David Hartley, Observations on Man, Part I (1749)
Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, Part I
(New York: Garland Publishing, 1971)
In the first part of the Observations on Man, Hartley formulates a human physiology that follows (and repeatedly cites) the method of Newton’s physics. Human bodily experience is shaped by the principle of “vibration” (which is a physical account of the work of nerves in sensation and movement) and by the concurrent principle of “association,” whereby all vibrations, internal and external and corresponding to sense impressions, thoughts, feelings, motions, and actions can potentially come to be associated and repeated together. Armed with these two principles, Hartley explains sensations, ideas (understanding, affection, memory, imagination), muscular motion, and “intellectual” as well as sensual pains and pleasures.
In many respects, Hartley’s theory and attitude resembles the Descartes of The Passions of the Soul; the difference comes from a radically simplified and unified conception of internal anatomy (no more humours or pressures, just vibration as principle of all actions and processes), which also allows for a materialist (brain-based) conception of association (where in Descartes, the soul had to mediate between the current bodily state and a similar one in the past).
[nervous system] The nervous system consists of vessels or tubes filled with a uniform substance whose essential characteristic is its sensitivity to and continuation of all vibrations. Vibrations permeate the air in the forms of light, sound, smells, and pervade solid bodies. Everything that the body thus senses is a vibration registered by the nerves and relayed to the brain. The brain in turn issues its commands in a similar form of vibrations, which trigger vibrations in motor nerves.
[pleasure-unpleasure] A peculiar consequence of Hartley’s unified principle of brain and nervous functions is his understanding of pleasure and unpleasure as a continuum with a shifting crossover point [I need to go back through some Freud to remember if his conception is similar]. Unpleasure is a difference in the volume of vibrations, not in kind or location; furthermore, since all repeated sensations diminish in their effect on the organism, borderline unpleasurable sensations tend to fade into pleasure of the highest sort.
[association theorem] If any Sensation A, Idea B, or muscular Motion C, be associated for a sufficient number of times with any other Sensation D, Idea E, or muscular Motion F, it will at last excite d, the simple Idea belonging to the Sensation D, the very Idea E, or the very muscular Motion F. (102)
[habit, automatism] “After the Actions, which are most perfectly voluntary, have been rendered so by one Set of Associations, they may, by another, be made to depend upon the most diminutive Sensations, Ideas, and Motions, such as the Mind scarce regards, or is conscious of; and which therefore it can scarce recollect the Moment after the Action is over. (104) These “automatic Motions of the secondary Kind” are “rather to be ascribed to the Body than the Mind”. Motions thus regularly pass from involuntary to greater and greater control and volition and back into semiconsciousness.
[curio; animal cruelty] “…whipping a Dog, after he has taken the Nux Vomica [strychnine], contributes to obviate its ill effects” (51).
[digestion and objects] The “very considerable, and frequently repeated” pleasures of the alimentary duct are “one chief Means, by which pleasurable States are introduced into the Brain, and nervous System. . . . one principal Cause of the Greatness and constant Recurrency of [alimentary] Pleasures, ...is to introduce and keep up pleasurable States in the Brain, and to connect them with foreign objects” (166).
[determinism] “...every semivoluntary, voluntary, and secondarily automatic Action, should be excited by an associated circumstance...” (235)
[sexuality] Of the Desires of the Sexes towards each other (239)
sex organs "sympathise" with the rest of the body i.e. become titillated when the body feels pleasure. The list of original reasons is worth quoting: "from Youth, Health, grateful Aliment, the Pleasures of Imagination, Ambition, and Sympathy, ..." (239), the latter being especially salient for later periods. Sex organs' sensitivity makes pleasure in them more acute than elsewhere.
"Young Persons hear and read numberless Things, in this degenerate and corrupt State of human Life, which carry nervous influences of the pleasurable Kind (be they Vibrations, or any other Species of Motion) to the Organs of Generation" (240).
Shame, diminished as other pains, adds to the pleasure. All of this explains desires common in the young, which are not without virtue if they are not indulged. Sim., once these desires focus on an object, this could be of the highest virtue if it is not indulged. H. expects animal passion to be brief, and quickly satisfied. Through association, all actions of the lustful become tinged with lust; this will not be abandoned until the painful consequences match and outweigh the associated pleasures.
....notwithstanding the great and public Mischiefs, which arise from the ungovernable Desires of the Vicious, there is great Reason, even from this Theory, to apprehend, that, if this Sourse of the benevolent Affections was cut off, all other Circumstances remaining the same, Mankind would become much more selfish and malicious, much more wicked and miserable, upon the Whole, than they now are. (242)
...The Theory here proposed for explaining the Nature and Growth of these Desires shews in every Step, how watchful every Person, who desires true Chastity and Purity of Heart, ought to be over his Thoughts, his Discourses, his Studies, and his Intercourses with the Word in general, and with the other Sex in particular. There is no Security but in Flight, in turning our Minds from all the associated Circumstances, and begetting a new train of Thoughts and Desires, by an honest, virtuous, religious Attention to the Duty of the Time and Place. to which must be added great Abstinence in Diet, and bodily Labor, if required. (242)
this brief (3 pages!) section on sex seems to be torn between seeing both the natural and the benevolent aspect of sexual passion and wholeheartedly embracing a conventional moralism. It doesn’t attempt to explain the way in which sexual desire becomes associated with a particular object or a class of objects; desire stems naturally from perceived beauty, mental perfection, etc. it also completely ignores sexual difference in anatomy, making no apparent distinctions between the operation of desire in women and men; the prescription in the last paragraph, however, seems to be aimed only at males.
[affect] affect and thought are not to be distinguished, except by degree. No affect w/o thought, no thought w/o affect.
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