•> & o X Kf, t ^> *A 5 ' . \V % * ' ' 1 0 PHILADELPHIA: PARRY AND McMILLAN. 1857. ^ Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. HKNRY B. A8HMEAD, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, George Street above Eleventh. PREFACE. All questions in sciences founded on facts, are settled by an appeal to the facts themselves. Hence our knowledge of Astronomy, Optics, Chemistry, Geology and Mechanics, is continually enlarged by the discovery of additional facts, while in the department of Theology, the question of Liberty and Necessity still rests on hypothesis where it stood two thousand years ago. The disputants on both sides ascribe every action to the agency of a power they call the Will ; but what determines the Will to act, is the point upon which the whole controversy turns. On one side it is affirmed that nothing determines the Will — that it determines itself — that it is a spontaneity which can act without cause of action, and can choose among motives without reason or preference. The necessarians do not understand this logic. They affirm that the Will is always determined by the strongest motive, or judgment of the mind, which they say is the only guide of conduct vouchsafed to man. IV PREFACE. The difficulty lies in substituting hypothesis for facts, under the belief that facts could not be affirmed of mind as well as of matter, whereas we know nothing of matter but from a con- sciousness derived through the senses, and from the same con- sciousness only, do we know what takes place in the mind. The evidence of fact in both cases is the same. There is no true knowledge but in consciousness. That we feel pity, love, hatred, malice and resentment, are as truly facts as that iron sinks in water, or that rain falls from the clouds, and unless we are conscious of these and all other facts we possess, we could have no knowledge of them whatever. When a jury is convinced by the testimony of a witness, their conviction is as much a fact, as the existence of the wit- ness himself. The sensations caused by the light and heat of the sun, are a3 truly facts as the existence of that luminary in the heavens. That the features of one person do necessarily remind us of those of another, merely by the force of resemblance, is a fact known to every man from his own experience. So the existence of any judgment, opinion or belief, attest- ed by consciousness,, is as truly a fact as any occurrence in the external world. All phenomena of mind, therefore, being so many facts, every question in mental philosophy may be settled as in other sciences, by an appeal to the facts themselves. Moreover, the immediate antecedents to these phenomena, are sensations, ideas and their combinations, which can be distinctly traced from their first elements up to those perceptions and judgments of the mind, that are the true and sole causes of action. I do not pretend to have discovered what wai not known PREFACE. V before. My aim has been to direct attention to truths we already possess : and if, as I trust it shall appear, that all phenomena of mind are so many facts ; that ideas act upon the mind, and not the mind upon ideas ; that all their combi- nations are formed by their own laws of aggregation, and that the mind cannot command or originate an idea for itself, then all further doubt upon the question of Liberty and Necessity must cease. If I possess any knowledge of my subject, it is mostly the fruit of twenty-five years experience at the Bar, and of obser- vation while on the Bench. The Bar is one of the best schools for the study of the mind — an argument is but a train of associated ideas ; conviction, judgment, execution are its direct consequences. For the first just hint on the association of ideas and the true meaning of the word Will, I am indebted to a treatise on the Mind, by James Mill ; and if it should appear that he has fallen into an occasional error, yet there is enough of truth in his work, if followed to its legitimate results, to place him among the first metaphysicians of any age. Weary of theory and hypothesis, and shut out from the free use of books from a defective vision, I sought and attained the truth in the phenomena of my own mind. Every man possess- es the same means of information within himself. All books written on the Mind from the time of Aristotle until now, can teach him nothing beyond what his own consciousness attests to be true. When he is thirsty. he drinks; the desire for water he knows to be the sole cause of action. This is nature. Such an agent as the Will is defined to be, has no place in the human mind. If in the following pages I have necessarily employed the 1* VI PREFACE. term Will in the sense in which it is used by writers and in common speech, it was that I might show that the true causes of action existed independently of its agency. Whether or no I have truly stated the phenomena of mind as they occur, is merely a question of fact, to be tested by every man's own consciousness, and not by argument. CONTENTS. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. CHAPTER I. PAGE. Elements of knowledge are few, but capable of almost endless com- binations 9 Inventions are simply combinations of ideas familiar to all 11 We think from necessity * 11 Ideas and sensations undefinable 12, 13 The soul, the percipient of all knowledge, can give no account of itself 14 Immutable laws inferred from a succession of like phenomena. ... 15, 16, 17 Delegated laws 19 Laws of thought : Ideas precede volition, and not volition ideas.. . 19, 20, 21 They are active in dreams where there is no volition, and are go- verned by inherent laws 21, 22 Mental philosophy an induction from facts ; true causes of associa- tion first known to Mr. Hume 22, 23 CHAPTER II. CONTIGUITY, CAUSE OF ASSOCIATION. Ideas bound up in words 25, 26, 27 Every definition must contain the precise number of ideas that enter the word 27 Ideas bound up in words, continued 28 Ideas suggested by the position of objects 29 Ideas suggest one another, illustrated by conversation 30, 31, 32 Geography, history, mere associations of ideas 32 Contiguity, source of tedious stories and long harangues 33, 34, 35 Why a concise style pleases 85 Do sensations and ideas make different impressions among them- selves 36 Vlll CONTENTS. PAGE. CHAPTER III. Resemblance, fertile source of associations — comparison 37, 38, 39, 40 Mind, passive under resemblances, as under sensations 41 Classification is altogether from natural resemblances — is made for us and not by us, we do not accept or reject 41, 42 CHAPTER IV. Associations from cause and effect 43, 44 The past becomes the interpreter of the future in physics and morals 44, 45, 46 Science propagates itself, as in geology, astronomy, gravitation, light, &c 46, 47, 48, 49 Ideas are the offspring of our wants, never of the will. 50, 51, 52 Genius, what 53, 54 Spontaneous associations, vagaries 54, 55, 56 Imagination, no such faculty exists 57, 58 CHAPTER V. Attention is not in the power of the will — it is measured by the interest felt in the object — ideas cannot be viewed separately and detained in the mind 59, 60, 61, 62, 63 CHAPTER VI. Memory never under the control of the will 65 To remember or forget is not in our power 66, 70 The mind essentially passive until aroused by sensations or ideas. 71, 72 To reason, is to perceive, unavoidably, the forms and relations of ideas as they arise to the mind. Illustrations — instructions to representatives, lawyers and j udg6s — no opinion can stand still in philosophy, laws or creeds of religion 73, 77 WILL. CHAPTER VII. The qucHtion of liberty and necessity of easy solution 81 A ut horn di.sagreo in their definitions of the will 82 Edwards' opinions examined, and shown to be contradictory 82, 83 His doctrine of moral necessity 83, 84 CONTENTS. IX PAGE. COUSIN Places motive or preference on the same basis with. Edwards 84 BIELFIELD Affirms that the understanding errs, and the will embraces the errors 85 LOCKE Thinks that the power of the will is limited to action — that it obeys the determination of the j udgment 85 MALEBRANCHE Thinks that it is the province of the will to reason, and of the un- derstanding to perceive 85 RE ID, CLARK Ej HOBBES Say that the will is the last dictate of the understanding 86 Gall and Spurzheim adopt the same opinion 86 DR. BROWN Says that action follows immediately upon desire alone, and that he is never conscious of such a power as the will 86 Payne and Young are inclined to the same opinion. 86 HUME Ascribes the power of new perceptions to the will — his opinion ex- amined 87, 88 AIME MARTIN Has revived the Manichean notion of two wills, spiritual and ani- mal SS Cousin's perplexity increases at every attempt to define the will. . S9 After making it every thing and nothing, he proceeds to define its powers 89, 90 A disciple of Mr. Cousin, a professor in an American University, gives a still more fearful account of the will, it acts because it is able to act, and always without cause 90, 92 When a Freewiller is pressed for proof, he retreats behind his con- sciousness, as an enthusiast does for inspiration 91 They nevertheless act from motives as other men 92 If motives move the will to move the man, as the necessarians say, why not let motives act directly ? nature never employs two causes for one effect 93 CONTENTS. PAGE. By choosing the weaker motive, the will acts against the cause of action 94 The power that chooses must judge, hence the will becomes the " I," the "me," the "man" 95 That men could have done otherwise than they did, under the same circumstances, is a delusion often exposed 95, 96 TRIAL AND DEFENCE OP THE GUILTY BARBER FOR MURDER, BEFORE A TRIBUNAL, WHOSE JUDGES, JURY AND ADVOCATE WERE ALL FREE- WILLERS. The address of counsel in defence, sets out fully their practical doc- trines 97, 106 Charge of the court ; acquittal of the barber 106, 107 VOLITION, CHOICE, FACULTY. If choice lie in the determination of the mind, it cannot lie in a faculty of the mind — it is the mind itself that chooses, reasons, hears, sees — faculty is thus made an entity 108, 109, 110 Though Mr. Locke warns us that by faculty he means only a mode of thinking, yet he relapses into the same error with Edwards — metaphysicians seldom fail to treat the will as an agent dwelling in the inner man, and such is their belief 110, 111, 112 The power exerted over the mind by sensations and ideas, the true and direct causes of action 112, 113, 114 SENSATIONS, CAUSES OF ACTION. Every one knows that his mind, when passive, is suddenly aroused by sensations, &c, the progress of sensations until they termi- nate in action — among sensations the strongest always pre- vails , 114, 115 IDEAS, CAUSES OF ACTION. Their power perceived on our features as well as in action 115, 118 CHOICE CONTINUED. Choice, nothing more than an agreeable impression made necessa- rily upon the mind, through the senses or from information derived from others — various illustrations — choice implies ne- cessarily the best — it is made for us and not by us — as in the perception of the greatest apparent good in which the will has no concern 118, 125 15 1 LI I B»j OPINION. Absurd notion on this subject — belief, not in our power — it is an oli'ect, testimony the cause 126, 127, 128 CONTENTS. XI Varies its aspect with the progress of evidence — it is necessarily to every man what it appears to be 128, 129 CAUSES OF ACTION — CONTINUED. Every one knows the causes of action on the minutest occasions — on subjects of magnitude, he pauses for further light which the subjects themselves are sure to bring by their own associa- tions 13 PURPOSE. When a man acts directly from the force of conviction, that is what is meant by the will in common speech 131 A fixed purpose carried into effect, cannot be explained by a rapid succession of volitions 131, 132 Succession of actions explained by a succession of thoughts 132, 133 The opinions of Locke and Edwards would have been unassail- able, had they ascribed all action to the power of sensations and ideas — the interposition of the will does not vary the effect 133 Comment on the Encyclopedia Britannica 134 Change of action, illustrated by change of opinion in a voter 134, 135, 136 PRACTICAL METAPHYSICS Between a necessarian, a Freewiller, a lesser motive man, and a disciple of Dr. Brown at a dinner table 136, 137 FACTS — PHENOMENA. The only forces that can disturb the mind are sensations, ideas, and their combinations; these are so many facts through which alone the truth can be known 13S, 139 The best book on metaphysics is every man's own mind — Descartes, Hobbes 139 GREATEST APPARENT GOOD. The desire of pleasure, whether virtuous or vicious, is the motive power — it is as gravitation to matter, inseparable 140 Pleasure and pain are our masters — opinion of Jeremy Bentham. . 140 Will and pleasure, convertible terms 141 Pleasure, sole spring of action ; but philosophers, unable to con- ceive how it could produce action, have contrived an auxilia- ry agent, the will, which renders the subject still more obscure 142, 143, 144 If we substitute desire for will, we shall perceive it to be the ne- cessary cause of action in all breathing things 144 Xll CONTENTS. PUNISHMENT. CHAPTER VIII. According to the Freewillers, punishment would he mere revenge for an act in which motive had no part 147, 148 Just among necessarians, since the motive can be changed 148 SIN AND CRIME EXIST OP NECESSITY. The best solution of the question of liberty and necessity found in the history of man That he sins from necessity, we have the same proofs as of any fixed law of nature Upon this known principle of human nature, legislators enact pen- alties against crime before committed Freewillers enact no penalty, for motives do not govern the will. . All physical and moral evil exist of necessity, and must therefore have entered the providence of God at the creation Idle speculations of theologians on the existence of evil The innocent are confounded with the guilty in all the dispensa- tions of Providence, whether physical or moral — errors of judgment, fatal to the innocent Presumption of divines in an attempt to apologize for evil. God can do no wrong ; he can commit no sin — no standard above himself. Punishment causes a change of motive, therefore, a remedy for sin and crime Upon this principle rests the codes of all nations and the denuncia- tions of Scripture Upon the same principle all children are disciplined and educated. LAWS ARE REMEDIAL. Lawgivers aim at the prevention of crime by countervailing mo- tives 161 If the disease of mind be not cured, the wrong doer is cut off from society as a patient is by bodily disease 161 The Egyptians treated ignorance as a disease of the mind — educa- tion was the cure. The moderns aim at the same result by more ample instruction 162, 163 Jf evils come by the dispensations of Providence, let us not com- plain, He has provided the remedy 164 Conclusion 165 149 149 150 150 151, 152 152 153. ,154 154, ,155 156, 157 158 159 159, ,160 OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. CHAPTER I. OF THE ELEMENTS OF KNOWLEDGE. Writers agree that external objects act of necessity through the senses, and that all the elements of knowledge are thus forced upon the mind by laws it cannot resist. Impressions from without are called sensa- tions, and when revived in memory, are called ideas ; and although the original stock may be small, yet will it appear inexhaustible when we consider that colors, sounds, and tastes, afford gradations almost without end ; that there is no limit to the variations of form which are but the inflections of aline; that all the varieties of plants on the globe are composed of four con- stituent gases; that the multiplied modes of architecture, of machinery, or of the vehicles in which we traverse sea or land, are shaped of timber cut from the forest, of marble from the quarry, or of iron dug from the earth; that the continual addition of an unit will measure the dis- 2 10 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. tance to the sun ; that of twelve digits only, four hundred and seventy millions of combina- tions may be formed; that the varied sounds of all languages, all the wisdom and learning of man, can be expressed by the combinations of the letters of the alphabet; that twenty-four bells would yield a greater number of sounds than could be struck in the longest life ; that the science of geometry is reared upon a few definitions, each succeeding problem standing on its predecessor, and however lofty the fabric, that the same elements are discoverable at the summit that entered at the base ; that the pro- foundest investigations of the mathematician or astronomer, the highest conceptions of the poet or orator, those ever varying modes and forms of speech that instruct and delight, may all be traced to a few primary thoughts, common alike to the ignorant and the wise. From the same humble sources, genius continues to draw new and elevated beauties, although Ovid complain- ed that preceding poets had appropriated all the graces of speech to themselves, and left none for their successors. COMBINATIONS NOT INVENTIONS. A clock or telescope is said to be an inven- tion; but when examined in its details, the ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 11 combination only turns out to be new, while the component ideas were as familiar to the age of Solomon as now. " There is nothing new under the sun," is as true of ideas as of things ; and he who first ap- plied the power of steam to machinery, could no more create a thought for himself than he could the metal of which the engine was made ; and if our descendants should hereafter contrive the means of travelling on the winds, it would nofrbe an invention, but a new arrangement of ideas already in store, as a new order of archi- tecture may be devised out of materials already in possession. Hence science and art will ever continue to advance, since their constituent ele- ments must, by their own movement, present other combinations, unexhausted and inexhaust- ible to the latest generations to come ; and when complex ideas, which become elemental by use, shall enter the associations, they must accele- rate the development of new and lofty truths that shall as far transcend the wisdom of the present age, as the Principia of Newton did the astronomy of the Egyptians or Greeks. WE THINK FROM NECESSITY. Every one is conscious of trains of ideas that pass across his mind in unbroken succession, in- 12 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. dependently of his will. They come unbidden, often unwelcome, guests, that take possession of the mind, where they continue to combine, dissolve, and depart, from the moment we are awake until we again subside into sleep. To think, is to perceive the forms and relations they present; and as we cannot refuse to perceive them, so are we made to think in spite of our- selves. IDEAS AND SENSATIONS INDEFINABLE. What are sensations and ideas? If, as is said, they exist only in consciousness, how shall we explain their re-appearance after they cease to exist? They can be neither matter nor spirit ; and it is inconceivable how they can be attributes of either. Plato thought they were coeval with matter ; Malbranche and Berkley ascribed them to the immediate agency of the Deity ; Leibnitz ima- gined they were a part of the harmonies of na- ture, subsisting independently of mind or body ; Hobbes, Priestly, and Cooper, thought they arose from the mere organization of matter ; Kant dis- covered them slumbering in the reason ; Victor Cousin supposed them to be real existences; Locke confounds them with sensations; Mill defines them to be copies of impressions receiv- ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 13 ed from objects without; and, since the time of Dr. Brown, most of the Scotch and English writers consider them as so many states of mind, no matter from what source derived. Whatever they may be, atoms or attributes, species, forms, images, phantom or shade, something or no- thing ; by whatever name they are called, sen- sations, ideas, thoughts, conceptions, or percep- tions, they are the disturbing forces that arouse and direct every movement of the soul. We are conscious of their existence — and here all inquiry must end. To define them is impos- sible, since every definition must consist of terms previously understood, or the definition itself will be unintelligible. Nevertheless they are the vehicles of all the knowledge we possess; they instruct us in the past, the present, and the future, in the forms and qualities of bodies, motions and magnitudes of the planets, measure time and space, solve the mysteries of the tides, but reveal not themselves. Though the most subtle and evanescent of all things, yet are they made obedient in speech, bound up in books, en- graven on brass, rendered visible in the produc- tions of art, in the steam engine, in the con- struction of fleets and cities, temples and palaces — reason, judgment, opinion, imagination, creed, religion, law, and philosophy, are but so 9* 14 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. many different forms of thought ; as we think, so are we gay or sad, virtuous or vicious, wise or foolish, Jew or Gentile, Mahometan, heretic, infidel or Christian. In thought only do we seem to exist, for when we lie down in sleep we become extinct to ourselves and the world around us. THE SOUL. The soul too, the passive recipient of thought, is as ignorant of its own nature as of the thoughts themselves. It can perceive the manner in which its ideas are required, but when interro- gated, What art thou ? it makes no reply. It cannot explain its own organization, or whether it be organized or not; whether it be a mere point, or composed of parts, is an attribute or subject. It can give no account of its beginning or end, or define that consciousness by which it mea- sures its own duration. It takes cognizance of its own properties as it does those of matter, but is equally ignorant of the basis in which they reside. Physiologists say it inhabits the head, but they have not fixed its precise locality. The Greeks supposed it to be a compound substance ; the Chaldeans, a lucid fire diffused through the body; while Phrenologists assign ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 15 its faculties to distinct compartments of the brain. It can settle none of these questions for itself. It perceives from necessity, and impels to action according to its perceptions, and when exhausted by fatigue, its functions are restored by sleep, which is a suspension of them all. It is equally at fault when it looks into the body, its temporary home. It finds itself provided with organs of hearing, seeing, tasting, touching and smelling, but knows not how they convey tidings from without. The heart beats, the blood circulates, the lungs respire, the stomach digests ; it observes these phenomena, but perceives not their causes. There is but one cause, that great Incompre- hensible Being who created and governs the Universe according to his own good pleasure; whose laws extend throughout the whole com- pass of matter and mind, ever and immutably the same. IMMUTABLE LAWS. From the uniform course of phenomena in the material world, we infer the existence of immutable laws : for the same reason we are bound to infer their existence in the department of mind. The tides uniformly obey the moon, heavy bodies continue to fall to the earth, rivers 16 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. to flow to the sea, heat to revive vegetation, to raise vapor into clouds, lightning to explode, rains to descend, plants and animals to multiply, decay and die, from the beginning as now. As in matter, so in mind; the elements of knowledge continue to come to us, as to our ancestors, through their appointed channels; ideas combine and form images now as in the minds of Homer and David, numbers and fig- ures in geometry, present the same relations as they did to Euclid ; and in similar circumstan- ces men have uniformly thought and acted alike in all ages of the world. The history of man is but the history of his mind; action is the offspring of ideas; Alex- ander conceived the conquest of Asia, before he embarked in the enterprise ; all those plots, wars and revolutions that overturn kingdoms and states ; all the actions, pursuits and works of man, whether for good or for evil, are but the outward expression of thoughts within. If, therefore, our thoughts were not regulated by uniform laws, mankind could not become the subjects of government, human or divine ; or, if their actions were the offspring of a self-deter- mining will, they would be equally beyond the control of the Deity, whose foreknowledge lies ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 17 only in His power to execute what Himself had decreed should come to pass.* SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. That class of waiters who resolve all pheno- mena of mind or matter into the immediate act of God, will hardly affirm that He prompts men to the commission of crime ; yet such must be their doctrine, as it is incredible that a part of the same mind should be governed by a par- ticular providence, and the rest left to some antagonist power; that all rivers should flow to the sea; that heavy bodies and light should sink or swim by a particular providence; that the specific gravity of gold, silver, iron or lead, and of all things else sold by weight, should be the exact measure of the Divine power, exerted upon each towards the centre of the earth, or that a special providence should fashion every drop that falls from the clouds ; trace the lines and colors of every blade of grass ; superintend the flight of every insect at the tropics or the poles — a doctrine not in harmony with the great- ness of God, since it denies Him the power to * Hence John Scotus, who is greatly lauded for his wisdom, affirms that God could not foresee the existence of sin, since he had not decreed it, and consequently there could be no pre- destination of the wicked, who could not be known until after the offence committed. 18 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. impart necessary laws for the government of His own creation. Whatever may be the theories of philosophers, the course of events proclaim the existence of invariable laws which, every man's own expe- rience compels him to believe. In practical life no one supposes that fire burns wood, or cooks his food; that the blood circulates, or the stomach digests by a particular providence ; that men defraud each other; that a mother loves her children ; or that the blow of the assassin is by the agency of a particular providence. Nor do we ever ascribe the actions of animals to a par- ticular providence, but suppose the dog barks, the horse neighs, the bird sings ; that the lamb is gentle and the tiger ferocious, each by a law appointed to their kind. The artisan never ascribes the motion in the wheels of a watch to the special act of Providence, but to the main- spring, in which he knows the power to reside. The physician never imagines that opium causes sleep, that arsenic poisons ; or the chemist that oxygen rusts iron, that alkalis neutralize acids, or that the mercury rises in the sun, or falls in the shade by a special providence. No advo- cate supposes he ever gained a bad cause or lost a good one, or that the jury pronounced a verdict, or the judge his decree, by a special ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 19 providence ; nor does the law-giver enact penal- ties against the act of God, but against crime, which he believes to come of a propensity in- herent in the constitution of man. DELEGATED LAWS. All changes in matter and mind do, no doubt, take place in obedience to the will of Grocl ; not by particular acts, but by delegated laws, as a clock continues its motion under the pressure of weights in the absence of the mechanic, or the decrees of a monarch are enforced without his immediate agency. But it is said that the effect would be the same, whether the world were governed by uniform laws, or by a series of particular acts. Not so j for under a government of particular acts, no rule of conduct could be prescribed, or law violated, since none could exist. LAWS OF THOUGHT. Tired of conjecture, metaphysicians begin to regard the phenomena of mind as so many facts, from which to infer the existence of uniform laws ; and enough is already known to encourage the belief that the laws of thought will soon be as well understood as the fall of bodies or mo- tion of fluids. 20 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. Ideas take forcible possession of the mind as soon as we are awake; we cannot deny them admission, arrest their progress, or expel them, if we would. We know not whence they come or whither they go ; whether they expire or de- part, are revived or return. Nevertheless, most writers are persuaded, and the masses of man- kind universally believe, that their thoughts, like so many slaves, come at their bidding. No- thing can be further from the truth ; for ideas not present to the mind cannot be perceived ; and what is not perceived cannot be the subject of command. A man cannot command his hat or his cloak, unless the idea of his hat or cloak were already in his mind ; the idea must pre- cede the command, and not the command the idea, as truly as light must precede vision, and not vision light. Ideas are always first in the order of time, they precede volition, and not volition ideas ; hence we have no power to choose what ideas shall enter the mind. They come to us as travellers arrive at an inn, or people pass along a street, we know not the next man until he appears ; so we cannot perceive the next idea in the train, until it is actually in the mind, when it is too late to for- bid its entrance there. For the same reason, every change of topic, ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 21 or subject of reflection, must arise by its own laws of association, or from impressions from without, and never by any effort of our own. We cannot, for example, change the conversa- tion from the properties of light to those of gold, unless the idea of gold had first entered the mind. Trains of ideas can only be broken up by introducing others in their stead ; but what command have we over thoughts unper- ceived and not in the mind ? Let him who thinks otherwise, make the trial for himself, and he will laugh at his own folly in attempting what he discovers to be a mere absurdity. In the absence of all other proofs, the associations of ideas in dreams establishes their spontaneous movement beyond all possi- bility of a doubt. They often combine into images of the highest beauty, reason out a diffi- cult case, revive the memory of distant objects, excite to tears or to laughter, or startle us by misshapen forms and unreal dangers, in all of which it is not pretended the will takes any part whatever, or that any idea can arise from chance. To one who has not studied the subject, our thoughts may seem to wander at hazard rather than by established law. A gentleman once inveighed against the in- 3 22 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. gratitude of Brutus towards Caesar ; the thought gave rise to new trains of ideas, that ran by regular gradation into the mode of making wa- fers. They presently turned upon the sudden death of a child, and in a moment thereafter, became ludicrous, even to laughter. They next dwelt for a time upon mere trifles, metal buttons and silk hats, when suddenly they grappled with the abuses of power and the Hungarian Revolu- tion. Yet not an idea arose from chance ; and however rapid and divergent the transitions, a skillful observer might have detected the law of connection. MENTAL PHILOSOPHY, AN INDUCTION FROM FACTS. All phenomena of mind are so many facts, of which we have as distinct a consciousness as of any occurrence derived through the senses from without. In facts alone consist all we can know of the human mind. That various ideas are instantly associated around any object when its name is pronounced; as a house, a tree, or the ocean, we have the same evidence as of the existence of the objects themselves. That ideas are associated and bound up in words; or are knit together by repetition, as in the alphabet, or inflections of a verb, is known to every schoolboy; but of that ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 23 subtile ligature that holds them together, or that mysterious movement by which they multiply themselves, we shall ever remain ignorant until the power that perceives shall explain the nature of its own perceptions. The subject of associ- ation of ideas was first noticed by Aristotle and afterwards by Hobbes in what he called " dis- course of mind or coherence of conception;" but it was Mr. Hume who first detected the true causes of association to be " contiguity in time and place, resemblance and cause and effect/' terms not altogether appropriate, but which must serve our purpose until better can be devised. CHAPTER II. CONTIGUITY IN TIME AND PLACE IDEAS BOUND UP IN WORDS, ETC. Ideas associated with any object, rise irresist- ibly to the mind, at the thought of the object itself. Pronounce the name Cato, and the virtues of that Roman, his struggles for the liberties of his country, his flight before Caesar and suicide at Utica, will be instantaneously revived in the memory without any effort of the mind itself. So the word "Greece" will draw in its train, its geographical position, com- ponent states, cities, ports, islands, inhabitants, poets, philosophers, heroes and battles, from the time of Cecrops until its conquest by the Romans. Every thing known or written upon its history lies bound up in that word "Greece." At ; the thought of the American Revolution, its causes, armies, commanders, wars, its pro- gress, vicissitudes and termination, pass across the mind as the scenes in a drama. The word " Italy" instantly presents an en- 3* 26 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. tire picture of that country — its form, limits, the surrounding sea, its climate ; mountains stretching its entire length; its rivers, the Ti- ber, Arno, and Po ; its cities, Genoa, Pisa, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples — their aque- ducts, streets, pavement, architecture, and a multitude of other objects, flash across the mind with a rapidity that no utterance can over- take. When a traveller speaks of England, the entire island with Scotland on the north, Ire- land on the west, its hills and valleys, pleasure grounds, cultivated fields, canals and railways — London with its palaces, churches, and bridges, and the multitudes that roll like rivers along the streets — start up to view spontaneously, as a sudden creation. Ideas are provided for us, we do not provide them for ourselves ; they come to us by laws we did not make, and can- not control. And such is the rapidity of their movement, that while we listen to a speaker in public debate, we often find time, without losing a word he utters, to draw upon the histories of different countries, for illustrations he had over- looked — to criticise his style and manner ; to anticipate his conclusions, and often to argue his cause against him, with those very associa- tions he had unconsciously raised in our minds. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 27 IDEAS BOUND UP IN WORDS, CONTINUED. When from the pulpit we hear of Baptism, Repentance, Predestination, Justification, Atone- ment, each word is a treatise in itself. By the terms inheritance, trover, equity, injunction, the advocate brings his whole library to the con- test, as a general his forces to the field. DEFINITIONS. All knowledge lies in the just association of ideas. King, subject, master, servant, husband, wife, virtue, vice, longitude, equator, gravita- tion, sympathy, piety, patriotism, are but so many groups of ideas held together by associa- tion; the words alone reveal the nature and functions of each. Every definition, to be cor- rect, must contain the precise number of ideas that enter the combination : the addition or sub- traction of a single thought would entirely over- throw the force of the term. Words, which are the representatives of ideas, must multiply and expand with the ideas themselves ; hence dic- tionaries must, for the same reason, be in a state of perpetual growth and reproduction. IDEAS BOUND UP IN WORDS, CONTINUED. The names of substances, as gold, iron, wood, stone, bread, apple, opium, sugar, are groups of 28 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. ideas bound up in words, as are the properties in the substances themselves. The associations, when once formed, are not easily dissolved. The idea of sweetness does not lose its hold on sugar and pass over to opium, else we could not distinguish food from poison, or one sub- stance from another. Nor are the associations formed by an effort of our own. When a plough- man is told, for the first time, that gold is heavier than iron, the idea attaches itself to his notion of gold, and becomes the representative of a permanent property. The sight of an ac- quaintance will revive the images of his entire family. We inquire of the progress of one child in music, of another in Latin, of the acci- dent that befell the third : — more, the position of his house and contiguous buildings, its apart- ments, furniture, and ornaments, irresistibly rise to the memory. At the next moment we meet a friend from the West : " When did you ar- rive?" " Yesterday, in a steamer from Pitts- burg." Instantly the Ohio presents itself with all its varied scenery — hills, rocks, towns, and cities ; next, the Mississippi — its muddy waters, alluvial banks, moveable sands, islands, tower- ing cypresses balancing their mossy arms in the breeze, with a hundred other characteristic fea- tures of that wonderful stream. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 29 IDEAS SUGGESTED BY THE POSITION OF OBJECTS, ETC. Nature is always great, but never more so than in the means by which she keeps us continu- ally informed of the true position of objects, upon which our preservation depends. A pilot steers his ship by the association of ideas. When first he perceives the distant light, the bearings, depths and windings of the channel, the rocks, bars, islands, shallows, and path marked for his ship, immediately rise before him in the relations they hold in nature. When a blind man lays his hand upon a known object, every relative object instantly takes its proper place in the mind, so that he is taught by the laws of association, how to direct his steps through the unseen streets and crooked alleys of the populous city. When Ave ascend a flight of steps to enter our chamber or library in the dark, these asso- ciations take the place of sight, and present us with the form, position, and color of objects as seen by the light of the sun. These facts are seldom considered, because familiar to all, but are not the less wonderful on that account. IDEAS SUGGEST ONE ANOTHER, ETC. Contiguity is the fruitful parent of ideas in 30 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. every conversation. When any subject is men- tioned, as the Protestant Reformation, instantly every mind is filled with kindred thoughts. One dwells upon the character of Luther, an- other upon that of Leo; a third upon the sale of indulgences ; a fourth declares that the money was applied to pious uses — the building of churches. The associations necessarily vary with every hearer ; and thus ideas are made to propagate themselves in any and every direc- tion by the means appointed by Providence to supply thought to the human mind. An example more in detail will better illus- trate this law of association. As our steamer approached the city of New York, a passenger said he intended to lodge his family at the Astor House. A lady near him observed it was an agreeable place, were it not for the continual uproar in the streets. 2d Lady. — "It is very quiet in the back apartments." 1st Lady. — "But there you lose sight of the Park, the fountains, Theatre, Museum, and es- pecially of that famous Broadway, where all the world is to be seen." 2d Gentleman. — " I prefer the quiet of the cross streets." 3d Gentleman. — " It is nowhere quiet in New ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 31 York ; every street is distracted by noise ; com- merce takes its level. The wharves of both rivers are encumbered with merchandise. Pearl street is beset with drays, boxes, and coopers ; Wall Street with money-changers, banks, and brokers. In Greenwich, Chatham, Canal Streets, and the Bowery, the retail business is prodigious ; one can hardly cross a street without danger of being crushed by an omnibus." 2d Lady. — u It is a great city ; it commands riches from the interior, and is always acces- sible from the ocean. From Brooklyn heights we have a view of its magnificent harbour, ani- mated with all sorts of living things, secured by a narrow entrance, bounded on all sides by high land terminating in the distant mountains of Jersey." Passenger. — " It is more magnificent than the Bay of Naples." Here the law of contiguity was interrupted by a comparison, but instantly recommenced at the word, Naples, when its streets, Theatre, Museum, population, quays, palaces, the king, Vesuvius, Pompeii, Hercu- laneum, excavations and relics, were all in turn the topics of conversation. 2d Gentleman. — "The first object I hastened to see on arriving at Naples, was Virgil's Tomb, but found nothing there, not even the Urn said to be deposited by Augustus." 32 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. "Id Lady. — "I had rather see the Tomb of his great translator, Dryden : Virgil is a greater poet only because his works are 1800 years older than Dryden s." Passenger. — "Madam, I perceive you have not read the original." Here the trains were again interrupted by a discussion on the com- parative merits of the two Poets, which in turn gave way to impressions from objects on the shore which we now approached. GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY, TRAVELS, ETC. Geography, books of travels, history, biog- raphy, are but the records of ideas, associated with things and persons, and bound up in so many words. The geography of Holland is an enumeration of particulars appertaining to the country, its roads, canals, bridges, towns, dykes, agriculture and cities, as truly as the enumera- tion of the properties of lead is a description of that metal. So all buying and selling consists of a detailed account of the properties of things to which prices are annexed. CONTIGUITY CONTINUED. Contiguity is the fertile source of those tedious stories in which great talkers abound ; of those long harangues at the bar and in the pulpit; and of those minute subdivisions of a subject ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 33 that weary attention by the accumulation of particulars which the subject will infallibly sug- gest of itself. I drew near a group of seamen on the deck of a vessel at sea, listening to a comrade explain- ing his motives for becoming a sailor. He be- gan from his earliest remembrance, described minutely the paternal house with every con- tiguous object, yard, trees, gate, spring-house, the abundance of its stores, the cows — here he was interrupted. " Go on with your story, no mat- ter about the covjs!" When he was old enough he was put to the plough ; here he dwelt minutely upon the qualities of a favorite horse. Again interrupted — u go on tvith your story:" but he could not take leave of the horse without call- ing him by many endearing, names. When he was put to school every circumstance was set out with the same irksome details ; again inter- rupted — "go on tvith your story/' but he insisted on describing his playfellows, and the cruel flogging given Jim Jenkins by the teacher. His story was protracted nearly two hours, with many interruptions and oaths from his hearers, and amounted in substance to this, that he and Jim Jenkins, tired of school, ran away and entered the service of a ship bound to Rot- terdam. 4 34 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. Contiguity is the chief source of thought to the ignorant and uneducated. Ploughing, sow- ing, reaping, the qualities of grain or hay, are topics ever new and inexhaustible to the farmer. Artificers in iron, wood or leather, talk more than the astronomer. A mother can descant upon the habits, tastes and genius of her children every day in the year; and slaves who labor in the field are known to spend whole nights in the pleasures of conversation. The illiterate are never at a loss for thought, since the com- binations of a few ideas may be varied to the end of life. The ideas of a philosopher may be more comprehensive, but it does not follow they are more numerous. He waits in silence for loftier and broader associations, while the minds of the ignorant are replete with details, which are sure in the end to turn upon them- selves and their respective pursuits. Contiguity supplies most ideas that enter every description or narration, and at the same time furnishes a just rule of criticism by which they are to be tested. A subject ^will, by its own necessity, draw after it every contiguous association. Says a traveller at sea, "the main- mast of the ship was struck by lightning in a storm, and three seamen killed." The descrip- tion is brief and just; the whole scene instan- ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 35 taneously breaks upon the mind; the vessel, its position in the water, hull, rigging, deck, hold, cabin, officers, the storm and bolt from the cloud. If the writer had enumerated all these particulars, he would have fatigued the reader with details, which would be unavoidably and instantaneously suggested by the subject itself. A word will often suffice, where a sentence would weaken the effect. Hence the beauty and power of a concise style ; the leading idea being sug- guested, its associations instantly arise, without retarding the movement of mind. Thoughts to be bright, must like the solar beams be con- densed. Enough should be said to arouse kin- dred associations, no more; they will supply spontaneously and without effort, details that would be irksome in the mouth of the speaker. Hence the force of wit, and of those concise sayings found in almost every language on the globe. 1)0 SENSATIONS AND IDEAS MAKE DIFFERENT IMPRES- SIONS AMONG THEMSELVES ? Though we cannot ascribe space or substance to ideas, yet they seem to be copies of the real magnitudes of objects without. The idea of France seems broader than the idea of Holland; the idea of a pyramid bigger than the idea of a 36 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. fly. The distance between the light-house and the channel, seems in the pilot's mind to be eight hundred feet; the channel twenty feet deep, its course and windings the same as in nature, the rocks as lofty, and the islands as large. We find a like absence of space in tra- cing the progress of light through the humors of the eye. The rays cross each other at points which have no parts, yet in those points are contained images of trees, or mountains, and what is still more incomprehensible, the images of all objects seen at once, as meadows, streams, forests, cattle, houses, rocks and hills of an entire landscape, that enter and cross at these points at the same instant without confusion, and take their true position in the picture behind. Never- theless, sensations and ideas must differ among themselves, or we could not distinguish objects from one another in the external world. Red, blue, green, bitter, sweet, hard, soft, cannot make identical impressions ; nor can our conceptions of vice, virtue, gratitude, ambition, revenge; but we know not the nature of the differences, though they enter the very sanctuary of the soul. We are never more ignorant than when we contemplate ourselves; overwhelmed with awe, we fall on our knees before that Eternal Incomprehensible Being, who created us, and whose we are. CHAPTER III. RESEMBLANCE, COMPARISON, ETC. Another cause of association is resemblance, which some authors have thought the most fruitful source of ideas. The sight of an object will often revive the idea of another that resem- bles it ; and although the resemblance may not be entire, yet it is felt in those parts wherein it does exist; and when the resembling object is once brought to the mind, it introduces all its contiguous associations, so that thought is doubly propagated by two laws, resemblance and con- tiguity, both of which are necessarily blended in this chapter. As I walked a street in New Orleans, with a Scotch traveler, he saw a little boy whose features and dress reminded him of his son in Glasgow. He gazed at the child with evident emotion, and began to enter into details, when the associations were suddenly broken up by a line of drays that crossed the street with great speed. u Everything in America," said lie, "ife 4* 38 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. clone in a hurry; a ship is loaded in New Orleans in half the time required in London ; the dray is well adapted for rapid execution, it is a vehicle not known in the capitals of Europe. In London, when a traveller's luggage is too heavy to be carried on the top of a cab, he is obliged to employ a truck by previous arrange- ment. In France, it is conveyed on the back of porters ; and in Italy, on the shoulders of women." The conversation turned upon these subjects and their contiguous associations, until we reached the Cathedral, where we saw women upon their knees at devotion. He said, "It is here as in all Catholic countries, the women are devout, while the men enter and depart as spec- tators at a show." Here the trains of thought ran again into particulars as before. We next bent our steps along a range of fruit stalls, where his attention was attracted by the quantity and size of the native apple. "In Scotland," he said, "apples are small and sour; they are bet- ter in England and Normandy, but nowhere so good and cheap as in the United States; that the Spitzenbergs, which he understood grew on the banks of the Hudson, were exported to England, and bought up for the tables of the rich." We next arrived at the flesh and vegeta- ble markets, which he declared were unequaled ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 39 by any similar edifices in Europe, except at Liverpool. The meats he thought were inferior, but the vegetables better and more abundant than in Scotland. We now stood on the banks of the Mississippi, in which he saw a resem- blance to the Ganges. The conversation then turned for a time upon these respective streams, the quantity of alluvia deposited by each, the culture of rice and the sugar-cane on their banks, the points of resemblance gradually fading away, until the trains ran into details suggested by the laws of contiguity as above. However desultory our conversation may seem, every change of topic could be traced to points of resemblance presented by the objects themselves. The features and dress of the child, unavoidably reminded the traveller of his son, the sight of the dray, the modes of con- veyance in the capitals of Europe ; the devotion of the women, and indifferences of the men, like occurrences in other Catholic churches ; the sight of the apples, their qualities and growth in Scotland, the appearances of the market-houses and river, acted by the same law of resemblance, and whenever we dwelt upon any particular object, the details were invariably suggested by the laws of contiguity of time and place. 40 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. ASSOCIATIONS INDEPENDENT OF THE AVILL. What is true of the sight is equally true of the other senses ; they, like the eyes, present points of resemblance almost every hour we live. " This fruit/' says one, " has the taste of an apple." " This flower," says another, " has the odor of a rose;" "that noise," says a third, "resembles the crying of a child." It is the resemblance and not the will that awakens the idea of the resembling object. The will cannot act upon what is not perceived. It did not intervene between the sight of the boy and the traveller's son; nor between the sight of the apples and the like fruit of Scotland; or the appearance of the Mississippi, and the thought of the Ganges. That resembling objects do suddenly and unexpectedly revive the ideas of one another without effort of the mind, is proved by every man's own experience. One anecdote often becomes the fruitful parent of many. Among western hunters, the first ad- venture with a bear brings up another with a panther, next with a w r olf, then a deer ; each story begetting its like, until the trains insensi- bly melt into other associations, or are inter- rupted by causes from without. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 41 THE MIND PASSIVE, ETC. See also Chap. VI The mind is as truly passive under what enters there from resemblances, as it is under sensations of light, sound or touch. When the report of distant artillery is compared to thun- der, the resemblance is felt from the same ne- cessity that the sound itself is heard. Hence all similes and metaphors used in speech must spring up spontaneously, and never by act of the will : for as we cannot create re- semblances where none exist, so we cannot perceive those that do exist, unless they are present to the mind. CLASSIFICATION. The classification of animals, is the offspring of resemblances existing in nature ; it is made for us and not by us. We see horses, dogs and sheep standing on four feet — nature made the resemblances as she did the animals, both of which we perceive by the same organ and at the same time. The resemblances make like impressions upon the mind, and like impressions melt into a sin- gle thought, expressed by the term quadruped. So a green color, whether seen on grass, the 42 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. leaves of trees, a ribbon, or a thousand other objects, are all identified under a single term, green. So do metals, flowers, plants and all things else, take their position in the mind by laws over which we have no control. We can- not create resemblances, or classify them for ourselves ; they obey their own appointed laws. A child having seen one bird, will call all others by the same name. They are assimi- lated by their resemblances, while their dis- crepancies are not felt. Such are the teachings of nature who made the birds, gave them wings, and ordained those laws which cause their re- semblances to flow into one abstract thought. And yet writers insist, that we, of our own choice, select and embody resemblances among objects, rejecting the differences, and thus make an artificial classification for ourselves. This is a great mistake. We do not select or reject; it is the work of nature herself. She associates all resemblances in the mind, whether of form, color or size, or other properties. Nothing re- mains for us to do, but to give them names, and even these are not created but suggested by etymologies, which are themselves associations of elements taken from other languages, rather than our own. CHAPTER IV. CAUSE AND EFFECT. Curiosity may be called the hunger and thirst of the mind. A desire to know the causes of events., and to trace their effects, ad- heres to every condition of life. It is mani- fested in children at an early period, while philosophers have never ceased to push their researches into the phenomena of nature and the motives of human action, in all ages of the world. At the appearance of an epidemic, every one is ready to assign a cause ; and after the lapse of years of conjecture and toil, physi- cians still continue their researches into the origin of the cholera. A war breaks out between nations — we straightway inquire the causes of quarrel, dis- cuss, approve, or condemn the motives of the parties, deplore the consequent waste of life, and all its attendant evils. We hear of the explosion of a steamer, or conflagration of a city — the causes and extent 44 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. of mischief done, must be known before curio- sity can be appeased. Every event, great or small, — a bankruptcy, disappointment, success, or death — every change in the condition of individuals up to the revolu- tions of a State, must have their causes and effects, from which new associations propagate themselves as light from so many radiant points. THE PAST BECOMES THE INTERPRETER OF THE FUTURE. From the necessities of language, we use the terms cause and effect ; but of that power that produces the effect, we can have no conception whatever. Nevertheless the connection between them, that is, the order of antecedent and sequence, is of momentous concern in the conduct of life, since every step we take is both cause and effect in an unbroken chain, whose last link is death. The past has lost its value, the present expires as soon as it exists — we live only for the future, and thither are our thoughts unavoidably directed. The associations by their own movement, extend the past into the future, in one continued succession of like causes and effects, wants and desires. Hence we are ad- monished to build houses, acquire wealth, sow ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 45 that we may reap ; provide fuel and raiment for winter ; instill principles of conduct into chil- dren for their guidance in riper years ; enact laws for the prevention of crime and abuse of power ; and when we look more narrowly into our own motives, and the motives of others, we still find that all our thoughts, in our humblest efforts and loftiest aims ; in all we do or for- bear to do ; in whatever scheme or enterprise we embark, are continually cast upon the fu- ture — as is the journey of a day, so is the en- tire march of human life. Could we follow out the course of events and reduce their compli- cated operations to settled laws, we might be- come, in a good degree, masters of our fate. But great as our fancied wisdom may be, our ignorance is greater still. "We may calculate the tides and return of the seasons, the courses of the planets and magnitude of the sun, but cannot penetrate our own destiny for a single day. The moral world is as inscrutable as the plrysical ; the motives to action are seldom re- vealed, except in the act itself; the passions overshadow and disturb the judgment ; what is true to-day, becomes false to-morrow ; the con- flict of opinions can never cease, since the opinions themselves must vary with the pro- 46 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. gress of science, and different constitutions of mind. Though we may perceive the connec- tion between effects and their causes, that are near and obvious, we can never rise to the comprehension of the unseen millions at work in this ever-teeming earth ! Nothing stands still; each moment brings change on rapid wing ; we are hurried along as by an impetuous tide into positions we could neither foresee nor prevent, and whatever may be our lot, we seldom do what we intended, or intended what we have done. Nevertheless as long as Nature is in harmony with herself, we are not wholly without a guide : the past becomes the interpre- ter of the future ; we unavoidably expect like events from like causes, and that the actions of men will not vary, where the motives and circumstances are the same. SCIENCE PROPAGATES ITSELF, ETC. Nature is our great teacher, and her means of instruction are the association of ideas. All true knowledge must be acquired in obedience to her established laws. Education may throw other ideas into the trains, but they must take up their position and derive their value solely from the associations they form in the mind. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 47 AS IN GEOLOGY. In a walk over the fields, we meet with rocks split into corresponding parts, and bould- ers scattered over the ground ; the thought of some inner commotion rises irresistibly to the mind, and not of our own effort. The idea is confirmed, when we perceive oblique strata resting on hill-sides, and masses of granite pushed into the summits of mountains. Pre- sently organic remains are discovered in the upper strata, but none in the granite : hence the opinion that granite existed first in the order of time. And when these remains are found in accumulated masses, our thoughts are unavoidably thrown back to a period of creation far beyond the supposed era of the world. Some of them are of different grades of being, while others are of races wholly extinct. Those of the lower grades lie at the greatest depths, while the incumbent masses rise gradually into a more perfect organization, and which were in turn, overwhelmed by some unknown catas- trophe. New trains of ideas rise at every dis- covery, and thus the science of geology, like seed cast into the earth, grows by its own laws of increase. The geologist creates not a thought for himself. His first impressions from objects without, are of necessity, and the combinations 48 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. within, come of the same necessity. Each thought enters the associations by its appro- priate laws, wherein there is neither chance nor choice ; not chance as all agree ; nor choice, since the ideas must have taken their position before the combinations were perceived. SO IN ASTRONOMY. A shepherd, while watching his flocks at night, perceives differences in the magnitude of the stars : that some change place while others are at rest. Then comes the astronomer with his glass, and discovers what he had not seen before, the satellites. Now, the sun presents itself in the centre, and the solar system rises in all its proportions. Nothing is left to the choice of the astronomer : he cannot by any effort of thought, associate the satellites of Jupiter with Mercury, or the diameter of Sa- turn with Venus. His ideas must conform to the condition of the objects themselves, and this is effected by the laws of association, which assign to each impression its proper place in the mind. OTHER PHENOMENA, ETC. Again, boiling water is seen to burst its con- finement and expand into steam. This phe- ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 49 nomenon awakens trains of thought which pre- sent, by their own combinations, the various forms in which this power may be applied. Experiments are accordingly made ; new asso- ciations rise in succession, until their just rela- tions are perceived, and forth comes the steam engine, the material embodiment of thoughts suggested by the phenomena themselves. Is is said that the falling of an apple from a tree, first suggested that great law of attraction, by which all bodies descend to the earth, or are held at rest on its surface ; by which the tides are raised, the moon restrained in its orbit, and the planets in their revolutions about the sun. Little children were seen to cut and fold paper with a bone at a paper mill; the hint expanded itself into the paper knife, now in universal use. Light was seen divided into different rays by fragments of broken glass : ideas beget ideas ; hence arose our knowledge of colors, of the re- fraction of light and the solution of the rainbow. The subject, as in all discoveries, propagated itself: the mind could only perceive what had already entered there. No idea, or combina- tion of ideas, could have been anticipated, since to anticipate an idea is to have it already in the mind. Thoughts come to us, we cannot go to 5* 50 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. them. Not a thought is uttered in the parlor, street, coffee-house, at the bar, in the pulpit, in the prattle of a child, or the grave debates of the senate, that is not plainly or covertly the offspring of some antecedent, and which in turn becomes the parent of other trains that run their own course until broken up by some ex- traneous cause. IDEAS ARE THE OFFSPRING OF OUR WANTS J NEVER OF THE WILL. If our ideas be independent of the will, do they, it may be asked, arise by chance ? I an- swer, no; they are the ready slaves of our wants and desires, that come uncalled to devise the means of relief. It is not in our power to think or not to think of our wants. They are often so intense as to take entire possession of the soul. Rachel cried, " Give me children, or else I die ;" and Patrick Henry exclaimed, u Give me liberty or give me death." The thing desired is deemed necessary to our happiness, and no man can for a moment divest himself of the desire to be happy. However capricious his conduct may be in other respects, in one thing he is always consistent : in the pur- suit of happiness. As soon as any want exists, ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 51 his thoughts will infallibly hasten like so many handmaids, to present the desired object in all its relations and dependencies, until it shall appear attainable ; or if unattainable, their task in either case, being finished, they dissolve and depart. If, for example, a man's affections are placed upon riches, his thoughts are ever busy with his subject. If he be a merchant, he fits out his ship in imagination, embarks his cargo, fol- lows it to its port of destination, sells it to ad- vantage, reloads with suitable merchandise, sells again at a profit, doubles his fortune by another voyage, and then retires in affluence and ease to the pleasures of a country life. Such, and a hundred other like thoughts, spring spontaneously out of any desired object, which, like every thing else in the world, must have its relations with other objects, and whe- ther it be attainable or not, will depend upon these relations brought to view by the associa- tion of ideas. Again : every unsatisfied desire becomes a want and a desire to understand a subject; like a want of food or water is sure to introduce the subject with its kindred associations. The ad- vocate who studies a cause, creates nothing for himself: ideas come to him, he cannot go to 52 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. them. He perceives the various phases his subject puts on, which he is apt to imagine are of his own creation : nevertheless the mind can take no part in the production of thought. Its activity being derivative, it cannot fall back upon its own cause of action. Again, when an author, who is engaged in committing his ideas to writing, is not pleased with the order in which they first rise to his mind, he waits for other and further associations which his subject is sure to present — this he calls thinking, reflecting ; and, when at length they come, he inserts them in their proper place. Still he is not satisfied, but effaces what he had just written, or interlines, or substitutes other words or ideas, or inverts their order; or, what often happens, remodels a page or chapter, and sometimes commits his paper to the flames and re-commences upon a new arrangement of his thoughts. Had he the power, as is supposed, to create or command ideas at will, he would not spend ten or twenty years in writing a book as some authors have done. Virgil might have called forth the iEneid, or Thompson his " Seasons," by mere act of volition, for there is not an ele- mental idea in either poem unknown to a boy of sixteen. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 53 The combinations only are new, and these are spontaneous and progressive, like the growth of a plant, slow or rapid, according to the soil in which the seeds are sown. Gibbon confesses he had spent three days upon a single sentence ; and Newton is represented as sitting motionless for hours, waiting the approaches of truth, as a benighted traveller does the dawning of day. GENIUS. Genius is said to be "a mysterious, original, indefinable power that strikes out a path for itself; an energy which collects, combines, ani- mates." Such a power as is here described, has no existence in nature. If we suppose two men to stand on a promontory overlooking the sea, one of them perceives a resemblance between gems buried in its depths and flowers that blos- som unseen in the desert; then forthwith comes the thought in harmonious measure. Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear ; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. This is genius. The other declared he could never endure 54 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. the sight of the ocean since he suffered from sea sickness in crossing from Liverpool. This is a common mind. Yet neither of them struck out a new path, created, collected, combined or animated an idea for himself. Both uttered thoughts suggested by the same object, just as the same subject raises different and varied ideas, accordingly as the associations shall act upon different minds. Hogarth, Hobbes and Newton, defined genius to be hard study. To think, is to perceive the forms and combinations of ideas as they rise to the mind. Some men possess a nicer suscepti- bility to these combinations than others. Genius lies in this susceptibility, and not in any power it has over its ideas ; for, it must not be for a moment forgotten, that ideas come to us by their appointed laws, and never at our commands. SPONTANEOUS ASSOCIATIONS, VAGAKIES. Although our lives are for the most part a mere succession of wants and desires, yet there are moments when they cease to importune. Then it is that our thoughts, freed from all restraint, yielding to their own laws of associa- tion, possess an activity which every man feels to be independent of his will. Ever on the wing, they fly from object to object, visiting with equal ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 55 ease the remote and the near, the great and the little, the visible and invisible, with a celerity that knows neither time nor space. At one mo- ment they are busy with objects of sense, at the next with forms of their own creation ; now they sport among distant worlds, summon their inhabitants before them, question them as to their polity, religion, works of art, modes of life and death ; in Jupiter, they are giants that live ten thousand years; in Mercury, dwarfs burnt black by the sun. Now suddenly they return to the earth, look into a volcano, the un- fathomed seas, trace their subterranean waters to the hills, whence come rivers that roll them back to the ocean; now they are busy with fossil remains, earth is one vast sepulchre : " shall we too be overwhelmed in turn, and our bones dug up by some higher order of beings?" The moon, too, has had its throes; its caverns are deeper, and its mountains are higher than those of earth ; no atmosphere, no inhabitants; still she holds the sceptre of the seas, and tides and tempests are the ministers of her power. Mysterious Providence ! good and evil are but modes of existence that entered the original plan of creation. Boyle, Leibnitz, John Foster, Chalmers : vain are the speculations of man. 56 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. " What is life ?" Where are our secret chambers of thought? All plants are composed of four gases ; " all flesh is grass ;" there is no limit to the power of steam and fire ; a vessel might be constructed long and broad enough to float un- agitated on a thousand waves as a house stands upon its pillars ; any number of engines might be attached to its sides, and an entire colony cross the ocean at once. Here the associations become more erratic and wild, overleaping the boundaries of the Universe into the vast unde- fined void, when suddenly a tap at the door or the sound of a bell calls them back to the realities of life. Every one is conscious at times of such like trains of thought, called reveries or musings by Mr. Locke, and which mean nothing more than associations left to their own spontaneous motion undisturbed by any extraneous cause. The mind is the passive area on which they cast their ever-varying forms as clouds their shadows beneath: we perceive them and the relations they present, and if the connection at every transition is not remembered, we are sure it did exist, for no one believes that an idea ever arose by chance. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 57 IMAGINATION. Every figure of speech or form of thought that enriches the poet's fancy; those wonderful stories in the Arabian Nights, and fabulous beings in Pagan Mythology; those castles Ave raise like mists in the air; those hopes and fears that forbode the good or evil to come; those gilded prospects of future felicity that entertain and delight, are all explained and solved by the association of ideas. Such a faculty as the imagination has no place in the human mind, for it is unphiloso- phical to ascribe to a supposed agent the func- tions of a power known to exist ; and if there were such a faculty as it is described to be, it would be a mere expletive, since it could not command a thought or any combination of ideas not already present to the mind. Professor Stewart admits that our ideas are so completely " subjected to physical laws, that it has been justly observed, we cannot, by any effort of the will, call up any one thought. This observation, although it has been censured as paradoxical, is almost self-evident; for to call up a particular thought supposes it already in the mind." This sentiment is just; neverthe- less, in another part of his work, he ascribes all inventions and discoveries in the sciences to 6 58 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. the power of the will, and all figures of speech to the imagination, which he says/ "selects and combines our ideas to form creations of its own." It did not occur to the Professor that inven- tions and figures of speech, were in the same situation with the ideas that compose them; since to call up a particular form or combina- tion of thoughts, supposes it already in the mind ; and to call up what is already in the mind, is a mere absurdity. CHAPTER V. ATTENTION. The Professor is equally at fault in his at- tempt to show the influence of the mind over its trains of thought. If it be true, as he affirms, that we possess the power of singling out any thought at pleasure, or of detaining it and making it a particular object of attention, then our ideas, when once in the mind, would not be subject to physical laws as he affirms, but to a law imposed by the will, so that a man might please himself in the selection and detention of his thoughts, as in the choice of the furniture of his house, or the cut and color of a garment. But the facts are otherwise. Ideas cannot be separated nor viewed singly, but always in connection with one another as are the objects they represent. When we contemplate the face of an absent friend, his features appear in their natural combination. If w T e could single out and consider any one of them separately as the 60 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. eye, the resemblance would vanish and our subject would be abstractedly • the eye: but here again a combination would appear as be- fore ; for the eye is only known by its form, coats, humors, iris, various colors and pro- perties. Or if we consider one of its parts only, as the crystaline lens, immediately its form, po- sition, and power to concentrate light rise to the mind. Or if our subject be simplified to a mere sensation, as a green color ; here again the combination exists, for something must be green — a field of wheat, the foliage of a tree, or some other object, whose form, magnitude, and other properties would enter the picture and become themselves new centres of association. We cannot detain any thought, or fix the at- tention at will. A traveller perceives without emotion, the succession of objects that rise to view ; but at the sight of a volcano, his steps are stayed, and his attention fixed. It is not the will, but the nature of the object that de- tains his thoughts, and his attention is measured by the degree of interest it excites. The at- tention of a child is riveted to an elephant, while a dog makes no impression. A little girl sees nothing but the pretty doll at the win- dow, while her brother is wholly taken up with the little man and his drum. A merchant ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 61 glances carelessly over the motley columns of a newspaper ; presently he falls upon a paragraph announcing the loss of his ship — his thoughts are suddenly arrested, and his mind shut to every object of sight or sound. He does not perceive a servant enter or depart ; nor does he hear the prattle of his children ; his own name pronounced, or the clock strike in the same apartment. This is no mystery. Every one has felt a like abstraction in himself. The attention cannot be divided ; it may be diverted in rapid succession, but can never keep pace with the manifold objects with which the senses are perpetually assailed. Its capacity is limited ; when wholly occupied by one subject, there is no room for another — a cup that is full can hold no more. It is with ideas as with sensation ; while one sensation acts, it prevails over all others. The flavor of an orange excludes that of an apple : each dish on the table takes its turn, and every one knows how difficult it is to over- come the taste of a nauseous drug. Great pain renders us insensible to less : in the agonies of the toothache, w r e do not feel the bite of an in- sect ; and a violent emotion, whether of joy or sorrow, makes us, while it lasts, unconscious of any other. 6* 62 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. But philosophers treat attention as a problem, which they endeavor to solve by supposing that the clock was not heard in the above in- stance, from the want of attention, which they affirm to be a voluntary act, forgetting that it must be heard before the attention could be aroused, when the voluntary act would come too late. The hearing must be antecedent to the attention, otherwise we might attend to a sound before it was heard, which would be quite as unintelligible as seeing an object be- fore it was visible. Although the attention be measured by the interest felt in any object, yet it may be ex- cited by an object indifferent in itself, when connected with some other that concerns us : as where an advocate defends a cause for the sake of a reward, or a school boy applies him- self to his hateful task from fear of punish- ment. The power to detain any thought at will, implies the power to exclude at the same time all other thoughts from the mind ; so that sor- row or remorse, which gives no pain but in thought, would cease to trouble, whenever the sufferer chose to detain other subjects in their stead. But this theory is contradicted by the universal experience of mankind. Ideas cannot ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 63 be made to stand still. They enter the mind from causes beyond our control, and depart with a celerity that no effort can retard. In their rapid flight they impart knowledge by sudden impression, as objects in the dark are seen by flashes of light; and however pro- tracted the investigation of any subject may be, the perception of truth is always instan- taneous ; so that if all the moments really spent in the reception of knowledge could be measured, they would occupy but a small in- definable portion of time. The fatigue of study does not arise from voluntary effort, but from the continued suc- cession of images that overtax the perceptive powers, as the eye is fatigued by the over ac- tion of light : and as the light acts upon the passive eye, and not the eye upon the light, so the forms of thought act upon the passive mind, and not the mind upon the thought. CHAPTER VI. MEMORY. Remembering, which is defined to be the re- vival of ideas that have passed out of the mind, is better understood from experience, than from any definition in words. Ideas are not revived by any effort of the mind, which, as has been repeatedly shown, can have no power over ideas, not present to its perception. Remembering, must be, there- fore, explained by some other process, and this is none other than the association of ideas. Like features in a stranger, will instantly and unavoidably revive in us the remembrance of a deceased friend, his form, dress, manners and conversation ; the causes and effects of his sudden death, the varied vicissitudes of his life, public and private, back to the early scenes of our youthful sports together. We know of our own consciousness, that the revival was purely the effect of the resemblance, and that every other idea in the train followed 66 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. by its own laws of association, independently of the will. Again : a lady in a stage coach which had stopped for a relay of horses, asked for water. At the sight of the servant who presented it, she burst into tears, fell back upon her seat and refused to drink. When she became com- posed, a passenger inquired into the causes of her sudden grief; she replied, that the servant who brought the water, had been the nurse of her child that died eight months ago. The mystery was solved; the appearance of the nurse revived, of necessity, the remembrance of her dying child, and all the sorrows of that melancholy scene. To remember or to forget, is not as we please. The guilty do not remember their crimes, nor can they forget them, at pleasure. To remember is at once their discipline and their punishment, from which there is no es- cape. They may traverse sea and land, scale walls and mountains, still the unwelcome thought follows up its blows, often more terri- ble than the rack. That memory is independent of the will, is confessed by the usages of society, which forbid the mentioning any subject that may cause painful remembrances in the minds of others. ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 67 The most ignorant, although they never heard of the association of ideas, never allude to any misfortune or crime by which one of the com- 1 pany had suffered. Nevertheless, most writers insist that we re- member by voluntary act : of this opinion is Dr. Abercrombie, a late author, who re-affirms the prevailing notion upon the subject. He says, " We remember facts, and can also recall them into the mind at pleasure; we call up facts by a voluntary effort, by directing the mind into particular trains of thought, calcu- lated to lead to those which we are in search of." To say we can remember a forgotten fact at pleasure, is simply an absurdity; for what pow- er have we over a fact not present to the mind? or how can we perceive the tendency of parti- cular trains of thought to lead to the discovery of a fact when the thoughts themselves are un- perceived ? If we could call up one absent or forgotten idea, we might a thousand — nay, all that we had ever known of history, ancient or modern, of philosophy or science ; all that we had ever read, heard, seen or thought, might, by voluntary effort, be instantaneously revived in the mind. We are, on the contrary, often disconcerted 68 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. at meeting with a friend, whose name we had forgotten. The usual civilities pass between „ us, while our air and manner betray our em- barrassments, which perceiving he turns away, not less mortified than ourselves. From this dilemma we would gladly escape, but we can- not ; the will can do nothing for us ; uneasy at our situation, we take some one aside and ask his name ; as soon as it is pronounced, the bur- then is removed, and we are relieved. Now, what took place in the mind ? The an- swer is easy. The sight of his features recalled the times and places of our first meeting in a steamer, his manners, dress and conversation — also our second meeting at the hotel, and after- wards at a private dinner, where we were in- troduced by name. In like manner, the fea- tures of other persons present, revived the associations peculiar to each, otherwise we could not have known them apart, or distin- guished the members of our own families from strangers. The desire to remember the forgot- ten name, like the desire to understand any subject, continued to renew the associations connected with it, again and again, as long as the desire remained unsatisfied; and if the name itself was not revived, it was because its impression, like a feeble link in a chain, was ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 69 too weak to sustain the connection : while on the contrary the names of the other guests, being more deeply impressed, were instantane- ously and irresistibly revived at sight. Again : instantly a traveller discovers he had lost his purse, its form, color, texture and con- tents ; the times, places and circumstances con- nected with it, pass in rapid review before his mind. He pauses, as he says, "to reflect," " to try to think what he had done with it," " to remember where he had it last," imagining that he voluntarily sends out his ideas in search of it, whereas it is the idea of the purse itself that revives the circumstances connected with it, just as the thought of a ship, a house, tree or child, or of any other object, would of neces- sity bring up the associations peculiar to each. If the trains lead to the discovery of the purse, desire is satisfied, and the subject departs ; if not, anxiety will infallibly bring up the circum- stances again and again, with the different asso- ciations at each return, in the same way that the interest we take in any subject, will con- tinue to exhibit it, in its different aspects, until desire be satisfied, or cease from some other cause. This is the philosophy of facts, and if it be a true account of the process of remembering, 7 70 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. it is as unreasonable to search for any other, as for other inlets of light and sound, than the eye or ear. The error lies in confounding will and desire, which are totally different in their natures. A man may have daily a hundred desires without a single act of the will. He may desire a change in the weather, a favorable wind, the restoration of his health, or the arrival of a friend, but he never wills either. Desire explains the recurrence of the idea of the object lost with its associated circumstances, but the will is never disturbed until the disco- very is made, and then only does action begin. The will obeys ideas, and not ideas the will. If ideas were under the control of the will, so would our opinions be, for they are made up of ideas, which we might select at pleasure, as an apothecary compounds a dose or a painter his colors : or we might dispose of the old stock of notions at wholesale, and provide ourselves with another set, as we furnish out our houses in the newest style. If we were possessed of such power as is alleged over our ideas, every man would be the maker of his own happiness. He would not suffer his peace to be disturbed by the fore- bodings of evil, the remembrance of misfortune or remorse for crime. That we have such pow- ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 71 er, is the romance of metaphysics. He who gave us our being, has annexed thereto immu- table laws of thought, that bring joy or sorrow to the mind, as the sun brightens, or clouds ob- scure the heavens. THE MIND PASSIVE. The mind is essentially passive in every as- pect in which it can be viewed. Sensations of light, heat, sound, taste, pleasure or pain, act upon us, and not we upon them. The passions act upon the mind as the word imports, and not the mind upon the passions. Hope, fear, ambition, hatred, pity, remorse, sorrow, love, keep us in almost perpetual agi- tation, waste our frames, and sometimes drive us to acts of violence and self-destruction. An argument that overthrows one opinion and es- tablishes another in its stead, acts upon the mind, and not the mind upon the argument. Even our spontaneous trains of thought do often, by their own movement, reveal unexpect- ed truths, that throw us back upon our steps, and give a new direction to the principles and conduct of life. We have proofs within ourselves of the pas- sive nature of the mind in the approaches of sleep. As our ideas begin to fade, perception 72 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. gradually declines and expires under the total absence of thought. The mind now reposes from the excitement caused by both sensation and ideas : we are no longer conscious of ex- istence ; time ceases to run, and the extremes of wakefulness meet without space between them. During the interval of rest, it retains its excitability, as does the optic nerve in the absence of light. Both are aroused into activ- ity at the return of their exciting causes, the mind to perception and the eye to vision. Sound sleep is the total absence of thought, as vision ceases in the absence of light. That the mind should act without the pre- sence of sensations or ideas, is impossible ; and if its activity be caused by sensation or ideas, then sensation and ideas must precede the first movement of the mind, and such is the fact, for every one is conscious of the presence of sensation or ideas before action begins. Sensations come of objects from without, and ideas from sensations, and thus the mind de- rives thought and activity from sources inde- pendent of itself. That there can be no motion in mind or mat- ter without antecedent cause, is the voice of universal nature, and he who contends for a self-moving power within himself, is bound to ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 73 show when, how, or on what occasion, and what achievements it performed without the presence of either sensation or thought. REASONING. To think, reason, judge and determine, is to perceive the forms and relations of ideas as they rise to the mind; nothing more. This will appear manifest if we follow out the pro- cesses of thought on any given subject; as for example, whether or not a representative be bound to obey the instructions of his constitu- ents ? The question w r ill of itself infallibly suggest trains of thought like the following : Commu- nities being too numerous to legislate in a body, meet by appointment to choose an agent to act in their stead. The whole scene passes in review before us; we see the assembled multitude — the judges of election seated at the ballot-box — Ave hear the interrogatories put to the voters as they come — the contest w^axes warm — the parties are alternately elate and despondent — the hour has elapsed — the polls are closed — the votes are counted, and the victor proclaimed — he takes his seat in the legislative chamber. His constituents instruct him to cause a road to be run through the centre of the population, 7* 74 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. and a bridge erected to connect its termination with a neighboring town. As this is a matter in which they best understand their own in- terest, his rule of conduct springs spontaneously out of the facts — ex factu oritur lex — as lawyers say; and he yields a ready obedience. Next comes the project of a law, based upon facts of which his constituents can have no knowledge whatever. Here it is plain he must act from his own convictions, such as arise of themselves out of the facts and circumstances before him. These being changed, his convic- tions, which are but the perceptions of the re- lations of ideas, must change also; each case furnishes its own solution. But if a Senator be instructed to vote against a treaty of peace, advantageous to the nation, but hurtful to the local interests of his con- stituents — how shall he act ? Must he obey in- structions ? On this point there will ever be two opinions, the necessary result of the same facts acting upon different minds. Uniformity of opinions is as impossible as uni- formity of taste for food. No man's opinions are in his power ; if they were, he might shut up his senses against impressions from without, or he might refuse to perceive the reasons of things or ideas ; or to think at all, £tnd thus re- ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 75 duce the mind to a blank, as Locke supposes it to be before sensation begins. On the contrary, nature teaches her children, as she upholds their being, by her own appointed laws, without their agency or consent. She has her alphabet, her grammar and syntax ; and he who can be made to observe and understand her modes of instruc- tion, that man, whether ploughman or philo- sopher, is a metaphysician indeed. I shall not inquire whether there be any other causes of association, and if any, whether they might not be resolved into the three treated above. My chief aim has been to show, that the mind is passive until aroused by sensations and ideas ; that ideas obey their own laws of mo- tion independently of the will ; and that from the forms and relations they present, arise all phenomena of mind, all the knowledge Ave pos- sess, and every emotion of the soul. Whether my position be true or not, is a mere question of fact which every one may ascertain for himself. Let him who doubts call up the idea of Cato or Washington, before he is conscious of the presence of either in his mind ; or try to form an image or figure of speech that does not spontaneously spring out of his subject, and he will find that the existence of ideas consist 76 ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. wholly in their being perceived ; and being per- ceived, must have been in the mind before the attempt was made. I may have insisted too much upon certain propositions too plain to be denied. Neverthe- less, most authors write, and all men act, as if they believed their ideas were at command, or of their own creation ; an error which has hither- to proved fatal to the progress of true philo- sophy. Lawyers would be better qualified than other men for researches into the mind, were they not too much cramped by the details of the pro- fession ever to rise to a just comprehension of the subject. The trial of every cause is an illustration of the laws of thought. The facts suggest the mode of attack, which in turn suggest the means of defence ; ideas beget ideas ; the struggle is maintained by new associations that come like fresh troops in the heat of battle — an idea un- expectedly aroused in the progress of debate, has often proved fatal to a cause, and as often has a thought occurred too late, that might have been equally decisive, had it been at command. Judges themselves often pronounce upon ideas that had not occurred to either counsel ; and if an appeal lie to a dozen tribunals, the decision ASSOCIAITON OF IDEAS. 77 might be as many times modified or reversed, since the same trains of thought might not oc- cur to the same counsel, or might act differently upon the understandings of the judges ; or new associations might arise to the same minds by that eternal law that impels all things forward in mind as in matter. The elements of knowledge will continue to vary their combinations through all time to come ; future judges will infallibly think differ- ently from their predecessors ; other opinions will prevail in law, which, like creeds in re- ligion and philosophy, will take their hue from the genius of every succeeding age. THE WILL THE WILL, CHAPTER VII. The disputants on both sides of the question of liberty and necessity, agree that the will is the immediate spring of action. On one side they say it is made to act by previous motive or determination of the mind; while on the other, they affirm it acts independently of mo- tive or of any influence outside of itself. Upon this point the controversy has turned for more than twenty centuries. Nevertheless, the so- lution of the question, when rightly understood, is so easy, that it is in danger of being rejected from its very simplicity. Whether we possess within ourselves such an agent as the will is said to be, by either party, can only be known from our own con- sciousness, and if that does not testify to its existence, it is a fiction to be found only in books. Authors do not agree in their definitions of 8 82 THE WILL. the will, each fixing its meaning for himself, and putting all others in the wrong. The ablest on the side of necessity, and one of the most accom- plished logicians of any age, is Jonathan Ed- wards, and yet his definition is altogether vague and at variance with itself. He says, " The will is that by which the mind chooses anything — the faculty of the will is that power or principle of the mind by which it is capable of choosing — an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice — the very act of volition itself, is doubtless a deter- mination of the mind; i. e., it is the mind draw- ing a conclusion, on coming to a choice between two or more things proposed." Having settled upon this definition, he pro- ceeds to show that volition or choice is deter- mined by " that motive, which, as it stands in the view of the understanding, is the strongest. Motive is something that is extant in the view or apprehension of the understanding or per- ceiving faculty — the strongest motive is that which has the greatest degree of previous ten- dency to excite volition." This he resolves into the " greatest apparent good," and adds, " That to appear good to the mind, as I use the phrase, is the same as to appear pleasing or agreeable to the mind." THE WILL. 83 That the will is determined by the strongest motive, and is always as the greatest apparent good, is often repeated and made the basis of his entire treatise on the freedom of the will. When, therefore, several objects are present- ed to President Edwards for choice, a half dozen different treatises, for example, on as- tronomy, he examines them respectively, and the mode in which the subject is treated by Woodhouse, his profound researches, illustrated by diagrams, the paper, type and binding, de- termine his judgment in its favor, being the ne- cessary effect of the evidence presented by the object itself; and thus it turns out, that choice arises of necessity, since the mind could not judge otherwise than as it did. And yet among the vulgar, and too often among the educated, choice implies the power to adapt the mind to the nature of things, whereas it only indicates the manner in which the things themselves act upon the mind. Such is the necessity of Edwards — that vo- lition or choice is the necessary effect of mo- tive, that is of the greatest apparent good. But as motives vary continually with every change of judgment, opinion, belief, desire or want, his necessity is simply a corresponding volition, followed by doing what pleases us 84 THE WILL. most at the time ; whereas physical necessity is that unchangeable law that governs the opera- tions of matter; wherein there is neither mo- tive, appetite or volition ; nevertheless it has been the fate of this great philosopher to be misunderstood or misrepresented by inferior minds, who seek to make capital for themselves, by raising an outcry against him for opinions he never entertained. Cousin. Cousin places choice or preference upon the same basis with Edwards. He says, " That to prefer is to judge definitively, to conclude ; for it is not the will of man to judge that such or such a motive is preferable ; we are not masters of our own preferences ; we judge in this respect according to our intellectual natures, w r hich has its necessary laws, without having the con- sciousness of being able to judge otherwise than as we do ; for it is evident the different motives for or against, apply to and govern the intellect, which is not free to judge indifferent- ly, this or the opposite." Bielfield. This writer affirms that " The understanding examines and presents all objects to the will, THE WILL. 85 and according as that presents them, this ac- cepts or rejects, for the will has not absolutely the power of examining and judging : its sole quality is that of determining. It is the judg- ment that errs and the will that embraces the errors; for if the will could freely determine either for good or bad, it must have the faculty of reasoning, comprehending and examining, which is the business of the judgment — the will at all times will follow the judgment as its guide." Locke. Of the same opinion is Mr. Locke, who says that the " only object of the will, is some action of ours, nothing more; for we producing nothing by our willing, but some action in our power, it is there the will terminates and reaches no farther. It is not a fault, but a perfection in our nature, to desire, will and act according to the best result of a fair examination. A mans will in every determination, follows his own judgment." Malebranche. This writer on the contrary, affirms, that it is the province of the will alone to reason, and of the understanding to perceive, but has not 8* 86 THE WILL. informed us how the will can reason without perceiving, or how the understanding can per- ceive without reasoning, since to reason is but to perceive the relations of ideas ; nothing more. Reid, Clarke, Holies. Dr. Reid thinks " that the last determination of the mind is another term for the will." Dr. Clarke says, that the last dictate of the under- standing is not different from the will, while Hobbes before them had said, "the will is the last act of deliberation." Gall says, motives must be compared, weighed and judged; the decision resulting from this operation is called the "Will." Spurzheim, fol- lowing in his footsteps, affirms "that the will is the decision of the understanding." Dr. Brown says that action follows immedi- ately upon desire, and declares he is never con- scious of such a power as the will. And even Edwards himself identifies the will with the affections of love, hatred, the passions and emo- tions, which he thinks are only certain modes of the exercise of the will. Payne and Young are inclined to the same opinion. Hume. This philosopher, in his Treatise on Human THE WILL. 87 Nature, defines this faculty thus: "I desire it may be observed, that by the will, I mean nothing but the internal power we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new mo- tion of our body, or new perception to the mind." By a new perception, the author could not have meant a simple idea derived through the senses, otherwise the blind might have a know- ledge of colors they had not seen, and the deaf of sounds they had not heard. He must have intended that the will could originate new combinations of ideas, indepen- dently of those laws of association he so hap- pily defines. If such were his meaning, then all discoveries in the arts might have been made in the beginning, and those to be made hereafter, might be forthwith brought to light, merely by an effort of the will. But it is now admitted by all the best authors, that the mind cannot originate an idea or combination of ideas for itself; nay, that this undefinable will cannot even help the memory to the forgotten name of a friend, unless it be aroused from some cause without, or brought into the mind in its appro- priate trains of associated ideas. As we become possessed of simple ideas from necessity, so are all their combinations formed independently of the will. 88 THE WILL. When for example, any complex idea, as of a ship, is present to the mind, how came it there ? were its simple elements put together at that instant, before the word ship conld be pro- nounced ? If so, the component elements must have been put together according to a form or mental image of a ship pre-existing in the mind ; but if the image or form pre-existed there, then the combination came too late, and the image or form of the ship must have come from another source, which could be none other than the asso- ciation of ideas. Aime Martin. This writer, in his Treatise on Education, has revived the Manichean doctrine of two wills in the same man, one spiritual and the other ma- terial, that contend for supremacy whenever a choice is to be made. Lorsque les deux volontes se rencontrent, il y a lutte; et alors, suivant que Tune ou 1'autre l'emporte, vous voyez apparaitre Epaminondas ou Cesar, Socrate ou Sylla, Washington ou Bona- parte, la sagesse ou 1' ambition, avec toutes leur suites. Lorsque la volonte de Tame est la plus forte, elle fait servir les facultes de l'intelligence a son triomphe; et lorsqu au contraire, la volonte animale a le dessus, toutes les facultes de Tame s'cffacent en leur obeissant. THE WILL. 89 M. Cousin , again. But no writer has had such a struggle with his will as M. Cousin : every effort at definition has but increased his perplexity. He first iden- tifies it with attention. " Now, what is atten- tion ? it is not the reaction of the organs against the impressions received ; it is nothing else than the will itself; for, nobody is attentive without willing to be so, and attention at last resolves itself into the will." It next becomes the foundation of conscious- ness. "The first event of which we have a consciousness is volition." It is next made the measure of time. "Now a moment is nothing else in itself but a single act of the will." It is then made the test of existence and personal identity. "It is will then attested by consciousness, which suggests to us the convic- tion of our existence, and it is the continuity of the will, attested by memory, which suggests to us the conviction of our personal identity." Having shown the will to be any and every- thing, he proceeds to display its powers. " The moment we take a resolution to do an action, Ave take it with a consciousness of being able to take a contrary resolution. Sec then a new element which must not be confounded with the former ; this element is the will ; this 90 THE WILL. cause, in order to produce its effect, has need of no other theatre, no other instrument than itself. It produces directly without interme- diate, and without condition, continues, consum- mates, or suspends and modifies, creates it entire or annihilates ; and at the moment it exerts itself in any special act, we are con- scious it might exert itself in a special act totally contrary, without any obstacle, without being thereby exhausted ; so that, after having changed its acts an hundred times, the faculty remains integrally the same, inexhaustible and identical, amid the perpetual variety of its appli- cations, being always able to do what it does not, and able not to do what it does. Here then, in all its plenitude, is the characteristic of liberty !" A disciple of M. Cousin, late a Professor in an American University, gives a still more start- ling account of the will. He says, " The will is a cause contingent and free — is first cause itself. Acts of the will neither require nor admit of antecedent causes to explain their action. What moves the will to go in the direction of reason ? Nothing moves it — it is cause per se. It goes in that direction, because it has power to go in that direction. What moves the will to go in the direction of the sensitivity ? Nothing moves THE WILL. 91 it — it is cause per $e. It goes in that direction, because it has power to go in that direction. It is a power that is indifferent to the agreeable- ness or disagreeableness of objects; distinct from reason, it is not conviction or belief.'' What, it may be asked, moves the professor, who is an eminent divine to pray or preach? Nothing moves him to pray or preach ; his will moves itself; he prays and preaches because he is able to pray and preach. What moved him to take his text in 17th of John the Evangelist ? Nothing moved him to take his text in 17th of John the Evangelist ; his will moves per se, and admits no cause of action outside of itself. What moves him to eat when hungry, or to drink when thirsty ? Nothing moves him to eat when hun- gry or to drink when thirsty ; his will neither requires nor admits of an antecedent, and unless it moves of its own accord, remains fixed forever. So when he snatches his child from the flames, he is not moved by love or pity; his will moves per se, and if it happened to move at that critical juncture, it was a contingency that might not happen again in a thousand years. There is no end to the absurdities uttered about this incomprehensible will. It becomes more unintelligible, the more that is said about it. The word is so inwrought into our language, 92 THE WILL. that it could not be torn away without endanger- ing the entire fabric. It is pronounced or writ- ten every hour of every day, yet no man knows what he means by it, though he thinks it a part of himself. Ask a ploughman what it is, and his definition, if any he can give, will be quite as intelligible as any found in the books. Ask a metaphysician, and he will define it by writing a treatise on Lib- erty and Necessity, which the next author will declare to be absurd and inconsistent with itself. They who say the will is a self-determining power, are bound to specify what actions it has performed under such conditions. But when pressed for facts, they retreat behind their own consciousness, as an enthusiast strikes his breast for proof of inspiration. In the meanwhile their own conduct furnishes the best refutation of their opinions. They engage in the acquisition of wealth, power and fame, w T ith the same steadi- ness of purpose as the rest of mankind, are actu- ated by all the passions and emotions of our common natures, fear, hope, love, revenge, ma- lice. They laugh and weep from the same causes, are aroused by insult and make battle in defence of their persons. They adjudge the actions of others, and are themselves adjudged as good or bad, virtuous or vicious, wise or foolish, by those THE WILL. 93 very motives which they affirm have no influ- ence over their conduct. The necessarians, on the other hand, declare the will cannot budge unless actuated by mo- tives; that motives move the will to move the man. But why not let the motive, as the word implies, move the man directly without an inter- mediate agent? Action would then follow in a straight line, which is always the shortest distance between two points. Whereas, it is a most clumsy contrivance for one faculty of the mind to act through another faculty of the mind; for the judgment to call upon the will to execute its decrees, to slay an enemy or walk a mile. Nature never employs two causes for one effect ; on the contrary, she produces many and varied effects from a single cause. The tongue serves for speech, taste, ingestion and deglutition, and the hand for purposes almost without end. The fall of bodies, motion of fluids, fluxes of the tides, come of gravitation alone. Heat warms our blood, cooks our food, melts brass, expands the air, raises clouds, reanimates plants, clothes them with leaves, and the earth with verdure. Sir Isaac Newton has said, " More causes of natural things are not to be admitted than are necessary to explain the phenomena, for nature is simple and does nothing in vain." 9 94 THE WILL. The Doctrine of the Weaker Motive, Free Will- ere, &c. There is yet another class of writers who affect a middle course, and insist that the will can choose the weaker of two motives, or the least eligible of any number of objects pre- sented for choice. They, like their kindred free-willers, are conscious of such a power with- in themselves, and thus cut short all further inquiry into the matter. They confine the power of choosing exclusively to the will; and yet, say they, the will is merely the faculty by w T hich the mind chooses. If it be the mind that chooses, the stronger motive must prevail ; for it is a contradiction to say the power of choosing can choose against its choice. If, from the stronger motive, a man choose to go to church, it is inconceivable how he can at the same time choose to go to the ale-house from the weaker motive. But if his will can choose the weaker motive, and send him to the ale-house against the choice of his mind, then the will acts inde- pendently of motive. Driven to this dilemma, these reasoners put motive at defiance, and cut us adrift from the affections of the soul, and the convictions of reason. What a tyrant is this will in the little king- dom over which it is appointed to preside ! THE WILL. 95 In this age of reform and march of philoso- phy, let us hope that its oppressed subjects, reason, judgment, conviction, belief, will rise in their might, overthrow the senseless monster and establish a government of their own. Choice, a judgment , &c. According to every view that has been taken of the subject, the power that decides must ex- amine and compare motives and objects before a choice can be made. Hence, if the will be that power, it must reason out each case for itself, and act from its own determination, and that it may be duly honored in the dignity to which it is raised, the Freewillers endue it with a sort of personality, by calling it the " self," the " I," the u me," the " man," making it an automaton, which, like a steam engine, has the faculty of moving at the same time, and under the same circumstances, in a direction contrary to that in which it actually moves. The advo- cates for the weaker motive embrace the same opinion, with this slight difference, that their will can act against motive, while that of the Freewillers is indifferent to motive altogether. That men could have acted otherwise than as they did under the same inducements, is a delusion that has been often explained. Other 96 THE WILL. thoughts afterwards enter the mind, that would have varied the judgment under which they acted ; then they are ready to say, " If it were to do again, they would act differently" — " had they known the vessel leaked, they would not have embarked"—" had they known that Titus had been convicted of robbery, they would not have intrusted him with money." So complete is the delusion, that when disappointment comes, they never cease to regret that they had not acted under a knowledge of facts, of which they were totally ignorant. Every man 'knows that he could have done the contrary of what he actually did, under a contrary influence. When he shaves himself, he is conscious of the power to cut his own throat, had he the motive to do so : and there is an even chance that he would do it, if his will were to choose the weaker motive, or were a self-determining power that acted per se : nor would his chance be much better if shaved by a Freewiller, whose will might impel him to commit murder, for which he would certainly be hanged if tried by a court of necessarians who hold that guilt lies in the motive and not the will. THE WILL. 97 Trial and defence of the guilty Barler. And now to test, practically, the doctrines of the Freewillers, let us imagine that a barber of their own school had actually cut the throat of his neighbor from motives of jealousy or other wicked intent : that he was brought to trial before a court of . Freewillers who believed in the "I" and the "me," and having pleaded not guilty, let us hear what his advocate has to say in his defence. Address to the Court. u This case, may it please your honors, is not " so much a question of law, as of metaphysics, " since laws can have no binding force, unless u adapted to the nature of the human mind. u The accused, like every body else in the u world, has a will of his own, that presides over * the faculties of both body and mind. It is a u power that acts per se, and does not admit of " motive or antecedent ; is indifferent to the u right or the wrong, to the convictions of reason " or emotions of the soul. Its power is unlimited " in the sphere of the inner man. It can confer " importance on trifles, clothe error in the garb " of truth, give strength to the weaker motive, " and deprive the stronger of its force. It acts u in all directions from itself as a centre, and is 9* 98 THE WILL. always able to do, at the same time and under the same circumstances, the contrary of what it actually does. It is prone to evil rather than to good ; for by its power over motive, it seduced Adam to prefer the taste of an apple to the preservation of life, and the hap- piness of the whole human race. " With respect to the manner in which, the will exerts its power, learned authors do not agree. Some suppose it places the smaller motive in such close juxtaposition to the per- ceptive faculties, that the larger motive is kept out of sight, as a straw near the pupil of the eye, will shut out the image of an oak. It is in this way that the great John Locke affirms, that the mind is deceived by a present unea- siness, however slight, and diverted from per- ceiving a greater and more distant evil, until it comes with power to destroy. u This reasoning is not at all affected by de- fining the will to be the faculty by which the mind chooses : for if it be the mind that chooses the weaker motive, then the mind chooses against its own choice, which is simply an ab- surdity. The weakness or strength of a motive is measured by the power it exerts over the will, and not the mind ; and since the will can always choose the least eligible of objects, a THE WILL. 99 thousand motives can have no influence upon its choice. This fact fully identifies the weaker motive men with the Freewillers. " Whatever difficulties may have arisen about the choice of motives, they must vanish, if, as a late author insists, that two or more motives cannot exist at the same time. ' For,' says he, 6 between two pieces of gold of equal value, a man will tell you, he does not care which he takes. But if one piece be worth ten shillings and the other nine, then a motive arises : there are not two motives, nine shillings on one side and ten on the other ; there is but one, the ex- cess of the value of one piece over the other. If no motive stir a man, he will sit still ; and when thirst drives him in search of water, he has but one motive, not two, the one to go in search of water, and the other to sit still : for a motive being that which moves, a man can hardly be said to be moved to sit still. If the motive be as ten to go by land, and two to go by water ; the less is merged into the greater, as the light of the stars in the beams of the sun: and as we then perceive but one lumina- ry, so we feel but one motive, the difference between ten and two. While we deliberate upon the two modes of travelling, various judg- ments may arise, each excluding the other in 100 THE WILL. turn, until all doubts terminate in conviction, which is now the sole motive to action, that exists only because all others cease to exist/ u 6 When, in the opinion of the jury, the ac- cused is innocent, they have but one motive for their verdict, not two, the one to acquit and the other to convict ; and if they convict whom they believe to be innocent, then it is plain, that neither his innocence *©r guilt was their motive of conduct, but some other, as personal dislike or policy of state.' "But it matters not whether there be but one or an hundred motives, since they are all under the power of the will, (the Court nodded assent.) This great and sublime truth, wrought out by the labor of twenty centuries, now lies at the bottom of all true metaphysics. But men are slow to believe the truth, and too proud to learn. There are yet writers of no mean reputation, who insist that every action is prompted by motive, some bodily want or mental affection; and that the nature of the motive is known by the action, as a tree by its fruit. " I do not deny that good or bad motives may co-exist with good or bad actions ; but I deny that their natures can be inferred from the actions themselves. (The Court again nodded THE WILL. 101 " assent) When a thief is detected hiding u stolen goods, or a highwayman concealing the " body of the deceased ; or when the cashier of " a bank runs away with its money ; or where " a man is caught setting fire to a town, he is " straightway consigned to the penitentiary or " the gallows as for a crime ; for, saith the law r " and its stupid interpreters, guilt lies in the u motive or intent with which an act is done. u How absurd, since motives cannot reach the " will, the sole spring of action ; quite the con- f* trary, the sovereign will can act backwards " upon motives, and demolish a thousand of " them at a blow. It would be as reasonable " to determine upon a man's guilt by the protu- u berances of his skull, as by guessing at mo- " tives, which can never be known. " It is high time that learned professors were " appointed to our universities, and legislators " instructed in the doctrines of the will, that " their criminal codes might be adapted to the " true nature of man. "Having thus got rid altogether of those " troublesome motives, the question next arises, " what disturbs the will when in a state of re- " pose ? It is affirmed by one class of writers, " that the mind is the cause of volition, others " say there is no cause of volition ; but that the " will determines itself, or is a self-determining 102 THE WILL. " power. Others again insist, that since it is " above the influence of motive, it is not deter- " mined at all, not even by its own determina- " tions, but is itself, simply the c determiner/ " But this does not remove the difficulty ; for, u although motives may have no influence in " themselves, it is nevertheless unaccountable " how the determiner can begin to move, without " some inducement ab aliunde. Hence the advo- " cates of this system have been obliged to admit, " that the determiner is occasionally prompted " to certain specific actions in order to gratify the " wants of the inner man. For example, one " might perish from hunger or thirst, unless the " determiner came to his aid ; or he might be de- " stroyed by an enemy unless the determiner " enabled him to fight, and thus involve itself in " the same common catastrophe. So that a mo- " tive of self-preservation inherent in the deter- u miner itself, may explain its activity in such " emergency. " But in the absence of all necessity, the de- " terminer is free to compare, collate, examine, " and weigh with an even hand, the objects and " motives that sue for a preference, and to form " its own determinations as independently of " them all, as if it resided in the moon, where " Furioso found his wits. " But the philosophers of this school differ as THE WILL. 103 u to the manner in which the determiner dis- u covers the wants and affections of the man. " One party insists that it is by an instinct u per se; another, that it is by sympathy; others, " that it is by an established harmony; and there " is still another party that insists it is by its "juxtaposition to the affections, as people living " under the same roof are apt to find out what " is going on in the adjoining apartments. " There is another difficulty of more serious " moment — as there can be no action without the " determination of the determiner, how comes it " to pass, that the determiner always takes sides " with the wants and appetites of the man ? u This question, which involves the influence of " motives, is now being discussed with such heat u and rancour that there is danger that the whole " doctrine of the determiner may tumble to " pieces. " However, this question may be settled, I " care not. Whether the will be a distinct power " or identical with the determiner, as Dr. Greg- " ory supposes, I affirm without fear of contradic- " tion, that it is beyond the reach of motive. — ff Upon this rock I plant my foot (and raising his u voice to its utmost pitch) and I defy Hobbes, " Reid, Clarke, Stewart, nay, I defy the great " Edwards himself, who has laid all his oppo- 104 THE WILL. " nents bleeding at his feet, to drive me from my " position. — {Great and continued applause.) " The will, may it please your honors, is the u element of both good and evil, stronger for evil " than for good. It has usurped the moral gov- " ernment of the world, and now holds an undi- " vided sway over the entire race of man. It " cannot be moved by argument or entreaty, re- u sisted or eluded. Hate, malice, revenge, am- a bition, these are the ministers of its power. It " pulls down and builds up at pleasure — war and " revolution are its pastime, and {raising his " clenched fists, exclaimed) it has reddened the " earth with the blood of her children, and " glutted the grave with untimely slaughter ! " {Applause.) " Vain are the instructions of parents, schools, " academies, colleges ! truly may it have repented u the Creator that he made man. No motive of " piety, fear, love or hatred, nor even the visita- " tions of the Holy Spirit can reach its iron heart. " To ascribe action to motive is a vulgar error, " that has misled all but the true believers. " A mother weeps at the death of her child — u her grief is an instrument in the hands of the u will with which it opens the sources of tears. " A man starts back at a precipice or a serpent " in his path. It is the will working upon his THE WILL. 105 " fears, and not his fears upon his will. Nor u does he who commits suicide wish to die : no, " it is the will itself that has grown weary of " the insatiate wants and appetites that knock " perpetually at its door. u The precise form of the will cannot be " known. It has neither body nor soul. It is a " simple entity sui generis. Nor has it any fixed " abode, as the spirit-rappings have gone far to H prove. In whatever part of the body it enters, H it immediately becomes a locomotive. {The " Court assented) If it enter the stomach, a man " straightway eats and drinks. If it enter the " blood, he is parched with a fever; if the heart, " the passions blow a gale ; and when it enters " weak minds, it dictates all those unintelligible " crudities written about itself. "But truth is great and must prevail: let " justice be done. If the will like all other " tyrants, has done much harm in the world, it " has also done some good. When enlisted on " the side of Virtue, it enables just men to carry " their motives into effect ; to establish whole- " some laws, schools and colleges, to provide for ft their families, rear up and educate pious chil- " dren ; to set examples of truth and justice by " which society is upheld. Such has ever been " the course of my client's life, until the 25th of 10 106 THE WILL. " June, 1853, his will suddenly turned its back " upon the best of men, and by diverting the " razor from its lawful uses, life fled in issues of " blood." Here the orator closed his defence and took his seat. The homicide having been admitted, the Court declined hearing any testimony or argument impeaching the motive or intent of the accused. The Chief Justice, a stout, able-bodied man of a most imperturbable will, then proceeded to charge the jury, and to deliver the unanimous opinion of his brother judges. " Gentlemen of the Jury : — To the able and " learned defence of the counsel of the accused, " I have but little to add. "All things in nature, except the will, are " actuated by their appropriate laws, while the " will itself acts without any cause of action " whatever. It is in man what fire and steam " are to an engine — a locomotive power that acts " per se, and does not admit of any interference " outside of itself. It is the "I" and the "Me" " that pervades and upholds both soul and body. " When, therefore, a man commits what the law " calls a crime, shall he be hanged for an act " to which his understanding never assented ? " This is an absurdity peculiar to the necessa- THE WILL. 107 " rians, who punish for actions to which men are " driven by irresistible necessity. On the other " hand, the freewillers are consistent with thein- " selves. They would punish the will could it be " reached, and not the man. But let us not des- " pair ; here, as in medicine, the disease is half " cured when its cause is known. The sources " of crime are now laid bare by the school to " which we have the happiness to belong. Meta- u physics is on the march, man is hastening to " perfection. The spirit-rappings have proved " that the will, the sole author of every crime, " can be made to know its proper place — to obey " and not to govern. If it can be forced back " from another world, there is no reason why it " should not be reduced to subjection in this. " When this happy period arrives, Ave shall see " mankind emerge as from troubled dreams, into " a broader and brighter life. " Justice and good faith will then prevail over " the earth; laws, lawgivers and judges, with all " their enginery of racks, gibbets, and dungeons, " will vanish before the dignity of regenerated " man." {Long-continued applause.) As soon as order w r as restored, the impatient jury rendered a verdict of acquittal without leav- ing the box. The barber was discharged and borne aw r ay on the shoulders of the multitude. 108 THE WILL. He was innocent, and the judgment cor- rect, unless we deny the existence of such a power as the freewillers describe the will to be. Both they and the necessarians affirm volition to be the immediate antecedent to bodily action ; but what causes the will itself to act, whether anything or nothing, is a point they can never settle among themselves. In the meanwhile the freewillers insist that if the barber acted from necessity, a tribunal of necessarians would be equally bound to acquit him, since there could be no responsibility where there was no freedom of action. But that no such conse- quences would arise, will, I trust, be hereafter seen when we come to treat of crimes and pun- ishments under their proper head. VOLITION, CHOICE, FACULTY. President Edwards insists, that, " The very act of volition is doubtless a determination of the mind drawing up a conclusion on coming to a choice." If choice lie in the determination of the mind, it can lie no where else. But when he affirms that " an act of the will is the same as an act of choice," the will becomes an agent able to choose, and is so treated throughout his entire work, leaving us in doubt, whether he places THE WILL. 109 choice in the determination of the mind, or separate act of the will. If in the determina- tion of the mind, why does he labor to show that choice is the effect, of the strongest motive acting upon the will ? The subject is thus ren- dered unintelligible, and often contradictory in itself, by ascribing choice, to what he affirms to be merely a faculty of something else. The mind possesses the faculty of perceiving light and sound : or of remembering and reasoning. It is not the faculty, that perceives light or sound, remembers or reasons; it is the mind itself. If a specific faculty be necessary for a choice, a specific faculty must be equally neces- sary, for thinking, remembering, reasoning, loving, hating, and performing all and every operation of the mind. Specific faculties must be equally necessary for the respective bodily actions. A man must dance, walk and sing, breathe and swallow, by each appropriate faculty. He may with the same propriety, be called a bundle of faculties, as he is a bundle of habits. By this logic, the horse neighs by his neighing faculty, the dog barks by his barking faculty, the bird flies by its flying faculty, and the cock crows, by its crowing faculty. A like form of speech, is often extended to 10* 110 THE WILL. inanimate objects, as that the magnet has the faculty to attract iron, fire the faculty to melt gold, or expand water into vapor. All this array of the faculties of the mind, when stripped of an overcharge of words, means nothing more, than that the mind chooses, the mind thinks, the mind remembers, the mind reasons. Though metaphysicians speak of the will as a faculty, or an attribute, yet they do, in effect, create it into an entity or real being, that can, of its own determination, choose between mo- tives or objects, or else is determined in its choice, by some antecedent cause. What else can they mean, when they say the will is free — that it is determined by the strongest motive — that it can choose the weaker between two mo- tives, or the least eligible of objects — that it is the determiner — that it acts per se — that it neither requires^or admits of cause of action — that it is cause itself— that it is the "I," the * Me," the " Man," and while one distinguished writer affirms that it is the only power that reasons, another insists, that it is the understanding that reasons, and the will that adopts its errors. These and an hundred other absurdities, have been heaped upon a subject in itself simple and not above the capacity of a lad sixteen years of age. THE WILL. Ill Mr. Locke, who warns us, that by the faculty of the will, he means nothing more than a mode of thinking, and that choice is a determination of the mind, straightway relapses into the com- mon error, and ascribes choice to the will, which both he and Edwards treat as a real Being, actu- ated by certain influences made to bear upon it. Had these philosophers been as good as their word, and left choice where they had placed it, in the convictions of the mind, their philosophy had occupied a position from which it could not be expelled. But having converted an attribute into an agent, they have made liberty and ne- cessity to consist in explaining the uses and functions of an imaginary being, that cannot be defined, or shown to have any existence in nature. Edwards has rendered the subject still more obscure, by identifying the will with the affections, so that we know not where he intends the first movement shall begin, whether in the determinations of the mind, the acts of the will, or affections of the soul. If there were really such an agent or power, as the will is made to be, every man would know it from his own consciousness, and not from what he was told by metaphysicians, who, not being able to conceive, how thought could arouse to action, have contrived an intervening 112 THE WILL. agent, which renders the subject more unintelli- gible, since it is easier to conceive that thought should act immediately of itself, than that it should move the will, to move the man. Writers deceive themselves when they say that by the will they mean nothing more than a mere faculty or attribute of the mind, and not an agent; for they cannot utter or write a sen- tence upon the subject of liberty and necessity, without assigning to the will a real and sepa- rate existence with a determining power over every action of the body or thought of the mind. If this be denied by the necessarians, it can not be denied by those who ascribe to the will the sole power of choice, and place it above the influence of all motives whatever. THE TRUE CAUSES OF ACTION, THE WILL, ETC. I once thought and spoke of the will as other men, supposing that it acted of itself, or from antecedent causes. But when I observed how writers contradicted themselves and one an- other, that they could give no intelligible defi- nition of the agent they labored to describe, I grew weary of their philosophy, began to doubt the existence of the will itself, and to search for the true causes of action in my own mind, and the minds of others. THE WILL. 113 I did not remain long in doubt ; for when I reflected that nothing but sensations and ideas could enter the mind, the truth broke upon me as a new and sudden light, that no other causes of action could possibly exist. Here the pre- judices of education rallied to the combat. Could I part from my will the sole power of locomotion, and sit forever motionless, like a stock or stone? The struggle was desperate. The truth at last prevailed, and lo ! the will turned out to be simply another name for the power exerted over the mind by sensations and ideas. As these or their combinations were strong or weak, external action did or did not take place. The riddle was solved. I saw r every one around me pursuing his ob- ject as I did mine, under the same impulses which he called free-will, free-agency, or doing as he pleased. And when I asked him why he did thus and thus, he invariably assigned some desire or bodily want ; some idea, judgment, or belief, all resolvable into sensations and ideas, as the sole cause of action. The explanation was just ; he could give no other, for none other existed. The question of liberty and necessity turns upon facts that lie within the comprehension of the humblest capacity. The simple language 114 THE WILL. of the ploughman, is abundantly copious to ex- plain all that can be known upon the subject. Every one perceives or feels what he pre- fers. This is the only motive power, and not what is called the will, that fifth wheel to the coach, which has kept it turning round and round in the same circle more than eighteen hundred years. SENSATIONS, CAUSES OF ACTION. Every one has felt the power of sensations, both painful and pleasant. They who insist that the mind is an ever active principle, must never- theless admit with Mr. Locke, that it is passive towards all sensations before they are perceived, as when we start at a sudden flash of lightning, the explosion of a gun, or from an unexpected blow or burn ; no one can doubt that both mind and body are aroused from a passive into an ac- tive state by the sensation alone. This is confess- ed by all metaphysicians, who say such actions are involuntary ; that is, independent of the will. Again : when a sensation is slightly painful, a man will often sit still from indolence, or the fear of disturbing others. Pain being the mo- tive power, like all other power, when too weak, cannot produce its effect. But as it in- creases, he will feel a growing tendency to mo- THE WILL. 115 tion, and when intense, it will urge him with an overpowering force. Here his own con- sciousness testifies to the sole and real cause of action, its beginning, progress, and end. In like manner thirst, in its first approaches, is barely felt ; but when it becomes excessive, a man would not doubt that it sent him in search of water, were he not told that he could not budge without the consent of a power within him, called by different names ; sometimes the will, at others an attribute, then the determiner; at other times, the " self," the "me," the "I," the " man," and by one philosopher, the greatest of them all, it is said to be merely a mode of thinking, so that he might perish from thirst, were the cup not handed him by that faculty, attribute, entity, called the will, whose functions and uses no one has been able to understand or define. Among sensations, the strongest is always the motive power. A traveller in Morocco saw five malefactors suspended on a wall by hooks thrust under the ribs. Three were al- ready dead ; the remaining two cried incessantly — " water, water." IDEAS, CAUSES OF ACTION. As sensations do of themselves excite to 116 THE WILL. action, so do mere ideas or thoughts in cases wherein it is not pretended, the will could take any part. In our most quiet moods, they rise to the surface and betray the workings of the inner man : we are by turns sad, soothed, gay, in- flamed, blush or grow pale by the mere power of thought. We are convulsed with laughter at a flash of wit: eyes, mouth, nose, chin, cheeks, all partake of the perturbation, but instantly react at the sight of distress. The anxieties of politicians, the forebodings of evil, remorse, mortification, hope disappointed, prey upon the health and waste away the frame. The first convulsive movement in a camp-meet- ing becomes the parent of a second ; the idea exists, and the effect follows. Boerhaave threat- ened to burn with hot iron the next man in his hospital taken with the St. Vitus' dance; the thought of the punishment prevented the recur- rence of the evil. Van Swieten relates of himself, that he passed near a dead dog that had burst from putrefac- tion. The stench caused him to vomit ; three years thereafter he passed the same spot, when the recollection of the offensive object made him vomit again. A blacksmith at his anvil was told he had drawn twenty thousand pounds in a THE WILL. 117 lottery; the hammer fell from his hand, and he became a maniac for life. The news of a sud- den calamity will often overthrow reason as effectually, as the fracture of the skull from a blow on the head. A candidate hears of his election to office, the idea explains his emotions of joy. Every one knows how bitterly he has suffered from the apprehension of evils that never happened. A merchant falls into despair at the supposed loss of his ship, which soon arrives to restore his tranquillity of mind. An officer under the Duke of Alva, was told to prepare for death the next morning. During the night his hair be- came perfectly white. It turned out to be a mere pleasantry, in retaliation for a similar jest, played off by him upon a brother officer. A child will shed tears at a story of fictitious woe, and the rudest natures will surrender to emo- tions of pity at the complicated miseries of a tragic scene. The bereft mother weeps at the thought of her departed child ; when the idea is not present, she ceases to weep. Hence sor- row is cured by change of place, which gives entrance to other ideas that take possession of the mind. To forget the causes of sorrow and to have none, are truly said to be the same thing. 11 118 THE WILL. Among ideas as among sensations, the strong- est is sure to prevail, and not unfrequently bodily pain is overcome by mental excitement, or a single thought j as where a soldier forgets his wounds in the heat of battle ; or as Philip of Spain, who died of erysipelas, brought on by sitting too near the fire, from which he thought it undignified to be removed, except by his chamberlain, who happened to be absent; In these, and an hundred other instances, which will not fail to suggest themselves, every one is conscious that sensations and thought are the sole causes of action, and not the will, of whose existence he has no evidence within himself. If a single sensation or idea can produce such effects, how much greater must be their power when embodied into choice, motive, judgment, opinion or belief, or any other form or combina- tion of ideas. choice, etc. — Continued. Nothing more is meant by choice than an agreeable impression made upon the mind by objects acting through the senses, or from infor- mation derived from other sources. Through the senses, as where the host inquires of his guests what they choose for their repasts ? THE WILL. 119 One replies beef, another mutton, and a third fish ; the reply of each simply discloses the dish most agreeable to his sense of taste. Its agreeableness constitutes his choice ; the mind determines nothing for itself; it cannot vary the sensation from what nature made it. Choice for different fruits, apples, pears or peaches, is indicated by the external action. It lies in a sensation made agreeable by appoint- ment of nature ; not by act of the will ; and yet metaphysicians say, "the will is the faculty by which the mind chooses anything." Choice in its nature, implies what is most agreeable. To say, therefore, that a man may choose what is disagreeable or painful, is a perversion of language. He may endure what is disagree- able or painful ; he may swallow aloes, or un- dergo an amputation — but his choice is not the aloes nor the amputation; they are only the means for attaining the good proposed. So choice may lie in the perception or belief of the greatest apparent good, wherein the will can take no part whatever, as where a traveller deliberates whether he shall go by land or water ; he is told that the trip by water is ren- dered delightful by the rich and varied scenery on the shores, and distant mountains crowned with snow. 120 THE WILL. These ideas make an impression upon his mind, and not his mind upon the ideas : they exert an influence in making up his opinion of the journey by water. He is also told, that the steamer is new, spacious and fitted with every convenience and luxury. These details add strength to the impression. On the other hand, he is • told the channel lies part of the way, among pointed rocks, that had proved destructive to life, in high winds and adverse tides. Here the idea of danger acts upon his mind, and takes its place in the effect about to be produced. What he is told, affects him by the same ne- cessity that the objects themselves would, were they present. His mind is the passive reci- pient of what was not known before, and his conviction is the aggregate of each impression made up for him, and not by him. He is now informed that the conveyance by railway is more safe and rapid than by steamer, but is over a barren, unsightly plain, dusty and disagreeably hot in summer. Each fact makes its impression as before, and the aggregate is his opinion of the journey by land. Here are two modes of conveyance, the one safe and the other dangerous ; the lives of the traveller's family being at stake, the idea of THE WILL. 121 safety prevailed by its own energy ; it consti- tuted his choice, and he took his departure by land accordingly. If it be said that the will took cognizance of the facts, and made the choice of itself; this is an absurdity that requires no refutation. Or if it be said that the mind made the choice by its faculty, the will, and that it could have chosen the opposite, this is another absurdity, for it dissolves the connection between the mind and its own conviction, and takes from it the only inducement to action. What then was the disturbing force that put the traveller on the journey by land ? If still it be insisted that it was the will that could have decided either way, then is the will an independent being, that thinks, reasons, acts and determines for itself. Such is the dilemma into which they fall, who make the will choose independently of the mind, or who make the mind choose by its faculty, the will. What then did really take place in the tra- veller's mind? Let us hear him; for when asked why he did not take his family at less expense and trouble, by water, he replied, be- cause he thought it safer to go by land. His explanation was just : the idea or belief of 11* 122 THE WILL. safety constituted his choice, and was the sole motive power. But if the will were above the influence of motives, it were folly, according to the Freewillers, to take information of the routes, and a fool would in all cases act as rationally as a wise man. The traveller's ac- count of himself is a practical illustration of free agency in its most perfect form. He did what pleased him most ; the idea of safety pleased him most ; it was his choice, and the sole motive power that set him forward on his journey by land. The choice was made for him, and not by him ; it was the effect of information which he had no power to vary. But if he had gone by water against his convictions, it would have been under some stronger motive ; such as that he hoped to meet on board a debtor who pro- mised to pay him money ; or lastly, if he were a Freewiller, he might, from the pride of sys- tem, risk his life among the rocks, to show that he had power over motives, and not motives over him. That choice among objects is the prevailing impression made by one object over the rest, is the experience of every man every day he lives. If a variety of cloaks, be shown to a purchaser, and the impression made by the THE WILL. 123 qualities of the brown cloak, please him most ; that impression is his choice ; none others can be made. His mind is the passive recipient of what enters there ; it cannot make an impression upon itself. It has no power to render the same object black or white, agreeable or disa- greeable : that depends upon the properties of the object itself, its color, form and texture. Hence, choice is an effect, whose cause resides beyond our reach in the object itself. When, therefore, a Freewiller affects to choose the least eligible of objects by the mere power of the will, he acts from some motive or antece- dent cause, known to himself, if not disclosed to others — as when he declaims against intem- perance as a vice, while abstaining himself from wine and rich sauces, from a secret apprehen- sion of disease. Or where a miser, from mo- tives of avarice, prevailed upon his son to espouse the rich hunch-back, instead of the beautiful but dowerless virgin; and when his illiterate neighbors expressed their surprise at the event, his solution of the enigma was ready and learned — " My son has a will of his own that acts per se, chooses contingently, and of its own spontaneity; admits of no influence ab extra, and being itself first cause, its choice was without motive." 124 THE WILL. Whoever denies that he acts from motives, makes a mockery of his understanding, and will certainly have his candor or veracity called in question. choice. — Continued. Let us trace the progress of choice in another traveller, from the first thought to its final result. A gentleman, intending to cross the seas with his family, inspected several steamers about to depart. The berths in the Canada were wide, but the apartments narrow and scantily furnished ; one impression favorable and one unfavorable. Again, the main deck was continually wet from the great weight of the timbers in front; another unfavorable impression. Again, the accommoda- tions in the saloon were good, but the smell of the bilge-water pervaded the entire ship, and her commander was said to be reserved, distant and uninformed. One favorable and two unfavor- able impressions ; so that the amount stands, three favorable and six unfavorable impressions. It is plain that each impression, whether of sensation or idea, was felt of necessity, and that the aggregate was his opinion of the Canada, which he had no power to order otherwise than as it was. THE WILL. 125 He next inspected the Arctic, where every similar object made favorable impressions, ex- cept that he was told that the vessel, however elegant and agreeable, was not as substantial and safe as the Asia, w r hich he now visited in turn. Here he was again offended by the smell of bilge-water, and narrowness of the berths ; but found the saloon neat and well furnished, and her commander an agreeable, well-informed officer, and particularly attentive to ladies. This last trait in the captain settled the ques- tion with the ladies of his family, and he took passage in the Asia, in compliance with their request and his own judgment of the best. His preference was the unavoidable effect of what he perceived and heard. He could not convert the smell of the bilge- water into a sweet savor, nor vary the combined impressions under which he acted. He w^as not master of his choice; that was the necessary effect of evidence acting upon his mind, as vision is of light upon the eye. And by whatever name w^e call that effect, judgment, choice, opinion or belief; and whether they be the same or different, they were nothing more nor less than the aggregate of sensations and ideas that acted upon him, and not he upon them. 126 THE WILL. BELIEF, OPINION, &C. Nothing can be more absurd than the notions entertained by the masses of mankind upon the subject of opinion or belief. Everybody is ready to say, "I have a right to my own opinion." "I will think and believe what I please." And there are not w T anting ministers of the gospel, who declare from the pulpit, that their hearers have the power to believe any creed they are told to embrace. It does no honor to the profession that such men should be appointed teachers of religious truth ; they would kindle anew the flames of persecution, were it not for the restraints of the law and the tribunals of public opinion. If belief be in our power, why do they preach and write on the evidences of Revelation, or why are wit- nesses heard in courts of justice ? Men are prone to dislike each other merely from difference of opinion ; and yet it is plain, that every opinion is the necessary effect of evidence derived from facts, or the circumstan- ces in which a man happens to be placed. A physician finds his patient suffering under an acute pain in the side, great thirst, tongue white, pulse frequent, hard and contracted ; each symptom makes its proper impression on his passive mind, and the aggregate is his opin- THE WILL. 127 ion of the disease — it is the pleurisy — can he believe it to be the gout ? In the progress of a trial at court, the opinion of the judges arises unavoidably from the facts and the law acting upon them, and not they upon the facts and the law, which they did not make and cannot vary. We hear debates in the Senate, and go away convinced. We are not the authors of our con- viction ; it is the effect of the speaker s argu- ment. The passive mind takes the impression as wax the form of the seal. The fluctuations of opinion we feel towards different sides of the question under debate, are the varied impres- sions each speaker makes in turn. Some facts are new, some we doubt ; one argument we say is weak, another strong; that is to say, facts and arguments act upon us, and not we upon them ; and, when finally an opinion is formed, let no man suppose he made it for himself; it is as plainly an effect as sound from the ringing of a bell, or sweetness from sugar on the tongue. New ideas upon a subject, are like new light shed upon an object before obscurely seen. When a disbeliever is convinced of his error, his conviction is the effect of facts and argu- ments that now act upon him for the first time. The minds of a jury are in a passive state 128 THE WILL. until the witnesses speak. Their belief is an effect ? the testimony, the cause or antecedent. Demonstrations in geometry , when under- stood, force truths upon the mind to which it was before passive, because ignorant. If opinions were in our power, no principle in religion or philosophy could endure for a day. The moral, like the physical world, would be turned upside down every twenty-four hours. The astronomer might, at pleasure, believe in the system of Newton, or of anybody else ; or, that the world stood upon a tortoise, as the inhabitants of Celebes say. All distinctions of right and wrong, friend and foe, debtor and creditor, parent and child, would be borne away by the overwhelming power of the will. Fortunately for mankind they are not per- mitted to bring such calamities upon themselves. Nothing is left to caprice or chance ; not a sen- sation, thought, opinion or imagination; every idea, every emotion that impels and governs the soul, comes of laws appointed by Him who gave us this mysterious being we hold. TRUTH, BELIEF, &C. Eighteen hundred years ago Pilate asked what is truth? The question remains unan- swered to this day. THE WILL. 129 Dictionaries define it to be "the conformity of our ideas to the reality of things. But as the reality of things can only be known from the ideas themselves, this definition amounts to nothing. That the sun revolved about the earth, was true for many centuries ; but now it is true that the earth revolves about the sun. Color was once inherent in objects, next in light, and is now a mere sensation in ourselves. Among the great variety of Christian sects, each deems itself possessed exclusively of the truth. The Papists find the flesh and blood of Christ in the Eucharist ; the Protestants, simply bread and wine. So that, when a Protestant turns Catholic, or a Catholic Protestant, truth changes sides. Wkh nine jurymen it lies in the guilt of the accused ; with the remaining three in his inno- cence. It is synonymous with belief, for no one can believe what does not appear to be true. Truth, therefore, must vary with the ideas of which it consists, with the nature and strength of evidence and the minds that receive it. Hence the ever-varying aspect under which it is pursued by all mankind. I do not contend with those who say there 12 130 THE WILL. are permanent universal truths, as in the rela- tions of numbers, &c. I affirm only that truth is to every man necessarily what it appears to be — the effect of evidence acting upon his mind by laws he did not make and cannot resist. CAUSES OF ACTION — CONTINUED. Every one knows the causes of action with- in himself, without being told by metaphysi- cians. He does daily what he perceives to be most agreeable. He lies down, sits, stands or walks; changes the form or color of his apparel ; eats and drinks when hungry or thirsty; reposes when fatigued, is silent, or speaks as occasion requires ; acting in all the complicated affairs of each and every hour, directly and immediately as the desire arises in his mind, unconscious of the agency of a power within, called the will, of which he knows nothing but from hear- say, or from what he may have read in books. But on subjects of magnitude, he pauses to reflect ; not that he can create ideas for himself, but to await their associations as they rise out of the subject itself; and when at length, a sin- gle perception takes possession of his mind, he acquiesces by a law of his nature, in the disco- very of truth, which now becomes the spring of THE WILL. 131 action, by its own direct inherent energy. That it should serve no other purpose than to move the will, to move the man, is too unreasonable to be repeated again. PURPOSE, ETC. It is not every idea or combination of ideas, that puts us in motion ; sometimes they make but a feeble impression and vanish without effect ; as when a man says, I am half inclined to do this ; to buy a house or send my ship to Canton. But let him be thoroughly persuaded of the advantages of either, and he will act with promptitude from the force of his convic- tion alone. This is what is meant by the will, convic- tion action, as he would himself testify, if asked to explain the motives of his conduct. When we embark in an enterprise with a fixed determination to its completion, it be- comes a calm and steady cause of action, un- moved by accident or persuasion : as where the commander of a vessel sails for a distant port, his thoughts and actions are directed to a sin- gle object, and though he changes his course an hundred times, and is driven by adverse winds into unknown seas, yet his purpose re- mains unchanged and unchangeably the same. 132 THE WILL. How are his actions to be explained, but by a fixed determination of mind. A single act of the will, or " determiner/' might serve to change the course of the ship, but could not keep it in the same direction, unless by a voli- tion continually on the stretch ; or an unbroken succession of volitions without a chasm, which it is not pretended can exist. A Freewiller, whose will admits of no motive or antecedent, would navigate his ship without compass or chart, and whether it struck on a rock, or held an even course, would be a mere contingency. They who regulate their actions by the dictates of the judgment, would not differ much from the necessarians, whose wills, yielding to mo- tives, would bring the vessel to its true desti- nation, as would the desires of Dr. Brown and his followers, while the weaker motive men might, from the pride of system, take the least eligible route, and share the same fate with the Freewillers. CAUSES OF ACTION — CONTINUED. We see a man walking in haste, stop sudden- ly with his hand on his pocket ; he has lost his purse : the thought explains the action ; none other can be given. He now retraces his steps towards home, where he thinks he may have THE WILL. 133 left it; here again the thought explains the action. He had not gone far when he suddenly turn- ed his face towards the shop where he bought his gloves; but before he arrived, he remem- bered he had afterwards purchased a book ; at this thought, he hastened to the booksellers, where he found his purse. Had he made twenty other calls, he would have followed up his object under like impulses, as the idea of each place rose to his mind. He who seeks in these instances for other causes of action than mere ideas, seeks for what he can never find. And if he cannot con- ceive how an idea can, of itself, move a man, let him learn the fact from his own conscious- ness, and not set up a will or other contrivances within himself, to explain what can receive no further explanation. The opinions of Locke and Edwards would have been unassailable, had they traced all ac- tion directly to sensation and ideas, of which every motive or determination must consist. The interposition of the will does not at all vary their conclusions, since they make it obe} r motive, or the judgment of the greatest appa- rent good. If it obey, it cannot choose, and if its power be limited to bodily action, it cannot 12* 134 THE WILL. act backwards upon motives, its own cause of action. It is necessity in either case. In the Encyclopaedia Britannica, edit. 1810, under the article Necessity and Liberty, motives are held to be passive, and their influence alto- gether denied. They are said to be "only views of things, or mental conceptions, which, in the strict sense of the word, are passive, and between two motives, the mind determines itself without receiving any influence from either." It requires great courage to deny, in the face of all mankind, that neither hunger nor thirst, pain or pleasure, judgment, opinion, or belief, parental love or love of country, of riches, pow- er or distinction, have any influence upon the conduct of men : and this at the moment that these philosophers are bent upon the pursuit of those very objects, every day of their lives. They may rest assured they can never make converts to doctrines which their own exam- ples show they do not believe. Let him who denies the influence of motives, observe his own conduct at every change of circumstance and opinion. Let him be at first indifferent to the great question of free trade that distracts the whole community : but hav- ing afterwards acquired the right to vote, he THE WILL. 135 now feels an interest in the subject, and re- solves to investigate it for himself. As he knew nothing of the arguments on either side, his mind was as passive towards them, as paper under the printer's types. He studies the subject, reads the public prints, attends the meetings of both parties. After much labor and investigation, he takes side with the protectionists, for in his judgment it is a reproach to any country, not to be able to feed and clothe itself. Under this conviction he sets out for the place of election, determined to vote accordingly. On the way he encoun- ters an illiterate blacksmith, who, in the sim- plicity of his heart, lamented that iron, under the tariff, was so dear, that by his labor " he hardly could support his family, and that goods were so high, he could not give his daughters suitable dress to be seen in at church." Simple truth, which seldom fails of its effect, shook the determination of our voter, so that he remained a silent spectator at the polls with- out casting a vote. When asked the reason, he replied, that he had not made up his mind what to do. His answer was perfectly correct, for having no decided opinion, he had no motive to action. He returned home to renew his inves- tigations of the subject, earnestly seeking the 136 THE WILL. truth. His opinions fluctuated as the argu- ments pressed on either side, ready to act at times with the protectionists, at others, with the free traders, when at length he settled down in the belief, that the manufacturers were enriched by the precise sum levied upon the consumer, which he said was robbery sanction- ed by law. He now passed over to the free traders, attended their meetings, and propa- gated their doctrines with unabated activity. He acted with decision while he thought with the protectionists ; he did not act at all when his opinion was unsettled, but again acted with decision when it became fixed in an opposite direction. His conduct changed with the dif- ferent convictions of his mind, and to seek for any other motive power, would be as unreason- able as to require another organ for seeing than the eye, or for hearing, than the ear. PRACTICAL METAPHYSICS. Let us imagine a necessarian, a Freewiller, a lesser motive man, and a disciple of Dr. Brown, seated at a table, well supplied with all kinds of meats and vegetables, fowl and fish. Each guest being asked in turn what he pre- ferred, the necessarian, after taking perception of the greatest apparent good, and after the THE WILL. 137 determination of his mind by its faculty, the will, replied, (as soon as his will enabled him to speak,) beef, sir, if you please, for it agrees best with me. To the same question the free-wilier replied : My will, sir, is free and contingent ; it is indif- ferent to the agreeable or disagreeable ; it acts per se, and does not admit of an antecedent. I eat what it chooses of its own spontaneity. I await its motion, — a long pause, — the landlord stood in amazement. The weaker motive man, after showing much contempt for the necessarian, applauded the free-wilier, who he said was on the road to truth, but had not quite reached it ; that the will is not only independent of all motives, but could act against the stronger and choose the weaker motive, and thus act against the cause of action itself; that this is true, landlord, you shall see. Give me a spoonful of stewed frogs, with mushroom sauce; I will swallow them, however disgusting, that I may demolish the system of necessity, and establish my own upon its ruins. In the meanwhile, Dr. Brown's disciple, who was actuated by desire alone, ate what he pre- ferred and left the table. The bell of the conductor now summoned the 138 THE WILL. passengers to their seats, whereupon the lesser motive man and the hungry free-wilier, whose will had not yet stirred, departed precipitately, tired of metaphysics, and determined to avenge themselves upon the first joint of roasted pork that fell in their way. FACTS. — PHENOMENA. Sensations and ideas and their combinations are the only forces that can disturb the mind. Of this fact we have the same evidence as of any other fact that occurs in the external world — consciousness alone ! That we perceive light through the eye, sound through the ear, pain from a burn, are undeniable facts. That we feel joy at good news, sorrow or remorse from misfortune or crime ; that we are affected to tears by a tragic scene; laugh at wit; are angry at an insult; reminded of different objects by their resem- blances; that the name of any person brings up his features, family, position and other cir- cumstances appertaining to him ; that any sub- ject being mentioned, its associated ideas infal- libly rise to the mind; that we perceive the relations between things and numbers, and are convinced of necessity by the demonstrations of a problem; that judgment, opinion, belief, choice, THE WILL. 139 are purely the effect of evidence acting upon the mind ; these, and all other like phenomena, attested by consciousness, are so many facts that constitute mental philosophy, as truly as geology or chemistry is an aggregate of facts attested by experience. The road to truth is through facts, all else is " vanity and vexation of spirit." Every man is conscious of the true and sole cause of action within himself. He knows of no such power as the will that can resist or carry his wishes into effect. His mind is a book which he must read for himself, and not trust to opinions that are believed, because they were uttered two thousand years ago. "I study hard," said Descartes, " but without books;" and said Hobbes, "I should have been as ignorant as other men, had I read as much as they." THE GREATEST APPARENT GOOD. By this form of words, Edwards meant what- ever was most agreeable, without regard to its moral tendency. There are virtuous and vicious pleasures. The pious take pleasure in the ob- servance of religion ; the wicked in the practice of vice. Pleasure is equally the motive power of both. No man can choose pain for its own sake; nor, (which is the same thing) can he 140 THE WILL. choose among motives or objects that which gives the least pleasure, without a conscious- ness of some ulterior motive ; and he who pre- tends to such a power without the motive, com- mits a fraud upon the truth, Avhich deceives no body but himself. The desire of pleasure (happiness) adheres to man as gravitation to matter. It is the mo- tive power to every action. It never relaxes its hold for a moment, and when it shifts its object, that instant it seizes upon another by a law of his nature fixed in the immutable pur- poses of his Creator. " Nature," says Jeremy Bentham, " has placed mankind under two sovereign masters, Pleasure and Pain. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do ; they govern us in all we do, in all we say, and in all we think. Every effort we can make to throw off their subjection, will but serve to demonstrate and confirm it. In words we may pretend to abjure their empire, but are in reality subject to it all the while ; systems which attempt to question it, deal in sound instead of sense; in caprice instead of reason; in darkness instead of light." And when anything is to be done, " there is nothing by which a man can be made ultimately to do it, but either pain or pleasure." THE WILL. 141 WILL AND PLEASURE, CONVERTIBLE TERMS. A traveller being asked if he were willing to wait for his dinner until 4 o'clock, replied, I am willing; that hour pleases me most — his will and pleasure are plainly the same. When the purchaser is willing to give the price the seller asks for his house, both are pleased, the one with the thing and the other with the price. Being willing and being pleased are identically the same. The will is not an active principle, as writers pretend : it is another name for the pleasure felt, by whatever affects the mind agreeably. The mind of the purchaser was passive before he heard the offer of the seller, and he was pleased when he found the object suited his purposes. His willingness was the effect of the qualities of the house acting upon his mind. This is all that can be made of the will, willing, willingness. When one of a party says, he is willing to spend the summer at A. because of its pure air and shady walks — another says, that place does not please me — what then, sir, is your will ? My will is to go to B., where the country is more elevated and picturesque — a third says, my will is to cross over to Liverpool, where 1 Q 142 THE WILL. the temperature is always more agreeable than in the same parallel on the American coast. Had there been fifty in the party, the will of each would have necessarily varied with his sense of pleasure. ACTION. When we assign the will as the immediate cause of action, we mean nothing more than the desire of pleasure, inherent in our natures. No other cause can exist, unless it be the desire of pain. He that does not know this, has never consulted his own consciousness or the actions of all living things about him. As the desire of food and water explains the actions of a man when he eats or drinks — the desire of revenge when he resents an injury with blows — the de- sire of wealth when he hoards up money ; so the desire of any other object that promises pleasure, whether near or remote, virtuous or vicious, is the sole spring of action from the highest exertion of strength, down to the slight- est movement of the hand. But philosophers, unable to conceive how desire can move a leg or an arm, have contrived an auxiliary agent they call the will, which they imagine acts upon the nerves, which act upon the muscles, which actuate the man. To THE WILL. 143 this mysterious power they trace all movements from within, while a certain great philosopher, with equal sagacity, traced all sensations from without, to the vibrations of a nervous fluid. The theory of vibrations, however, did not long survive its author, while that of the will is still kept alive, merely because the existence of such an agent has never been seriously called in question. But most metaphysicians say they are con- scious of such an agent within themselves, and the Freewillers affirm that it can act against motive, judgment, or any determination of the mind : for if they admit any antecedent influ- ence, the controversy would cease, or they would be obliged to compromise with the neces- sarians on half way grounds. There is no rea- son why these philosophers should not be equally conscious of the cause of the circula- tion of the blood, or of animal life, as of the power that can move a leg or an arm. There is another class of philosophers, by whom all causes, physical and moral, are per- ceived to be supersensual ideas, residing and pre-existing in the soul, and connected with the understanding by a spontaneity called the rea- son, free of time and space. Such are the unintelligible vagaries that have 144 THE WILL. brought ridicule upon the science of mental philosophy, which, like every other science, consists in the generalization of phenomena, while their causes abide solely in Him, "in whom we live and move and have our being." Any attempt to explain the causes of phe- nomena, or to understand the nature of power, would be an affectation altogether out of place, in the present advanced state of philosophy. We cannot tell why sugar is sweet on the tongue, or aloes bitter; how light produces vision, or the impulses of the air causes sound ; or how action immediately follows the desire to stand, sit, walk, ride, eat or drink — such are the facts of experience, beyond which we can- not go. If, then, we substitute desire for will, the clouds that overhang the subject of liberty and necessity will instantly vanish, and we shall perceive one all-pervading immutable law, the desire of pleasure, to be the immediate and ne- cessary spring of action in all breathing things that inhabit earth, air, or seas, from man down to the poor insect crushed under his feet. PUNISHMENT. 13* PUNISHMENT. CHAPTER VIII. We infer the existence of immutable laws in the operations of matter, from the constant suc- cession of like events under the same circum- stances. This reasoning applies with equal force to the thoughts and actions of men, which have ever been the same in like circumstances, from the beginning of time until now. Thoughts, from which all actions must pro- ceed, have their necessary laws. Nobody believes they arise from chance, or that the mind can create them for itself, since they must be already in the mind, before it can know what to create. Hence we are taught, the true nature and in- tent of punishment in its connection with our subject. If we suppose with the free-willers, that we possess the power of doing the contrary of what we actually do, at the same time and under the 148 PUNISHMENT. same circumstances, punishment for a violation of the law would be simply revenge for an act of the will, in which the understanding took no part. But if, on the other hand, we are neces- sary agents, shall we be punished for actions we could not avoid ? This is a serious question that fills the necessarians with dismay : and yet the difficulties that surround it will vanish, when we reflect that crime is a necessary evil, and punishment its appropriate remedy. We shall then stand in the same relation to moral as to physical evil, both to be combated and overcome by the best means human wisdom can devise. The question must be answered in the affir- mative by the necessarians, who hold that every action, whether good or bad, proceeds necessa- rily from volition; volition from the strongest motive, and the strongest motive from what is most agreeable to the nature and constitution of the agent. Such is moral necessity, differing from phy- sical in this, that moral necessity varies with the motive, which motive itself may vary a hundred times a day; whereas, physical neces- sity pervades all matter by immutable laws evermore the same. Nevertheless, when once the motive is fixed, it is no less certain in its effects than the forces of physical necessity. PUNISHMENT. 149 SIN AND CRIME EXIST OF NECESSITY. But the solution of this question does not require the aid of metaphysical refinement. It is to be found in the history of man, who is known by his actions as a tree by its fruit. The first page of his life is a record of sin and crime. As he began, so has he continued throughout all the stages of his existence, un- changeably the same. Education, or the penalties of the law, may restrain individuals from offences ; but before the species can be reformed, ambition, self-love, hatred, malice, lust, avarice, revenge, those ele- ments of sin and crime, must be expelled from the soul ; for they are as much a part of human nature as hunger and thirst, to see with the eyes, or to hear with the ears. We pronounce that a necessary law, whose operations are known through all ages past by an uniform succession of like events, as rain continues to fall from the clouds, iron to sink in water, and rivers to flow to the sea, from the beginning as now. By the same rule of evidence we are taught that men sin from necessity, since they have continued to sin through all the generations in which they have lived ; and so unrelenting is this necessity, that none but the power that 150 PUNISHMENT. created can save them from the doom that awaits them. Upon this known principle of human nature, the legislatures of all newly organized States, erect prisons, penitentiaries, work-houses, and ordain punishments for murder, robbery, theft, and all other crimes before they are committed, for the same reason that they provide for the daily wants which they know must return with every rising sun. None but a legislature of free-willers would make laws without penalties to enforce obe- dience. "Be it enacted, that theft shall con- " sist in feloniously taking away the property of " another. Be it enacted, that murder shall " consist in destroying the life of any person " with malice aforethought;" and, if asked why no penalties were prescribed, they would reply, that neither fear nor hope nor any other motive whatever can determine the will ; that it is its own determiner ; that, as all men have freewills, there is a certainty but no necessity that crimes should exist through all time to come; that there is a broad distinction between certainty and necessity, inasmuch as an event that is certain is necessarily uncertain, and may never come to pass ; whereas, an event that is neces- sarily certain, may certainly take place, if PUNISHMENT. 151 not rendered uncertain by some overpowering force. It is by such logic, not easily understood, that the free-willers overthrow the creed of the neces- sarians, and establish in its stead their own, which consists in acting without intending, and in intending without acting; in other words, the act has no connection with the intent, aim or purpose of the understanding. ALL EVIL, PHYSICAL AND MORAL, EXISTS OF NECESSITY. Can he who believes in the power and wisdom of God to govern his own creation, doubt that all physical evils take place at his command; that He caused Herculaneum to be overwhelmed by an eruption of Vesuvius ? Fifty thousand of the inhabitants of London to be destroyed by pestilence at one time, and a hundred thousand at another? The earth to open and swallow thirty thousand people in Lisbon ? Or, that He sends on earth those unnumbered diseases, mes- sengers of death, that consign their daily thou- sands to the grave ? If He be not the author of these events, then He does not retain the government of the w T orld in His own hands, which nobody does or can believe. Moral evils are equally ministers of His pow T er, by which He removes the living from earth to 152 PUNISHMENT. give place to other series, destined to perish in their turn. "If storms and earthquakes break not heaven's design, Why then a Borgia or Cataline V No one can doubt that the fall of Adam, the ambition and conquests of Alexander, of Caesar, of Grhengis Khan, the Inquisition, persecutions of the Christians, the propagation of Islamism by the sword, the sins, crimes, frauds, violence and oppression that overrun the earth, were foreseen, and must have entered the providence of God, or they never could have existed. Theologians waste their logic in vain and idle speculations upon subjects they cannot under- stand. That a Being of unlimited power and benevolence should permit evil to exist, is a mystery inscrutable to the limited capacity of man; and far more mysterious is it to those who contend for a particular providence, that the innocent and guilty should be confounded and made to suffer the same measure of evil at His hands. The tempest that sinks the ship, or an earth- quake that overwhelms a city, is no respecter of persons — lightnings, inundations, famine, pes- tilence, fall alike upon the helpless and unof- fending, the sinner and the saint, the oppressor and the oppressed. PUNISHMENT. 153 The guilt of a parent brings disgrace and poverty upon his innocent offspring, the igno- rant are overreached by the wise, and a great portion of mankind are held in bondage by the superior cunning of the rest. Idolaters burn their little children to appease their angry gods. Persecutions, wars, massacres, have reddened the earth with the blood of the innocent. A single tyrant, by his follies and vices, can destroy the happiness of millions — quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur AchivL History teaches us that all power is founded in the oppression of the weak, and upheld by force, that raises the oppressor above the retributions of justice, while his crimes fall with a wider and more destructive sweep upon the unresisting and helpless multitude. Again : the erring judgment of man, even when he aims at doing good, is often more fatal to the innocent than crime. In the complicated affairs of human life, we think, err and act from necessity every day we live. The most skillful mariner, by miscalculation, runs his ship upon a rock and buries hundreds in the waves. A physician, by mistake in the nature of the disease, kills the patient, and throws whole families into tears : the com- mander of an army, by an injudicious move- ment, loses a battle and enslaves his country. 14 1 54 PUNISHMENT. But errors of judgment do not disturb the philosophy of the Freewillers. Their will acts for itself, independently of the understanding, without having an idea of its own. If they still leave the government of the material world in the hands of the Deity, they assign its moral government to a senseless, lawless power, the will, that no motive or instruction can reach ; and although they do not explain the nature of the shock the mind underwent at the fall of Adam, yet the loss of its control over the sole spring of action, fully explains that catastrophe, and the confusion and uproar that continue to prevail in the world. APOLOGY FOR EVIL. Some divines imagine themselves commis- sioned to apologize for the existence of evil, lest it argue a want of power or benevolence in the Creator. They admit that He made and governs the world according to His own good pleasure : that all future events were foreseen, and must have entered his plan of creation : but affirm, that He is not the Author of sin and crime, although they exist by His permission, and continue to disturb the earth, notwithstand- ing He is able to suppress them at will. This doctrine, so derogatory to the perfec- PUNISHMENT. 155 tions of the Creator, would disparage an earthly monarch, were he to permit robbery and mur- der to be committed upon his unoffending sub- jects, whom he could, but would not, protect. Even a father, were he not to restrain his chil- dren from committing like offences, would in all countries be involved in the penalties of the law. Dissatisfied with this reasoning, another class of divines affirm that the world is the best that could have been made by a benevolent and omnipotent Being; and that physical and moral evil were instruments in His hands, necessary for the production of the greatest ultimate good. Such language illy suits the solemnity of the subject. Arguing from the light of nature, they cannot make the existence of evil harmo- nize with infinite power and benevolence, nor are they called upon, in the discharge of their sacred duties, to reconcile apparent contradic- tions. Their duties grow out of the Scriptures, which are silent upon what they profess to teach.* * To assign limits to the power of an omnipotent Being, or to attempt to penetrate his motives in the creation and govern- ment of the world, beyond what has been revealed, is pre- sumption little short of blasphemy. Nevertheless, the New England theology now stands charged with teaching that 11 God could not prevent the entrance of sin into our system ; 156 PUNISHMENT. Divines, theologians, freewillers and neces- sarians, one and all, be not over wise ! first instruct us in something nearer to yourselves ; how you see, hear, taste, or smell ; what moves the blood in your veins- — nay, explain the flight of an insect, or the growth of a blade of grass, before you enter the councils of God, to scan the motives and measures of His creation. True wisdom exaltetK not herself; she is meek, not boastful. Rebuked by her own fol- lies, she reasons, now that her locks are gray, " he could not govern the world so as to have less sin and less " misery in it ; he does the most and best he can to banish sin * and bring in holiness ; men persevere in sin in spite of all he " can do to reclaim them; he converts and saves as many souls " as he can, and would willingly save all if he could ; there is "no sinful nature antecedent to sinful acts or exercises; sin " is the free preference of the world and worldly good, to the " will and glory of God ; infants come into the world as free " from sin as Adam ; death no more proves sin in infants than " in animals ; the imputation of Adam's sin is unreasonable " and absurd ; regeneration is a change in the governing pur- " pose of the mind ; it is a gradual progressive work ; there is "no change in the nature or disposition of the sinner, antece- " dent to the exercise of right affections ; the sinner may so " resist the grace of God, as to render it impossible for God to " convert him; the agency of the Spirit in regeneration is alto- " gether persuasive, exerted through the medium of truth or " motives; self-love or desire of happiness is the primary cause " or reason of all acts of preference or choice which fix su- " premely on any object, &c, &c. ;; — Theology of New Eng- land, p. 29. PUNISHMENT. 157 upon things as she finds them, and presumes not upon what is denied to her capacity. She pretends to no commission from heaven to ex- plain or apologize for the existence of evil : God is its author; he has so declared in his revelation of himself. Sin and crime relate only to man, they are words without meaning when applied to God : He can do no wrong. Sin is the transgression of a law prescribed to man, not to himself. He cannot violate his own commandments; make graven images of himself, or take his own name in vain, nor honor his father and mother; nor bear false witness against his neighbor ; nor steal or mur- der ; for all things, man, and the life of man, belong to him. When he cuts off thousands by pestilence or war, by earthquakes or lightnings, He violates no law. He is a law unto himself; there is no standard above him. And yet a senseless clamor is raised against the necessarians, who are charged with making God the author of sin ! God cannot sin, men must. Urged by wants they did not create, guided only by a weak, erring judgment, they live and act under a necessity from which there is no escape. 14* 158 PUNISHMENT. PUNISHMENT, A REMEDY. That a man ought not to be made to suffer for an act of physical necessity, is universally admitted : but shall he suffer for a violation of law committed from moral necessity ? Certain- ly, since punishment is a remedy, and his mo- tive for the act may be overcome by a stronger motive, the fear of pain ; and though punish- ment cannot efface his guilt, it may cure the offender, and prevent a repetition of the offence : for motives govern actions, and this is the whole secret of parental discipline, and power of the law — change the motive, and the conduct will infallibly change with it. Motives do not stand still : they change with the ever varying circumstances in which we are placed : with every new desire or want: with fear, hope, joy, or sorrow, good or bad fortune : with a word, a look from a friend or enemy : with a thought of our own, and often vary and take a new direction before we finish an action already begun. The greatest apparent good, whatever form it may assume, exerts over our actions a des- potic sway, which never relaxes its hold. Upon this great law of our nature rest the codes of all nations, civilized and savage, from the beginning of the world. They settled the PUNISHMENT. 159 question of liberty and necessity upon the influ- ence of motives, long before the freewillers' heresy was known to exist. Upon the same principle rest the denunciations made against sin and crime by Him who made man, and knew the being He had created. punishment a remedy. — Continued. If we follow out the natural temper and work- ings of the passions of a child from infancy up- wards, we shall be convinced that the word punishment is strangely perverted in common speech, and that in the hands of the mother, the preceptor and the legislators, it is as truly a remedy for the vices of the mind as medicine is for the diseases of the body. A child acts solely from the impulses of nature; not from reason, for it has none. Its desires are at first made known by cries and tears. It soon becomes capricious, impatient, the most implacable of tyrants. It wants every- thing, and is content with nothing. It storms, raves, and screams itself breathless when denied or disappointed. At the earliest dawn of reason the mother's warfare upon its passions begins ; first by restraint, then persuasion and threats as soon as they are understood. When these fail of effect, she has recourse to stronger reme- 160 PUNISHMENT. dies, privation and actual infliction; not from the pleasure it gives her, but from a hard neces- sity that often wrings tears from her eyes. At a suitable age he is put to school, where the good effects of maternal discipline are felt for a time. But he is soon led astray by wicked boys, plays truant, and invents lies to explain his absence. The evil grows upon him; threats and the ferula produce no change. The teacher complains to his father : the boy is called to account, weeps and confesses his fault. He reforms for a short time, but soon relapses into his former habits. Admonition having failed, he is again called to account, and a stronger remedy is now applied — he is punished with stripes. The dread of pain overpowers the temptation to repeat the offence ; a change now comes over him; he loathes his wicked com- panions, the cause of his suffering and disgrace. The remedy is effectual, and his reformation complete. A like story may be told of every child that cometh into the world. If the discip- line of the mother, schoolmaster and father, were not intended as remedies for the vices of mind, then for what purpose were they intended ? PUNISHMENT. 161 LAWS ARE REMEDIAL. The lawgiver aims at the prevention of crime, and reformation of the offender, mostly by bodily infliction. A thief who is exposed in the pillory and flogged, is deterred from the repetition of the offence, as was the truant boy by the chas- tisement of his father. Both were made to suffer for their misdeeds; and whether it be called punishment, or by some other name, it is as truly a remedy as medicine for the sick. The child necessarily acted out its pleasure until corrected by discipline. The thief is a grown child, who, when he steals, necessarily acts out his pleasure also, in which all agree, perfect free agency consists. He steals from choice as he abstains from choice, accordingly as the desire of the object or fear of detection prevails in his mind. If the remedy does not always cure the offender, neither does it always cure the patient ; both remedies often succeed, and as often fail. As diseases of the body may be prevented by proper precaution, so may the vices of the mind by proper instruction. If the vice of mind be incurable, great offenders are cut off from society. If the disease of the body be incurable, the patient dies. If the vice of mind cannot be reached without infliction, so the vice of body often requires the surgeon's 162 PUNISHMENT. knife. Neither the lawgivers surgeon derives pleasure from the infliction of pain; it is an unavoidable attendant on the cure of disease, whether of body or mind. The Egyptians treated ignorance as a disease of the mind, which they professed to cure by education. The Moderns aim at the same result by more ample instruction. We set up schools and col- leges, fill our libraries with books, and keep the press at work day and night. We reason well : raise the motive, and the action will infallibly rise with it. Moral evils diminish with increase of knowledge, as do physical evils with the pro- gress of science. For the vices of ignorance, the Egyptian remedy is the cure; when that fails, corporal infliction may succeed. Of all motives to conduct, the dread of pain is the most powerful and constant. Hence legislators deter from crime by the penalties of the law, and divines from sin by threats of retribution in another world. Were the penalties of the law to follow the offence as instantaneously as pain from a blow or burn, crimes would seldom exist, if they did not altogether cease from the earth. PUNISHMENT. 163 remedy. — Continued. To the evils, physical and moral, that exist, we often add others more painful of our own contrivance. For diseases of the body, we pre- scribe drugs, bleeding, blistering, abstinence, and sometimes the use of the surgeon's knife. For vices of the mind, which cannot be reached without corporal suffering, the law prescribes imprisonment, pillory, stripes, and other forms of infliction. Both are remedies, painful indeed, but administered in kindness. If they fail to cure, death comes alike to the patient and the culprit. Again : a physician interrogates his patient, weighs the symptoms, that is, the facts of the case, and if he finds the disease to be imagina- ry, no remedies are prescribed. So when a man is charged with a crime, he is interrogated, the facts of his case are examined, and if his guilt appear altogether imaginary, he is set at liberty. But if the symptoms prove the existence of a real disease, the patient is made to undergo treatment, however afflictive, for his own cure, and a caution to others. So if the facts show a violation of the law, the accused undergoes stripes for his own cure, and a warning to others. 164 PUNISHMENT. Who can doubt that the medicine and stripes were purely remedies, and nothing but reme- dies ? But if, as has been shown, physical and moral evil come of the dispensations of Provi- dence, then crime and disease exist by immu- table laws, and the sufferer, from moral neces- sity, is in like condition with the sufferer from physical necessity; the same law exists for both. Let us not complain ; we take life with the conditions annexed. God has appointed the means to alleviate the ills we are made to bear. We contrive houses to shelter ourselves from the weather, garments to protect our bodies from the cold, and fill our granaries with the fatness of the earth. For diseases of the body, we find remedies in minerals and plants, and for those of the mind in education, instruc- tion, and bodily infliction. He has likewise extended his providence to the birds of the air and beasts of the forest. While we trust to the contrivances of art, they are taught by instinct to take refuge in the caverns of the earth, to seek a warmer sun, or to lay up food like the bee, against the season of want. PUNISHMENT. 165 CONCLUSION. If the foregoing be a just account of the laws of thought, then may the question of liberty and necessity be stated and settled in a half dozen lines. Sensations enter the mind by a necessity we cannot resist : hence, arise, by the same neces- sity, ideas, the vehicles of knowledge, that in- struct us by the laws of association, in the pursuit of happiness ; that is, in the pursuit of the greatest apparent good ; which, when per- ceived, becomes, by its own energy, the sole and immediate cause of action. Notwithstanding our judgments of happiness vary continually, whether from new combina- tions of ideas ; from instruction, discipline, fear, hope, or the circumstances in which we are placed ; yet at every change, unsatisfied desire renews the struggle, that can never cease but in death. FINIS. 15 / x°°. 4 r +* ,V X 00 ^ 1> "> .^ V % I: ^ ^ v° Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce«. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide ^ Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 . . X, ^ aV