Account of the inference given by Locke and Clarke rejected.
288. With the first of the above questions Hume only concerns himself so far as to show that we cannot know either intuitively or demonstratively, in Locke’s sense of the words, that ‘everything whose existence has a beginning also has a cause.’ Locke’s own argument for the necessity of causation—that ‘something cannot be produced by nothing’—as well as Clarke’s—that ‘if anything wanted a cause it would produce itself,i.e.exist before it existed’—are merely different ways, as Hume shows, of assuming the point in question. ‘If everything must have a cause, it follows that upon exclusion of other causes we must accept of the object itself, or of nothing, as causes. But ’tis the very point in question, whether everything must have a cause or not’. [1] On that point, according to Locke’s own showing, there can be no certainty, intuitive or demonstrative; for between the idea of beginning to exist and the idea of cause there is clearly no agreement, mediate or immediate. They are not similar feelings, they are not quantities that can be measured against each other, and to these alone can the definition of knowledge and reasoning, which Hume retained, apply. There thus disappears that last remnant of ‘knowledge’ in regard to nature which Locke had allowed to survive—the knowledge that there is a necessary connection, though one which we cannot find out. [2]
[1] P. 382. [Book I, part III., sec. III.]
[2] cf. Locke IV. 3, 29, and Introduc, par. 121.
Three points to be explained in the inference according to Hume.
289. Having thus shown, as he conceives, what the true answer to the first of the above questions is not, Hume proceeds to show what it is by answering the second. ‘Since it is not from knowledge or any scientific reasoning that we derive the opinion of the necessity of a cause to every new production,’ it must be from experience; [1] and every general opinion derived from experience is merely the summary of a multitude of particular ones. Accordingly when it has been explained why we infer particular causes from particular effects (andvice versâ), the inference from every event to a cause will have explained itself. Now ‘all our arguments concerning causes and effects consist both of an impression of the memory or senses, and of the idea of that existence which produces the object of the impression or is produced by it. Here, therefore, we have three things to explain, viz.first, the original impression;secondly, the transition to the idea of the connected cause or effect;thirdly, the nature and qualities of that idea.’ [2]
[1] P. 383. [Book I, part III., sec. III.]
[2] P. 385. [Book I, part III., sec. V.]
a. The original impression from which the transition is made, andb. The transition to inferred idea
290. As to the original impression we must notice that there is a certain inconsistency with Hume’s previous usage of terms in speaking of animpressionof memory at all. [1] This, however, will be excused when we reflect that according to him impression and idea only differ in liveliness, and that he is consistent in claiming for the ideas of memory, not indeed the maximum, but a high degree of vivacity, superior to that which belongs to ideas of imagination. All that can be said, then, of that ‘original impression,’ whether of the memory or senses, which is necessary to any ‘reasoning from cause or effect,’ is that it is highly vivacious. That the transition from it to the ‘idea of the connected cause or effect’ is not determined by reason, has already been settled. It could only be so determined, according to the received account of reason, if there were some agreement in respect of quantity or quality between the idea of cause and that of the effect, to be ascertained by the interposition of other ideas. [2] But when we examine any particular objects that we hold to be related as cause and effect,e.g.the sight of flame and the feeling of heat, we find no such agreement. What wedofind is their ‘constant conjunction’ in experience, and ‘conjunction’ is equivalent to that ‘contiguity in time and place,’ which has already been pointed out as one of those ‘natural relations’ which act as ‘principles of union’ between ideas. [3] Because the impression of flame has always been found to be followed by the impression of heat, the idea of flame always suggests the idea of heat. It is simple custom then that determines the transition from the one to the other, or renders ‘necessary’ the connection between them. In order that the transition, however, may constitute an inference from cause to effect (orvice versâ), one of the two objects thus naturally related, but not both, must be presented as an impression. If both were impressions it would be a case of ‘sensation, not reasoning;’ if both were ideas, no belief would attend the transition. This brings us to the question as to the ‘nature and qualities’ of the inferred idea.
[1] Above, par. 195.
[2] Cf. Locke IV. 17, 2.
[3] Above, par. 206.
c. The qualities of this idea.
291. ‘’Tis evident that all reasonings from causes or effects terminate in conclusions concerning matter of fact,i.e.concerning the existence of objects or of their qualities’; [1] in other words, in belief. If this meant a new idea, an idea that we have not previously had, it would follow that inference could really carry us beyond sense, that there could be an idea not copied from any prior impression. But according to Hume it does not mean this. ‘The idea of existence is the very same with the idea of what we conceive to be existent;’ [2] and not only so, ‘thebeliefof existence joins no new ideas to those which compose the idea of the object. When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nor diminishes’. [3] In what then lies the difference between incredulity and belief; between an ‘idea assented to,’ or an object believed to exist, and a fictitious object or idea from which we dissent? The answer is, ‘not in the parts or composition of the idea, but in the manner of conceiving it,’ which must be understood to mean the manner of ‘feeling’ it; and this difference is further explained to lie in ‘the superior force, or vivacity, or steadiness’ with which it is felt.’ [4] We are thus brought to the further question, how it is that this ‘superior vivacity’ belongs to the inferred idea when we ‘reason’ from cause to effect or from effect to cause. The answer here is that the ‘impression of the memory or senses,’ which in virtue of a ‘natural relation’ suggests the idea, also ‘communicates to it a share of its force or vivacity.’
[1] P. 394. [Book I, part III., sec. VII.]
[2] P. 370. [Book I, part II., sec. VI.]
[3] P. 395. [Book I, part III., sec. II.]
[4] P. 398 [Book I, part III., sec. VII.]. Cf. above, par. 170, for the corresponding view in Berkeley.
It results that necessary connection is an impression of reflection,i.e., a propensity to the transition described.
292. Thus it appears that in order to the conclusion that any particular cause must have any particular effect, there is needed first the presence of an impression, and secondly the joint action of those two ‘principles of union among ideas,’ resemblance and contiguity. In virtue of the former principle the given impression calls up the image of a like impression previously experienced, which again in virtue of the latter calls up the image of its usual attendant, and the liveliness of the given impression so communicates itself to the recalled ideas as to constitute belief in their existence. If this is the true account of the matter, the question as to the nature of necessary connexion has answered itself. ‘The necessary connexion betwixt causes and effects is the foundation of our inference from one to the other. The foundation of the inference is the transition arising from the accustomed union. These are therefore the same’. [1] We may thus understand how it is that there seems to be an idea of such connexion to which no impression of the senses, or (to use an equivalent phrase of Hume’s) no ‘quality in objects’ corresponds. If the first presentation of two objects, of which one is cause, the other effect, (i.e.of which we afterwards come to consider one the cause, the other the effect) gives no idea of a connexion between them, as it clearly does not, neither can it do so however often repeated. It would not do so, unless the repetition ‘either discovered or produced something new’ in the objects; and it does neither. But it does ‘produce a new impression in the mind.’ After observing a ‘constant conjunction of the objects, and an uninterrupted resemblance of their relations of contiguity and succession, we immediately feel a determination of the mind to pass from one of the objects to its usual attendant, and to conceive it in a stronger light on account of that relation.’ It is of this ‘internal impression,’ this ‘propensity which custom produces,’ that the idea of necessary connexion is the copy. [2]
[1] P. 460. [Book I, part III., sec. XIV.]
[2] Pp. 457-460. [Book I, part III., sec. XIV.]
The transition not to anything beyond sense.
293. The sequence of ideas, which this propensity determines, clearly does not involve any inference ‘beyond sense,’ ‘from the known to the unknown,’ ‘from instances of which we have had experience, to those of which we have had none,’ any more than does any other ‘recurrence of an idea’—which, as we have seen, merely means, according to Hume, the return of a feeling at a lower level of intensity after it has been felt at a higher. The idea which we speak of as an inferred cause or effect is only an ‘instance of which we have no experience’ in the sense of beingnumerically differentfrom the similar ideas, whose previous constant association with an impression like the given one, determines the ‘inference;’ but in the same sense the ‘impression’ which I now feel on putting my hand to the fire is different from the impressions previously felt under the same circumstances, and I do not for that reason speak of this impression as an instance of which I have had no experience. Thus Hume, though retaining the received phraseology in reference to the ‘conclusion from any particular cause to any particular effect’—phraseology which implies that prior to the inference the object inferred is in some sense unknown or unexperienced—yet deprives it of meaning by a doctrine which makes inference, as he himself puts it, ‘a species of sensation,’ ‘an unintelligible instinct of our souls,’ ‘more properly an act of the sensitive than of the cogitative part of our natures’ [1]—which in fact leaves no ‘part of our natures’ to be cogitative at all.
[1] Pp. 404, 475, and 471. [Book I, part III., sec. VIII., part IV. sec. I. and part III., sec. XVI.]
Nor determined by any objective relation.
294. We are not entitled then, it would seem, to say that any inference to matter of fact, any proof of an ‘instructive proposition,’—as distinct from the conclusion of a syllogism, which is simply derived from the analysis of a proposition already conceded,—rests on the relation of cause and effect. Such language implies that the relation is other than the inference, whereas, in fact, they are one and the same, each being merely a particular sort of sequence of feeling upon feeling—that sort of which the characteristic is that, when the former feeling only has the maximum of vivacity, it still, owing to the frequency with which it has been attended by the other, imparts to it a large, though less, amount of vivacity. This is the naked result to which Hume’s doctrine leads—a result which, thus put, might have set men upon reconsidering the first principles of the Lockeian philosophy. But he wished to find acceptance, and would not so put it. A consideration of the points in which he had to sacrifice consistency to plausibility—since he was always consistent where he decently could be—will lead us to the true αἴτιον τοῦ ψευδοῦς [1], the impossibility on his principles of explaining the world of knowledge.
[1] [Greek αἴτιον τοῦ ψευδοῦς (aition tou pseudous) = the cause of the error. Tr.]
Definitions of cause: a. As a ‘philosophical’ relation.
295. As the outcome of his doctrine, he submits two definitions of the relation of cause and effect. Considering it as ‘aphilosophicalrelation or comparison of two ideas, we may define a cause to be an object precedent and contiguous to another, and where all objects resembling the former are placed in like relations of precedency and contiguity to those objects that resemble the latter.’ Considering the relation as ‘anaturalone, or as an association between ideas,’ we may say that ‘acauseis an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other’. [1]
[1] P. 464. [Book I, part III., sec. XIV.]
Is Hume entitled to retain ‘philosophical’ relations as distinct from ‘natural’?
296. Our first enquiry must be how far these definitions are really consistent with the theory from which they are derived. At the outset, it is a surprise to find that the ‘philosophical relation’ of cause and effect, as distinct from the natural one, should still appear to survive. Such a distinction has no meaning unless it implies a conceived relation of objects other than thede factosequence of feelings, of which one ‘naturally’ introduces the other. It is the characteristic of Locke’s doctrine of knowledge that in it this distinction is still latent. His language constantly implies that knowledge, as a perception of relations, is other than the sequence of feelings; but by confining his view chiefly to relation in the way of likeness and unlikeness—a relation that exists between feelings merely as felt, or as they are for the feeling consciousness—he avoids the necessity of deciding what the ‘ideas’ are in the connection of which knowledge and reasoning consist, whether objects constituted by conceived relations or feelings suggestive of each other. But when once attention had been fixed, as it was by Hume, on an ostensible relation between objects, like that of cause and effect, which, if it exist at all, is clearly not one in the way of resemblance between feelings, the distinction spoken of becomes patent. If the colour red had not the likeness and unlikeness which it has to the colour blue, the colours would be different feelings from what they are; but if the flame of fire and its heat were not regarded severally as cause and effect, it would make no difference to them as feelings; or, to put it conversely, it is not upon any comparison of two feelings with each other that we regard them as related in the way of cause and effect. In what sense then can the relation between flame and heat be a philosophical relation, as defined by Hume—a relation in virtue of which we compare objects, or an idea that we acquire upon comparison?
Examination of Hume’s language about them.
297. This definition, indeed, is not stated so exactly or so uniformly as might be wished. In different passages ‘philosophical relation’ appears as that in respect of which we compare any two ideas; as that of which we acquire the idea by comparing objects, [1] and finally (in the context of the passage last quoted) as itself the comparison. [2] The real source of this ambiguity lies in that impossibility of regarding an object as anything apart from its relations, which compels any theory that does not recognize it to be inconsistent with itself. It is Locke’s cardinal doctrine that real ‘objects’ are first given as simple ideas, and that their relations, unreal in contrast with the simple ideas, are superinduced by the mind—a doctrine which Hume completes by excluding all ideas that are not either copies of simple feelings or compounds of these, and by consequence ideas of relation altogether. The three statements of the nature of philosophical relation, given above, mark three stages of departure from, or approach to, consistency with this doctrine. The first, implying as it does that relation is not merely a subjective result in our minds from the comparison of ideas, but belongs to the ideas themselves, is most obviously inconsistent with it according to the form in which it is presented by Locke; but the second is equally incompatible with Hume’s completion of the doctrine, for it implies that we so compare ideas as to acquire an idea of relation other than the ideas put together—an idea at once open to Hume’s own challenge, ‘Is it a colour, sound, smell, &c.; or is it a passion or emotion?’
[1] Cf. Part I. 5.
[2] P. 464. [Book I, part III., sec. XIV.]
Philosophical relation consists in a comparison, but no comparison between cause and effect.
298. We are thus brought to the third statement, according to which philosophical relation, instead of being an idea acquired upon comparison, is itself the comparison. A comparison of ideas may seem not far removed from the simple sequence of resembling ideas; but if we examine the definition of cause, as stated above, which with Hume corresponds to the view of the relation of cause and effect as a ‘philosophical’ one, we find that the relation in question is neither a comparison of the related objects nor an idea which arises upon such comparison. According to his statement a comparison is indeed necessary to give us an idea of the relation—a comparison, however, not of the objects which we reckon severally cause and effect with each other, but(a)of each of the two objects with other like objects, and(b)of the relation of precedency and contiguity between the two objects with that previously observed between the like objects. Now, unless the idea of relation between objects in the way of cause and effect is one that consists in, or is acquired by, comparisonof those objects, the fact that another sort of comparison is necessary to constitute it does not touch the question of its possibility. However we come to have it, however reducible to impressions the objects may be, it is not only other than the idea of either object taken singly; it is not, as an idea of resemblance might be supposed to be, constituted by the joint presence or immediate sequence upon each other of the objects. Here, then, is an idea which is not taken either from an impression or from a compound of impressions (if such composition be possible), and this idea is ‘the source of all our reasonings concerning matters of fact.’
The comparison is between present and past experience of succession of objects.
299. The modern followers of Hume may perhaps seek refuge in the consideration that though the relation of cause and effect between objects is not one in the way of resemblance or one of which the idea is given by comparison of the objects, it yet results from comparisons, which may be supposed to act like chemical substances whose combination produces a substance with properties quite different from those of the combined substances, whether taken separately or together. Some anticipation of such a solution, it may be said, we find in Hume himself, who is aware that from the repetition of impressions of sense and their ideas new, heterogeneous, impressions—those of ‘reflection’—are formed. Of this more will be said when we come to Hume’s treatment of cause and effect as a ‘natural relation.’ For the present we have to enquire what exactly is implied in the comparisons from which this heterogeneous idea of relation is derived. If we look closely we shall find that they presuppose a consciousness of relations as little reducible to resemblance,i.e.as little the result of comparison, as that of cause and effect itself. It has been already noticed how Hume treats the judgment of proportion between figures as a mere affair of sense, because such relation depends entirely on the ideas compared, without reflecting that the existence of the figures presupposes those relations of space to which, because (as he admits) they do not depend on the comparison of ideas, the only excuse for reckoning any relation sensible does not apply. In the same way he contents himself with the fact that the judgment of cause and effect implies a comparison of present with past experience, and may thus be brought under his definition of ‘philosophical relation,’ without observing that the experiences compared are themselves by no means reducible to comparison. We judge that an object, which we now find to be precedent and contiguous to another, is its cause when, comparing present experience with past, we find that it always has been so. That in effect is Hume’s account of the relation, ‘considered as a philosophical one:’ and it implies that the constitution of the several experiences compared involves two sorts of relation which Hume admits not to be derived from comparison,(a)relation in time and place,(b)relation in the way of identity.
Observation of succession already goes beyond sense.
300. As to relations in time and space, we have already traced out the inconsistencies which attend Hume’s attempt to represent them as compound ideas. The statement at the beginning of Part III., that they are relations not dependent on the nature of compared ideas, is itself a confession that such representation is erroneous. If the difficulty about the synthesis of successive feelings in a consciousness that consists merely of the succession could be overcome, we might admit that the putting together of ideas might constitute such an idea of relation as depends on the nature of the combined ideas. But no combination of ideas can yield a relation which remains the same while the ideas change, and changes while they remain the same. Thus, when Hume tells us that ‘in none of the observations we may make concerning relations of time and place can the mind go beyond what is immediately present to the senses, to discover the relations of objects’ [1] the statement contradicts itself. Either we can make no observation concerning relation in time and place at all, or in making it we already ‘go beyond what is immediately present to the senses,’ since we observe what is neither a feeling nor several feelings put together. If then Hume had succeeded in his reduction of reasoning from cause or effect to observation of this kind, as modified in a certain way by habit, the purpose for which the reduction is attempted would not have been attained. The separation between perception and inference, between ‘intuition’ and ‘discourse,’ would have been got rid of, but inference and discourse would not therefore have been brought nearer to the mere succession of feelings, for the separation between feeling and perception would remain complete; and that being so, the question would inevitably recur—If the ‘observation’ of objects as related in space and time already involves a transition from the felt to the unfelt, what greater difficulty is there about the interpretation of a feeling as a change to be accounted for (which is what is meant by inference to a cause), that we should do violence to the sciences by reducing it to repeated observation lest it should seem that in it we ‘go beyond’ present feeling?
[1] P. 376. [Book I, part III., sec. II.]
As also does the ‘observation concerning identity,’ which the comparison involves.
301. Relation in the way of identity is treated by Hume in the third part of the Treatise [1] pretty much as he treats contiguity and distance. He admits that it does not depend on the nature of any ideas so related—in other words, that it is not constituted by feelings as they would be for a merely feeling consciousness—yet he denies that the mind ‘in any observations we may make concerning it’ can go beyond what is immediately present to the senses. Directly afterwards, however, we find that thereisa judgment of identity which involves a ‘conclusion beyond the impressions of our senses’—the judgment, namely, that an object of which the perception is interrupted continues individually the same notwithstanding the interruption. Such a judgment, we are told, is a supposition founded only on the connection of cause and effect. How any ‘observation concerning identity’ can be made without it is not there explained, and, pending such explanation, observations concerning identity are freely taken for granted as elements given by sense in the experience from which the judgment of cause and effect is derived. In the second chapter of Part IV., however, where ‘belief in an external world’ first comes to be explicitly discussed by Hume, we find that ‘propensities to feign’ are as necessary to account for the judgment of identity as for that of necessary connection. If that chapter had preceded, instead of following, the theory of cause and effect as given in Part III., the latter would have seemed much less plain sailing than to most readers it has done. It is probably because nothing corresponding to it appears in that later redaction of his theory by which Hume sought popular acceptance, that the true suggestiveness of his speculation was ignored, and the scepticism, which awakened Kant, reduced to the commonplaces of inductive logic. To examine its purport is the next step to be taken in the process of testing the possibility of a ‘natural history’ of knowledge. Its bearing on the doctrine of cause will appear as we proceed.
[1] P. 376. [Book I, part III., sec. II.]
Identity of objects an unavoidable crux for Hume. His account of it.
302. The problem of identity necessarily arises from the fusion of reality and feeling. We must once again recall the propositions in which Hume represents this fusion—that ‘everything which enters the mind is both in reality and appearance as the perception;’ that ‘so far as the senses are judges, all perceptions are the same in the manner of their existence;’ that ‘perceptions’ are either impressions, or ideas which are ‘fainter impressions;’ and ‘impressions are internal and perishing existences, and appear as such.’ If these propositions are true—and the ‘new way of ideas’ inevitably leads to them—how is it that webelievein ‘acontinuedexistence of objects even when they are not present to the senses,’ and an existence ‘distinct from the mind and perception’? They are the same questions from which Berkeley derived his demonstration of an eternal mind—a demonstration premature because, till the doctrine of ‘ideas,’ and of mind as their subject, had been definitely altered in a way that Berkeley did not attempt, it was explaining a belief difficult to account for by one wholly unaccountable. Before Theism could be exhibited with the necessity which Locke claimed for it, it was requisite to try what could be done with association of ideas and ‘propensities to feign’ in the way of accounting for the world of knowledge, in order that upon their failure another point of departure than Locke’s might be found necessary. The experiment was made by Hume. He has the merit, to begin with, of stating the nature of identity with a precision which we found wanting in Locke. ‘In that proposition,an object is the same with itself, if the idea expressed by the wordobjectwere no ways distinguished from that meant byitself, we really should mean nothing.’ ‘On the other hand, a multiplicity of objects can never convey the idea of identity, however resembling they may be supposed. … Since then both number and unity are incompatible with the relation of identity, it must lie in something that is neither of them. But at first sight this seems impossible.’ The explanation is that when ‘we say that an object is the same with itself, we mean that the object existent at one time is the same with itself existent at another. By this means we make a difference betwixt the idea meant by the wordobjectand that meant byitselfwithout going the length of number, and at the same time without restraining ourselves to a strict and absolute unity.’ In other words, identity means the unity of a thing through a multiplicity of times; or, as Hume puts it, ‘the invariableness and uninterruptedness of any object through a supposed variation of time’. [1]
[1] Pp. 489, 490. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
Properly with him it is a fiction, in the sense that we have no such idea. Yet he implies that we have such idea, in saying that we mistake something else for it.
303. Now that ‘an object exists’ can with Hume mean no more than that an ‘impression’ is felt, and without succession of feelings according to him there is no time. [1] It follows that unity in the existence of the object, being incompatible withsuccessionof feelings, is incompatible also with existence in time. Either then the unity of the object or its existence at manifold times—both being involved in the conception of identity—must be a fiction; and since ‘all impressions are perishing existences,’ perishing with a turn of the head or the eyes, it cannot be doubted which it is that is the fiction. That the existence of an object, which we call the same with itself, is broken by as many intervals of time as there are successive and different, however resembling, ‘perceptions,’ must be the fact; that it should yet be one throughout the intervals is a fiction to be accounted for, Hume accounts for it by supposing that when the separate ‘perceptions’ have a strong ‘natural relation’ to each other in the way of resemblance, the transition from one to the other is so ‘smooth and easy’ that we are apt to take it for the ‘same disposition of mind with which we consider one constant and uninterrupted perception;’ and that, as a consequence of this mistake, we make the further one of taking the successive resembling perceptions for an identical,i.e.uninterrupted as well as invariable object. [2] But we cannot mistake one object for another unless we have an idea of that other object. If then we ‘mistake the succession of our interrupted perceptions for an identical object,’ it follows that we have an idea of such an object—of a thing one with itself throughout the succession of impressions—an idea which can be a copy neither of any one of the impressions nor, even if successive impressions could put themselves together, of all so put together. Such an idea being according to Hume’s principles impossible, the appearance of our having it was the fiction he had to account for; and he accounts for it, as we find, by a ‘habit of mind’ which already presupposes it. His procedure here is just the same as in dealing with the idea of vacuum. In that case, as we saw, having to account for the appearance of there being the impossible idea of pure space, he does so by showing, that having ‘an idea of distance not filled with any coloured or tangible object,’ we mistake this for an idea of extension, and hence suppose that the latter may be invisible and intangible. He thus admits an idea, virtually the same with the one excluded, as the source of the ‘tendency to suppose’ which is to replace the excluded idea. So in his account of identity. Either the habit, in virtue of which we convert resembling perceptions into an identical object, is what Hume admits to be a contradiction, ‘a habit acquired by what was never present to the mind’; [3] or the idea of identity must be present to the mind in order to render the habit possible.
[1] ‘Wherever we have no successive perceptions, we have no notion of time.’ (p. 342) [Book I, part II., sec. III.].
[2] P. 492. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[3] P. 487. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
Succession of like feelings mistaken for an identical object: but the feelings, as described, are already such objects.
304. The device by which thispetitio principiiis covered is one already familiar to us in Hume. In this case it is so palpable that it is difficult to believe he was unconscious of it. As he has ‘to account for the belief of the vulgar with regard to the existence of body,’ he will ‘entirely conform himself to their manner of thinking and expressing themselves;’ in other words, he will assume the fiction in question as the beginning of a process by which its formation is to be accounted for. The vulgar make no distinction between thing and appearance. ‘Those very sensations which enter by the eye or ear are with them the true objects, nor can they readily conceive that this pen or this paper, which is immediately perceived, represents another which is different from, but resembling it. In order therefore to accommodate myself to their notions, I shall at first suppose that there is only a single existence, which I shall call indifferentlyobjectandperception, according as it shall seem best to suit my purpose, understanding by both of them what any common man may mean by a hat, or shoe, or stone, or any other impression conveyed to him by his senses’. [1] Now it is of course true that the vulgar are innocent of the doctrine of representative ideas. They do not suppose that this pen or this paper, which is immediately perceived, represents another which is different from, but resembling, it; but neither do they suppose that this pen or this paper is a sensation. It is the intellectual transition from this, that, and the other successive sensations to this pen or this paper, as the identical object to which the sensations are referred as qualities, that is unaccountable if, according to Hume’s doctrine, the succession of feelings constitutes our consciousness. In the passage quoted he quietly ignores it, covering his own reduction of felt thing to feeling under the popular identification of the real thing with the perceived. With ‘the vulgar’ that which is ‘immediately perceived’ is the real thing, just because it is not the mere feeling which with Hume it is. But under pretence of provisionally adopting the vulgar view, he entitles himself to treat the mere feeling, because according to him it is that which is immediately perceived, as if it were the permanent identical thing, which according to the vulgar is what is immediately perceived.
[1] P. 491. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
Fiction of identity thus implied as source of the propensity which is to account for it.
305. Thus without professedly admitting into consciousness anything but the succession of feelings he gets such individual objects as Locke would have called objects of ‘actual present sensation.’ When ‘I survey the furniture of my chamber,’ according to him, I see sundry ‘identical objects’—this chair, this table, this inkstand, &c. [1] So far there is no fiction to be accounted for. It is only when, having left my chamber for an interval and returned to it, I suppose the objects which I see to be identical with those I saw before, that the ‘propensity to feign’ comes into play, which has to be explained as above. But in fact the original ‘survey’ during which, seeing the objects, I suppose them to continue the same with themselves, involves precisely the same fiction. In that case, says Hume, I ‘suppose the change’ (which is necessary to constitute the idea of identity) ‘to lie only in the time.’ But without ‘succession of perceptions,’ different however resembling, there could according to him be no change of time. The continuous survey of this table, or this chair, then, involves the notion of its remaining the same with itself throughout a succession of different perceptions—i.e.the full-grown fiction of identity—just as much as does the supposition that the table I see now is identical with the one I saw before. The ‘reality,’ confusion with which of ‘a smooth passage along resembling ideas’ is supposed to constitute the ‘fiction,’ is already itself the fiction—the fiction of an object which must be other than our feelings, since it is permanent while they are successive, yet so related to them that in virtue of reference to it, instead of being merely different from each other, they become changes of a thing.
[1] P. 493. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
With Hume continued existence of perceptions a fiction different from their identity. Can perceptions exist when not perceived?
306. Having thus in effect imported all three ‘fictions of imagination’—identity, continued existence, and existence distinct from perception—into the original ‘perception,’ Hume, we may think, might have saved himself the trouble of treating them as separate and successive formations. Unless he had so treated them, however, his ‘natural history’ of consciousness would have been far less imposing than it is. The device, by which he represents the ‘vulgar’ belief in the reality of the felt thing as a belief that the mere feeling is the real object, enables him also to represent the identity, which a smooth transition along closely resembling sensations leads us to suppose, as still merely identity of aperception. ‘The very image which is present to the senses is with us the real body; and ’tis to these interrupted images we ascribe a perfect identity’. [1] The identity lying thus in the images or appearances, not in anything to which they are referred, a further fiction seems to be required by which we may overcome the contradiction between the interruption of the appearances and their identity—the fiction of ‘a continued being which may fill the intervals’ between the appearances. [2] That a ‘propension’ towards such a fiction would naturally arise from the uneasiness caused by such a contradiction, we may readily admit. The question is how the propension can be satisfied by a supposition which is merely another expression for one of the contradictory beliefs. What difference is there between the appearance of a perception and its existence, that interruption of the perception, though incompatible with uninterruptedness in its appearance, should not be so with uninterruptedness in its existence? It may be answered that there is just the difference between relation to a feeling subject and relation to a thinking one—between relation to a consciousness which is in time, or successive, and relation to a thinking subject which, not being itself in time, is the source of that determination by permanent conditions, which is what is meant by the real existence of a perceived thing. But to Hume, who expressly excludes such a subject—with whom ‘it exists’ = ‘it is felt’—such an answer is inadmissible. He can, in fact, only meet the difficulty by supposing the existence of unfelt feelings, of unperceived perceptions. The appearance of a perception is its presence to ‘what we call a mind,’ which ‘is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity’. [3] To consider a perception, then, as existing though not appearing is merely to consider it as detached from this ‘heap’ of other perceptions, which, on Hume’s principle that whatever is distinguishable is separable, is no more impossible than to distinguish one perception from all others. [4] In fact, however, it is obvious that the supposed detachment is the very opposite of such distinction. A perception distinguished from all others is determined by that distinction in the fullest possible measure. A perceptiondetachedfrom all others, left out of the ‘heap which we call a mind,’ being out of all relation, has no qualities—is simply nothing. We can no more ‘consider’ it than we can see vacancy. Yet it is by the consideration of such nonentity, by supposing a world of unperceived perceptions, of ‘existences’ without relation or quality, that the mind, according to Hume—itself only ‘a heap of perceptions’—arrives at that fiction of a continued being which, as involved in the supposition of identity, is the condition of our believing in a world of real things at all.
[1] P. 493. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[2] Pp. 494, 495. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[3] P. 495. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[4] Ibid.
Existence of objects, distinct from perceptions, a further fiction still.
307. It is implied, then, in the process by which, according to Hume, the fiction of a continued being is arrived at, that this being is supposed to be not only continued but ‘distinct from the mind’ and ‘independent’ of it. With Hume, however, the supposition of a distinct and ‘independent’ existence of theperceptionis quite different from that of a distinct and independent object other than the perception. The former is the ‘vulgar hypothesis,’ and though a fiction, it is also a universal belief: the latter is the ‘philosophical hypothesis,’ which, if it has a tendency to obtain belief at all, at any rate derives that tendency, in other words ‘acquires all its influence over the imagination,’ from the vulgar one. [1] Just as the belief in the independent and continued existence of perceptions results from an instinctive effort to escape the uneasiness, caused by the contradiction between the interruption of resembling perceptions and their imagined identity, so the contradiction between this belief and the evident dependence of all perceptions ‘on our organs and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits’ leads to the doctrine of representative ideas or ‘the double existence of perceptions and objects.’ ‘This philosophical system, therefore, is the monstrous offspring of two principles which are contrary to each other, which are both at once embraced by the mind and which are unable mutually to destroy each other. The imagination tells us that our resembling perceptions have a continued and uninterrupted existence, and are not annihilated by their absence. Reflection tells us that even our resembling perceptions are interrupted in their existence and different from each other. The contradiction betwixt these opinions we elude by a new fiction which is conformable to the hypotheses both of reflection and fancy, by ascribing these contrary qualities to different existences; the interruption toperceptions, and the continuance toobjects’. [2]
[1] P. 500. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[2] P. 502. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
Are these several ‘fictions’ really different from each other?
308. Here, again, we find that the contradictory announcements, which it is the object of this new fiction to elude, are virtually the same as those implied in that judgment of identity which is necessary to the ‘perception’ of this pen or this paper. That ‘interruption of our resembling perceptions,’ of which ‘reflection’ (in the immediate context ‘Reason’) is here said to ‘tell us,’ is merely that difference in time, or succession, which Hume everywhere else treats as a datum of sense, and which, as he points out, is as necessary a factor in the idea of identity, as is the imagination of an existence continued throughout the succession. Thus the contradiction, which suggests this philosophical fiction of double existence, has been already present and overcome in every perception of a qualified object. Nor does the fiction itself, by which the contradiction is eluded, differ except verbally from that suggested by the contradiction between the interruption and the identity of perceptions. What power is there in the word ‘object’ that the supposition of an unperceived existence of perceptions, continued while their appearance is broken, should be an unavoidable fiction of the imagination, while that of ‘the double existence of perceptions and objects’ is a gratuitous fiction of philosophers, of which ‘vulgar’ thinking is entirely innocent?
Are they not all involved in the simplest perception?
309. That it is gratuitous we may readily admit, but only because a recognition of the function of the Ego in the primary constitution of the qualified individual object—this pen or this paper—renders it superfluous. To the philosophy, however, in which Hume was bred, the perception of a qualified object was simply a feeling. No intellectual synthesis of successive feelings was recognized as involved in it. It was only so far as the dependence of the feeling on our organs, in the absence of any clear distinction between feeling and felt thing, seemed to imply a dependent and broken existence of the thing, that any difficulty arose—a difficulty met by the supposition that the felt thing, whose existence was thus broken and dependent, represented an unfelt and permanent thing of which it is a copy or effect. To the Berkeleian objections, already fatal to this supposition, Hume has his own to add, viz. that we can have no idea of relation in the way of cause and effect except as between objects which we have observed, and therefore can have no idea of it as existing between a perception and an object of which we can only say that it is not a perception. Is all existence then ‘broken and dependent’? That is the ‘sceptical’ conclusion which Hume professes to adopt—subject, however, to the condition of accounting for the contrary supposition (without which, as he has to admit, we could not think or speak, and which alone gives a meaning to his own phraseology about impressions and ideas) as a fiction of the imagination. He does this, as we have seen, by tracing a series of contradictions, with corresponding hypotheses invented, either instinctively or upon reflection, in order to escape the uneasiness which they cause, all ultimately due to our mistaking similar successive feelings for an identical object. Of such an object, then, we must have an idea to begin with, and it is an object permanent throughout a variation of time, which means a succession of feelings; in other words, it is a felt thing, as distinct from feelings but to which feelings are referred as its qualities. Thus the most primary perception—that in default of which Hume would have no reality to oppose to fiction, nor any point of departure for the supposed construction of fictions—already implies that transformation of feelings into changing relations of a thing which, preventing any incompatibility between the perpetual brokenness of the feeling and the permanence of the thing, ‘eludes’ by anticipation all the contradictions which, according to Hume, we only ‘elude’ by speaking as if we had ideas that we have not.
Yet they are not possible ideas, because copied from no impressions.
310. ‘Ideas that wehave not;’ for no one of the fictions by which we elude the contradictions, nor indeed any one of the contradictory judgments themselves, can be taken to represent an ‘idea’ according to Hume’s account of ideas. He allows himself indeed to speak of our having ideas of identical objects, such asthis table while I see or touch it—though in this case, as has been shown, either the object is not identical or the idea of it cannot be copied from an impression—and of our transferring this idea to resembling but interrupted perceptions. But the supposition to which the contradiction involved in this transference gives rise—the supposition that the perception continues to exist when it is not perceived—is shown by the very statement of it to be no possible copy of an impression. Yet according to Hume it is a ‘belief,’ and a belief is ‘a lively idea associated with a present impression.’ What then is the impression and what the associated idea? ‘As the propensity to feign the continued existence of sensible objects arises from some lively impressions of the memory, it bestows a vivacity on that fiction; or, in other words, makes us believe the continued existence of body’. [1] Well and good: but this only answers the first part of our question. It tells us what are the impressions in the supposed case of belief, but not what is the associated idea to which their liveliness is communicated. To say that it arises from a propensity to feign, strong in proportion to the liveliness of the supposed impressions of memory, does not tell us of what impression it is a copy. Such a propensity indeed would be an ‘impression of reflection,’ but the fiction itself is neither the propensity nor a copy of it. The only possible supposition left for Hume would be that it is a ‘compound idea;’ but what combination of ‘perceptions’ can amount to the existence of perceptions when they are not perceived?
[1] P. 496. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
Comparison of present experience with past, which yields relation of cause and effect, pre-supposes judgment of identity;
311. From this long excursion into Hume’s doctrine of relation in the way of identity—having found him admitting explicitly that it is only by a ‘fiction of the imagination’ that we identify this table as now seen with this table as seen an hour ago, and implicitly that the same fiction is involved in the perception of this table as an identical object even when hand or eye is kept upon it, while yet he says not a word to vindicate the possibility of such a fiction for a faculty which can merely reproduce and combine ‘perishing impressions’—we return to consider its bearing upon his doctrine of relation in the way of cause and effect. According to him, as we saw, [1] that relation, ‘considered as a philosophical’ one, is founded on a comparison of present experience with past, in the sense that we regard an object, precedent and contiguous to another, as its cause when all like objects have been found similarly related. The question then arises whether the experiences compared—the present and the past alike—do not involve the fiction of identity along with the whole family of other fictions which Hume affiliates to it? Does the relation of precedence and sequence, which, if constant, amounts to that of cause and effect, merely mean precedence and sequence of two feelings, indefinitely like an indefinite number of other feelings that have thus the one preceded and the other followed; or is it a relation between one qualified thing or definite fact always the same with itself, and another such thing or fact always the same with itself? The question carries its own answer. If in the definition quoted Hume used the phrase ‘all like objects’ instead of the ‘same object,’ in order to avoid the appearance of introducing the ‘fiction’ of identity into the definition of cause, the device does not avail him much. The effect of the ‘like’ is neutralized by the ‘all.’ Auniformrelation is impossible except between objects of which each has a definite identity.
[1] Above, pars. 298 and 299.
… without which there could be no recognition of an object as one observed before.
312. When Hume has to describe the experience which gives the idea of cause and effect, he virtually admits this. ‘The nature of experience,’ he tells us, ‘is this. We remember to have had frequent instances of the existence of one species of objects, and also remember that the individuals of another species of objects have always attended them, and have existed in a regular order of contiguity and succession with regard to them. Thus we remember to have seen that species of object we callflame, and to have felt that species of sensation we callheat. We likewise call to mind their constant conjunction in all past instances. Without any farther ceremony we call the one cause, and the other effect, and infer the existence of the one from the other’. [1] It appears, then, that upon experiencing certain sensations of sight and touch, we recognize each as ‘one of a species of objects’ which we remember to have observed in certain constant relations before. In virtue of the recognition the sensations become severally thisflameand thisheat; and in virtue of the remembrance the objects thus recognized are held to be related in the way of cause and effect. Now it is clear that though the recognition takes place upon occasion of a feeling, the object recognized—this flame or this heat—is by no means the feeling as a ‘perishing existence.’ Unless the feeling were taken to represent a thing, conceived as permanently existing under certain relations and attributes—in other words, unless it wereidentifiedby thought—it would be no definite object, not thisflameor thisheat, at all. The moment it is named, it has ceased to be a feeling and become a felt thing, or, in Hume’s language, an ‘individual ofa species of objects.’ And just as the present ‘perception’ is the recognition of such an individual, so the remembrance which determines the recognition is one wholly different from the return with lessened liveliness of a feeling more strongly felt before. According to Hume’s own statement, it consists in recalling ‘frequent instances of the existence ofa species of objects.’ It is remembrance of an experience in which every feeling, that has been attended to, has been interpreted as a fresh appearance of some qualified object that ‘exists’ throughout its appearances—an experience which for that reason forms a connected whole. If it were not so, there could be no such comparison of the relations in which two objects are now presented with those in which they have always been presented, as that which according to Hume determines us to regard them as cause and effect. The condition of our so regarding them is that we suppose the objects now presented to bethe samewith those of which we have had previous experience. It is only on supposition that a certain sensation of sight is not merely like a multitude of others, but represents the same object as that which I have previously known as flame, that I infer the sequence of heat and, when it does follow, regard it as an effect. If I thought that the sensation of sight, however like those previously referred to flame, did not represent the same object, I should not infer heat as effect; and conversely, if, having identified the sensation of sight as representative of flame, I found that the inferred heat was not actually felt, I should judge that I was mistaken in the identification. It follows that it is only an experience of identical, and by consequence related and qualified, objects, of which the memory can so determine a sequence of feelings as to constitute it an experience of cause and effect. Thus the perception and remembrance upon which, according to Hume, we judge one object to be the cause of another, alike rest on the ‘fictions of identity and continued existence.’ Without these no present experience would, in his language, be an instance of an individual of a certain species existing in a certain relation, nor would there be a past experience of individuals of the same species, by comparison with which the constancy of the relation might be ascertained.
[1] P. 388. [Book I, part III., sec. VI.]
Hume makes conceptions of identity and cause each come before the other. Their true correlativity.
313. Against this derivation of the conception of cause and effect, as implying that of identity, may be urged the fact that when we would ascertain the truth of any identification we do so by reference to causes and effects. As Hume himself puts it at the outset of his discussion of causation, an inference of identity ‘beyond the impressions of our senses can be founded only on the connexion of cause and effect.’ … ‘Whenever we discover a perfect resemblance between a new object and one which was formerly present to the senses, we consider whether it be common in that species of objects; whether possibly or probably any cause could operate in producing the change and resemblance; and according as we determine concerning these causes and effects, we form our judgment concerning the identity of the object’. [1] This admission, it may be said, though it tells against Hume’s own subsequent explanation of identity as a fiction of the imagination, is equally inconsistent with any doctrine that would treat identity as the presupposition of inference to cause or effect. Now undoubtedly if the identity of interrupted perceptions is one fiction of the imagination and the relation of cause and effect another, each resulting from ‘custom,’ to say with Hume, that we must have the idea of cause in order to arrive at the supposition of identity, is logically to exclude any derivation of that idea from an experience which involves the supposition of identity. The ‘custom’ which generates the idea of cause must have done its work before that which generates the supposition of identity can begin. Hume therefore, after the admission just quoted, was not entitled to treat the inference to cause or effect as a habit derived from experience of identical things. But it is otherwise if the conceptions of causation and identity are correlative—not results of experience of which one must be formed before the other, but co-ordinate expressions of one and the same synthetic principle, which renders experience possible. And this is the real state of the case. It is true, as Hume points out, that when we want to know whether a certain sensation, precisely resembling one that we have previously experienced, represents the same object, we do so by asking how otherwise it can be accounted for. If no difference appears in its antecedents or sequents, we identify it—refer it to the same thing—as that previously experienced; for its relations (which, since it is an event in time, take the form of antecedence and sequence)arethe thing. The conceptions of identity and of relation in the way of cause and effect are thus as strictly correlative and inseparable as those of the thing and of its relations. Without the conception of identity experience would want a centre, without that of cause and effect it would want a circumference. Without the supposition of objects which ‘existing at one time are the same with themselves as existing at other times’—a supposition which at last, when through acquaintance with the endlessness of orderly change we have learnt that there is but one object for which such identity can be claimed without qualification, becomes the conception of nature as a uniform whole—there could be no such comparison of the relations in which an object is now presented with those in which it has been before presented, as determines us to reckon it the cause or effect of another; but it is equally true that it is only by such comparison of relations that the identity of any particular object can be ascertained.
[1] P. 376. [Book I, part III., sec. II.]
Hume quite right in saying that we do not gomorebeyond sense in reasoning than in perception.
314. Thus, though we may concede to Hume that neither in the inference to the relation of cause and effect nor in the conclusions we draw from it do we go ‘beyond experience,’ [1] this will merely be, if his account of it as a ‘philosophical relation’ be true, because in experience we already go beyond sense. ‘There is nothing,’ says Hume, ‘in any object considered in itself that can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it’ [2]—a statement which to him means that, if the mind really passes from it to another, this is only because as a matter of fact another feeling follows on the first. But, in truth, if each feeling were merely ‘considered in itself,’ the fact that one follows on another would be no factfor the subject of the feelings, no starting-point of intelligent experience at all; for the fact is the relation between the feelings—a relation which only exists for a subject that considers neither feeling ‘in itself,’ as a ‘separate and perishing existence,’ but finds a reality in the determination of each by the other which, as it is not either or both of them, so survives, while they pass, as a permanent factor of experience. Thus in order that any definite ‘object’ of experience may exist for us, our feelings must have ceased to be what according to Hume they are in themselves. They cease to be so in virtue of the presence to them of the Ego, in common relation to which they become related to each other as mutually qualified members of a permanent system—a system which at first for the individual consciousness exists only as a forecast or in outline, and is gradually realized and filled up with the accession of experience. It is quite true that nothing more than the reference to such a system, already necessary to constitute the simplest object of experience, is involved in that interpretation of every event as a changed appearance of an unchanging order, and therefore to be accounted for, which we call inference to a cause or the inference of necessary connection; or, again, in the identification of the event, the determination of its particular nature by the discovery of its particular cause.
[1] Above, pars. 285 & 286.
[2] P. 436 and elsewhere. [Book I, part III., sec. XII.]
How his doctrine might have been developed. Its actual outcome.
315. The supposed difference then between immediate and mediate cognition is no absolute difference. It is not a difference between experience and a process that goes beyond experience, or between an experience unregulated by a conception of a permanent system and one that is so regulated. It lies merely in the degree of fullness and articulation which that conception has attained. If this had been what Hume meant to convey in his assimilation of inference to perception, he would have gone far to anticipate the result of the enquiry which Kant started. And this is what he might have come to mean if, instead of playing fast and loose with ‘impression’ and ‘object,’ using each as plausibility required on the principle of accommodation to the ‘vulgar,’ he had faced the consequence of his own implicit admission, that every perception of an object as identical is a ‘fiction’ in which we go beyond present feeling. As it is, his ‘scepticism with regard to the senses’ goes far enough to empty their ‘reports’ of the content which the ‘vulgar’ ascribe to them, and thus to put a breach between sense and the processes of knowledge, but not far enough to replace the ‘sensible thing’ by a function of reason. In default of such replacement, there was no way of filling the breach but to bring back the vulgar theory under the cover of habits and ‘tendencies to feign,’ which all suppose a ready-made knowledge of the sensible thing as their starting-point. Hence the constant contradiction, which it is our thankless task to trace, between his solution of the real world into a succession of feelings and the devices by which he sought to make room in his system for the actual procedure of the physical sciences. Conspicuous among these is his allowance of that view of relation in the way of cause and effect as an objective reality, which is represented by his definition of it as a ‘philosophical relation.’ It is in the sense represented by that definition that his doctrine has been understood and retained by subsequent formulators of inductive logic; but on examining it in the light of his own statements we have found that the relation, as thus defined, is not that which his theory required, and as which to represent it is the whole motive of his disquisition on the subject. It is not a sequence of impression upon impression, distinguished merely by its constancy; nor a sequence of idea upon impression, distinguished merely by that transfer of liveliness to the idea which arises from the constancy of its sequence upon the impression. It is a relation between ‘objects’ of which each is what it is only as ‘an instance of a species’ that exists continuously, and therefore in distinction from our ‘perishing impressions,’ according to a regular order of ‘contiguity and succession.’ As such existence and order are by Hume’s own showing no possible impressions, and by consequence no possible ideas, so neither are the ‘objects’ which derive their whole character from them.
No philosophical relation admissible with Hume that is not derived from a natural one.
316. It may be said, however, that wherever Hume admits a definition purporting to be of a ‘philosophical relation,’ he does so only as an accommodation, and under warning that every such relation is ‘fictitious’ except so far as it is equivalent to a natural one; that according to his express statement ‘it is only so far as causation is anaturalrelation, and produces an union among our ideas, that we are able to reason upon it or draw any inference from it’; [1] and that therefore it is only by his definition of it as a ‘natural relation’ that he is to be judged. Such a vindication of Hume would be more true than effective. That with him the ‘philosophical’ relation of cause and effect is ‘fictitious,’ with all the fictitiousness of a ‘continued existence distinct from perceptions,’ is what it has been the object of the preceding paragraphs to show. But the fictitiousness of a relation can with him mean nothing else than that, instead of having an idea of it, we have only a ‘tendency to suppose’ that we have such an idea. Thus the designation of the philosophical relation of cause and effect carries with it two conditions, one negative, the other positive, on the observance of which the logical value of the designation depends. The ‘tendency to suppose’ mustnotafter all be itself translated into the idea which it is to replace; and itmustbe accounted for as derived from a ‘natural relation’ which is not fictitious. That the negative condition is violated by Hume, we have sufficiently seen. He treats the ‘philosophical relation’ of cause and effect, in spite of the ‘fictions’ which it involves, not as a name for a tendency to suppose that we have an idea which we have not, but as itself a definite idea on which he founds various ‘rules for judging what objects are really so related and what are not’. [2] That the positive condition is violated also—that the ‘natural relation’ of cause and effect, according to the sense in which his definition of it is meant to be understood, already itself involves ‘fictions,’ and only for that reason is a possible source of the ‘philosophical’—is what we have next to show.
[1] P. 394. [Book I, part III., sec. VII.]
[2] Part III. § 15.
Examination of his account of cause and effect as ‘natural relation’.
317. That definition, it will be remembered, runs as follows: ‘A cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it in the imagination that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.’ Now, as has been sufficiently shown, the object of an idea with Hume can properly mean nothing but the impression from which the idea is derived, which again is only the livelier idea, even as the idea is the fainter impression. The idea and the object of it, then, only differ as different stages in the vivacity of a feeling. [1] It must be remembered, further, in regard to the ‘determination of the mind’ spoken of in the definition, that the ‘mind’ according to Hume is merely a succession of impressions and ideas, and that its ‘determination’ means no more than a certain habitualness in this succession. Deprived of the benefit of ambiguous phraseology, then, the definition would run thus: ‘A cause is a lively feeling immediately precedent to another, [2] and so united with it that when either of the two more faintly recurs, the other follows with like faintness, and when either occurs with the maximum of liveliness the other follows with less, but still great, liveliness.’ Thus stated, the definition would correspond well enough to the process by which Hume arrives at it, of which the whole drift, as we have seen, is to merge the so-called objective relation of cause and effect, with the so-called inference from it, in the mere habitual transition from one feeling to another. But it is only because not thus stated, and because the actual statement is understood to carry a meaning of which Hume’s doctrine does not consistently admit, that it has a chance of finding acceptance. Its plausibility depends on ‘object’ and ‘mind’ and ‘determination’ being understood precisely in the sense in which, according to Hume, they ought not to be understood, so that it shall express not a sequence of feeling upon feeling, as this might be for a merely feeling subject, but that permanent relation or law of nature which to a subject that thinks upon its feelings, and only to such a subject, their sequence constitutes or on which it depends.
[1] See above, paragraphs 195 and 208. Cf. also, among other passages, one in the chapter now under consideration (p. 451) [Book I, part III., sec. XIV.]—‘Ideas always represent theirobjects or impressions.’
[2] The phrase ‘immediately precedent’ would seem to convey Hume’s meaning better than his own phrase ‘precedent and contiguous.’ Contiguityin space(which is what we naturally understand by ‘contiguity,’ when used absolutely) he could not have deliberately taken to be necessary to constitute the relation of cause and effect, since the impressions so related, as he elsewhere shows, may often not be in space at all.
Double meaning of natural relation. How Hume turns it to account.
318. It is this essential distinction between the sequence of feeling upon feeling for a sentient subject and the relation which to a thinking subject this sequence constitutes—a distinction not less essential than that between the conditions, through which a man passes in sleep, as they are for the sleeping subject himself, and as they are for another thinking upon them—which it is the characteristic of Hume’s doctrine of natural relation in all its forms to disguise. Only in virtue of the presence to feelings of a subject, which distinguishes itself from them, do they become related objects. Thus, with Hume’s exclusion of such a subject, with his reduction of mind and world alike to the succession of feelings, relations and ideas of relation logically disappear. But by help of the phrase ‘natural relation,’ covering, as it does, two wholly different things—the involuntary sequence of one feeling upon another, and that determination of each by the other which can only take place for a synthetic self-consciousness—he is able on the one hand to deny that the relations which form the framework of knowledge are more than sequences of feeling, and on the other to clothe them with so much of the real character of relations as qualifies them for ‘principles of union among ideas.’ Thus the mere occurrence of similar feelings is with him already that relation in the way of resemblance, which in truth only exists for a subject that can contemplate them as permanent objects. In like manner the succession of feelings, which can only constitute time for a subject that contrasts the succession with its own unity, and which, if ideas were feelings, would exclude the possibility of an idea of time, is yet with him indifferently time and the idea of time, though ideas are feelings and there is no ‘mind’ but their succession.
If an effect is merely a constantly observed sequence, how can an event be an effect the first time it is observed? Hume evades this question;
319. The fallacy of Hume’s doctrine of causation is merely an aggravated form of that which has generally passed muster in his doctrine of time. If time, because a relation between feelings, can be supposed to survive the exclusion of a thinking self and the reduction of the world and mind to a succession of feelings, the relation of cause and effect has only to be assimilated to that of time in order that its incompatibility with the desired reduction may disappear, The great obstacle to such assimilation lies in that opposition to the mere sequence of feelings which causation as ‘matter of fact’—as that in discovering which we ‘discover the real existence and relations of objects’—purports to carry with it. Why do we set aside our usual experience as delusive in contrast with the exceptional experience of the laboratory—why do we decide that an event which has seemed to happen cannot really have happened, because under the given conditions no adequate cause of it could have been operative—if the relation of cause and effect is itself merely a succession of seemings, repeated so often as to leave behind it a lively expectation of its recurrence? This question, once fairly put, cannot be answered: it can only be evaded. It is Hume’s method of evasion that we have now more particularly to notice.
Still, he is a long way off the Inductive Logic, which supposes an objective sequence.
320. In its detailed statement it is very different from the method adopted in those modern treatises of Logic which, beginning with the doctrine that facts are merely feelings in the constitution of which thought has no share, still contrive to make free use in their logical canon of the antithesis between the real and apparent. The key to this modern method is to be found in its ambiguous use of the term ‘phenomenon,’ alike for the feeling as it is felt, ‘perishing’ when it ceases to be felt, and for the feeling as it is for a thinking subject—a qualifying and qualified element in a permanent world. Only if facts were ‘phenomena’ in the former sense would the antithesis between facts and conceptions be valid; only if ‘phenomena’ are understood in the latter sense can causation be said to be a law of phenomena. So strong, however, is the charm which this ambiguous term has exercised, that to the ordinary modern logician the question above put may probably seem unmeaning. ‘The appearance,’ he will say, ‘which we set aside as delusive does not consist in any of the reports of the senses—these are always true—but in some false supposition in regard to them due to an insufficient analysis of experience, in some reference of an actual sensation to a group of supposed possibilities of sensation, called a “thing,” which are either unreal or with which it is not really connected. The correction of the false appearance by a discovery of causation is the replacement of a false supposition, as to the possibility of the antecedence or sequence of one feeling to another, by the discovery, through analysis of experience, of what feelings do actually precede and follow each other. It implies no transition from feelings to things, but only from a supposed sequence of feelings to the actual one. Science in its farthest range leaves us among appearances still. It only teaches us what really appears.’