Chapter V.

       Sensation and Experience.

       Table of Contents

      A careful study of the various theories which have been held concerning sensation would be of as much interest and importance as an investigation of any one point in the range of philosophy. In the theory of a philosopher about sensation we have the reflex of his fundamental category and the clew to his further doctrine. Sensation stands on the border-line between the world of nature and the realm of soul; and every advance in science, every development of philosophy, leaves its impress in a change in the theory of sensation. Apparently one of the simplest and most superficial of questions, in reality it is one of the most difficult and far-reaching. At first sight it seems as if it were a sufficient account of sensation to say that an object affects the organ of sense, and thus impresses upon the mind the quality which it possesses. But this simple statement arouses a throng of further questions: How is it possible that one substance,—matter,—should affect another,—mind? How can a causal relation exist between them? Is the mind passive or active in this impression? How can an object convey unchanged to the mind a quality which it possesses? Or is the sensational quale itself a product of the mind’s activity? If so, what is the nature of the object which excites the sensation? As known, it is only a collection of sensuous qualities; if these are purely mental, what becomes of the object? And if there is no object really there, what is it that excites the sensation? Such questionings might be continued almost indefinitely; but those given are enough to show that an examination of the nature and origin of sensation introduces us to the problems of the relation of intelligence and the world; to the problem of the ultimate constitution of an object which is set over against a subject and which affects it; and to the problem of the nature of mind, which as thus affected from without must be limited in its nature, but which as bearer of the whole known universe must be in some sense infinite. If we consider, not the mode of production of sensation, but its relation to knowledge, we find philosophical schools divided into two,—Sensationalists, and Rationalists. If we inquire into its functions, we find that the empiricist sees in it convincing evidence of the fact that all knowledge originates from a source extra mentem; that the intellectual idealist finds in it evidence of the gradual transition of nature into spirit; that the ethical idealist, like Kant and Fichte, sees in it the material of the phenomenal world, which is necessary in its opposition to the rational sphere in order that there may occur that conflict of pure law and sensuous impulse which alone makes morality possible. We thus realize that as we look at the various aspects of sensation, we are taken into the discussion of ontology, of the theory of knowledge and of ethics.

      Locke virtually recognizes the extreme importance of the doctrine of sensation, and his second book might almost be entitled “Concerning the Nature and Products of Sensation.” On the other hand, one of the most characteristic and valuable portions of the reply of Leibniz is in his development of a theory of sensation which is thoroughly new, except as we seek for its germs in its thoughts of Plato and Aristotle. According to Locke, knowledge originates from two sources,—sensation and reflection. Sensations are “the impressions made on our senses by outward objects that are extrinsic to the mind.” When the mind “comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas,” it gets ideas of reflection.

      If we leave out of account for the present the ideas of reflection, we find that the ideas which come through sensation have two main characteristics. First, in having sensations, the mind is passive; its part is purely receptive. The objects impress themselves upon the mind, they obtrude into consciousness, whether the mind will or not. There is a purely external relation existing between sensation and the understanding. The ideas are offered to the mind, and the understanding cannot refuse to have them, cannot change them, blot them out, nor create them, any more than a mirror can refuse, alter, or obliterate the images which objects produce in it. Sensation, in short, is a purely passive having of ideas. Secondly, every sensation is simple. Locke would say of sensations what Hume said of all ideas,—every distinct sensation is a separate existence. Every sensation is “uncompounded, containing nothing but one uniform appearance, not being distinguishable into different ideas.” Knowledge is henceforth a process of compounding, of repeating, comparing, and uniting sensation. Man’s understanding “reaches no further than to compound and divide the materials that are made to his hand.”

      It hardly need be said that Locke has great difficulty in keeping up this thoroughly atomic theory of mind. It is a theory which makes all relations external; they are, as Locke afterwards says, “superinduced” upon the facts. It makes it impossible to account for any appearance of unity and connection among ideas, and Locke quietly, and without any consciousness of the contradiction involved, introduces certain inherent relations into the structure of the ideas when he comes to his constructive work. “Existence and unity are two ideas,” he says, “that are suggested to the understanding by every object without, and every idea within.”

      At other places he introduces the idea of quality of a substance, effect of a cause, continued permanence or identity into a sensation, as necessary constituents of it; thus making a sensation a unity of complex elements instead of an isolated bare notion. How far he could have got on in his account of knowledge without this surreptitious qualifying of a professedly simple existence, may be seen by asking what would be the nature of a sensation which did not possess existence and unity, and which was not conceived as the quality of a thing or as the effect of an external reality.

      This digression has been introduced at this point because the next character of a sensation which Locke discusses is its objective character,—its relation to the object which produces it. To discourse of our ideas intelligibly, he says, it will be convenient to distinguish them as they are ideas in our minds and as they are modifications of matter in the bodies that cause them. In other words, he gives up all thought of considering ideas as simply mental modifications, and finds it necessary to take them in their relations to objects.

      Taking them in this way, he finds that they are to be divided into two classes, of which one contains those ideas that are copies and resemblances of qualities in the objects, ideas “which are really in the object, whether we take notice of them or no,”—in which case we have an idea of the thing as it is in itself; while the other class contains those which are in no way resemblances of the objects which produce them, “having no more similitude than the idea of pain and of a sword.” The former are primary qualities, and are solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number; while the secondary qualities are colors, smells, and tastes. The former ideas are produced by impulse of the bodies