single vibration from being accurately transmitted, it would not be very easy to find one better suited for this purpose, than that soft pulpy matter which is supposed by Dr. Hartley to transmit with most exact fidelity, all the nicest divisions of infinitesimal vibratiuncles.

Of the system of vibrations and vibratiuncles, which has now fallen into merited disrepute, even with those who are inclined, in other respects, to hold in very high estimation the merits of Hartley, as an intellectual analyst, it is scarcely necessary to offer any serious confutation. The very primary facts of association or suggestion on which the whole of his metaphysical system is founded, have always appeared to me a sufficient confutation of that very hypothesis which is adduced to explain them; and as these are his favourite phenomena, on which he constantly insists, they may fairly be taken as the most suitable instances in which to examine the force of the analogy which he wishes to establish. Though the sensorium, then, were allowed to be, in almost every circumstance, the very opposite of what it is-to be finely elastic, and composed of chords, adapted in the best possible manner, for the nicest differences of vibrations; and though varieties, in the mere times of vibration of the same strings, were allowed to be sufficient for explaining all the infinite diversities of sensation; still the influence of that very association on which Hartley founds so much, would remain wholly unexplained. We may suppose, indeed, any two of these chords, from accidental simultaneous impulse, to have vibrated together; but this can be no reason, even though the accidental concurrence of vibration should have taken place one thousand times at the same moment--that there should be any greater tendency in the second chord than there was originally, to vibrate, without a repetition of the primary impulse, in consequence of the mere vibration of the first. If the chords, or series of vibratory particles still retain the same length and tension, the motion of the second may indeed be allowed to be producible indirectly, by an impulse given only to the first, if the strings truly harmonize; but, in this case, the motion of the second must have been produced in like manner, originally, by the first vibrations of the other, when external force was applied to it alone; and, if the two series of vibratory particles be of such a kind as not to harmonize, a thousand accidental co-existencies or successions of their vibrations, cannot make them harmonize more than at first. Association, therefore, or habit, on such an hypothesis, would not be necessary to account for phenomena which must have taken place equally by the mere laws of harmonics, without association. If the sight of a pictured rose recall to me its fragrance, or the fragrance of a rose in the dark, recall to me its form and colour, it is a proof that the sensorial chords, of which the vibrations give rise to these conceptions, are of such a length as to harmonize, and to admit, therefore, of joint vibration from a single impulse. But, in this case, it is surely unnecessary that both the sight and smell should ever have existed before. Though I had never seen a rose, the mere smell of one in the dark should have brought before me instantly the form and colour which I had never beheld, because it should instantly have produced this particular corresponding vibration in the harmonizing strings; and, though I had never enjoyed its delightful fragrance, the mere picture of the flower, on paper or canvass, should have given me, in the very instant, by a similar correspondence of vibration, the knowledge of its odour.

All this, it may perhaps be said, would be very true, if the vibrations, of which metaphysical physiologists speak, were meant in their common physi

cal sense. But if they are not used in their common physical sense, what is it that they are intended to denote? and why is not the precise difference pointed out? Nothing can be simpler than the meaning of the term vibration-an alternate approach and retrocession of a series of particles; and if this particular species of motion be not meant, it is certainly most absurd to employ the term, when another term could have been adopted or invented, without risk of error; or at least to employ it without stating what is dist meant by it, as different from the other vibrations of which we are

to speak. If it be not understood in its usual meaning, and if no other mean ing be assigned to the term, the hypothesis, which expresses nothing that can be understood, has not even the scanty glory of being an hypothesis. The same phenomena might, with as much philosophic accuracy, be ascribed to any other fanciful term-to the Entelecheia of Aristotle, or to the Abracadabra of the Cabalists. Indeed, they might be ascribed to either of these magnificent words with greater accuracy, because, though the words might leave us as ignorant as before, they, at least, would not communicate to us any notion positively false. There is certainly very little resemblance of memory to an effervescence, yet we might theorize as justly in ascribing memory to an effervescence as to a vibration, if we be allowed to understand both terms in a sense totally different from the common use, without even expressing what that different sense is; and if the followers of Hartley, in preferring vibratiuncles to little effervescences, profess to understand the term vibration as it is commonly understood, and to apply to the phenomena of association the common laws of vibrating chords, they must previously undertake to show that the phenomena of musical chords, on which they found their hypothesis, are the reverse of what they are known to be,-that strings of such a length and tension as to harmonize, are not originally capable of receiving vibrations from the motions of each other, but communicate their vibrations mutually only after they have repeatedly been touched together,and that musical chords, of such a length and tension as to be absolutely discordant, acquire, notwithstanding, when frequently touched with a bow or the finger, a tendency to harmonize, and at length vibrate together at the mere touch of one of them. Then, indeed, when the tendencies to vibratory motion are shown to be precisely the reverse of what they are, the phenomena of suggestion might find some analogy in the phenomena of vibration; but, knowing what we know of musical chords, it is impossible to bring their phenomena to bear, in the slightest degree, on the phenomena of association, -unless, indeed, by convincing us, that, little as we know positively of the mysterious principle of suggestion, we may at least negatively have perfect knowledge, that it is not a vibration or a vibratiuncle.

VOL. I.

56

LECTURE XLIV.

ON THE INFLUENCE OF PARTICULAR SUGGESTIONS ON THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CHARACTER.

wes, having now endeavoured to lay before you, and explain, as far as the limited nature of these Lectures allows, the general phenomena which flow from the principle of Simple Suggestion, I shall conclude this part of my course, with some remarks on the Influence of Particular Associations on the Intellectual and Moral Character. The speculation, if we had leisure to enter upon it fully, would be one of the most extensive and interesting, in the whole field of philosophic inquiry. But so many other subjects demand our attention, that a few slight notices are all which my limits at present permit.

In these remarks, I use the familiar term associations, for its convenient brevity, as expressive of the suggestions that arise from former co-existence or successions of feelings, with perfect confidence, that you can no longer be in any danger of attaching to it erroneous notions, as if it implied some mysterious process of union of the feelings suggesting and suggested, or any other influence, than that, which, at the moment of suggestion, certain feelings have, as relative, (our proximate feelings among the rest,) to suggest other correlative feelings.

In this tendency to mutual suggestion, which arises from the relation of former proximity, there is not a single perception, or thought, or emotion of man, and consequently not an object around him, that is capable of acting on his senses, which may not have influence on the whole future character of his mind, by modifying, for ever after, in some greater or less degree, those complex feelings of good and evil, by which his passions are excited or animated, and those complex opinions of another sort, which his understanding may rashly form from partial views of the moment, or adopt as rashly from others, without examination. The influence is a most powerful one, in all its varieties, and is unquestionably not the less powerful, when it operates, for being in most cases altogether unsuspected. It has been attempted to reduce to classes the sources of our various prejudices, those idols of the tribe, and of the cave, and of the forum, and of the theatre, as Lord Bacon has quaintly characterized them. But, since every event that befalls us may add, to the circumstances which accidentally accompany it, some permanent impression of pleasure or pain, of satisfaction or disgust, it must never be forgotten that the enumeration of the prejudices, even of a single individual, must, if it be accurate, comprehend the whole history of his life, and that the enumeration of the sources of prejudice in mankind, must be, like the celebrated work of an ancient naturalist, as various as nature herself, "tam varium quam natura ipsa." It is not on their truth alone, that even the justest opinions have depended for their support; for even truth itself may, relatively to the individual, and is, relatively to all, in infancy, and to the greater num ber of mankind for life,-a prejudice into which they are seduced by affection or example, precisely in the same way, as, on so many other occasions, they are seduced into error. Could we look back upon the history of our mind, it would be necessary, in estimating the influence of an opinion, to consider

as often the lips from which it fell, as the certainty of opinion itself, or perhaps even to take into account some accidental circumstance of pleasure or good fortune, which dispelled for a moment our usual obstinacy. We may have reasoned justly on a particular subject for life, because at some happy

moment,

Perhaps Prosperity becalm'd our* breast;
Perhaps the wind just shifted from the East.f

I have already alluded to the influence of professional habits, in modifying the train of thought; and the observation of the still greater influence, which they exercise, in attaching undue importance to particular sets of opinions, is probably as ancient, as the division of professions. The sciences may, in like manner, be considered as speculative professions; and the exclusive student of any one of these, is liable to a similar undue preference, of that particular department of philosophy, which afforded the truths, that astonished and delighted him in his entrance on the study, or raised him afterwards to distinction by discoveries of his own. We know our own internal enjoyments; but we have no mode of discovering the internal enjoyments of others; and a study, therefore, on which we have never entered, unless its ultimate utility be very apparent, presents to our imagination only the difficulties that are to oppose us, which are always more immediately obvious to our thought, than the pleasure to which these very difficulties give rise. But the remembrance of our own past studies, is the remembrance of many hours of delight; and even the difficulties which it brings before us, are difficulties overcome. The mere determination of the mind, therefore, in early youth, to a particular profession or speculative science, though it may have arisen from accidental circumstances, or parental persuasion only, and not in the slightest degree from any preference or impulse of genius at the time, is thus sufficient, by the elements which it cannot fail to mingle in all our complex conceptions and desires, to impress for ever after the intellectual character, and to bend it, perhaps, from that opposite direction, into which it would naturally have turned. It has been said, that Heaven, which gave great qualities only to a small number of its favourites, gave vanity to all, as a full compensation; and the proud and exclusive preference, which attends any science or profession, hurtful as it certainly is, in preventing just views, and impeding general acquirements, has at least the advantage of serving, in some measure, like this universal vanity, to comfort for the loss of that wider knowledge, which, in far the greater number of cases, must be altogether beyond attainment. The geometer, who, on returning a tragedy of Racine, which he had been requested to read, and which he had perused accordingly with most faithful labour, asked with astonishment, what it was intended to demonstrate? and the arithmetician, who, during the performance of Garrick, in one of his most pathetic characters, employed himself in counting the words and syllables which that great actor uttered, only did, in small matters, what we are, every hour, in the habit of doing, in affairs of much more serious importance.

How much of what is commonly called genius,-or, at least, how much of the secondary direction of genius, which marks its varieties, and gives it a specific distinctive character,-depends on accidents of the slightest kind, that modify the general tendencies of suggestion, by the peculiar' liveliness + Pope s Moral Essays, Ep. II.

His-Orig.

which they give to certain trains of thought! I am aware, indeed, that, in cases of this sort, we may often err,-and that we probably err, tó a certain extent, in the greater number of them,-in ascribing to the accident, those mental peculiarities, which existed before it unobserved, and which would afterwards, as original tendencies, have developed themselves, in any circumstances in which the individual might have been placed; but the influence of circumstances, though apt to be magnified, is not on that account the less real; and though we may sometimes err, therefore, as to the particular examples, we cannot err as to the general influence itself. We are told, in the life of Chatterton, that, in his early boyhood, he was reckoned of very dull intellect, till he "fell in love," as his mother expressed it, with the illuminated capitals of an old musical manuscript in French, from which she taught him his letters; and a black-letter Bible was the book from which she afterwards taught him to read. It is impossible to think of the subsequent history of this wonderful young man, without tracing a probable connexion of those accidental circumstances, which could not fail to give a peculiar importance to certain conceptions, with the character of that genius, which was afterwards to make grey-headed erudition bend before it, and to astonish at least all those on whom it did not impose.

The illustrious French naturalist Adanson, was in very early life distinguished by his proficiency in classical studies. In his first years at college, he obtained the highest prizes in Greek and Latin poetry, on which occasion he was presented with the works of Pliny and Aristotle. The interest which such a circumstance could not fail to give to the works of these ancient inquirers into nature, led him to pay so much attention to the subjects of which they treated, that, when he was scarcely thirteen years of age, he wrote some valuable notes on the volumes that had been given to reward his studies of a different kind.

Vaucanson, the celebrated mechanician,-who, in every thing which did not relate to his art, showed so much stupidity, that it has been said of him, that he was as much a machine as any of the machines which he made,— happened, when a boy, to be long and frequently shut up in a room, in which there was nothing but a clock, which, therefore, as the only object of amusement, he occupied himself with examining, so as at last to discover the connexion and uses of its parts; and the construction of machines was afterwards his constant delight and occupation. I might refer to the biography of many other eminent men, for multitudes of similar incidents, that appear to correspond, with an exactness more than accidental, with the striking peculiarities of character afterwards displayed by them; and it is not easy to say, if we could trace the progress of genius from its first impressions, how very few circumstances, of little apparent moment, might have been sufficient, by the new suggestions to which they would have given rise, and the new complex feelings produced,-to change the general tendencies that were afterwards to mark it with its specific character

Indeed, since all the advantages of scientific and elegant education must, philosophically, be considered only as accidental circumstances, we have, in the splendid powers which these advantages of mere culture seem to evolve, as contrasted with the powers that lie dormant in the mass of mankind, a striking proof how necessary the influence of circumstances is for the deve lopement of those magnificent suggestions which give to genius its glory and its very name.