Descartes. The story, indeed, has some appearance of exaggeration; but it shows what Alcibiades, or rather Plato through him, deemed the requisite of a great thinker. According to this report, in a military expedition which Socrates made along with Alcibiades, the philosopher was seen by the Athenian army to stand for a whole day and a night, until the breaking of the second morning, motionless, with a fixed gaze, thus showing that he was uninterruptedly engrossed with the consideration of a single subject: "And thus," says Alcibiades, "Socrates is ever wont to do when his mind is occupied with inquiries in which there are difficulties to be overcome. He then never interrupts his meditation, and forgets to eat, and drink, and sleep,—everything, in short, until his inquiry has reached its termination, or, at least, until he has seen some light in it." In this history there may be, as I have said, exaggeration; but still the truth of the principle is undeniable. Like Newton, Descartes arrogated nothing to the force of his intellect. What he had accomplished more than other men, that he attributed to the superiority of his method;1 and Bacon, in like manner, eulogizes his method, -in that it places all men with equal attention upon a level, and leaves little or nothing to the prerogatives of genius. Nay, genius itself has been analyzed by the shrewdest observers into a higher capacity of attention. "Genius," says Helvetius, whom we have already quoted, "is nothing but a continued attention," (une attention suivie). "Genius," says Buffon, "is only a protracted patience," (une longue patience). "In the exact sciences, at least," says Cuvier,5 "it is the patience of a sound intellect, when invincible, which truly constitutes genius." And Chesterfield has also observed, that "the power of applying an attention, steady and undissipated, to a single object, is the sure mark of a superior genius." Bacon, Helvetius. Buffon. Chesterfield. 4 These examples and authorities concur in establishing the important truth, that he who would, with success, attempt discovery, either by inquiry into the works of nature, or by meditation on the phænomena of mind, must acquire the faculty of abstracting himself, for a season, from the invasion of surrounding objects; must be 1 Discours de la Méthode, p. 1.-ED. 2 Nov. Org., lib. i. aph. 61. — ED. 3 De l'Esprit, Discours iii. chap. iv. -ED. 4 [Quoted by Ponelle, Manuel, p. 371.] 8 Eloge Historique de M. Hary, quoted by Toussaint, De la Pensées, p. 219.] 6 Letters to his Son. Letter lxxxix. [Compare Bonnet, Essai Analytique, tom. i., préface, p. 8.1 Instances of the pow er of Abstraction., able even, in a certain degree, to emancipate himself from the dominion of the body, and live, as it were, a pure intelligence, within the circle of his thoughts. This faculty has been manifested, more or less, by all whose names are associated with the progress of the intellectual sciences. In some, indeed, the power of abstraction almost degenerated into a habit akin to disease, and the examples which now occur to me, would almost induce me to retract what I have said about the exaggeration of Plato's history of Socrates. Archimedes. Joseph Scaliger. Carneades. Newton. Archimedes, it is well known, was so absorbed in a geometrical meditation, that he was first aware of the storming of Syracuse by his own death-wound, and his exclamation on the entrance of Roman soldiers was, Noli turbare circulos meos. In like manner, Joseph Scaliger, the most learned of men, when a Protestant student in Paris, was so engrossed in the study of Homer, that he became aware of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and of his own escape, only on the day subsequent to the catastrophe. The philosopher Carneades was habitually liable to fits of meditation, so profound, that, to prevent him from sinking from inanition, his maid found it necessary to feed him like a child. And it is reported of Newton, that, while engaged in his mathematical researches, he sometimes forgot to dine. Cardan, one of the most illustrious of philosophers and mathematicians, was once, upon a journey, so lost in thought, that he forgot both his way and the object of his journey. To the questions of his driver whither he should proceed, he made no answer; and when he came to himself at nightfall, he was surprised to find the carriage at a stand-still, and directly under a gallows. The mathematician Vieta was sometimes so buried in meditation, that for hours he bore more resemblance to a dead person than to a living, and was then wholly unconscious of everything going on around him. On the day of his marriage, the great Budæus forgot everything in philological speculations, and he was only awakened to the affairs of the external world by a tardy embassy from the marriage-party, who found him absorbed in the composition of his Commentarii. Cardan. Vieta. Budæus. It is beautifully observed by Malebranche, "that the discovery of 1 See Valerius Maximus, lib. viii. c. 7.-ED. 2 [Steeb, Über den Menschen, ii. 671 ] 3. Ibid., lib. viii. c. 7.-ED. Malebranche quoted on place and importance of attention. 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: 2 "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 Ibid., 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." I have translated Study of the writings of Malebranche recommended. 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 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. |