Note 94 — AIDS TO REFLECTION IN THE FORMATION OF A MANLY CHARACTER, ON THE SEVERAL GROUNDS OF PRUDENCE, MORALITY, AND RELIGION. (continued 4)

See Wisd. of Sol. vii. 22 23 27.—H. N. C.

[95] Accordingly as we attend more or less to the differences, the sort becomes, of course, more or less comprehensive. Hence there arises for the systematic naturalist, the necessity of subdividing the sorts into orders, classes, families, &c.: all which, however, resolve themselves for the mere logician into the conception of genus and species, i.e. the comprehending and the comprehended.

[96] Were it not so, how could the first comparison have been possible?—It would involve the absurdity of measuring a thing by itself. But if we think on some one thing, the length of our own foot, or of our hand and arm from the elbow joint, it is evident that in order to do this, we must have the conception of measure. Now these antecedent and most general conceptions are what is meant by the constituent forms of the Understanding: we call them constituent because they are not acquired by the Understanding, but are implied in its constitution. As rationally might a circle be said to acquire a centre and circumference, as the Understanding to acquire these, its inherent forms, or ways of conceiving. This is what Leibnitz meant, when to the old adage of the Peripatetics, Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu (There is nothing in the Understanding not derived from the Senses, or—There is nothing conceived that was not previously perceived;) he replied—præter intellectum ipsum (except the Understanding itself).

And here let me remark for once and all: whoever would reflect to any purpose—whoever is in earnest in his pursuit of Self-knowledge, and of one of the principal means to this, an insight into the meaning of the words he uses, and the different meanings properly or improperly conveyed by one and the same word, accordingly as it is used in the schools or the market, accordingly as the kind or a high degree is intended (for example, heat, weight, and the like, as employed scientifically, compared with the same word used popularly)—whoever, I say, seriously proposes this as his object, must so far overcome his dislike of pedantry, and his dread of being sneered at as a pedant, as not to quarrel with an uncouth word or phrase, till he is quite sure that some other and more familiar one would not only have expressed the precise meaning with equal clearness, but have been as likely to draw attention to this meaning exclusively. The ordinary language of a Philosopher in conversation or popular writings, compared with the language he uses in strict reasoning, is as his watch compared with the chronometer in his observatory. He sets the former by the Town-clock, or even, perhaps, by the Dutch clock in his kitchen, not because he believes it right, but because his neighbours and his cook go by it. To afford the reader an opportunity for exercising the forbearance here recommended, I turn back to the phrase, "most general conceptions," and observe, that in strict and severe propriety of language I should have said generalific or generific rather than general, and concipiences or conceptive acts rather than conceptions.

It is an old complaint, that a man of genius no sooner appears, but the host of dunces are up in arms to repel the invading alien. This observation would have made more converts to its truth, I suspect, had it been worded more dispassionately, and with a less contemptuous antithesis. For "dunces," let us substitute "the many," or the "ουτος κοσμος" (this world) of the Apostle, and we shall perhaps find no great difficulty in accounting for the fact. To arrive at the root, indeed, and last ground of the problem, it would be necessary to investigate the nature and effects of the sense of difference on the human mind where it is not holden in check by reason and reflection. We need not go to the savage tribes of North America, or the yet ruder natives of the Indian Isles, to learn, how slight a degree of difference will, in uncultivated minds, call up a sense of diversity, and inward perplexity and contradiction, as if the strangers were, and yet were not, of the same kind with themselves. Who has not had occasion to observe the effect which the gesticulations and nasal tones of a Frenchman produce on our own vulgar? Here we may see the origin and primary import of our unkindness. It is a sense of unkind, and not the mere negation but the positive Opposite of the sense of kind. Alienation, aggravated now by fear, now by contempt, and not seldom by a mixture of both, aversion, hatred, enmity, are so many successive shapes of its growth and metamorphosis.—In application to the present case, it is sufficient to say, that Pindar's remark on sweet music holds equally true of genius: as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognizes it as a projected form of his own Being, that moves before him with a Glory round its head, or recoils from it as from a Spectre. But this speculation would lead me too far; I must be content with having referred to it as the ultimate ground of the fact, and pass to the more obvious and proximate causes. And as the first, I would rank the person's not understanding what yet he expects to understand, and as if he had a right to do so. An original mathematical work, or any other that requires peculiar and (so to say) technical marks and symbols, will excite no uneasy feelings—not in the mind of a competent reader, for he understands it; and not with others, because they neither expect nor are expected to understand it. The second place we may assign to the misunderstanding, which is almost sure to follow in cases where the incompetent person, finding no outward marks (diagrams, arbitrary signs, and the like) to inform him at first sight, that the subject is one which he does not pretend to understand, and to be ignorant of which does not detract from his estimation as a man of abilities generally, will attach some meaning to what he hears or reads; and as he is out of humour with the author, it will most often be such a meaning as he can quarrel with and exhibit in a ridiculous or offensive point of view.

But above all, the whole world almost of minds, as far as we regard intellectual efforts, may be divided into two classes of the Busy-indolent and Lazy-indolent. To both alike all Thinking is painful, and all attempts to rouse them to think, whether in the re-examination of their existing convictions, or for the reception of new light, are irritating. "It may all be very deep and clever; but really one ought to be quite sure of it before one wrenches one's brain to find out what it is. I take up a Book as a Companion, with whom I can have an easy cheerful chit-chat on what we both know beforehand, or else matters of fact. In our leisure hours we have a right to relaxation and amusement."

Well! but in their studious hours, when their bow is to be bent, when they are apud Musas, or amidst the Muses? Alas! it is just the same! The same craving for amusement, that is, to be away from the Muses! for relaxation, that is, the unbending of a bow which in fact had never been strung! There are two ways of obtaining their applause. The first is: Enable them to reconcile in one and the same occupation the love of Sloth and the hatred of Vacancy! Gratify indolence, and yet save them from ennui—in plain English, from themselves! For, spite of their antipathy to dry reading, the keeping company with themselves is, after all, the insufferable annoyance: and the true secret of their dislike to a work of thought and inquiry lies in its tendency to make them acquainted with their own permanent Being. The other road to their favour is, to introduce to them their own thoughts and predilections, tricked out in the fine language, in which it would gratify their vanity to express them in their own conversation, and with which they can imagine themselves showing off: and this (as has been elsewhere remarked) is the characteristic difference between the second-rate writers of the last two or three generations, and the same class under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. In the latter we find the most far-fetched and singular thoughts in the simplest and most native language; in the former, the most obvious and common-place thoughts in the most far-fetched and motley language. But lastly, and as the sine quâ non of their patronage, a sufficient arc must be left for the Reader's mind to oscillate in—freedom of choice,

To make the shifting cloud be what you please,

save only where the attraction of curiosity determines the line of motion. The attention must not be fastened down: and this every work of genius, not simply narrative, must do before it can be justly appreciated.

In former times a popular work meant one that adapted the results of studious meditation or scientific research to the capacity of the people, presenting in the concrete, by instances and examples, what had been ascertained in the abstract and by discovery of the Law. Now, on the other hand, that is a popular work which gives back to the people their own errors and prejudices, and flatters the many by creating them, under the title of the public, into a supreme and inappellable Tribunal of intellectual Excellence. P.S. In a continuous work, the frequent insertion and length of Notes would need an Apology: in a book like this of Aphorisms and detached Comments none is necessary, it being understood beforehand, that the sauce and the garnish are to occupy the greater part of the dish.

[97] Take a familiar illustration. My sight and touch convey to me a certain impression, to which my Understanding applies its pre-conceptions (conceptus antecedentes et generalissimi) of quantity and relation, and thus refers it to the class and name of three-cornered bodies—we will suppose it the iron of a turf-spade. It compares the sides, and finds that any two measured as one are greater than the third; and according to a law of the imagination, there arises a presumption that in all other bodies of the same figure (that is, three-cornered and equilateral) the same proportion exists. After this, the senses have been directed successively to a number of three-cornered bodies of unequal sides—and in these too the same proportion has been found without exception, till at length it becomes a fact of experience, that in all triangles hitherto seen, the two sides together are greater than the third: and there will exist no ground or analogy for anticipating an exception to a rule, generalized from so vast a number of particular instances. So far and no farther could the Understanding carry us: and as far as this "the faculty, judging according to sense," conducts many of the inferior animals, if not in the same, yet in instances analogous and fully equivalent.

The Reason supersedes the whole process, and on the first conception presented by the Understanding in consequence of the first sight of a tri-angular figure, of whatever sort it might chance to be, it affirms with an assurance incapable of future increase, with a perfect certainty, that in all possible triangles any two of the inclosing lines will and must be greater than the third. In short, Understanding in its highest form of experience remains commensurate with the experimental notices of the senses from which it is generalized. Reason, on the other hand, either predetermines Experience, or avails itself of a past Experience to supersede its necessity in all future time; and affirms truths which no sense could perceive, nor experiment verify, nor experience confirm.

Yea, this is the test and character of a truth so affirmed, that in its own proper form it is inconceivable. For to conceive is a function of the Understanding, which can be exercised only on subjects subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of the Understanding all truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection, and to be rendered expressible. And here we have a second test and sign of a truth so affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds of the Understanding only in the disguise of two contradictory conceptions, each of which is partially true, and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes the representative or expression (the exponent) of a truth beyond conception and inexpressible. Examples: Before Abraham was, I am.—God is a Circle, the centre of which is everywhere, and circumference nowhere. The soul is all in every part.

If this appear extravagant, it is an extravagance which no man can indeed learn from another, but which, (were this possible,) I might have learnt from Plato, Kepler, and Bacon; from Luther, Hooker, Pascal, Leibnitz, and Fénélon. But in this last paragraph I have, I see, unwittingly overstepped my purpose, according to which we were to take Reason as a simply intellectual power. Yet even as such, and with all the disadvantage of a technical and arbitrary Abstraction, it has been made evident—1. that there is an Intuition or immediate Beholding, accompanied by a conviction of the necessity and universality of the truth so beholden not derived from the senses, which intuition, when it is construed by pure sense, gives birth to the Science of Mathematics, and when applied to objects supersensuous or spiritual is the organ of Theology and Philosophy:—and 2. that there is likewise a reflective and discursive faculty, or mediate Apprehension which, taken by itself and uninfluenced by the former, depends on the senses for the materials, on which it is exercised, and is contained within the sphere of the senses. And this faculty it is, which in generalizing the notices of the senses constitutes Sensible Experience, and gives rise to Maxims or Rules which may become more and more general, but can never be raised into universal Verities, or beget a consciousness of absolute Certainty; though they may be sufficient to extinguish all doubt. (Putting Revelation out of view, take our first progenitor in the 50th or 100th year of his existence. His experience would probably have freed him from all doubt, as the sun sank in the horizon that it would re-appear the next morning. But compare this state of assurance with that which the same man would have had of the 37th Proposition of Euclid, supposing him, like Pythagoras, to have discovered the Demonstration.) Now is it expedient, I ask, or conformable to the laws and purposes of language, to call two so altogether disparate subjects by one and the same name? Or, having two names in our language, should we call each of the two diverse subjects by both—that is, by either name, as caprice might dictate? If not, then, as we have the two words, Reason and Understanding (as indeed what language of cultivated man has not?) what should prevent us from appropriating the former to the Power distinctive of humanity? We need only place the derivatives from the two terms in opposition (for example, "A and B are both rational beings; but there is no comparison between them in point of intelligence;" or "She always concludes rationally, though not a woman of much understanding") to see that we cannot reverse the order—i.e. call the higher gift Understanding, and the lower Reason. What should prevent us? I asked. Alas! that which has prevented us—the cause of this confusion in the terms—is only too obvious; namely, inattention to the momentous distinction in the things, and (generally) to the duty and habit recommended in the fifth Introductory Aphorism of this volume, (see p. 2). But the cause of this, and of all its lamentable effects and subcauses, false doctrine, blindness of heart and contempt of the word, is best declared by the philosophic Apostle: they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, (Rom. i.28,) and though they could not extinguish the light that lighteth every man, and which shone in the darkness; yet because the darkness could not comprehend the light, they refused to bear witness of the light, and worshipped, instead, the shaping mist, which the light had drawn upward from the ground (that is, from the mere animal nature and instinct), and which that light alone had made visible, that is, by superinducing on the animal instinct the principle of Self-consciousness.