CHAPTER VI

That Hartley’s system, as far as it differs from that of Aristotle, is

neither tenable in theory, nor founded in facts.

Of Hartley’s hypothetical vibrations in his hypothetical oscillating

ether of the nerves, which is the first and most obvious distinction

between his system and that of Aristotle, I shall say little. This, with

all other similar attempts to render that an object of the sight which

has no relation to sight, has been already sufficiently exposed by the

younger Reimarus, Maasz, and others, as outraging the very axioms

of mechanics in a scheme, the merit of which consists in its being

mechanical. Whether any other philosophy be possible, but the

mechanical; and again, whether the mechanical system can have any

claim to be called philosophy; are questions for another place. It is,

however, certain, that as long as we deny the former, and affirm the

latter, we must bewilder ourselves, whenever we would pierce into the

adyta of causation; and all that laborious conjecture can do, is to fill

up the gaps of fancy. Under that despotism of the eye (the emancipation

from which Pythagoras by his numeral, and Plato by his musical, symbols,

and both by geometric discipline, aimed at, as the first propaideuma of

the mind)--under this strong sensuous influence, we are restless

because invisible things are not the objects of vision; and metaphysical

systems, for the most part, become popular, not for their truth, but in

proportion as they attribute to causes a susceptibility of being seen,

if only our visual organs were sufficiently powerful.

From a hundred possible confutations let one suffice. According to

this system the idea or vibration a from the external object A becomes

associable with the idea or vibration m from the external object M,

because the oscillation a propagated itself so as to re-produce the

oscillation m. But the original impression from M was essentially

different from the impression A: unless therefore different causes

may produce the same effect, the vibration a could never produce the

vibration m: and this therefore could never be the means, by which a and

m are associated. To understand this, the attentive reader need only be

reminded, that the ideas are themselves, in Hartley’s system, nothing

more than their appropriate configurative vibrations. It is a mere

delusion of the fancy to conceive the pre-existence of the ideas, in any

chain of association, as so many differently coloured billiard-balls in

contact, so that when an object, the billiard-stick, strikes the first

or white ball, the same motion propagates itself through the red, green,

blue and black, and sets the whole in motion. No! we must suppose the

very same force, which constitutes the white ball, to constitute the red

or black; or the idea of a circle to constitute the idea of a triangle;

which is impossible.

But it may be said, that by the sensations from the objects A and M,

the nerves have acquired a disposition to the vibrations a and m, and

therefore a need only be repeated in order to re-produce m. Now we will

grant, for a moment, the possibility of such a disposition in a

material nerve, which yet seems scarcely less absurd than to say, that a

weather-cock had acquired a habit of turning to the east, from the wind

having been so long in that quarter: for if it be replied, that we must

take in the circumstance of life, what then becomes of the mechanical

philosophy? And what is the nerve, but the flint which the wag placed in

the pot as the first ingredient of his stone broth, requiring only

salt, turnips, and mutton, for the remainder! But if we waive this, and

pre-suppose the actual existence of such a disposition; two cases

are possible. Either, every idea has its own nerve and correspondent

oscillation, or this is not the case. If the latter be the truth, we

should gain nothing by these dispositions; for then, every nerve having

several dispositions, when the motion of any other nerve is propagated

into it, there will be no ground or cause present, why exactly the

oscillation m should arise, rather than any other to which it was

equally pre-disposed. But if we take the former, and let every idea have

a nerve of its own, then every nerve must be capable of propagating its

motion into many other nerves; and again, there is no reason assignable,

why the vibration m should arise, rather than any other ad libitum.

It is fashionable to smile at Hartley’s vibrations and vibratiuncles;

and his work has been re-edited by Priestley, with the omission of the

material hypothesis. But Hartley was too great a man, too coherent a

thinker, for this to have been done, either consistently or to any wise

purpose. For all other parts of his system, as far as they are peculiar

to that system, once removed from their mechanical basis, not only lose

their main support, but the very motive which led to their adoption.

Thus the principle of contemporaneity, which Aristotle had made the

common condition of all the laws of association, Hartley was constrained

to represent as being itself the sole law. For to what law can the

action of material atoms be subject, but that of proximity in place? And

to what law can their motions be subjected but that of time? Again, from

this results inevitably, that the will, the reason, the judgment,

and the understanding, instead of being the determining causes of

association, must needs be represented as its creatures, and among its

mechanical effects. Conceive, for instance, a broad stream, winding

through a mountainous country with an indefinite number of currents,

varying and running into each other according as the gusts chance to

blow from the opening of the mountains. The temporary union of several

currents in one, so as to form the main current of the moment, would

present an accurate image of Hartley’s theory of the will.

Had this been really the case, the consequence would have been, that

our whole life would be divided between the despotism of outward

impressions, and that of senseless and passive memory. Take his law in

its highest abstraction and most philosophical form, namely, that every

partial representation recalls the total representation of which it was

a part; and the law becomes nugatory, were it only for its universality.

In practice it would indeed be mere lawlessness. Consider, how immense

must be the sphere of a total impression from the top of St. Paul’s

church; and how rapid and continuous the series of such total

impressions. If, therefore, we suppose the absence of all interference

of the will, reason, and judgment, one or other of two consequences must

result. Either the ideas, or reliques of such impression, will exactly

imitate the order of the impression itself, which would be absolute

delirium: or any one part of that impression might recall any other

part, and--(as from the law of continuity, there must exist in every

total impression, some one or more parts, which are components of some

other following total impression, and so on ad infinitum)--any part

of any impression might recall any part of any other, without a cause

present to determine what it should be. For to bring in the will, or

reason, as causes of their own cause, that is, as at once causes and

effects, can satisfy those only who, in their pretended evidences of a

God, having first demanded organization, as the sole cause and ground

of intellect, will then coolly demand the pre-existence of intellect,

as the cause and ground-work of organization. There is in truth but

one state to which this theory applies at all, namely, that of complete

light-headedness; and even to this it applies but partially, because the

will and reason are perhaps never wholly suspended.

A case of this kind occurred in a Roman Catholic town in Germany a year

or two before my arrival at Goettingen, and had not then ceased to be

a frequent subject of conversation. A young woman of four or five and

twenty, who could neither read, nor write, was seized with a nervous

fever; during which, according to the asseverations of all the priests

and monks of the neighbourhood, she became possessed, and, as it

appeared, by a very learned devil. She continued incessantly talking

Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, in very pompous tones and with most distinct

enunciation. This possession was rendered more probable by the known

fact that she was or had been a heretic. Voltaire humorously advises the

devil to decline all acquaintance with medical men; and it would have

been more to his reputation, if he had taken this advice in the present

instance. The case had attracted the particular attention of a

young physician, and by his statement many eminent physiologists and

psychologists visited the town, and cross-examined the case on the spot.

Sheets full of her ravings were taken down from her own mouth, and

were found to consist of sentences, coherent and intelligible each for

itself, but with little or no connection with each other. Of the Hebrew,

a small portion only could be traced to the Bible; the remainder seemed

to be in the Rabbinical dialect. All trick or conspiracy was out of

the question. Not only had the young woman ever been a harmless, simple

creature; but she was evidently labouring under a nervous fever. In

the town, in which she had been resident for many years as a servant in

different families, no solution presented itself. The young physician,

however, determined to trace her past life step by step; for the patient

herself was incapable of returning a rational answer. He at length

succeeded in discovering the place, where her parents had lived:

travelled thither, found them dead, but an uncle surviving; and from him

learned, that the patient had been charitably taken by an old Protestant

pastor at nine years old, and had remained with him some years, even

till the old man’s death. Of this pastor the uncle knew nothing, but

that he was a very good man. With great difficulty, and after much

search, our young medical philosopher discovered a niece of the

pastor’s, who had lived with him as his house-keeper, and had inherited

his effects. She remembered the girl; related, that her venerable uncle

had been too indulgent, and could not bear to hear the girl scolded;

that she was willing to have kept her, but that, after her patron’s

death, the girl herself refused to stay. Anxious inquiries were then,

of course, made concerning the pastor’s habits; and the solution of the

phenomenon was soon obtained. For it appeared, that it had been the old

man’s custom, for years, to walk up and down a passage of his house into

which the kitchen door opened, and to read to himself with a loud voice,

out of his favourite books. A considerable number of these were still in

the niece’s possession. She added, that he was a very learned man and

a great Hebraist. Among the books were found a collection of Rabbinical

writings, together with several of the Greek and Latin Fathers; and the

physician succeeded in identifying so many passages with those taken

down at the young woman’s bedside, that no doubt could remain in any

rational mind concerning the true origin of the impressions made on her

nervous system.

This authenticated case furnishes both proof and instance, that reliques

of sensation may exist for an indefinite time in a latent state, in

the very same order in which they were originally impressed; and as we

cannot rationally suppose the feverish state of the brain to act in any

other way than as a stimulus, this fact (and it would not be difficult

to adduce several of the same kind) contributes to make it even

probable, that all thoughts are in themselves imperishable; and, that if

the intelligent faculty should be rendered more comprehensive, it

would require only a different and apportioned organization,--the body

celestial instead of the body terrestrial,--to bring before every human

soul the collective experience of its whole past existence. And this,

this, perchance, is the dread book of judgment, in the mysterious

hieroglyphics of which every idle word is recorded! Yea, in the very

nature of a living spirit, it may be more possible that heaven and earth

should pass away, than that a single act, a single thought, should be

loosened or lost from that living chain of causes, with all the links of

which, conscious or unconscious, the free-will, our only absolute Self,

is coextensive and co-present. But not now dare I longer discourse of

this, waiting for a loftier mood, and a nobler subject, warned from

within and from without, that it is profanation to speak of these

“mysteries tois maede phantasteisin, os kalon to taes dikaiosynaes kai

sophrosynaes prosopon, kai oute hesperos oute eoos outo kala. To gar

horon pros to horomenon syngenes kai homoion poiaesamenon dei epiballein

tae thea, ou gar an popote eiden ophthalmos haelion, haelioeidaes mae

gegenaemenos oude to kalon an idae psychae, mae kagae genomenae--to

those to whose imagination it has never been presented, how beautiful is

the countenance of justice and wisdom; and that neither the morning nor

the evening star are so fair. For in order to direct the view aright,

it behoves that the beholder should have made himself congenerous and

similar to the object beheld. Never could the eye have beheld the sun,

had not its own essence been soliform,” (i.e. pre-configured to light

by a similarity of essence with that of light) “neither can a soul not

beautiful attain to an intuition of beauty.”