is of much more importance, Hobbes builds nothing on the prin ciple which he had announced. He does not even announce it, as differing in any respect from the general laws of material motion and impact: nor was it, indeed, possible for him so to do, compatibly with his system, which was exclusively material and mechanical. Far otherwise is it with Des Cartes; greatly as he too in his after writings (and still more egregiously his followers De la Forge, and others) obscured the truth by their attempts to explain it on the theory of nervous fluids, and material configurations. But, in his interesting work, De Methodo, alterius, quæ aliquando una cum ea memoriæ impressa fuit. Ut si videam luos oculos cum naso, continuo frontem, et os, omnesque alias faciei partes imaginor, quia assuetus non sum unas sine aliis videre. Et cum video ignem, recordor colorem ejus, quem viso igne percepi aliquando' That Hobbes was not the discoverer or first propounder of this law of association is, indeed, clear enough; but it does not appear that he was indebted to Des Cartes for his knowledge of it; and it must be admitted that he states the rule with distinctness. "The cause of the coherence or consequence of one conception to another, is their first coherence or consequence at that time when they are produced by sense." H. N., c. iv. 2. See also Leviathan, Pt. I., c. iii. Neither is it, perhaps, quite correct to say that Hobbes builds nothing on this law. He at least clearly saw its connexion with speech. "It is the nature almost of every corporal thing, being often moved in one and the same manner, to receive continually a greater and greater easiness and aptitude to the same motion, insomuch as in time the same becometh so habitual, that to beget, it there needs no more than to begin it. The passions of man, as they are the beginning of voluntary motions, so are they the beginning of speech, which is the motion of the tongue. And men desiring to show others the knowledge, opinions, conceptions, and passions, which are in themselves, and to that end having invented language, have by that means transferred all that discursion of their mind mentioned in the former chapter, by the motion of their tongues, into discourse of words: and ratio now is but oratio, for the most part, wherein custom hath so great a power, that the mind suggesteth only the first word; the rest follow habitually, and are not followed by the mind," &c. H. N., c. v. 14. Ed.] 4 [It may well be doubted whether Mr. Coleridge is not more indulgent here to Des Cartes than the truth of the case warrants. The Tractatus de Homine is, no doubt, a part of the great Work of which he gives an account in his De Methodo, as being then written; and in it the nervous fluids and material configurations are displayed as precisely, if not as copiously, as by his commentator De la Forge himself. The "animal spirits" Des Cartes relates the circumstance which first led him to medi tate on this subject, and which since then has been often noticed and employed as an instance and illustration of the law. A child who with its eyes bandaged had lost several of his fingers by amputation, continued to complain for many days successively of pains, now in this joint and now in that, of the very fingers which had been cut off. Des Cartes was led by this incident to reflect on the uncertainty with which we attribute any particular place to any inward pain or uneasiness, and proceeded after long consideration to establish it as a general law; that contemporaneous impressions, whether images or sensations, recall each other mechanically. On this principle, as a ground work, he built up the whole systein of human language, as one continued process of association. He showed in what sense not only general terms, but generic images,-under the name of abstract ideas,-actually existed, and in what consist their nature and power. As one word may become the general exponent of many, so by association a simple image may represent move mind and body. See De Hom., P. IV., s. 55, &c. See even in the De Methodo itself. Denique id quod hic super omnia observari meretur, generatio est spirituum animalium, quæ aut instar, venti subtilissimi, aut potius flammæ purissimæ ; quæ continue e corde magna copia in cerebrum ascendens, inde per nervos in musculos penetrat, et omnibus membris motum dat, &c. P. 30., edit. 1664. See Spectator, No. 417. And indeed their agency is distinctly recognised in the same part of the Principia, in which the story of the child is related. Ed.] 5 [This story is told by Des Cartes in these words as one of many proofs that animam, non quatenus est in singulis membris, sed tantum quatenus est in cerebro, ea quæ corpori occidunt in singulis membris, nervorum ope sentire. Cum puellæ cuidam, manum gravi morbo affectam habenti, velarentur oculi, quoties chirurgus accedebat, ne curationis apparatu turbaretur, eique, post aliquot dies brachium ad cubitum usque, ob gangrenam in eo serpentem, fuisset amputatam, et panni in ejus locum ita substituti, ut eo se privatam esse plane ignoraret, ipsa interim varios dolores, nunc in uno ejus manus quæ abscissa erat digito, nunc in alio se sentire querebatur. Quod sane aliunde contingere non poterat, quam ex eo, quod nervi, qui prius ex cerebro ad manum descendebant, tuncque in brachio juxta cubi. tum terminabantur, eodem modo ibi moverentur, ac prius moveri debuissent in manu, ad sensum hujus vel illius, digiti dolentis animæ in cerebro residenti imprimendum. Princ. IV., 196 Ed.] a whole class." But in truth Hobbes himself makes no claims to any discovery, and introduces this law of association, or (in his own language) discursion of mind, as an admitted fact, in the solution alone of which, and this by causes 'purely physiological, he arrogates any originality. His system is briefly this; whenever the senses are impinged on by external objects, whether by the rays of light reflected from them, or by effluxes of their finer particles, there results a correspondent motion of the innermost and subtlest organs. This motion constitutes a representation, and there remains an impression of the same, or a certain disposition to repeat the same motion. Whenever we feel several objects at the same time, the impressions that are left (or in the language of Mr. Hume, the ideas) are linked together. Whenever therefore any one of the movements, which constitute a complex impression, is renewed through the senses, the others succeed mechanically. It follows of necessity, therefore, that Hobbes, as well as Hartley and all others who derive association from the connexion and interdependence of the supposed matter, the movements of which constitute our thoughts, must have reduced all its forms to the one law of Time. But even the merit of announcing this law with philosophic precision cannot be fairly conceded to him. For the objects of any two ideas need not [The Editor has never been able to find in the writings of Des Cartes anything coming up to the statement in the text. Certainly nothing of the sort follows the paragraph containing the story of the amputated hand. That Des Cartes was a Nominalist is clear from the following passage: Et optime comprehendimus, qua pacto a varia magnitudine, figura et motu particularum unius corporis, varii motus locales in alio corpore excitentur; nullo autem modo possumus intelligere, quo pacto ab iisdem (magnitudine scilicet, figura, et motu), aliquid aliud producatur, omnino diversæ ab ipsis naturæ, quales sunt illæ formæ substantiales et qualitates reales, quas in rebus esse multi supponunt; nec etiam quo pacto postea istæ qualitates aut formæ vim habeant in aliis corporibus motus locales excitandi. Princip. IV., 198 Ed.] 7 [See Human Nature. C. ii, 111. Leviathan ubi supra. Ed.] 9 I here used the word idea in Mr. Hume's sense on account of its general currency amongst the English metaphysicians; though against my own judgment, for I believe that the vague use of this word has been the cause of much error and more confusion. The word, ida, in its original have co-existed in the same sensation in order to become mutually associable. The same result will follow when one only of the two ideas has been represented by the senses, and the other by the memory. sense as used by Pindar, Aristophanes, and in the Gospel of St Matthew, represented the visual abstraction of a distant object, when we see the whole without distinguishing its parts.* Plato adopted it as a technical term, and as the antithesis to εἴδωλον, or sensuous image; the transient and perishable emblem, or mental word, of the idea. Ideas themselves he considered as mysterious powers, living, seminal, formative, and exempt from time. In this sense the word Idea became the property of the Platonic school; and it seldom occurs in Aristotle, without some such phrase annexed to it, as according to Plato, or as Plato says.. Our English writers to the end of the reign of Charles II., or somewhat later, employed it either in the original sense, or Platonically, or in a sense nearly correspondent to our present use of the substantive Ideal; always however opposing it, more or less, to image, whether of present or absent objects. The reader will not be displeased with the following interesting exemplification from Bishop Jeremy Taylor. "St. Lewis the King sent Ivo Bishop of Chartres on an embassy, and he told, that he met a grave and stately matron on the way with a censer of fire in one hand, and a vessel of water [— τὸν εἶδον κρατέοντα χερὸς ἀλκᾷ, βωμὸν παρ' Ολύμπιον ὥρᾳ τε κεκραμένον.—Olymp. XI. (Χ.), 121. οὐ γινώσκων, ὅτι τοῦ Πλούτου παρέχω βελτίονας ἄνδρας, ἦν δὲ ἡ ἰδία αὐτοῦ ὡς ἀστραπὴ, καὶ τὸ ἔνδυμα αὐτοῦ λευκὸν ὡσεὶ χιών.—Matt. xxviii., 3. Ed.] + See the Timus. (Bekk. III., ii., 23.) ὅτου μὲν οὖν ἂν ὁ δημιουργὸς πρὸς τὸ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔχον βλέπων δεί, τοιούτῳ τινὶ προσχρώμενος παραδείγματι, τὴν ἰδέαν αὐτοῦ καὶ δύναμιν ἀπεργάζηται, καλὸν ἐξ ἀνάγκης οὕτως ἀποτελεῖσθαι πᾶν. But the word idea is used by Plato in several senses, modified according to the natures, divine or human, in which he represents the ideas as placed See the fine moral passage in the Republic (vii., 3)—ἐν τῷ γνωστῷ τε εν ταία ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα καὶ μόγις ὁρᾶσθαι, ὀφθεισα δὲ συλλογιστέα εἶναι ὡς ἄρα πᾶσι πάντων αὕτη ὀρθῶν τε καὶ καλῶν αἰτία, ἔν τε τρατῷ φῶς καὶ τὸν τούτου κύριον τε οὖσα, ἔν τε νοητῷ αὐτὴ κυρία ἀλήθειαν καὶ νοῦν παρασχομένη, καὶ ὅτι δεῖ ταύτην ἰδεῖν τὸν μέλλοντα ἐμφρόνως πρίξειν ἢ ἰδία ἢ δημοσίᾳ. The notes appended by the enthusiastic Thomas Taylor to his translation of the Metaphysics of Aristotle, are full of learned illustration upon this subject. Ed.] Long, however, before either Hobbes or Des Cartes the law of association had been defined, and its important functions set in the other; and observing her to have a melancholy, religious, and phantastic deportment and look, he asked her what those symbols meant, and what she meant to do with her fire and water; she answered, My purpose is with the fire to burn paradise, and with my water to quench the flames of hell, that men may serve God purely for the love of God. But we rarely meet with such spirits which love virtue so metaphysically as to abstract her from all sensible compositions, and love the purity of the idea."* Des Cartes having introduced into his philosophy the fanciful hypothesis of material ideas,-or certain configurations of the brain, which were as so many moulds to the influxes of the external world,-Locke adopted the term, but extended its signification to whatever is the immediate object of the mind's attention or consciousness.† Hume, distinguishing those representations which are accompanied with a sense of a present object from those reproduced by the mind itself, designated the former by impressions, and confined the word idea to the latter. 9 [For the substance of the following paragraph, and in part for the remarks upon the doctrine of association of ideas as represented in the writings of Aristotle, Mr. Coleridge is indebted to the very interesting and excellent treatise of J. G. E. Maasz, On the Imagination, Versuch über die Einbildungskraft, pp. 343-4-5-6. A copy of this work (1797), richly. annotated on the margins and blank spaces, was found among Mr. Coleridge's books; and in so "immethodical a miscellany of literary opinions" as this the insertion of these notes may not be out of place. 66 In Maasz's introductory chapters," says Mr. Coleridge, "my mind has been perplexed by the division of things into matter (sensatio ab extra) and form (i. e. per-et-con-ceptio ab intra). Now as Time and Space are evidently only the universals, or modi communes, of sensation and sensuous Form, and consequently appertain exclusively to the sensuous Einbildungskraft (=Eisemplasy, nhárrei eis ), which we call Imagination, Fancy, &c., all poor and inadequate terms, far inferior to the German, Einbildung, the Law of Association derived ab extra from the contemporaneity of the impressions, or indeed any other difference of the characterless Manifold [The passage here ascribed to Bishop Taylor I cannot find in his works, nor have I been able to light upon the expression, "him that reads in malice or him that reads after dinner," also attributed to him by Mr. Coleridge, in any of his writings. S. C.] t["It (Idea) being that term which, I think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding, when a man thinks; I have used it to express whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking." Human Understand. I. i., s. 8. Ed.] ["By the term, Impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. And impressions are distinguished from Ideas, which are the less lively perceptions, of which we are conscious, when wo reflect on any of those sensations or movements above mentioned Inquiry concerning the Hum. Under., S. 2. Ed.) |