C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Mental Freedom
By Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)
A
That we do not possess absolute dominion over them, I have already shown. Yet the Stoics have thought that the emotions depended absolutely on our will, and that we could absolutely govern them. But these philosophers were compelled—by the protest of experience, not from their own principles—to confess that no slight practice and zeal is needed to control and moderate them; and this some one endeavored to illustrate by the example (if I remember rightly) of two dogs,—the one a house-dog and the other a hunting-dog. For by long training it could be brought about that the house-dog should become accustomed to hunt, and the hunting-dog to cease from running after hares.
To this opinion Descartes not a little inclines. For he maintained that the soul or mind is specially united to a particular part of the brain,—namely, to that part called the pineal gland,—by the aid of which the mind is enabled to feel all the movements which are set going in the body, and also external objects; and which the mind by a simple act of volition can put in motion in various ways. He asserted that this gland is so suspended in the midst of the brain that it could be moved by the slightest motion of the animal spirits; further, that this gland is suspended in the midst of the brain in as many different manners as the animal spirits can impinge thereon; and again, that as many different marks are impressed on the said gland as there are different external objects which impel the animal spirits towards it: whence it follows, that if the will of the soul suspends the gland in a position wherein it has already been suspended once before by the animal spirits driven in one way or another, the gland in its turn reacts on the said spirits, driving and determining them to the condition wherein they were when repulsed before by a similar position of the gland.
He further asserted that every act of mental volition is united in nature to a certain given motion of the gland. For instance, whenever any one desires to look at a remote object, the act of volition causes the pupil of the eye to dilate; whereas if the person in question had only thought of the dilation of the pupil, the mere wish to dilate it would not have brought about the result, inasmuch as the motion of the gland, which serves to impel the animal spirits towards the optic nerve in a way which would dilate or contract the pupil, is not associated in nature with the wish to dilate or contract the pupil, but with the wish to look at remote or very near objects.
Lastly, he maintained that although every motion of the aforesaid gland seems to have been united by nature to one particular thought, out of the whole number of our thoughts, from the very beginning of our life, yet it can nevertheless become through habituation associated with other thoughts: this he endeavors to prove in the ‘Passions de l’Âme.’ He thence concludes that there is no soul so weak that it cannot, under proper direction, acquire absolute power over its passions. For passions as defined by him are “perceptions, or feelings, or disturbances of the soul, which are referred to the soul as species, and which (mark the expression) are produced, preserved, and strengthened, through some movement of the spirits.” But seeing that we can join any motion of the gland, or consequently of the spirits, to any volition, the determination of the will depends entirely on our own powers; if therefore we determine our will with sure and firm decisions in the direction to which we wish our actions to tend, and associate the motions of the passions which we wish to acquire with the said decisions, we shall acquire an absolute dominion over our passions.
Such is the doctrine of this illustrious philosopher (in so far as I gather it from his own words): it is one, which, had it been less ingenious, I could hardly believe to have proceeded from so great a man. Indeed, I am lost in wonder that a philosopher who had stoutly asserted that he would draw no conclusions which do not follow from self-evident premises, and would affirm nothing which he did not clearly and distinctly perceive, and who had so often taken to task the scholastics for wishing to explain obscurities through occult qualities, could maintain a hypothesis beside which occult qualities are commonplace. What does he understand, I ask, by the union of the mind and the body? What clear and distinct conception has he got of thought in most intimate union with a certain particle of extended matter? Truly I should like him to explain this union through its proximate cause. But he had so distinct a conception of mind being distinct from body, that he could not assign any particular cause of the union between the two, or of the mind itself, but was obliged to have recourse to the cause of the whole universe,—that is, to God.
Further, I should much like to know what degree of motion the mind can impart to this pineal gland, and with what force can it hold it suspended? For I am in ignorance whether this gland can be agitated more slowly or more quickly by the mind than by the animal spirits, and whether the motions of the passions, which we have closely united with firm decisions, cannot be again disjoined therefrom by physical causes; in which case it would follow that although the mind firmly intended to face a given danger, and had united to this decision the motions of boldness, yet at the sight of the danger the gland might become suspended in a way which would preclude the mind thinking of anything except running away.
In truth, as there is no common standard of volition and motion, so is there no comparison possible between the powers of the mind and the power or strength of the body; consequently the strength of one cannot in any wise be determined by the strength of the other. We may also add that there is no gland discoverable in the midst of the brain, so placed that it can thus easily be set in motion in so many ways; and also that all the nerves are not prolonged so far as the cavities of the brain. Lastly, I omit all the assertions which he makes concerning the will and its freedom, inasmuch as I have abundantly proved that his premises are false. Therefore since the power of the mind, as I have shown above, is defined by the understanding only, we shall determine solely by the knowledge of the mind the remedies against the emotions, which I believe all have had experience of, but do not accurately observe or distinctly see; and from the same basis we shall deduce all those conclusions which have regard to the mind’s blessedness.