The Scottish Philosophy [195]
that he is an atheist, because there is no relation of cause and effect." " The just analysis, then, which reduces our expectation of similarity in the future trains of events to intuition, we may safely admit, without any fear of losing a single argument for the existence of God." By this doctrine he has separated himself for ever from sensationalists, and given great trouble to those classifiers {328} of philosophic systems who insist, contrary to the whole history of British philosophy, that all systems must either be sensational or ideal. It is quite obvious that such men as Butler, Brown, and Chalmers, cannot be included in either of the artificial compartments, and hence one ground of their neglect by the system-builders of our age.
(3) His account of sensation is characterized by fine analysis: in particular, his discrimination of the sensations commonly ascribed to touch, and his separation of the muscular sense from the sense of touch proper. About this very time Charles Bell was establishing the distinction of the nerves of sensation and motion. " I was finally enabled," says Sir Charles, to show that the muscles had two classes of nerves; that on exciting one of these the muscles contracted, that on exciting the other no action took place. The nerve which had no power to make the muscle contract was found to be a nerve of sensation." Contemporaneously, Brown was arguing, on psychological grounds, that by the muscular sense we get knowledge which cannot be had from mere feeling or touch. "The feeling of resistance is, I conceive, to be ascribed not to our organ of touch but to our muscular frame." Hamilton, by his vast erudition, has been able (note appended to Reid's works) to detect anticipations of these views; but they were not so clearly stated, and they were not conclusively demonstrated. Brown started, and carried a certain length, those inquiries regarding the variety of sensations commonly ascribed to touch, which have ever since had a place in psycho logical treatises.
(4) Nor must we omit his ingenious and felicitous mode of illustrating the succession of our mental states, called by him "suggestion," to intimate that there is no connection in the nature of things between the ideas, and not " association," which might leave the impression that there was a nexus joining them. He is particularly successful in showing how by association the various ideas and, he adds, feelings blend, and, as it were, coalesce. He has called attention to an important phenomenon, which has been little noticed ever since he brought it out to view, and which he himself did not see the significance of. " In our mental sequences, the one feeling which precedes and induces another feeling does not necessarily on that account give place to it; but may continue in {329} that virtual sense of combination, as applied to the phenomena of the mind, of which I have often spoken, to coexist with the new feeling which it excites, outlasting it, perhaps, and many other feeling to which, during its permanence, it may have given rise. I pointed out to you how important this circumstance in our mental constitution is to us in various ways: to our intellectual acquirements, since without it there would be no continued meditation, but only a hurrying confusion of image after image, in wilder irregularity than in the wildest of our dreams; and to our virtue and happiness, since, by allowing the coexistence and condensation of various feelings in one complex emotion, it furnishes the chief source of those moral affections which it is at once our happiness to feel and our virtue to obey." He has here got a glimpse of a great truth, which needs to be developed more fully than it has yet been it is the power of a motive principle, and of a strong purpose and resolution abiding in the mind to sway the train of thoughts and feelings. Had he followed out his own hint, it would have led him to discover deep springs of action directing the flow of suggestions.
While he illustrates the laws of suggestion under the three Aristotelian
(3) His account of sensation is characterized by fine analysis: in particular, his discrimination of the sensations commonly ascribed to touch, and his separation of the muscular sense from the sense of touch proper. About this very time Charles Bell was establishing the distinction of the nerves of sensation and motion. " I was finally enabled," says Sir Charles, to show that the muscles had two classes of nerves; that on exciting one of these the muscles contracted, that on exciting the other no action took place. The nerve which had no power to make the muscle contract was found to be a nerve of sensation." Contemporaneously, Brown was arguing, on psychological grounds, that by the muscular sense we get knowledge which cannot be had from mere feeling or touch. "The feeling of resistance is, I conceive, to be ascribed not to our organ of touch but to our muscular frame." Hamilton, by his vast erudition, has been able (note appended to Reid's works) to detect anticipations of these views; but they were not so clearly stated, and they were not conclusively demonstrated. Brown started, and carried a certain length, those inquiries regarding the variety of sensations commonly ascribed to touch, which have ever since had a place in psycho logical treatises.
(4) Nor must we omit his ingenious and felicitous mode of illustrating the succession of our mental states, called by him "suggestion," to intimate that there is no connection in the nature of things between the ideas, and not " association," which might leave the impression that there was a nexus joining them. He is particularly successful in showing how by association the various ideas and, he adds, feelings blend, and, as it were, coalesce. He has called attention to an important phenomenon, which has been little noticed ever since he brought it out to view, and which he himself did not see the significance of. " In our mental sequences, the one feeling which precedes and induces another feeling does not necessarily on that account give place to it; but may continue in {329} that virtual sense of combination, as applied to the phenomena of the mind, of which I have often spoken, to coexist with the new feeling which it excites, outlasting it, perhaps, and many other feeling to which, during its permanence, it may have given rise. I pointed out to you how important this circumstance in our mental constitution is to us in various ways: to our intellectual acquirements, since without it there would be no continued meditation, but only a hurrying confusion of image after image, in wilder irregularity than in the wildest of our dreams; and to our virtue and happiness, since, by allowing the coexistence and condensation of various feelings in one complex emotion, it furnishes the chief source of those moral affections which it is at once our happiness to feel and our virtue to obey." He has here got a glimpse of a great truth, which needs to be developed more fully than it has yet been it is the power of a motive principle, and of a strong purpose and resolution abiding in the mind to sway the train of thoughts and feelings. Had he followed out his own hint, it would have led him to discover deep springs of action directing the flow of suggestions.
While he illustrates the laws of suggestion under the three Aristotelian