ON THE HUMAN BEING
Chapter 1: The origin of the human race, etc.
Chapter 2: The visual line and the perception of motion
2.1. Introduction.
[7] Seeing is distinct and shaped when light or colour has a shape, the parts of which are caused by the parts of the object, and have an ordered one-to-one relationship with them.
Light or colour shaped in this way is called an ‘image’. However, it is a natural instinct for all sentient beings, at first sight, to think that this image is the very thing seen, or at least a body of some sort, which exactly corresponds to the thing itself through its similar arrangement of parts. Even humans (apart from the very few who have corrected the judgments of the senses by reasoning) think the image is the object itself, and need to be trained to get it into their heads that the sun and the stars are larger and more distant than they seem.
As far as I am aware, although many have tried, no-one has yet succeeded in proving why an object appears sometimes larger, sometimes smaller; sometimes nearer, sometimes further away; and sometimes as having one shape, sometimes another. But this is hardly surprising, since no-one has even suspected that light and colour are not accidents of objects, but our own phantasms. Hitherto, nothing has been written about the role of images [8] with the solidity of reasoning which is required of those who aspire to scientific knowledge of the genuine causes of things. Therefore let us see whether we can accurately reckon up the accounts [n.1] of these things too, on the basis of what has been said above. . . . .
Chapter 3: The apparent position of the object in direct vision
Chapter 4: The representation of the object in perspective
Chapter 5: The apparent position of the object in plane and convex mirrors by reflection
Chapter 6: The apparent position of the object by reflection in a spherical concave mirror
Chapter 7: The apparent position of the object seen by a single refraction
Chapter 8: Vision after two refractions, or common diopters
Chapter 9: Double diopters, or the telescope and the microscope
Chapter 10: Language and the sciences
10.1. The definition of language, and that it is exclusive to humans.
[88] Language or speech is a complex of words which have been arbitrarily established by human beings to signify the sequence of the concepts of the things we think about. So language bears the same relation to mental discourse as words do to the ideas or concepts of individual things. And it appears to be peculiar to human beings. It is true that some lower animals can be trained to conceive what we want or command through the words we use. However, they do it not through taking our words as words, but as signs, since they do not know what thing human beings have arbitrarily established them as signifying.
So the signifying which takes place through the cries of one animal to another of the same species is not language, because these cries, through which they signify hope, fear, joy, etc., are uttered by force of their passions — not voluntarily, but by the necessity of their nature. It happens that animals have the minimum variety of cries for the difference between one cry and another to warn them to flee from danger, or to call them out to feed, or to stimulate them to song, or to entice them to sex. However, these cries are not language, since they were not established by their will, but broke out by force of nature from their individual [89] fear, joy, desire, and other passions. It is obvious that this does not constitute speaking, since animals of the same species have the same cries everywhere in the world, whereas the words of humans are different.
Consequently, other animals also lack understanding. For although understanding is a kind of imagination, it is one which arises from the established signification of words.
I have said that words arose from an agreement among humans. However, someone might ask which humans had so much authority that they were able to endow the human race with something as beneficial to us as language. For it is impossible to believe that there was some occasion when humans convened a meeting in order to establish by decree the significations of words and complexes of words. What is believable is that at first there were very few names, and that they were the names of the most familiar things. Thus the first man arbitrarily imposed names on only a limited number of animals, namely those which God paraded before him. Subsequently, he imposed names on other things, depending on what things, or species of things, presented themselves to his senses. These names were handed down from father to son, and additional ones were invented. But in the second chapter of Genesis, God is said to have prohibited ‘the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ before Adam had given any names to anything. So how could Adam understand God’s command, when he did not yet know the meaning of ‘eat’, ‘fruit’, ‘tree’, ‘knowledge’, ‘good’ or ‘evil’? Consequently Adam must have understood the divine prohibition, not by virtue of words, but in some supernatural way. This becomes obvious a little later, when God asks him who pointed out to him that he was naked. Similarly, how could [90] he understand the serpent talking about death, when Adam was the first mortal, and could have no idea of death? Such things could not have been understood in any natural way. Consequently, the only possible natural origin of language is the arbitrary decision of human beings. This is even more evident from the forgetting of languages at Babel. From that time, different languages have arisen, and that of each nation is derived from one individual person. Some people say that names are imposed on individual things in accordance with the nature of those things. But this is silly. For how could it have happened that languages are different, while the nature of things is the same everywhere? And what is there in common between a word, [n.2] that is to say a sound, and an animal, which is a body?
The chief benefits which depend on language are the following. Firstly, by means of the names of numbers, people can quantify not only unities, but anything whatever which can be treated as one. For example, bodies, in so far as they are quantifiable in any respect — whether in respect of their length, their length and depth, or their length, depth, and width. They can also add them, and subtract them, and multiply and divide them using numbers, and compare them with each other. Again they can make calculations about times, motions, weights, and the degrees of intensity of qualities. From these things arise enormous benefits for human life, raising it above the condition of other animals. Everyone knows how indispensable these techniques are for measuring bodies, telling the time, calculating celestial motions, mapping the earth, navigation, civil and mechanical engineering, and other necessities. All of these come from numbering, and numbering comes from language.
Secondly, language also enables one person to teach another, that is, to communicate their scientific knowledge to others; to [91] warn others, and to consult with others. In this way, something which is good in itself becomes even better by being communicated to others.
Thirdly, it is thanks to language that we have the very great benefit of being able to give and understand orders. Without that, there would be no co-operation between people, no peace, and consequently no law and order. Instead, there would first be savagery, and then we would be cut off from each other, and live in caves rather than houses. It is true that some animals have a certain degree of social organisation, but it is not significant enough for the good life, and does not deserve to be taken account of here. It is to be found only among defenceless animals with few needs, and humans are not animals of this sort. Just as our weapons, the sword and the gun, are superior to those of other animals — their horns, teeth, and stings — to the same extent we surpass wolves, bears, and snakes in our rapacity and savagery, and are even hungry for future hunger; whereas these animals are rapacious only when hungry, and savage only when wounded.
We can easily infer from this how much we owe to language, since it enables us to co-operate and make agreements with each other, and thus live in security, happiness, and comfort. But I only say we can if we want to. There are also the disbenefits of language. It is true that the universal signification of words means that humans, alone among animals, can work out general rules for the art of living, as also for other arts. But humans are also the only animals who can use false rules, and hand them on for others to use. Consequently, humans can stray further and more dangerously from the truth than other animals can. If they wish (as they will whenever it seems to be to their advantage), humans can also deliberately say what they know to be false — in other words tell lies — and make people’s minds inimical to the conditions of co-operation and peace. This cannot happen [92] in the social groupings of other animals, since they judge what is good or bad for them by their senses, and not by the grievances of others, and they cannot understand the causes of these grievances unless they actually see them.
Furthermore, since we are used to listening, it sometimes happens that some people are too ready to accept what is said. This is true of those who listen to the words of philosophers and university teachers, even though no proposition can be expressed by means of these words, since the doctors have invented them in order to cover their own ignorance. Having accepted them, they then use them themselves, believing that they are saying something, even though they are not saying anything at all.
Finally, because humans have such a facility for speaking, they can speak without having any thoughts; and they can deceive themselves into believing that what they are saying is true. Other animals are not capable of self-deception.
The conclusion is that language does not make humans better, but more powerful.
10.4. Science and proof arise from knowledge of causes
By ‘science’ is meant the scientific knowledge of theorems, that is, of the truth of general propositions, that is, of the truth of consequences. But when it is a question of the truth of something which has happened, it should not be called ‘science’, but merely ‘knowledge’. [n.3] The scientific knowledge by which we know that some given theorem is true, is knowledge from the causes or the coming into being of the subject derived through correct reasoning. Whereas the scientific knowledge by which we know only that it is possible that such a theorem is true, is knowledge derived through legitimate reasoning from experience of effects. Both types of derivation are usually called ‘proofs’. However, the former is more powerful than the latter — and rightly so, since it is better to know scientifically how we can make best use of present causes, than to know what something was like in the irrevocable past. Consequently, it has been granted to humans to have scientific knowledge by means of an apriori [n.4] proof only in the case of things which are brought into being by the will of human beings themselves.
[93] Most provable theorems are about quantity, the science of which is called ‘geometry’. This is because the properties of individual shapes are inherent in the lines which we ourselves have drawn, and the generation of these figures depends on our will. Nothing more is required for knowing any transformation [n.5] specific to that figure, other than that we take account of everything which follows from the act of construction we ourselves performed in drawing the figure. Therefore it happens that geometry is considered to be provable, and indeed is so, precisely because we ourselves create the figures.
By contrast, we cannot deduce the properties of real things from their causes, because we do not see these causes — they are not in our power, but lie in the divine will; and the most significant of them, namely the ether, is invisible. However, by drawing consequences from the properties we do see, it is granted to us to advance as far as to be able to prove that such and such could have been their causes. This kind of proof is called ‘aposteriori’, and the science itself is called ‘physics’. But we cannot reason even aposteriori about the real world without knowledge of what follows from every species of motion, since all natural effects are brought about by motion. Nor can we know the consequences of motions without knowledge of quantity, which is geometry. It is therefore inevitable that some things must be proved apriori even by the physicist. So physics (genuine physics, I mean) is usually included among the ‘mixed mathematical sciences,’ since it depends on geometry. Sciences used to be called ‘mathematical’ if they were learned from teachers and through rules, and not by practice and experience. [n.6] So pure mathematics deals with quantities [94] in abstract, so that it does not require any knowledge of the subjects of the quantities — for example, geometry and arithmetic. Whereas the mixed mathematical sciences are those in which reasonings also take account of some property of the subject — for example, astronomy, music, physics, and branches of physics which can be distinguished in terms of the different species and components of the universe.
Finally, politics and ethics, or the sciences of the just and the unjust, and of the right and the wrong, can be proved apriori. This is because we ourselves created the principles by which it is known what are the just and the right, and, conversely, the unjust and the wrong — that is, the causes of justice, namely laws and contracts. For until contracts and laws were established, there was no justice or injustice, nor was anything naturally for or against the public good among human beings, any more than among other animals.
Chapter 11: Appetite and avoidance, pleasure and pain, and their causes
Appetition and avoidance differ from pleasure and pain in the same way as desire differs from enjoyment, that is, as the future differs from the present. For appetition is a pleasure, and avoidance is a pain; but the former comes from a pleasure, and the latter from a pain, which is not yet present, but foreseen or expected. Although pleasure and pain are not called sensations, [95] they differ from them only in the following respect. Sensation is of an object, which is perceived as external because of the reaction or resistance which comes from the organ, and hence consists in an outward conation of the organ. Pleasure, on the other hand, consists in a passion which comes from the action of the object, and is an inward conation.
So, as with sensation, the causes of appetite and avoidance, or pleasure and pain, are the actual objects of sensation. From this it follows that neither our appetite nor our avoidance is the cause of our desiring or avoiding this or that — in other words, that we do not have an appetite for something because we will to do so, since will itself is an appetite. Similarly, we do not avoid something because of a contrary will, but because both appetite and avoidance are brought into being by the things themselves which we desire or hate, and there necessarily follows a preconception of the future pleasure or pain from those objects. But what am I saying? Can it really be that we are hungry, and have an appetite for other necessities of life, because we will to be hungry? Can it really be that hunger, thirst, and other desires are voluntary? When people have an appetite towards something, it is certainly possible for their action to be free, but not their appetition. This is so obvious from anyone’s own experience, that I never cease to be amazed how many people fail to understand how it can possibly be the case. When we say that someone has a free choice between doing or not doing something or other, we must always take as understood the qualifying clause ‘if they so will;’ for it would be absurd to say that someone has a free choice of doing this or that, whether they will it or not.
When someone wonders whether they should or should not do something suggested, they are said to ‘deliberate’, that is, they put on hold the liberty they have of opting for either side. In such a deliberation, depending on how the advantages and disadvantages appear on one side or the other, [96] they [n.7] feel appetite and aversion alternately, until they are forced to make some decision; and the last appetite, whether to do it or not to do it, which directly produces the action or its omission, is properly called the ‘will’.
In accordance with the way of nature, sensation is prior to appetite. For we cannot know whether what we see will be pleasurable or not except by experiencing it, that is, by sensing it. This is why it is popularly said that you cannot desire what you do not know about. On the other hand, it is possible to desire to experience what is as yet unknown. This is why infants have a narrow range of appetites; children try out more new ones; and with advancing age, adults, especially educated ones, experience innumerable things, including things which are not necessary for life. And what they know to be pleasurable as the result of experience, they subsequently strive after more frequently, being prompted by their memories of them. It also sometimes happens that things which are unpleasant on first experience, if they are rare or novel, are rendered less unpleasant by familiarity, until they become positively pleasurable. Habit has a great power to change the natures of individual people.
The name ‘good’ is common to all things which are sought after, in so far as they are sought after; and the name ‘bad’ is common to all things which we avoid. Consequently, Aristotle was right to define ‘good’ as that which everyone strives after. But since different people strive after and avoid different things, there are necessarily many things which are good for some and bad for others — for example, what is good for us is bad for our enemies. Therefore whether something is good or bad depends on who is striving after it or avoiding it. But a good can also be common; and a thing is correctly described as ‘for the common good,’ if it is useful for many people, or good for the state. It can also sometimes be said that something is ‘good for everyone’ — health, for example. But even this manner of speaking is relative. Consequently, nothing can be described as ‘good in itself,’ since whatever is good, is good for some person or for a number of people. From the beginning, [97] everything which God created was good. Why? Because all his works pleased him. It is also said that God is good for all those who invoke his name, but not for those who blaspheme his name. So what is called good is relative to the person, the place, and the time. Something is pleasing to this person here and now, but displeasing to that person there and then — and similarly for other circumstances. The nature of good and evil is entirely contingent upon what happens to be the case. [n.8] . . . .
Chapter 12: Affections, or disturbances of the mind
Chapter 13: Characters and habits
[111] People’s characters, that is their propensities towards specific things, arise from roughly six sources, namely bodily constitution, experience, habit, good luck, self-estimation, and authorities. Differences in character depend on differences in these factors.
Other things being equal, people who have a warm constitution tend to be bolder, and those with a cool one, more timid. The mobility of the animal spirits (i.e. the quickness of the imagination) is responsible for two character differences. The first is that some wits are sharper than others, so that some people have a lively wit, and others a dull one. Secondly, of those who have a quick wit, some have thoughts which range over wide areas, and others have thoughts which are concentrated on a single thing. This is why some people are praised for their imagination, and others are commended for their judgment. People with good judgment have the ideal kind of mind for investigating disputes, and for any kind of philosophy, i.e. for reasoning; and people with good imaginations have the ideal kind of mind for poetry and invention. Both are required for oratory. Judgment is needed for making subtle distinctions between similar objects, whereas imagination makes pleasing connections between dissimilar objects. Generally, old people have better judgment, and young people have stronger imaginations. However, old and young alike often have both. If imagination is excessive, it results in the sort of stupidity which is characteristic [112] of those who cannot finish a speech they have begun, because they are distracted by thoughts which are irrelevant to the topic. By contrast, excessive slowness of imagination leads to a different sort of stupidity, which is dullness.
It is often said that old people are characteristically too interested in money; but this is not true. The reason why the majority of old people habitually accumulate money which they are hardly going to spend, is not because of the intrinsic character of old people, but because of the continuation of a motivation. The same motivation was present before old age, namely to be able to congratulate oneself on seeing how far one can get in making money by one’s own foresight and wit, and to enjoy, not the money, but the foresight shown in amassing it. This should not seem surprising, since the same is true of people who are motivated by scholarly ambition. The older they get, the more they are used to increasing their knowledge, seeing the virtue of their minds in knowledge, as in a mirror. Finally, everyone is accustomed to pursuing and doing their best at their chosen vocation in life as the greatest of pleasures right up to old age, as long as they are able. And in old age above all, not becomes they are old, but because they have made more progress, rather like things which, by their nature, move faster and faster the longer they have been moving.
Difference arise from differences in habits, because things which are unpleasant the first time they are experienced (i.e. which human nature initially reacts against) overcome nature after enough repetition. At first you just have to put up with them, but soon they make you love them. This is most obvious in the case of physical exercise; but it also applies to mental activity. People who have got used to drinking wine from their youth find it difficult to stop; and people who have grown up from childhood with opinions of any sort usually stick with them until old age, especially those who have no great concern for truth and falsehood, except when it concerns their private property. [113] This is why, among all peoples, everyone permanently retains the religious practices and beliefs which they learned from their earliest years, so tenaciously that they hate and revile anyone who disagrees with them. — as is obvious from books (especially of theologians, who of all people should know better) full of the most vile abuse. The character of such people is not conducive to peace or society.
Habit also brings it about that people who are often engaged in dangerous activities for a long time have less fearful characters; and people who have enjoyed high office for a very long period have a less arrogant character, as also those who have given up self-admiration.
Experience of external things makes for a cautious character. By contrast, people who have had little experience of external things generally have a rash character. In reasoning, the human mind proceeds from what is known to what is unknown, and it cannot see ahead to the remote consequences of things without knowledge derived from sensation, that is, without experience of many actual successions of things. This means that people’s characters are improved by adversity: namely, an audacious character by frequent misfortunes, an ambitious character by repeated set-backs, a rude character by frequent cold-shouldering; and finally the characters of children are formed, in any direction their parents or teachers want, by the rod.
To a certain extent, differences in character depend on good luck, such as wealth, good breeding, or high office. Generally, wealth and high office make characters more proud, because people who have more power, demand more licence for themselves — in other words, they are more inclined to commit injustices, and are less capable of relating to people who have less power on an equal basis. People from ancient noble families [114] have gracious characters, because they can safely be generous and liberal in their respect for others, since they are confident enough of the respect owed to themselves. But the character of someone recently elevated to the nobility is more suspicious, like those who are often too hard on their inferiors, and too obsequious to their equals, because they are not sure enough how much respect they ought to receive.
13.6. From self-estimation
People who think they are wise, but are not, have a character which is not conducive to their correcting their own vices, because they do not think that there is anything in themselves which needs correcting. On the other hand, they are prone to correcting, or finding fault with, or laughing at what other people do; like those who think that anything they see done differently from the way they would have done it, must have been done wrongly. So they even think that the state is badly governed, simply because it is not governed the way they want; consequently, they are more likely than other people to become revolutionaries.
The same character is shared by people who think they are learned, because they think they are wise — and no-one would want to be educated [n.9] unless education made them wiser. This is why tutors very often have a censorious character which makes them bad company; like those who, since they see they have been put in charge of the moral education of children, can hardly refrain from criticising the morals of their parents, even when dining with them.
Even those who are employed to regulate public morality through their teachings, namely the doctors of the church, not knowing to whom they owe their vocation to such an important function, demand that kings themselves, the heads of the churches, should be regulated by them. Indeed, they want it to seem that they were appointed to this job, not by kings, or by those to whose care God entrusted the well-being of the people, but directly by God himself — which is extremely dangerous for the state.
Similarly, those who are appointed by the state to interpret the law [115] can hardly help thinking they are wiser than other people, because of such a distinguished accolade from the state. Consequently, they insist on using their position, not simply to administer justice, i.e. to explain what the laws are, i.e. to explain what has been decreed by the state; but often also to prescribe laws, i.e. to bring the sovereign authorities to order, i.e. to bring the state itself to order. This is usually the beginning of most civil wars. In other words, the rulers of states are accused of injustice by people who are considered to be legal experts. Then the ignorant populace takes up arms against the rulers of the state (i.e. against the state itself), under the leadership of people who either find revolution and civil war congenial because of their ambitions, or find it to their advantage because of reduced financial circumstances.
By an ‘authority’ for someone on any matter, I mean someone whose moral principles or example they follow because of their opinion of their wisdom. The young acquire good characters from them if they are good, and bad if they are bad, whether they are teachers, parents, or anyone else who they generally hear praised for their wisdom, since they respect people who are praised, and consider them a good role model.
From this it follows, first, how important it is for parents, teachers, or tutors, not only to fill the minds of the young with true and good moral principles, but also to behave piously and justly in their presence, since their minds are no less (in fact far more) inclined towards bad habits by example, than towards good habits by moral training. Second, how important it is for the books they are going to read to be sound, moral, and useful. But the books written by Roman citizens, when democracy was still flourishing or had only recently been abolished, as also those written by Greeks while Athens was a republic, are full of moral principles and examples liable to make the character of the people hostile to their kings; if only [116] because they see these books praise crimes committed by treacherous people — in particular the killing of kings, except that they call kings ‘tyrants’ before they kill them. But the character of the people is corrupted even more by reading the books and listening to the sermons of those who allow no influence of the Crown over the Church, but allow the Church to interfere in civil matters. This is why Cassiuses and Brutuses have been replaced by Ravaillacs and Cléments, [n.10] who helped other people’s ambitions by killing their kings, but thought that they were serving God.
Characters are called ‘habits’ when they are so deeply embedded by repetition, that they result in the appropriate action easily and without resistance from reason. If habits are good, they are called ‘virtues’, and if they are bad they are called ‘vices’. But since the same things are not good or evil for everyone, it sometimes happens that the same habits are praised by some and criticised by others; that is, some call them ‘good’, and others call them ‘bad’, and some call them ‘virtues’, and others call them ‘vices’. It is a common saying that ‘there are as many opinions as there are heads;’ [n.11] and it can also be said that there are as many different moral codes as there are people. However, this is to be taken as applying to people only in so far as they are people, and not in so far as they are citizens. As long as people are not citizens of a state, there is no obligation for one person to act in accordance with the opinions of another; but in a state, they are bound by contracts. From this it follows that those who consider people as they are in themselves, and as if they were not part of civil society, cannot have any science of morality, because there is no fixed measure by which virtue and vice can be quantified and defined. And all sciences begin with definitions, otherwise they are not to be called ‘sciences’, but mere verbiage.
13.9. The law is the measure of morals
A measure of virtues and vices which is common to everyone is to be found only in civil life; and this is why such a measure can only be [117] the laws of each individual state, since the laws of nature are absorbed into civil law after the establishment of the state. It is no argument against this that there exist now, and have existed in the past, innumerable states with different laws. Whatever the laws are, it has always and everywhere been held that the virtue of citizens consists in obeying the laws, and their vice consists in ignoring them. Therefore even if some actions are just in one state and unjust in another, justice itself (that is, not breaking the law) is and always will be the same everywhere. The only moral virtue is justice and equity, which we can measure by the civil laws, which are different in different states. The only thing we measure by purely natural laws is charity. These two cover the whole of moral virtue.
As for the other three so-called ‘cardinal virtues’ apart from justice, namely courage, prudence, and moderation, these are not virtues of citizens as citizens, but as people. As such, they are of benefit to the individual people who have them, but not so much to the state. It is equally true that the state is preserved by the courage, prudence, and moderation of its good citizens, and that it is thanks to the courage, prudence, and moderation of its enemies that it is not destroyed. Both courage and prudence consist in the strength of the mind, rather than the goodness of habits. Moderation is not so much a moral virtue, as an absence of vices which arise from greedy personalities, who harm themselves rather than the state. Just as each citizen has their own private good, each state has its own public good. If courage and prudence are of benefit only to certain individuals in their personal capacity, they should not be praised (that is, considered to be virtues) and expected of states, or any other people to whom they are of no benefit.
So to give a brief summary of this whole topic of habits and characters, [118] I say that goodness of character is what makes you fit for entering into civil society, and goodness of habits (that is, moral virtue) is what can best preserve civil society once it has been entered into. So all virtues are contained in justice and charity. It also follows from this that characters opposite to these are bad; and that the opposite habits, and all vices, are contained in injustice, and a mind which is insensitive to the sufferings of others, that is, in lack of charity.
Chapter 14: Religion
Chapter 15: Artificial people, or persons
Go to Index to On the Human Being