Volume 1

In search of the soul and the mechanism of thought, emotion, and conduct ... / by Bernard Hollander.

  • Bernard Hollander
Date:
[1920]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: In search of the soul and the mechanism of thought, emotion, and conduct ... / by Bernard Hollander. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    161/536 (page 145)
    receive by communication ’’ the “inclinations and sentiments ” of others, i.e., suggestibility ; but in the case of opinions, he distinguished between the effects of sympathy and those of “ authority.’’ Upon this sympathy he based the various phenomena arising really from the gregarious instinct. By means of the imagination we enter into the experience of others and par¬ ticipate in their joy and sorrow. Whatever depresses or rejoices them, whatever inspires them with pride, fills us with similar emotions. From the habit of sym¬ pathetically passing moral judgment on the actions of others, and of seeing our own judged by them, is developed the further one of keeping a constant watch over ourselves and of considering our dispositions and deeds from the standpoint of the good of others. This custom is called conscience. Allied to this is the love of reputation, which constantly leads us to ask. How will our behaviour appear in the eyes of those with whom we associate ? In order that an action may gain the approval of the spectator two other things are required besides its salutary effects : it must be a mark of character, of a per¬ manent disposition, and it must proceed from disinterested motives. Hume is obliged by this latter position to show that disinterested benevolence actually exists, that the unselfish affections do not secretly spring from self-love. To cite only one of the thousand examples of benevolence in which no discernible interest is con¬ cerned, we desire happiness for our friends even when we have no expectation of participating in it. The accounts of human selfishness are greatly overdrawn. Because virtue, in the outcome, produces inner satisfaction and it is praised by others, it does not follow that it is practised merely for the sake of these agreeable consequences. Only after we have experienced the pleasure which comes from the satisfaction of an original motive (e.g., ambition), can this become the object of a conscious reflective search after pleasure, or of egoism. Power brings no enjoyment to the man by nature devoid of ambition, and he who is naturally ambitious does not desire fame because it affords him pleasure, but conversely, fame affords him pleasure because he desires it. The case is the same with benevolence as with the love of fame. It is implanted in the constitution of our minds as an original impulse immediately directed toward the happiness of other men. After it has been exercised, and its exercise rewarded, it is indeed possible for the expectation of the agreeable consequences to lead us to the repetition of beneficent acts. But the original motive is not an egoistic regard for useful consequences. t The advent of Hume denoted the period which initiated the discussion of the mental powers of animals. Descartes had tried to prove that the bodies of men and animals are machines actuated by springs like watches, but that man possessed in addition a soul, wholly different in its properties from his body, and apparently incapable of being acted upon by it. Man only can think ; animals are capable only of physical sensations, and have no consciousness. Animals were supposed to act from “blind instinct,’’ a supposition which was still held in the last century and helped to strengthen the conviction that the mental processes of animals are un¬ searchable. Hume appealed to the observation of domesticated and other animals of high grade. The facts seemed to him to show that animals as well as men are endowed with reason and able to draw inferences ; he did not, however, credit them with the power of framing general statements, holding that experience operates on them, as on children and the generality of mankind, by “ custom ” alone. He saw no ground for drawing a line between the mental powers of man and those of the higher animals, though he attributed to man a power of demonstrative reasoning to which animals do not attain. In this he substantially agreed with Aristotle. DAVID HARTLEY (1705-1757), physician and philosopher, a contemporary of Hume, devoted himself to discovering Vol. i.] l