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THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE*: 
 
 AN ESSAY 
 
 HAVING IN VIEW THE REVIVAL, CORRECTION, 
 AND EXCLUSIVE ESTABLISHMENT 
 
 ^r-- Vi- 
 
 _ Of THr ""T^^ 
 
 :^i^/FORNlA. 
 By B. ^ 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 
 
 1855. 
 

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 '•■^WA^J j^^^ 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BT W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFOBD SXKEET. 
 
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 oy' 
 
■V 
 
 To MICHAEL FARADAY, Esq. 
 
 D.C.L.Oxon: F.B.S.: F.G.S.: M.R.I.: 
 
 Fullerlan Prof, of Chem. : Knight of the Prussian Order of Merit : 
 
 Foreign Associate of the Acad, of Science In the Imperial Inst, of Paris: 
 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 
 THIS ESSAY, 
 
 THOUGH IN A DEPARTMENT OP PHILOSOPHY 
 
 DISTINCT FROM THAT IN WHICH HIS NAME STANDS ILLUSTRIOUS, 
 
 YET BEING ATTEMPfED TO^BE CARRIED OUT 
 
 IN THE INDUCTIVE SFntlT 
 
 WHICH HIS EXAMPLE EMINENTLY RECOMMENDS, 
 
 WITH VIVID RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY FRIENDSHIP 
 AND CONTINUED KINDNESS, 
 
 J 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. 
 
 Athek.«:dm, Pall-mall, London. 
 September, 1855. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE COMMON PERSUASION OF THE WAY IN WHICH 
 
 T-)-: 
 
 LANGUAGE DENOTES THOUGHT-V-HORNE TOOKE S 
 FAILURE TO CORRECT LOCKE — CAUSES WHICH 
 HAVE DISCREDITED LOCKE'S PHILOSOPHY — PRE- 
 SENT EFFECTS OF THIS DISCREDIT ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SPECULATION BY HYPOTHESIS— INQUIRY BY INDUC- 
 TION 12 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN— INITIAL STEPS 
 IN THE inquiry/^ HOW LANGUAGE DENOTES 
 thought) .27 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN AN ADULT . . 58 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS UNDER OTHER MODES 
 OF VIEW — WHAT LOCKE'S PHILOSOPHY WOULD BE^ 
 IF CONSISTENT WITH ITSELF . . . .81 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CTHE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE IS THE EXPONENT OF 
 THOUGHT — CONCLUSION ^j . . . . .136 
 
 I 
 
> »>•»••",'»*>' 
 
 THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The common persuasion of the way in which language 
 denotes thought — Home Tooke's failure to correct 
 Locke — Causes which have discredited Locke's Phi- 
 losophy—Present effects of this discredit. 
 
 That Language and Thought stand to each 
 other in the relation of sign and thing signified, 
 is a fact beyond question ; but it may be made 
 a question whether the way in which the 
 representation takes place is not universally 
 misconceived. The universal notion is, that 
 language represents thought with a perfect 
 correspondence of part to part, and a corre- 
 spondence of operations in joining the parts ; 
 
 B 
 
2 THE COMMON NOTION OF THE RELATION 
 
 SO that if we wish, when thought is expressed, 
 .to .ascertain the nature and process of what 
 kds" takeA' phjC^ '^^unthin, we have only to 
 e;8.am:axe'/tTaG pjarls 'and composition of the 
 language without J On the presumption of 
 this kind of correspondence have been built 
 all the metaphysical doctrines of ancient and 
 of modern days, all treatises on grammar or 
 structure of speech, all systems of logic, and 
 consequently all systems of rhetoric also. The 
 same kind of correspondence is taken for 
 granted by Locke, who considers that all 
 nouns in a proposition are put forward as 
 signs of ideas that are the mental elements of 
 the proposition, while the other parts of speech 
 
 » Addison speaks the common opinion when, in 
 Spectator 166, he says, " The world is a copy or tran- 
 script of those ideas which are in the mind of the 
 First Being, and those ideas which are in the mind of 
 man are a transcript of the world. To this we may 
 add, that words are the transcript of those ideas which 
 are in the mind of man, and that writing or printing 
 is the transcript of words," 
 
BETWEEN THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE. 3 
 
 " signify the connection the mind gives to 
 ideas, or to propositions, one with another."^ 
 
 But universal, or all but universal as is this 
 notion of the way in which language stands 
 related to thought, it may, as I have said, be( 
 questioned ; and I mean to show that if Locke / 
 had questioned it, he might have reached a | 
 foundation for his doctrine that would have \ 
 placed it out of the reach of contradiction or \ 
 dispute. A hundred years later, Home Tooke, 
 one of Locke's most ardent admirers, did ques- 
 tion it ; but it was by attributing to the instru- 
 mentality of language all that Locke ascribes 
 originally to thought. Overpowered by the 
 blaze of light which a view so near the truth 
 cast upon him, he lost all distinctness of vision, 
 and shot, in consequence, as far beyond the 
 truth, as he had left Locke behind it. On the 
 subject of abstraction, for instance, instead of 
 saying that it is carried on, after our early 
 learning, chiefly by the instrumentality of 
 2 Locke's Essay, b. iii., ch. vii., § 1. 
 
4 HORNE TOOKE'S FAILURE 
 
 words, he says, " there is no such thing as ab- 
 straction except in words."^ Again, instead of 
 being content with saying what most people 
 suspect to be true that "all" (foregone) " sys- 
 tems of metaphysics, and controversies concern- 
 ing it, are founded on the grossest ignorance of 
 words and the nature of speech," he declares 
 that " the very term metaphysic, is nonsense."^ 
 Instead of pointing out in what way artificial 
 language is instrumental in the conveyance of 
 thought, he asserts that " all which we are ac- 
 customed to consider the operations of the 
 mind, are nothing but the operations of lan- 
 guage.* And further, after having traced all 
 the parts of speech up to two, namely noun 
 and verb, and shown that the remaining parts 
 are only one or the other of these in disguise, 
 he draws unwarrantable conclusions from the 
 
 ' Diversions of Purley, cli. ii. The passage is often 
 repeated. 
 * Ibid., vol. i. (second edition), eh. ix., p. 399. 
 'Ibid., ch. iii., p. 51. 
 
TO CORRECT LOCKE. 5 
 
 fact, and leaves his inquiries unfinished, be- 
 cause he could not establish, what indeed is 
 contrary to truth, that verbs grew out of nouns, 
 and not nouns out of verbs. Thus failing to 
 place Locke's philosophy, as he meant to do, 
 correctly before the world, he left an impres- 
 sion that the philosophy itself was unsound, 
 instead of being deficient simply in mode of 
 development ; an impression the more injuri- 
 ous, inasmuch as the continental followers of 
 Locke had already brought, among his coun- 
 trymen, discredit upon his doctrine, by having 
 made it the ground of a system of materialism. 
 Thus it happened that Locke, who, up to 
 nearly the close of the last century, had been 
 our leaning staff in metaphysics, as much re- 
 spected by us as Bacon, the reformer of physics, 
 lost almost all the authority he had won ; and 
 the effect has been that those doctrines and 
 methods of speculation have come again into 
 activity, which Locke had set himself to ; 
 oppose. _i) 
 
6 CAUSES WHICH HAVE DISCREDITED 
 
 Now the doctrines which it had been Locke's 
 especial object to subvert, were all those which 
 assigned any other beginning, or any other 
 ground of human knowledge than experience, 
 and which pretended to arm human reason 
 with any other means of prosecuting knowledge 
 than Grod had given it.® The Aveight of his 
 authority being removed, up sprung, in Ger- 
 many, system after system of philosophy, con- 
 structed, in the old way, upon hypothesis, in 
 contempt of all demand for experimental evi- 
 dence; and here in England, where it had 
 been thought dead, though alive among the 
 metaphysicians of Germany, uprose, however 
 failing in pristine vigour, the doctrine of the 
 syllogism as taught by Aristotle and his fol- 
 lowers, the schoolmen of the middle ages. Of 
 this last-mentioned revival, Dr. Whately, the 
 present archbishop of Dublin, was the indirect 
 cause, probably without intending the full 
 effect produced. He wrote for the Encyclo- 
 " Locke's Essay, b. iv., ch. xvii., § 4. 
 
LOCKE S PHILOSOPHY. 7 
 
 pedia Metropolitana an article on Logic, which 
 he afterwards published separately; a work 
 which, to use concerning it the words of Sir 
 William Hamilton, himself a decided Aristote- 
 lian, " conciliated to the declining study a 
 broader interest than its own." This it accom- 
 plished by the clearness of its style, by the 
 strong common sense underlying the super- 
 structure, and by its forced connection with 
 Aristotelian logic, while all that is practically 
 good and useful in it, is independent of the 
 foundation on which it pretends to rest, but 
 does not rest. But the public ear was won, 
 and the subject followed up by an article in the 
 Edinburgh Eeview (No. 115, 1833, Art. IX.), 
 from the learned and powerful pen of the 
 writer just named (Sir William Hamilton) ; 
 and it is to this essay we may immediately 
 ascribe the revulsion in favour of Aristotelian 
 logic, and against Locke, which, for nearly five- 
 and-twenty years, has been dominant in the 
 academic world, and the portion of our periodic 
 
8 PRESENT EFFECTS OF DISCREDITING LOCKE. 
 
 press which distributes, or which apes its 
 learning.' 
 
 ^ That I did not, at the time, under-estimate the 
 likely effect of the article, — that, however conscious 
 of my better cause, I saw it would eclipse for a season 
 both me and my cause, — will be evident from the fol- 
 lowing passage, which was written six years after the 
 publication of my "Outline of Sematology," and 
 soon after the article appeared, while I was yet igno- 
 rant of the name of the author : — 
 
 "Though Oxford is said to be 'the only British 
 seminary where the study of logic-proper survives,' 
 yet if the learning expended in the article referred to 
 operates according to its quantity, we may soon expect 
 to see what the reviewer calls logic-proper flourishing 
 in other places than Oxford. ' A new life ' is said to 
 be * suddenly communicated to the expiring study,' 
 in earnest of which we are presented with an array of 
 new publications on the subject, formidable by their 
 number at least, while the reviewer's essay, which 
 places them at its head, is still more formidable for its 
 learning, — learning which, being derived not only from 
 Greece and Eome, but from the armouries of scholastic 
 times, threatens, by its bare weight of rusty metal, to 
 crush all opponents who come not in similar panoply. 
 It would not he a new or singular event if, hy such sort 
 of array, truth were overlornefor a season." — Begin- 
 nings of a new School of Metaphysics, Second Essay, 
 p. 19. 
 
PRESENT EFFECTS OF DISCREDITING LOCKE. 9 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of the efforts which 
 have thus far succeeded in re-establishing 
 Aristotle, and in procuring respect for German 
 metaphysics, our old love for the plain common- 
 sense English philosophy of Locke, seems by 
 many pregnant symptoms to be coming round 
 again.® Nor must it be supposed that the 
 
 " Beside articles relative to Locke in several of the 
 reviews, the following works, among others, have ap- 
 peared, since these pages were first written, all of them 
 tending in the direction of my own efforts : 
 
 " On the Study of Language, an Exposition of the 
 Diversions of Purley : by Charles Richardson, LL.D." 
 
 " Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind : 
 by Samuel Bailey." 
 
 " Locke's Writings and Philosophy historically con- 
 sidered : by Edward Tagart, F.S.A., F.L.S." 
 
 " The Senses and the Intellect : by Alexander 
 Bain, A.M." 
 
 Ignored as I have been by the leaders among those 
 who profess to review the literature of the day, and 
 acquaint the world with what is new and true in doc- 
 trine, I cannot wonder that the three gentlemen last 
 mentioned should know nothing of me or of my pre- 
 tensions. 
 
10 PRESENT EFFECTS OF DISCREDITING LOCKE. 
 
 efforts alluded to have been successful in any 
 great degree beyond the limits of the academic 
 world. Ask any Englishman of sound sense 
 and wide information, clear from the trammels 
 of college learning, what he thinks of meta- 
 physics, Greek or German, and the subtilties 
 of mood and figure in logic, — he will say that 
 the one is moonshine, and the other, child's 
 play with words. That this opinion is just, I 
 do not despair of making evident. As a step 
 to it, I shall, in the following chapter, endea- 
 vour to show that Locke's purpose is the only 
 legitimate purpose that metaphysics can have ; 
 that so far as he failed in it, the failure arose 
 from his inability, notwithstanding all his 
 pains, to keep his teaching clear from the false 
 points of view which all previous teaching had 
 contributed to establish ; but that, with regard 
 to Kant's method of pursuing the same pur- 
 pose, — while Locke's is a failure through 1^ 
 wrong views occurring at times and capable of 
 correction, Kant's is a failure throughout by 
 
PRESENT EFFECTS OF DISCREDITING LOCKE. 1 1 
 
 being built on a purely hypothetical founda- 
 tion incapable of proof, and permitting no 
 substitution which would not destroy the 
 entire edifice. 
 
12 SPECULATION BY HYPOTHESIS — 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 Speculation by hypothesis— Inquiry by induction. 
 
 The philosopliers of antiquity had but one 
 way of prosecuting science, though the prin- 
 ciple which each carried with him was as 
 various as fancy could make it. Being ad- 
 mitted, the principle assumed was the key to 
 all knowledge ; but this principle differed with 
 every sect, and to the number of sects there 
 was no end. The idealists of modern Ger- 
 many build up systems in the same way, each 
 system different from the last, because each is 
 founded on mere hypothesis incapable of either 
 proof or disproof. Surely it is time that this 
 mode of philosophizing had an end ; and it 
 would long since have been at an end, so as to 
 
INQUIRY BY INDUCTION. 13 
 
 have saved the world from nearly two cen- 
 turies of fruitless speculation, if Locke's Essay 
 on the Human Understanding had been as 
 faultless in execution as it was sound in pur- 
 pose. That purpose was, " to inquire into the 
 original, certainty, said extent of human know- 
 ledge." It is self-evident that such inquiry 
 should precede all other philosophical specula- 
 tion, in order to stop it when it cannot be of 
 use, and to indicate the ground, when ground 
 there is, for speculating with likely profit. 
 But while Locke's purpose was sound, he very 
 soon takes a fundamentally wrong step in pur- 
 suirof "it. In endeavouring to get at th^ 
 beginning of human knowledge, he goes back \ 
 to the beginning of human existence, and finds | 
 it sensitive ; that is to say, the babe has sen- | 
 sations as the first condition of his existence. | 
 With these sensations, either at first or after- V 
 wards, he has knowledge also. Locke's proper | 
 inquiry (the proper inquiry of every meta- 
 physician) then was, how does knowledge 
 
14 SPECULATION BY HYPOTHESIS — 
 
 become connected with sensation? For sensa- 
 tion is not knowledge : a sensation by itself is 
 nothing more than an effect on the animal 
 frame ; that is to say, some nerve or nerves of 
 that frame are acted upon by a foreign sub- 
 stance, the action is diffused to the nerve 
 centres, and sensations follow as the effect of 
 having life that transcends, it may be just 
 transcends, vegetable life. What an unwar- 
 rantable assumption, then, lies under Locke's 
 first application of the term idea, when he 
 considers the beginning of our knowledge to 
 be those early sensations which reach the brain 
 from the world without ; which sensations he 
 calls simple ideas ! This first error leads to all 
 his other errors in his doctrine of ideas. For 
 speaking of sensations as simple ideas, he 
 makes them the materials of complex ideas, by 
 which he means all our subsequent knowledge, 
 — all of which is derived from, or rather con- 
 sists of, so he teaches, those first materials, 
 with the addition to their number of ideas 
 
INQUIRY BY INDUCTION. """^-W 
 
 obtained by reflecting on the inward processes 
 while we accumulate our ideas obtained from 
 without. Locke was not himself a materialist, 
 but it is easy to see that such doctrine tends to 
 materialism ; and this accordingly has, in other 
 hands, been its issue, and its cause of failure. 
 This is the reductio ad absurdum by which 
 Locke has, for a time, been driven from the 
 ground he was believed to have won ; nor can 
 he be reinstated on it but by tracing our know- 
 ledge to a higher function of our nature than 
 sensation, however true it is that the higher 
 function would never have been called into 
 activity if sensation had not first been active. 
 
 Turning now to Kant, the xmintentional 
 father of modern idealism, as Locke is of 
 modern sensationalism, we shall find that, with 
 the same general purpose, namely, to ascertain 
 the origin and the nature of human know- 
 ledge, and the source of its certainty when it 
 is certain, he proceeds on a plan entirely 
 difierent. He begins indeed as Locke begins, 
 
16 SPECULATION BY HYPOTHESIS— 
 
 with sensations, and he allows that sensations 
 arise from something that comes from without ; 
 but what this something is, he denies that we 
 know, or, in our present state of being, ever 
 can know. Sensations, he teaches, are the 
 crude materiel ^ of the world in which we 
 live, which materiel is so moulded by the 
 understanding immediately on its reception 
 through the senses, as to exhibit the pheno- 
 'mena which we deem external nature, though 
 these phenomena are nothing but the forms 
 which the mind gives to that spiritual some- 
 thing, that noumenon, which occasions its 
 activity. The mind, so he teaches, consists of 
 TWENTY elements, of which the first TWO are 
 Space and Time, for these receive the crude 
 materiel conveyed by the senses ; the eye and 
 the hand conveying it into space, inasmuch as 
 they convey it in coexisting parts; the ear, 
 the tongue, and the nose conveying it into 
 
 » Kant does not use this word, but it oifers itself in 
 the attempt to explain his meaning. 
 
INQUIRY BY INDUCTION. 17 
 
 time, inasmuch as they convey it in successive 
 parts. Thus existing in space and time, it 
 has next to take its varieties of form, and 
 these it obtains from the understanding by 
 virtue of the twelve constructive powers or 
 faculties that constitute the Understanding. 
 External nature, then, is nothing but the pro- 
 duct of our own activity of thought : what 
 things are in their own nature, we cannot now 
 know; we can but know them as 'pheno- 
 mena.^ Yet Reason is given to us to specu- 
 late on things transcending our present 
 experience, and, while it regulates the under- 
 standing, it enables us, by virtue of its six 
 ideas, completing the twenty elements of 
 mind, to soar above this world where all is 
 contingent and conditioned, and catch a secure, 
 
 ^ Stated in our own way, we, Lockeists, must admit 
 the fact which seems couched under this Kantist 
 dogma. While we are convinced that the things of 
 sense are, for us, related to each other as we perceive 
 them to be, we must admit that by beings otherwise 
 constituted, they may bo otherwise perceived. 
 
 C 
 
18 SPECULATION BY HYPOTHESIS — 
 
 though not an experimental or demonstrable 
 sight of that world, where all is absolute and 
 unconditioned. 
 
 Such is the outline of Kant's doctrine ; and 
 we, Lockeists, presume to say of it, that if our 
 teacher began and continued his doctrine so 
 as never to get clear of Matter, the German 
 philosopher begins and continues his, so as 
 scarcely to allow of our seeing anything but 
 Mind. We need not wonder therefore that 
 the speculators in Germany who have followed 
 him, — Ficht^, Schelling, Hegel, and others, — 
 have sought to establish systems of pure 
 idealism, each agreeably to his own fancy, and 
 have thus accomplished in Kant's case, the 
 reductio ad ahsurdum which the French 
 materialists accomplished in Locke's. 
 
 Seeing, then, that these philosophers have 
 equally failed in their one common purpose, — 
 a purpose that must be achieved or human 
 learning will remain imperfect, — namely, that 
 of establishing undeniable criteria by which 
 
INQUIRY BY- INDUCTION. 19 
 
 to test the oriffln, th e nature, and the limits of 
 human knowledge, we have next to ask 
 whether, in both of them, the faulty procedure 
 is irremediable ? Now with regard to Kant, 
 his system is a pure hypothesis, of which, if 
 you change one part, you destroy the whole ; 
 moreover, as it contradicts our earliest, our 
 strongest convictions, it is required to contain 
 in itself such inherent force, as to make its 
 way and establish its authenticity without 
 danger of change or question, the moment it 
 becomes intelligible. We have seen that it 
 has not so established itself, but that other 
 hypotheses, like it in character, are continually 
 arising, and seeking to displace it. Locke's ,^ 
 theory^ on the other hand, is never hypothe- 
 tic al but in the search of facts to confirm the 
 supposition ; as a whole, it ^pppala to eype^^'- 
 ence, and ri ses, or seeks to rise to general pro - 
 positions by the induction of particulars. It 
 does not contradict our early convictions 
 respecting space and time, nor that of the ex- 
 
20 SPECULATION BY HYPOTHESIS — 
 
 istence of an outward world unindebted for its 
 forms to the understanding, nor that of the 
 identity of human understanding and human 
 reason ; contradictions which stand at the very 
 threshold of Kant's doctrine. Always where 
 it is faulty, it is so by being at variance with 
 itself, and admitting as experimented facts, 
 hypothetical distinctions which are essential 
 only in such philosophy as Kant's. In avoid- 
 ing the language of such philosophy, his own 
 course would have been clear. He needs not 
 have floundered as he does, in speaking of that 
 unknown, unknowable support or substratum 
 of qualities called matter, — he needs not have 
 exposed himself to the objurgation of modern 
 Platonists^ by supposing that matter, for 
 aught we know, could be made to think, and 
 that 'mind, for aught we know, may not be 
 immaterial, if, with this persuasion of our 
 necessary ignorance on these points, and 
 
 ^ E. g. of Mr. James Douglas of Cavers, in his 
 volume on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, p. 117. 
 
INQUIRY BY INDUCTION. 21 
 
 avoiding the philosophical distinction implied 
 by the terms, he had accepted them simply in 
 their colloquial uses, and considered his subject 
 to be, not the rrdrid^^iT^^ 
 nor the body distinct from the mind, but MAN, 
 as a living, feeling, thinking, reasoning crea- 
 ture. It was also essential to his purpose to 
 avoid the personification as well of the facul- 
 ties and the furniture of the mind, as of the 
 mind itself; yet no metaphysician more fre- 
 quently offends by giving, in mode of speech, 
 distinct independent existence to sensation, 
 memory, volition, perception, judgement, rea- 
 soning, and to ideas of every kind and 
 variety. 
 
 It seems, then, that while Kant's philosophy 
 must stand or fall as it is, that of Locke may 
 be taken up where he has left it, and be cor- 
 rected in parts till it becomes perfect as a 
 whole. And the truth is, if Locke's conti- 
 nental followers had not seized upon, and 
 carried out to their own conclusions, his pri- 
 
22 SPECULATION BY HYPOTHESIS — 
 
 mary assumption, that sensations are the ma- 
 terials out of which all our ideas are formed, 
 both that assumption, and every other faulty 
 statement in his Essay, would in time have 
 been amended by his British followers. In- 
 deed, the corrections are already made, though 
 they have to be collected from different quar- 
 ters, and sometimes to be carried out and 
 specially applied. Take, for example, Berke- 
 ley's Theory of Vision ; a theory admitted 
 (with only one exception, to be noticed here- 
 after) by every philosopher since his time, and 
 we shall have reason to deny the fact which 
 Locke at his first step takes for granted, that 
 sensations enter the mind as simple ideas, 
 and remain there to be formed into complex. 
 Berkeley's theory makes evident this fact, that, 
 with regard to vision at least, the sensations 
 which enter by the appropriate organ, do not 
 make us perceive the things that produce them 
 from without, but only awaken higher func- 
 tions of our nature, to the activity of which 
 
INQUIRY BY INDUCTION. 23 
 
 higher functions the perception is properly 
 ascribable. The fact has only to be generalized 
 by including the other senses, and we reach 
 the truth that a sensation is one thing, and the 
 knowledge we have of it, and have, through 
 it, of a something external, is quite another 
 thing Berkeley may be made further ser- 
 viceable to Locke. For subsequently to his 
 " Theory of Vision," he published '' A Treatise 
 concerning the Principles of Human Know- 
 ledge," in which he follows out, to its legiti- 
 mate consequences, the doctrine of all philoso- 
 phers who start upon the hypothesis of two 
 substances, Mind and Matter, which divide the 
 universe, — the doctrine, namely, that mind 
 cannot become acquainted withroatter except 
 by means of its own ideas ; the legitimate 
 conclusion from which fact, if it were a fact, 
 is, that the mind never becomes acquainted 
 with anything but its own ideas, and Berkeley, 
 presuming that the fact must be admitted, 
 shows accordingly that we have no proof of 
 
24 SPECULATION BY HYPOTHESIS — 
 
 the existence of an external world.'' Locke 
 needs not have exposed himself, this second 
 time, to a reductio ad ahsurdum ; for, as we 
 have seen, he lays no stress on the Platonic 
 division of the universe, and yet, by his manner 
 of using the term idea, "to express whatever 
 is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatr 
 ever it is that the mind can be employed about 
 when thinking,"^ he renders himself liable, 
 while placed among the materialists by one 
 party, to be set down as an idealist by another. 
 To have done justice to himself, he should 
 have made it clearly understood, that in using 
 the expression mind ofTYian, he meant nothing 
 more nor less than man himself as a thinking 
 being ; nor should he have ever used the term 
 idea but in some one well-defined sense. ^ 
 
 ■* Kant's doctrine adds the external noumenon to 
 this doctrine of Berkeley's ; but the general similarity 
 of the two doctrines is evident. 
 
 ^ Locke's Essay, Introduction. 
 
 ^ I^eaVVmong the old Platonists, means a form of 
 thought, a pure abstraction ; in modern definite use, 
 
INQUIRY BY INDUCTION. 25 
 
 However, Locke is not left in the iJtrait to 
 which Berkeley reduces him : his followers of 
 the Scottish school, so far as they are his fol- 
 lowers from using, like him, the inductive 
 method of inquiry, here come in to his rescue 
 by being the first philosophers to assert, what 
 indeed no one of unfettered common sense 
 ever doubted, that we are cognizant of an ex- 
 ternal world immediately by our senses, though 
 whether we are originally thus cognizant of it, 
 as brutes certainly are, or become cognizant by 
 virtue of some higher function of our nature, 
 is an inquiry yet to be made. 
 
 As to the defect in Locke's mode of pro- 
 cedure which springs out of his ignorance of the 
 true relation that language bears to thought. 
 
 it signifies that unreal presentation of some individual 
 thing which remains, when the real presentation to the 
 appropriate sense is absent ; following which use of 
 the substantive, the adjective ideal stands opposed to 
 real. By Locke the terms are confusedly applied in 
 all possible ways of using them. 
 
26 SPECULATION BY HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 this, wlwch lias already been alluded to, also 
 remains to be considered hereafter. Home 
 Tooke, as already said, saw this cause of* 
 failure, but misapplied the remedy, because 
 he, as well as Locke, misunderstood the rela- 
 tion. Locke became aware, as he proceeded 
 with his essay, that from having neglected to 
 trace the moulding influence of language on 
 thought, he had been working in the dark. 
 " for," says he, " when I began this discourse 
 on the understanding, and a good while after. 
 I had not the least thought that any considera- 
 tion of words was at all necessary to it." '^ All 
 metaphysics, indeed, have been elaborated more 
 or less under the same darkness ; nor can this 
 department of learning receive its proper light 
 till language and thought shall be understood 
 in theory to be what they are in common 
 proper practice. 
 
 7 Essay, iii., ix., § 21. 
 
INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Intellection, brute and human — ^Initial steps in the 
 inquiry, how Language denotes Thought. 
 
 Man is a sentient, an intellectual, and an 
 emotive creature ; that is to say, he is placed 
 in contact with tilings that pain or do not 
 pain, that pleasure^ or do not pleasure him : 
 he becomes cognizant of* these things, and 
 speculates on things beydnd them: and on 
 becoming thus cognizant, he fears and hopes, 
 grieves and rejoices, hates and loves, as oc- 
 casions arise from the previously mentioned 
 sources. 
 
 1 This verb is not in elegant use, but it is needed 
 in this place, because there is no other verb which 
 would signify mere sensational pleasure. 
 
28 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 
 
 But are not brutes of the higher orders 
 capable of all this? Excepting speculation 
 which rises above the things of sense, — by 
 which characteristic even human beings do 
 not all distinguish themselves, and none till 
 early years are passed, — we have full ground 
 f©r asserting that they are capable. In what, 
 then, does the human being essentially differ 
 from the intelligent brute ? He has one, and 
 only one external characteristic by which he 
 is clearly divided from all other creatures 
 inhabiting the earth, — the use of rational 
 language. As to his early language, at first 
 instinctive, and then emotional, it identifies 
 in kind and character with that which other 
 creatures use; but, placed in society with 
 his fellows, he inevitably invents or adopts 
 means of communication which no other 
 creature can invent or use. Have we not 
 ground to infer, from this fact, that a human 
 creature's first intellection occurs in some way 
 different from a brute's? Not however his 
 
IXTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 29 
 
 very first intellection, — that which makes him 
 imbibe his earliest food, — but almost every 
 subsequent intellection. We cannot go back 
 and examine the first acts of human intellec- 
 tion, but we can those of later date ; and if 
 we find that they occur with circumstances 
 of a specific character, clearly distinguishing 
 them from brute intellection, we shall be jus- 
 tified in deciding that the early acts likewise 
 differed in the same specific manner, and that 
 human language becomes different fi*om brute 
 language, because early knowledge, in the 
 respective cases, is differently derived. 
 
 Now as soon as we are old enough to ex- 
 amine how an act of intellect occurs, that is, 
 an act by which we understand or know some- 
 thinor which we did not understand or know 
 before, we shall find that it takes place, and 
 can take place, only by virtue of knowing 
 something else at the same time : that is to say, 
 we come to know B only because we previ- 
 ously knew, or now for the first time know A. 
 
30 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 
 
 In other words, every act of human intellection 
 consists in becoming aware of a relation not 
 hitherto perceived: but a relation implies 
 things related, of which there must be two, 
 and the relation between these being appre- 
 hended, is the new step in knowledge. We 
 may further say that every such act includes 
 a virtual syllogism, of which the two things 
 whose relation is perceived, are the premises, 
 and the knowledge of their relation, the con- 
 clusion. Thus, for instance, when I know for 
 the first time that the loadstone attracts iron, 
 it is by virtue of knowledge already existing, 
 that neither of them stands in that relation to 
 other things in which I now perceive that they 
 stand to each other. Thus, again, when from 
 some temporary disorder that affects my vision 
 I believe my friend to stand before me within 
 my reach, and I learn, by putting out my hand, 
 that he is not there, not only do I learn this 
 fact which I did not know before, but I also 
 learn the fact, of which I was equally ignorant. 
 
INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 31 
 
 that my sight is disordered. Let this inquiry 
 concerning our acts of intellection be prose- 
 cuted to the utmost amount of instances of 
 every kind, and the result will always be the 
 same, namely, that we cannot know one thing 
 but by knowing another. We may restate the 
 fact thus: not only is it true that I cannot 
 know what it is to be a father, except by know- 
 ing what it is to be a son, — that I cannot know 
 what it is to be a cause except by knowing 
 what it is to be an effect, and in both and all 
 cases, vice versa ; but it is equally true that 
 I cannot know what is a man except by know- 
 ing what is not a man ; that I cannot know 
 which of many persons is my friend John^ 
 except by knowing which of them severally 
 is not John ; that I cannot know the colour 
 before me to be blue, unless I know some other 
 colour or colours; that I cannot know I am 
 now in pain, feel the pain though I may and 
 do, unless I know what it is to be free from 
 pain. 
 
32 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 
 
 If to the statement here made, this be offered 
 as a counter statement, that a dog also knows 
 his master from many others, and every one 
 of these others not to be his master ; that he 
 knows when he is in pain and when he is 
 relieved from pain ; we answer that he knows 
 each fact irrespective at the moment of the 
 other fact, — ^knows it instantly and immediately, 
 — in a word instinctively and not rationally, 
 the knowledge going along with the sensation 
 from the very first, and not requiring the con- 
 tradistinction which, in the first occurrence of 
 a human intellection, is indispensable to its 
 taking place. That the dog has to learn his 
 master, is true ; but the delay is only till his 
 instinct becomes sure, and not to gather ra- 
 tional means of knowledge. If it be fiirther 
 objected, with regard to all the common ob- 
 jects of sense, that they seem to be perceived 
 by the human and the brute creature in the 
 same direct manner, we answer that they are 
 so, when, in the human creature, the appro- 
 
INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 33 
 
 priate sensations have become linked to the 
 knowledge which foregone intellections have 
 established; then, but not till then, a sen- 
 sation produced by something affecting the 
 appropriate organ, no sooner occurs, than the 
 knowledge of the thing so affecting it occurs 
 with it, — occurs as quickly, as immediately as 
 the knowledge of its food occurred to the 
 new-born babe when the nipple was put to 
 its mouth, howbeit that this last was an in- 
 stinct, while, in their beginning, all our other 
 perceptions were rational, although being once 
 established, they cease to have any difference 
 from the correspondent instinctive perceptions 
 of brutes. 
 
 But in order to establish this doctrine of 
 human as having a different beginning from 
 brute intellection, (the babe's first intellection 
 excepted, and perhaps a few others,) we must 
 be able to see in what way our early intellec- 
 tions could link themselves to our sensations ; — 
 how, if we first have only sentient existence, 
 
 D 
 
34 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 
 
 it could become intellectual also. Now, with 
 respect, at least, to one class of our sensations, 
 tliose which -enter by the eye, it is already 
 admitted by all who subscribe to Berkeley's 
 doctrine, that originally and in themselves 
 they are sensations from reflected and refracted 
 light, and nothing more ; and that it is by 
 subsequent acts of the understanding that the 
 thing communicating the sensations receives 
 its accredited individuality. One English 
 writer, and only one, since the bishop's time, 
 dissents from his doctrine, namely, Mr. Samuel 
 Bailey of Sheffield. With regard, however, 
 to the Essay which undertakes to show the 
 unsoundness of Berkeley's doctrine, a very 
 able critic ^ asserts that, '' On the whole, nei- 
 ther by his facts nor his arguments has Mr. 
 Bailey thrown any new light on the question, 
 but has left the theory precisely as he found 
 it, subject, as it has always been, to the ac- 
 knowledged difficulty arising from the motion 
 ^ Westminster Review, No. 75, October, 1842. 
 
INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 35 
 
 of young animals " (brute animals), " but 
 otherwise unshaken, and, to all appearance, 
 unshakeable." Now the difficulty here alluded 
 to, is the fact that, with regard to brute animals, 
 a sensation may be, and is, from its very first 
 occurrence, accompanied by such knowledge 
 as the occasion demands; for instance, the 
 sensation on the eye of the new-hatched duck, 
 by which it immediately knows the water. 
 
 Under our doctrine, the fact we have just 
 stated is no difficulty ; for we extend Berke- 
 ley's theory to the human creature only, 
 and deny that it should include brute-vision. 
 Neither to our other senses any more than 
 to the eye, do we suppose knowledge to be 
 originally joined ; and we thus keep clear from 
 all that remains of fact or argument by which 
 Mr. Bailey attempts to establish the doctrine of 
 original or immediate perception. We repeat 
 that, as regards the human creature, there is, 
 with his sensations, no perception originally, 
 except of his first food ; and the inquiry which 
 
36 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 
 
 remains, is, how, in his case, do intellections be- 
 come linked with his sensations, so that the latter 
 are no longer mere sensations, but perceptions ? 
 That the human being should not have the 
 powers of perception earlier than they are 
 needed, is a fair presumption. The. babe is 
 so completely tended immediately on its birth, 
 as to require no knowledge of the things 
 around, save the single knowledge of its food. 
 The Creator grants instinct where he denies 
 reason; but granting the latter to man, he 
 gives him little of the former. We must 
 believe that the first human pair had instincts 
 which their progeny have not ; it is accord- 
 ingly said of them that while they had the 
 fruition of good, they had not the knowledge 
 of it ; for the rational knowledge of good can 
 take place only by the mental presence of the 
 other premise, evil; and they were not as 
 Gods, knowing both good and evil, till they 
 misused the only voluntary election which was 
 put into their power. 
 
INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 37 
 
 But if it is true that, in the actual condition 
 of our race, our first existence is purely sen- 
 tient, how does it become intellectual? It 
 must be by the occurrence of states which at 
 the same time resemble, yet differ from sensa- 
 tions. Two real sensations cannot be distinctly 
 present at once, so as to awaken intellect 
 hitherto dormant ; they can but blend so as to 
 be one sensation. If knowledge goes along 
 with such sensation, it must be originally given 
 with it, that is, it must be instinctive. But 
 we are supposing (always with one clear ex- 
 ception) that man's early knowledge is not 
 instinctive any more than his later ; that, till 
 his intellect is awakened, he merely lives, — 
 lives in successive states of hunger, feeding, 
 and repletion, of sleeping and being awake, 
 of noises of every kind, of the absence of 
 noise or silence, of light and its degrees and 
 refractions, of the privation of light or dark- 
 ness, of different affections of the skin by the 
 contact of different substances, of affections 
 
38 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 
 
 by effluvia that pass up tlie nostrils, of 
 warmth and cold in every different degree, — 
 that he lives in all these varieties of sensation, 
 but, in supposing no instincts joined to these, 
 that, as yet, he knows nothing by them. 
 He has no memory yet : his sensation is now 
 painful, now free from pain; he cries in- 
 stinctively in the first case, he ceases instinc- 
 tively in the second ; but there is no knowledge 
 at the time, and none therefore to survive it. 
 Now it is one and the same thing to say of a 
 creature that it has no knowledge of the pain 
 in which it exists, and to say it is not con- 
 scious : the babe, then, is not yet conscious f 
 when memory comes, consciousness will awake ; 
 but memory requires this condition of our 
 being, that while we really exist in one state 
 
 2 To all who have consciousness, it is one and the 
 same thing to be in pain, and to be conscious of pain. 
 In saying the babe is not conscious of pain, we do not 
 say he is not in pain. A man born blind is in dark- 
 ness, but he is not, and cannot be, conscious of the 
 darkness. 
 
INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 39 
 
 of sensation, there is revived, at the same time, 
 some past state in which we are conscious that 
 we do not really exist. And it will not be 
 difficult to apprehend how, in the progress of 
 such early existence as we are supposing in the 
 human creature, unreal states at length occur 
 with the real. Suppos(i a succession of real 
 sensations, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ; 
 l,2,&c., occurring and re-occurring: the nerves 
 which convey the several sensations to their 
 centres, will very soon be so predisposed to the 
 established order, that if one state of the series 
 should not come in its place, the appropriate 
 nerve or nerves will nevertheless be affected 
 in some degree as if it did ; but at the same 
 time there will be the real sensation along with 
 it, and the difference between them will not 
 fail to be known if there be a faculty, however 
 dormant hitherto, which, on having presented 
 to it two things at one and the same time, 
 shall be empowered to discern the relation 
 between them; if, we repeat, there be a 
 
40 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 
 
 faculty appointed to apprehend tlie relations ol 
 things to each other among which we live, 
 always with relation at the same time to the 
 living, sentient, and now intellectual creature 
 whose present abode is among those things. 
 
 To exemplify the previous statement, let it 
 be supposed of the series 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, that 
 
 5 is a sentient state of cold and hunger in 
 which the lately-born babe exists, which state, 
 during a certain period, has been almost uni- 
 formly followed by 6, a sentient state of warmth 
 and suction, which is one state in experience, 
 though language forces us to describe it by 
 reference to two states that might exist sepa- 
 rately. We repeat that up to the end of some 
 short period from the birth, the state 6 is sup- 
 posed to have almost uniformly followed the 
 state 5 ; so often, that at length when the state 
 
 6 does not come in its turn, but the state 5 con- 
 tinues, a state resembling 6 nevertheless super- 
 venes, a state which is not 6 really^ but — we 
 cannot say what, without borrowing a term of 
 
INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 41 
 
 knowledge which now only dawns on the in- 
 fant. Yet we may say that, for the first time, 
 two premises are presented at one and the same 
 instant to the hitherto dormant intellect, and 
 the consequence follows in the imderstood dif- 
 ference of the real from the unreal. The cry 
 of the babe now begins to change its character ; 
 to be no longer a merely instinctive unavoid- 
 able effect, but, by degrees, to be wilful, indi- 
 cating the knowledge of what is required ; and 
 when the required reality comes, there will 
 very likely come with it a slight grunt of gra- 
 tification. The sucking pig, it will be said, 
 exhibits these signs of intellectuality much 
 earlier than the sucking babe ; and we grant the 
 fact while we deny the intellect in the former 
 to be the same in kind as the power awakened 
 in the babe. The pig has not to wait for pre- 
 mises in order to know that he is cold and 
 hungry, or warm and feeding: to him, the 
 knowledge and the sensation are the same, be- 
 cause, from the first moment of existence, the 
 
42 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 
 
 one has never occurred without the other ; but 
 it is otherwise with the babe. And because 
 man's knowledge begins otherwise than as the 
 pig's begins, it can go and be increased for 
 ever, limited indeed at present by the limits of 
 its present suggestive occasions, but in capacity 
 unlimited, while the earlier learned of earth's 
 creatures stop where their knowledge begins. 
 As to the first step in knowledge which we 
 suppose the babe to have made, it has but given 
 him consciousness, that is to say, the knowledge 
 that he exists in different sentient states, now 
 painful, now pleasurable, now indifferent ; be- 
 yond this, he as yet knows nothing, not even 
 that anything exists beside himself; and no- 
 thing beyond this would he ever learn were he 
 destitute of muscular power to turn his head 
 and move his limbs, and also destitute of eyes 
 and of ears. But through these instruments, 
 suggestive occasions of knowledge wiU now be 
 in abundance supplied ; and every step gained 
 will be a premise, to which the next suggestive 
 
INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 43 
 
 occasion will add the other premise, and from 
 the two, a new intellection, a fresh conclusion, 
 will spring. The real has been learned because 
 of the unreal: the solid or substantial will 
 make itself known by the experience of resist- 
 ance, but only because the absence of solidity 
 or the unsubstantial is learned, at the same time 
 through the experience of non-resistance. And 
 thus universally, one thing is never learned 
 but by means of another, the being aware of 
 the relation between the two, and nothing less, 
 or more, or other than being so aware, consti- 
 tuting and being our knowledge in the case. 
 Taking this doctrine with us, let us go on : we 
 have seen but the first steps which the babe 
 makes in knowledge, and these have not yet 
 brought him to the perception of an external 
 world : we mean that there is nothing yet to 
 tell him that the sensation of substantial and 
 unsubstantial proceeds from other cause than 
 his own existence furnishes, sometimes change- 
 able at his will, and sometimes not. In other 
 
44 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 
 
 words, the consciousness of existence does not 
 yet include the knowledge of what that being 
 is which so exists ; or again, in further words, 
 the babe does not yet know what is himself, 
 because he does not yet know what is not him- 
 self. When he puts his finger in his eye, when 
 he knocks his head, his foot, or his arm again 
 a block, he does not at first know, however 
 conscious of the unwelcome change, that him- 
 self is partially the cause; he has not ascer- 
 tained, even in its very first degree, the extent 
 of his power to produce, or to avoid certain 
 states of his being. Soon, however, in his ex- 
 periments on the substantial by the chance 
 exertion of his muscular powers, he learns 
 something that he can do, on the usual condi- 
 tion of learning something else at the same 
 time, namely, in this case, something that he 
 cannot do. Further, he learns, by tactual im- 
 pressions, that there is substance which responds 
 to his touch, inasmuch as he learns at the same 
 time that there is other substance which does 
 
INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 45 
 
 not respond ; that he can give pain to the one, 
 or avoid giving it pain ; that he cannot give 
 pain to the other, nor always avoid receiving 
 from it pain; and thus, we may believe, the 
 separation of himself from what is not himself, 
 first dawns on his understanding. Eapidly 
 now does this something, — this huge substantial 
 reality which is not himself, — which variously 
 reflects to that self the rays of light, which as 
 variously aflfects, on contact with the skin, the 
 nerves it reaches, which sends to the brain the 
 reverberations of the atmosphere, — rapidly now 
 does this immense external something resolve 
 itself into singulars, though no one step in that 
 resolution is, or can be other, than the intellec- 
 tual act which makes us know one thing be- 
 cause we know another, — which receives a 
 conclusion from premises suggested at one and 
 the same instant to the understanding. As fast 
 however as knowledge is in this way received, 
 it links itself to the sensations that gave occa- 
 sion to it; in other words, the sensations are 
 
46 INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HUMAN. 
 
 now perceptions ; and these perceptions thus 
 acquired by reason, are thenceforward practi- 
 cally the same in kind and character as the 
 perceptions of brute creatures which are not 
 acquired by reason, but given to them with the 
 gift of life. 
 
 We have arrived, then, at this fact, if it will 
 be admitted as fact, that man who comes into 
 the world destitute of instinctive knowledge 
 except of the breast on which he hangs, has 
 everything to learn by virtue of that reason 
 which is the same in its earliest operations as 
 in its latest, and no less necessary, in him, to 
 the first perception of the things of sense, than 
 to the recognition, in after days, of the truths 
 of science, and the deductions of philosophy ; 
 that this power is at first dormant ; that it is 
 developed by degrees ; and that every step in 
 its development includes three things : 1, the 
 thing which becomes for the first time known ; 
 2, the thing apprehended at the same time 
 with it, by virtue of which simultaneous ap- 
 
INTELLECTION, BRUTE AND HU^IAN. 47 
 
 prehension the knowledge takes place ; 3, and 
 the knowledge itself, which, because it is thus 
 acquired and is not instinctive, can, whenever 
 necessary, be called up and applied to other 
 things than those which first suggested it ; and, 
 we are entitled to add, can be abstracted, and 
 entertained apart from all things whatever. 
 
 It is because he gets his knowledge in this 
 way, that the human creature subsequently 
 invents or adopts a language altogether dif- 
 ferent in kind from that with which nature 
 furnishes him in common with other creatures ; 
 a language not calculated, and not intended to 
 to make itself at once intelligible, as a cry or 
 a gesture is intended, but which places means 
 before the hearer from which to collect, ratio- 
 nally, what is intended to be made known. 
 Such artificial language begins by the evolution 
 of a natural word, or of an articulate word 
 naturally used, into artificial parts. A child 
 in his earliest use of a name uses it naturally, 
 that is, as a word which means all he has to 
 
48 INITIAL STEPS IN THE INQUIRY, — 
 
 say without any assistance but the tone and 
 gesture that go along with it. Such use is 
 purely emotional, and is the little tyro's first 
 step in rhetoric. If, for instance, he calls out 
 joyously ** Papa!" or " Mamma!" it is most 
 likely to signify that papa or mamma is 
 coming; in which use the vocable is not a 
 mere part of speech, a name or noun, but the 
 one word for the one meaning. Sooner or 
 later, however, having some other meaning to 
 convey that regards papa or mamma, the 
 child, in using the word, will be driven to 
 use it logically. For, finding that you do not 
 understand him, he will, for the first time, 
 use it as part of means to an end, — as one of 
 two premises out of which a conclusion shall 
 issue ; he will so utter it that you shall be in 
 suspense as to what he intends to convey, — 
 he will put it forward as one of two parts, 
 from which, nevertheless, only a single mean- 
 ing will flow, and oblige you to wait for the 
 other part before you understand him. Sup- 
 
HOW LANGUAGE DENOTES THOUGHT. 49 
 
 pose his actual perception to be that papa is 
 asleep, but that " Sleep !" as an exclamation 
 has always meant, brother is asleep ; yet now, 
 in joining it to the sign papa, as this receives 
 i a new meaning from the sign sleep, so the 
 I sign sleep receives a new meaning from the 
 sign papa, which meaning is one, and to join 
 the signs is to convey it. If it be asked 
 whether the term papa, or the term sleep, has 
 not an independent meaning, the answer is, 
 yes ; but such meaning is metaphysical, — it 
 lies beyond or out of nature, inasmuch as 
 papa cannot be perceived or imagined inde- 
 pendently of the circumstances belonging to 
 him at some one moment, and sleep cannot be 
 perceived or imagined independently of some 
 one sleeping. Moreover, such metaphysical 
 meaning is put forward at one instant, only 
 that it may be taken away at the next. It is 
 taken away by adding the other part of 
 speech ; for, of the two signs, each merges its 
 separate meaning in the meaning of the other, 
 
 E 
 
50 INITIAL STEPS IN THE INQUIRY, — 
 
 in this way forming the new expression, — the 
 one word with one incomplex indivisible 
 meaning. It is thus that the early practice of 
 logic, — th€ logic of practical life, not Aris- 
 totelian logic, — is evolved from the early 
 practice of rhetoric : grammar has yet to be 
 evolved. Home Tooke ended his industrious 
 inquiry most lamely through not perceiving 
 this fact. It was not till each of the two 
 abstractions of a word was evolved into further 
 abstractions, and these were again and again 
 evolved, that one of the excessive abstractions 
 was required to assume the function which now 
 distinguishes the grammatical verb, — namely, 
 that of aggregating all the other parts, — of col- 
 lecting into one conclusion the several syllogistic 
 processes, so that the whole, when completed, 
 shall be but one expression with one meaning.^ 
 Let us nowy from what has been shown, 
 
 * Dr. Charles Richardson, a disciple of Home Tooke 
 in common with myself, is a much more faithful dis- 
 ciple than I. In his very ahle little volume published 
 
HOW LANGUAGE DENOTES THOUGHT. 51 
 
 consider how far the signs which form artificial 
 language, are concerned in fixing and making 
 permanent what have been called meta- 
 physical ideas. I ^ do not join with those who 
 apply the term ideas to these metaphysical 
 
 last year (1854) "On the Study of Language, an 
 Exposition of the Diversions of Purley," he not only 
 clearly re-stales all Home Tooke's etymological dis- 
 coveries, but defends all his metaphysical positions. 
 He does not think, as I do, that our predecessor came 
 to his abrupt end because he had brought himself to a 
 puzzle, but believes that he could have explained the 
 difference between the noun and the verb on his own 
 previously-advanced principles. Accordingly Dr. R., 
 with very many modest apologies, undertakes to do 
 that for the master which he did not do for himself. 
 That my friend and fellow-disciple does not carry me 
 with him, I am obliged to declare, but I wish my 
 reader to judge for himself, assuring him that Dr. E.'s 
 work is well worth his perusal. 
 
 5 Be it permitted me to state under what difference 
 of feeling I sometimes use " I," and sometimes " We," 
 in writing these chapters, — at least to disclaim edi- 
 torial arrogance in using the latter. By " we," I mean 
 " we, Lockeists :" the pronoun singular I use when I 
 feel personal responsibility for what I advance. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 INITIAL STEPS IN THE INQUIRY, — 
 
 existences; but let them be so called at 
 present, and the statement will be, that though 
 the understanding originates these ideas, they 
 are preserved for use and for abuse by the 
 signs that stand for them. Their use is, 
 through their signs, to suggest thought : they 
 are abused when supposed to be constitutive 
 of thought as parts are constitutive of a whole, 
 and when, under such supposition, they are 
 joined mechanically; as, for instance, ideas 
 called subject and predicate by a copula. 
 They correspond, — so long as they are abstract 
 or unapplied to singulars, — to nothing that 
 we know or can know to exist, and we pro- 
 perly use them only when we intend that 
 they shall lose their abstraction. To borrow 
 an illustration from modern science, they are 
 held from natural spontaneous combination 
 only for an instant, that, at the next, they 
 may be lost in the substance they generate. 
 This being their use, all procedure that keeps 
 them abstract in order to reason FROM them, 
 
HOW LANGUAGE DENOTES THOUGHT. 53 
 
 or that joins them mechanically in order to 
 reason with them, is abuse. It is, we repeat, 
 an abuse to reason from ideas of this kind, 
 unless we can apply our demonstration, when 
 complete, to things in nature for practical 
 ends ; an applicability which, for instance, quite 
 prevents the censure from falling on geometry, 
 the demonstrations of which are from meta- 
 physical ideas of figured space. And it is an 
 abuse to reason vdth ideas of this kind, as is 
 done in using the organ or instrument in- 
 vented by Aristotle : for then we dispense 
 with the natural, involuntary acts of the 
 understanding, and the real or fancied things 
 that should prompt the acts, and use language 
 with its abstract ideas mechanically joined, as 
 the instrument itself of reasoning. 
 
 One remark must be added. While it is 
 insisted that science, in order to be of value, 
 must confine itself to things knowaUe, there is 
 no intention to discountenance belief. When, 
 by merely human powers, and the accumulation 
 
54 INITIAL STEPS IN THE INQUIRY, — 
 
 of facts, all that can be known shall be known, 
 (if such period shall ever be,) there will still 
 remain a boundless region beyond, and in that 
 region Belief will discern much that Eeason can 
 have no pretence to see. Why, then, it may 
 be said, not believe what Plato teaches, or Kant, 
 or Fichte, or Schelling, or Hegel ? Because, 
 it may be answered, there exists a Book that 
 opens for our belief, views far, far more satis- 
 factory than can be suggested by the most 
 splendid metaphysical system that has existed, 
 or that can exist. To be sure, if any one, in 
 preference to the God that Scripture reveals^ 
 chooses to believe in Fichte, who, in one of 
 his lectures, undertook to create God in the 
 next day's lecture, we must leave the chooser 
 to his bent ; only let him keep in mind that 
 his choice has no support in science of legiti- 
 mate foundation ; — it is but belief, to say the 
 very best of it. 
 
 The fundamental principle which we shall 
 have hereafter more fully to explain, is, that 
 
HOW LANGUAGE DENOTES THOUGHT. 55 
 
 every constructed form of instituted language 
 however long and complex by which thought 
 is made known, is, when completed, but as one 
 word with one incomplex meaning. Thought 
 is indeed continually changing, but arrest it at 
 any moment, it is one and incomplex. That 
 which led to it, and that which led to its pre- 
 cursor, and so on backward, was at every step 
 only one thought; as the place on which a 
 person now stands is one, although to reach it 
 he had to pass through many places, each of 
 which was one, if for a moment he had rested 
 at it. Nor is the assertion less true, because a 
 thought may, in the progress of its formation, 
 embrace many things ; there must be occasions 
 of thought inward or outward : these are dis- 
 tinct from the state of intellect which they 
 produce ; and, in speaking of the thought, it 
 is the state of intellect which is meant, and not 
 the suggestive occasions. If, then, when we 
 seek to make thought known, the thought is 
 one and indivisible while the expression we 
 
56 INITIAL STEPS IN THE INQUIRY, — 
 
 employ is made up of parts, the cause must 
 be, that not being able to find an expression 
 correspondent in unity to the thought, we are 
 driven to construct an expression, and, as we 
 well know, the construction will at times be 
 extremely long, involved, and intricate. Now 
 the doctrine is, that it is a subsequently felt 
 necessity, not original nature, that leads to 
 this procedure. As with other creatures that 
 communicate with their kind by oral sounds, 
 so with man, it is a natural impulse to signify 
 an actual state of feeling and thought by a 
 single appropriate exclamation: 
 
 " Could I embody and unbosom now 
 That which is most within me, — could I wreak 
 My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw 
 Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings, strong or weak, 
 All that I would have sought, and all I seek, 
 Bear, know, feel, and yet breathe — into one word, 
 And that one word were Lightning — I would speak ; 
 But as it is, I live and die unheard. 
 
 With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword." 
 Childe Harold J canto iii., 97. 
 It is a necessity, then, that*drives man from 
 
 this natural mode of communication to the use 
 
HOW LANGUAGE DENOTES THOUGHT. 57 
 
 of means tliat nature does not immediately 
 provide. In our previous inquiry we have 
 seen how he is fitted to meet this necessity ; 
 and we shall have to follow up the inquiry by 
 another, which will make language its especial 
 subject. But before we reach the chapter 
 having this especial purpose, it will be at- 
 tempted to confirm the views thus far opened, 
 first, by such a re-statement of the facts ® of 
 consciousness as would fit the revived and 
 corrected philosophy of Locke ; and, secondly, 
 by a comparison of this re-statement with other 
 modes of statement, in order to reconcile what 
 may admit of reconciliation, and to reject the 
 rest as unwholesome in philosophy. 
 
 " A better term than facts is desirable, but is not 
 easy to be found. Phenomena may seem better, but 
 in cXd&smg perceptions among phenomena we might 
 seem to admit Kant's doctrine that the things per- 
 ceived are not realities. In favour of the term /acf, 
 be it remembered, that though it etymologically signi- 
 fies a thing done, ili^means derivatively a thing that is. 
 Of course, it is in the latter sense we are to understand 
 it in the text. 
 
58 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Facts of Consciousness in an Adult. 
 
 It is proposed, in this chapter, to show, by ex- 
 amining the facts of consciousness as they are 
 experienced by an adult, that first conscious- 
 ness, and all knowledge that followed it, must 
 have taken place in the way which the last 
 chapter described. We shall have to go over 
 much of the same ground ; but if clearer evi- 
 dence is gained by repetition, it will not be 
 objected to. 
 
 The lowest element of consciousness (and 
 this exists before consciousness itself begins) 
 is sensation. While life continues, there is to 
 every person the sensation of life, not remain- 
 ing the same in character but continually 
 
IN AN ADULT. 59 
 
 changing; otherwise we should not be con- 
 scious of life. It is because I am now sensible 
 of pain or uneasiness, now of relief from pain, 
 — because I am now hungry, now thirsty, have 
 now sensations from variety of food, now feel 
 replenished and vigorous, am now overcome 
 by fatigue, am now drowsy, and now, even 
 when asleep, though not conscious of sleeping, 
 that is, aware of being asleep, yet still not 
 unconscious of many of the sensations of my 
 waking hours, — because, when I awake, my 
 ever-changing sensations continue ; the painful 
 perhaps intensified, the pleasurable diminished 
 by sudden sickness, or by another step of slow 
 decay— it is because all this, in much greater 
 variety than can be described, is at every in- 
 stant a part of my consciousness, that I know 
 I am alive. 
 
 But we could not know even thus much 
 unless knowledge were given with sensation, 
 which would be instinct, or were added to it 
 by reason. Let us say that human knowledge 
 
60 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 is not instinctive, and we shall have to con- 
 sider how, in our earliest years, it could be 
 derived rationally. While sensations were 
 nothing more nor less than sensations, and 
 instinct went not with them, the change from 
 one to another, however felt, could not be 
 known: the babe existed unconscious of ex- 
 istence. Pain indeed came at times, and 
 forced the instinctive cry from the sentient 
 creature ; the pain ceased, and the cry ceased, 
 leaving no memory of the one or of the other ; 
 so that, so far as reason could yet be awakened 
 by the changes of sentient existence, existence 
 might as well have been without any change. 
 
 Let us, however, examine our adult con- 
 sciousness a little further, and we shall find 
 there was a point in infant existence at which 
 THOUGHT must have begun, always assuming 
 that the creature in whom it begins, is em- 
 powered to think. 
 
 Now, even in our adult years, how great a 
 proportion of the sensations which make up 
 
IN AN ADULT. 61 
 
 the sum of our animal existence, come and go 
 without bringing with them or leaving behind 
 any knowledge but consciousness ! It may be 
 truly said that we think not of them so long 
 as they do not force us to think. Even our 
 most painful sensations, if they spring from 
 internal disease, are not apt to rouse in us any 
 other thought than consciousness of their pre- 
 sence, and desire of their absence. A man 
 I must be a physician, which indeed they say 
 every man, if not a fool, is at fifty, who 
 habitually inquires why he has this or that 
 sensation, — in other words, finds in his sen- 
 sations occasions of thought and knowledge 
 beyond the simple consciousness of them. 
 
 And now, with the belief before us that the 
 human creature receives with life the powers 
 and capacities which are to be developed by 
 appointed occasions, let us see whether the 
 occasion which, in the previous chapter, was 
 assumed to awaken thought for the first time, 
 is not adequate to the efiect, and in accord- 
 
62 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 ance with similar facts in our adult con- 
 sciousness^ 
 
 We supposed the human creature to be born 
 with the instinct to suck its food, and to cry 
 when in pain, but with no other knowledge; 
 under which supposition, we have just seen 
 that while sensation was nothing more nor less 
 than sensation, no such thing as thought, no 
 such thing as rational knowledge, could arise. 
 But after a time states of the animal frame 
 supervened, which had the character of sen- 
 sations, but were not true sensations, inas- 
 much as they did not spring from the original, 
 that is, the extrinsic causes. For the nerves 
 of sensation having been set in motion by these 
 real extrinsic things, at times repeated their 
 motion when the things were not present ; and 
 the fact insisted upon, was, that as soon as 
 these shadows of sensation occurred in contra- 
 distinction to their realities, and no earlier 
 than they occurred, did thought, in its first 
 dim glimmerings, begin. 
 
IN AN ADULT. 63 
 
 In the last chapter, we saw how those dim 
 glimmerings cleared by degrees, till the ex- 
 ternal world was fully known for all the 
 I ordinary ends of life; and we must again 
 advert to these facts. But let us previously 
 ask what is properly meant by the terms 
 thought and knowledge when we employ them 
 in such discussions as the one now in progress. 
 
 The term thought, like most abstract terms, 
 has an extensive vague meaning, and a re- 
 stricted precise one. When, on common occa- 
 sions, we speak of thinking, or of our thoughts, 
 we mean all that exists at the moment in our 
 consciousness ; but a very little discrimination 
 separates this aggregate into the things which* 
 occasion the thought, and the thought itself. 
 Going back to our presumed beginning of 
 thought, what do we find? One sensation in 
 reality and another in shadow present at the 
 same time : these are the suggestives of the 
 first thought, namely, the thought of existence, 
 — not of one's own existence in contradistino- 
 
64 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 tion to something else existing, for this is 
 another thought that must await other occa- 
 sions, — but the thought — the dim conscious- 
 ness of existence simply. The thought having 
 once occurred, remains as knowledge per- 
 manently accompanying sensation from what- 
 ever cause arising whether real or ideal ; 
 and thenceforward, to have a sensation, and 
 to be conscious of the sensation, is the same 
 thing. 
 
 In the progress of this consciousness, we saw 
 how another thought was suggested by certain 
 muscular and tactual sensations, which found 
 sometimes resistance with kindred response, 
 sometimes resistance but no response of 
 kindred. That thought was the dim discovery 
 of self, and of something distinct from self; 
 and this remained as knowledge permanently 
 fixed to each of these two sensations, with 
 diffusive effect to others; so that it became 
 impossible, eventually, for any sensation to 
 arise which did not bring with it the recogni- 
 
m AN ADULT. 65 
 
 tion of ego and non-egOy the self and the 
 not-self. 
 
 Thought, then, is the dawn of new know- 
 ledge, and knowledge permanently linked to 
 a sensation, is perception. We then cease to 
 call it thought : it remains fixed to the sen- 
 sation in order to be the occasion of other 
 thought : to make use of the ordinary way of 
 speaking, the things we see, hear, touch, taste, 
 and smell, are the constant occasions of thought, 
 because they are constantly presenting them- 
 selves in new relations to each other and to 
 oneself. 
 
 And not only are our perceptions constantly 
 active in generating thoughts, but our concep- 
 tions (ideas) also ; that is to say, the things 
 which we have seen, heard, touched, tasted, 
 and smelled ; things which re-appear quite dis- 
 tinctly in point of the knowledge necessary to 
 their existence in consciousness, though the 
 sensations are revived -in shadow only, not in 
 reality. 
 
66 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 Other facts of adult consciousness remain to 
 be mentioned, but some remarks must first be 
 made on those that have been so far traced. 
 
 All our early knowledge is forced upon us ; 
 that is to say, the occasions of our early 
 thoughts are so put in our way that we cannot 
 but have them, and entertain the knowledge 
 which they leave behind. This might have 
 been expected as a provision of the Creator, 
 who gives us no more instinctive knowledge 
 than we absolutely need. But beyond the 
 knowledge required for the merely animal 
 ends of life, we get knowledge only in propor- 
 tion as we seek it, and we seek it by seeking 
 occasions of new thought, occasions which 
 would not come in our way, if we did not 
 seek them. Hence the fact stated above, a 
 fact too common to be for a moment ques- 
 tioned, that the things which produce know- 
 ledge in one individual have no such effect on 
 another; the explanation of which fact, is, 
 that the one is an active, the other only a 
 
IN AN ADULT. 
 
 passive thinker. This however must be noted 
 that no one, let him think actively or passively, 
 can directly will the thought which shall suc- 
 ceed his actual thought ; for to do this, would 
 require the thought to be already present to 
 the will ; but we can dwell upon or rest in a 
 present thought, tiU, among the multitude that 
 are in some way associated with it, one recurs, 
 which, by the side of the other, suggests a 
 relation never perceived before, and unlocks, 
 or goes onward to unlock, the truth we are 
 seeking. Such is the process of thought suc- 
 ceeding thought which we are conscious of in 
 study. The process is generically the same, 
 though specifically different, when we are not 
 seeking knowledge: tliought, in this case, 
 succeeds thought ; that is, familiar perceptions 
 and conceptions arise, differing with the dif- 
 ferent habits of the individual ; and these so 
 present themselves relatively to each other as 
 constantly to generate thoughts, but not such 
 thoughts as are likely to leave any important 
 
68 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 accession of knowledge behind. How many a 
 man, before Newton lived, had seen an apple 
 fall from a tree, without being awakened to 
 any other thought, than that it fell because 
 the stalk gave way ! 
 
 Another remark which may be here inserted, 
 is, that a thought must be what the suggestive 
 occasions make it ; and error, if there is any, 
 will lie with the occasions, not with the 
 thought. Now we can create occasions of 
 thought by assuming knowledge which we 
 have not reached, as the ground of necessary 
 knowledge that will spring from it; a pro- 
 ceeding tantamount to laying down unproved 
 premises, and resting in the conclusion which 
 they yield. Such is our proceeding whenever 
 we interpret what we do not know by what 
 we do know ; a proceeding than which nothing 
 is more common with all thinkers, both of the 
 idle passive kind, and of those who control 
 and direct their thoughts ; and it is a legiti- 
 mate proceeding when the included assump- 
 
IN AN ADULT. 69 
 
 tions can be, and are, brought to the test of 
 subsequent experiment, but vicious for science, 
 and unwholesome for the regulation of life, 
 when the test is impossible, or is never made. 
 We may now go on to state, that as intel- 
 lection or thought is first occasioned by sensa- 
 tion, emotion is first produced by thought. 
 To be rationally conscious of existence is to 
 know good and evil, to fear the one and grieve 
 when it comes, to love the other and rejoice at 
 its approach. These and all other emotions 
 spring as naturally from our thoughts, as our 
 thoughts spring from the things that come 
 before us, really and ideally, in ever-changing 
 relations to each other and to the thinker; 
 nor, to the common thinker, is thought apt to 
 occur at any time without bringing with it 
 some degree and kind of emotion. Exceptions 
 are to be found in the scientific tliinker, and 
 in the cold unimaginative poet, if such a one 
 can be called a poet. In what is called a 
 chain of reasoning to reach a remote truth, 
 
70 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 each link of tlie chain is a purely intellectual 
 thought ; and in those efforts of fancy, con- 
 ceits as they are called, which are ingenious 
 but not natural, we often have what is put 
 forward as poetry, but it is poetry engendered 
 without warmth, and kindling none after its 
 birth, except admiring wonder in a tasteless 
 hearer and revulsion in another. 
 
 Not distinct from elements of consciousness 
 already spoken of, though arising out of them 
 with a very marked character, is that which 
 claims our next statement, — namely, the Will. 
 It is nothing more nor other than the impulse 
 of desire enforced and circumscribed by the 
 knowledge that what we desire can be com- 
 passed. We desire the apple on the tree before 
 us, we raise the arm and grasp it. We wish 
 to clear a doubt that clouds a present thought, 
 and we repel every thought that begins to 
 displace it, till one arises that removes all the 
 dimness from it. Wiiat we are conscious of 
 in these and similar cases is, first, a desired 
 
IN AN ADULT. 71 
 
 end or purpose, and then an effort that goes 
 along with the purpose, and attains or fails to 
 attain it. To state the fact otherwise, we are, 
 if successful, conscious of causation ; getting in 
 this way, the thought which leaves behind it 
 the knowledge, or, in Kantian phrase, the idea 
 of causation. The new-born infant has to get 
 this knowledge as he gets all other. He moves 
 his limbs, at first, without pui*pose, without 
 aim ; he cries, but the cry is only instinctive : 
 in a few weeks, however, he moves his arm, 
 he opens and shuts his hand with a purpose, 
 and his cry, from having been instinctive, 
 becomes wilful. 
 
 Nor must Memory be spoken of as an ele- 
 ment of consciousness distinct from elements 
 already mentioned. The term is liable to 
 some variety of application. We call by this 
 name the dreamy passive state in which past 
 occurrences suggest themselves in the order of 
 their by-gone real existence, or nearly so ; for 
 8ome will have lapsed, namely, the least inte- 
 
72 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 resting, by reason of the little pleasure or the 
 little pain which accompanied them when 
 real. We also call by this name that active 
 exertion to call back to consciousness something 
 gone by, which, without the exertion, does not 
 suggest itself. Not, as already observed, that 
 we can directly will any state of desired con- 
 sciousness ; for this would be to have the state 
 already present to the will : but we can force a 
 present state to remain till another arises that 
 places us nearer to the one desired, and so on 
 till the one desired arises. Again, we apply 
 the name memory to the power acquired, by 
 frequent repetition, of going through a series 
 of acts, as soon as we get hold of one link of 
 the chain. In none of these instances does 
 it appear that there is any distinct faculty in 
 operation, but only certain effects of intellec- 
 tion and emotion, suggested sometimes by real 
 sensations, but in immediate union with only 
 the shadows of sensation. 
 
 Much in the same way must we explain the 
 
IN AN ADULT. 73 
 
 operation of* another faculty or supposed 
 faculty, namely, Imagination. This differs 
 from Memory by differing in the emotive 
 cause — the originative excitement of the states 
 of consciousness. Acts of memory are stimu- 
 lated by the desire of living over again in 
 thought some part or the whole of what we 
 have lived in reality, or by the purpose of 
 doing over again what we have done once or 
 oftener before. Acts of imagination arise under 
 the excitement of a less narrow motive, namely, 
 under some ruling emotive state of a compre- 
 hensive character, which summons up ideas of 
 complexion suitable to it, and so marshals and 
 combines them, as to continue the dominant 
 emotion by a series of emotions in unison with 
 it. And let the remark be added that the 
 acts of imagination thus attempted to be de- 
 scribed, are very different in their generation 
 and their effect from what were described 
 above as the acts of fancy. ^ Also, let the re- 
 » Our old writers, it is true, often use fancy for 
 
74 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 mark be added, that the genuine effect of 
 poetry differs from the genuine effect of in- 
 strumental music (music without words) in 
 this way, that in poetry, though all the 
 thoughts excited are in harmony with one 
 pervading state of feeling, yet as to the special 
 emotions, these do not come but in conse- 
 quence of the thoughts, while in music emo- 
 tions are first generated, and thoughts (in 
 general of a vague character) follow. 
 
 Something must now be said about the 
 different degrees of certainty with which we 
 hold our knowledge. We have seen that all 
 rational knowledge is the product of intellecr 
 tion (thought), and that an act of intellection 
 takes place, and can take place, only when two 
 things — things apprehended as two — present 
 themselves in some relation to each other. 
 
 what is here called imagination ; but it is believed 
 that good modem use sanctions the distinction indi- 
 cated. 
 
IN AN ADULT. 75 
 
 Till they come before the intellect in that 
 relation, they are not, as regards that relation, 
 yet known; then, in that relation, they are 
 known. Let us take an example from adult 
 consciousness: say, that a person knows, in 
 other relations, a certain wine, but he does 
 not know it as a promoter of gout : he gets a 
 fit of the gout, but continues to drink the 
 wine : he accidentally ceases to drink it, and 
 the fit relaxes : the relation between the wine 
 and his gout will probably now occur to him 
 for the first time, that is to say, he will think 
 the wine is the cause of his gout, but he is not 
 sure : he will, however, be pretty sure, if, on 
 repeated occasions, when he drinks the wine, 
 the gout returns, and relaxes when he ceases 
 to drink it. 
 
 Let us now examine this instance, and see 
 what is originally certain in it, what is at 
 first uncertain, how the uncertainty becomes a 
 certainty, and whether the certainty thus 
 attained is not a certainty of a different kind 
 
76 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 from the certainty that went along with the 
 act itself of intellection. 
 
 One original certainty which is an element 
 in the foregoing instance, is, the abstract rela- 
 tion of cause and effect existing as a part of 
 our knowledge. For that relation once under- 
 stood, is understood of necessity to be what it 
 is ; nor can its certainty be in the least affected 
 by the doubt that accompanies the particular 
 things that stand, or seem to stand, in that 
 relation to each other. Another element of 
 the same kind in the instance before us, is the 
 relation between the wine and the gout now 
 for the first time suggested. This relation 
 abstracted from the suggesting things is as 
 certain an element in our consciousness as the 
 more comprehensive one mentioned above ; 
 for, being abstracted, it is not — "this wine is 
 the cause of my gout," which at first I am 
 far from being sure of, but — " this wine is ap- 
 prehended as being the cause of my gout," 
 which I am quite sure of; and the relation 
 
IN AN ADULT. 77 
 
 thus suggested and abstracted, namely, the 
 possible relation between some one wine and 
 some one disease is thenceforward a part of my 
 consciousness, to be brought into activity 
 whenever a new occasion calls for it. In the 
 mean time, experiment either increases or 
 diminishes the certainty that this particular 
 wine is the cause of this my particular disease. 
 After long trial I shall perhaps be sure that it 
 is so : but the strongest certainty thus obtained 
 is different in kind from the other, namely, 
 that which belongs to the abstract relation; 
 for I know that this latter is of necessity what 
 it is, and cannot be different but by being 
 anotiier relation. And hence it is that when, 
 dismissing all regard to the particular things 
 which suggested the relations, — the things 
 from, without which first awaken me to thought, 
 — I take the relations themselves as the 
 beginning of further thought,^ the result is 
 pure necessary truth ; such truth, for instance, 
 * In Kantian phrase, synthetic cognitions a priori. 
 
78 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 as we attain in the metaphysics of quantity, 
 pure mathematics. 
 
 And now, returning once more to the 
 beginning of knowledge, it will be compre- 
 hended why that beginning must have been 
 dim or unassured. Awakened consciousness 
 could not indeed but be what it was : but the 
 pleasurable and painful sensations by which 
 we become aware of existence, were required 
 to be frequently repeated before that conscious- 
 ness could be strong. After some experi- 
 ence, however, the knowledge of existence 
 abstracted itself from its contingent suggestive 
 occasions, thenceforward to be the first element 
 of necessary truth, on which all further know- 
 ledge was to be built. The knowledge of ex- 
 istence brought with it the abstract relation of 
 non-existence, without entertaining which, the 
 former cannot be entertained. Then, as we 
 have seen, arose from its suitable suggestive 
 occasions, the dim discovery of self and some- 
 thing distinct from self; a knowledge which 
 
IN AN ADULT. 79 
 
 became clearer and clearer as the occasions 
 were repeated, till at length no doubt remained 
 that what came under our hands, or before our 
 eyes, or sent sounds, or effluvia, or flavours to 
 the appropriate organs, were things quite dis- 
 tinct from that self which apprehended them. 
 Still, the certainty so attained was difierent 
 from necessary certainty, and there are times 
 when it breaks down ; that is to say, when 
 what we think we see, and feel, and hear, and 
 smell, and taste, turns out to be altogether a 
 delusion, or something very diiFerent from 
 what we thought it to be. 
 
 Such, then, as was proposed to be shown in 
 the beginning of this chapter, are the facts of 
 consciousness growing up from days of infancy 
 till the human being is adult. Are these all — 
 that is, all in kind, or are there others different 
 in kind ? And if these are all, have they been 
 truly described ? It is for individual experi- 
 ence to answer the questions— no appeal lies 
 elsewhere. Yet we may ask how others, in- 
 
80 FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN AN ADULT. 
 
 eluding Locke himself, whose professed dis- 
 ciple we are, have traced and described the 
 same facts, with the view of correcting what 
 in other doctrine shall appear evidently 
 erroneous, of reconciling to ours what will 
 admit of reconciliation, and of proposing the 
 rejection of all else. 
 
THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 81 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Facts of Consciousness under other modes of view 
 — What Locke's Philosophy would be, if consistent 
 . with itself. 
 
 We have seen that it is the property of every 
 thought — of every rational intellection — to 
 leave behind it the relation apprehended ab- 
 stract from the things that suggested it. Thus, 
 to go back to one of our former instances, we 
 no sooner know, by unavoidable experiment, 
 that certain things are solid and heavy in con- 
 tradistinction to things not solid and heavy, 
 than we have and hold the knowledge in such 
 a way apart — abstract — from the things, as to 
 take under it other things which are brought 
 before us by our constantly-increasing famili- 
 
 G 
 
82 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 arity witli the world we are placed in. In 
 first entertaining the abstraction, our persua- 
 sion that the things really exist in the relation 
 suggested by them, is slight, but it becomes 
 stronger and stronger with every new sug- 
 gestive occasion. Still, as we have seen, our 
 growing certainty is always distinct in kind 
 from that with which we hold the abstract 
 knowledge : the latter is necessary certainty 
 even from the first moment of holding it, be- 
 cause, irrespective of the things which may, or 
 may not stand in the apprehended relation, 
 the relation itself cannot, by any higher func- 
 tion (we have no higher ^) be called in ques- 
 tion. 
 
 But yielding to the abstraction its claim of 
 necessary certainty, are we to admit (what as- 
 suredly cannot be proved if it cannot be dis- 
 pro-ved), that, irrespective of the things which 
 
 ^ Eeason and understanding, in our doctrine, are 
 the same, as they are the same Avith all persons but 
 the Kantists. 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 83 
 
 suggested the abstraction, and beyond the 
 abstraction itself, there exists under the name 
 matter or body, an element fit to enter into a 
 higher system of speculation than Locke's cor- 
 rected philosophy would be able to recognise ? 
 For it is upon elements such as this is, that all 
 other systems of metaphysics are constructed. 
 
 Further ; assuming that there is a something 
 that, independently of the things of sense, 
 corresponds to the name matter or body, 
 which substance does not and cannot think, 
 are we forced to admit, that, irrespective of 
 the creatures of our species, who, we know by 
 experience, can and do think, and irrespective 
 of higher creatures, and of the Creator, whose 
 mannet of existence, with whatever firmness 
 we believe in their existence, we cannot now 
 know, — are we forced to admit that, irrespec- 
 tive of these, there is another something which 
 corresponds to the name mind, spirit^ or 
 soul ? For we here have a second of the 
 elements employed in the construction of all 
 
84 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 metaphysics, except what we assert Locke's 
 would be, if made consistent with itself. 
 
 Locke's Essay does not start expressly on 
 the hypothesis which the terms mind and 
 matter include, and, as already said, he fre- 
 quently so refers to them, as to prove that he 
 does not intentionally build upon what they 
 are supposed to mean. Yet he does build 
 upon them. Accepting a manner of speaking 
 which was interwoven with philosophy itselfj 
 he takes his stand, from the verj^first, with 
 matter, and pursues it till, through the senses, 
 I it is transmuted into mind, the things of 
 I matter becoming ideas, that is things of mind, 
 I the latter being presumed to be just, in pro- 
 l portion to their correspondence with the 
 former. Kant, with full consistency on his 
 side, because the division of the universe into 
 mind and matter is to him essential, takes his 
 stand with mind, and deduces from mind the 
 whole world of matter. That part of mind which 
 he distinguishes from the impersonal reason by 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 85 
 
 calling it the understanding, is furnished be- 
 forehand with its recaptivities and its moulds ; 
 these give exi§tence to matter, and add all the 
 phenomenal characteristics by which it is at 
 present known ; while reason standing above 
 the understanding, reposes in the absolute and 
 unconditioned. 
 
 The difference between this mode of tracing 
 the facts of consciousness and that which con- 
 sistently belongs to Locke, is, that the abstract 
 knowledge which the Lockeists follow up from 
 the individual things of sense, is assumed by 
 the Kantists to be pre-existent in the under- 
 standing ; as to which pre-existent knowledge, 
 since the individual things of the world receive 
 their forms from it, so from it all true science 
 of the world is derived. Now it cannot be 
 denied that this method quite agrees with that 
 pursued by the pure geometrician. He does 
 not begin, as would the unscientific earth- 
 measurer, by examining and comparing with 
 his eyes and fingers, the points, lines, angles. 
 
86 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 circles, and so forth, that come before those 
 senses, but requires you to admit the abstract 
 existence of these figures, and proceeds, from 
 this beginning, to deduce all the truths of his 
 science. Observe, however, that his science 
 would be of no • practical value whatever, if 
 points, lines, circles, &c., had not tangible and 
 visible — in short physical — as well as meta- 
 physical existence. There would indeed be 
 the same powerful exercise of the intellect, 
 and the same indubitable conclusions ; but 
 after the intellect had been at work and the 
 conclusions attained, the question would arise, 
 where are the things concerning which all this 
 labour has been expended ? Now, in the me- 
 taphysics of quantity, an answer can be made 
 to the question, but it cannot be made in other 
 metaphysics, and least of all can it he made in 
 Kant's. 
 
 On the other hand, in the mode of inquiry 
 which essentially belongs to the school of 
 Locke, we begin by experiment on the things 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 87 
 
 which our science is eventually to embrace, 
 using hypotheses indeed to assemble our facts, 
 but casting them aside as fast as they appear 
 untenable ; nor do we say that the understand- 
 ing gives its pre-existing forms to the things 
 we examine, but that these things, pre-existing, 
 suggest relations to the understanding, which 
 relations the understanding thenceforwaid 
 entertains as knowledge, abstractly from the 
 susforestive occasions. To the statement of the 
 Kantists that the things are contingent but the 
 knowledge absolute, we agree : for the moment 
 it is abstracted from the things that suggested 
 it, it is' independent of those things, that is to 
 say, it is necessarily to our apprehension what 
 it is, whether the things do or do not stand in 
 the apprehended relation. Then, as to the 
 plea which the Kantists oppose to this doc- 
 trine, that these abstract relations, these ideas 
 as they call them, cannot be derived from the 
 contingent things of matter, because the latter 
 are soiled by the doubt which clouds all con- 
 
88 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 tingent things, while the former are clear, 
 perfect, absolute, — we answer that we do 
 not consider the abstract relations to be copies, 
 as ideas are copies in our sense of the word 
 idea, but as appropriations which the higher 
 function of our nature, reason, makes of what 
 is suggested, not given to it, by a lower. It 
 may be that this way of accounting for the 
 facts, contains in it an admission of all that 
 the Kantists substantially require, — ^be it so: 
 there must be something in common to the 
 two schools, or men of science would not be 
 found in both; yet this essential difference 
 remains, that Kant begins with the abstrac- 
 tions, and the school of Locke ascends to 
 them. ' ^ «**^v**««-r»-. 
 
 However, before we attempt to trace any 
 further the difference, and the virtual agree- 
 ment of the two modes of doctrine, it may 
 assist us to take a brief preliminary survey of 
 the strife which the abstract terms, matter, 
 mind, ideas, have, without intermission, ex- 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 89 
 
 cited in the speculative world from the days 
 of Plato down to our own ; for the strife is still 
 raging at least in Germany, and if at a lull 
 in our own country, it is so only from the 
 very reasonable persuasion, that, carried on as 
 it has been hitherto, it is in its very nature 
 interminable. 
 
 First, then, in time and in importance, — for 
 we pass by the philosophers who preceded 
 him, — comes the divine Plato. To him we 
 owe the distinct enunciation of the principle 
 that two substances make up the universe, 
 mind arid matter, of which Mind is the pre- 
 siding deity, and the human mind an emana- 
 tion of the mind Divine. With regard to 
 Matter, which, like the other substance, is 
 eternal, it existed as a chaos till the forming 
 power of the Almighty mind gave it order 
 and beauty. This was accomplished by virtue 
 of Ideas, eternal forms of perfect beauty 
 existing in the Divine mind, and which being 
 impressed on matter, the sensible world took 
 
90 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSXESS 
 
 the shape it now bears, rising upward from 
 things which the forms scarcely reached, to 
 those that received their immediate and full 
 impression. Among the latter was Man, as a 
 part of the world of matter. But man, how- 
 ever bound to matter, received from Deity the 
 essential gift of mind, and with it the ideas, 
 the moulding forms that belong to mind. In 
 his mind, however, immersed as it is in matter, 
 these ideas are dim and indistinct, till intel- 
 lectual and moral exercise diminishes the 
 incrustation, and lays open the beauty of the 
 universe, in contemplating which, the original 
 forms in the Divine mind are seen reflected, 
 and strength is gathered for the corresponding 
 forms in the mind of man. 
 
 That these are sublime views, none will 
 deny ; but they are poetry, not philosophy. 
 Felt as the former, and accepted as the latter, 
 so great has been their charm, that there is no 
 language of civilized people that does not bear 
 their stamp, so that persons who are not Pla- 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 91 
 
 '. tonists in opinion are obliged to platonize in 
 I their expressions : nay, further, platonism has, 
 I at sundry times, and by sundry teachers, been 
 i' so mingled with Christianity, that to dissent 
 from the former shocks many a Christian as if 
 it were infidelity in the latter. Be it then 
 ^ observed, in passing, that Plato teaches the 
 immortality of mind, as consequent on the 
 nature of mind ; but Christianity teaches the 
 conditional immortality of man, triumphing, 
 by a Saviour, over the grave that cannot hold 
 his relics except as a seed that is to shoot up 
 into new beinfif, havinfj in it the elements of 
 the old, improved, if improved, by its trial-pil- 
 grimage on earth, and rising without its former 
 liability to decay, its former tendency to cor- 
 ruption. Both doctrines are doctrines for be- 
 lief, quite distinct from science, or what can be 
 known by human investigation : to attach the 
 ■ name of science to the one, and call the other, 
 opinion, is to deceive oneself; both are matters 
 of opinion, liable, it may be, to hold the judge- 
 
92 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 ment in doubt between the two, unless on 
 other grounds than human science furnishes, 
 Faith comes in to fix the election of one in 
 preference to the other. It is, indeed, pos- 
 sible to compromise the two, and pin one's 
 faith on that compromise ; but this is unfair : 
 If Baal be God, then follow him, but, &c. 
 
 But whatever has been, and is now believed 
 concerning the immortality of mind as a part 
 of Plato's doctrine, his theory of ideas was very 
 soon opposed, and this by a philosopher of no 
 less name than Aristotle. The reader must 
 keep in mind Plato's use of the term idea, 
 remembering that with him, it implies an 
 original, an a priori element of the Divine 
 mind, and as the human mind is an emanation 
 of the Divine, so ideas in the human mind are 
 also a priori, that is to say, as regards m^n, 
 they are innate. Aristotle refused this doc- 
 trine concerning ideas in the human mind, 
 and, refusing the doctrine, he rejected the 
 term, admitting under other names the ex- 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 93 
 
 istence of what we now call ideas, which term 
 was not applied to such existences till times 
 comparatively modem. According to Aris- 
 totle, all that is found in the human mind, 
 enters originally through the senses from the 
 world without; a doctrine afterwards em- 
 bodied in the well-known proposition, Nihil 
 in intellectu quod non prius in sensu. 
 This was saying, in other words, that ideas 
 were not a priori, or innate, but acquired ; so 
 that, on this point, Aristotle and our English 
 philosopher are agreed. But now came a 
 difficulty which has puzzled philosophers from 
 that time to the present, though it is a difficulty 
 that none but philosophers have felt. With 
 regard to ordinary thinkers, there is not, and 
 never has been, a person who doubts his imme- 
 diate connection with the things of senbe among 
 which he is placed, — who believes that he does 
 not directly perceive whatever he sees, hears, 
 touches, tastes, or smells. Not so the philoso- 
 pher. Since man is both matter and mind, 
 
94 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 yet has his true existence only in the latter as 
 a perceiving, judging, reasoning being, — since 
 not matter, but mind, is the self, the ego, the 
 I, — we as philosophers have to explain what 
 on such supposition is a most wonderful fact, 
 the intercommunication of mind and matter, 
 so that the former gets cognizance of the latter. 
 The explanation was various, though every 
 explanation agreed in this, that the outward 
 world is not immediately perceived, but recog- 
 nised only through the media of existences — 
 ideas — which come between the mind, and the 
 things of the outward world ; that is to say, 
 the mind never perceives the things, but only 
 its own ideas. When this doctrine, in Bishop 
 Berkeley's legitimate deduction from it, had 
 produced the absurd conclusion which previous 
 chapters have alluded to. Dr. Reid, the founder 
 of the Scottish school of metaphysics, under- 
 took to contradict it on what he considered 
 the principles of common sense ; yet as he left 
 the hypothesis untouched which had rendered 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 95 
 
 the doctrine necessary, he can but be said to 
 have cut the knot without solving it. Had 
 he declared the simple fact, that Tnan, having 
 once gained a knowledge of sensible objects, 
 directly perceives them as often as they come 
 before him, he would have stated what no 
 common sense can deny; but in continuing 
 the doctrine of mind and matter, he leaves the 
 original mystery as he found it. It is the 
 more remarkable that the Scottish school 
 should adopt this platonic division of the uni- 
 verse, when, while it stands in the way of 
 their first fact, it is not of the least use to them 
 afterwards : they do not, as the Germans do, 
 construct systems on its basis, but industriously 
 collect facts by observation in order to reach 
 inductive truths relating to consciousness ; a 
 proceeding quite as possible under another 
 name as under that of the Philosophy of the 
 human Mind. 
 
 But to return to Aristotle : — ideas, accord- 
 ing to him, enter the mind as singulars ; we 
 
96 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 say ideas in our sense of the term ; for though 
 Aristotle repudiated the term, his doctrine 
 did not, on this point, differ from ours. Being 
 received as singulars, — as first existences, — 
 they assemble themselves into species, and 
 these into genera, and so on from proxima to 
 summa genera. All these are existences in 
 the mind, and came, in later times, to be 
 called ideas, just as first existences were so 
 called ; an extension of the term, which, be it 
 remembered, we decline to adopt. Now all 
 these existences, under whatever denomination, 
 are the provision for the first stage of Aristo- 
 telian logic, which is limited to what its 
 teachers call the first of the three operations 
 or states of the mind, namely, the simple 
 Apprehension of ideas, using the term ideas 
 in its widest application. The next stage is 
 Judgement ; in which so-called second opera- 
 tion of the mind, two ideas are compared, and 
 pronounced to agree or disagree. Then comes 
 the third stage, Eeasoning, which takes place 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 97 
 
 as often as the agreement or disagreement of 
 two ideas cannot be immediately discerned : 
 for then a third idea is introduced with which 
 each of the others is measured : this is accom- 
 plished in two propositions, and then in con- 
 sequence of the admeasurement, we come to a 
 third proposition, which affirms or denies the 
 agreement between the two ideas that were in 
 question. Such was the organon that found 
 its most devoted admirers in the schoolmen, 
 the lights of the dark and middle ages. How- 
 ever, a division occurred at an early period 
 even among them concerning the reality or 
 non-reality of these ideas or existences. Of 
 first existences, that is, ideas of things singular, 
 no one questioned the reality ; but when they 
 were collected into a species or a genus, the 
 question arose whether the name used was the 
 sign of an idea,— of a reality existing in the 
 mind, — or whether it was a name and nothing 
 more. For, said the Nominalist, the holder of 
 the latter opinion, though I can be, and am, 
 
98 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 conscious of the idea of a particular man, or a 
 particular animal, or a particular creature of 
 any kind, liow can I have the idea of a uni- 
 versal man, or a universal animal, or a univer- 
 sal creature of all kinds ? Yet in spite of this 
 reasoning, the Eealists, the holders of the other 
 opinion, resting in some way on Plato's sense 
 of the term idea, predominated in almost all 
 the schools, nor did their opinion lose much 
 ground till the doctrine of the formal syllogism 
 began to sink in estimation. At the end of 
 the last century and beginning of this, no one 
 any longer spoke of realism but as of an opi- 
 nion gone by ; so that when, about this time 
 or a little later, some men of high academical 
 reputation, again, as we have said, took up the 
 doctrine of the formal syllogism, the revival 
 was free from the appendage of realism : judge- 
 ment and reasoning were indeed still spoken 
 of as resulting from the comparison of ideas, 
 but the expression was not interpreted with 
 rigour, nor the terms minor, middle, and 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 99 
 
 major, declared to be more than mere terms, 
 each having a certain extent of meaning. 
 
 Ideas, then, among all who hold that there 
 is nothing in the intellect which was not first 
 in the senses, being given up, except in the 
 meaning to which we have proposed to limit 
 the term, namely, to denote impressions within 
 of things singular without, we shall have to 
 apply to those philosophers who, with Plato, 
 derive ideas from the Deity for any further 
 doctrine under the word. Of course, all who 
 admit the existence of a Creator, must, under 
 any doctrine of ideas, confess that we come by 
 them through the provisions of the Creator ; 
 but the philosophers we refer to, Plato in 
 ancient days, and Kant in modern, require 
 more than this admission. Plato, as we have 
 seen, made it a part of his doctrine, that as the 
 mind of man is an emanation of the Divine 
 mind, so does he receive his ideas also from 
 the same eternal source : they are innate or 
 a priorij not learned from experience, not 
 
too THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 obtained a posteriori. Kant takes up unques- 
 tioned from Plato the division of the universe 
 into mind and matter; but with regard to 
 man, he does not view him as mind immersed 
 in matter ; he is pure mind, though not per- 
 mitted yet to know the unconditioned or 
 absolute which exists beyond the things of 
 space and time.^ As to these, namely Space 
 and Time, which receive from without and 
 mould the something that is poured into 
 them through the senses, they are, as we have 
 already seen, elements of the mind itself, — 
 necessary and permanent ideas : — it is that 
 alone which is given from without in order to 
 
 * According both to Plato and Kant, man is mind 
 though encumbered with matter : the difference be- 
 tween them is this — in Plato's doctrine, a man is so 
 much matter with mind in it, that is with him in it, 
 while in Kant's doctrine a man is so much mind with 
 matter in him, that is, with it in him. In point of 
 antiquity and general persuasion, Plato's is the superior 
 opinion, but in intrinsic value, Kant's is quite as good 
 — not better ; the one is worth as much as the other. 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 101 
 
 be moulded, that is, for the present, contingent, 
 because it is meant to be transitory. Further ; 
 the something so received by space and time, 
 and moulded by these ideas, has (to repeat our 
 former statement) yet to take the varieties of 
 form, in which, during our prefeeht.existence, . .., 
 it appears to us, — in which it, hhbohi^g plieno- '•* * 
 mena to us; for which en^^ .<iiej miifd 'haS^; :\J • ,••, 
 essentially and of necessity, its twelve ideas 
 which impress those forms upon it. But, the 
 observation must be repeated, it is only the 
 matter which is conditioned that receives the 
 forms ; — the mind which lends its forms is un- 
 conditioned. And in raising itself above what 
 is conditioned, which the pure reason can now 
 do only by speculating on its own ideas, it 
 becomes conscious of this its unconditioned 
 essence, conscious of ideas no longer giving 
 form to matter, but absolute : of which absolute 
 ideas, there are six, making up the twenty 
 elements of mind, which are called indifferently 
 either elements or ideas. As to the products 
 
102 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 of the twelve ideas or categories, tliat is to 
 say, the things of matter formed by them, 
 Kant does not call them ideas but notions, re- 
 serving the former term for the two recepti- 
 vities of the mind, for the categories that, out 
 . of the ma^eJr ^received, form the notions, and 
 
 ' ' especially' ^nd pre-eminently for the six ele- 
 
 .' ' i^-eii-ts ?of tlle-pure/Teason. 
 
 In this manner, up to the end of the last 
 century, has the strife concerning mind, 
 matter, and ideas, been carried on. And is it 
 now come to a conclusion ? As far from it as 
 ever ; nor, as it is carried on in Germany, can 
 it ever terminate, because the philosophers 
 there, do not take into any important account 
 the truths which we reach by inductive in- 
 quiry, but build up hypothesis after hypothesis 
 to account for our knowledge ; which hypo- 
 theses can be varied for ever by every change 
 of station that gives a new point of intellectual 
 vision in constructing them. Something 
 more, but not much more, satisfactory has been 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 103 
 
 accomplished by the French eclectic school 
 under M. Cousin ; for Cousin does not clear 
 himself from German prepossessions; while 
 here, in England, the country of Bacon and of 
 Locke, no attempt to regenerate metaphysics, 
 and render it a healthy science is made, or if 
 made, is encouraged. A cause has been 
 assigned for this in the re-action we have 
 alluded to in favour of Aristotle; and an 
 assisting cause may be, the partiality which 
 some of our leading men of science have shown 
 for German modes of propounding general 
 truths, while the utter unsuitableness of such 
 modes of explanation to an English atmo- 
 sphere, has revolted general readers, and turned 
 them away from every attempt to revive meta- 
 physical inquiry, though on English ground, 
 and with an English purpose. It is unfor- 
 tunate, too,, that the author of a lately-pub- 
 lished work, whose talents and reading qualify 
 him to indicate to his countrymen the direction 
 which English metaphysics must take in order 
 
104 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 to remain English, has exhibited, throughout 
 his " Historical and Critical View of the 
 Speculative Philosophy of Europe," a decided 
 bias toward the German mode of speculation. 
 Take, for instance, the following passage in an 
 early part of his work : (Morell's Historical, 
 &c., first edition, vol. i, p. 63.) " The three 
 great and primary elements of all our know- 
 ledge, are, first, the idea of our own individual 
 existence;" (in any improved revival of 
 Locke's philosophy, what is here called an 
 idea, would be called knowledge ;) " secondly, 
 the idea " (knowledge) " of nature ; and 
 thirdly, the idea of the absolute and eternal 
 as manifested in the pure conceptions of our 
 impersonal reason." Of this passage, which is 
 intended to be fundamental in order to serve 
 as a standard for estimating all the philosophy 
 of which the history treats, the whole spirit is 
 German : the use of the word idea is German : 
 it implies a something existing in the mind 
 a priori or independently of experience : and 
 

 UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW.^^ 
 
 hence the statement of a third element of our 
 knowledge, which third element Locke's phi- 
 losophy entirely excludes, not by denying the 
 existence of the things, but by denying that 
 we can scientifically know anything about 
 them in our present state of being. Indeed, 
 Kant's six ideas of pure reason, namely, Abso- 
 lute totality, Absolute limitation, Absolute sub- 
 stance, Absolute cause. Absolute concurrence, 
 Absolute necessity, can have no place in Locke's 
 philosophy except with an addition to absorb 
 the rest, namely absolute incomprehensibility. 
 That the author from whose work the pas- 
 sage above referred to is quoted, and who, 
 with all his efforts to be impartial, is decidedly 
 biassed in favour of German modes of specu- 
 lation, should find any " Beginnings " to be 
 vague and unsatisfactory which propose to 
 regenerate English philosophy, is not at all 
 surprising. Neither is it surprising that the 
 English public, turning with weariness and 
 mistrust from all that takes the name of meta- 
 
 !RNiA. 
 
106 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 physics on account of the constant failure to 
 produce unanimity of view, should extend this 
 aversion and neglect to materials, which, pro- 
 perly worked out, would fix the philosophy 
 begun by Locke on an unassailable basis, and 
 stop all speculation differing in kind and 
 purpose from itself. In the hope, however, 
 that what has hitherto been unfavourable to 
 the restitution of English philosophy is be- 
 ginning to give way, we now return to our 
 examination of certain parts in Locke's own 
 method of developing his doctrines, for the 
 sake of showing that he is often at variance 
 with his stated purposes, and the truths he 
 seeks to establish. 
 
 To begin, then, not with the Essay, but the 
 beginning of human knowledge as set forth in 
 the Essay — in order to go back as far as pos- 
 sible and get at the very first stage of human 
 knowledge, Locke supposes the child may 
 gain some few ideas even in the womb.^ 
 ^ Essay, b. ii., ch. ix., § 5. 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 107 
 
 Such a supposition is quite unnecessary to his 
 ultimate purpose. That he should deem the 
 child, as soon as bom, conscious because sen- 
 tient, is an error not likely to be detected 
 unless pointed out ; for all people are liable to 
 think so. But indeed it is a fundamental 
 error in Locke, since it confounds two things 
 which, from the beginning of his essay, ought 
 to have been discriminated — sensation, and in- 
 tellection. Accordingly, he deems sensations 
 to be ideas, distinguishing them as simple 
 ideas, and teaching that out of these, and out 
 of those other simple ideas, as he calls them, 
 namely, thinking, willing, &c., which are ob- 
 tained " when the mind turns its view inward 
 upon itself," are formed all its other ideas 
 whatever, which other ideas are therefore, 
 according to him, co'inplex, and they are of 
 three sorts, modes, substances, and relations ; 
 of which three sorts, let Lie be an example 
 of the sort of idea he calls a complex mixed 
 mode/ Svjan be an example of the sort of 
 * Essay, b. ii., ch. xxii., § 9. 
 
108 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 idea lie calls a complex substance,^ and Father 
 be an example of the sort of idea he calls a 
 complex relation : ^ which three complex ideas 
 are thus, as he says, made np out of simple 
 ideas; — First, as to the complex idea denoted 
 by lie^ it is made up of these simple ideas, — 
 Articulate sounds ; Certain ideas in the mind 
 of the speaker ; Those words the signs of those 
 ideas ; Those signs put together by affirmation 
 or negation otherwise than the ideas they stand 
 for are in the mind of the speaker -? — Next, as 
 
 ^ Essay, b. ii., ch. xxiii., § 14. 
 
 ® Ibid., cb. xxviii., § 2. 
 
 "^ I take tbe opportunity of tbis ill-appointed example 
 to repeat a former remark, namely, tbat Locke was 
 too much trammelled by existing metbods of explana- 
 tion to take up sucb original modes of teaching as his 
 own doctrines required. Nothing is more certain 
 than bis strong persuasion of the futility of tbe formal 
 syllogism ; yet here, in so simple a matter as explain- 
 ing what is done in telling a lie, be borrows tbe doc- 
 trine of affirmative aud negative predication, as if there 
 were something more in it than a mere grammatical 
 difference. Assent and dissent are indeed differences 
 in thought, and one of tbe circumstances under which 
 
I 
 
 UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 109 
 
 to the complex idea denoted by swan, sup- 
 posing it to be the common English swan, it is 
 made up of the simple ideas, White in colour. 
 Long neck, Red beak, Black legs, Whole feet, 
 Power of swimming, and Power of making a 
 certain kind of noise. — Thirdly, as to the 
 complex idea denoted by father, it is made up 
 of the simple ideas. Community of blood, and 
 Origin or beginning.^ 
 
 \ 
 
 a lie may be spoken is that of having to say yes or no 
 to a previous question. But a lie can take place 
 impromptu without such reference, and it can be ex- 
 pressed by a gesture, or a look, or an exclamation, as 
 in crying Wolf! when no wolf is present. — What we 
 Lockeists of the present day have to do, is, to free our 
 great master from his inconsistencies : let us accom- 
 plish this, and his philosophy is safe. 
 
 " In the last two examples, Locke is thinking of the 
 sense presentation of the individual things, and of the 
 ideas (ideas as we receive the term) which they leave 
 behind. But then he confuses his thought, otherwise 
 clear enough, through his wide, vague interpretation 
 of the word idea, esteeming swan and father, which 
 are abstractions of the understanding, to be the same 
 
110 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 How immature, how confused, how far from 
 the facts, are these statements of Locke ! how 
 evidently they tend to mislead us from the 
 ultimate truths he has in view ! A sensation 
 is not an idea, nor can sensations, nor can acts 
 of thought, be made up into ideas. A sensa- 
 tion cannot he even the cause of thought while 
 it is real, and while nothing exists but the 
 sensation in the sentient creature. For if a 
 thought is the apprehension of a relation (and 
 what else can it be ?), there is need of more 
 than one state of being to suggest relation : 
 one sensation cannot suggest relation by itself; 
 and if, when it ceases, another takes its place 
 without leaving remembrance behind, it is — so 
 far as regards the suggestion of thought — as 
 though the creature existed but in one un- 
 changing sentient state. There is, however, a 
 
 things as the idea of an individual swan, and of an 
 individual man, who, among his other accidental 
 circumstances, is a father. 
 
UNDEK OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. Ill 
 
 point, and that point we have endeavoured to 
 trace, when sentient existence becomes intel- 
 lectual also, not by any change of the one into 
 the other, but by the awakening of a higher 
 function of our nature, that very Understand- 
 ing of which it was Locke's declared purpose 
 to treat. And then, as to his threefold divi- 
 sion of complex ideas, we refuse the name 
 ideas to what he calls so, and find but one 
 common principle to which all his instances 
 both of simple and complex ideas can be pro- 
 perly referred. ■ A colour, or a sound, or a 
 taste, which he calls a simple idea, is not ap- 
 prehended, however present as a sensation, till 
 apprehended relatively to another colour, or 
 sound, or taste, or to what is not a colour, or 
 sound, oi; taste, and when so apprehended, it 
 is knowledge of the colour, of the sound, of 
 the taste, not an idea. The term idea will, it 
 is true, be properly used to signify the present- 
 ation of the thing to thought when the sense- 
 presentation is away ; but Locke's use of the 
 
112 THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 term is not thus circumscribed. His examples 
 of complex ideas come properly under the 
 same explanation as his simple ideas : lie, for 
 instance, is a term standing for my knowledge 
 of what it is to tell a lie, namely, wilfully using 
 signs to declare what is not true ; swan, is the 
 name I give to a certain bird under the know- 
 ledge that to be so called, it must be white in 
 colour, have a long neck, &c. ; and father is the 
 name I give to a man under the knowledge that 
 he has a child. In assigning only the last ex- 
 ample to the apprehension of a relation between 
 the thing and something else, Locke quite mis- 
 leads us, unless we correct him. He confines 
 our view to a narrow, trivial application of the 
 term. But whatever shows off something not 
 itself by the force of contradistinction, without 
 which contradistinction we could not know it, 
 stands in relation to that thing ; and hence there 
 is relation between lying and telling the truth, 
 between being a swan and being anything not 
 a swan, say a goose for instance, — ^just as well 
 
UNDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW. 113 
 
 as there is relation between being a father and 
 being a son. That the last is a special relation 
 and the others wide and general, is true ; but 
 that is all the difference. It is also true that 
 Locke's examples are drawn from things dif- 
 ferent in kind, but not different in the way he 
 tries to make out. For though some of the 
 things, as colours, tastes, smells, are justly 
 classed as simple sensations, they do not reach 
 the understanding at first in that shape, but as 
 suggestives of the things that produce them, 
 and they have to be abstracted from the 
 things in order to be understood as simple 
 sensations. Again, there are other things 
 brought forward among his examples, think- 
 ing, willing, &c., which belong to the class of 
 things called mental acts ; and these have to 
 be abstracted from the person who performs 
 the acts, in order to be understood simply. 
 Other things among his examples, a lie for 
 instance, are acts of mind manifested by out- 
 w^d acts, and these again have to be abstracted 
 
 I 
 
114 WHAT LOCKE'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 from the person performing them, in order to 
 be understood simply. As to swan, goose, 
 man, father, &c., they belong, when applied 
 individually, to the things which help to make 
 up the world in which we are placed ; these 
 four happen all to be living things ; nor is the 
 living thing- called a father generically dif- 
 ferent from the living thing called a many 
 although the name is applied to a man only 
 under the special circumstance of his having 
 a child. The distribution here adopted of the 
 several things in this place and above men- 
 tioned, is a distribution on the common and re- 
 cognised principle, and it is very different from 
 Locke's. His distribution is foimded in error, 
 and his whole doctrine of ideas is a delusion. 
 
 Dismissing, then, for ever this exploded 
 mode of tracing human knowledge from its 
 beginning to its adult state, what are we, 
 Lockeists, prepared to substitute for that one 
 which our master furnishes ? We cannot answer 
 the question but by again going over the ground 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 115 
 
 we have twice traversed. We begin, as Locke 
 began, with sensation, but not to call it, as he ; 
 did, an idea, or even, by itself, the occasion of ! 
 an idea, but a state of existence in a succession ? 
 of such states, in which the human creature i 
 has its being immediately on its birth, and in \ 
 which it continues for a very short time, un- 
 conscious of the changes it imdergoes. Before 
 intellection can begin, states of sentient being 
 must occur, different ftom those that occur at 
 first, namely those that we have called states of 
 unreal or ideal sensation ; and these very soon 
 arise to open the understanding by contrasting 
 with the real. At birth, the human creature, 
 otherwise so ungifted, so helpless, has however 
 one decided instinct; and on the subject of 
 instinct, as the consideration of it must enter 
 into Locke's philosophy when complete, and as 
 there are otKer instincts that grow in us when 
 the first has served its purpose, we may take 
 occasion here to remark that all our instincts, 
 all our animal impulses, for such they are, we 
 
1 1 6 WHAT Locke's philosophy 
 
 are bound to place under the control of the 
 higher elements of our nature. 
 
 Intellection being awakened in the manner 
 we have seen, sensations are now not only felt 
 but known ; in other words, consciousness 
 begins. Now with regard to Intellection, as 
 with regard to Sensation, and also of Emotion, 
 the reader has to bear in mind that the effect 
 is always passive and unavoidable, — it must 
 take place the adequate cause being present. 
 It is in this fact we shall find the element of 
 necessary truth, concerning which so much in- 
 quiry has been made ; it is here, in the ine- 
 vitable acts of the understanding, that we rest 
 without a doubt, because any doubt would in- 
 volve the absurdity of being at the same time 
 the thing doubted, and the thing that doubts it. 
 But if an act of intellection must be right, how, 
 it will be asked, do we come throughout life so 
 abundantly upon error? Because, though an 
 act of intellection can never be other than it is, 
 yet the premises are always liable to be false ; 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 117 
 
 in Other words, what is necessarily true exists 
 in the intellection; what is contingent and 
 doubtful exists in the matter submitted to it. 
 Therefore, as was stated in a former chapter, 
 when instead of those data which originally 
 gave activity to the intellect, the data for its 
 further activity are the results of its own acts, 
 namely the relations abstracted —taken apart — 
 from the things which suggested the relations, 
 — we have for the product what is distinctively 
 called Science, concerning the truth of which, 
 so long as we continue to keep aloof from the 
 things that suggested the relations, there can 
 be no doubt whatever. But then, it will be na- 
 turally asked, what to us now living among the 
 things that suggested the relations, can be the 
 value of such science, if the things do not exist 
 in the relations to eaCh other and to ourselves, 
 in which we understand them to exist? The 
 answer is, that for the truth of all our early 
 knowledge, the premises of which are placed 
 before us, and not sought out or collected by 
 
118 WHAT LOCKE'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 ourselves, we must depend on the wisdom and 
 beneficence of our Creator : if the things of 
 sense are not in themselves what they are by 
 us understood to be, it is our Creator that mis- 
 leads us, and we must yield to the illusion. 
 But who believes there is illusion ? Who does 
 not think that the outward world is a reality, 
 and not a mere phenomenon, as the doctrine of 
 Kant would make us esteem it ? With regard 
 then to our early knowledge, in the acquire- 
 ment of which we are almost entirely passive, 
 namely both in waiting for premises and re- 
 ceiving conclusions, we may and do count upon 
 it safely for all the ordinary purposes of life, 
 though as our experience enlarges, much of our 
 early knowledge is replaced by riper. That 
 early knowledge being acquired, the process of 
 learning falls under very different conditions 
 from those that went with it at first. When 
 the Will is evolved, — the Will which gives 
 personality to, and imposes responsibility on 
 the individual, — the Will which grows out of 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 119 
 
 the tliird original element ol our nature, Emo- 
 tion, inasmuch as it begins by being simply 
 wish or desire, but is completed by the intel- 
 lection of a certain degree of power to accom- 
 plish, so that, up to where we are conscious of 
 power, the Will extends, while what exists 
 beyond it, remains in the shape of simple wish 
 or desire, — when the Will is thus evolved, the 
 process of learning, we repeat, comes under 
 conditions very different from those conceded 
 to infancy. We now seek knowledge, or we 
 neglect to seek it ; we now interpret what we 
 wish to know by what we know already, — 
 that is to say, we interpret hypothetically 
 what lies beyond our immediate understand- 
 insr, and then hunt for further facts to con- 
 firm or set aside the hypothesis. Throughout 
 this course, which continues to the end of 
 life, we are liable to false conclusions at every 
 step ; not however, be it distinctly re-asserted, 
 from any possible error in the natural acts of 
 the understanding, but solely from the false 
 
120 WHAT LOCKE S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 premises wliicli we place before it ; in other 
 words, not because any conclusion can be 
 wrong with reference to its actual premises, 
 but because wrong premises can be assumed, 
 and right premises wilfully or ignorantly 
 overlooked. 
 
 Pausing for a moment in this attempt to 
 show how, from his own beginning, we might 
 proceed to reconstruct Locke's philosophy, let 
 us ask whether, so far as we have advanced, we 
 have ground to affirm the non-existence of a- 
 priori elements in our knowledge, — whether it 
 is true that there is nothing in the intellect 
 which is not first present to the senses ? With 
 regard to this proposition, Leibnitz makes a 
 very pertinent remark, — there is, says he, at 
 least the intellect itself. Nothing can be more 
 certain : but we should choose to state the fact 
 thus. The Creator has given to his creature, 
 man, the power to understand more or less ac- 
 curately the things among which he is placed ; 
 but always so, that if he does not understand 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 121 
 
 them accurately, the fault lies, not in his want 
 of power to understand, but in his want of op- 
 portunity, or industry, or inclination to collect 
 all the matter obtainable outwardly, in order 
 to elicit the truth from within. Now with 
 regard to the fact thus stated, what shall be 
 our doctrine? Shall we say with Kant, that 
 the understanding is provided, a-priorif with 
 forms or ideas which it impresses upon matter, 
 and so deduce all truth from within ? or shall 
 we say, as Locke's improved philosophy would 
 say, that the world conveys its forms to the 
 understanding, and so deduce all knowledge 
 from without, that is, from experience? We 
 have already answered the idealists who tell us 
 we cannot philosophize thus, because, the forms 
 or ideas which exist in our consciousness, — say, 
 for instance, the figures in pure geometry, — 
 cannot be copied from the individual figures 
 which experience supplies, and which have the 
 same names ; — they are not, say they, ideas of 
 those figures in your sense of the word idea : 
 
122 WHAT Locke's philosophy 
 
 for all tliese, namely the real, and the corre- 
 sponding ideal figures, exist in our knowledge 
 as things contingent and doubtful, because the 
 matter is so in which the forms inhere; but 
 the forms themselves — the ideas in Platonic 
 and in Kantian phrase, — are absolute and 
 necessary ; and therefore they must exist inde- 
 pendently of experience, that is, a-priori, and 
 be impressed upon matter, not received from it* 
 To this reasoning we have answered, that though 
 all our knowledge of outward things must be 
 accompanied by the doubt to which their con- 
 tingent character subjects them, yet as our 
 knowledge, from the way in which we acquire 
 it, can be abstracted, and is by means of signs 
 abstracted from the things that suggested it, the 
 knowledge so abstracted is as free from contin- 
 gency and doubt, as the conscious acts by which 
 it is obtained. Take, for instance, our know- 
 ledge of what it is to be a circle. Before we 
 have this knowledge, we are familiar with 
 numberless things in nature, — the sun, the full 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 123 
 
 moon, the outline of many fruits and flowers, 
 the outline of the vertex of the skull, and so 
 forth ; and are familiar at the same time with 
 other things some straight-lined, some un- 
 equally curved, some angular, and so forth. 
 Those first-mentioned set of things, in contra- 
 distinction to any one set among the latter, ap- 
 pear to the understanding in a certain relation 
 the one set to the other ; and this relation can 
 be abstracted from the things, and then it be- 
 longs exclusively to the understanding, having 
 left behind all that was contingent, and become 
 an element of necessary truth ; though still, as 
 often as we re-apply it to such things, it yields 
 only truth that is contingent, and not neces- 
 sary ; for the circle so called, may not, that we 
 are sure, agree with the conditions which our 
 abstract knowledge of what it is to be a circle, 
 requires. Should the idealist here say, that in 
 admitting the understanding to be capable, 
 a-priori, of all that is here described, we vir- 
 tually admit all he contends for, we join 
 
124 WHAT Locke's philosophy 
 
 hands f objecting, at the same time, to Kant's 
 mode of explanation, because it makes intricate 
 what would otherwise lie straight before us. 
 Instead of taking man as he is to common 
 apprehension, it turns him wrongside out, as 
 we might turn a shirt to make it seem cleaner. 
 In Kant's philosophy, matter is put almost 
 out of sight, and mind made all in all. This 
 is flattering to our pride, and, it must be con- 
 fessed that, granting certain first steps, the 
 
 ^ We are most happy that German influence is not 
 so strong in every one of high name and talent that 
 has yielded to it, as to prevent such concessions as the 
 following : " Fundamental ideas may be termed, if 
 any one chooses, results of connate intellectual tenden- 
 cies." — Vide a Demonstration (a-priori\) that all Matter 
 is heavy, by Professor Whewell (1841), inserted in 
 the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical So- 
 ciety. Again : " Instead of saying that all our know- 
 ledge involves certain fundamental ideas, the sources 
 from which all universal truth is derived, — we may 
 say that there are certain laws of mental activity 
 according to which alone all the real relations of things 
 are apprehended." — Dr. Whewell, 1844, in a Letter to 
 Sir John Herschel, printed for private circulation. 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 125 
 
 whole holds harmoniously together. Hence, 
 favoured in no small degree by the natural 
 love of what is marvellous when offered instead 
 of plain vulgar truth, its reception in Germany 
 and elsewhere, so far as it is received. But 
 it is constructed in violent opposition to our 
 earliest and strongest convictions, and cannot 
 stand against a philosophy that shall be pro- 
 perly based, and properly carried out, on these 
 convictions. 
 
 We mean to say, then, that the doctrine of 
 certain forms or ideas in the understanding, 
 which forms the Understanding impresses upon 
 matter, is only part and parcel of Kant's whole 
 inquiry Clmcerning the grounds of truth, and 
 that this inquiry begins at the wrong end, 
 while our English philosophy begins the same 
 inquiry at the right end. In affirming this 
 of Kant's Critic of pure Eeason, we do not 
 refer to the order in which he developes his 
 scheme, but to the ideas of pure reason on 
 which he makes the whole to depend. We 
 
126 WHAT LOCKE S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 have already referred to these so-called ideas, 
 and have to repeat that, in Locke's philosophy, 
 whose purpose is, to ascertain what man does 
 know, what he can know, and what he CANNOT 
 know, they come, with all similar generaliza- 
 tions and abstractions, into the third division, 
 to be viewed as stumbling-blocks in the way of 
 truth, not as helps to attain it. Kant himself 
 does not pretend that they yield knowledge 
 now, but proposes them as intuitions of God, 
 the Universe, and the Soul, — subjects that, 
 except by intuition, lie, in our present state, 
 beyond us. By Locke, stich subjects, as 
 matters of human learning, are rejected 
 altogether. Nor must our reader think, be- 
 cause Locke's philosophy thus recedes from 
 idealistic views, that it is less favourable to 
 the spiritual, by which we mean the religious 
 and moral improvement of our nature. At all 
 events, so far as that improvement is carried 
 on in accordance with the doctrine of what 
 we call revealed religion, it goes hand in hand 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 127 
 
 with it. In denying, for instance, what has 
 just been denied, the fitness of certain subjects 
 for human inquiry, it carries Scripture with 
 it ; — " Canst thou, by searching, find out 
 God ? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto 
 perfection ? It is high as heaven, what canst 
 thou do ? It is deeper than hell, what canst 
 thou know?" Kant, who acknowledges that 
 speculative reason cannot reach thus high and 
 thus low, retains nevertheless the ideas, and 
 seeks to give value to speculative reason, by 
 adding the doctrine of what he calls practical 
 reason. We confess indeed that during the 
 lifetime of him who is the father of modern 
 idealism, the wings lay folded which were 
 nevertheless inherent in it from the birth. 
 But under his successors, those wings were 
 soon expanded to reach the heights and depths 
 of all possible being — (and impossible also, we 
 might venture saying ;) to scan, at one glance, 
 the finite and the infinite ; to view truth as 
 a whole whose connected parts lie stretched 
 
128 WHAT LOCKE S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 upon the field of vision ; and among the parts, 
 in due subordination to the rest, the revela- 
 tions of the Bible interpreted as myths, that 
 they may adjust themselves to the other parts, 
 and harmonize with the great, the all-absorbing 
 whole. 
 
 We repeat that Philosophy in the school of 
 Locke, as it takes its beginning from the 
 humblest elements, can never aim at flights 
 like these. But humble as its beginning is, 
 we may hope that when it shall be carried out 
 in its true spirit, and to its true purpose, it 
 will issue in the indication of paths by which 
 we may attain all the knowledge possible to 
 us here, and all the moral improvement of 
 which our nature is capable. With regard 
 to the Bible, it will not build on, or appro- 
 priate its doctrines as belonging to human 
 learning, but if the paths it discovers be close 
 and parallel to those which the Bible indicates, 
 it will hardly be denied us to exclaim — So 
 much the better ! And indeed, in laying: 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 129 
 
 down as primary facts three states of being in 
 man. Sensation, Intellection, and Emotion ; in 
 teaching that he cannot now raise himself out 
 of these, nor make them other than they are ; 
 but that he can, by exertion of his personal 
 Will, which develops itself from the latter 
 two, exert a control over the whole three, so 
 that the senses shall be cared for and governed 
 by the intellect, and the intellect seek know- 
 ledge by inquiry within limits where alone it 
 can be found in a wholesome state, and the 
 emotions be partially detached from inferior 
 occasions of excitement, till they strongly 
 respond only to high, and generous, and holy 
 motives, — in teaching all this, which it will 
 teach when its doctrines shall be completed, 
 Locke's philosophy will be able to assert a 
 conformity between the moral training to 
 which it naturally leads, and the righteousness 
 defined by the Sacred Volume. 
 
 But in order that Philosophy carried out 
 from Locke's beginning and with Locke's pur- 
 
 K 
 
130 WHAT LOCKE'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 pose, may stand without a rival, it must 
 remove the delusion which renders possible 
 the construction of such systems as the Ger- 
 mans furnish. This cannot be accomplished * 
 by anything which Locke himself has pro- 
 vided, and for assistance in the matter, we 
 must go to another English writer, far inferior 
 indeed to Locke in all that gives a claim to 
 reputation, but worthy of being listened to, 
 because he was the first who saw, however 
 dimly, that delusion in Locke, which, while 
 it was the main cause that Locke's own doc- 
 trine is imperfect, completely invalidates all 
 other metaphysics. Both these men had that 
 peculiar sagacity, often observable in commoner 
 men, which sees a truth clearly on general 
 grounds without having reached the particular 
 proofs necessary to make it clear to ordinary 
 understandings. Locke, for instance, was 
 clearly persuaded that the Aristotelian syllo- 
 gism was built on a delusion. " God," says 
 he, " hath not been so sparing to men to make 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 131 
 
 them barely two-legged creatures, and left it 
 to Aristotle to make them rational : he hath 
 been more bountiful to mankind than so." He 
 saw there was a juggle somewhere, but he 
 could not put his finger on the spot; and 
 Leibnitz truly says of him that he despised 
 logic (Aristotle's logic) without understanding 
 it. The fact was, that he himself lay under 
 that universal delusion concerning language 
 and thought, which had led to the construc- 
 tion of the formal syllogism, and to indicate 
 where Aristotle was wrong, he must first have 
 been aware of his own error. Then, a century 
 afterwai-ds came Home Tooke, who, but for 
 his participation in the same universal error, 
 would have detected all that Locke had failed 
 to see. He, too, looking at the vast web 
 which metaphysical philosophy had spun, 
 strongly felt the presence of an undetected 
 error, but he was not able to give it to the 
 day. He says there is no such thing as 
 abstraction, except in words, and that " the. 
 
] 32 WHAT LOCKE S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 very term metapliysic is nonsense, all the 
 systems of it, and controversies concerning it, 
 being ibunded on the grossest ignorance of 
 words and the nature of speech." To deliver 
 himself thus, was to miss the truth he was in 
 search of^ and yet to have it close to his 
 lingers. If there had been no such power in 
 man as that of abstracting knowledge without 
 using words at first in the operation, words 
 could never have been invented in order to 
 carry on tlie operation afterwards; and if 
 Tooke had not failed in attempting to remove 
 the ignorance which he complains of concern- 
 ing words and the nature of speech, he would 
 have found that metaphysic, in a wholesome 
 state, merits a far better name than nonsense. 
 
 Thus it happened to both these men to feel 
 that a great fundamental error existed, and 
 yet to fail in pointing it out. Still, I am very 
 clear that if they had not gone before, the 
 discovery would never have been made by 
 him who pretends to have made it. It is to 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 133 
 
 Locke next after Bacon that we must assign 
 the credit of founding English philosophy. 
 Little credit is due to Home Tooke, because 
 his work, so far as metaphysics are concerned, 
 is a failure. If I can lay claim to any merit, 
 it is that of having discovered, by the guidance 
 of Locke and Home Tooke, what nevertheless 
 they themselves had failed to see, though the 
 discovery was essential to the purpose of both. 
 And in saying even thus much, I am quite 
 aware that I shall be deemed to say more than 
 can be true. Is it possible, so it will be 
 thought, that any discovery can be made in 
 the theory of a practice so familiar to us as 
 speech ? I must leave it to be judged. One 
 thing I am sure of, that no writer I am ac- 
 quainted with explains the practice as I do, 
 except Dugald Stewart ; and what he says to 
 the same purpose as myself is contained in the 
 following two short passages in his Philosophi- 
 cal Essays ;^^ passages which I quoted in my 
 '0 Phil. Essays, Part I. Ess. 5. Ch. I. 
 
134 WHAT LOCKE S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 " Outline of Sematology," published twenty-five 
 years ago, and again in my " Letter to Dr. 
 Whately," published in 1852. I quote them 
 again before proceeding to my next chapter : — 
 
 '* In reading the enunciation of a proposi- 
 tion, we are apt to fancy that for every word 
 contained in it, there is an idea presented to 
 the understanding ; from the combination and 
 comparison of which ideas, results that act of 
 the mind called judgement. So different is all 
 this from fact, that our words, when examined 
 separately, are often as completely insignificant 
 as the letters of which they are composed, de- 
 riving their meaning solely from the connection 
 or relation in which they stand to others." 
 
 " When we listen to a language which 
 admits of such transpositions in the arrange- 
 naent of words as are familiar to us in Latin, 
 the artificial structure of the discourse sus- 
 pends, in a great measure, our conjectures 
 about the sense, till, at the close of the period, 
 the verb, in the very instant of its utterance, 
 
WOULD BE, IF CONSISTENT. 135 
 
 unriddles the enigma. Previous to this, the 
 former words and phrases resemble those de- 
 tached and unmeaning patches of different 
 colours, which compose what opticians call an 
 anamorphosis ; while the effect of the verb 
 at the end may be compared to that of the 
 mirror, by which the anamorphosis is reformed, 
 and which combines these apparently fortuitous 
 materials into a beautiful portrait or landscape. 
 In instances of this kind, it will generally be 
 found, upon an accurate examination, that the 
 intellectual act, so far as we are able to trace 
 it, is altogether simple, and incapable of ana- 
 lysis ; and that the elements into which we 
 flatter ourselves we have resolved it, are 
 nothing more than the grammatical elements 
 of speech; — the logical doctrine about the 
 (comparison of ideas, bearing a much closer 
 affinity to the task of a schoolboy in parsing 
 his lesson, than to the researches of philoso- 
 phers able to form a just conception of the 
 mystery to be explained." 
 
136 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Way in which Language is the Exponent of 
 Thought — Conclusion. 
 
 The truth, if truth it is, which I oppose to 
 the prevalent persuasion on the subject of lan- 
 guage in its relation to thought, may be stated 
 in a single proposition, though it may require 
 a good deal of care to state it clearly, and a 
 good deal of reflection to see, when stated, its 
 distinctness from the notion we receive of 
 language from all our school and college in- 
 struction. 
 
 No part of speech is properly a word, but 
 only the part of a word, a part completed by 
 what follows, or completing what precedes, yet 
 in such a manner that it expresses no part of 
 the thought which the word will express when 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 137 
 
 completed : the meaning of this word will be 
 one and indivisible, to assist in conveying 
 which, each part resigns its separate meaning 
 the moment it enters into union with the 
 other parts in order to form the word. For 
 instance, in saying Men-must-die, the whole 
 expression is the word that corresponds with 
 the thought, — the parts, men, must, die, are 
 parts of the word, but not parts of the attained 
 meaning : each indeed has a meaning while 
 separate, but the moment it joins the other 
 parts, it merges its separate meaning in the 
 one meaning of the word it helps to form. 
 
 This statement requires only to be under- 
 stood to be at once admitted. But unfortu- 
 nately, after being understood and admitted, 
 the old notion will return into a pre-occupied 
 mind, and be somehow reasoned into the other. 
 I can deal with young minds, and carry them 
 on successfully on the one principle without 
 confusion from the other : not so when there is 
 the rooted prepossession that the meaning of 
 
138 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 any expression made up of parts, is the aggre- 
 gate of the meanings of those several parts. 
 Dr. Richardson, the gentleman referred to, in 
 a note at page 50, as a disciple of Home Tooke 
 in common with myself, had read, I believe 
 without objection to the main principle, my 
 Outline of Sematology : yet when I say, — 
 " If my theory is true, the words of a sentence 
 understood in their separate capacity, do not 
 constitute the meaning of the whole sentence, 
 (i. e. are not parts of its whole meaning,) and 
 therefore, as parts of a sentence, they are not 
 by themselves significant/' — Dr. Eichardson 
 exclaims, " Might not Mr. Smart as well say, 
 that the several numbers which together 
 amount to a total number, do not constitute — 
 are not parts of — that total number ; and that 
 the figures representing such several numbers, 
 are not by themselves significant !" ^ Assuredly 
 I might not as well say so ; for this would be 
 to contradict the doctrine I seek to establish, 
 ' On the Study of Language, p. 52, foot note. 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 139 
 
 that the meanings of parts of speech are not 
 constitutive of the ultimate meaning sought 
 to be made known, but suggestive only. The 
 meaning of a phrase or sentence is not the 
 aggregate of the several meanings of the parts 
 which construct it, but the rational conse- 
 quence. Take any two parts of speech that 
 are fitted to make sense, such as old and men : 
 each of these has a much larger meaning than 
 the phrase they form; as in French, vieux 
 and hommes are severally names of very much 
 larger application than the name vieillards. 
 The phrase old men does not signify the 
 aggregate of the previous meanings of its two 
 parts, but is the merging of each of those 
 meanings in the narrower meaning attained. 
 The fact indeed is, that when parts of speech 
 are joined so as to make sense, what takes place 
 under the addition of part to part outwardly, 
 is not addition, but on the contrary is SUB- 
 TRACTION. For instance, when to the part of 
 speech old we add the part of speech men, the 
 
 Y 
 
140 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 effect is, that old suffers a subtraction of its 
 extent of meaning, so far as its meaning is 
 included in men ; and men suffers a subtrac- 
 tion of its extent of meaning, so far as its 
 meaning is included in oM. The result is, the 
 identification of the two subtractions, yielding 
 the limited out of the two wider meanings, 
 which limited meaning is signified by what is 
 virtually or really a single word, old-men or 
 vieillards, whose parts are no longer separately 
 significant. And the fact is universal, namely, 
 that as fast as we join parts of speech which 
 agree logically, that is, make sense, we sub- 
 tract meaning from meaning, till we reach the 
 special meaning we design to convey. 
 
 The fact here stated is so evident, so unde- 
 niable when once apprehended, that it must at 
 times have forced itself on individual observa- 
 tion. Am I, then, the first to teach, on the 
 incontrovertible principle which this fact dis- 
 closes, what is our process when we are using 
 language properly in its relation to thought, 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 141 
 
 and what process is an abuse of it ? I admit 
 that it is quite unlikely I should be; and 
 accordingly, when I came forward five-and- 
 twenty years ago, with the pretension of 
 having made a discovery, I was quite prepared 
 for a denial of originality ; and a denial soon 
 came. A critic in the following year,^ after 
 highly lauding my essay, found its principal 
 fault to be " its pretension to the character of 
 a Tiew theory." I expected, and therefore 
 yielded to the rebuke. But from that time 
 to the present I have looked about in vain for 
 some one who had taught, or who teaches 
 language to be what my doctrine makes it. 
 Hence I cannot help thinking that the critic 
 read and judged my essay under prepossessions 
 he was unable to set aside — such prepossessions 
 as led Dr. Richardson to animadvert upon it in 
 the way mentioned above. And I am the more 
 inclined to think thus, because if the critic is, 
 
 * Examiner newspaper, March 25, and April 1, 
 1832. 
 
142 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 as I suspect, the same gentleman that has since 
 put forth a very important and much valued 
 work, he has shown that he did not understand 
 my view of language to be essentially different 
 from the common view, by having kept closely 
 to the latter, while laying down the ground 
 materials of his undertaking. 
 
 Looking to the dijficulty which persons so 
 acute appear to find in keeping one view of the 
 nature of speech distinct from another which 
 is quite different from it, I beg my reader to 
 be on his guard against the same confusion, 
 and to carry the caution with him while he 
 proceeds with me. 
 
 I think it expedient to repeat a remark I 
 made at page 47, and to follow it up by a 
 similar example. 
 
 Artificial (instituted — rational) language 
 begins by the evolution of an exclamation into 
 artificial parts. An infant, say ten or fifteen 
 months older than his brother who has just 
 fallen asleep by the side of the nurse, toddles 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 143 
 
 into the adjoining room to make his mother 
 aware of the fact. This he attempts to do by 
 a subdued repeated exclamation that means 
 *' Sleep ! sleep !" His mother replies " What, 
 nurse asleep ?" and his rejoinder is, " Baby ! 
 baby !" There is as yet, in these exclamations, 
 no evolution into artificial parts : the one ex- 
 clamation is indeed intended to explain the 
 other, but it is only by being another exclama- 
 tion with the same meaning. The approach 
 may however be seen to the time when mate- 
 rials such as these will be joined, in order to 
 convey the one meaning which they now sepa- 
 rately signify. And what will be the efiect, 
 when, for instance, Bahys asleep signifies the 
 same that hahy, and that sleep, signified each 
 by itself? It will be this, that each sign, till 
 it joins the other, is the sign of a certain de- 
 crree of knowledge which the infant learner 
 has acquired, which knowledge is held ab- 
 stractly from — independently of— the present 
 fact, the knowledge, namely, of hahy under 
 
144 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 Other circumstances, as well as that of being 
 asleep, and of sleep under the circumstance 
 of papa, of mamma, of nurse, of the cat, and 
 so forth being the sleeper, as well as of hahy. 
 And these signs, whose comprehensive power 
 is enlarged to an indeterminate degree bj no 
 longer being applicable to a particular occasion 
 except when they restrict each other's mean- 
 ing, — these signs, and signs like these, will go 
 along with the infant to fix every future accu- 
 mulation of his knowledge under its proper 
 head — that is, as to the present instance, all 
 that he shall hereafter know of hahy more 
 than he now knows, and all that he shall see 
 of sleep beyond the cases which his present 
 little circle supplies. 
 
 And how happens it that the human crea- 
 ture thus breaks through the bondage of 
 instinctive or of emotional language to which, 
 to the end of their existence, all other of 
 earth's creatures are fixed? The cause can 
 but be that which has been insisted on in pre- 
 
IS yHE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 145 
 
 vious chapters, that while to other creatures 
 such knowledge as they require is imme- 
 diately, instinctively given, man is left with- 
 out knowledge till his reason is opened by 
 occasions appointed for that effect ; and reason 
 once awakened, he invents or adopts rational 
 language, not only to communicate, by ade- 
 quate means, with his fellow rational beings, 
 but to assist the steps of his own understand- 
 ing. Till his reason is awakened, man's lan- 
 guage, his first cry, is like that of other creatures, 
 instinctive. It afterwards becomes emotional, 
 but so does the dog's, whose varieties of cry 
 often betray us into thinking there is more 
 than instinct in them : — 
 
 Irritata canum cum primiim magna Molossum 
 Mollia ricta fremunt, duros nudantia denteis, 
 Longe alio sonitu rabie distracta minantur ; 
 Et cum jam latrant, et vocibus omnia complent. 
 At catulos blande cum lingua lambere tentant, 
 Aut ubi COS jactant pedibus, morsuque petentes, 
 Suspensis teneros imitantur dentibus haustus. 
 
 L 
 
146 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 Longe alio pacto gannitu vocis adulant ; 
 
 Et cum deserti baiibantur in sedibus, aut cum 
 
 Plorantes fugiunt summisso corpore plagas. 
 
 Lucretius^ de Her. Nat., Lib. V., v. 1062. 
 
 Even in his emotional language, however, 
 man far transcends all other creatures; for, 
 with him, emotions swell not, till reason has 
 begun ; and those characteristics of rational 
 feeling, the smile and the tear, though they 
 come soon after the first month, do not, be it 
 observed, come earlier; the original cry is 
 tearless, and the lips at first relax not, except 
 to receive the food that passes them. With 
 purely emotional language we make, as was 
 said in an earlier page, what may be con- 
 sidered our first step in the practice of 
 rhetoric ; and in evolving an exclamation into 
 artificial parts, we begin the practice of logic. 
 Let it not be supposed, however, that, subse- 
 quently, the one art is carried on independ- 
 ently of the other. For though rhetoric in 
 her earliest practice is superseded by a rational 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 147 
 
 process, she immediately puts in her claims, 
 and follows close on the steps of logic. She 
 accepts the constructed in lieu of the original 
 unconstructed expression; she utters it with 
 the same emotive tone and gesture ; and soon 
 begins to find what a useful, what an indis* 
 pensable ally she has gained. Our infant 
 speaker, who has become a logician by the 
 first or earliest step he takes in the use of 
 rational language, does not therefore cease to 
 be a rhetorician, either now, or ever after- 
 wards, except when language is employed on 
 subjects altogether abstract, and kept de- 
 signedly apart from the feelings. But gram- 
 mar, as was also remarked in an earlier page, 
 has yet to be evolved : the artificial verb was 
 not needed while the signs put together to 
 form the expression demanded by the occasion 
 were only two. But the same necessity which 
 drives the infant logician to substitute for his 
 natural exclamation a word constructed of two 
 signs that convey premised meanings, will 
 
148 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 afterwards drive him to construct each of 
 these in the same way, and thus, when by 
 this multiplication of parts, the artificial verb 
 becomes necessary in order to collect all the 
 parts mediately or immediately to itself, and 
 imply, as often as may be judged eligible, that 
 so many of the parts, neither more nor fewer, 
 are to be received as one expression with one 
 meaning, — then will grammar follow in the 
 train of rhetoric and of logic. We are here 
 admonished of these arts as they come into 
 existence practically; and practice, it needs 
 not be said, is, in all arts, born before theory. 
 When, for the improvement of practice, theory 
 is at length instituted, grammar comes first in 
 order with its laws of construction, — logic next 
 as requiring sense along with construction, — 
 and rhetoric last, as bringing the frame thus 
 put together and thus endowed with ration- 
 ality, back again to receive the warmth, the 
 life, the feeling, and, consequently, the per- 
 suasiveness of natural language. 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 149 
 
 To confirm these views, I proceed to show, 
 by a few examples, the true and proper ana- 
 lysis of rational speech. As to such an ex- 
 pression as " Forgive !" though borrowed from 
 rational language, it suggests its meaning 
 without premises ; and yet an etymologist 
 sees that however this may be its present 
 force, it originally suggested that one meaning 
 by two premises. At present, the speaker in 
 using it, is conscious only of one unconstructed 
 word that at once denotes his one meaning. 
 But possibly he may find it inadequate — he 
 may not be understood as he wishes to be 
 understood, and so he may be driven to con- 
 struct an expression — thus, " Brother, forgive !" 
 or thus, " Brothers (nominative) forgive :" or 
 thus, " Forgive brother (fratrem) :" or thus, 
 " Entreated, forgive :" or thus, " Fully for- 
 give :" or thus, " Try to forgive." Any one 
 of these, or any one of fifty others, might have 
 been his special meaning in using the single 
 word ; but since he could not make that special 
 
150 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 meaning known by it, lie now uses means to 
 suggest what he wishes to be known, and 
 these means are, in each instance, put forward 
 as premises from which the hearer is to collect 
 a conclusion, which conclusion is signified by 
 the two parts joining into one whole, and each 
 losing its abstract meaning in the less abstract 
 meaning which they unite to express. The 
 grammatical character of the structure, which, 
 by imitating subsequent practice when parts 
 of speech were multiplied, is, in every one of 
 the six instances diiFerent, aiFects not the 
 nature of the logical process as here described : 
 this logical process is the same in each, though 
 the sense conveyed is different, and it will 
 continue the same however complicated the 
 grammatical structure may become by making 
 up each of the two parts out of other two 
 parts, and these again out of further two parts, 
 and so on till no more premises are needed to 
 suggest the one meaning. And that this is 
 the nature of, in connection with the structure 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 151 
 
 of, rational language, and nothing else its 
 nature and its structure, will appear by com- 
 paring the ordinary method of parsing which 
 prevails in schools, with the method which 1 
 have now to explain. As to the ordinary 
 method, it is adequate only for sentences con- 
 structed of no more than two parts of speech, 
 and is therefore adequate to the analysis of the 
 six examples given above, but it is not ade- 
 quate when the sentence is in the least degree 
 more complicate. Take, for instance, the first 
 period of the Lord's prayer, — "Our Father 
 which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name :" 
 — to begin the analysis with the part of speech 
 our, to proceed to the part of speech Father, 
 and so on to the last part of speech name, is 
 as if we should begin the examination of any 
 work of nature or art, by breaking it up at 
 once into its minutest parts, instead of first 
 surveying the large parts from which it imme- 
 diately receives its form and character. It is 
 evident, to proper observation, that the period 
 
152 THE WAY IN WPIICH LANGUAGE 
 
 in question is, until we descend below the 
 first division, a structure precisely the same as 
 the shorter example, " Brother, forgive," con- 
 sisting of a noun vocative, and a verb impera- 
 tive. But then, in the more complicated 
 sentence, the noun vocative is itself con- 
 structed, being made up of the substantive part 
 ouT-father, and the adjective part which-art- 
 in-heaven. Again, the substantive part is also 
 constructed, being made up of the adjective 
 part our, (specially called an adjective pro- 
 noun,) and the substantive part Father ; while 
 the adjective, wJiich-art-in-heaven, is, in con- 
 struction, a sentence made up of nominative 
 and verb, the verb being made up of the mere 
 grammatical verb, and of the adverb in heaven, 
 and this last being made up of the preposition, 
 and the noun objective to it. So again, the 
 latter great division of the whole period, haU 
 lowed'he-thy-naTne, is a sentence the same in 
 construction as " Entreated, forgive :" — this 
 being subdivided yields, for the latter of its 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 153 
 
 two parts, a sentence, be-thy-name, which in 
 construction is a verb imperative with its 
 nominative in the third person ; which nomi- 
 native is made up of the adjective part thy, 
 and the substantive part name. 
 
 The syllogistic process which I assert to take 
 place whenever meaning is received from two 
 parts of speech that are joined 4n order to 
 express the one meaning, may be thus illus- 
 trated to the eye : 
 
 Here, on receiving the former part of 
 speech, it is evident that if the hearer rests in 
 its meaning, he understands the speaker to 
 say just the contrary of what he intends to 
 say. The suspension of voice, with other 
 
154 THE WAY m WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 rhetorical indications, will prevent this, and 
 force the term to be received as a premise 
 only, awaiting the other premise in order to 
 suggest the conclusion. The lines drawn from 
 the two parts of speech may represent this 
 process : the points where they begin are two 
 in number, but these points move down and 
 become ona at the angle of junction. And 
 here I claim to make a passing remark on the 
 Aristotelian doctrine of affirmative and negative 
 propositions in the construction of the formal 
 syllogism; which doctrine I assert to be a 
 delusion, so far as it pretends to teach more 
 than a mere grammatical difference. The 
 term negative with regard to the foregoiug 
 example, (and the same could be shown of 
 all so-called negative propositions that occur 
 in examples of the formal syllogism,) applies 
 to it only as indicating the effect which not 
 produces on the term associated with it : as to 
 the meaning which the terms suggest when 
 their separate meanings have merged into that 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 156 
 
 one meaning, it is no more negative than the 
 meaning of the equivalent expression **Stay." 
 Assent and dissent have indeed their difference 
 in the mind ; but assent can be expressed by 
 a sentence grammatically negative, and 
 dissent by one grammxitically affirmative; 
 for instance, if it is said to me, " You are not 
 an Aristotelian," I can assent by replying, 
 ** I am not an Aristotelian," or dissent by 
 saying, " I am an Aristotelian." 
 
 In applying to more complicated structures 
 the mode of ocular illustration employed 
 above, 1 hope I shall be able to show how, by 
 repeated steps, meaning is collected from pre- 
 mises, sometimes by successive steps, some- 
 times, in a language of different genius, by 
 steps one of which is included in another, or 
 that crosses another, till, at last, having arrived 
 at two premises wliich collect the meaning of 
 all the preceding, we collect from these two 
 the one final meaning of the whole structure. 
 But, be it observed, that final meaning may 
 
156 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 be final only as regards the grammatical struc- 
 ture completed; since this structure may be 
 afterwards used as a premise in connection 
 with another premise exhibited in another 
 similar structure ; and both of them may be 
 independent, grammatically, of a third 
 structure which shall express a conclusion 
 issuing from the sense which those two have 
 suggested, to which single sense the last adds 
 the limitation, so that the whole three, though 
 distinct grammatically, are, logically, only one 
 expression with one meaning. Such, in point 
 of fact, is the shape in which the formal 
 syllogism presents itself, our explanation of 
 whose effect remains to be stated with more 
 particularity hereafter. In the meantime, I 
 propose to add further illustrations of the 
 informal syllogism exhibited to the eye in the 
 manner of the previous example. Instead of 
 a single syllogism, which the sentence Go not 
 presents, let us suppose a sentence whose 
 ultimate meaning is gathered from a series of 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 157 
 
 such syllogisms, and the process may be repre- 
 sented thus : 
 
 Preserve yourselves for better things. 
 
 Of this sentence, the understanding collects 
 the one whole meaning which flows down to 
 the point 0, in the following manner : — from 
 the premises ^preserve and yourselves^ it gets 
 the one meaning, ^preserve yourselves : from 
 for and better-things, it gets the one meaning, 
 fo7'-better-things ; but included in this syllo- 
 gism, is the sub-syllogism better and things, 
 yielding the one meaning better-things. And, 
 lastly, from the premises Preserve-yourselves, 
 and for-better-things, it gets the one meaning 
 of the whole sentence. 
 
158 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 Let US now see how the same meaning is 
 collected from the correspondent sentence in 
 a language of different genius : 
 
 Vosmet rebus servate secundis. 
 
 Here, in receiving the premise vosmet, the 
 understanding holds itself in suspense till the 
 other premise shall be supplied. In the mean 
 time, rebus, the premise of a second syllogism 
 is presented to the understanding, requiring 
 the same suspense on the same account. Then 
 comes servate, the other premise of the first 
 syllogism, yielding with vosmet the one mean- 
 ing vosmet-servate : then secundis, the other 
 premise of the second syllogism, yielding, 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 
 
 159 
 
 with rebus, the one meaning rehus-secundis. 
 And now, from the premises vosmet-servate 
 and rebus-secundis, we get the same one 
 meaning of the Latin sentence that we received 
 from the previous English sentence. 
 
 It may be as well to furnish another English 
 and correspondent Latin example, for the 
 sake of showing that in the latter language, 
 different hearers will not always collect the 
 meaning by exactly the same process. The 
 same difference occurs, though not so often, in 
 English : 
 
 There 
 
 is a certain pleasure in 
 
 weeping 
 
 Here, from the premises there and is, we 
 
160 THE WAY IX WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 receive the one meaning there-is : again, from 
 the premises a and certain-pleasure- in- 
 weeping, we get the one meaning a-certain- 
 ptleasv^re-in-weeping ; but included in this 
 syllogism, are two sub-syllogisms, the first 
 having for its premises certain and pleasure, 
 which yield the one meaning certain-plea- 
 sure ; and the second, in and weeping ^ which 
 yield the one meaning in-weeping. And, 
 lastly, the premises There-is ^ and a- certain- 
 pleasure-in-weeping, yield the one meaning 
 of the whole sentence. 
 
 The same meaning is collectible from the 
 Latin sentence in the following way : 
 
 quaedam flere voluptas. 
 
 If we suppose the meaning to be collected 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 161 
 
 in the manner which the figure indicates, 
 there is no diiFerence between this and the 
 Latin example preceding the last figure. For 
 in receiving the premise est, the understand- 
 ing remains suspended till it gets the other 
 premise ; and in the mean time, it receives 
 quoeda/m, the premise of a second syllogism 
 requiring a like suspense. Then comes Jlere 
 to complete the first syllogism, and then 
 voluptas to complete the second, yielding the 
 premises Est-flere and qucedam-voluptas, out 
 of which we collect the one meaning of the 
 whole. 
 
 But the same meaning is collectible from 
 tliis Latin sentence in the following somewhat 
 different manner : 
 
 Est quaedam flere voluptas. 
 
 M 
 
162 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 Here, though in the first part of the pro- 
 cedure, the understanding, as before, holds 
 itself in suspense at the premise est, and again 
 at the premise qucedam, yet in coming to 
 fiere it continues to hold itself in suspense 
 until voluptas completes the syllogism with 
 quceda'm. Then, out of the premises est and 
 qucedam-voluptas we get the one meaning 
 est-qucedam-voluptas ; and lastly, it is from 
 premises a little different, namely Est-quce- 
 dam-voluptas and flere, that we get the same 
 one meaning of the whole. 
 
 The reader cannot fail to have remarked 
 how tedious, in every one of these instances, 
 is the description of what takes place. This 
 is unavoidable. But, quite unlike the descrip- 
 tion, the acts of the understanding attempted 
 to be recorded by it, are under-rated in saying 
 they are as lightning, — at least with regard to 
 the hearer or reader who is versed in the 
 language, and in possession of the abstract 
 knowledge, which, before merging into the 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 163 
 
 Other parts of the sentence, or inamediately 
 into the sentence itself, the parts of speech 
 severally denote. The schoolboy, indeed, 
 who, in Latin, has to construe the sentence in 
 the ordinary, but unavoidably tedious manner, 
 and to whom the parts of speech, even in 
 English, bring, severally, only a limited degree 
 of that knowledge which will be accumulated 
 ^under them as his experience increases, finds 
 the process to be one of more or less difficulty ; 
 . but to others, it springs in successive flashes out 
 of gradually dissipating , darkness, till the last 
 flash reveals in full light the meaning for which 
 all that went before, was intended to prepare. 
 Language, then, whenever it makes thought 
 known in such a way that the parts which 
 enter into its construction, are separately at- 
 tended to before receiving the meaning of the 
 construction as a whole, does not stand for 
 thought as a sign stands for the thing signified, 
 till the structure is complete. The parts 
 of that structure do not signify parts of the 
 
164 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 speaker's thouglit, — thought has no parts, — 
 but they are means used for recalling know- 
 ledge in the hearer, which knowledge losing 
 its abstraction in proportion as the parts join 
 to form new wholes, the parts now united at 
 length indicate that special thought which the 
 speaker desires to convey. Then, and not till 
 then, when the hearer and the speaker have 
 the same thought in common, may it be said 
 with truth that the expression which has been 
 formed is the outward sign of what, with re-, 
 gard to both of them, exists within. But 
 among the causes which have prevented the 
 world from seeing the relation of language to 
 thought in this its true point of view, is the 
 fact, that we do not always collect the meaning 
 of a sentence from its several parts, but, being 
 familiar both with the sentence, and its mean- 
 ing as a whole, we at once receive from the 
 one structure its one meaning. Who, for 
 instance, has to collect out of the several parts 
 the meaning of the common sentences of com- 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 165 
 
 mon discourse ? Who thinks what how^ and 
 do, and yoUy and do, separately mean on hear- 
 ing the sentence which those parts construct ? 
 Who does not understand, as single parts of 
 speech, all the common combinations which 
 serve to connect and carry on construction, 
 such as, in-co7isequence-of^ on-this-account, 
 under-these-circumstances, at-all-events^ ad- 
 , TYiitting-the-fact, and the like? Indeed, we 
 are entitled to say of ordinary common-place 
 speakers, that as they scarcely use constructed 
 language except in forms already existing, so, 
 with them, each thought finds an immediate 
 sign in some familiar sentence ; but then, be 
 it observed, the parts which compose the sign 
 have ceased to be separately significant : the 
 sentences so used have been brought back to 
 the condition of original or natural language, 
 that of exclamations, — they have ceased to be 
 logical, by having become purely rhetorical. 
 
 The effect above described, as regards the 
 familiar forms of constructed speech, is per- 
 
166 THE WAY m WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 fectly analogous to what had previously taken 
 place as regards our perceptions, and is pro- 
 ductive of a similar error in the doctrine en- 
 gendered by it. We have seen that every 
 perception at its first occurrence to the human 
 being, was an intellectual act, such as, when 
 words are subsequently instrumental to such 
 an act,we consider a syllogism, informal though 
 it may be. But that act having once taken 
 place — the conclusion of the virtual syllogism 
 having once been received — the knowledge 
 having been reposited apart from its premises, 
 — those premises, as premises, are no longer 
 required ; the occurrence of the sensation 
 which entered partially into the proceeding, is 
 sufficient to bring back the knowledge without 
 renewing the act that led to it, and thence- 
 forward the sensation and the thing under- 
 stood, are one. Thus it is, as stated in former 
 pages, that human perception becomes prac- 
 tically the same as brute perception, and the 
 error engendered by the fact is, that from the 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 167 
 
 days of Aristotle — we may perhaps say from 
 the days of Adam — to those of Locke and 
 Home Tooke inclusive, the practical identity 
 of the two cases, has hindered the inquiry 
 concerning the possible difference between 
 them originally. So with regard to language, 
 it cannot, I think, any longer be denied that 
 the first time a child puts two signs together 
 / to express his one thought, he substitutes a 
 logical for what, when he used only one sign, 
 was a natural way of trying to make it known ; 
 and it cannot, 1 believe, be any longer imagined 
 that either of the two signs is, separately, sig- 
 nificant of his thought, or part of his thought, 
 but that they are premises put forward in 
 order that his one thought may be collected 
 from them as a conclusion. As soon however 
 as they are put together, they do stand for his 
 thought, and the expression so formed may 
 become a familiar established expression bring- 
 ing back the thought every time it is used, 
 without demanding a repetition of the logical 
 
168 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 process that went along with it at first. In 
 this way, then, language sometimes is, though 
 it generally is not, related to thought in the 
 same way that, in other matters, a sign is 
 related to the thing signified ; and the error 
 of doctrine engendered by the fact is this, that 
 again from the days of Aristotle down to 
 Ijocke and Home Tooke inclusive, it has been 
 taken for granted that language is, in all its 
 parts, and at all times, related to thought in 
 that way in which, only under certain circum- 
 stances it stands related. Hence it is that 
 the true nature and import, the legitimate use 
 and proper operation of signs which are only 
 parts of a word, and, in strictness, not by 
 themselves to be deemed words, remains yet 
 to be taught, or, at least, remains yet to be 
 accepted. When it shall be accepted, it will 
 reconcile Locke and Tooke to themselves and 
 to each other, while it will make evident what 
 both of them saw though they could not prove, 
 and what men of strong sense, untrammelled 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 169 
 
 by academical learning, are always forward to 
 assert, that Aristotelian Logic is, as I lately said, 
 a puerile juggle with the forms of language, 
 and the metaphysics of ancient Greece and 
 modern- Germany, a something which has 
 seeming existence, only through favour of 
 surrounding darkness. 
 
 I think it here necessary to re-assert, that 
 what has been called an act of intellection, 
 whenever such an act occurs, is inevitably 
 what it is, — inevitable in the same way that a 
 sensation is inevitable the adequate cause 
 being present, — inevitable as an emotion is 
 inevitable a sufficient cause for it arising. A 
 real and an ideal sensation occurring at one 
 and the same instant, was the cause of the first 
 intellection by which the babe became con- 
 scious of existence, and the latter efiect was 
 quite as unavoidable as the two former. Just 
 as unavoidable is every subsequent intellection 
 of the human being to the end of life, let pre- 
 mises vary as they may. We are accustomed 
 
170 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 indeed, when the process of reasoning, with 
 regard to the choice and assembling of premises, 
 becomes a work of art and prolonged labour, 
 to speak of drawing wrong conclusions ; but 
 the expression misleads us if it induces us to 
 believe that the essential act in each step of 
 the reasoning process is a voluntary one, or 
 that it can occur wrongly. With regard to 
 that act itself, irrespective of the preparation 
 made for it, it cannot be other than it is, and, 
 with relation to its actual premises, it cannot 
 be wrong. To understand facts or phenomena 
 as premises, is, to understand the conclusion 
 which they necessarily include ; to understand 
 a fact or phenomenon as a conclusion, is, to 
 understand it in connection with premises that 
 include it. How is it, then, that we ever 
 reach a wrong conclusion ? It may be done 
 by using a calculus in the process, and using 
 it wrongly, as we may perform a sum wrongly 
 in arithmetic, and so get a wrong conclusion. 
 But the majority of mankind are not ingenious 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 171 
 
 enough to substitute an artificial for an all- 
 sufficient natural act,^ and when they get 
 wrong conclusions, which no doubt they do in 
 too sufficient abundance, it is not by a non- 
 distribution of a middle, or an illicit process 
 of a major or a minor, but through the wrong 
 premises which their ignorance, their passions, 
 their prejudices, are continually throwing in 
 their way. Even before the intermediation of 
 language, our perceptions may be false because 
 our senses may be diseased, and our conceptions 
 wrong because our fancies may be disordered ; 
 but in every case the act of intellection with 
 regard to its suggestive occasions is right, and 
 wrong only because those are wrong. And 
 
 * The formal syllogism is wonderfully fitted to meet 
 the predilections of those gentlemen — 
 Who love, by geometric scale, 
 To take the size of pots of ale, 
 Eesolve by line and tangent straight 
 If bread and butter wants of weight, 
 And wisely tell what time of day 
 The clock doth strike by algebra. 
 
172 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 very often when error is attributed to an act 
 of intellection, no such act has taken place. 
 We are plausibly told that a madman reasons 
 justly from false data, and a fool erroneously 
 from just data. Only the former part of this 
 assertion is correct. The fool reasons justly 
 from such data as his intellect can reach : what, 
 to a higher intellect, appears a false conclusion 
 in the fool's, is, in the latter, not a conclusion, 
 because his intellect has not embraced as pre- 
 mises what the wiser man's intellect does so 
 embrace. In other words, we are justified in 
 calling a fool's characteristic actions or sayings 
 irrational, not because they are wrong effects 
 of a rational proceeding, but because they 
 take place independently of any such pro- 
 ceeding. 
 
 And now, 1 must beg my reader will recon- 
 sider by the light which the present chapter 
 is intended to furnish, the history, so often 
 pressed on his attention, of the progress of our 
 human state from unconsciousness up to adult 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 173 
 
 knowledge. Let him remember how the infant 
 creature was represented to get its earliest 
 dawn of thought; how real sensations are 
 felt, but not understood — not known — till 
 ideal states supervene ; how these, in contra- 
 distinction to the real, yield the condition 
 under which all "thought takes place, namely, 
 the co-existence of things having some rela- 
 tion to each other, of which the intellect is 
 created to be cognizant ; how the real and the 
 unreal thus become a part of consciousness 
 even before the outward world is known ; how 
 muscular action, resisted and unresisted, gives 
 the next thought ; to indicate which thought 
 in terms correspondent to its first dim light, 
 is impossible : it is, like the other, at first only 
 a part of consciousness, the outward world 
 being still unknown; how another thought 
 occurs in this manner, — an event, say feeding 
 by suction, now a conscious reality, takes place 
 and ceases ; conscious existence goes on, and 
 the event again takes place; the thought 
 
174 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 alluded to being generated by the events 
 which ibrm one premise, and the conscious 
 existence between them, which is the other ; 
 this thought or conclusion also being, by its 
 then dimness, far short of any terms that are 
 fitted to meet its riper state ; how at length 
 the outward world revealed itself in the dim 
 twilight of the next thought, suggested by 
 solid substance that does not sympathize with 
 the opposing touch, in contradistinction to 
 that which does ; the latter being now known 
 as self, the former as the world beyond it; 
 how this discovery acted on the thoughts that 
 had preceded it, by referring the real to the 
 outward world, and to self, existing in, and 
 being a part of it, although that same self, by 
 its consciousness and sensibility, remains iso- 
 lated in the world it lives in; and further, 
 how the unreal, the creations of which, by the 
 operations of the real on the understanding, 
 were constantly increasing, were referred to 
 self, and experienced, except when the real 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 175 
 
 was excluded by sleep or other cause, to be 
 essentially a part of that self; a microcosm or 
 little world within, contrasting with the ma- 
 crocosm or great world without ; how likewise 
 that which resisted and that which did not 
 resist muscular power were also now referred 
 to the outward world and known as Space- 
 occupied, and Space-unoccupied; while con- 
 scious existence which went between events, 
 was now itself measured by outward duration, 
 and known as Time, — I ask my reader, while 
 he recollects the statement in substance such 
 as this in earlier chapters, whether it is not 
 consistent and correspondent in character with 
 what has been advanced in the present chapter, 
 and corroborative each of the other ? 
 
 I have further to observe that as thought 
 began by the rising up of the unreal in contra- 
 distinction to the real, so it is carried on, and 
 cannot otherwise be carried on, by contrast in 
 particulars of the one world with the other : 
 that is to say, every ordinary thought we have. 
 
176 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 suggested as our ordinary thoughts are by what 
 we see, and hear, and touch, and taste, and 
 smell, finds its other indispensable premise in 
 what we remember to have seen, heard, 
 touched, tasted, and smelled. The friend 
 whose presence brings with it the delightful 
 thought of all his amiable qualities, brings that 
 thought only by bringing before me the facts 
 of our past intercourse, facts now become 
 ideal : — the song which I listen to with delight, 
 could not afford that delight, if the past notes 
 did not remain in consciousness to combine 
 with the note, the only note, that I really 
 hear: — the object (suppose me to be born 
 blind) which I ascertain by feeling to be a 
 straight line or a curved one, a triangle or a 
 circle, a plane or a solid, a cube or a sphere, 
 could not, unless so small as to be taken into 
 the hand at once, be ascertained to be w^hat it 
 is, unless those parts of the whole which the 
 hand had relinquished, remained in conscious- 
 ness with the part really touched : — the peach 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 177 
 
 which I taste, the rose which I smell, and 
 which I recognise, be it supposed, by those 
 senses alone, I could not so recognise if the 
 real flavour and the real odour did not bring 
 with them the ideal flavour and the ideal 
 odour of past occasions. In this manner, then, 
 is the ideal world ever present to consciousness 
 in ccfnnection with the real world : and it is 
 even more constantly present ; for we can par- 
 tially shut out the latter by excluding it from 
 some of our. senses, but the former remains not 
 only in our. waking hours, but, for the most 
 part, and perhaps always, even when we sleep. 
 Now, — (unless it be a thought of the con- 
 stantly recurring kind which is already pro- 
 vided with a constructed WORD, to the parts of 
 which we have ceased to give separate atten- 
 tion,) — the process of making a thought known 
 to others must resemble that by which the 
 speaker came to have it himself. He places 
 before them, not his thought — he cannot im- 
 mediately do that, — nor yet parts of his 
 
178 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 thought, for thought has no parts; but he 
 calls up ideas which are common to them and 
 to himself, in order that thought after thought 
 may spring from these, till at length the de- 
 sired state of intellect is engendered, and his 
 thought is known. Till he comes to the end 
 of his speech, whether its end be the sentence 
 in progress, or require volumes for its develop- 
 ment, we are not entitled to rest in the mean- 
 ing, but must hold it in suspense for the 
 junction of other parts, out of which junction, 
 new meaning will spring, till the intended 
 meaning is at last revealed.^ 
 
 In the process here attempted to be de- 
 scribed, it must be borne in mind, that the 
 ideas which the speaker calls up in order to 
 engender thought, are ideal presentations of 
 real things, or of things, including fancied 
 
 ^ The Bible is an instance : one part is meant to be 
 taken with another, and the conclusion or spirit of the 
 whole gives it the title of the Word of God, — the one 
 word with one meaning. 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 179 
 
 things, which are absent from sense ; and that 
 such an idea never finds a correspondent sign 
 in an abstract part of speech. While we 
 understand it abstractly, a part of speech de- 
 notes knowledge, but not an idea in the only 
 sense of the term which the reader is requested 
 to entertain. The part of speech, man, for in- 
 stance, does not stand for any man in particular 
 until we so apply it, and of course it does not 
 stand for the idea of a man in our sense of 
 idea, because we cannot have a clear idea of 
 this kind, unless it be accompanied by every 
 circumstance that attaches to a particular. 
 What, then, is it but the sign of the know- 
 ledge which we have gathered from particulars, 
 have accumulated under the sign, and now, 
 until we join it to other similar signs, the 
 means by which we hold that knowledge apart 
 from — abstractly from — the particulars that 
 suggested it. Let the fact be re-stated by 
 saying that the noun man, in a detached state, 
 does not signify a particular man, or the idea 
 
180 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 of a particular man, but includes, or is pre- 
 sumed to include, the knowledge of what it is to 
 be a man. So the noun circle, in an unapplied 
 state, does not signify a particular circle^ or 
 the idea of one, but the knowledge of what it is 
 to be a circle. Again, the noun virtue denotes 
 the knowledge of what it is to be virtuous ; 
 and the proper name John, however it may 
 be made to stand for my familiar friend under 
 the particular circumstances of the moment as 
 often as I have occasion so to apply it, yet, 
 abstracted from these circumstances, and still 
 remaining the proper name • of that familiar 
 friend, it denotes my knowledge of what John 
 is, collected from, yet now apart from, all the 
 circumstances of his life that my intimacy with 
 him has brought before me. 
 
 Now with respect to names thus entertained 
 separately from expressions into which, as 
 indicated by their grammatical form, they are 
 meant to enter, three important observations 
 are to be made. The first is, that no such 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 181 
 
 name can stand for more knowledge in the 
 individual who uses it, than he has acquired ; 
 the second, that he may reason, or pretend to 
 reason, from a name under which he can have 
 no knowledge at all; the third, that as an 
 abstract name is not intended for meaning by 
 itself, but to make meaning with other parts 
 of speech, so, even when there is knowledge 
 under it, we are not entitled to count upon it 
 as the knowledge of anything existing, unless 
 we can trace it to some singular existing thing 
 or things. We may indeed, without such 
 proof, substitute a hypothetical definition, and 
 build our argument on this; but then the 
 value of the proceeding wiU entirely depend 
 on the applicability of the argument, when 
 complete, to matters of fact and practice. 
 Let these three observations be repeated and 
 exemplified. 
 
 First, it is evidently impossible that a name 
 should stand for more knowledge in the indi- 
 \'idual who uses it, than the individual has 
 
182 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 acquired. But this is to be remarked, that all 
 knowledge which a name can include, is not 
 necessary to its adequacy in coming to conclu- 
 sions of limited extent. When we say, " a 
 large man could not get through this opening," 
 — no other knowledge is necessary of what a 
 man is, than that of the ordinary and less 
 ordinary sizes of men. It requires other know- 
 ledge under the same name, to conclude that 
 " man is the highest of the Maker's creatures 
 here on earth ;" and again, other knowledge 
 to conclude that " man is what his education 
 makes him." It is by continually hearing or 
 reading the same word in diiferent contexts 
 that our knowledge under it, is widened, as 
 well as by experience gathered from the things 
 to which it is applied. How very limited is 
 the knowledge which young persons entertain 
 under innumerable words of very large abstract 
 capacity, needs hardly be observed : for the 
 process by which knowledge is accumulated 
 is only in its beginning with them. And what 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 183 
 
 is that process but the method which Bacon 
 shows to be the only true process, and which 
 Locke's philosophy undertakes to trace from 
 its beginning ? 
 
 In the second place, it is possible to reason, 
 or pretend to reason, from a name under which 
 there can be no knowledge at all. We may 
 choose, for instance, to speak of Rotundo- 
 aquareness ; we may call it an idea, an in- 
 tuition, or anything else that may help to hide 
 its nonsense ; and then, only requiring the first 
 step to be given, the absolute concurrence of 
 round and squareness, we may construct a 
 system of which every following step shall 
 be demonstratively consequential. What will 
 be the value of such a proceeding, the reader 
 is left to judge. 
 
 In the third place, even when there is 
 knowledge under an abstract name, we are 
 not entitled to count upon it as the knowledge 
 of real existence, unless we can prove that a 
 thing or things exist to which the knowledge 
 
184 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 corresponds, or unless, if we define the term 
 hypothetically, we can apply our demonstra- 
 tion with practical effect to real things. That, 
 in pure geometry, there is knowledge under 
 the abstract names a point, a line, an angle, a 
 circle, and so forth, none can deny ; but we 
 cannot prove that anything exists in nature 
 rigorously correspondent to our knowledge, 
 although we can and do re-apply the names to 
 the numerous individual things that originally 
 suggested it. Now it is the possibility of this 
 constant re-application of our knowledge to 
 physical things, to things in nature, that 
 renders valuable a demonstration from a thing 
 metaphysical, a thing out of nature. No such 
 re-application is possible when we come to such 
 metaphysical existences as matter, Tnind, God, 
 spirit, infinity, eternity, absoluteness, and 
 the like : we cannot prove by any procedure 
 of human science that these things exist : we 
 can indeed readily indicate a multitude of 
 things to which we apply the common name 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 
 
 of matter ; we can point to man as exhibiting 
 in his discourse and actions what we call 
 mind ; we can appeal, independently of re- 
 velation, to the wisdom and beneficence evident 
 in the design of the universe so far as we ex- 
 perimentally understand it, as a proof inductive 
 that a God exists ; we can believe in the ex- 
 istence of other intelligent beings than our- 
 selves although we perceive them not, and call 
 them spirits ; we are sure that, relatively to 
 ourselves, many things are endless, are out- 
 enduring, are without dependence or con- 
 tingency — but only, we repeat, as regards 
 ourselves : for as to infinity, eternity, abso- 
 luteness, put forward with pretence to higher 
 knowledge, they are terms that do but hide 
 our inevitable, our necessary ignorance. 
 
 We may further observe, to the same pur- 
 pose, that though many such names as we 
 have referred to, have no correspondence, in 
 their abstract state, with anything that we can 
 prove to exist, yet making sense with other 
 
186 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 parts of speech, and so losing some of their 
 abstract meaning, they are valuable elements 
 in the construction of other names. We speak 
 with sufficient intelligibility of '* the infinite 
 goodness of God,'' of " his absolute perfection," 
 of " the mind of the Eternal," of " the human 
 mind," of " the vast extent of matter" and the 
 like. But when we presume on the apparent 
 entirety of form and meaning of the parts 
 entering into these expressions, — each of 
 which so formed expressions, be it observed, 
 is one expression with one incomplex meaning, 
 — when, resting in the abstract sense of a part 
 of speech detached from the other parts that 
 take that abstract sense away, we attempt to 
 raise science on such foundations as the 
 Infinite, the Absolute or Unconditioned, the 
 Idea of Mind, the Idea of Matter, and the 
 like, each considered abstractly from all sin- 
 gulars existing in the visible, and the invisible 
 but accredited world, — that is to say, abstractly 
 from individual men, abstractly from God, 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 187 
 
 abstractly from spirits, abstractly from things 
 differing in kind of matter,— when we attempt 
 thus much, it may be confidently said that we 
 are under the dominion of an enormous error 
 engendered by a wrong use of language ; and 
 this wrong practice produced by a wrong 
 understanding of the relation in which lan- 
 guage stands to thought. Here is the source, 
 — a source quite sufficient it is to produce the 
 evil, — of all the systems which pseudo-philo- 
 sophy has put forth to divide, bewilder, and 
 misinstruct mankind. 
 
 But perhaps these systems would have had 
 little chance against the common sense of 
 mankind, if an organon or instrument of 
 reasoning exactly adapted to them, had not 
 existed from the days of Aristotle to our own. 
 This instrument enables us to reason with 
 parts of speech in their abstract state, so as to 
 dispense with all attention to real things ; just 
 as, when we reckon up a sum in arithmetic, 
 we dispense with all regard to the kind of 
 
188 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 things numbered. It pretends to be the 
 science of the laws of thought, as if there 
 could be such a science without first rendering 
 thought mischievously artificial, — as if there 
 could be a science of natural thought, any- 
 more than a science of natural sensation, and 
 of natural emotion. What formal logic truly is, 
 may be stated in words that amount to its own 
 proposition : it is the science or the art, which, 
 in the use of language, apprehends parts of 
 speech abstractly, and keeps them abstract ; 
 then judges, by two separate acts of com- 
 parison, that two of these parts of speech or 
 the abstractions they signify, agree or disagree 
 with a third ; and, lastly, by a necessary act 
 of reason, concludes that the two parts of 
 speech or abstractions which have been com- 
 pared with the third, agree or disagree with 
 each other. For instance, let This (meaning 
 this bird). Swan, and Goose, be the three 
 abstractions, or x, y, z; — we compare swan 
 with goose, y with z, and deny that they 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 189 
 
 agree by saying, No swan is a goose : we com- 
 pare this with swan, x with y, and affirm 
 that they agree by saying, This is a swan : 
 and so we conclude inevitably that x is not z, 
 that is, that the swan (this) is not a goose. 
 The perfection of the art, and its adepts boast 
 of that perfection, is, that it puts signs for 
 things, and makes its conclusions depend on 
 the form of the reasoning, and not on the 
 knowledge of the things concerning which the 
 reasoning takes place. Such, fortunately, is 
 not the logic in use by mankind, — not even 
 by the Aristotelians themselves when they 
 step out of their colleges and mingle with the 
 rest of the world. The logic which all of us 
 use who use language, is an art which also 
 employs language instrumentally in reasoning, 
 but so employs it as ever to lose its abstrac- 
 tions as fast as they answer their end, while it 
 never loses sight of the things, on and from the 
 knowledge of which, the reasoning takes place. 
 In this logic, as in formal logic, the previous 
 
190 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 example is also a syllogism, but a syllogism 
 rising out of previous syllogisms, all of which 
 the last syllogism includes, while, throughout 
 the whole process, the knowledge is presup- 
 posed of what it is to be a swan, and what it 
 is to be a goose, gathered from familiarity with 
 the things in particular instances. Warranted 
 by this knowledge, we affirm — not deny — 
 that No swan is a goose, — a conclusion that, 
 in point of expression, arises out of the two im- 
 mediate premises 7ho swan and is a goose, 
 each of these being also conclusions, in point 
 of expression, from subordinate premises. The 
 same knowledge enables us to affirm This is a 
 swan, — a conclusion in point of expression 
 from the premises this and is a swan, which 
 join, and, as in the previous affirmation, become 
 one in meaning. But we are quite aware, 
 while this proceeding is in hand, so long in 
 description, but in its acts like lightning, that 
 the thought we propose to express is one, how- 
 ever we may be using many parts of speech to 
 
IS THE EXPONEIfT OF THOUGHT. 191 
 
 construct a WORD for it. To complete this 
 word — this one expression with one meaning, 
 — ^we have now only to take all that precedes 
 as the first of the two premises of the syllogism 
 that will collect all the others, and then add 
 the premise which will complete it, namely, It 
 is not a goose, and the work is done, — As no 
 swan is a goose, and this is a swan, it is not a 
 goose. In this manner, we rid logic of the 
 three operations of the mind by installing 
 reason — the informal — the virtual syllogism, 
 in place of simple apprehension or perception, 
 and in place of judgement, while of course we 
 leave her where she has always been under- 
 stood to reign. In this manner, too, we rid 
 logic of the care of looking after the affirma- 
 tive or negative quality of propositions, leaving 
 that care entirely to grammar. We also leave 
 to grammar the useful terms subject and pre- 
 dioate, and, with them, the whole doctrine of 
 predication.^ And, dear reader, — for we hope 
 * Connotative and non-connotative, much lauded 
 
192 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 we have made or confirmed you a Lockeist, — 
 along with these, what a precious jargon do we 
 at the same time get rid of, — Distribution and 
 non-distribution of terms ; Undistributed mid- 
 dle ; Illicit process of the major ; Illicit process 
 of the minor; Mood and iigure — Barbara, 
 Celarent, Darii, Ferio, Cesare, Camestres, Fes- 
 tino, Baroko, Feriso, Bramantip, Camenes, 
 Dimaris, Fesapo, Fresison ; Categoricals, Me- 
 dals, Constructive form, Destructive form, 
 Ostensive reduction. Illative conversion, &c. 
 &c. &c. ! In listening to all this, well may 
 we, as I wrote many years ago, join with 
 Mons. Jourdain in exclaimitig — " Voiia des 
 mots qui sont trop rebarbatifs. Cette logique 
 la ne me revient point. Apprenons autre 
 chose qui soit plus jolie." 
 
 There remains a remark to be made with 
 reference to parts of speech not being nouns or 
 
 terms of modern invention, are also at the service of 
 grammar, if grammar wants them : as to logic, tliey 
 are of no use to it, when we leave Aristotle behind. 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 193 
 
 verbs infinitive ; which latter are indeed but a 
 sort of nouns. As to a verb personal, it may 
 or may not be a part of speech, since it is 
 sometimes the whole speech, — the one word 
 with the one meaning ; for instance, " Come ;" 
 " Go ; " '' Esurio ; " " Vixit." Excluding 
 verbs so used, and excluding nouns and verbs 
 infinitive, our present remark is, that all parts 
 of speech bear their inconclusive meaning in 
 their very form, and yet, like nouns, they are 
 signs of knowledge, but often of knowledge so 
 excessively abstract as hardly to be definable. 
 We are conscious, in using them, that they are 
 not without meaning, but we wait for what is 
 to be joined to them to know what that mean- 
 ing will merge into. If any one says — " I am 
 employed in — " and stops short, we ask im- 
 patiently — "In what?" The preposition 
 evidently yields no meaning in which we are 
 satisfied to rest, and the remark holds good of 
 prepositions, conjunctions, adjectives, and ad- 
 verbs generally, and also of verbs personal, if 
 
194 THE WAY IN WHICH LANGUAGE 
 
 only parts of speech. In all of them, the 
 grammatical form concurring with the very- 
 vague meaning which attends many of them 
 when they stand alone, forces us to insist on a 
 continuation of the structure which is to take 
 their vagueness away. It is only when a part 
 of speech has the form of noun or verb infini- 
 tive that we are tempted to rest in its abstract 
 meaning ; and where the abstraction is greatest, 
 the temptation is often greatest, seduced, as 
 we are apt to be, by the indefinable and ob- 
 scure, into an opinion of the profound, the 
 vast, the sublime. What an excessive abstrac- 
 tion we have in the infinitive verb. To be ! — 
 it signifies existence apart from anything ex- 
 isting. Does not every one of undeladed 
 common sense perceive, that such a meaning 
 would not for an instant be accepted as of the 
 least value, if the relation of language to 
 thought were justly understood ? Seeing the 
 abstraction to be the pure effect of the artificial 
 structure of language, we should understand 
 
IS THE EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. 195 
 
 the meaning to rest in the word, and be value- 
 less until restricted by, or rather lost in some 
 context. Yet upon this abstraction Hegel has 
 constructed his system of philosophy, which 
 explains the universe and all that therein is,— 
 a wondrous web, woven 
 
 Out of fine cobweb, fit for skull 
 That's empty when the moon is full. 
 
 As a conclusion to these chapters, the reader, 
 who was spared a preface, is reminded that the 
 author does not pretend to have re-constructed 
 Locke's philosophy, but only to show how it 
 is to be done. ^* But if he knows how it should 
 be done, why has he himself not done it ? " 
 Alas ! he has done too much already to be 
 easily forgiven. How does such a one as he, 
 of small name even now, of no name at all 
 before he took up this subject, dare enter a 
 field appropriated by men who have gained 
 the ear of the reading public, and are inte- 
 rested in keeping it ? Is it likely they would 
 
196 CONCLUSION. 
 
 have drawn attention, by any notice of theirs, 
 to a writer, who, while he had youth, and 
 spirits, and time, to accomplish it, might have 
 produced a work important enough to contend 
 with — nay to have overturned — the philoso- 
 phies, the logics, and the grammars of the 
 day ? Instead of assistance in this way, while 
 the generality of periodicals have been content 
 to avoid all aid by keeping a cautious silence, 
 and ignoring the author, one at least among 
 the number has stood between him and the 
 public by designed and decided misrepresenta- 
 tion. In 1837, the periodical alluded to speaks 
 of him as an author *' endeavouring to revive 
 the study of metaphysics, which the experience 
 of ages has proved to be barren." Some 
 twelve years after, the same periodical, care- 
 fully avoiding any explanation of the princi- 
 ples of the author's Logic, charges him with a 
 design to cheat the public by substituting him- 
 self for Aristotle : and more lately, with refer- 
 ence to a work in which he tried to get the ear 
 
CONCLUSION. 197 
 
 of the public by coucbing his principles in a 
 popular form, the same periodical, choosing to 
 consider the book only in its character of 
 Novel, finds it of course a very dull one, and 
 di-agging the author from under his disguise 
 of editor, sets him down as " one of a little 
 knot of curious speculators in that mysticism 
 which in our day calls itself metaphysical 
 science." In other quarters, indeed, he has 
 not found such sort of opposition: nay, in 
 stable works of high reputation, he is the subject 
 of laudatory foot-notes ; while, to return to 
 periodicals, there is one which, some years 
 back, said of his Essays, that " like all works 
 destined to last and grow in favour, they are 
 written for posterity :" — yes, 
 
 " The only way his fault to cover, 
 To hide his guilt from every eye," 
 To shine, and not offend another, 
 Nor stir up malice, " is— to die." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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