Part 25

Dr. Hartley has shewn with a weight of fact and argument amounting to demonstration, that all the phenomena of mind, may be accounted for from the known properties and laws of animal organization; and notwithstanding, that for some reason or other he has so far accommodated his work to vulgar prejudice, as to adopt the theory of a separate Soul, though in a very objectionable form, it is evidently a clog upon his system, and unnecessary to any part of his reasoning. Substitute PERCEPTION, and his theory is compleat. Nor indeed is it possible to reject this. Constant concomitance is the sole foundation on which we build out; inference of necessary connection: we have no evidence of the latter, but the former. Perception manifestly arises from, and accompanies animal organization; the facts are of perpetual occurrence, and the proof from induction is compleat.

Hartley having laid a sufficient foundation to conclude (as Dr. Priestley has done) that the natural appearances of the human system might be fully explained by means of Perception and Association, without the redundant introduction of the common hypothesis, Dr. Law a few years afterward compleatly proved to the christian world that though Life and Immortality were brought to light by the christian dispensation, the common theory of a separate immaterial and immortal soul, was not necessary to, or countenanced by the christian doctrine. Dr. Law seems by his preface, to have been fearful of the consequences of expressing the whole of his opinion on this abstruse subject, and confines himself in his appendix to the examination of the passages of Scripture usually referred to in favour of the Soul’s immortality. This appendix I believe was first added to the third edition of his Considerations on the Theory of Religion, published in 1755.

Against Dr. Priestley, any ground of popular obloquy would be eagerly laid hold of by the Bigots of the day. The doubts expressed in the examination of Drs. Reid, Oswald, and Beattie, excited so much obloquy, as to render it necessary for Dr. Priestley to review his opinions, and renounce or defend them. The result was, the disquisition on matter and spirit, the first volume containing a discussion of the question of materialism, the second that of liberty and necessity.

In discussing the former hypothesis, Dr. Priestley denies not only the existence of spirit as having no relation to extension or space, but also the common definition of matter, as a substance possessing only the inert properties of extension, and solidity or impenetrability. The latter he defines in conformity with the more accurate observations of later physics, a substance possessing the property of extension and the active powers of attraction and repulsion. With Boscovich and Mr. Michell, he admits of the penetrability of matter, and replies to the objections that may be drawn from this view of the subject.

It must be acknowledged that highly curious as this preliminary disquisition is, it is not only unnecessary to the main argument, but leaves the definition of matter open to the question whether there be any substratum or subject in which the essential properties or powers of attracting and repelling inhere. That these powers really belong to matter, whatever else matter may be, is evident from the reflection of light, previous to contact with the reflecting substance and its inflection afterward from the electric spark, visible along a suspended chain, from the phenomena of the metallic pyrometers, from the rain drop on a cabbage leaf, &c. And that matter is permeable, at least to light, is sufficiently evident from every case of tranparency. Still however it cannot consist of properties alone; a property must be the property of something. But the proper and direct train of argument in favour of materialism is, that every phenomenon from which the notion of a soul is deduced, is resolveable into some affection of the brain, perceived. That all thought, reflection, choice, judgment, memory, the passions and affections, &c. consist only of ideas or sensations,(i. e. motions within that organ) perceived at the time. Though, judgment, memory, being words, denoting different kinds of internal perceptions, relating only to, and consisting of, ideas and sensations. That sensations and ideas themselves, arise only in consequence of the impressions of external objects on our senses, which impressions are liable to be recalled afterward by the recurrence of others with which they were originally associated, agreeably to the necessary and inevitable law of the animal system. That this is evident in as much as there can be no ideas peculiar to any of the senses where there is a want of the necessary bodily organ, as of hearing, sight, &c. inasmuch as all these ideas commence with the body, grow with its growth, and decrease with its decline. That they can be suspended, altered, destroyed, by artificial means, by accident, by disease. That all these properties of mind, viz. thought, judgment, memory, passions, and affections, are as evident in brutes as in men; and though the degree be different, it is always accompanied with a proportionate difference of organization. That perception is clearly the result of organization, being always found with it, and never without it: as clearly so in other animals as in the human species; and probably in vegetables though in a still lower degree. That as all the common phenomena of mind, can be accounted for from the known facts of organized matter without the souls, and as none of them can possibly be attributed to the soul without the body, there is no necessity to recur to any gratuitous theory in addition to the visible corporeal frame. That the doctrine of the soul originated in ignorance, and has been supported by imposture; that it involves gross contradictions and insuperable difficulties, and is no more countenanced by true religion than by true philosophy.

A Sensation is an impression made by some external object on the Senses; the motion thus excited is propagated along the appropriate nerve, until it reaches the Sensory in the Brain, and it is there and there only, felt or perceived.

An Idea, is a motion in the Brain, excited there either by the laws of association to which that organ is subject, or by some accidental state of the system in general, or that organ in particular, without the intervention of an impression on the Senses ab extra as the cause of it. Such a motion being similar to a sensation formerly excited, and being also felt or perceived is the correspondent Idea.

Dr. Percival, Dr. Bell in the Manchester Transactions, and Dr. Watson in the last volume of his essays, have made this opinion highly probable. Many additional observations are to be found in Dr. Darwin’s works. I consider it as a theory established.

All this has been shewn with great force of argument and ingenuity by Dr. Priestley in these disquisitions, to which it may safely be affirmed nothing like a satisfactory answer has yet been given, or is ever likely to be given. True metaphysics, like every other branch of philosophy can only be founded on an accurate observation of facts, and as these become gradually substituted for mere names, our real knowledge will improve. It is to physiology perhaps that the question of the materiality of the human soul, and even that of liberty and necessity will owe the compleatest elucidation. Until medical writers brought into view the facts relating to animal life, the metaphysical disquisitions on these subjects were involved in an endless confusion of words without precise meaning, and almost always including in their definition a petitio principii. Indeed we are not yet fully apprized either in Law, Physic or Divinity any more than in Metaphysics, that the species intelligibiles of the old schoolmen, and the whole class of abstract ideas of the new schoolmen with Locke at their head, are not things, but names. They are not even either sensations or ideas; they are words, convenient indeed for classification, and used artificially like the signs of Algebra, but they have no archetype. This is a subject which will probably be better understood ere long by the labours of Mr. Horne Tooke.

Dr. Priestley therefore considered the question of a future state, as now rested on the basis which to a christian is or ought to be perfectly satisfactory; on the promises and declarations of our Saviour, exemplified by his own resurrection from the dead. Indeed the circumstances of the whole question of futurity depending on the truth of the christian scriptures and on them alone, is calculated to give them a peculiar and inestimable value in the eyes of those who look forward with anxious hope to a continued and more perfect state of existence after death. Nor is it of any consequence to the christian, that the manner how this will be effected is not plainly revealed; for it is sufficient that the Being who first gave animation to the human frame, will at his own time and in his own manner for the wisest and best of purposes, again exert the same act of almighty power in favour of the human race, and in fulfillment of his promise through Jesus Christ. Such at least was the view of the subject habitually entertained by our author.

There are some persons who do not seem to entertain this anxious hope. Mr. Gray the poet seems an instance, from the following passage in his ode Barbaras Ædes aditure mecum (Letters V. 2 p. 44) though I do not recollect that the sentiment has been noticed before.

Oh ego felix, vice si (nec unquam Surgerem rursus) simili cadentem Parca me lenis sineret quieto Fallere Letho. Multa flagranti radiisque cincto Integris, ah quam nihil inviderem, Cum Dei ardentes medius quadrigas Sentit Olympus!

I wonder whether Gray ever perused the following lines written by his friend and Biographer the Revd: Mr. Mason.

‘Is this the Bigot’s rant? Away ye vain!’ Your hopes your fears, in doubt, in dulness steep! Go sooth your souls in sickness, grief, or pain, With the sad solace of, eternal sleep. Yet know ye Sceptics, know, the Almighty mind Who breath’d on man a portion of his fire, Bad his free soul by earth nor time confin’d To heav’n, to immortality aspire. Nor shall the pile of hope his mercy rear’d, By vain philosophy be e’er destroy’d; Eternity! by all or wish’d or fear’d, Shall be by all, or suffer’d or enjoy’d.

Mason.

It is still more singular that Dr. Beattie with all his professions of christianity, should not have been aware of the atheistical complexion of the following passage in his “Hermit.”

Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn, Kind nature the embryo blossom shall save; But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn! Oh, when shall it dawn on the night of the grave!

Indeed, the natural evidences of a future state were never conceived by any reasonable defender of the doctrine, to be of themselves satisfactory and conclusive. They were never deemed of more value than to produce a probable expectation of a state of future rewards and punishments, and they are certainly contradicted by the known facts relating to the origin, the growth, and decline of the human faculties. Bishop Porteus has collected these arguments, and stated them with as much force as his moderate abilities would permit; but by far the best summary of what has been urged on this as well as on almost every important question of morals and metaphysics, will be found in Mr. Belsham’s Elements of the Philosophy of Mind. An excellent compendium, by a gentleman, to whom next to Mr. Lindsey, Dr. Priestley appears to have been more attached than to any other.

Dr. Priestley in his observations on the increase of infidelity published at Northumberland, has a passage which would seem to intimate that a future state might be clearly made out by the light of nature (p. 59, 60) but this is certainly inadvertency, and by no means conformable to his constant, deliberate, sentiments on that subject as expressed particularly in his Institutes.

The SECOND part of the Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit, contains a discussion of the long contested and confused question of Liberty and Necessity.

Dr. Priestley is right in his opinion that this question was not understood by the ancients, nor perhaps before the time of Hobbes: Long ago it appeared to me, that the only writer among the schoolmen who had touched upon it, was Bradwardine in his Book De causà Dei, which I regret that I have no opportunity of consulting here. Many of his observations are extracted by Toplady in his treatise on Liberty and Necessity, and in his life of Zanchius; but Toplady like Edwards, did not completely understand the question; they connected the doctrine of necessity with all the bigotry of Calvinism.

Hobbes in his Leviathan, and in his reply to Bramhall on liberty and necessity in his Tripos, first truly stated the subject, and shewed that the question was, not whether we can do what we will, but whether the will itself, (i. e. choice, preference, inclination, desire, aversion,) is not inevitably determined by motives not in the power or controul of the agent.

Hartley’s book, however, shews, or rather leads to the conclusion, that these motives are twofold, ab extra and ab intra. The action depending on the compound force of the motives ab extra, and the physical state of the animal organs at the moment. For the latter is frequently of itself an immediate cause of voluntary action.

But previous to Dr. Hartley’s great work, the question of liberty and necessity had been discussed between Collins and Clark, and Clark and Leibnitz. Collins’s Philosophical inquiry into human liberty, first published in 1715 was the only book on the subject worth reading between the times of Hobbes and Hartley, and a masterly and decisive work it is. This appears to have been translated and repeatedly printed on the continent; Dr. Priestley, who republished it in London, mentioning a second edition in 1756 at Paris, and a third edition when he was there in 1774. The controversy was kept alive in Collins’s life time by Leibnitz; but he like Dr. Edwards who afterwards wrote in defence of the same side of the question in his treatise on Free will, was too much given to expand his ideas, and obscure the sense by the multiplicity of words which he used to express it. The letters of Theodicèe contain many passages well conceived, but the book is insupportably tedious. Hobbes could condense more argument and information in a page, than would serve Leibnitz for a volume.

I do not find that the controversy about the Soul occasioned by the publications of Blount, Coward, Dodwell, &c. involved the question of Liberty and Necessity, though they touch so nearly. It escaped me a few pages back, that Dr. Coward, was also the author of “Second Thoughts concerning the human Soul.” (Estibius Psycalethes) as well as of the Grand Essay.

To this treatise of Collins, plainly and popularly written, no sufficient answer was or could be given. It must have satisfied the mind of every reader capable of understanding the question, though it omitted to notice many objections which were afterwards taken up and fully answered by Dr. Priestley. Collins in his preface takes pains to have it understood that he writes in defence of moral necessity only, and not of physical necessity. A distinction without a difference, though taken by all who have succeeded him.

I do not dwell on the controversy between Jackson on the one side in defence of human liberty, and Gordon and Trenchard in Cato’s letters, because little was added to the sum of knowledge, on either side. Jackson had learning and industry, but he did not understand the question, and had no pretensions to that species of distinguishing acuteness, so necessary to a good metaphysician.

Dr. Priestley, following the enlarged and cheering views of the future happiness of all mankind, first connected by Hartley with this question, shews completely that the doctrine under consideration has nothing to do with the strict calvinistic hypothesis. That it is sufficiently conformable to popular opinion. That it is the only practical doctrine which in fact is, or indeed can be acted upon with respect to the application of reasoning and argument, reward and punishment. That the formation of character and disposition, the actual inferences we make from, and the dependence we place upon them, rest entirely on the truth of this opinion. That from the nature of cause and effect, every volition must be the necessary result of previous circumstances. That the scientia contingentium, the great and insuperable difficulty of God’s pretended foreknowledge of uncertain events, can on no other hypothesis be avoided, and that the doctrine of necessity is perfectly consistent with the great plan of divine benevolence, in the present state, and future destination, of the human race.