The Scottish Philosophy [175]
of truth." He adds: " I have never met a mere mathematician who was not credulous to excess."
In the same volume he discusses cautiously and judiciously the comparison between the faculties of man and brutes. I suspect, however, that the theory has not yet been devised it has certainly not been published -- which is fitted to give a satisfactory account of the relation of the brute to the human faculties. I suppose that Bonnet is right when he says that we shall never be able to understand the nature of brute instinct, till we are in the dog's head without being the dog. It is certain that we have at this moment nothing deserving of the name of science on this subject. I have sometimes thought that the modern doctrine of homologues and analogues, if extended and modified to suit the new object, might supply the key to enable us to express some of the facts. Certain of the brute qualities are merely analogous to those of man (as the wing of a butterfly is analogous to that of a bird); others are homologues, but inferior in degree; while there are qualities in man different in kind from any, in the brute. Aristotle called brute instincts, [Greek quote]. They would be more accurately described as anticipations or types of the coming archetype. {295} The volume closes with an account of James Mitchell, a boy born blind and dumb.
The " Philosophical Essays " are an episode in his system as a whole, even as his numerous notes and illustrations are episodes in the individual volumes. I am tempted, in looking at them, to take up two of the subjects discussed, as a deep interest still collects around them, and the questions agitated cannot yet be regarded as settled.
Every careful reader of Locke's "Essay" must have observed two elements running through all his philosophy, -- the one, a sensational, or rather to do justice to Locke, who ever refers to reflection as a separate source of ideas, an experiential element, and the other a rational. In the opening of the " Essay" he denies innate ideas apparently in every sense, and affirms that the materials of all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection; but, as he advances, his language is, that by these sources ideas are "suggested and furnished to the mind" (the language adopted by Reid and Stewart); he calls in faculties with high functions to work on the materials; speaks of ideas which are "creatures and inventions of the understanding;" appeals to "natural law" and the "principles of common reason; "and in the Fourth Book gives a very high, or rather deep, place to intuition; says we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence; speaks of the " mind perceiving truth as the eye doth light, only by being directed toward it;" declares that, in the "discovery of and assent to these truths, there is no use of the discursive faculty, no need of reasoning, but they are known by a superior and higher degree of evidence," and talks even of a " necessary connection of ideas." It unfortunately happened that in France, to which Locke was introduced by Voltaire and the encyclopedists, they took the sensational element alone, and the effect on thought and on morality was most disastrous. Unfortunately, too, Locke has become known in Germany, chiefly through France, and hence we find him, all over the Continent, described both by friends and foes as a sensational 1st; and the charge has been re-echoed in Great Britain by Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Morell. Yet it is quite certain that Locke has an intellectual as well as a sensational side.[83] I have, {296} in a careful perusal of the "Essay," mainly for this very end, discovered in every book, and in the majority even of the chapters, both sides of the shield; but I confess that I have not been able to discover the line that joins them. I do not think that Stewart's remarks on this subject are exhaustive or decisive: he is evidently wrong in supposing that Locke identified reflection with the reason which discovers truth, but his strictures are always candid and sometimes just.
In the "Philosophical
In the same volume he discusses cautiously and judiciously the comparison between the faculties of man and brutes. I suspect, however, that the theory has not yet been devised it has certainly not been published -- which is fitted to give a satisfactory account of the relation of the brute to the human faculties. I suppose that Bonnet is right when he says that we shall never be able to understand the nature of brute instinct, till we are in the dog's head without being the dog. It is certain that we have at this moment nothing deserving of the name of science on this subject. I have sometimes thought that the modern doctrine of homologues and analogues, if extended and modified to suit the new object, might supply the key to enable us to express some of the facts. Certain of the brute qualities are merely analogous to those of man (as the wing of a butterfly is analogous to that of a bird); others are homologues, but inferior in degree; while there are qualities in man different in kind from any, in the brute. Aristotle called brute instincts, [Greek quote]. They would be more accurately described as anticipations or types of the coming archetype. {295} The volume closes with an account of James Mitchell, a boy born blind and dumb.
The " Philosophical Essays " are an episode in his system as a whole, even as his numerous notes and illustrations are episodes in the individual volumes. I am tempted, in looking at them, to take up two of the subjects discussed, as a deep interest still collects around them, and the questions agitated cannot yet be regarded as settled.
Every careful reader of Locke's "Essay" must have observed two elements running through all his philosophy, -- the one, a sensational, or rather to do justice to Locke, who ever refers to reflection as a separate source of ideas, an experiential element, and the other a rational. In the opening of the " Essay" he denies innate ideas apparently in every sense, and affirms that the materials of all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection; but, as he advances, his language is, that by these sources ideas are "suggested and furnished to the mind" (the language adopted by Reid and Stewart); he calls in faculties with high functions to work on the materials; speaks of ideas which are "creatures and inventions of the understanding;" appeals to "natural law" and the "principles of common reason; "and in the Fourth Book gives a very high, or rather deep, place to intuition; says we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence; speaks of the " mind perceiving truth as the eye doth light, only by being directed toward it;" declares that, in the "discovery of and assent to these truths, there is no use of the discursive faculty, no need of reasoning, but they are known by a superior and higher degree of evidence," and talks even of a " necessary connection of ideas." It unfortunately happened that in France, to which Locke was introduced by Voltaire and the encyclopedists, they took the sensational element alone, and the effect on thought and on morality was most disastrous. Unfortunately, too, Locke has become known in Germany, chiefly through France, and hence we find him, all over the Continent, described both by friends and foes as a sensational 1st; and the charge has been re-echoed in Great Britain by Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Morell. Yet it is quite certain that Locke has an intellectual as well as a sensational side.[83] I have, {296} in a careful perusal of the "Essay," mainly for this very end, discovered in every book, and in the majority even of the chapters, both sides of the shield; but I confess that I have not been able to discover the line that joins them. I do not think that Stewart's remarks on this subject are exhaustive or decisive: he is evidently wrong in supposing that Locke identified reflection with the reason which discovers truth, but his strictures are always candid and sometimes just.
In the "Philosophical