174. The Soul and its organs of Sense.
It is a strong presumptive proof against materialism, that there does not exist a language on earth, from the rudest to the most refined, in which a materialist can talk for five minutes together, without involving some contradiction in terms to his own system. Objection. Will not this apply equally to the astronomer? Newton, no doubt, talked of the sun's rising and setting, just like other men. What should we think of the coxcomb, who should have objected to him, that he contradicted his own system? Answer.—No! it does not apply equally; say rather, it is utterly inapplicable to the astronomer and natural philosopher. For his philosophic, and his ordinary language speak of two quite different things, both of which are equally true. In his ordinary language he refers to a fact of appearance, to a phenomenon common and necessary to all persons in a given situation: in his scientific language he determines that one position, figure, &c. which being supposed, the appearance in question would be the necessary result, and all appearances in all situations may be demonstrably foretold. Let a body be suspended in the air, and strongly illuminated. What figure is here? A triangle. But what here? A trapezium,..and so on. The same question put to twenty men, in twenty different positions and distances, would receive twenty different answers: and each would be a true answer. But what is that one figure, which being so placed, all these facts of appearance must result, according to the law of perspective?. . .Aye! this is a different question,..this is a new subject. The words, which answer this, would be absurd, if used in reply to the former. Thus, the language of the scriptures on natural objects is as strictly philosophical as that of the Newtonian system. Perhaps, more so. For it is not only equally true, but it Is universal among mankind, and unchangeable. It describes facts of appearance. And what other language would have been consistent with the divine wisdom? The inspired writers must have borrowed their terminology, either from the crude and mistaken philosophy of their own times, and so have sanctified and perpetuated falsehood, unintelligible meantime to all but one in ten thousand; or they must have anticipated the terminology of the true system, without any revelation of the system itself, and so have become unintelligible to all men; or lastly, they must have revealed the system itself, and thus have left nothing for the exercise, developement, or reward of the human understanding, instead of teaching that moral knowledge, and enforcing those social and civic virtues, out of which the arts and sciences will spring up in due time, and of their own accord. But nothing of this applies to the materialist; he refers to the very same facts, which the common language of mankind speaks of: and these too are facts, that have their sole and entire being in our own consciousness; facts, as to which esse and consvire are identical. Now, whatever is common to all languages, in all climates, at all times, and in all stages of civilization, must be the Exponent and Consequent of the common consciousness of man, as man. Whatever contradicts this universal language, therefore, contradicts the universal consciousness, and the facts in question subsisting exclusively in consciousness, whatever contradicts the consciousness, contradicts the fact. Q.E.D.
I have been seduced into a dry discussion, where I had intended only a few amusing facts in proof, that the mind makes the sense, far more than the senses make the mind. If I have life and health, and leisure, I purpose to compile (from the works, memoirs, transactions, &c. of the different philosophical societies in Europe, from magazines, and the rich store of medical and psychological publications furnished by the English, French, and German press, all the essays and cases that relate to the human faculties under unusual circumstances (for pathology is the crucible of physiology); excluding such only as are not intelligible without the symbols or terminology of science. These I would arrange under the different senses and powers: as the eye, the ear, the touch, &c.; the imitative power, voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy, or the aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating, and realizing power; the speculative reason,..vis theoretica et scientifica, or the power, by which we produce, or aim to produce, unity, necessity, and universality in all our knowledge by means of principles [1]a priori; the will, or practical reason; the faculty of choice (Germanicè, Willkiihr,) and (distinct both from the moral will, and the choice) the sensation of volition, which I have found reason to include under the head of single and double touch. Thence I propose to make a new arrangement of madness, whether as defect, or as excess of any of these senses or faculties; and thus by appropriate cases to shew the difference between, I. a man, having lost his reason, but not his senses or understanding—that is, he sees things as other men see them; he adapts means to ends, as other men would adapt them, and not seldom, with more sagacity; but his final end is altogether irrational. II. His having lost his wits, i.e. his understanding or judicial power; but not his reason, or the use of his senses. Such was Don Quixote; and, therefore, we love and reverence him, while we despise Hudibras. III. His being out of his senses, as is the case of an hypochondrist, to whom his limbs appear to be of glass. Granting that, all his conduct is both rational (or moral) and prudent; IV. or the case may be a combination of all three, though I doubt the existence of such a case; or of any two of them; V. or lastly, it may be merely such an excess of sensation, as overpowers and suspends all; which is frenzy or raving madness.
A diseased state of an organ of sense, or of the inner organs connected with it, will perpetually tamper with the understanding, and unless there be an energetic and watchful counteraction of the judgment (of which I have known more than one instance, in which the comparing and reflecting judgment has obstinately, though painfully rejected the full testimony of the senses) will finally over-power it. But when the organ is obliterated, or totally suspended, then the mind applies some other organ to a double use. Passing through Temple Sowerby, in Westmoreland, some ten years back, I was shewn a man perfectly blind, and blind from his infancy; Fowell was his name. This man's chief amusement was fishing on the wild and uneven banks of the river Eden, and up the different streams and tarns among the mountains. He had an intimate friend, likewise stone blind, a dexterous card-player, who knows every gate and stile far and near throughout the country. These two often coursed together, and the people, here as every where, fond of the marvellous, affirm that they were the best beaters up of game in the whole country. The every way amiable and estimable, John Gough of Kendal, is not only an excellent mathematician; but an infallible botanist and zoologist. He has frequently at the first feel corrected the mistakes of the most experienced sportsman, with regard to the birds or vermin which they had killed, when it chanced to be a variety or rare species, so completely resembling the common one that it required great steadiness of observation to detect the difference, even after it had been pointed out. As to plants and flowers, the rapidity of his touch appears fully equal to that of sight; and the accuracy greater. Good heavens! it needs only to look at him!...Why, his face seems all over! It is all one eye! I almost envied him: for the purity and excellence of his own nature, never broken in upon by those evil looks (or features, which are looks become fixtures) with which low cunning, habitual cupidity, presumptuous sciolism, and heart-hardening vanity, caledonianize the human face, it is the mere stamp, the undisturbed ectypon, of his own soul! Add to this, that he is a quaker, with all the blest negatives, without any of the silly and factious positives, of that sect, which with all its bogs and hollows is still the prime sun-shine spot of Christendom in the eye of the true philosopher. When I was in Germany, in the year 1798, I read at Hanover, and met with two respectable persons, one a clergyman, the other a physician, who comfirmed to me, the account of the upper-stall master at Hanover, written by himself, and countersigned by all his medical attendants. As far as I recollect, he had fallen from his horse on his head, and in consequence of the blow lost both his sight and hearing for nearly three years, and continued for the greater part of this period in a state of nervous fever. His understanding, however, remained unimpaired and unaffected; and his entire consciousness, as to outward impressions, being confined to the sense of touch, he at length became capable of reading any book (if printed as most German books are, on coarse paper) with his fingers, in much the same manner in which the piano forte is played, and latterly with an almost incredible rapidity. Likewise by placing his hand, with the fingers all extended, at a small distance from the lips of any person that spoke slowly, and distinctly to him, he learnt to recognize each letter by its different effects on his nerves, and thus spelt the words as they were uttered: and then returned the requisite answers, either by signs of finger-language to those of his own family, or to strangers by writing. It was particularly noticed both by himself from his sensations, and by his medical attendants from observation, that the letter R, if pronounced full and strong, and recurrring once or more in the same word, produced a small spasm, or twitch in his hand and fingers. At the end of three years he recovered both his health and senses, and with the necessity soon lost the power, which he had thus acquired.
N.B. The editor scarcely need observe, that the preceding article is taken from his friend's "volume of title pages," &c. scattered in his memorandum books.
- ↑ This phrase, a priori, is in common most grossly misunderstood, and an absurdity burthened on it which it does not deserve! By knowledge a priori, we do not mean that we can know any thing previously to experience, which would be a contradiction in terms; but that having once known it by occasion of experience, (i.e. something acting upon us from without) we then know, that it must have pre-existed, or the experience itself would have been impossible. By experience only I know, that I have eyes; but then my reason convinces me, that I must have had eyes in order to the experience.