Chapter 68
Mind, intellect and understanding; consciousness; the relation of mind and body.
436 passages · 145 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
The idea of mind gathers several questions that the Harvard Classics keep returning to. What is it in man that thinks and understands? Is that power a thing apart from the body, or only a function of its organs? How does it know the world, and how does it know itself? How should it be governed, and what happens when it falls into disorder? Because nearly every other idea in these books, from knowledge and virtue to God and art, presupposes some account of the knower, mind is a great idea almost by necessity. Milton could say that a good book preserves the living intellect of its author1. Emerson praised Wordsworth for treating the human mind with absolute trust2. A collection of books is itself a monument to the subject it examines.
The most insistent claim in these pages is that thought makes man what he is. Pascal puts it most starkly. A man can be conceived without hands, feet or head, but not without thought, for then he would be a stone or a brute3. All our dignity consists in thought, since by thought we comprehend the universe that comprehends us in space4. The meanest mind, he adds, outweighs all bodies, stars and kingdoms, because it knows them and itself5. Montaigne, quoting Epicharmus, says that the understanding sees and hears while everything else is blind6. Epictetus measures reason’s greatness by the mind’s resolves rather than by size7. Watts calls the mind the standard of the man8.
The theme takes a democratic turn in Channing. For him thinking is the fundamental distinction of mind and every man’s chief vocation9. It raises the laborer toward the dignity of the Divine intellect10, and it makes mind the highest force in the universe, conquering matter11. The modern naturalists echo the praise. Faraday notes that the mind travels as far as sight can pierce12. Lyell marvels that a mind confined to a point of space can trace ages before mankind13. Rousseau complicates the picture. Thinking and speaking presuppose each other14, so a savage’s discoveries would perish with him15. Reason, once awakened, breeds a self-love that isolates men from others’ suffering16.
Older writers explain this preeminence by tracing reason to a divine source. In Aeschylus men saw and heard in vain until Prometheus roused them to reason17. Sophocles calls reason the noblest gift of the gods18, and Cicero calls intellect the best gift of nature or God19. Philosophically the decisive moment is Socrates’ encounter with Anaxagoras. In the Phaedo, Socrates is delighted by the claim that mind disposes and causes all things, and he expects mind to order everything for the best20. He is disappointed to find Anaxagoras falling back on air, ether and water21. Plutarch credits Anaxagoras with positing a pure intelligence, rather than chance, as the world’s orderer22.
The Stoics make the same principle intimate. Reason is the divine element in us23,24, common to men and gods25, and each man’s daemon is his own understanding26. Christian and modern authors keep the doctrine while recasting it. Augustine says that man was meant to excel the beasts by mind27. Bacon says that God breathed intellectual light into man as the crown of creation28. Milton speaks of the sanctity of reason29. Rousseau infers that demanding the surrender of reason insults its Author30.
The modern turn is to ask what kind of being mind is. Augustine confesses that he long conceived mind only as a subtle body spread through space31. He failed to see that the power forming images is itself not spatial32, until he came to understand the inner man as a judge who uses the senses as messengers33. Descartes makes the point foundational. The “I” is a substance whose whole essence is thinking, distinct from body and more easily known34. Pascal observes that Descartes built a metaphysical system on what Augustine had said35. He himself insists that matter cannot know itself36, that all bodies together could not produce one thought37, and that the distance between body and mind is a figure of the greater distance between mind and charity38.
Hobbes takes the opposed line. There is no conception in the mind that was not first begotten on the organs of sense39. What is peculiar to human understanding is the joining of names into affirmations40.
The question returns sharply at the border between man and animal or machine. Descartes denies that animal ingenuity proves mind, since animals act by nature and the disposition of their organs41. Pascal grants that his calculating machine approaches thought, but notes that it shows no will42. Pope makes reason and instinct the comparing and acting powers, one in the animal and two in man43. Rousseau holds that no machine thinks, and that man alone weighs and foresees relations44,45. Darwin is more cautious. Bees build geometrically without knowing geometry46, yet judgment sometimes enters even in low animals47, and he expressly declines to inquire into the origin of mental powers48. The old line between reason and instinct has become a question of degree, left open.
On the mind’s internal divisions, Milton offers the classical hierarchy: fancy and the senses ordered under reason49, with discursive and intuitive reason differing only in degree50. The Gita ranks senses, mind and reason in ascending strength51. Hume treats the classification of mental operations as a valuable “mental geography”52, distinguishing will, understanding, imagination and passion by reflection53. Berkeley says that will and understanding together constitute a mind54. Kant sets reason, as pure spontaneity, above both understanding and sensibility55. Against this multiplication of faculties stands a strain of resistance. Burke thinks it unphilosophical to multiply separate faculties56. Long calls the faculties mere convenient divisions of one intelligence57. Schiller laments that powers which were united among the Greeks are experienced as separate by moderns58.
Minds differ in kind as well as in capacity. Pascal’s contrast of the mathematical and the intuitive mind is the classic statement. The one reasons from few remote principles, the other sees many subtle ones at a glance59,60, and each fails in the other’s domain61,62. Schiller finds both the speculative and the business mind one-sided63. Emerson sees the perceptive and practical minds held in counterpoise in England64. The Gita classes intellect morally, by the gunas65.
On whether minds are equal by nature, Descartes says that good sense is equally distributed and that only its application differs66. Channing calls intellect a universal gift, adapted to thought as the eye is to light67. Hobbes68 and Hume69, by contrast, stress real differences of quickness and grasp. Smith adds that occupation shapes understanding, so that the varied work of the countryman enlarges his mind more than the town mechanic’s few operations70.
When the mind turns on itself, it meets its deepest puzzle. Augustine wonders that men admire mountains and stars while neglecting the mind that holds their images71. Memory is the mind itself, yet it is unlike the mind72,73. The mind is nearest to itself yet cannot master its own force74, and much within it stays hidden until experience reveals it75. Carlyle defines metaphysics as the mind’s attempt to rise above the mind76. He also gives the modern answer to Augustine’s wonder. Conscious thought is only the surface over a deep, unconscious vital force77, and creative work proceeds from that region below78.
Others stress the activity of the self. Rousseau finds in himself the power that assembles and compares sensations, which makes him active rather than passive79. Kant has man regard himself both as intelligence and as phenomenon80. Pascal warns that the inner dialogue convinces by repetition and so must be governed81. Buddhist writings analyze consciousness quite differently, as a series that passes away and is reborn without anything being transferred82, and whose functions cease stage by stage in trance83,84.
How the mind relates to its objects divides the empiricists among themselves. Hume finds nothing present to the mind but perceptions, graded by vivacity85,86, and seeks a general law of their association87. Mill reports that Hartley’s law explained complex mental phenomena better than Locke or Condillac had88, and that moral feelings too were held to result from association89. Berkeley draws the idealist conclusion. Whatever is conceived is in the mind, and a tree existing unconceived is a contradiction90. Unperceived things therefore exist in an infinite Mind91. Hylas objects that extended things cannot be in an unextended mind92. Philonous replies that “in the mind” means only perceived, not contained as a seal is in wax93.
Some carry this further, toward one universal mind. Marcus asks that human intelligence harmonize with the intelligence pervading all things, as breathing harmonizes with the air94, and Virgil’s Anchises describes a mind infused through the mass of the world95. Augustine rises from bodies through reason to an unchangeable Truth above his changeable mind96. Emerson holds that one nature writes and the same reads97, that a single mind animates all men98, and that the world is mind precipitated99. Channing names God the Parent Mind100 and calls the material world a shadow of the spiritual101.
The relation of mind and body is posed in three registers. The first is sovereignty. Socrates finds thought best when the mind is collected into herself102. Marcus describes the understanding as master of its own activities103, unmingled with flesh104. Schiller holds that the passions cannot oppress the mind except through its own neglect105. Augustine notices a paradox here. The mind commands the body and is obeyed at once, but commands itself and is resisted106.
The second register is dependence. Descartes concedes that the mind depends on the condition of the bodily organs107. Pascal’s judge of the world is unsettled by a buzzing fly108. Paré records a spinal wound costing a patient first feeling, then reason109. Browne finds nothing in the brain beyond a beast’s skull110. Burke traces passions through bodily states and holds that the organs suffer first and the mind through them111,112. Hume suspects hidden mechanism behind a self-command that varies with fasting or fullness113.
The third register is mystery. Pascal calls the union incomprehensible, yet man’s very being114. Hume finds it inexplicable how thought acts on matter115,116. Schiller sees the finite mind as able to act only through what is passive117.
The Stoics supply the fullest discipline of the mind. The ruling faculty, when it is self-collected and free of passion, is a citadel118. Fire, iron and tyrants cannot impede it119. It converts every hindrance into an aid120, and it may always retreat into itself121. The Buddhist trained mind stands unmoved like a rock122. Poets carry the theme on. Dyer’s mind is a kingdom123, Marvell’s withdraws into a green thought124, and Milton’s Satan boasts that the mind is its own place125.
Discipline also means exercise. Cicero insists that intellect, like a lamp, needs oil, and that the old keep their minds by use126,127. Marcus by contrast fears that understanding may decay with age128. Pliny seeks darkness and silence for meditation129. Penn advises bounding thought to the present occasion130. Channing distinguishes active thought from a passive succession of ideas131.
Bacon’s contribution is sterner. The intellect makes its own difficulties132, distorts things like an uneven mirror through its idols133, and must be guided at every step as by machinery134. Hume similarly finds the understanding unfit for remote subjects135. Rousseau finds it dazzled before the divine essence136. Mill adds a social diagnosis: creeds received passively petrify the mind137.
Finally, the books give madness unusual prominence. In the Bacchae a god unseats reason. Agave mistakes her son’s head for a lion’s138 and recovers only gradually under Cadmus’s questioning139. Cervantes makes madness local. Reading and sleeplessness dry up Don Quixote’s brain140, yet he reasons soundly on everything except chivalry141. Shakespeare shows Hamlet’s noble reason like sweet bells jangled142, Lear waking unsure of his perfect mind143, and Macbeth longing to pluck sorrow from memory144. Theory follows the literature. Hobbes treats madness as a disorder in which mind and organs each cause the other145. Cellini records a castellan who thought himself a frog or a bat146. Manzoni calls one deranged case a specimen of the human mind147. Poe allegorizes the palace of Thought overrun by evil things148.
What remains open is the question these accounts circle. If madness can arise from poison, grief, books or a god, is reason sovereign, as the Stoics held, or hostage to the body, as Burke and Hobbes suggest? Pascal’s answer, that the union is incomprehensible yet is what we are, may be the most candid the collection offers.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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See also: Sense, Soul, Matter, Man, Memory and Imagination, Madness