Malebranche quoted on place and importance of attention.

2

truth can only be made by the labor of attention; because it is only the labor of attention which has light for its reward;" and in another place: "The attention of the intellect is a natural prayer by which we obtain the enlightenment of reason. But since the fall, the intellect frequently experiences appalling droughts; it cannot pray; the labor of attention fatigues and afflicts it. In fact, this labor is at first great, and the recompense scanty; while, at the same time, we are unceasingly solicited, pressed, agitated by the imagination and the passions, whose inspiration and impulses it is always agreeable to obey. Nevertheless, it is a matter of necessity; we must invoke reason to be enlightened; there is no other way of obtaining light and intelligence but by the labor of attention. Faith is a gift of God which we earn not by our merits; but intelligence is a gift usually only conceded to desert. Faith is a pure grace in every sense; but the understanding of a truth is a grace of such a character that it must be merited by labor, or by the coöperation of grace. Those, then, who are capable of this labor, and who are always attentive to the truth which ought to guide them, have a disposition which would undoubtedly deserve a name more magnificent than those bestowed on the most splendid virtues. But although this habit or this virtue be inseparable from the love of order, it is so little known among us that I do not know if we have done it the honor of a particular name. May I, therefore, be pardoned in calling it by the equivocal name of force of intellect. To acquire this true force by which the intellect supports the labor of attention, it is necessary to begin betimes to labor; for, in the course of nature, we can only acquire habits by acts, and can only strengthen them by exercise. But perhaps the only difficulty is to begin. We recollect that we began, and that we were obliged to leave off. Hence we get discouraged; we think ourselves unfit for meditation; we renounce reason. If this be the case, whatever we may allege to justify our sloth and negligence, we renounce virtue, at least in part. For without the labor of attention, we shall never comprehend the grandeur of religion, the sanctity of morals, the littleness of all that is not God, the absurdity of the passions, and of all our internal miseries. Without this labor, the soul will live in blindness and in disorder; because there is naturally no other way to obtain the light that should conduct us; we shall be eternally under disquietude and in strange embarrassment; for we fear everything when we walk in darkness and surrounded by precipices. It is true that faith guides and supports; but it does so only as it

1 Traité de Morale, partie i. chap. vi. § 1.

2 lbid., partie i. chap. v. § 4. - ED.

produces some light by the attention which it excites in us; for light alone is what can assure minds, like ours, which have so many enemies to fear."

Study of the writings of Malebranche recommended.

I have translated a longer extract than I intended when I began ; but the truth and importance of the observations are so great, and they are so admirably expressed in Malebranche's own inimitable style, that it was not easy to leave off. They are only a fragment of a very valuable chapter on the subject, to which I would earnestly refer you, indeed, I may take this opportunity of saying, that there is no philosophical author who can be more profitably studied than Malebranche. As a thinker, he is perhaps the most profound that France has ever produced, and as a writer on philosophical subjects, there is not another European author who can be placed before him. His style is a model at once of dignity and of natural ease; and no metaphysician has been able to express himself so clearly and precisely without resorting to technical and scholastic terms. That he was the author of a celebrated, but exploded hypothesis, is, perhaps, the reason why he is far less studied than he otherwise deserves. His works are of principal value for the admirable observations on human nature which they embody; and were everything to be expunged from them connected with the Vision of all things in the Deity, and even with the Cartesian hypotheses in general, they would still remain an inestimable treasury of the acutest analyses, expressed in the most appropriate, and, therefore, the most admirable eloquence. In the last respect, he is only approached, certainly not surpassed, by Hume and Mendelssohn.

I have dwelt at greater length upon the practical bearings of Attention, not only because this principle constitutes the better half of all intellectual power, but because it is of consequence that you should be fully aware of the incalculable importance of acquiring, by early and continued exercise, the habit of attention. There are, however, many points of great moment on which I have not touched, and the dependence of Memory upon Attention might alone form an interesting matter of discussion. You will find some excellent observations on this subject in the first and third volumes of Mr. Stewart's Elements.1

1 See Works, ii.; Elements, i. p. 122 et seq., and p. 352.-ED.

LECTURE XV.

CONSCIOUSNESS,-ITS EVIDENCE AND AUTHORITY.

Consciousness the source of Philosophy.

HAVING now concluded the discussion in regard to what Consciousness is, and shown you that it constitutes the fundamental form of every act of knowledge;-I now proceed to consider it as the source from whence we must derive every fact in the Philosophy of Mind. And, in prosecution of this purpose, I shall, in the first place, endeavor to show you that it really is the principal, if not the only source, from which all knowledge of the mental phænomena must be obtained;1 in the second place, I shall consider the character of its evidence, and what, under different relations, are the different degrees of its authority; and, in the last place, I shall state what, and of what nature, are the more general phænomena which it reveals. Having terminated these, I shall then descend to the consideration of the special faculties of knowledge, that is, to the particular modifications of which consciousness is susceptible. We proceed to consider, in the first place, the authority,

The possibility of Philosophy implies the veracity of conscious

ness.

the

certainty of this instrument. Now, it is at once evident, that philosophy, as it affirms its own possibility, must affirm the veracity of consciousness; for, as philosophy is only a scientific development of the facts which consciousness reveals, it follows, that philosophy, in denying or doubting the testimony of consciousness, would deny or doubt its own existence. If, therefore, philosophy be not felo de se, it must not invalidate the

1 Under the head here specified, the Author occasionally delivered from the Chair three lectures, which contained "a summary view of the nervous system in the higher animals, more especially in man; and a statement of some of the results obtained [by him] from an extensive and accurate induction on the size of the Encephalus and its principal parts, both in man and the lower animals, - serving to prove that no assistance is afforded to Mental Philosophy by the examination of

the Nervous System, and that the doctrine, or doctrines, which found upon the supposed parallelism of brain and mind, are, as far as observation extends, wholly groundless." These lectures, as foreign in their details from the general subject of the Course, are omitted in the present publication. A general summary of the principal conclusions to which the researches of the Author on this subject conducted him, will be found in Appendix II.-ED.

integrity of that which is, as it were, the heart, the punctum saliens, of its being; and as it would actively maintain its own credit, it must be able positively to vindicate the truth of consciousness: for, as Lucretius' well observes,.

"... Ut in Fabrica, si prava est Regula prima,
Normaque si fallax rectis regionibus exit,
Omnia mendose fieri, atque obstipa necessum est;

Sic igitur Ratio tibi rerum prava necesse est,

Falsaque sit, falsis quæcunque ab Sensibus orta est."

And Leibnitz truly says, "If our immediate internal experience could possibly deceive us, there could no longer be for us any truth of fact (vérité de fait), nay, nor any truth of reason (vérité de raison)."

So far there is, and can be, no dispute; if philosophy is possible, the evidence of consciousness is authentic. No philosopher denies its authority, and even the Skeptic can only attempt to show, on the hypothesis of the Dogmatist, that consciousness, as at variance with itself, is, therefore, on that hypothesis, mendacious.

But if the testimony of consciousness be in itself confessedly above all suspicion, it follows, that we inquire into the conditions or laws which regulate the legitimacy of its applications. The conscious mind being at once the source from which we must derive our knowledge of its phænomena, and the mean through which that knowledge is obtained, Psychology is only an evolution, by consciousness, of the facts which consciousness itself reveals. As every system of Mental Philosophy is thus only an exposition of these facts, every such system, consequently, is true and complete, as it fairly and fully exhibits what, and what only, consciousness ex

hibits.

Consciousness, as the criterion of philosophy, naturally clear and unerring.

But, it may be objected, if consciousness be the only revelation we possess of our intellectual nature, and if consciousness be also the sole criterion by which we can interpret the meaning of what this revelation contains, this revelation must be very obscure,- this criterion must be very uncertain, seeing that the various systems of philosophy all equally appeal to this revelation and to this criterion, in support of the most contradictory opinions. As to the fact of the variety and contradiction of philosophical systems, this cannot be denied, and it is also true that all these systems either openly profess allegiance to

1 De Rerum Natura, lib.. 516.

2 Nouveaux Essais, lib. ii. c. 27, § 13. — ED.

consciousness, or silently confess its authority. But admitting all this, I am still bold enough to maintain, that consciousness affords. not merely the only revelation, and only criterion of philosophy, but that this revelation is naturally clear, this criterion, in itself, unerring. The history of philosophy, like the history of theology, is only, it is too true, the history of variations, and we must admit of the book of consciousness what a great Calvinist divine 1 bitterly confessed of the book of Scripture,

"Hic liber est in quo quærit sua dogmata quisque;
Invenit et pariter dogmata quisque sua."

Cause of variation in philosophy.

In regard, however, to either revelation, it can be shown that the source of this diversity is not in the book, but in the reader. If men will go to the Bible, not to ask of it what they shall believe, but to find in it what they believe already, the standard of unity and truth becomes in human hands only a Lesbian rule. And if philosophers, in place of evolving their doctrines out of consciousness, resort to consciousness only when they are able to quote its authority in confirmation of their preconceived opinions, philosophical systems, like the sandals of Theramenes, may fit any feet, but can never pretend to represent the immutability of nature. And that philosophers have been, for the most part, guilty of this, it is not extremely difficult to show. They have seldom or never taken the facts of consciousness, the whole facts of consciousness, and nothing but the facts of consciousness. They have either overlooked, or rejected, or interpolated.

3

Before we are entitled to accuse consciousness of being a false, or

We are bound to inquire whether there be any rules by which in employing the testimony of conscious

vacillating, or ill-informed witness, we are bound, first of all, to see whether there be any rules by which, in employing the testimony of consciousness, we must be governed; and whether philosophers have evolved their systems out of consciousness in obedience to these rules. For if there be rules under which alone the evidence of consciousness can be fairly and fully given, and, consequently, under which alone consciousness can serve as

ness, we must be governed.

1 S. Werenfels, Dissertationes. Amstel. 1716, pòs yàp тò σxîμα TOû λídov μetakiveÎTαI vol. ii. p. 391.- Ed.

2 Aristotle, Eth. Nic., v. 10: Τοῦ γὰρ ἀορίστου ἀόριστος καὶ ὁ κανών ἐστιν, ὥσπερ καὶ τῆς Λεσβίας οἰκοδομῆς ὁ μολίβδινος κανών

καὶ οὐ μένει ὁ κανών. - ED.

3 Θηραμένης διὰ τὸ μὴ μόνιμον ἀλλὰ καὶ επαμφοτερίζον ἀεὶ τῇ προαιρέσει τῆς πολιτείας, ἐπεκλήθη Κόθορνος. Plutarch, Nicias, vol. i. p. 525 (ed. 1599). - ED.