of dependence exists before any activity of the mind is called forth, existing as a mysteriously inborn principle. Much more erroneous, if possible, is it to suppose that any such native sense of de- pendence can indicate beforehand the particular character of the object on which it depends. It is accordingly an illegitimate foundation for an argument for the existence of God ; for He can be known in his distinguishing attributes only as 30 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. He manifests himself. The human mind is incom- petent to determine from itself, from its own nature or experiences, except in the most general way, the properties of the world of beings ex- ternal to itself. As it finds in actual experience that it can exert its native activity on other ob- jects around it, and as it finds itself thus to be a part of a larger whole, it may legitimately reason that these objects are more or less like itself, since otherwise they could not be parts of the same whole ; and that they are also more or less in sympathetic affinity to itself, since otherwise there could be no interaction between itself and them. But this sense of dependence, of relation- ship as a. part in sympathy with the external world of being, can arise only on the actual exer- tion of its activity in interaction with the objects on which it depends. Its life begins with action ; and there can be no sense or feeling, if at least we leave out of the account the impression which first determines it to act, anterior to such begin- ning of its life. § 17. This characteristic of dependence in- volves the more positive organic attribute of sym- pathy. The human mind not only depends, but suffers, is passive. Its very activity is encom- passed or pervaded by this sympathetic nature through which it experiences — suffers, or is pas- sive to — the action of other realities in its uni- verse of being. It is never purely active, nor purely passive. Any particular mental state is THE ORGANIC NATURE OF MIND. 31 characterized alike in both respects, as passive and as active ; yet not necessarily in equal degree. So we speak of the mind as a faculty, when we regard the active side, and as a capacity, when we regard the passive side of the experience. The mind is ever in all its states both faculty and capacity. As one part of a universe, the human mind stands in organic, that is, in sympathetically inter- acting relationships to the other parts. That it should be affected by them as well as itself react upon them, according to their respective natures, is involved in the very idea of a universe. All created things, so far as we can know them, are bound up together in one, and reciprocally act upon each other. The fact of this sympathetic interaction is one of universal recognition. To be subject to this law of reciprocal action, that is, to be truly sympathetic in its nature, is one of the most fundamental characteristics of mind ; one of its most comprehensive laws. Out of this characteristic in its constitution, as will be seen, are evolved the governing principles of one of the leading functions of mind. In this organic inter- action with other realities, the mind evinces its sympathetic nature ; it impresses and receives impressions ; communicates with other realities, imparting and receiving. § 18. In an analogous way, the human mind pos- sesses the character of an organic whole in rela- tion to its own parts. It is in sympathy with 32 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OE MIND. them, and they with one another. The whole mind never moves, no specific function moves, but in this reciprocal sympathy — acting and react- ing. The whole is affected, is characterized by each particular function, and each particular function is similarly affected and characterized by the whole organism, as well as by every other function. The whole nature of the human soul or spirit gives character to each specific act and affection ; and each feeling and thought and en- deavor gives character to the action of the whole mind, just as the several functions of respiration, circulation, digestion, interact with the animal body as a whole, as well as with one another. The special functions of the mind interact in like manner with one another. Our feelings influence our thoughts ; our thoughts determine our wills. Each function is in organic, sympathetic ministry to each of the others. Farther than this, each function is an organic whole to its parts ; and the same character of sympathetic interaction is to be recognized in it. The feelings influence subordinate feelings ; the thoughts subordinate thoughts; the purposes subordinate purposes; and all these subordinate acts or affections are in organic sympathy with one another. Throughout the entire structure of the human mind thus do we discover this grand characteristic and attribute. Out of it we shall evolve great determining, regulative laws of mental action and affection. The human mind is an organism. THE ORGANIC NA TURE OF MIND. 33 Its whole life is in sympathetic interaction and ministry in relation to beings external to itself, and also ever maintains the same organic character in relation to itself and its own constit- uent functions. CHAPTER V. THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF MIND. § 19. We have recognized the mind as an organism with a threefold function. § 10. We have seen also that it is essential to the very life of mind that these its several functional activities should maintain a perpetual interaction with one another. § 18. Thought must act upon feeling as object and equally upon purpose ; and they in like manner upon thought and upon each other. The human mind knows thus its own feelings, knows its own purposes or determinations. It equally knows its own thoughts. " If I did not know that I knew," says Hamilton most truly, 11 1 would not know ; if I did not know that I felt, I would not feel ; if I did not know that I desired, I would not desire." The self, the ego, would not be a true self or ego if destitute of this organic function of knowing all it does and feels. This self-knowing power possessed by the human mind is denominated consciousness. The etymol- ogy of this term and its use, both in familiar dis- course and also in scientific discussion, indicate very exactly its meaning. " Consciousness," says Locke, " is the perception of what passes in a THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF MIND. 35 man's own mind." In like manner Reid affirms, " Consciousness is a word used by philosophers to signify that immediate knowledge which we have of our present thoughts, and purposes, and in general of all the present operations of our minds." . . . . " Consciousness is only of the things in the mind and not of external things." Hamilton says: "The expressions, I know that I knozv, I know that I feel, I knozv that I desire, are translated by / ant conscious that I know, I am conscious that I feel, I am conscious that I desire. Consciousness is thus the recognition by the mind or ego of its own acts and affections." Two characteristics stand out distinct and un- qualified in these representations of conscious- ness; first, that it is essentially a term denoting knowledge ; secondly, that its sphere of knowing in regard to its objects is exactly " what passes in the mind itself." Consciousness, then, in mental science, must be held ever to be characterized as simply a knowing function and is limited to the mind's own acts and affections. It is only a loose popular use of the term when it is said : " I was not conscious that the clock had struck; " "that the sun had risen," and the like ; as if we could be conscious of purely external objects. In the strict technical usage of exact thought we can be said to be conscious only of what passes in our own minds. The term, however, it should be observed, like other terms of similar character, although as cor- 36 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. rcctly used, ever presenting this elemental contest of self-knowing, is employed with divers specific modifications of meaning. It is variously used to denote the power or faculty of self-knowledge, the exercise of this power, and the result of the exercise. The term is also sometimes loosely used to denote the mind or spirit itself, or the spiritual nature generally, and moreover its con- dition or state, or what it experiences, and partic- ularly here the abiding result of this experience. As a technical term in mental science it denotes simply self-knowing or self knowledge. § 20. Consciousness is to be ever recognized as being essentially of an active nature — -a power or a function. To be conscious is to know. Con- sciousness must possess the properties and parts of knowledge generally, as we shall hereafter come to recognize them. It is of an active nature therefore as is knowledge. Only in the allowable looseness of familiar discourse, or the license of poetic and rhetorical usage, never in the exact- ness of science, can consciousness be truly repre- sented as a light. It is a beholder in its essential meaning. Neither can it be truly represented in scientific discussion as a condition, in anv other sense than as knowledge is a condition. It is illusive and misleading to represent it as that which must be supposed to be antecedent to all mental activity or affection, except in its loose use as a synonym of mind itself. The nature of such a supposed antecedent none can tell or even con THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF MIND. 37 ceive. There is not anything back of the mind's acting to be imagined as antecedent condition to its acting, to its knowing, to its knowing its own acts, except indeed, the active nature itself and some object on which this active nature is to exert itself. Out of the groundless assumption concerning consciousness as such antecedent con- dition to mental action, which in its mysterious nature can be filled with all sorts of properties and relations — out of such mystic imaginings can come only illusion and error. Neither can con- sciousness be truly regarded as a field, in which the active mind may employ itself. It is the cultivator, the laborer, the producer, the active power. The field of consciousness can be noth- ing but the field in which consciousness exerts itself — the field of internal or mental phenomena, of actual mental products. It has no existence until after the mind has felt or acted. It does not condition or determine those acts or feelings , in strict scientific meaning consciousness only knows them — becomes cognizant of them — when existing. Consciousness is but one form of knowledge. There is a knowledge which respects objects without the mind, objects that are presented to the mind through the physical senses and also objects that, being themselves of a purely spirit- ual nature, address the mind directly through its own apprehensive sense. This form of knowledge is precisely distinguished from the knowledge 3S GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OE MIND. called consciousness or conscious knowledge, by the characteristic that its objects are external to the mind while those of conscious knowledge are entirely within the mind. Consciousness accordingly is not to be reckoned as a fourth function of mental activity, co-ordi- nate with the functions of feeling, thought, and will. It is as a knowing function simply a subor- dinate function of the intelligence. Consciousness is one form of knowledge— knowledge confined to the self ; other knowledge respects the not- self. The knowing nature in these two forms of knowledge is the same ; the object which it re- spects only is changed. There can therefore be no more mystery in consciousness, in self-know- ing, than in knowing external objects. But farther, consciousness, strictly speaking, gives only that form of knowledge which is denom- inated perceptive or intuitive, in distinction from reflective knowledge. It simply observes, per- ceives, intuits, the mental act or affection as a phenomenon of mind. The discriminative act which analyzes the act or affection, distinguishes its characters or contents and judges what they are, follows the action of consciousness in observ- ing. The knowledge given in consciousness is thus only immediate, inchoative knowledge, not full, completed knowledge, such as is first gained when a proper judgment emerges. Con- sciousness gives only perceptive or intuitive, not attributive Knowledge. § 137. THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF MIND. *" 39 Conscious knowledge, being thus immediate and of an object nearest possible to view, and accordingly exempt from the liabilities to mistake that may attend means or instruments of knowing, is of the first and most commanding order. No testimony respecting real things can outrank that of consciousness. But while consciousness is recognized as strictly self-knowledge, its sphere being entirely circum- scribed by the mind's own modifications, Sir William Hamilton contends that this immediate knowledge, given in consciousness, embraces also the external object which interacts with the mind and impresses it. " I see," he reasons, " the ink- stand. How can I be conscious that my present modification exists — that it is a perception and not another mental state, and finally, that it is a perception of the inkstand only, unless my con- sciousness comprehends within its sphere the object, which at once determines the existence of the act, qualifies its kind, and distinguishes its individuality? Annihilate the inkstand, you annihilate the perception ; annihilate the con- sciousness of the object, you annihilate the Con- sciousness of the operation." He admits that it sounds strange to say, " I am conscious of the inkstand," but maintains that the apparent incon- gruity of the expression arises from the prevalence of erroneous doctrines of perception. The difficulty of Hamilton arises from his failure to observe the sharp distinction between apprehensive and attrib- 40 * GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. utive knowledge — between perceptive or intuitive and reflective. In fact, he represents consciousness as discriminative and as involving judgment and even memory. Still he holds that consciousness is an immediate knowledge and enumerates only three things as necessarily involved in it — a knowing subject, a modification, and a recognition of the modification by the subject. These three things are clearly reducible to two— the knowing or conscious power and the modification ; so that it is the mental modification only of which con- sciousness in its simplicity takes cognizance. Consciousness, then, as the function of self- knowledge, giving only immediate, perceptive or intuitive, and not analytic and attributive knowl- edge, and having for its object some modifica- tion of the mind, some mental act or affection, must be held to regard that object only as a concrete ; it is the mind itself, but the mind as acting or feeling in some specific way that is regarded in consciousness, just as in the imme- diate perceptive knowledge given in vision the perception takes in the concrete whole — the bird flying or the fish swimming. The analytic discrimination into subject and attribute — the bird as subject and the flying as attribute — is pos- terior to the perception ; this is an act of re- flective knowledge. Consciousness takes notice of the mind as modified — as acting or feeling. It is this concrete which is its proper object. We use language in a loose, unscientific way, accord- THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF MIND. 41 ingly, when we speak of consciousness as having the pure ego, or self, irrespectively of its acting or feeling, as its proper object. In scientific discourse such representation is erroneous and leads to unsound speculation. Self-conscious- ness in exact truth always regards the self not abstractly, but in concrete act or affection. But a modification of the mind, a mental act or affection, involves an object as well as a subject. It is ever an interaction of mind and object, in which both meet. Conscious- ness takes cognizance of this interaction, which takes place within the mind itself, with all the peculiarities that characterize it. Its vis- ion takes in, however, only the interaction, the impression. The outer object in itself does not come within its range of view, except in its working, as a force from without actually impressing or engaging the mind. Consciousness may present grounds of inference as to what the object may be ; it does not immediately observe the inkstand. The same state of mind might be occasioned by a mere image of the inkstand, by internal nervous affection, by some exterior force. It is competent to affirm perhaps thus the reality of a world without as discerning the two- fold character of the interaction : but, what the na- ture of that exterior something is, what its form, its mode of working, its relations to the world without, consciousness itself does not observe. Here comes in the function of reflective thought. 42 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. This analytic movement of thought proper may follow so quick upon observation by consciousness, that the two acts may seem to be one. The truth remains: consciousness simply observes ; it does not analyze ; it gives no attributive cog- nition. It observes, we repeat, the mental affec- tion, the impression, the interaction ; it does not take cognizance of what produces the affection or impression ; it does not observe the inkstand while yet it may observe the immediately suc- ceeding movement of thought by which the object producing the impression is inferred to be the inkstand. § 21. Consciousness is variously modified, both in degree and also in range. As is true of all mental activity the human consciousness varies in the vigor or intensity of its action. It varies with native energy, with bodily health and condition, with advance in age and experience, with growth and culture. In specific exercises, also, we speak of being "fully conscious," " clearly " or " distinctly conscious," or of being " feebly " or "indistinctly conscious"; and we speak also of being " entirely unconscious." In like manner, the human consciousness is variously modified in respect to its range of object. While, generally speaking, all mental acts and affections lie properly within its range — and nothing but such acts and affections — in fact, only a part, a very small part, can be truly said to be at any one time in actual view. The very finite- THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF MIND. 43 ness of the human mind involves this. It can no more truly take cognizance of all its own modifi- cations at any one moment than it can be cog- nizant of all that passes in the world around it at once. There are thus what have been called " latent modifications " of the mind, acts or affec- tions, which, although lying within the realm -of consciousness, escape its notice. In this fact we find the explanation of certain mental phenom- ena. CHAPTER VI. THE SPONTANEITY AND SELF-DETERMINATE- NESS OF THE MIND. §22. THE mind, as an essentially active na- ture, must begin its being in action. This be- ginning exercise of activity cannot of course be self-caused. It is determined by the power that created the mind itself. This activity originating, thus in a source external to the mind continues on, as we have seen, never en- tirely superseded by the mind's power of self- control. There is no good ground for supposing that it ever ceases. We are conscious of an ever- flowing current of mental activity that we neither originate ourselves nor sustain. Often, indeed, we are but too sensible that it holds on against our express endeavor to check it. It flows on during sleep and sweeps on even during periods of unconsciousness, connecting our past experience with our present. It takes hold of our self-originated exertions and bears them on often without any effort of our own. The thought starts perhaps through an express de- termination of our will; it holds on by a power of its own, at least by a power that is not prop- erly of the will itself, but rather from above and THE SPONTANEITY OF THE MIND. 45 upon it. This activity, thus primitive and last- ing, which involves an element other than that of mere continuousness, we call spontaneous to dis- tinguish from that other activity which we recog- nize as coming from our own determination — from our free-will, which is hence designated voluntary or volitional, self-determined, and also from that kind of activity which necessarily takes place in us from the action of external realities upon us. Our thoughts and our imaginings are so-called spontaneities as distinguished from the free exercises of the will. But these exercises of the will themselves, after being freely put forth, also participate in this spontaneity. We have thus only to purpose, as to take a walk, and the purpose is kept alive through this primitive spontaneity of mind, and we keep on walking without any fresh determination of will. The will continues its action in that particular way of purposing the walking. §23. The free-will is accordingly to be dis- tinctly recognized as a characteristic function of the human mind, and as distinct from what is purely spontaneous or necessary in its nature. We are conscious of the exercises of this func- tion. We recognize this freedom in others. We regard ourselves as responsible for the right exer- cise of this determining power, and hold others to a like responsibility for their free action. This self-determining power is the dominant power in our mental nature. It presides over the 46 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. mind's natural activity, controls within certain lim- its the direction in which it shall flow, and regu- lates to a certain extent the measure of its inten- sity. We are free thus to choose the commanding aim and end of our lives, or direct the ruling ap- petency or craving of our natures and so form and fix our characters. We to a certain extent, also, freely control our mental growth and cul- ture, making ourselves superior often to circum- stances, making even such circumstances as are in themselves adverse and untoward to be help- ful by our triumph over them. Struggle develops strength ; and opposition subdued is made subservient and ministering to our over- coming purpose. The activity of the mind, spontaneous from its creation and ever continuous through its existence, is also free and self- determined. " 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus and thus. The power and corrigible authority of this lies in our own wills." § 24. Whether spontaneous or free, all mental activity flows on towards a result — an end. It is not to be characterized as driftless. It has a dis- tinguishable drift or tendency, which, however much modified by occasion or circumstance or ex- ternal condition, is never utterly lost. It is not the mere sport of circumstance, nor is it in itself wholly without trend or definite set. Nothing indeed " walks with aimless feet." We are sen- sible in ourselves that our mental activity, our thoughts, our feelings, our purposes, our whole THE SPONTANEITY OF THE MIND. 47 mental natures, flow on in the direction in which they are set. We observe, too, that both individ- ually and collectively men are generally sure, if undisturbed, to hold on in a course once entered upon. In fact, we recognize, from manifold views and considerations, that the mind of man has a true rational nature, imparting an end or aim or design in its being and its action. So far, thus, as the activity of the mind is rational, it is properly telle, ever tending to an end or result. This general end or result of mental activity is to be recognized as good or evil. We cannot question that the creature of a wise and benefi- cent maker was fashioned for good, so that in the designed and legitimate direction of itself and of its powers it would finally reach a goal that is on the whole good. Endowed with freedom the creature himself may misdirect the current of his being as designed by his creator, and so, missing the good, fall into the evil. The entire current of the mental life may thus be misdirected ; and spe- cific powers or functions also may be perverted. The fitting end, however, is ever neared ; the life as a whole trends ever to an end that is good or evil, and each specific endeavor with the different specific habits of life has a corresponding trend. The course maybe arrested, the direction turned; but the tendency, the drift, is ever present with the entire mental activity and with each specific exertion. But for this great telic characteristic of mental activity we should be powerless as to 4S GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. forming our characters, or shaping our destinies. As will be seen hereafter, moreover, this telic characteristic of mind, this drift towards an end or object, gives character to certain of our feel- ings. Our passive nature being impressed under the influence of this natural drift of the mental life towards some object assumes the form of a craving. Its nature seeks the object towards which it thus tends or drives ; it experiences a want. The modifications of this feeling of want appear in the form of propensities, appetites, and desires. In this way, this drifting feature of mind determines in the passive affections of the soul an important class of the feelings. CHAPTER VII. THE RELATIVITY OF THE MIND. § 25. As organic part of a larger whole the human mind exists in relation both to the whole itself and to the other parts of that whole. As it- self an organic whole, it exists also in relation to its own parts, and these parts exist in reciprocal relation to one another. This relativity in the existence of the mind appears at once of immense extent and immensely diversified. In the ex- pressions, " the necessary relativity of the human mind," " the necessary relativity of human knowl- edge," a large diversity of specific meanings may be comprehended. It is of the first importance therefore that speculations in this field of thought should with peculiar care maintain a firm hold on the specific application of the term which is in- tended. There are several forms of this relativity per- taining to the human mind, which it seems par- ticularly needful for clearness and for security against error in our studies of mind, to specify and define. It should be noticed, at the start, that a relative attribute pertaining to an object determines nothing as to the essential attributes 50 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIX D. of the object. These essential attributes, that is, the essence of the object or concretely the object itself, must exist before there can be any relation- ship to other things. § 26. In the manifold relativity of the human mind is to be recognized as first and most funda- mental, the relation already intimated of real to .real — of the mind as a real existence to other real existences. As organic part of a universe of real existences the human mind exists and acts by necessary implication in the relation of a real to a real. That itself is real implies that the other parts with which it constitutes an organic whole are also real. The grand fact that it is an or- ganic part and is real itself proves that it is in re- lation not to phantoms, but to realities. It in- teracts in fact with them ; and interaction in- volves reality. It involves activity as well as reality. The human mind can interact only with other active natures. Still farther, as a rational nature, a trifunctional organism, its interaction is with other rational natures. A function im- plies, as a necessary correlative, an object ; and diversity of function implies a certain diversity of object. In respect to each mental function and the action of each there must be its correlative object and a fitting condition of the object in order to be affected by the action. Every spe- cific act of one mind respects thus, exists in re- lation to, an affection of some other mind. Or to use a form of statement that shall avoid any im- THE RELATIVITY OF THE MIND. 51 plication of favor to any of the different theories as to the nature of matter, any specific energy going forth from my mind fastens upon a correl- ative energy in some other reality which accord- ingly must exist in a condition to receive the act ; the active implies the passive : the imparting im- plies the receiving ; each with a character corre- sponding in some measure and way to the char- acter of the other. We must presume, therefore, that the three functions of the human mind have their correlatives in the objects which they re- spectively regard. If, as the usage in philosoph- ical discussion warrants, and popular usage abund- antly supports, we designate by the term idea any specific act or affection of mind, then in the inter- action between mind and its object idea meets idea ; — idea as specific act of mind meets idea as specific affection of mind. Nothing but strength of bias or dullness of thought can infer from this the identity of mind and object. The very statement imports the exact opposition of one to the other. § 27. We have then in the trifunctional activity of the mind a threefold division of ideas as active or as put forth by the mind itself or of subject- ive ideas — those of intelligence, sensibility, and will, otherwise named cognitive, aesthetic, and purposive ideas. The presumption now is that we shall find a threefold division of ideas as object. This division, in fact, the history of thought and the literature of the world, has recognized as 52 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. the objective division — the division into the true, the beautiful, and the good. These are the three great ideas, the three comprehensive ideas, which have come down to us through the acres. Each of these divisions, the subjective and the objective, has been accepted with substantially unanimous consent. The one is the more recent, the other the more ancient. The literatures of the modern and the ancient world show corre- sponding tendencies of thought. Each may be regarded as the recognized classification of mental phenomena, more suited to the habits of thought in its own time, while yet equally valid for all other times. As the intelligence, the sensibility, and the will make up the entirety of the mental functions, so that we cannot conceive of the mind as acting except through one or other of these func- tions, so in the object of the mind's action, we cannot conceive of any character pertaining to it other than these three — the true, the beautiful, the good — at least of this order. And as the mind, as one organic whole, even when one func- tion predominates, must be at the same time also exerting its other functions, just as the animal body carries on all its functions together, even although one may exhibit at times greatly pre- ponderant activity, so in every object of mental action the three ideas ever co-exist inseparably. However much one may predominate in a given case, or however much one may engage our con- THE RELA TIVITY OF THE MIND. 53 templation or our thought, the others are still there in the object. Not an object can be con- ceived which in some respect or some degree is not at the same time true, and beautiful, and good. § 28. Still further, the threefold functions have each its respective object. The function of intelligence has for its object the true. This function deals with nothing else in the object but the true ; its sphere is entirely bounded by the true. The term, as used here, will be understood as a category embracing all gradations of the true — from the perfectly true to the absolutely false. So, on the other hand, the true is object for the intelligence alone — for no other function of the mind. The intelligence may be exactly defined accordingly as the function of the true. The function of the sensibility, using the term in its full meaning as inclusive of both the active side and the passive side, in like manner has for its object the beautiful. This function deals with nothing else but the beautiful, including here, of course, the several gradations from the perfectly beautiful to the positively ugly. And the beautiful is proper object for no other func- tion of the mind. The sensibility, including the imagination as its active side, may accordingly be defined as the function of the beautiful, or more properly as the function of form — the beautiful being only the perfect in form. § 31. In the same way the will has for its object the 54 GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF MIND. good, with its gradations from the perfectly good to the positively bad. It deals with nothing but the good in object. And the good is exclusive object for the will, which function might be de- fined as the function of the good. § 29. This twofold classification of mental phenomena into (1), the subjective, of function, as of intelligence, of form, including sensibility and imagination, and of will, and (2), the objective, of object, as true, beautiful, and •£*?r modes of our sense which are wholly subjective, that is, are in our minds, and do not at all pertain to the objects of our knowledge. A second theory is, that they are apriori, that is, they exist in the mind before any object that is viewed in relation to time or space, and are to be regarded as " native cogni- tions." The groundlessness as well as the need- lessness to any true science of mind of each of these theories alike have already, it would seem, been abundantly shown. They are mere assump- tions, taken up only to support certain theories, or because, perhaps, no other account seemed within reach of the human mind. A third view 19 290 THE INTELLIGENCE. of space and time regards them as real and as presented to the mind in a way analogous to that of all external objects that are known, through presentation to the mind by some attribute. § 191. Time is thus known or may be known on the occasion of any action, whether of the mind itself or of external reality, observed by it. Every action reveals as a necessary concomitant the attribute of duration. This attribute is not of the essence of the action itself. No analysis or inspection of that can detect it. From the action — from the mind acting or from the exter- nal body moving — may be abstracted every attri- bute that enters into the action itself and consti- tutes it, leaving an absolute zero so far as the essence of the action is concerned, while yet the abstraction may bring away no such attribute as duration. Nevertheless this attribute came into the mind as inseparably attached to the action. The simple fact is, that the action is set in this necessary relationship of time as duration, as the sun is set in the sky. If after an experience of the sun we abstract every essential attribute of the sun — color, figure, gravity — and thus think away the entire sun itself, there will still remain the sky in which the sun is set in real relationship. Just so, as just observed, we may abstract every intrinsic and constituent attribute of an action or of a motion, that is, of an active or moving object, as it has come into our experience, and still there will remain the relative attribute of THE TRUE RECEIVED. 291 duration. For every action must be regarded as having extrinsic as well as intrinsic attributes, which, although not essential as entering into its essence, are equally indispensable as conditions of its existence, since any part is conditioned on the existence of other parts. Here comes into play the quantitative relationship of part — of part to the whole. The part is necessarily in its whole. Our minds, all its activities, are parts of a whole of reality ; and every manifestation of mind, every action, by the necessities of thought itself, brings in this whole of reality, not in its full comprehension indeed, yet truly, just as the sun necessarily brings with itself into an apprehension the sky in which it is set, although not in its absolute wholeness or just as a severed limb implies the body of which it was an organic part. Time as the whole of duration, is revealed to us thus through this attribute of condition on the occasion of any specific action. It is revealed to us as real. It certainly is not an original product of the imagination, for imagination cannot create out of nothing ; and it creates only forms out of its own materials already acquired. It is not a prod- uct of thought, for such a work is entirely beyond the function of thought, which creates only thoughts of what is given to it, adding nothing. It is real, because it is given to the mind from without its own proper action, truly impressing it and determining a new state or mode of the mind's activity. We have an exact analogy in 292 THE INTELLIGENCE. geological science. The mastodon is revealed to us not as a whole, for the animal is long since extinct. It is revealed to us as a real existence, through a part — a particular bone. This part, by logical necessity, compels us to infer the exist- ence of the whole animal of which it must have been a part. The mastodon is revealed to us thus as a real, through the part which logically implies the whole. Just so, every action or motion experienced by the mind reveals itself as continuing, as a duration ; and this continuing or duration is given to us as a part which implies its corresponding whole — the whole of time. The idea of time accordingly has in a certain sense the character of necessity ; — a necessity lying not in essence but in relation. When we experience an action or a motion, time as the condition necessarily appears, as the mastodon appears to the thought of the naturalist on the perception of a bone. The supposition of such experience involves the presence of time under the necessities of thought by which the part implies the whole to which it belongs. Every action or motion has the relative attribute of duration ; and duration is a particular property of time, and so implies it. The idea of time is universal as well as neces- sary, as all men have experience of some action or motion. It is, moreover, self-evident in the sense that, given the experience, time reveals itself in its attribute of continuous duration. It THE TRUE RECEIVED. 293 is a proper object of intuition, not of perception proper ; for it is supersensible in its nature. Time touches no bodily sense. The sense decays, the body passes away, while time endures. Duration is the more interior and essential attribute of time ; but this duration itself has the attribute of continuous succession. But time as a real entity has another important attribute. Experience brings to us no beginning to time. Particular actions begin ; but they each appear to us as succeeding parts to a pre-existing move- ment ; we can discover no absolute beginning of motion. Every particular motion has a preced- ing; and, so far as our experience goes and up to the present moment, each has had its succeeding motion. The duration of any particular action or motion is thus a part of a larger duration necessarily implying a whole of which it is a part. Time is the whole of these parts, of these partic- ular durations. Conceived thus as a whole, time does not come under the category of bound or limit, or outer relation. It is as absurd to apply this attribute to time as a whole, as to apply the category of vertebrateness to stones, or of gravity to spirit ; for the very idea of a whole precludes all consideration of outward relation as pertinent to it, and of course all consideration of bound or limit or dependence. It is as preposterous to inquire whether time as a whole is finite or infinite, as to inquire whether a stone is a verte- brate or an invertebrate or whether spirit is 2<) \ THE INTELLIGENCE. heavy or light. It is logically legitimate under the law of disjunction to affirm that time is finite or it is not finite ; but a sound logic distinguishes this widely from the disjunctive proposition time is finite or infinite. Only in the looseness of popular speech can we speak of time conceived as a whole as infinite ; and in popular discourse the language is perhaps allowable. But specula- tion which starts with the assumption of time as a whole and then treats it under the category of limitation, is at once involved in the mist of bewildering and misleading fallacy. Duration may be logically considered as a part of time and may therefore be logically considered under the category of bound or limitation. The question is logically proper: is this or that duration finite or infinite. But wholeness excludes all notion of limit or outer relationship. If we have thought of an object as a whole, as, suppose, of an orange hav- ing as parts its rind and pulp, we may proceed to think of it as a part, as, for instance, of a larger number, and then it may be conceived of as finite or limited. But so long as it is thought only as a whole, it is not thought at all as thus finite ; so far as the thought regards it as a whole the attribute of limitedness is excluded, for the simple reason that all outer relationship is excluded from the notion of a whole. § 192. The genesis of the idea of space is in perfect analogy to the genesis of the idea of time. The experience of any physical body brings into THE TRUE RECEIVED. 295 our minds, besides its special essential attributes or its proper qualities, the attribute of position — of a here and there ; of place. This attribute of position comes by a natural association into this experience of a physical body, universally. It is the natural setting of such a body, but is not of its essence. It is an attribute of condition, of re- lation in the larger -sense. Abstract from our notion of a physical body all its essential attri- butes, still the notion of its attribute as being liere or there — of having position — remains. It is of the constitution of things that this association of body with position should exist in our experi- ence. It is not ours to determine why, or how, or wherefore. We have to deal only with the fact. The fact is that position is given to us ever and in- variably with our experience of a physical body. We do not say that in the guarded language of philosophical discussion, this association must be pronounced to be one of necessity in nature, for nature does not testify such necessity to our thought. But the experience of the association is universal ; so universal that common speech without much liability to error speaks of it as necessary. But position is a part of a containing whole — a whole of space. In our experience of physical body, accordingly, space as whole reveals itself to us through its part of position or of a here and there. The fallacy in the Berkeleian rea- soning, that we can have no knowledge of space as a real, because it cannot be a legitimate intellect- 296 THE INTELLIGENCE. ual notion nor yet is it perceived by any of our senses, is easily exposed. The notion of space is not attributable in its ultimate ground to the ex- clusive action of either intellect or perceptive sense, but to both combined. There is sense- perception first, as of some object ; there is then the intellectual inference from this, as a part to the existence of space as a whole, through the relative attribute of condition — position or place — as we perceive the bone of the mastodon and then infer the whole animal of which it is a part. The notion of space as a necessary idea comes in precisely as the notion of the existence of the mastodon becomes necessary on the condition of the existence of the bone. The existence of the part implies by the necessities of thought the ex- istence of the whole. But the part, the bone, must first be given to us in experience, before we can conclude to the existence of the whole of the mastodon. And this is a matter of contingency; we cannot beforehand assume the existence of the bone before it is presented to us. So posi- tion, the here or there, is matter of experience ; it is so far contingent. But position is given to us as a part ; and as the part necessarily brings into our thought the whole, position, or particu- larly extension, necessarily involves its whole — of unlimited extension or space. Given the fact of position, as part and so limited, the fact of space as whole and so not limited, is an infer- THE TRUE RECEIVED. 297 ence that partakes of the necessitous nature of perfect thought. Position as part of space has as its essential at- tribute that of continuous extension. This ex- tension is in three directions. In other words, real things conceived as particular substances and physical bodies are of three dimensions: length, breadth, and thickness. A mathematical point has no dimensions of any kind ; it is without di- mensions. But a point produced — extended — it is loosely said, forms a line which has one single dimension. A line produced forms a surface which has two dimensions. A surface produced forms a solid, which has three dimensions, and here we find the limit in real being. Space conceived as a whole cannot be consid- ered under the category of limit or outer relation. Position, as part, is limited, as one part is bounded by other parts of the same whole. It is logically legitimate to inquire of the extent of a position or place as more or less limited ; not of space while it is conceived as a whole. Space is not finite, is not limited ; only in the looseness of popular speech can we say it is infinite. SYNOPSIS OF FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES. § 193. It may be serviceable to present here a formulated statement of those most fundamental categories or classes of attributes which are re- vealed to our view on inspection of any accom- 298 THE INTELLIGENCE. plished thought or instance of knowledge. In order to such thought or knowledge there must be a thinking subject and a thought object. The fundamental categories of pure thought, that is, those which are given on inspection of the thinking element by itself, we have found to be Identity, Quantity, and Modality or Necessity, § § 1 61-165. But in order that an object may be thought it must be real and must actually im- press the mind. §§ 187,188. Hence the two nec- essary attributes in anything that can be thought, the categories of Reality and Activity. But in any actual thought of any object the union of the thinking subject and thought object reveals two other fundamental attributes. The object or thing thought becomes necessarily either Sub- stance with properties, or Cause with effects. § 177. We have thus these three fundamental classes of categories necessarily appearing in any actual thought of an object : — First Class : THE CATEGORIES OF PURE THOUGHT — Identity, Quantity, Modality. Second Class: THE CATEGORIES OF PURE TH I NG — Reality, A ctivity. Third Class : THE CATEGORIES OF THOUGHT- THING, Substance, Cause. The so-called three comprehensive ideas — the true, the beautiful, the good — constitute as we have seen, § 189, a class of categories of an en- tirely different order. They might be appropri- ately designated the TJiree Psychological Cat ego- THE TRUE RECEIVED. 299 ries, as they are given in the nature of the mind or soul itself as tri-functional and so involving this threefoldness of attribute in every object which it can apprehend, that is, in its exact cor- relative and complementary. II. SENSIBLE REALITY — MATTER. § I94. The Real as external object to the mind and as brought to it only through the me- dium of the bodily sense, is collectively known as matter. By this term is denoted the collective whole ; the parts of matter are bodies, including under this term all material or sensible magni- tudes from the greatest to the least, from suns to atoms and even the infinitesimal particles of the supposed primitive ether. The real in the world of matter, as in the world of spirit or mind, is given to us as a concrete which our reflective thought resolves into subject and attribute, by identifying which it effects its product — knowledge or truth. We know here as everywhere in the form of subject and attri- bute. The genesis of the idea of matter generally is analogous to the genesis of the ideas of time and space, only that it is reached through the medium of the bodily sense ; it is primitively appre- hended in perception, not in intuition. A part of matter — some sensible body — is presented to us ; we apprehend it as a part, implying other 300 THE INTELLIGENCE. parts, that is, other bodies, the aggregate of which constitutes a whole, which we call the world of matter — the material universe. Each body that we come to know is real ; for it comes to us from without and impresses our sense. This is the fundamental attribute of matter — reality. Even idealists can, and for the most part in fact do, admit this ; they only claim that what we call material substance is after all prop- erly spiritual in its essence ; it is none the less real. The particular body or portion of matter that we experience comes to us as a part — as limited ; but we discern no limit to the number of these parts. The whole which is thus brought to us through the part is given to us without discerni- ble limits ; and there is no indication given in the nature or relations of these parts of matter or any ground given in reason for supposing that this aggregate is limited, that is, becomes a part of some larger whole. Imagination is as inadequate to picture the boundaries of matter as it is those of time and space, or to impute any shape, char- acter, reality even, to what can lie outside of these boundaries. Beyond them is neither full- ness nor void, neither motion nor substance, not indeed anything, nor nothing ; for there is no be- yond them. The notion is contradictory to the deepest convictions of the mind. It is a convic- tion, attained indeed in experience, but not less trustworthy, that matter is one of the so-called THE TRUE RECEIVED. 301 infinities ; or, more correctly, one of those ob- jects which the human mind apprehends as wholes and accordingly as not limited — not sub- ject to bounds. Matter makes itself known to us through the bodily sense — through some impression it makes upon that. Matter thus is a source of energy, of force, of power ; it impresses our sense. This, then, is an attribute of matter which the fact of our knowledge of it presupposes. A very troublesome question to philosophers has arisen just here : What is the nature of this source of energy ? Some eminent thinkers have maintained that matter is energy — consisting " of mere mathematical centers of force " — nothing in fact but force. Others have conceived of matter as a real substance, but as nothing more than a mere passive receptacle of force. Matter, they think, is entered by force ; it retains such force, till some fresh force determines it to let it go ; at most it is but a mere inert receptacle and medium of. force. A third class of thinkers have conceived it as a real substance endowed with force as one of its essential abiding attributes, not as the pre- ceding class conceive, a mere casual visitor. Its other properties, besides passivity, are inert- ness, retentiveness, mobility, space-filling. There is still another doctrine of matter which, to say the least, is plausible. It is that matter is potentialized force ; that is, force changed from an active state to a simple potency. The univer- 3 o2 THE INTELLIGENCE. sal force or energy in nature is here conceived as existing in two different modes or states, active and inactive. As inactive it becomes a mere po- tency — a mere capability of operating. If we suppose the universe of force to become diversified into specific exertions of energy, a weaker energy may readily be conceived to encounter a stronger, and so, without losing its identity, to continue inactive for the time that it is thus overborne. It is now a potency, inoperative, but still subsisting. When the overbearing force is removed or new ac- cessions of force are gained, the potency may re- sume its active state. The theory has the merit of being conceivable ; of being in harmony with our existing knowledge of things and forces and espe- cially of matter, as inert, passive, receptive, reten- tive, mobile, space-filling; of being simple beyond most or all other theories ; and of removing per- plexities and shedding light on obscure problems in philosophy. We readily understand in the light it gives us why matter should possess just the attributes here enumerated. We more easily conceive also how mind and matter can interact, since they are not positively different natures, but only states or conditions of the same. The question is relegated to metaphysical speculation. But beyond all doubt what we have here to observe is that the true is presented to our minds in a form of what we call matter, what- ever may ultimately be established as the true doctrine of its nature. THE TRUE RECEIVED. 303 § 195. Material bodies can make themselves known to us only through the medium of the bodily sense. The true in them is subject to divers modifications in its way to the mind. In fact the true as existing in the outward object is attained only as the result of a process of inter- preting. The sun in the heavens thus, as object to the intelligence, as true, is not exactly the sun in our thought. In the first place the actual sun and the thought-sun differ in the very important respect that the one is object, the other is sub- jective ; the real sun is not absolutely and exact- ly the known sun. How much is involved in this simple point of difference, it is difficult to say. Even when we have what we rightly es- teem to be a right thought of the sun, there is a heaven-wide difference between the real sun and the thought-sun. A true thought of the sun is only a recognition of the attributes — the proper- ties and relations — of the sun. But farther, the precise character of these attributes suffers modifi- cations in reaching the mind. The attribute of brightness, for example, is modified by the state of the atmosphere through which the light is trans- mitted \ a murky atmosphere presents a different light from one that is clear. The light, further, impresses the sense of sight differently accord- ing to the ever varying condition of the organ of that sense — the eye — with its connected bodily organism ; — a diseased organ, an otherwise occu- pied organ, receives a different impression from 304 THE INTELLIGENCE. one in a different condition. Still farther, this impression itself is modified as it is transmitted to the central seat of sensation to reach the mind. And in the mind itself at last the impression is interpreted very differently in different mental conditions ; in respect, for instance, of intensity and of relation to other attributes. The other attributes, as of figure and of gravity, are sub- ject to like modifications in these several ways of their transmission to the mind. Besides all those modifications which attend a perfectly healthy transmission as we have noticed, a morbid condition of body or mind brings in manifold illusions and hallucinations in all our experiences of external objects. The attainment of the true is accordingly the result only of a long continued process of more or less unconscious interpretation. The particular character of this process in which the mind interprets out the impressions made on the bodily sense by external objects varies greatly in different cases in respect of difficulty, length, mode, and certainty of result. But the experi- ences being repeated over and over by the same mind and by the minds of others, by the multi- tudes of human minds, we cannot question the truthfulness of the results when there is general accord. If no discrepancy worthy of considera- tion is discovered in the testimony of the senses between one experience and another by the same mind, or between the experiences of differ- ent minds, and if no ground of rejection of the THE TRUE RECEIVED. 305 testimony is furnished in reason, the result must be accepted as a true interpretation. If it be not a demonstrative knowledge, it may be a certainty. So the race of men have concluded. The testi- mony of the senses is accepted as trustworthy. Men believe in the reality of external objects ; they have a belief of what these objects are. The true respecting these objects they believe them- selves to possess by legitimate and unimpeach- able means. There is besides a natural presump- tion in favor of the belief ; the laws of probabil- ities favor it. Moreover there is no valid argu- ment against it. 20 CHAPTER X. THE TRUE PRODUCED. § 196. The true first comes into our experience and so gives us a knowledge, a cognition, on pres- entation of some object. But a mere knowl- edge or cognition may, without the aid of any additional presentations of object, of itself alone become a source of further cognition. Besides the proper presentative knowledge which may be attained from the simple inspection of a thought or cognition revealing its own attributes and giv- ing us thus the categories of pure thought, the mind may attain still other knowledge through the application to what it has already attained of the different processes of legitimate thinking. Especially after attaining a plurality of cognitions respecting different objects or even respecting the same object, it may without further presenta- tions of object go on to attain an indefinitely large amount of other knowledge. There is a proper sense thus in which the mind may be said to produce knowledge. Acting in accordance with the fixed laws of knowledge or thinking, the mind may bring into light new cognitions not given by any presented object, strictly speaking, yet legit- THE TRUE PRODUCED. 307 imately attainable by thought. The true, as thus produced, we now proceed to investigate, particularly as to the various forms which it may assume in our thought and the specific processes by which it is attained. § 197. We are prepared by previous considera- tions, to accept the principle that the mind has no truth until an object is presented to it. There are no a priori cognitions in the sense that there are such before the mind's activity is called forth by some object presented to it. To search for any such truth is accordingly preposterous, and must be fruitless. Knowledge is the product of the mind's activity ; and this activity can be ex- erted only on condition that some object — the true in some form — has been brought or pre- sented to it. Provisionally until light is obtained or for some purpose of convenience in acquiring, or storing, or communicating knowledge, hypoth- eses or theories which are hypotheses corroborated in some way or degree, are legitimate. But they are not to be esteemed as true cognitions ; cer- tainly are not to be accepted as a priori cognitions that are not to be challenged. The assumption of some general formula which is to be accepted because a mere formal truism, as the famous for- mula of Fichte, " A=A" out of which to educe real knowledge, can never avail to any solid acqui- sition or evolution of truth and is pretty certain in the use and application of it to draw in some fatal paralogism. No more can the putting for- 30S THE INTELLIGENCE. ward of some comprehensive definitions, ad- vanced arbitrarily and without assigned ground or substantiating reason, as we find in Spinoza's sys- tem, satisfy the legitimate demands of sound knowledge. Such definitions are sagaciously, per- haps unconsciously of ill-intent, contrived to em- brace all that can be required in the way of proof in the development that follows. The fatal paralo- gism as before is sure to come in somewhere ; and here as there the paralogistic introduction of the real into what was, as assumed, only empty form, vitiates the whole procedure. Neither can any validating ground of truth, or legitimate source of truth ever be found in any mere assump- tion. The only legitimate procedure for finding either ultimate source or ground of truth is to take some instance of a knowledge accepted as such, which shall have also the character of a first or primitive knowledge and be a fair representative of such a knowledge and from it effect both the production of truth and its validation. We do this when we take either any simple intuition or a simple perception — it may be one of the most familiar character — respecting which we can make no mistake ; as " I feel a pain," or " I see the sun." Each of these assertions is in the form of a truth — subject identified with attribute — the self identified with one form of its essential ac- tivity as feeling or seeing. A subject and an attribute, that is, two concepts, and also a copula, which properly combined form a judgment, are THE TRUE PRODUCED. 309 in either case attained. Now from this we may proceed to evolve or attain other knowledge. We have attained a valid test of knowledge in the essential character of the judgment which is the primitive and legitimate form of all truth. That is so far true everywhere which bears this essential character of a truth. We read by in- spection of such a judgment, further, as in fact we have done, the categories of pure thought, and obtain in the study of them and their manifold relations, a body of truth of indefinite expan- sion in the realms of pure thought, as, for instance, with the addition at least of the notions of space and time as the necessary conditions of all appli- cations of the science in experience, the entire science of pure mathematics under the category of quantity. Then again we have the concepts — subject and attribute — and first as pure thought and afterwards as having real content — real feel- ing, real seeing. We find them to yield similar indefinite realms of abstract and concrete truth — truth of pure thought and truth of reality. Proceeding in this way we find our path clear and our attainments in knowledge sure. We have no need of invoking the aid of a priori truths, of native cognitions, of first principles, of rational intuitions, of axioms, of fundamental defini- tions — of assumptions of any name or any form. We carry with us one validating test — the ascer- tained character of a genuine knowledge. What ever stands this test — whatever possesses the 3 to THE INTELLIGENCE. essential character of a knowledge — is true knowl- edge. No skepticism can assail it to its harm. § 198. The several processes by which the mind may proceed legitimately to attain new truth from that which has already been gained are at once given us in logical science. They are of a twofold order, as determined by the twofold form of thought, a judgment and a concept. First, the essential element of a truth or judg- ment — the logical copula — may, when once legit- imately attained, be modified in various ways so as to present new forms of knowledge. Such changes are logically known as Reasonings. The identification may, under certain limitations which it is the province of logic to set forth, thus be turned so as that it shall directly respect the attribute and identify the subject with that ; in other words, the terms may be made to change places, as in the logical process of Conversion. So the breadth of the identification may be legiti- mately lessened as in Quantitative Restriction ; or the necessary truth be changed to an actual or a contingent as in Modal Restriction. From the very nature of thought, further, we are author- ized to derive new judgments from a disjunctive proposition as in logical Disjunction. Within cer- tain prescribed limits also, we may transfer the quality or modality of a judgment to the terms, or from the terms to the judgment, as in logical Transference. These are all instances of what are called, Immediate Reasonings, in which one judg- THE TRUE PRODUCED. 311 ment is changed to another without necessary in- troduction of any other thought. § 199. Under the class of Mediate Reasonings otherwise styled Syllogisms, in which one judg- ment or truth is derived from another, through the mediation of some third truth or judgment, are comprised two species : — (1) the so-called Categorical Syllogisms, embracing those two most important instrumentalities of thought in attain- ing new truth from that already attained, Deduc- tion and Induction, which mediate the derivation through the matter or the terms of the judgment ; and (2) the Conditional Syllogism, which effects the derivation of the new truth through the given judgment itself and embraces two species, distin- guished in respect to the two kinds of logical Quantity, the so-called Hypothetical and Disjunc- tive Syllogisms. § 200. It has been already stated that there are two, and but two, relationships of quantity of this order — that of the part to the whole and that of the part to other parts. The process of Deduction moves in the first relationship — moves between the part and the whole. The principle of this movement which legitimates it and validates its product is simply this : that whatever is contained either numerically, that is, in the j"orm of a sub- ject of a proposition, or comprehensively, that is, in the attribute or predicate of a proposition, must be contained in the whole or any larger part. The science of Deductive Logic has been, 312 THE INTELLIGENCE. since the days of Aristotle, who has left us the substance of its teachings, developed into a very- considerable body of principles and forms, and has constituted a prominent department of instruc- tion in the higher institutions of learning. Its formidable system of formulas has been severely assailed by Sir William Hamilton who has ex- posed its fallaciousness and its unfitness for prac- tical uses. The study of the principles of deduct- ive thought, however, accompanied by suitable exercises in the application of them is of indis- pensable service to thorough intellectual training. The principle of induction is found in the nec- essary relation of one part to every other part of the same whole ; all the parts must contain in common those elements or attributes by which they are constituted into a whole. The principle is as legitimate and clear as that in deduction. It embraces, too, numerous diversified applica- tions, for which definite laws may be prescribed, and valid forms of procedure may be indicated. It is, perhaps, the most serviceable instrumentality of thought in the advancement of knowledge. To it natural science is confessedly indebted for its great achievements. Yet the science of induction has been but slightly elaborated. In- deed, the nature of induction is little understood even by those who boast of its achievements. It is, in fact, even by them grossly misunderstood. Its validating principle or ground has been pre- posterously, although very generally, set forth as THE TRUE PRODUCED. 313 to be found in the alleged " uniformity of na- ture." Induction is thus made to rest on induc- tion, since it is only by induction that nature is known to be uniform. Induction suffers divers modifications like the deductive movement ; and accordingly a true science of induction must present a large and rich development of laws and forms, the knowl- edge of which with fitting exercises, must natur- ally be supposed to furnish not only an invalu- able means of mental discipline but also an equally invaluable stock of instrumentality for the effective advancement of knowledge. § 201. Secondly, each of the concepts in an at- tained judgment or truth, each of the so-called terms — the subject and the predicate — may also, like the judgment itself, become the fruitful source of new thought, with or without the con- comitant accession of other truth. The concept itself, it will be remembered, comes to be simul- taneously with the judgment, just as the mem- bers of the living body come to be necessarily and only with the body itself. There can be no genuine concept, accordingly, until there is a judg- ment. In simple truth, a concept, in the legiti- mate use of the word, is none other than either the subject or the predicate of a judgment; and can- not exist before the judgment, any more than a member can exist before the living body to which it belongs. A single and it may be a simple ob- ject may be presented to the mind and be appre- 31 4 THE INTELLIGENCE. hended by it in perception or intuition ; but it does not become a concept until the object is thought, in other words, is resolved into subject and attribute which are then identified in the judgment. The truth of a concept must accord- ingly be validated through the body of the judg- ment and as a constituted member of it. BrigJit- ?iess, thus, can never be accepted as a true con- cept of the Sun, except as it is recognized in the full body of the thought — the Sun is bright. As before explained the identification set forth by the copula respects concepts, not things. The true interpretation of the proposition is : my concept of the Sim is the same in respect of one attribute as my concept of round. Proceeding in this recognition of the relation of the concept to the judgment, the fundamental principle of which is the identity asserted be- tween subject and attribute, we may out of any validated concept, and especially out of two or more validated concepts, educe an indefinite amount of new truth, which being produced un- der the fixed law of thought must be genuine, legitimate truth — necessary truth — necessary, that is, if the original judgment be true and the principles of thought be observed in the process. These principles of thought, particularly under the category of quantity, allow of a twofold change in each of the terms of a judgment — in the subject- concept and in the attribute-concept ; a change THE TRUE PRODUCED. 315 by enlargement called Amplification, and a change by contraction or reduction called Resolution. § 202. We may thus amplify any attained truth in the form of subject-concept by combining two or more together in what is known as generaliza- tion. The one validating condition to be ob- served in this process is that the concepts so com- bined be recognized as having each been identi- fied in a judgment with some common attribute, which in such use is called the base of the new con- cept. Single objects are thus, to the great en- largement of truth, gathered into varieties ; vari- eties into species; species into genera; and one concept under a single name is legitimately made to embrace an indefinite number of subordinate classes and individuals ; as " man " comprises races, families, individuals, having in common the attribute characteristic of the class, — that is, the attribute which is the base of the generalization. This movement of thought is of inestimable value in the advancement of knowledge. It is a movement inconsiderately confounded with in- duction, from which all accurate thinkers will widely distinguish it. The movement is a simple one in its nature and is clearly validated under the more specific principle of a common base, as stated, and the more comprehensive principle of identity in the judgment. The amplification of the attribute-concept is analogous in process and in validity as well as in importance of result. Like induction as com- 316 THE INTELLIGENCE. pared with deduction, this process, as compared with the corresponding process in amplifying the subject-concept — generalization — as just expound- ed, has been overlooked and underestimated. The minds of learners have been less trained in it ; and the conscious use of it in the advancement of knowledge accordingly has been less common. But we may enlarge an attribute-concept by com- bining into one, two or more attributes having a common subject, which will here be the base of amplification, as the common attribute was the base in the amplification of a subject-concept, and in this way greatly enlarge the bounds of our valid knowledge. Under the common subject, John, thus, to exemplify by a very familiar instance, we may combine bodily, white, Caucasian, or bright, studious, persevering, and attain comprehensive concepts, for which we may devise convenient names or words in language. Such concepts are comprehensive concepts, and differ widely from generic concepts ; the former being combinations of attribute-concepts, the latter only of proper subject-concepts. § 203. The other process indicated, by which new truth is produced from concepts, is Resolu- tion or Analysis. As applied to subject-concepts this process is called Division and is the opposite of Generalization. As applied to attribute-con- cepts, the process is called Partition, and is the opposite of the process just noticed of attribute- amplification. They are both of them most use- THE TRUE PRODUCED. 317 ful and effective principles in the advancement of truth. They are validated by being recognized as proceeding under the more proximate princi- ple of logical quantity and the more comprehen- sive principle of logical identity. The resolution of the concept must proceed in recognition of the base, which of course will ever be the opposite term in the original judgment that gave rise to the concept, and must pass downward from whole to part or larger part to contained part, either numerically as in the case of a subject-con- cept or comprehensively as in the case of an at- tribute-concept. § 204. It will be observed on carefully inspect- ing these processes and comparing them, that as the subject-concept is enlarged, the corresponding attribute-concept is reduced ; and conversely as it is reduced, the attribute is enlarged. And con- versely as the attribute is enlarged, the subject is reduced, and as the attribute is reduced, the sub- ject is enlarged. For example, if to Socrates, Plato, etc., we add Cimon, Pericles, etc., so as to form the composite subject or generic concept Athe- nian, we at the same time reduce the attributes that characterize Socrates, or Plato, such as sage, moral, etc., which cannot be thought as belong- ing to all Athenians as Cimon. So reducing AtJienians to sage Atlienians, we in reducing the number of subjects enlarge the characteristics or attributes, having added the attribute sage to the attribute Athenian. 3i8 THE INTELLIGENCE. This is a method of producing new truth or new forms of knowledge that may be most con- venient and most serviceable. It is at once seen that it is a legitimate method, and its results must be accepted as true, provided at least the original concept is true and the procedure regular under the simple and clear principles of thought. § 205. By these few processes and in these le- gitimate modes of thinking we may thus build up an indefinitely large and imposing structure of knowledge. Such knowledge, likewise, is sound, genuine knowledge, for it is the knowing faculty's own building. It is, however, but knowl- edge — thought — after all. The great question suggests itself: is the world around us, is the universe, is nature, conformed to this thinking of ours, so that in its strictest sense what is true to us is true of nature — of the universe? This ques- tion calls for a fair and full consideration. It is to be allowed at the outset that the forms of the true in nature, using this term — nature — to denote the entire real object of our thought or knowledge, are not the same as those which we may or actually do construct in our thought. The chemist can effect combinations in his labo- ratory of which actual instances cannot be found in the world without. The heavenly bodies do not move exactly in that perfectly elliptic orbit which Sir Isaac Newton's fundamental principles of motion prescribe. Bodies do not exist around us gathered together in just such groups THE TRUE PRODUCED. 319 as our logical classifications effect for some pur- poses of convenience to our study ; there is no actual general man, or general tree. Notwith- standing all this, the combinations of elements in the natural world, the movements of the planets, and the modes of existence in the material world generally, never contradict the principles of thought ; and the variations noticed are simply such as the varying purposes or occasions might have produced while following strictly the same principles of thought. We have our peculiar aims in attaining certain results in particular forms of thought ; and nature has her aims pe- culiar to her, and so has her peculiar forms of products. It may be well to bear in mind in pur- suing the investigation that if there be in nature that which is really contradictory to our legitimate thinking, it is really unthinkable to us and does not concern us in any imaginable way. It is to us a very zero — a nothing. The agnosticism or the skepticism that denies or questions the real- ity in nature of truth to us, denies its own right to be or to be regarded with the slightest respect by men who think and who believe in thought. It is to be considered, moreover, that we start in our investigation with a well settled determi- nation of what truth is — what true knowledge is. We know that we know what we know by the incontestable demonstration that this knowledge has the accepted and undoubted character and essence of a true knowledge.. 3 2o THE INTELLIGENCE. § 206. We may begin our investigation with a search into the nature within, by a search into our internal, intuitional experience and thought. We feci — we have a feeling. The feeling is a fact , at least, we may assume it here as a fact ; and we intuit the fact ; that is, we are conscious of the feeling. This acceptance of the fact of feeling by our conscious selves, is not a knowl- edge in the highest and exactest sense, perhaps it is not a demonstrative, a necessary knowledge ; it is a belief, a trust, a faith ; but it is a certainty. It is a certainty of the highest order. If we are not conscious when we feel that we feel, we can- not be conscious of anything, and agnosticism, skepticism, sound knowledge, are alike annihi- lated and vanish away together. But this faith in our consciousness of feeling is beyond question, as it is to us the foundation of all knowledge. This consciousness is at once the ground, the prompting cause, and the object of our thought, when we think that we feel ; the ground of our assertion in thought that this attribute of feeling belongs to our feeling self. We have then one veritable thought — one sound knowledge — one genuine truth. We feel ; that is a fact in nature ; we know that zee feel, that is a truth of thought. Nature and our thought are in perfect accord, as object and subject ; Nature in our feeling soul is so far exactly conformed to our thinking, so that we can put the statement in words, we feel, iden- tifying subject and attribute and so having a true THE TRUE PRODUCED. 321 thought of a real fact in nature. We go further. We become in a like way conscious of a purpose, a determination, and think that we thus get a new genuine truth, as tested by the essential nat- ure of a truth ; we know that we purpose or de- termine. We become conscious, moreover, that we know that we feel and purpose ; this, too, is a truth as tested by the veriest criterion of truth — • its essence. We have now three attributes — feeling, willing, conscious or knowing — all per- taining to one subject — one conscious self — and identified with that subject. We combine these attributes under the law of attribute-amplification and find they fall into a true unity — which in fact we designate in a single word — self. The real fact in the realm of nature is so far found to be exactly conformed to our thinking. One process of thought is found to give us the true in nature. The true of nature is found to be the true to us. There is no contradiction or sign of variance. But w T e extend our investigations. Feelings, purposes, thoughts, repeat themselves. As hav- ing each its own essential property, we combine them into three several classes respectively ac- cording to these several attributes. Nature no- where shows any signs of reluctance. She most freely yields to the needs of our thinking. Na- ture is thus in these classifications conformed to our thoughts; she never contradicts in her indi- vidual objects our legitimate classifications. § 207. Pushing our investigation still farther 21 3 22 THE INTELLIGENCE. into our experience of the outer world, we find precisely the same thing substantially with varia- tion only in form. We combine with the largest freedom everywhere into comprehensive con- cepts and into generic concepts or classes ; and never a hint does nature give of opposition or conflict. Nature is conformed everywhere to legitimate thought. We direct our thought on whatever point ; it is all the same. Whatever exists of truth in nature knowable to us is con- formed to the demands of the true from within our own thought. We combine or synthesize, we separate or analyze, and nature never resists. So well assured are we that there can be no variance, that if there appear, as there may perhaps some- times appear to our first understanding, a seeming discrepancy, we ascribe it at once to our own weakness and liability to error or mistake. The same result is reached if we investigate the corre- spondence between nature and our reasoning. We have already indicated the logical unsound- ness of the common notion that induction rests on the uniformity of nature, since it makes induc- tion rest on itself, for we can know that nature is uniform only by induction. If it should be thought that this notion belongs to the class of a priori or native cognitions, we have, it would seem, sufficiently shown all these to be untenable as ultimate grounds of knowledge. That " na- ture is uniform " has in fact just the measure of scientific value, that the similar assumption " na- THE TRUE PRODUCED. 323 ture abhors a vacuum," once was imagined to have. It has a certain truth of meaning, and it es- pecially serves a use ; it is a cloak to our igno- rance, and protects our studies from inconvenient molestation. But nature allows as freely our in- ductions as our deductions, as our generalizations and our comprehensions of attributes. Nature is conformed everywhere to true thought. That is a grand truth which we find by experience, one which we can legitimately find by experience and sound thought applied to that experience. Induc- tion like all true thought rests on its own determi- nable principles. It is to be tested only by its own ascertained nature — its essential laws and legitimate forms. If it be suggested that there are seeming dis- cords and variances in nature ; and that there- fore legitimate thought may reach conclusions that are at war with facts, it is replied that there are what are called " sports " and " monstrosities," departures from what are conceived to be true type-forms. So there are freaks in our thinking pursuits ; we sport these at times and attain mon- strosities of product. Even in the purest of all forms of thought — pure mathematics. By skill- ful legerdemain the expert mathematician de- monstrates beyond the possibility of any discover- able error any given quantity to be equal to any other given quantity. But the certainty of. mathematical principles and the trustworthiness of their results when legitimately applied in cal- 324 THE INTELLIGENCE. culation, do not therefore totter and fall. There are satisfactory explanations of the seem- in"- falsities in the results. So with a higher knowledge and a sharper eye we might satisfy ourselves that nature has a satisfactory explana- tion for her " sports " and monsters in creation and is never thrown off her balance of exact truthfulness. Still further, induction itself brings to us strong corroboration of this grand truth that na- ture is ever true to herself and true to thought. Our conscious selves are a part o*f nature. The fact of our sympathetic interaction with nature, attested by our consciousness, involves that. In- duction accordingly may move freely and se- curely everywhere among the other parts of the body of creation and find the true and nothing but the true ; for, as parts of the same one whole, what is true of us as one part, is true of all the other parts, so far as parts of the same whole. That there is truth in nature and that the true in nature is true to us ; that, in other words, na- ture is exactly conformed to thought, so that our legitimate thinking in regard to nature must ever bring in legitimate and every way trustworthy results, appears then beyond all question. It is a fair presumption beforehand. The instincts of our nature involve it. The experience of our thinking ever corroborates it. The very principles of inductive thought lead to it. No one can advance a particle of valid proof to the THE TRUE PRODUCED. 325 contrary. Nature is true. " Order is heaven's first law." The creation is the product of true thought ; the universe in every minutest portion of its infinite stir moves ever along the straight lines of thought. BOOK IV. THE WILL.— I. SUBJECTIVE VIEW. CHAPTER I. ITS NATURE AND MODIFICATIONS. 208. THE WILL is the mind's function of will- ing. This function is otherwise known as the Volun- tary Power, the Orectic Faculty, the Conative Power, the Moral Power, the Power of Choice, the Free- Will, the Faculty of Freedom, etc., Its product is diversely named ; as a volition, a choice, a purpose ; also, a decision, a determi- nation, a resolve, a resolution, etc., Of these designations, the three first named are the more technical. The first, volition, expresses more ex- actly the proper essence of an act of the will. Choice, from its etymology and its current use, points to the appetency, the relish, the liking, the selecting, which attends volition, as its prompt- ing occasion or the grosser movement of mind in which the volition is embodied. Purpose looks rather to the result of an act of willing ; it indi- NATURE AND MODIFICATIONS, 327 cates the end implied in all rational volition as a telic activity, § 24. The other terms are of in- terest as giving the testimony of language, which to a certain extent at least, is a trustworthy record of the human consciousness, that the will, as a determining, deciding, resolving function, belongs to an active nature. § 209. The will is diversely characterized. It has its own permanent and essential attributes and suffers certain noticeable modifications in this its own essential character. It is modified also in relation to the objects of its action. It is still farther modified in relation to the other mental functions. Our method will be to present the doctrine of the will, as we have that of the other functions, in the twofold view — Subjective and Objective. In our subjective view will be given an exposi- tion of the essential characters of volition as the proper function of the will ; the growth and in- trinsic relationships of the will ; and its extrinsic relationships to the other mental functions as in Conscience and in the comprehensive virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. The objective view will respect the Good as the one object of the will in the twofold aspect of the Good Presented — Mo- tives — and the Good Produced — Duties. CHAPTER II. VOLITION. § 210. We may readily identify in familiar ex- perience an act of will — a volition — clearly distin- guishing it from other mental phenomena. An orange presented to our view, produces a certain sensation ; — we have a feeling. The sensation brings in a cognition ; we perceive the orange and proceed to distinguish and think it as having this or that attribute ; — we have a knowledge. But we often go farther ; we reach out the hand and take the orange. We recognize now, besides the sensation and the thought or knowledge, a certain free determination of our mind ; we determine to extend the hand, to take the orange. In this determining act we find a proper act of willing, a volition. It is proper here to repeat the observation that most of the terms used to denote mental functions are, without much liability to error, employed to denote the faculty, the exercise of the faculty, and the re- sult of the acting. The term function is a syno- nym of faculty ; but points rather to the exercise than to the power implied. § 211. Inspecting closely this act of willing or VOLITION, 329 of volition, we discover a characteristic which en- ters into its inmost essence ; it is directive. In determining to take the orange there is on the part of the mind a directing of the nervous en- ergy subject to its commands toward the orange. This element is discernible in every conceivable act of will. There is a directing of some power or energy toward some end or object — the order- ing of some energy to effect some result. This is clearly signified in some of the terms employed to designate an act of will — as, determination, pur- pose. This directive character in an act of volition involves selection. As directive, volition is nec- essarily selective. In the universe around it and within the sphere of the mind itself, a vast diver- sity of objects present themselves for the action of the mind toward them or upon them immedi- ately or remotely ; and as all mental action in man must be more or less specific, there must be in any act of will a selection from among this multitude of objects. And when the object has been determined in such selection, there is, still further a selection from among the diverse pos- sible forms of acting in reference to it on the part of the will. In all cases of volition there are these objective and subjective alternatives — al- ternatives in respect of object and alternatives of action by the will toward it. It is this selective character in volition which makes the term choice a fitting one to designate 330 THE WILL. it, especially as choice often expresses itself or is presupposed in the volition. But selection — choice — does not necessarily involve willing , for these terms express sometimes mere comparative judgments or comparative preferences in taste in respect to way or degree of pleasing. We may select or choose between an orange and a peach as to some comparable elements, without deter- mining any action in respect to them further than a mere judgment or preference, — without determining to take the one or the other. There may be simple judging without volition. But if I proceed to take the orange, I take another step not necessarily contained in this act of mere judging ; I exert a positive act of will. This indeed presupposes selection or choice ; but the two are clearly distinguishable as pertaining to different mental functions. As well in the sub- jective as in the objective alternatives ever at- tending volition, there may be selection or choice presupposed in the act of willing while yet dis- tinguishable from it. I may indeed supposably, on a given occasion, forbear all action of will ; the simple forbearance of all volition may imply what may be called a selection — a selection be- tween willing and not willing. Selection here is obviously not volition. But in positive volition I may either will or nill. This is always a subject- ive alternative. But even here, although selection — choice — is presupposed in either case, in will- ing as well as in nilling, the essence of the volition VOLITION. 331 lies in something distinguishable from the selec- tion. I will or nill something. Even nilling im- plies something inviting or repelling the action of the will, toward which accordingly the instinctive activity of the will tends by its native drift or trend and the willing act respects properly this instinct to act by allowing or resisting it. I may have this alternative before me of selecting between willing and not deciding at all either to will or not to will. So still further, it may be that two or more forms of desire or appetency are presented, in which case the selective or choosing element in still another form comes into the act of willing. I am offered the alternative of a peach or an orange and I select the one or the other. But here, as before, the mere choosing or selecting is not all that constitutes the act nor is it the essen- tial and characteristic element in it as an act of will. Some one of these forces of desire or ap- petency, the higher or the lower, this or that, is in a proper volition positively determined. The desire is allowed at least, perhaps fostered and strengthened and given room and sway. It is here in this determining by positive allowance and enforcement of the desire or appetency or by its repression that we find the heart of the volition or willing act. It is here consequently in the al- lowance or disallowance of the appetency that the proper moral character of the act is seated, not in the appetency itself. In this directive function as the more essential element of an act 332 THE WILL. of will there is often involved besides the selective element mentioned, also a proper evoking constit- uent — the power to call forth — to excite — as well also as to repress the energy working in specific acts. It is possibly true that the will cannot in- crease or diminish the aggregate of energy at any one moment of the mind's history. But we are certainly conscious of being able to summon forth what energy we have and to infuse more or less of it into this or that particular exertion. We can be more or less attentive ; we can engage our imaginations, our recollections, more or less earnestly ; we can determine with more or less decisiveness of will. It is an important fact concerning the free-will that it can evoke in higher or lower degree the energies of our natures. The sovereignty of the will reaches to this con- trol over the degree as well as the direction of the energy to be called forth in any specific case of its action. Further, this directive action, constituting the essence of a proper volition or act of will, neces- sarily respects some active nature. We cannot conceive of a directive activity exerted on what is absolutely inactive. We speak, with allowable correctness in the compression of familiar speech, of " choosing pleasure," of " choosing honor," and the like, when we mean something more than mere intellectual selection and intend voluntary preference or actual determination of will. But we do not, strictly speaking, will the pleasure or VOLITION. 333 the honor ; for the will has no power to call them into being. They attend only on the conditions which are prescribed in the very creation of man and which the will is utterly unable to set aside or supplant. The native desire for pleasure or for any specific form of pleasure or honor, the will may allow or disallow. Desire belongs to an active nature, and over it the will has a legitimate control. It may repress or, it may be, entirely suppress this desire or appetency, and then all choice in the case is exterminated in its very roots. Or the will may act upon those activities or affec- tions of the soul upon the exertion or allowance of which the pleasure is made to attend. The will accordingly as a sovereign directive power, may prevent choice by suppressing desire or may give it life and effectiveness by activities or affec- tions as required instrumentalities and conditions. But its action is ever directed on active natures. This action may respect the mind's own ener- gies and susceptibilities. The will evokes and di- rects thoughts, imaginations, subordinate pur- poses. It evokes susceptibilities, directs them toward their objects, and holds them under im- pression. It acts, too, on the soul itself in its na- tive instincts, propensities, appetencies, summon- ing them forth, maintaining their ascendency in the mind and giving them control ; or on the other hand repressing them and crowding them out by other feelings or thoughts which it evokes and sustains. 334 THE WILL. This directive action, also, may respect the en- ergy which resides in the body so far as subject to such control. It arouses the nervous energy in the body and directs the divers motor forces of the nerve-system. It also has a certain in- direct control over the affections of the soul through the sensory nerves, directing to a certain extent what feelings shall be touched by them and to what degree they shall be allowed. The soul itself and the body with which it is united in a living organism are, perhaps, the only natures with which the will can interact in imme- diate communication. We certainly know too little as yet of our relations to other spiritual beings to determine with absolute assurance whether our wills can immediately touch them. But mediately we do beyond doubt act upon other beings. We manifest ourselves to our fellow men under the direction of our wills so as to determine their actions and feelings. We stir their pity; we summon forth their benefi- cence ; we command their service. Their charac- ters and their condition furnish to us true and proper ends to our endeavors. We correctly say that we purpose this or that in their experience. We purpose their success rather than their de- feat, working out our purpose in active endeavor to secure it ; our love goes out in positive exer- tions of will toward them. In our behavior toward them we not infrequently recognize a truly moral character which implies the action of VOLITION. 335 our free-will. Still more ; we often purpose this or that in their immediate experience, as when we intentionally provoke them by an insulting word or an angry blow ; and this effect in them is that which alone comes distinctly into our consciousness. The purpose and the will seem to fasten immediately on their personality ; in the insult or the blow we seem to will directly their hurt or pain. The will is an end-seeking activity ; and these are seemingly its ends — the feeling of hurt or pain in those whom we attack. But a strict analysis, here as before, shows that the action of the will respects as its immediate end, the disposition or the appetency of the soul that craves the supposed effect in the condition of others, or the ministry of its executive activi- ties to effect what is desired. There may be no distinct consciousness of any such complicated action as this, of first allowing the desire and then evoking the executive ministry ; it may seem to us as if we immediately willed the pleasure or the success of others. But our mental activity often evades our notice. When we purpose, for in- stance, the raising of the finger, the will cannot immediately reach that; it can only allow the desire and then direct the energy or the active nature that resides in the nerves. The finger rises, not in obedience to the command of the will, but by the action of this nervous energy which we have evoked and set to work. We yet seem to will directly the rising of the finger, all 336 THE WILL. unconscious of the intervening instrumentality. Once more, volition, as the exertion of a true telic activity, ever regards an end ; and as we accept the truth that man is the creature of per- fect wisdom and love, the legitimate action of the human will must ever be for a good end. The proper end in all exertions of the will is em- braced accordingly under this category — the good. Pre-eminently and characteristically the will, as the sovereign regulator of the soul, which is itself, as rational, an end-seeking nature, is the function of ends. Its action is essentially telic — end-seeking in a sense higher and larger than the action of any other mental function. It is the end in respect to the will which thus acquires the right to be denominated the good. The function of the will, it should be observed further, is limited to this directive work, under- stood as involving the selective and evoking ele- ments named. In loose popular discourse it is often made to play a much broader part. Crea- tion is thus said to be the product of the Al- mighty's will. Great achievements are ascribed to mere will-power, when something more is meant than a work of mere directive or evoking energy. There may be great sagacity and wis- dom, large judgment, strong feeling, enthusiastic zeal concerned ; but as will, in directing the ten- dencies, the feelings, the imaginations, the thoughts, is a characteristic feature, the whole joint product or effect is ascribed to that. But VOLITION. 337 it should ever be remembered that the sole func- tion of the will is to will — to direct and evoke the various activities of the soul or of the bodily organism. It has no power to feel, to imagine, or to think or judge. The mind does all its work of willing in directing and evoking through its function of will, just as it does all of its work in knowing through or by its function of the intelli- gence. The grand truth, however, is that the mind never acts but as a whole, as one single organic nature. It moves ever as a feeling, knowing, free activity. One function may pre- dominate and give character to a specific act, but cannot appear except in organic union with the other two. Analytic thought may of course sep- arate for convenient study any one functional feature from a joint tri-functional manifestation of the rational nature. It may deal with mere abstraction , the real is ever a concrete. The summary doctrine of the will thus is that it is essentially a directive function involving a selecting and also an evoking element ; that the will ever acts on some active nature ; that its action is immediately on that nature; and that as directive it ever looks to an end, which end is known as the good, the term being used in its large philosophical import. § 212. If now we take an instance of a peculiar kind of volition, as when, for instance, we sup- pose the orange, which we have determined to take, not to be our own, but another's, who re- 22 33S THE WILL. fuses us his permission to take it, and if we still determine to take it by stealth or by violence, we discover in our act another class of elements. We discover, first, that such a volition involves freedom. It is implied in this that the determination to take was not forced upon us by any insuperable necessity ; that it could be withheld as truly as be put forth. We never think of saying, how- ever pressed, in self-vindication, that literally we could not help taking it ; — that we were neces- sitated to take it. We are conscious that in every such act we could take or forbear taking. Accordingly we acknowledge our responsibility for the act. To deny this element of freedom is to belie the testimony of our own conscious- ness ; it is to contradict the universal testimony of intelligent and unbiased men ; it is to falsify the universal language of man, which in all its dialects comprises terms significant of this free- dom. § 213. Another of the higher elements in- volved in proper volition is distinct personality. This element is indeed dimly given in feeling and in knowing. The phenomenon of feeling gives the distinction of an object impressing and a subject impressed ; as does that of knowing give the distinction of object known and subject knowing. But this elementary and germinant distinction of personality rises into perfect out- line and fullness in the free-will and with an em- VO LIT/OAT. 339 phasis not allowable before. The feeling and knowing subject in willing recognizes and pro- nounces itself a true ego, a person distinct from other persons and things. But this free personality which has its seat in the will and constitutes the leading and charac- teristic element of that mental power, itself in- volves several distinguishable attributes of high- est interest and importance. § 214. First, free personality involves mental sovereignty. The free-will rules over the whole soul, hold- ing the sensibility and the intelligence in strict • subjection to itself and under its own control. This mental sovereignty residing in the per- sonal free-will of man is by no means absolute. The very finiteness of his being, which we have so fully recognized, forbids this idea. The do- main of the will is limited both outwardly and inwardly. It meets even within its own proper limited domain with checks and obstacles which it often finds itself unable to overbear or remove. Its universal experience leaves recorded in the consciousness the clear, salient characters of the dependence and finiteness of the human will. This sovereignty of the human will is limited, also, in relation to the mind itself of which it is the chief function. Its power does not reach so far as to reconstruct the mind or change its es- sential attributes. It cannot make the sensibility feel, the imagination create or put forth form, 340 THE WILE the intelligence know or apprehend or represent, otherwise than according to their own nature and laws. It cannot utterly destroy, if it may impair, the essential activity of the soul. It cannot pre- vent its feeling or its knowing. It cannot abro- gate utterly its own freedom or its own activity, however much it may weaken, corrupt, or ham- per its proper function and character. But while thus dependent and limited in its sovereignty, the personal free-will is a true sove- reign. It rules the sensibility while it cannot pre- vent feeling when an object is presented to the sensibility, and cannot remove the mind from the reach of all objects that can impress it, inasmuch as it cannot remove itself from the universe of being, — cannot altogether prevent feeling, it can yet direct feeling in various ways. It can arrest any feeling, any appetency or desire, when go- ing out toward any one object, and turn it to- ward another object. The angry man expels his wrath by evoking a feeling of fear or of love ; by closing his eye on the provocation to anger and opening it on what excites compassion or gratitude or reverence. The free-will rules also the imagination or the faculty of form. It selects the ideal, the matter in which it shall be embodied, and prompts and directs the embodying act. It rules in like manner the intelligence, evok- ing it and directing and sustaining or arresting its activity. VOLITION. 341 The personal free-will is thus sovereign in a true sense over the sensibility and the intelli- gence. It is equally sovereign, as will be shown farther on, over its own subordinate movements. It pervades the entire mental nature by its se- lecting and directive power. As the mind feels only through its function of feeling, and knows only through its function of knowing, and as feeling and knowing pervade the entire activity of the mind, so the mind wills only through the function of willing and willing pervades its entire activity. §215. Secondly, the free personality involves the attribute of originativencss. In a sense, perhaps, in which it cannot be said of the sensibility and the intelligence, the will is a true originator. As part of a finite being, it is dependent on something external to itself for the object toward which its activity is to be directed and with which, if it act at all, it must interact. Free choice is in this sense determined by its object as presented to it. There can be no choice where there is nothing to be chosen, as a man, however strong, cannot lift a weight unless there be a weight to be lifted. In a sense analo- gous to that in which we say the weight deter- mines the lifting, we may say, perhaps, that the object chosen determines the choice. But there is a true sense in which the free-will may be said to originate action. As the man determines whether he will lift, or not, the weight presented 342 THE WILL. to him, so the free-will ever determines its action in this or that direction to be or not to be. Freedom supposes ever this subjective alternative. If there be but one object presented there is the simple alternative of choice and refusal. If two or more objects are presented only one of which can be taken, the alternative is complicated ; the choice or refusal is combined with the act of electing- or selecting the one or the other of the objects. Of the choice or refusal, whichever it be, and whether simple or elective, the free-will is justly called the originator and true producer. The free-will of man accordingly is so consti- tuted by its creator as to be able directly or indi- rectly to enter the realm of mere nature as it flows on in its necessary flow and to originate new sequences different from what would be otherwise. It does not originate new matter; but it does originate new dispositions of matter. It does not originate new measures of force ; but it does originate new directions of force, so that the sequences of nature are more or less changed from their undisturbed order. It does not origi- nate, in the sense of exerting, new choices or purposes in other free beings ; but it does present to them new objects, new motives, new inspira- tions which may induce new purposes and char- acter in them while still remaining in unchecked freedom. . § 216. Thirdly, the free personality involves the attribute of morality. VOLITION. 343 By morality is expressed the relation of a being to right and duty. By virtue of its freedom, however, as necessarily intelligent and feeling, the mind of man has rights which it exacts and duties which it owes. The personal free- will is the seat and center of this relation of man to right and duty, and is the source out of which it naturally and necessarily springs. § 217. Fourthly, the free personality involves the attribute of responsibility. The fmiteness of man's being and his depend- ence already in themselves foreshadow a power above him, by which he is limited and hemmed in, and on which he depends. But in his free activity this relation to a higher power shines out clearly and in definite outlines. As the exactor of rights and the subject of duties, he recognizes a law from without and from above which has allowed those exacted rights and has prescribed those owed duties. He recognizes a law written in his creation on the very center of his being, his inmost personality, that at once imposes duties and gives rights. He recognizes also a power to sustain and to enforce this law, to which he expects all other beings from whom he has rights to be answerable, to which accordingly he feels they must expect him to be answerable, so far as he is bound in duty to them. The free per- sonality thus makes man moral, as subject to a law which enforces duty and sustains rights. It is important to remark that this characteris- 344 THE WILL. tic of free personality, involves at once the dis- tinction of the personal moral self from other personal moral beings. It involves, also, the recognition of a personal free being who is the source of the law of duty and equally its adminis- trator. The responsibility of a free person must be not to a thing, not to an attribute, but to a free person. This free person we call God, who writes the law of duty on the human soul by making it what it is and who rules to sustain that law. The free personality is thus shown to be the seat and center and source of religion, the heart and life of the relation of man to God. CHAPTER III. GROWTH AND SUBORDINATIONS OF WILL. § 218. In the mind as an essentially active nature we have found the will to be the ruling and directive activity. It rules the other func- tions of feeling and knowing, and also, as we shall now see, in all subordinate volitions, it rules itself. It is to be remarked now -of this ruling energy of the human mind — the will — that, on the one hand it is capable of indefinite increase, and that on the other hand, it is limited and dependent. In infancy the will is feeble, bordering on im- potency. By exercise it becomes mighty through the principle of habit and growth. It is devel- oped out of the instinctive nature of the mind. The transition from action which, is merely instinctive and as such necessitated by the appointment of the creator in creating it, is be- yond the notice of our limited observation. We can as well observe the development of the bud from its germ. Bat by the very law of all mental life its action once prompted continues on, and although in a sense changed in its direction or opposed by subsequent volitions, yet it never can 346 THE WILL. be truly said to lose its record in the mind's his- tory. Each volition not only strengthens the willing mind itself, as legitimate exercise strength- ens all living power, but each repetition of the volition in the same direction or toward the same object confirms the tendency to will in that direction. The will thus may acquire in time what in popular phrase we term indomitable determination ; it is proof against all motive that finite power can bring to it. Weakness of will, in other words, imbecility of purpose, vacillation, irresoluteness, is the result of varying volitions, one moving in one direction, another in another. Strength of will, on the other hand, under the great law of growth, comes directly and surely by multiplying volitions in the same direction, that is, toward the same or similar objects, and by shunning volitions looking in opposite directions. § 219. The will, however, as a single function in a complex organism, is so far dependent on the other functions of the mind — the sensibility and the intelligence. The objects of volition as motives, without which the will cannot act, come to it in part at least, if not wholly, through these other functions. And further than this, its strength is also depend- ent on them. A feeble sense, a feeble under- standing, is attended by a feeble volition. In the intensest feeling and the clearest knowledge, is ever found the most energetic will. § 220. The will, as has been already stated, GROWTH AND SUBORDINATIONS OF WILL. 347 rules itself, in a certain sense, as well as the feel- ing and other functions of the mind. It does this by putting forth volitions which draw along, whether more positively by its own free prompting and sustaining, or more negatively by allowing and suffering other following voli- tions. Such originating volitions are called gov- erning, or ruling, or predominant volitions. The volitions which they respectively draw along after them, are called, in reference to the former, subordinate volitions. We determine, thus, to take a journey : This determination of will is, in reference to the particular acts by which it is car- ried into execution, a governing or predominant volition. Every particular act of will put forth to carry out this original determination, as getting ready the baggage, procuring the conveyance, etc., is a subordinate volition. Such subordinate volitions, in so far as they are regarded as carry- ing out the governing volition, are called execu- tive volitions. The putting forth the hand to take the orange after the determination to appro- priate it, is an executive volition. It is obvious that the same volition may be in one relation a predominant volition, and in another relation a subordinate volition. The getting ready one's baggage is subordinate and executive in relation to the predominant volition to take a journey; it is itself predominant in relation to each specific volition, as going to the shop to purchase, purchasing, ordering or bearing home, etc. 34S THE WILL. The highest volition of which man is capable, and thus with him absolutely the predominant volition, which is subordinate to no other, is that which controls the entire activity of the mind so far as subject to the will itself. Such a predomi- nant volition determines the character of the man in its largest and most proper sense. From the very nature of motive as object to the will, such predominant purpose must have for its object as motive the chief good of the soul as actually selected by it. The good so taken to be the chief good may possibly be an inferior good, as compared with some other good that might have been taken. Such is the prerogative of the will as essentially free ; it can choose the lesser of two goods. In the grand alternative of choice in which the perfecting of character and condition is presented as one of the objects and rejected or declined, the lower good is in fact chosen as the chief good. And this choice of the inferior good is the sin ; as St. Augustine in his confessions B. ii., § x., well defines: — " Sin is committed while through an immoderate inclination toward those goods of the lowest order, the better and higher are forsaken." Such sinful choice, although of a lower good, consisting in the selecting, the allow- ance, and enforcement of a lower appetency, yet becomes the predominant volition, and so governs and determines the succeeding acts of the moral life, and gives character to the entire current of the soul's activity. CHAPTER IV. CONSCIENCE. § 221. The term conscience, originally and ety- mologically synonymous with consciousness, de- noted self-knowledge generally. But usage has greatly modified its signification, first by restrict- ing it to matters of will or morality, and, secondly, by enlarging it to include feeling as well as knowledge. It has, therefore, acquired a new import widely differing from its primary sense. Other expressions are in use to denote the same mental state with more or less modifica- tions, as moral sense, moral faculty, sense of duty or of rigl it and wrong. The peculiar relationship of the conscience to the will, as needful condition or necessary con- comitant modifying the character of its action, justifies or even necessitates the distinct recogni- tion of it in a full exposition of the doctrine of the will. Conscience includes three chief distinguishable elements: — (i) a discernment of right and wrong; (2) a feeling of obligation ; and (3) an approval or disapproval. The term is used sometimes with more promi- 350 THE WILL. ncnt reference to one of these elements, some- times with more prominent reference to another. It properly implies, however, all three, even when used with such prominent reference to one, inas- much as the three necessarily exist and imply one another. § 222. i. Conscience involves, as a chief ele- ment, the discernment of right and wrong. We have already recognized the truth that the idea of free personality involves the idea of being a subject of rights and duties, that is, the idea of morality. In other words, the fact of free choice reveals to us at once the attributes of morality as truly as the orange reveals to us the attributes of form and of color. It is impossible for us fully to contemplate such an act without recognizing this attribute of morality, by which is understood that the act must be considered as either right or wrong. This is the proper origin of the category of morality which includes under it the specific and alternative attributes of right and wrong. It is true, however, that the existence of this attribute as pertaining to free action in man may be proved from other assumed truths. From the assump- tion of the being and rule of God there follows by necessary deduction the subjection of his free creatures to him, which subjection implies the enforcement upon them of the observance of the right and the avoidance of the wrong. He can- not rule without subjects; and as he is free and CONSCIENCE. 351 righteous, he cannot be true to himself but as re- quiring righteousness of his free subjects. The existence of this attribute as pertaining to free action may be deduced equally from the as- sumed existence of that true law, right reason or rule, invariable, eternal, universal, of which Cicero so profoundly and so justly discourses. Given such a law, and it follows that action under it must be characterized as right or wrong. It may be proved also from universal acknowl- edgment, from the general consciousness of men, and especially as expressed in the language of men. This attribute of free action — that it is moral, that is, either right or wrong — as necessarily per- taining to it, may be discerned by the human in- telligence in every case, whether the act be one's own, and so properly within the range of personal consciousness, or another's and apprehended by observation. The fundamental element in conscience is this discernment of the right or wrong in every free act which of itself and immediately reveals this attribute to every free contemplation. § 223. 2. Conscience further involves the senti- ment of obligation. A sense of moral freedom involves a sense of obligation to do the right and shun the wrong. So soon as a free choice is proposed, obligation is felt. As every volition involves the necessity of an alternative determination, of choosing or re- 352 THE WILL. fusing, and as there is given in this freedom the attribute of being obligatory — of constraining to the right — so the sensibility is impressible by the attribute. It is true, the mind in its sovereign freedom, may turn away to a certain degree its sensibility from the attribute : yet as the mind is in its highest nature a free and consequently a moral agent, this sense of obligation cannot be utterly prevented or annihilated. This sense of obligation, thus necessarily springing from the consciousness of freedom, has for its objective counterpart what is fitly called " the law of God written on the heart." It is ac- cordingly a legitimate inference from this con- sciousness, from this sense of obligation, that there is an outer source of this obligation ; that there is a law, given to man from without him- self, and inscribed on his inmost nature ; and that this source is none other than God himself, who created man and endowed him with his free- dom and who wrote the law in his inmost being and rules ever to sustain and enforce it. § 224. 3. Still further, the full contemplation of an act of free-will necessarily brings along with it a sense of approval or of disapproval. Every such act reveals in itself this attribute of fitness to awaken this feeling, as the orange re- veals the attribute of juiciness and so impresses the outward sense. Relatively to the doer, and as seated in him, the attribute is that of merit or demerit, desert or guilt. In every free act the CONSCIENCE. 353 doer feels this desert or ill-desert according as he has chosen right or wrong ; and exactly corre- spondent to this feeling in the heart of the per- sonal doer is the judgment of approval or con- demnation, of praise or of blame, by whoever scans the act with a moral eye. Such is the threefold function of conscience ; it discerns in every free act the right or the wrong; it feels the obligation to do the right and to shun the wrong ; it approves or condemns — awards praise or blame. Conscience, it should be added, has sometimes been regarded as the seat of that pleasure or pain which attends on all mental activity, and which in moral acts and states is deepest and most intense. We speak of the pleasure of a good conscience, and this pleasure may, perhaps, not unwarrantably in less strict language, be re- garded as a function of conscience. In this case Ave should add as its fourth function that of giv- ing the sense of that peculiar pleasure or of pain in the doer which naturally attends all right or wrong action. § 225. The will extends its sovereignty over the conscience as over the entire mental activity. It directs and controls the culture of conscience, which, like all other mental activities, is capable of culture and growth. Quickness and accuracy of moral discernment, tender sense of obligation, and ready and just response of praise or blame are matters of culture. There is open to man a 23 354 THE WILL. path of advancement, of ascent, leading ever on and up towards that infinite perfection which be- longs to the judge and ruler of all. The will, also, regulates and controls the con- science in respect to specific acts. Most moral acts of men are more or less complex, embracing some lawful elements, some unlawful. Morality in this respect is like truth and beauty; it ap- pears among men in forms complicated of the perfect and the imperfect. As there is some de- formity in almost every beautiful form on earth, some error in almost every truth held by men, so there is in the life even of the upright man some taint of imperfection. And on the contrary, there is no form wholly destitute of every beauty, no error void of all truth, no sin desti- tute of some feature or element that is morally approvable. The thief may steal to procure food for a starving family ; the theft is sinful, the care for the dependent ones is right. The will can thus fasten the attention more upon this or more upon that one of these complex elements that enter into every moral act of man, and so the recognition of the right or wrong, the corre- sponding sense of obligation to choose or refuse, and the consequent approval or disapproval may vary. Hence the consciences of men, however true in themselves, differ in men of different moral habits or dispositions in their estimate of particular actions. One's own conscience varies with his moral mood. The same action is CONSCIENCE. 355 judged and felt by him differently at different times. His intelligence varies in quickness and keenness, and his sensibility in tenderness. But above and beyond this, his will, as sovereign, may turn the view or the sense now more on one ele- ment, now more on another. Even one's own conscience is not uniform in its action. Nevertheless conscience remains to man the highest arbiter and ruler in all his moral life. The authority of the Divine Ruler and Judge speaks only through that. If the human con- science is not infallible, it is yet the supreme ar- biter within the man himself in all morality. Man knows no higher in any department of his nature. The will itself in all its sovereignty must yield to the arbitrament of conscience ; for the Creator has not with freedom granted exemp- tion from responsibility. As the mind by the necessities of its nature, must be conscious of its own action, so the will must, to some degree at least, pass its own determinations in review be- fore the censorship of the conscience. It may to some extent hinder, or defer, or even mar the action of conscience ; but it cannot wholly silence nor so corrupt as to destroy it. Hence arises the duty and the importance not only of training and cultivating the conscience, but also of securing it from being stifled or warped by a perverse will. CHAPTER V. HOPE, FAITH, AND LOVE. § 226. Hope, Faith, and Love are not only three comprehensive graces ; they are also com- prehensive virtues. They sometimes appear with the. sensibility or in feeling predominant and so characterizing them, and then consequently are proper graces. They sometimes, however, appear with the moral element — the free-will — predominant in its ac- tions and so characterizing them as virtues. As graces they come but indirectly, while as vir- tues they come directly under this law; but under the law of duty in both cases they are properly sub- jects of immediate command. The practical rea- son, the conscience, recognizes them as right, as obligatory, as praiseworthy, and accordingly by its voice of authority as the organ of the divine will and word, commands them. As graces, they appear characteristically as spontaneous ; as vir- tues they appear as voluntary and free. As thus enjoined duties, in these exercises the will puts itself forth and embodies itself in the feeling as its needful body and form of expression. It selects the feeling to be moved ; it directs the HOPE, FAITH, AND LOVE. 357 awakened feeling upon its object ; keeps the feel- ing on its object and animates it to its proper degree of life and tenderness, and moreover pro- tects it from being smothered or overpowered by any adverse feeling. § 227. In HOPE, the free-will leads the feeling of desire fed with expectation to its proper ob- ject. This object, as legitimate to the human soul, must be a good, and in order to hope as an enjoined virtue the good hoped for must be the highest good which is possible in the case. Hope, as a virtue, may be defined to be the choice of good as the object of desire and expec- tation. Hope as an enjoined duty and virtue comprises several leading distinguishable elements and modifications which we proceed to enumerate. 1. Hope, as a duty, implies something positive to be done. It is not a wholly passive exercise, a mere grace. The will is summoned to go out and find the proper object of hope and put the feeling in exercise. Such object in some form is ever attainable. As surely as the activity of the soul was ordained and fashioned and conditioned in infinite wisdom and goodness for good as its end, so surely is it that the duty of hope is a practicable one under the rule of God. The good in the nature of things connected with right action, is in the duty of hope to be sought and proposed as object to the sensibility. 2. In the duty of hope, the desire and expecta- 35S THE WILL. tion are to be set on this good by the sovereign direction of the will. 3. The duty of hope is both generic and spe- cific. The whole activity of the soul is to be sub- ject to hope in such sense that each governing purpose or choice shall be inspired by it ; the whole man is to move on in hope. And subordi- nate volitions are to stand in like relation to the duty of hope, receiving each its special inspiration from it. No duty can be rightly and perfectly discharged except as thus inspired by hope. 4. Hope has its limitations both as to the kind of its objects and the degree of its allowance. The one legitimate object of hope in its generic and supreme exercise, is the good for which the soul was designed and fashioned. The will is enjoined in this duty to seek out and choose this good as highest object of desire and expectation. The duty prohibits any other good to be thus taken as the object of the soul's governing hope. Among the objects of specific hope there is wide room for selection. Some objects are absolutely prohibited ; other objects are prohibited only because, in the circumstances, less worthy than others which are presented or may be found. The highest legitimate good brings no limita- tion to hope in degree but such as is imposed by the capacity of the soul itself or by the due demands of other capacities in its culture and regulation. Allowable specific objects of hope are limited in their demands to their due measure HOPE, FAITH, AND LOVE. 359 of desire and expectation. These limitations vary indefinitely with condition and circumstance. 5. Finally the free-will is enjoined in the duty of hope not only to find its proper object and regulate the affection to its proper degree, but also to guard and protect it from being over- borne, and also to sustain and nourish it that as participating in an active living nature it may ever grow and strengthen. § 228. In FAITH, the free-will leads the natural feeling of dependence to its proper object. Faith, as a duty, may accordingly be defined to be the allowance and regulation of this feeling on the proper object of dependence. It involves the actual exercise of the feeling in reliance and trust. The objects of faith are all those objects on which man may in any way depend. Its highest form is in relation to God, as the creator and disposer of man. The office of faith in this its highest form, is to recognize God as the one comprehensive, legitimate, absolute ground of dependence and trust. In this highest form, faith is well characterized as " the subtle chain that binds us to the infinite." In lower and sub- ordinate forms, faith finds its legitimate specific objects in all the beings within its reach which fill the universe of God and in all the events of his providential rule. Especially does it find legitimate objects in fellow-beings of the same rational nature. Manifold modes and degrees of 360 THE WILL. dependence determine manifold forms and meas- ures of faith. Even the manifold capacities and functions of the soul itself call for manifold kinds and measures of faith as they are interlocked with one another in manifold forms and degrees of reciprocal interdependence. We must have faith in our senses, our thoughts, our purposes. The soul's true life depends on the legitimate ministries of these functions. Faith, as a duty, like hope, involves divers ele- ments and modifications. It implies something positive to be done , it involves the fixing of the feeling of dependence necessarily belonging to a finite nature on its proper object or ground, whether this object or ground is the highest and most comprehensive as God himself, or subordi- nate as his creatures and ordinances ; it has its limitations both as to object and degree; and requires protection and nourishment. § 229. In love, the free-will leads out the natural feeling of sympathy to its proper object. Love, as a duty, may accordingly be defined to be the choice of the proper object for sympathy. It involves the actual exercise of this sympathy toward its object. The sphere of love as a duty to man, is com- mensurate with the range of human sympathy. With whatever being the human soul can be in sympathy and in whatever way such sympathy can be felt and manifested, toward that being and in that way the duty of love extends. HOPE, FAITH, AND LOVE. 361 Its highest forms are in relation to those objects or beings with which the soul is in closest, broadest, deepest relations of sympathy. No being is so near to the soul as its creator and dis- poser. No being can engage or reciprocate such deep sympathies. Love consequently is highest and most imperative toward him. It is supreme and comprehensive of all exercises of love toward inferior beings. As there can be nothing more worthy to engage our sympathy, nothing in a particular being that is more worthy to enlist our highest and warmest sympathy, than the comprehensive good for which he exists, so love in its highest and most commanding form involves sympathy with this end for which the object has his being. If we reverently characterize the end of God's being as the perfectness of his infinite nature, or the perfect glory of his character and the infinite blessedness which waits on his perfect working, then our love to him must necessarily express sympathy with this end as its highest possible form. Love to God thus in its highest form is will to please him or will to glorify him. As the end of man's being is his true excellence of char- acter and consequent highest blessedness, love to man in its highest, most generic form, is will to promote this well-being in him. The specific and subordinate forms of love respect the manifold specific attributes and rela- 362 THE WILL. tions and conditions of other beings so far as they can enlist our sympathy. Love, as a duty, like hope and faith, involves divers elements and modifications. It implies a positive act of will, something to be done ; it involves the fixing of the natural sympathy of the soul on its appropriate object in kind and allowing to its natural expression its proper de- gree ; it requires protection and nourishment as being subject to culture and growth. THE WILL.— II. OBJECTIVE VIEW. CHAPTER VI. THE GOOD — ITS NATURE AND MODIFICATIONS. § 230. The GOOD is proper object of the will — it is that which the will as a function of the mind immediately and exclusively respects as the legit- imate end or result of its action. This term, like most others employed in spec- ulations respecting the mind, is used in different meanings. The ambiguity naturally occasions in ethical discussions, in which the term is of fundamental import, serious misapprehension and error. Two different meanings have been very generally recognized, each legitimately be- longing to it according to the uses and analogies of language :— I, Jiappiness in the largest and most comprehensive sense ; 2, the means or conditions of happiness. All good, thus, it is held by some writers, is either happiness or the means of hap- piness. But to others this whole view is unsatis- factory. They hold that there is a true good to be found in mere being or condition of being irrespectively of all happiness. The works of 364 THE WILL. the creation, it is said, were pronounced to be good, not because there was universal happiness nor yet because simply they stood in the relation to happiness which would bring in happiness or to that on which happiness depends. These works were good in themselves as being perfectly fashioned both in respect of their own individual natures and also in relation to all surrounding and related things, but emphatically good in respect to the special end or purpose of their respective being. God saw his works were good, answering his fair idea. They were all made for an end, each individual being and each particular function of each being; and that end, whether more comprehensive or more particular, was ever and always good. It might be true and doubt- less it is true, that the designed and the legiti- mate result of the working of each and all would be happiness, and happiness unmixed. If such working be not happiness itself, happiness is but the sign and test of it, being its necessary effect. But irrespectively of that relation to happiness, all these works were good in respect to the end for which they were made; and this end was corre- spondingly good. It was good as the result of the right working of each and all existing things and good also in its relation to all other ends in the system of universal being and action. As the true respects the essence of things and signi- fies the congruous relationship internally and externally existing in things, and the beautiful THE GOOD. 365 respects their form as they interact in perfect sympathy with one another, the good respects the end of this being and interaction, and signi- fies that it is the fit and legitimate result of their nature and action. And so down through the history of philosophical speculation from Aris- totle onward, the highest good to man, his sum- mum bonum, has been held to be the highest and most comprehensive end of his being. Inasmuch as man exists but as part in a universe of being with which he must be in sympathetic interaction, his ministry to secure this end or highest good, can be neither more nor less than to perfect his own being and his relationship to the beings by which he is environed. Whatever else may be said of man's duty or man's interest, this ever remains as the fundamental truth that his good, his true good and his highest good, as the legiti- mate comprehensive end of his entire activity, is to perfect J lis character and his condition. This view of the nature of the good, as the term is employed in ethical and metaphysical speculation, seems to be not only accordant with authoritative usage but also to be supported by its significance and helpfulness in resolving some of the perplexities in this field of knowledge. This use of the term seems certainly legitimate ; for what can be a truer, a more perfect good to a being than that its own being and condition should be just what it was designed and fitted to be by its creation in infinite goodness and wis- 366 THE WILL. dom ? In the case of an active and growing nat- ure what can be its proper highest good but the attainment of the highest perfection possible to it ? Especially in the case of a rational being whose predominant attribute is that it is end- seeking, what higher end as good can it propose to itself than such perfection of its nature and condition ? This is in truth his proper joy, his truest happiness, his highest blessedness, his chief glory, that he be himself in the greatest perfec- tion of his own being and condition. This he can by his own free action, in part, at least, effect ; he can, to a certain extent, by direct exertion of his free-will determine such a good for himself. Happiness is beyond his immediate control ; he can reach that only through his character and condition. He can will conduct on which provi- dence suspends all happiness for him ; he cannot will happiness. His true good, in so far as he is a free being and capable of willing it, is to be what he should be. This is the only good which the action of his will can reach. This kind of good he may be required to seek and pursue. He was made for this : if he regard his relation to his maker, he cannot but see that it is his maker's will that he seek this good di- rectly in all his free action. This will is the su- preme law of his being. It is the law written on the heart — on the inmost tablets of the soul. He is called not to happiness, but to perfect living, which is to be attested and sanctioned by the pure THE GOOD. 367 joy and blessedness that waits upon it. So we answer without hesitancy the question : Whence springs the sense of obligation — of obligation to do right — in the soul of man ; why should he do right ? It springs from the observed nature and condition and manifest destiny of his being. He observes powers or capacities for certain ends. He should be what he was made for and fitted for, and should therefore employ those capacities for the uses for which they were created. Especially he observes in himself as a predominant character- istic a free-will fitted to act for a certain end, in which action he secures his highest perfection — comes to be himself most perfectly. The sense of obligation comes at once on this observed character of a free being. Man should be his most perfect self. His supreme good is to be his best self. § 231. The field of the good which is thus the end or object in all legitimate voluntary action divides itself at once into the two realms of the self and the not-self; — of the mind itself and the being extrinsic to the mind, with which it may interact. In the first of these realms, that of the mind itself, the most fundamental and the most impor- tant of the activities which the will may direct and control are the instinctive motions, ongoings, trendings, which characterize the very essence of every activity in actual exertion. Whether the whole soul or only a particular function be en- 36S THE WILL. gaged, some object more or less specific must be regarded in the excited activity, and this direc- tion of the activity is, as we have seen, under the control of the will. To direct it aright, and this can be no other than to direct it so as to secure its highest perfection in character and condition so far as this may depend on the particular act, is the proper end — the true good — proposed to the will to effect by its control. These instinctive ongoings or trendings of the activities of the soul appear in manifold forms and connections and degrees and are abundantly designated in language in a vast diversity of terms. Of these terms the following will serve as exemplifications : — like and dislike, relish, taste ; disposition, inclination, propensity, procliv- ity, bias, bent, tendency; appetency, want, desire, avidity, craving, longing, appetite. These all come, so far as in exercise, under the control of the will as exciting, maintaining, strengthening, diverting, in all ways regulating them : and its province is so to regulate each and all, as to se- cure the legitimate end of each and all, their best condition and working, which is the true good to them. But the will also has the power directly to summon forth, to incite and to direct, the several functional activities of the soul, its thoughts, its feelings, its subordinate purposes. Its legitimate end here is still comprehended in the great end of perfecting character and condition : this is the THE GOOD, 369 true good to be proposed as its end. It will of course be included in its field here to repress and to divert as well as to incite and lead. In the realm of the proper not-self, the end proper to the will is that which is suitable to it as a member ministering to the body of which it is an organic part, and can be no other than the perfecting of all this* body so far as it may, and particularly in the relations of the whole and every part to itself. It is a principle of all or- ganic life that the perfect condition and working of every part is necessary to the highest perfec- tion of each particular member. In this field, the end is more characteristically and more largely remote as compared with the end in the field of the proper self. After the control of the appetency or desire at the root of all free action, the immediate end of the will here is the working and directing of such instrumental agency as may involve and draw in that remoter end which the will may have allowed the desire or appetency to crave. For the most part, certainly, if not in fact entirely, this instrumental agency is the force or energy which works in the body and is recog- nized under the name of nerve-force or nervous energy. The human will acts directly on this nerve-force ; evokes it, directs it to its purposed object. Its action here, as* we; have before inti- mated, is a mystery. When we purpose to walk, we seem to deliver our command immediately to the foot, and order that it lift itself and put itself 370 THE WILL. forward, and have no consciousness of any inter- mediate agency or work between our proper selves and the member that is ordered to move. But science teaches otherwise. At all events the will can act immediately only on some active nature with which it is interacting, and this is the nerve- force residing in the body. Through this instru- mentality the will works toward its remoter end, putting the instrumental activity to its true and perfect use, this being in the existing relation its proper good. We conclude in the time-honored and time- proved words of Aristotle. Under the assump- tion that the function of man is activity of soul according to reason, he says, " activity of soul ac- cording to virtue becomes the good to man, or, supposing a diversity of virtues, according to the best and most perfect ; and further in a perfect life ; for a single swallow does not make a spring nor yet a single day. So does neither one day nor a brief time make one happy and blessed." Or in paraphrase : — the highest good to man is virtuous activity of soul in a perfect life of the best and highest particular virtues in the most favoring conditions. § 232. The good which is the proper object to the will is termed a moral good as distinguished from all other kinds of so-called good. All these may comprehensively be designated as 7iatural good. Natural good comes to man from no direct determination of will. It is the normal result or 24 THE GOOD. 371 end of all activity whether spontaneous or volun- tary. It may be remote consequence of free ac- tion. It includes accordingly, as a part, the hap- piness that naturally attends upon right conduct or the legitimate exercise of faculties. Happi- ness as we have seen cannot be the immediate object of the will, and therefore strictly speaking it is only a natural, not a moral good. In so far as an object or end is regarded by the free-will, the object or end is thereby characterized as moral ; — it is termed a moral good, or, as it may be, a moral evil, simply because it is the immediate object in the action of the free-will. § 233. Moral good or the good which the free- will respects and effects is more direct and imme- diate object in character, and more indirect in condition. The object of the will and action in character is to be found in the specific acts which make up character. Its object in condition is in the adjustment of one's self or of another to those circumstances or those relationships to other beings and influences which help to deter- mine character ; or conversely, the adaptation of those circumstances or relationships themselves to the ends of character. § 234. Moral action, accordingly, which must ever respect a good either in one's self or in another, must be in its true perfection character- istically beneficent. All morality, all virtue must be found in beneficent action ; in that action, in other words, which seeks the good — the perfect 372 THE WILL. character or condition — of one's self or another. Moral action involves the three elements of an object, an agent, and an act of the agent upon the object. It may be characterized as perfect or right from regard to either element, provided only that there be ever understood a real, if un- expressed, an implicit, if not explicit, co-existence of the others. If perfect moral action be charac- terized in respect to the object, the effect on the character or on the condition as affecting charac- ter is emphasized and the action is characterized as beneficence. If the action be characterized in prominent reference to the agent or doer, it is the sympathetic action of the free-will in its in- teraction with other beings which is emphasized ; and the action is then characterized as love. If the action, as being in right relation between the agent and the object, be emphasized, the action is characterized as rectitude. The three principles — ■ beneficence, love, and rectitude — are co-ordinate and complementary ; they all unite in every per- fect moral action ; neither can exist without the others, although one may be more prominent in reality or in our thought than the others. They are in truth three different aspects of the same thing. Inasmuch as the good admits of degrees, a per- fect choice involves the selection of the highest degree of good in character or condition which is possible. The determination of what is, in the particular case of choice, the highest, is left of THE GOOD. 373 necessity to the moral judgment — to the intelli- gence acting under the impulse and guidance of a pure morality. It is the proper province of ethical science to unfold the nature and forms of free action adopt- ing as its starting point the act itself of the will — a moral act rather than the agent or doers of the action, and rather than the object which the ac- tion immediately respects, just as logic starts from thought rather than from the thinking function — intelligence — or the object in thinking which is the true ; and aesthetics starts from beauty or form realized in feeling or imagination, rather than from the mental function or from the beautiful or perfect in form in its own nature. CHAPTER VII. THE GOOD PRESENTED. — MOTIVE. § 235. By MOTIVE, as object to will, is to be un- derstood that which the will immediately re- spects in its action. The term motive, as applied to moral action generally, has been used in two widely distinguish- able meanings, to denote both the object of the will, as just stated, and as we shall for convenience use the term except when specially modified, and also the inward spring or impulse or propensity inducing or prompting the action. This double use of course leads to a certain degree of confu- sion and to corresponding error. There seems, however, to be legitimate ground for each of these uses. The mind as essentially active is by the strong set of its whole nature prone to act. This natural propensity we have recognized as the rudimental principle of the class of feelings called desires. This prompting principle is, in a legitimate import of the word, a motive, as mov- ing the mind to action. But it is a motive-spring to thought and to imagination, to the reception of truth and the love of beauty, as truly as to pur- pose and choice. This motive-spring or impulse, THE GOOD PRESENTED.— MOTIVE. 375 moreover, respects an object ; and the specific ob- ject on which it fastens determines the specific character of the motive impulse itself. In the case of the intelligence, thus, this specific motive-spring is the desire for knowledge. We have recognized it under the form and name of curiosity. The in- ward spring or incentive to knowledge is this de- sire — this curiosity. But knowledge determines curiosity, as knowing is the object or end of in- tellectual desire. We study in order to know ; and the attainment of knowledge or truth — know- ing — is the motive to study, inasmuch as it deter- mines and moves the desire in that particular di- rection. Curiosity may thus be spoken of as the motive-spring or incentive to knowledge, while at the same time and with equal propriety of lan- guage, truth and knowledge may be spoken of as the motive-object in intellectual endeavor. In any concrete act, accordingly, in which the will is engaged, we have both motive-spring and motive-object. But, it is worthy of remark, the immediate object on which the will may act, may be this very instinct or appetency which consti- tutes the motive-spring; and the end or result of the action of the will upon it is allowance, or in- citement, or direction. It is this end — the effect to be produced in the instinctive activity of the mind — which is here the proper motive as object to the will. The will itself, as an active nature, it may also be remarked, possesses this instinct or appetency to act; but of this element it is sel- 375 THE WILL. dom important to take account in ethical discus- sions. But the distinction indicated between motive-spring as applying to the appetency upon which the will immediately acts on the one hand, and motive-object as applying to that which the will seeks to effect in regulating this instinct on the other, although it may seem at a first glance rather overnice, is yet of vital importance in some of those discussions. To motive-spring as a mere spontaneity, no moral character as right or wrong can attach ; only to motive-object as in- volving the free activity of the will can this attri- bute of right or wrong be ascribed. § 236. Inasmuch as in an act there must be, as alike necessary, both agent and object, there is a certain propriety in the statement that either factor determines an act of choice or volition. The will cannot allow and enforce an appetency or desire unless that appetency or desire be actu- ally present, as the appetency or desire itself can- not be except as it is awakened by its appropriate object. This object itself may thus be truly re- garded as determining the action of the will ; — the presence of the orange awakening the desire, de- termines my will to take it. All this, however, must be understood as allowing freedom to the will itself — the power of determining its own acts. It can will or nill ; it can allow the appetency or disallow, or even refrain from either allowing or disallowing ; it can take, or refuse to take, the orange. The will is the doer of its own acts ; it THE GOOD PRESENTED.— MOTIVE. 377 is a self-wilier, a self-determiner, in the truest and highest signification of the expression. It is not another that wills in my willing ; not another being, nor thing, nor force ; it is myself. Its na- tive prerogative of willing or nilling is never sub- verted, but by its own allowance. The motive, whether as spring or as object, has no such abso- lute control ; it is occasion, or it may be effect, not proper cause of willing. The motive as spring or incentive I am ever free to resist or to allow; the motive as object to be effected by my will is the result not the cause of my willing. § 237. A motive-object can be such to the will only in so far as it is an end within the scope of the free activity of the will. Such an end is a proper good. The highest good to man, as we have seen, is perfect activity according to the nature and condition of his being. Every spe- cific affection or act, that is truly legitimate in itself in the time and condition, is a true good, a legitimate motive, because a true end of man's being. § 211. Good and will are thus seen to be exact correla- tives, bearing the relation of object and subject to each other. Good and motive-object, more- over, it will be seen, are synonyms. § 238. Motives are of two classes — external and internal. An EXTERNAL MOTIVE is primarily some mod- ification of the nerve-force on which the will acts by summoning it forth and directing it on some- 373 THE WILL. thing exterior to the mind. More remotely and so in a sense more inexactly and derivatively, the result of this action of the nerve-force — the move- ment of the hand, the grasping of the orange, may be regarded as the motive, but only by rea- son of its following the movement of the nerve- force which the will determined. An INTERNAL MOTIVE is the act or affection of the mind itself which the will regards ; as, the exercise of the imagination, the putting forth of a thought, the allowance of a desire as deter- mined by the will. In this class — internal motives — must be embraced all those ends which we seek in our free action in other spiritual beings ; exter- nal motives being limited to those which lie in the direction of the nerve-force. Of our immedi- ate interaction with purely spiritual natures, its extent, its modes, its processes, its results, science gives us little information that is trust- worthy. What the future of experience and dis- covery may reveal, it would be unwise to conject- ure. It is enough to say here that science and rev- elation agree with human experience in testify- ing that between the soul and its maker there may be, even as there unquestionably is, free and im- mediate interaction in which the creature may di- rectly seek to move its creator and without inter- vention of neural energy. Man may thus find in God a true motive to its adoring and loving action. It will be noticed that motives of different THE GOOD PRESENTED.— MOTIVE. 379 classes may be associated in the same complex act. There may be the motive of exciting the nerve-force to take the orange associated with the motive to gratifying the appetite. Some- times one will preside and govern, sometimes the other. I may move my arm to take the orange without the consciousness of any desire for it ; and yet there may follow a sense as of the gratification of such a desire. Or I may desire the orange, and the will to gratify that may draw on the executive volition to take it. The motive with a hungry man to take food that belongs to another may be to appease his appetite ; the actual determination to take it follows as a sub- servient motive. With a kleptomaniac the mo- tive may be to indulge a perverse passion for appropriating as the primary and governing mo- tive ; he may use the food he has thus thievishly appropriated to satiate his hunger. CHAPTER VIII. THE GOOD PRODUCED. — DUTIES. § 239. The highest good in character and con- dition attainable in the case being recognized as the object in a perfect choice, the actual adop- tion of this object by the free-will in positive ex- ertion to secure it is its truest and best action. This is true virtue. But we have recognized a sentiment of obligation as springing up sponta- neously in the mind when the free-will is brought into this face-to-face relation to its object ; and virtue becomes duty — action that is obligatory — because of the organic relationship of the will to its co-ordinate functions and to the mind it- self, and of the analogous relation of the individ- ual self to others as like parts of one moral whole — a moral universe. Moral obligation — duty — ■ is founded in this organic relationship. And to duty there is the correlative — of rigJit. That which is due from me to my neighbor is his right. Duties and rights are correlatives, reciprocally implying each other. If the question be raised, how do I come to see or feel this obligation — whence comes the sense of duty — the answer must be that the organic relationship indicated THE GOOD PRODUCED.— DUTIES. 381 immediately reveals it ; I discern my duty of ministry at once in this, that I am organic part of a living whole. The fundamental fact here to be considered is just this— that the will is a part of a living whole, a true member of an organism, the life of which is sustained and nourished by the com- mon ministry of each part. Each particular member has its own office, which office the wel- fare of the whole and, as involved in this, the particular welfare of itself and of each other part demands, and which office it belongs to the par- ticular member to discharge. The will thus properly and truly owes, by reason of its own nature and its relation to the whole soul, this faithful discharge of its office, or fulfillment of its ministry. It exists for this; its end and function are fulfilled in this. I normally feel this obliga- tion — have a sense of duty — as I perceive this re- lationship of function and end. To this it is to be added in the case of the will, that being free, endowed with the high prerogative of selecting and directing its ministrations, allowing ministry or refusing it as to any particular service, the idea of duty takes on a peculiar character — that of being moral and carrying responsibility with it. By virtue of its membership of a living whole, the function of the free-will is charged by its very nature with the obligation to fulfill its office toward the other members and the whole soul. Its entire office in this relation to the J 82 THE WILL. whole man and to the several co-ordinate mem- bers consists in summoning forth these several co- ordinate functions of the soul or of the whole soul itself as the particular occasion shall require, of directing them, sustaining them, and giving them free scope and sway, and all so as to effect this highest and fullest perfection in accordance with the end of their being, whether of the whole man or of the several members of the organism. But the soul itself is a part of a larger whole. It exists in vital relationships to other beings around it. It is a veritable member of an organic whole, in the life of which its own life is en- wrapped. The obligations of a ministering mem- ber exist here as in the former case. They are of the same general character and are compre- hended in the general duty of effecting the high- est perfection of every part and of the whole. Thus are indicated the objects of duty to the human soul — to self, to fellow men, and to God. These are the objects at least which most closely concern it. They are accordingly those which it is of importance to enumerate here. The particular ways in which the will dis- charges the duties of its ministry have been al- ready intimated. It will be sufficient simply to restate them. First and chiefly, perhaps, the will fulfills its duty by allowing or disallowing some particular propensity, or appetency, or drift, which we have recognized as native to the soul of man, and giving it sway. In this min- THE GOOD PRODUCED.— DUTIES. 3S3 istry the will forms what we call character. If it accept the highest and most comprehensive appetency of the soul's nature, and give it con- trol over all other appetencies, the highest and best character is formed ; for, as we have seen, activity, once determined in a particular direc- tion flows on till positively arrested. If a lower appetency be allowed to rule in place of a higher, the character is lowered accordingly. In the next place, the will determines specific imaginations, thoughts, subordinate purposes. Such move- ments of the soul affect, if they do not fully determine, character. They strengthen char- acter, or impair it. In the third place, besides these immediate determinations of the will, through the rational nature of the soul, remoter ends may be proposed and accepted by the will when, if the purpose be a living one, subordinate immediate determinations are made by the will, both in the personal life and also in the life of the outer being around with which the soul is in organic interaction. § 240. A fundamental condition of duty, of virtue, of right action of will, is sympathy in the large sense of susceptibility of being affected by others and capacity of affecting them. Such sympathetic relationship between the different departments of the mind or self we must also suppose to be conditional to all proper personal duties. It becomes at once the fundamental duty to secure and maintain this relation of ac- 384 THE WILL. tive sympathy between the subject or agent in duty and his object. Ranking with this, as a second fundamental duty, is that of securing and maintaining a practical acquaintance with the objects of duty. And still a third of the same rank of fundamental duty is that of maintaining a disposition of will to meet the calls of duty, as addressed by the several objects of duty. Such a sympathetic, intelligent, and ready dispo- sition it is the proper function of the will as sove- reign to foster and cherish. Only so can that habit of action which constitutes virtuous char- acter be secured. Viewed in this light the duty might more properly be considered as falling into the division of personal duties as a part of personal culture. Yet as obviously fundamental and conditional to duty in the comprehensive sense it may, without impropriety in method, be presented here for distinct consideration. § 241. The distribution of specific duties fol- lows most conveniently for practical uses the principle of division furnished in the objects of duty. Only in them is to be found the proper motive to the will — the good, in character and condition, of sentient rational being. We have thus as the most generic classification of specific duties the threefold division, of (1) Duties to self ; (2) Duties to fellow men ; and (3) Duties to God. Duties to self or Personal Duties comprise (1) duties in respect to the body, of guarding, nourishing, and ruling it ; (2) in respect to exter- THE GOOD PRODUCED.— DUTIES. 385 rial condition, including such as relate to nature or the external world, to property, to station, and to friendship ; and (3) in respect to character. Duties to fellow men embrace the three classes of (1) duties to individuals; (2) duties in the fam- ily ; and (3) duties in the State. Duties to other individuals, or the proper so- cial duties comprise the three classes of duties determined by the threefold constituents of duty — love, good, right, viz. : (1) sympathy, kindness, loving endeavor; (2) courtesy, truthfulness, jus- tice, and benevolence ; (3) sincere intent in action that is governing, unswerving, and accordant with condition. Duties in the Family or proper Domestic Du- ties comprise (1) those of marriage, or conjugal du- ties; (2) parental and filial duties, and (3) frater- nal duties. Duties in the State or proper Civil Duties are those of loyalty, obedience, and support. Duties to God or proper Religious Duties are those of personal piety, and of social religion. It is the proper province of Ethical Science to unfold the doctrine of duty in its nature, grounds, and specific forms. 25 BOOK V. THE REASON.— MIND AS ORGANIC WHOLE. CHAPTER I. ITS NATURE AND MODIFICATIONS. § 242. In our survey of the general attributes of mind we recognized its most essential charac- ter as activity. This activity it is impossible for the human mind to apprehend except as it is manifested in specific exertions — specific acts. The exhaustive consideration of this active na- ture cannot go beyond the study of these spe- cific acts of whatever form and kind, gathering them together into classes by means of some common characteristic belonging to them, and then fixing them in their true relationships to one another and to the whole of which they are the organic parts. All these special acts, we have found, may be comprehended in the threefold functional activity of feeling, thought, will, — as it goes out toward the respective objects of these several functions, the beautiful or perfect in form, the true, and the good. This threefold di- ITS A~A TURE AND MODIFICA TIONS. 387 versity of function we recognized as pertaining to a simple organic whole ; the threefoldness con- sisting with a complete organic unity which is a fundamental character of mind, never to be lost from view in the study of its nature. Another gen- eral attribute was recognized as that of finiteness and dependence. The human mind is finite — limited in its range of object and in its intensity of action. It is also dependent for its action upon objects that present themselves to it more or less beyond its control as well as upon the channels or means through which these objects gain access to it. This characteristic indicates and involves the great truth of its being a part of a larger whole — a part of a universe in fact, so that its whole life, the entire development and outgoing of its active nature, is determined, shaped, and sustained through this relationship to an environ- ing universe of being and to the other co-ordi- nate parts which with it constitute and make up the whole. In this circumstance of being and life it is susceptible of indefinite growth and maintains a character of unbroken continuance. Three prominent features at once associate them- selves with these general facts of observation in regard to the human mind. First, as a distinct unit among those which constitute the universe of similar life, it interacts with them, receiving and imparting, impressing and being impressed. In this interacting relationship, in the next place, it is self-conscious as well as cognizant of the ob- 3S8 THE REASON. jects that impress it. In the third place, it is self- determining, as it maintains by a power within itself its independent life and determines within the limits of a finite nature, its acts, its affections, its forming character. With this general survey of the attributes of the human mind, the continued study led to a more minute and thorough investigation of the three specific modes in one or other of which its essential activity manifests itself. This investi- gation we have prosecuted in the last three Books. It will occur to the thoughtful student that our study of the human mind does not reach its ex- treme limit with this separate study of the sev- eral functional activities of the mind, even al- though they constitute the entirety of its nature as essential activity. There is a view of its life and history as one organic whole which is not contained within this study of particular functions. There is a life of the organism embracing all this specific action, but not embraced within it. As single, the mind is in every function — it is " all in the whole and all in every part." This is a great fact never to be forgotten. . But there is a view of the whole which is more than a view of the sum of the constituent parts ; for the mind is more than a mere aggregation of functions. It has a life which contains this aggregation, and what is vastly more, which converts it into one living or- ganic whole. Each several function is other and different from what it would be if subsisting by ITS NA TURE AND MODIFICA TIONS. 389 itself, were this possible. Each member partakes of a larger life by which it is shaped and charac- terized, and which in its turn it helps to shape and characterize. A mere functional treatment of the human mind misses the wholeness there should be observed both in the mind itself and also in its object. Such a functional psychology gives but the anatomy of mind and leaves out the vitality of action, which is its truest characteris- tic. Philosophical discussion and the language of cultivated men generally have fully recognized this fact, that the science of the several functions of an organism does not fill out the full knowl- edge of the organism itself. There are relations sustained by the organism as a whole, both inter- nal toward its own members and constituent parts and also to other organisms around it, which are peculiar to it and do not immediately respect the individual members. The body has a life other and different from that which can be portrayed in the science, however perfect, of its separate organs ; and the activity — the condition and working — of the several organs is affected by the condition of the whole bodily organism. Divers errors of very serious moment have arisen in mental science, it is believed, from the limita- tion of its sphere to the presentation of the sev- eral functions. Something more, for illustration, is meant by the phrase " rational nature " than would be signified in any expression of the com- 390 THE REASON. bined functional activities of sense, thought, free- will. No hesitancy is felt in characterizing an act of the mind in imagination, intelligence, or purpose as rational. This implies that any spe- cific act might be genuine and in itself altogether legitimate and complete, and yet fail of being entirely or perfectly rational. To exclude in the full study of mental activity, this organic whole of mind as a rational nature cannot fail to occa- sion error. The term " reason " is synonymous with the phrase " rational nature." As a single term it is more convenient in use. For the use of it as denoting the mind as an organic whole, abundant vindication could be adduced from our best liter- ature. It will suffice simply to cite the following from Sir William Hamilton. As his sixth special faculty under the general cognitive faculty, he gives what he calls the Regulative Faculty. This faculty corresponds, he says, to what was known in the Greek philosophy under the name of vovq. It is analogous to the term Reason as used by the older English philosophers and to the vernnnft {reason) in the philosophy of Kant, Jacobi, and others of the recent German metaphysicians. It is also nearly convertible with the Common Sense of Reid and Stewart. The designation — Regulative Faculty — happily points out a leading characteristic of what is generally understood by the phrase rational nature or reason. But the reason is more than a mere cognitive faculty. When we speak of a ITS NATURE AND MODIFICATIONS. 391 "rational thought" we mean something more than a well-regulated thought as a form of knowl- edge ; something more than a thought well grounded and well formed and well adjusted in its parts and external relations, as the laws of pure knowledge prescribe. A rational thought is a thought which is worthy of a rational soul, which is not only logically sound and congruous, but is pervaded with feeling, and has an aim ; — a rational thought is a sympathetic and also a wise thought. The phrase opens out to our view a field vastly richer than the merely cognitive ele- ment exhibits. Rationality is more than intelli- gence ; reason, more than intellect. It is also more than feeling, more than choice. It is more even, as we shall see, than mere aggregation of the three — thought, feeling, choice. § 243. Without further vindication of this mode of designating mind as an organism and leaving the propriety, not to say the necessity, of this distinct treatment of it to be seen in the exposi- tion of its nature, we will in the next two chap- ters, present the twofold view we may take of it, first subjectively and then objectively. We fol- low in this the method of our treatment of the several specific functions of the mind. It is obvious that this faculty may be modified both in reference to the specific determinations of its outgoing activity from within itself, and also in reference to the specific characteristics of the general object which may address it from with- out. CHAPTER II. THE REASON — I. SUBJECTIVE VIEW. § 244. THE HUMAN REASON — the Rational Nature of Man — the Human Mind viewed as a living organism the essential nature of which is activity expressing itself in the threefold func- tional modes of Sensibility, Intelligence, and Will — is obviously to be viewed as no co-ordinate faculty in the rank of the special functions just named, any more than the human body is to be co-ordinated with any special function such as that of nutrition, muscular contraction, nerve- sense. It is rather to be regarded in the larger view suggested by the term of a power than in the more restricted view of a faculty. It is not a special faculty. On the other hand it acts only through some special faculty and never in its action contravenes the laws of such special fac- ulty. Just as the body breathes only through the lungs and precisely after the law of the lungs, so the reason, the mind, as a living organism, feels only through the sensibility and according to the laws and forms of the sensibility, imagines only through the imagination ; thinks only through the intellect ; and chooses only through the will. SUBJECTIVE VIEW. 393 It, however, through this diverse functional activ- ity performs work that is beyond the reach of any of these separate functions. This work, it is to be noticed also, is not a merely combined product of two or more of these functions, as we have recognized,, for example, in the sentiments in which feeling is expressed combined with in- telligence or will, or as in the virtues, hope, faith, love, in which all the functions find characteristic expression. This peculiarly organic work, which is properly to be recognized as the work of the reason in distinction from that of either of the three functional activities, is at once distributed into three distinguishable fields. The first of these is its work as directed upon itself. I. THE ACTIVITY OF THE REASON AS DIRECTED UPON ITSELF. § 245. The human reason, the mind of man as a living organism, we have found to be sympa- thetic, conscious, free. It exhibits these several attributes in its reflex action — in its action upon itself. It is, in a true and most important sense, in sympathy with itself. It has by its very na- ture an interest in its own well-being. It is sen- sitive to the very depths of its being to whatever vitally affects - this, its inner well-being. No deeper principle can be found in its nature. Absolute recklessness, absolute unconcern here is a human monstrosity, if not a contradiction. 394 THE REASON. The suicide who murders the bodily life in an inconsiderate wreck of all higher interests, has his only motive-spring or inducement to his deed of desperation in this self-regard ; for why should he seek to terminate a life that does not concern him ? It is the very unbearable pressure of this self-regard that drives him to this climax of madness. It is a woful mistake, but it is that of a man, a rational nature, however misled, not that of a stick or a stone. If a man is crushed, he knows that he is crushed ; and more, he knows and feels that it is himself that is crushed ; alas ! still more, he knows that he freely crushes him- self. The human reason is in vital sympathy with itself. It acts back upon itself ; it feels its own presentations ; its own imaginings. It holds up its ideals of life, of being, of character, of destiny, before its own capability of feeling ; it receives these ideals to itself; it feels them. It acts back thus upon itself also in full con- sciousness. Even when not holding up such inner work before its cognitive power in distinct form so as to be reflected upon and remembered, it yet works consciously, intelligently, observing the principles of truth, the essential nature of things in its work and conscious, too, possibly if not actually more or less, of the proper effect of its work, of its fitness to its end. Moreover, this inner work is done aimingly, in reference to some end, more or less felt and seen. Just as the total life-force in the bodily organism exerts itself on SUBJECTIVE VIEW. 395 each organ, determining in harmonious co opera- tion, motor power and muscular power and every organic power, upon the inner life in some par- ticular need, so the reason acts back as a whole, in the conspiring exertion of all its functions upon its own interior nature. It is in the high- est sense a regulative power over its entire inner self. With a true, sympathetic, conscious, pur- posing interest in itself, it rules within the limits of its nature its whole activity in reference to its demands. The human mind possesses, as we have seen, the attribute of continuousness. Action, which is its essential nature, involves continuousness. The human reason discerning this character of continuousness, as it must in any proper intro- spection, and discerning that it is to itself at least an unending continuousness with a conscious sense of this fact, together with the consciousness of its being capable of an indefinite growth and expansion, an ever growing enlargement both of experience and of capacity, — the reason is of ne- cessity impelled by an irrepressible ambition to act under the law of this unlimited continuous- ness of its activity in this growth and drift of its nature, in such a way as best to secure its truest well-being and its highest perfection. The hu- man reason beyond all question is capable of this high, most worthy ambition. It may well be doubted whether a mature reason ever failed at some time to be conscious of its inspiration. It 396 THE REASON. may be smothered, it may be disregarded, it may be resisted ; the human reason is free and is able to sell its birth-right for the paltriest indulgence. But this high ambition is a true belonging to the human reason. It is its proper work, its most commanding and pressing work, indeed, to obey the promptings of this high ambition and form for itself a true character in the perfecting of its powers and capabilities. The destiny of the man, thus, as mainly depending on his character, is en- trusted to the care and ordering of the reason, as its indefeasible organic trust and care. Such is the peculiar office-work of the feason in respect to its inner self — feelingly, consciously, aimingly to shape out and nourish up into its highest degree of well-being its own true nature and thus, so far at least as depends upon itself, to determine its final destiny. Involved in this work is the regulation of all specific and subor- dinate actions so that they shall helpfully and harmoniously carry forward this high develop- ment into perfect character. It is beyond the province of any special function to effect this co- operation, each in its turn and in its degree, in perfect adjustment to the final end. It is the reason that must summon forth the particular function, select its object, and direct the activity upon it, regulate it, in the largest sense, as to di- rection, intensity, and continuance. It is the office of the reason to keep the several functional activities in equipoise and symmetrical working. SUBJECTIVE VIEW. 397 Sense and imagination, intellect and will, can move only as called forth by this higher author- ity ; they can each work only in its own respective lines according to its own laws. Only as super- vised, harmonized, controlled by the reason can they effect any worthy comprehensive result. Such is the high function of the rational nature — the reason — to regulate the entire outgoing of the mind's activity so as to effect the highest per- fection of its own nature. The candid study of its nature discovers this momentous truth con- cerning itself. The " categorical imperative " of duty, the " moral sense " in man, comes from this study by a true rational intuition, — by an intro- spection into itself by the reason. The inde- structible impulse in the inmost life of mind to- ward a comprehensive end which is to be found only in a perfect character, the irrepressible drift of the essential activity of mind toward this end, the consciousness of the power to regulate to- ward the consummation of it, constitute the im- perative calf to the duty, reveal the obligation, and press to the performance. Here is the seat and origin of conscience. Hence is the authori- tativeness of its high behest that the mind make itself to be the best it can. The free-will has a part here ; if it be not the better view to regard moral freedom as pertain- ing rather to the rational nature — to the reason — than to the specific function. In any view, the freedom in man remains in all this urgency of 39S THE REASON. reason and of conscience. The high end of rational perfection may be taken or refused ; and the refusal involving the choice of a lower aim, does a fatal work — a work that is obviously irrep- arable by itself. No subsequent action of its own can undo what is done. It yet remains true that in the very nature of the human reason and its necessary outworking is revealed the fact that the true comprehensive end of all its activity is the perfecting of its own well-being and condi- tion. II. THE ACTIVITY OF THE REASON AS DIRECTED UPON THE SEVERAL FUNCTIONAL ACTIVITIES. § 246. The reason finds a second field for its work in the special regulation of the specific functions of mental activity — the sensibility and imagination, the intelligence, the will. As al- ready intimated, it selects their objects, summons forth and controls their activity as to decree and measure. This is a work altogether outside the province of the special function. More particularly; in the field of the sensibility and imagination, the reason selects the objects by which the sense is to be impressed or which it is to impress and controls these impressions as to their force and range. More than this, acting in this sphere the reason becomes a designing and constructing power, a faculty of means and ends, and of methods in the particular working of the SUBJECTIVE VIEW. 399 function of form, and, moreover, modifies, shapes, adapts the forming work, in reference to ulterior objects and ulterior ends. In all proper art and also in the construction of proper science, the rational imagination does its fashioning work sym- pathetically with all related things, in conscious congruousness as to all parts and relations, and in governing aim toward its own chosen ends, and adaptations to outer objects. In the field of the intellect, the reason also comes in to regulate so as to effect cognitions, forms of thought and of knowledge, altogether be- yond the sphere of mere intellect. Rational in- telligence is true wisdom ; and wisdom and mere science of knowledge are far from being one. Prodigies of science and learning are sometimes most irrational ; the more prodigious, the more irrational. Rational intelligence acts in sympathy with all objects of knowledge and all the powers and capabilities of the soul, whereas pure knowl- edge is in itself hard and unyielding to exterior things. Rational intelligence, farther, co-ordinates each special knowledge with all other cognitions and also subordinates according to due rank and worthiness, fashioning all knowledge into shapely completeness and symmetry, in due dependence and relation, into a veritable body of truth with its own proper unity. It pours in upon each act of knowledge a light from the principle of knowl- edge, assuring it to be a work of true knowledge, comprehending all specific cognitions in their 400 THE REASON. grounds, and directing all, both to their respective places in the body of truth and also to the spe- cific ends of the knowledge or even to the com- prehensive end of all knowledge. In the field of the will, in an analogous way, the reason controls all specific exertions of choice as to object ; correlates them to other exertions both of the will and of the other mental func- tions ; brings all into due symmetrical relation- ship to the whole mental condition and destiny. The rational choice is put forth in sympathy with all related things and in conscious reference to all its bearings both such as are internal and also such as are external to itself. III. THE ACTIVITY OF THE REASON AS DI- RECTED UPON EXTERNAL OBJECTS. § 247. The human reason has a third field of activity in the world of being properly extra- neous to it. Here are comprehended the relation- ships of the mind to the body which it inhabits, to external nature, and to other minds. The interaction between mind and body has already been considered so far as manifesting it- self between the special functions of form, on the passive side, known as the sensibility and on the active side, known as the imagination, and their respective objects. We need here only to super- add the consideration of the activity of the proper rational nature in this interaction, beyond SUBJECTIVE VIEW. 401 and outside of the action of the special function, as also beyond its regulation of the special func- tion as already noticed. In the first place, as an organic whole in vital connection with the body as also an organic whole, its general life and ac- tion are in sympathetic interaction w T ith the life and action of the bodily organism. Mind and body affect each other with the sympathetic sen- sitiveness and quick response of members of the same organic whole. The health and vigor of the one affect the health and vigor of the other. Bodily vivacity and energy awaken and sustain mental action ; the weariness of the one induces lassitude and weakness in the other. Lively feel- ing, vigorous thought, determined purpose, quick- en and strengthen the heart-throbs. " Conceit can cure and conceit can kill," is a familiar maxim in the experience of the physician. If the warm blood of youth animates the feelings and thoughts and purposes of earlier life, the es- tablished vigor of mental life protects and up- holds the bodily life in later years. Sudden death not infrequently is the consequence of a sudden termination of active intellectual pursuits. Body and soul as parts of one organic whole, thus act and react upon each other ; and they thus act and react because one life affects another in organic relation to it by natural sympathy. Such is the ordinance of nature. Every life is interlinked with its neighbor life. " Man's life," 26 402 THE REASON. says Emerson, ''is intertwined with the whole chain of organic and inorganic being." In the next place, the mind as a whole, the whole rational nature acting as a single organism, interacts with the body in interchange of impres- sion, each imparting and each receiving. In sympathy ; in conscious apprehension too of what it seeks to effect, of the character of its own action, and of the effect it is to produce, as well as of the means to secure the effect ; in aim- ing purpose, likewise, as one activity although tri-functional, the reason acts upon the body ; and in corresponding sympathy, consciousness, and free allowance or resistance, receives to itself the action of the body. This sympathetic, vital interaction between soul and body suggests, if it does not prove be- yond reasonable question, that a like nature pre- vails in both ; that in other words, the action that comes from the body on the soul is that of a being like the soul itself. The interaction is be- tween two like energies, similarly constituted. We are safe from all reasonable question when we assume that the energy which works in the body on the mind is itself spiritual like the mind. It follows from this assumption that the activity of the human reason on the body is in fact di- rected immediately on another mental nature like its own ; and consequently that this action on the body is exactly pictured in its action upon SUBJECTIVE VIEW. 403 itself and upon its special functions, as we have just recognized it. But this living energy of the body thus in sym- pathetic interaction with the reason can be no other than that which pervades the natural world around us generally. We discover the same interaction between the mind and the exter- nal physical universe as that which we have dis- covered between mind and body. The only dif- ference is that here the interaction is more me- diate, whereas in the other case, it was more im- mediate. Yet the interaction between mind and body is to a large degree properly mediate. If I press the end of my finger on yielding wax, the impress on the wax is mediately effected through the bodily organ ; but my purpose to make the impress acts in a true sense mediately as it travels along the efferent or motor nerve out through the arm and hand to the tip of the fin- ger. And so in regard to the entire interaction between the mind and the external world, we find substantially the same character of action, only modified by the greater or less degree of immediateness in the interaction and by the re- spective qualities and condition of the particular objects. The reason acts in relation to these ob- jects as joint member with them of one organic whole, affecting them in the first place by mere presence of life, and in the next place by the positive exertion of its own communicative, thoughtful, purposeful energy upon them ; and is 404 THE REASON. passively affected by them in their sympathetic, truthful, and aiming work. The result we find to be the same in its gen- eral characteristics if we push forward our inves- tigation to the interaction between one mind and another. There is the mediateness of interaction that we have already recognized ; only it is of a remote degree — a mediateness through the en- ergy that pervades all being, and by which all in- teraction between different organisms is effected. I think of a man : I communicate my thought through certain nerves producing at length a sound which we call his name ; the air vibrations of the sound traverse a space and reach another organism in which afferent nerves convey move- ments that at last effect an image in another mind ; and joy, grief, fear, anger, stormy emo- tions, it may be, follow. I purposed them in utter- ing the name ; and the energy there is in nature took up the purpose and conveyed it to its desti- nation. The mind which my purpose finally reached and moved is discovered to me to be of a common nature with mine. All the properties and laws of interaction between my reason and itself or its special functions, govern here in this interaction between my reason and other natures around me. My rational activity is in harmony with that of other beings ; it interacts with them ; it impresses them and is impressed by them ; it determines the rational tri-functional activity of SUBJECTIVE VIEW. 405 others through a sympathetic, conscious, aiming action of its own. Simple, unquestionable, comprehensive, thus, is the law of the human reason as tri-functional activity ; — it is regulative through sympathetic, intelligent, purposive exertion. CHAPTER III. THE REASON. — II. OBJECTIVE VIEW. § 248. The proper function of the reason being predominantly and characteristically regulative, the object or end of its work must be precisely to perfect character and condition. This is its comprehensive work and the comprehensive effect of its work. The work is twofold, as it respects (1) character or the essential properties of its ob- ject, and (2) condition or its relation to other be- ings. But such a regulative work in the case of the human mind can be exerted, directly at least, only on active beings — energies, or forces, or powers. Man cannot affect any portion of mat- ter even, except by directing some force upon it, as through some motor nerve-force. This regu- lative work, accordingly, of reason in any object in regard to character is simply this — to effect that such object be at its best. Every object, how- ever, with which the human mind is to act, is a part of an organic whole, and cannot be at its best estate unless its environment, its condition, its relation to other objects, be the most favor- able. Such then is the twofold work of reason upon its objects to make them, so far as it can, OBJECTIVE VIEW. 407 perfect in character and also perfect in condition. The objective view of the human reason as a regulative power or function covers precisely this field — the perfecting of the character and condi- tion of the beings upon which it works. It will be sufficient, so far as the demands of our pres- ent undertaking are concerned, simply to outline in a summary way the effected object of this regulative work of the reason in this twofold direction — egoistic and altruistic — in the respect- ive departments of its office work. § 249. As directed upon itself, in its proper egoistic work, the regulative office of the reason is to perfect the essential activity of the spirit — to effect that it be ever at its best, as to fullness, roundness, and symmetry, and as to direction by being expended on the highest and best objects. To this one high end its growth and culture are to be regulated, while all specific outgoings of its active nature, which must always be in har- mony with the demands of the best culture, are to be kept at their best. It is, in other words, the sacred trust and office of the reason, so far as may depend on it, to render the soul a fully developed activity with its specific functional powers in perfect harmony and symmetry — a feeling, intelligent, aiming spirit, ever moving in due sympathy, enlightenment, and free determi- nation, a spirit of love and light and beneficence. But the character of an activity must of course depend on the character of the object on which 4o8 THE REASON. it is exerted. It is high or low, broad or narrow, noble or base, according to this object. The activity of the human soul, we have seen, has a strong and steady drift and set in the direction in which it is made to move. This drift or set works itself out in the form of desire ; and the comprehensive desire as allowed by the rational free-will determines the character of the soul and is determined or characterized by the object on which it fastens. As desire, it is spontaneous and therefore is not in itself moral or immoral, until the rational free-will comes in, in its sym- pathetic, conscious, aiming work, to allow or dis- allow it. The object of the desire, whether bod- ily indulgence, intellectual strength, or nobility and excellence of character, cannot, as we have seen, be the immediate object of this action of the rational free-will, for that must be some ac- tivity which it is to control and regulate. It is the activity in the desire which comes under this controlling power, and by allowing or disallow- ing that, by fostering or repressing that, deter- mines the fundamental and comprehensive form of character. The first, chiefest, most funda- mental, and most vital work of the rational na- ture in forming character is found accordingly just here, in regulating this all-pervading sweep of the soul's active nature appearing in the form of desire, by directing it upon its proper object and then steadfastly sustaining it and developing it into its fullest and largest sway. The supreme OBJECTIVE VIEW. 409 good, the summum bonum, to man, his chief end and the object of his highest endeavor, is the per- fection of his own being in itself and in its con- dition. As he constitutes a part of an organic whole, the life of which is his life, the perfecting of his condition is but the perfecting of his fel- low members in this organic whole. This is the altruistic part of the work allotted by its nature to the reason as regulative. Summarily, then, the comprehensive object of true rational activity is the perfecting of the natures of all individual beings in their organic relationships to one another, beginning its radi- cal and germinant work in regulating the funda- mental drift or desire of the soul itself aright, following it up in regulating all specific desires and propensities and determinations, and ending with a like work on all surrounding natures with which it is in interaction. The product or resultant of this rational work would be the realized ideal of a perfect character in each of the organic parts of the universal cos- mos, both as a whole with its parts in congruous relationship to it and to one another, and also as a part in like congruous relationship to all other parts of the cosmos. This realized ideal, as per- fect, would of course bear the several character- istics which we have recognized, the true in es- sence, the beautiful in form, the good in end. These characteristics will, in a nature finite and imperfect as is the present lot of man, naturally be 410 THE REASON. realized with a diversity of aim and of endeavor. The essence of a perfect character will be more regarded by one part of the race, as by the Roman the just or right was esteemed the true mark of the perfect soul or the perfect act. The form of character will be the leading ideal of another part, as the noble — the kalon — by the Greek. The end in action will be the governing ideal in another, as wisdom was the- comprehen- sive character of the perfect soul in the estima- tion of the Hebrew. The absolute perfection in character will be the three joined in true or- ganic union — the true or essentially right, the noble or beautiful in form, and the practically wise in relation to the good as end. This is the comprehensive result of all proper egoistic work as regulated by the reason. The altruistic work is perfectly analogous. It will modify itself only in reference to the pecul- iar character and relationships of the being on which this part of its work will be directed. Certainly the grand center and source and all- pervading energy in this cosmical organism — the very creator and disposer of it — must be the chief object in this rational activity. The specific character of its work is determined at once by the peculiar character of the object; and the per- fecting work of the reason here can be only the endeavor to secure that character and condition in all created natures which shall perfectly show forth the perfect character of the great creator OBJECTIVE VIEW. 411 and disposer in the comprehensive features of love and wisdom and beneficence conjoined in the supreme reason. Should the question arise : of these two depart- ments of rational endeavor — the egoistic and the altruistic — which should be esteemed the higher and the more commanding; the answer is, that the two endeavors can in a perfect life never come in conflict, any more than one organ of the body in a perfect condition conflict with another. In the next place, the perfected character and condition of all related parts of the cosmos is indispensable to a like perfection in character and condition to each individual part. It is still true that in all finite natures, the objective is before and so leading to all subjective action. The human soul waits on external object to awaken it to the first going forth of its activity ; and ever, as we have seen, it recognizes its dependence on the external object for lead and guidance. In this view, it would seem that whenever there arises a doubt which should be the dominant principle in action, the presumption should favor the altruistic. It is the sad condi- tion of humanity that the proper egoistic work has disastrously prevailed, a true egoism has become a downright selfishness ; and a proper counterbalancing remedy for this, would seem- ingly be found in determined altruistic work. Job's misery ceased when he prayed for his friends. 4 i2 THE REASON. The grand result and outcome of this rational work in a rightly proportioned egoistic and altru- istic endeavor will be, in the mind itself, a whole- souled and harmonious movement of all its func- tions in loving, wise, and purposive action toward the noblest and worthiest objects, bringing in, as the consequence appointed and assured by the supreme wisdom, love, and power, the perfect blessedness of a perfect character and condition. This grand result and outcome in respect to all fellow-creatures must be a like loving, wise, and purposive activity going out in all opened ways toward them, modified from a proper self-love only in the respects due to co-ordinates and fellow-members of the same body. Finally, in respect to the great Supreme, this result and outcome will be a like loving, wise, and purposive activity, going out here toward him in due reverence, submission, and trust. To perfect character and condition in the creature and sub- ject is the one way to manifest the perfections of the creative and sovereign ruler conceived in his creative and ruling work. To " glorify God " accordingly is in one aspect the " end of man." In another aspect, the highest blessedness of which a man is capable, is a true and right end of his action, but mediately and in so far only as a consequence that is appointed in the constitution of the universe to wait on all legitimate action. While to perfect for himself this character and condition is the one immediate legitimate end of OBJECTIVE VIEW. 413 all free activity in man. Most truly says Seneca : " Man is a rational being ; therefore his good is consummated by fulfilling the end for which he was made. Rationale enim animal est homo; con- summatur itaque ejus bonum si id adimplevit cui jiascitur." INDEX. Activity, essential attribute of mind, 8. Affections, T02 ; classified, 103 ; Appetites, 108. A priori ideas, 282. Association of ideas, 167 ; laws, 172. Attention, 255. Attributes, essential or intrinsic, and relative or extrinsic, 6; 261. Attributive Knowledge, 210; its object, — the true, 211; its ele- ments, 210. Catalepsy, 139. Categories, 238 ; of identity, 241 ; quantity, 244; substance and cause, 263 ; synopsis of funda- mental categories, 297. Concept, 234. Conscience, 349. Consciousness, a knowing func- tion, 34 ; gives intuitive knowledge, 38; restricted to the mind's own modifications, 39 ; variously modified, 42. Continuousness of mind, 17-26. Contradiction, law of, 232. Copula, 228. Curiosity, 254. Deduction, 311. Desires, 105, classes, — desires proper and aversions, 107 ; self-love, 107 ; appetites, 108 ; rational desires — personal and social, 109. Determination, logical, 235. Disjunction, law of, 231. Division, logical, 316. Dreaming, 134. Emotions, 94 ; classified, 95 ; as intellectual", 96 ; aesthetic, 97 ; moral, 99. Exclusion, law of, 231. Faith, 274 ; as a virtue, 356, 359- Fears, ill. Feelings, classified, 63 ; pleasure and pain, 67. Form, 59 ; of a twofold charac- ter — active and passive, 60 ; its nature and modifications, 188; its three constituents, 193 ; received, or interpretation of form, 196 ; produced, 202 ; principles, 205. Generalization, 235. Good, the, its nature and modifi- cations, 365 ; its two realms, 367 ; moral and natural, 370 ; presented — motive, 374 ; pro- duced — duty, 380; duties clas- sified, 385. Growth of mind, 22. Habit, 22. Hope, in ; as a virtue, 356. 416 INDEX. Idea, as denoting any act or affection of the mind, 51 ; the three comprehensive ideas of the true, the beautiful, and the good, 51 ; 269. Ideals, 121 ; primitive and sec- ondary, 121. Identity, personal, 19 ; law of, 231 ; category of, 241. Imagination, active function of form, 63, 11S; artistic, philo- sophical, and practical, 185. Induction, 311. Ijitellectnal apprehension , 251 ; representation, 253. Intelligence defined, 209; modi- fications, 209. Intuition, 222 ; sphere, 223 ; an act of presentative knowledge, 223; gives immediate knowl- edge, 224. Intuitive knowledge, 212. Judgment, 234. Love, as a virtue, 360. Matter, 299. Memory, proof of continuousness of mind, 21 ; defined, 149; its law, 153 ; conditions of a good memory, 161 ; rules, 165. Mental Reproduction, 166. Mental Science, its subordina- tions, 1 ; importance, 2 ; co- ordinate with physical science and mathematical science, 3 ; an inductive science, 3 ; sources, 5; method, 7; Mind, .essentially active, 8 ; a unit, 12 ; not identical with its object, 13; simple, 14; tri-functional, 14; continuous in its activity, 17 ; of an organic nature, 27 ; finite and dependent, 27-30 ; sympa- thetic, 30 ; self-conscious, 34 ; its spontaneity and self-deter- minateness, 44; its activity telic, 46 ; its relativity, 49 ; its phenomena classified subjec- tively as intelligence, sensibil- ity, and will ; objectively as the true, the beautiful, and the good, 51 ; as organic whole, 3S6. Modality, category of, 246; its forms, 247. Motives, 374 ; classes, ^77- Nervous organism as seat of sensation, 77 ; described, 79 ; functional activity, 80; reflex action, 82; subject to a law of habit, 84 ; as related to the mind, 86. Partition, logical, 316. Passions, 116. Perception, 214; relation to sen- sation, 216; sphere, 217; gives immediate knowledge, 218. Phantoms, 127. Pleasure and pain, 67 ; their immediate source, 71 ; final- ities, 72 ; simple, 72 ; tests of legitimate mental action, "J2> > diversely modified, 74. Properties, 262 ; two classes, ac- tions and qualities, 262. Quantity, category of, 244. Reality or existence, attribute of, 279. Reason, the, 386 ; in respect to the self, 393 ; to the several functional activities, 398 ; to external objects, 400 ; its work — egoistic and altruistic, 406. Reasoning, 236 ; classified, 237. Recollection, 179; rules, 180. Relativity of mind, 49. Self-consciousness of mind, 34. Selfdeterminateness of mind, 44. Self-love, 107. Sensations, 77 ; their seat in the nervous organism, 79 ; classi- fied, 89. INDEX. 4*7 Sense ideals, 123. Sensibility as mental function of form, 58 ; how modified, 63. Sentiments, 112; contemplative, practical, rational, 113. Somnambulism^ 140. Space, genesis of the idea, 294. Spiritual ideals, 145. Spontaneity of mind, 44. Supersensible reality, 289; time, 290. Syllogisms, 311. Thought, 225 ; constituents, 228 ; laws, 231. Time, genesis of the idea, 290. True, the, 257; received, 274; produced, 306. Truth, internal or supersensible, 276. Volition, 328 ; directive and se- lective, 329 ; respects some active nature, 332 ; telic, 336; its elements, freedom, ^S ; personality, involving mental sovereignty, originativeness, morality, and responsibility, 338. Will, nature and modifications, 326; growth and subordina- tions, 345. < fee ' \ v ^ . s % s- > V >> ,D '/ ,\\ c o % ^ *r