Philosophical Works of the Late James Frederick Ferrier/Philosophical Remains (1883)/Lecture, April 1858
LECTURE,
APRIL 1858.
1. PHILOSOPHY is of course the subject of which the history of philosophy treats. It is obvious, therefore, that before we can reanimate and verify, as proposed, the philosophical systems of the past, we must, first of all, have formed a distinct idea in regard to what philosophy itself is. It is not by means of a man's ordinary thinking, but by means of his philosophical thinking, that the verification spoken of can be effected. You might carry the old systems home to your ordinary consciousness, you might attempt to infuse your ordinary consciousness into them, you might do this for ever, and you would not obtain one particle of insight either into them or into their grounds. Your popular everyday consciousness will not help you here; you must have established a philosophical consciousness; in other words, you must know what philosophy itself is. When you have a right and clear idea of this, you can then go to work to some purpose. Assuming your philosophy to be true, as I am of course entitled to do, inasmuch as I have supposed your idea of it to be right, you can now breathe into the old systems the breath of your living thoughts, and the old bones will come to life; for in all genuine speculative thinking there is the closest intercommunion, if people would but see it, between the living and the dead. Pythagoras will be no longer remote, and it will seem but yesterday since Parmenides threw off the garb of his mortality. Plato will speak to you like a familiar friend; his ideas, so far from being unintelligible, will now come before us as the only intelligibilities in the heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth; and Aristotle's hard technicalities, dry and uninteresting no longer, will be found fertile with the germs of the profoundest and most inexhaustible speculative knowledge. To repeat this in one word—to apply the rule rightly, you must have a correct and clear conception of philosophy itself. In order to deal effectually with the history of philosophy, in order to derive any benefit from it as students, and in order to confer any benefit on it as historians, we must, first of all, be philosophers ourselves.
2. This is a new position. We have hitherto been considering the history of philosophy, and the rule by which we must be guided either in studying or in writing it. The consideration of these points has brought us to this conclusion, that to do either of these things effectually we must, in the first place, be philosophers ourselves, or, at any rate, must have a clear and correct idea of what philosophy itself is. This, I say, is a new position, for it raises the new question, But what is philosophy? How shall we go to work in order to obtain a clear conception of it? How shall we set about the acquisition of a philosophical as distinguished from a common consciousness? Here, too, I shall merely offer a few hints, for I think that by this time you ought to have formed for yourselves a pretty distinct conception of what philosophy is in its means and in its ends.
3. To obtain a distinct idea of philosophy let us ask, first of all, What is its converse? If we can get hold of the opposite or counter idea, this will help us to grasp the conception we are in quest of. The converse of philosophy is opinion. You frequently hear the expression "philosophical opinions" made use of. That is altogether a misnomer; strictly speaking, it is a contradiction. There are no opinions in philosophy properly so called. For what are opinions? Opinions are optional thoughts, arbitrary excogitations, thoughts which we may entertain or not, just as we please. We may maintain an opinion, we may also maintain its converse; at least, it is not impossible to maintain the converse of any opinion that may be formed, for that is precisely what is meant by an opinion; it is a thought which we can help thinking, and in the place of which we may, by possibility at least, entertain the opposite thought. To define opinion almost in one word, I should say that opinions are thoughts which we can help thinking.
4. Philosophy is the converse of opinion: philosophy therefore consists essentially of thoughts which we cannot help thinking; I say essentially, for such is the imperfection of our faculties, the limited extent of our knowledge, and the waste condition of our reason, which, looking to mankind generally, is very far from having received the culture of which it is susceptible; such, I say, is the actual state of things that opinion enters to a greater or smaller extent into the composition of philosophy. But it is present there as the accident, not as the essence. Opinions, or thoughts which a man can help thinking, have no business in philosophy. They are there under protest and only by sufferance, only until their places can be occupied by something better: occupied, that is, by thoughts which we cannot help thinking; for just as I have defined opinions as thoughts which we can help thinking, so I now define philosophy as that which is made up of thoughts which we cannot help thinking, necessary thoughts in short, the ground elements of reason.
5. Philosophy, then, is the embodiment and exposition of necessary thought, of thoughts which a man cannot help thinking, of processes which the mind cannot help performing in the exercise of its intelligent functions; and that is the only correct conception of it which we can form. It is this in its essence, although, as I have said, it may accidentally embrace alien and illegitimate materials. Such, I conceive, is the correct general idea of philosophy, and he who entertains it knows generally what philosophy is. But this idea requires a good deal of explanation, for although a correct idea, it is by no means a clear one as yet. I now take a new step in advance. I proceed to clear up this idea of philosophy.
6. What may occur to you at the outset is this: if philosophy consists of thoughts which a man cannot help thinking, surely it can be no such very difficult pursuit. So you would naturally think, but in thinking so you would be mistaken. The thoughts which we cannot help thinking are precisely those which it is most difficult to lay hold of and bring to light. You are aware of the doctrine in the Institutes in which the effect of familiarity in deadening our intellectual insight is described and illustrated; also that the first in nature is the last in science. I need not therefore at present insist upon that consideration. Suffice it to say, that whatever we are most familiar with we take the least notice of. Hence the thoughts which we cannot help thinking never attract our attention; in our ordinary moods they never rise into distinct consciousness, they are there all the while, but they are present as though they were absent, and it often requires a severe intellectual strain before we can make ourselves cognisant of them. Indeed it may be assumed that the whole efforts of speculation, from the earliest times until now, have been directed to the single end of bringing men to think, to think clearly that which at no moment of their lives are they able to avoid thinking; and how difficult this task is, how laborious this process, is proved by the fact that this end has as yet been very imperfectly overtaken. It may appear a paradox, but it is not really one; it is undeniable truth to say this, that Plato and all great philosophers have existed for the purpose of teaching people to think what not one man in a million has as yet succeeded in thinking, but what nevertheless every man necessarily thinks in the very exercise of his powers as an intelligent being.
7. But I am still dealing, you will think, too much with generalities. Let us get to something like specialty, to some definite and particular illustration of the foregoing position. Well, what you want, I suppose, is this, that I should place distinctly before you one of those necessary and inevitable thoughts which men cannot help thinking, and which scarcely any man has as yet been able to think clearly or in the right way. I shall do so, but I shall begin by placing before you an opinion, or set of opinions, on a particular point, in order that by the contrast you may afterwards perceive more clearly what the necessary, the unavoidable, the philosophical thought on that same point is. Let me ask, then, what your opinion is in regard to the mind? This that people call mind may be taken as a common and fair subject of opinion, and opinions differ in regard to it. One man is of opinion that it is a sort of vapour; another man is of opinion that it is a kind of fire; another man's opinion is that it is a species of attenuated matter different both from vapour and fire; the opinion of a fourth is that it is a material substance, nature unknown; a fifth thinks that it is immaterial, a spiritual substance, nature also unknown, altogether different from matter, and so on. These are all so many different opinions, and in all these, opinions there is not one particle of thinking. It may be that the man who supposes that the mind is immaterial or spiritual is more in the right than the others. But still his judgment is a mere opinion. He might have thought otherwise. It rests on no necessary grounds. It is not a thought which we cannot help thinking. If this opinion has a place in philosophy, it is there without any legitimate title. It is only accidentally, and not essentially philosophical.
8. Let us now consider what thought, necessary thought, declares in regard to the mind. Let us consider the case of a genuine speculator, of one who thinks and who does not form opinions in regard to the mind. Of course we put aside this word "mind," together with all its synonyms. No man will ever get at any idea who begins with a word. He must first get hold of the idea, and then he must see that a word is required to express it. This is the bane of all philosophical thinking, that we first take hold of certain words and then we attach certain ideas to them. No good can come of that procedure; indeed, infinite mischief has already proceeded out of it. We must first grasp the idea as a necessary truth, or thought we cannot help having, and then we must attach to it the word, for of course every idea must be fixed and expressed in words. Let us take the case, then, of this speculator. He may have lived two thousand years ago, or two months ago, or he may be living at the present moment; for time and the fashions of different times have no influence here, all necessary thoughts are the same at all times and in all places. He casts his eyes upon the universe, and he sees perpetual changes going on; at one moment he sees one thing, at the next moment he sees a different thing, and the same may be affirmed in regard to all his other senses and their intimations. Change, in short, forces itself on all sides upon his notice. He obtains the idea of change without any difficulty, and to this idea he attaches a word which expresses it; he calls it change: change, change prevails everywhere, that is the order of the day. To this speculator all objects are in a state of change; even those which appear in themselves to be permanent are in this state so far as they are his perceptions, because at any moment they may cease to be his perceptions, and he receives or may receive different impressions. His perceptions are or may be incessantly changing; all his thoughts are or may be incessantly changing. In short, he is cognisant at first of nothing but change. He is inclined to generalise that observation, and to maintain that change is the essence of the universe. After a time, however, he considers, and he asks himself the question, But is there nothing but change? In other words, does the observer of the changes change just as much as the objects of his observation change? Is there at every moment a new observer as well as a new observed? This consideration causes the speculator to pause. No, says he, there is not, there cannot be a new observer for every new thing observed. If there were, no observation, no knowledge, no consciousness, could take place. The speculator sees that, if he, the observer, were changed into a different observer with every change that took place in his perception, that all thoughts, all cognition, all perception, would be rendered impossible and absurd. In other words, he sees that the wildest contradiction is involved in the supposition that every time the object is changed he (the subject, as we nowadays call it) is also changed; that a different he came into the field with every new presentation. And hence there is forced upon him this necessary thought, this thought which he cannot help thinking, and which we may divide into two thoughts: first, that change is not the only thing of which he is cognisant, as he heretofore supposed; and, secondly, that there is a permanent of which he is cognisant amid all the vicissitudes that surround him, whereof he is cognisant through sense. These are the two thoughts which he now entertains, and which he cannot help entertaining. He must think change as one of the elements of his consciousness, otherwise there would be an absolute uniformity in his perceptions, which would be equivalent to his having no perceptions at all; he must think permanence as the other element of his consciousness, otherwise there would be an absolute diversity (a new subject for every new object), which also would be tantamount to no consciousness at all.
9. Now you have got hold of an idea, an idea opposed to that idea which we call change; as the converse of this idea, you have got hold of the conception of a permanent, an immutable, a universal, an identical amid all changes; this idea must have a word attached to it; and, accordingly, to this idea you attach the word mind. By this process you have been enabled to get hold of the idea before you had recourse to the word; of course you were acquainted with the word before we went through the process, but we did not avail ourselves of that acquaintance in order to assist us to the idea; no, we got hold of the idea independently of the word, and now the word has for us a meaning. It has a meaning, because it expresses a necessary thought: the thought of the permanent and universal, as opposed to the fluctuating and particular. The word mind, then, is the word which gives expression to the thought of the permanent and universal, just as the word matter gives expression to the thought of the changeable and particular. These two ideas are directly antagonistic; it is impossible to regard the one as convertible with the other, although, at the same time, they are absolutely indivisible; wherever change is thought there is also thought permanence conversely. It is impossible to regard mind and matter as the same, unless we regard change and not-change as the same, or permanence and non-permanence as the same. It is impossible to regard matter as everything, as the whole, unless we hold that change is everything, and that there is no permanence anywhere; it is impossible to regard mind as everything, as the whole, unless we hold that permanence is everything, and that there is no diversity anywhere; but it is impossible to think that there is nothing but change, it is impossible to think that there is nothing but permanence. We must hold that there is both change and permanence; in other words, we must hold that there is both matter and mind as the two distinct elements of the universe. These are thoughts which we cannot help thinking, and in this way, and only in this way, do we obtain an intelligible distinction between mind and matter; not, however, as two distinct substances, but only as two distinct elements of one substance, and no distinction can be more absolute and complete than this. Now, all those opinions about mind being vapour or fire, this or that, may be given to the winds. It is nothing but the universal and permanent, and no other character can be assigned without destroying the very idea of it.
10. One word in conclusion. The illustration now laid before you may be regarded as an exposition in outline of the whole philosophy of ancient Greece. There cannot be a doubt that the early Greek philosophers reached the idea of mind through the process described. It was because the idea of something permanent was a thought which they could not help thinking that they gave expression to this thought in the word which signifies mind. It was because the idea of something changing or changeable was a thought that they could not help thinking that they gave expression to this thought in the word which signifies matter. The early Greek philosophy was occupied entirely in the adjustment and clearing up of these ideas; and these ideas of mind on the one hand and of matter on the other, were felt to be ideas which men could not help thinking, inasmuch as the idea of a permanent on the one hand, and of a mutable on the other, of one and many, are ideas which we cannot help thinking. But the further prosecution of this subject I must reserve until a future occasion.