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our visual organism. This sensation may be little noticed because the attention is fixed on the object; still it is always there, as we may discover by a careful introspection of the combined mental affection.

But this leads me to notice that in the concrete mental state sometimes the perception or the knowledge is the more prominent, whereas at other times the sensation is the predominant. There is a difference indeed of the senses in this respect. Thus in the senses of taste, smell, touch proper, and the allied senses of tem-perature, titillation, shuddering and flesh-creeping, the sensation is the prevailing element. These may be regarded as the lower and the more animal senses, in which the attention is largely absorbed in self. In hearing, so far as the original perceptions are concerned, the sensation is still the predominant affection; but as we come to know the sounding bodies, our attention is often directed almost exclusively to the object. Thus we are listening to a person speaking we lose sight of the hearing ear, and think only of what is said. Still, when the sounds are unpleasant, or when they are peculiarly pleasant, as in music, it is the sensation that absorbs the attention. In the muscular sense it is the resisting object that is most noticed. In sight the colour is largely (but not exclusively, as will be shown forthwith) a sensational, whereas the spread-out surface is the perceptive element. In many of our acts of vision there is a nice balancing of the two, the colour and the form being alike noticed; in others the colour, by its gorgeousness, absorbs the whole mental energy; while in a third class the colour-sensation is lost sight of, and we are conscious of scarcely anything more than the form. And here I am tempted to remark that in the lower forms, both in nature and of the fine arts, it is the colour which is the more striking characteristic; and children, and persons low in the scale of intelligence, feel a peculiar delight in such objects. As we rise, in nature to the common herbaceous plants, and in art to flower-painting, there is often a union of the beauty both of colour and of form. When we mount to the highest plants, as to the trees of the forest, and to the animal creation and the human form, and in art to historical painting, varied colouring disappears, that higher minds may gaze with un

divided attention on objective forms characterized by high proportions, or full of life, or suggestive of character.

It should not be omitted that the mind can at any time fix its attention more specially on one of these, and then the other will very much disappear from the field of view. Sometimes this is done for us spontaneously, by the vividness of the sensation on the one hand, or by the interest which collects around the external object on the other. Sometimes the concentration is effected by a strong act of will, fixing the mind's regards on one or other in order to gain a special end. Thus we may yield ourselves entirely to a luscious strain of music, or we may be absorbed in thought about some object, so as scarcely to notice the sounds. Under ear-ache we may have the whole energy of the mind concentred on the pain, and be able to attend to nothing else; or we may be so interested in a discourse on a topic of thought as scarcely to feel the torture.

ear.

But while the two ever co-exist, sometimes with the one prevailing and sometimes with the other predominant, and sometimes with the two nicely balanced, it is of importance to distinguish them. Every man of sense draws the distinction between the music and the musical instrument, between the ear-ache and his The metaphysician should also draw the distinction,—indeed it is essential that he do so. The two were given for different ends. Our perceptions are the main means of supplying us with knowledge, whereas our sensations are meant to increase our enjoyment, to stimulate to exertion, to give warning, or perhaps to inflict penalties. We must beware, both philosophically and practically, of confounding our sensations and our perceptions, our feelings and our cognitions. In the confounding of the two we have another circumstance leading men to charge their senses with deception. This will appear more fully when we come to notice another set of distinctions.

III. There are DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN THE OBJECTS KNOWN. There is the distinction between the organic object and the object beyond the organism. There is the more delicate distinction between the objects immediately known as extra-organic and objects

inferred as existing and affecting the organism but themselves unknown. Let me explain these distinctions.

We have seen that in some of the senses the proper object of perception is the organism itself. In two others it is beyond the organism. Let us consider these two classes in order.

In the first class all that we know immediately is the organism Saffected. But if affected, it must be affected by something. It is in one state this instant, and it will be in another state the next. The intuitive conviction of causation-to be afterwards discussed-constrains us to look for an agent to produce the effect. And where is this agent to be found? In the organism, or beyond the organism? I am certain, in regard to some of our organic affections, that intuition says nothing on this special point. This is the case with the sense of smell, of taste, of touch, and temperature, -and I think also, though with some hesitation, with the sense of hearing. The intuitive conviction of cause and effect does indeed intimate that there must be a cause, but as to where that cause is to be found we must trust to experience, which tells us that in some cases it is to be found in the organism itself, and in other cases in an agent beyond,-such as odorous particles, sapid bodies, heat, undulations from a sounding body, or a solid object applied to our nerves of touch. In all cases the affection of sense and the conviction of cause combined are sufficient to prompt us to look round for an agent. The senses act as monitors, and most important monitors they are, of powers working in our bodily frames, and in the physical universe around us. I believe that every one of our senses gives us intimation of powers,-such as floating particles, light, and heat, which are among the most powerful agencies conducting the processes of the material world. Still these are unknown to our senses, and we become aware of their existence merely as causes of known effects. As to what odours, sounds, flavours, heat, and, we may add, light and colours are, our intuitions are silent, and their nature is to be determined by observation,-indeed can be determined only by elaborate scientific research. It should be added, that while science has ascertained much about them, it has not, in its latest advances, been able to settle what is the exact nature of such agents as heat, light, and colour

Let us turn now to the other class of senses, which give us a knowledge of extra-organic objects. By the muscular sense we know an object as extended in three dimensions, and as resisting our effort. We have thus a knowledge of objects extended, and exercising dynamic energy beyond the little world of self.

The sense of sight presents peculiar difficulties in this connec. tion. It seems to me clearly to look at an extended surface, not part of our organism, but affecting it. But what are we to make of colour? It is the greatest difficulty which the metaphysician meets with in the investigation of the senses. The mind knows the perceived object to be in its nature extended; but do we also know it as in its very nature coloured? If so, is there colour in the object as there is extension? The following is the solution which I am inclined to offer of this difficult subject. The sense of colour may be regarded as intermediate between those senses in which we perceive an extra-organic object, and those other senses which reveal merely the organism as affected, but whether by agents within or beyond the organism we know not. In the sense of colour, we primarily know only the organism as affected, but we are intuitively led, at the same time, to look on what thus affects our organism as not in the organism, but as in the extended surface in which it is seen. But beyond this, that is beyond colour being an extra-organic cause of an organic affection, we know nothing of its nature by intuition. If this account be correct, we see that our sense of colour is different, on the one hand, from the knowledge of our sensations of heat, or smell, or taste, for we do not know whether the causes of these are within or beyond the frame, while we do know that colour is out of ourselves in a surface; and different, too, on the other hand, from the knowledge of the extended surface and the impenetrability which are revealed directly by the sight and muscular sense, whereas we do not know what colour is. Hence arises, if I do not mistake, that peculiar conviction regarding colour which has so puzzled metaphysicians. The sense of colour combines, in closest union, the sensation and the perception, the organic affection and the extra-organic. I confess I have always fondly clung to the idea that, sooner or later, colour will be found by physical investigation

to have a reality, I do not say of what kind, in every material object.1

By help of such distinctions as these, we may defend the validity of all our native convictions through the senses. In doing so, it will be observed that we stand up for the trustworthiness of our original, but not necessarily of our acquired perceptions; that we stand up for a reality corresponding to our perceptions proper, but not therefore to our associated sensations; and that we stand up for a reality, be it organic, or extra-organic, or both, corresponding to each particular sense as for itself, but not a reality for any one sense of precisely the same kind as the reality for the others. The senses can be supposed to deceive us, when the organism and mind are in a sound state, only when we overlook one or other or all of these distinctions. SECT. IV. (SUPPLEMENTARY) BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF OPINIONS AS TO THE VERACITY OF THE SENSES.

THE Eleatics looked upon the senses as deceiving, and appealed to the reason as discovering the abiding (rò ov) amid the fleeting. The question arose : Since the senses are delusive, what reason have we for thinking that the reason is trustworthy? Heraclitus the Dark thought that the senses give only the transient, and that man can discover nothing more. Plato mediated between the two schools, and thought that there were two elements in sense-perception, an external and an internal: Καί ὅ δὴ ἕκαστον εἶναί φαμεν χρῶμα, οὔτε τὸ προσβάλλον οὔτε τὸ προσβαλλόμενον ἔσται, ἀλλὰ μεταξύ τι ἑκαστω ἴδιον γεγονός· ἤ σὺ διισχυρίσατο ἄν ὡς οἷον σοί φαίνεται ἕκαστον χραμα, τοιοῦτον καὶ κυνὶ καὶ ὀτῳοῦν ζωῳ (Theat. 28) Εγέννησε γὰρ δὴ ἐκ τοιοῦτον καὶ κυνὶ καὶ ὀτῳοῖν ζωῳ (Theæt. 28). 'Εγέννησε γὰρ δὴ ἐκ τῶν προωμολογημένων τό τε ποιοῦν καὶ τὸ πάσχον γλυκύτητά τε καὶ αἴσθησιν, ἅμα φερόμενα ἀμφότερα (43). This theory has ever since been maintained by a succession of thinkers, including the school of Kant. Unfortu nately they can give us no rule to enable us to distinguish between what we are to allot to subjective and what to the objective factors. Possibly the following passage, affirming that science is not in sensations but in our reasoning about them, may have suggested the theory of Aristotle, which has long divided the philosophie world with that of Plato : Ἐν μὲν ἄρα τοῖς παθήμασιν οὐκ ἔνι ἐπιστήμη, ἐν δὲ τῷ περὶ ἐκείνων συλλογισμώ (107).

Aristotle with his usual judgment and penetration started the right explanation (see De Anima, Lib. II. Chap. i. iii. vi.). He says that perception by a sense of things peculiar to that sense is true, or involves the smallest amount of error. But when such objects are perceived in their accidents (that is, as to things not falling peculiarly under that sense), there is room for falsehood, when, for instance, a thing is said to be white there is no falsehood, but when the object is said to be this or that (if the white thing is said to be Cleon, cf. ш. i. 7), there

1 In Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation, by J. M'Cosh and Geo. Dickie (p. 165 2d ed.), I have pointed to a number of phenomena, which seem to show that colour is a reality in the object, which reality is made known to us by means of the reflection of the beam by the colour. When the undivided beam falls on the green leaves of a plant, the green beam is reflected and reaches our eye, and the red is absorbed, not to be lost, but to come out in russet bark, or red flower, or berry.

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