The Divine Lamp

Article 7. Dr. Reid Maintains, Against Locke, That The First Operation Of The human Mind Is, Not Analytic, But synthetic.
117 Dr. Reid considers that the above is the only satisfactory account of the formation of our mind begin by synthesis, and not by analysis. Accordingly he proceeds as follows:-

“It is the operations of the mind, in this case, as with natural bodies, which are indeed compounded of simple principles or elements. Nature does not exhibit these elements separate, to be compounded by us; she exhibits them mixed and compounded in concrete bodies, and it is only by art and chemical analysis that they can be separated. (Reid: “An Inquiry, & c., chap. 2. sec. 4)

Article 8. The System Proposed By Dr. Reid Cannot Be Considered Satisfactory.
118. It must e admitted that the adversaries of Dr. Reid can have nothing to say against his description of the facts. Most undoubtedly, the simple apprehension of an object, or the concept of it divested of the persuasion of its existence, cannot be had by us until we have perceived that the object as existent, and then by an intellectual operation divided it from the persuasion of its existence, and considered it only in that abstract state.

119. But if Dr. Reid’s appeal to the fact as presented to observation is the decisive against his adversaries, they may in their turn take the offensive, and show him that the system which he would substitute for theirs is not by any means free from objection.
Their rejoinder might e expressed in some such form as the following:-

“We will for the sake of argument suppose that the intimate persuasion of the existence of the things perceived by man is, as you have said, antecedent to the simple apprehension of them, and that this apprehension is the result of an abstraction which man exercises on the judgment whereby he has affirmed their existence. Yet we fail to see in this proof that you have gone up to the first and highest of the facts of the human spirit in connection with the origin of ideas. You suppose that the first product of the action of the human spirit is composite; for such is that persuasion which you place before simple apprehension. In short, you make the development of man’s intellectual life start, not from ideas, but from judgments. Now this is precisely what we cannot understand. To say that the composite goes before the simple, judgment before ideas, seems to us a contradiction in terms. We will explain ourselves more fully.

“if as you assert, the first operation of the human spirit is a judgment, you must concede that it is, not a simple, but a composite operation-i.e. resulting from several elements.

“It is true that you qualify this judgment by the epithets of natural and original; which is tantamount to saying that man makes it by necessity, by an intrinsic force or, as you express it, a certain ‘inspiration’ (Essay 2. chap 6). But this does not make it any the less a veritable judgment, and you yourself call it so. Indeed, how can a man be persuaded of the existence of a being until he has said within himself, ‘This being exists’? and what is this interior pronouncement but a judgment by which existence is attributed to being?

“We beg to repeat it, it is quite immaterial whether this judgment which is immediately conjoined with the sensations be made from an internal and natural movement which man cannot resist, or whether it e made freely: in either case its nature as a judgment remains unchanged. So far it seems that we are agreed.

“You may, if you like, change the formula, and instead of saying, ‘I judge that this being exists,’ say, ‘I feel that this being exists,’ or, ‘My consciousness tells me that what I now perceive by my senses has existence;’ or you may use some other still more accurate expression. But the self-same concept of a true and complete judgment will remain. It will always be true that you inwardly feel that there is a relation of identity between what affects your senses and existence; and that to feel this is the same as to make a judgment. There is, therefore, no gainsaying the fact, that the natural and original judgment which you have laid down as the basis of your theory is a judgment in the strictest sense of the word, and must precede our persuasion of the existence of external things.

“But if so, you certainly begin the development of man’s intellectual life, not by a simple but by a composite operation, by the conjunction of a predicate with a subject; for this, and nothing else, is what all philosophers, your ownself included, understand by a judgment. Thus, in the judgment we are discussing (”such or such a thing really exists”), existence is the predicate, and the “sensible,” or the thing in so far as felt, is the subject.

“we ask, therefore, how can a man thus join the predicate of existence with the thing which affects his senses, unless he be already in possession of these two elements? And how can you, therefore, call this judgment original in the sense that it is not preceded in man by any knowledge? If to make such a judgment it is necessary, on the one hand, to experience the sensation, and, on the other, to have the idea of existence, surely you must acknowledge that this operation is not original, but preceded by two simpler operations, of feeling the sensation, and intueing the idea of existence. The fact of the judgment taking place immediately upon our experiencing the sensations in no way invalidates the force of our argument. The two elementary operations must exist before they can be conjoined.

120. “Now, think, if you please, of the idea of existence. The object seen in this idea is a universal, and you assume it without giving any account whatever of its origin in our mind. It is a necessary element in the formation of the judgment; it is simpler than the judgment, and must precede it, logically at least. With what consistency , then, can you charge us with error for maintaining that man’s intellectual development begins with ideas, when you do the very same y representing it as strting with a judgment which is necessarily conditional upon an antecedent idea?”