CHAPTER VIII.

PRIMARY RATIONAL KNOWLEDGE.

Ir has been stated that our primary knowledge is of two kinds, sensuous and rational. The former we have briefly considered. We began with the former, because our first knowledge is from this source. Man starts at the lowest point; he learns his humblest lessons first. He is put to school in the flesh, through its humble instrumentality to learn the alphabet of that great volume, which is to unfold to him its bright pages, long after the body shall have returned "to the dust as it was."

At what period the mind begins to have any other knowledge than that of a sensuous origin, it is impossible to tell. Sensuous knowledge is certainly the first. Various sensations of touch, of heat and cold, of pleasure and pain, fall early to the infant's lot. How much the mind learns from these and other sensations at this early period, none can tell us.

"One of the first natural sensations it has," subsequent to birth, "upon which sensational phenomena can be predicated, is that of hunger. Of this it must be conscious. The sensation and consciousness of it, coexisting, constitute its first experience. Whatever may be the diversity in human character, in this, their beginning experience, they are alike. When the child nurses, combinations begin with the outward world, and the blending of the mother's milk with the gastric juice produces the first sensation of hunger gratified; and this is its second experience. Here children begin to differ from each other, in the ratio of their different digestive sensations, and the diversity of character begins. The

child now remains nearly stationary, till repeated experiences, within very narrow limits, of gratified hunger, enable it to associate; then mental combinations begin to grow rapidly, and memory combines itself with association, and their mutual interaction excites the imagination, and the will to enjoy springs into being The action and interaction of these attributes of sensa tion upon each other constitute the whole range of the infant's mind."

Of the early ideas obtained by sensation, it is only by cries, and smiles, and glances of the opening eye that the little stranger can ever speak to us, for as yet he has no other language; as to the future child, all is blotted from the records of memory. We watch, however, in that kindling countenance, and those significant movements, evident tokens of growing intellect; and long before language gives us a free exchange of thought, he is found to have made considerable progress, not only in that knowledge which comes through the senses, but that which springs directly from the mind. In respect to the former, however, he is far in advance of what he is in respect to the latter.

OUR INQUIRY CONFINED TO STRICT KNOWLEDGE.

It should be observed, that our inquiry is here restricted to actual knowledge of facts. It has been shown, that what we learn directly by the senses is of this description. What we feel, see, hear, taste, &c., we know. The sensations which they produce we know by consciousness; the things themselves, by direct perception, without any process of ratiocination, without any proof whatever, except what our own senses furnish.

Now we have other sources of knowledge, as direct and certain as these, not outward in the flesh, but inward in the pure mind. Here, as in the preceding case, no reasoning process is demanded, no proof wanted, but such as is immediately furnished by the mind itself. This point should be clearly settled, for many have stumbled here

* Laws of Causation, pp. 144, 145.

Distinguished intellects, in other respects wise, by laboring to prove what was never designed to be proved, and therefore cannot be proved, the proof being in itself, have only "darkened counsel by words without wisdom," rendering obscure what the Creator has made plain.

DIVERSITY OF VIEWS ON THIS POINT.

At no other point in the whole range of mental science have philosophers diverged so widely as at this. Here, as we have seen, is the grand point of difference between the two great schools. Before John Locke wrote his famous Essay on the Human Understanding, the prevailing continental philosophy gave the widest possible range to the internal or rational sources of knowledge, maintaining that the mind is created with a fund of dormant ideas wrapped up in it, which the senses serve only to wake up; that all external nature is but the semblance or counterpart of ideas already in the mind, and therefore incompetent to teach it.

This method of philosophizing, descending from the ancient Platonic school, originated in a lofty desire to exalt spirit over matter, and restore to the soul the dominion and glory to which it is entitled. The design was worthy of the great minds which conceived it; the fault lay only in the means which they took to accomplish it. It was in the infancy of philosophy that such imposing theories were framed; and when imposing theories, sanctioned by great names, have, from an early period, deeply einbedded themselves in modes of thinking, it is the work o ages to root them out.

Moreover, there was something of truth in these theories. Unmixed error cannot long survive. Great errors are palmed upon the world by virtue of the truths involved with them; and when hoary-headed association has identified error with truth, it requires a bold, original mind, with uncommon powers of discrimination, to enter successfully upon the hazardous task of effecting a divorce. There is always, in such cases, danger of going too far, and removing truth with error. Whether Locke actually

did so, in reducing the origin of all our knowledge to sensation and reflection, philosophers are not agreed to this day. But one thing is certain some of his professed disciples have vibrated widely to the opposite extreme of the errors which he assailed, and have pressed his doctrine to the most absurd and dangerous speculations.

MATERIALISM.

Some philosophers, of the French school especially, have carried the sensuous theory into all the extravagant and revolting forms of materialism. They have conceived all the interior workings of the mind to be nothing more than "transformed sensations."

"If we consider," says Condillac, "that to remember, to compare, to judge, to distinguish, to imagine, to be astonished, to have abstract ideas of number and duration, to know truths, whether general or particular, are but so many modes of being attentive; that to have passions, to love, to hate, to fear, to will, are but so many different modes of desire; and that attention in the one case, and desire in the other, of which all these feelings are modes, are themselves, in their origin, nothing more than modes of sensation, we cannot but conclude that sensation involves in itself [envelope] all the faculties of the soul."

Dr. Thomas Brown remarks, "This system, by the universality of transmutation supposed in it, truly deserves the name of intellectual alchemy;" and he justly adds, "The doctrine, then, as exhibited by Condillac and his followers, whatever merit it may have in itself, or however void it may be of merit of any kind, is not the doctrine of him [Locke] from whom it is said to be derived."

TRANSCENDENTALISM.

In their attempts to rescue the mind from the grasp of a debasing materialism, others have leaned strongly back

* Brown's Philosophy, vol. i. p. 329.

ward towards the Platonic theory, and ascribed to man larger sources of knowledge, independently of the senses, than truth allows. They are of every grade, from the more free pupils of the primitive school to the more cautious disciples of the Kantian system, and the yet more modern and mystical forms of the Coleridgeian philosophy.

Here, then, we have the modern extremes -materialism on the one hand, and transcendentalism on the other. Which is the more dangerous, we should not be slow to decide if we must have either, give us the enchanting dreams of transcendentalism, rather than the intellectual alchemy of materialism. But let us seek for truth, and truth only.

ACCURACY OF CLASSIFICATION.

We are never to forget that our classifications of mental phenomena are but the application of names to cover groups of similar ideas; that these groups may be more or less extended, to suit our convenience; and that, consequently, our classifications are more or less arbitrary. This should make us indulgent towards those from whom we are, in this matter, constrained to differ.

Still, it is of great importance in mental science that the terms we employ significantly represent the precise ideas intended. In defining and arranging classes, the severest accuracy should be observed. These remarks are especially applicable to the point before us.

BROWN'S CLASSIFICATION.

Stripped of its gorgeous drapery, the philosophy of Thomas Brown presents the varying phases of the human mind in a light exceedingly simple. Indeed, his fondness for simplification seems to have been a passion. He calls Reid, Stewart, and others to account for too much increasing the classes of mental phenomena. "The philosophy of Dr. Reid," he says, "and, in general, of the metaphysicians of this part of the island, has had the