Notes on Hume’s Treatise

by G. J. Mattey

Book 1
Of the UNDERSTANDING
PART 4
Of the sceptical and other systems of philosophy.

Sect. 3. Of the antient philosophy.

Context

In the previous two Sections, the author has examined skeptical philosophical systems, which cast doubt on the judgments we make by way of probable reasoning (Section 1) and our belief in the existence of unperceived objects of the senses (Section 2). At the end of Section 2, he notes that this skepticism does not last long, and that he will presume that there is both an external and internal world. On the basis of this presumption, he undertakes to examine some general systems, both antient and modern, which have been proposed of both [the external and internal world]. The present Section and the next concern the external world, with this Section examining an ancient system regarding external objects.

Background

The target of criticism in this section is loosely called peripatetic, after the followers of Aristotle. This philosophy is said to contain a number of fictitious notions, including those of:

The notion of substance is developed originally in Aristotle’s Categories and Metaphysics. Aristotle recognized a number of ways of understanding what substance is, including substratum (Book VII, Chapter 3). The substratum is that of which everything else is predicated, while it is itself not predicated of anything else. Matter and form are considered as kinds of substratum. Accidents are understood negatively, as what does not belong to a substance essentially or necessarily (see Book V, Chapters 7 and 30).

After the revival of Aristotle’s philosophy in the fourteenth century by Thomas Aquinas, the scholastic philosophers adapted simplified versions of these notions. A material substance is composed of matter and substantial form. The matter is what distinguishes one substance from another. The form makes it the kind of thing it is. Substances, even those sharing a substantial form, have as well accidental qualities that distinguish them from one another in number but not in kind. Occult qualities, sympathies and antipathies, and horror of a vacuum were notions used in the explanation of natural and (apparently) magical phenomena.

The Treatise

1. We may learn from the philosophy of the ancients as we can from analysis of our dreams, which “several moralists” have recommended as revealing our own character because in them we act without hypocrisy, artifice, fear and policy. Our dreams are fictions of the imagination, which are influenced without constraint by character-traits such as courage and cowardice. In dreams, we see these traits in the most glaring colours. The imaginations of the ancient philosophers produced fictions of their own, to wit, substances, and substantial forms, and accidents, and occult qualities. Such fictions, while “unreasonable and capricious, have a very intimate connection with the principles of human nature.” [These principles are those that govern the imagination, which will be seen to be the sources of the fictions of the ancient philosophers.]

2. Before discussing the fictitious notions of the ancients, the author describes two evident contradictions in our ordinary thinking about objects. [The fictions of the ancients will turn out to be ways of coping with these conflicts in our thinking.] The author cites “the most judicious philosophers” as adopting the minimalist view that our ideas of bodies to be nothing but collections formed of ideas of the sensible qualities of which the body is composed. These qualities are found to have a constant union with each other. [See Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, Section 1 and following.] Although these qualities may be distinct, we commonly regard the compound of them as ONE thing and as being the SAME despite considerable changes in the compound. Yet these two suppositions cannot be correct: a simple thing cannot be compounded of several qualities, and what undergoes changes is not an identical thing. [There is a conflict between simplicity and compoundedness, so that the unity denoted by the expression ‘one thing’ must be understood here as an uncompounded thing. The second conflict is between what is invariant and what varies, so ‘same thing’ here must signify an unvarying thing.] Thus, there are two fundamental conflicts in our manner of thinking about bodies. The author proposes that we seek the causes of these conflicts (evident contradictions) and how it is that we try to cover the conflicts up.

3. The author begins his investigation by examining our belief in the sameness of an object that changes over time. This is easily understood when the changes are very gradual, so that the ideas of the several distinct successive qualities of objects are united together by a very close relation. [Consider, for example, the gradual warming of a stone in sunlight as the day progresses.] The transition from the idea of one quality making up the object to the idea of the closely related one is very easy. The author first calls this the effect of the close relation, then calls it the essence of relation. [In Book I, Part I, Section 5, the author had defined a natural relation to be that quality, by which two ideas are connected together in the imagination, and the one naturally introduces the other, after the manner above explain’d. In the present case, the ideas are connected together by resemblance.] Because the imagination does not separate the two ideas, they have a similar effect on the mind, hence it proceeds, that any such succession of related qualities is readily consider’d as one continu’d object, existing without any variation. The smoothness of the transition from one idea to the next readily deceives the mind, and makes us ascribe an identity to the changeable succession of connected qualities. [Thus the idea of the relation of identity of a compound of changing qualities is a deception brought on naturally by the imagination, in that the compound is not identical due to the changes in the qualities that make it up.]

4. A contrasting case is one in which the body is viewed at two separate times, at which its qualities are noticeably different. [There is no longer an easy transition from the one to the other, so the effects of the body on the imagination are dissimilar.] Under such conditions, the differences “seem entirely to destroy the identity.” As a result, we think of the body in contrary ways, depending on whether the period of time separating the views is short or long. Following an object undergoing changes gradually induces a smooth transition of thought which is very much like viewing an unchanging object. Just as we [rightly] ascribe identity in the latter case, we [wrongly] ascribe it in the former. But the progress of thought is broke when there is a noticeable difference in the qualities, and consequently we are presented with the idea of diversity. [Given that the only difference between the cases of unnoticed and noticed change is the point of view taken of the object,] we must do something to reconcile this contradiction. [That is, we must decide whether the body is really identical or really distinct.] The imagination decides in favor of identity by inventing a new something that remains the same in both the cases of unnoticed and noticed change. [As it is a fiction of the imagination and not to be discovered in the qualities of the object], this something is unknown and invisible, and it is called substance, or original and first matter. [On the peripatetic view, the matter of a body remains unchanged through all the changes of its qualities. For Aristotle’s argument that something remains one despite a change in its qualities, see Physics, Book I, Chapter 7 and Metaphysics, Book VIII, Chapter 1.]

5. What remains to be explained is our supposition that an object compounded of several qualities is nonetheless simple [or uncompounded, see paragraph 3]. The author announces that the fictitious notion of simplicity is similar to that of identity and arises from like causes. The correlate of the similarity between the views of no change and gradual change in qualities is the similarity between the views of an uncompounded or simple and indivisible body and one which has a strong relation between its parts at the time it is viewed. When the mind considers these different objects, its reaction is very similar.

The imagination conceives the simple object at once, with facility, by a single effort of thought, without change or variation. The connexion of parts in the compound object has almost the same effect, and so unites the object within itself, that the fancy feels not the transition in passing from one part to another.
An example is the close relation between the qualities of colour, taste, figure, solidity, and other qualities combin’d in a peach or melon. These qualities are conceived by the mind as making up a single thing, and the closeness of the relation of its qualities to one another makes it seem as if it were not composed of those qualities [just as if it had viewed an uncompounded body. The analogy is not exact here, since if the qualities of a body are taken to be the parts of which it is compounded, then the original experiment of viewing an uncompounded body would require that the body have only one quality. A body cannot, on the author’s account, have only one quality, since bodies are extended, and extended bodies are colored or solid, as explained in Book I, Part II, Section 3. The only sense of object which would consist of a single quality would be a colored point, also described in Book I, Part II, Section 3.] However, when the mind views the object in another way, it comes to recognize that despite the close relation among them, these qualities are in fact different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other. This second way of viewing the object is in conflict with the first way, and to reconcile this conflict, the imagination must invent an unknown something, or original substance and matter, as a principle of union or cohesion among these qualities, and as what may give the compound object a title to be call’d one thing, notwithstanding its diversity and composition. [The wording here is slightly different from that in the preceding paragraph, which identified the fiction as substance, or original and first matter. This difference seems to be inconsequential, as the author in both cases is referring to an alleged basis for identity despite the distinctness of qualities of bodies. The description of substance as an unknown something can be found in the modern philosopher Locke’s Essay, Book II, Chapter XXIII.]

6. After having described the basis for the imagination’s fiction of substance or original matter, the author turns to the description of it given by the peripatetic philosophers. It is taken to be perfectly homogeneous, or without any difference within it. Thus, the matter of earth, air, fire, and water, is the same, however one may change into another [as in water turning to air by evaporation]. The differences we find in these species of object [what we might now call natural kinds] is attributed to differences in their substantial forms. [It appears that the author identifies substantial form and essence. Water and air, for example, have distinct substantial forms or essences which make them different in species.] The substantial form not only is the source of the qualities of the things having it, but it also is taken to be a new foundation of simplicity and identity to each particular species. If we view several objects that are insensibly different from one another, we think they are all of the same kind, having the same substance [in the sense of substantial form] or essence. But if we view objects that are sensibly different from one another, we think of them as having a different substantial forms or essences. And in order to indulge ourselves in both these ways of considering our objects, we suppose all bodies to have at once a substance and a substantial form. [This would account for the identity of species—the having of the same substantial form. The species would be simple insofar as the single substantial form is its principle of unity, regardless of the different qualities members of that species possess. This seems to be the reason that the author refers to substantial form as being a new foundation of simplicity and identity, i.e., identity of species of body rather than individual body.]

7. The next ancient notion to be considered is that of accidents, or existents which cannot subsist apart, but require a subject of inhesion to sustain and support them. Examples of accidents are the colours, sounds, tastes, figures, and other properties of bodies. The notion of an accident is taken to be an unavoidable consequence of this method of thinking with regard to substances and substantial forms. In every case where we find properties or qualities, we suppose that there is a substance. Since we habitually associate the ideas of the property and the substance, we infer that the property depends on the substance. The mechanism here is the same as that which operates in general with causal relations: constant conjunction leads to an inference to a causal connection [see Book I, Part III, Section 6]. There is a difference between the two, in that with causal inference, the conjunction is between two impressions produced by observation, while the association in the case of accident and substance is between something observed and something imagined. But the two habits have the same effect. The imagined dependence, however, is a conceit just like the notions of original matter and substantial form. Each quality of things is distinct from each other one, and so each can be conceived to exist apart from each other, in which case they can in fact exist apart, not only from every other quality, but from that unintelligible chimera of a substance. [Note that in some cases, there may be required a distinction of reason between two qualities that cannot be sensibly presented apart from each other, such as color and shape. See the concluding paragraph of Part I, Section 7 for a discussion of this kind of distinction. The claim that the perceivable qualities of bodies must be supposed to inhere in a substance can be found in Locke’s Essay, Book II, Chapter XXIII.]

8. The final step in this progression of fictions composing the ancient system is to attribute to bodies accidents which are as unknown as the substances in which they are supposed to inhere. These are occult qualities, which are invoked when the cause of a phenomenon is unknown. [For example, the power of a magnet to attract iron was sometimes attributed to an occult quality it possesses.] So, the account of bodies includes an unknown substance which is related to accidents by an unknown relation of inherence, [and some of which accidents are themselves unknown or occult]. The whole system, therefore, is entirely incomprehensible, and yet is deriv’d from principles as natural as any of those above-explain’d. [These would be principles that account for our causal inferences, as described in Part III.]

9. Having explained the fictitious nature of the notions of the basic system of the peripatetic philosophy, the author now steps back to reflect upon a more general theme. He notes that people’s opinions regarding the connexions betwixt such objects as they have constantly found united together can be ranked, according as they acquire new degrees of reason and knowledge. The opinions are those of:

It will turn out that the opinions of the true philosophy resemble those of the vulgar more than those of the false philosophy, despite the fact that the false philosophy it is the result of degrees of reason and knowledge superior to those of the vulgar. As for the common and careless way of thinking, people naturally find, by repeated observation, associations among objects and their qualities, and from those associations infer connections that they imagine to be impossible to break. Philosophers are able to step back from such customary associations and recognize that there is no known connexion between objects. They see that objects and their qualities are distinct from one another and that the connection imagined by the vulgar is solely due to customary conjunction. What they should do at this point is to recognize that power and force are simply not discoverable in nature. [See Part III, Section 14, for an extensive argument for this claim.] What philosophers in fact do is seek for qualities upon which to base these undiscoverable connections. Unfortunately for them, the philosophers find fault with all the explanations that have been proposed. The right reaction would have been to regard them all with the indolence and indifference of the vulgar. But instead, they find themselves in a very lamentable condition. The stories of Sisyphus and Tantalus told by the poets have given us only a faint notion of the hopelessness of their task. [Sisyphus was condemned to roll a rock up a mountain, only to have it roll back down when he neared the top, after which he rolled it up again, with no end to the process. Tantalus’s punishment was to stand in water up to his neck beneath the limbs of a fruit tree. When he wanted to drink, the water receded from his mouth, and when he wanted to eat, the wind blew the branches away from him.] For what can be imagin’d so tormenting, than to seek with eagerness, what for ever flies us; and to seek for it in a place, where ’tis impossible it can ever exist?

10. Nature, which “seems to have observ’d a kind of justice and compensation in every thing,” gives solace to the philosophers by providing a consolation primarily in the invention of words like ‘faculty’ and ‘occult quality.’ [Thus, the foregoing paragraph serves as a prelude to a discussion of new fictions introduced by the ancient philosophy.] When we use terms that are really significant and intelligible, we have a tendency to omit the ideas that they express when we use them and rely on a custom that allows us to recall the ideas at will. Similarly, it is natural that when we frequently use terms that have no significance or intelligibility, we take them to work the same way. We think that if we reflect upon them, we will be able to discover by reflection their secret meaning. The two ways of using terms resemble each other in appearance, and this deceives philosophers into thinking that they resemble and conform to each other thoroughly, so that the invented words are taken really to express ideas. The minds of such philosophers are thereby set at ease. In this their attitude resembles that of the vulgar, who were never bothered in the first place, so that the philosophers settle into the same indifference, which people attain by their stupidity. On the other hand, their indifference also resembles that of the true philosopher, who reposes in a moderate skepticism. These philosophers need only say, that any phænomenon, which puzzles them, arises from a faculty or occult quality, and there is an end of all dispute and enquiry upon the matter.

11. The most remarkable instance in which the peripatetics have let their imaginations fly is in their notions of sympathies, antipathies, and horrors of a vacuum. [Sympathy and antipathy were supposed to be attractive and repulsive causal agents in objects. Horror of a vacuum was the notion that nature resists the creation of a vacuum.] The author notes that humans naturally are inclined to project onto other objects those qualities they find in themselves. A little reflection cures this, and the result is that it persists only in children, poets, and ancient philosophers. Children beat on stones that hurt them. Poets are ready to assign human qualities to everything. The fictions of sympathies and antipathies are the projections of the philosophers. We must pardon children, because of their age; poets, because they profess to follow implicitly the suggestions of their fancy: But what excuse shall we find to justify our philosophers in so signal a weakness?

The Enquiry

The ancient system of philosophy that is the topic of this Section is not discussed in the Enquiry.

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