[1] p. 370 [Book I, part II., sec. VI.]
The question, how thesingularproposition is possible, the vital one.
224. A great advance in simplification has been made when the false sort of ‘conceptualism’ has thus been got rid of—that conceptualism which opposes knowing and being under the notion that things, though merely individual in reality, may be known as general. This riddance having been achieved, as it was by Hume, the import of the proposition becomes the central question of philosophy, the answer to which must determine our theory of real existence just as much as of the mind. The issue may be taken on the proposition in its singular no less than in its general form. The weakness of Hume’s opponents, indeed, has lain primarily in their allowing that his doctrine would account for any significant predication whatever, as distinct from exclamations prompted by feelings as they occur. This has been the inch, which once yielded, the full ell of his nominalism has been easily won; just as Locke’s empiricism becomes invincible as soon as it is admitted that qualified things are ‘found in nature’ without any constitutive action of the mind. As the only effective way of dealing with Locke is to ask,—After abstraction of all that he himself admitted to be the creation of thought, what remains to be merely found?—so Hume must be metin limineby the question whether, apart from such ideas of relation as according to his own showing are not simple impressions, so much as the singular proposition is possible. If not, then the singularity of such proposition does not consist in any singleness of presentation to sense; it is not the ‘particularity in time’ of a present feeling; and the exclusion of generality, whether in thoughts or in things, as following from the supposed necessity of such singleness or particularity, is quite groundless.
Not relations of resemblance only, but those of quantity also, treated by Hume as feelings.
225. Hitherto the idea of relation which we have had specially in view has been that of relation in the way of resemblance, and the propositions have been such as represent the most obvious ‘facts of observation’—facts about this or that ‘body,’ man or horse or ball. We have seen that these already suppose the thought of an object qualified, not transitory as are feelings, but one to which feelings are referred on their occurrence as resemblances or differences between it and other objects; but that by an equivocation, which unexamined phraseology covers, between the thought of such an object and feeling proper—as if because we talk of seeing a man, therefore a man were a feeling of colour—Hume is able to represent them as mere data of sense, and thus to ignore the difference between related feelings and ideas of relation. Thus the first step has been taken towards transferring to the sensitive subject, as merely sensitive, the power of thought and significant speech. The next is to transfer to it ideas of those other relations [1] which Hume classifies as ‘relations of time and place, proportion in quantity or number, degrees in any quality’. [2] This done, it is sufficiently equipped for achieving its deliverance from metaphysics. An animal, capable of experiments concerning matter of fact, and of reasoning concerning quantity and number, would certainly have some excuse for throwing into the fire all books which sought to make it ashamed of its animality. [3]
[1] The course which our examination of Hume should take was marked out, it will be remembered, by his enumeration of the ‘natural’ relations that regulate the association of ideas. It might seem a departure from this course to proceed, as in the text, from the relation of resemblance to ‘relations of time and place, proportion in quantity or number, and degrees of any quality,’ since these appear in Hume’s enumeration, not of ‘natural’ but of ‘philosophical’ relations. Such departure, however, is the consequence of Hume’s own procedure. Whether he considered these relations merely equivalent to the ‘natural ones’ of resemblance and contiguity, he does not expressly say; but his reduction of the principles of mathematics to data of sense implies that he did so. The treatment of degrees in quality and proportions in quantity as sensible implies that the difference between resemblance and measured resemblance, between contiguity and measured contiguity, is ignored.
[2] p. 368 [Book I, part II., sec. V.]
[3] If we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school-metaphysics, for instance, let us ask,Does it contain any abstract reasoning for quantity or number?No.Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?No.Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.’—‘Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding,’ at the end.
He draws the line between certainty and probability at the same point as Locke; but is more definite as to probability,
226. In thus leaving mathematics and a limited sort of experimental physics (limited by the exclusion of all general inference from the experiment) out of the reach of his scepticism, and in making them his basis of attack upon what he conceived to be the more pretentious claims of knowledge, Hume was again following the course marked out for him by Locke. It will be remembered that Locke, even when his ‘suspicion’ of knowledge is at its strongest, still finds solid ground(a)in ‘particular experiments’ upon nature, expressed in singular propositions as opposed to assertions of universal or necessary connexion, and(b)in mathematical truths which are at once general, certain, and instructive, because ‘barely ideal.’ All speculative propositions that do not fall under one or other of these heads are either ‘trifling’ or merely ‘probable.’ Hume draws the line between certainty and probability at the same point, nor in regard to the ground of certainty as to ‘matter of fact or existence’ is there any essential difference between him and his master. As this ground is the ‘actual present sensation’ with the one, so it is the ‘impression’ with the other; and it is only when the proposition becomes universal or asserts a necessary connection, that the certainty, thus given, is by either supposed to fail. It is true that with Locke this authority of the sensation is a derived authority, depending on its reference to a ‘body now operating upon us,’ while with Hume, so far as he is faithful to his profession of discarding such reference, it is original. But with each alike the fundamental notion is that a feeling must be ‘truewhile it lasts,’ and that in regard to real existence or matter of fact no other truth can be known but this. Neither perceives that a truth thus restricted is no truth at all—nothing that can be stated even in a singular proposition; that the ‘particularity in time,’ on which is supposed to depend the real certainty of the simple feeling, is just that which deprives it of significance [1]—because neither is really faithful to the restriction. Each allows himself to substitute for the momentary feeling an object qualified by relations, which are the exact opposite of momentary feelings. ‘If I myself see a man walk on the ice,’ says Locke (IV, xv. 5), ‘it is past probability, it is knowledge:’ nor would Hume, though ready enough on occasion to point out that what is seen must be a colour, have any scruple in assuming that such a complex judgment as the above so-called ‘sight’ has the certainty of a simple impression. It is only in bringing to bear upon the characteristic admission of Locke’s Fourth Book, that no general knowledge of nature can be more than probable, a more definite notion of what probability is, and in exhibiting the latent inconsistency of this admission with Locke’s own doctrine of ideas as effects of a causative substance, that he modifies the theory ofphysicalcertainty which he inherited. In their treatment of mathematical truths on the other hand, of propositions involving relations of distance, quantity and degree, a fundamental discrepancy appears between the two writers. The ground of certainty, which Hume admits in regard to propositions of this order, must be examined before we can appreciate his theory of probability as it affects the relations of cause and substance.
[1] See above, paragraphs 45 and 97.
… and does not admit opposition of mathematical to physical certainty—here following Berkeley.
227. It has been shown [1] that Locke’s opposition of mathematical to physical certainty, with his ascription to the former of instructive generality on the ground of its bare ideality—the ‘ideal’ in this regard being opposed to what is found in sensation—strikes at the very root of his system. It implies that thought can originate, and that what it originates is in some sort real—nay, as being nothing else than the ‘primary qualities of matter,’ is the source of all other reality. Here was an alien element which ‘empiricism’ could not assimilate without changing its character. Carrying such a conception along with it, it was already charged with an influence which must ultimately work its complete transmutation by compelling, not the admission of an ideal world of guess and aspiration alongside of the empirical, but the recognition of the empirical as itself ideal The time for this transmutation, however, was not yet. Berkeley, in over-hasty zeal for God, had missed that only true way of finding God in the world which lies in the discovery that the world is Thought. Having taken fright at the ‘mathematical Atheism,’ which seemed to grow out of the current doctrines about primary qualities of matter, instead of applying Locke’s own admissions to show that these were intelligible and merely intelligible, he fancied that he had won the battle for Theism by making out that they were merely feelings or sequences of feelings. From him Hume got the text for all he had to say against the metaphysical mathematicians; but, for the reason that Hume applied it with no theological interest, its true import becomes more apparent with him than with Berkeley.
[1] See above, paragraphs 117 and 125.
His criticisms of the doctrine of primary qualities.
228. His account of mathematical truths, as contained in Part II. of the First Book of the ‘Treatise on Human Nature,’ cannot be fairly read except in connection with the chapters in Part IV. on ‘Scepticism with regard to the Senses,’ and on ‘the Modern Philosophy.’ The latter chapter is expressly a polemic against Locke’s doctrine of primary qualities, and its drift is to reverse the relations which Locke had asserted between them and sensations, making the primary qualities depend on sensations, instead of sensations on the primary qualities. In Locke himself we have found that two inconsistent views on the subject perpetually cross each other. [1] According to one, momentary sensation is the sole conveyance to us of reality; according to the other, the real is constituted by qualities of bodies which not only ‘are in them whether we perceive them or not,’ but which only complex ideas of relation can represent. The unconscious device which covered this inconsistency lay, we found, [2] in the conversion of the mere feeling of touch into the touchof a body, and thus into an experience of solidity. By this conversion, since solidity according to Locke’s account carries with it all the primary qualities, these too become data of sensation, while yet, by the retention of the opposition between them and ideas, the advantage is gained of apparently avoiding that identification of what is real with simple feeling, which science and common sense alike repel.
[1] See above, paragraph 99 and following.
[2] See above, paragraph 101.
It will not do to oppose bodies to our feeling when only feeling can give idea of body.
229. Hume makes a show of getting rid of this see-saw. Instead of assuming at once the reality of sensation on the strength of its relation to the primary qualities and the reality of these on the strength of their being given in tactual experience, he pronounces sensations alone the real, to which the primary qualities must be reduced, if they are not to disappear altogether. ‘If colours, sounds, tastes, and smells be merely perceptions, nothing we can conceive is possessed of a real, continued, and independent existence’. [1] That they are perceptions is of course undoubted. The question is, whether there is a real something beside and beyond them, contrast with which is implied in speaking of them as ‘merelyperceptions.’ The supposed qualities of such a real are ‘motion, extension, and solidity’. [2] To modes of these the other primary qualities enumerated by Locke are reducible; and of these again motion and extension, according to Locke’s account no less than Hume’s own, presuppose solidity. What then do we assert of the real, in contrast with which we talk of perception, asmereperception, when we say that it is solid? ‘In order to form an idea of solidity we must conceive two bodies pressing on each other without any penetration. … Now, what idea do we form of these bodies? … To say that we conceive them as solid is to run onad infinitum. To affirm that we paint them out to ourselves as extended, either resolves them all into a false idea or returns in a circle; extension must necessarily be conceived either as coloured, which is a false idea, [3] or as solid, which brings us back to the first question.’ Of solidity, then, the ultimate determination of the supposed real, there is ‘no idea to be formed’ apart from those perceptions to which, as independent of our senses, it is opposed. ‘After exclusion of colours, sounds, heat and cold from the rank of external existences, there remains nothing which can afford us a just and consistent idea of body.’
[1] p. 513 [Book I, part IV., sec. IV.]
[2] Ibid.
[3] ‘A false idea,’ that is, according to the doctrine that extension is a primary quality, while colour is only an idea of a secondary quality, not resembling the quality as it is in the thing.
Locke’s shuffle of ‘body,’ ‘solidity,’ and ‘touch,’ fairly exposed.
230. Our examination of Locke has shown us how it is that his interpretation of ideas by reference to body is fairly open to this attack. It is so because, in thus interpreting them, he did not know what he was really about. He thought he was explaining ideas of sense according to the only method of explanation which he recognises—the method of resolving complex into simple ideas, and of ‘sending a man to his senses’ for a knowledge of the simple. In fact, however, when he explained ideas of sense as derived from the qualities of body, he was explaining simple ideas by reference to that which, according to his own showing, is a complex idea. To say that, as Locke understood the derivation in question, the primary qualities are an ἄιτιον γενέσεως to the ideas of secondary qualities, but not an ἄιτιον γνώσεως [1]—that without our having ideas of them they cause those ideas of sense from which afterwards our ideas of the primary qualities are formed—is to suppose an order of reality other than the order of our sensitive experience, and thus to contradict Locke’s fundamental doctrine that the genesis of ideas is to be found by observing their succession in ‘our own breasts.’ It is not thus that Locke himself escapes the difficulty. As we have seen, he supposes our ideas of sense to be from the beginning ideas of the qualities of bodies, and virtually justifies the supposition by sending the reader to his sense of touch for that idea of solidity in which, as he defines it, all the primary qualities are involved. That the sense in question does not really yield the idea is what Hume points out when he says that, ‘though bodies are felt by means of their solidity, yet the feeling is quite a different thing from the solidity, nor have they the least resemblance to each other.’ In other words, having come to suppose that there are solid bodies, we explain our feeling as due to their solidity; but we may not at once interpret feeling as the result of solidity, and treat solidity as itself a feeling. It was by allowing himself so to treat it that Locke disguised from himself the objection to his interpretation of feeling. Hume tears off the disguise, and in effect gives him the choice of being convicted either of reasoning in a circle or of explaining the simple idea by reference to the complex. The solidity, which is to explain feeling, can itself only be explained by reference to body. If body is only a complex of ideas of sense, in referring tactual feeling to it we are explaining a simple idea by reference to a compound one. If it is not, how is it to be defined except in the ‘circular’ way, which Locke in fact adopts when he makes body a ‘texture of solid parts’ and solidity a relation of bodies? [2]
[1] [Greek ἄιτιον γενέσεως (aition geneseos) = cause of coming-to-be, ἄιτιον γνώσεως (aition gnoseos) = cause of being known. Tr.]
[2] See above, paragraph 101.
True rationale of Locke’s doctrine.
231. This ‘vicious circle’ was nothing of which Locke need have been ashamed, if only he had understood and avowed its necessity. Body is to solidity and to the primary qualities in general simply as a substance to the relations that determine it; and the ‘circle’ in question merely represents the logical impossibility of defining a substance except by relations, and of defining these relations without presupposing a substance. It was only Locke’s confusion of the order of logical correlation with the sequence of feelings in time, that laid him open to the charge of making body and the ideas of primary qualities, and again the latter ideas and those of secondary qualities, at once precede and follow each other. To avoid this confusion by recognising the logical order—the order of intellectual ‘fictions’—as that apart from which the sequence of feelings would be no order of knowable reality at all, would be of course impossible for one who took Locke’s antithesis of thought and fact for granted. The time for that was not yet. A way of escape had first to be sought in a more strict adherence to Locke’s identification of the sequence of feelings with the order of reality. Hence Hume’s attempt, reversing Locke’s derivation of ideas of sense from primary qualities of body, to derive what with Locke had been primary qualities, as compound impressions of sense, from simple impressions and to reduce body itself to a name not for any ‘just and consistent idea,’ but for a ‘propensity to feign,’ the gradual product of custom and imagination. The question by which the value of such derivation and reduction is to be tried is our old one, whether it is not a tacit conversion of the supposed original impressions into qualities of body that alone makes them seem to yield the result required of them. If the Fourth Book of the ‘Treatise on Human Nature,’ with its elimination of the idea of body, had come before the second, would not the plausibility of the account of mathematical ideas contained in the latter have disappeared? And conversely, if these ideas had been reduced to that which upon elimination of the idea of body they properly become, would not that ‘propensity to feign,’ which is to take the place of the excluded idea, be itself unaccountable?
With Hume ‘body’ logically disappears. What then?
232. ‘After exclusion of colours, sounds, heat and cold, from the rank of external existences, there remains nothing which can afford us a just and consistent idea of body.’ Now, no one can ‘exclude them from the rank of external existences’ more decisively than Hume. They are impressions, and ‘all impressions are internal and perishing existences, and appear as such.’ Nor does he shirk the consequence, that we have no ‘just and consistent idea of body.’ It is true that we cannot avoid a ‘belief in its existence’—a belief which according to Hume consists in the supposition of ‘a continued existence of objects when they no longer appear to the senses, and of their existence as distinct from the mind and perceptions;’ in other words, as ‘external to and independent of us.’ This belief, however, as he shows, is not given by the senses. That we should feel the existence of an object to be continued when we no longer feel it, is a contradiction in terms; nor is it less so, that we should feel it to be distinct from the feeling. We cannot, then, have an impression of body; and, since we cannot have an idea which does not correspond to an impression or collection of impressions, it follows that we can have no idea of it. How the ‘belief in its existence’ is accounted for by Hume in the absence of any idea of it, is a question to be considered later. [1] Our present concern is to know whether the idea of extension can hold its ground when the idea of body is excluded.
[1] See below, paragraph 303, and foll.
Can space survive body? Hume derives idea of it from sight and feeling. Significance with him of such derivation.
233. ‘The first notion of space and extension,’ he says, ‘is derived solely from the senses of sight and feeling: nor is there anything but what is coloured or tangible that has parts disposed after such a manner as to convey the idea.’ Now, there may be a meaning of ‘derivation,’ according to which no one would care to dispute the first clause of this sentence. Those who hold thatreally, i.e.for a consciousness to which the distinction between real and unreal is possible, there is no feeling except such as is determined by thought, are yet far from holding that the determination is arbitrary; that any and every feeling is potentially any and every conception. Of the feelings to which the visual and tactual nerves are organic, as they would be for a merely feeling consciousness, nothing, they hold, can be said; in that sense they are an ἄπειρον; [1] but for the thinking consciousness, or (which is the same) as theyreallyare, these feelings do, while those to which other nerves are organic do not, form the specific possibility of the conception of space. According to this meaning of the words, all must admit that ‘the first notion of space and extension is derived from the senses of sight and feeling;’ though it does not follow that a repeated or continued activity of either sense is necessary to the continued presence of the notion. With Hume, however, the derivation spoken of must mean that the notion of space is, to begin with, simply a visual or tactual feeling, and that such it remains, though with indefinite abatement and revival in the liveliness of the feeling, according to the amount of which it is called ‘impression’ or ‘idea.’ If we supposed him to mean, not that the notion of space was either a visual or tactual feeling indifferently, but that it was a compound result of both, [2] we should merely have to meet a further difficulty as to the possibility of such composition of feelings when their inward synthesis in a soul, and the outward in a body, have been alike excluded. In the next clause of the sentence, however, we find that for visual and tactual feelings there are quietly substituted ‘coloured and tangible objects, having parts so disposed as to convey the idea of extension.’ It is in the light of this latter clause that the uncritical reader interprets the former. He reads back the plausibility of the one into the other, and, having done so, finds the whole plausible. Now this plausibility of the latter clause arises from its implying a three-fold distinction—a distinction of colour or tangibility on the one side from the disposition of the parts on the other; a distinction of the colour, tangibility and disposition of parts alike from an object to which they belong; and a distinction of this object from the idea that it conveys. In other words, it supposes a negative answer to the three following questions:—Is the idea of extension the same as that of colour or tangibility? Is it possible without reference to something other than a possible impression? Is the idea of extension itself extended? Yet to the two latter questions, according to Hume’s express statements, the answer must be affirmative; nor can he avoid the affirmative answer to the first, to which he would properly be brought, except by equivocation.
[1] [Greek ἄπειρον (apeiron) = unlimited, indefinite or infinite. Tr.]
[2] It is not really in this sense that the impression of space according to Hume is a ‘compound’ one, as will appear below.
It means, in effect, that colour and space are the same, and that feeling may be extended.
234. Thepièces justificativesfor this assertion are not far to seek. Some of them have been adduced already. The idea of space, like every other idea, must be a ‘copy of an impression.’ [1] To speak of a feeling in its fainter stage as an ‘image’ of what it was in its livelier stage may, indeed, seem a curious use of terms; but in this sense only, according to Hume’s strict doctrine, can the idea of space be spoken of as an ‘image’ of anything at all. The impression from which it is derived,i.e.the feeling at its liveliest, cannot properly be so spoken of, for ‘no impression is presented by the senses as the image of anything distinct, or external, or independent.’ [2] If no impression is so presented, neither can any idea, which copies the impression, be so. It can involve no reference to anything which does not come and go with the impression. Accordingly no distinction is possible between space on the one hand, and either the impression or idea of it on the other. All impressions and ideas that can be said to be of extension must be themselves extended; and conversely, as Hume puts it, ‘all the qualities of extension are qualities of a perception.’ It should follow that space is either a colour or feeling of touch. In the terms which Hume himself uses with reference to ‘substance,’ ‘if it be perceived by the eyes, it must be colour; if by the ears, a sound; and so on, of the other senses.’ As he expressly tells us that it is ‘perceived by the eyes,’ the conclusion is inevitable.
[1] P. 340 [Book I, part II., sec. III.]
[2] P. 479 [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
The parts of space are parts of a perception.
235. Hume does not attempt to reject the conclusion directly. He had too much eye to the appearance of consistency for that. But, in professing to admit it, he wholly alters its significance. The passage in question must be quoted at length. ‘The table, which just now appears to me, is only a perception, and all its qualities are qualities of a perception. Now, the most obvious of all its qualities is extension. The perception consists of parts. These parts are so situated as to afford us the notion of distance and contiguity, of length, breadth, and thickness. The termination of these three dimensions is what we call figure. The figure is moveable, separable, and divisible. Mobility and separability are the distinguishing properties of extended objects. And, to cut short all disputes, the very idea of extension is copied from nothing but an impression, and consequently must perfectly agree to it. To say the idea of extension agrees to anything is to say it is extended.’ Thus ‘there are impressions and ideas that are really extended.’ [1]
[1] P. 523 [Book I, part IV., sec. V.]
Yet the parts of space are co-existent not successive.
236. In order to a proper appreciation of this passage it is essential to bear in mind that Hume, so far as the usages of language would allow him, ignores all such differences in modes of consciousness as the Germans indicate by the distinction between ‘Empfindung’ and ‘Vorstellung,’ and by that between ‘Anschauung’ and ‘Begriff;’ or, more properly, that he expressly merges them in a mode of consciousness for which, according to the most consistent account that can be gathered from him, the most natural term would be ‘feeling.’ [1] It is true that Hume himself, admitting a distinction in the degree of vivacity with which this consciousness is at different times presented, inclines to restrict the term ‘feeling’ to its more vivacious stage, and to use ‘perception’ as the more general term, applicable whatever the degree of vivacity may be. [2] We must not allow him, however, in using this term to gain the advantage of a meaning which popular theory does, but his does not, attach to it. ‘Perception’ with him covers ‘idea’ as well as ‘impression;’ but nothing can be said of idea that cannot be said of impression, save that it is less lively, nor of impression that cannot be said of idea, save that it is more so. It is this explicit reduction of all consciousness virtually, if not in name, to feeling that brings to the surface the difficulties latent in Locke’s ‘idealism.’ These we have already traced at large; but they may be summed up in the question, How can feelings, as ‘particular in time’ or (which is the same) in ‘perpetual flux,’ constitute or represent a world of permanent relations? [3] The difficulty becomes more obvious, though not more real, when the relations in question are not merely themselves permanent, like those between natural phenomena, but are ‘relations between permanent parts,’ like those of space. It is for this reason that its doctrine about geometry has always been found the most easily assailable point of the ‘sensational’ philosophy. Locke distinguishes the ideas of space and of duration as got, the one ‘from the permanent parts of space,’ the other ‘from the fleeting and perpetually perishing parts of succession.’ [4] He afterwards prefers the term ‘expansion’ to space, as the opposite of duration, because it brings out more clearly the distinction of a relation between permanent parts from that between ‘fleeting successive parts which never exist together.’ How, then, can a consciousness consisting simply of ‘fleeting successive parts’ either be or represent that of which the differentia is that its parts are permanent and co-exist?
[1] As implying no distinction from, or reference to, a thing causing and a subject experiencing it. See above, paragraphs 195 and 208, and the passages there referred to.
[2] ‘To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive.’ p. 371 [Book I, part II., sec. IV.]. ‘When I shut my eyes andthinkof my chamber, the ideas I form are exact representations of the impressions Ifelt.’ p. 312 [Book I, part I., sec. I.].
[3] See above, paragraphs 172 & 176.
[4] Essay Book II. chap. xiv. sec. 1.
Hume cannot make space a ‘perception’ without being false to his own account of perception;
237. If this crux had been fairly faced by Hume, he must have seen that the only way in which he could consistently deal with it was by radically altering, with whatever consequence to the sciences, Locke’s account of space. As it was, he did not face it, but—whether intentionally or only in effect—disguised it by availing himself of the received usages of language, which roughly represent a theory the exact opposite of his own, to cover the incompatibility between the established view of the nature of space, and his own reduction of it to feeling. A very little examination of the passage, quoted at large above, will show that while in it a profession is made of identifying extension and a certain sort of perception with each other, its effect is not really to reduce extension to such a perception as Hume elsewhere explains all perceptions to be, but to transfer the recognised properties of extension which with such reduction would disappear, to something which for the time he chooses to reckon a perception, but which he can only so reckon at the cost of contradicting his whole method of dealing with the ideas of God, the soul, and the world. The passage, in fact, is merely one sample of the continued shuffle by which Hume on the one hand ascribes to feeling that intelligible content which it only derives from relation to objects of thought, and on the other disposes of these objects because they are not feelings.
… as appears if we put ‘feeling’ for ‘perception’ in the passages in question.
238. ‘The table, which just now appears to me, is only a perception, and all its qualities are qualities of a perception. Now, the most obvious of all its qualities is extension. The perception consists of parts. These parts are so situated as to afford us the notion of distance and contiguity, of length, breadth, and thickness,’ &c., &c. If, now, throughout this statement (as according to Hume’s doctrine we are entitled to do) we writefeelingfor ‘perception’ and ‘notion,’ it will appear that this table is a feeling, which has another feeling, called extension, as one of its qualities; and that this latter feeling consists of parts. These, in turn, must be themselves feelings, since the parts of which a perception consists must be themselves perceived, and, being perceived, must, according to Hume, be themselves perceptions which = feelings. These feelings, again, afford us other feelings of certain relations—distance and contiguity, &c.—feelings which, as Hume’s doctrine allows of no distinction between the feeling and that of which it is the feeling, must be themselves relations. Thus it would seem that a feeling may have another feeling as one of its qualities; that the feeling, which is thus a quality, has other feelings as its co-existent parts; and that the feelings which are parts ‘afford us’ other feelings which are relations. Is that sense or nonsense?
To make sense of them, we must take perception to mean perceived thing,
239. To this a follower of Hume, if he could be brought to admit the legitimacy of depriving his master of the benefit of synonyms, might probably reply, that the apparent nonsense only arises from our being unaccustomed to such use of the term ‘feeling;’ that the table is a ‘bundle of feelings,’ actual and possible, of which the actual one of sight suggests a lively expectation, easily confused with the presence, of the others belonging to the other senses; that any one of these may be considered a quality of the total impression formed by all; that the feeling thus considered, if it happens to be visual, may not improperly be said to consist of other feelings, as a whole consists of parts, since it is the result of impressions on different parts of the retina, and from a different point of view even itself to be the relation between the parts, just as naturally as a mutual feeling of friendship may be said either to consist of the loves of the two parties to the friendship, or to constitute the relation between them. Such language represents those modern adaptations of Hume, which retain his identification of the real with the felt but ignore his restrictions on the felt. Undoubtedly, if Hume allowed us to drop the distinction between feeling as it might be for a merely feeling consciousness, and feeling as it is for a thinking consciousness, the objection to his speaking of feeling in those terms, in which it must be spoken of if extension is to be a feeling, would disappear; but so, likewise, would the objection to speaking of thought as constitutive of reality. To appreciate his view we must take feeling not as we really know it—for we cannot know it except under those conditions of self-consciousness, the logical categories, which in his attempt to get at feeling, pure and simple, Hume is consistent enough to exclude—but as it becomes upon exclusion of all determination by objects which Hume reckons fictitious. What it would thus becomepositivelywe of course cannot say, for of the unknowable nothing can be said; but we can decidenegativelywhat it cannot be. Can that in any case be said of it, which must be said of it if a feeling may be extended, and if extension is a feeling? Can it be such a quality of an object, so consisting of parts, and such a relation, as we have found that Hume takes it to be in his account of the perception of this table?
… which it can only mean as the result of certain ‘fictions’.
240. After having taken leave throughout the earlier part of the ‘Treatise on Human Nature’ to speak in the ordinary way of objects and their qualities—and otherwise of course he could not have spoken at all—in the fourth book he seems for the first time to become aware that his doctrine did not authorise such language. To perceive qualities of an object is to be conscious of relation between a subject and object, of which neither perishes with the moment of perception. Such consciousness is self-consciousness, and cannot be reduced to any natural observable event, since it is consciousness of that of which we cannot say ‘Lo, here,’ or ‘Lo, there,’ ‘it is now but was not then,’ or ‘it was then but is not now.’ It is therefore something which the spirit of the Lockeian philosophy cannot assimilate, and which Hume, as the most consistent exponent of that spirit, most consistently tried to get rid of. The subject as self, the object as body, he professes to reduce to figures of speech, to be accounted for as the result of certain ‘propensities to feign:’ nor will he allow that any impression or idea (and impressions and ideas with him, be it remembered, exhaust our consciousness) carries with it a reference to an object other than itself, any more than do pleasure or pain to which ‘in their nature’ all perceptions correspond. [1] He cannot, indeed, avoid speaking of the consciousness thus reduced to the level of simple pain and pleasure, as being that which in fact it can only be when determined by relation to a self-conscious subject,i.e.as itself an object; but he is so far faithful in his attempt to avoid such determination, that he does not reckon the object more permanent than the impression. It, too, is a ‘perishing existence.’ As the impression disappears with a ‘turn of the eye in its socket,’ so does the object, which really is the impression, and cannot appear other than it is any more than a feeling can be felt to be what it is not. [2]
[1] ‘Every impression, external and internal, passions, affections, sensations, pains, and pleasures, are originally on the same footing; and, whatever other differences we may observe among them, appear, all of them, in their true colours, as impressions or perceptions.’ p. 480. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
‘All sensations are felt by the mind such as they really are; and, when we doubt whether they present themselves as distinct objects or as mere impressions, the difficulty is not concerning their nature, but concerning their relations and situation.’ p. 480. [ibid.]
[2] See above, paragraph 208, with the passages there cited.
If felt thing is no more than feeling, how can it have qualities?
241. Such being the only possible object, how can qualities of it be perceived? We cannot here find refuge in any such propensity to feign as that which, according to Hume, leads us to ‘endow objects with a continued existence, distinct from our perceptions.’ If such propensities can give rise to impressions at all, it can only be to impressions of reflection, and it cannot be in virtue of them that extension, an impression of sensation, is given as a quality of an object. Now if there is any meaning in the phrase ‘qualities of an object,’ it implies that the qualities co-exist with each other and the object. Feelings, then, which are felt as qualities of another feeling must co-exist with,i.e.(according to Hume) be felt at the same time as, it and each other. Thus, if an impression of sight be the supposed object, no feeling that occurs after this impression has disappeared can be a quality of it. Accordingly, when Hume speaks of extension being seen as one of the qualities of this table, he is only entitled to mean that it is one among several feelings, experienced at one and the same time, which together constitute the table. Whatever is not so experienced, whether extension or anything else, can be no quality of that ‘perception.’ How much of the perception, then, will survive? Can any feelings, strictly speaking, be cotemporaneous? Those received through different senses, as Hume is careful to show, may be;e.g.the smell, taste, and colour of a fruit. [1] In regard to them, therefore, we may waive the difficulty, How can feelings successive to each other be yet co-existent qualities? but only to find ourselves in another as to what the object may be of which the cotemporaneous feelings are qualities. It cannot, according to Hume, be other than one or all of the cotemporaneous feelings. Is, then, the taste of an apple a quality of its colour or of its smell, or of colour, smell, and taste put together? It will not help us to speak of the several feelings as qualities of the ‘total impression;’ for the ‘total impression’ either merely means the several feelings put together, or else covertly implies just that reference to an object other than these, which Hume expressly excludes.
[1] ‘The taste and smell of any fruit are inseparable from its other qualities of colour and tangibility, and … ’tis certain they are always co-existent. Nor are they only co-existent in general, but also cotemporary in their appearance in the mind.’ p. 521. (Contrast p. 370, where existence and appearance are identified.) [Book I, part IV., sec. V. and part II, sec. IV.]
The thing will have ceased before the quality begins to be.
242. In fact, however, when he speaks of the feeling, which is called extension, as a quality of the feeling, which is called sight, of the table, he has not even the excuse that he might have had if the feelings in question, being of different senses, might be cotemporary. According to him they are feelings of the same sense. The extension of the table he took to be a datum of sight just as properly as its colour; yet he cannot call it the same as colour, but only ‘a quality of the coloured object.’ As the ‘coloured object,’ however, apart from ‘propensities to feign,’ can, according to him, be no other than the feeling of colour, his doctrine can only mean that, colour and extension being feelings of the same sense, the latter is a quality of the former. Is this any more possible than that red should be a quality of blue, or a sour taste of a bitter one? Must not the two feelings be successive, however closely successive, so that the one which is object will have disappeared before the other, which is to be its quality, will have occurred? [1]
[1] It should be needless to point out that by taking extension to be a quality of ‘tangibility’ or muscular effort we merely change the difficulty. The question as to its relation to such feelings will be simply a repetition of that, put in the text, as to its relation to the feeling of colour.
Hume equivocates by putting ‘coloured points’ for colour.
243. If we look to the detailed account which Hume gives of the relation between extension and colour, we find that he avoids the appearance of making one feeling a quality of another, by in fact substituting for colour a superficies of coloured points, in which it is very easy to find extension as a quality because it already is extension as an object. To speak of extension, though a feeling, as made up of parts is just as legitimate or illegitimate as to speak of the feeling of colour being made up of coloured points. The legitimacy of this once admitted, there remains, indeed, a logical question as to how it is that a quality should be spoken of in terms that seem proper to a substance—as is done when it is said to consist of parts—and yet, again, should be pronounced a relation of these parts; but to one who professed to merge all logical distinctions in the indifference of simple feeling, such a question could have no recognised meaning. It is, then, upon the question whether, according to Hume’s doctrine of perception, the perception of an object made up of coloured points may be used interchangeably with the perception of colour, that the consistency of his doctrine of extension must finally be tried.
244. The detailed account is to the following effect:—‘Upon opening my eyes and turning them to the surrounding objects, I perceive many visible bodies; and upon shutting them again and considering the distance betwixt these bodies, I acquire the idea of extension.’ From what impression, Hume proceeds to ask, is this idea derived? ‘Internal impressions’ being excluded, ‘there remain nothing but the senses which can convey to us this original impression.’ … ‘The table before me is alone sufficient by its view to give me the idea of extension. This idea, then, is borrowed from and represents some impression which this moment appears to the senses. But my senses convey to me only the impressions of coloured points, disposed in a certain manner. … We may conclude that the idea of extension is nothing but a copy of these coloured points and of the manner of their appearance.’ [1]
[1] Pp. 340 and 341. [Book I, part II., sec. III.]
Can a ‘disposition of coloured points’ be an impression?
245. If the first sentence of the above had been found by Hume in an author whom he was criticising, he would scarcely have been slow to pronounce it tautological. As it stands, it simply tells us that having seen things extended we consider their extension, and upon considering it acquire an idea of it. It is a fair sample enough of those ‘natural histories’ of the soul in vogue among us, which by the help of a varied nomenclature seem able to explain a supposed later state of consciousness as the result of a supposed earlier one, because the terms in which the earlier is described in effect assume the later. It may be said, however, that it is only by a misinterpretation of a carelessly written sentence that Hume can be represented as deriving the idea of extension from the consideration of distance; that, as the sequel shows, he regarded the ‘consideration’ and the ‘idea’ in question as equivalent, and derived from the same impression of sense. It is undoubtedly upon his account of this impression that his doctrine of extension depends. It is described as ‘an impression of coloured points disposed in a certain manner.’ To it the idea of extension is related simply as a copy; which, we have seen, properly means with Hume, as a feeling in a less lively stage is related to the same feeling in a more lively stage. It is itself, we must note, theimpressionof extension; and it is an impression of sense, about which, accordingly, no further question can properly be raised. Hume, indeed, allows himself to speak as if it were included in a ‘perception of visible bodies’ other than itself; just as in the passage from the fourth book previously examined, he speaks as if the perception, called extension, were a quality of some other perception. This we must regard as an exercise of the privilege which he claims of ‘speaking with the vulgar while he thought with the learned;’ since, according to him, ‘visible body,’ in any other sense than that of the impression of coloured points, is properly a name for a ‘propensity to feign’ resulting from a process posterior to all impressions of sense. The question remains whether, in speaking of an impression as one of ‘coloured points disposed in a certain manner,’ he is not introducing a ‘fiction of thought’ into the impression just as much as in calling it a ‘perception of body.’
The points must be themselves impressions, and therefore not co-existent.
246. An impression, we know, can, according to Hume, never beofan object in the sense of involving a reference to anything other than itself. When one is said, then, to beofcoloured points, &c., this can only mean that itselfis, or consists of, such points. Thus the question we have to answer is only a more definite form of the one previously put, Can a feeling consist of parts? In answering it we must remember that the parts, here supposed to be coloured points, must, according to Hume’s doctrine, be themselves impressions or they are nothing. Consistently with this he speaks of extension as ‘a compound impression, consisting of parts or lesser impressions, that are indivisible to the eye or feeling, and may be called impressions of atoms or corpuscles, endowed with colour and solidity.’ [1] Now, unless we suppose that a multitude of feelings of one and the same sense can be present together, these ‘lesser impressions’ must follow each other and precede the ‘compound impression.’ That is to say, none of the parts of which extension consists will be in existence at the same time, and all will have ceased to exist before extension itself comes into being. Can we, then, adopt the alternative supposition that a multitude of feelings of one and the same sense can be present together? In answering this question according to Hume’s premisses we may not help ourselves by saying that in a case of vision there really are impressions on different parts of the retina. To say that itreallyis so, is to say that it is so for thethinkingconsciousness—for a consciousness that distinguishes between what it feels and what it knows. To a man, as simply seeing and while he sees, his sight is not an impression on the retina at all, much less a combination of impressions on different parts of the retina. It is so for him only as thinking on the organs of his sight; or, if we like, as ‘seeing’ them in another, but ‘seeing’ them in a way determined by sundry suppositions (bodies, rays, and the like) which are not feelings, and therefore with Hume not possible ‘perceptions,’ at all. But it is the impression of sight, as it would be for one simply seeing and while he sees, undetermined by reference to anything other than itself, whether subject or object—an impression as it would be for a merely feeling consciousness or (in Hume’s language) ‘on the same footing with pain and pleasure’—that we have to do with when, from Hume’s point of view, we ask whether a multitude of such impressions can be present at once,i.e.as one impression.
[1] P. 345 [Book I, part II., sec. IV.]
A ‘compound impression’ excluded by Hume’s doctrine of time.
247. If this question had been brought home to Hume, he could scarcely have avoided the admission that to answer it affirmatively involved just as much of a contradiction as that which he recognises between the ‘interrupted’ and ‘continuous’ existence of objects; [1] and just as in the latter case he gets over the contradiction by taking the interrupted existence, because the datum of sense, to be the reality, and the continued existence to be a belief resulting from ‘propensities to feign,’ so in the case before us he must have taken the multiplicity of successive impressions to be the reality, and their co-existence as related parts to be a figure of speech, which he must account for as best he could. As it is, he so plays fast and loose with the meaning of ‘impression’ as to hide the contradiction which is involved in the notion of a ‘compound impression’ if impression is interpreted as feeling—the contradiction, namely, that a single feeling should he felt to be manifold—and in consequence loses the chance of being brought to that truer interpretation of the compound impression, as the thought of an object under relations, which a more honest trial of its reduction to feeling might have shown to be necessary. To convict so skilful a writer of a contradiction in terms can never be an easy task. He does not in so many words tell us that all impressions of sight must be successive, but he does tell us that ‘the impressions of touch,’ which, indifferently with those of sight, he holds to constitute the compound impression of extension, ‘change every moment upon us.’ [2] And in the immediate sequel of the passage where he has made out extension to be a compound of co-existent impressions, he derives the idea of time ‘from the succession of our perceptionsof every kind, ideas as well as impressions, and impressions of reflection as well as of sensation.’ The parts of time, he goes on to say, cannot be co-existent; and, since ‘time itself is nothing but different ideas and impressions succeeding each other,’ these parts, we must conclude, are those ‘perceptions of every kind’ from which the idea of time is derived. [3] It is only, in fact, by availing himself of the distinction, which he yet expressly rejects, between the impression and its object, that he disguises the contradiction in terms of first pronouncing certain impressions, as parts of space, co-existent, and then pronouncing all impressions, as parts of time, successive. A statement that ‘as from the coexistence of visual, and also of tactual, perceptions we receive the idea of extension, so from the succession of perceptions of every kind we form the idea of time,’ would arouse the suspicion of the most casual reader; while Hume’s version of the same,—‘as ’tis from the disposition of visible and tangible objects we receive the idea of space, so from the succession of ideas and impressions we form the idea of time’ [4]—has the full ring of empirical plausibility.
[1] P. 483 and following, and p. 486 [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
[2] P. 516 [Book I, part IV., sec. IV.].
[3] Pp. 342, 343 [Book I, part II., sec. III.].
[4] P. 342 [Book I, part II., sec. III.]
The fact that colours mix, not to the purpose.
248. This plausibility depends chiefly on our reading into Hume’s doctrine a physical theory which, as implying a distinction between feeling and its real but unfelt cause, is strictly incompatible with it. Is it not an undoubted fact, the reader asks, that two colours may combine to produce a third different from both—that red and yellow, for instance, together produce orange? Is not this already an instance of a compound impression? Why may not a like composition of unextended impressions of colour constitute an impression different from any one of the component impressions, viz. extended colour? A moment’s consideration, however, will show that no one has a conscious sensation at once of red and yellow, and of orange as a compound of the two. The elements which combine to produce the colour called orange are not—as they ought to be if it is to be a case of compound impression in Hume’s sense—feelings of the person who sees the orange colour, but certain known causes of feeling, confused in language with the feelings, which separately they might produce, but which in fact they do not produce when they combine to give the sensation of orange; and to such causes of feeling, which are not themselves feelings, Hume properly can have nothing to say.
How Hume avoids appearance of identifying space with colour, and accounts for the abstraction of space.
249. So far we have been considering the composition of impressions generally, without special reference to extension. The contradiction pointed out arises from the confusion between impressions as felt and impressions as thought of; colour, between feelings as they are in themselves, presented successively in time, and feelings as determined by relation to the thinking subject, which takes them out of the flux of time and converts them into members of a permanent whole. It is in this form that the confusion is most apt to elude us. When the conceived object is one of which the qualities can really be felt,e.g.colour, we readily forget that a felt quality is no longer simply a feeling. But the case is different when the object is one, like extension, which forces on us the question whether its qualities can be felt, or presented in feeling, at all. A compound of impressions of colour, to adopt Hume’s phraseology, even if such composition were possible, would still be nothing else than an impression of colour. In more accurate language, the conception, which results from the action of thought upon feelings of colour, can only be a conception of colour. Is extension, then, the same as colour? To say that it was would imply that geometry was a science of colour; and Hume, though ready enough to outrage ‘Metaphysics and School Divinity,’ always stops reverently short of direct offence to the mathematical sciences. As has been said above, of the three main questions about the idea of extension which his doctrine raises—Is it itself extended? Is it possible without reference to something other than a possible impression? Is it the same as the idea of colour or tangibility?—the last is the only one which he can scarcely even profess to answer in the affirmative. [1] Even when he has gone so far as to speak of the parts of a perception, a sound instinct compels him, instead of identifying the perception directly with extension, to speak of it as ‘affording through the situation of its parts the notion of’ extension. [2] In like manner, when he has asserted extension to be a compound of impressions, he avoids the proper consequence of the assertion by speaking of the component impressions as those, not of colour but, of coloured points, ‘atoms or corpuscles endowed with colour and solidity;’ and, again, does not call extension the compound of these simply, but the compound of them as ‘disposed in a certain manner.’ When the idea which is a copy of this impression has to be spoken of, the expression is varied again. It is an ‘idea of the coloured pointsand of the manner of their appearance,’ or of their ‘disposition.’ The disposition of the parts having been thus virtually distinguished from their colour, it is easy to suppose that, finding a likeness in the disposition of points under every unlikeness of their colour, ‘we omit the peculiarities of colour, as far as possible, and found an abstract idea merely on that disposition of points, or manner of appearance, in which they agree. Nay, even when the resemblance is carried beyond the objects of one sense, and the impressions of touch are found to be similar to those of sight in the disposition of their parts, this does not hinder the abstract idea from representing both on account of their resemblance’. [3]
[1] Above, paragraph 233. Though, as we shall see, he does so in one passage.
[2] Above, paragraph 235.
[3] P. 341 [Book I, part II., sec. III.]
In so doing, he implies that space is a relation, and a relation which is not a possible impression.
250. If words have any meaning, the above must imply that the disposition of points is at least a different idea from either colour or tangibility, however impossible it may be for us to experience it without one or other of the latter. Nor can we suppose that this impression, other than colour, is one that first results from the composition of colours, even if we admit that such composition could yield a result different from colour. According to Hume, the components of the compound impression are already impressions of coloured ‘points, atoms, or corpuscles,’ and such points imply just that limitation by mutual externality, which is already the disposition in question. Is this ‘disposition,’ then, an impression of sensation? If so, ‘through which of the senses is it received? If it be perceived by the eyes it must be a colour,’ &c. &c.; [1] but from colour, the impression with which Hume would have identified it if he could, he yet finds himself obliged virtually to distinguish it. It is a relation, and not even one of those relations, such as resemblance, which in Hume’s language, ‘depending on the nature of the impressions related,’ [2] may plausibly be reckoned to be themselves impressions. The ‘disposition’ of parts and their ‘situation’ he uses interchangeably, and the situation of impressions he expressly opposes to their ‘nature’ [3]—that nature in respect of which all impressions, call them what we like, are ‘originally on the same footing’ with pain and pleasure. Consistently with this he pronounces the ‘external position’ of objects—their position as bodies external to each other and to our body—to be no datum of sense, no impression or idea, at all. [4] Our belief in it has to be accounted for as a complex result of ‘propensities to feign.’ How, then, can there be an impression of that which does not belong to the nature of any impression? What difference is there between ‘bodies’ and ‘corpuscles endowed with colour and solidity,’ that the outwardness of the latter to each other—also called their ‘distance’ from each, other [5]—should be an impression, while it is admitted that the same relation between ‘bodies’ cannot be so?
[1] Above, paragraph 208.
[2] P. 372 [Book I, part III., sec. I.], ‘Philosophical relations may be divided into two classes: into such as depend entirely on the ideas which we compare together; and such as may be changed without any change in the ideas. … The relations of contiguity and distance between two objects may be changed without any change in the objects themselves or their ideas.’
[3] P. 480. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.] ‘When we doubt whether sensations present themselves as distinct objects or as mere impressions, the difficulty is not concerning their nature, but concerning their relations and situation.’
[4] P. 481. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.] In there showing that the senses alone cannot convince us of the external existence of body, he remarks that ‘sounds, tastes, and smells appear not to have any existence in extension;’ and (p. 483) [ibid] ‘as far as the senses are judges, all perceptions are the same in the manner of their existence.’ Therefore perceptions of sight cannot have ‘an existence in extension’ any more than ‘sounds, tastes, and smells;’ and if so, how can ‘existence in extension’ be a perception?
[5] Above, paragraphs 235 and 244.
No logical alternative between identifying space with colour, and admitting an idea not copied from an impression.
251. To have plainly admitted that it was not an impression must have compelled Hume either to discard the ‘abstract idea’ with which geometry deals, or to admit the possibility of ideas other than ‘fainter impressions.’ It is a principle on which he insists with much emphasis and repetition, that whatever ‘objects,’ ‘impressions,’ or ‘ideas’ are distinguishable are also separable. [1] Now if there is an abstract idea of extension, it can scarcely be other than distinguishable, and consequently (according to Hume’s account of the relation of idea to impression) derived from a distinguishable and therefore separable impression. It would seem then that Hume cannot escape conviction of one of two inconsistencies; either that of supposing a separate impression of extension, which yet is not of the nature of any assignable sensation; or that of supposing an abstract idea of it in the absence of any such impression. We shall find that he does not directly face either horn of the dilemma, but evades both of them. He admits that ‘the ideas of space and time are no separate and distinct ideas, but merely those of the manner or order in which objects’ (sc.impressions) ‘exist’. [2] In the Fourth Book, where the equivalence of impression to feeling is more consistently carried out, the fact that what is commonly reckoned an impression is really a judgment about the ‘manner of existence,’ as opposed to the ‘nature,’ of impressions, is taken as sufficient proof that it is no impression at all; and if not an impression, therefore not an idea. [3] He thus involuntarily recognized the true difference between feeling and thought, between the mere occurrence of feelings and the presentation of that occurrence by the self-conscious subject to itself; and, if only he had known what he was about in the recognition, might have anticipated Kant’s distinction between the matter and form of sensation. In the Second Book, however, he will neither say explicitly that space is an impression of colour or a compound of colours—that would be to extinguish geometry; nor yet that it is impression of sense separate from that of colour—that would lay him open to the retort that he was virtually introducing a sixth sense; nor on the other hand will he boldly avow of it, as he afterwards does of body, that it is a fiction. He denies that it is a separate impression, so far as that is necessary for avoiding the challenge to specify the sense through which it is received; he distinguishes it from a mere impression of sight, when it is necessary to avoid its simple identification with colour. By speaking of it as ‘the manner in which objects exist’—so long as he is not confronted with the declarations of the Fourth Book or with the question how, the objects being impressions, their order of existence can be at once that of succession in time and of co-existence in space—he gains the credit for it of being a datum of sight, yet so far distinct from colour as to be a possible ‘foundation for an abstract idea,’ representative also of objects not coloured at all but tangible. At the same time, if pressed with the question how it could be an impression of sight and yet not interchangeable with colour, he could put off the questioner by reminding him that he never made it a ‘separate or distinct impression, but one of the manner in which objects exist.’
[1] Pp. 319, 326, 332, 335, 518. [Book I, part I., sec. IV and VII, part II, sec. I, and part IV., sec. V.]
[2] P. 346. [Book I, part II., sec. IV.]
[3] P. 480. [Book I, part IV., sec. II.]
In his account of the idea asabstract, Hume really introduces distinction between feeling and conception;
252. Disguise it as he might, however, the admission that there was in some sense an abstract idea of space, which the existence of geometry required of him, really carried with it the admission either of a distinct impression of the same, or of some transmuting process by which the idea may become what the impression is not. His way of evading this consequence has been already noticed in our examination of his doctrine of ‘abstract ideas’ generally, though without special reference to extension. [1] It consists in asserting figure and colour to be ‘really,’ or as an impression, ‘the same and indistinguishable,’ but different as ‘relations and resemblances’ of the impression; in other words, different according to the ‘light in which the impression is considered’ or ‘the aspect in which it is viewed.’ Of these ‘separate resemblances and relations,’ however, are there ideas or are there not? If there are not, they are according to Hume nothing of which we are conscious at all; if there are, there must be distinguishable, and therefore separable, impressions corresponding. To say then that figure and colour form one and the same indistinguishable impression, and yet that they constitute ‘different resemblances and relations,’ without such explanation as Hume cannot consistently give, is in fact a contradiction in terms. The true explanation is that the ‘impression’ has a different meaning, when figure and colour are said to be inseparable in the impression, from that which it has when spoken of as a subject of different resemblances and relations. In the former sense it is the feeling pure and simple—oneas presented singly in time, after another and before a third. In this sense it is doubtless insusceptible of distinction into qualities of figure and colour, because (for reasons already stated) it can have no qualities at all. But the ‘simplicity in which many different resemblances and relations may be contained’ is quite other than this singleness. It is the unity of an object thought of under manifold relations—a unity of which Hume, reducing all consciousness to ‘impression’ and impression to feeling, has no consistent account to give. Failing such an account, the unity of the intelligible object, and the singleness of the feeling in time, are simply confused with each other. It is only an object as thought of, not a feeling as felt, that can properly be said to have qualities at all; while it is only because it is still regarded as a feeling that qualities of it, which cannot be referred to separate impressions, are pronounced the same and indistinguishable. If the idea of space is other than a feeling grown fainter, the sole reason for regarding it as originally an impression of colour disappears; if itissuch a feeling, it cannot contain such ‘different resemblances and relations’ as render it representative of objects not only coloured in every possible way, but not coloured at all.
[1] Above, paragraph 218.
… yet avoids appearance of doing so, by treating ‘consideration’ of the relations of a felt thing as if it were itself the feeling.
253. It is thus by playing fast and loose with the difference between feeling and conception that Hume is able, when the character of extension as an intelligible relation is urged, to reply that it is the same with the feeling of colour; and on the other hand, when asked how there then can be an abstract idea of it, to reply that this does not mean a separate idea, but coloured objects considered under a certain relation, viz. under that which consists in the disposition of their parts. The most effective way of meeting him on his own ground is to ask him how it is, since ‘consideration’ can only mean a succession of ideas, and ideas are fainter impressions, that extension, being one and the same impression with colour, can by any ‘consideration’ become so different from it as to constitute a resemblance to objects that are not coloured at all. The true explanation, according to his own terminology, would be that the resemblance between the white globe and all other globes, being a resemblance not of impressions but of such relations between impressions as do not ‘depend on the nature of the impressions’ related, is unaffected by the presence or absence of colour or any other sensation. Of such relations, however, there can properly, if ideas are fainter impressions, be no ideas at all. In regard to those of cause and identity Hume virtually admits this; but the ‘propensities to feign’ by which in the case of these latter relations he tries to account for the appearance of there being ideas of them, cannot plausibly be applied to relations in space and time, of which, as we shall see, ideas must be assumed in order to account for the ‘fictions’ of body and necessary connexion. Since then they cannot be derived from any separate impression without the introduction in effect of a sixth sense, and since all constitutive action of thought as distinct from feeling is denied by Hume, the only way to save appearances is to treat the order in which a multitude of impressions present themselves as the same with each impression, even though immediately afterwards it may have to be confessed, that it is so independent of the nature of any or all of the impressions as to be the foundation of an abstract idea, which is representative of other impressions having nothing whatever in common with them but the order of appearance. This once allowed—an abstract idea having been somehow arrived at which is not really the copy of any impression—it is easy to argue back from the abstract idea to an impression, and because there is an idea of the composition of points to substitute a ‘composition of coloured points’ for colour as the original impression. From such impression, being already extension, the idea of extension can undoubtedly be abstracted.
Summary of contradictions in his account of extension.
254. We now know what becomes of ‘extended matter’ when the doctrine, which has only to be stated to find acceptance, that we cannot ‘look for anything anywhere but in our ideas’—in other words that for us there is no world but consciousness—is fairly carried out. Its position must become more and more equivocal, as the assumption, that consciousness reveals to us an alien matter, has in one after another of its details to be rejected, until a principle of synthesis within consciousness is found to explain it. In default of this, the feeling consciousness has to be made to take its place as best it may; which means that what is said of it as feeling has to be unsaid of it as extended, andvice versâ. Asfeeling, it carries no reference to anything other than itself, to an object of which it is a quality; asextended, it is a qualified object. Asextendedagain, its qualities are relations of coexistent parts; asfeeling, it is an unlimited succession, and therefore, not being a possible whole, can have no parts at all. Finally asfeeling, it must in each moment of existence either be ‘on the same footing’ with pain and pleasure or else—a distinction between impressions of sensation and reflection being unwarrantably admitted—be a colour, a taste, a sound, a smell, or ‘tangibility;’ asextended, it is an ‘order of appearance’ or ‘disposition of corpuscles,’ which, being predicable indifferently at any rate of two of these sensations, can no more be the same with either than either can be the same with the other. It is not the fault of Hume but his merit that, in undertaking to maintain more strictly than others the identification of extension with feeling, he brought its impossibility more clearly into view. The pity is that having carried his speculative enterprise so far before he was thirty, he allowed literary vanity to interfere with its consistent pursuit, caring only to think out the philosophy which he inherited so far as it enabled him to pose with advantage against Mystics and Dogmatists, but not to that further issue which is the entrance to the philosophy of Kant.
He gives no account of quantity as such.
255. As it was, he never came fairly to ask himself the fruitful question. How the sciences of quantity ‘continuous and discreet,’ which undoubtedly do exist, are possible to a merely feeling consciousness, because, while professedly reducing all consciousness to this form, he still allowed himself to interpret it in the terms of these sciences and, having done so, could easily account for their apparent ‘abstraction’ from it. If colour is already for feeling a magnitude, as is implied in calling it a ‘composition of coloured points,’ the question, how a knowledge of magnitude is possible, is of course superfluous. It only remains to deal, as Hume professes to do, with the apparent abstraction in mathematics of magnitude from colour and the consequent suppositions of pure space and infinite divisibility. Any ulterior problem he ignores. That magnitude is not any the more a feeling for being ‘endowed with colour’ he shows no suspicion. He pursues his ‘sensationalism’ in short, in its bearing on mathematics, just as far as Berkeley did and no further. The question at issue, as he conceived it, was not as to the possibility of magnitude altogether, but only as to the existence of a vacuum; not as to the possibility of number altogether, but only as to the infinity of its parts. Just as he takes magnitude for granted as found in extension, and extension as equivalent to the feeling of colour, so he takes number for granted, without indeed any explicit account of the impression in which it is to be found, but apparently as found in time, which again is identified with the succession of impressions. In the second part of the Treatise, though the idea of number is assumed and an account is given of it which is supposed to be fatal to the infinite divisibility of extension, we are told nothing of the impression or impressions from which it is derived. In the Fourth Part, however, there is a passage in which a certain consideration of time is spoken of as its source.