Philosophical Works of the Late James Frederick Ferrier/Philosophical Remains (1883)/Introductory Lecture, Nov. 1861
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE,
NOVEMBER 1861.
1. In this lecture I propose to consider a subject which lies at the very threshold of moral philosophy, and which may therefore form an appropriate theme for a general and introductory address. The topic to which I refer is the relation of ethics to psychology; in other words, the relation of moral philosophy to that more extensive study known as the science of the human mind. This latter science, psychology namely, is a department of philosophy on which all or most of you have already, I believe, bestowed some attention, and in which you have made some progress. What we have now to consider is, how this science stands related to the department of philosophy, which is the province of study treated of in this class. The complete illustration of this connection would require a wide survey of philosophy, both in itself and in its history; but enough may now be said to make intelligible to you the more general bearings of the relation, and at any rate its discussion may serve to break the ground in such a way as to suit it for our future more detailed operations. In considering this subject, what I wish to bring before you is this: that ethics must always have their roots in psychology; that as our psychology is, so must our ethics be (that is, if we preserve any consistency in our reasoning); that a confused or imperfect or erroneous psychology must always issue in a confused or imperfect or erroneous moral theory; and that a correct moral theory is only to be reached through a correct psychological system.
2. To trace this connection, I must first of all speak of psychology, and of the principal problem with which psychology has to deal. The main problem of psychology is that concerning the nature and origin of our knowledge. More explicitly stated, the question is this: What cognitions or elements of cognition are native to the mind itself, and what cognitions or elements of cognition are imparted to it from without? Or stated perhaps still more distinctly, it is this: In the formation of our knowledge, that is, in our apprehensions of the things around us, what ingredients belong to, and are supplied by, the mind, and what ingredients are contributed by foreign and external causes?
3. Now, two very extreme answers, two answers widely opposed to each other, may be conceived to be returned to this question. We may suppose the one answer to be that our knowledge is wholly, or almost wholly, due to the mind itself; that none, or, at any rate, very few of the ingredients of cognition are derived from foreign sources. And conversely we may suppose the other answer to be, that all, or nearly all, the elements of cognition are derived from foreign sources, and that none, or scarcely any, of them are native products of the mind. I have laid down these two answers in an extreme form, in order that you may the better understand them. The one solution is, that the mind originates all, or nearly all, its knowledge from within, and derives almost nothing ab extra. The other solution is, that the mind derives all, or nearly all, its knowledge, ab extra, and originates scarcely anything from within.
4. These two solutions, which I have advanced by way of supposition, have found plenty of upholders, as we know from the history of philosophy—upholders not perhaps in quite the extreme forms in which I have expressed them, but in forms certainly approaching very near to these extremes. Indeed these two answers may be said to divide the psychological world into the two most general divisions which it presents. The party which tends towards the one extreme consists of those who advocate the psychology of innate ideas. The party which approaches, and I think we may say sometimes reaches, the other extreme, consists of those who advocate the psychology of sensation. These are the two poles, and they stand widely asunder, of the psychological world; the, doctrine of innate ideas on the one hand, and the doctrine of sensation on the other hand. You will understand how widely apart these doctrines are placed if you will bear in mind the extremes which I have stated, extremes which they approach if they do not exactly reach. The extreme doctrine of innate ideas allows nothing to foreign sources, but finds the origin of all cognition in the mind itself; the extreme doctrine of sensation allows nothing to the mind itself, but finds the origin of all cognition in foreign sources. That antithesis may enable you to keep in mind and to understand generally the character and tendency of the two great psychological schemes which I say have divided the philosophical world. It may here occur to you that a third alternative is possible as a solution of the problem respecting the origin of our knowledge, and that this third solution is the truest and most natural of any. Why, you will ask, why may we not combine into one the two solutions just given, and thus obtain the most correct and the most tenable explanation? Why may we not say that our knowledge is due neither entirely to the mind itself, nor entirely to the action of external things, but that it is the joint result of both these constituents? Now there can be no doubt that the true answer to the problem does lie somewhere in this middle alternative. But there is a difficulty in adjusting the terms of the compromise, a difficulty on which I shall not touch at present, further than by saying that in connection with this solution the question arises, Which of the two constituents, the mental or the material, is the more important and essential to the process? Some inquirers will make the one set of elements the more essential, others will make the other set of elements the more essential. The one contribution or the other will be regarded as of preponderant or exclusive, or overwhelming importance; and thus we are again brought to the two alternatives spoken of, and are led either to adopt the doctrine which represents innate ideas as the essential groundwork of our knowledge, or we adopt the other doctrine, that our sensations, induced by external causes, are the basis and origin of our cognitions. At any rate, in order to simplify the discussion, I leave out of account at present that third or middle alternative, which aims at conciliating the two solutions, and I confine my remarks to the two extreme answers on which I have touched.
5. I go on, then, to speak of the psychology of innate ideas, and of the ethics to which this system gives rise. This system contends that there are cognitions, or (at least) elements of cognition in the mind prior to its intercourse with external things, and that these mental elements are far more essential to our completed knowledge of objects than aught that is supplied to us by these objects themselves; that they are in fact the "light of all our seeing;" that without them all our knowledge would be a blank, and all our experience impossible. And that, therefore, we may truly affirm that our cognitions, in all their essential qualities, are originated from within, and are native to the mind itself. Such, stated very briefly, is the doctrine of innate ideas.
6. The innate ideas for which this system contends are otherwise called a priori cognitions, or a priori elements of cognitions. They are thus distinguished from any elements which may be supplied to us from without, and which are called a posteriori. The latter are also termed empirical, as depending on outward experience; while the others are held to exist independently of all outward experience, although this may be and is required to elicit them into manifestation. Among the innate or a priori ideas are to be ranked the conceptions of Being, of number, of space, of time, of cause, of substance, of resemblance, of difference. I do not profess to give you a complete list. But remove these conceptions, say the advocates of this psychology, and no knowledge of any kind would be possible; they are the groundwork and conditions and essential constituents of all cognition. Nor if they were removed could they by any possibility be supplied to the mind from without; because the mind could not receive them unless it already had them. They are the conditions under which all knowledge is received into the mind; and therefore they cannot themselves be received into the mind; for in order to receive themselves they must be already there to render their own reception possible. The inevitable and irresistible inference is, that they are already there, or, if not these ideas, that at any rate something innate and a priori is already in the mind, and that the mind has within it cognitions or elements of cognition which are not imparted to it from any foreign quarter. Such, stated very briefly, is the ground on which the psychology of innate ideas rests, the reasoning by which it is supported.
7. That there is much truth in this doctrine of innate ideas, when rightly understood and expounded, I firmly believe. I cannot pause at present to attempt its complete explanation and adjustment. The following hint must suffice. In speaking of innate ideas, I have called them indifferently "cognitions" or "elements of cognition." But in attempting to establish a right doctrine on this subject, these two expressions, "cognitions" and "elements of cognition," would require to be most signally and accurately distinguished. If the innate ideas be represented as mere elements of cognition, a perfectly correct and intelligible and impregnable psychology of innate ideas may, I conceive, be set on foot. But if the innate ideas be regarded as cognition, that is, as completed cognitions, nothing but an untrue doctrine, a doctrine of the most unintelligible and most bewildering character, can emerge. I may add that it is under the latter expression, the expression of "cognitions," that the doctrine has been usually expounded by philosophers. They have treated the innate ideas as cognitions, of course completed cognitions; and hence they have failed, I think, to construct a true or intelligible theory in regard to them.
8. In consequence of this mistake, the neglect, viz., to discriminate between cognitions and mere elements of cognition, the psychology of innate ideas has come to us in a very crude state, in a very imperfect and untenable form, a form which was sure to provoke, and which did provoke, a reaction in favour of the other extreme, I mean the psychology of sensation. The advocates of innate ideas were held to have magnified to an undue extent the inborn principles of knowledge, to have multiplied without careful investigation the native properties of the mind; to have allowed, in short, far too much, in the formation of knowledge, to man's original and internal nature, and far too little to his outward experience. The system, as it stood, was felt to be crude and insufficient. Its doom was sealed for a time at least, and it is generally believed to have expired under the assault of the English philosopher Locke.
9. But we have now to ask, What kind of ethics might we naturally expect to germinate from this system of psychology? The answer is, that we might naturally expect the doctrine of innate ideas to give birth to a system of innate or intuitive morality. And such we find to be the case. In the history of philosophy the one of these theories is closely affiliated to the other.
10. The ethical system, which springs from the doctrine of innate ideas, is the hypothesis which contends for an innate moral faculty, an instinctive perception of the difference between right and wrong, a natural sense of justice and injustice, an original conscience which teaches us to govern our passions, and prompts us to do to others as we would that they should do unto us. This system of ethics maintains that we have from nature social affections which lead us into friendly fellowship with our kind, and incline us to consult the interests of others, no less than private feelings, which excite us to promote our own personal advantage. It holds that we grow up to be the moral agents that we are through an innate sense of duty, which at once approves of our conduct when we do right, and disapproves of it when we do wrong. It allows but little influence to the varied circumstances which operate upon us from without. It finds our moral sentiments not to be the result of any foreign agencies, but the spontaneous produce of our own internal constitution.
11. Our unreflective judgment is rather in favour of this hypothesis. When we look, with a not very critical eye, at the ongoings of human life, we are apt to think that people have grown up of their own accord to be what they are. We do not, indeed, go so far as to suppose that a man who from his infancy had lived in solitude would, either in his moral or intellectual manifestations, bear any close resemblance to ourselves. Still, I think that we naturally tend to approximate to such a supposition. We entertain a half-conscious impression that we and our friends should have been tolerably like what we now are, and should have demeaned ourselves very much as we now do, even though the external agencies to which we have been subject had not been brought to bear upon us. In a word, it appears to the unthoughtful observer as if our manners, our morals, our social sentiments, our modes of thought, and ways of life, came to us from nature, and were part and parcel of our original selves.
12. The doctrine of an innate morality, which is founded on the doctrine of innate ideas, thus seems to be still further reinforced by the natural sentiments of mankind. But whatever support it may receive from this quarter, or from the psychology on which it rests, it is an hypothesis which must be pronounced highly unsatisfactory in any form in which it has hitherto appeared. I do not say that the doctrine is in the main, or in itself, untrue. I am quite of a contrary opinion. I believe that, like the psychological doctrine of innate ideas, this doctrine, under due limitations and accompanied by proper explanations, is substantially correct. Man's morality is rooted in his innermost nature. It grows necessarily out of his very reason, but it is certainly moulded into what it is by the form and pressure bf the society in which he lives, and by the force of the circumstances which surround him. These alter considerably his primitive nature, and engraft new shoots on the original stock of his being. Example, education, traditional usages, prescriptive customs, the approbation and disapprobation of our fellow-men, all these are foreign agencies, and they exert such a potent influence on each of us, and so shape and modify our original dispositions, as to render it in the highest degree difficult to determine accurately what are the native or primary, and what the acquired or secondary elements in our moral constitution. And we learn nothing from being told that our conscience or sense of duty, our sentiments in regard to right and wrong, our obligation to pursue one course of conduct and to avoid another course, are ultimate principles which admit of no further analysis or explanation. Even if this were true, it would teach us nothing. But it is not true. It is not true that conscience operates like an instinct; it is not true that we distinguish instinctively between the right and the wrong, as we do between the pleasurable and the painful; it is not true that our social feelings arise, as our selfish ones do, without the intervention of any antecedent principle. Above all, the advocates of an innate morality have failed to note the very important part which thought or reason plays in the construction of our moral sentiments. They have not explained or comprehended the exact nature of thought, this being indeed rather a psychological than a moral research, and one which has been left very much in arrear by the psychology of innate ideas. The consequence is that the ethics which uphold an innate morality have inherited all the crudeness of the psychology on which they are founded, and exhibit that crudeness in a still more conspicuous aspect.
13. I pass on to the second topic of the discussion, viz., to consider the psychology of sensation, and the ethics which arise out of it. This system is a recoil from the doctrine of innate ideas. Just as the latter scheme tends to enlarge as widely as possible the sphere of innate cognition, and to attach to it the utmost importance, so the former proceeds on the principle of limiting this sphere to its narrowest dimensions, or of exploding it altogether. It allows to the mind no original furnishing at all, except a power of receptivity. The name of this receptive and entirely passive capacity is sensation. Outward things conveying impressions to the senses in particular, and to the nervous organism generally, are the source and origin of all our ideas. The mind is at first an absolute blank, and contributes no elements of its own to the formation of its cognitions. It originates nothing from within, but receives all its knowledge from without. All knowledge and all ideas are ultimately resolvable into sensations. Thoughts and conceptions are merely faint and transformed sensations.
14. Such is sensationalism in its most extreme form as propounded by some of the French metaphysicians of the last century. Locke, by admitting reflection as well as sensation to be a source of our ideas, had previously taught a modified form of this doctrine. But still, even in Locke's system, reflection holds a subordinate place, and sensation is with him the chief and dominant, if not the sole original capacity of the human mind.
15. Before proceeding to consider the ethics which arise out of this system, we must examine carefully the nature of sensation. We must investigate and ascertain its character as a psychological phenomenon before we can judge of it as the basis of an ethical hypothesis. The characteristics of sensation are twofold. First, it is either pleasurable or painful; secondly, it is individual or particular. On the first of these points little requires to be said. Some degree of pleasure or of pain is involved in all our sensations. It may be thought that some of them are neutral or indifferent. But this indifference seems either to be a mixture of pleasure and pain in which these balance each other, or else it is a state of ease and tranquillity brought about in some other way. But in whatever way the tranquillity which looks like indifference is brought about, it is still a pleasurable condition. Or if the state of apparent indifference be a state of ennui and satiety, in that case it is a condition of pain. A sensation which was absolutely indifferent to us would be no sensation; it would not be felt at all. All sensations then, even those which seem to be indifferent, involve either pleasure or pain as their constant and inseparable ingredient.
16. Sensation, and the capacity of receiving it, being, according to this psychology, the only original quality or endowment of our nature; and sensation being always an expression either of pleasure or of pain, and the sensational capacity being a susceptibility of these feelings, it follows that pleasure and pain, and a susceptibility thereof, form originally the whole staple and essence of our constitution.
17. The second characteristic of sensation is, that it is strictly individual or particular. This characteristic of sensation is very important, but it is less obvious and has been less noticed than the other. Indeed, I am not aware that it has been noticed at all by any psychological observer. But it is a quality of sensation which it is very necessary to keep in view, if we would understand in their true form the ethics which have their origin in the psychology of sensation. By the neglect to note and signalise this characteristic of sensation, the true aspect of the sensational ethics has been disguised and obscured. All sensation then, I repeat, is individual and particular. By this I mean that each sensation is precisely the single sensation which it is, and any group or series of sensations is precisely that single group or series of sensations, and not anything more. A sensation has no general or indefinite compass. Hence no sensation, and no series of sensations, can ever carry the being who experiences them out of and beyond himself. He is tied down by sensation and confined exclusively to himself. Particular pleasures and pains are experienced, there the matter begins and ends; not a hair's-breadth beyond his own sentient states can the creature experiencing the sensations travel. His condition is one of utter and entire isolation. No sensations, transform them as we may, can ever transport a being beyond the limits of itself, nothing can do that but thought: and thought, as different from sensation, has no place in this psychology. If you are not quite satisfied with this statement, consider the matter in this way: I cannot feel your pleasures and your pains, nor can you feel mine. Each of us can only feel his own; and therefore if sensation be all in all it is absolutely impossible for us to pay the slightest heed to the pains and pleasures of one another. To do that we should require actually to experience each other's sensations. But this we cannot do. If I am wounded I feel pain, but you feel none; while if you are wounded you feel pain, but I don't. Your pain is to me absolutely nothing, just as mine is absolutely nothing to you; absolutely nothing, that is, on the supposition that we are merely sensational creatures, that sensation, and sensation alone, is what we have been originally endowed with. The whole animated universe may be riotous with enjoyment, or may be plunged in the most agonising torment; but all this is nothing to the separate individuals who compose it. Each of them can be occupied with nothing but its own sensations. None of them can transcend its own particular feelings, because no creature can feel any pains or any pleasures except its own. So much in explanation of what I mean by saying that all sensation is necessarily individual or particular.
18. I have now to speak of the ethics which are founded on the psychology of sensation. It will conduce to distinctness if we regard these ethics as twofold. There is, first, a very simple system which arises when we keep in view the particularity of sensation as I have just explained it to you; and there is, secondly, a very confused system which arises when we lose sight, as the sensational psychologists did, of the fact referred to. We shall confine our attention at present to the first of these ethical systems. It is, as I have said, extremely simple and intelligible, and although exceedingly defective in point of truth, nothing can be more perfect than the logical consistency with the psychological principles on which it is founded. The ethical system in its simplest form which arises out of the sensational psychology is that which is now to engage our attention.
19. By ethics are meant generally those principles and practical rules of conduct which move and guide us in the pursuit of that which we esteem to be right and good, and in the avoidance of that which we esteem to be wrong and evil. Now to a mere sensational creature (and such the sensational psychology represents man to be), what alone can be esteemed good and right? Obviously nothing, except its own sensational pleasure. And what alone to such a being can be esteemed evil and wrong? Obviously nothing, except its own sensational pain. The sole end of its existence, the sole rule and principle of its conduct, must therefore be the attainment of sensual enjoyment, and the avoidance of sensual suffering; for pleasure naturally allures, and pain naturally repels the whole animated creation, and here there is no principle to counteract in any degree the allurement and the repulsion. Here the only duty, the only obligation, is to enjoy. Here sensational happiness is equivalent to an approving conscience, while a disapproving conscience is identical with sensational misery. And here, too, our own pleasures and pains must be pursued and shunned by each of us in total disregard of the claims and feelings of our fellow-men. These necessarily go for nothing, for, as I have shown you, our sensations (and we are supposed to have nothing but sensations), our sensations can give us no sense of theirs, no sense of their felicity or wretchedness. In such a case it is each man for himself and his own interests, not because he dislikes the happiness and desires the misery of his fellows, but because he has, and can have, absolutely no perception of them. He has a perception only of his own weal and of his own woe. The one of these he courts, and the other he wards off under the irresistible compulsion of his nature. And this nature, the only nature which he has, assures him that he is doing right in pursuing the one at all hazards, and wrong in failing at all hazards to eschew the other.
20. It is obvious that these ethics are scarcely entitled to the name of a moral scheme; and it cannot be maintained for a moment that they are applicable to man in his rational maturity. But it is only because man is not a mere sensational creature that they are not applicable to him. Admit with the sensational psychologists that he is this, and these certainly are the only ethics adapted to his condition. They stand in a relation of perfect consistency with the psychology which is their groundwork.
21. Yet, untrue as these ethics are in the main, they present one side on which we may, perhaps, win from them some degree of truth. Let us suppose that man is at first a mere sensational creature, and that his reason and other qualities, although original, do not show themselves until a later period in his career; on that supposition I conceive that these ethics would apply to man, would, indeed, be the only rule and motive of his actions in his early condition, and prior to the development of these subsequent manifestations. Now this is by no means an absurd or untrue supposition; on the contrary, it is certain that man is sensitive to pleasure and pain before his reason comes into play. In such circumstances I hold that these selfish ethics are the only true, the only possible ethics of his condition. There can be no objection to our making man commence his career as a mere sensational creature, provided we allow due weight and authority to the principles, no less original, which he afterwards develops. This is the position taken up by the celebrated philosopher Hobbes. He regards sensation as man's earliest manifestation; and this fact, for a fact it certainly is, seems to me to justify some of his apparently paradoxical opinions. For instance Hobbes asserts that man's natural condition is a state of mutual warfare and aggression, and this assertion has drawn down upon his head a large measure of obloquy and indignation. But it is precisely equivalent to saying that man's natural condition is a state of susceptibility to pleasure and to pain; because this susceptibility, if unchecked by any other principle, will necessarily strive after a monopoly of enjoyment, and this struggle will necessarily bring people into collision with each other. If, therefore, by our natural condition, Hobbes means our early and sensational condition, it appears to me that a good ground of defence may be obtained for his averment that the natural and primitive state of mankind is a bellum omnium contra omnes. Hobbes's error lay in his not paying sufficient regard to the provision I just mentioned. He does not allow due weight to the principles which man develops subsequently to his sensational manifestations.
22. On the whole, then, we may conclude that the sensational ethics in the simple form in which we have been viewing them, are true in regard to man in his early and mere sensational state. This truth, however, must be admitted to be rather ideal than real, for, except in early infancy, it is only in the abstract or ideally that we regard man as a merely sensational being. Reason soon comes into play, and then the ethics of sensation lose their truth and cease to be applicable to his nature.