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Logic, Metaphysics, and the Natural Sociability of Mankind, ed. James Moore and Michael Silverthorne, texts translated from the Latin by Michael Silverthorne, introduction by James Moore (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006).

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CHAPTER 1

On the Powers of the Mind, and First on the Understanding

1.

The definition of pneumatology

The science of spirits is called pneumatics by modern writers; among the ancients it was a part of metaphysics or of physics.1 But as we have no certain knowledge of any spirits other than human minds and the good God almighty, when we rely on the resources of our own reason alone, they will necessarily be the principal subjects of our discussion. And since we must progress from things that we know in order to bring more obscure things to light, without regard to the dignity of the things themselves, pneumatics rightly begins from knowledge of the human mind.

Spirit is substance which thinks or can think

Spirit, soul, mind denote the same nature, whatever it may be, which thinks or can think, and which is conscious of its own actions.2 It is likely that there is a very large number of such natures, various orders of them, in fact, equipped with various powers: most of them much inferior to human minds with which they have very little in common, but many also perhaps which are superior. Though all of them are called by the same name of spirit or soul, they are almost a whole world, as they say, different from each other. We must first give some account of the powers of minds before determining anything about their nature. It is quite obvious that the human soul is distinct from the gross body which is accessible to the external senses, since no one has said that thought, prudence, arts, or virtues are located in flesh or bones, or in the veins or gross humors.

2.

The twofold power of minds: understanding and willing

Since no one has yet shown whether there is any power in the mind which causes the body to grow and flourish and be nurtured by the food it takes in, we shall ignore the auxetic and threptic force of the soul which the ancients so often mentioned.3 The other powers of the mind we might reasonably reduce to two, namely, the faculty of understanding and the faculty of willing, which are concerned respectively with knowing things and with rendering life happy.4

The senses report to the understanding, which is those powers or that ordering of the soul by which, at the prompting of certain things, it immediately receives certain ideas, which are not alterable at its discretion, but which a certain superior nature, the parent and creator of the soul, seems to have formed; and he has so structured the mind that it refers certain sensations to external things, as images which depict their nature or qualities.

Sensations and their causes

Learned men have adopted different opinions about the cause and origin of ideas. None of them can affirm anything beyond this one single point: that ideas arise in the mind from a certain contact with things, according to certain laws which become known by practice and attention; nor can they be referred to any other cause than divine power. We must also credit divine power with the fact that certain external sensations and other ideas are similar to external things.5

3.

Sensations are either direct and antecedent or reflexive and subsequent6

One [kind of] sensation is primary and direct,when a certain appearance (species) is first presented to the mind, and the other is reflexive and subsequent sensation,when a certain new appearance (species) occurs to a mind as it attends to things which it has previously perceived. We must first discuss direct sensation.

External sensation

The sensations which arise in the mind as the result of a certain motion excited in the body or impressed upon it are said to be external and are commonly reduced to five kinds. However, if instead of distinguishing perceptions, we were to make a division of the senses, there would be more than five.

Sensible qualities, secondary or primary

There is an important distinction between sensible qualities: some affect only one sense, others more than one. Of the former kind are colors, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold; of the latter, duration, number, extension, figure, motion and rest, which may be perceived by more than one sense, and indeed some of them are perceived by an internal sense. Qualities of the former kind would properly be called sensible, qualities of the latter kind rather states [of mind] (affectiones) that accompany sensation. [We judge that the ideas of these [qualities] and of the relations which hold between them are representations of external things, under the guidance of nature; hence they are classified as intellectual ideas, because in them the powers of reason are exercised with the greatest profit and pleasure.]7

[Sensible qualities] either pleasing or painful or neutral

Some sensible qualities are pleasant, some painful, others neutral or indifferent. In the case of some sensible qualities, mild sensations are pleasing, intense sensations painful. But these sensations depict or represent neither external objects nor actual motions excited in the body itself; however, without the sense of colors or any tactile quality, all bodies would be totally hidden from us, as well as their positions, figures, motions, and sizes. There are also the other sensations properly so called, which are sure signs or indications of things or movements which can help or harm the body; we are warned by a sense of pain to avoid those which do us harm, but are stimulated by a pleasing sense to pursue those which can help. Not without design, I think, not without the power of the gods.8

Ideas accompanying every sensation, duration and number

Certain sensations of concomitant ideas do or may accompany absolutely every perception of the mind; such are the notions of duration and number. For any perception of the mind and any action of which the mind itself is aware carries a portion of duration with it; several of these succeeding each other in a certain series also suggest to the mind some longer space of time. In the same way, it is not only things perceived by external sense which may be numbered, but also those which are perceived by the internal sense or by reflection, as it is called.9

Others are perceptible by sight and by touch

Extension, figure, motion and rest are perceived by two senses, that is, by sight and by touch. Certain writers call these, rather well, the primary properties (affectiones ) of bodies, because under the guidance of nature we believe them to be present just as they are seen in things themselves,10 and physicists tell us that the whole power of bodies to excite sensible ideas depends on one or other of them.11 They speak of sensible qualities, however, as merely secondary properties (affectiones ) or qualities: there is nothing like them in external things, though these things, by a fixed law of nature, have a certain power of exciting these ideas in us, [a power] which they get from their primary qualities.

Whether this perception of primary qualities be called an action or a passive process of the mind, the only cause which seems able to be suggested for the similarity or congruence between ideas of this kind and things themselves is God himself, who by a fixed law of nature ensures that the notions of things which are aroused in the presence of objects are similar to the things themselves, or at least depict their physical appearances, if not their true qualities.

[God himself seems to have made the forms or elements of all ideas, without our own minds contributing anything at this point. But once ideas have been admitted, the mind can ring the changes upon them, and vigorously exercise its powers in doing so. It can either retain ideas or dismiss them, pay attention to them or turn to others; it can divide concrete ideas by abstracting, or join simple ideas and compound them. It can in a certain manner enlarge ideas or diminish them, compare them with each other and learn their relations. In all these [activities] no less than in willed motions and appetites, the mind is conscious to itself of truly doing something.

From the pleasing senses which are called pleasures arises our first acquaintance with good, from painful senses our first acquaintance with evil. And those things which serve to procure the former and avert the latter are called useful, and their opposites are called useless or harmful. When the sublimer senses come into play, they introduce notions of superior goods and graver ills. From these we understand what a happy life is and what is a miserable life, and they must necessarily be attributed to certain natural senses.

Appearances which are perceived by taste,smell, and touch are closely related to specific parts of the body; they indicate what directly helps or harms the body, and have an immediate effect. By sight and hearing we acquire some knowledge of distant things, and sometimes of far superior pleasures; in fact, sight and hearing are very useful in our learning about things and developing understanding. All these senses, then, have been usefully given by nature either to protect our bodies or to preserve the human race or for the purpose of living a good and pleasant life, as will be more evident in the case of the nobler senses soon to be expounded.]12

4.

Internal senses or consciousness (conscientia)

The other power of perception is a certain internal sense, or consciousness, by means of which everything that takes place in the mind is known.13 Each man knows his own sensations, judgments, reflections, volitions, desires, and intentions; they cannot be concealed from the mind in which they are. By this power of the mind each man knows himself and has a perception of himself and can direct his attention to himself and his own actions. Hence there may be full knowledge of spirits and bodies alike; the inner nature of both are unknown, [but] the properties (affectiones) are known.

Ideas of modes of thinking are abstract ideas like many others

It cannot be denied that we have general ideas of these modes of thinking, and that they are abstracted from the properties which distinguish individual ideas. For wherever a similarity is seen between different things, or several things are included in one class, or designated by any common word or symbol, one part of a complex idea comes before the mind, and the rest of it is left out.

5.

Reflexive or subsequent sensations

Now it remains for us to discuss subsequent and reflexive sensation, or those appearances of things or that sense which occurs to the mind when it is directed toward things previously perceived. We call them sensations because these ideas or perceptions arise by a fixed law of nature, not at our discretion. There are many kinds of them, and we will deal with them briefly.14

Novelty, grandeur, similarity, and certain harmonies of sounds are pleasing to them

Some of the things which affect an external sense and would seem to be neutral to it are pleasing, or in some cases unpleasing, to a kind of reflexive sense, when the mind pays attention not only to its external sensations but also to the ideas which accompany them, and is also moved by a kind of impression that is different from the pleasing external sensations. In the first place, novelty is pleasing to the mind because we have a kind of natural impulse to know things, or a desire for knowledge. Likewise the grandeur of anything we see is pleasing. And a certain similarity among several things is also pleasing, when difference and variety are also present. Most pleasing are the combination and harmony of certain sounds, when not only are the higher and lower sounds themselves enjoyed, but also the lengths of the notes and the various other devices so familiar to music lovers.

And all imitation

Virtually all imitation is pleasing, whether in works of art in the classical sense—painting, sculpture, and engraving—or in movement and rhythmical speech.

And knowledge of things

A sense of great happiness accompanies learning and knowledge.

And skilled crafts

It gives great pleasure to look at things which have been cleverly and skillfully made to fill a certain need, even for those who do not expect to get any use from them.

The common sense, and sympathy of affections

We must include among these reflexive senses the sense which is called common. This sense takes joy from the happiness of another man’s good fortune and sorrow from his adversity, so long as there is no animosity, resentment, enmity, or abhorrence of disgraceful behavior. By the wonderful fabric of our nature also, most of the emotions and passions of other men excite similar feelings in us by a kind of sympathetic influence.

The sense of the fitting and the good

Of all these reflexive senses the most notable is the sense of the fitting and the good, which passes judgment as from the bench on all the things men do, on all our pleasures of body or mind, on our opinions, sentiments, actions, prayers, intentions, and feelings, determining in each case what is fine, fitting and good, and what is the measure in each. Almost all the pleasures which we have in common with the animals seem to this sense to be vile and shameful. But resolutions to act that display a nobler character, that intimate powers of mind and reason, that give evidence of a kindly disposition, and especially those which reveal a constant and steady will to do good and to deserve well of others, move all hearts by their very goodness; and for the man who possesses them, when he calls them to mind, they are glorious and full of joy.

This power is innate, gratuitous, and at hand

That this power is innate to the mind and that a man does not approve either his own or others’ actions because of any advantage they have or pleasure they bring him is clear from the fact that each man thinks his own duties toward others are more virtuous the more they are associated with risk of loss to himself, and the less they are intended for his own advantage, honor, or reputation; and from the fact that we praise the good actions of other men which we read of or hear about, even from earlier centuries, as much as we praise present actions that are good, and even approve virtue, loyalty, and patriotism in an enemy, though it does us harm ourselves. In approving these services in which a man has done something for another from friendship, faith, or courage, we cannot expect that either honor, pleasure, advantage, or reward will accrue to us. Even men who scarcely believed in rewards after death still thought it was sweet and fitting at times to die for their country,15 and they believe that even their enemies should praise their death.16

Related to this is that sense of praise and honor when a man sees that his intentions and his actions are approved by the verdict of other men; the opposite of this is that very painful sense of blame if one’s actions and intentions are condemned by others. Men are still moved by both of these feelings even when they do not expect any further benefit from other people’s approval or disadvantage from their censure. Even dying men are anxious about their posthumous fame, no less than those who look forward to a long life.

The sense of humor

By the aid of these senses, then, some of the things that happen to us appear delightful, fitting, glorious, and honorable to us, while others seem vile and contemptible, and we may discern yet another reflexive sense: a sense of things that are ridiculous or apt to cause laughter, that is, when a thing arouses contrary sensations at one and the same time. In the case of men’s intentions and actions, bad behavior that does not cause grievous sorrow or death gives rise to laughter, because there is some dignity in the very name of man because we have a certain opinion of his prudence and intelligence, whereas bad behavior that leads to serious pain or death rather excites pity. In the case of other things, we are moved to laughter by those which exhibit some splendid spectacle at the same time as a contradictory image of something cheap, lowly, and contemptible. This sense is very beneficial, whether in increasing the pleasure of conversation or in correcting men’s morals.

6.

Memory, the power of reasoning, imagination17

From these powers of perception, the mind acquires for itself all the furniture of ideas that the faculty of judging and reasoning makes use of, and it preserves them by means of memory. For there is a power in the mind which can recall a weaker image or notion of any sensation; this is true of every action, judgment, will, and motion of the mind. [This faculty is called the imagination when it has to do with ideas of bodies. There is a similar power involved with all other ideas, which can ring the changes on them. However, there is no imagination or notion whose simpler elements the mind has not previously taken in by some external or internal sense. The mind is able to store and keep such notions, so that oftentimes it can recall them a long time afterward.18

Although both memory and imagination depend to some extent on body in the present state of the soul, nevertheless both powers seem to be within the mind itself, because it often recalls of its own accord ideas it once received, including those which have nothing in common with the body or with external sense. Indeed, images once invoked also run through the fancy of their own accord in some strange fashion, whether because they are connected in some wonderful way with certain previous images, and we must speak of this later, or for some other obscure reason. The Cartesian doctrine of some kind of animal spirits, readily passing through interconnected and open passages of the brain, has altogether too much of the note of fiction.19

We must give a word of warning about the external sense and the imagination, lest being too familiar with them, we judge things that belong to neither of them as untrue or unreliable. To the contrary, those things that are truest and contribute most to a happy or a wretched life are in no way subject to these faculties.]20

Natural associations of ideas

We must not ignore that other capacity of the mind, which is so important in our lives, of storing up associations between ideas which have once impressed it, so that when anything subsequently suggests one idea, it also triggers the others which are associated with it. To this capacity we owe facility in speech and, indeed, almost all our memory of things past.

7.

All good is distinguished from evil by a certain sense; useful things are also perceived by reason

The mind is supplied with a variety of images of good and bad things through the senses and by reasoning. Those which are pleasing in themselves to any of the senses are called good;those which arouse a distressing sense are bad; and they are ultimate in their own kind, and to be sought or avoided for themselves. The reasonings we bring to bear here are not primarily concerned with ultimate goods or evils themselves, but with the means or aids which we make use of in pursuing ultimate goods or rejecting evils. Since the importance of any good to a happy life depends at the same time on the value of the pleasing sensation or the intensity and duration of the pleasure, there will be room for a kind of simple reasoning, or rather recollection, in comparing ultimate ends with each other so that we may make a comparison of the values or degrees of different sensations. We train our capacity to judge the duration of goods through our use and experience of things. We should take the same approach to making discriminations between evils.

Some pleasures accompany passions for passing things; others accompany actions

Some pleasant and painful sensations accompany passions; others accompany actions, though in both cases the sensation itself may be called a passion. [The happier [pleasures] are those which accompany actions.] But although all happiness lies in some sensation, it is still rightly said that the happiness of every nature that is born to act lies in action, since the pleasures that accompany certain human actions are much superior, much more worthy and enduring, than those which can arise from any passion or physical impulse. For some sensations are vastly superior to others. Not all natures that are truly happy are also equally happy. For those which are endowed with few senses or with senses which are capable only of the lighter pleasures will draw the greatest happiness of which they are capable from things that will never satisfy the [longing for] a happy life of a superior nature, equipped by nature with a nobler sense.

8.

Habit, a quality which perfects an innate power

Another wonderful capacity in both mind and body is that if an action is frequently repeated, it will become easy to do it thereafter. This is called habit, and by habit a man’s native powers can be wonderfully developed; and it does not seem that the whole power of habit resides in memory. In oft-repeated sensations, the pleasure or pain gradually diminishes; but if pleasant things ever cease, one misses them dreadfully, simply because one had frequent enjoyment of them before.

9.

Relative ideas: when several things have a property in common

When the mind compares ideas which have been received by internal or external sense, a new idea arises which is called a relative idea; it exhibits the relation or connection between the things compared, so long as they are not completely different. If between the things compared there is nothing common to both, or no similar quality or property in both, there will be no relation or connection between them.21

Judgments, some abstract, others absolute

Judgment, which is called the second operation of the understanding, can hardly be totally distinct from perception. For an absolute judgment may be said to be the complex perception of a thing existing at a certain time, which is prompted either directly by means of the senses or by the intervention of reason, when one discerns the connection of the thing which is the subject of the judgment with the things which sense shows to exist. Abstract judgments are perceptions of relations which exist between things observed; or, if anyone thinks that judgments are distinct actions of the mind, which nevertheless originate in these perceptions, the act of judging is represented by a simple idea which cannot be defined.

How our judgments are in our own power

We will not linger over this other question, as to whether a judgment is a passion of the mind rather than an action.22 The mind seems to be active in the process of cognition, in careful attention, in comparison of ideas with each other, and in its desires and intentions to act. Almost everyone would agree that we do not judge that a thing is this way or that way because we wanted so to judge. The only way, therefore, in which our judgments are in our power or follow the behest of our will, is that it is within our power to direct our attention to either side [of an argument] and to carefully examine both. And since a sane man soberly directs his mind by particular arguments and understands them, he cannot withhold his assent; or, if the arguments which he understands are only probable, he will perceive, even against his own will, that the side to which they point is probably or likely to be true. There is therefore a greater freedom involved in apprehensions, which we can vary at will, than in judgments. But since against most arguments which are only probable, the presumption or suspicion remains that there may be other more likely arguments on the other side, it is within our power to withhold the full assent of our minds to this conclusion, even though it seems more likely, and to abstain from acting, until we have also examined the arguments which point in the other direction. There are countless degrees of likeliness, and some approach very close to full certainty and seem to offer full and perfect credit.

[1 ]On the study of pneumatology in Scottish universities in the early eighteenth century, see the introduction, p. xxii.

[2 ]In the first edition (1742), the text continued after this sentence with a discussion of spirit and the ways in which spirit differs from body. This order of presentation followed de Vries, Determinationes Pneumatologicae, sec. 1, in De Natura Dei et Humanae Mentis. In the second edition of A Synopsis of Metaphysics (1744) this discussion has been moved to chap. 3, pp. 138-44.

[3 ]The auxetic and threptic powers of the soul are Aristotle’s terms for the powers responsible for the “growth” and “nourishment” of all living things. See Aristotle, On the Soul, II, 4, especially 415 a23, p. 85 in the Hett translation.

[4 ]De Vries, Determinationes Pneumatologicae, sec. 2, chap. 6. Locke thought that the distinction of the faculties into understanding and willing had “misled many into a confused notion of so many distinct agents in us.” Essay, II, 21, 6, p. 237. In contrast to Locke, Hutcheson liked to remind his critics of the importance of the distinction between the understanding and the will: An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections (1742), pp. 30-31n., and Illustrations upon the Moral Sense (1742), pp. 219-22.

[5 ]Malebranche, The Search After Truth, pp. 46-47, and Locke, “An Examination of Malebranche’s Opinion,” secs. 10-16.

[6 ]De Vries, Determinationes Pneumatologicae, II, 2, does not speak of sensation but of apprehensio, which he defines as nuda perceptio. Hutcheson’s distinction between direct sensation and reflexive sensation follows Locke, Essay, II, 20-24.

[7 ]This sentence was added in 1744.

[8 ]Virgil, Aeneid, bk. 5, 56, in vol. 1, p. 476: Aeneas reflects that it is not without design that he has been driven by a storm to land in the very place where his father died. Hutcheson makes evocative use of the beginning of book 5 of the Aeneid in his inaugural lecture. See p. 191.

[9 ]Locke used the term “internal sense” on occasion (for example, Essay, II, 1, 4, p. 105), as Hutcheson recalled in An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, preface, p. xi. But Locke preferred to use the term “reflection” for those ideas “the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations,” Essay, p. 105.

[10 ]Locke, Essay, II, 8, 9, p. 135.

[11 ]Robert Boyle, Origin of Forms and Qualities, pp. 18-19.

[12 ]The last three paragraphs were added in the second edition, 1744.

[13 ]A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, p. 6: “Internal senses are those powers or determinations of the mind by which it perceives or is conscious of itself, … this power some celebrated writers call consciousness or reflection.”

[14 ]For a parallel discussion of reflex or subsequent sensations, see A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, p. 12 ff.

[15 ]This is a quotation from Horace, Odes, 3, 2, 13, p. 144, in Odes and Epodes.

[16 ]Hutcheson’s note (1749): “these things are more fully proved in the ethics.”

[17 ]Hutcheson’s note (1749): “memory and imagination.”

[18 ]Hutcheson’s note (1749): “On the origin of all ideas, as on the conclusions of reason, read Locke’s oft-cited book on Human Understanding.”

[19 ]Malebranche described the influence of animal spirits upon the imagination and memory in The Search After Truth, bk. 2, pp. 87 ff. and 106 ff.

[20 ]The three paragraphs between brackets were added in the second edition (1744).

[21 ]Hutcheson’s note (1749): “see Part I, Chapter V, Section 4,” pp. 106-8.

[22 ]See de Vries, Determinationes Pneumatologicae, II, III, 21.