The Relationship Between the Physical and the Moral in Man by Maine de Biran;

Author:Maine de Biran; [Biran, Maine de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472579690
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2016-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

§3 Of the affections of sight

We have just considered the affective impressions from the point of view of external animal sensations relating to instinct, whose base, or at least whose predominant part, they constitute. If we now consider them from the point of view of sensations relating to perception or knowledge, of which they are an obscure and subordinate element, we find first, for the sense of sight, that corresponding to the immediate action of the luminous fluid on the retina is a particular affection that, remaining mixed up in the total phenomenon of objective representation, not distinguishing itself when this phenomenon takes place, not raising itself to the height of idea when it is alone and outside of objective representation, never itself produces an image.

Aside from the cases in which light beams act en masse upon the external organ and in which there is nothing more than a simple affection without any visual representation, there is little doubt but that there is also an impression relating particularly to each tone, to each shade of light, and it is for this very reason that this tint or that mixture of colours becomes more agreeable to us than any other, as a stimulant for the physical sensitivity of the eye, to that exact degree that constitutes the immediate pleasure associated with the use of this sense. I say immediate pleasure, because the direct visual affection I am speaking of here, pleasant or disagreeable in itself, has almost nothing in common with that pleasure of comparison and reflection which is afforded the trained eye by the extension and variety of perspectives, the vividness of sights, the harmonious proportions of figures, the concordant tones of colours. This sentiment of the beautiful, of the grand, for which sight is the primary organ, derives from another more elevated source and is only born of an intellectual effort that this is not the place to discuss. We shall merely observe as the principal mark of distinction that these superior sentiments derive from knowledge and are necessary effects of it, whereas the immediate affections long precede it and are independent from it, which suffices to justify a distinction that is established in Descartes’ physiology.

The phenomena of direct vision, considered from the particular point of view that we are considering here, seem to exhibit a sort of vibratory property particularly characteristic of the immediate organ of sight; in virtue of this vibratility (vibratilité), impressions remain in the external sense with more or less force and duration, even after the external cause has stopped acting; it is this material shock that Buffon speaks of, etc.; spontaneously reproduced, these impressions can also combine together, follow one another in all different ways, doing so without any collaboration from perceptive activity and against the very efforts of the self, which vainly attempts to repudiate these adamant spectres.

Whence a faculty that I have characterized elsewhere under the heading passive immediate intuition, a faculty that is spontaneous in its exercise, independent of thought and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.